<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><title>My Old Ohio Home - California</title><link href="./" rel="alternate"></link><link href="./feeds/california.atom.xml" rel="self"></link><id>./</id><updated>2022-05-22T00:00:00-04:00</updated><subtitle>Family history</subtitle><entry><title>Curtis and Nancy Booth, of Turlock, California</title><link href="./curtis-and-nancy-booth-of-turlock-california.html" rel="alternate"></link><published>2022-05-22T00:00:00-04:00</published><updated>2022-05-22T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Ed Hamilton</name></author><id>tag:None,2022-05-22:./curtis-and-nancy-booth-of-turlock-california.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;div class="left_image"&gt;&lt;a href="../articles/curtis-and-nancy-booth-of-turlock-california.html"&gt;   &lt;img src="../images/1916-TurlockCA-GreatFallsMT.jpg" title="Curtis and Nancy Booth, of Turlock, California" width="97" height ="60"&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In December 1916, Mrs Curtis M (Nancy) Booth, of Turlock, California, sent a postcard to her son which read ...&lt;/p&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-TurlockCA-GreatFallsMT.jpg" alt="" title=""  width="408" height="251"/&gt;
&lt;p&gt;1916 postcard from Turlock, CA to Great Falls, MT&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In December 1916, Mrs Curtis M (Nancy) Booth, of Turlock, California, sent a postcard to her son, Robert P Booth, at 526 2nd Ave South, Great Falls, Montana. It read ...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
Dec 8 - 1916&lt;br&gt;
To My Dearest Boy:&lt;br&gt;
The mornings and evenings are pretty cold. heavy frost this a.m. Papa is plowing with riding plow [.] got a mule of a neighbor to work with Prince &amp; Rex. Frisco is near a coal famine for lack of cars. The papers are full of scarcity of cars. Freeze not so bad as they thought at first. Every packing house nearing full capacity. We have planted lettuce, raddishes, turnips and onion sets.&lt;br&gt; 
love from Father and Mother B. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;

R4 Box 105&lt;br&gt;
Turlock, Calif
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Can we learn anything about these people and the times they lived in?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Robert Pearl Booth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Robert Pearl Booth was born December 12, 1889, in Corydon, Wayne County, Iowa, the first known child of Curtis and Nancy Booth. He was still living with his parents in Lindsay, Tulare County, California, on October 8, 1913, when he married Pearl Viola Hardesty. The couple must have soon moved to Montana where they were in December 1916 when Robert received the postcard. Their first child, Edith, was born in Bozeman, Montana, in 1918. By 1920 the family had returned to California and was living with Robert's maternal uncle Charles Thornburg in Orange County. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Robert and Pearl eventually settled in Kittitas County, Washington, where Robert worked as a postal worker. Their remaining three children were all born there. Robert died in Kittitas Co. on August 5, 1975, and is buried in the IOOF Cemetery in Ellensburg with his wife Pearl who died in 1994 and their son Robert who died as a child.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Curtis Monroe Booth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Robert's father, Curtis Monroe Booth, was born in March 1859 in Corydon, Iowa, the son of William and Hattie (Bishop) Booth. He married Nancy "Nannie" Isabell Thornburg on November 25, 1886, in Appanoose County, Iowa. She had been born July 2, 1863, in Red Oak, Montgomery County, Iowa, the daughter of Robert W Thornburg and Mary E Whitsell.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, their son Robert was born in Iowa in 1889, but they soon moved to California, where their daughter Mary Garnet was born in December 1892. They had two other children: a child who died before 1900, and a son Oliver who died at the age of 6 in Long Beach, California.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Curtis was a farmer for his entire life in California, but did not seem to stay in one place for very long. Maybe "the grass was always greener" somewhere else. For a time line of his residences, click on the time line: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;details&gt;
  &lt;summary&gt;Curtis Booth Time Line&lt;/summary&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;
    1886 25 Nov, Appanoose Co, IA married
  1889: Corydon, Iowa, birth of son Robert &lt;br&gt;
  1892: California, birth of daughter Mary G &lt;br&gt;
  1896: Pasadena, voter reg  &lt;br&gt;
  1899: California, birth of son Oliver &lt;br&gt;
  Jun 1900: Downey Township, LA Co, CA, census &lt;br&gt;
  1902: Fullerton, Orange Co, voter reg  &lt;br&gt;
  1904/1905/6: not in Long Beach dir &lt;br&gt;
  Dec 1905 corner of Perris and State, Long Beach (Oliver's death notice) &lt;br&gt;
  1907: 1422 Elm, Long Beach &lt;br&gt;
  1908: west side of Oak Ave, Long Beach, 1st house n of Hill &lt;br&gt;
  1909 not listed in Long Beach &lt;br&gt;
  no dir for Lindsay or Tulare until 1957 &lt;br&gt;
  1912: Lindsay, Tulare County, voter reg &lt;br&gt;
  1914: Lindsay, Tulare County, voter reg &lt;br&gt;
  Nov 1916: Turlock, voter reg  &lt;br&gt;
  Dec 1916: RR 4, Box 105, Turlock - postcard &lt;br&gt;
  1917: RR 4, box 197, Turlock &lt;br&gt;
  1918: RR 1, box 382, Turlock &lt;br&gt;
  1919: RR 1, box 36, Turlock &lt;br&gt;
  Jan 1920: Whittier, wage worker, farmer &lt;br&gt;
  1924: Garden Valley, El Dorado Co &lt;br&gt;
  1926: Placerville, El Dorado Co &lt;br&gt;
  1928: Smith Flat, El Dorado Co &lt;br&gt;
  Apr 1930: Placerville, retired &lt;br&gt;
  May 1939: Anaheim, death &lt;br&gt;
  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/details&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Curtis Monroe Booth died May 30, 1939, in Anaheim. His wife Nannie died September 23, 1944, in Orange County. They are both buried in Santa Ana Cemetery, Santa Ana. There is a picture of Curtis on &lt;a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/117234218/curtis-monroe-booth"&gt;his page&lt;/a&gt; on findagrave.com.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supply Chain Problems&amp;mdash;1916 Style&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The part of the message on the card that got my attention were Nannie Booth's words "Frisco is near a coal famine for lack of cars. The papers are full of scarcity of cars. ... Every packing house nearing full capacity."&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;My first&amp;ndash;and second and third&amp;ndash;thought was 'I didn't think there were that many cars by 1916 for there to be a scarcity of them.' But after a few readings, I realized that Nannie was talking about &lt;em&gt;railroad&lt;/em&gt; cars, not automobiles. So I started typing phrases into search engines and found out that, Yes, there was a shortage of railroad cars in 1916. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Farmers and the Trains&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To appreciate the California farmers' dependence on the railroad, take a look at this 1915 or 1916 picture from Hughson, California, near the Booths' farm in Turlock:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1915-1916-HughsonCaliforniaFarmers.jpg" alt="farmers with horse drawn carts of melons wait at the Hughson, California, train depot in either 1915 or 1916" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Shipping melons from Hughson, CA in 1915 or 1916&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As the accompanying text, at the &lt;a href="https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt6q2nd4n7/"&gt;Calisphere, University of California&lt;/a&gt; site said: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
In front of the Ward Lumber Company is a train locomotive with two freight cars visible ... [and] wagons full of watermelons that are powered by horses and mules. It appears that all are waiting until the watermelons can be loaded onto the freight cars. The railroads were the primary method farmers had to ship their crops long distances to large market areas, such as San Francisco, especially for perishable crops like watermelons.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next realize that in February 1915 there was a &lt;em&gt;surplus&lt;/em&gt; of 279,000 railroad cars, but by March 1, 1917, there was a &lt;em&gt;shortage&lt;/em&gt; of almost 125,000 cars. The problem seems to have started in mid-August of 1916. (See &lt;em&gt;Business Digest&lt;/em&gt;, January to March 1917, Vol 1, page 359, found at Google books.)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The number of cars didn't seem to be the only problem. Edwin E. Albertson, the marker reporter for the San Francisco &lt;em&gt;Call&lt;/em&gt;, in an article dated November 22, 1916, quoting the Railway Age Gazette, says: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
"If the railways now had enough cars to supply one for every one ordered, it is probable that when they got them all loaded their tracks would be so blocked that they would be unable to move much more traffic than they are at present handling. The term 'car shortage' is now, as always, merely a misnomer used to describe a condition resulting from the inablility of the roads to supply facilities enough of any kind to handle the business available."
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The effect on West Coast farmers was "most severe" according to an article in the Los Angeles &lt;em&gt;Herald&lt;/em&gt;, October 20, 1916:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
Information gathered by the interstate commerce commission confirmed reports that the Pacific coast states are suffering most severely from the shortage of cars. It was also learned that Nebraska's grain crop and Colorado's mining products are in great danger of damage and incurring storage losses through lack of carriers.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And the Chicago &lt;em&gt;Packer&lt;/em&gt; of November 11, 1916, carried a story with the dateline "Seattle, Wash., Nov 10" and the headline "Car Shortage Affects Potato Shipments" which read in part:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-11-11-ChicagoPacker.jpg" title="" alt="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chicago Packer&lt;/em&gt; of November 11, 1916 &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
All doubts as to the scarcity of cars and the inablility of the railways to cope with the situation was shown here last week when three carloads of spuds, loaded on gondolas covered with tarpaulins, were switched into the wholesale fruit yards of this city. This is the first time in the history of the North Coast that it has been necessary to transport perishable freight in this way.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Coal Famine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The other problem that Nannie Booth mentioned was that "Frisco is near a coal famine for lack of cars." Other cities faced the same problem. Mr Albertson's article in the San Francisco &lt;em&gt;Call&lt;/em&gt; said this:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
... many Pennsylvania and West Virginia mines have been operating on half time, as they could not get cars to move their product.&lt;br&gt;
The city of Columbus, O., confronted by a coal famine, has established a municipal coal and wood yard, in order to assure fuel to its inhabitants this winter, and Cleveland now threatens to do likewise.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania for 1916 said on page 5:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
The operations of the year were of an unusual character. ... with sharp contrasts in prices and exasperating uncertainty, due to car shortage, labor troubles, and embargoes placed upon traffic.&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote6"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote6" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;&lt;a href="https://archive.org/details/reportofdepartme1916penn"&gt;"The Report of the Department of Mines" &lt;/a&gt; (Harrisburg, Penna, J.L.L. Kuhn, Printer to the Commonwealth, 1917), page 5.&lt;/span&gt; 
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here are a few headlines about the coal famine from around the United States.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;From Utah:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-12-28-SaltLakeCityRepublican-p1.png" alt="Headline: Utah Hit by Coal Famine" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Salt Lake City, Utah, &lt;i&gt;Republican&lt;/i&gt;, December 28, 1916, page 1&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;and Cleveland: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-10-27-AkronBeaconJournal-p1.png" alt="Headline: Cleveland Coal Shortage Serious" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Akron Beacon Journal, October 27, 1916, page 1&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Even Altoona, in coal country, felt the effects:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-11-22-AltoonaTimes-p10.png" alt="Headline: Coal Shortage due to Eastern Shipments" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Altoona, Pennsylvania, &lt;i&gt;Times&lt;/i&gt;, page 10&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The October 27, 1916 edition of the Cedarville, Ohio, &lt;em&gt;Herald&lt;/em&gt;, page 1, summed up the nationwide situation nicely:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-10-27-CedarvilleOhio-Herald-p1.png" alt="Headline: Coal Shortage due to Railroad Facilities" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Cedarville &lt;i&gt;Herald&lt;/i&gt;, October 27, 1916, page 1&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;saying in part: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
&lt;b&gt;Coal Shortage Due to Railroad Facilities&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Almost every section of the country is at present affected by a shortage of coal due largely to the railroad companies being unable to supply cars.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Causes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Why was there a rail car shortage? Why were farmers having a hard time getting their produce to markets? Simply put, there was a war going on. The Booths on their small farm in Turlock, California, were being affected by the war in Europe thousands of miles away.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Munitions and war supplies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The United States did not yet enter the war until 1917, &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
   But soon after war broke out in August 1914, America began to supply food, materials and even munitions to Britain and other German enemies, such as Italy.&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote1"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote1" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.dla.mil/AboutDLA/News/NewsArticleView/Article/1162583/logistics-and-american-entry-into-the-great-war/"&gt;"Logistics and American Entry into the Great War" &lt;/a&gt; at the Defense Logistics Agency website. &lt;/span&gt; 
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Cleveland and Pittsburgh are dear to my heart, so here is what was going on in those two cities:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For Cleveland:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
The years of U.S. neutrality were bonanza ones for Cleveland's industries, as its workers satisfied contracts for uniforms, weapons, automobiles and trucks, and chemicals for explosives. By the fall of 1918, it was estimated that the city had produced $750 million worth of munitions in the 4 years since the war had begun.&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote2"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote2" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;"&lt;a href="https://case.edu/ech/articles/w/world-war-i"&gt;"World War I"&lt;/a&gt; at the Case-Western Reserve Encyclopedia of Cleveland History website. &lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;and for Pittsburgh: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
1914 had seen a slump in American steelmaking, with output well below capacity.  By mid-1915, all mills in the Pittsburgh area were operating day and night, even though the United States had not yet entered the war.  Production throughout 1915 was at about 85 percent of capacity, reaching 100 percent during the fourth quarter.  From 1916 onward, US Steel alone delivered more steel each year than all the plants of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires combined.  By the second half of 1917, some 75 percent of iron and steel output was supplying war demands.&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote3"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote3" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/pennsylvania-in-ww1-articles.html"&gt;"Facts About Pennsylvania in the First World War"&lt;/a&gt; at the World War I Centennial website. &lt;/span&gt;
 &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The increased production of the factories meant they needed more coal. The coal had to be transported in. The manufactured goods and munitions had to be transported out. All of this required railroad cars. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;An editorial on the same page of the San Francisco &lt;em&gt;Call&lt;/em&gt; as Mr Albertson's article, November 22, 1916, summed up the country's situation this way:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1916-11-22-SanFranciscoCallEditorial-p6.png" alt="" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;San Francisco Call editorial, November 22, 1916&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
We have lent England hundreds of millions. We have turned our entire nation into an ammunition factory for her benefit.
&lt;br&gt;
Our citizens and business men are unable to get goods, the poor are unable to get coal, because those interested in saving England control our railroads&amp;mdash;and England's service in the ammunition line is put ahead of everything else on our American roads.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shipping rates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Another consequence of the war was an increase in shipping rates. The San Francisco &lt;em&gt;Call&lt;/em&gt; article by E. E. Albertson said that the rates for shipping iron ore on the Great Lakes had risen to a point where it was more profitable for ore boats to return home empty than to carry back coal, as they had done previously. This left the burden of taking coal to places like Minnesota up to the railroads. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I looked for some original sources online to back this up but didn't find anything, but it makes sense to me. The munitions factories would require iron ore and could probably pay what it took to get it. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Pacific shipping rates had increased also, which affected California farmers directly. Mr. Albertson's article pointed out that the rates on shipping routes from the West Coast to Asia had risen since the beginning of the war. This motivated at least one shipping company, the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company, to move their vessels from the west coast-east coast route elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Tables 1 and 2 in "The War and Trans-Pacific Shipping," by Abraham Berglund bear this out. When the war broke out, Germany pulled its entire commercial fleet from the Pacific. Net tonnage carried under the British flag was cut in half from 1914 to 1916. Japan made up some of the difference but the overall net tonnage in July 1914, 237,004 tons, dropped to 147,744 tons in May 1916.&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote4"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote4" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1809717.pdf"&gt;"The War and Trans-Pacific Shipping"&lt;/a&gt; in The American Economic Review, September 1917, Volume 7, Number 3, pages 553-568. Published by the American Economic Assocation. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Tables 3 and 4 show the change in freight rates from Asia to America and America to Asia. Increases were across the board, many more than 100%. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;American-Hawaiian's decision might be referred to here:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
"By the time the Canal reopened on 15 April 1916, American-Hawaiian had entirely suspended its intercoastal service, and its ships were operating only on war charters."&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote5"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote5" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3111801"&gt;"The American-Hawaiian Steamship Company, 1899-1919"&lt;/a&gt; by Thomas C Cochran and Ray Ginger, in Business History Review, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1954), pp. 343-365, published by The President and Fellows of Harvard College. &lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div class="right_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/elephantsFighting.jpg" alt="a drawing of elephants fighting" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When elephants fight, &lt;br&gt;it is the grass that suffers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With all this going on, the California farmers were in a bind. Were the Booths able to sell their "lettuce, raddishes, turnips and onion sets"? Did they lose their farm? Their rural route address changed from 1917 to 1918, but I can't tell whether they moved or the route system was re-organized. If they moved, did they buy another farm in Turlock? Again, I don't know. There are probably property records out there somewhere that would answer those questions. But I do know that by January 1920, Curtis had left off farming for himself and was a wage worker in a walnut grove in or near Whittier, California, more than 300 miles south. I don't think that is what he pictured for himself when he moved to California in the 1890s.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Credits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The genealogical information for the Booth family came from the usual suspects&amp;mdash;ancestry.com and familysearch.org&amp;mdash;with a few vital records from the Washington State Archives thrown in for good measure.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The image of the farmers in Hughson, California, is in the Stanislaus Region History and Culture Image Collection of California State University, Stanislaus, &lt;a href="https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt6q2nd4n7/"&gt;Calisphere, University of California&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Business Digest, 1917, was at Google Books.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I found the Los Angeles and San Francisco articles at the &lt;a href="https://cbsrinfo.ucr.edu/CNP"&gt;University of California, Riverside, Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research's California Newspaper Project site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Chicago &lt;em&gt;Packer&lt;/em&gt; article was in the &lt;a href="https://idnc.library.illinois.edu"&gt;University of Illinois' Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The clippings from the Salt Lake City &lt;em&gt;Republican&lt;/em&gt;, the Akron &lt;em&gt;Beacon-Journal&lt;/em&gt;, and the Altoona &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt; were found on &lt;a href="https://www.newspapers.com"&gt;newspapers.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Cedarville &lt;em&gt;Herald&lt;/em&gt; article can be found on &lt;a href="https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1583&amp;amp;context=cedarville_herald"&gt;Digital Commons&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/759419555910167950/"&gt;drawing of two elephants fighting&lt;/a&gt; was available at pinterest which said it was royalty free.&lt;/p&gt;</content><category term="misc"></category><category term="California"></category><category term="postal covers"></category></entry><entry><title>Minda Wilde and Agnes Bateman of Champaign, Illinois</title><link href="./minda-wilde-and-agnes-bateman-of-champaign-illinois.html" rel="alternate"></link><published>2021-08-14T00:00:00-04:00</published><updated>2021-08-14T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Ed Hamilton</name></author><id>tag:None,2021-08-14:./minda-wilde-and-agnes-bateman-of-champaign-illinois.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;div class="left_image"&gt;&lt;a href="../articles/minda-wilde-and-agnes-bateman-of-champaign-illinois.html"&gt;   &lt;img src="../images/1950-Wilde-Bateman-Postcard-original.png" alt="Minda Wilde and Agnes Bateman of Champaign, Illinois" title="Minda Wilde and Agnes Bateman of Champaign, Illinois" width="75" height ="46"&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;On August 3, 1950, Mrs Wilde mailed a postcard from Oakland, California, to Mrs Agnes Bateman and daughter at 406 East Healey, Champaign, Illinois. Who were these people, how did they know each other, and  what can we learn about them?&lt;/p&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1950-Wilde-Bateman-Postcard-original.png
" alt="" title="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;1950 Postcard, Oakland CA to Champaign, IL&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On August 3, 1950, Mrs Wilde mailed a postcard from Oakland, California, to Mrs Agnes Bateman and daughter at 406 East Healey, Champaign, Illinois. The message read:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
Dear Folks: Arrived all O.K. Having a nice visit, we are going up in the mountains this coming Friday. It is cold here this morning but nice 
[With? so?] one to both of you.
[Signed] Mrs Wilde&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote1"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote1" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;The image of the photograph appears in a slide show at the   &lt;a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/AtticDiscoveries08?ref=simple-shop-header-name&amp;listing_id=537075414" target="_blank"&gt;Antique and Vintage Postcards&lt;/a&gt; shop at etsy.com and is used with the permission of the shop owner.&lt;/span&gt; 
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Who were these people, how did they know each other, and  what can we learn about them? &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At first glance, this just looked like a card from one neighbor on vacation to another neighbor. The Wildes and the Batemans both lived on East Healey Avenue in Champaign. But there turned out to be a story behind each side. Let's start with Mrs Wilde.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Wildes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Minda M (Palmer) Wilde was born January 20, 1890, in Vincent, Washington County, Ohio, the younger of two known daughters of Austin H Palmer and Margaret Breckenridge. Minda had an older sister named Elma, born in 1880. Minda and Fred L Wilde were wed on December 3, 1911, in St Peter's German Evangelical Church in Champaign. They never had children.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Wildes were at 503 East Healey the year after their marriage and until at least 1960, but Fred's work as a construction engineer for a bridge company took him away from home at times. In 1918, when he registered for the draft he was working on a project for the Cleveland Construction Company at Camp Perry Proving Ground, Port Clinton, Ohio. The 1930 census finds them in Calumet City, Illinois, and in 1935 they were in Hammond, Indiana. But they kept returning to their home on East Healey.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So what was Minda doing in Oakland, California, in August 1950? Well, she had lost her husband earlier that year&amp;ndash;Fred died in February 1950 at the age of 64. And Minda's sister Elma, also widowed, had relocated to Oakland by 1940 to be with her daughter and son-in-law, Gladys and Gilbert Hohmann. So it would have been natural for Minda, after suffering such a loss, to take the opportunity to visit her sister and her family. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Minda Wilde once again returned to Champaign though, and is found in the city directory there in 1957 and 1960. She died March 20, 1970, and was buried with her husband in Woodlawn Cemetery, Urbana, Illinois.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As a side point, I found a tree at ancestry.com that included her father, Austin Palmer, and started clicking, and clicking, and clicking. Most of his ancestors are old New England families and eventually I got back to a Thomas Roberts, born about 1600 in England, who settled in Dover, New Hampshire. I have that man in the notes on my wife's ancestry as well so it seems likely that Minda (Palmer) Wilde was a very distant relative of my wife. Trying to figure out for sure has sidetracked me from this article for the better part of a day and I'm nowhere near proving it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Batemans&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Batemans had a different story to tell. Agnes Bateman was born August 15, 1903. She and her brother George were adopted by John W and Mary Lodema (Goodell) Bateman between 1910 and 1920, while the Batemans were still farming in Blue Ridge Township, Platt County, Illinois. John gave up farming in 1924 and moved to Champaign where he worked as a furniture salesman. They lived first on East Armory Avenue, but moved to 406 East Healey in 1936. John died there in 1938 and Mary in 1949. They are both buried in Mansfield Cemetery, Platt County. Like the Wildes, John and Mary Bateman had no children of their own.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The postcard, we'll remember, was addressed to "Mrs Agnes Bateman and daughter." Agnes' daughter, Mary Ann Bateman, was born in 1930 presumably in Champaign, but her obituary (as Mary Ann Speck in 2018) said this about her:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class="left_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/Gallatin-to-Platt.png" alt="Google maps from Gallatin to Platt, Illinois" title="" width="91" height="320"&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
"She was born in a two-room log cabin in Gallatin County, Ill., 87 years ago. She and her brother endured the premature death of their father, and an eventual adoption required by their mother’s diagnoses with Typhoid Fever. Luckily, both she and her brother were adopted by loving parents, John and Mary Bateman."
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This looked to me like a family story that became mixed up between generations. Instead of Mary Ann being the adoptee, the account was most likely referring to Mary Ann's mother Agnes and her brother George. Agnes' Social Security application said she had been born in Bowlesville Township. George's stillborn daughter Lucille's death record in 1928 said George was born in Junction and his obituary said he was born in Equality. All these are locations in Gallatin County. So it was likely that Agnes and George's father had died young and their mother fell sick with typhoid. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Could we find their birth parents?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Dobbs Family of Gallatin County, Illinois&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At this point in the article we enter the realm of "maybe." There happens to be a Sarah Dobbs, age 25 but widowed, on the 1910 Census of Equality, Gallatin County, with two young children: Agnes, age 6, and George, age 3. Those ages match what we know about Agnes and George Bateman. And there happens to be a William Dobbs, born in January 1876, who died at his home near Junction, Gallatin County, September 20, 1909, and is buried in Pisgah Cemetery. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Was William Dobbs the husband of the widowed Sarah Dobbs? Were they the parents of Agnes and George? I can't say for sure. And what happened to Sarah Dobbs, did she die of typhoid or recover? Did she remarry? I didn't find any record of her after the 1910 Census. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So we will leave it there. We know a little more now about the Wildes and the Batemans, but we don't know if the Batemans were Dobbses by birth. I am waiting for the Shawneetown (Gallatin Co) Library to respond to a request for more information about the death of William Dobbs, and if I hear anything I will update this post.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Updated December 24, 2021&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have heard from the Shawneetown Library. The only microfilms they had with obituaries for that time period were in &lt;em&gt;The News Gleaner&lt;/em&gt;, Shawneetown. They did not find anything on William Dobbs. &lt;/p&gt;</content><category term="misc"></category><category term="California"></category><category term="Illinois"></category><category term="Wilde"></category><category term="Bateman"></category><category term="postal-covers"></category></entry><entry><title>Catherine Timony, San Rafael, California</title><link href="./catherine-timony-san-rafael-california.html" rel="alternate"></link><published>2019-09-04T00:00:00-04:00</published><updated>2021-08-07T00:00:00-04:00</updated><author><name>Ed Hamilton</name></author><id>tag:None,2019-09-04:./catherine-timony-san-rafael-california.html</id><summary type="html">&lt;div class="left_image"&gt;&lt;a href="../articles/catherine-timony-san-rafael-california.html"&gt;   &lt;img src="../images/ClifdenGalway.jpg"  title="Clifden, Galway, view from D'Arcy Monument" width="75" height ="60"&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 1937 Miss Katie Timoney of 654 Lincoln Avenue, San Rafael, California, received a letter from Ballyconneely, County Galway, Ireland. Did this correspondence have anything to do with her family's county of origin in Ireland?&lt;/p&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;div class="left_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/ClifdenGalway.jpg" alt=""  /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Clifden, Galway, view&lt;br&gt; from D'Arcy Monument&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 1937 Miss Katie Timoney of 654 Lincoln Avenue, San Rafael, California, received a letter from Ballyconneely, County Galway, Ireland. Did this correspondence have anything to do with her family's county of origin in Ireland?&lt;label class="inline-toggle linenote-number" for="linenote2"&gt;(footnote)&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input class="inline-toggle" id="linenote2" type="checkbox" /&gt;&lt;span class="linenote"&gt;The envelope to Kate Timoney was once at the &lt;a href="http://www.postalhistory.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Jim Forte Postal History&lt;/a&gt; but has been sold. I am not connected with the site.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;On the 1930 Census of San Rafael, I found a Catherine F Timony living with her widowed mother Mary at that address. Catherine was 40 and was born in California. Her mother, age 75, was born in Ireland. Working back through the censuses, in 1900 Kate was with her father Anthony, age 49, and Mary, 49, in San Rafael. Anthony had been born in Ireland as well. It seems that Catherine was Mary and Anthony's only child. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anthony and Mary Maddock were married on January 18, 1881, in Marin County. In 1910, Mary said she had been married twice, and had four children of whom only two were alive.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Besides this basic information, I found Catherine Timony re-entering the United States on August 3, 1934, aboard the SS President Harding. The passenger manifest said the ship had left Cork on July 27. Had Catherine struck up a friendship in Ireland, and was that person the source of the correspondence? Or was the letter from her mother's family? Or her father's?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At this point I had come to a dead end, so I decided to just Google "anthony timony san rafael" to see what showed up. It turns out that a number of local California papers have been digitized and are on line at the &lt;a  href="https://cdnc.ucr.edu/" target="_blank"&gt;California Digital Newspaper Collection&lt;/a&gt;, at the University of California, Riverside, website.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There were a lot of hits for Anthony Timony and his wife, but the one that helped me the most was an obituary for John D'Arcy Connolly, brother of Mrs Anthony Timony. This told me that Mary Timony's maiden name was not Maddock, but Connolly. I also now had someone else to search for, namely John Connolly. As a bonus, he had an unusual middle name. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Googling 'John D'Arcy Connolly' finished it off. He served as the US consul to New Zealand for some time, and there was a big writeup on him in the History of Sonoma County, at GoogleBooks. It began with: &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;"The subject of this sketch, John D'Arcy Connolly ... was born in 1854 near the town of Clifden, County Galway, Ireland, his father's name being Daniel Connolly and his mother's maiden name Mary D'Arcy."&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few sentences later it mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;"Early in 1875 he joined his widowed sister, Mrs John Maddocks, near San Rafael, Marin County."&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Clifden, Galway, is 9.4 km from Ballyconneely, according to Google Maps, so it is probably safe to say that Kate Timony's 1937 letter came from one of her mother's family in Ireland. She might have been visiting them in 1934. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Maddock children&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As we said, Mary had been married previously, to Thomas Maddock. On the 1880 census Mary, widowed, is living in San Rafael with her daughter Eleanor, 7, born in New York, and daughter Mary A, 5, born in California. Eleanor is mentioned in a news clipping in 1892, but after that I lost track of her. Mary may be the Mary A Maddock who died in California in 1917, age 44. There is a headstone in the Timony family plot that is just inscribed "Mary." &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If Mary (Connolly) Maddock Timony's 1910 Census information is correct, saying that she had 4 children but only 2 were still living, then possibly Eleanor had died before 1910. But I found no record of her death. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anthony Timony&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I didn't have much more to go on for Anthony Timony's family either, until I found another news clipping at the site I mentioned above. On May 8, 1913, the &lt;i&gt;Marin Journal&lt;/i&gt; published a remembrance of Martin Jordan, a cousin of Anthony's, who had died a few days earlier. It said Martin was only 27 when he died and had just arrived in the United States three weeks earlier. I found Martin's obituary, which said in part:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;
Jordan-In this city, May 2, Martin, beloved son of Mr. and Mrs. M Jordan and cousin of Anthony Timony of San Rafael, a native of County Mayo, Ireland, aged 27 years.
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class="center_image"&gt;
&lt;img src="../images/1913-MartinJordanObit.png" alt="" /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;1913 Martin Jordan Obituary&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;as well as his Ellis Island record a few weeks before his death, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;Left Queenstown April 3, Arrived April 9, 1913, New York, aboard the SS Olympic&lt;br&gt;
Martin Jordan, 26, farm laborer, last residence Lahardane, Ireland, born in Lahardane, nearest relative in Ireland: mother Margaret Jordan, of Cartron, Lahardane, Co Mayo, destination: friend Michael Loftus, 6 Summer St, San Francisco.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Martin is in his mother's household in 1901, house 4 in Cartron (Addergoole, Mayo).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There were three Martin Jordans born in Mayo in the mid-1880's, but the only one with a mother Margaret was born June 22, 1886, in Derryhillagh Townland, son of Anthony Jordan, a farmer of Derryhillagh,  and Margaret Jordan, formerly Timony.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;(I know Martin's obituary said his father's first name started with "M", but those things happen. I think he would know his own mother's first name, which he said was Margaret on his passenger's manifest.)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Working backward, when Margaret Timony married Anthony Jordan on February 19, 1884, in the Catholic Chapel of Lahardane she said she was of Ballyduffy Townland and her father's name was John. Based on that, and on her age on the 1901 and 1911 censuses, this looks like Margaret's baptism record:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;May 2, 1857&lt;br&gt;
Addergoole, Diocese of Killala, County of Mayo&lt;br&gt;
Margaret, of John Timony and Cate Lynn. sponsors: Thomas Hoban and Bridget Hoban. [Ballyduffy scratched out] [Cartron added or also scratched out?]&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I didn't find a baptism record for Anthony Timony, father of Kate. There are a few Anthonys in the 1840's in Addergoole, including this one:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p class="centerblock"&gt;February 14, 1846&lt;br&gt;
Addergoole, Diocese of Killala, County of Mayo&lt;br&gt;

Anthony of Anthony Timony and Margaret Brogan, witnesses: John McAndrew? and Mary Lynn. Ballyduffy&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;but his might not have been recorded. If he was Martin's true first cousin, then Margaret's father, John Timony, would have been Anthony's father's brother. But putting all that together just from the parish registers would have been a lot of work. "Suffice it to say" that Anthony Timony is very likely from the area of Addergoole, Mayo, possibly Cartron or Ballyduffy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Anthony Timony died October 14, 1924, Mary on May 11, 1931, and their daughter Catherine on June 3, 1979. They are all buried in Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in San Rafael, California.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I seem to end up with a lot of "orphan" families. Mary and Anthony's only child Kate died single, and Mary and Thomas Maddock's two daughters also seem to have died childless. Maybe there is a relative out there somewhere wondering what happened to Mary Connolly or Anthony Timony.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;US Censuses.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;1901 and 1911 Census of Ireland, National Archives of Ireland.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Irish Civil Birth and Marriage Registers, irishgenealogy,ie.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Irish Catholic parish registers, National Library of Ireland. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;California Death Indexes, California County Marriages, California, San Francisco Area Funeral Home Records, all at familysearch.org&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;findagrave.com.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ellis Island records, libertyellisfoundation.org/.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;California Digital Newspaper Collection at https://cdnc.ucr.edu/.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Credits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The photograph of Clifden, Galway, came from the article &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifden" target="_blank"&gt;Clifden&lt;/a&gt; at wikipedia.org, and is in the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;</content><category term="misc"></category><category term="Galway"></category><category term="California"></category><category term="Timony"></category><category term="Mayo"></category><category term="Connolly"></category><category term="D'Arcy"></category><category term="postal covers"></category></entry></feed>