Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Goals for 2026

 Time once again for Randy Seaver's  Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in which we are encouraged to state our genealogy goals for 2026.  My list is rather short. 

1.  Finish my revision of my family history on my father's side, Richards Packard, His Ancestors and Descendants in Direct Line to Arden Packard (1911-1954), Together with Some Notes on Selected Collateral Relatives.  Yes, that's a mouthful.  I am revising it, as I have found a good deal of additional information, and I need to correct some errors in the earlier edition.  I plan to send copies to the Georgeville, Quebec, Historical Society, the Library of Congress, the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, the Southern California Genealogical Society, and to provide a copy to my local genealogical and historical societies. 

2.  Continue filling out my contributions to WikiTree.  

3.  Finish with success the Profile Improvement Project on WikiTree.

4.  Do more in filling out my genealogy on my computer, using Legacy Family Tree.

5.  I bought a copy of Planning a Future for Your Family's Past, by Marian Burk Wood.  As I'm 78 in a family not generally known for long lives, I need to start preparing for preservation of my family history.  WikiTree is part of this planning, for me.  

That about does it, because another goal for 2026, covering my life in general, is to practice the practical art of saying, "No."  I don't have the time or the energy to be overcommitted, as I have had a habit of doing in the past.  

 

How Did They Meet?

 I am inspired today by the Genealogy Tip of the Day newsletter sent out by Michael John Neill.  What caught my eye was this:

"Determining how your ancestor met their spouse can be an interesting genealogical endeavor. It may not even be possible to do anything other than conjecture about their meeting. But at the very least, researching them with the intention of discovering how they met may result in new information–even if it has nothing to do with their marriage."

I know how my mother and father met, because my mother told me.

Mom was raised in Pensacola, Florida, and graduated from Pensacola High School in 1935.  My father, raised in Pasadena, California, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland in 1934.

Dad had always been interested in flying, having been a member of the "Aero Club" at Pasadena High School/Junior College, a combined educational institution.  After graduation, Dad served on an aircraft carrier, and, in 1937, was chosen for flight school at Pensacola Naval Air Station.  Ah, fate.

My mother could be very determined.  Once she made up her mind to do something, it was going to be done come Hell or high water.  She and her friends, the social elite of Pensacola, would hang out at the Officers' Club at NAS Pensacola to see who they could meet.  My mother told me that she spotted my father across the proverbial crowded room, and decided, "That's the man I'm going to marry."  Dad's fate was sealed.

She most likely introduced herself to him, rather than wait for someone else to arrange an introduction.  And the rest is history.

They were married 16 July 1937.  These wedding pictures are hand-colored and mounted on tiles of porcelain.

Throwback Thursday: A Midshipman on Leave

 This picture was taken sometime between 1930 and 1934.  The people pictured are my grandmother Elizabeth Jane (Reynolds) Packard, my father Arden Packard, and my grandfather Walter Hetherington Packard.  The picture was probably taken in Pasadena, California, where my grandparents lived.  My father is in the uniform of a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.  He was on leave from the Academy, which suggests he was in his third or fourth year there.

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 13: Home Sweet Home

Time for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  This week's theme: Home Sweet Home.

My parents' "home, sweet home" was rented as long as my father, Arden Packard (1911-1954) was alive.  When I got serious about genealogy, more than 30 years ago, I read about how wonderful land and property records can be.  I tried to apply that evaluation to my parents, and came up baffled.  I couldn't  find one property record in their names.  I remember Mom talking about a particular house in Jacksonville, Florida, where I grew up, that she and Dad had rented during World War II.  Rented.  Oh, boy.

 The 1940 census does have them living in a rented house in Coronado, California.  I do remember that one of the houses we occupied in Pensacola in the early 1950s -- about 1951 -- was rented; then we moved into another rented house.  My father did not stay in one place very long, even within the same county.  That could explain why he and Mom never owned a house.  The first purchased house my mother lived in after marrying Dad was the house she bought after he died in 1954, when she took me and my brother and sister -- and my brother's bird -- back to Florida.  

To find where my mother and father were in any particular year before my own recollections begin, I depended on censuses and city directories.  City directories can be marvels, and for me, they helped to solve a mystery.  For years, I had heard my mom and dad and my grandma talk about a certain gentlemen that I never met.  At least, I don't remember ever having met him.  In one city directory for Jacksonville, from about 1953, there is a full page ad for an insurance company my father worked for.  And there, in the list of agents of the company, was this man's name.  

My husband and I rented in the first years of our marriage.  He was in the Coast Guard on active duty, stationed in St. Petersburg, Florida, and we actually tried to buy a house, but the mortgage company made a blatant error.  We told them they were wrong, but they were unable, unwilling, or both, to correct the error.  I hold grudges like my mother did, and that mortgage company and the owner thereof landed on my permanent excrement list.  So we ended up renting.  We ended up living next door to the unfortunate real estate agent we had worked with in trying to buy a house in St. Petersburg.  Mind you, she was as baffled and disgusted at that mortgage company as we were, and had done a terrific but, alas, fruitless job of trying to get the company to admit their error.  She was a wonderful neighbor and friend, and gave us free run of her citrus trees, which were bearing enough fruit to have fed our entire block.  When we returned to Jacksonville, where my husband was born and raised, we rented until we could find a house to buy.

Well, home sweet home is just that, whether owned or rented.  Each location generates memories and stories.

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 20: Taking Care of Business

This week's title phrase can mean a variety of things.  It can literally mean taking care of one's means of supporting self and family.  Here on this blog, I've discussed businessmen and businesswomen in the family:  Emily [Hoyt] Packard, who was a milliner; Nelson Reed McKee, a jeweler and watchmaker; Frank A. Packard, Bloomington, Illinois, merchant; Perry Wilmer Reed, head of the Pensacola, Florida, Chamber of Commerce; my father, Arden Packard, and his brother Jack, advertising agency owners; Oscar Merry Packard, builder and developer; Walter Hetherington Packard, builder and developer, and stockbroker.

The phrase can also mean buckling down and taking care of the serious stuff in life.  Samuel Packard's religious convictions caused him to take his wife and their firstborn, a daughter, on a risky and most probably quite uncomfortable sea voyage in 1638, from their home in Suffolk, England to a hardscrabble new settlement in a wild land called Massachusetts.  There was Richards Packard, who did his part in taking care of a certain dispute with England at the end of the 1700s.  After that was settled, Richards began a northward migration that left him disappointed in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, on up into Canada, which was practically giving land away and not being terribly picky about who they were giving it to, even to those who had previously taken up arms against His Majesty, George III.  The succeeding three generations of my line were born in Canada.  Mathew Hale Packard, a member of that third generation, took a chance on what I call "retro-migration," going from Canada back to the U.S.  He took care of other grim business from 1860 to 1865, serving in two regiments of New York cavalry.  Farther west, at the same time, Charles Reed did the same in a regiment of Indiana infantry.  My father took care of the business of serving in the U.S. Navy, from his education at the Naval Academy to World War II service.

They all, with their brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and all else, took care of the business of living, as best they could.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Descendants of 2nd great-grandparents

One of the genealogy web postings I have always enjoyed appears in Randy Seaver's prompts under the title Saturday Night Genealogy Fun .  I'm a bit late with this one; it's been busy around here!  So, without further ado:

1)  How complete is your family tree?  Do you have information about your cousins  - both close and more distant?  Today's challenge is to take one set of your 2nd great-grandparents and make a Descendants List (using your genealogy management program - e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, etc.)

2) Tell us about your choice of 2nd great-grandparents, and tell us approximately how many descendants of them that you have in your family tree database. Share your answers, and perhaps a chart, on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

 

Here is mine: it's rather long, and I apologize for the fuzziness of the image, but I just spent two hours trying to get it to work at all . . . I have NO talent in the graphic arts.

 

 

 

As you can see, the Reeds were indeed fruitful, and multiplied, until you get down to my grandparents, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed and Ruth Nave.  They were married in 1913, and Frank was killed in a railroad accident in 1917.  Ruth remarried twice, but had no more children.  I have only 33 Reeds and spouses and children in my database, because I have not been able to work on it for a goodly while.  I have not by a long shot finished delving into all the collateral ancestors here.  I have no idea how many descendants of Charles Reed and Clarissa Haney Wright there may have been, up to the present time.  I have met only a few of my cousins, and very few of my uncles and aunts, and only two grandaunts. 
 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 17 - War

War!  Huh!  What is it good for?  Absolutely nothing!

Those who were around in the 1960s will recognize that line.

Though rational people would prefer to avoid war, one thing that comes out of it: stories.  At least it is good for stories.  Many of the stories that come out of war are, as one would expect, grim and gruesome.  Some are sad stories, some touching tales of humanity or the lack of it.  And some are just downright funny.

My father, Arden Packard, was in the U.S. Navy in World War II.  He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1934.  Having been fascinated by flight since he was a lad, he applied for flight training, and was so assigned in 1937, at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.  He became a carrier-based naval aviator and his first assignment as a naval aviator was to USS Yorktown.  One story that came out of his days afloat concerned the commanding officer of a destroyer assigned to a carrier group.  One night, after the captain had retired to his cabin for the night, one of the other ships lost control and began to drift into the destroyer's path.  The captain was summoned to the bridge and quickly briefed.  He began to give orders.  "Now, everyone stay calm.  Stay calm, like me," he urged.  Then he barked out this order:  "Two toots on the rudder; right full whistle."  Dad never mentioned whether the ships collided or managed to avoid it.

There were sad stories about friends who never got to see peace restored.  Dad had two best friends at the Academy.  Their names were Edward "Ned" Worthington and James "Jimmy" Newell.  Ned Worthington was killed at Pearl Harbor.  Dad died in April of 1954 of pneumonia.  Jimmy Newell outlived them both, and my mother and I visited him and his wife in Norfolk, Virginia, when I was in high school.  The three Navy buddies had an agreement that they would each be cremated and their ashes scattered from a U.S. Navy aircraft.  Ned Worthington's ashes were scattered off Koko Head in Hawaii.  Dad's were scattered over Glendale, California.  I don't know about Jimmy Newell, who most likely passed on many years ago now.  My father assigned the nickname "Ned" to my brother, in remembrance of his friend.

[This post is a little late.  I'm catching up.]

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - M is for Military

 From the very first English emigrations to the New World, my family has had individuals in it who did military service of one form or another.

As with most men in early colonial times, Samuel Packard, my eighth great-grandfather, served in the militia of his town of residence.  He came to the New World first at Hingham, Massachusetts, shown in some records as New Hingham, named for a town in England.  From there, he moved to Weymouth, and eventually settled in Bridgewater, the part that is now known as Brockton.  A town in New England at that time was centered around the church; and it was the church.  Church membership was required for a man to be considered a "freeman," to be able to vote and hold office.  Now and then, there would be a squabble in a church over something-or-other, and a group would break off and set up another church in another part of town, creating thereby a new town.  Bridgewater eventually split into East Bridgewater, West Bridgewater, and North Bridgewater.  It was in the latter town that Samuel Packard lived, and which later became Brockton.

Samuel's fourth-great-grandson Richards Packard served in the American Revolution.  His name was Richards; he signed several documents, including at least one in his Revolutionary War Pension file, as Richards.  He was probably so named after his mother's maiden name; her name was Mercy Richards.  I have written a booklet on Richards, his ancestors, and his descendants.  In it, I describe his military service:

"Richards Packard’s original enlistment was at Western, Massachusetts, for a term of six months. Western is in Middlesex County, north and west of Bridgewater. Richards mustered in at Springfield, Hampshire County (that part which is now Hampden County), in Captain Wade’s company, Colonel Jackson’s regiment. The company went to West Point, New York; Richards was at Kings Ferry and, as Richards says in his sworn statement, at Haverstraw “when Andre was hung,” referring to the execution of Major John Andre, the British spy who was hanged 2 October 1780 at Tappan, New York. Richards Packard was discharged in the fall of 1780. 

"He enlisted again in February, 1782, at Leverett, Massachusetts and again was at West Point, this time under Captain Smith in Colonel Rufus Putnam’s regiment. During this time, he suffered from smallpox, but apparently recovered. The troops went to Verplank’s Point in the spring of 1783, and were there until fall, when they retired to winter quarters at Newburgh, New York. He was discharged in February of 1783."

I have two direct ancestors who served the Union in the Civil War.  My paternal great-great grandfather, Mathew Hale Packard (not a typo; there was only one "t" in Mathew's name) served in two different regiments of New York Cavalry, the 15th New York Cavalry, and the 2nd Regiment, New York Provisional Cavalry.  My maternal great-great grandfather, Charles Reed, served in the 140th Indiana Infantry.  Both survived, but were disabled by disease.  

My father, Arden Packard, enlisted in the Navy and was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1930, having passed a competitive exam offered to enlisted personnel.  He graduated from the academy in 1934.  He took flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1937, and that is where he met my mother and they got married in July of 1937.  He received exemplary fitness reports, placing him in the top 5% of Naval aviators -- "Top Gun" territory.  But he was grounded due to medical problems, and became a flight instructor.  In that capacity, he was sent by the Navy Department to the Empire Central Flying School, outside of London, England, to learn the tactics the British were using against the Germans.  He brought that knowledge home and taught these tactics to his students, who would be shipping out with the Atlantic Fleet to English waters to fight the Germans.

Inspired by our father's service, my brother enlisted in the U.S. Marines after high school, and I enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve when I saw how much my husband was enjoying his Coast Guard service.  Our family very much has a military tradition.

 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - I is for Insurance

One of the occupations my father Arden Packard (1911-1954) pursued after retiring from the Navy at the end of World War II was as an insurance salesman.  He worked for the Angus B. Rosborough agency in Jacksonville, Florida in the early 1950s.  The Rosborough Agency represented Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Company in the Jacksonville area.  

A half-page ad in the 1951 R. L. Polk Jacksonville City Directory answered one question, solving a small mystery for me.  For many years, as a teenager and adult, I had heard my mother and grandmother mention a man of the surname Stoudemire as a family friend.  I had never met this individual; I don't remember him being a guest in our house either before or after my father died in 1954.   But there in the half-page ad in the city directory was the name right below that of my father.

Another insurance salesman -- one who over the years sold policies to my grandmother, my aunt, my mother, myself and my husband, and our daughters -- told me one time that my father had mentored him in insurance sales when he was a young man just starting out in the field.  

But again, as he had so many times before, my father got happy feet and, even having been fairly successful in insurance sales, he wanted to move on to something else, and soon we were on our way to California.  Once again. 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - E is for Engineer

 My father, Arden Packard, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934, with a degree in civil engineering.  During World War II, he devoted his career to his first love: flying.  Medically retired in early 1941, he was recalled to active duty in October of 1941, as the country experienced a military buildup in anticipation of future involvement in war raging across the world.  The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941, brought the future into focus for everyone in the nation as the U.S. entered World War II by declaring war on Japan.

After the war, unable to find engineering work, he entered into the world of advertising with his brother, Jack.  This endeavor was chronicled in the first entry in this year's A to Z Challenge: A is for Advertising.  After the agency dissolved and my uncle went into business for himself, also in advertising, my father served as the general manager of a printing company, then sold insurance.

Finally, in about 1951, he landed a civil engineering job helping design a duPont chemical plant in Pensacola, Florida.  My memory is sketchy on this because I was only four years old at the time.  There was a book published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Class of 1934, but our copy of it was disposed of without our knowledge by someone who shared living quarters and wanted our space for her belongings.  I have tried to track down a copy of that book, and intend to try again this week.  In that book is an essay by my mother on my father's life and career, and she mentioned this engineering job of my father's.  

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - B is for Business

 Some of my ancestors were involved in business in one way or another.  

My adoptive maternal grandfather, Perry Wilmer Reed (1885-1938), was a railroad freight agent, having to do with the business of shipping goods for all sorts of commercial enterprises by rail.  After retiring from railroad work, he became the Executive Secretary of the Pensacola, Florida, Chamber of Commerce.

My paternal grandfather, Walter Hetherington Packard (1879-1937), had his fingers in all sorts of pies relating to business.  He was a builder and developer in California during the early 20th century boom.  He was a stock broker.  He sold real estate.  He had mining interests.  Whatever fortune he may have accumulated from these enterprises up to that point vanished in the Crash of 1929.  He managed to rebuild some of that by the end of the Depression. It was on his way to sign a mining contract that he was killed in an automobile accident. 

My paternal great-grandfather, Oscar Merry Packard (1849-1932), began his professional life as a builder and developer in the Chicago area, but moved to California at the end of the 19th century.  He settled in the Los Angeles area at the beginning of a real estate boom.  

With my father Arden Packard (1911-1954), the apple didn't fall far from the tree, as he had some projects relating to business after retiring from the Navy after World War II.  The Navy was his primary and most-loved occupation, being graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934.  I've already posted about his brief adventure in advertising with his brother, John Creighton "Jack" Packard (1909-1987).  After their advertising partnership dissolved, Uncle Jack continued in advertising, with his sole proprietorship, Jack Packard Advertising, until his retirement.  My father also sold insurance in California and in Florida, and used his degree in engineering on a project in Pensacola, Florida.

Francis A. Packard (1833-1911), brother of my great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard, was a merchant in Bloomington, Illinois.  His career also was interrupted by the Civil War, in which he served in a unit of Illinois volunteer infantry.  After the war, he returned to Bloomington, where he sold insurance and real estate.   

Some of my ancestors got up to business of a different kind -- monkey business!  I've blogged about that in the past, and as soon as I find out about any more monkey business on the part of my ancestors, I'll blog about that too.  It's the mischievous who are most interesting.

 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - A is for Advertising

When my father, Commander Arden Packard, USN, retired from the Navy after World War II, one of the first jobs he had was in partnership with his brother, John Creighton "Jack" Packard, in the advertising business.  They opened their agency, Packard & Packard Advertising, in Los Angeles, both being natives of that city.  The firm was written up in two case studies of successful advertising campaigns.

One of their projects was for a company in Glendale, in Los Angeles County, whose owner did not believe in advertising.  Before the war, his small company had made shoelaces.  During the war, it ended up making nylon cording for parachute shrouds under government contract.  On a parachute, a shroud is any of the lines running from the canopy to the harness.  After the war, the company, left with some twenty tons of surplus nylon, decided to make nylon fishing line.  The business got off to a rocky start and was in danger of folding, when the owner decided that maybe he should try advertising, after all.  He contacted Packard & Packard for the job.

The Packard brothers advised a national advertising campaign.  The company's owner produced twelve thousand dollars as a budget.  The brothers started with full-page, color ads in periodicals aimed at the hardware trade, where the fishing line would likely be sold.  One-third-page ads were placed in sporting periodicals aimed at consumers.  The business owner favored the use of coupons in the ads, which consumers could fill in and use to request more information.  Coupons sent in would show the effectiveness of the advertising campaign, and provide data for further refinements of the campaign.  

The coupons sent in requesting more information were answered with the information and samples of the fishing line.  Consumers returning the coupons had also been asked to provide the name of their local sporting-goods store.  Initial response was 2,900 coupons mailed in, and hundreds of inquiries from dealers interested in carrying the product.  According to this case study, when the campaign began, the fishing-line company owner was "cautiously counting the mail resulting from the ads.  By the end of the campaign he was weighing it."(1)

The second case was for a Los Angeles company that manufactured rectifiers, equipment that converts alternating current into direct current, for technical applications.  Though having been in business for nearly two decades in manufacturing technical equipment, the company had been ill-served by its former advertising agency, and was only locally-known.  This company needed a national advertising campaign, and they turned to Packard & Packard.

The problem was not the battery-charger market the company had always produced for, which was the military and commercial aircraft industry.  The company was entering, simultaneously, two new markets:  motion-picture projection equipment and quick-charging equipment for automotive repair businesses.  The target for the advertising campaign would be jobbers and distributors rather than the general public.  The ads had to be technical enough to convince the target audience of the manufacturer's ability, but also had to be massaged into the proper technical language for each of the three different industries to be served.  Even at this technical level, the Packard brothers again used coupons effectively.  The campaign was a success in both domestic and international markets for the manufacturer's products, and the CEO of the company remarked that the campaign would be expanded as needed.(2)

As successful as the Packard brothers were in advertising, they dissolved their partnership.  I doubt it was because of any disagreement between my father and my Uncle Jack.  There certainly was no animosity between them, as they remained in contact, with frequent visits always jovial in nature, as I remember.  Our families were very close into the 1950s, and after my father died in 1954, remained so.  Uncle Jack and Aunt Billie were very close to all of us, and were among my favorite relatives.  Jack stayed in advertising, in his own firm, Jack Packard Adversing, of Glendale.  He retired in the 1980s, and he and Aunt Billie moved to Florida, where we lived.  Visits were much more frequent with them living so much closer to us. My father may have received or had notice of a job opportunity in his field of engineering, and might have welcomed the chance to use his degree from the Naval Academy.

Notes:

1.  "Didn't Believe in Advertising; Tried It; Now Does," in Printer's Ink Editors and Contributors, Case Histories of Successful Advertising: Problems - Solutions - Results.  (New York: Funk and Wagnall's and Printer's Ink Publishing Company, 1949), 42-44.

2.  "Hit-or-Miss Ads Failed, but Consistent Campaign Clicked," in Printer's Ink Editors and Contributors, Case Histories of Successful Advertising: Problems - Solutions - Results.  (New York: Funk and Wagnall's and Printer's Ink Publishing Company, 1949), 128-132.

Throwback Thursday -- A Matter of Opinion

 The jaunty fellow in the photo below is my father, Lieutenant Arden Packard, USN.  The uniform is that of a Navy officer of the 1930s.  He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1934, but he has lieutenant's stripes on his sleeves, so the photo was probably taken about 1940 or 1941. It looks like his attendance had been required, in full dress uniform, at some hoity-toity event or ceremony, and the uniform being a fussy thing, he was not subtle about expressing his opinion of it.  The photo may have been taken by my mother.  They were married in 1937.

A Rose by any Other Name

 I subscribe to Family History Daily, which has articles about all kinds of aspects of genealogical research.  Today's article is about naming patterns, telling us that there are clues in first names regarding our ancestors, based on the naming patterns of their native region, influenced by factors such as religion.

They left out middle names.  I have found that middle names often have more of the story than first names.  

Example:  My first name, Karen, has no connection to any ancestors.  I was given that name in honor of a character in a novel my mother was reading during her pregnancy with me.  I was saddled with the middle name LeSueur, and that name and I suffered greatly in my childhood from the cruelty of other children.  I was called "sewer rat" and likened to a can of a particular brand of peas (which I love).  Yeah, I love the peas.  I didn't love the comparison.  But, as often happens in genealogy, learning the story behind the name will often soften any negative feelings about it.  My middle name was also the middle name of a granduncle of mine, Wilmer LeSueur Reed.  Wilmer died in infancy, of an acute gastritis, according to his death certificate.  One of the items in my grandmother's cedar chest, which I inherited, was a photo of little Wilmer.  I have it on one of my bookcases.  Knowing that sad story, as told to me by my grandma, made me feel more agreeable toward the name.

My husband's first name and middle name have reference to ancestors.  His first name is Marshall.  Marshall was the surname of his great-grandfather, who fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War.  That puts my husband on the other side from me, as I have two great grandfathers who fought on the Union side.  Marshall became a middle name for my father-in-law, Leonard Marshall Rhodes.  The name Leonard also has significance, though not a family connection.  My husband's great grandfather's physician was named Leonard Henley, and was so close to the family he is buried in the Marshall family plot.  Marshall became my husband's first name, and has since migrated back to being a middle name, that of our grandson.  My husband's middle name is Keys, a name that came from his father's favorite uncle, Richard Keys Russell.  

One may not find a family-name connection to an ancestor's name, but a connection, perhaps, to a parent's or an ancestor's occupation.  My father was named Arden Packard.  He had no middle name.  The name Arden was intended as a placeholder, because his father wanted to bestow his own name on my father.  His name was Walter Hetherington Packard.  Grandma Packard put the kibosh on that, as they already had a son named Walter, my father's older brother.  Young Walter's middle name had a family connection, by the way.  His middle name was Reynolds, which was Grandma Packard's maiden name.  So, no more Walters in the Packard family at that time.  My grandfather agreed to a renegotiation of the name at a future date, and wrote a temporary name on the birth certificate:  Arden, naming his new son after the city-owned dairy at which he was the superintendent.  The name Arden has remained in the family, with namesakes both male and female, including my brother, the son of a nephew, and a granddaughter of a cousin.

      Wilmer LeSueur Reed

Military Monday:  On the Flight Line

The photo posted here is my father, LT Arden Packard, USN, with his Corsair aircraft.  It was taken at Naval Air Station Miami, FL, about 1942.  He had been fascinated by flight at least since high school, if not earlier.  At his school, he had been a member of the Aero Club in the 1920s.  When he graduated in 1929, he enlisted in the Navy and took basic training at San Diego, where he was enumerated in the 1930 census.  He was also enumerated in that census at the family home in Pasadena, nobody having told the enumerator that he was in the Navy and stationed elsewhere.

He qualified to take a competitive exam for an appointment to Annapolis.  He passed, and entered the Naval Academy in the summer of 1930, graduating in 1934.  He received orders to the aircraft carrier Saratoga, and after that, to the Farragut.  In 1936, he was sent to Naval Air Station Pensacola, FL, for flight training.  Upon completion, he was ordered to the carrier Yorktown, but this time as a member of a fighter squadron, not as a member of the deck department, as before.  From there, he spent time attached to carriers out of Norfolk, VA, and then Coronado, CA.

Dad was medically retired in February of 1941, but was called back to active duty in October of 1941.  Perhaps no solid information was circulating about what was about to happen that December, but there was some sort of build-up going on if the Navy was recalling broken-down old pilots. 

His next assignment was to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, as a flight instructor.  During that assignment, he was sent to the Empire Central Flying School, a facility of the Royal Air Force in England, to learn the tactics the British were using against the Germans.  He brought that knowledge back to NAS Jax to teach his students.

Dad retired from the Navy after World War II was over.  He died 25 April 1954.

 

  

The 1950 Census Follies!

As I indicated in The 1950 Census Blues, in my previous post, I looked forward to looking for and finding myself in the census.  1950 was also the first appearance in a census for my late brother, who passed away in 1996.  So both of us in our first census was special to me.

 Then the "fun" began.  Looking for was one thing.  Finding was something else entirely.

My mother and father never owned a house.  While he was alive, he always rented.  Part of that habit was due to bouncing from job to job.  He had some engineering jobs, opportunities to use his degree in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy.  He had other jobs, as well.  But the movements of the family looked like migration on steriods -- or on meth!  Between the end of World War II and my father's dischage from the Navy, and 1954 when he died, my dad had the family bouncing between California and Florida nearly every year.  And in between, the family didn't stay put within the locality, either.  Tracking all this down was a real detective story, and this census is only part of that picture, I have developed a keen empathy with ping-pong balls!  I'm also amazed that my mother didn't divorce him for making her pack up and unpack at least once a year, if not more!

So frequent relocation is part of this picture of why it was so doggone difficult to find my family in the 1950 census!

The other part has been both frustrating and outrageously entertaining!  And both of these diametrically opposed concepts have sprung from the National Archives' experiment in allowing an AI to do the first run of indexing the census. Our younger daughter correctly insists that AI is not the proper term.  The proper term, she says, is "machine learing," because the thing may be long on artificial, but it sure is short on intelligence!

The machine learning is mangling names most hilariously. I have told relatives about the manglings.  A cousin working on a Master of Fine Arts degree is writing a novel, and she took one of the name manglings for a character in her novel.  And oh, did it ever do a number on my father's name.  My father's name was Arden Packard.  

The machine rendered -- and believe me, rendered is the exact right word -- his name as . . . wait for it . . .  Urden Pucbard.

I laughed for a solid hour, partly at the relief of having finally found my family -- and me and my brother -- in the census, but mostly at the utter absurdity of Urden Pucbard!

Also entertaining is the machine's mangling my brother's name, Ned, as Nee.  It put my brother's son (and me) immediately in mind of that immortal Monty Python schtick: the Knights who say Ni!

But unfortunately, there is a serious side to the entertainment, sad to say.  Not only is the machine learning or AI or whatever you choose to call it mangling names to an absolutely absurd degree, it is also: 

• skipping individuals 
• skipping entire households
• conflating information on two different lines

 Thus, there are some people who, unless the entire census is transcribed by us human beings who are doing so, will have little chance of finding their family in the 1950 census.

 

Accuracy counts.

 

 

  

A to Z Challenge On the Move: B is for Bicoastal

My father's family line in America began with Samuel Packard, born around 1610 in Stonham Asphal, Suffolk, England.  He became a separatist and left England for the Plymouth Colony in 1638.  With him were his wife Elizabeth and their infant daughter Mary.  Elizabeth's maiden surname has never been discovered.

Samuel and his family settled first in Hingham, Massachusetts, then removed to Weymouth and finally ended up in Bridgewater.  As towns were organized in those colonial days, it all revolved around the church.  There was a squabble in Samuel's church, and one part of the congregation broke away and renamed their part of the town North Bridgewater, which today is known as Brockton.  Samuel was a farmer, and he also kept a tavern, known as an ordinary, in his home.  This was a common colonial practice, and not just in the English colonies, but also in the Spanish colonies in Florida, as my studies of one of those colonies, St. Augustine, Florida, have revealed.

Samuel was also at one time or another the Keeper of Minister's Rates (tax collector) and Surveyor of Highways.  He was obviously literate and worked well with numbers.

Descendants of Samuel, through several generations, scattered to the four winds.  My fourth great-grandfather, Samuel's great-grandson Richards, served in the American Revolution and afterwards, went north in search of land.  He went up into New Hampshire, where he met and married Sarah ("Sally") Coates.  They continued their migration up into Vermont, where my third great-grandfather, John Allen Packard, was born.  And apparently Richards was not satisfied with the land he tried to farm in Vermont, and he heard that the Canadians were giving away land and were not being particular about who they were giving it to.  He eventually settled near Georgeville, Quebec, in an area known as the English Townships, because so many Anglophones settled there.  My great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard was born there.*

Mathew Hale Packard married Emily Hoyt in Canada.  Their son Oscar Merry Packard, my great-grandfather, was most likely, by everthing I have found so far, born in Hamilton, Ontario.  His happy-sounding middle name came from the Merry family, close friends of the Packards in Georgeville.  Mathew and Emily also later had a daughter, Sarah Augusta.  This family migrated from Canada to Chautauqua County, New York, after the Civil War, in which Mathew served from two different regiments of New York cavalry.

Another migration was in store for this family, as they ended up in Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois, with a few of Mathew's brothers and sisters, and their families.  It was in Bloomington that Mathew Hale Packard died.

His son, Oscar Merry, continued the peripatetic Packard tradition, and after becoming a real estate agent, took that career to the perfect place for it at the perfect time -- southern California in the early 20th century.  Before leaving Illinois, however, he married Agusta Hetherington.  They had several children, among them my grandfather Walter Hetherington Packard.

It was in California that my grandfather met and married my grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.  Their children were Walter Reynolds Packard, Arden Packard, Sarah Packard, and John Creighton Packard.

In my previous post, A is for Arden, the story is told of my father's migrations, which went from California to Maryland to Virginia to Florida, and back to California.  We have been a very bicoastal family.


*Be it noted that, yes, my fourth great-grandfather's name was Richards, with the s.  His mother's maiden name was Mercy Richards, and that is probably where his name came from.  And my great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard had only one t in his first name.

A to Z Challenge On the Move: A is for Arden

Arden was my father's name.  He did not have a middle name.  His parents were Walter Hetherington Packard and Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.  He was born in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, 29 April 1911.

His name was a bit of a bone of contention and lapse of attention.  His father wanted to name him Walter Hetherington Packard, Jr., according to my aunt.  Elizabeth Jane nixed that, saying that two Walter Hetherington Packards would be too many.  Undecided about what permanent name to hang on him, my grandfather put Arden on the birth certificate, with no middle name.  And apparently grandpa and grandma Packard could not agree on a name, and left it at Arden.

I have no idea how my father felt about being named for a dairy.  Walter Packard was the supervisor at the Arden Dairy in Los Angeles.

My father's interest in flying began fairly early.  In high school, he was a member of the Aero Club, an organization for boys who were fascinated by the relatively new phenomenon of flying.  My father kept that fascination.  He enlisted in the Navy out of high school, and was sent for training at the San Diego Naval Base.  That was in 1930, and in that year's census, he was counted both at the family home in Pasadena, where he wasn't, and at the San Diego Naval Base, where he was.

While an enlisted man, he took the competetive examination for admission into the Naval Academy.  He won entrance, and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1934.  After getting initial experience as an officer under his belt, he applied and was accepted for flight training at Pensacola Naval Base in Florida.  There was a family there named Reed, and their younger daughter, Martha, met Arden there, and they were married in 1937.

They never owned a home while my father was alive.  Not even after he got out of the Navy after World War II.  They always rented, which gave me dyspepsia tryng to find them in property records.  From Pensacola, Arden and Martha set out for his first duty station as a Naval aviator -- Norfolk, Virginia.   They started their family fairly early, and while he was out on an aircraft carrier in August of 1938, mom was back in Pensacola to obtain her mother's help for the birth of their first child, Mary Elizabeth. 

The Navy sent my dad back to California for a while.  I remember reading in his service record that he had kept that he was a technical adviser on some training films made in Hollywood.  That record got lost when an individual who shall always be accorded my opprobrium selfishly destroyed it and several other precious keepsakes when she wanted our storage space at the house she and my mom and I both shared with another woman.  All she had to do was ask; there was plenty of room for the items in my closet.  All three adults were employees of a local hospital, and I was in high school.

After Norfolk, the Packard Family migrated to Florida, to Miami, where he was assigned to the Naval air base there.  That's where my brother, Arden Packard II, was born in 1942.  I guess my mother thought two Arden Packards in the world was not such a bad thing.

After Miami, dad was sent to Jacksonville Naval Air Station, also in Florida.  My mom once pointed out to me the house where they lived in the Riverside - Avondale area of Jacksonville.  They also lived a while at Jacksonville Beach.  My dad was not one to stay in place long.

After World War II, they stayed in Jacksonville a brief while, then it was back to California, where I was born in 1947.  We stayed there a few years, which I do not remember, and when I was about three or four, we went back to Jacksonville.  From there, we went to Pensacola, where dad had an offer of a job based on his degree in Engineering from Annapolis.  And from there, we went back to California, and were living in Tarzana when he died in 1954.

There was one final migration, when my widowed mother took my sister and my brother and me back to Florida.  We were accompanied by our teenage cousin Rosanna, who wanted to visit the Reed relatives in Jacksonville.  That was where my mother lived in the first house that she lived in that wasn't rented.  She bought a house around the corner from her mother and sister.

A is for Arden

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge for genealogy bloggers.  I'm catching up today, because I got a little bit of a late start on this.  This is a Facebook group, so you'll have to log in to Facebook to find out more about it, if you'd like to.

Arden is a name that has been in my extended paternal family for four generations now.  My father was the first.  His parents, Walter Heatherington Packard and Elizabeth Jane (Reynolds) Packard could not decide on a name, as the story goes.  Walter put on the birth certificate "Walter Heatherington Packard, Jr." but grandma Elizabeth ("Betty") put her foot down.  One Walter Heatherington Packard in the family was quite enough, she said.  They could not come to an agreement on a name, so for the interim, they did agree to put Arden on the birth certificate.  They chose that name as a stopgap, because grandfather Walter worked as the supervisor at the Arden Dairy in Los Angeles at the time.

They never did come up with another name, so my father was Arden Packard.  He had no middle name, probably because that, too, had been set aside for a while during the time grandma and grandpa Packard were supposed to be agreeing on a name!

My brother was Arden Packard II, but was called "Ned."  That nickname came from a Naval Academy classmate of my father's who was killed at Pearl Harbor, Edward Worthington, who was called "Ned."  My brother died in 1996.

Various grandchildren and now great-grandchildren in the family have Arden either as a given name or a middle name, preserving the legacy of my father, who died in 1954.  One of these new little Ardens is a girl, and the name fits for both girls and boys.  I have to say that it touches me that my cousins and others in the family have seen fit to preserve that legacy, my father and brother apparently having made quite an impression on them.

Census Sunday: amusing and odd census errors

I have, over the years, found interesting errors in censuses for people within and outside of my family.  Many of these errors can be attributed to careless or misinformed informants, likely to be outside the family (neighbors, neighbor's child, or someone else unrelated), or to language difficulties on the part of the informant or the enumerator.

Spelling errors can be amusing.  My father-in-law's name was Leonard Marshall Rhodes.  Everyone, in and out of the family, knew him as Marshall.  He was born in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida, 16 October 1919, according to his baptism certificate. In 1920, the family was still living in Tampa, and the young (less than one year old) Marshall was recorded as Lennon M. Rhodes.  In those days of the Red Scares, it is probably a good thing the enumerator did not spell it "Lenin."

In the 1930 census, it was Marshall's sister's turn.  Her name was Della Mae Rhodes, and she was named for her mother, whose name was also Della Mae.  I wonder if it ever got confusing in that household.

Anyway, in 1930, young Della, five years old, was recorded as Kellie A. Rhodes.  How that happened, I can't be sure.  It seems a bit of a stretch.

My grandparents, Perry W. and Mary L. Reed, do not appear at all, as far as I have been able to determine, in the 1920 census.  That may be because they were en route from Indiana to Pensacola, Florida.

My father, Arden Packard, born 29 April 1911 in Los Angeles, California, shows up twice in the 1930 census, either because the enumerator did not follow the rules, or because the informant did not have all the information.  In 1930, according to the instructions to enumerators, if an individual in a household was in the military and not living at home, he or she would be recorded where they were stationed, and not at their home of record.  But in Pasadena, California, in the household of my grandfather Walter H. Packard, my father was enumerated as being there.  He was, however, in the United States Navy at the time, in training in San Diego, and was recorded there -- correctly -- as well.

My great-grandfather Charles Reed was also recorded twice, in the 1860 census.  He was first recorded in the home of his father, Harvey Reed.  A month or so later, it taking time for the census-takers to get around on horseback, Charles Reed was recorded in the home of a Vinson Nidey, who I believe was his boss.  I am fairly certain this is the same Charles Reed, because the other data match up, and because in that same block where the Nidey family lived, there was the family of Francis Marion Wright, whose daughter, Clarissa Haney Wright, was very soon to become Mrs. Charles Reed.

There is one item in the Florida State census for 1935 that is probably less of an error than it is a function of the small spaces in which the enumerators recorded their data.  The space for occupation was less than an inch long, and one fellow, who was probably a certain type of fisherman, was recorded as being by occupation a lobster.

Finally, I come to the most amusing error I have yet found, not in my family, but in the subject of study I do because I'm just intrigued with this guy.  There was a family in Chicago, in the household of a baker named Peter Ness, the youngest child, a son.  He was misrecorded in the 1920 census as Ella, daughter, 16 years old.  Most likely, this individual never knew he, actually the son of Peter Ness, was so misidentified, and the mistake is probably attributable to either language difficulties between the enumerator and the informant (the parents were Norwegian immigrants), or a less-than-accurate informant from outside the family.  Either way, this error would probably have been quite embarrassing to Eliot Ness, the prohibition agent famed in legend and history.