Wordless Wednesday - Dad and the Crew of the B-29

My father was a radio operator on a B-29 in the early 1950's. I love this photograph of the crew; autographed by all. My father is standing, second from the right.

Tombstone Tuesday - John, Margaret and Flossie Routsong

The picture I chose for today's "Tombstone Tuesday" prompt is that of the final resting place for John Routsong, his wife, Margaret, and their daughter, Flossie in Zion Cemetery, Kettering, Ohio. John Routsong, my great great uncle, was the brother of my great grandmother, Elizabeth Routsong Norris. I had heard the family lore that one of her brothers had been "buried" alive, but I knew few specifics until I found the above newspaper article. It was in a box filled with various cards and clippings that my mother received after my grandmother passed away. I don't know what newspaper contained the article, but it is dated March 15, 1884. Handwritten is 13, 1884, so I assumed that that was the date the incident itself happened. The article is not complete, but there is enough there to know how John died. He and several other men were excavating a trench on the "Old Johnson Farm" on the Lebanon Pike in Van Buren Township which would now be on Far Hills Ave. in the Kettering/Centerville Ohio area. When they had made the trench 20 feet deep, it collapsed, killing John and his friend John Marshall.

John Routsong only 27 years old. Margaret never remarried and she lived until 1925. Their daughter, Flossie, never married, and was buried alongside her parents.

Sentimental Sunday - Grandpa Norris and the Stingray Bike

The pictures above are still photographs taken from an 8 mm home movie. It is also one of my favorite memories of my grandfather, Leland Norris. My brother had received a purple Stingray bicycle for his birthday and my grandfather decided to ride it, pipe and all. I don't know how many years it had been since he had been on a bicycle and he didn't stay on it very long, but while he was riding, he was awfully proud of himself! To this day, when I think of my grandpa, this is usually the first thing that comes to my mind.

Sabina School Class Photos

Since school photos have been so popular with my blog readers, I decided to share a few more today. These are my father's (Estel Shoemaker, Jr) class photos. He attended Sabina School, Sabina, Clinton County, Ohio. The Sabina schoolhouse was located on Washington St.. It was at one time destroyed by fire, but was rebuilt and stood for many years until it was torn down to make way for a new elementary school. My father attended the school from first grade through his graduation in 1948.

In the first photo, my father is in the top row, far right. In the second photo, he is in the middle row, far right. He is also wearing the same sweater in each photograph.

Solving the Mystery of August Hellmund

A few posts ago, I talked about my husband's great great grandfather, Ernest Hellmund, who immigrated to the United States from Saxony in what we believe to be September, 1860. Today, I'm writing about his eldest son, August Ernest.

August was born either "at sea" on the voyage to America, or in Scales Mound, Illinois. It all depends upon which account one reads. He was the only one of Ernest's children not to move to Miami County, Ohio with him when he left Illinois sometime after his first wife, Maria, and two of their children died, in 1872.

On 1 October, 1882, August married Matilda Sophia White and they eventually had 11 children. During my research I discovered that from 1900 through 1910, the family lived in Gratiot, Lafayette County, Wisconsin, but sometime before 1915, they had moved to Waterloo, Iowa.

I was shocked when I discovered this entry in the 1915 Iowa State Census collection that states August was living in an asylum and lists him as "insane". I had no idea why he was there or what had happened between the time he had lived in Wisconsin and the time he had moved to Iowa.

I also had discovered August's gravesite in Elmwood Cemetery, Waterloo, Iowa, where he was buried along with his wife and son. (His daughter, Caroline is named on the stone, but she is not buried here.) However, there is no date on the stone and the cemetery has no record of when he was buried. No further clues there.

August's story threatened to be a lifelong mystery to me until another resource became available to me. This time I found WorldVitalRecords.com, and they had a list of publications that until now I had not seen before and I was eager to search. Once again, I took advantage of the "free trial" subscription to see if there was anything on the site that might be helpful to me. Luckily, one of the cities included in their list of newspaper resources was Waterloo, Iowa. I did a quick search on "Hellmund" not expecting to find too much, but I was in for quite a surprise.

On 8 January, 1913, August had been electrocuted in a freak accident in the power station where he worked. The fact that he even lived was a miracle. But, he was badly burned.

A subsequent article from The Waterloo Reporter on 7 March, 1913 stated, "Yesterday afternoon at the Presbyterian Hospital, August Hellmund underwent an operation in which sixty inches of skin were grafted onto his left arm. The operation was performed by local physicians. Hellmund was nearly electrocuted six weeks ago at the W.C. F. & N. powerhouse while showing a friend through the building. The skin was taken from the patient's thigh and grafted onto his arm. He is now recovering. Few instances are on record in the city where more than this amount of skin was grafted. It was removed in strips about a half inch wide and four inches long leaving spaces between the wounds that may heal rapidly. Only the epidermist with a little of the true skin was taken. The high voltage of electricity burned the tendon's in the victims hand and he will never have complete control of the member. His mind is said to also have been slightly affected by the shock."

Then, in a further article, this one dated 22 October, 1914, and titled "Unfortunate Victims Taken to Asylum", I read "A.E. Hellmund, whose pitiable case of brain affection attracted much attention at police headquarters, was taken to Independence last evening for treatment. His mind disintegrated following an electrical shock of 22,000 volts."

So, there was the answer to why he was living in the asylum in 1915. However, according to the 1930 United States Census, he was at that time living with his daughter, Evalina Hellmund Morgan and her family in Waterloo. Therefore, I know that his death date came sometime after 1930, and thankfully, I don't believe he died while he was institutionalized.

The solving of the mystery of August Hellund is a good example why you have to search many different venues. No one resource can possibly hold all the information you can find on your family. Your family history is a living thing; constantly changing and growing. That's what makes it so wonderful!

Treasure Chest Thursday - Family Cedar Chests

What better items to post for Treasure Chest Thursday than than two "treasured" cedar chests. The first chest belonged to my maternal Great Aunt Grace Norris Bailey and was given to her by my great grandparents. One day she asked me if there was anything she had that I might want to have. I remembered seeing the chest one day in her attic when I was very young. I told her I would really like to have it and she was shocked. She thought it was "old and broken", but I loved it. I have placed my children's keepsakes in this one.

The second chest belonged to my paternal grandmother, Imogene Huffman Shoemaker. My Aunt Joyce recently presented it to me for safe keeping. Currently, I have it filled with dishes that belonged to my grandmother and my great grandmother.

These are two of my greatest treasures; reminders of both sides of my family.

Wordless Wednesday - Bonus The Galloway Log Cabin

The Galloway Log Cabin, owned by the Greene County (Ohio) Historical Society
Xenia, Ohio

Wordless Wednesday - Holocaust Witness

This letter written to my grandparents from my Uncle Donald Norris during World War II needs no further words to explain the horrible sights he witnessed. We Must Never Forget!

Tombstone Tuesday - Vincent and Maud Bridgman Norris

For today's Tombstone Tuesday post, I have chosen the gravesite of my great aunt and uncle, Vincent and Maud Bridgman Norris. This is a perfect example of why "playing hunches" while researching family history can be very successful. Growing up, I had never heard anyone discuss that I had an "Uncle Vincent". The first time I ever knew he existed was when I found him on the 1880 census, living with my great grandfather, Harry, and their family in Frederick County, MD. I searched on his name and the birth year that appeared in that census, and discovered that he too had come to Ohio to live. According to the 1920 census, he was living with his wife, Maud, along with her mother, Hannah Bridgman, on a farm in Montgomery County. Now, I knew Maud's maiden name was Bridgman. I asked my mother about her Great Uncle Vincent and she didn't really have a memory of him, but she did remember visiting her "Aunt Maud". She knew that she had lived at the Otterbein Home for awhile, but nothing else. When I visited David's Cemetery where most of my maternal ancestors are buried, I could find nothing about Vincent or Maud. I decided to do some research about Maud's family and I found quite a lot of information about Maud's father and grandfather in Dayton history books. After taking a look at the Dayton-Montgomery County Public Library website's obituary search, I discovered her father's obituary which stated that he was being laid to rest at the Beavertown Cemetery. Eureka! Beavertown Cemetery is literally 5 minutes from my home. Could it really be that easy? It made perfect sense to me that Maud would want to be buried with her own family and not that of her husband. So, I dragged my husband and my sons off to the cemetery to do a good old fashioned "tombstone search". Luckily for us, Beavertown is not a very large cemetery. We found the gravesites of Maud's family pretty quickly, but, alas, Maud and Vincent were not near them. We spent some time walking up and down the rows of gravesites and we were very close to giving up and going home. Right before we headed for the car, I looked down and there they were. Maud and Vincent. Now, I knew the correct years of their births and deaths. This led me to Vincent's death certificate. I still don't know his middle name and I would dearly love to have a photograph of them, but I'm pretty pleased with what I do know. All because I followed a hunch!

Madness Monday - Joshua Hammond Norris

Searching for information about my great great grandfather, Joshua Hammond Norris and his first wife, Sarah Alice Munshower Norris, has certainly fallen into the category of adding to my "madness" many times. So, I felt it appropriate for today's "Madness Monday" prompt to tell a little of my trials and tribulations relating to the search for Joshua.

7 years ago, all I knew of Joshua was this photograph and a page in the Norris family Bible that stated that Joshua H. Norris married Alice C. Norris. Then, are sorting through some papers at my mother's I found a letter sent to my great aunt Grace from her cousin in Maryland detailing the Norris family ancestry. Jackpot! Wow, this is just what I needed. I wouldn't even have to work that hard now that I had all the names. I could just "plug" these into Ancestry.com and I was home free. Yeah....

At first, it seemed liked that was true. The information I had on those papers seemed to match Ancestry pretty closely. I did have a few problems though. Joshua's wife wasn't included on the papers. They began with Joshua's father, Amon and his wife, Mary Ann Miller Rouzer. But, that didn't stop me from printing out ancestry reports for all of my mother's family, detailing our Norris family history. However, a few months later, I began studying the Maryland Archives, looking through court records online. It was while I was doing this that I discovered a court case regarding my 5th great grandmother and it wasn't the lady I had named in my ancestry report! It was quite a detailed court case though, listing the name of my great great grandfather, Amon Norris, his father, and his mother, and his grandmother whose name was Hannah Hammond. When I read it, it made sense why Joshua's middle name was "Hammond".

Oh no! Amend that branch of the tree....quickly.

I don't know how the previous researchers got it so wrong, but it seems that there was quite a bit of "following the leader" going on because many people had the incorrect name.

Then, I set about researching Joshua and Alice's immediate family. I knew, again from the family Bible, that "Alice Norris died in 1888". I found Joshua, Alice, Harry (my great grandfather), Effa, and Vincent in the 1880 census, living in Creagerstown, Frederick County, Maryland. Prior to 1880, the only census information I can find on Joshua is the 1850 census when he is 11 years old and living with his parents, Amon and Mary. From 1850 to 1880, I can find no record of Joshua. Maddening is the fact that there is another Joshua Norris living in Frederick County during that same time period. That Joshua married a Catherine McBride and they seem to appear just about everywhere with regularity. I have no idea what Joshua did between 1850 and the time he appears again in 1880, other than marrying Alice. I don't know when or where they were married, which is frustrating as well.

Alice herself is another story entirely. She appears in the 1880 as "Alice" and on the gravesite of their daughter, Flarance, as "Alice", but everywhere else she is known as "Sarah A. Norris". I'm not sure where the "Alice C" in the family Bible came from, but the cemetery and census records are what I chose to ascribe to. From their daughter, Effa Norris Rowe's obituary, I learned that Sarah's maiden name was Munshower. I haven't found anything yet to confirm this, but I believe she is the daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth Munshower.

Sometime after Alice died in 1888 (at only 40 years of age), Joshua married Amelia Cahill. After his death on 3 January, 1908, he was buried with Alice in Mt. Tabor Cemetery. I have found a great deal more information about Joshua than I knew a few years ago, but there is so much more to know....and sometimes it does drive me a little mad!