George Washington Abbott...

...or, as I think of him, "GW," was born about 1838 in Indiana to John and Ellender Abbott. John and Ellender had been married on Christmas Day, 1815, in Alexandria, Kentucky. They had quite a few older children: Susan, Mary, Catharine, Ellen, William, James, and Edward. (A younger sister, Margaret, completed the family when she was born in 1842.) The family had only moved to Indiana about a year before George was born.

The family was still in Ripley County, Indiana, when the 1850 census was taken and George was 12. By then his older sisters had married and moved out of the house.

By 1857, however, the John Abbott family had moved to Tazewell County, Illinois, and on October 30, 1857, John deeded 40 A. of land to son George W., in exchange for $1 and the promise to care for his parents "during the full term of their natural lives." George would have been about 19 or 20 at the time.

On March 17, 1859, George married Martha A. Barr. In January, 1860, their son Edward was born.

On February 11, 1860, George and Martha sold the 40 acre tract he'd been given by his father for $700. This obviously upset his father. In June, 1860, John Abbott sued George and the man who'd bought the land to get the land returned to him. The case dragged on for about a year, but the land was eventually returned to John Abbott.

Also in June of 1860, about the same time that John pressed the suit against his son George, the 1860 census puts Ellender, George's mother, living with George and Martha and their son Edward. (This is the only mention of Edward, so presumably he died as a young child.)

On July 18, 1861, George and Martha's second son was born, John William Abbott.

In August, 1862, Allen Henry Abbott, their third son, was born.

There is reasonable evidence that another child was probably born around June or July of 1864.

However, in September, 1864, George Washington Abbott married Lucinda A. Dancy in Peoria, Illinois, right across the river from Pekin. In January, 1866, Martha sued for divorce from George, stating abandonment of her and their 3 small children. Further testimony in the case stated that George was "...living in...Peoria in open state of adultery with some woman...." There was an attempt to give Martha legal custody of the children, but the clause was struck out and no further mention of the children was made in the divorce documents.

Four years later, on July 18, 1870, Martha Abbott was living as a domestic servant with two children, Charles (6) and Minnie (2), in the home of Charles Walker and his family in Pekin.

Meanwhile, on August 3, 1870, George Washington Abbott was living in southern Missouri, with his wife Lucinda and his sons, William (7) and Allen (6). He was working at a sawmill. His rights to vote had been denied.

Interestingly, there is a second marriage record for George and Lucinda, witnessed by William Rounsville, Police Magistrate, in Peoria, Illinois - dated May 13, 1873. Presumably the first marriage was determined to be null and void, since George was still married to Martha at that time.

Despite being married twice, things didn't go too well for George and Lucinda's union either. In June 1879, Lucinda petitioned for divorce from George in Jasper County, Missouri.

The last we know of George, there was a daughter born to him and Laura C. C. (nee Dickson) Abbott in Jasper County, Missouri, on October 28, 1884. Laura was listed as 24 years old, born in Arkansas, and with 2 prior children. George's occupation was listed as "engineer."

Where and when did George die? We have no idea. Did his marriage to Laura last longer than his marriages to Martha and Lucinda. We don't know that either. Nor have we been able to chase down Charles or Minnie Abbott, or George and Laura's daughter.

It's a sad story. It's not surprising that major parts of it were omitted when telling youngsters about their ancestors. What was George like? Presumably he must have been charming - his parents gave him their farm, and he convinced 3 women to marry him. Living up to his responsibilities appears to have been a problem for him, though. We'll keep searching - who knows what we'll find to further flesh out this all-too-human ancestor.

Family Myths - The Roving Father

One of the double edged swords in chasing family history is the family myth. None are coming to mind on my family's side, but Greg's family has a couple that we are still chasing down.

The myth that seems central to his father's family is the story of George Washington Abbott. As I understand this family tale....

"George Washington Abbott married Martha around 1860 and had 4 children in Pekin, Illinois. At some point he packed up the two eldest, John William (Greg's ancestor) and Allen Henry, and left his wife and 2 younger children behind in Pekin. He traveled south and west, eventually leaving his two boys with a farm family in southeast Kansas and disappearing.

"He came back a few years later to borrow a team of horses. He let his boys know that he had remarried in Arkansas, then he disappeared again. A couple years later, his widow came by to return the borrowed horses, but John William figured that she needed them more than he did, so he let her keep them."

John William was, understandably, not too fond of talking about his father, so this is all that had been pieced together by the family in the 1970's. John William had passed away many years before, so it wasn't possible to ask him for further details.

This myth took some serious work to penetrate and we don't have all the details yet, but like so many family tales, it turned out to be mostly true...as far as it went. A lot of the messiest details were omitted in constructing the myth, but they add context and reason and understanding, if not pride. There's a bit of bigamy, apparent shiftlessness, and at least 2 divorces involved. I guess every family has at least one black sheep. I'll continue filling in the story in increments, as it's rather long and complicated. Who knows? Maybe someone will read this and help me fill in the details that we don't know yet....

Tough Times Shape Tough People in Depression-Era Michigan and Canada

With thoughts of the Dust Bowl family stories going around in my head, my thoughts have turned to another classic Depression saga - that of my great-grandfather, Homer R. Shafer, and his wife, Mary Ethel.

Homer was apparently a very astute businessman...or at least he considered himself one. He and Mary Ethel were married in 1903 and 2 years later my grandmother, Helen Viola Pauline Shafer was born. By the time Homer and Mary had been married for 20 years or so, they had four children and were living in a huge old Victorian mansion, pictured below, that they rented on the well-to-do island of Grosse Ile, south of Detroit, in middle of the Detroit River. Helen and her siblings told many stories about the horse-riding they did, the farm animals they had, and the generally wonderful times they enjoyed in their years on Grosse Ile.

In fact, I remember stories told of how the house was full of old furniture and other possessions when they first moved in. The kids had a great time exploring and, as they got settled, they started finding crisp dollar bills hidden in odd places. The prior owners had apparently hidden them, then forgotten where they put them.

Homer was a real estate agent and fancied himself a real estate developer, too. He purchased a large plot of land in Windsor, Ontario, and subdivided it into many lots, intending to create a large development. Things didn't go as planned, however, and the Depression intervened. Unable to pay the property taxes, Homer eventually lost all of the property except for the one house that had been built on it. He and Mary moved there from Grosse Ile, and lived there for most of the rest of their lives. The picture below is of Helen and her husband Ted, taken in front of her parents' home (the Windsor, Ontario, house) in 1934.

The Grosse Ile house burned down in the 1940's.

The Windsor, Ontario, house was still there in 2002 (photo above), when I visited it with my mother and her 2 sisters on a family history trip through Canada and Michigan. It now sits completely surrounded by tiny little homes that look like they were built in the 1940's. The house is still well cared for and the attractive yard is full of big trees and well groomed gardens.

Tough Times Helped Shaped Tough People in Depression-era Oklahoma

With the economy still struggling these days, my thoughts have turned to how some of our ancestors dealt with tough times, especially with the great Depression of the 1930's.

I have gleaned a few vignettes from talking with family members who either remember the Depression themselves, or who remember the stories their parents told about the Depression.

Photo: The Luther Abbott family in front of their Oklahoma farmhouse, approximately 1937.

On the Abbott side, we have classic "dust bowl" stories. Bill Abbott tells of how he and his father, Luther A. Abbott, were hoeing peanuts in their northwest field near Shamrock, Oklahoma, when two of his mother's brothers drove by in their cars with their families, on their way to California. Alby Woody and Walter Woody stopped in with the family to spend the night and say goodbye, then they all got back in their cars and drove west. Walter had owned a grocery store in Tulsa; Bill doesn't remember what Alby did for a living. Both felt that they needed to move to California for the opportunities there; later another brother, Oscar Woody, joined them.

Luther himself had (in modern parlance) been downsized. He had worked for Long-Bell Lumberyards for many years, first in Quapaw, Oklahoma, next as a bookkeeper in Cushing, Oklahoma, and then as a general manager in Shamrock, Oklahoma. Each new position had been a promotion, but the tough economic conditions and the switch from wooden oil rigs to steel oil rigs eventually caused Shamrock's lumberyard and many of Long-Bell's other Oklahoma operations to be closed down. While Long-Bell had offered Luther a bookkeeper position again in Cushing, he figured that it was just a matter of time until that lumberyard closed, too, so he opted not to move his family away from Shamrock.

Instead Luther rented a farm just outside of town and bought the "farmhouse" that went with it. He figured that on a farm he could at least always feed his family. The house was very small and pretty primitive (sometimes referred to as "a converted chicken coop"). Bill's older sister Virginia remembers their mother, Vergie, standing in the middle of the room that was to be hers and L. A.'s bedroom, looking around, and saying sadly, "Oh, Luther! How could you?"

The original house was two rooms and a lean-to. As they got ready to move into the house, Virginia remembers that they discovered the lean-to was full of bedbugs. She remembers her mother down on hands and knees with hot water and disinfectant, scrubbing every surface as hard as she could to get rid of those awful insects. They ended up tearing down the lean-to and building on 2 new rooms, then later adding 2 more.

The house was heated by a single gas stove and lit by natural gas lighting in all the rooms. There was a well, but the water wasn't fit to drink, so the family hauled drinking water from a spring 3 miles away. (They kept a barrel on a wagon reserved for that purpose.)

When they first moved out to the farm, they still had a car, a 1920's vintage, 4 door Chevy. Unfortunately, son Claude drove it to a meeting one night and forgot to drain the radiator when he got home. The radiator water froze and broke the radiator; the car became a fixture in the barn until, eventually, they sold it. There was no money to repair it. For the rest of their time on the farm, they relied on horses and a wagon for transportation.

Bill was a young boy in those days (about 5 when they moved to the farm), and he doesn't remember his family as particularly poor. They were just like everybody else in town...and better off than some. His mother got to keep and sell the cream from their milk cows, using the money for whatever special household expenses she (and most surely the kids) had. Both Bill and Virginia tell of Vergie walking the half mile from their house into town, approximately twice a week, lugging the full, 5 gallon cream can so that she could sell the precious cream. (When you realize that Vergie was very small, only about 4' 10" tall, this becomes an even more incredible feat.)

The family may not have had many possessions during the Depression, but they always ate. They raised "HyGear" (a hybrid sorghum similar to milo) and maize as crops to feed their livestock and peanuts and cotton for cash crops. They had 2 horses for riding (one of whom also doubled as a work horse), 2 mules for plowing, about 5 or 6 milk cows, generally a few pigs for meat, and chickens for meat and eggs. They also had a huge garden every year, raising all sorts of vegetables, as well as watermelon and other treats.

Cotton and peanuts were two of the few crops that did quite well during this time, but they were doing very well for a lot of people. Consequently, FDR's government had limited the acreage of each that any one farmer could plant and sell. The reasoning was to keep the market from getting glutted by too much of either product, causing the prices to bottom out. Government agents would literally come out to the farm to measure and make sure you hadn't planted too much land in cotton or peanuts. If you had, you had to plow under the excess. Luther did not understand the rationale behind the restrictions that kept him from planting more land in these cash crops, and he chafed at not being allowed to plant them. He resented FDR and the Democrats for the rest of his life.

Luther and his family lived on that farm, in that "converted chicken coop," for about 11 years from 1931 to 1942, until they left Oklahoma and moved to the Wichita area during World War II. At that point, Boeing needed workers, so Luther went on ahead and got a job, leaving Vergie with her two youngest, Bill and Betty, to sell off their equipment and close up the farm. About six months after Luther moved to Wichita, Vergie, Bill and Betty were able to join him. Wichita was overcrowded with workers, though, and undersupplied with housing, so for the first year and a half, the Luther Abbott family lived with Luther's parents in Conway Springs, southwest of Wichita. The Depression was over, the kids were almost grown up, and life moved on to a new phase. They had survived the Depression with the family intact - the tough times had tested them, but they had survived.

The Fruit Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree.....

...even after 7 generations!

A while back I was having a discussion with a couple friends about the traits that our families valued. We all made our lists and then shared them with each other. One thing that surprised me very much was how different our lists were. My family values intelligence very highly; almost above almost all else (except religiosity, for most of them). We tend to believe things very passionately and then to argue for those beliefs almost to the point of alienation...and, unfortunately, sometimes beyond. Their families valued kindness and generosity and togetherness highly - traits that hadn't even crossed my mind to list as I thought about the concepts held in deep regard by my family.

Truthfully, the fact that I hadn't thought about those traits in connection with my family bothered me. My family can be very kind and generous and enjoy getting together a great deal, but those aren't values that are held up as primary or that distinguish us from others.

When I visited Pella and read descriptions of my gg-grandfather Gerrit and my ggg-grandfather Koonraad, written by one of their nephews in 1934, I realized that the traits I had listed are, indeed, traits that are valued in our family now and that have been valued in our family for many generations:

Koonraad was described as a man with a magnetic personality and a fearless and outspoken manner, a "militant" champion of all good causes who always had a large following. When young, he was involved primarily in "religious work and political controversy." Furthermore, he was apparently "fiery" and of an idealistic temperament, with advanced views and a keen mind, firm in his convictions.

His son Gerrit was described as kind and gentle, quiet and unassuming, with a keen sense of humor, BUT there was an "underlying firmness and argumentative make-up typical of DeJongh stock." He was also said to have a very keen mind, and "when aroused [he] was a skillful antagonist in controversy over religious and political topics."

Later, Gerrit's wife's family was described as "a very cultured and keen-minded old family of the Netherlands."

Obviously, being of a "keen mind" was highly regarded, and being wrapped up in religious and political arguments goes back many, many generations. I find it highly interesting...and rather ironic, but those traits could still be used to describe many members of our family today. There's a lot to be said for looking at a person's family!

Religious Freedom: So Often A One Way Street

In reading through an account of the original group of settlers that came to Pella, Iowa, under the leadership of H. P. Scholte in 1847, I was struck by the description of the people who were admitted into membership of this group. (Keep in mind that many of these people were leaving Holland because of religious persecution.)

"No profane, immoral or intemperate person, nor any avowed atheist, skeptic or Roman Catholic could become a member of the colony...." [Italics added.]

It continually amazes me how religious freedom so often seems to be thought of as "MY" right to worship how I want to AND to force "you" to believe the same way "I" do. Somehow I don't think that the framers of the Constitution would agree with that way of looking at it.

Family Roots in Prairie Soil

After spending several days at the North American Prairie Conference, I started to journal early yesterday morning about everything I'd learned, sort of a way to encapsulate all of the varied information I'd been hearing. Suddenly I had one of those "aha!" moments - although not necessarily a pleasant one: I realized that my immigrant ancestors had been among those who broke Iowa's prairie for agriculture.

So yesterday, instead of coming home right after the conference, I took a side trip to Pella, Iowa, to learn a little bit more about this nexus of time, place and individuals in my family history. Here is what I learned....

Koonraad DeJong was the next to youngest child in a large family in Holland. He was born in 1802 and, because of the death of his fiancee when he was young, didn't marry until he was 38.

According to a family history written in 1934, Koonraad was "fiery" with an idealistic temperament, advanced views and a keen mind. He was "firm in his convictions," a large, heavily built man with a magnetic personality and a fearless and outspoken manner.

He was reportedly educated for the ministry but wasn't ordained "because he was out of sympathy with the reactionary element of the Dutch Reformed Church". (A little research leads me to understand that the king was liberalizing the state church in Holland, which those of a more Calvinistic bent deplored.) Koonraad became a lay minister and reformer, leading eventually to his imprisonment for holding secret religious meetings. He was ransomed after 6 weeks, but after that he became set upon emigrating to America.

Koonraad and his wife Wilhelmina, with their 3 young children, joined in a large group of Dutch settlers under the leadership of Dominie Henry Peter Scholte, many of whom were emigrating because of their desire to worship freely in the manner they deemed appropriate. They left Schoonhoven, Holland, on April 7, 1847, sailing from Rotterdam to the U.S. on the Nagasaki, one of four ships used to transport the group of about 800 settlers.

During the oceanic voyage, all 4 ships hit a huge storm. None of the ships were lost, but apparently a few lives were. Koonraad and Wilhelmina's one year old daughter Tryntje died on the voyage; their son Pieter was born on the same voyage. Gerrit, their second son and my ancestor, was 4, and made the voyage safely. According to the ship's manifest, Koonraad and Wilhelmina and their children traveled steerage. "Religious work and political controversy," listed by the author of the aforementioned family record as Koenraad's work in Holland, evidently didn't pay enough for more commodious quarters.

The Nagasaki landed in Baltimore on June 10, 1847. It took several weeks for all 4 ships to reach Baltimore. Once Scholte's entire group had all gathered in Baltimore, they traveled by rail to Columbia, Pennsylvania and then by canal boats on to Pittsburg. From Pittsburg they traveled on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to either Keokuk, Iowa (family archive) or St. Louis (accounts of Scholte's group's travel in other records). Again they regrouped, then traveled over the unbroken prairies by covered wagon to the site they called Pella, meaning "city of refuge."

Once they reached Pella, Koonraad and Wilhelmina had 6 more children.

The family history states that, around 1858, Koonraad and his younger brother Adrian purchased a farm together near Pella. They supposedly built homes for their families side by side, but the farm was lost "several years" later. I didn't have time to search the land records to find out exactly where this was, so there's more research to do at a later time.

Koonraad died suddenly at age 63 years, 10 months. He is buried in the rich prairie soil of Iowa.

I was able to locate the cemetery where he and Wilhelmina are buried: Graceland Cemetery, north of Pella. It's not a very big cemetery, so I was successful (at least partially) in locating their graves. Unfortunately but not unusually, there has been vandalism over the years at the cemetery. I did not find Wilhelmina's gravestone, but I did find Koonraad's. It was broken off and leaning against a nearby marker for someone else.

Seeing Koonraad's broken marker and being unable to find Wilhelmina's, I was left feeling a little unsettled, but I'm still very glad that I found their final resting place. Maybe we can get a group together and put up a set of new markers for them someday.

Several years after Koonraad's death, several of his children, including son Gerrit, joined the group settling Orange City, Iowa. So there's another Iowa community to explore for the next chapter in the story.

Did Koonraad actually break out any prairie? I have no idea. He was old for a settler - 45 when he first arrived in Pella - but his occupation was listed as farmer and he had a large family to provide for, so I have to assume that he did. Maybe that's why I feel so drawn to the idea of prairie restoration. The sins of the fathers...?