52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2026, Week 1: An Ancestor I Admire

Starting a new Year with Amy Johnson Crow's  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, she asks us to talk about an ancestor we admire.

I'm going to choose my maternal great-great grandmother Sarah Ann (Sunderland) McKee Rogers (1842-1922).

Sarah was the daughter of Benjamin Sunderland (1813-1890) and Margaret Emeline Weller (1814-1810). She was born in Ohio and died in Allen County, Indiana.  She married my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee (1838-1908) 8 April 1859 in Allen County, Indiana.  They had three children, Florence Elizabeth (1862-1943, my great-grandmother), Benjamin Franklin, called Frank, (1865-1890), and Charles Preston (born in 1873; death date not yet discovered).

 As related in my blog post "The Mystery of Nelson Reed McKee" (https://karenaboutgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/05/blacksheep-sunday-mystery-of-nelson.html), the family's life changed when Nelson disappeared on the night of 31 May 1879, never to be seen again in Indiana.  The town turned out to search for him.

He turned up later in Beloit, Rock County, Wisconsin.  In Indiana, he had been a jeweler and watch repairman.  He took up the same occupation in Beloit, first under the name Nels R. McCuren, then later under his true name, Nelson R. McKee.  He married Ida Josephine Colby 1 August 1880.  There was a slight problem with that: he was still married to Sarah Ann.  

Here's where her story begins, though not as richly documented as Nelson's.  I see Sarah as holding out hope for a while that Nelson would return or be found.  That hope must have eventually faded, and Sarah sought a divorce from Nelson, which was granted in mid-November of 1882.  The divorce was uncontested, and Sarah was awarded custody of the children.  She was left to raise her three children by herself.  Her 16-year-old daughter, on the cusp of 17 years, went to work as a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse to help support herself and her mother and brothers.  For the same reason, by the 1880 U.S. federal census, Frank, then 15, was earning a living as a wagon driver.

Sarah obtained the divorce to enable her to marry again, which she did 29 October 1884, to a man named Luke Rogers.  She faced the grief and shock of her husband Nelson's disappearance, and later the knowledge that he had abandoned the family.  She had to endure six years of being a single mother, and the strain of seeing two of her three children having to go to work at early ages to help support the family.  One did what one must.

Luke Rogers died in 1915.  I have not found out much about him.  I hope he was a decent man who treated my great-great grandma and her children well.  I hope they had a happy life together.  Sarah deserved it.

 

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Be a Time-Traveler

In this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver wants us to be a time-traveler.  

1)  We all wish that we knew more about our most elusive ancestors - the ones we might not know the surname for, or the one who was probably adopted, changed his name for some reason, or lived through war or a natural disaster.

2)  Be a time traveler - where would you go, who would you speak with, what would you ask them?  

2)  Share your time traveler adventure on your own blog, on Facebook or other social media, or in a Comment on this blog.  Share the link to your stories on this blog, so readers can respond.

 

I would go back to Beloit, Wisconsin, about 1880, to talk to my great-great-grandfather Nelson Reed McKee.  He disappeared from his home in Monticello, White County, Indiana, the night of 4 June 1879, and turned up in Wisconsin.  I would ask him about the details revealed in the Monticello Herald of 5 June 1879, these questions:

1.  Why did you leave great-great grandma Sarah, and your children, in Monticello and end up in Beloit?

2.  There was mention in the Monticello Herald of a forged deed and mortgage in your name, with an endorsement supposedly by a justice of the peace who swore he never set eyes on the document.  It was dated the day before it was supposedly executed.  Do you have any information on that? 

3.  Did your brother, who was married to great-great grandma Sarah's sister, know where you had gone?

4.  Did he tell his wife, who then told her sister?

5.  Did he tell you about Sarah eventually suing for divorce?  Did you know that after the divorce was final, she married Luke Rogers?  Had Sarah's sister maybe told her that you married Ida Josephine Colby while still married to Sarah?  Did Sarah get the divorce at least in part to save you from a charge of bigamy?

6.   Did you ever know that your daughter, my great-grandma Florence Elizabeth McKee, had to go to work just before her 17th birthday as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse to help support her mother and brothers?

7.  Did you ever know that she married Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed and had a passel of children?

 

 Sure, I have other ancestors of whom I'd like to ask questions, dozens of 'em.  But this mystery has intrigued me for years, now.  These are some questions I'd like answered.

 

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 15 -- Big Mistake

This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow wants us to 'fess up.  

My Big Mistake wasn't specifically made with genealogy in mind, but turned out to be related to genealogy long before I got bit by the genea-bug.

My grandma, Mary (LeSourd) Reed, was really my grand-aunt.  My mother was an intra-family adoption.  I never knew any of my actual grandparents, maternal or paternal.  

But "Chollie," as we all knew her, was as much my grandmother as anyone who bears that genealogical label for reals.  And she had a bunch of stories about her life in Indiana, where she was born and raised, and where she was married to Perry Reed.   There were also stories about the time she and her husband and family lived in Pensacola, Florida, later on.  Many stories involved my maternal great-grandparents, too, and some of my grand-uncle Perry Reed's siblings.

I was a teenager; it was the early to mid 1960s.  My mom had given me a little inexpensive tape recorder.  The sound quality wasn't the best, but it was adequate.  The mistake?

I didn't record my grandma's stories when I had the chance.

So many times in the intervening years since she died in 1978, I have wished I had recorded those stories.  Several of them would have helped me sort out the various members of the extended Reed clan, and would have provided information to liven up their entries on the family tree.

I do remember one story, however, and will share it here, now.

My great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth (McKee) Reed was a formidable woman who ruled the large Reed clan with an iron hand.  One day, sometime in the 1890s, she made a large pot of oyster stew.  She ladled a portion into a tureen and corralled two or three of her sons to take it around to an old lady who lived in the neighborhood.  All the children were convinced the old lady was a witch.  When I was a child in the 1950s, we had such an elderly woman in our neighborhood, subject of the wild imaginations of children and nothing else. 

The Reed boys approached the old woman's home with trepidation.  Steeling themselves to the task, and more fearful of reporting failure back to their mother than of any possibility of supernatural power on the part of the home's lone resident, they knocked on the door.  When the woman answered their knock, one of the boys said something like, "Please, ma'am, our mother made this oyster stew, and thought you might like some."  They handed over the tureen.

The old lady said in return, "Well, you tell your mother thank you, and that I'm not particularly fond of oyster stew, but seeing as how she was so kind to have made it for me, I'll eat it if it pukes me!"

The boys dashed off the porch and ran home, and we aren't sure if they were screaming in fear or in laughter all the way.

"Seeing as how you've been so kind as to make it for me, I'll eat it if it pukes me" became a family saying, meaning thanks for the meal, and it was grandly delicious.  

 

Throwback Thursday: Back Home Again in Indiana

Left to right:  Florence Geneva Reed, Florence Elizabeth [McKee] Reed, Mary [LeSourd] Reed, William S. LeSourd.

The four people in the photograph are members of my mother's paternal line, the Reed family of Logansport, Indiana.  The photograph was taken sometime in the 1930s, judging by the clothing.  Florence Geneva Reed was mom's aunt.  Florence Elizabeth [McKee] Reed was her grandmother.  Mary [LeSourd] Reed was the wife of mom's uncle, Perry Wilmer Reed, the oldest of the eleven children of Francis Harvey Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee.  William S. LeSourd was Mary's brother.  When mom's father, Benjamin Franklin Reed, was killed in a railroad accident in 1917, when mom was barely a year old, the Reeds took her and her sister Margaret away from their mother, Ruth [Nave] Reed.  Margaret was adopted by Don Francis Reed and his wife, Grace [McElroy] Reed, and mom was adopted by Perry and Mary Reed.

       

A to Z Challenge On the Move: D is for Detroit

I have devoted three blog posts in this series to my father's line, so it is time to talk a little about my mother's.

My mom, Martha Shideler Reed, was born in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.  She and I had something in common:  we each did not like our middle names much.  Family history has reconciled me to mine.  The fact that hers came from the surname of a young social activist in Logansport, Indiana at the turn of the 20th century apparently had no effect on Mom.

Her family was not as peripatetic as my father's.  I have not gone back far enough to discover the family's origin.  The name Reed could be either English, Scots, or Irish.  From some things I know about the Reeds and their attitudes and behavior, I have a sneaking suspicion that they were "lace curtain" Irish.  But as yet, I have no evidence.  I find the family in the United States in the early 1800s, in a slow westward movement that ended up in Ohio and then in Indiana.  In Indiana, towns associated with my Reed line are Monticello, in White County, and Logansport, in Cass County.

There were railroad men in the Reed family.  My great-grandfather Francis Harvey ("Frank") Reed was a conductor.  My grandfather Benjamin Franklin (also called "Frank") was a switchman in a railroad marshaling yard.  My adoptive grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed's oldest brother Perry Wilmer Reed, was a freight agent.  

Francis Harvey Reed married Florence Elizabeth McKee 10 September 1884 in Monticello, White County, Indiana.  Francis H. had been raised in Monticello when his family lived there.  His work for the railroad had stationed him in Logansport, and that is where the new bride and groom set up their house.  That was the end of their migrations.  Their children, however, ended up scattered to the four winds, ending up in such places as Washington state, California, and Florida.

Benjamin Franklin Reed married Ruth Ella Nave, who was from South Bend, Indiana.  She worked to support her widowed mother, a situation frowned upon by many whose notion was that "nice" girls did not work, no matter the circumstances.  But eating is preferable to starving, so Ruth became a telephone operator.  Married in November of 1913, the couple had three children by December of 1916.  They got an early start, according to some in the family.  In October of 1917, Benjamin Franklin Reed was killed in a railroad accident in Detroit, where he worked in a railroad yard.  

According to my aunt, my mother's sister, the Reed family was not fond of Ruth Nave, possibly both because she worked for a living, and because the growth of her and their son's family had been, shall we say, rapid beyond the customary.  My aunt said that the Reeds "ganged up" on Ruth Nave, and took her daughters, Margaret, the second child, and Martha, my mother, the youngest.  The oldest, a son named Donald, was 16 by the time all the family rearrangement had taken place in the early 1920s, and he stayed with his mother.  These three siblings were not reuinted until the 1950s, when all had ended up in Florida, scattered among the Tampa Bay area (Uncle Don), Orlando (Aunt Margaret) and Jacksonville (Mom).

My mother was placed with the oldest Reed brother, Perry, and his wife Mary LeSourd, of Sleeth, Carroll County, Indiana.  There is not much left of Sleeth; it's practically a ghost town, so I've been told.  The town was named for Mary Reed's mother's family.  Perry Reed and his family are found in the 1910 census in Chicago, where their daughter, their second child Elizabeth, was born in 1910.  They are missing from the 1920 census. I have looked in Chicago, in various locations in Indiana, and in Pensacola, Florida, where Perry was a railroad freight agent.  My theory is this:  in April of 1920, there is a very small notice in the Logansport Pharos-Reporter to the effect that Mr. Perry W. Reed, of Pensacola, Florida, was visiting relatives in the area.  The visit was to take custody, I'm fairly certain, of four-year-old Martha.  I would imagine Perry's wife Mary was with him, to care for the child on the journey home to Pensacola.  They were on the move from one location to the other, and that is the way they got missed in the census.  The final adoption decree was issued later in 1920 in Pensacola.  My mom's journey to Pensacola was but the first in many migrations, as she married a young Navy officer, Arden Packard, in Pensacola, 16 July 1937.  Their story is told in the first in this series of posts, On the Move: A is for Arden.

Women's History Month: Marriage Records

Today's instruction from Lisa Alzo at The Accidental Genealogist is:

March 4 — Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post a photo too if you have one.

I have a marriage record for my maternal great-grandparents and my paternal great-grandparents, and for my maternal grandparents, but not for my paternal grandparents -- just haven't got round to that one yet.

My maternal great-grandparents were Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee. The marriage was announced on page 1 of the Monticello (Indiana) Herald, Thursday, September 18, 1884: "Married, at the residence of the bride's mother, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 1884, at 12:30 p.m., by Rev. L. J. Natzger of Logansport, Mr. Frank Reed, of Portland, Ind., to Miss Flora McKee, of this place. The ceremony was witnessed by a number of friends and relatives and the happy couple were the recipients of many handsome and appropriate gifts. They left on the afternoon train for Logansport, their future residence, bearing with them the well wishes of many friends in this locality."

On the marriage certificate itself, the minister signed his name as Lyn Naftzger, so the newspaper had it misspelled, but one can hardly blame the poor copywriter!

I do not have a wedding picture, but I have a picture of the two of them many years later. They look like typical reticent midwesterners!


My maternal grandparents, Benjamin Franklin Reed, also called "Frank," and Ruth Nave, were married 23 November 1913 in the county courthouse at South Bend, Indiana. He was a railroad switchman and she was a telephone operator. I have no photographs of them at all.

My paternal great-grandparents, Oscar Merry Packard and Sarah Augusta Hetherington, were married 17 August 1871 in Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois. I have no photographs of either of them.

I do know that my paternal grandparents were married sometime around the turn of the 20th century in southern California. My great-grandfather had brought his young family to southern California sometime in the 1890s, and it was a good place for him to be in the next 30 years, as he was a real estate salesman and developer. I do not know if my grandfather, Walter Hetherington Packard, had followed his father's footsteps originally, but later on he was supervisor of a local dairy. My grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Reynolds, is shown in a photograph in 1897, taken by a Los Angeles studio, and has signed her name "Bessie Reynolds" on the back. I do not have a photo of their wedding day, either. The only photo I have of my grandparents together is this photo, later in life, with their son Arden, who was visiting home on leave from the United States Naval Academy, probably 1932 or 1933. Arden Packard was my father.


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Women's History Month: Names and naming

Here's today's Women's History instruction:

March 3 — Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree.

First name, no. My mother told me that she was going to name me Barbara -- which is not a name which appears in the family -- but she changed her mind when she read something in a magazine and came across the name Karen, and liked it. It is probably a good thing she did change her mind, because I know several Barbaras, including one of my best friends. I have two great close friends, Amanda and Barbara, and if my mother had not changed her mind, introducing ourselves might have sounded like a routine out of the old Newhart television show: "Hi, I'm Amanda and this is my friend Barbara and this is my other friend Barbara."

There have been several Elizabeths in the family, including the maternal progenitress of my paternal line, Elizabeth who married Samuel Packard in around 1635 or so, her surname being so far unknown. Elizabeth, in fact, seems to be the most common female name in the family on both sides. My great-great grandmothers include Florence Elizabeth McKee and Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.

One of my favorite given names comes from the old Puritan line of my father's, the name being Freelove Packard. I don't think it meant to the Puritans what we think of when we hear that name, especially those of us who came of age in the 1960s!
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Women's History Month: Picture

Today's instruction from The Accidental Genealogist, Lisa Alzo, is:

March 2 - Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?

Unfortunately, I have no life photos of my great-great grandmother, Sarah Ann Sunderland McKee Rogers. Sarah married my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee 14 April 1859 in Monticello, White County, Indiana. In 1879, after twenty years of marriage, Nelson McKee took off one night, never to return, as I have related in an earlier blog post. This photo was taken by my cousin Connie, who lives in Wisconsin, and is descended from Nelson Reed McKee and his second wife.

Sarah was faced with whatever financial accommodation she had to make, such as selling Nelson's jewelry and watchmaking business and paying whatever debts may have remained from it, and with raising three children by herself, my 16-year-old great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth and her 14-year-old and 9-year-old brothers. Eventually, Sarah was granted a divorce from Nelson, in absentia, and she remarried on 29 October 1884, to Luke Rogers.

In an essay she wrote not long before her death in 1943, my great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth McKee relates that, not quite 17 years old, she became a schoolteacher in a classic rural one-room schoolhouse, to help support the family. I cannot imagine any 16-year-old girl today (or boy, either, for that matter) becoming a schoolteacher!

Sarah was a strong woman, because her life and times required her to be so. She did what she had to do, as did her daughter, to provide for her children. I just wish I had a life photo of her.
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