52 Ancestors Week 12: Popular

How to be very, very popular

That is the subject, friends.

A gal with charm can walk off the farm

And start earning dividends

If she's popular, popular, popular friends.

-"How to Be Very, Very Popular" lyric by Sammy Cahn, 1955

MyHeritage recently released a new tool that has become quite popular, and for good reason. It automatically colorizes your old black-and-white family photos. For the most part, it does a very nice job. Like many others, I have been having some fun looking at my ancestors in color. Although the colorizations are simply guesses (you can't be certain that the couch or the shirt was really that color, and in some cases I can actually disprove the color choices), it does bring an immediacy to the old photos that can be surprising.

Grandma Aileen and Grandpa Red Brosius in Netarts, Oregon, late 1930s or early 1940s

Grandma Rose Stroesser on her first leave from the Navy, with her sister Clare.

Not only do the pictures often seem more lifelike, but occasionally the color can bring out details that easily go unnoticed in the black and white versions.

Great-uncle Lowell Brosius on a tricycle. Although clearly visible in the original, the barn in the background is much more noticeable in color.

Of course, sometimes the choice in colors goes humorously awry. I noticed a propensity for bare arms and bare legs to come out a greyish periwinkle color, very different from any normal skin tone.

Grandma Aileen Underwood at her high school graduation, with her sister Inez. Her arms were never that color in real life, nor were either girl's legs.

The tool is a colorization tool, advertised as adding color to black and white photos. However, I was curious how it would treat a faded color photograph.

Great-aunt Doris and Great-uncle Bill Underwood's 25th Anniversary

In some cases I was rather impressed with the results. It seems, however, that the color photo must be converted to black and white and then colorized from there, because in some of the pictures the colors chosen for the colorization are most definitely not those in the original.

Grandma Rose and Grandpa Jack Hoyt. The original, though faded, is far more colorful than the colorization!

All in all, I have been greatly enjoying MyHeritage's popular new colorization tool, despite its shortfalls. I appreciate the ability to download the results as a comparison between the original and the colorized version, as all the examples posted on this blog entry.

I am not affiliated with MyHeritage in any way, except as a subscriber.

52 Ancestors Week 11: Luck

A horse and buggy in 1909
On the road, 1909 by Fylkesarkivet i Vestland, on Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.

When I saw that this week's prompt was "Luck," the first thought that leapt to mind was of a certain newspaper report about an incident involving my great-grandma Cora's brother, Buchanan Wade, whom my Uncle Lowell (and probably the rest of the kids) called "Uncle Buck." But no, I reasoned, I have told that story too many times; it has featured in my Instagram feed and in my WikiTree comments. Surely I have written about it on my blog as well. A search of my blog posts, however, revealed that the story has yet to be told here, so I am free to share it this week!

Upon reading the article, you will discover that the phrase "leapt to mind" was something of a pun...

Horse Falls 30 Feet; Lands In Tree-Top and Wasn't Hurt
   It is said that a cat has nine lives but now it is believed that a horse belonging to Buck Wade has all the cats in catdom beaten a mile. Mr. Wade's horse jumped over the guard rails on the big fill by the ice plant Tuesday morning, fell fully thirty feet into the top of a tree and apparently was none the worse for its thrilling adventure.
   Mr. Wade was driving east along the north side of the fill when an approaching auto frightened his animal. The horse whirled to the guard rail and Mr. Wade leaped for his life, landing safely on the road side. But the horse went on and landed with the buggy on top of it in a tree at the bottom of the creek below. How it escaped instant death is a miracle. Probably such a thing could never happen again without fatal results either to the horse or its driver.
   Men in the vicinity rushed to the scene and got the horse out as quickly as they could. The animal walked away just a little stiff in some of its joints but otherwise apparently safe and sound. The buggy fared much worse, being torn all to pieces.

It seems that both Uncle Buck and his horse had plenty of luck that day. Only the buggy did not share in their good fortune.

The article does not state what make of auto was involved, but this Firestone-Columbus automobile (in this case, chauffering presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) was one of the vehicles on American roads at the time.
Unknown author / Public domain

Citation:

"Horse Falls 30 Feet; Lands In Tree-Top and Wasn't Hurt," Sedan Times-Star, 25 Nov 1909, p. 1, col. 5-6; digital images, America's GenealogyBank (www.genealogybank.com : accessed 15 Aug 2011), Historical Newspapers. 

52 Ancestors Week 10: Strong Woman

Katie Sandwina, "The Lady Hercules," lifting three men
Bain News Service / Public domain

It is incredibly difficult to narrow down the topic of "Strong Woman" to a single woman in my family. In just one generation--that of my great-grandparents--it is impossible to decide. There is Great-Grandma Flora (Amos) Underwood, who left England with her husband and infant son, to travel across the ocean on a journey to America, knowing she would never see her home in England again. She left a comfortable middle-class life for the unknown world of the western U.S., living almost a pioneer existence and learning the skills along the way.

There is Great-Grandma Cora (Wade) Brosius, who raised a family of six boys and one girl in Kansas, married to a man nearly twenty years older than she was. When he died and left her with four children who were still quite young, she packed those children into a car and the five of them drove across the country to the Pacific Northwest to begin their new lives.

There is Great-Grandma Mary (Craig) Stroesser, who grew up in "the Bottoms" in Omaha, a neighborhood marked by its shanty houses and poverty, and frequently flooded by the nearby Missouri River. She went on to marry and give birth to thirteen children, suffering post-partum depression after many of them according to family lore, and suffering also the deaths of three of her sons. Although Grandma Rose, her daughter, had a strained relationship with her, it seems clear that Great-Grandma Mary was battling her own demons.

Then there is Great-Grandma Hazel (Fox) Hoyt, who, according to family lore, graduated valedictorian. Unlike my other great-grandmothers, she began to work outside the home during WWII, and continued to work after the war was over. She was a shipping clerk at Dehner Boot Company until her retirement. She was also the only great-grandmother whose lifetime overlapped my own.

Truly, I believe that you could pluck almost any woman off my family tree and, looking at her life and circumstances, come to find that she deserves the appellation of a "Strong Woman."

Wordless Wednesday: Grandma Aileen's Pedigree Scrapbooking Page

Just felt like sharing this digital scrapbooking page I created for Grandma Aileen's pedigree...

52 Ancestors Week 9: Disaster

Although I have been unable to find an example, surely in my nearly nine years of blogging I have alluded to the fact that my Grandpa Jack's family home burned sometime shortly after he returned from the service in WWII. It is a fact of which I have long been aware, and is the reason that so few photos from Grandpa's side of the family exist. Some of the few that do survive are actually singed around the edges, physical artifacts of that disaster.

For some reason, though, I never could seem to find any independent information on the fire. All I knew was the little that Grandpa told me. However, a mere two weeks ago, I finally found my first independent source: an article appeared in the 18 Aug 1948 edition of the Council Bluffs Nonpareil. So now I finally have a date for that fateful blaze. It must have happened on 11 Aug 1948.

The article reads:

Interior of Home Damaged by Fire

Fire, heat and smoke damaged the interior of the two-story home of Francis A. Hoyt, 1102 South Thirty-fifth street, Wednesday.

Two companies of firemen brought the blaze under control. It is believed a kerosene stove in the kitchen caused the fire. Hoyt told firemen he heard what sounded like an explosion in the stove.

 

Though brief, there is some valuable information contained in that article. First of all, as aforementioned, I can finally put a date to the incident. Secondly, the address is given. From city directories and other sources, I know that the Hoyts lived in that house from at least 1940 and continued to live there until at least 1957. There must have been some serious renovations made. Thirdly, it was a two-alarm fire. This makes me certain that this article is truly the correct event. In the past I have managed to find another article concerning a fire at the Hoyt house, but that one was a minor chimney fire and quickly put out. This one bears much more the character of the fire Grandpa spoke of. Lastly, the article says that the fire was believed to be caused by the kitchen stove. That rings a bell somewhere deep in my memory. It seems that Grandpa once told me that.

Incidentally, the Francis A. Hoyt referred to in the article was Grandpa's dad, my great-grandfather.

Citation:

"Interior of Home Damaged by Fire," Council Bluffs Nonpareil, 18 Aug 1948, p. 12, col. 1; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 9 Feb 2020), World Collection. 

52 Ancestors Week 8: Prosperity

The theme of Prosperity brings to mind my great-grandfather Walter Underwood's sister and her husband. The newspaper article celebrating the couple's golden wedding anniversary makes them sound very prosperous indeed.

Maldon Golden Wedding

Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Bell.

To-day (Saturday) Mr. John William Bell, J. P., and Mrs. Bell, of Spital Road, Maldon, will celebrate their golden wedding. They were married at the Wantz Road Methodist Church, Maldon.

Mrs. Bell was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. Underwood, of Hawkwell. Mr. Bell is a native of Westgate, near Weardale, Co. Durham, and came to Maldon in 1886 to assist in the construction of the Maldon-Southminster-Southend railway. On the completion of that line he remained in employment with the old Great Eastern Railway as a foreman platelayer, a position he held until he retired on reaching the age limit of 65.

In 1907 Mr. Bell was elected delegate for the G.E.R. Permanent Way Department on the Joint Conciliation Board, representing the extensive Ipswich district. For some years he devoted his spare time to endeavouring to improve the conditions of railway workers, and he played a big part in the reduction of hours and the increase of wages. When the Maldon branch was formed, Mr. Bell was appointed chairman, and he held that office until the branch was amalgamated with the National Union of Railwaymen 17 years later. Mr. Bell has always been an ardent Trade Unionist.

Mr. Bell was for some years chairman of the Maldon Co-operative Education Committee. In 1918 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the borough, and is about to commence his sixth successive year of office as chairman of the Juvenile Court. For three years he served on the Town Council, and for some time was a member of the Maldon Board of Guardians.

Mr. Bell is 74 and his wife 71. There is no family, but Mr. and Mrs. Bell have brought up a niece, who is now a Sister under the L.C.C. at the Eastern Fever Hospital, Homerton.

Source:

"Maldon Golden Wedding," The Essex Newsman, 31 Dec 1938, p. 1, col. 2; digital images, British Newspaper Archive (http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk : accessed 26 Dec 2012), Brightsolid in partnership with the British Library.

Abraham Amos' parents - part 2

A while ago I traced the parents of my 3great-grandfather Abraham Amos, determining them to be Thomas Amos and Amy Dunn. Since then, I have continued pushing the line back, and have gone back quite far--to the seventeenth century--on one of the maternal lines. Recently, however, in a Google search for something else, I stumbled across an apparently well-researched genealogical site that threw my conclusions into doubt.

The site is called Faded Genes, and is a project to trace the ancestry of some Kentish soldiers who died during WWI. Two of my 2great-grandfather George Amos' nephews, Ernest Richard Amos and Fred Amos, are featured. They are sons of his brother Thomas, and therefore share his ancestry on their paternal side. The information on the site agrees with my research that their grandparents were Abraham Amos and Isabella Cock. It also agrees with my research on the Cock family, and even gives me a hint that one of the Simon Cocks may have had a second marriage I didn't know about. However, when looking at the Amos line I had a great shock.

The line read " Thomas AMOS, born Abt 1795. He married Mary [maiden name unknown – marriage not found]." My initial reaction was that the researcher simply hadn't been able to find out as much as I had. Abraham's parents were Thomas and Amy; likely the mistake of Amy for Mary was the cause. But then I continued reading. Children were listed:

i          Jane AMOS, born Abt 1817, baptized 6 Apr 1817 at St Augustine, East Langdon (Kent).

ii         Margaret AMOS, born Abt 1820, baptized 6 Feb 1820 at St Augustine, East Langdon (Kent).

These were not the siblings I had discovered for Abraham. Yet they were baptized in the same parish he was, making them more likely candidates than the group I had found. But if his parents were Thomas and Amy, and these girls' parents were Thomas and Mary, the likelihood was surely decreased. I had to refer to my sources.

And that was when I realized that I had no primary source for his baptism. I had only an index entry. The "England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" database at Ancestry, which cited the "England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" database at FamilySearch, which cited FHL microfilm 1,786,622 was my solitary source. It claimed that his baptism had taken place at East Langdon, Kent, on 7 April 1821, and that his parents were Thomas Amos and Amy. Surely in all my digging through parish registers I had verified this record? But a search through my Evernote account, where I store all my in-progress documents, proved that I had discovered only that East Langdon is not a parish included in FindMyPast's "Kent, Canterbury Archdeaconry Parish Registers Browse, 1538-1913," where I have been finding original images of so many of my family's records.

St. Augustine's Church, East Langdon, where Abraham Amos was baptized no matter who his parents were.
Nick Smith / St Augustine's church / CC BY-SA 2.0

So now, since I couldn't see them in the usual place, it was time to figure out where I could see images of East Langdon's parish registers. I could find them in none of the databases at FindMyPast, nor at Ancestry. FamilySearch had only Bishop's Transcripts and transcribed excerpts. I searched the catalog of the British National Archives and Kent Archives. A guide, provided by the Kent Archives, to the locations of parish registers in Kent indicated only Bishop's Transcripts for East Langdon. After about two days of using all my spare time to search every possible repository I could think of, I came to the conclusion that the original parish registers must have been lost. Even the databases covering East Langdon used the Bishop's Transcripts as their source.

And these databases had me worried. The one at FamilySearch, as I had discovered before, recorded Thomas and Amy as Abraham's parents. But the "Kent Births" database at FindMyPast gave his parents as Thomas and Mary. This was disheartening and inconclusive. Even though I have seen errors in Bishop's Transcripts in the past, in this case it would have to serve as my best possible source. I would have to consult it. That meant visiting my local FHC, which I would not be able to visit until Sunday afternoon. It was going to be a long, suspenseful week.

Finally Sunday arrived. When the time came, I hopped into my car to make the drive, just as my phone buzzed to remind me of a workshop I was supposed to attend, which had nothing to do with genealogy. With a heavy heart, I turned my car the opposite direction. The suspense would have to last another hour. It turned out to be an hour and a half before I was able to dash to the FHC, checking my clock and noting that I had only an hour and twenty minutes to solve this mystery. Had I spent a large quantity of time and effort climbing the wrong family tree? Would I have to add an editor's note to my recent blog post about the Shrubsoles that further research had proved that they were not actually my ancestors? Soon I would find out.

Within two minutes of entering the building, I was seated at a computer, and scrolling through images from the appropriate microfilm, searching for the beginning of the section filming East Langdon. It took a little while to find; East Langdon was quite far into the roll. But not too long after locating the right item, the 1813 baptism of a child with the surname Amos appeared. His parents, however, were named William and Ann. Perhaps he was a cousin, but that would have to wait. A few more images passed, and then came another Amos baptism. Ah, now we were on the right track; this was for Jane Amos, the supposed sister of Abraham. In both the FindMyPast and the FamilySearch databases, as well as the tree at Faded Genes, her parents were Thomas and Mary. The real question was the names of the parents on Abraham's record. The Bishop's Transcript, though--the source of most, if not all, of these of these entries--provided a surprise. Jane's parents were Thomas and Amy! That possibility had never entered my mind. I had felt certain that either Abraham was the brother of Jane and Margaret, and not the son of Thomas and Amy, or that he was the son of Thomas and Amy, and not the brother of Jane and Margaret.

Quickly, I looked up the information I had on Thomas and Amy's children, and saw that Jane and Margaret would fit nicely into that gap I had noticed between the births of Abraham and his older sister Susanna. Perhaps all my research would not have to be scrapped after all. Margaret, too, and Abraham, all were the children of Thomas and Amy according to the Bishop's Transcripts, despite databases claiming their mother's name was Mary. And thank goodness for that, because tracing a Thomas and Mary Amos through Kent would be a far more difficult task than the more unusual combination of Thomas and Amy. Plus, I can still claim to be a descendant of numerous John Shrubsoles. Now, if I could just find Thomas' parents...