A passing of wives

     

Lucinda Raymond Fensom (1848-1913) of York, Ontario, Canada

Carol's great-grandmother

~

The unexpected passing away this week of Carol Lee Dunn (1942-2024) has sent my mind reeling. I haven't seen Carol in many years, but still, the news of her death wasn't easy. I've been lucky in a way though; I've managed to reconnect with Carol in the past few months via social media. Unknowingly, I was finding my own personal closure to a long-ago chapter of our lives. Some friends of mine will always tell me that I have kept "work wives" throughout my life, and in some ways, although she was several years my senior, Carol might have just fit that bill.

Carol was a "DMV Contract Clerk" and I was an "F&I Manager." We worked together at a Ford agency during those fast and furious early 1990s. This particular working relationship in the auto business is certainly fast-paced; it is co-dependent, and intertwined. The truth too is that Carol was very good at her job. It was Carol who helped me sort out the car deal messes that the sales department needed to create to keep the small Ford dealership in the black. And please, don't get me wrong. Carol could be tough as nails to work with. She was exacting, to say the least. She had a caustic tongue that could cut you to the quick if your paperwork wasn't in order. You never knew what mood she was going to be in, or what transgression you were going to get chastised for. Nonetheless, you always knew that Carol absolutely and positively had your back. Her files (and this meant your files) were always in perfect order. 

And yes, we grew to be friends.

You see, Carol also had a huge heart and was indeed way more than all that "car business stuff." I was humbled when she volunteered her interest in my nascent study of genealogy and singlehandedly helped put into manuscript form a series of twenty-odd letters written about one hundred years prior - letters that helped me locate my grandmother's birth mother and led me to my own Mayflower ancestry. Yes, Carol was so much more than just a "contract clerk" at that Ford dealership to me. Like all of us, Carol also led a complex life of her own. Outside of that dealership, she was a devoted wife, mother, and daughter.

                                    

Jessie Fensom Murphy (1879-1957) of York, Ontario, Canada

Carol's grandmother

Because of this, or despite our "car business" ways, I've decided that I want to somehow honor Carol. I don't have a lot of tools to do this buy as I'm not the best at sending flower arrangements or rich enough for charities. No, the only way I know how to do this is to look at her ancestry. I wanted to see just who were the people that made up Carol Lee Dunn. What people had brought that firebrand car business contract lady into our midst? I felt that if I could bring forth some of her ancestors, that even in her passing I might feel closer to her. I might understand her better. I might finally know a bit more about Carol.

What I found was a strong Irish ancestry. Carol Lee Dunn was born Carol Lee Murphy on the 20 August 1942 in Los Angeles County, California. The direct lines of both her paternal and maternal great-grandfathers having been born in Ireland. In the middle of all that, Carol's ancestry was also a mix of strong English and Scottish lines filtering down through Canada, with a smattering of New York Palatinate German blood thrown into her mother's mix. The earliest known reference (that I could find) to her family in America comes through her mother and shows possible ties to the Soule, Eaton, and Howland families of Plymouth Rock. 

Carol was also interestingly enough, a woman who had married for her first and second husbands a set of brothers, and for her third husband, a man with the same last name as her mother's maiden name - that of Dunn. (It is a connection that still confounds the genealogcial researcher in me.)                              

Eliza Doughty Fensom (1803-1888) of London, England

Carol's great-great-grandmother

Be all of this as it may, I wanted to see what pictures I could find of Carol's ancestors. I know this isn't much, but I wanted to see if I could see something of Carol in their eyes. I wanted to honor Carol by looking into the eyes of her ancestors and through what pictures of them I might be able to find. The pictures online have been few, but I was able to find three women, all paternal ancestors of Carol, that I thought I'd share with you. I believe that if f you look very closely at each of them, you will see in their eyes a hint of Carol and a hint of one of my dearest "workwives." You will see a lady who lived an incredible journey of love and terrible loss, of personal sacrifice, and yes, that of a "car business contract clerk" who took pity on a budding genealogist all now so many years ago. You will be missed, Carol Dunn. You were a tough gal who didn't always get the breaks in life you surely deserved. You were good. You were kind. You were strong.

In gratitude, I remember you.

                             

         Rest in peace, Carol.

     Mayflower misgivings 

Recently, while looking into the ancestry of a distant cousin, I noticed something wasn't quite right. I was researching among the renowned Mayflower "Silver Books" when it happened - or maybe I should say where it happened. I was attempting to establish a Mayflower connection for my new cousin Dan to MP John Howland. Dan is a Soap Opera and reality TV star who I'd found through a DNA match and whose father had been "switched at birth" as a baby - but that's a whole other story. Can you say Soap Opera? (But as usual, I digress.) 

Those of you who don't follow Mayflower lineage (and lineage society applications) should know that the "Silver Books" are generally considered the go-to sourcebooks for establishing any claim as a descendant of one of the Mayflower passengers. Generally speaking, the first five generations as outlined in those books are considered gospel, and usually "a given" when making an application to that particular lineage society. My problem was things just weren't adding up.

Now I understand that genealogy can be unwittingly fluid. It is as much an art as a science. (Think jig-saw puzzle missing both center and end pieces) True too, is that I was working on a difficult and previously unestablished line. Because of this, I needed to be very certain of all my facts if I was to have any hope of establishing a line from Mayflower passenger John Howland to Cousin Dan. I knew that I needed to go through each line of data to prove to myself that Dan's line was sound. This meant re-examining any statement about any part of his Mayflower line - even those in the Silver Books - to see if it matched up to original documents, and in the absence of those, if anecdotal ones held weight. What I found was that they didn't. What I found was some glaring mistakes and incongruencies on just the first two pages.

The line of descendants I've been intent on proving is for Mary Angel who married Jonathan Church, Jr.. and the records are slim. Since Mary's marriage to Jonathan isn't mentioned in this work, I've wanted to confirm everything else surrounding Mary Angel, like the fact that her father was William Angel, and her mother was Almy Harding, the daughter of Stephen Harding and Mercy Windsor as stated in the Silver Books. The trouble was, I couldn't. Everywhere I looked only proved to me that there was a "Stephen Harding who had married 'a' Mercy Windsor" almost a full generation before. It made me scratch my head. Did I have the right Stephen Harding and Mercy Windsor? Any genealogist knows it's an easy mistake to get the wrong couple with the right names - but a generation to two before? It didn't make any sense. After all, this is what the revered Silver Books were telling me was true. How could it not be so?               

So I wrote to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, and, as politely as possible, I referenced the pages and the lineage in question and asked: "Can you tell me your source for the parents of Almy (Harding) who married William Angel?" This was the answer I received:

                        

Say what??? You don't know? You don't have a reference point or citation for what you are publishing as a fact? Come on folks!!! Now I know that this doesn't directly affect this particular Mayflower Howland line from Mary Angel to Cousin Dan, but one would think that if you don't know who her actual grandparents were you might not want to publish without citations that you did? Hello? Disclaimer anyone?

Given this, I decided to dig a little further into that particular page of the Silver Book. What I discovered was that the "body of facts" regarding the marriage of Mary Angel (and her husband therein called "Jonathan") was only noted as having "not been found." What was odd though, is that this "non-information about Mary's "non-marriage" to a Jonathan Comstock appeared to be constructed through faulty premises. What "information" there was in the Silver Book for her (and her alleged husband Jonathan) had been constructed around people who have been blended together - as if they were one and the same person.

It is my contention that the information about Mary Angel has been convoluted and borrowed from bad genealogies and again repeated in the Howland book. One of these faulty and convoluted "non-positions" is that the Mary Angel in question married Jonathan Comstock in the first place (and not her actual husband Jonathan Church, Jr.). 

I decided to take a look at this:                  

The bottom asterisked paragraph might be read as if the "Jonathan Comstock" mentioned here at Smithfield RI is the same person as the Jonathan Comstock at West Greenwich in both instances. A closer examination of the Angell Comstock genealogies reveals that the Silver Book author has done a poor job of clarifying two separate men. (Jonathan Comstock of Smithfield was deceased by 1784.) Given other errors in each of those genealogies about "Mary Angel" and "Jonathan Comstock" just who are we supposed to believe?

"I wasn't surprised by this. Years ago, Alica Crane Williams highlighted a potential error in the Hopkins Silver Book. While this error was acknowledged, it still appeared in the text of the lineage.

My question is: How can lay genealogists trust genealogical work presented as fact, especially when lineage societies use it to approve or deny applications? We know genealogy is often inaccurate and mistakes happen, but how can societies publish or rely on the information without clear and accessible citations or even acknowledged faulty ones? If something is unknown there is an obligation to publish with that caveat. Further, the average researcher shouldn't have to fork over a great deal of cash just to have someone read between "the lines" of any lineage society application.

Or, is the Mayflower "truth" only subject to how much someone wants to spend?

And yes, what about poor Dan?

                            

 Boogie Nights                                      

What if you learned an ugly family secret? Would you promise not to tell?

Family history is an evil thing. It's a vast bastion of told and untold "things" just lying in wait. It cloaks itself behind well-meaning and purposeful genealogies. It hides behind the need to prove any given branch of itself. In truth though, it's so much more. You see, family history often curdles away like old milk hidden in an abandoned house's forgotten cupboard. It's a house of secrets ready to be carried away by past and present unexpected storms. It can be pernicious. It is ever present even when unseen. Indeed, think carefully before you fall victim to its maxim, "Seek and ye shall find."

Sometimes, however, family history finds you instead.

For me this week it was the accidental (?) serendipitous (?) unexpected (?) discovery of my step-father's short-lived career as a distributor of homemade pornographic "stag films" in the early 1970s.

Say what???

    

     Home - 1971

It all happened quite randomly, that is in learning about his secret life as a distributor of wannabe Dirk Digler films. It happened just the other day, as I thought about wishing him a Happy Birthday.  You see, I can never quite remember if his birthday is the 2nd or the 3rd? So I went to my trusty Ancestry.com account to look it up. While he and I have never been especially close, he was married to my mother for well over forty years, not to mention the fact that he will soon be turning ninety-something years old.

It seemed like the right thing to do to wish the old man many happy returns.

It was then that the curdled milk fell out of the proverbial genealogical cupboard. It was then that those unexpected storms from the past blew in shaking the foundations of my family and my family history. You see, "the algorithm" prompted me to look at a "hint" about my stepdad. It pointed me to an old newspaper article. There, in "black and white" text, was my stepfather's name. There in black and white on the back page of a back page article with a more newsworthy headline about "Nude Dancers," was my stepfather's full and complete name. There was the story explaining how he'd been arrested for distributing pornography.

The year was 1971.

      

Now I'm not a prude. Two men looking at titty pictures or even worse is not offensive to me. Heck, paying for his buddy's subscription to "Playboy Magazine 1971" isn't exactly "distribution" in my book.  Even watching a "dirty movie" or two at the Pussycat Theater, while generally unwholesome is not the end of the world. We all have our demons. We all have lust in our hearts in some form or another. True too is that we are all "mixed bags" of good and evil. I certainly do not wish to judge anyone for their legally (if not ethically) permissible "tastes" in these things. 

I guess I just wasn't expecting that it was my stepfather that I was going to be giving 'a pass' to. Silly me.

However, finding the initial arrest mentioned in the local papers of the day, indeed being directed to them by Ancestry.com's algorithm was startling. It brought back a whole range of emotions and questions. It brought back a whole range of memories. 

Wasn't he dating my mother in 1971???

I certainly had to know more. I mean having just one cup of curdled milk from the forbidden cupboard is never enough, right? We genealogical types rarely give up when we are on the hunt for the truth or the facts. No, we are like sharks with blood in the water. I had to know more. 

Oh Hell, I would know more.

Beware: Seek and ye shall find what you were not looking for...

So like any good genealogical family historian type, I scoured. I mean, this was my mother we were talking about here. The follow-up piece in the newspaper a couple of months later did little to ease my fears. It largely dealt with the penalty phase of my stepfather's Boogie Nights era, and how he and his cohorts (a Marine paraplegic, a welfare mother of four, himself, and a young twenty-five-year-old apparent stud-boy) had set up a quasi-film studio in a house in Westminster, CA to make their dirty flick shows. How many they actually "completed" is anybody's guess. I assume that Barbara does Buena Park and Down on Los Coyotes Diagonal were all confiscated by the local police department. Forgive me, but I sure as Hell hope so.

And to think, all of this occurred in Westminster, California - not three miles away from my home in 1971.

  

Written in his own hand...

Near as I can tell, my stepfather was going to be "the distribution point man." He was to be (or in fact was) the purveyor of their assemblage of homemade pornographic films. The paraplegic mentioned in the newspapers was "the producer" (or Lord knows what else) and supplied the suburban Westminster house and  cameras for the films to be made. The paraplegic was an older guy and seems to have been the mastermind behind "the business(?)." How my stepfather ever came to know him is a mystery to me - and no doubt always will be. The roles for the other two, the middle-aged woman and the younger man, sadly, seem a bit too obvious to go into more of a description. I don't know if I am happier that my step-dad was on the "entrepreneurial side" of all this or if I'd been happier with him "shooting scenes" in Riding High on the Queen Mary.

  

      The Movie Set

As unsettling as all of this has been, as sordid and as prurient as it feels the worst part is the memories and attached associations that come back with it. Things like my kid sister told me years ago, "He keeps lesbian porn under the sink in the bathroom," and me not completely hearing her, or disregarding it as a 'natural' habit of men (of sorts????), or the aspersions of an unhappy kid. Or worse, my coming for a visit with mom one time about '75 and walking in on him dry-humping my mother's face at the breakfast table. I remember looking away and pretending like I hadn't seen anything. After all, they were nearly married and I was the one who had interrupted them, right?? I should have been embarrassed, right? But my memory isn't of my embarrassment at all. It's the memory of my mother's face. It was blank and unfeeling. It was of a woman who was doing what she had to do to appease this man and keep herself and her kids fed.

There was no emotion in return to his "humping."

I need to tell you that my stepfather is not a bad man. He has never been cruel in words or actions. He did and has done many, many good things. I do not ever recall him raising his voice to me. We never fought, but I daresay we had a mixed sort of detente. He provided a good life for my mother financially. He took good care of her when Alzheimer's disease stole her away from all of us. 

Yes, he, like all of us, is a mixed bag of a lot of different things.                                   

My mother and father separated in January of 1969. My stepfather was certainly around shortly thereafter and during my high school years. He was certainly around by 1971 when all of this "risky business" occurred. I remember calling him "The Creep" (as my High School friends will still attest to) as he came around during those years to date my mother. It was as harsh a term at the time as it is even now. Nevertheless, in light of these "pornographic film industry" revelations, it may be a title that my teenage self was using more aptly than I realized.

Did my mother know about this? Did she excuse it or cover it up? 

Mom always said that they met through mutual friends in Westminster.

WHAT THE FUCK????

How close did my mother come to being recruited for this crap??

My maternal grandmother "Nana" and my stepfather had an uneasy relationship. He thought my grandmother was a bitch. He even used that word once with me in earshot. 

What did Nana know that she kept to herself?

In the back of my mind, in a dark "filed away in 1971" corner of forgotten things I seem to recall my mother telling me something about her new boyfriend's dealings with the law. She was explaining something to me, not justifying it, but telling me about some sort of "timeline" or restrictions that he was facing. It was so long ago now. I don't recall the content of what she was explaining to my sixteen-year-old self. Looking back, the following year ("1972") would have been the year of his probation...

Did she tell me this? Did I make this up in my head? Is it a false memory? I can't tell...

"Nana" certainly read the same local newspapers of the day. There, with his name in black and white.

What did Nana know that she never spoke about? 

Mostly though, I feel sorry for my mother. I know, I know. I really don't know that she had to endure anything more awful than my stepfather's unusual proclivities. I assume he was faithful to her, though I always wondered about his solo "family trips" to El Paso and the proximity of Mexican whore houses. I am sad for her because she was so down after Dad left her and had such a bad self-image. (Dad had left Mom for a trollop- sort of lady, a coquettish gold-digger type that Mom was never gonna be.)

 Mom must have felt unpretty and unloved and not sexually worthy after my father left. 

"Your father doesn't want me anymore," she said to me one day in 1969.

           

            Mom and Dad 

What that must have done to her young mind. 

Enter my step-father and his 1971 ring of paraplegic pornographic movie purveyors. 

Believe me - I have just started to scratch the surface of their identities.               

         

Oh, I will know who you people were. I will know who your little pornographic entourage was. 

                           

   "Zelma Sharp Carvalho Beauchamp" - apparently living, age 98.

It may not matter now that my stepfather is ninety-two years old. It doesn't matter that he watched porn back in the day or even that he participated in making it. I guess what bothers me most is that he sold "it" for profit. It bothers me that he brought my mom too close to his proclivities and that I'm unable to see who she was in all of this. Was she a victim? Was she being groomed to be the next star of Dirty Housewives of Huntington Beach? It bothers me that my dad in leaving his family behind left her so vulnerable.

 I guess it doesn't bother me that this ninety-two-year-old man still keeps porn on his Google phone to amuse himself. I mean, who really gives a shit?

It may not matter to him, me, or anyone else along the way anymore. Someday though, I wonder if I won't "pin the movie credits" on a few dusty eight-millimeter films he must have secreted away in some treasure chest waiting to be discovered when he is gone. You see, I will find that cold curdled milk you thought you had hidden away in a forgotten cupboard.

It's what we family history types do.

I will not judge you - but like someone will see me one day...

I will know who you are.

☮️