20 – Bearded: Dad part 2

The first time Dad grew a beard, that I remember, was for some sort of Village of Villa Park, Illinois, historical celebration; it was a circle beard. A Villa Park Historical Society newsletter notes that they celebrated the 100th birthday in 2014, so that would have been their 50th in 1964. 

My youngest sister was born in 1963, the sixth child in our family. That would be a lot of kids today today, but it was not that unusual during the baby boom years. Mom was the caregiver and ran the household, and Dad had the responsibility of providing for us all. 

Dad with circle beard, with Great Aunt Dorothy and my sister Pat

Over the next few years Dad may have experimented with beards a couple times, but he ended up with a full beard, in 1969, which he kept for the rest of his life. It certainly fit him, and I think made him less conscious of his baldness, and hid his upper lip – his nose might have been taken as evidence of a fight at a younger age. 

October 1969, West Point, at his brother's grave

Dad was the city manager of Villa Park, hired in late 1962 and fired in 1970. He tried a short bit as an appraiser, but eventually landed another city manager job in Madison Township, New Jersey, in the summer of 1971. I moved on to college as my older sister had the previous year, and the rest of the family moved out east. 

June 1972, looking a bit like Salman Rushdie, with my sister Stephanie, Jersey Shore

Dad's beard grayed a bit after he turned 50, but he died before it turned completely gray. He went through a couple jobs in New Jersey, the Madison Township job lasting into 1976 followed by a short stint in Oceanport in 1977. My older sister and I spent some college breaks out there working for money to help pay expenses back in the Midwest. The family lived in their New Jersey home for almost 7 years, and Mom always looked back fondly on their time there. Eventually Villa Park hired Dad back and they returned to Illinois in early 1978, leaving one married daughter behind.

January 1977, at age 50, in New Jersey home

His job back in Villa Park lasted another 7 years until he was fired again in 1985. A city manager is hired by an elected board, and the hiring board isn't always around after the next election. Dad was also not that good at politics; he was good at managing the city, but freely gave his opinions at board meetings, not always politely. A little while after he was fired, he ran for the board himself and served a two-year term. I never talked to him about whether that gave him any new insights into the board-manager relationship. 

1979, back in Illinois

Eventually Dad started growing hair on one side and combing it over his bald spot. He lived to see 11 grandchildren, and his personality softened a bit in these years. He certainly enjoyed holding them on his lap and reading them stories. My kids always referred to him as "Grandpa Beard."

Dad in 1991, a few months before he died, with grandson Travis

Historical Facial Hair

When he was growing up the men in my father's life weren't sporting any beards or mustaches: his father and uncles had neither. There were some mustaches in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and his great-great-grandfather Heinrich Jakob Gerhard had a long untrimmed beard. I get the feeling that these were all part of the fashion in those days, but when Dad grew his beard it was a bit unusual.

Heinrich Jakob "Jacob H." Gerhard 1806-1868

19 – Bald: Dad part 1

This week's writing prompt is "bald" and next week's is "bearded." Both bring to mind my father. Dad was born May 4, 1926, and he died June 23, 1991 of lung cancer, at the age of 65. Dad had black hair; his older brother Harry was red-headed, and his sister's hair was very dark brown. 

But Dad's real distinguishing feature at birth was a cleft lip and perhaps cleft palate; after whatever operation was available at the time, he was left with a distinctive nose and upper lip. 

His mother, Marie, had a 5-year diary for 1924-28 in which she wrote a few notes every day, typically about visits, occasions, the weather. On the day Dad was born Grandma Marie made no mention of this congenital anomaly: 

May 4, 1926. Tues. At 3 P.M. went to the hospital. Our "Sonny" was born at 10:06 P.M Weight 8 lb 1 1/2 oz. Height 22 inches. 

She refers to him as "baby" for a few days; leaves the hospital after 10 days, and notes: 

May 16, 1926. Sun. Had baby baptized "Laurence Austin" at St. Mary's church. Mabel & Bert as sponsors. 

A few days later she writes: 

May 19, 1926. Wed. Harry, Jack & I went to Dr. Brown's office - then hospital. Stayed all nite at Lillian's.

May 20, 1926. Thurs. Operated "Sonny" at 11 A.M. H. went home at 1 P.M. Stayed all nite at Hospital. 'Sonny' getting along fine.

And then: 

May 24, 1926. Mon. Bright, clear weather to-day! Baby is fine. Fed him myself to-day. Went to bed 8 P.M.

May 27, 1926. Today is warm & sunny. Dr. Brown took Sonny's stitches out to-day.

May 30, 1926. Sun. Holy Rosary Church. Got Baby at 1 P.M. and arrived in Fondy 3:30. Supper at Asylum...

So it seems the operation was done in Milwaukee, and Dad was hospitalized for 10 days. Marie continues to refer to him as "Baby" until August 4: 

August 4, 1926. Wed. "Larry" weighs 13 3/8 lbs. and is 26 inches tall.

A year later it appears that Dad has a new nickname – on his first birthday,  Marie's diary reads: 

May 4, 1927. Wed. "Muggins" is 1 yr. old - and weighs 22 1/4 lbs. 

Dad, with brother Harry, left, Grandma Ida holding him, and two cousins Russel and Donald

Eventually they all called him "Laurence," and at some point that changed into "Lawrence." His nose and upper lip gave him a distinctive appearance, and must have helped shape his personality as other kids reacted to this.

Uncle Harry, Grandpa, Aunt Pat, and Dad (maybe 7 years old)

Dad, about 18 years old

So when Dad's hair started noticeably thinning, it must have been a bit distressing given all that he had already had to suffer from the cleft lip. It probably reinforced his strong personality, and left him thinking that life wasn't exactly fair. 

Dad and Mom's 1951 wedding photo

Almost four years into marriage, and now a family with two children, Dad had taken on the appearance we remember for most of our childhood. Here we are in a June 1955 photo taken at the wedding of his sister Pat:

Dad with Mom, my sister and I, and his grandmother Ida

My mother told me that baldness was passed down along the female line when I asked her if I would "go bald" (as if that were a destination), and her brothers and father had hair on the tops of their heads. Neither of Dad's grandfathers show balding in their photos, but both of his maternal uncles, Jacob and Carl show baldness.

Alice, Dad's Uncle Jacob, and Billy Gerhard

Frances and Dad's Uncle Carl Gerhard and Irish Setter

Harry, Dad's older brother, still had most of his hair, but only lived to age 23. Harry was pretty much better at everything – he was four years older than Dad, and Dad looked up to him; I don't think there was any resentment. Dad's sister Pat passed the genes down to her son. So, from our experience, Mom was right about getting this trait from your mother. 

Harry and wife Kathryn, 1944, months before he died

Dad went through a phase in which he took family movies; then he moved on to slide film which started in 1967. A couple years into slides, he starts sporting a beard in photos, but I'll save that for next week's blog.

Horicon Marsh, Wisconsin, 1967

With his father and mother, 1967

With his Uncle Carl in California, now with a beard, 1970

Genetics

Curious, I searched for some up-to-date information on baldness and genetics. A 2017 paper from an NIH website states that about 80% of men develop male pattern baldness (Androgenetic alopecia) by age 80 (guess I still have some time), and it can be about 80% attributed to genetic factors. The amount of loss of hair also varies widely. Genetics aren't completely understood yet, and quite a few genes are thought to be involved. A 2022 paper in the European Journal of Human Genetics notes that "it still is a long way towards highly accurate genetic prediction of MPB such as already available for eye colour," but the most predictive gene was found on the X chromosome which men get exclusively from their mothers.

18 – Pets

Mom grew up on a farm; there were a lot of animals, but no indoor pets. Dad was a city boy: Fond du Lac, St. Louis, Milwaukee; and they had a dog, and when I came on the scene, my grandfather had some parakeets he kept in a small cage indoors.

The Farm Story

Horses were for farming; but they lived long and weren't raised for their meat, so it probably was easy to become friends with them; they typically had names, something you do with pets.

Granddad (Dan Knaus) on his favorite horse as a young man

Granddad using horses to plow - animals had their jobs

Visiting the Farm

When we visited the farm in Colorado as children in the 1960s and 1970s the animals were always a big attraction. Granddad still had a horse we could try riding, we might try milking one of his cows, search out eggs in the chicken coop, etc. Milk cows didn't live so long, but I recall Granddad treating them a bit like pets: they would come to his call, probably just conditioned to come for milking - I'm not sure if he gave them names however. 

My sister and I before falling off

There was always a dog named Jack; the instance would change every couple years - farm life was hard on a dog, and "Jack" always seemed to like chasing cars too much, and he was treated more like a farm hand than a pet. As were the cats: their job was to deal with the mice, and although Granddad would give the young ones a little drink after milking the cows, they were scratchy and wild around us kids, and we quickly learned to keep our distance. 

Scratchy cats getting their milk

There were lots of cows, occasionally sheep - and perhaps a lamb that needed to be fed a milk bottle, chickens and roosters. Basically lots of animals, still no real pets, and you wouldn't catch one inside the house. You might need to tame a cow a bit in order to take it to the fair for a 4H exhibit, but knowing the ultimate fate of the animal, it wasn't good to get too close. So animals were part of the farm operation. 

Granddad feeding an abandoned lamb

The City Story

On Dad's side it was a bit different. His family had lived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin since the mid-19th century; his paternal grandfather had grown up on a farm on the other side of the county, and had run the county Asylum and its associated farm operation, but his maternal grandfather had been born in the city, and followed in his father's footsteps as a baker. Photos show their various pets, and even their ponies seemed a bit pet-like. 

My Great-grandfather Jacob Gerhard with a substantial dog at his feet, my grandmother with a kitten

Great-great Aunt Caroline Gerhard (Lina) with horse named Robbie

Even though they were city people, the Gerhards maintained a residence on the outskirts of Fond du Lac they referred to as "the Farm" and it had a rural feel. Animals were part of the bakery operation: until motor-driven trucks appeared in the 1920s, horses pulled the wagons they used to deliver bread to stores. Apparently they named the horses – in this photo Lina is shown feeding a "bakery horse" named Baldy: 

This photo shows a couple ponies with crocheted blankets draped over them; surely they were more pets than work animals: 

City pets were there to entertain, to be companions; in return they were given room and board, and treated like part of the family, pretty much pets as most of us know them today. Harry, my dad's older brother, wrote an eighth-grade autobiography with a chapter "My Pets," sandwiched between chapters titled "My Hobbies" and "Pet Peeves,"  in which he talks about his dog Trixie:  "She is a very roly-poly Spitz and she stops barking only long enough to refill with a drink of water. But a dog is better than no dog so I hope Trixie lives a good many years yet."

Harry Jr. with his dog Trixie

 

My Aunt Pat with pet chicken and Trixie

Farm and City Pet Culture Intersect

And so, when Mom and Dad married, there was a bit of a difference between them concerning pet culture; Mom was uncomfortable with having a pet indoors and the extra work entailed in cleaning, and she had children, six of us eventually, to love and hold. Dad, I think, missed having a dog around, someone to give him unconditional love which we children didn't. And so, one day when a couple of us had grown and gone off to college, and they were living in New Jersey, Dad brought a puppy home from work as city manager that some police had rescued, "just for the night," and it became part of the family. But when "Pepper" eventually grew old and had to be put down, Mom did not encourage a replacement.

Mom with Pepper

My wife had a dog and a cat when we married, and we've had a cat since, but raising three children has otherwise been enough. I look forward, however, to the day I can convince my wife to get another dog – maybe one like Malia.

Malia on beach in Half Moon Bay

One More Item

I came across this photo of Uncle Harry in the brief weeks he had after his marriage and before he shipped off to England to fight in World War II. It looks like one of the first things he and Kathryn did was to get a dog; after three years in the military academy without one, that was probably a priority!

Harry and Kathryn and their puppy

17 – DNA

Hettie Lollahvene Palmer was born in 1863, the youngest child of Mary Philinda Kenyon and Isaac Palmer, Jr., and was raised on a farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin. A handful of years before she died, widowed from a John S. Hyde, she published "The Palmer Family Lineage," a small family history booklet on the Palmer family which contained a few pages on our common Kenyon line.  

When we were children my father showed my siblings and me the copy of this booklet that he must have gotten from his parents – Hettie would have been his first cousin two times removed. It seemed authoritative, and it was my first example of genealogy; the Kenyon family and Jones family came from the Isle of Man it said, which sounded like a good place to ground your past. And we had a Revolutionary War soldier in our heritage, namely a G4 grandfather Simon Jones, Sr. 

 There are no sources in the booklet, but much of it can be corroborated with existing records: e.g., a marriage record showing that a Pardon Kenyon married a Hannah Jones in Marlborough, Vermont on March 20, 1817. There are census records, and other evidence that Pardon and Hannah did have three children: Mary, Austin, and Russel.  

I didn't explore this part of my ancestry for a few years. When DNA became a thing, I started looking at my thousands of matches on Ancestry.com. I discovered a number of matches where I share DNA with what appeared to be a different Simeon Jones from Vermont. Now I trust the DNA and that I am related to these other people, but did they have better records, and was Hettie right or were they?

So DNA gave me a clue that more research was needed, and I started looking into this Vermont Simeon. Luckily there were some Vermont vital records, some references in old history books, some land records, and a probate record for his father. These basically corroborate that my Hannah Jones was the daughter of this Simeon Jones of Windham County Vermont, who was the son of a Bazeleel Jones who was born in Massachusetts, but ended up in Dover, Vermont, also in Windham County.

My sister and I share a couple dozen Ancestry DNA matches to descendants of other children of Simeon Jones from both his marriages, in the 15cM-25cM range for Mary A., and Russell, and 10cM-15cM range for Cynthia and John (see sources below). Although not completely definitive, this does add evidence for the Simeon Jones from Vermont hypothesis, assuming these other trees have it right - which, according to the additional records, appears to be the case.

So how did Hettie get this wrong? Of course she had no access to DNA - it wouldn't be discovered for decades yet - and access to records back then would have been difficult. The Marlboro history wasn't written yet. She may have been motivated to show a connection to a Revolutionary War veteran like Simeon Jones, Sr. from Pembroke: e.g., to get into the Daughters of the American Revolution. I checked, and she was a member, but gave her lineage to Thomas Kinney Palmer, not Simeon Jones, Sr. Maybe that was a surer connection.

So DNA raised some doubts, and provided some facts that had to be reconciled with the various paper records, including Hettie's genealogy; but the resulting family history should be more complete and accurate. Unfortunately, that lost me a revolutionary war veteran in my ancestry, but I can accept that! And I have yet to find any connection to the Isle of Man...

Simeon Jones 1769-1846, St. James Cemetery, Arlington, Vermont

More Detail

The WikiTree and Family Search Family Tree have the Vermont and Massachusetts Simeon's, but both are a work in progress. In WikiTree the Massachusetts Simeon Jones  is Simeon Jones Sr., wife unknown, with three children including Simeon Jones, Jr. Simeon Jr. first marries Betsey Baker, and after she dies in 1802 marries Susanna Washburn (after having 3 children, none a Hannah), which is where the genealogy diverges: he marries Susanna Washburn and has 8 more children (also none a Hannah). The Vermont Simeon Jones is Simeon Jones, who first marries a Hannah Morse, and has 5 children, and then marries a Hannah Riggs, widow of a Pardon Kenyon. 

Hettie Palmer Hyde has Simeon Jr.'s second wife as the widow of a Pardon Kenyon, Sr. who had a son Pardon Kenyon, Jr. No name is given for the widow, and Hyde also states that Simeon Jr. and Betsey Baker had a daughter Hannah Jones, as well as a Russel, Simon, and Cynthia.  

Hettie does seem to have gotten a lot right: the names of Simeon's children by his first marriage (just the wrong wife); that Pardon Kenyon, Jr., married his step-sister Hannah Jones in Marlborough, Vermont on March 20, 1817; and that they had three children: Mary Philinda born 1818 in Stockbridge, N.Y.; Austin Pardon born 1820 in Munsville, N.Y.; and Russel Jones born 1822. 

My guess: when Hettie went looking for the Simon Jones who fathered Hannah Jones (and siblings Russel, Simon, and Cynthia), she found the Massachusetts Simeon Sr., who having served in the Revolutionary War, had more records that the Simeon in Vermont, and had a son Simeon Jr.  She then missed Simeon Jr.'s second marriage to Susanna Washburn, assuming he instead moved to Vermont and married Hannah Kenyon, widow of Pardon Kenyon.

On Using DNA

The use of DNA for ancestry research is amazing, and incredibly useful. Shared DNA is evidence that you are related, and to what extent, but not how, and this is a great complement to the written records we use to uncover our ancestry.

I've been an early user of DNA services, have my Y-chromosome and mitochondrial (MtDNA) DNA fully decoded at MyFamilyTree, and have done autosomal tests there, at Ancestry, 23AndMe, and a few other sites to see how consistent they are.  I use this DNA to add evidence for relationships I've established using traditional means (and discover problems like I've described here), but I've also used it to help some adopted matches figure out their parentage, to help me with some brick walls, and simply to connect with other distant relatives interested in genealogy. 

Sources

"The Palmer Family Lineage." self-published in 1917 by Hettie Palmer Hyde. Here are the somewhat tortured paragraphs where Hettie connected us to the wrong Simeon Jones:

Newton, The Reverend Ephraim H. 1930. The History of the Town of Marlborough, Windham County, Vermont. Montpelier: Vermont Historical Society. Published 13 years after Hettie's family history booklet), this provides a short bio of Simeon as well as one for his brother Aaron. "Hannah-Russell" here might be "Hannah; Russell" as there is a birth record for a Russel Jones born in Marlboro on 9 Dec 1802, to a Simeon Jones, and there is a descendant of Russel who shares 26 cM of DNA with me.