Friday Find - Unnamed Batchelder Comes Home

A few years ago I traded a friend of mine some maple syrup for a box of Walton's Vermont Register books from the late 1800s. The original owner of the registers kept daily notes in the front of them. It was obvious that he was a farmer, and that he lived near where I grew up, based on some of his entries. There were mentions of "Went to S. Derry", "Went to Weston", "Went to Landgrove". I always thought it would be neat if he had been from Peru (where I grew up), but I never really thought much more about it.

Tonight, I started reading through the entries of the 1898 edition. In addition to place names, the names "S. Stiles" and "Simmonds" were frequently mentioned. Stiles and Simmonds were families in Peru way back when. I kept looking through the entries, till I got to October 31st. The entry was "Edmond Batchelder died." Edmund Batchelder was my great-grandfather's name, though he didn't die until the 1930s. I flipped the page. November 2nd, "Edmond Batchelder buried." November 3rd, "Fannie Cross buried."

Fannie Cross was my great-grandfather's first wife. I'd never found a death date for her. I checked FamilySearch for the date and place, and sure enough, there she was. Fannie Cross, wife of Edmund Batchelder died from "Shock after child birth" on 1 November, 1898. I checked my database. I had an unnamed baby girl, stillborn to Edmund and Fannie on 1 November, 1898. It appears that the unnamed baby girl may actually have been a boy, named after his father, and born late on October 31st or early on November 1st. Unfortunately mother and child didn't survive.

I've heard of ancestors finding us instead of us finding them, but I've never had it happen before. Not only did the writer of the daily entries live in Peru, he knew my great-grandfather's family. Weird how a penciled entry by someone who knew my great-grandfather found it's way out of Vermont, down to Connecticut to a friend of mine, then to me, taking 100+ years to travel.

Surname Saturday – Davis and the Snow Summers

I realized the other day that I haven’t blogged for a while.  For the past few days, I’ve been trying to think of a topic.  This afternoon, my wife called me from the top of Bromley Mountain in Peru.  “It’s snowing!” she said gleefully.  “The top of the mountain is white!”

Snow?  In May?  Memorial Day weekend?

I was instantly reminded of an event that I learned about in history class in junior-high.  The Year Without a Winter.

In 1816 the weather in Vermont was cold enough during the summer that crops failed and ponds froze over.  It snowed the first week of June, and the end of August saw frost hit, killing even more crops.  The cause of the strange weather was thought to be linked to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before, which spread dust and ash into the air, eventually leading to the lowered temperatures on this side of the world. [1]

What, I wondered, were my ancestors doing during that year?

Solomon Davis and his wife Hannah, who brought the family west from New Hampshire in 1803, would have been raising, along with their other children, their new baby daughter.  Hannah Davis, who shared her mother’s name, was born in May of 1816 in Londonderry, Vermont.  Solomon, his son, grandson, great-grandson, and so on were farmers.  The family remained in Londonderry until my grandfather, Solomon Wesley, passed away in 1996, one-hundred and ninety-three years after the family arrived in town.

I can only imagine what the farmers in 1816 must have been going through, planting crops to feed their families, only to see those crops freeze and die.  Then I was given a reminder of Vermont resilience.  My aunt, as I typed this post, posted a photo on Facebook.  The photo was taken in a town near Londonerry, on May 25^th, 1967, or exactly 46 years before today's snow.  The image shows snow-covered fields with snow-covered mountains in the background.  Her comment: “My dad planted potatoes the next day.”

Apparently both the first and last Davis men to live in Londonderry had something in common.

[1] http://www.virtualvermont.com/history/1816.html

Tribe Tracking Tuesday

As genealogists, we usually think of ourselves as the ancestors trackers, following the trail and negotiating the jungle of old records and distant relationships.

Sometimes, however, the tribe unexpectedly finds us.

Last night, just as I was getting ready for bed, my oldest daughter wandered out of her room, phone in hand, texting away.  “Hey Dad,” she asked without looking up from the screen, “Do I have a great-grandfather named Wesley?”

This question surprised me on two levels.  First, it was a rare teenage daughter sighting.  Second, she was actually asking about her family history without prompting from me.

“Yes,” I answered warily, not wanting to scare her off, “My grandfather’s name was Wesley. Why?”

My daughter looked up from her screen and sighed.  “I just found out that I’m related to one of my best friends.”  She sighed again, “Which means I’m related to, like … half the school!  She’s related to *everyone*!”

I had to grin a little at this point.  I could relate.  When I was in school, it seemed that I was running into distant cousins all the time.  It was one of the hazards of growing up in the area where your family had lived for more than a hundred years.

“What’s her last name?” I inquired, intrigued by the news.  The answer was Wyman.  “From Londonderry?” I asked innocently as the name triggered a bell in my head.  My daughter paused and looked up again.  “Yes,” she said.

I mentally ran through our pedigree in my head.  I recognized the surname, but no immediate connection came to mind.  “How’s she related?” I asked.

My daughter’s thumbs quickly flicked over her phone’s keys, sending my question through the ether to her friend and possible cousin’s phone.  The reply came back faster than I could have typed my five-letter name on the tiny keyboard.  “Her great-grandfather’s cousin was Wesley Davis.”

“Who’s her great-grandfather?” I asked.

“Harry Derby,” came the reply, after a short burst of keystrokes.

Ah ha.  There was the connection.  Derby.  I’ve been tracking my grandfather’s grandfather, Charles Jenkins, for some time.  His wife was Laura Derby.  The girl’s great-grandfathers were likely second cousins

“It’s okay,” I smiled, “You guys are only like third or fourth cousins.  Maybe fifth.  I’d have to trace it.”

My daughter shrugged, looking back to her screen.  “Okay good.  I’ll tell her we could get married if we wanted to then.”  She disappeared back into her room, leaving her dry sense of humor lingering behind her.

I chuckled and headed to my genealogy database to double-check the name and add some notes for future research.  I’ve been looking for this part of the tribe for some time, but instead of me finding them, they found me.

Sickness Saturday - Influenza 1918

 

Mary Fletcher Hospital (Library of Congress photo)

Some of the bloggers that I follow have recently written about the 1918 Influenza outbreak.  Heather Wilkinson Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy pulled together a nice list of articles, prompting me to write my own story of how the flu outbreak affected my family.

In 1918, 2,146 people died of Spanish Influenza in Vermont [1].  Among those unfortunates was my great-grandmother, Christine (Wilkinson) Batchelder.  Though the worst of the flu was over in November of that year [2], great-grandma Batchelder passed away at Mary Fletcher Hospital in Burlington, Vermont on December 7^th, at the age of 38, due to pneumonia caused by the flu [3].

The effect of her passing is illustrated in the memories of her daughter, Helen, in an autobiography that was written in 1979.

“It was near Christmas time in 1918 when the first big change took place in my life,” her story begins.  “On Dec 5^th of 1918, father received a telephone call from Burlington Hospital where mother had been taken for surgery the week before, telling him she was dying. Father caught the daily stage (which was also the mail route over the mountains) to Manchester and a train to Burlington.”[4]

Great-aunt Helen, age 8 at the time of the story, then goes on to describe the blizzard that hit their farm while their father was away.  Her older brother, the family’s housekeeper, and neighbors helped keep the farm running through the storm, clearing paths, milking cows, and keeping her and her 5 year-old brother entertained while snow piled two stories high around their house.  Helen’s next set of sentences recall a heart-breaking scene from another era.

“It was about noon on the 9^th when we heard a different noise above the wind.  Voices, a lot of them.  Nine men with three teams of horses and the snow roller had made a road for the stage mule team to bring mother’s body and coffin home.  Father was broken and bitter and could be of no comfort to us at the time.

It was nearly a week before the town could get the roads opened, so the close relatives could come for the funeral.  Also mother’s body need to be taken to Londonderry to be placed in a vault until spring.  It was a rough week for two small motherless children.  It seemed as if with mother’s death we lost everything.”[5]

70 years later, when I was a child, stories of how broken-hearted my great-grandfather had been were still being told by his children.  It was obvious what an impression the event had left on their small rural family.  The aftermath of Christine’s passing was also impactful.  After describing the funeral of her mother, Great-aunt Helen continues:

“Now the silence was broken. Everyone on mother’s side of the family wanted to help out and to split us up as a family. They wanted to take just one of us and raise us like their own. … Father seemed to come alive at the time, grabbing us and telling the relatives ‘over my dead body you split them up or take them away from me. They are all I have left of Christine, and all I have left to live for.  I am going to take care of them myself.  And I don’t want any help from any of you!’”[6]

The family did stay together, continuing to live on the farm.  Helen’s older brother Erwin (my grandfather) occasionally came home to help them out.  Their oldest brother, Lyle, was away at the time of Christine’s passing, stationed in France at the end of World War I.  He would not learn of her death until he returned home in the spring of 1919.

It’s interesting to look at my children, who have all had the flu this winter, and think how lucky they are to have access to the conveniences we all enjoy today.  Slightly less than a hundred years ago, a flu epidemic took away a wife and mother.  It took her husband two days, a train, three teams of horses and a snow roller to bring her body the distance that a car would cover in less than three hours today.  Her children, due to the society at the time, were almost taken away from their home and father.  Ultimately, though, that family’s strength was passed down by those same children to us.  Their stories of hardship and family became ingrained in me, and I can only hope to pass a part of that strength down to my own children.

[1] Sherman, Michael, “’Awful, Awful’: The Spanish Flu in Vermont, 1918-1919”, Historic Roots, volume 3, number 1 (April 1998): 12.

[2] Ibid, 16.

[3] "Vermont, Vital Records, 1760-1954," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XF2V-CYM : accessed 02 Feb 2013), Christine Batchelder, 1918.

[4] Helen (Batchelder) Billings, The Other Mission Field: Where the Unloved Are Loved, (Privately printed, 1979), 2.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 3.

Saturday Sampling – Evidentia

Last week several blogs that I read mentioned a new software program called Evidentia.  The authors of Evidentia, ed5becy, LLC, describe the software as “a Source Centric genealogy tool” that, unlike most genealogy programs, focuses on a source instead of an individual person.  The authors also claim that the software follows the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) Genealogical Proof Standard.  That is, the software forces you to document your source, perform a reasonably exhaustive search, resolve conflicting evidence and so on.

When I first read about the software, it sounded interesting, but also seemed like it was unnecessary given how I use The Master Genealogist (TMG), my genealogy database of choice.  For instance, Evidentia is supposed to be Source Centric.  Instead of entering a person and their details (birth, death, residence, etc.), you enter a source and then each claim the source makes.  This is actually how I use TMG.  While I may be looking for information about Ernest Solomon Davis, once I find a source of information, I document the source first in the Master Source List, then create a single entry (“tag” in TMG speak) for each “fact” on the source, even if it applies to someone other than Ernest.

Evidentia is also supposed to allow you to easily see conflicting evidence.  For instance, different birth dates for a subject should show up so that you can see the conflict and resolve it by analyzing your sources.  I can also do this with TMG by looking for multiple birth tags for single person; however Evidentia did make it easier to see the sources of the conflicting information.  In TMG, I would have to open each tag to view my sources and the values I attached to them indicating my analysis of if the source provided primary or secondary evidence.  With Evidentia, the screen displayed all sources, along with if the source was primary, secondary, original, derived, and so on.

One of the major reasons that I use TMG is that it is fully customizable.  While the base install does come with many templates for sources, tags, locations, and more, I can also create or modify templates as needed.  I was pleased to see that Evidentia templates could also be customized.

What did I dislike about Evidentia?  Nothing really.  It took a few minutes to get used to the interface, but that happens with any new software application.  The interface is actually very clean and intuitive, and the software forces you to step through each process before moving on to the next.  The tool tips that appear when you hover over an element were handy for learning the interface.

What did I like about Evidentia?  It did force me to slow down while looking at evidence on a source.  For instance, in TMG, if I find evidence of birth information, I would create a birth tag, fill in the date and place if they were shown, and save the data.  With Evidentia I followed the process of “Complete this sentence: The source asserts that…” for every piece of evidence.  For instance, Ernest’s birth information on his death record was listed as 10 May 1873 in Londonderry, Vermont[1].  I typed two sentences on the Catalogue Claims screen: “The source asserts that Ernest Solomon Davis was born on 10 May 1873” and “The source asserts that Ernest Solomon Davis was born in Londonderry, Vermont”.  I actually created 20 different claims from information found on a single index card documenting Ernest’s death.  In TMG I found that I had cited the same card only 8 times.  Part of this, I think, relates to having dates and places recorded in a single tag in TMG, while recording them as separate claims in Evidentia.

The big question, of course, is did I find Evidentia useful enough to purchase?  I can definitely see it being a useful piece of software to help solve complex cases.  I liked the interface and how it forced me to look at each piece of evidence.  I also liked how the software was designed to do exactly what it says.  There weren’t any unnecessary additions that I could see during my trial use.  For folks using genealogy databases that only allow the recording of a single “fact” for things like births and deaths, I can see the software being helpful to look for conflicting evidence.  For me, I think TMG is still sufficient for my needs, though I may have to think about splitting some tags to be more detailed in my analysis.

[1] Ernest Solomon Davis Death Record (1933); digital image, Vermont Death Records, 1909-2008, database online, Ancestry.com (accessed 30 Oct 2012), citing Vermont Death Records, 1909-2003, Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, Montpelier, Vermont.

Friday Find – Ernest Solomon

Last summer I was looking through a book of historical images of the town of Londonderry, Vermont. One photo’s caption claimed that it was of the home of Ernest Davis [1], my great-grandfather. Since many of my Davis ancestors had lived in Londonderry, and the pages contained at least one image related to them, I bought it and brought it home.

A couple of months later I was documenting Ernest’s life.  On his wedding record, his occupation was listed as “blacksmith” [2].  I remembered one of my relatives mentioning once that my great-grandfather had been a blacksmith, so this bit of information wasn’t surprising.

As I worked my way back through his life, I again found mention of blacksmith as his occupation, this time on the 1900 census.  What was interesting this time, however, is that he was boarding with another blacksmith, Harvey Clough [3].  As I was making a note of this, I remember another photo that I had seen in Sincerely Yours, the book I had picked up earlier.  I pulled the book from my shelf and found the page with the photo I had been thinking of.

“Interior shot of Leslie Benson’s Blacksmith Shop.  June 20, 1909…” read the caption [4].  Three men were pictured in the photo.  Thinking that there probably wasn’t more than a single blacksmith shop in the small town of Londonderry, I looked at the photo closer.  Though I couldn’t remember seeing a photo of my great-grandfather before, the man in the middle of the photo reminded me of my grandfather.  I wondered if it was his father, Ernest Solomon Davis.

I asked my relatives via Facebook if the man in the photo might, indeed, be Ernest Davis.  Those who also owned the book, and therefore had seen the photo, thought that it might be, but none of us had another photo to use as a comparison.  One person remembered being told that Ernest was a tall man, which didn’t really fit the description of the man in the photo.  I later found a description of him on his World War I draft card that described him as “medium build”, [5] which did seem to fit the photo.

Without a positive way to identify if it was Ernest in the picture, I put the book away, documented some more of his life, and continued on to other things.

The photo came back to me again last night.  The other day, while I was sorting my “stuff”, I found a photograph of my grandfather that I thought had been lost a long time ago.  To my surprise, there was another older portrait attached to it.  On the back was written “Ernest Solomon Davis”.  Not only had I found my grandfather’s missing photo, I had found a photo of his father that I didn’t even know I had!

After sharing the photo with my relatives, I took out my copy of Sincerely Yours again.  Putting the portrait next to the image in the book, it appears to me that it is Ernest in the blacksmith shop.  What a cool feeling it is to see not only my great-grandfather, but also the place where he lived and worked, all thanks to a chance encounter at a bookstore, and a “lost” photo!

Blacksmith photo from page 45 of the book Sincerely Yours by George F. Newell.
Inset photo from the private collection of Elroy Davis

[1] George F. Newell, Sincerely Yours - Historic Postcard Views of Londonderry & South Londonderry, Vermont, (Poultney, VT: Historic Pages Company, 2007), 69.
[2] "Vermont, Vital Records, 1760-1954," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XFSG-CRC : accessed 29 Oct 2012), Ernest Solomon Davis and Minnie Laura Jenkins, 1903.
[3] Harvey R. Clough household, 1900 U.S. census, Windham County, Vermont, population schedule, town of Londonderry, enumeration district [ED] 253 (penned), supervisor's district [SD] 274 (penned), sheet 2A (penned), dwelling 25, family 29 ; digital image, Ancestry.com (accessed 28 Oct 2012).
[4] George F. Newell, Sincerely Yours - Historic Postcard Views of Londonderry & South Londonderry, Vermont, (Poultney, VT: Historic Pages Company, 2007), 45.
[5] Ernest Solomon Davis World War I Draft card, 12 Sep 1918, 2850. Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [DATABASE ON-LINE]. Provo, UT, USA; citing United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls.