Before I Forget

...the said Albert T. Wantland and Alice Oakley are not related to each other in the degrees prohibited by law, to wit: Parent and child, grandparent and grandchild of any degree, brother and sister of either of the one-half or of the whole blood, uncle and niece aunt and nephew, nor first cousins...

Months ago I wrote of my Mom's Grand-Aunt Lizzie
http://treepig.posthaven.com/lizzie-coffee-page-daughter-of-john-h-and-nancy-james-coffee  and how we lost touch with her family.

Well, I learned of her daughter Monta's final resting place. And it is in the same cemetery as our beloved Aunt Helen. Fancy that! I hope to find Lizzie's burial place soon.

See Monta Belle (Page) Webster's page on Findagrave:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=141143279

(Hmm, wish I knew how to turn that choppy looking URL into something I could give a subtitle.)

I obtained Aunt Lizzie's date of death from here:

I had an "ahh-HAA" moment upon finding a splendid site containing a much-sought after marriage record. This link  http://www.ksgennet.org/ks/cq/index.html#search  leads to the Chautauqua County, Kansas history site containing a wealth of data: vital records, military histories, photos, biographies, land records, etc. A genealogist's dream page! It is easy to navigate, clearly marked, and has had hundreds of hours of input from terrific volunteers. (clapping, here) 

My project du jour involves Elbert Franklin Wantland who appears as a neighbor to or living with others I'm researching. But I don't know who his parents are. He was born after the 1880 Federal Census. The 1890 Federal Census burned, and so he first appears on the 1900 census living in northern Missouri with another Wantland, a Juliett, age 39, who is married to Jesse Ruben Thomlinson. This couple and their young daughter, Minnie, live with their "laborer/hired hand" Elbert on a farm in Daviess County. The census indicates Elbert's parents' birthplace was Illinois. Another clue. A brief timeline of Mr. Wantland:

          I've spent this evening learning of my paternal 2xGrandmother's father-in-law. Matilda never met him, as she married his son, James A. Price (her third husband), in 1900 long after Linsey was killed in the war between the states.

          Several databases are uploading military records which is a boon for family historians. I especially like learning the physical descriptions of my ancestors. Why, unless you committed a horrendous crime and had your face splashed across a newspaper's front page, few documents from the 19th century describe a person's coloring, height, and weight as do military enlistment docs. The Union Army's records offer more detail than do those of the Confederacy.

          Linsey Price enlisted June 5, 1863 and served with Company F of the 11th Regiment Cavalry. While Price may have been born and bred in Kentucky, he joined a Missouri unit with the Union Army. Many researchers spell his name "Lindsey." But I only find his signature showing a spelling of Linsey. See for yourself in these splendid actual docs:

          Did you see Pvt. Price was "5 foot 7 inches high," fair complected, hazel eyes, with dark hair. And his health record, word! The detailed questions. I've not seen that before in Civil War records. 

From the September 18, 1910 newspaper, The Daily Oklahoman, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma:

George Margaretich was a colorful character who met a violent end in New Orleans in 1913. He had been a well known mining operator in Arizona Territory, ran a saloon in Flagstaff in the early 1890s, and prospected and developed gold and copper mines in both Nevada and Arizona. 

A brief bio on www.croatians.org/ indicates he was a native of Dalmatia, Croatia and immigrated to the United States in 1857. If you are unfamiliar with Croatia, one of its famous natives, Nikola Tesla, was an infant when George left Buffalo, New York, and "rode horseback across the plains" to California arriving in 1858. That in itself is a story I would like to have heard from him! Imagine the adventures he encountered. Google tells me author Robert Badovinac published a book in 2000: George Margaretich in the West. AbeBooks has agreed to look for a copy.

George married the recently widowed Mrs. Rebecca Clem in Yavapai, Arizona Territory in 1889. The 1900 Federal Census shows their family (misspelled) as: George Marguart, age 55; Rebecca Marguart, age 49; with teenagers, Elmer Clem, Clara Clem, and Eula Clem. George is listed as the owner of a stage coach line. 

Because I know little of my great uncle Johnny Margaretich's heritage, I keep an eye open for items related to his surname. His own father farmed in central California 100 years ago. Naturalization papers from 1901 in Juneau, Alaska indicate John's dad came from "Yugoslavia." While I know of no relation to George Margaretich, genealogy has taught me to keep the puzzle pieces of data spread out on the table, so to speak, as connections might be made. Or not. But what fun looking through old archives! Why, two articles from Louisiana newspapers raise interesting questions: 

"Charges By Trazivuk. Declares Margaretich Has Been Swindling Fisher Folk" - headline from Times-Picayune, New Orleans, June 17, 1913, p. 2:

Tonight I found several mentions of my family in area newspapers from over 100 years ago. Simple chatty sentences in papers with a circulation of a few hundred readers. Small rural communities writing unnoteworthy topics such as my great-grandfather having sold some chickens, his attendance at an I.O.O.F. meeting, and his purchase of two stoves in preparation for his wedding. Another great uncle wrote to the editor of his trip to Raton, New Mexico from Keystone, Oklahoma Territory. It was also noted when this same uncle and his father came into town. From where and for what purpose? Further details were not given. 

But one headline grabbed my attention: Southern Women And The Negro Question. Women's suffrage must have been a hot topic "back in the day." I can well imagine the concerns held by the opposite sex, as old white guys disliked relinquishing control. African American men had been given the vote only a few decades prior:

• The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1870, stipulates: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The writer of this article below asks why, if former slaves could now vote, shouldn't the good white women of Oklahoma be afforded the same opportunity? I've read this piece several times and am both horrified at the presumptions made and confused by its reference to setting men on fire for what, I do not know. In what world is torture/death by flame acceptable? Was the author trying to inflame his readers or titillate? I hope someone called out this sick puppy passing for an editor. Did he even exercise his own right to vote?  

Source: The Appalachia Out-Look newspaper, (Pawnee County, Okla.), Vol. 2, No. 45, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 17, 1907, p. 1. via the most excellent and awesome http://www.okhistory.org/

As a reminder, women didn't get the 'ballot' until 1920. Just a couple of years after ten to fifteen thousand citizens near Waco, Texas convened to watch and cheer as a caged African American named Jesse Washington was repeatedly raised and lowered onto a fire for nearly two hours. Source: Billmoyers.com/

Today is the 110th anniversary of my maternal grandfather's birth near the middle of Texas. Cattle country. In the very small town of Tuscola. In a county which today has Abilene as its seat. His parents were from rural Bell and Red River Counties and lived in several Texas and New Mexico towns with their eight children.

As a boy, Grandpa met several of that dying breed of storytellers called cowboys. He saw the end of a fabled time soon to be memorialized by Hollywood. But Art didn't need a silent movie or a "talkie" film to get him excited about the Old West. He learned to love it early on. This is a favorite photo of Art as a teenager. I'm told he had red hair. I hope to see a color photo of young Art someday. 

Always nice to find an ancestor in an archived newspaper! Especially one with whom I've happy memories of swinging me around and around the garden when I was a small giggly child. 

Grandpa was 36 in this photo that appeared in the Fort Worth, Texas Star-Telegram newspaper