"The wonder is always and always..."

Almost every year, I re-read the Oz books. It is usually a summer occupation, those jolly and carefree stories the perfect match to a hammock and cold drink. But, as in so much else it seems, I'm running a little behind; this year's return to Oz began just last month. Right now I'm in the middle of the eleventh book, The Lost Princess of Oz--you remember, the one where Ozma goes missing, so Dorothy and all the other celebrated Oz characters search among the Winkies and Munchkins to find her.... No?



Nearly as nice as a hammock.

Anyway. Long about the part where the Frogman jumps over the gulf separating the Yips from the rest of Oz, it occurred to me how many of the Oz books involve a search for a particular person, the term "person" being loosely applied, of course, in a land of living tinmen, anthropomorphic quilts, and assorted talking objects. All of these missing friends and family, all of these quests.... This, despite Glinda's Magic Book!



The eleventh and nineteenth in the series.

My musings continued, easily linking the idea of searching for family in the Oz books with genealogical research, and I wondered what might happen when two hobbies collide. I have been an Oz fan since childhood, first introduced to that marvelous land--like most of us--through the 1939 film, and its annual television broadcast. By second grade, I was so enamored of the story and songs (and musical theater in general, another nascent love) that I auditioned for--and got, beating out a bunch of no-talent third and fourth graders--the part of the Scarecrow in my elementary school's stage version.



"If I Only Had an Agent"

My introduction to the actual Oz books themselves did not come until a few years later. And it was a few years after that when I first became interested in genealogy. The rest, as they say, is--if not history--at least blog fodder. Which begs the question: why am I writing about Oz in a genealogy blog?

Because L. Frank Baum, the man who first discovered Oz and began the beloved series, married Maud Gage on 9 Nov 1882. And she is my sixth cousin, four times removed! (Those of you who follow this blog may take a minute to savor yet another example of my near-miss relationships to prominent people.)

I discovered this--to me--remarkable fact when reading up a little on Baum himself, who was partly of English and Scotch-Irish descent, as I am. I thought it might be fun to see if somehow, somewhere we might be related or connected. Some quick Googlery and Ancestry.com-ing proved that Baum would be a bust ("be a bust, be a bust"--can you hear it too?), but that his wife was more promising. Passing aside her suffragette mother, Matilda Joslyn Gage, I traced Maud Gage's father's line instead. Once I began seeing "Barnstable, Massachusetts" on some of the early births and deaths I thought it likely I'd hit gold if I could just follow ("Follow! Follow! Follow! Fol--" cripes, those tunes are catchy) back a bit further.

And there it was: Lombard. A name I knew from my own family tree. A little more quick "research" (none of this hasty investigating will get me into the NEHGS, that's for sure), and I found the link: Thomas Lombard (2 Feb 1581 - 1663). He was born in Dorset, England, and came to America in 1630, aboard the Mary and John. He settled in Barnstable in 1639, where he was the first inn-keeper, and lived there until his death. His will indicates that he owned books, good fellow, to the value of fourteen shillings. After that, he gets a bit sketchy. He apparently had several wives about whom we know little, with children by each, about whom we know a bit more.

Thomas' oldest son, Bernard Lombard (1608- 1668) is the seven-times great-grandfather of Maud Gage; another son, Jedidiah Lombard (1640 - 1682), is my ten-times great-grandfather. In a further coincidence (or as further proof of just how inbred New England was in those days), another brother, Joshua Lombard (8 Oct 1627 - 1697) is also related to me, although just by marriage. He married Abigail Linnell (1630 - 1662); his grand-daughter Hopestill Lombard (15 Nov 1686- 1756) was the second wife of Joseph Hamlin (20 Nov 1680 - 27 Aug 1766), my eighth great-grandfather. I am descended from Hamlin and his first wife, Mercy Howland (1678 - aft 1721).

And for those of you not entirely confused yet, let me note that the name "Linnell" might ring bells if you are a follower of this blog. Abigail Linnell, Joshua Lombard's wife, was the sister of both Hannah Linnell (17 Apr 1625 - 1701; she married John Davis), a ten times great-grandmother of mine, and Bethia  Linnell (7 Feb 1640 - 25 Mar 1726; she married Henry Atkins), a nine times great-grandmother of mine. ("And you were there, and you were there....")

I feel quite confident that if I keep looking, I will be able to find connections to the remaining Linnell siblings: David and Mary and Shubael (oh my)! But rather than look into that now, or see to whom else I can make myself be related, I've got a book to finish reading.

Ozma isn't going to find herself.

"...more the silent one..."

In honor of Halloween, allow me to introduce you to The Spook, also known by the less macabre name of Sarah Jane Conley, one of my maternal second great grandmothers.



The Spook holding a pumpkin, appropriately enough.

Sarah Jane Conley was born in November 1857, in Richland County, Illinois, sixth child (of seven) of David Conley (abt 1822 -aft 1880) and Rebecca Tolliver (abt 1823 - 1869). It is through Sarah Jane that I am a Double Tolliver, as her parents were second cousins. Sarah Jane's great-grandparents on her father's side were William Maxwell and Lucy Tolliver, while her great-grandparents on her mother's side were Jesse Tolliver and Martha Stamper, Lucy and Jesse being brother and sister.

The Conleys were farmers, and moved to the recently formed Redwood County, Minnesota, sometime in the early 1870s. In 1875, on 13 Nov 1875, the just-of-age Sarah Jane married William Edwin Kinman. The Kinmans, like the Conleys, had been living in Illinois in 1870, and moved to Minnesota about the same time as the Conleys. I do not know if they families knew each other in Illinois; the Conleys and Tollivers (and associated families) tended to be clannish, and I can find no records of other Kinmans in their milieu.

At any rate, the newlyweds seem to get along fine; their first child (of six), Cora Mabel Kinman was born just ten months later. Growing up with siblings named Susan, Rebecca, Catharine, George, John, and Anna (all common names of the era, and much-used in the Tolliver clan) it comes as a bit of a surprise to find Sarah Jane giving her own children such comparatively exotic names as Alta, Iza May, and Lola.

From left: William Edwin Kinman and Sarah Jane (Conley) Kinman; their grandson,
 Dana Earl Brown; daughters Lola Dorothy (Kinman) Gilmore, Cora Mabel (Kinman) Brown,
 Alta Edith (Kinman) Anderson; and son-in-law Walter Campbell Gilmore.
 In front; grandson Ray Edgar Brown?  About 1925.

The Kinmans remained in Redwood County until just after 1900 (William Edwin Kinman is listed as the postmaster of Morgan on the 1900  U S Federal Census), although by the early 1890s William had given up farming and taken up insurance sales. In late 1904 the family moved to Minneapolis, a consequence, no doubt, of William's success; by this time he was the State Manager of the Modern Brotherhood of America, a fraternal organization founded in 1897.

By 1920, the Kinmans had moved twice more; William Edwin Kinman was now State Director for the MBA, and along with his two unmarried daughters, Iza and Lola (both teachers), had his oldest daughter, Cora, and her family (husband Clarence Edgar Brown, and sons Dana Earl Brown and Ray Edgar Brown) living with them.

3512 Third Ave S. The house was built in 1909, and is still standing.
 Apart from a paint job, it looks nearly the same.

But what, you ask, of The Spook? After her husband's death in 1925, Sarah Jane again lived with her oldest daughter and her family, this time in their home in Moorhead, Minnesota. Apparently as time went on she became more and more reclusive and odd. (She was, by this point, in her seventies, so today we might assume she was suffering from senile dementia.)

By the time my maternal grandmother, Myrna Margaret Severin married my grandfather, Dana Earl Brown, in 1933, Sarah Jane had taken to wandering the house, silently (in part because she always wore slippers). She was known to suddenly appear, staring silently, which would usually frighten whomever she encountered. Hence the sobriquet "The Spook."

From left: The Spook, AKA Sarah Jane (Conley) Kinman, daughter Cora Mabel (Kinman) Brown,
 and granddaughter-in-law Myrna Margaret (Severin) Brown. About 1933.

In true Spook fashion, she died on Friday the 13th, March 1936.


5. Sarah Jane Conley (Nov 1857 - 13 Mar 1936) married William Edwin Kinman (Mar 1858 - 13 Jun 1925), son of William Kinman and Sarah R Moore, on 13 Nov 1875, in Redwood Falls, Minnesota.

4. Cora Mabel Kinman (4 Sep 1876 - 22 Aug 1958) married Clarence Edgar Brown (1 Dec 1878 - 21 Aug 1937), son of Silas W Brown and Malinda J Carter, on 16 Sep 1903, in Morgan, Minnesota.

3. Dana Earl Brown (26 Jan 1910 - 10 Sep 1984) married Myrna Margaret Severin (6 Nov 1907 - 12 Jun 1997), daughter of John Jacob "Jack" Severin and Isabelle "Belle" Runser, on 21 Oct 1933, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2. Beverly Alane Brown (8 Aug 1934 - 7 Mar 2010) married [Living] Burnett, son of Leroy Stanley Burnett and Hazel Lucille Erickson, on 4 Mar 1961, in Long Beach, California.

1. Your humble blogger.

"Wider and wider they spread, expanding..."

Town founders, places I haven't been, ancestors who were "bridesmaids" to history.... This post conflates (and at one point refutes) these motifs seen perhaps too often in this blog. It takes place primarily in Connecticut ("place I haven't been"--check!), but begins in England (check!).

From The History of Guilford, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1639 by Ralph Dunning Smith:

William Seward came originally from Bristol, England, and settled first in New Haven, and, while residing there he was married to Miss Grace Norton of Guilford, April 2, 1651. He soon removed to Guilford and took the oath of fidelity there May 4, 1654. He appears to have been a tanner, a man of considerable property and eminence in the town. For a long time he was captain of the guard in Guilford….

He was also a paternal tenth great-grandfather of mine, and although an early inhabitant of Guilford, was not one of the founders of that town ("bridesmaid"--check!), although his father-in-law, Thomas Norton (15 Sep 1609 - 16 May 1648), and sons' grandfather-in-law, Francis Bushnell (1580 - 13 Oct 1646), were. The apostrophe is correct: three of the Seward sons married three of the Bushnell daughters. (For completists: one brother never married, another was killed by a horse).

The Seward son that concerns me is Caleb Seward, a ninth great-grandfather. Born in Guilford, it was there he married Lydia Bushnell (Nov 1661 - 24 Aug 1753) when he was twenty-four, in a service officiated by Mr Andrew Leete, who was not a minister, but rather son of another of Guilford's founders, William Leete, Governor of the Colony of New Haven (1661- 1665) and later, Governor of the Colony of Connecticut from 1676 until his death in 1683.

Perhaps tired of being surrounded by nothing but town founders and their descendants, at age thirty-six Caleb headed off to an area near the Coginchaug River known as "The Great Swamp," that was used as a hunting ground for the native Mattabesset people. He built a log house, brought his wife and six children, and thereby founded the town of Durham.

From Fowler:

The early inhabitants of Durham were enterprising and energetic. In the year 1698, when Caleb Seward of Guilford, the first pioneer of the unbroken wilderness, moved into his loghouse in the south part of Cogenchaug [sic], he might have climbed to the mountain top on the southern border, and have looked northwardly, as Moses looked from Pisgah upon Canaan, upon hills rising into mountain ranges on the east and on the west part of the landscape, and between them upon that long swamp, Coginchaug, and the small stream working its sluggish way though it; but he would have seen very little like a land of promise…. Think of that unbroken pathless wilderness, the abode of the wolf and the panther on the hills, a possession of the “bittern and the pools of water” in the swamps, guarded by rattlesnakes and copperhead.

They must have been men of enterprise and energy, men of bold hearts and strong hands, who could undertake the task of planting their institutions, domestic and religious, social and civil on this forbidding ground. But they performed their tasks nobly and well.

A few pages on, we learn more about Caleb Seward:

...Caleb Seward has the claim, as the first inhabitant of Durham.... After he removed to Durham, he had Ephraim, Aug. 6th, 1700, the first white born child of Durham, and Ebenezer the second white child born June 7th, 1703. He was the first Town Clerk; was a man in whom confidence was universally reposed. He was a representative of the Town fifteen sessions of the Legislature.

First inhabitant, first Town Clerk.... "Bridesmaid" no more!
  

"Here lieth Mr Caleb Seeward
 Who died Aug ye 2d, 1728
 in ye 63 year of his Age,
 Being ye First Inhabitant of Durham"

(Note both his surname and age at death are incorrect.)
 

1 Noadiah Seward (22 Aug 1697 - 1744) married Hannah Smith (22 Sep 1703 - 23 Apr 1769), daughter of Simon Smith (1658 - 15 Apr 1746) and Elizabeth Alice Wells (1672 - 8 Jul 1742)), on 19 October 1721, in Durham, Connecticut.

2 Lydia Seward (17 Jan 1722 - 6 Dec 1811) married Stephen Hickock (17 Jul 1714 - 1768), son of Stephen Hickox (12 Apr 1684 - 19 Apr 1726) and Ruth Gaylord (1686 - 1727), in 1742, in Granville, Massachusetts.

3 Stephen Hickock (30 Jun 1749 - 9 Sep 1836) married Rebecca Robinson (8 May 1748 - 8 Oct 1807), daughter of John Robinson (bef 1732 - ?) and Rebecca LKU (?), about 1770.

4 Hannah Hickock (abt 1785 - 24 Aug 1809) married Williams Davenport (12 Nov 1782 - 4 Dec 1830), son of Eliphalet Davenport (14 Oct 1750 - 17 Dec 1835) and Elizabeth Williams (31 Mar 1757 - 5 Jun 1841), on 20 Dec 1803 in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

5 Stephen Addison Davenport (20 Nov 1806 - Nov 1850) married Alma Holmes Doty (9 Oct 1814 - 10 Aug 1879), daughter of Stephen S Doty (24 Jun 1791 - 21 Oct 1870) and Polly Holmes (1788 - aft 1860), in August 1835 in Madison, New York.

6 Henrietta Davenport (Jan 1836 - May 1904) married Charles Swarts (12 Feb 1835 - 8 Jun 1909), son of John Swarts and Mary McDonald, in Wisconsin, in 1859.

7 Ella Swarts (1862 - Apr 1899) was born and lived her entire life in Minnesota. She married Charles A Burnett (Feb 1856 - 17 Jan 1930), son of Nathaniel S Burnett and Rachel Elizabeth Squire, in Scott County, Minnesota, September 1879.

8 Alfred Nathaniel Burnett (19 Aug 1883 - 31 Jul 1959) married Jennie Arleta Eaton (14 Mar 1891 - 15 Apr 1979), daughter of Dor Henry Eaton and Anna B A Miller, in Minnesota, in 1909.

9 Leroy Stanley Burnett (31 Aug 1910 - 11 May 1980) married Hazel Lucille Erickson (6 Sep 1910 - 6 May 2002), daughter of Erick Albert Erickson and Johanna Maria Svard, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 21 June 1933.

10 [Living] Burnett married Beverly Alane Brown (8 Aug 1934 - 7 Mar 2010), daughter of Dana Earl Brown and Myrna Margaret Severin, in Long Beach, California, on 4 March 1961.

11 Your humble blogger.




"the blab of the pave..."

Road trips are in my blood--perhaps literally. Whether I got it from my roaming forebears like paternal fourth great-grandfather Stephen Addison Davenport, who after moving to the newly-formed state of Wisconsin, next headed to California with the Gold Rush; or from more recent relations like my maternal grandfather, Dana Earl Brown, who drove to Hollywood from Minnesota in 1931 just for kicks, it must be in my genes somehow.

Family vacations were part of my childhood. Growing up, my family was mostly west coast, even before I was born: mom's side in California, dad's side in Washington state. We would visit my grandparents outside of Seattle almost every summer; Thanksgivings often meant a long weekend in the Bay Area with cousins. I saw a lot of Pacific Coast Highway from the window of the station wagon.

Once we took a family driving trip to the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon Caverns, then and now.

Later, while living briefly in Ohio, we went to Washington D C, Omaha, and Atlanta once each.

Even then, I wrote trip journals and sent postcards. The Nebraska trip journal, modestly titled Bob Burnett's "Around the Cornbelt [sic] in Six Whole Days," A Humorous Dialogue Based on a True Incident in the Month of August 1973, was printed in a "Special Limited Edition, Illustrated by the Author." It was full of droll observations such as "Very beautiful countryside (if you like corn and soybean)" and "Soon right before we saw Nebraska we saw many signs for a SCENIC VIEW: it was a hill!" A bit of juvenalia, no doubt, but I am pleased to see that even as a child I knew my way around a parenthetical aside and proper colon usage. I was a little more terse, if no less snarky in an (untitled) log of a trip to Northern California from my high school years: "Nondescript. Hot. Flat. Dull."

 

As an adult, my love of Road Trips has only deepened. One of my favorite vacations was a solo road trip through The South, hitting everything from Walt Disney World ("First Time Visitor") to New Orleans (for Mardi Gras) to the Great Smokey Mountains which were, in fact, all covered with snow. There was no real itinerary, aside from a few "tent poles:" visiting my friend Erik, who was attending North Carolina's Wake Forest University; the Boll Weevil Monument in Alabama.... Each night, in some quaint motel or other, I would peruse my AAA maps and guidebooks to create a theoretical route for the following day, although those often fell by the wayside as I would follow whatever whims and byways crossed my path.

Since then, I have found that trip planning can be beneficial, providing useful context and background, and preventing mishaps. Although as Dwight D Eisenhower, best remembered--I believe--as the founder of the Interstate Highway system, once remarked, regarding warfare: "before a battle begins, planning is everything; once it has started, planning is nothing." Road trips are the same. 

The ne plus ultra of my Road Trip planning was in 2003. Rather than one lengthy trip, we decided to explore California; every nook and cranny, mission, monument, and more. As I wrote in our trip recap-cum-holiday card that year: 

Two native-born sons with one awfully big mission: To See California. All of it. In one year.... And see it we did. Every mission--all 21 of 'em--from San Diego to Sonoma. What we don't know about adobe isn't worth knowing.

We visited every National Park, Monument, and Historic Site. From the well-known (Yosemite) to the obscure (who had ever heard of Pinnacles?), from untouched nature to the WW2 Homefront & Manzanar Memorials, we saw birthplaces, cemeteries, volcanoes, lighthouses, and more.

We even visited as many tourist traps as Stephen would allow. This too is California. Or so Robert said.... From the Trees of Mystery to the Winchester Mystery House, we saw the biggest, smallest, oldest, oddest, and--frankly--tackiest the Golden State has to offer, and we have the snowglobes, bumper stickers, and commemorative spoons to prove it. It seems only appropriate for this state of superlatives.

And superlative it is. We visited the highest (Mt Whitney) and lowest (Death Valley) points in the contiguous United States on the same day. We saw sagebrush, sailboats, salmon, sand dunes, sequoias, snow, steam trains, the Steinbeck Center, Sunset magazine's HQ, surf... and that was just "S."

We sought out--and found--the geographical center of California, as well as the cardinal points. We rode on everything from interstate super-highways to dirt roads and rabbit paths. We even accidentally wandered into Nevada and Oregon, albeit on two different trips; the no-doubt well-intentioned people at Rand-McNally have some explaining to do. We even spotted a few bits of land not in the sight of a new subdivision or Future Home of Wal-Mart ®, alas.

We saw everything from ice caves to outlet malls; attended a movie premiere, farmers' markets, and the Ramona Pageant; celebrated Earth Day in San Luis Obispo, Easter at Hearst Castle, and Disneyland's forty-eighth birthday.

We discovered (Eureka!) that Stephen will go into a swimming pool; you can swelter in San Francisco and freeze in the Mojave Desert; and that Maisie loves leftover hash browns from Black Bear Diner (convenient locations throughout central and northern California) more than any other food. Most importantly, we discovered that even after fifteen outings, thirty-plus roles of film, and over ten thousand miles of road, we have barely begun to see it all... but what a great beginning. California, here we come!



On the right is "Command Central." We hung a large map with pins, strings, note cards, and the like over the fireplace.
This was about partway through the year, with accumulated souvenirs.

That was followed by our more expansive "Rushmore Road Trip" in 2005, which took us through ten states and forty-eight hundred miles en route to that famous memorial.

Don't you brand your trips with logos and such?

 

Highlights of the trip included Golden Spike National Historic Site in Utah, Glacier, Yosemite, Wind Cave, and Badlands Nat'l Parks, Devil's Tower and Dinosaur Nat'l Monuments, and more. Of course, it wasn't all hiking and history; we also enjoyed the Cody Night Rodeo, Wall Drug, and Carhenge (a Nebraska must-see).

 

That year's card. The message: Hope Your Holidays are Monumental.

 

In 2008, after buying a home in Ohio, perhaps needless to say we drove out, in part because we were taking Maisie and Rosie along. We saw a lot more of the country, and had many adventures and mishaps, including a wild turkey going through our windshield in Kansas. We have made three driving trips back to California since then; once along Route 66, another time, after picking up our Airstream, we dodged blizzards and had a planned six-day round-trip turn into nine.

Leaving sunny California, and in snowy Somewhere Else.

We did get to see the scenic Natchez Trace, however, and a great deal of the Mexican border in our quest to avoid further snow.

 

Other Road Trips we've taken from here include a recent jaunt to New York City (to see living relatives), excursions to Murrells Inlet N C (likewise) and Kansas City, and two trips to Washington D C.

Now, if you are a follower of this blog (and if you're not, why not? It's easy....), you might remember that most of my family stories here have been about Minnesota and Wisconsin, or North Dakota, and several New England states, in particular Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. And if you've been following this post (and its handy visual aids), you'll notice that I have not mentioned trips to--or even through--any of the above-mentioned states.

There are plans--of course!--to remedy that, including a Boston-based trip for next summer that will take in Cape Cod, Plimouth Plantation, Londonderry N H and the like. I have also been sketching out a Great Lakes trip tentatively titled "On the Trail of Frederick D Ketchum," [snappy subtitle TBD) tracing his life; and have another, as yet vague trek in mind to include Minnesota and Wisconsin, a sort of genealogical double-feature, since many of Stephen's ancestors lived there as well.

This year? We're going to Disney World! But we'll be driving.

"The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready"

Immigrant, farmer, patent holder...?

Phillip Jacob Runser (30 Jun 1845 - 22 Mar 1921), a maternal second great-grandfather, was born in Hégenheim, in the Alsace region of France--just a landslide away from the Swiss border--where Runsers can still be found. He was the seventh of eight children, and was named after his father.

 The Runser family emigrated to the U S when Phillip was just a year old, and settled in the newly-formed Jackson County, Wisconsin, where they purchased eighty acres. Phillip finished any schooling he had before age thirteen, able to read and write English; the household language was primarily French.  He worked on his father's farm, and on 19 Feb 1871, at age twenty-five, married Caroline Clarissa Ketchum (30 Sep 1848 - 7 Feb 1920) in Black River Falls, Wisconsin.

(I would be fascinated to know how Phillip and Clara, as she was known, met, as her family worked primarily as sailors and such along the Great Lakes, while the Runsers were farmers in central Wisconsin. I do not know where she was living in 1870, as I cannot locate her on the U S Census for that year. The John Borden Wilbor family, with whom she was living in 1860, was still in Erie, Ohio, but Clara was no longer living there. Did she go to Wisconsin? If so, why? I have no indication that Phillip or any of the relevant Runsers visited Ohio.)

Anyway. Black River Falls, home to numerous Runsers and their relations, is the subject of both a book (by Michael Lesy, 1973) and documentary film (by James March, 2000) entitled Wisconsin Death Trip. Both works feature extremely disturbing stories, and photographs taken in Black River Falls during the late 1800s by Charles Van Schaick. The film is highly recommended as a look at what our ancestors endured. It is no wonder that within a few years the newly-married Runsers moved to the Dakota Territory, settling in Redfield, Spink County sometime around its formation in 1879.

Black River Falls a few years after the Runsers left.
Photo by Charles Van Schaick, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The Runsers acquired more acreage, and with it, apparently, some financial success. The first school in Spink County was built on one acre of land on the NE corner of NW 1/4 Section 25, Twp.117, Range 64, donated by P J Runser, Sr. Perhaps this altruistic gesture served as the catalyst for the love of learning that runs through our family, and led to many of P J Runser's descendants becoming educators. Several of his grandchildren attended the school, which stood in the same location for over fifty years. It was later moved (a new school built in its place), and used as a meeting hall for the Farmer's Union, then finally torn down in 1975. 

In 1888, Phillip co-founded a company, the Redfield Elevator Company, for "Buying, selling and shipping grain and farm products."

Notice of incorporation of the Redfield Elevator Company,
from the Bismarck [North Dakota] Daily Tribune, 9 Dec 1888.

His entire adult life was spent in farming, so perhaps it is not surprising that a few years later Phillip invented a gizmo to be used on farm equipment. His "Speed-Changing Device and Indicator" was patented on 8 Feb 1898 as U S Patent number 598,817.

Page one of a three-page explanation of the device.

Note the engraving of  PJR's signature in the lower right.

In a previous post, I had quoted from a distant relation who bemoaned the detailed pedigrees of livestock, in lieu of focusing on human lineage. At the time, I imagined he was hyperbolizing, but researching Phillip, I discovered that these animal genealogies actually exist. In my second great-grandfather's case, I was able to find his name in several hefty tomes with titles like The American Oxford Down Record, Vol 5 (1892, page 391) as the owner of what were apparently several prized animals, including American Oxford and Vermont Merino sheep, and American Poland-China hogs. From 1901:




Some pig.

Like his father, Phillip also had eight children, including a son who became the third Philip Jacob Runser (26 Oct 1884 - 10 Nov 1984). Strictly speaking, he was not the third, as his grandfather went by Phillipe, and his father by Phillip, seemingly losing a letter with each generation; however, we will not let orthography get in the way of sentiment. At any rate, as of 2010, there was still a Philip (or perhaps, by this point, just Phil) J Runser--the sixth--living in Foxboro, Wisconsin.



The Runser family, c. 1900.
Back row: Catherine "Kitty" Runser, Joseph William Runser, Clara C Runser,
 Phillip Jacob Runser III, Anna Marie Runser, Frances "Frankie" Runser.
Front row: Robert Alfonso Runser, Phillip Jacob Runser II,
Caroline Clarissa "Clara" Ketchum,  Isabelle "Belle" Runser.
Not pictured: Will Sanders.

A few years later, Phillip and Clara, after living for a short time in Minnesota, finally returned to Wisconsin, this time to Douglas County. As late as 1910, aged sixty-five, Phillip Jacob Runser's occupation on the U S Federal Census was still listed as "Farmer." He died in 1921, just a year after his wife; his children Kitty, Joseph, and Philip and their families living on adjoining farms.



Summit Cemetery; Foxboro, Douglas County, Wisconsin.

"...they are no household of mine"

In a recent post, I wrote about one of my favorite ancestors, Frederick Dillazone Ketchum, focusing on his ship-building career. This time we will look at his other legacy, his children. But before that, I must touch briefly on his second wife.

Adaline [LKU] (1814 - 7 Nov 1888), the sometimes Mrs Frederick Ketchum, is a person of mystery, not just because she is listed in the 1860 U S Federal Census as "Acklin Kitchun." Was she an "attractive and prepossessing" woman of character, or a wicked stepmother--or a little of both? Not much is known about her, making her a good example of how genealogists must read between the lines when researching, as well as delving into the tangential stories sometimes discovered there. The time frame makes it especially difficult, as it was not until the 1850 U S Federal Census that children or married women were listed by name.

We do know that Adaline was our widowed ancestor's second wife, while he was her third husband. Her previous spouse was William P Mason (abt 1785 - bef 1860?), a man thirty years her senior, by whom she had three children, whose ages and birthplaces vary from record to record; were these honest mistakes, or did she have something to hide?

The Masons were living in Monguagon, Michigan in 1850; at the time the Ketchums were temporarily away from their Huron, Ohio home and living in Erie, Pennsylvania, no doubt due to Capt Ketchum's work. His first wife, Mary Ann Cherry, died in 1853. Sometime between then and 1860, Adaline and the Captain were married and living in Huron. How they met and when they married is not known.

We also know that upon marrying Capt Ketchum, Adaline moved her family in and his family out, scattered among other family members and friends; why? None of Adaline's children seem to have married; why not? Her youngest child, Charles Mason (? - 30 Mar 1917), a minor sculptor, died in 1917, at age sixty-two (or perhaps sixty-four...), an inmate of the Erie County [Ohio] Infirmary, his home for the previous twenty years.

Capt and Mrs Ketchum separated by 1880 (although, again, we do not know why or when); Frederick lived the last eight years of his life with his daughter Fannie and her husband. Perhaps tellingly, on their respective 1880 U S Federal Censuses, both Capt Ketchum and Adaline gave their marital status as "Widowed." Who was Adaline's first husband? What was her maiden name? Would she have married again? These are among the things we may never find out.

Adaline's obituary,
Erie County Reporter, 15 Nov 1888

Despite any influence from their step-mother (however unlikely), the Ketchum children stayed remarkably true to their father's nautical nature; nearly all of them made their livings on the Great Lakes, one way or another. The Ketchum love of water seems to have descended to my cousins and me as well; nearly all of us live within sight of an ocean, bay or lake.

George Cherry Ketchum (3 Dec 1835 - 3 Sep 1899) was a sailor until, after being imprisoned during the Civil War, he fell upon ill health.  He married an orphan, Amelia Lloyd McLaurin (Nov 1842 - 3 Apr 1914), and the new family moved to Mackinac Island, Michigan for his health, which never fully recovered. Interestingly, Amelia is the only member of my family beside myself I have found that lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, at any time; she appears there as a young girl on the 1850 U S Federal Census.

Both before and after her marriage, she lived for many years with her uncle, Richard Lloyd Mansell (22 Oct 1840 -18 May 1912), who was the lighthouse keeper in Huron, Ohio for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. It is nice to think about him helping protect his in-laws' ships; although as I mentioned elsewhere, this was a mostly impossible task. (I have also written elsewhere about George and Amelia's daughter, Minnetta Amelia Ketchum.)

The lighthouse at Huron, Ohio, on Lake Erie, as it was in Richard Mansell's time.
This was the second lighthouse at this location, the first, built in 1835, having
been destroyed by a storm. Erected in 1857, this lighthouse was in turn replaced
by an automated, art deco design in 1936, which still operates today.

Frances "Fannie" Matilda Ketchum (13 Mar 1838 - 31 Jan 1917) and her husband, James Bennett (1 Oct 1822 - 22 Jul 1883) were married about 1855. James Bennett was a ship's captain, at least once in command of one of the ships built by his father-in-law. They had one son, James W Bennett (Mar 1856 - aft 1910), who never married. Until his death, he ran a hotel the family had purchased on Mackinac Island, Michigan.



Not the Bennett's hotel, although from the same period.
Mackinac Island Grand Hotel, abt 1910.

William Henry Ketchum (17 Jul 1840) lived just ten days.

Mary Elizabeth Ketchum (21 Nov 1841 -10 May 1911) married John L Dunbar (May 1834 - aft 1910), who worked as a ship's carpenter and moulder. They moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, had five children, and lived--one hopes--an uneventful life.

Florence Augusta Ketchum (8 July 1844 - 12 Jun 1916) and Frederick Augustus Ketchum (8 Jul 1844 - 28 May 1933) were twins. Born as they were in July, it is unclear why they received their middle names, as there were no other classical names in the family....

Florence married Louis Cass Crowell (Apr 1848 - bef 1916), a farmer. Like her sister, she also moved to Kalamazoo, her husband's hometown.

Fred Jr was a sailor on the Great Lakes, then served as a Private in the Ohio 24th Infantry during the Civil War. He married twice (both times to women named Mary, like his mother), and died, aptly enough, in the Ohio Sailors' and Soldiers' Home, at age 88. He outlived all his brothers and sisters.

William Wallace Ketchum (6 Oct 1849 - 2 Jul 1920) married Helen Marcia Thomas (9 Feb 1852 - 13 Feb 1917), and had three children. A farmer, he lived his entire life just a few miles from where he was born. He was the only one of Capt Ketchum's sons not to make his living on the Great Lakes.

Not last (she was born before William, above), and certainly not least, was Caroline Clarissa Ketchum (30 Sep 1848 - 7 Feb 1920), my great-great grandmother, better known as "Clara." At age twelve, after her father's marriage to the mysterious Adaline, she was sent to live with the John Borden Wilbor family, whose relationship with the Ketchums remains unknown, although they lived just a few doors down from her uncle, William Hopkins Cherry. In 1871, she married Philip Jacob Runser (30 Jun 1845 - 22 Mar 1921). You'll be able to read more about them in a future post.

Caroline Clarissa Ketchum, at 18.

"are you the President? / It is a trifle..."

Today is July 4th, America's birthday. Which makes me think of history, and what it is to be an American; "thinking," perhaps overstating in this case what is really more riffing than meditation, filtered--as always--through my own peculiar prism of interests and experiences. Those of you who follow this blog will certainly note recurring motifs....

Anyway. This particular train of thought was begun by my last post, in which a ship builder whom my ancestor knew--but who was not my ancestor--was enshrined in an exhibit at the Smithsonian. An "itinerant" ship builder at that. Another of my posts concerns a scientific pioneer, who married into the family, and that via a first cousin three times removed. Heck, one of my earliest posts was about a number of famous folks, from presidential relations to the subject of an Arthur Miller play, who married into my distant family. If you're thinking about bridesmaids versus brides right now, you're on the right track.

But what of my actual forefathers (and mothers)? Did my "Miner '49er" ancestor discover the gold in California? No, but he died there a year later looking for it. A couple days ago at the library, I discovered a book on the Mayflower that looked interesting. Flipping through the index, I noticed that out of over four hundred pages, in a book covering fifty years, my four pilgrim forebears warranted just a handful of mentions, usually as part of a longer list of names. (I still checked it out.)

My ancestors often seemed to be present at--or at least adjacent to--historical events and personages, but never quite got the glory. Which reminds me of the wonderful children's book (and later Disney cartoon) Ben and Me, by Robert Lawson. The "Me" of the title is a mouse, who was present at, and occasionally inspired, many of Benjamin Franklin's greatest achievements, but never got any of the recognition or acclaim himself. Lawson followed up this book with similar titles, whose subjects included Christopher Columbus and Paul Revere, among others.

Gertrude Stein, upon returning to America for the first time after more than twenty years' absence, wrote, "In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is." (Which was far truer in 1937 than it is today.) She was writing about geography, but I think there is a further meaning: that there are far more people who are nobody than anybody, in the sense of what she called "glory," but we might call fame. And accepting that interpretation, again her words seem even more true today.



Gertrude Stein, at the height of her fame,
in a portrait by her friend Carl Van Vechten, 1935.

Almost fifty years after Stein's piece, performance artist Laurie Anderson wrote "Zero and One," a section of Home of the Brave, one of her numerous works that reflect on America and what it means. She continues the theme: 

Now, nobody wants to be a Zero. To be a zero means to be a nothing, a nobody, a has-been, a clod. On the other hand, almost everybody wants to be Number One. To be number one means to be a winner, top of the heap, the acme. And there seems to be a strange kind of national obsession with this particular number. Now, in my opinion, the problem with these two numbers is that they are just too close; leaves little room in there for everybody else.

Laurie Anderson, famous for explaining the US to us.

And speaking of trains (of thought), and has-beens, I am also reminded of the musical On the Twentieth Century ("as in flight, across the night, America the beautiful rolls by...."), a confection by Comden and Green, with music by Cy Coleman. It's one of my all-time favorites (and much in need of a revival), directed by the legendary, but usually more high-minded director, Harold Prince. It too talks about fame, dealing as it does with 1930s theatrical folk, a few of whom have even ventured to--gasp!--Hollywood. In a typical put-down, one of the characters says to two-bit leading man Bruce Granit, who plays opposite a much bigger star:

Don't tell me... I can't place the face, but I've seen you opposite Lily in all those pictures and I'd know the back of that head anywhere.



Kevin Kline, the front of the back of the head,
at the recording session for On the Twentieth Century, 1978.
 It was the show that first brought him to fame.

Apparently I must content myself with being descended from a long line of backs of heads. But surely there is another way to look at things....

For an earlier American anniversary, our country's bicentennial, Stephen Sondheim wrote music and lyrics for a show called "Pacific Overtures." Sondheim being Sondheim, this was no 1776 of course, but an exploration of imperialism and global homogenization that was set in Japan, beginning in 1853 and ending in the present day, presented from the point of view of the Japanese, using elements of Japanese theater, including kabuki and bun-raku. It was one of a series of collaborations of challenging shows written by Sondheim and directed by Harold Prince, the same fellow who gave us the aforementioned On the Twentieth Century. (I told you he was high-minded.)



The arrival of the Americans in Japan,
from the original production of Pacific Overtures, 1976.


One of the highlights of Pacific Overtures, and a high point in the Sondheim canon, is the song "Someone in a Tree." Recounting the first official meeting between the Americans and the Japanese, the narrator (accurately) notes that there are no records of the fateful day, which begins a thrilling musical sequence. An old man suddenly appears, who claims to have been there. He summons his younger self to tell of what he saw from his vantage point hiding in a tree, although he was too far away to be able to hear the events. Next a warrior appears, hidden under the floor, who is able to hear what is said, but not see the meeting. Each character adds their unique perspective, until they all realize that

I'm a fragment of the day.
If I weren't, who's to say
Things would happen here they way
That they're happening?

It's the fragment, not the day.
It's the pebble, not the stream.
It's the ripple, not the sea
That is happening.
Not the building but the beam,
Not the garden but the stone,
Only cups of tea
And history
And someone in a tree.

Of course, it is not hard to make the leap from being someone in a tree to someone in a family tree. It's nice to think that every one of us is part of the story, blurring the lines between which of us might be considered a "somebody," who a "nobody." Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman gave us an entire play (although not the one about my distant relatives-by-marriage) glorifying the "common man" to whom attention must be paid. Good for him; his Pulitzer was well-deserved.

Perhaps songwriters Frank Loesser and Jule Styne summed it up best in their song "That Ain't Hay (That's the U S A)," from the 1941 film Sis Hopkins.  "Hooray, hooray for the little guy...."

Have a Happy Independence Day, no matter whoever--or whatever--you are! You're an American. And that ain't hay.