Grace Edwards (1904-1993) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 19) Theme: "Service"

Grace (Edwards) and Floyd McBride in their Service Station Coffee Shop
Moses Lake, Washington, 1940

A service station featured prominently in the life of one family member and her husband. Grace was my Grandma Della's youngest sister, born to Charles F. Edwards and Mary Jane "Mayme" (Wescott) Edwards on 19 November 1904 in Great Falls, Montana.

It is so disappointing that we cannot see additional views of the cafe in the above picture since there was apparently one feature that was at one time the talk of the town in Moses Lake. Here is Grace's nephew John Edwards' description, transcribed from his audio recording (see Resources below to find a link to listen to John tell it in his own voice):

"That little coffee shop and restaurant that my Aunt Grace and Uncle Floyd had in Moses Lake was an interesting place. . . .

When Grace and Floyd built that restaurant there, the state told her they had to have two bathrooms, they couldn’t have one. They had to have a men’s and a women’s. So what she had was two doors a ways apart, one was women’s and one was men’s. They both went into the same bathroom! It was the talk of the town! The state never caught on. They were pioneers in their day. That was true grit, if there ever was. 

I loved my Aunt Grace. She was my favorite aunt." 

Before returning to more of John's memories, we will visit Grace's life story that led to that service station in Moses Lake.

Grace's older sister Marion recalled in her memoirs that the family had quite a comfortable life in Great Falls, Montana, where Grace was born. Father Charles had good employment with the railroad and they had a nice home right across from Longfellow School. The merry-go-round that Charles built them in their back yard was well used by all the school children. Railway passes enabled regular visits to Mayme's family back in Wisconsin. Mayme, an excellent seamstress, ensured that they were always well dressed.

Grace Edwards 1906

Despite this comfort, when Grace was about 4 years old Charles decided to move his family to a  fruit farm 12 miles from Kalispell near Lake Blaine. Charles seemed to be forever on the move, looking for yet another opportunity, but never quite finding that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The 1910 American census finds young Grace, age 5 living with her family at Jocko, Flathead, Montana. Cayuse Prairie School was 3 miles away. By the time Grace started school, it was no longer a matter of simply crossing the street!

When freight rates made the fruit farm uneconomic, Charles went back to work for the Great Northern Railroad. A strike in 1914 left him unemployed, so he went to Canada to work for the CPR and then took out a homestead on some rather poor farmland. The 1921 Canadian census for the family at Miry Creek, Maple Creek, Saskatchewan includes 15 year-old Grace, a student. This was NOT a particularly luxurious life for the family.

Christmas 1921 at the Charles Edwards Saskatchewan Homestead
Grace is on the right, next to her mother Mayme

Within a few months of the above picture, their farm house burned to the ground, including paintings and sketches by Charles Russell, the Montana artist who had been a friend back in Great Falls. Charles gave up on his Saskatchewan homestead and moved back to work on the railroad in the United States.

Grace first married Clark Robbins and settled in Birmingham, Oakland, Michigan, where a 1925 City Directory has them listed at 616 Ann. This marriage was not destined to last; after her divorce from Clark, she married Floyd Marshall McBride on 8 June 1931 in Ferndale, Michigan. Floyd was listed as an insurance agent at the time of the 1930 U.S. census.

Grace was always beautifully turned out!

Grace's mother Mayme had died suddenly in 1926, leaving the family bereft. Her father Charles had received a railroad pension after losing a leg in a switching accident, enabling him to buy property in the area of Castle Rock, Washington. By the early 1930s, hearing of plans to build Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington, Charles had sold the Castle Rock property and built a service station near the dam site.

Charles and his son Everett operated that service station at the dam site until he sold that in about 1939 to help Grace and Floyd get established in Moses Lake, Washington with their own service station (pictured at the top of this story).

Grace and Floyd raised a family of two; Grace gave up the cafe to stay at home with her children. Their son says that when Floyd first opened his service station, he drove his car to Spokane and sold it to generate enough funds for an air compressor and other equipment for the new service station - and a bus ticket back to Moses Lake!

January 1947 - Family Gathering with Floyd and Grace standing center 

Grace's nephew John Edwards (smiling in the center of the above photo, seated at the table on his father's knee) recounts the events that occurred at the service station restaurant one very memorable December during his childhood. The following is a transcription from an audio recording made by John in  2019:

"I think it was the winter of ‘45, I’m not sure. All the winters - that area was extreme in its climate at that time. It was triple digits in the summer and it was below zero in the winter and blizzards and it was just a miserable place to live. It’s amazing that a jackrabbit could survive out there. But Grace and Floyd ran that little café. He had a little bulk plant back in behind there. . . .

It was winter and they were all gathered there celebrating, I guess, the upcoming Christmas and singing songs. My uncle Everett there, my Dad’s brother, he was D.O.A. That doesn’t mean dead on arrival; it means drunk on arrival. Which was not unusual for Everett or anybody else in those days, I guess. Every deal was done on a handshake and a drink. It was kind of interesting. As a little kid I didn’t realize that that was inappropriate. I would have been 5 years old.

I think it was the winter of ‘45. This blizzard had been blowing all night. There was hardly anybody coming through town at all. The snow was so deep everybody had chains on and then this one car had come over from Seattle all the way through the Snoqualmie Pass, in those days nothing like it is today, a little two-lane road that was paved in places only. Most of it was gravel. It was a horrible time getting through. We had this car that came through and stopped there at Grace’s café. It was a 1940 Plymouth business coupe. And a very polite young man got out of that and he was just beat and bedraggled. It had been a heck of a trip! His fenders were all beat up in the back from those chains. He came in just frozen. He had run out of money - and everything else. . . .

They were all gathered around in there. Everett had a collection of harmonicas; I think he probably had those the day he died, all colors, all different kinds of harmonicas. He was a genius on a harmonica. Oh, he could play good! Dad had his guitar. They were in there singing Christmas songs.

This gentleman came in all bedraggled and broke and didn’t know what he was going to do. They invited him in and Grace made him a sandwich of some kind and they all kept singing and Dad was playing his guitar and Everett the harmonica.

This little fellow said “I have a little tenor guitar out in my car. Let me go get it.” Dad said sure we’ll wait and he went out and came in with this little tenor guitar. . . . They struck up again and started singing.

And this gentleman started singing with them and, all of a sudden, they just all stopped singing. And it was Bing Crosby! They’d all heard him on the radio but they had never seen him before. They were just thrilled to death!

He was the guest of the evening. He was fed and I think they sang songs all night down there. I fell asleep over in a corner there somewhere, as a kid. . . .

In the morning Bing wanted to know if there was anyplace in town where he could maybe hawk his little 4 string guitar to get enough money to get on into Spokane - that’s where he lived. Chris the barber had a place down there on East Broadway. . . . He was the one who had the pawn business. And so Bing got on down there; they gave him a couple of bucks to get down there. They’d had a road grader come through and knocked some of the worst snow back where you could get going again.

Chris was so excited when he found out who he was! He wrote him a pawn ticket for it but he had one of the - Parker had just come out with the roller pens  to write with instead of  the regular fountain pen and it went down a lot nicer - and he had Bing sign his guitar and put the date on it and everything and he said this will always be here. He said, "If you can’t pick up your pawn ticket that’s fine. But I will have this guitar until the day I die. I’m not going to sell your guitar." . . .

I think he loaned Bing $20 which in those days was one heck of a lot of money, and that’s what he paid for the little 4 string guitar.

 Bing made it, I guess, on in to Spokane.  . . . But I think Chris had that guitar still when he died."

Grace (Edwards) McBride c1964

Grace's son recalls that the family lived for awhile at the service station in the part that had been the cafe. The McBrides built a new service station on the same location in the mid-1950s and eventually sold out to retire in 1973.

Grace and Floyd at the time of their 50th wedding anniversary party

Floyd died in Moses Lake, Washington in 1992 and Grace joined him the following year.

End note: 

In fairness, but not wanting to ruin the hilarious story of the deceptive bathroom doors recalled above by John Edwards, it should be reported that Grace's son recalls there actually being two bathrooms at one point but with the dividing wall not providing much privacy! Perhaps the authorities did catch Grace out in the end?

Resources:

• Edwards, John; Audio recording made in 2019 detailing some of his memories of his Aunt Grace's service station cafe, can be listened to in its entirety in the Memories section for Grace Edwards on the Familysearch.org website at: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/LCRN-S58
• Miller, Marion Frances Edwards; My Memories, personal memoir written for her family in January 1978 from her home at 5405 Union Street, Lexington, Michigan

Captain Richard Beers (1607-1675) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 18) Theme: "Where There's A Will"

My 10X great grandfather Richard Beers was born 1 May 1607 in Gravesend, Kent, England to John and Mary (Selby) Beers (sometimes spelled "Beeres" or "Beres").

Milton Chantry built c.1320 in Gravesend Kent
Image courtesy Agw19666
his file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

He emigrated from Gravesend to New England in 1635 with his orphan nephews, Anthony and James (sons of his brother James). They settled in Watertown, MA., where he remained for the rest of his life. Richard was made a freeman of Watertown in 1637, was a Selectman in the government there for 31 years and served as a Representative to the General Court for thirteen years. Clearly, he was a  respected man of influence in his community.

Richard was active in the military, taking part in the Pequot War of 1636; this was a trade war between the English Colonists on one side and the Pequot tribe and Dutch settlers on the other. Many years later, on 24 October 1665 he petitioned for some land to add to the 1 1/2 acres he had been given as support resulting from his participation in the War and was granted several hundred acres in response.

He married a woman named Elizabeth, generally believed to have been Elizabeth Furman (1615-1706). She had immigrated to Massachusetts Bay from Nayland, Suffolk, England with her parents in the Winthrop Fleet of 1630. Their oldest child Sarah Beers, my 9X great grandmother, was born in 1639, followed by others between 1642 and 1662.

In 1654, Richard was granted a license to keep an ordinary (inn) in Watertown, which he operated for the rest of his life. I always think that is a perfect occupation for a man named Beers!

Friendship between the colonists and the local Native Americans in early Plymouth Colony continued throughout much of Richard's life. Massasoit, Chief of the Wampanoags, was a friend and ally to the early colonists and is often credited with saving them from almost certain starvation when they first landed. All went well until after his death upon the succession in 1662 by his second son Metacom (who often went by his English name Philip).  Philip was less favorably inclined toward the colonists, probably for good reason. More and more English settlers continued to arrive and occupy traditional Wampanoag territory.  Bad treatment by some of the colonists and, in particular, the execution of three of Philip's warriors in response to their killing of John Sassomon, a Harvard-educated Native American convert to Puritanism, led to the eruption of all-out war in the latter half of 1675. The conflict, known as "King Philip's War", the "Great Narragansett War" or the  "First Indian War", was one of the worst ever waged on American soil.

Captain Richard Beers at age 68 surely knew the danger he would be facing when he left the safety and comfort of his inn to lead his men the 60 miles to Brookfield on 6 August 1675 in the early days of King Philip's War. He had the foresight to make his will the day he left, leaving his estate to wife Elizabeth and his 8 surviving children. As it turned out, Captain Richard Beers indeed had a short military history in King Philip's War and his will would, sadly, soon be put to use.

Yellow pins mark significant locations from Richard Beer's home in Watertown
through Brookfield and Springfield to the Beer's Ambush site at Northfield, Massachusetts

A detailed description of the campaign can be found in Soldiers of King Philip's War. Captain Beers and his men had marched some 35 miles to Springfield by 15 August; there they were joined by others including the Connecticut Indians and spent several days searching the area unsuccessfully for the enemy. They returned to Brookfield where there was a council meeting of leaders to determine the course of action. The idea was to disarm Philip's men at their fort on the west side of the river, but by the time they got there, no one was to be found. In hot pursuit, Beers and his group came upon the enemy unexpectedly and a skirmish at Sugar Loaf Hill left several men dead. Once again, the enemy escaped. Meanwhile on 1 September Philip's men had attacked Northfield, burning houses and killing several of the residents there. Unaware of these developments, Beers arrived near Northfield on the evening of 3 September with about 3 dozen mounted men and an ox team bearing stores and ammunition for the protection of Northfield. Early the next morning Captain Beers and his 36 men proceeded into Northfield but were ambushed by 150 enemy fighters under the direction of Monoco, the Nashaway sachem. Fighting went on for some time but eventually Beers and his men were backed into a ravine south of a hill that later became known as "Beer's Hill" since it was there that Captain Beers and nineteen of his soldiers were killed.

Public Domain Image
From Findagrave.com website for Richard Beers

Richard Beers was buried along with the men who fell with him at the Beer's Ambush Gravesite in Northfield, Hampshire, MA.

Some Resources:

Find a Grave Memorial 39677250 for Richard Beers located at Find a Grave.

Bodge, George M., Soldiers in King Philip's War 1675-1677, Boston: Printed for the Author, 1891, available online at Internet Archive.

Van Wagenen, Mrs. Avis Stearns, Genealogy and Memoirs of Isaac Stearns and his Descendants, Syracuse, N.Y.: Courier Printing Co., 1901, available online at Internet Archive, p.26

Ingvald Theodore Anderson (1893-1958) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 17) Theme: "Land"

Ingvald (sometimes spelled "Ingwald" as it was pronounced) was my maternal grandfather. He was born 3 January 1893 on the family farm west of Grafton, North Dakota to Andrew and Jorgena (Torkelson) Anderson and baptized at the South Trinity Lutheran Church at Grafton on 31 March of that year. The new state of North Dakota had just been established in 1889 but no civil birth records can reliably be found until 1899; thankfully, the Lutheran church in America had a strong tradition of maintaining its own records, a practice that had long been established in Norway.

Birth/baptism record for Ingvald - first entry at the top of the page

He had five older siblings, plus a sixth who had died at the age of 3 in 1885. Another brother Arnold was born the year after Ingvald; tragically, this younger brother also died very young. Some time after the birth of his youngest sister Gladys in 1903, his mother Jorgena's mental health declined to the point where she was admitted into an institution in Yankton, South Dakota. Shortly thereafter, Ingvald's father moved his family to a ranch in South Dakota, perhaps to be closer. With the family story being that she had died, it isn't clear that the children ever actually visited her.  His mother basically disappeared from his life when Ingvald was about 12.

Andrew and Jorgina Anderson family c.1904; Ingvald is they young boy on the far right

The only incident we know from Ingvald's youth is described by his son Bob Anderson:

In 1905, Ingvald met with a near-fatal accident when a friend's shotgun accidentally discharged, the full blast catching him in the left shoulder just above the lung.  He almost bled to death before a doctor reached him, and lay close to death for many days following.  The left arm and hand were  to remain permanently stunted, though not of too great a hindrance to work.  Fifty years later, suffering from neck and shoulder pains, he thought it might be the old wound.  X-rays revealed many shotgun pellets lodged in bone, muscle and skin in the shoulder and neck.

Ingvald in back row centre (see arrow) at Business College, 1909

A few years after the move to South Dakota, Andrew sold out the ranch and bought a hardware and implement business in Haynes, North Dakota.  Ingvald clerked there as a youth. It seemed for awhile as if Ingvald planned to join his father with a career in business but the land seemed to call out to him.

Canada had been encouraging farmers to take up land in its western prairies. For a $10 registration fee, qualified individuals could file at a Dominion Land Office for a selected  "homestead" of 160 acres (1/4 section) of land. Certain requirements to build and reside on the land and to cultivate it had to be met in order to have the land title transferred into the name of the homesteader; this was called "proving up" the land. One of the requirements for obtaining title was that the homesteader be a British subject. A second adjacent quarter-section could be obtained by a process called "pre-emption". Uncle Bob describes Ingvald's reaction to this opportunity:

By the time Ingvald and brother Clarence were of age, arable land in the American West had just about all been settled and a large part of the most accessible acreage of the Saskatchewan prairies had also been settled.  Areas such as the Lancer-Abbey region -- still with no rail service closer than Swift Current -- were still available.  To this area in 1909 came Clarence (age 19) and Ingvald (age 17) and their friend Hans Berg (age 22).  They filed on homesteads on the "flat" between Abbey and the South Saskatchewan River.  Ingvald's homestead quarter was SE6-22-20-W3M.  He had to stretch his age to get it, 18 being minimum age to qualify for a homestead.  They came with horse teams and wagons which held their few belongings all the way from Park River, North Dakota. They journeyed through eastern Montana and north into Western Saskatchewan -- a treeless stretch of prairie.  They mentioned having to pull ranchers' fence posts for fuel to cook with and for heat at their night camps. Clarence and Ingvald both felt extremely fortunate in getting a homestead with a creek running through it (Spring Creek).

Ingvald (right) probably about 1906

On 9 March 1911, Ingvald made application for his homestead; he had proved up his land and received title on 23 July 1914. To fulfill the requirement that he be a British subject, Ingvald became a naturalized Canadian citizen in June of 1914.

Although his original homestead application was for the SE quarter, he eventually built his home on the SW quarter of Section 6.

Ingvald's Homestead Grant (top line) in the Dominion Lands Records

When World War I broke out in the Fall of 1914.  Ingvald went to enlist, but was turned down when the medical examiner told him he looked as though he had already been through the war.  (This was no doubt because of the shotgun accident he had had as a boy.)

Ingvald as a young homesteader

.


It was likely in the Fall of 1917 that Ingvald first met Idella Edwards when she started teaching at nearby Wayne Valley School. The two were married in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in late 1919. Children started arriving a year later with the birth of my Uncle Bob, followed by his sisters Kathryn, Eunice, Elinor (my mother), then John "Jack", and finally Helen.

Ingvald back row, second from left
Front row: daughters Elinor, Eunice, Kathryn, probably about 1929

With Della pregnant as winter approached in 1927, the family moved to be near Della's father Charles Edwards in Everett, Washington. This is where younger son Jack was born in December of  1927. While there, Ingvald worked in the lumber industry. But when spring arrived, he made his way back to his Saskatchewan land.

Ingvald on the left, in Washington State about 1927

The Anderson family lived in an unpainted shack made up of a main part that was 12 X 16 feet with a north lean-to 10 X 16 and an east lean-to 6 X 12 feet, the latter containing bunk beds.  There was a plank cribbed cellar under the north lean-to for vegetable storage and cooling milk.  In the winter, snow was melted in a wooden barrel for household use.

The land that Ingvald had homesteaded was to prove challenging over the years, no more so than during the "Dirty Thirties" of the depression and drought. This was the time that my mother and her siblings were growing up; the children seemed to have taken things in stride and had a happy childhood. However, for Ingvald and Della, things must have been very difficult. Trying to feed and clothe this growing family with the economic hardships of the time must have been a challenge.

Uncle Bob described the situation in a story he wrote in 1986 about how local governments tried to help reduce pest problems by declaring a bounty on gophers and rabbits:

In those desperate Prairie years of the early 1930s many things came together to drive farm families into deep poverty. Grain and livestock prices sagged to all-time lows and continued drought resulted in crop failures and reduced herds and flocks. Weeds, grasshoppers and cutworms further thinned the stands of grain. Gophers ate their way in from field edges, gathering and storing grain. Jack rabbits roamed field and pasture, eating at feed stacks in winter.

Horsing Around with Family and Neighbours c1938

Dust was everywhere in the summers and the winters were bitterly cold. Uncle Bob described how the wood fires often burned down by midnight, leaving water in the tea kettle frozen atop the stove by morning. There was no coal to heat their small homestead shack. The prairies were not generally a good source for wood, but Ingvald and elder son Bob would make an annual trip to scavenge what they could, quite often for poplar, willow and black birch in the nearby Sandhills. The following is an account written by Uncle Bob in 1986:

I was down cleaning out the barn that late fall afternoon when the stranger in his shiny new car drove into our yard. Dad was at our wood pile. He had just started, with bucksaw and axe, to convert the huge pile of poles into stove-length pieces to use in the coming winter. 

The stranger stopped his car by the wood pile and got out. In moments I heard Dad's voice, loud and angry-sounding. I couldn't hear what was said, but it upset me just the same. I had never before heard Dad speak to a caller in this way. 

I watched as the stranger paced out the length and width of the pile of uncut poles. I thought I saw Dad hand him some money. The stranger wrote on a piece of paper, handed it to Dad, jumped into his car and left. I thought I'd better finish my job and let Dad cool down a little before I went to the wood pile to ask him who the stranger was.

Later, when Bob could see that Ingvald had calmed down, he learned that the stranger was a government man who had fined them for taking the wood. Bob still had  the receipt in 1986 when he wrote the story.

Received: the sum of six dollars. From I. Anderson. On account of: Dues for six cords fuel wood cut in trespass. Signed (officer's name) Department of Natural Resources. 

Ingvald was diagnosed with diabetes and suffered complications such as poor circulation in his legs and removal of a kidney. Daughter Helen reported that it aged him tremendously.

Della never loved the land the way Ingvald did. By the mid 1940s the family moved to Swift Current where she operated a boarding house. In the summers, Ingvald would return to farm his land in the Lancer area, eventually joined by son Bob. My memories of my grandfather are of a quiet gentle introverted man with a warm sense of humour.

Ingvald about 1955

My brother John and sister Sandy and I were staying with our grandparents at their farm in the summer of 1958 when Ingvald died very suddenly of a heart attack at the age of  65. Sandy had gone with him to deliver a load of grain to the local elevator when he collapsed in his seat. He died, not on his own land, but nevertheless while conducting his farming operations.

Some Resources:

• Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, Homesteading; located online at https://www.saskarchives.com/collections/land-records/history-and-background-administration-land-saskatchewan/homesteading
• Anderson, Robert W., various writings in possession of the author (many hand-written, some from articles printed in the Western Producer newspaper in the 1980s) 

George Garner Wescott (1836-1916) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 16) Theme: "Air"

Conjuring an ancestor's photo out of thin air - that's my latest genealogical superpower!

I've written about my great great grandfather George Garner Wescott a couple of times previously: once in relation to the 1890 Population Schedule for Union Veterans of the American Civil War and once regarding his wife Sarah Catherine Bullen and their family photo which was my "favourite photo", both written as part of the 2015 "52 Ancestors" project.

Here's the thing about George Garner Wescott: we in the extended family have not been able to locate a single photograph of him.

In desperation, many family members have added the Civil War photograph of a George Wescott in the hope that he is our man. I do not believe that to be the case. When I first located that photograph online for a Civil War site many many years ago, I am quite sure it was identified with a different middle initial (T.?) and different military unit to that of our George Garner Wescott. (Why didn't I record the source for this and more detail, you well might ask?) Secondly, George didn't enlist as "George" but under his middle name of "Garner". This created all sorts of problems when he and then his widow were making pension applications decades later. Unfortunately, I don't believe this handsome young man to be our George Garner Wescott, but one of the many other Wescotts who served in the Civil War.

George Wescott - probably NOT George Garner Wescott

George lived until 1916, but he does not appear in the following Wescott family photograph taken at his home about 1901. As his wife Sarah does not appear in it either, perhaps they were just intending to record their descendants in this image.

George's children with their families - my grandmother Idella Edwards is far left
in front of her mother Mary Jane Wescott Edwards (holding baby Marion Edwards)
Neither George G. nor Sarah appear in this photograph

In 2015 my favourite photo as part of the "52 Ancestors" project was the one from 1895, shown below.

Wescott Family 1895

 I have looked at this picture so often over the years because the posing in front of the Wescott home intrigues me. We have the 8 children of George and Sarah posed more formally on chairs and standing in the foreground and then standing further back on the right side of the picture is Sarah (the middle woman) surrounded by some of the daughters-in-law and grandchildren. I speculated at the time that George's absence could perhaps be explained if he was an amateur photographer who took the picture. I no longer believe that to have been the case.

While recently going through some photographs that had belonged to my Uncle Bob, I took an extra minute to read what was written on the reverse of his copy of this 1895 picture. I do not know who had identified the people in the picture, but whoever it was had made the notation:  "Captain George Wescott, seated on step far left". SAY WHAT???? Grabbing my magnifying glass, I examined the picture more closely and there he was, almost off the picture at the far left in the background. Trouble is: to the best of my knowledge, George was never a "Captain". I checked my database to see if perhaps there was another George Wescott who might have been a Captain and who might be closely enough related to make an appearance in this immediate family photograph; I could find none. Perhaps the person who identified him as a Captain was giving him an honorific title for his service in the Civil War. I immediately put my theory out to other members of the extended family. No one else had ever noticed the man on the left; in some copies of the photograph, he had been cropped right out of the picture.

One theory had been put forward by a descendant and keen family historian Frank Wicker who had noticed this person. His suggestion was that perhaps he was George Bernard Wescott, a man who indeed had a very distinguished military history. The problem with that idea is that George Bernard was born in 1887 and would have been just a child at the time of this picture. Although the image is not clear, the man in the photograph (see enlarged segment below) is almost certainly not a child!

Enlarged segment of 1895 photo showing the man seated on far left behind George and Sarah's adult children

(Scroll  back up to the full image and you will see him almost falling off the left side of the picture.)

George's description from his Civil War pension file indicates that when he signed up he was 5 feet 5 inches tall, blue eyed, black haired. In the early 1890s his pension application and medical report indicated he weighed just 133 pounds and was suffering from rheumatism and kidney trouble. At the time of the 1895 photograph, he would have been 59 years old. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I see a strong similarity between the mystery man on the left and the son appearing in the above picture.

Occam's Razor would have us pick the simplest solution to the puzzle. If one person who SHOULD be in the photograph is otherwise missing, this is most likely that person. I can see how this ailing veteran might wish to be seated for a lengthy photography session. He most likely would not want to be standing with the women and children to the one side and was probably quite happy to find a step to rest on while still being part of the scene. It's just too bad that he almost completely disappears.

George Garner Wescott, I think we've finally found a photo of you!

(Comments are welcome. But I will say this before someone else does: Far from having a superpower of conjuring up a picture out of thin air, one might well say I spent years being just plain unobservant.)

Isaac Stearns (c1600-1671) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 15) Theme: "Fire"

So many family researchers hit brick walls when records they seek were burned in some long-ago fire. Irish records in the Dublin courthouse and the 1890 American census are among the best known losses, but any time only one copy of a record is in existence, it is in peril of this fate. Fortunately for our family, there was a solution for the court records lost to a fire in the matter of the estate of my 10X great grandfather Isaac Stearns (sometimes spelled Sterns or Stearnes).

Isaac was born between 1597 and 1600 at either Nayland or nearby Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, England to William and Emma (Ramsford) Stearnes. No birth or baptism records have yet been located (not because there was a fire, at least not so far as we know).

Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, England
Photo by Elinor Bardahl 1998

St. Mary's Church, Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk 1998

Isaac was a tailor. Clothing in the 17th century was much more elaborate than a simple suit might be today. (For examples of the styles that Isaac might have been expected to make, check out this link.) However, Puritan dress tended to be much less elaborate and perhaps Isaac's clientele were mainly Puritan sympathizers.

Isaac married Mary Barker 20 May 1622 in St. Mary's Church at Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk. Four children were born to them in Suffolk during the 1620s. The family were Puritans who took part in the Great Migration from England to the Massachuetts Bay Colony in the summer of 1630. Eleven ships, including the Arabella, made up the Winthrop Fleet carrying between 700 - 1000 passengers to America.

Included in the list of the passengers on the Arabella, embarking from Yarmouth on 8 April 1630 and arriving Salem 12 June 1630 were the following:
Stearns, Isaac of Stoke Nayland, Suffolk to Watertown
Stearns, Mrs. Mary Barker
Stearns, John, son
Stearns, Abigail, daughter
Stearns, Elizabeth, daughter
Stearns, Hannah, daughter

Replica of the Arabella Produced in 1930 for the 300th anniversary of Salem

Public Domain Image

Isaac was in Watertown (Boston area) in 1630 and was admitted as a freeman there on 18 May 1631.  He served as Selectman for several years and was on the first jury trial for a civil case in New England; this pertained to an assault by a man named Endicott on Thomas Dexter in May 1631. Isaac was a surveyor of highways, but on 4 December 1638, he and John Page were fined 5 shillings at the Boston Court for "turning the way about" (changing the highway). No further information could be found but one might assume they had changed it in such a way as to perhaps benefit themselves at the expense of some neighbours!

In 1647, he and Mr. Biscoe were appointed  to determine how a bridge over the Charles River should be built and to arrange workmen for its construction. This was probably the first bridge over the Charles at Watertown.

Isaac and Mary may have been Puritans, but it seems Mary, at least, did not always toe the line when it came to compulsory church attendance. On 23 May 1665 "Goodwife Stearns Senior" was one of several Watertown residents who were called to answer at a town meeting for not "attending their seats in the meetinghouse appointed them by the town." (It is not clear whether they did not attend church  at all or simply chose to sit in seats other than those assigned to them.)

One might gather from his public service that Isaac was a reasonably well-educated man for his times; he signed his own will dated 14 June 1671. He must have known his days were numbered: he died just 5 days later at the age of 71.

In his will proved in October 1671 he bequeathed to his wife Mary his entire rather large estate during her widowhood.  Prior to his death he had already made fairly generous gifts to each of his seven children but provided that, after Mary died or remarried, additional gifts would go to his children and grandchildren as more particularly set out in his will.

The inventory of his large estate was first taken on 28 June 1671 and filed with the court in Cambridge. It was valued at 524 pounds, 4 shillings, and was a lengthy list that included 14 parcels of land, livestock, farming equipment, provisions and household goods.

Unfortunate timing! The first county courthouse in Cambridge was burned in a fire in 1671 (presumably some time between the end of June and October) with all the court records from 1663-1671, including Isaac's estate inventory. Fortunately, all was not lost. A copy had been kept by the sons Samuel and Isaac (my 9th great grandfather) who were their father's executors. They were able to use their retained copy to complete the probate of their father's estate as indicated in the following excerpt from the court records (taken from p.20 Van Wagenen - see below in Some Resources).

 That this is a true coppie of ye orriginall attested in Oct., 1671, and yn put upon Record, and burned in ye fireing of ye court house, is sworn by Isaac Sternes and Samuel Sternes, I, 8, 72, in open court, at Cambridge.

If only duplicate copies could be located for other genealogical records lost to fire over the years!

Some Resources:

• Samuel Adams Drake, History of Middlesex County, Massachuesetts: Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City & Town in the County, Vol. II. Boston: Estes and Laurit Publishers, 1880, p.556 located online at books.google.ca
• Wikipedia Article for Isaac Stearns located at this website.
• James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Volume IV Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1862 accessed online at Internet Archive
• Genealogy of Isaac Sterns and his Descendants accessed online 10 Sept 2016 at https://archive.org/stream/genealogymemoirs00vanw/genealogymemoirs00vanw_djvu.txt:
• New England, The Great Migration and The Great Migration Begins, 1620-1635. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
• Robert Charles Anderson, The Winthrop Fleet: Massachusetts Bay Company Immigrants to New England 1629-1630, Boston: The New England Historic Genealogical Society 2012.
• Avis Stearns Van Wagenen, Genealogy and Memoirs of Isaac Sterns and His Descendants, Syracuse, N.Y.: Courier Printing Co., 1901.