Granny Whetstone's Missing! (And I can't find her.)

 

Yes, dear Granny Whetstone, Mom's own kind and gentle grandmother, is missing. There she is above with her husband Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939). No, she didn't wander off just now. She's been gone since right around the time I was born. And yes, she's missing from the records. Oh, sure, she's right there in the census records from 1870 with her House family in West Virginia all the way through the 1930 census in Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland. She's there except for a birth certificate but that's to be expected because it's West Virginia in 1865, right after the Civil War and West Virginia is a brand new state, so no birth record for her... and by way of extension, for me. By the way, she was born April 5th and the war ended April 9th. I wonder if there ever was a birth certificate for her?

But I can't complain too much (even though you know I'm going to) because of one census return for Granny and her family. Here it is and you'll notice that she and her husband are there, as well as Mom - Virginia - and her parents, Emma and Cambria Williams. And look, they are all named and the relationships are named too! WOW! Jackpot! Three generations in one record.

Isn't this cool?!

 

Alright, that's nice but what I really want is Granny Whetstone's death certificate. I have the rest of my great grandparents death certificates and I need hers too. So I emailed my guy who knows his way around the Maryland State Archives and off he went to get her death certificate as well as that of her husband, Joe. When I received his package in the mail there was no death certificate for Granny. WHA?? I couldn't believe it. So I went on the Maryland State Archive myself and tried to find her in the index. Got nothin'.

 

Then I noticed a discrepancy in her death year. Her tombstone says she died in 1945. Just look at this photo of it and see for yourself.

 

 

 

 

Mom's tree and it says that she died in January of 1946. Now I'm really confused because if I think about it, maybe that's not right either. Mom remembers - and I asked her about this many times over the years - that after she had me in October of 1946, she spoke with Granny on the phone and Granny said, When are you going to bring that baby over so I can see her? So Mom did, and Granny saw me, and presumably I saw her too. It was winter, Mom said, which in Western Maryland can come anytime really, but usually from November and until about April. That would make it late 1946 and into 1947. And Mom remembers that she took me to Granny's home of many years, on Midlothian Road in Frostburg. So maybe Granny Whetstone passed in January of 1947.

 

Grand pop Whetstone had passed on August 15, 1939, and Mom remembers it well. She and Dad were to get married that day but cancelled until the 21st because Joe died then. Granny continued to live in their home until she passed, as Mom has said.

 

So what's with the missing death certificate? And what's with the multiple death years? I'm at a loss.

 



Mom, Virginia Williams, on the left and her sister, Dot, on the right Flanking their mother Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams in the light dress and Granny Kate, in the dark dress.
Katherine (or Catherine depending on the record) Elizabeth (House) Whetstone.
Photo, mid 1930s.

 

 

I seriously needed Granny Whetstone's death certificate because I'm working on Mom's application to the NSDAR. The DAR for short, or Daughters of the American Revolution, requires exact and accurate documentation in the preparation of your application. Death certificates are a boon to the applicant because it ordinarily includes birth and death dates as well as the names of both parents and therefore proved the vitals of that person as well as provide a link back to the previous generation.

 

But my Maryland State Archive guy sent a note with the things he did find stating in blatant terms, "She did not die in Maryland."

 

I was in shock. Shocked and maybe a little depressed at how much more work this was going to make for me. Now what the heck was I going to do? I have no vital records for Granny Whetstone. She's just plain missing.

 

More in the next post.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/09/granny-whetstones-missing-and-i-cant.html

My photo file tells a story

While looking at my photo files, discovered two big fat files that hadn't yet been processed. I'm a little miffed that I've overlooked these treasures when I would have bet that all the photos had been properly processed by photo editing, sorting and naming, with details put in labels within the file. But I'm also thrilled that there are more delicious pictures. So off I went to start that task and that's gonna take time. That's OK because I just love working with old family photos.

What I realized when looking through the yet to be sorted files as well as the older sorted photos is that they tell the story of photography in our family as well as photography in general and in the small Western Maryland world in which the taking of photos in our family operated. So I'd like to share with you what I observed, here in this post.

The oldest photos come from the mid 1800s, about 1850 or 1860 and on to about 1910-ish. They are formal portraits taken by professional photographers in their studios. There were a number of photographers operating in Western Maryland then. A couple in Cumberland, the largest town in the region, and two or three in Frostburg which is smaller and situated just west on the Old Pike or National Road, a major route west before the railroad came to the area. Let's start with a couple of those images.

The above was taken by a photographer named E. Gilbert Irwin and bound up in a book documenting the National Road about 1910 which Mom has in her collection. As far as I've been able to discover he did this project under the auspices of the management of the National Road.

The small plate in the rear of the book identifies him by name, and you can see that up top. The middle image shows the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania where the Maryland road work ends. As you can see, It looked bad for Maryland and the state of the road is pretty awful compared to how Pennsylvania took care of their portion of the road. That would have been a perfect shot to document the need for more Maryland funds to be allocated. The last image is included just because it's one of my favorites. Plus it was probably handy in demonstrating the general terrain which was farmland and forest. This image is often referred to as an example of the photographer's artistic eye, and indeed while this album had a practical use, it is a work of art, as well of history.

The real formal studio portraits are a treasure to us, and I bet you have your own grouping of these. Here are just a few. I love to look at what our ancestors are wearing. I'll put these in presumed order by date with the oldest first. They stop about 1913 with the formal wedding portrait of Dad's parents and they were married September 30, 1913.

Enoch Clise (1843 - 1896) in his Civil War uniform. He is not an old man here and died in 1896, which leaves a window of about 1865 to 1880-ish. Maybe.

They were married 19 April, 1878 and this is thought to be their wedding portrait.

Joseph E Whetstone 1816-1897.
He is quite old here so maybe about 1890?

 

 

His son, Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939) on the right, in his Frostburg Fire Department uniform. Date about 1890s, maybe.

Moretta Workman 1859-1946.
Maybe she's in her 20s here?

Moretta's husband, Gustav Zeller 1858 - 1925.
Wondering if these two images were their wedding portraits? If so then there would have been a couple photo. None of the relatives seem to have that. Too bad.

Their daughter and my paternal grandma, Helen Zeller Kelly 1894-1985. About 1900.

Wedding photos, 1913.

 

 When Grandma, above, married Grandpop, John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) these two photos of his family were also taken. That's he and his mother in the oval, and the whole Kelly bunch, with labels.

 

I like to examine all of the formal portraits we have and especially the backgrounds to see which were taken in the same studio. Those big backdrops are a good clue!

Just about the time Mom was born in 1918, the informal snapshots start to appear. These are wonderfully plentiful and their informality tells so much about the people in them. I'll just share a few for your enjoyment.

 

 

Mom with her parents, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897 - 1956) and Cambria Williams (1897 - 1960).

John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) with his children, about 1925.

Mom with a kitten.

Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939) who we saw in his fire department uniform, above. What a difference! This image tells a broader story of family as he and his wife Catherine Elizabeth (House) Whetstone (1865 - 1947) sit with some of their grandchildren, Mom in the big hair bow.

These pictures tell, I think, a fuller story, about the family and times. The frequency of the images and their abundance tell me that it was easy and relatively inexpensive for the family to take their own photos. They are, of course, less formal by stretches! The family would have chosen, as we all do, where and when the picture was to be made so it tells even more about them. Plus, and I really like this, it catches them in their every-day clothes. Candid's: gotta love them!

Mom with her camera, August 1942.



After this date, photos in our file multiply like rabbits. Mom has a camera and is obviously using it. I bet she got it for her birthday on July 29. I mean now that I think about it, if you have your own camera you are going to take pictures, for sure!

Do you remember your first camera? I sure do. And the thrill of going to the drug store to pick up the processed photos to see how they came out? I usually went with friends. Once you have your own camera, you are free to capture your personal world as you see it, and that makes all the difference to those of us interested in family history. We get to see the family as it saw itself, or at least as one member saw it.

Here are some images from Mom, as photo documentarian. I won't label them because I want you to look at the content of the images and se what they tell.

 

Yeah, it's all there in those pictures: all the family history of the most recent generations. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every generation going back just five or six had their own cameras with which to document family? Wouldn't that be a treasure?

And so I ask myself, what with all the new media, are we taking enough photos? I wonder if I am?


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-photo-file-tells-story.html

Stories Mom Told Me: Part 1, Pepper is a Whetstones thing

Mom has written up some memories and we've put them together in a book form, with a lot of photos, to make sharing easy. She wrote them years ago in those stenographer's notebooks that she took to libraries and court houses when she went to do genealogy research in years past. She was a good note taker and we've been able to piece together sources for almost every bit of information we looked at in her files. You see, she only did her genealogy for herself and never intended to share it, so sources were recorded on the fly just to help her find her way back to where she first saw a thing. But I digress.

When Mom had a memory of her life and was in a writing mood she'd grab one of those steno books and write it down on blank pages in the back. I noticed the steno books last spring on a visit to see Mom and she read me a couple of stories. I knew then that they should be shared. Over the last ten days I've posted them to this blog.

That done, I think I'll share some more stories Mom told me. You see I call Mom almost every morning and we do go on about family history! I keep notes on what she tells me in spiral notebooks. Now I have three fat ones brimming over with what Mom knows. Sometimes it's just a detail about our ancestors, a small event, or a note about what happened to whom and when. It's the kind of stuff that can easily get lost if a person doesn't write it down then and there.

So here goes, and in no particular order. I'll just work my way back through my "Conversations with Mom" notebooks in a first attempt to get it down in writing, or rather typing. Might be said that it's going to be just a wild basket of kittens!

Stories Mom Told Me: Part 1, Pepper loving Whetstones

I was standing in the kitchen here in our home in San Diego, California, on a cold and rainy winter day a while back. It was a soup or stew day, for sure. We love how a good soup makes the house smell like a home, don't you? When I first got married Mom gave me some tips about cooking and marriage. Men like meat. When you start any cooking that's not a cake, begin with sautéing onions and garlic because it makes the house smell wonderful. Over the years and through all of the vagaries of life, there has been one constant: every savory meal is likely to start with onions and garlic!

As my soup (or stew, I forget) got going and was into the seasoning stage about 45 minutes before it landed on the table, I grabbed for the pepper. Lots of pepper. Love it. I put pepper on everything. So does Mom. We love pepper. I've been criticized for adding too much of it to salads, roasts, and soups. Every beef dish turns into Steak au poivre! It just seems right.

Just as I made this observation, I reached out and grabbed for the phone: let's call Mom and find out about why we love pepper! She said immediately, "That's a Whetstone thing. My grandfather Whetstone put pepper on everything, and lots of it too. So did my Mama. We all love pepper."

What about the Kellys? Do they like pepper like that, I inquired about Dad's side of the family. I wanted to know this because my Grandma Kelly was a wonderful cook and an exceptional baker of sweets. Her wilted spring greens would have made a New York City chef weep! Sauté up some bacon to crispy, remove from the iron skillet (you know the ones, all black) add some vinegar and a dash of sugar swirl in the hot pan and let come to a small boil, then add the greens. The greens wilt immediately, but cover the skillet and take off the heat. The objective is to wilt not cook them, and that's a delicate matter. If overcooked those fresh spring greens can turn bitter and that's no good at all.

Nope, said Mom, pepper is a Whetstone thing. Even a cousin of mine through the Whetstone line says she loves pepper! I wonder how many Whetstone descendants are out there today grabbing for the pepper instead of the salt?

I wondered if there were health benefits associated with black pepper and sure enough, there are. You can see one write-up here and another one here. From the looks of it, pepper, and that's common black pepper that we usually have on the table or in a pepper grinder, is full of antioxidants, and promotes digestion and absorption. Piperine is a substance in it that is known to be a little powerhouse of an item that often works synergistically (especially with turmeric, which I'm willing to bet the Whetstones din not use) to enhance anti-inflammatory properties of other good nutritious foods.

Now I'm wondering if this use of pepper isn't adaptive and old Joseph E Whetstone (1816-1897) and even his father, Jacob Whetstone Junior (1776 - 1889) used pepper to protect from strange intestinal troubles out on the frontier of Western Maryland?  And as an added bonus, it kept arthritis and other inflammatory type ailments at bay? Pretty smart, those Whetstones!

Me on right with cousins, sons of Mom's sister: all pepper lovers.

Mom: possibly the biggest pepper lover of us all!

Mom's mother, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897 - 1956) with her brothers, pepper lovers, all!

 

Pepper lover:

Mom's grandfather Whetstone and her mother's father, Joseph H. Whetstone (1858 - 1939), on the right in his Frostburg Fire Department uniform. Recent news from the FFD historian indicates that his hat says "Assistant Chief."

Joseph H's father, Joseph E Whetstone (1816-1897.)

Another pepper lover? I'm willing to bet.

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/11/stories-mom-told-me-part-1-pepper-is.html

Stories from Mom: Part 5, Fall and Winter on Center Street

By Virginia Williams Kelly

Fall was always beautiful on Centre Street because we had many trees with lots of leaves and we were allowed to rake all those leaves from our big old maple and oak trees. We piled them in our yard and then jumped from our front porch into the leaves. Then it was time to burn them so we always put them into many small piles at the edge of the curb. Our parents would each take turns burning some of them. I don’t know of anyone who does not love the smell of leaves burning in the fall and to me that smell always says home and childhood.

Winter had joys of its own on Centre Street. We always built the biggest snow men had the hardest snow balls and even tried to make igloos. But the biggest thing of all happened when the city policeman closed off Loo Street at Broadway and let us enjoy it after a good snow storm. Every one for blocks and blocks came over to sleigh ride. Winters are not like they used to be because in those days we had very few cars and most did not drive when the snow got deep and I think snow plows were nonexistent in Frostburg in the 1920s.

School busses were not even invented when we went to Old Beall High School. I remember one particularly large snow fall when my sister Dorothy, Mary Middleton, Gladys Gunter, Olive Coleman and I all waded thru waist deep snow to school only to find that it was closed for the day. Of course, at that time we had no communication by radio to tell us to stay home. You just went at your own discretion at such times or you ask a friend if they were going and go with them.

 As you might imagine, it snows a lot in Frostburg so here are some winter photos.

 

That's my sister Dot on the left, then Dad and Mama, and me.

Dad and his son-in-law, Harold Conrad, Dot's husband, holding game.

Dad with his truck.

Another picture of Dad with his truck.

 

Mama's parents and my grandparents,

Joseph H. Whetstone 1858 - 1939, and Catherine Elizabeth House Whetstone 1865 - 1947.

You can read previous post of Mom's stories here:

Part 1: Those were the days my friend, we though they'd never end

Part 2: Center Street

Part 3: Summertime on Center Street

Part 4: Mushrooms!

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/11/stories-from-mom-part-6-fall-and-winter.html

This one's for you, Molly!

My niece, Molly has expressed an interest in some of the family photos posted here, and she and I were chatting about those early pictures of Mom. They are wonderful and so expressive of Mom's personality and we both love them and her:) So this post is for you, Molly! And anyone else who cares.

This is Mom's mother, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897 - 1956). Molly, she's your great grandmother. A very, very sweet woman.

 

Here's Emma with little Virginia. Love this picture!

That's Mom as a baby with her parents, Emma and Cambria "Camey" Williams (1897 - 1960).

I remember him as a big bear of a man whose arms would embrace me in a bear hug.

 

This is a cropped view of the above picture showing Mom and her mother and father better.

Look how cute she is!! Sitting out in a field.

This might have been taken at Mom's grand parent's home, the Whetstones, that's Joseph H. Whetstone (1858 - 1939) and Catherine Elizabeth "Kate" (House) Whetstone (1865 - 1947). Mom can show you where their "farm" used to be.

 

Mom with her "terrorist" uncles. Just look at them and you know that they're up to no good!

That's Mom on the right with her sister, Dorothy "Dot" (Williams) Conrad (1920 - 2007).

Mom and an unknown dog. We love animals, don't we?

This is Mom's all-time favorite picture of herself, with a kitten. For a very long time she "accused" me of having this photo, then one day I found it in one of her albums! Seriously, I kept telling her I didn't have it;)

Looks like this was taken on the same day as the photo of Mom with her uncles.

 

This one might have been taken on the same day too because Mom has that wonderful hair bow! There the grandkids are with their Whetstone grandparents.

 

Mom in the church choir, First row third from left. Her sister, Dot, is on the end and Mom's good friend Mary is between them.

 

Mom's high school photo, senior year. Ask her about her hair! Think she's still upset about it:)

 

 

Mom, on the left, with her mother Emma, her sister Dot, and her brother Camey, Cambria Williams Jr.

Hey Molly, you'll love this one: Mom on her 21st birthday! And you were there for her 95th!

 

Mom about 1945-ish, Easter Sunday, and sporting an impressive hat. Taken by Dad at the Castleman Bridge. Look at those legs!

Mom and Dad out with friends.

 

Mom fixes my hat on Easter Sunday, about 1950.

 We leave Frostburg Maryland for Cleveland Ohio. 1952.

 

Mom in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, after 1952. She's not too happy to be there.

 

That's my brother there so this is about 1955 or 56.

Mom and Dad in Ireland about 1986.

 

Mom in Wales.

 

So Molly, I have a ton more but this will do for now:) Here's a hug (   ).

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/10/this-ones-for-you-molly.html