Ancestry Magazine

Sometimes getting past that difficult family history hurdle means enlisting someone other than family.

My grandparents’ farmhouse stood outside North Branch, New Jersey, a village settled by the Dutch. Its thick Dutch-brick walls reputedly hid several walk-in fireplaces. Its hand-fashioned windowpanes offered rippled views of the old water pump and outhouse in the back. Its cellar, gloomy with packed dirt floors, led to a string of dim storerooms filled with squat jars of indeterminate, ageless content. Beyond the kitchen lay an unheated passageway leading to a locked door. Though we children frequently fetched muddy boots and other items from the passageway, we never ventured further—until the day we found the door wide open. Slipping in unnoticed, we discovered a warren of rooms, probably built for my grandfather’s farm hands.

Stacks of dishes and rickety furniture lined one wall and a huge black metal stove another. Beyond lay a clawed bathtub overflowing with dusty children’s books. After leafing through them, enjoying their old-time illustrations, I turned to the squat dresser just beyond. I unearthed yellowed tablecloths and faded Saturday Evening Posts. And beneath it all, I found a neat package tied with a red ribbon. Valentines, sweet lacy valentines. Each was addressed by a child: To My Dearest Mother, from Anita. But who was Anita?

When I asked my mother, she minced no words. When they were children, she explained, her sister Anita had been killed in a traffic accident in North Branch. End of story. But for me, the story had just begun. While I never dared breach my mother’s wall of silence again, the mystery of Anita haunted me as surely as her death haunted my mother.

Years later, in the midst of a genealogy project, an exciting thought arose. Why not use my investigative skills to find the answers that had eluded me as a child? After all, no one need know, no one need suffer.

Because I had left North Branch far behind, I turned to JewishGen for help. Joining their online discussion group, I asked if anyone lived in or around North Branch. One kind soul, when he heard my tale, offered to do the legwork for me. Since the death of a child in a small village would be big news, he visited the nearest newspaper office for me. And it worked. Although I had supplied him with only Anita’s surname, I was soon reading the Somerville Messenger Gazette’s front page report of her death, “Local Baker’s Deliveryman Driver in Death Machine.”

According to the article, Anita and her sisters had been walking along the main road that ran through North Branch. Perhaps they were horsing around or singing or arguing or daydreaming. One of them crossed to the other side, and Anita followed. Midway across, when she noticed a bakery truck bearing down on her, Anita hesitated, changed her mind, and turned back to the curb. As her horrified sisters watched, the truck plowed into her, dragging her along. Anita sustained a fractured skull, broken ribs, a broken leg, and more. Three days later, home in the farmhouse, she died.

My JewishGen angel did more than visit the newspaper office—he visited the local Jewish cemetery, located Anita’s grave, and, as is traditional, left a stone there in my name. He also photographed Anita’s grave for me. Her slender gravestone stands tall, perhaps as tall as she stood at the time of her death in 1931. As I stare at the old-fashioned oval portrait embellishing her gravestone, my beautiful aunt, forever young, stares back at me. Hello, Anita.
—Melody Amsel-Arieli

Taking a Chance

I had been researching my family tree for quite a while and wanted to find out about my great-great-grandmother’s father. All I had was a very common last name and first initials for her possible father, C.B. Campbell. I found a basic record on Ancestry.com for Civil War Veterans, and it had a C. Campbell in a nearby town in Iowa, with dates close to his age. I took a chance and ordered the record.

When I received the papers, I discovered that it was the right C.B. Campbell. The pension papers listed his wife and children’s names, as well as his. I now had a first name—Claridon—the same name as my grandfather.

I looked further into his regiment and found a descendants group. From there, I was connected with a person at the soldiers’ home where my great-great-great-grandfather spent time following his discharge. I was told that since I was the first of C.B.’s descendants to contact the home, they’d send me all of his records.

Shortly thereafter, I received an envelope full of information, including C.B.’s discharge papers and his personal letters that described our family (including my great-great-grandmother) and their birth dates. Other notes indicated C.B. wanted no association with his wife—apparently, she was unfaithful while he was away at war. There were notes from C.B.’s associates and even a note written by my great-great-grandmother. I learned that he came from New York, and I began tracing his ancestors all the way back to Scotland.

My advice? Take a chance, dig deeper, and ask around. You never know when—or where—you might find the lead of a lifetime.
—Tammy Altonen Schenekl

Remaining a Mystery

I teach a family history class at church. During one class, a family friend informed me that she had been searching for her deceased husband’s great-grandfather, Calvin Pratt, for over 40 years, but with no luck. I promised that I would help.

There were only two known records about Calvin. One was his marriage record to Elizabeth Hanford, in Pueblo, Colorado, which provided little information. The other was the 1880 U.S. Census taken in Pueblo a few months after their marriage. From there, Calvin disappeared off the face of the earth.

I turned to Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness and contacted someone in Denver—it was believed that Calvin had been a civil engineer there. The Denver volunteer found a divorce record for a Charles Calvin Pratt and an Elizabeth Pratt.

I requested the divorce records from the Colorado Archives and discovered Calvin and Elizabeth were divorced because of Calvin’s “conviction of forgery in 1886 and subsequent imprisonment for 14 years at California’s State Prison in Folsom.”

Contacting the California Archives, I learned that 200 pages of Calvin’s prison record were available. Upon receiving the documents, I learned more about Calvin’s trial and imprisonment but nothing that identified his parents’ names or his birth date. I did find a valuable clue—“Pratt had been accused of passing a spurious check in Elizabethtown, New York, and of having encumbered his mother’s property so that she lost it.”

I also learned that Calvin attended Union College in 1870 in Schenectady, New York, until he dropped out after his father’s death in 1871. (Still no mention of his father’s name.) Shortly afterwards, I read an article in Ancestry Magazine about using school records in research (September/October 2005) and was motivated enough to contact Union College.

Here’s their response:

We keep alumni files dating back to 1795, and there is a file for your ancestor, Charles Calvin Pratt. The only piece of paper in the file states that he was in the class of 1874 and that he was from Elizabethtown, New York. Our account books indicate that his bills were paid for by his father, Calvin D. Pratt.

I searched for Calvin’s beginnings in Elizabethtown and stumbled upon the Pratt Directory at genforum.com where I was directed to the 1875 New York state census. I learned that Calvin had been previously married to a woman named Minnie. I found this marriage certificate and finally confirmed Calvin’s parents’ names: Calvin D. Pratt and Caroline Lobdell.

As for Charles Calvin Pratt, we still don’t know what happened to him. He was released from Folsom Prison in 1895, and in a letter to the governor seeking clemency, he talked about going to South Africa or Mexico where no one knew him. Was one of these his final resting place? We’re not sure. Did he ever find happiness or have family or friends? We’re still wondering.
—Susan W. Bartholomew