Asenath Larimer and Worship on the Wagon Train

Cover of transcribed journal kept by Asenath Cornwell Larimer 

Asenath Cornwell Larimer (1808-1897) was born 211 years ago today.

She was the widow of my husband's 4th great-uncle James Larimer (1806-1847), who sadly died at age 40, thrown from a horse while riding near their farm in Elkhart county, Indiana.

When James died, Asenath was left with five children under the age of 10. Her brothers helped her through this difficult time, but ultimately, Asenath made a bold decision she hoped would secure her children a better life.

Westward Ho

Five years after her husband's untimely death, Asenath sold the farm she had been bequeathed and used the money to join her brother, John Cornwell, in taking two steamboats en route to joining a wagon train at Lexington, Missouri.

Their destination: the Gold Rush country of California.

Asenath wrote in a journal from March 1852-March 1853 about the daily thoughts and events of that time. She notes that her oldest son was against her going west. Despite his opposition, she wrote that "...looking forward to the dangers and trails of the way, I feel very gloomy, but in the Lord put I my trust."

Faith Guides Asenath

Asenath was sustained by her strong Presbyterian faith during the arduous journey west. When possible, she and others on the wagon train would worship together on the Sabbath. In one journal entry, she wrote [sic]:

"...we felt that the Lord was as truly with us here sitting round on the grass, as if we had worshiped in a church, and likely we felt as much love and gratitude even at home." 

Most of the time, however, the wagon train leaders pushed ahead without stopping on the Sabbath, which distressed Asenath, even as she acknowledged the necessity of maintaining a good travel pace.

Asenath recorded not just the details of daily life on the wagon train (births, sickness, deaths, cooking, laundry) but also the natural wonders they viewed, for which she praised the Lord.

Journey's End

After arriving in the mining town of Clinton, California (now a ghost town outside Sacramento), Asenath scraped by on odd jobs such as washing clothes while her brother prospected for gold.

Then she moved to San Francisco, where she launched a bakery and was joined by one of her sons. Later, she moved south to Santa Monica, where she helped found the public library. She died in Santa Monica only a few weeks before her 89th birthday.

Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow for the #52Ancestors prompt of "At Worship."
--
Note: Any comments won't be posted for a few days. Thanks for reading!

At Family Tree Live!

Today and tomorrow I'm presenting at the new genealogy show in London, Family Tree Live. Sponsored by the UK magazine Family Tree, the show has dozens of lectures and workshops for genealogy enthusiasts at every level.

I can't wait to visit the exhibit hall and meet representatives from local family history societies all around the country, as well as top genealogy firms and genealogy buddies like mystery novelist Nathan Dylan Goodwin.

On Friday, my topic is "How to use social media for #genealogy and #familyhistory."

On Saturday, my topic is "Do you have a genealogical will?"

Also on Saturday afternoon, I'm joining Gill Blanchard and Diane Lindsay for a special panel discussion, "Crash course in writing your family story."

I'm planning to tweet (@MarianBWood) during the show, but won't have any recaps here on the blog for a little while.

Any comments left by readers won't appear for a few days. Thanks for reading!

"Aunt Ada" Reinvents Herself

"Aunt Ada" living in Toledo, Ohio, sent this penny postcard for Easter, 1914 to her nephew, "Master Wallis Wood," in Cleveland, Ohio.

The recipient was then 9 years old and accustomed to postcards tumbling out of the mailbox from relatives on every conceivable occasion.

Even before he could read, he was receiving greetings from cousins, aunts, and uncles.

The sender this time was Adelaide Mary Ann Slatter Baker (1868-1947). She, unlike nearly every correspondent who sent a card to the young boy in Cleveland, spelled his name correctly!

"Aunt Ada" was the great aunt of my husband, a woman with a very, very difficult childhood.

Census Records Reveal Real Trouble 

Adelaide Mary Ann was the daughter of John Slatter (1838-1901) and Mary Shehen Slatter (1837-1889), living in the notoriously poor London neighborhood of Whitechapel. I didn't immediately recognize the hint of trouble beyond poverty when I found Ada for the first time in the 1871 UK Census, living at 3 Half Moon Passage in Whitechapel with her parents and 4 siblings.

In the previous Census of 1861, I easily found the parents and their first child, Thomas John Slatter. However, Thomas didn't appear in the 1871 Census with his parents and siblings. For a long time, I believed he had died young, not an unknown phenomenon in this poverty-stricken neighborhood.

One of my wonderful blog readers tipped me off to where Thomas John Slatter was in 1871. The UK Census shows him in Christchurch Southwark, another poor section of London, at the unimaginative address of "32 Gravel Lane." He's 10 years old, living with his grandmother and step-grandfather. Also in the household are 2 other grandchildren! So this grandmother and step-grandpa were apparently rescuing 3 grandchildren from desperately impoverished conditions.

With Thomas in another household, Ada and her siblings were only 5 mouths for their parents to feed. Alas, still too many for a simple laborer who wasn't always with the family. Ada and her Mom and 4 siblings were in and out of poorhouses and workhouses during the 1870s, I learned. Ultimately, Ada's mother entered an insane asylum and died there.

The children were then on their own. The girls were in a school for the poor, the boys went to a "training ship" on the Thames and ultimately joined the Army. During these years, Ada was accustomed to watching over her baby sister Mary (my husband's grandmother).

Ada Reinvents Herself

In spring of 1895, Ada sailed from Liverpool to Montreal, enroute to join her father, who had left London for Ohio a few years earlier. The outbound passenger manifest lists her occupation as "servant." Miraculously, her U.S. border documentation lists her occupation as "lady."

One year after arriving, Ada married James Sills Baker (1866-1937) in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (where Cleveland is located), just 3 weeks after Easter Sunday.

They moved to Toledo, where their first child was born 9 months and 1 day after their marriage. Their second child was born another 4 years after that.

Ada regularly kept in touch with her baby sister Mary and all of her family, in England as well as in Ohio and beyond. She sent penny postcards on many occasions and had her two children write greetings to their first cousins, including Wallis W. Wood, a son of baby sister Mary.

I continue to be impressed that Ada and her siblings grew up, married, and had productive lives after the grinding poverty and appalling workhouse experiences of their childhood.

Note: With my presentations at Family Tree Live coming up, I won't be able to look at any reader comments for a little while. Thanks for reading!

Easter Greetings from - Elton?!

No, not Elton John. More than a century ago, "Master Wallace Wood" in Cleveland, Ohio received this penny postcard from his relative "Elton" in Toledo, Ohio.

"Master Wallace" was an inaccurate but common misspelling of my husband's uncle Wallis Walter Wood (1905-1957). The correct spelling is in pencil, below the greeting from "Elton," the sender.

Which Elton in the Wood Family?

Originally, when I saw this, I thought the sender might be Marion Elton Wood (1867-1947). He was an uncle. A few of the Wood aunts and uncles wrote to their nephew, I know from reading all those post cards.

But rereading recently, it dawned on me that this had to be a young person writing, the way Wood first cousins were encouraged (possibly strongly encouraged, as in "you will do this") to send postcards to each other for holidays and birthdays.

The handwriting doesn't look like that of a very young person, but probably a teen. So the sender was, I now realize, almost certainly Charles Francis Elton Wood (1891-1951), the son of Marion Elton Wood in Toledo, Ohio.

About the Younger Elton

The younger Elton and Wallis Walter Wood were first cousins. They each had many first cousins because their fathers were among 17 siblings. Imagine a lot of penny postal greetings flying through the mails between all these cousins!

The younger Elton went by the name "Elton" in the 1910 US Census, where he is shown as as "Elton C.F. Wood." His parents, Marion Elton Wood and Minnie C. Miller, told the Census they had had 2 children in all but only 1 was now living--the younger Elton.

By 1918, when the younger Elton filled out his WWI draft registration card, he was a farmer living in Lenawee, Michigan, with a wife and child. By 1920, when the US Census was taken, "C. Elton Wood" and his growing family were living back in Toledo, where he was a "city salesman" for a bakery. His occupation was still "salesman" in the 1928 Toledo city directory and the 1930 US Census (where he was "Elton C.F. Wood.")

By 1940, the younger Elton is listed as "Charles F. Wood" and his occupation in the Census is "shipping foreman." His WWII draft registration card shows him working for a bakery. His name is now listed as "Charles Francis Elton Wood."

Unfortunately, Elton died in a car accident 1951. His death cert calls him "Charles Francis Elton Wood" but his obit in the Toledo Blade newspaper calls him "Wood, Elton."

The name "Elton" did live on in, as the middle name of one the younger Elton's grandsons.

Immigrant Grandparents: City (His) and Country (Mine)

           Mary Slatter Wood (1869-1925)

Remember that Sesame Street song, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other"?

Well, one of our immigrant grandparents is not like the others. One was a city girl, the others were all from rural backgrounds.

This month's Genealogy Blog Party theme is "Immigrant Ancestors." This week's #52Ancestors prompt is "out of place." I've fit both into one post about his and hers immigrant grandparents.

His Big-City Grandma from London

My husband had only one immigrant grandparent. All the others were descended from families that had come to America long ago (some as long ago as the Mayflower). Others arrived in the 1700s.

At top, hubby's immigrant Grandma Mary Slatter Wood (1869-1925). Born in the poverty-stricken Whitechapel neighborhood of London, she was the youngest of six children. In her youth, she was in and out of notorious poorhouses because her father wasn't always in the household and her mother (Mary Shehen Slatter) couldn't support the family.

Yet Mary not only survived her sad childhood, she became a doting and devoted mother in her 30s after arriving in Ohio and marrying James Edgar Wood (1871-1939). The photo above shows her soon after her marriage, around the turn of the 20th century. From hearing my late father-in-law talk about her, Mary was the bedrock of love for her four sons. Mary was born a city girl and she lived a city life in fast-growing Cleveland, Ohio.

My Eastern European Grandparents

Henrietta Mahler Burk and Isaac Burk

My immigrant grandparents, all four of them, were from the country, unlike my husband's big-city grandma.

Above, my paternal grandma, Henrietta Mahler, from Latvia. Her husband, Isaac Burk, was from Lithuania, and they met in New York City. Both lived fairly rural lives in Eastern European towns, but had to adjust to skyscrapers and concrete when they arrived in the Big Apple. After some years in Jewish Harlem, they moved to the Bronx--then considered almost suburban because of the many parks, not to mention the world-famous zoo and botanical gardens.

Hermina Farkas Schwartz and Tivador "Teddy" Schwartz

My maternal grandparents, shown here, were both from Hungary. Hermina Farkas Schwartz (1886-1964) and Tivador "Teddy" Schwartz (1887-1965) met and married in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Before coming to New York City, he lived in Ungvar in Hungary, a bustling market town, and she lived out in the countryside in the small town of Berehovo. They raised their three children in an apartment in the Bronx, nothing at all like where they were originally from.

After the children were grown and gone, Grandma Minnie and Grandpa Teddy tried to spend a week or two each summer away from the city heat in "the country." I dimly remember visiting them in a bungalow in Spring Valley, New York, which is now a hop, skip, and jump across the busy Tappan Zee Bridge but was then quite a rural area, dotted with small summer rentals.

Remember Soundex? Consider Sound AND Spelling!

When I began my genealogy journey 21 years ago, I had to learn new vocabulary, such as Soundex.

Soundex is a method of classifying a surname based on the way it sounds. The National Archives explains it here.

I quickly picked up the basics, and any time I was at the local Family History Center, I could consult the Soundex poster as a refresher.

These days you can go to a converter like this and type in the name. Out pops the Soundex code, which consists of a letter and three digits. As shown here, my great-grandpa Farkas's Soundex code is F-622.

Why care today? Even though indexing and other advances have made genealogy research faster and easier, sometimes the old methodology offers clues to help us find elusive ancestors.

Farkas Sounds Like . . . 

More than 30 years ago, my wonderful Cousin B went looking for our ancestor Moritz Farkas (1857-1936).

There was no such thing as an indexed census with full names for every person in every household. She couldn't log into a database, type in a name, and pull up a listing of possible results.

No, Cousin B began by looking at microfilmed 3x5 index cards filed by Soundex code, listing those in the 1900 Census. Hand-cranking the microfilm reader, she read every card carefully to try and find Moritz.

At top, you can see the index card she eventually found among the F-622 cards for that Census. As soon as she saw it, she said the name "Furkosh" out loud and realized this was the way it would sound in his native Hungarian.

Using the cross-reference at top right of the card, she pulled the microfilm for the correct Enumeration District and cranked to the page and line indicated. There was Moritz (as Morris, the Americanized given name), living as a boarder with a family in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Sound It Out!

When one of my second cousins* recently asked how Cousin B located Moritz Farkas, she sent the 3x5 card (long ago printed from the microfilm) and told us the story.

Trying to replicate the search with today's technology on Family Search, I entered basic info (name: Moritz Farkas; birth: 1857; residence: New York, New York in 1900).

Sure enough, the Morris Furkosh result appeared in the first 10 results, as shown in the snippet here. Clearly, Family Search does a great job of searching on the basis of how a surname sounds, not just spelling.

Knowing the sound of the name in Hungarian, I didn't overlook this result, which wasn't spelled like my ancestor's name of Farkas.


*This cousin found Moritz Farkas in the census with a different, creative search method. He ignored the surname and searched for Moritz and Morris in the 1900 Manhattan census records, including the birth year, hoping there would not be too many to sort through. When he came to the entry for "Furkosh" he remembered this was the Hungarian sound of the surname and knew he had found our ancestor!

Ancestor Landing Pages: Summaries and Cousin Bait

As shown above, my genealogy blog includes tabs for a series of "landing pages," mostly devoted to summarizing what I know about key ancestors in my family tree and hubby's family tree.

I established the first of these ancestor landing pages more than 6 years ago, and expanded until now I have 14 such landing pages. Each tells the story, in brief, of an ancestral couple or family. When I blog about one of those ancestors or families, I update the landing page with a link to the newest post. This enables anyone who searches for that surname to see, at a glance, what I've learned about that family and what I'm still learning or wondering about.

In addition, I have a landing page devoted to hubby's Mayflower ancestors. The remaining 3 landing pages include links to free genealogy resources, sample templates for family history, and my genealogy presentations.

McClure, Larimer, and Schwartz

By page views, the three most popular ancestor landing pages are:

• Halbert McClure and family from Donegal. This is the Scots-Irish ancestor of my husband who had enough money to sail, with many members of his family, from the north of Ireland to Philadelphia. The family then walked to Virginia to buy farm land. 
• Robert & Mary Larimer. According to my husband's grandfather, family lore has it that Robert Larimer was sent from the North of Ireland to America to make his way in the world. Alas, he was shipwrecked en route and forced to work off the cost of his rescue. 
• Schwartz family from Ungvar. This is my maternal grandfather's family. Born and raised in what is now Uzhorod, Ukraine, Grandpa Teddy was the first in his family to leave for America. Soon he sent for an older brother and together, they saved their nickels and sent for a baby sister.

Cousin Bait

My landing pages are attracting thousands of views, so I know people are finding them via online search. Sometimes people even leave me a comment or write me c/o my blog to discuss possible family connections.

More than once, a cousin I didn't know I had (or couldn't find) has landed on my blog and gotten in touch with me. Genealogy blogs are excellent cousin bait, and ancestor landing pages increase the odds of being found via online searches.