What are the Odds?

What are the odds of there being “two” sets of twins out there named Mearl and Pearl? The set I’m interested in were born in 1895. I keep coming across a pair born in 1924.  Pearl Fay only lived 10 days before she passed. She is buried in an unmarked grave with my great great grandparents and her uncle Charlie.  I found Pearl’s burial location through court records, but have not yet found Mearl May…or is it Merl May?  I’ve seen both spellings.  Their father, Arthur is buried in California.   I’ve not yet looked for their mother.

 

Chicago City Cemetery and William Cullimore

It appears that one of the possible burial places of my great (x4) grandfather, William Cullimore, will prove to be the ultimate challenge. More so than I originally thought. One of the possible locations of burial was Chicago City Cemetery. As a widower, he moved west via the newly opened turnpike from Maryland to Chicago where his younger brother, Thomas, and his wife were living at the time. William’s obit does not list where he was buried but the cemetery that his brother is buried at does not reflect his being buried there. The puzzle has just begun and I look forward to challenge.

 

“Chicago City Cemetery was located in at the south end of what is now Lincoln Park. The first burials were in 1843, and at its peak, had 20,000 burials. City residents did not like the cemetery location, which was on low land, close to the lake, thinking it contaminated water supply and aided the spread of diseases such as cholera.

In 1859, the city stopped selling lots at the cemetery and reinterments began in the newly-opened Rosehill Cemetery. The last burials at City were in 1866. Other cemeteries that have reinterred remains are Graceland, Wunders, and Calvary. Jewish Cemetery landowners handled reinterments, for which there are no public records. The remains of about 6,000 confederate prisoners from the federal prison, Camp Douglas, were moved from a potters field to Oak Woods Cemetery. The conditions at Camp Douglas were notoriously awful, and most of the rebels died of hunger and disease, between 1862 and 1865.

Disinterments were completed by 1870, and the City Cemetery was officially empty of all graves except the Ira Couch tomb, which still stands in the park (it was deemed too expensive to move--and may be empty--records indicate he is in Rosehill's Couch family tomb) and 116-year-old Boston Tea Party's David Kennison. However, various digs in the park over the years, one as recently as 1998, have yielded human remains.”

 

Also Ref: http://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/home.html

Lloyd George Mallette (1914-1961)

I received a pleasant surprise from my cousin a couple days ago – a black and white photo of my Grandfather Lloyd George Mallette, my mother’s father. And, his baby foot print.  When I first looked at the photo I saw my younger brother looks a lot like him and my mom too. I can’t wait to scan and post a copy of the picture. I wish my mom could have seen the photo too, she would have been so excited to see it since she never knew him.

 

Mary Helen Weigandt Shipman Solomon

Here is a newspaper article about my Great Aunt Mary “Helen” Weigandt Shipman Solomon.  An amazing person! I’m so happy my husband was station here and we moved to Warner Robins in 1996.  My husband also worked in the 5^th MOB.  It gave me the opportunity to meet up with her. We even did some oil painting together, a memory I will cherish forever. She is extremely gifted with the paint brush! Now, we are back for good and I get to see her again. She has told me so many wonderful stories about my dad’s side of the family. I will have to make her some of my cowboy cookies and see if the measure up to her standards…haha.

 

Here’s Why She’s Called ‘Sweetie’

Macon Telegraph (GA), February 15, 2011

 

WARNER ROBINS, Ga. – Her name is Helen Solomon but most everybody knows her as “Sweetie.”

 

Her late husband, Col. Joseph Solomon, first started calling her that. Then her three children picked up on it. They would introduce their mom as Sweetie, and the name stuck like a confectioner’s spoon in a bowl of thick icing.

 

Her coronation had nothing to do with her famous “cowboy cookies,” although there is a sweet tooth behind those apron strings. Sweetie has a secret recipe of oatmeal, chocolate chips and pecans. Her daughters swear it is probably locked in a vault somewhere.

 

It’s somewhat appropriate I introduce you to this sweet spirit in the days before Valentine’s Day. After all, there’s an ongoing love story here between a 93 year-year-old woman and the world.

 

She grew up in a German family in Lincoln, Neb., and married Frank Shipman five days after Pearl Harbor on Dec. 12, 1941.  A month later he was on his way to fort Dix, N.J.  He died in combat 67 years ago this week near the Abby of Monte Cassino in Italy.

 

Her friends and family in Nebraska encouraged the young widow to volunteer with the local USO.  She was working in the cloak room when a handsome soldier from Cleveland, Miss., waltzed across the dance floor. His name was Capt. Joseph Solomon. He would later ask for her hand in marriage.

 

In 1948, while stationed in Germany, he was responsible for setting up the radar operation for the famous Berlin Airlift. She helped organize clothes and food drives in German neighborhoods.

 

Their son, Joe, was born in 1949. The stork dropped identical twin daughters Sandy…and…Linda into the nest two years later. In 1953, while the family was living in Montgomery, Ala., there was a massive polio outbreak. Sweetie tried to flee with her three children and head back to Nebraska to stay with her family. But 4-year-old Joe became ill on the plane. When they landed, he was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with polio.  It was July 4, 1053, a day Joe would later refer to as his “dependence day.”

 

Sandy, who was 22 months old, was diagnosed with polio the next day followed by Linda the day after. Sweetie was diagnosed on the fourth day. Joe and Sandy were the most afflicted and spent four months in the hospital. Joe’s right leg was paralyzed, and he wears a brace to this day. Sandy still wears a knee brace and has had numerous operations.  Linda and Sweetie had non-paralytic polio, although they both have scoliosis.

 

Their housekeeper in Montgomery, a black woman named Sadie Bell Parker, was so concerned she bought a bus ticket to Nebraska and bravely stayed in the quarantined hospital room with Joe and Sandy.

 

She later cared for them when they returned home to Alabama. Parker often went on trips with the family, which wasn’t easy in the days of segregation in the Deep South. It was a special relationship, and the Solomon’s still stay in touch with Parker, who is in her 90s.

 

In 1956, the Solomon family moved to Warner Robins, where Joseph was appointed commander of the 5^th Mob at Robins Air Force Base.  Two years later, the Solomon’s were named the National Poster Family by the March of Dimes. Sweetie traveled with her children for speaking engagements all over the country and tutored her children in their schoolwork.  They appeared on national radio and television commercials and “The Ed Sullivan Show.”  They participated in a fashion show with Marilyn Monroe at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.  Little Joe served as grand marshal of the Daytona 500.  They brushed elbows with Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), Eartha Kitt, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Hugh O’Brian (Wyatt Earp), Liberace, Howdy Doody and Marcel Marceau.  They met Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine.

 

The next year, Sweetie was state representative for the March of Dimes and helped establish the office in Macon.  She often went door to door to raise funds.

 

In her heart, she had always wanted to become a nurse.  Although she never received a nursing degree, she became a medical caregiver by administering daily physical therapy to Joe and Sandy until they were teenagers.

 

The family left Warner Robins for a few years and lived in Puerto Rico during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  Joseph even had a “red phone” at the house to notify him in the event of an emergency.  While in Puerto Rico, he helped build the foundation for the world’s largest and most sensitive radiotelescope at Arecibo.

 

After the Solomons returned to Warner Robins, Sweetie worked for several years in the office of U.S. Rep Jack Brinkley.

 

Linda has complied a book of letters her mother wrote over a 27-year period from 1947-74.  She plans to have it published and will call it “Dearest Folks.”  That’s the greeting with which Sweetie opened every letter. 

 

I asked Sandy about her mother’s nickname.  “It’s a perfect match, “she said.  “That’s her personality.”

Blish/Blush

I received some genealogy information from Wisconsin in the mail last Friday. I now know when Alfred Day Blish and “Catherine” Amanda Vandozer/Vandoozer (several Racine registers has Vandozer for Catherine and other family members) were married.  There are varying dates on Ancestry.com and a different date in a book on the Blish genealogy.  I’m not sure why the date in the book would be different. I would have assumed he had looked at/acquired a copy of the register of marriages as a source reference.  Maybe he couldn’t accept her marriage at such an early age, 13/14, which really wasn’t that uncommon in those days.  I have another distant grandmother who married when she was 14. Her parents had to sign for her to be able to marry at that young of an age.  I also learned the names of Catherine’s parents. 

 

I also received the obituary for Henry Blish, but I’ve not had a chance to completely review it yet. I think this is actually Harvey, brother to my Alfred.  The obit for Henry is lengthy but I will add it to my blog at a later date for others who are researching his side of the Blish/Blush family.

Blish - Blush

So, I’m taking a break from the Mallette side of my mother’s family to research the “Blish” side. I have learned that Blish and Blush were interchangeable many generations back contributing to mass confusion and adding to the need for a wall of post-it notes. I first run into the undecided spelling of the last name with Joseph Blish/Blush, Jr. (1762-1848). This interchanging of last names was detrimental in Joseph’s application for pension for his service during the Revolutionary War, his claim was rejected due to no service records being found - under the spelling of Blush. But, they are there under the spelling of Blish, a discovery made in 1902 by a family researcher writing a book on the “Blish” family. When reading his pension records, under the name Blush, I see that a contributing factor could quite possibly be due to penmanship, and probably just the family not being consistent.  I believe as the researcher in 1902 that this Joseph Blush is the same Joseph Blish that is great great grandfather to my  great grandmother Margarite Rose Blish Mallette Rash, my mother’s grandmother.  In the records at the National Archives that hold the original documents is the annotation of the researcher in 1902 and the records are now cross filed under Blish too.  Also within the pension records are two documents attesting to the service of Joseph, one from his daughter Almira and one from his son Oliver, another validation that these two Josephs are one in the same.  I have discovered two books on the family. Interestingly, one for each spelling of the name and both documented with various resources that are similar. So, when researching this line my suggestion is to try both spellings….Blish….Blush…happy hunting.

Middletown, Delaware County, New York

It looks quite possible that two family lines (one on my mom’s side and one on my dad’s side) lived in the same community in New York. The Blish and the Graham families, ghee what a small world it was a couple hundred years ago.

The Civil War, it can be such a small world.

Imagine my surprise when researching the Blish side (on my mother’s side) of my family when I see that the brother in-law (Capt Theodore Lane) of my relative, Alfred Day Blish, served under my great x3 grandmother’s Roxcenia (Butterfield) Dickisson (on my father’s side) brother’s (Charles Butterfield) regiment. Wow, that was a mouth full.  There was no easy way to type that all out without a chalk board, I’m limited to electronic pen and paper here.  And, he was mustered out in Missouri when my  great great grandfather John W. Cullimore (on my father’s side) was at Jefferson Barracks too. I was  researching Alfred and stumbled upon a lengthy section on his brother in-law and sister (Caroline Melissa Blish) in “Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha counties, Wisconsin: containing biographical sketches of business and professional men and of many of the early settled families”, J.H. Beers & Co, 1906.    

Mallette

What an elusive family you are!  In hopes to learn more about my direct family line I try researching  my great grandfather’s brothers, no luck with his sisters yet. I find information on some them, but John Paul, or Paul John, why can’t I find out more about you? I know where you are buried and that according to a 1930 census you remarried.  Whatever happened to her?  Your father Peter is just as mystifying. I lost track of him in Bangor, New York.

 

I’m amazed at the number of divorces in this family. It could very well be that not only did my grandfather divorce my grandmother and his father did divorced my Great Grandmother Margarite but it seems that my Great Great Grandfather could have possibility too? I hope that is not the case. Alphronia Dwyer where are you? Did you die at an early age, move to Canada, left the family?

 

I’ve not given up yet…the hunt for puzzle pieces continues!

Margarite Rose and George Orville Blish

I discovered today that brother and sister Blish married brother and sister Mallette. My Great grandmother Margarite married Paul John (or John Paul, birth certificate and death certificates contradict each other) Mallette and her brother, Orville, married his sister Elizabeth J. Mallette.

James Cullimore (1898-1868) and Benjamin Nelson Graham (1828-1885)

Oh how frustrating it is to see so many people on Ancestry.com that have my greatx3 grandfather James listed as the James Cullimore of Utah. Don't remember seeing anywhere that he was a Mormon, nor that he lived in Utah and had a wife named Clara Fowlke.  And, to see people listing my greatx2 grandfather Benjamin as living, dying and being buried in California.  I try to email them and tell them of their errors, with little success.  Check your resources people before you add to your Ancestry.com tree.

John and Suzanna Kate (Cullimore) Flanagin

Don't really know why I've become obsessed with finding the parents of John W. Cullimore's sister's husband. Because it is a mystery? Because a great grandson has emailed me asking for any information I have on Suzanna?  What I do find interesting is that there are two sets of John and Suzanna Flanagins in the Ancestry.com databases and member created trees. And, within Ancestry.com people have these two intertwined within their trees. Suzanna Kate Cullimore's husband John Flanagin didn't not live, die, nor was he buried in Pawnee,Nebraska in 1905. Her husband live to around 1930. There seems to be two James Flanagin's that people are claiming to be the father of her husband. Both have different birth and death dates. I'm inclined to believe if one of these is his father that it would be the one born in 1811.  But as of this date I have no proof of who his father was.  Then there is the spelling of the last name. I'm sure that contributes to all the confusion...Flanagin (Suzanna's husband's spelling), Flanagan and Flanigan. Of course one could say that his family may have changed the spelling along the course of time.

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names.  At some point the search becomes futile... there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago.  All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks.  What will it be?  A photograph?  A will?  A fragment of a letter?  The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he find the object he never knew he was looking for.  ~Henry Wiencek

 

Weigandt Pleve Chart

     My dad's Aunt Helen, and his cousins Sandy and Linda, gave me a copy of a Weigandt Pleve chart yesterday they received from another person researching his mother's Weigandt family line to/in Russia.  I believe the chart goes back to when our family emigrated from Germany to the Volga region of Russia.
     Families emigrated from various parts of Germany in response to the manifesto of Katherine the Great, a German Princes, in 1763. This same stream of emigration also brought the Pennsylvania "Dutch" to the American colonies.  They were allowed to retain their own language, customs and religion.  After the freeing of the serfs in Russia in 1861, the reforms that followed greatly changed the status of the German colonists. Their local self-government was gradually being interfered with and military serviced forced upon them.  With this came a great emigration in the 1870s in large numbers to South America, Canada and the United States. In the States they mainly settled in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas since this region most resembled where they came from. Nebraska being the central hub.  These groups of individuals were often referred to as Russian Germans, or White Russians.
     My Great Grand father Jacob Weigandt arrived in America 9 Nov 1911, emigrating from Hook, Russia to settle in Lincoln, Nebraska. My Aunt Helen is first Generation American along with her brother, my grandfather, Albert Weigandt. Jacob's brother, Oswald, traveled with him but was denied entry due to possibly having pink eye. He then traveled to and settled in Argentina where we now have distant cousins
     More about Jacob, his first wife Mary and his second wife Katherine (sister to Mary) during another post. I can't wait to study the chart further and to figure out our Weigandt line.