Made in America, Born in the USA

My great-grandmother Katherine (Shepherd, then Banks) Sharpe spent the last two decades and change of her life living in the Bronx, in New York City. For some of that time, one of my mother’s brothers lived there with her, and one of his clear memories from that time is her telling him the story of where she came from. As the story goes, she was born in...Italy! She was supposed to come over on the Titanic, but her mother stopped her from going at the time, saying she was too young to travel so far by herself.

The RMS Titanic docked in Southampton, England before her 1912 maiden voyage.

 

Katherine Jane Sheppard/Shepherd: A Timeline

Many of my posts here on KINterested so far have touched on the life of my maternal great-grandmother, Katherine Jane Sheppard/ Shepherd (my mother’s father’s mother). However, I haven’t given a full outline of her life yet! This post is meant to correct that. 

Mystery Monday Update 2: Women, Who Art Ye?

This time last week I was planning a series of quick trips down to South Jersey to dig deeper into my Shepherd/Kilson research. These are the families that I am related to through my mother’s father, Louis Shepherd, and my goal was to continue chipping away at the mystery of how exactly his mother, my great-grandmother Katherine Shepherd, was related to the Kilsons. You can read my original Mystery Monday post here and an update here. Long story short, Katherine’s mother was one of three women - Rose Sheppard, Bertha Kilson and Eleanor Petite - who were probably sisters, but there wasn’t much solid evidence of this at the beginning of this journey.

Well, good news! I found another piece of the puzzle! Here is the obituary for Bertha Kilson’s daughter, Eleanor, published in the October 25, 1968 edition of the Salem Standard and Jerseyman:

Rest in Peace, Cousin

My Harris/Johnson/ West Family lost one of its members yesterday. In the interest of privacy, I will not be posting details, but suffice it to say the person we lost was entirely too young and their life was worth more than the way it was taken.

My heart goes out to everyone who feels this loss, most especially his immediate family. You - and he - are in our thoughts.

Photo Friday: Of Pufferfish and People

One of my maternal uncles and his wife recently moved into a new house nearby and, not too long ago, some of us went over to check it out and say welcome to the neighborhood. The previous owners had left quite a few things behind, and as we got the grand tour, one of the items we all stopped to have a conversation about was a mobile hanging on the ceiling in one of the rooms. Its theme seemed to be “marine life,” and the sight of several pufferfish dangling from the piece sparked a memory for my uncle (and several jokes about not eating fugu fish from the rest of us!).

For a time in his teenage years, my uncle lived with his paternal grandmother, my great-grandmother Katherine (Shepherd) Sharpe, in the Bronx in New York City. One of the ways they passed time together was to go fishing, and he remembers on several occasions accidentally catching pufferfish. 

Wedding Wednesday: Louis and Elnora (Cooper) Shepherd

Today’s post is inspired by the Wedding Wednesday genealogy blog prompt over at Geneabloggers.

Louis And Elnora (Cooper) Shepherd with their oldest two children. 

 

 

One of my favorite family history nuggets is the fact that my maternal grandfather literally fell in love with the girl next door. (Or maybe it’s my grandmother that fell in love with the boy next door.) Either way, it’s definitely the fact that in a world (or at least a city) full of possibilities and potential mates, these two individuals - a girl from rural Georgia whose family came up during the Great Migration, and a boy who was born and raised in busy DC - ended up as next door neighbors, then husband and wife, and then parents to 5 children, including my mother.

Mystery Monday Update: Women, Who Art Ye?!

It’s after midnight and I just got back from a research trip to DC. I’m sleepy and I want to fall into my bed, but even more than that, I want to share this post with you, because I got A BREAKTHROUGH IN ONE OF MY BRICK WALLS!

Earlier this year I posted a Mystery Monday where I spoke about the possible relationship between three women who orbited my Great-Grandmother Katherine Shepherd: Rose (Allen) Shepherd, Eleanor (Allen/Ellis) Petite and Bertha (Allen) Kilson. Were they related? If so, how? Well, yesterday, I got lucky!

Mystery Monday: Are You My (Great-Great Grand) Mother?

Do you remember that children’s book, Are You My Mother? A little birdie hatches from his shell while his mother is away and he goes on a quest to find her, asking each animal (and machine!) he passes if they are his mama. It’s cute, and, of course, it has a happy ending. Well, as I think about my quest to get each of my family lines back to 1870, and as I thought about a good Mystery Monday topic, this book popped into my mind; I’ve got a mystery for which I’m hoping there will be a happy ending. You see, we have this postcard…

Where There's A Will...

Yesterday I came across what, for me, is a really exciting document: My great-great-grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper's will!

I'm Focused, Man!

I’ve got my genealogy groove back! I mentioned in a recent post that I had made a major life change, quitting my job to travel and focus on my genealogical research for 6 months to a year. Well, I spent 4 weeks traveling in Europe - to England, France and Italy (York Minster! Croissants! Mt. Vesuvius!) – and I just got back a few days ago from a week in New Orleans (Halloween! Voodoo Fest!).

Anyway, during the time I haven’t been on the road, it’s been difficult to get focused on genealogy. Frankly, I was probably exhausted and just trying to get used to being home again. I think I’ve also been feeling a bit overwhelmed, both by the research I already have but need to review, and also by the limitless possibilities (and thus the need to do something meaningful) for this year off.

Genealogical To Do List - September 2015 Edition

Faced with an eternity of spare time on my hands (exaggeration alert!), I realize that I'm going to have to stay focused so that I accomplish my genealogical goals. So, here's what's on my To Do list right now, in no particular order:

• Digitize my Grandma Doris's 29 photo albums and scrapbooks. Yes, 29. I remember that time when I was young and naive and forgot that there was an entire other box full of albums!! Those were the days...

• Plan my first research trip to Washington, DC. That's where the Coopers met the Shepherds, where the Shepherds met the Reids, and where both my momma and my granddad were raised.

• Reach out to my remaining living Grandfather. That thing I said about “no particular order” clearly is not true here. This is a priority.

• Write up some more of the stories I'm already able to tell and the mysteries I want to solve. Like why my maternal grandparents applied for a marriage license twice, two years apart. Or that my paternal great-grandfather was involved in a coal mining strike and subsequent court case that made it into the newspapers. 

• Figure out my priorities for Ohio research. And also whose couches I want to sleep on!

• Review my current research for holes, lingering questions, and mistakes. The Genealogy Do-Over, suggested over at Geneabloggers.com really is a great idea. And while I’ve been pretty darn careful, it never hurts to doublecheck!

• Set goals for additional research trips. Virginia, that other West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, New York (again), and New Jersey (again), here I come!

So there you go folks. If I've made no headway a year from now, send the Land Shark after me! (Ding dong...)

 

A New Adventure!

I never remember to take a photo of the whole cake!

 

It’s been a little quiet over here! But I promise it’s been for a good reason. See, I’ve done something a little crazy: at the beginning of August, I announced that I was quitting my job at the end of the month, to start 6 months to a year of chasing my passions, travel and genealogy. (I’m! So! Excited!)

It’s an idea I’d been playing with, dreaming about, and then finally acting on, for over a year. Why not do this now, when I’m young, healthy, single, and have no kids, pets or a mortgage? Why wait until I’m retired to do the things I really want to do? Especially since there’s no guarantee I’ll be healthy then, or even able to retire at all! So, I’m taking some time for myself right now!

Updated, thanks to my (former) colleagues, who are (still) awesome and made sure I got a picture of the WHOLE cake. Thanks y'all!

I’ll be blogging about my travels and other interesting experiences over at A Runs Away, starting with a month-long trip to Europe at the end of this month. And with all the time I’ll now have to do genealogy research, I’ll be adding lots to this blog as well!

Fam, I’m super excited to have this opportunity to learn more about our history and dig deeper into our roots, and to be able to share what I’m learning with you all! If I call you up and ask if I can interview you / look at your photo albums / sleep on your sofa, I hope you’ll say yes! Stay tuned :)

Genealogical Serendipity: Marriage in the Morning

I absolutely believe in genealogical serendipity. Every now and then, that thing you’ve been looking for, that record you wanted, or maybe even something that hadn’t even crossed your mind in a while – it’ll just pop up in front of you! I think it’s because – and I truly believe this – our ancestors want to be found.

Well this morning, I woke up and, like I do every day, started tooling around on the interwebs, visiting some of my favorite sites. At least once a week, I check out Dick Eastman’s super useful blog, Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, for the news, notes and updates he is always posting. So today, as I’m scrolling through, I come across an announcement about the newest updates to FamilySearch.org’s collections. Top of the list: Alabama County Marriages 1809 – 1950.

Well, hey, I know my paternal roots are in Alabama, let me just go check this out. Cool, calm, and collected. Used to being disappointed.

“Only Thing Can Find To Do:” Louis Shepherd and the CCC, Part 2

WPA Poster, ca. 1936-1941 (WPA Poster Collection, Library of Congress)

In my last post, I wrote about my maternal grandfather, Louis Shepherd, and what little I knew about his time in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). My next step was to send away for his Individual Record, held by the National Archives and Records Administration. Well, guess what came in the mail last week??

Yes, indeed - fourteen pages of information, though honestly a fair bit of it was redundant. However, there were some gems of information. In between his actual Individual Record (8 pages), Certificate of Selection (2 pages), and Enrollee Cumulative Record (4 pages), I learned that he:

-          was a beanpole of a 17-year--old, at 6 feet 3 inches and 160 lbs

-          was in good health – 20/20 eyesight, no asthma, no convulsions and - thankfully - no “fits”

-          got his auto mechanic training at Phelps Vocational junior high school (one of his sons also attended this school, in later years)

-          dropped out of school to seek employment

And it’s this last point I want to focus on for the rest of this post. Remember from the previous post that the CCC was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a way to provide gainful employment to some of those hardest hit by the Great Depression: young men. 

Nine African American men in CCC employment. ( Public Domain: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

So let’s explore what Granddad’s situation was in 1940.

A snippet of the 1940 Census for Washington, DC showing Louis Shepherd and his mom Katherine
(née Shepherd) Banks as lodgers.

• He and his mom Katherine are living in a boarding house at 152 D Street, SE, in Washington, DC. (Does this address sound familiar, Cooper/Shepherd family? There was a cute girl next door – I know her as Grandma Elnora!)

• Including this boarding house, Katherine has at least 4 different addresses between 1932 and 1940.

• Katherine is listed as a domestic, servant, cook, laundress or maid in every document that lists her occupation from 1920 on.

The Colonial Hotel, in Washington DC. According to a 1939 City Directory, Katherine worked here as a maid that year. (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress)

• According to the 1940 Census, Katherine is working as a maid in a hotel. In the previous year, she earned a total of $744 over 52 weeks of work. In today’s dollars that’s equal to about $12,636. For an entire year.

• Katherine is either separated, divorced or widowed in 1940, and has been since at least 1930.

All of this suggests that their financial situation was, if not dire, then not on completely solid ground, especially given the backdrop of the Great Depression. It’s no wonder that Louis would want to help out, especially if he already had his eye on that girl next door and wanted to prove his worth!

According to the new paperwork, Louis at one point worked odd jobs after school and even served as a newspaper boy - what I would give for a picture of that!! But clearly that wasn’t enough, because as his record shows, Granddad dropped out of school to seek employment. Imagine the competition - hundreds of thousands of men and women looking for work, everyone's situation worse than the last. He ended up with the CCC because, according to his file, it’s the “only thing can find to do.”

As a CCC enrollee, Granddad Louis earned $22 a month, worth about $365 today. To put that in context, according to this website, you could get a jumbo loaf of bread for about 5 cents, a gallon of gas for 11 cents, and a Cadillac La Salle for $1,240.

For the first few months, Louis sent all of his earnings home to his mom. When the new year began, he began setting aside $7 per month in his CCC savings account, but all the rest continued to be sent to my Great-Grandma Katherine. After his first term was up, in April of 1941, Louis was apparently still having trouble finding work, because he re-enlisted, under the same terms as his previous contract. But this time he didn’t stay for the whole term: in August of ’41 he was honorably discharged because he had found paying employment. Through a friend's connection, he would serve as an orderly at Weaver Bros., Inc, a real estate firm down the street from the Washington Monument, at 15^th and G, NW. And because he’d been setting aside a few dollars each month, he had a little nest egg to withdraw - $56. I wonder what he did with it...

 

Can You Dig It? Louis Shepherd and the Civilian Conservation Corps

One day sometime last year, my mom and I asked my Grandma Doris if she knew anything about my granddad Louis Shepherd serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). One of the first record sets family historians look for when researching male family members are military records, because they can be goldmines of information that shed light on the whole family. My grandfather, having been born in 1922, was of an age to have fought in World War II, but if he served, it is the World’s Best Kept Secret – to our knowledge (“as the story goes,” essentially), he was unfit for service due to his scoliosis. So, the question became, what was he up to in the 1940s? My mom was pretty sure he’d served in the CCC, but neither she nor her siblings had details.

Grandma to the rescue! (To those of you who think you don’t have anything to share, YES YOU DO!!!) She headed to her bedroom and came back with a thick folder, out of which she pulled 2 papers. One, a cover letter from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, the official holders of the government’s archival records), the other, a photocopy of my grandfather’s discharge paper from the Civilian Conservation Corps! Score!!

OK, so what even is the Civilian Conservation Corps, you ask? Imagine: It’s early 1933. It’s been a little over 3 years since the U.S. stock market crashed on Black Thursday in 1929. Banks have collapsed, leaving people without their life savings. Around a quarter of the public is unemployed. People are “rioting” for food, marching for jobs, and WWI veterans have recently camped out in DC to get bonus pay for their service. The nation is hurting and people are starving. And you are Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and you’ve just been elected President in a landslide victory on the promise of a New Deal package of reforms that will lift the economic fortunes of the nation.

 

A Civilian Conservation Corps recruitment poster, ca. 1941. (Public domain courtesy of the Works Progress Administration, accessed via Wikimedia Commons)

So, you propose and push forward a plan to hire the nation’s young men, ages 17 – 25, who make up a significant portion of the unemployed. You’ll put them to work taking care of the country’s natural resources. They’ll live in camps across the nation and plant trees, fix roads, build dams, restore historical structures, and take on many other projects that will allow them to develop vocational skills, further their educations, and – crucially – send $25 of the $30 they’ll earn monthly back home to their families. This, in a nutshell, is what the Civilian Conservation Corps was.

According to his discharge paper, Louis Shepherd served in the CCC from October 21, 1940 until August 14, 1941, when he was honorably discharged. He was 17 when he enrolled, 18 when he left. Unlike some of the young men in the CCC, Granddad served pretty close to home, in Cabin John, Maryland. That’s in Montgomery County and isn’t terribly far from his mom in Washington, DC, about 12 miles.

 

The discharge paper says that Louis was an auto mechanic prior to signing up (who knew??), but that his work in the camp was doing canal excavation. The company that Louis was a part of, Company 333 in camp NP-2-MD, was one of two who were charged with restoring the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, an industrial waterway that ran parallel to the Potomac River. Running from Georgetown, in DC, to Cumberland, Maryland, the canal had been in use since the 1800s but had ceased operations after a disastrous flood in 1924. 

The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in use, ca. 1900-1924. (Public domain courtesy of the National Park Service Historical Photograph Collection, accessed via Wikipedia.)

The 150-200 young men in NP-2-MD and NP-1-MD, just a bit away along the river, cleared away rocks, debris and overgrown foliage, repaired the crumbling walls of the towpath, resurfaced the towpath along the canal, and ultimately restored approximately 22 miles of the canal before World War II diverted funding and resources, leading to the end of the CCC. In their time, these young men at NP-2-MD – all of them black because CCC camps were by this time completely segregated – laid the foundation for later efforts that would see the land on which they worked become the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.

By dionhinchcliffe (Cropped from Washington, Jul 26, 2008) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

When Grandma Doris pulled out that discharge paper for Granddad Louis, she opened a door that’s led to a whole world of interesting information, speculation, and things to research. It turns out that NARA has Louis’ Individual Record, at least 6 pages of information related to his service. I’ve sent away for those. It may have been only 10 months of his life, but what did they mean to him, and how did they shape his world?

I’ll be exploring his service and CCC experiences in futures post – especially when his Individual Service Record arrives! – so stay tuned for more. Do you know anything about his service, or about the two camps in Cabin John, MD? Please let me know below!

Grandma Doris - More Bowling Pins!

I posted a few weeks ago about the stash of bowling pins - the kind you wear, not the kind you knock down - my mom and I came across as we went through some of my Grandma Doris' things while prepping for a flea market. Grandma passed away at the beginning of April and a LOT of her things ended up with us.

(Side Note: If her spirit was watching from somewhere, seeing us getting ready for a flea market probably made Grandma smile a little bit - I'm pretty sure half her adult life was spent at flea markets, selling Mary Kay and an assortment of thingimbobs.)

Anyway, Grandma didn't just bowl, she lived bowling - and was pretty good - and her jewelry boxed attested to that. Our first go round revealed 26 pins, from the Washington, DC Women's Bowling Association, Virgina State Women's Bowling Association, Women's International Bowling Conference, and more. Welp, we found two more!

The one at the top of the page may be my new favorite out of all of them, b/c... Tasmanian Devil. I mean, really, y'all. This sends me back to my Looney Toons youth - Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs. But anyway...Both pins have been added to the collection, and I actually hope we find more. Plus we have tons of pictures of Grandma posing with her teammates at tournaments, so maybe we can match a few pictures to pins?

Speaking of which, one of the other things that came back up with us from DC were Grandma Doris' photo albums. If she had been born a little later, she would have been a scrapbooker, with all the fancy doodads, special papers, stickers and scissors that cut decorative edges. As it was, she filled album after album with labeled pictures, some with commentary, some with dialogue bubbles (yep!). There are 19 of them.

So one of my next genealogy tasks is going through these babies, scanning and cataloging the photos, and then making the hard (or digital) copies available to folks in the family who want them. Did I mention there are 19 albums? I need to get cracking!

Mystery Monday: Women, Who Art Ye?!

Update: I've made progress on this mystery! Click here and here for details.

So, there are these three women. They all have the same maiden name. They are all from the same state. Their parents’ names are eerily similar. And they all appear connected to one woman in my family tree. But I don’t know how – or even if – they are related to each other!

The line of the Social Security Number Application my Great-Grandmother Katherine completed listing her mother's name.

Let’s start with the clear connection: my Great-Grandmother Katherine Shepherd. Her mother’s name is Rose Anne (or Rose Anna or Roseanne or Rosa Anne) Shepherd. But what is her maiden name, according to several records Katherine and others completed? Rose Allen. And where is she from, according to the 1910 Census and other records? Virginia, as are both of her parents.

1910 Census (Salem, New Jersey) for Samuel, Rose and Katherine Shepherd.

Katherine has a “cousin” (we don’t know yet if it’s a biological cousin or a play cousin, precisely because of this mystery) named Eleanor Kilson. They both grew up in Salem, New Jersey and they appear pretty close – in Katherine’s apartment after her death were several pictures of herself with Eleanor, plus lots of papers and photos of Eleanor’s brothers and sister. Eleanor’s mother’s name is Bertha Kilson. What does her marriage certificate say her maiden name is? Bertha Allen. And that she’s from Orange County, Virginia.

1912 Marriage Certificate for Bertha Allen and Waymon Kilson

Katherine moves to Washington, DC between 1918 and 1920, and into the household of Oswald Petite and his wife, Eleanor Petite. And what is this Eleanor's maiden name, according to her marriage license? Eleanor Allen.

Segment of 1912 Marriage License App, License and Return for Oswald Petite and Eleanor Allen

In the 1920 Census, Katherine is listed as Oswald’s niece (he’s the Head of Household). In the 1930 Census, after Oswald has passed and Eleanor is Head of Household, Katherine is listed as Eleanor’s cousin, and Katherine’s son, my grandfather Louis, is listed as Eleanor’s nephew. The 1920 and 1930 Censuses both list where each person and their parents are from. Eleanor (and both parents) are from Virginia. Katherine’s mother is from Virginia.

1920 Census showing Eleanor Petite and Katherine Shepherd's birthplaces and those of parents

1930 Census showing same as above

Oh, and that thing about their parents’ names? Records suggest that Rose’s are Jannis Ellis and Robert Ellis, that Bertha’s are Roberta Allen and Robert Allen, and that Eleanor’s mother is Elenor Ellis. And, just for kicks, there’s a Luke Ellis – also from Virgina, as are his parents – living in Eleanor’s household in 1930. He, like my great-grandmother Katherine, is listed as Eleanor’s cousin.

To Summarize, here's what we know based on census and vital records:

Are they sisters? Are they cousins? Are they mumble mumble no guesses?

Alright, so how am I going to solve this mystery? Obviously I need to do some more census digging. I’ve done many an online search for various combinations of these men and women living in family groupings in Virginia, with no luck. Perhaps birth records in Virginia will be useful – I have Orange County as a starting point. Obituaries, if I can find them, would likely be very helpful!

I'm also tracking Luke Ellis - the "cousin" living with Eleanor and Katherine in DC in 1930 - back through as many records as I can, and then fleshing out the households and families to whom he’s connected. (When researchers tell you organization is key, believe them!) One tantalizing tidbit from this line of digging is that in 1900, there’s a Luke Ellis living in the household of James Stearns and Charlotte (Ellis) Stearns in Orange County, VA. He’s listed as their grandson. Also in the household? An Ellen Allen, also listed as their grandchild! And both she and Eleanor Allen – the one living in DC by 1910 - are born about 1890; we may be on to something here!

So, do you have any recommendations for ferreting out the answer to this mystery? Or do you have information that may help us figure out what the relationship is between Rose Ann, Bertha and Eleanor Allen? Please leave your comments below!

Family Preserves: Beatrice (Harris) Johnson / West

My first serious foray into family history research was a cookbook called Family Preserves that I put together for my high school senior project. I reached out to members of my family on both sides and picked their brains about their family trees, their favorite or signature recipes, and the people, places and stories in their lives that these recipes conjured up.

I knew some of the details of my ancestry on both sides already, but this was the first time I had specifically invited folks to tell me what they knew, and really the first time I witnessed the power of remembering and sharing, and felt the excitement of recording and preserving.

Every now and then, I think I’ll use this space to pull out a story or a recipe from Family Preserves, to keep the chain of sharing alive. I know a lot more than I did back then, so let's think of these as both a trip down memory lane and a jumping off point for more conversation.

Here’s how I introduced my great grandmother Beatrice (Harris) Johnson / West. Have pity on my writing - I was 17!

 

Great Grandma Beatrice was born Beatrice Harris on April 14, 1915 in Montgomery, Alabama. She was the eldest of two children, both girls – her sister Lillian was born almost exactly 2 years later, in April of 1917. Their parents were Ardenia Harris (maiden name possibly Jackson) and, according to records, Solomon Harris, both born in 1897.

Great Grandma Beatrice's story will take quite a few posts to tell (and that's without all the other stories I'm sure my family has to share!), but here's a quick and dirty sketch:

1918 - The family is still living in Montgomery, Alabama, where dad Solomon works for a grocer.

1930 - The family - minus Solomon, so far as I can tell - is living in Majestic, Alabama, an unincoporated coal mining town not too far from Birmingham. Mom Ardenia runs a boarding house, which becomes significant later on.

My Great Grandmother Beatrice, date unknown.

Between 1930 and 1940 - Both Beatrice and Lillian start families, and mom Ardenia remarries.

By 1940 - Beatrice and husband Theodore Johnson move north and east to another mining town, Powhatan Point, Ohio, but two of Beatrice's children are still with Beatrice's mom Ardenia in Alabama, at least when the 1940 census is taken. Sister Lillian is still in Alabama, in the same town as their mom, but she'll soon move north and slightly west, to Kewanee, IL.

1947 - Beatrice marries Raymond Montgomery West. They are living in Yorkville, OH, about 26 miles north of Powhatan Point along the Ohio River.

1947 -1971 - Beatrice and Ray continue to grow and raise the family, and see the children start their own families. Beatrice is active in her church.

1971 - Husband Ray West passes away.

1986 - Former husband Theodore Johnson passes away.

1987 - Beatrice's children hold the first Harris/Johnson/West Family Reunion.

1991 - Beatrice passes away in Ohio at 76 years old.

I'll be fleshing this timeline out in future posts - Beatrice was a person, not a list of dates, after all - and I'm looking forward to talking with relatives and learning more about her. She lived through several wars and the Civil Rights Movement, participated in the Great Migration, and raised 10 kids (including the woman who raised my father). She was born before Alaska and Hawaii became states, was 4 when Prohibition started, 5 when women got the right to vote and was 12 when Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic and the first movie with sound was released.  Polaroid cameras and atomic bombs were developed during her lifetime. So was prepackaged sliced bread. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and John Lennon were all born and killed during her lifetime. And yet all of these things were probably only swirling in the background as she was a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a parishioner, and a community member. She had her own stories to tell, and priorities.

Family, I hope you'll also share what you know - pictures, documents, stories - so we can share (and preserve!) an even better understanding of who she was and how she shaped our family with generations to come!

I've Got Mail!

Something came in the mail today! I've known for a while now that my mom's cousin, France Davis - France, not Francis, mind you - wrote a book. I remember it being talked about at a family reunion a couple of years back, but I was too cheap poor and in college or a recent graduate and didn't buy it. Welp, you guessed it, I went ahead and ordered the book online a few days ago and when I came home today, it was waiting for me!

Cousin France is actually my mom's first cousin, once removed. What does that mean? Mom's maternal great-grandfather, Reverend July Cooper, was Cousin France's grandfather, or put another way, Mom's maternal grandfather Noah Cooper and Cousin France's mom Julia (Cooper) Davis were siblings. So, yeah, I get to use the fancy term "first cousin once removed" for them and if you throw me in the mix, he's my "first cousin twice removed."

Sings to self: I'm so fancy, you already know...Just kidding. I had to look it up on this chart to get the terminology right.

Anyway, I bought the book because at our last reunion, last summer, the suggestion was made that the next reunion be held in our ancestral town, Gough, (Burke County) Georgia. Then we could visit the land the family still owned, see the family cemetery, and really connect to the place we came from. (My great-grandparents Noah and Nancy (Thomas) Cooper moved from Georgia to Washington, DC in the 1930s.) And I remembered someone saying, on several occasions, that there was even a town named after us down there, a Cooperstown or Coopersville. It popped up in my mind a few months ago and so I did what everyone else does - I googled it. Lo and behold, France's book popped up as a hit, with the names of a bunch of my family members! So, I took a really long time to get around to it and bought the book.

One of my favorite photos of my great grandparents, Noah Cooper and Nancy (Thomas) Cooper.

I unwrapped the package, but my mom opened the book before I did! She very generously closed the book again until I sat down, though. Then we dove in and started looking at the pictures. (Just doing what I was taught in school - skim a thing first to get the general idea and then go back and read for details!)

It's pretty cool to see family members that I recognize in a published book. And of course my mom has more memories of these folks, especially of the older ones who've passed. There's even images of pages from my 2x great aunt Julia's family bible (earliest date 1858)! How neat!

I'm looking forward to sitting down and really reading this, both to learn about our Cousin France (who is still living, and is a pastor out in Utah as far as I know), and to learn about my Cooper roots. I haven't researched this branch of the family as much as I have others, because several other folks are already very capably doing so, but, hey, I want to know the stories, too!

Mystery Monday: Who's Your Daddy, Louis Shepherd?

One of my friends likes to refer to the genealogy group I belong to as the “Who’s Your Daddy?” group. I know it's tongue in cheek, but it drives me a little crazy! Yet, for my maternal grandfather, Louis Allen Shepherd, it’s right on the money – it’s the biggest question we wish we had an answer to!

A rather mysterious photo of my grandfather Louis Allen Shepherd.

  

Bowled Over by Bowling Pins

As some of you already know, my Grandma Doris passed away earlier this year. Technically, Doris Elizabeth (Reid) Shepherd was my step-grandmother – my mom’s stepmother – but she’s the only grandmother I’ve ever known on that side of my family. My biological grandma, Elnora Mae (Cooper) Shepherd, passed away when my mom was 5 years old. (In a strange twist of metaphysical fate, both grandmothers passed away on April 1^st, forty-eight years apart.)

One of the things Grandma Doris’ passing has meant is that a ton of her stuff is now at my parents’ house. Now that it’s yard sale season, we’re going through boxes and bags to see what can be let go, and what we want to keep (which, it turns out, is basically anything with sentimental value). Look what came out of one envelope of costume jewelry:

 

Grandma Doris was a bowler. Actually, that fails as a descriptive statement. Grandma Doris had a deep, abiding and passionate love of bowling and she gave a lot of her time and energy to both playing the sport and supporting it. Among her many bowling commitments, she was a member (and sometimes officer) of the Washington, DC Area Women’s Bowling Association for many years.

A love of bowling was something that my grandma had in common with her husband, my Granddad Louis, and my mom and aunt remember family trips to places like Lebanon, PA and Aliquippa, PA so their parents could compete in bowling tournaments. I didn’t find any Lebanon pins, but I did find a few from the Virginia State Women’s Bowling Association and the Ocean County, New Jersey Women’s Bowling Association:

She also had more than a few from the Women’s International Bowling Congress, plus one from the National Duckpin Bowling Congress:

 

(I’m not gonna lie – I had to look up what “duckpin bowling” was. According to duckpins.com, it is “a variation of 10-pin bowling where the balls and pins are significantly smaller making the game much harder.”)

In total, I counted 26 pins in that one envelope. I wonder if there are more hiding somewhere else? Either way, maybe we’ll come up with a good way of displaying these – my dad has already suggested mounting them in a nice frame for a conversation piece.

This is just a sliver of my Grandma Doris’ bowling story – I’ll be coming back to this topic more than a few times, so stay tuned! In the meantime, do you have a story or memory about Doris Shepherd the Bowler?

Why We're Gathered Here Today

My first stab at family history, aka my high school Senior Project.

This is a blog about family. This is a blog about uncovering the stories of the people who came before me. This is a blog about understanding how I got to be where I am, because of how my parents and grandparents and great-grands beyond got to be where they are and were.

I’ve been doing family history research off and on since 2001, and much more seriously since about 2007. A fair amount of the credit (or blame, depending on how you look at it!) goes to two of my high school teachers. One, my AP U.S. History teacher, assigned this awesome project where we went to the historic Woodland Cemetery in West Philadelphia, chose a headstone, and researched that person’s life through records at archives and repositories across the city. To be honest, I don’t remember a darn thing about the person my group chose – not even his name. But what I do remember is how cool it was to get to search through historical records and actually find out what this person’s life looked like at a time when the world looked different than the one I knew. (It’s also the first, and only, time – to date – that I’ve eaten lunch in a cemetery. I’m a terrible Victorian!)

Around the same time – maybe junior or senior year - my English teacher had us read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Spoiler alert, if you’ve never read it, there’s a children’s rhyme that pops up several times in the story that turns out to reference the family history of the story’s protagonist. There’s a haunting coolness to that that made me wonder what I might be able to find out about my own family. I took that question and ran with it – my senior project was a cookbook with family recipes that I got by visiting and interviewing family members in DC and Columbus, OH.

What really sealed the deal, though, was something my Grandma in Ohio told me before I went away to college. (Nope, not a deep, dark secret!) She told me that when she heard what college I’d decided to go to, she went to church and told her fellowship how proud she was to be the daughter of a coal miner whose granddaughter was going to Harvard. The sense of motion, the sense of time, and really, the sense of history in that statement – especially knowing how and where both my parents grew up – has stuck with me to this day. So has the question of what I could learn about my coal mining ancestors, and all the other folks who came before me, on both sides of my family.

In the past 14 years, I’ve answered a lot of questions, and raised a thousand more! I’m going to use this blog to share a lot of the information that I’ve found, first and foremost with my family, but also with all my genealogy and history buddies (and hopefully new ones as well). Maybe I’ll even connect with new family, or with fellow researchers who can help me break down brick walls in my family history.

I’m looking forward to this blogging journey and hope that you all – family and friends – will take it with me. More than that, I hope you’ll participate: sharing stories, memories, photos, and family recipes, and maybe writing a post here and there for me to share! At the least, I hope you’ll leave comments, ask questions, or just tell other folks about what’s here, so we can keep this information – our stories – alive for generations of family to come. 

P.S. My posts won’t all be this long!