05 Oops

We all make mistakes, and have our "oops" moments, and when those mistakes affect others, being able to apologize well is a skill I wish I had inherited from my Uncle Harry...

The Apology

Harry Kenyon, Jr., my uncle, went to West Point in 1941, and would write home to his family weekly; I have these letters, and in the last couple years have transcribed them all. I was going through these chronologically and was initially perplexed at the ones written in late March of his plebe year because he failed to note his mother's birthday, March 23. When I got to his May 4 letter my confusion was cleared up – and the apology that Harry wrote to his mother for his forgetfulness made me wish I had read these letters as a child: what an example!
 
Harry wrote:

"Dear Mother, All of a sudden one day this week it struck me that I had grossly mailed my indifferent correspondence week after week and right by your birthday on March 23. There are some things I do that regularly appall me but that really stopped me. I still don’t see how I did it. I even remember reading right thru a paragraph in your letter in which you said that you all went to Communion on March 23. Sure, on Mother’s birthday I said, nodding to myself & passing on without a glimmer of intelligence. Just how did you ever put up with my inexcusable carelessness? And how did you figure I did such a thing? Maybe I just depend so much on you to remind me of my obligations that I just didn’t conceive of anybody’s birthday getting by without one of your timely warnings. Maybe you figure I’m old enough to know better, and I’m not. Perhaps I’m even more selfish than I’m accustomed to admit. But I can’t ask you to forgive me or even watch me more closely. Just maybe allow for me. Tho God knows if you have to allow for me forgetting important things like my mother’s birthday just when & how can I be trusted?"

Like all Harry's letters, this is written out in longhand, no going back to correct and edit, so this pretty much flowed directly from his mind, after mulling it over a day or two. Harry was the oldest child, and comes across as intelligent and confident in his letters, but can occasionally be self-deprecating. I'll write more about Harry in future blogs...
 
But maybe the future holds a less earnest possibility. Typing "write an effusive apology to my mother for forgetting her birthday" into ChatGPT, I get:
 

"Dear Mom, I am so incredibly sorry for forgetting your birthday. I know how important this day is to you and I cannot even begin to express how remorseful I am for not being there to celebrate with you. I know that my actions have caused you pain and disappointment, and for that, I am truly sorry. Please know that my forgetfulness in no way diminishes my love and appreciation for you. You are an incredible mother and I am so grateful for all that you do for our family. I promise to make it up to you and to be more attentive in the future. I love you so much, Mom. Happy belated birthday. Sincerely, (Your Name)."

 
I think Harry has it beat, hands down!

04 Education

Last Friday our granddaughter Claire and her third-grade class went on a field trip to visit a one-room schoolhouse. It was probably similar to schools my grandparents attended at the turn of the 20th century. 

"Learn to Think" is subtitled on my maternal grandfather's 1905 diploma, now framed and hanging in our living room, "Be it known, that Dan Knaus of School District No. 7 in the County of Boulder has completed the course of study prescribed for the Public Schools of Colorado" – he was just 15. 

Another diploma, hanging nearby, proclaims that in May 1908 Daniel Knaus "has completed the prescribed course of study and practice in the Bookkeeping Department" at Boulder Business College, and "We therefore by these presents award him this TESTIMONIAL of HONORABLE GRADUATION and cheerfully recommend him to the favor of the business community." He was just 18, his destiny was to be a successful farmer like his immigrant father - with more education than most of the farmers had in that area at the time.  

My maternal grandmother grew up in rural southwestern Iowa, now a ghost town, a daughter of immigrant Swedes. Life was hard, 3 of 9 children died young, but education must have been stressed in the family; she went on to graduate from Western Normal College, in Shenandoah, Iowa, before moving out to Colorado to live with an aunt, and meeting and marrying my grandfather. According to my mother, it was Grandma, not Granddad, who insisted that Mom and other siblings go on to college: "meanwhile, she and Dad were doing without little frivolities such as indoor plumbing!" Grandma's favorite saying about child-rearing was "The only thing you can give to your children is an education!" 

My father's parents grew up in a medium-sized town in Wisconsin, both had some college, and my grandmother made sure my father was enrolled in college after WWII, funded by the GI Bill. And so I went to college of course; that was understood in my family. My daughter, Claire's mother, became a teacher. Claire represents a fifth generation; my grandmother had a point.

Dan Knaus with his grade school graduating class – 

he is the one standing on the right. 

03 Out of Place

 In September 2019 my wife Patti and I were on a genealogy-inspired tour from Detroit to Boston. The Brewer family (one of my lines) had, in 7 generations, gone from England to the Boston area in Massachusetts (mid-1600s), then to the Berkshires in the western part of the state (mid-1700s), and on to New York (1790s), and Michigan and Wisconsin (mid-1800s).  And so we were going back in time, as we travelled east. According to findagrave.com, a few of my Brewer ancestors were supposed to rest in the "Brewer Family Cemetery" outside Augusta, Oneida County, New York. This cemetery was not quite what I had expected. 

Brewer Family Cemetery, Augusta, New York

The GPS coordinates brought us to a field in a pretty area of farmland, and about 100 yards into the field there it was – a small plot segregated from grassland full of cow patties by a crooked wire mesh fence, one prominent monument, a few small headstones still in place, most scattered about the tiny lot. The main monument, inscribed to Curtis Brewer and his wife Luroxy, had the headstones of many in his family propped against it.

My G4 grandfather David Brewer Jr. moved to this area from the Berkshires in Massachusetts in 1793-94 along with his first wife Deborah Hall; my G3 grandfather Allen Brewer was born here in 1800. Allen married Lovinia Tefft and had 3 children with her, including Harriet Brewer my G2, remarried after Lovinia died, and eventually moved away to Michigan, leaving some family behind to further populate the cemetery. David Brewer's three wives are in this cemetery (Deborah, Lucy, Catharine), he's probably there too. Life was hard on these women; Allen's first wife didn't make it out of New York alive either, and she is here, but he is buried near Port Huron where we started this genealogy journey.

Curious, as I write this, I trace out the descendants in the FamilySearch tree, and by the 1900s it appears that all the male Brewer lines had moved on, further west in New York, to New Jersey, Washington, California... This cemetery stays, decays, represents the Brewers here of the 1800s, even as we descendants have found new places. So the place has lost its people, and the people have lost this place, like the stones perhaps a bit misplaced?

A bit more:

We might have started in Fairwater, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, where my great-great grandmother Harriet Brewer is buried alongside her husband Austin Pardon Kenyon, but we had been there many times. So we began with her father, buried about 10 miles from Marysville where I lived in Michigan, along the St. Clair River, when I was 2 to 6 years old. I don't believe my father knew he had a relative so close.

And we might have ended in Watertown, where my sister now lives, and where we believe our earliest Brewers lived when they first came to America from England. But we did cover the 4 generations in between.

The start of our trip, Caswell Cemetery, near Kimball, Michigan,
at Allen Brewer's grave (my G3 grandfather)

Where we ended up: John Brewer (my G6 grandfather),
Woods Cemetery, Monterey near Tyringham, Berkshires

Lovinia Tefft, my G3, "Died July 15, 1828, Lovinia,
wife of Allen Brewer, age 25 years"

Deborah Hall Brewer, my G4: "In memory of Deborah Brewer,
Wife of David Brewer who died Feb 6, 1807, Aged 42 years & 8 Months"

02 Favorite Photo

 One of my favorite-photo candidate's would have to be this unremarkable one, taken in 1893, of Ingrid Sophia 'Sophie' Erickson, born Johnson, my 2nd great aunt. Born 16 December 1861 in Geneseo, Illinois to my 2nd great grandparents who had both emigrated from Sweden about 10 years earlier, Sophie probably posed for this photo in the mid-1880s. 

My second cousin Linda writes: "Sophie, along with sister, Anna and stepsister, Amanda, worked in Chicago where they all learned dressmaking and tailoring." Sophie married at age 31 and died at age 41, probably of tuberculosis, which also caused the death of her mother Caroline and her older sister Lottie, my great-grandmother. 

This photo stands out because it reminds me of how I got started on genealogy. It was one of several photos of unrecognizable ancestors that I remember seeing at a large family reunion in Breckenridge, Colorado in the summer of 2004. Only my 86-year-old Aunt Marian knew who this was, though Marian was born 17 years after Sophie died, and the photo was uncaptioned as were many others that were being shared. That week I decided to help preserve these old photos and capture the stories behind them, and over the next three years found myself sucked into the black hole of genealogy. I brought my scanner with me to the next reunion in 2007.

But was this really Sophie and not one of her sisters? It took some comparisons with other photos to decide it was. It was clear we had already lost much to time: what prompted this photo? How many copies were made and to whom were they sent? What was a typical week for Sophie at the time? It has been said that pictures are worth 1000 words, but here most of those words are questions.

Sophie married and had three children; two survived but none had children, and so there is little that Sophie has left behind in this world besides this photograph: vital event records, entries in some genealogies, a grave. But the photo she had taken survived, and helped to introduce me to genealogy.

01 I'd Like to Meet

In these posts are stories mostly about people I've never met, and have only "met" via the records they have left behind. I was drawn to genealogy because these ancestors are all people "I'd like to meet," and genealogy offers me the only chance to do so.

Harry Kenyon, my father's brother, left behind a trove of letters and other artifacts, more than any other relative or ancestor other than my parents. He probably deserves a whole book. His uncle, Louis Kenyon, another great war veteran, also left many letters he mailed home from the war. There will be a number of stories about Harry and Louis, perhaps because there is so much material.

Harry's (and my father's) ancestry is a mix. There are the English, coming to the Americas in the 1600 and 1700s, bearing the Kenyon, Brewer, Allen, and Jones surnames among others, coming from Harry's grandfather Louis Kenyon Sr. There is the Baker-Steinke line out of Posen, contributed by Ida Becker whom Louis married. There is the Gerhard-Steiger line from Limburg and Wiesbaden in Hesse that produced Harry's grandfather Jacob Gerhard, and the separate Justen and Gaetz lines that produced Harry's grandmother Louise Justen. Other than the English, all these paternal lines of mine came to America between 1843 and 1872.

A quarter of my ancestry is Swedish tinged with a bit of Finnish, and comes from my maternal grandmother Lillian Wederquist. I met my second cousin Linda when I was just starting this hobby; she shares my quarter Swedish, has done the genealogy work on this line back to the 1600s, and has been a great role model for me in this field. But since I have had to do so little work in this area, I have few stories of my own, and so you won't see much here in that ancestry quadrant; Linda has those stories sprinkled throughout her Swedish tree – I would love to see her write a book.

The other quarter of my maternal ancestry is split between Swiss, from Canton Bern, and southern Germany, from Schwabia. Both have been a strong focus of my genealogy work and both are inspirations for many of the blog posts you will see here. 

Birthplaces of my Ancestors - 5 Generations

In the last 15 years of my genealogy hobby I've focused on gathering facts and data, leaving the writing to later; this 52Ancestors exercise in 2023 is providing a nice impetus to getting the writing going. It also affords a chance to go over previous research, reviewing and rounding out the research, hopefully improving it as I go. Some of the blogs I did simply because I wanted to do a bit more research in a particular area. And some blogs are about the process, and probably will only interest other genealogists, present and future.

Enjoy!

00 Intro

This podcast series "#52Ancestors" is my attempt at Amy Johnson Crow's challenge laid out here; as she says:

"There are two common problems that I hear from people: They don't like the prospect of writing a book or they don't know what to write about/share with others... 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks [is] a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The guesswork of "who should I write about" is taken care of... The point is to get you to take that knowledge that you have and the discoveries that you've made and get them out of the filing cabinet/computer/pile of papers and do something with it. How you share it is up to you."

I'm doing this as a series of blog posts. I certainly have the material for 52 posts, let's see how far I get :-) I'm posting pointers to these blogs weekly on Amy's "Generations Cafe" on Facebook as well as Mastodon with the #52Ancestors hashtag.