YOUR ANCESTORS LIVED THROUGH HISTORY AND WE ARE TOO! I CANNOT MATCH THE STRENGTH and COURAGE OF MY ANCESTOR, ROSE

It's always a pleasure to research and write this genealogy blog which includes American History with it's main focus being genealogy in the United States and for Americans. 

I was reminded recently that we too are living through history.

The other day I was showing a new friend some photos I had found, my immigrant ancestors on their 50th wedding anniversary, which took place in the 1950's. My new friend comes from one of the oldest American immigrant heritages there is - Dutch into New Amsterdam. His heritage has been part of is family story as long as he can remember, including the name of the wooden sail ship his ancestors were on that came across the Atlantic in the 1600's. I, on the other hand, had almost nothing to go on but the names of my grandparents.

I told him the story of my ancestors in particular the woman named Rose, whose strength and courage I cannot match.

All I had known as a girl of ten, who was beginning to understand that I was actually related to some of the people I met when we visited, was that Rose had been an orphan. I didn't know until years later that in Europe an orphan was a fatherless child, but Rose had been "Double Orphaned." It was assumed she had been alone as a child, without siblings or relatives. 

Rose passed before I had any idea that I should be asking questions and what those questions should be. So, on a trip to visit relatives years later, I asked her youngest daughter, "How was Rose orphaned?"

The story came forward sans any details.  One parent "burned up in a fire" and the other was "killed on the road."

When Rose was in her 80's she stayed with this relative for a couple weeks summer vacation. One morning she was up especially early. She explained that she had just had the most wonderful dream. She explained that in her dream a man had come to her and said, "At last I have found you!"  Then, in the dream, they danced and danced and danced.

Rose was a humble women who always wore a long house dress and an apron and it was not easy to imagine her dancing. One wondered if she'd had a boyfriend before marrying at nineteen and coming to American with a baby onboard the steamship.

The man she had dreamt about turned out to be a brother!

All these years later, scraps of stories that I overheard, or that were all that was left of memories that may have been considered too horrible to relay to children, have been rooted in genealogy research and embellished with historical and cultural research.

Rose, it turns out, was the result of a marriage of a woman who had been widowed and a man who had been widowed twice. Her mother had three children, so she had three half siblings. Rose's father (who most think was the one "killed on the road" was thus the step-father to three. She also had two brothers, who had come to America but decided to go back to Europe after they realized the conditions they would have to live in if they worked in factories here rather than farms there.

But, Rose said, "When we were orphaned, my brother" (the one who had come to her in a dream) said, "Don't worry, you will always have me."

What happened to him?

"He went down with the ship."

For years now I have from time to time worked on finding out what ship and when it went down.  It was not the Titanic (everyone asks). Though I don't have the name of the ship, or know if he was on crew or a passenger, through genealogy I've been able to narrow the years this could have happened between a visit or immigration of his wife and her remarriage in Europe a few years later.

As a woman who lost both of her parents as a child, likely before the age of thirteen (the death records are nowhere to be found), and who went to work that young, who married a man their friends arranged, and immigrated to America, Rose was likely traumatized, yet she and her children prevailed, She not only come to America with a baby in her arms but also have birth to many more children.

I sometimes weep a bit for Rose but I more often think that compared to her I'm weak and cowardly!

I take inspiration from her...

I'm proud to have met her!

How do ancestor's figure in your story?

Happy Holidays!

Christine

C 2024 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

PRAGMATIC MARRIAGE and DEATH

Pragmatic marriage - matchmaking or introductions - and no contraception.  Children dead from diseases now conquered through vaccinations and antibiotics - Fragile beings.  Or because their mother was malnourished during her pregnancy.  Or had too many children close together to actually recover between births.  Or they wore born without a father to support the family. Or their mother had no milk.

Today we talk Grieving.  We say it takes time to heal.  We have psychotherapy.  Then?

They had religion -informed world views. Children born as replacements (but not reincarnated) for previously born children who died. It seems to me that our ancestors had a whole lot to grieve as intimate family members, wives and husbands, parents, siblings, as well as friends and people they surrounded themselves died.  Reminding them that they too would and that life had many risks.

They often remarried - pragmatically  and quickly- as they might have the first time around in youth - and there were blended families due to death rather than divorce (which we think is another form of death.)  A woman without a husband needed another one quickly.

Were they so different than us?  Did they always have to carry on and get to it?

Villagers in Europe were often quite genetically related.  

Children on farms worked young.

Girls were left uneducated more than boys.  Even well-to-do families thought education - reading and writing - though educating a girl was handicapping her, making her a less desirable and dependent wife.

This was socially acceptable.

I think of the brides of pre-contraception and modern medicine days as especially brave.  They all knew that pregnancy and childbirth could kill them. 

As I try to understand my ancestors, I'm glad for the choices that modern medicine has given us.

And that be it them or me, life is short.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

SEARCH FOR HERITAGE - ORPHANAGE - ADOPTION - LOVING HOME Research Path Heritage Search 1 - eight

I meet with the man whose birth mother's heritage, in particular that of her birth mother, while we await the archive to respond to our request for information on her baptism. To reiterate, the story goes that she was put in an orphanage by her father because her mother died in childbirth or soon after. He visited until he died.  There were two brothers who did not keep in touch with her.

I've now compiled a file of census records, photocopies of photographs, and a list of all the things I've tried such as trying to put her birth into a family group, eliminating all the families that already had a child born that year, searching indexes, and historical research on the greater family of her father's surname at a specific location where she was put into a Catholic orphanage.

Something I have wondered is if this woman was a sickly child herself and in particular if she was considered "slow" or had some other issue that back in the day no one labeled like we do now.  In other words, did men take advantage of her as a result when she was emancipated at 18?

I ask a retired nun why the orphans would not have been taken to the close-by church so they could be part of the community, why they were given sacraments and educated at the orphanage.  She says it probably was easier, that diocese could assign a priest or nuns to the institution.  Because of this, we did not have to tell the archive what church she went to, which they usually request.  In particular, she seems to have been 16 when she finished the 8th grade.

Someone else tells me their mother was in a church run orphanage in another state and city and there she learned to clean houses and knit.  Why would the educational standard be lower for orphans?  Or was it?

The man tells me he thinks we have gone as far as we can go and that he wants to put the project to rest until the spring, when he can travel to the city where his birth mother was born and "knock on doors!"  I want him to be a peace with all this but NOT having contact with possible or actual relations was a high priority when we began. 

I realize he has probably been on bit more of a roller coaster ride emotionally than he has let on during this research.  Perhaps he is forgetful that we discussed the contact we can make using FAMILYSEARCH or the potential of DNA testing. (I could also make contact with members of the extended family of his birth mother by using public records for their addresses and phone numbers.)  But maybe some travel to the area will be what gives him peace.

To some degree he has genealogy myopia and is doubting what I tell him.  For instance, he insists that one person we looked at as a potential birth father of his mother "can't be it" because he is buried in a cemetery a town over from the one where most of the people with that surname are buried.  I tell him the man is buried with his wife's side of the family and I can confirm that it is a Catholic cemetery and may be over the county line but so what? These places are just a few miles away from the family stead.

I see that he is "relying" on his flawed memory and rejecting my research.  I'm not here to prove what he remembers is right. 

I'm here to find the truth.  I'll admit I've become his mother's advocate.  I want her truth to be told. 

Just to prove to me that he can't remember what all his mother told him or I told him or what he told me, he says that his mother's birth mother died TWO YEARS after she was born!  I look at him and say, "That is not in childbirth or soon after."   

Then I say, "Well you can send away for the civil records..."  He says, "I thought you told me they were not available."  I look again on indexes.  The birth is not there, even if I add 2 years, or more years, or play more games with spellings and nicknames.

"We can always ask and they can say they don't have them or cannot release them due to privacy laws in that area. Either way it's $25 nonrefundable.  I suggest we wait for her baptism record. OK, so contact me when you hear from the Catholic archives."

At home I feel depressed.  I know I've done everything within my capacity - which includes his budget - and honestly informed him of every step.  I even typed up a letter a while back that apprised him of the possibility that a different couple were the birth parents and why I thought so.  I felt that if he read the letter later in the privacy of his home he would consider it. 

Here are the possibilities:

1) Due to a home birth, or perhaps the parents knowing they were not going to keep this baby in advance of its birth, no civil record of the birth was ever made.  (There was a country doctor in the family.)

2) Some form of inner-family adoption occurred, either informally, or perhaps legally, which included changing the birth certificate, and so the family that perhaps visited or maintained some contact could include a "dad" and "brothers," who were really an "uncle" and "nephews."  In this case we might get a birth certificate that has been altered due to an adoption, one not expected.

3) That this man's birth mother was actually BORN two years later (though the birth still doesn't come up on indexes for that county and city) and she graduated 8th grade at 14 rather than 16.

4) Whomever reported information for her death certificate and burial knew more, was ignorant, or perpetrated a lie (which might include her birth year.)  He may have been that informant and this might be why he first said he had her birth and death certificate and then said he did not.  (Based on the information on FIND A GRAVE which may have come from a overzealous volunteer going into the cemetery burial records, I sense that the information revealed on the net IS what those records say, and so sending for them would not be helpful.)

5) His mother was related to the family in the county and state and diocese where the orphanage was, but was actually born in another city, state, or county.  Her birth mother might have been sent to relatives to give birth. Was she married?  Could her husband have sent her away because he doubted the baby was his?  Just the opposite could have happened.  She could have gone elsewhere to give birth to her; if she is the woman whose husband would have died before she died, she might have gone to relatives as a pregnant widow.

6) His mother was a sweetheart, but she was "slow," and the things she told him were flawed by memory or some other aspect of her psychology or thinking.

7) The woman who I found in the mental hospital was the birth mother and it was a lie that she died and also a lie that her husband died: I find him living in old age with a son - who could be one of the brothers who did not want contact.

C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy All Rights Reserved.
To follow along on this research path from the beginning, click on the label "Research Path Heritage Search 1."

A BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY ARRIVED IN THE MAIL

At this special time of year I like to tell a special story.

I recently learned of a something quite beautiful that happened for a man who, because his mother was very ill for many years and his father abandoned them, had to bounce around with relatives, was put into foster care, was himself in a children's hospital for some time, and then went to an orphanage. He was born into poverty and his grandparents who took care of him were elderly and ailing when it was decided that when he started school he would have to move from their household. This man is nearing 80 years old now.

Several years ago a mystery package arrived in the mail.

I contained a carefully put together scrapbook.  Someone had put all the letters that had been received from his mother in chronological order. The person who sent this scrapbook is probably not the person to whom the letters were addressed.

He and his wife sat together and read one letter after another that his mother had written, expressing her love for him, her concern for him, and they cried their eyes out.

His mother had died in the 1950's.
Someone had saved the letters.
The person that they were addressed to cannot be found, they say. It was too long ago.

Soon I'm going to try and find someone who might be related to her.

Just in case.


Merry Christmas!

THE ORPHAN TRAINS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

THE ORPHAN TRAINS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

In 1853, a minister named Charles Loring Brace, decided to address the urgent problem of immigrant children who were homeless, on the street, or living in deplorable conditions.  This film doesn't say it, but these children were not just begging, or singing for donations.  Many of them probably were being used for sex or sex trafficked.   Many of them were orphans or the children of unmarried women.  His Children's Aid Society moved 150,000 of these children to the Midwest, usually to farms, between the years of 1854 and 1929.  Some of the people who were moved to homes this way were still alive to testify for this documentary film.  Overall the film presents both sides.  Stories of a child who was worked to death like a slave and lived in fear, children who became the beloved adoptees by excellent parents. Children who stayed in one place and came to appreciate that they had been given a chance that saved them.  Others who moved from one place to another, who were hard to place. Other charities followed this example of placing children who had no real home to go to.

While watching this film, I couldn't help but think of all the children today who are awaiting foster homes or adoption or who are homeless and living in vehicles or motel rooms. Today I do not think this system of putting children on trains, having them get off at a stop, being chosen or rejected, and then putting them back on to another town until someone wanted them would be allowed.

PBS ORPHAN TRAIN SITE

Are you researching to find more out about someone who did or may have been adopted this way?  My advice is to find that person on a census at as young an age as possible.  Then inquire at the county they lived in to find out if any legal adoption was necessary.  I've found that adoption was often not a legal or formal procedure and the text to this program suggests that.  However, the Childrens Aid Society did ask any locatable parent to sign paperwork in which they agreed not to contact the child or interfere in their life, until they were an adult.

CHILDRENS AID SOCIETY NEW YORK  still in existence. 

WAS YOUR ANCESTOR AN 8 CENT AN HOUR BREAKER BOY in a COAL MINING HELL HOLE?

VIDEO by James Von Schilling on YOUTUBE  - A testimonial.


Bosses who punished physically... No fingernails left... You didn't dare quit.  Mules not human beings.

LEWIS W. HINE PHOTOGRAPHED CHILD LABORERS 1908- 1920 UNITED STATES

VIDEO by Michael Jeffries on YOUTUBE


EXCERPT: A look at child labor in the early 20th century in the United States as represented through the photography of Lewis W. Hine. The film documents the use of child labor in industry, including the exploitation of children and the lower classes in American society. Many of the jobs were extremely dangerous and numerous children and adults were injured or killed in the attempt to advance in society. The viewer must understand the context of the situation at the time and think of the individuals from the perspective that it could be one of their ancestors, in order to fully grasp the emotion of the video.

ORPHANS : JSTOR on TRACING ORPHANS IN YOUR ANCESTRY by D. JOSHUA TAYLOR - EXCELLENT!

JSTOR-TRACING ORPHANS IN YOUR ANCESTRY  by D. Joshua Taylor   

EXCERPTS: Many children who ended up institutions or orphanages might not have truly been orphans, but instead might have required the support of an organization. Their father or mother might have passed away, they could be suffering from a variety of ailments, or their parents could simply not afford to be able to provide for them...The first documented orphanage in what is now the United States was opened in New Orleans as early as 1727. Founded by a group of Ursulines the organization’s strong religious ties were central to its mission to help the poor children of New Orleans. Tracing the orphanages of New Orleans, Priscilla Ferguson Clement found that during the antebellum era children admitted to orphanages were not always truly orphans, as some had only lost one parent or had both parents living. In fact by 1915 only 15% of children registered with the New Orleans Board of Prisons and Asylums were reported as full orphans. However, it should be noted that not every orphanage opened their arms to abandoned children. Some New Orleans institutions rejected children under the age of five, due to the high death rate, as well as adolescents, who might have been turned away due to potential behavioral problems....          

DEFINING ORPHAN : IT'S LIKELY THAT SOME OF YOUR ANCESTORS WERE!

BE AWARE THAT IN THE 19th century and before, an ORPHAN was defined as a child without a father (to support the family) and if you hear that a child was orphaned in your family, their mother or a step-mother may still have been living, and also under pressure to remarry quickly and pragmatically.  Disease didn't respect class.  Women died in childbirth or because of child-bearing, especially while malnourished by today's standards.

Coming up ... Some interesting articles I found on the internet about ORPHANS. 

While you're reading, please consider how many children are living today homeless, malnourished, and impoverished.  Can we hope that their families will prevail as some of us who come from orphan heritage have?

Have your child-bearing ancestors died too young to raise their own children to adulthood?

Think about this question too when you think about who you will help ELECT by VOTING in the elections here in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

C 2016-2025 Ancestry Worship -Genealogy BlogSpot

ORPHANS IN THE FAMILY? : WHERE LILLIES BLOOM

Orphans in the family?

Very common.

I was watching an old movie the other day, about a family in the Smokey Mountains, called " Where the Lilies Bloom," which was based on a novel by Vera and Bill Cleaver.  Since I did some extensive research for a family with roots in the Smokey Mountains, I've heard so many stories of living off the land, early marriages, and good neighbors who have a fine sense of community.

The crisis in this film is that children are left orphaned when their father dies and because they do not want to be put in foster care they decide to hide his death.  Of course the fact that this takes place in the Smokey Mountains makes it doable.  The children can bury him without anyone knowing and they can blame to be busy with collecting herbs to make medicinals and farm work when visitors come calling to talk to their dad. It goes on for a while, the children exhausted but still attending school so as not to raise any red flags, until the worn out 14 year old daughter who leads the family admits the problem to the owner of the land whose sister wants it back.  A younger daughter marries the older man who wanted to marry her, despite promises to the dying father.  Thus the land they were renting becomes owned by that daughter and family.

These days in the United States we seem to be ignorant about how many children were orphaned in the old days, often because their mother died in childbirth or afterwards of related causes.  Believe it or not, two children out of three were orphaned in England in Charles' Dickens days, which is why Charles Dickins novels were so popular - all those street urchins.  Today's blended families are most often because of divorce.   Used to be blended families were because of death.

HOWEVER, BE AWARE THAT IN THE 19th century and before, an ORPHAN was defined as a child without a father (to support the family) and if you hear that a child was orphaned in your family, their mother or a step-mother may still be living.

There are orphans in my family, and I'm still researching to find out more about the people who took them in and raised them!