52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 16: Negatives

It's Week 16 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. I’m behind this week. Some of the reasons are good. I’ve been busily working to help index the 1950 US Census on FamilySearch. You can help, too. I’ve also spent the weekend participating in the WikiTree Connect-a-thon. It’s too late to participate in this round, but you can get involved on WikiTree, too. Check it out.

The last reason is that the prompt for the week is ‘Negatives’ didn't inspired me. But I do want to write every week. So this week is a real reach. As you know, I’ve found a collection of photos from a Gunn family in Kentucky. I found them with other family photos. There are quite a few, so I have to assume that they are somehow related to my family. I’ve been researching various Gunn family members trying to find that connection. Some of the people I have been researching is Mary D Lane and her father, William Lane. I found a passport application for Mary on FamlySearch. She mentions that her father, William N Lane, was born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. At the time of the passport application in 1923 he was living in Maysville, Kentucky.

Clip from 1923 passport application for Mary D Lane
found on FamilySearch.com

 This lead me to a death certificate for a Willoughby N Lane, married to Jenny. He was buried in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. But he died in Ohio. 

 

Clip from Ohio death certificate for Willoughby N Lane - 10 Mar 1926
found on FamilySearch

I wasn’t sure if this was Mary’s father, but one thing caught my eye. The death certificate was signed by a deputy coroner and the cause of death was a gun shot wound to the right eye. This left me with a lot of questions. Did Willoughby/William die by suicide, and if so, why. This was my first negative feeling. Was a he murdered? And if this was Mary’s father, why was he in Kentucky? Obviously I had some research to do.

The first thing I found was a small article in a Paducah, Kentucky newspaper. It stated that Col. Wm. Lane, formerly of Kentucky, was killed in Ohio. There an argument with Ross Campbell about a tobacco crop. The dates matched up to the death certificate. Suddenly I had negative feelings towards Ross Campbell!

 

William Lane Killed by Ross Campbell 12 Mar 1926, Fri News-Democrat (Paducah, Kentucky) Newspapers.com

 

I found another article detailing the trial. The sons of both William Lane and Ross Campbell were witnesses. Ultimately, Ross was acquitted, which left me with even more negative feelings. And I felt bad for Mary!

William Lane Murder Trial 02 Jun 1926, Wed Portsmouth Daily Times (Portsmouth, Ohio) Newspapers.com
 

Then I found a third article, this one from a Danville, Kentucky paper. The headline states that Newt. Lane was killed. The body reports that Col. William Newton Lane was killed. 

 

Newton Lane killed 12 Mar 1926, Fri Kentucky Advocate (Danville, Kentucky) Newspapers.com

It is enough to convince me that William and Willoughby are the same man. But I still don’t know why the name discrepancy. Then one little line at the bottom of the article caught my eye. ”It was reported here that Lane killed two men at Versaille many years ago.” That left me with some negative feelings towards Col. Lane. And a lot of questions!

Was he maybe not a very nice guy. Did he threaten Ross Campbell? Did Campbell act in self-defense? And why the move to Ohio and the name change. After William killed two men, was he a pariah in Kentucky, Did he move to Ohio with a new name for a fresh start? Obviously, I’m going to need to do more research!

Photo Friday: Unknown Woman and Child

  It's Photo Friday. Today I am sharing another photo from the Gunn collection.

I love this photo of the unknown woman and child. I don't know who they are, but I want to think that they are mother and child. However, the woman could be older than I think, and could be an aunt or a grandmother. I love the wicker baby pram! Based on the pram and the woman's clothing, I'm guessing this photo to be about 1900. There is not photographer mark.

The photo was found with the Gunn famliy photos I posted about previously. Someday I hope they will let me know who they are!

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 15: How Do You Spell That?

It's Week 15 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The prompt for the week is ‘How Do You Spell That?’ That is a great question! After over 20 years of research, I still do not know the correct spelling of my grandmother’s surname! When I knew my grandmother, she was Susie Petrini. But before that she was Susie Janco…or was she? I have found so many variations of the spelling of ‘Janco’, and the longer I research, the more variations I find!

The earliest record I have found is the ship manifest for her father’s arrival at the Port of Baltimore. I always knew him as Paul Janco. Janco is the spelling my grandmother wrote down in her notes. Janco is the spelling on his death certificate. Janco is the spelling I've seen on the back of every photo. But on the ship manifest he is ‘Pal Jancso’.

This could be a simple misspelling due to pronunciation. I know my great-grandfather lived into his 90s and only reluctantly used English. He had a heavy accent and could have been misunderstood. However, the Jancso spelling is also found on a ship manifest 4 years later. When his wife arrived at the Port of Baltimore with 3 of their children, the name is spelled Jancso.

Paul is found as ‘Paul Jansgo’ in city directories from Peoria, Illinois in 1913 and 1914. The spelling is close, with a ‘g’ replacing a ‘c’. But the ’s’ has reversed places. In an earlier 1910 directory I find ‘Paul Jansok’. This may not be Paul Janco, but I don’t find ‘Jansok’ in any other directory, and I don’t find ‘Paul Jansgo’ in the 1910 directory.

I have a 1912 birth certificate for daughter Elizabeth, born in Peoria. The spelling here is difficult to read, but appears to be ‘Janscha’ or ‘Janscka’. I don’t have a lot of faith in this variation as my feeling is that this is could be a distortion due to pronunciation.

When Maria aka Mary died a few months later her surname was recorded as ‘Jansgo’.

 So which was the original spelling? Was it Jancso; or was it Jansgo? Things will be even more complicated for future genealogists! Very early in my research I requested a lookup for Mary Janco’s death record on a Peoria County message board. Not only did the researcher look up the death record—she also went out to the cemetery to get a photo for me! Unfortunately Mary’s grave was unmarked. I shared this information with my Janco family. They all seemed excited to have this information.

About 10 years later I was making edits on Find-A-Grave and saw that there is now a tombstone photo on Mary’s memorial. 

 

Tombstone of Mara Miller Janco/Jancso
Springdale Cemetery and Mausoleum - Peoria, Illinois
photo by Karen Ziege Bartelt
Find A Grave contributor # 48169864
Memorial #194939360

The name on the marker is Mary Jancso. I contacted the cemetery to get contact information for the person who placed the stone. I hoped to learn more about Mary and the original spelling of the name. I was surprised and disappointed to learn that the purchaser was my mother’s cousin. She used the spelling I gave her years earlier! And had no supporting evidence that Jancso was the true spelling!

I have no idea if this is something she 'always' knew. She seemed surprised by the spelling when I showed it to her. Both my mother and my aunt have reacted this way when I've shared information with them. They are completely surprised by the new information. Then several months later they seem convinced that they always knew this infomation. They tell me I should have just asked instead of wasting my time on research! I know this happens with them, so I have no confidence that any information they give me is correct! Obviously, oral history is not reliable information!

So...how DO you spell that anyway?!

Photo Friday: Easter Sunday

It’s Photo Friday. It is also Easter weekend, so I am sharing a photo from an Easter past. This is a throwback photo of my sisters and I on Easter Sunday 1963.

I like this photo a lot! It is a photo of my sisters and me, but it is so much more! You can guess that is was a chilly Easter morning. You can almost feel the sister on the left shivering!

The photo also shows a slice of history—a time in the past when people routinely dressed up! I have photos of a family vacation with us dressed similarly, with all the little girls in dresses at the beach! But Easter was special. You see the girls are wearing dresses. They have shiny patent leather shoes, little white purses, and even hats and gloves! Shopping for Easter clothes was a big deal when we were little girls, and the outfit always had to be brand new!

From this photo you can see that my Mom liked to dress the little girls alike. The two older girls are in identical dresses. Even the color is the same—a sky blue. My little sister is not dressed the same. Her dress is yellow. My guess is that the dresses were from different departments. This one was probably not offered in the smallest sizes.

Our clothes were handed down from one sister to the next. My mom often bought our clothes a bit on the big side so that we could 'grow into them. We could wear them for at least two years. Of course that meant that the younger sisters wore the ‘same’ dress for four years! Woe to the poor sister who hated the style!

52 Ancestors in 2022 - Week 14: Check It Out

 It's Week 14 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The prompt for the week is ‘Check It Out’. This was a hard one for me. I thought about sharing a resource I recently discovered, but that didn’t motivate me. Then I thought…'checker'. Many people in my tree worked in retail, and often as the person who ‘checked you out’. My mother spent many years in retail. My brother is in retail now. My sisters both worked in retail as young women. And even I worked in retail for a short while. I was a sales clerk for J.C. Penney.

This week I am going to write about one store—the store owned by my Dad’s cousin, Henry Hahnenkamp. My dad always called him Junior. Henry’s father was a brother to my Dad’s mother and came from a family of dairymen. His grandfather and father were dairy farmers. Henry learned the dairy business growing up. Then he used that knowledge to open a dairy store. 

photo from Goodreads

 When I was quite young, the store was known as Quality Dairy, but at some point the name was changed to East Alton Dairy. My family just called the store ‘Henry’s’. Many of Henry’s relatives worked at the store at one time or another. That included both my mother and one of my sisters. Some of my favorite memories come from the time my mother worked at the store. I’m going to share a few random memories today.

My mother worked at the store when I was very young, leaving when my baby brother was born. I was 10 years old when she left. The dairy started at as a very small store, selling a variety of dairy products. The store later expanded and began selling a larger variety of groceries. The main thing I remember the store selling was ice cream—both soft-serve and scoops of many flavors. I remember asking for ‘dip’ cones. These were soft-serve cones dipped in chocolate. The chocolate hardened when it touched the cold ice cream.

My family only had one car at the time, so my Dad would drive my mom down to work, and pick her up at the end of her evening shift. And of course we kids would ride along. And as often as not, we got ice cream! The biggest ice cream cone I ever had came from Henry’s. It was so tall—at least to my little kid eyes! I'm sure that my mom made the cone. She had a trick of swirling the ice cream at the top of the cone instead of ‘in’ the cone, so it always looked like more than it was. My mom told stories of Henry giving her ‘a talking to’ because she was putting too much ice cream in the cone. She was say it was the right amount. He would weigh it, only to find out that it was the right amount of ice cream.

Henry was always had a smile on his face. He was very generous to us kids, slipping us a piece of candy or extra ice cream when we came into the store. He also took us to the back room to let us look through the ‘magic window’. The window looked like a mirror from the outside, but from inside, we could look out and see all the people.

One particularly special memory for me is a night when we drove down to pick my mom up after work. My dad drove the car around to the back of the store to wait until closing. It was a warm summer night. There was a meteor shower that night. The night was dark because there weren’t a light of lights around. The sky was clear. Dad pulled a blanket out and laid it on the roof of the car. Then he set me up there to lay down on the blanket and stare at the sky. There were so many meteors that night! It was amazing! I’ve never seen such a spectacular meteor shower since, and that has been over 50 years ago!

Another not-so-pleasant memory is from an evening when we dropped my mom off at work. My little sister was sitting in the front seat. Back before child car seats were common, kids used to argue over who got to ride in front, and this evening it was her turn. We had an old Dodge. The locks were the door handles. Pushing forward locked the door, and pulling back unlatched the door so you could open it. You see where this is going, right? As my Dad rounded the corner, my sister locked the door…she thought. But she was 5, and she mistakenly pulled up instead of pushing down. As my dad made the turn, the door flew open, and my little sister fell out! (Seat belts weren't yet common.) My other sister and I were in the back seat yelling “Dad! Cindy fell out of the car! Dad! Cindy fell out of the car!” It took a minute for him to register what was happening. He was concentrating on traffic, trying to pull out onto the busy road. Luckily he was still in the parking lot and not going very fast. And even luckier, my sister hung onto the door handle for dear life! She was 'only' dragged along the pavement, and not run over by the car! Her legs were terribly skinned up, but she was okay. My Dad was more shook up than any of us, because he realized how bad it could have been. I don’t think we little kids realized at the time that she could have been run over and killed!

I have other memories of the dairy, but they will have to wait for another post. If you'd like to learn more about Henry and his store, you can pick up a copy of Our Father's Business on Amazon. It is written by Henry's daughter, Jeannette Hahnenkamp Gentry. In addition to family history, there are bits of history about the dairy business and some great photos that give context to the era.

Photo Friday: Thomas Gunn and Nieces

It's Photo Friday. I missed last week. It was opening day for the 1950 U.S. Census and I had other things occupying my mind. But I'm back this week with another photo from my collection of Gunn Family photos.

This is a photo of Thomas Gunn with his nieces. Luckily this photo is captioned on the back!

 I can't be sure of the order of the photos, but I know the Mary D. Lane is sitting next to Thomas on the arm of the chair. This is the same Mary D Lane whose diary I found and posted about a few weeks ago. I'm still working on that. I've been researching Mary and will share some of that research in a future post.

Mary was born in 1900. To me, she looks to be about 15 in this photo. That would date this photo as about 1915. That date is consistant with the fashions in the photo. Sailor collars were popular in the 1910 to 1920 era. Young girls were also wearing loose dresses with dropped waists during this time.