In reviewing old newspaper articles I discover more cousin connections

My cousin Kate Keller and I have collaborated to collect newspaper articles about our common ancestors, great grandparents Joe and Emma (Strait) Becker and their many descendants. We really struck gold on the Chronicling America section of the Library of Congress web site. The article at left is an example of what we've found from the Great Bend Weekly Tribune of 1913.

Let me break it down for you. The opening sentence refers to Ellen Howard. She married Lew Becker, one of the sons of Joe and Emma Becker. 

The next sentence refers to Edna Smith, who, four months after this article was written, married "Bert" Becker, another son of Joe and Emma Becker. 

The third sentence says Beatrice Stevenson is working at F. Becker's. F. Becker refers to Fred Becker, the oldest son of Joe and Emma. And Beatrice was the youngest sister of Fred's wife Ethel Stevenson Becker.  

The fifth paragraph is about Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Flanders. Clarence was a brother to my grandfather Milo Flanders, who married Nannie Becker, a daughter of Joe and Emma. 

The sixth paragraph mentions Mr. and Mrs. J. (Joe) Becker, their son-in-law and daughter Mr. and Mrs. W. H. (Will and Mabel Becker) Lillich.

The eighth paragraph tells us that Opal and Roberta Diggs (unknown to me) and Edna Becker took dinner Thursday with Mrs. G. P Amerine. Edna Becker is the grandmother of my 2nd cousin Kate Keller and one of the daughters of Joe and Emma. 

The final paragraph in this news article mentions Mr. and Mrs Fred Becker (Joe and Emma's oldest son), Albert "Bert" Becker, their 6th child, again G. P Amerine, a neighbor at Route Three, Mr. and Mrs. Jos. ("Joe") Becker, and their daughter Edna Becker again, who all attended the ball game at Great Bend (Kansas, my home town). 

You might think that's not much information to bother to clip. But to me it says a lot. I can see who went places with other members of their family, how they associated with friends and neighbors, I see they had time and desire to attend sporting events, I see that they took parents with them when they went places, or the parents took their grown children with them, etc. In 1913 Joe Becker was 52 years old and Emma was 45.

As I reviewed this article, an example of many that I collected, I was curious about the Mr. and Mrs. G. P. Amerine mentioned. On August 19, 2012 I wrote a story here on my blog about an Amerine family in my home town of Great Bend, Kansas. I invite you to click the link and read the short story. I found the ancestry of G. P. Amerine online and learned that he was indeed related to Loren Amerine, one of the subjects of this previous post.  As I looked through more of that Amerine ancestry, I was astonished to see the name Flanders. As I mentioned above, my mother's father was Milo Flanders, who married Joe and Emma Becker's daughter Nannie. I'm looking at Amerine ancestry and see the name FLANDERS?? I'm so easily astonished and this really grabbed my attention. I've prepared a chart here that shows where the Flanders name fits into Loren Amerine's relationships.
  

I'm at the bottom left, M. Rebecca Margheim. At bottom right is Loren Amerine, with three of his children listed, Kent, Clyde and Elaine.

This cute little guy above is Clyde Amerine. Clyde was in the same classroom as my brother and I all through grade school, and attended Junior and Senior high School with us.  A classmate can feel like a relative after you've attended school together for 13 years!

Pictured above is Elaine Amerine with her husband Glenn Mull. Sadly, they both perished in an airplane accident in Feb. 2014. You can read about that here. My dad worked for Glenn Mull the last two years of his working career. 

Clyde and Elaine's oldest brother was Kent Amerine. I was recounting this story to my husband last night after I prepared the chart posted above. I told him it was sad that Kent Amerine was one of the casualties of the Viet Nam war who was from my hometown. I was indeed surprised this morning when I reviewed my news feed on Facebook when I saw that just today that the Barton County Historical Society Museum and Village posted this photo of Kent, along with a story of his loss of life along with other Barton County residents in that war.

My curiosity was aroused about the Amerine family yesterday afternoon as I read the news clippings mentioning my Becker and Flanders ancestors and their association with their neighbors, the Amerines. I discovered the connection to our two families and drew up the chart shown above, and this morning, my hometown Historical Society posted a photo and tribute to Kent Amerine on their Facebook feed. Now what are the chances of that happening? I think there's a message in here somewhere!

One of the messages is to pay attention to the names! I'm fortunate to find it easy to remember names and find them meaningful. I love discovering new connections and I find great value in knowing more about the daily lives of my ancestors. I'm blessed to be able to collaborate with cousin Kate, who introduced me to the Chronicling America site and shares my interest in all that we find in those 100+ year old newspaper articles! 

It Pays to Speak Up

I recently made the discovery, while researching the ancestry of my daughter-in-law, that one of her distant cousins was married to a Flanders. My mother's maiden name was Flanders and the United States Flanders residents are the descendants of one Stephen Flanders, who immigrated to America before 1636. So I assumed her cousin was married to a cousin of mine. When I mentioned that discovery on Facebook, my second cousin Kate Keller commented that she had photographed several Flanders gravestones near her hometown of Marshall, Michigan. She asked if I'd like to see the photos and documents she had on the Flanders name. Of course I said YES!

Kate and I share photos and documents via Dropbox so she set up a folder and deposited the Flanders items in it, and shared it with me. I finally had time today to review what she gave me.

The first document I opened was this very brief notice from a newspaper of the death of the infant son of "Roy" Flanders and his wife. Based on the time frame, I determined the infant was actually the son of "Ray" Flanders. 

That son was named Carlton. Kate also sent me his death certificate, that shows he died at age 19 days of meningitis.

I added the headstone photos that Kate shared to the appropriate individuals on the Family Tree at FamilySearch. These screen shots shows how many photos I was able to add.

As I added the photos and documents on Family Tree, I also added Sources from the Record Hints provided. In doing so, I found this death record of another infant, Harry Flanders, son of 
William Raymond and Mary Emeline "Lina" Rich Flanders and uncle of the Carlton Flanders mentioned above. 

I noticed the entry of Amarilla Flanders right above the entry for Harry. Amarilla was the grandmother of Harry. It shows that Amarilla died of Typhoid Fever and Harry died of Spinal Meningitis. 

With the information that cousin Kate had, along with what's available through records on FamilySearch, I've been able to add really good documentation to the records of my distant cousins on the Family Tree. And it all started when I mentioned in a Facebook post that I was related to all the Flanders's in America. Kate realized she was holding information that would be useful to me and was willing to generously SHARE it with me. This is the spirit of genealogists across the country and I'm blessed to experience it right in my own family. In this case it paid for me to SPEAK UP on Facebook!

Another Cousin Pops Up on Facebook

My second cousin Kate Keller has done more to advance my family history research than any other individual. Her genealogy page on FamilyTreeMaker 15 years ago was the first site I ever found that had information on MY family. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw my grandparents written up on the internet. That was in the year 2000 when I'd only owned a home computer for 2 years and had just started my family history research.

Last year Kate created Family Groups on Facebook for many of her/our ancestral lines. One of those is for Descendants of Philippe Du Trieux (1676-1759) who is my 7th great grandfather. Yesterday I saw that Tammi Truax posted this photo of Sarah Truax, "an American actor whose career began in the mid-1890s and lasted well into the twentieth century."

I'm not very familiar with my Truax ancestors and didn't know there was an "Actor" in the family. So I was curious how I might be related to this Sarah Truax.

At iMDB.com I found this brief bio about Sarah: 

I didn't have Sarah in my RootsMagic database, but by searching at FamilySearch.org, I was able to fill in some blanks and determine my relationship with Sarah as illustrated in this chart. 

Sarah Addie Truax is my 5th cousin, 5 times removed, or as I like to say, my 5th cousin, 5 generations back. She and my 3rd great grandfather were 5th cousins. Thank you, Kate Keller and Tammi Truax for giving me the opportunity to discover this cousin of fame in the theater from the last century. 

House (County Jail) Identified from 1940 Census

Last month my genealogist cousin Kate Keller graciously shared the  photo above on Facebook of our great grandfather John Joseph "Joe" Becker. We knew it was taken in my home town of Great Bend, Barton, Kansas and judging from a car we noticed in the background, my husband estimated it was taken in the very late 1930s or 1940. My father is still alive and, at age 90, has a very acute mind and memory, so I asked him if he remembered where Joe Becker might have lived in 1940. It was in 1943 that my dad married my mother Ruby Flanders, Joe Becker's granddaughter, in the same town of Great Bend, Kansas. Dad said he didn't remember my mother ever talking about her grandpa so he wasn't able to identify the house.>When the 1940 Census became available on Monday, April 2, my same dear cousin was able to search for and find Great Grandpa Joe Becker in that census. She emailed me a copy of the census page and said "I found him!". As I reviewed the page, I noticed that Joe was living with his son Lew, daughter-in-law Ellen and grandson Larry. Their residence was 1400 Kansas and Lew's occupation was Sheriff. I remembered that "house" as it also housed the County Jail in the 1940s and 1950s. I was fortunate to have visited my Granduncle Lew Becker while he was serving as the Barton County Sheriff. But I had not remembered it well enough to identify it as the house in the photo above.Last night I found this old photo of the Barton County Jail as I searched on Google Images. It had been available on ebay.>It's quite apparent that it's the same house in the photo at the top of this post.It's wonderful that we're finally allowed access to the 1940 census so we can answer some of these "puzzles" we've encountered over the years of doing the family history research. And I'm very blessed to have a cousin like Kathryn "Kate" Keller who has researched our family for so many more years than I have, who has ownership of a LOT of old family photos, and who is so gracious and willing to share these family treasures!! Thank you, Kate!

My Mother and Stepmother Cousin Connections

My cousin Kate Keller posted this picture on Ancestry.com this week. 

Martha Matilda "Mattie" Larue 1838-1920
Found in collection of photos and papers held by Mary Steele LaRue. Dated 1917 and "To Mary S. LaRue, 1917, Grandma LaRue". frankieraney1originally submitted this to Wilson Family Tree of East Texas on 22 Jun 2007

The photo is not in good shape, but instantly captured my interest because of the perspective. I haven't quite figured it out. At first I thought it was taken looking through a window. But upon closer inspection, it appears that Mattie is sitting on a porch with an exterior window directly behind her. Anyway, I LOVE the photo. I'll bet the open book on her lap is a Bible. Her obituary below says "To talk about the Bible and religion was her chief delight."

When I saw that cousin Kate has posted this photo into our ancestry tree, I had to refer to my genealogy database in RootsMagic to determine who Mattie was and how she was related to me. That investigation led me on a surprising, amazing, and delightful journey yesterday. I made notes of my findings and this evening drew up this chart to illustrate what I discovered.

My mother was Ruby Flanders, who married my Dad in 1943. She appears in a green box at bottom left of the chart. My twin brother and I were born in 1947 and in 1949 my mother divorced my Dad. In 1951 Dad remarried to Phyllis Jones, who appears in a green box at the bottom right of the chart. 

Mattie Larue is in the blue box, as her name was Martha Matilda Larue, 1838-1920. She was married to John Wellington Larue who was the grandson of John C. Larue and Clara Hardin. John C. Larue is the 3rd cousin 5 generations removed of my mother Ruby, and his wife Clara Hardin is the 1st cousin 6 generations removed of Phyllis Jones, my step-mom.

John Wellington Larue is the 5th cousin 3 generations removed of my mother Ruby and he's the 3rd cousin 4 generations removed of my step-mom Phyllis. His wife Mattie Larue is the 4th cousin 4 generations removed of my mother Ruby and she's also the 4th cousin 4 generations removed of my step-mom Phyllis.

You might not find this significant. But there was great hostility between my mother and step-mother. Their families were totally separate "camps" when I grew up in Kansas. Think of the Hatfield and McCoys. The Flanders and Jones families were not at odds, but the two wives of my dad, Ernie Margheim, certainly were! So to discover this cousin connection is just quite amazing to me! They'd each probably "roll over in their graves" if they knew this.

And it doesn't stop there! Look at the yellow box that shows Hardin DuVal and his wife Mary Strait. Mary Strait is the great, great grandaunt of my mother Ruby Flanders. And her husband Hardin DuVal is the 3rd cousin 5 generations removed of my step-mother Phyllis Jones. 

I love it when I discover these connections. That's obvious, because I worked for an hour tonight to write up this relationship chart showing all these connections.

And it all started with this beautiful picture of Martha Matilda "Mattie" Larue. Thank you, cousin Kate, for sharing it with me yesterday!