JUST A LITTLE "BIT"

My mother put a positive spin on everything. No matter what I asked her, she fudged the truth. “Why did your mom and dad divorce?” I asked her. “Well,” she said, “I don’t really know. I never asked. I was a teenager kind of wrapped up in my own life; I guess they just didn’t get along.”

It wasn’t until I got a copy of the divorce papers and saw that Grandma alleged extreme cruelty and that her husband wasn’t fit to have custody of the kids that I realized how much my mom chose not to tell me.

My mother told me she once put daddy’s clothes in a suitcase and set them on the front porch, letting him know that if he didn’t stay home more, he could just move out. Knowing what I know now, he was working on a mine venture in Angel’s Camp when they were married and she was living in Southern California taking care of her young siblings while her mom worked. This was during the depression – 1932 or 1933 – and I can’t believe she didn’t understand when she married Dad that there would be separations until he got the mine issues resolved. I wonder if she really intended to end the marriage if he didn’t “shape up.”

I wish I knew the answers to these questions. It wasn’t that I didn’t ask; she just didn’t tell us kids anything, even when we did ask.

~o~

What we gather in our genealogical research, if we go after family history as well as the facts we gather for our Family Group Sheets, will sometimes give us ideas of what might have happened. This enables us to construct a possible scenario. But it would be so much better to really know what happened.

I began working on my “official” life story (which I call “My Life in Bits and Pieces) about fifteen years ago. Since my life has been mundane and uneventful, it seemed quite useless to try a chronological retelling. I mean, there really was nothing to tell. But I found that I had lots of little “stories” to share, and I started writing them down. None of them were important events, but they did illustrate a piece of my life.

In my elementary school years I went to three different schools, and I had a little boyfriend in each one. At Lafayette school there was a darling little boy named Bobby in my Kindergarten class I mooned over. At Willard school where I went first through fourth grades cute little Jerry and I were an item. We attended each others’ birthday parties and we gave each other a little Christmas gift.

Finally in fifth and six grades at Whittier elementary school, a cute shy red-head came into my life, and there were CC+BD’s carved on more than one tree in our neighborhood. I suspect we did some hand-holding too, but I can’t remember for sure. Each time, I really thought I was in love.

I wrote a tiny little “story” encompassing these childish love-affairs as one of my “bits.” I called it “Recollections of a Shy School-Girl”. Granted, it doesn’t tackle big issues like wanting to know about grandma and grandpa’s divorce, but hopefully it will do two things:

Firstly, it will give my children a word picture of a part of my childhood and how different and yet the same our childhoods were. And secondly, with any kind of luck it will cause every reader of this blog to take a trip down their own childish memory lane and see what they can save for their kids.

As for genealogy, I have loved knowing more about my ancestors. In most cases I am lucky if I have a single written record of something that described a life: in once case I have a really good obituary; in another I have a copy of a letter written to the US government about a widow’s pension. A third treasure I have is a letter written by crusty old Rev. Dobbins who in 1847 in a fit of pique quits the Presbyterian Church. And lastly, I own love letters written to my grandma from a suitor when she was 16. I treasure those “bits.” They make my ancestors much more real to me.

I don’t want to be remembered as just a statistic on a Family Group Sheet. My “Bits” – as well as the pieces (blogs, essays, letters to the editor, etc. that I’ve written over the years) is still in progress. No one is going to get a good solid literary book as a legacy from me, but certainly they are going to know more about who I am/was than I knew about my own mother or Grandmother. And I am pleased about that.

Anyone can write a “bit.” You certainly don’t have to be Shakespeare to do it!

IMMORTALITY, EH?

I recently read an essay by Ellen Lupton in which she said the desire to pass objects on to one’s offspring is part of our longing for immortality. She also said an “heirloom” is an object steeped in family history and handed down from generation to generation.

I have mulled over her words and share with you a number of random, and some kind of odd, thoughts about them.

1. I do not have any heirlooms to pass on to my children. Neither my mother’s family nor my father’s family were particularly sentimental. My mother did have six hobnail sauce dishes that she said belonged to the grandmother she was named after and which I inherited, but in doing a tiny bit of research on them I discovered they actually post-dated great-grandma’s death and couldn’t have been hers. So heirlooms may not be heirlooms at all.

2. In my curio cabinet I have lots of trinkets that have meaning to me, things I can’t bear to give up now even in another pending round of downsizing. But who of my children would see anything of sentimental value in a porcelain ashtray used on Turkish Airlines? I am not ready to part with it yet, but it will be ok if it ends up in the trash after I die, along with the dozens of hand made glass beads I brought home and other such trivia.

3. I feel bad that Trigger sold at auction for $230,000.00...not at how much he brought in but that obviously he had no sentimental value to his owner’s descendants. Bullet did well at the sale too and will join Trigger in some future museum. I think if there is a wax figure of Roy Rogers lolling around somewhere, he ought to join his old buddies. That would be the way kids of my generation remember them. I am sentimental about RR, because I always wanted to marry him and Dale beat me to it.

4. I have more desire for my children to keep my baby book in the family as an “heirloom” – a book of no dollar value whatsoever – than I do for them to keep my great-great-great grandfather George Stevens’s bone toothbrush handle that was dug out of his old privy in Belvidere, Illinois. That artifact has no actual value either but since George left that privy before 1860, it truly is the oldest “heirloom” that our family has. Nevertheless, I’m not emotionally attached to that one like I am my baby book.

5. It occurred to me that there are now only two people in the world who remember my grandma Jessie. I am the oldest of her living descendants and my cousin Shirlee is the next oldest; the rest of the cousins were wee tots when she died. I remember her mostly because she always let us sit in the rumble seat of her little car when it was parked at the curb. Seeing as she was a good woman with lots of good works to her credit, I’m sure she’d not be totally happy to know that what I remember is the fun of her old car. I have to admit it makes me wonder about my own legacy!

6. Tigger, our favorite cat of all times, got the honor of being cremated. His little ashes sit in a small cedar box in our living room. Jer and I know that he is not an heirloom to be fought over by our kids, so we are planning to take him with us when we go. I get half and Jer gets the other half. How this will be accomplished is not yet certain, and probably will be done by the kid who most understands my crazy self! I have read that humans can be buried in a pet cemetery but animals are not allowed to be buried in a human cemetery. So perhaps somewhere on “my property” – that little 4”x 6” piece of ground that I paid an arm and a leg for and that is set aside for me and me alone – that kid can surreptitiously dig a smallish hole and put my share of Tig in it. (Don’t let the security cameras watch you, though!)

Interesting that all it takes is the reading of one essay to get ruminations going about the specialness (or mundaneness) of one’s life and things. I have always said that my life just doesn’t have the panache for a good autobiography. Nevertheless, I have documented myself somewhat for my kids/grandkids and I’ve called it “My Life in Bits and Pieces.” It and the genealogy stories I’ve written about my family heritage, not any heirlooms, will be theirs. But that’s about as immortal as I’m ever going to get.

A RAILROAD IN EVERY LIFE

Some time ago I heard in a genealogy talk a passing comment about the impact of the railroads on the lives of our ancestors. Later I began to think about the many little incidents I had uncovered in my own research about railroads and relatives. Just off the top of my head here's what I came up with. All of these people are in my family lines, but I spared you from hearing just how I'm related. Trust me, they are all mine!

1860s: General Stephen Hurlbut, one of General Grant’s officers in the civil war, served first in militias in Illinois and then in Missouri guarding the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad.

1864: Serena and Sophronia, both elderly ladies, were riding in the last car of the morning mail train heading east out of Belvidere, Illinois. The flange on one of the wheels broke and the car “was precipitated down an embankment 20 or 25 feet high without a moment’s warning. The car in its descent turned completely over, smashing the top and sides but landing right side up.” Luckily all the passengers survived, but were badly bruised. The newspaper article says the new car was very new, with many new amenities. It added “It is hoped the builders don’t always furnish that style of wheels.”

1873: John G. Davis and his neighbors in Schuyler county, Missouri filed lawsuits against the St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railway Company because they didn’t fence their tracks properly, allowing “property” to be killed. That property was probably a “cow” and Davis was awarded $30.00.

1873: Frank Stevens’ first job at age 15 was learning telegraphy in the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad office in Raymond, Kansas. In 1874 he was given charge of that station and remained with them until 1891.

1880s: Jim & Nannie Dobbins lost their ranch in Colorado. They no sooner got their house and corrals built than they learned the Santa Fe railroad tracks would come directly through their property.

1887: The first picture of my Grandma Jessie was taken in Pueblo, Colorado in a Railroad photo car.

1893: Aunt Lillie was widowed when her husband, an engineer on the Midland Railroad in Colorado, was killed in a head-on crash in the Rocky Mountain foothills. As Ben McCammon lay dying he willed his house to his widow, as attested by three of his co-workers. This oral will was discovered during a 1977 title search.

1898: In the late 1890s Scott Dobbins played cornet in the Midland Railway Band. In weekly concerts in Colorado Springs he met – and began wooing - the lady who later became his wife.

1903: Frank Stevens’ son, Roland, was killed in a train accident in 1903 in Cimarron, Kansas

1906: In 1906 Byron Hall, aged 30, took the railroad home from a business trip. The conductor, sensing that apparently the passenger was having some kind of a mental problem, notified the next station of his odd behavior. At the station Byron got off and walked to a nearby hotel, where he shot and killed two policemen before he himself was killed.

1916: Bruce Kirkpatrick, a 16-year old in Tennessee, went with a buddy one evening to try to jump aboard a moving freight train, the type of unsafe things young men often do. When Bruce jumped, he bumped into his buddy. This caused Bruce to fall to his death beneath the wheels. Bruce’s parents, while acknowledging that there was no malicious intent in the death, nevertheless inscribed “Murdered” on his tombstone.

1939: I had my first train ride in Long Beach California, accompanied by my little sister.

1940s: In the 30s and 40s, many homeless men “rode the rails” to California looking for a job. Julius was the head of the Transit Committee for the local Elks club and as such his job was to give to hobos jumping off the train in Pomona a bus ticket to either Los Angeles or San Bernardino, “where jobs were more plentiful.”

1948 and 1950: I spent the summers with an Aunt and Uncle in El Paso, Texas, going to and from Los Angeles via the Southern Pacific Railroad.

2005-2010: It seems I spend about half my time waiting in my car for a freight train to pass. It is just not possible in Mira Loma to go directly from "here" to "there" without being stopped by either the world's longest freight train or, if it is my lucky day, a Metrolink train! Ah well, we all are still affected by railroads.

FOLDS OF BRACA & ME

“Stiff,” a most interesting, informative and funny book written by Mary Roach, is subtitled “The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.” First, let me assure you that she does, in fact, treat the subjects with dignity, but some of the ramifications in her story can’t help but make the reader laugh – ranging from a quiet giggle to a loud guffaw. I’ve used her book once before in my blog, but as it is apropos to today’s subject (and may not have been read by the newer readers) I’m going to share it again.

Several chapters in her book deal with the quest to understand where the soul resides. In Mary’s words, “Thomas Edison came up with another variation on the all-through-the-body concept of the soul. Edison believed that living beings were animated and controlled by “life units,” smaller-than-microscopic entities that inhabited each and every cell and upon death evacuated the premises, floated around a while, and eventually reassembled to animate a new personality – possibly another man, possibly an ocelot or a sea cucumbers. Like other scientifically trained but mildly loopy* soul speculators, Edison strove to prove his theory through experimentation.”

At the bottom of the page on which this appears she adds, “People have trouble believing Thomas Edison to be a loopy individual. I offer as evidence the following passage…taken from his diaries: “We do not remember. A certain group of our little people do this for us. They live in that part of the brain which has become known as the ‘fold of Broca’ .. There may be twelve or fifteen shifts that change about and are on duty at different times like men in a factory….
Therefore it seems likely that remembering a thing is all a matter of getting in touch with the shift that was on duty when the recording was done.”

Now ever since Jerry and I read this we have used the “shift” theory to explain why we can’t remember something. We understand forgetfulness isn’t because of aging. Rather, the wrong shift is working. We’ve had many a good laugh over this.

Forgetting where you put things is just awful! Keys is one of the first thing that comes to mind. But surely second to keys is for a genealologist not to be able to find a piece of paper that should easily be found in the proper file. When it isn’t there, we check the files nearest the correct one. We check all the piles of papers on our desk. We look in boxes where we might have stuck a pile of paper when we see company coming up our front walkway. If we can’t find the paper, we know it is our fault, and we pay the price in aggravation.

On April 2 of 2006 I received a very important e-mail from a man in Chico who had agreed to look at the probate inventory list of my great-grandpa’s older brother who died in 1852 at the age of 23. I couldn’t understand why this young man, son of a farmer in Illinois, had in his inventory such things as yard goods, silk vests, fur hats, unbrellas, a “letter writer,” and a “Missouri Harmony.” Furthermore he was holding lots of “notes” for various amounts. Over the years my friend Dr. Carl Peterson, a historian and educator at one of our Cal State Universities, has been very generous with his help to me and since his wife is also a Dobbins, we have swapped information, although I must admit the swapping always benefited me far more than him. I knew he could take a look at the probate inventory and give me a sense of this young man, something I couldn’t do. I wasn’t mistaken. His analysis, sent to me via several e-mails over week’s time, was absolutely amazing. It was exactly what I needed and proved exceptionally helpful.

Recently I have prepared a “booklet” on my Dobbins families to give to my children. I took out my various Dobbins files and in reviewing all the papers in them I noted that Carl’s e-mail notes on Robert Gaston Dobbins were missing. For two weeks I tore through my files, my office and then my whole apartment looking for those notes. I knew I wouldn’t have thrown them away, but after going through each file at least three times, shuffling stacks of papers more times than I’m willing to admit, and kicking myself around the apartment for my bad filing habits, I had to go ahead and do the booklet with only my memory to help me out when it came to this young Dobbins fellow. I sent the booklets out last week to my kids.

Last night after I crawled into bed I was trying to decompress from my busy day and my mind was still churning away. All of a sudden I said to myself, “Self, the Carl Peterson memos on Robert Gaston’s inventory are in the packet of material you put together for your genealogy talk last May.” This morning I went directly to that file, found the manila envelope and pulled out the e-mails.
So all this is to say that Thomas Edison may have been more right than I thought he was. When the proper crew is working, things happen!

THE BURDEN OF UNFINISHED PROJECTS

As many of you know, I am engaged in a big genealogy project of my own making: the goal is to get everything I know about the ancestry of each of my four grandparents into a written and illustrated booklet and into my kids’ hands. I figured it would take me two months to complete one grandparent’s book, so the overall project would be, allowing for slight variations of time available to do this, done in a year’s time. I finished up my Grandma Maud Susan McConnell Dobbins’s family in two months. I finished up my Grandma Jessie Davis Ryland’s family in two months. I’m now working on my Grandpa Byrd Ryland’s family and I may need to use a little bit of that built-in variation time for him, because his two month period spans both Thanksgiving and Christmas, never a good time to find oneself at a loss for something to do. Anyway, I’m still on schedule as of this writing.


This morning I was at the Laundromat knitting furiously while the machines did their work and I was thinking about when this knit-hat project was going to be done. The hat I made for Olivia didn’t fit well, so I’m knitting another one. It needs to be done by Saturday, because that’s when I’ll see her next. I thought to myself, “Projects, projects, projects!”


Lurking in the back of my mind is an unfinished cross-stitch piece that I set aside some time back and just haven’t returned to finish it. I thought how unlike me to not finish a project. And at that point I felt my nose growing longer and my tongue turning black, both signs of a big, fat lie. And once I acknowledged to myself that I had more than one unfinished project, my mind’s eye remembered what was in one of my office drawers. In addition to the three unfinished cross-stitch pieces I’m showing, I found two that hadn’t even been started yet, and found four that I had started but didn’t like and know I’ll never get back to them. Those four are now residing in my trash can.


And because I DO know that I will keep doing the cross-stitches I dare not throw away all the threads that I’ve collected over the years. I started putting them into nice little cubby-holed boxes but finally rather than buy MORE boxes I decided to chuff them in zip-lock bags. That quantity of possibly usable embroidery threads takes up a great deal of space; I am not able to let even 1 of them go!

I do hate to have unfinished projects hanging around. Whenever I used to go housesit for Kerry I always took a bunch of projects with me. I never knew what I would feel like working on. “Feeling” is not a good rationale for completing projects. But if I assign myself too many deadlines for completing things, I feel that I don’t have time to smell the roses.

I am definitely not going to buy any more pieces to cross-stitch, nor am I going to do any more hats once Olivia’s gets finished. I AM going to make a little something for the newest Great-granddaughter, but I think I’ll draw the line there. One by one I’ll finish the projects I’ve started, finish up Grandpa Scott Dobbins’ family report by February 2010, and just maybe do nothing for a while except read. And smell a few flowers, too.

RIGHT CHURCH, WRONG PEW

I can see you putting on your bifocals and then scratching your head to figure out what kind of a picture I'm using for my blog today.

Unless you read Latin, don't strain yourself too much, because the writing is completely in Latin and simply says that Robert B. Dobbins has completed the requirements to graduate from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. About midway through you can see his name - Robertum B. Dobbins. The year is 1799.

I have often given a genealogy talk called "Research Surprises: Making Them Happen." The original talk was written back in 1985, when one's research was limited to sending letters, hiring researchers or traveling to distant places in an attempt to fill in the blanks on one's Family Group Sheets.

Since the advent of the Internet, I've had to change my talk a bit, and it is one of those changes that my photo above illustrates.

Within a year after I started doing my Dobbins research (1984) I had located (and been provided a copy of) a report of the 1911 Dobbins family reunion in Fulton County, Illinois. In that report there is a statement that the patriarch of the family, Rev. Robert B. Dobbins, had graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and his Diploma was in Latin and was hanging on the wall of a certain family member.

Now in the intervening years this diploma's whereabouts had been lost to further researchers. I had given my best efforts at finding out if the information on the diploma mentioned in this family booklet was true or false, even to the extent of having a nice chat with an Archivist at Princeton. No record of Robert B. Dobbins existed there, although they were very helpful in suggesting other avenues of research.

After Internet research became a possibility I did plenty of searches for information on this old fellow - who by the way is my 3rd great grandfather - but really didn't find much that I didn't already have. And after 20 years of research, there was a whole cadre of us descendants who were in touch constantly, sharing with each other every tidbit that came our way.

In early 2004 my phone rang one night and a very excited Dobbins researcher told me quickly to go on E-Bay, that RBD's Diploma was up for sale and she was going to try to get it for us. I offered to help. To make a long story short, she did not make the top bid, and we learned later that the new owner was none other than Hampden Sydney college in Virginia. That was ok with us, because we now knew where it was and could go visit it anytime we wanted.

How to you make research surprises happen?

1) Do not believe everything you read; wait until you can prove it to believe it. Until then, it is just a theory, a likelihood, or a possibility. I always call things like this, things that are close but not exact, right church, wrong pew!

2) Do not stop with one search. Keep your eyes open. Especially with the internet what isn't there today may just be there tomorrow.

3) Keep contact with your other researching friends and relatives. Something you may never have known sometimes crops up in someone else's material.

4) Cultivate contacts in various areas. Over time and as they get to know you and your needs better, you might be surprised that they will actually contact you with information you didn't even know to ask. It has happened to me many times, both "BI and AI" (Before and After Internet). If you need them to do something very specific for you, pay them what they are worth to you if they don't already have a set fee.

Things like this are what keep us plugging away, moving our lines ancestor by ancestor, and learning enough about them to turn them into people we know, not just names on a pedigree chart.

IN GENEALOGY, IT'S WORTH THE WAIT

When I was a kid growing up in Long Beach, California my mom used to tell me little things that happened in her life as a child. She grew up on a farm in Kansas, and she was faced with tornados instead of earthquakes, acres of crops instead of Victory Gardens, and stifling heat instead of afternoon breezes off the ocean. I was always interested in these stories and of course believed every word she said.

Among the stories was one she told about coming out to Newport Beach from their home in Caldwell, Kansas in April of 1920. She said her dad had some kind of illness that he felt the fresh salt air would help. He had tried Colorado Springs before and had experienced no change, so California was next on his agenda. Mother said she started first grade in the Newport Beach schools but that in a few months her dad packed everyone up - everyone being his wife, sons Bob and Byrd Jr. and daughters Florence, Virginia and Marie - and headed back to Caldwell.

When I started doing genealogy in 1984, occasioned by my mother's death and the realization that I was carrying around in my head lots of details about the life of the Ryland family and no one to confirm it with, I tackled the job of proving every thing she told me. None of her younger brothers or sisters remembered the California story, so I decided that when I finished with the major, more important part of my research, I'd tackle the Newport Beach story. I figured I'd run down to the Newport Beach School District to see if I could find any corroborating facts.

I never got around to it.

In 1984 I had located a fairly close Ryland relative, Verne, who still lived in Caldwell and as luck would have it, two of his three children lived here in California. One of those two had already done some research on the Rylands and over the years we swapped details and ideas. Verne died in 1997 and in the years since, his son has methodically gone through some of his dad's memorabilia. So imagine my surprise when one day in the mail I received a copy of a postcard that Verne had kept all these years (above). It was sent to Verne's mother by my grandma Ryland and gave me the confirmation I needed of my mom's trip to California. The postmark tells when and the postcard shows where.

Imagine! Almost 20 years after starting my research I received something new and surprising. In the scheme of things it is not all that important, but we who research understand that every tiny "find" adds one more dimension to the story we can leave for our children. Right now it probably doesn't matter to them, but it matters to me. And someday they are going to find this as interesting as I do.

Patience and serendipity, two important values for the genealogist.

McCONNELLS, McCAMMONS & DOBBINSES

This is a picture of Miss Maud McConnell and her sister Lillie’s children posing on donkeys. The oldest, Hazel, is in the middle, and her brothers Floyd and John are on either side of her. It is true, the boy in front looks like a girl, but in those days boys stayed in dresses until they were out of diapers. I’ll make an educated guess that this photo is dated about 1894. Every photo tells a story. Today I’m going to tell you about this one.

Maud always went by her middle name. According to her family bible, she didn’t like her first name, Susan! Her parents, John B. McConnell and Frances Narcissa Wright McConnell, lived in Barren County, Kentucky and eight of their nine children were born there. The last child, Harrie Uberto was born in Texas. As often happened in those days, only three of their children survived to adulthood, Lillie, Maud and Harrie Uberto. About 1880, the McConnell family moved from Kentucky to Kossee, Texas, where they bought some farmland. Lillie shortly met and married a railroad engineer, Benjamin Franklin McCammon, and the McCammons moved to Colorado City, (now west Colorado Springs) where he worked for the Midland Railroad.

In 1893, Ben was killed in a railroad crash, leaving Lillie with the three little kids. Lillie’s parents, her 17 year old sister Maud and little brother “Bert” came up from Texas to help her out. Maud chose to stay in Colorado to help her sister with the children. Her folks and Bert went back home.

Maud lived with Lillie and the kids until the little ones were in school. At that point, Maud, now 20, went to work at a bookstore in old Colorado City. In those days, almost every Sunday there was a band concert at the local parks. It was a social event, and once the concert ended the band members mingled with the audience.

It was at one of these band concerts at Stratton Park in Colorado Springs that Maud McConnell met a cornet player by the name of Scott Dobbins, who in the summers played in the Midland Railroad Band. During the rest of the year, he lived on the Dobbins ranch in Las Animas, Colorado and played in the Las Animas band. Maud herself was an accomplished pianist and apparently she and Scott discovered they made sweet music together. On December 28, 1898, Maud and Scott married in Colorado Springs at the home of her sister. Maud and Scott then moved to the ranch. In 1904 she and Scott had their first child, a daughter Dorothy, and in 1908 they added Scott Jr. to their family. Shortly before Scott’s birth, they sold the ranch and moved into town.

For those of you who know our family, you will know that my father was Scott Jr. When he was in his mid 20s my dad came to California, partly to do some investigation for a Colorado mining group but mostly to stay in touch with my mother, who had come west with her family from Colorado Springs a few months earlier than Scott did. They married in October of 1932.

A few years before he died Dad and I were talking about what life was like in Las Animas. He said that his folks always had a piano in their house, and during the freezing winters all the neighbors would bring their musical instruments to the Dobbins house and spend the afternoon making music for their own enjoyment, my grandma Maud on the piano and grandpa Scott on the cornet. A neighbor taught my dad to play the banjo, and other neighbors and relatives filled in with guitars, trombones, and clarinets. Those who didn’t play an instrument became the “choir.”

I was born in California in 1935. Grandma Maud began making yearly trips to visit our family. Because I was so young when she came, I really didn’t know who she was and I referred to her as “that lady.” Eventually “Lady” became my name for this grandma. Unfortunately she died in 1940, and I don’t have any real recollection of her. But I do have this picture of me, my mom and Lady taken in 1938, and when I think of her, it is this picture that always comes to mind.

For those of you who are my Dobbins cousins, my grandma Maud is also your grandma. To our children, she is their great-grandma, and to our grandchildren she is their great-great grandma. So when your grandkids hit fourth grade and are required to produce a genealogy of their family, you can at least show them this picture, tell them this story and then, if I am still living, I can fill you in on all the rest. This is, of course, the whole purpose of genealogy – passing the family history on down through the generations.

STRIKING GOLD IN THE GOLD COUNTRY

Every once in a while the diligent genealogist will find something very unexpectedly that has a value worth more than gold. My turn came a while back.

I have been researching a Bradley family that had its roots in Missouri. My great-great grandmother Susan Bradley Davis was one of the children of Thomas and Elizabeth Cockrill Bradley. I'd tracked down all of Susan's siblings except for one: Mandana (sometimes shown as Mandania). And of course the one you don't have is the one that keeps calling to you and drives you crazy! She married David Rice and subsequently disappeared.

Without going into detail, I'll just say that in a Deed book in Schuyler County Missouri I was checking to see what became of Thomas' property when he died. There I came upon a Power of Attorney issued to John G. Davis (husband of my Susan) to represent Mandana Bradley Rice, who lived in Amador County, California. This was such a surprise. I was at the Salt Lake City Genealogical Library when I found it, and I was probably that person you heard stand up and yell "EUREKA!"

Several months later Jerry and I were visiting friends in Lodi, California and they wanted to spend the afternoon gambling at the Indian Casino in Jackson. I begged off, telling them to drop me off at the County Archives in downtown Jackon by the cemetery and come pick me up when they were finished. (A true genealogist!) And as they were true friends, they did just that.

I found the people at the Archives to be exceptionally helpful and to have an exceptionally rich lode of material. Among what was shown to me was the picture above. It is a 4-generation picture of now-aging Mandana, with her daughter Mary Jane Rice Keeney (upper left), granddaughter Nellie Keeney Kent (wife of Walter E. and at lower right) and great-granddaughter Vivian Kent (upper right.) I paid to have a copy of the photo made for myself, and I gathered up all the data in their files and was sitting on the porch grinning when my friends came to pick me up. Believe me, I was the winner that day.

I encourage every single genealogist to find where the archived material is located in each county you research in - and see if you can get as "lucky" as I did. I did extensive research on Mandana and her family, and it is all posted on Rootsweb.com under their Family Tree section.

For anyone who wonders what else the Amador County archives might hold, take a look at their website: http://www.co.amador.ca.us/depts/archives/

And as a note, this family also belongs to all of my "Ryland" relatives who read this blog.

A CHANGE FOR ALL REASONS

Do you read the Legal Notices in the newspaper? I find them very interesting, especially the ones regarding name changes. The most usual, of course, are where one parent petitions for a surname change for a child or children. Probably mom has remarried and the children will, through this legal action, assume the name of the new father. That is, of course, if the old father agrees.

A little harder to understand is why Petunia Clapsaddle chooses to change her name to Aphrodite Clapsaddle. Name changes like this usually cause an interruption to my husband’s newspaper reading when I say, “Hey, can you believe this?” And I would think it might behoove poor Ms. Clapsaddle to get rid of her surname as well.

Another change that is hard to understand but probably perfectly logical if one were familiar with names from other cultures is when someone by the name of Zeynep Erkut changes to Yaprak Erkut. I can’t help but wonder if this is a male or female doing the changing. And why he or she just didn’t pick a name easy for Americans to identify. (When I lived in Turkey I had my Turkish name all picked out – Canan, pronounced Jahnan, - but since I didn’t live there the rest of my life I never had a chance to use it!)

I am always surprised when I see a male name being changed to a female name. We know it happens, and I personally am okay with it (as if I were asked!), but it is nevertheless a surprise to me and maybe to his/her co-workers. Changing from Petunia to Aphrodite is much less startling than change from Dick to Jane.

A couple of years ago I was listening to a genealogical talk on using newspapers published in the county where an ancestor lived. The speaker, a fine researcher herself, was stimulating us all with her success stories, amply illustrated with overhead transparencies from old newspapers. She ended her talk with the importance of also reading the Legal Notices in old newspapers from the area where our families lived. As she prepared to put up the final illustration, she said, “Now look at this next legal notice. Think how lucky you would feel if you discovered your family like this in a newspaper.”

Up the illustration went – and darned if it wasn’t a Pomona newspaper from 1947, showing a Petition for Name Change of Julius, Bertha, Jerrold and Judy Teitelbaum to Julius, Bertha, Jerrold and Judy Title! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I am embarrassed to admit I yelled out quite loudly, “THAT'S MY HUSBAND'S FAMILY!”

Now as it happened, none of this information was new to me, since my husband had the original court documents in his files. But to be sitting in a room and find your husband’s family being used as a really important illustration in a good genealogical talk was just too funny! Luckily it was a fairly small meeting and the people there knew me and forgave my outburst. But it certainly did confirm my thinking that reading Legal Notices sometimes can be exceptionally interesting.

ABNER HALL'S WILL - A TOUCH OF EVENTS PAST & TO COME

All relatives of Louise Hall Ryland -- and these relatives would be all my cousins and their kin -- will find the will of Abner Hall very interesting. I will have to tell the story in two parts, but the will is the first part that sets the scene.

His will is the first one I found where our ancestors were slaveholders. I was shocked, to say the least. Abner Hall was from North Carolina (Rowan County, for you genealogists) and had come to Missouri in the 1830s. He was a died-in-the-wool southerner and as such, being a fairly well-to-do man, had many slaves. It took me a long time before I could like him, especially because of the way he doled out his slaves as time grew closer to his death. You can see by the date that things were to change shortly.

But if you read his will carefully and note specifically what he says about his oldest son, William, and the making of his second-oldest son John A. (our direct ancestor) his executor, in the next section of this story you will find another more dramatic change that was soon to take place.

Last will and Testament
Abner Hall, Franklin Co., MO
dated April 19, 1862


I, Abner Hall of the County of Franklin, State of Missouri, being now in feble health but of sound and disposing mind, do on this the nineteenth day of April, 1862, make, publish and declare the following to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking all former wills by me made.

First I desire that all my funeral expenses and just debts be first paid.

2nd I give and bequeath to my beloved Mildred Hall, to have and to hold during her natural life the following named slaves, To wit Thom, Minerva and Ester.

It is further my will that in the event of any one or all of said Slaves become unruly, unsafe or unprofitable, then and in that event my executor herein after mentioned shall have full power to sell or dispose of such slave or slaves so deemed to be unruly or unprofitable to my said wife, out of proceeds of said sale my said Executor shall apply the interest arising from the sale to the benefit of my said wife or to be subject to her control.

I further give to my wife, in addition to the slaves herein before mentioned during her natural life, my home stead farm situate on St. Johns containing two hundred acres being the farm upon which we now reside and at her death the same to descend to my youngest son James E. Hall in fee simple.

3rd I give and bequeath to my daughter Caroline the following named Slaves. To wit Amanda, Lydia and Laura.

4th I give and bequeath to Nancy E. Hall the following Slaves to wit Mary, Augustus and Lucy.

6th I give and bequeath to my son James E. Hall the following named Slaves to wit Washington, Mariah and Elen the youngest child of Minerva and in addition to the three slaves herein named that at the death of my said wife the said James E. Hall is to have the farm upon which I now live as his absolute property which said farm contains two hundred acres being the same in which my wife is given a life time interest.

5th I give and bequeath to my son R. M. Johnson Hall the following slaves to wit Anderson, Allice and Daniel.

7th I give and bequeath to John A. Hall the following slaves to wit Charlotte and her increase, Gracy and Joseph, the two first named he is to take immediate possession of.

8th I give and bequeath to William L. Hall ten dollars and such a sum to be paid him annuly as his necessities require or as my said executor may think proper, not to exceed the one half of the yearly value of the three slaves willed to my said Executor, after first deducting out clothing, sickness and doctor bills, the annual legacy to be paid by my Executor to the said William L. Hall is to be paid by said Executor and not to be paid out of my estate, this left alone to the sole discretion of my Executor.

9th It is my will that the personal property on hand at my death remain together and be kept for the use of my wife and the raising of my four youngest children, this clause of my will to mean the household and kitchen furniture and all the stock on hand at my death.

10th It is my will that the Real Estate situate in the town of Washington County and State aforesaid, one a lot and brick house on Jefferson St. and five other lots with all and singular their improvements these situated in the western part of said town and described as follows to wit, lots one, two, three, four and five and being the whole of Elijah W. Murphy's addition to the town of Washington as the same is laid down on the plat of said addition, that this property be sold whenever my said executor shall deem it advantageous to my said Estate and the proceeds of said sale shall be equally divided between Caroline, Nancy E. and R. M. Johnson Hall, my said executor being fully authorized under this will to convey title to said property without any order or decree of any court.

11th That it is my will that at the death of my said wife Mildred Hall the slaves herein before bequeathed to her or the proceeds arising from them shall descend to the four youngest children, to wit, Caroline, Nancy E., R. M. Johnson and James. E. Hall, share and share alike.

12th It is my will that all of my estate personal and mixed not herein specifically disposed of shall be collected, preserved and applied to the payments of my debts and the expenses of the settlement of my estate and the residue if any to be divided among the four youngest children, Caroline, Nancy E., R. M. Johnson and James E. Hall.

13th and lastly, I do hereby appoint John A. Hall the sole Executor of this my last will and testament with full power to employ such assistance as he may choose in order to carry into effect the purposes and desires of this my last Will and testament.

In testimony whereof I, Abner Hall, have hereunto set my hand and seal this the day and year aforesaid.

A. Hall

Signed and declared by the above Abner Hall to be his last will and testament in the presence of us who at his request and in his presence have subscribed our names as witnesses thereto.

Robert F. Sullins
John D. Jump
George W. Hawkins

GENEALOGY IS DEFINITELY FUN!

When I mention genealogy to my kids they roll their eyes, thinking I can't see them but I am very attuned to it (I had lots of practice watching them when they were teenagers). However, I am sure when they are old and decrepit they are going to enjoy all the wonderful "finds" I've made through the years.

One example is actually two photographs - one of the Las Animas (Colorado) Band about 1895 and another photo of it around 1910. Their great-grandfather appears in each of them -- but more than that, each picture shows what life was like in that time period.

Their great-grandfather (my grandfather) was Scott Dobbins Sr. He died when he was only 44 years old and my dad was only 8. There are no family stories handed down about him. But these pictures tell a lot.





The Dobbins family lived in a tiny dry-land farming community east of Pueblo, Colorado. The town was Las Animas, and this is the Las Animas City Band. Scott had an older brother named Gaston and he is on the right hand side of the bottom row holding a trombone. Way up on the top row, right, is Scott, who always played a cornet. The Dobbins family were always involved in music.

What I learned is that during this period in our country's history, band competitions were regularly held. These bands traveled to various locations, even as far as to an adjacent state, to complete in very elaborate and ceremonial competitions. If you are lucky enough to be able to find a newspaper story about such a competition your mouth will drop open to learn what lengths the bands went to in order to make a good showing. The above picture came to me from Gaston's son, Percy, back in 1984. He told me at the time that there was another picture in which he himself appeared but he wasn't able to find it. In 2001 I received a copy of that one from Percy's daughter, who had come upon it stored in an old scrapbook belonging to her long-deceased father

This is the same band taken about 1910 or thereabout. And yes, it is Cousin Percy posing in the front. Percy was born in 1902, so I'd guess he's about 8 years here. My grandfather Scott is on the extreme left hand side and his brother Gaston is directly behind him. My own father would have been 2 at this time, way too young to pick up a horn. (He later learned to play a banjo).

I am so pleased to have these photos. One of them reeks of the old west; the other of the early 20th century. Finding things like this and being able to explain them is what genealogy is all about. It certainly is about more than just getting dates and names.