A Wealthy Christmas

                                          

                  

(Author's note: Sometimes, small genealogical miracles do happen. Sometimes those miracles come in small "frowning packages" looking out at you from an old photograph - especially at Christmas time. Sometimes they are a small but "wealthy" miracle :)

Yesterday, a curious thing happened.

It's been cold outside. Christmas is just around the corner, but it's still too early to celebrate much of anything. So instead of humming Jingle Bells to myself, I figured I'd go to my familiar haunts and look through some old family lines. Lately, I've wanted to check out some of the vintage documents on familysearch.org, on the off chance of finding more evidence of the Mayflower family ties between William Church of Crawford and Mercer Counties, Pennsylvania, and his parents Jonathan Church, Jr., and Mary (Angell) Church, late of Montville, New London County, Connecticut.

(Mary Angell is a descendant of MP John Howland through her father William Angell of New London County, Connecticut)

I was looking for anything really; however, in this instance, I was searching for any onomastic ties that might 'strengthen William to his parents,' Jonathan and Mary, and to their collateral family branches. I’m a big believer that a family’s naming practices provide fundamental clues to generational relationships.

I'd seen where “Jonathan and Mary” named two of their sons “Jonathan” and “William” (after both of their fathers) but I hadn't seen where any of their children had repeated the name “Mary” (or "Molly") in homage to “Mary (Angell) Church,” their mother. While this isn't a necessary thing to prove lineage, I admit it seemed odd. This is a family who has beautifully perpetuated some of their older names (most notably the name of “Church”) from the 1700s nearly down to the present day.

It just didn't fit.

I zeroed in on the decades surrounding the death of William Church in (1863) with the hope of maybe finding his Will. (Sadly, I didn't.) What I did find was an old deed that identified the exact naming practice within the family I’d been looking for. I found one “Mary Church” - a daughter of William Church that I had not previously accounted for. (I had accounted for William’s other children Cyrus, Gaylord, Emily, and Miranda.)

It felt a bit serendipitous, as it wasn’t expected. I had located a Mercer County, Pennsylvania deed that identified this Mary as both the daughter of William Church and the sister of Gaylord Church. Unless there were two sets of them (i.e., William, Gaylord, and Mary) in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, I had hit a small amount of genealogical gold.

I found the genealogical homage I was looking for.

It made sense to me now.

Mary (Angell) Church named one of her sons "William" after her father William Angell. Her son William Church named one of his daughters "Mary" after his mother Mary (Angell) Church. (The naming connection I'd been looking for.) But what else was there that might tie this particular branch of the family together besides this old deed at least onomastically?

William Church married Wealthy Palmer - the mother of Mary Church. Mary Church (as evidenced in the above deed) married Daniel Kirkpatrick in Mercer County, Pennsylvania in 1842. Mary (Kilpatrick) named her daughter "Wealthy" thus bringing the naming practice full circle in this instance for the years spanning from 1744 (the birth of Mary (Angell) Church) to the birth of Wealthy (Kirkpatrick) Johnston almost one hundred years later (to the day) in 1844.

Crazy, right?

Okay, I know what you're thinking, "So what," right? I mean after all, what's so unusual about finding a confluence of old names that tie a family together? What sort of dumb Christmas miracle is that? You're right. It isn't one - it's frankly nothing more than elbow grease and a bit of luck. But what came next might surprise you. You see, I had to know more about this Mary Church and yes, maybe a bit more about her daughter Wealthy Kirkpatrick.

So I went to the proverbial family trees to look for Mary and for Wealthy. Oh, I found them. Fifty-seven instances of them. There were that many "brick walls" when it came to Mary Church. They were there with no answers whatsoever for "Mary Church." She and her daughter Wealthy had no family indicated to tie them into with or together. It was as if many had looked but had simply given up.

For the most part, the trees looked like this:

"Ye Olde Brick Wall."

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I wrote to one of them, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Mary's named "Melissa." I told her, "Hey, I think I have your Mary Church..." I sent her a copy of the deed. I sent her a page from the History of Montville and I explained her ties to William and to Wealthy (Palmer) Church and to Jonathan Church, Jr. and to Mary Angell and to John Howland of the Mayflower....

...and all this through her ancestor, Mary Church, daughter of William and Wealthy.

This was her reply:

"Wow, thank you so much!  I was unable to find anything about Mary Church for about 20 years!

So yes, genealogical miracles can happen and when they happen on Christmas and allow one part of a family to reconnect to its lost past and when they involve "a someone" named "Wealthy" you have to stop and wonder if you truly haven't found some of the meaning behind having a "Wealthy Christmas" after all.

To give the gift of lost family, well for me, I feel blessed to have (perhaps) brought about just a small bit of "family wealth" for a stranger...

Thank you, Lord, for giving me a small part this gift that I might share it somehow.

~ PEACE

   Thelma along the way   

Thelma

(Authors note: Sometimes family history comes in the form of a karmic reminder)

I watched as the man snuck into his own home that day. 

The garage door closed sharply behind him nearly pushing him inside and into a place he didn't want to be. He was anxious, and it didn't help that he was in a hurry. He cloaked this hurry behind nervous hands and quick eyes that seemed to seek out simple ordinary tasks. None of this helped his need to escape that day, or for that matter, any other. His eyes were sad - like a bad dog whipped too many times. It was easy to see he didn't want to be "home" any longer than he had to be. 

There was something else too. His eyes darted around avoiding mine as if knowing that some neighbor kid might see the guilt and utter misery he felt inside. That man, Mr. Jack Everson, couldn't move fast enough to get out of his own home, and away from the small curious eyes that watched that day. Maybe he could just feed Thelma, Jack had thought. Maybe he could just tell the kids what needed to be done, grab his lunch, and get the Hell out. 

Man, he needed to get away from her.

     

                              Jack Everson 

You could hear her scream. Then again, she always seemed to be screaming. They were not the screams of pain or physical agony. I suspect that, she, Thelma Everson, was numb to most pain at least by - the late 1960s. No, her screams were demanding yells. They were commands. They were the orders she issued at the top of her lungs as screamed them at this kid or that. They were the orders she yelled at Jack Everson. She screamed those orders about her house as her voice was surely the only thing she had left to control.

Thelma was broken. Her body had betrayed her several years back, or rather someone had broken her body and caused it to be betrayed. It had been such a terrible auto accident. The car had just kept rolling. Jack! We're going the wrong way! When she closed her eyes it was all she could see. After they told her about the paralysis, after she'd "healed" and been "discharged," it had started. She'd felt the anger growing and burning inside. Why couldn't you have just slowed the fuck down, Jack? 

The anger was numb like the rest of her at first, but still, it grew. It grew like Thelma's five children had all around her, they were loud and solitary, and she was unable to even embrace them. The accident had taken that away from her too. I can't even hug my babies! The accident had taken all movement away from her arms and legs and all the feeling below her neck was gone. The only thing that was left was her voice. Thelma, and her terrible voice, and her terrible anger that grew against anyone and anything that crossed her path. 

She was sure as Hell angry at Jack Everson, the man with the nervous and guilty eyes and her second husband. She hated him without question. She hated this man who had promised to take care of her and her three children while giving her two more to total five to look after. Truth be told though, Thelma hated her children too. She hated their freedom to move about freely and hated how they looked at her knowing that even at their young age they were in more control than she was or would ever be again. Thelma, whose anger only seemed to grow in each yell, in each command she screamed at them, and at Jack from her confinement.   

Had it always been that way for her? The anger?

               

The circumstances of the accident weren't all that clear. Hell, they weren't even clear to her or Jack Everson anymore, and certainly not to the kids. The circumstances put forth in the newspapers were vague enough. Jack! You're on the wrong side of the road!!! Certainly, once the "human interest" behind it all began to fade, well, you can guess what was left. Just anger and the curious neighbor kids like my sisters and me who'd straggle into her home alongside her own kids. Curious neighbor kids who were scared of her. Curious neighbor kids watching as her oldest Diane fed her through a straw in the supine stander and as Jack Everson put her to bed and laid her baby John down with her - the baby that she, Thelma Everson, could no longer hold. 

     

Yes, Thelma was in Hell and she was determined to take everyone (especially Jack Everson) along with her. "Thelma, you're lucky to be alive," they'd said. Bullshit. So what if she scared or shocked a few of the neighbor kids along the way, so be it. No doubt the little bastards had it coming. What had she ever done to deserve this living Hell? 

Thelma didn't like to think about that. It made her numb limbs tingle somehow and the hair on the back of her neck stuck up. Had she done something to deserve this? An image of her first husband Chuck kept circling in her mind. It was like she couldn't escape it. She couldn't even pour herself a whiskey to make herself forget about him. All Thelma could feel, was well, anger, and well, nothing.

 Yes, before there had ever been a "Mr. John Leo 'Jack' Everson" there had been Chuck Burch. Her handsome aviator pilot (first) husband, Mr. Charles Raymond "Chuck" Burch. Their somewhat storybook courtship in the early 1950s had produced her three eldest kids, Diane, Danny, and Kelly. But Thelma knew it hadn't really been a storybook romance had it? Their ensuing marriage had been anything but that. Chuck just couldn't give her what she needed and she let him know it. Was it her fault that Chuck was weak? Thelma had scolded Chuck about money, about sex, about the kids, about where they lived, and what time of day it was or wasn't. It was just like then as it was now - how she scolded Jack Everson and scolded all of her children. She scolded them all relentlessly. 

One day in 1958 Chuck Burch had had enough. Chuck had pulled off to the side of the road, and perhaps cursing Thelma, Chuck Burch took a .32 caliber and shot himself in the head.

Yes, Thelma was in Hell. Chuck Burch had sent her to Hell and poor Jack Everson had driven her there. It was a car ride that had left her her paralyzed and Jack Everson awash in guilt.

The trouble was the family had had to pay for all their many sins along the way.

                                                   *********************

The neighbor kid in me has thought about The Eversons over the years and wondered what had happened to them. Back in the day, I knew Danny Everson vaguely. I think I spent time with him down at the creek catching frogs and I can see the older sister Diane Everson feeding Thelma when Jack Everson was gone.  It was really my sister Darla though who was closest to the family, and closest to their daughter Kelly. I think my sister stayed in touch with Kelly for a few years but as people do lost track of her in the dust bowl we call life. 

The nearly seventy-year-old wannabe genealogist (and family snoop) in me has wanted to revisit this family for years. You know, to see what I could find out. I guess the sight of Thelma screaming out her orders in both her just and unjust state of being has stayed with me. I guess the look of guilt and shame on Jack Everson's face has stayed with me too. I have wondered how one family could be so messed up with so much tragedy. I wondered too if the kids escaped any of it, or, if like dysfunction can do, repeated itself. How had all of this misery come to pass?

I wondered about Thelma and her own shitty karma.

I didn't learn a lot in this quick look. I learned that Jack Everson did escape from Thelma in 1969. He divorced her. That had to be hard to do with five kids and Thelma paralyzed from the neck down. If I had to guess, Jack must have (most deservedly) become an alcoholic for the accident he caused that left Thelma the way she was and the kids with only a de facto mother. Jack did remarry though and lived until 2003. I can't tell if he ever had any relationship with his kids. I know that Jack was responsible for the accident, that much is evident. Still, there is a part of me that thinks Jack Everson fell in love with a miserable woman with a miserable soul. While the accident was Jack Everson's fault, I will always believe he was caught up in the web of Thelma's sad edition of karma - and caught up in the sadness that caused her first husband Chuck to take his own life.

Sometime the late 60s Thelma went back to South Dakota with at least the three older kids. The kids dropped their "adopted" surname of "Everson" and returned to their biological surname of Burch. "Thelma Everson Burch" died there in 1977, presumably from complications left by the accident. I'm glad that her period of suffering (and life of anger) was finally over by then. The poor lady had certainly done her time.

                           "Kelly Everson"

I can't tell you much about the other kids other than what is in the old obits. I did learn that Danny Burch-Everson died in the Modesto area in 2021. His obituary is vague like all are anymore. I believe that my sister's friend "Kelly Kathleen Everson" was married shortly after her mom died in 1977 to a Pedro Valdez, and I believe that she married once again in 1982 to a Michael Applebaum of Copperopolis, California. Some family trees indicate that Kelly died several years ago - but they are scant on details and I cannot verify that she is dead. These same family trees credit Kelly with as many as seven children. Whether this is true or not, at this point in time, I am unable to say. 

Anyway, I thought I should tell you all a bit about Thelma, and a bit about Jack, and how karma is such a bitch that it sometimes can take everyone down along the way.

So today I am reminding myself to simply love difficult people. We are all "them." We are all one of the Eversons. 

Don't end up being just another "Thelma."

PEACE.