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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Wordless Wednesday - Old Indiana

I. G. Wilson Grocery
Sleeth, Carroll County, Indiana
circa 1890

Carnival of Genealogy 78 - Ride 'Em Cowboy

Or cowgirl. The not too sure cowgirl in this picture is my aunt Elizabeth Reed about 5 or 6 years old, which would put this picture about 1915 or 1916. I do not know whether this photo was taken in Chicago, where her family lived at the time, or in Indiana, which was the home ground for the Reed family.




Elizabeth Reed was born in 1910 and died in 1967. She was my favorite aunt. She and her mother, my grandma Mary LeSourd Reed, lived around the corner from us in the 1950s, my mother having bought a house in the neighborhood to be close to them. My aunt Elizabeth helped raise me. She taught me how to drive. She had connections that helped me get into college at Florida State University.

A public health nurse, she served as Director of Health Information at what was at the time known as the State Board of Health in Florida. It is now the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. And she had a store of humorous monologues that entertained many a civic meeting in northeast Florida.

What's in a Name?

The other evening -- well, very early the other morning, like about 2 a.m. -- I finally opened up some of my own family history and did a little more work. I explored a great-great-great grandfather I hadn't done much about, named Francis M. Wright. He is on my mother's side, born in Ohio and lived most of his life in Indiana. I traced him back to his father, whose name was Merritt Wright. And thereby hangs a tale of names.

My great-great grandfather, grandson of Francis M. Wright via his daughter Clarissa, was Francis Harvey Reed. He and his wife, Florence Elizabeth McKee, had ten children, many of whom had interesting names drawn from history and literature and, as I found out the other early morning, family history. One of those children was Merritt Wright Reed. By the way, he died in 2004 at the age of 104 or some such! I did not find this out until a few years after that, and heartily kicked myself for not investigating him earlier, for what information could he have given me about the Reed family?

Thus by investigating this Wright line, I found the origin of the name of Merritt Wright Reed and of the first name of Francis Harvey Reed (called "Frank"), whose middle name derived from his own father, Harvey Reed. Some of the names of Frank H. Reed's sons are rather obvious in their origin: Benjamin Franklin Reed (my grandfather), John Ruskin Reed, and William Ewart Gladstone Reed. That tells me a little about Frank H. Reed's education, as well as that of Florence Elizabeth McKee, who had become a school teacher at the age of 17 to help support her mother and brothers when her father, Nelson Reed McKee, had abandoned the family in 1879.

I have not yet investigated Nelson Reed McKee's lineage, though it intrigues me. Where did the Reed as his middle name come from? An offshoot of the same line that brought forth Frank H. Reed? Or was this another line?

Another thing I ponder about names is: What was going on in the midwest in the 19th century? There were a whole lot of men running around the midwest with the same name! I once was contacted by another researcher looking into her line from a Nelson Reed McKee. We compared dates and locations, and had to conclude that we were not talking about the same Nelson Reed McKee. What was really odd was that each of our N. R. McKees had a son named Charles Preston McKee! I should revisit that, though, and be sure the other investigator had the right dates. I have documentation to back mine up.

Likewise, I have found three or four Francis M. Wrights, and at least two of these (including my g-g-g-grandpa) were named Francis Marion Wright. Francis Marion, of course, was the famed "Swamp Fox" of the American Revolution, who ran the British ragged in South Carolina, being a particular bane to Colonel Banastre Tarleton ("Bloody Ban"). Apparently, the midwesterners liked their history (and literature). There were all these Francis Marions, and there were scores of Benjamin Franklins (including my grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed, and including a son of Nelson Reed McKee, Benjamin Franklin McKee).

Also on my mother's side lies the origin of my middle name, LeSueur. The spelling varies through generations. My mother was an intra-family adoption, as I have discussed in a previous blog post. Her father -- the above-named Benjamin Franklin Reed -- was killed in a railroad accident in 1917. The Reed family saw to it, according to my Aunt Margaret, my mother's sister, that my mother was adopted by my grandfather's oldest brother, Perry Wilmer Reed (no idea yet where his name came from) and Perry's wife, Mary LeSourd. That is how she spelled the name that was handed down to me as LeSueur. That name also appears as the middle name of Perry and Mary's ill-fated infant son Wilmer LeSueur Reed, who died in infancy of an acute gastritis in 1909. Spelling of that name has been a bugaboo; it is misspelled on my birth certificate.

My mother was named Martha Shideler Reed -- giving her a middle name she hated. I was not terribly fond of mine, either, as a child, but doing genealogy has reconciled me to it. My mother was named for a young reformer in turn-of-the-century Logansport, Indiana -- Martha Shideler. I have a newspaper clipping from 1908, which is rapidly deteriorating, about this young woman. Apparently, my grandparents found her an admirable namesake.

As for my father, he was named for a dairy. That line's names will be the subject of another blog someday.

Double Vision in the Census

I have on two occasions found family members listed twice in a particular census. I have also found some apparently not listed at all.

In the 1860 census, my great-great grandfather Charles Reed appears to have been listed twice. On the 11th of June, 1860, he is in the household of his father, Harvey Reed, in Wayne, Jay County, Indiana (M653, Roll 269, page 15). He is shown to be 19 years old, and by occupation a miller.

On the 12th of July, Charles Reed, miller, 20 years old, appears in the household of Vinson Nidey, a landlord, in Jefferson Township, Jay County, Indiana (M653, Roll 269, page 69). Is this the same Charles Reed? I think it quite likely, even with the slight age discrepancy, because just a few lines down on the same census sheet appears the family of Francis M. Wright, including his 16-year old daughter Clarissa H., who very soon after became the bride of Charles Reed. It appears the young man relocated with courtship in mind, or became smitten soon after relocating. Could be the beginning of a love story which included separation during the Civil War, and later widowhood for Charles Reed. And there is also the possibility that Charles Reed had already relocated to Jefferson Township earlier, and had just been included in his father's household by whoever was the informant even though he was no longer resident there.

The second instance of double listing involves my father, Arden Packard, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy 22 June 1929, after graduation from high school in Pasadena, California. On dates recorded by the enumerator as 4-5 April 1930, in Pasadena (T626, Roll 168, ED 19-1208, Sheet 4A) he is enumerated in the household of his father, Walter Hetherington Packard. It is probable that he was not actually present in the household on either of those days, because on 5 April 1930, he was also enumerated at the U.S. Naval Training Center, San Diego (T626, Roll 191, ED 37-56, sheet 10B).

On the Pasadena enumeration, his father's household, there is no occupation listed for my father. The informant apparently did not tell the census enumerator that my father was in the Navy, otherwise the enumerator would not have listed him, according to Item 73 of the Instructions to Enumerators, which states in part: "If . . . any family in your district reports that one of its members is a soldier, sailor, marine. or civilian employee of the United States with a post of duty or station elsewhere, you should not report him as a member of that family." On the San Diego census sheet, my father, age 18 at the time, is reported as a seaman in the U.S. Navy, and shown as having been at work the previous day (4 April 1930). He was, therefore, not in Pasadena on the day his father's household was enumerated.

My mother's parents, Perry W. and Mary Reed, do not show up in the 1920 census. I have looked for them in their native state of Indiana, in Illinois, where they had lived while Perry worked in Chicago, and in Florida, where they did relocate early in 1920. Perry Reed was a railroad freight agent, who had gone from Indiana to Florida to become freight agent for the Gulf, Florida, and Alabama Railway. Around that time, probably in the spring of 1920, they went to Indiana to retrieve my mother. Briefly, my mother's birth parents were Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed, Perry's younger brother, and his wife Ruth Nave. Frank Reed was killed in a railroad accident in 1917, when my mother was not quite a year old. According to my aunt Margaret, my mother's sister, the Reeds "ganged up" on their mother. The result was that my mother was adopted by Perry and Mary Reed, the adoption having been finalized 15 June 1920 in the Circuit Court of Escambia County, Florida, in the First Judicial Circuit.

Perry and Mary Reed were enumerated in the 1910 census in Chicago (T624, Roll 271, Sheet 8B), and in the 1930 census in Pensacola (T626, Roll 316, Sheet 12A). I have not been able to locate them in the 1920 census, and my suspicion is that they were en route from Indiana to Florida at the time of that enumeration.

If you suspect an ancestor may have appeared twice, pursue the investigation. Use neighbors, as I did with Charles Reed -- a bride-to-be or groom-to-be may reside nearby. Use other records, such as my father's Navy service record. Read the instructions to the enumerators, and bear in mind that they were not always followed.

If you think you are having double vision, you may be right!