Never perfect, but good enough

Such a long time since I’ve added a post! Bear with me -- there is much to report. Besides working on a narrative about my Cain ancestors, I’ve spent a week in Salt Lake City, done some traveling, and dealt with various at-home projects that just don’t seem to end. In other words, life intervened.

The Cain story is ready for the printer, if I don’t find one more minute piece of information to add, or notice another comma out of place. What do they say? “Perfection is the enemy of good.” Just as no family history is ever complete, this small sliver of mine is only tentatively “done”  (and I can never claim perfection). But at this point I really need to say “enough” because there are other lines I’d really like to return to!

What have I learned from doing this? For one thing, trying to write something down as a story instead of just a string of charts and notes really makes me look much more carefully at what I’ve gathered. New information comes online every day, and some of my earliest research was done well before the existence of FindaGrave, Ancestry, or that online treasure, FamilySearch. New sources for obituaries, in particular, have provided a wealth of fascinating data. And I learned a particular lesson: if, for whatever reason, you cannot find an obit for a particular individual, try to find one for a spouse, child, or sibling.

Another lesson: when one puts something iike this together, patterns emerge that may have been hidden before. Looking at a person singly, or just with his/her immediate family, is what I often do when entering new data. But writing about that same person as part of an extended group makes certain information stand out. Sisters who married men sharing occupation, siblings who left home and ended up in the same place elsewhere, relatives who died within days or weeks of one another -- that sort of thing invites further examination.

It’s been a rewarding effort, and one I hope to reprise with other ancestral lines in due time.

Who ARE they?

Annabelle Cain

Genealogy is all about tracking down relatives, living and dead, though mostly dead. We all know that. But then there are the ones who perch out on the edges of our family tree --  clinging there by reason of a previous marriage, informal adoption, or some other situation. And while they may not be the main focus of our research, they ARE there … sometimes just pleading for recognition.  

A couple of my puzzles were not really on the margins, but did remain elusive for a long time. Franklin Lee Parkison, my grandmother’s cousin, was one of what I call the 
“lost boys,” single, with no fixed address. His widowed mother remarried and it appears they barely kept in touch.  I finally found him through a death certificate which had mispelled his surname.


Another was Albert Kelsey Thompson, also a cousin, also single and also on the move. I THINK I’ve found him, in the potter’s field section of a Sacramento, California, cemetery.


Then there are the youngsters taken in by families, for whatever reason. Often they are given their adopting/fostering family’s surname and their own biological past is virtually erased. While I am not so concerned about delving into that past, I am quite interested in learning what became of them in later life.

Recently I rediscovered a girl named Jessie in our Indiana Cain clan, one of at least three children who had been adopted, informally or otherwise, by Sarah Cain and her husband, Orlando Hamilton. Although obviously quite young in an 1886 family photo, she was identified as the wife of another adoptee in the same family.  Though my proof is not rock-solid, I now feel sure she not only  grew up in the same household as this fellow adoptee, but later did become his second wife. Of course I’ll keep checking for any new evidence that might prove (or disprove) the matter.

But now I’m turning my attention to another young woman, Annabelle, who was found in the 1900 census for Middlesex County, New Jersey, as part of the Albert Cain family. That record states she was an adopted daughter, born January 1886 in England. After that -- nothing.  Family members I queried long ago (all gone now) remember nothing more of her, but I can’t let it go.  Is she the Annabel, also spelled “Anna B.” who is shown as the wife of Jack/John Coffey in subsequent NJ census records? The birth year is close, the birthplace is England, the year of immigration close enough.  This Annabelle is buried in Groveville Cemetery, according to FindaGrave, with a stone that simply shows her years of birth and death.  Without a more specific date I cannot get a death certificate, and searches for obituaries have so far come up empty. No NJ marriage records online -- as far as I can tell, and no children’s birth records which might show the mother’s pre-marriage name.

Well, it is a work in progress. 

Who are you looking for these days?

Five Generations, Sixty-Five Years, Twenty-Six Hundred Miles

Browsing through old family pictures  -- and discovering ones that haven’t been scanned yet --  I came up with some pretty interesting juxtapositions.

To the left, below, are Dr. Cornelius Cain, my great-grandfather, Rev. John Wesley Cain, his son, and Howard Hamilton Cain, his grandson (and my father). This was taken in Clarksburg, Indiana, in about 1899.

 The next shot is of of Howard holding his son, Thomas Hayden Cain, in 1943, in Riverside, California.

The color photo, taken about 1966, shows Thomas again, and Jonathan Minton, my son, in San Mateo County, California. Not satisfied with just a beard, or a mustache, like his two forebears, Tom is sporting both.

Middling mysteries

Don’t you love it when you discover a middle name?  It can be a clue to an earlier relative, a mother’s birth name, or a naming tradition that’s been handed down through generations.

Then again, it may just be … a name.  But finding it is a small triumph, because it makes the individual’s story more complete.

Mary Howard Cain

My father’s middle name was Hamilton, and of course I knew that from early days. I even knew that it was the surname of his aunt’s husband.  But I didn’t realize the import given this family until I saw the impressive stone at the Kingston Cemetery in Decatur County, Indiana. It is labelled “Hamilton-Cain” -- not Cain-Hamilton, even though many more Cains than Hamiltons are buried there.  

I’ve mentioned my hunt for Elvira Amanda Kelsey, a relative in my Howard line, from which derives my own middle name.  Elvira came west from Indiana with her widowed mother in the 1860s, married in Oregon, and had three sons:  Albert, Parker and Rowland.  It was easy to guess Albert’s middle name, Kelsey, from the initial K, but I nailed it down when I found Albert Kelsey Thompson listed in the Great California Voters’ Registers of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Thank goodness he was conscientious enough to register!  His brother Parker married well -- to a state senator’s daughter -- and his obituary carried his impressive-sounding full name: Parker Howard Thompson. (His mother’s father was Samuel Parker Howard.)  As for the youngest, Rowland, it took a while for me to find his middle name -- he was simply designated as Rowland M. Thompson in census and Social Security records, and even on his death certificate.  But his World War I draft registration card showed him as Rowland Maynard Thompson.  I don’t know of any specific reason for that name -- yet.  But I’m still working on his father’s line, and perhaps the Maynard name will crop up there somewhere.

A middle name I’m still looking for is that of Daniel M. Howard.  He was my grandmother’s half-brother, who died at the age of 18 in the Civil War.  He served in Company G, Ninth Indiana Infantry (Union Army), and was “slightly” wounded at the Battle of Shiloh.  He “died of fever” while hospitalized, according to his military service records.  But NOWHERE does his middle name appear.

John M. Cain is another puzzle.  His mother was Elizabeth Morgan (my great-great-grandmother, who lived to be 96), so it is a strong possibility his name is Morgan.  But I am not going to assume anything!  And since John died in 1828 it is quite possible I will never know for sure.

There could be a whole subset of genealogy about middle names, don’t you think?  

A post script: Given names don’t always follow family tradition, as I’ve learned to my rue.  After years of trying to find the source of the above-mentioned Samuel Parker Howard’s name, I learned that a charismatic Methodist circuit-riding preacher was in in the region around the time this ancestor was born, in Kentucky. His name: Samuel Parker.

Elmer Ellsworth Cain posed another puzzle, until I discovered the story of the Civil War officer who had led colorful military drills in various venues around the country.  He put on quite a show with his Zouave-like troupe, and went on to achieve the dubious fame of becoming one of the first Union casualties of the war.  His name was Elmer Ellsworth, and not only was my relative named for him, but he named his twin sons Elmer and Ellsworth.

So much for “family” names.

Look and look again

In college days we were told to devote at least two hours to study for every hour in the classroom.  A corollary, for me, is that it’s important to spend at least as much time -- right away -- to examining research results as was expended in planning the original search.  And it is important to go back and look at the material more than once.

The same theory applies to family heirlooms, which are, after all, just as research-worthy. Don’t simply acquire, store and forget.  Old photos could have names on the back that were a vague mystery at first glance, but later have more meaning.  (Take care to examine the front, too -- sometimes really faint writing will show up under close scrutiny.) Costume and hair styles may help date the images and and a photographer’s imprint could provide the all-important location.

As for old letters -- let me tell you!  Years ago, after just a quick look, I filed away a stack of Howard/Cain family correspondence because it was not from the time period I was working on.  It languished, nearly forgotten, until this past week, when I pulled out the box so I could stash away another item. Inside I re-discovered many letters written by my father around the time he enlisted in the Army in WW I. They were sent to his parents and sisters, and besides the wealth of personal information inside, the addresses pinpointed for me where these individuals were living at the time.  

Another previously overlooked find was a 1916 letter from my grandmother’s half-sister which gave me a clue to the whereabouts of her son. I have been trying to trace him for years!

In yet one more missive from this collection, my great-grandfather wrote how he was presented with a gold-headed cane by fellow Masonic members when he retired as Grand Master of the Sunflower Lodge in Wichita, Kansas.  The cane is still in the family, but the details of its 1891 presentation had vanished from our collective memory.

After careful scanning the letters will be placed with their envelopes in a suitable storage environment and I’ll be able to use the scanned images for further study and possible transcription. [For more information on preserving correspondence go to http://www.warletters.com/preserve/  Though the site is specifically about saving wartime mail, the guidelines are universally applicable.]

It is likely there will be more discoveries and unexpected clues when I zero in on the contents of these letters.

I am reminded once more that research more often than not has unpredictable results.  Searching for specific data or scrutinising a set of documents for any possible clue (as I will be doing), may not yield what we think it will.  I can recall times when I was going through vital records for one specific bit of information and instead came up with data I had not even known existed.  And that goes for the second-time-around look, too.

So let me say it again -- as much for myself as for you -- look, and look again!