Newest Discovery & Secrets Unearthed

 Like so many of us who are researching our families' histories, I've come across events and/or documents that I am sure the subject family member thought, at the time, could be kept under wraps.  In my case, most of these relatives have long since gone to meet their maker, so there's not much to be said, other than to share my find with a favorite cousin, and marvel at the things we didn't know.

However, recently, and by that I mean in the last few months, I've come across a couple of discoveries that have popped up on Ancestry as a result of continuing efforts to digitize and index public records. The first is the marriage record for my husband's father and step-mother.  They met and married about 15 months after my husband's mother had passed away.  There was some acrimony about their rush to marry, but eventually everyone just sucked it up and shut up.  

We flew to Texas with our young children in January 1993 to attend their afternoon ceremony held at a local Lutheran church. It would be the first time we would meet the adult children and the families of the woman my father-in-law was marrying. Her older daughter hosted a nice reception afterwards in her home. Their marriage lasted until 2010 when my father-in-law was taken by lung cancer.  We continue to have a good relationship with his widow who is now 87.

To my surprise, I recently found a marriage record that this couple actually married a month prior to the ceremony we attended.  I've no idea why, and it doesn't really matter.  Perhaps taxes?  I've only mentioned this to my husband, and have no intention of asking my mother-in-law about it, but I am somewhat amused by their innocent deceit being exposed at this late date.

The second situation worries me a bit more. My parents divorced when I was a child and my father had a second family, none of whom I knew until I was an adult (another story, another time). The oldest (half) brother is a sweet man who made sure my father was cared for in his later years, and he is the patriarchal figure for all the family in the town where they live. He and I still talk on the phone every few months. Prior to my dad's death in 2006, my brother was contacted by a young woman claiming to be his daughter. My brother had been friends with the girl's mother many years earlier, and even acknowledged a physical relationship, before she relocated to another state. At the time he was contacted though, it seemed he was unaware that he had a child. And so he began a relationship with her and her young family, and she eventually moved her family back to the same town where he lives. And now, for reasons unknown to me, they are estranged. :(

So it shocked me when recently,  Ancestry coughed up a marriage certificate for him and the girl's mother (now deceased) from the state where she had relocated. I can only believe this marriage was for the benefit of the child's birth, and I don't know whether there was a subsequent divorce. There's so much I want to know about this, but feel it's not my place to pry into this very sensitive issue, so I'll stay mum about this too. Maybe one day he'll confide the details to me. If not, that's OK too.

In one way, it makes me sad that it's becoming harder to keep our so-called private lives private, without fear of exposing ourselves to society's harsh judgments.

2021-Week7-The Hoosier Pocket Billiard Champion

 I have had the devil's own time tracing the lineage of my maternal grandfather's family.  This much I know.  My grandfather ran away from home at about age 13 and did God only knows what to survive until military records show he enlisted about 10 years later clear across the country. His mother, my great-grandmother, a vaudeville singer/dancer, first shows up in New York state records when she married for the first time.  Her mother, my great-great-grandmother, has been found in Buffalo newspaper articles involving her marriage AND divorce to her first husband, John Lipp...a real catch, that one.  Beyond that is all a matter of speculation for now.

I do know from correspondence my own mother had with my great-grandmother's sister that there was a younger brother named Eugene Henning.  When I started looking into Eugene, I found dozens of newspaper articles and advertisements about his playing billiards professionally all over the United States and even Canada, a fact not mentioned in his sister's letters.  By looking into his FAN club, I was reassured this was indeed my relative.  Remarkably, one article mentioned that Eugene had written and published a biography about his exploits.  Of course, I went straight to Google, not really surprised to find the book was out of print, having been published in 1913.

I recently attended a meeting of one of our local genealogy societies and the speaker that day gave a presentation on how to locate your family in printed documents.  One source she talked about to find books not on-line is worldcat.org.  I plugged Eugene's book into the search box and, sure enough, found 5 libraries throughout the country with a copy of his book. 

I started with the Indiana State Library and sent an inquiry to see if the book could be borrowed through an inter-library loan. The librarian responded within a day saying they only held one copy in their reference section and it could not be loaned out.  He went on, however, and said that because the book was rare, it would be a good candidate for digitizing, and he promised to let me know when it was available, projecting it would be late spring.  To my amazement, two weeks later he sent me the link where I could read Eugene's life story. 

 https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16066coll44/id/1424

I jumped right into it hoping Eugene would enlighten me on the mysteries of my family's heritage.  I was disappointed to find extremely little in the way of family history, but there were a few nuggets that perhaps will lead me to other helpful sources.  

His story starts when he is about 12 years old, and on the very first page, tells of being left by his mother at an orphanage in Coldwater, Michigan. His father has died and his mother has no means to support him.  I was unaware the family had relocated from Buffalo, NY back to Michigan, so this points me back to researching in Michigan. I went to Google to see exactly how far Coldwater was from Grand Rapids where I knew the family had some roots, and in the process, discovered another book that purports to have the records of children left at the orphanage. I am now working on how to get access to that book!

The second fact I got from Eugene's book was his short marriage to a woman he met in Washington state.  I had earlier come across a newspaper announcement for his marriage license, and he had used the name Eugene Peter Liff Henning.  This had me scratching my head, and I wasn't 100% certain this was "my" Eugene until I read about his marriage in the book. I now must order a copy of the marriage license because I want to see exactly how it's completed.  I have speculated that Eugene's father was actually Mr. Lipp to whom his mother was married prior to becoming Mrs. Henning.  At the time of her divorce, she was either pregnant with Eugene, or he was an infant.  But this is the only reference I've found where he's used that name. It's obvious to me that "Liff" was a poor transcription of "Lipp".

The book is harrowing in parts. He was adopted from the orphanage by a farmer who abused him, most likely adopting him for the labor he could get out of him. Eugene soon ran away with the intent of finding his mother in Buffalo, but quickly figured out he would have no idea how to look for her.  He eventually made his way to Buffalo and back to Cleveland, OH by working on boats.  He frequently traveled from one place to another hitching rides in empty boxcars.  He writes of being afraid to fall asleep for fear of the other hoboes traveling with him.  He was in a boxcar one night when the train derailed and four others were killed, and although he was pretty badly injured, he managed to crawl away.  Once he started playing billiards professionally, he more than once abandoned all his belongings to skip town either in fear for his life from local pool hall hooligans, or because he lost all his money and couldn't pay for his lodging. No wonder his WW I draft registration card shows he's missing a kidney, deaf in one ear, and other injuries.

He evidently had some talent for running a restaurant kitchen, but he didn't seem to have much business sense.  It seemed he couldn't totally overcome his proclivity for gambling and would return to competing in billiards again after living a relatively conventional life for a while.  

When he published his book in 1913, he was about 34 years old.  He had divorced his first wife, but had not yet met his second wife, so this part of his life is beyond the scope of the book.  They would have a son together, Robert, his only child as far as I know.  I do know that son never had any children of his own.  

Eugene was able to find his mother eventually, as well as his two sisters.  In his will, he didn't mention his son, so I presume they had no relationship to speak of.  He did ask that his remaining assets be used to give a monthly stipend to his sister, Charlotte, except for the $1 he bequeathed his other sister, Jeanette (my great- grandmother) "for reasons well known to her".

The thought of him making his way alone as a young boy, a child really, weighed on me for several days.  At the same time, I am grateful for finding the book in a library where they took the care to make it available for me.  I look forward to seeing where the little bit I learned from it will take me.

2020-Favorite Photo

Picking a single favorite photo of a family member is nearly impossible for me, as I'm sure it is for many of you who are also participating in this writing exercise.  I love taking photographs, and when I look at photos, even ones I haven't taken, I often spend time studying the person and their surroundings, trying to imagine that instant in time when the photo was snapped.  What was the occasion?  What were they thinking about?  Who else was there out of the frame of the camera?  Or in some cases, who the heck are these other people with my relative?   Also, because I am our "official" family photographer, I've learned that I am often not present in the photos of our family events, a problem I've tried to remedy by lots of whining....

Papias Peru Moskal circa 1953

In any event, after an inordinate amount of time studying my collection of photos, I've selected this photo of my Mexican nana, Papias Peru Moskal (1888-1967).  In it, she is sitting on a stool at her kitchen table in El Paso, making tamales, it appears.  She is smiling, and it looks to me like it was snapped while she was engaged in a conversation with someone else in the room, probably my mother, enjoying herself while she worked.

I like this photo because I remember sitting as a very young child, maybe 2-3 years old, at that table with the oil cloth tablecloth, on the end near that hot water heater, while Nana would make flour tortillas, heating them in a skillet, and slathering them with butter for me to eat.  There was often a manual meat grinder attached to that table.  I am so emotionally attached to that image that I've kept the one my husband's grandparents owned in a box in my basement for years...just because.  No plans to use it; I have a modern one that attaches to my stand mixer.  Just because it reminds me of my nana and those flour tortillas.

That's the power of a photograph to evoke memories from an image that can make us time travelers. 

There's More than One way to Reunion

My parents divorced in 1955, and my mother and I relocated to Memphis, TN from El Paso, TX.  My father stayed in his hometown and remarried a few weeks after the ink was dry on the divorce papers.

l-r. Uncle Bill, Dad

His communication with me was sporadic for several years, and then, for reasons known only to him, stopped altogether around 1963.  His mother and his older brother, my Uncle Bill, continued to stay in touch with us, and I would occasionally write my dad a letter and send it to Uncle Bill who would take care to forward it.  But my father stayed incommunicado.

I graduated from high school, worked my way through college, got married, buried my mother, and had two children all without any acknowledgment from my dad.  When my first son was born, I told my husband I was thinking about trying to let my dad know.  My husband's wise counsel was I could do what I wanted, but I would be unhappy either way.  I decided he was right, so I did nothing.

Uncle Bill would occasionally tell me about visiting with my dad, and at one point, I guess I told him I didn't want to hear any more about him. Uncle Bill complied for several years, but sometime in the early 1980s, he told me he had seen my dad, and that he looked well.  (By this time, my dad and wife #2 were also divorced.)  He acknowledged he was going against my wishes to tell me that, but he thought I should know.  After so many years, I guess I had buried the hurt and I responded that I was OK with that, but I would never seek my dad out, and if he ever wanted to talk to me again, he would have to make the first move.  I knew that was a low risk and I had no expectation whatsoever of ever seeing the man that had fathered me.

Then...on Christmas Eve in 1987,  I got the shock of my life.  My phone rang about 9 pm, and after 32 years, I found myself having an extremely tense and awkward conversation with my father. One thing I didn't anticipate was how angry his call would make me. I'll spare the details, but after about 15 minutes, we hung up. I had offered to write him a letter, once the busy-ness of the holidays was past, and share information with him about myself.

I did write that letter, and he called me when he received it, and our conversation went somewhat more smoothly, although still awkward, given that we were essentially two strangers.  Going forward from that, he wrote me a letter every week for several years, and eventually got on a schedule of calling me every Sunday morning promptly at 9 am. He worked hard to earn my trust. We began visiting one another traveling from Arizona to Virginia, and vice versa.  While we could not regain the time we had lost, we did form a strong bond, and I'm grateful that I could muster the forgiveness needed to make that happen.

In the process of that reunion, I gained 3 half-brothers and 2 half-sisters, all of whom apparently knew of me, and they welcomed me.

2002-That's me on the right with 4 of my 5 half-sibs. 

l-r. My dad and me; Uncle Bill and Anita; Nana.  Circa 1954.

In 1995, my Uncle Bill passed away.  My dad had made several trips to El Paso to see him while he was ill, and to offer help to Uncle Bill's only daughter, Anita.  As very young children, Anita and I had been cared for by our grandmother but Anita was 4 years older than I, and we'd never been in contact as we grew up.  I traveled to El Paso to attend the funeral, and Anita and I established a lasting friendship.

Anita on the left and me, circa 2006.

Anita is truly the family historian for my ancestors on that side, having grown up in El Paso, and knowing a lot of the family lore and legend.  She's been the primary custodian of papers and photographs which she has shared generously with me.





When my dad turned 80, his children in Arizona arranged a surprise birthday party for him, and Anita flew to Arizona to attend the party with me and my family.   This was the first time my own two teenage kids would meet their aunts and uncles and many cousins from this side of the family.  Anita knew them, but had not seen them since they were children.  By this time, my dad and I were on solid ground, and this was a very happy occasion.

Anita and I have more than once returned to Arizona to visit with our relatives there, and we always celebrate with lots of homemade Mexican food and an all day party at my brother's home with as much local family as possible.  It's a reunion every time we visit.  I am so grateful to have these connections that I grew up thinking were lost to me.

Dear Diary

My grandmother, whom I never knew, kept a diary beginning in 1938 while she was confined in a tuberculosis sanitorium in Colorado.  Her hand-written recordings were brief, and run the gamut from descriptions of her poor health on a particular day to what someone else was wearing as they left the property.  She also commented on letters she received from friends and relatives back home in Arkansas.

I found this entry particularly interesting.  She wrote on Monday, September 26, 1938, "Listened to Hitler from 12 to 1:30.  Wonder if it means war.  Temp 101 at 1 o'clock but 100 3/5 at 2:30." I pondered what it was like to listen to Hitler, through a translator I presume, for an hour and a half.  I also felt her desperate hope when her temp had declined by a mere 2/5 of a degree.

She didn't fill in every day's entry, and in October 1938, she started writing about how discouraged she was becoming about her lack of improvement. On October 18, she wrote, "Have about reached the point where I can't hope much longer." Then on October 19, after talking with a pastor, a nurse, and a doctor, she "decided suddenly to go home.  Panicky & frightened."  Her notes say she left on the 5:15 pm train on Friday, October 21.  And that was her last entry, although she lived for another 17 months.

Then in 1942, my mother, who would have been 16, began writing in the same diary.  She was now living with her aunt and uncle who were her guardians, as her mother's death left her completely orphaned.

My mother's entries span 1942 and 1943, and are typical of what you might think a 16-year old would write:

• Music:  "Listened to Hit Parade--White Xmas is still 1st";
• Movies: "Saw 'Star Spangled Rhythms' after school"; "Saw 'My Gal Sal' with Rita Hayworth and Victor Mature."  Throughout she recorded many more movies and the stars of those movies.
• Friends:  "Nell blew her lid at noon because of something Bernice said.  Nothing else much."  I don't know who Nell was, but from other entries, she must have been quite a hot-head, as my mother remarks frequently about Nell being mad about one thing or the other.
• School: "A very dull day.  Gym starts - dancing and exercise- Mon & Wed.  Was elected Red Cross Rep." And "Had lecture on vulgarity of generation."  But in a sign of the times, she also wrote in different entries, "had practice air raid"; "everybody out on scrap metal hunt"; and "gas rationing today".
• Family: This remark made me laugh, so typical of a teenager even today:  "Damn Uncle Bud.  He wouldn't let me go to the USO Dance.  I hate him."   Uncle Bud died before I was born, but his wife, Aunt Edna, was a dear, dear person, and while she couldn't replace my grandmother in my mother's life, she was a fantastic stand-in.  She outlived my mother. 

I do plan, as time permits, to transcribe all the entries from both my grandmother and mother.  They tie me to my relatives, and give me insight to their lives, emotionally and historically.

At the Courthouse with the Lipps

I suppose we all have at least one of those ancestors whose name vexes us in our research.  One such of those in my background is my 2nd great grandmother, Mary (Maria) Hanick/Hanink/Harnink/Hannink/Henank/Heineke/Henning.  I doubt I have exhausted the potential spellings of what seems to be a somewhat common Dutch name.  Most of the census records state she was born in Michigan, and I've found a long list of family members in the Grand Rapids area with one or more of the variations above.  Then there's that one document that says she was born in Ohio.  <sad face>

A lot of what I know about Mary I've learned through articles or notices in newspapers where Mary has been in a court of one kind or another.

Mary was born in 1856, so she was barely 17 years old in 1873 when she appeared in Police Court in Buffalo, NY, to sue her future husband, John Lipp, for "seduction under promise of marriage".  An 1848 law passed in New York state made it illegal "under promise of marriage<to>seduce any unmarried female of previous chaste character".   John's bail of $800 seems to be a significant sum in that time period.  Mary gave birth to my great grandmother, Jane, five months later in January 1874, so it was probably pretty straightforward for Mary to prove she had indeed been deflowered.  But John Lipp was no "catch".

Buffalo Courier, September 3, 1873

Mary and John had their second daughter, Charlotte (Lottie), in October 1878.  Less than a year later, in September 1879,  John sued Mary for divorce.  Again the case was decided in favor of Mary.  I've no idea what this means to have had a divorce decided in your favor, because I don't know the terms of the suit.  Perhaps she counter-sued.

Buffalo Courier, September 22, 1879

A third child was born in November 1879, a few months after the divorce was settled, a son named Eugene.  I've found no record of his ever being referred to by the surname "Lipp".  It appears he lived his life using the surname of Mary's second husband, John Henning.  Yes, she married someone with a name sounding similar to her maiden name, adding even more confusion to my ensuring I'm looking at the proper ancestor.

I would say that Mary was lucky to be rid of Mr. Lipp, but for this.  In the article below, one year after her divorce, Mary would be a single mother with three young children to care for, so desperate circumstances must have led her to put one child out for adoption.  This case was settled in the County Court.  It doesn't say which child, so I don't know whether it was my great grandmother, Jane, or her younger sister, Lottie.   What a scene it must have been in the court room for the two women involved going at each other!

In her 1950s correspondence with my mother, Lottie wrote that, as a child, she had lived for a time with an aunt during hard times, so for all I know, the Lowe family below could have been relatives, although I've not yet found any evidence to support this premise.

Buffalo Morning Express, November 2, 1880

Censuses from 1900 and on show at different times the three women living together.  The son, Eugene, is not listed in any of the censuses, but turns up later in various newspapers around the country as a professional billiards player.  Lottie married and moved to Ohio, and later to California after she was divorced.  Jane was married twice, and as a widow turned her home into a boarding house in Niagara Falls.  Mary, once in her dotage, lived with Jane until she died on Christmas Eve in 1936.

When I read these articles as a sequence, as well as other information I have about these women, I feel deep sorrow for the difficulties they all endured in just day to day survival.

Family Photo

I had many group photos from which to choose, and decided to mix things up a bit this week to write a little about my husband's family.  His mother, Jackie, organized this photo shoot and hired a pro to come to their home while we were visiting them in Texas.  Based on our clothing, I believe this was late winter or early spring.

I don't really have too many specific memories about this event.  One thing I do remember is the photographer had a particularly hard time with my younger son squinting when he smiled.  The photographer would call it to his attention, then gesture like he was turning a reel, making a squeaking noise at the same time, as if that would control Kevin's eyes.  It's probably why we all look like we're laughing.

I don't know for sure, but most likely my father-in-law was grumbling about having to do this, because that's just what the men in this family do (ahem).  My husband is no fan of having his photo taken, but he knew better than to fuss too much to his mother.  She didn't care.  This was taken circa 1990, and by October 1991, she had succumbed to pulmonary fibrosis at age 62.

My sister-in-law and her husband had two daughters, and we had two sons.  In this photo the older niece, Angela, is about 11-12.  Her younger sister, Carissa,  and my older son, Justin, are about 9-10, and Kevin is about 5. Even though the cousins usually only saw one another once a year, they still had a good time together.  Jackie, a former elementary school teacher and librarian, was a great organizer, and she always planned at least one day where she had all four kids together.  Just about anything went at Grandmother's house.

I was blessed to have great in-laws, and Jackie has been my role model for being a mother-in-law (rules: bite your tongue; avert your eyes; bite your tongue some more) and for being a grandmother (rules:  there's no such thing as too much banana pudding; bubble gum? sure; drop bouncy balls from upstairs to the first floor when I'm babysitting you? of course!)   Whenever I question my judgment about what to do, I've co-opted the phrase from the 90's, "WWJD?"  In my mind, though, it means, "What Would Jackie Do?"  It's still my guiding principle.  I may not get it right, but I try!

After Jackie died, my father-in-law soon remarried a really nice woman, and she also has been a role model.  She was sensitive to our grief from losing Jackie, and just let us all take our time to adjust to the new normal.  She and L.A. were married for 19 years before he passed away from lung cancer.  They came to visit us in Virginia before he started treatments, and I was shocked as I listened to him tell my husband what it meant to have been his dad.  It was startling for me to hear him open his heart and share it, as he was usually taciturn about his emotions.  I will always regret that I didn't take the opportunity to tell him what a great father-in-law and grandfather he was, but I was totally unprepared for that conversation.

When my father-in-law died in 2010, I snapped this photo of the cousins, now grown-ups with kids of their own. Four more little ones have been born to this group since then.  This is the last time they were together, the realities of adulthood--kids, jobs, finances--making long distance family gatherings more infrequent, at least for now.  It would be a joy to pull us all together with all the kids, spouses, and grandkids without a funeral as the occasion.  Who knows?

April 2010