Say bullshit*t!

              Above image: Cousin Sam playing around with the camera

As always, unapologetically unedited

                            

I.

Well, there's one thing for certain. It runs deep in my family tree. Bullsh*t that is. Biological, adopted, or otherwise, it's a guarantee that you'll find it. However, before I get too far, allow me to introduce Cousin Sam. 

I recently stumbled upon Cousin Sam while researching the life of my third great-uncle, Samuel Truman Kelsey. My third great uncle, "Uncle Sam," had a remarkable life, seemingly fulfilled in every way. He also had a great-nephew named after him, and here's where I get to introduce you to "Cousin Sam."

I won't bore you with the degree of connection to Cousin Sam - (say about 2nd cousin to grandma...)

I guess I should first mention that I'd been lamenting the fact that we have no "record breakers" in our family tree. Nope, just a bunch of boring average folks. You see, I'd recently looked at a couple of family trees that have people listed in Ripley's Believe it or Not, or who had s family member who was a contender for things like: "World's Fattest Kid." 

I mean, how cool is that? Um, so what do I have? Not much. 

It was about that I stumbled upon the similarly named Cousin Sam. And, yes, his name caught my eye because it was the same as our shared multigenerational "Uncle Sam" previously mentioned in the last post. However, it was this Cousin Sam's age that caught my eye. 

"Sam Kelsey, 109 years young." 

109??? Yeah, I could work with that.

WTF? Could we actually have a supercentenarian among our branches? Could I actually have something among Ye Olde Branches that would give the Ripley's Believe it or Not crowd a run for their money? 

Shoot, I had to dive in here. 

The newspaper article on Cousin Sam said he had witnessed the Civil War, Old West cattle drives, and dealt with dangerous western outlaws. Good stuff, right? Yeah, Sam knew how to sell it.

Cousin Sam was so good at bullsh*t that when he died at "111 years of age," the California State Legislature even passed a resolution in his honor declaring him one of the West's oldest persons.

Yeah, turns out it was all bullshit*t. 

Cousin Sam lied about his age. And he did all of this for a girl, the love of his life. 

II.

Seriously, Sam? You get us almost qualified for some "oldest living guy award" in Ferndale, California, only to tell us it was all just a misunderstanding when you went to marry your sweetheart? You get the freaking legislature to honor your longevity in death, only to find out it was bunk?

You see all those recollections about the Old West and the Civil War? Yeah, he couldn't really recall the Civil War because he was born the year it ended.

All bullshit?

Yeah, I guess that's the case.

You see, Sam committed one of those many nineteenth-century faux pas. He married an older woman. Yes, Sam married the lovely and talented Mattie Hendee Shinn. Mattie was a "widow woman" and nine years older than Cousin Sam. Legend has it that because Cousin Sam didn't want to embarrass his new bride by her having married a man nearly a decade younger than she was, he lied about his age on the marriage license. Sam simply stated that he and Mattie were the same age.

"Forever twenty-nine." LOL.

When in fact, the genealogy and accounting of Sam's birth is better reflected in the Kelsey genealogy (image below) and in the earlier census records. 

However, after he marries the lovely and charming Mattie, all bets are off, and he just goes with it, like in the 1920 census image below:

See? Same age again, nearly forty years later...

In fact, he's "all in" at this point. Cousin Sam probably figures, "Who the heck's ever gonna know when he was really born?" In fact, Cousin Sam - he rather seems to like the fake (?) attention to:

All fake.

And, as they say, "bless his heart," he carries on his charade all the way to the end:              

But he stayed true to his Mattie. They were married until she died in 1926. So in the end, maybe that bullshit counted for something?

You go, Cousin Sam. You tell 'em whatever they gotta hear.

Thank you for the "proper use of bullshit." :)

Rest In Peace.

                       

    ☮

 Uncle Sam and Company 

...or "Go tell it on the Mountain" 

Our dashing boy in blue, Uncle Sam, and his wife, Catherine

(Author's note: The next few blog posts will be portrayals of individuals who have crossed or otherwise contributed to my own family's past in some unusual or different way. If you have no interest in this, what can I say other than "you're probably barking up the wrong tree." Aw, come on, that was frickin funny. Peace out.)

As always, unapologetically unedited.

Part I.

I have often lamented the lack of colorful or better-than-average people amongst the branches of my family tree. In truth, though, that's kind of a bunch of b.s---. There really are plenty of cool folks if you just take a closer look. But that's me. I'm usually always bitching about something, especially about anything among Ye Olde Branches.

Sometimes, though, it takes circling back around to see them. It isn't that you missed them on the first go-around, but more that you got busy looking for that kinda ridiculous connection to Taylor Swift or some dumb one to Megan Markle that caused you to misremember some of the amazing ordinary lives. However, when you do circle back, the digital breadcrumbs just might lead you to some of the perhaps not-so-familiar names of the people who've surrounded our ancestral pathway into this world. 

This week, I have gone back to that tree to find a few of those I might have misremembered to tell you about. The truth, too, is that I've grown a bit weary looking in the family trees of those too busy to notice.

It's good to come home to these familiar faces and to celebrate our own. 

In doing so, I have let "the algorithm" guide me where it would, with the first place it "stopped" being at the probate record for the father of my great-grandmother Mary Kraus Ogle. This was all well and good, and while Mary Karus Ogle is only distantly related biologically and "blood-wise" to me through her mother Electa, and via Mayflower passenger Richard Warren, still her family (especially in this instance) has always been my own. 

It seemed natural that the algorithm should return me here. It seemed natural that, in looking for remarkable lives that I should simply "go home."   

This is my long-winded way of saying that the first (or rather the next) guy, "the algo," brought me back to was "Uncle Sam." (Kinda makes sense when "returning home," right?) Yes, to Samuel Truman Kelsey (1832-1910), the dashing fellow "in blue" pictured above. Yes, "Uncle Sam," who was my great-grandmother's great-uncle. Sam was her grandmother's brother. See? Now, no complaining about too many branches in the tree. 

                        

                      

Above: This newspaper clipping is my favorite. 

Uncle Sam - whose mother was called "the Belle of the Mohawk."

               

You see, Uncle Sam isn't really all that far away. :) In fact, I'd wager to say that my grandmother Katheryn Ogle Record might have even sat on his lap. It would have been quite the occasion in 1916 Kansas for Uncle Sam to come to town.

Now I don't know where to begin with Sam. Of course, his alleged acquaintanceship with the young Abraham Lincoln is what family legends are made of. While this acquaintanceship is unverified, and falls under the genealogical category of "Yeah, sure..," still, it's a great way to start off in taking a look at Uncle Sam. I guess Sam knew Lincoln back in their younger days in Illinois. Regardless of whether it's true or not, one wonders at the circumstances that would have brought about such a meeting.

Did they go to the same mercantile? Hitch horses to the same watering trough? Talk legal briefs and sweet potatoes?

Even putting all that Abraham Lincoln stuff aside, Sam was quite a dude.

                   

Uncle Sam was a horticulturist. He grew trees and nuts and berries, all in an attempt to refine and promote better crops. He was a college professor in Kansas, where he taught nineteenth-century horticultural sciences. He was nomadic, moving from New York to Illinois to Kansas and to North Carolina before returning to New York again. He passed away in Boston, but managed to get buried in Baltimore. I guess Baltimore was in between them all.      

 

         

 

He co-founded towns in places like Highlands and Linville, North Carolina, and helped preserve great patches of forest in Appalachia. In short, I guess you could say that Uncle Sam kind of embodied what I like to think of as the best of us. 

    

Yeah, then there was that whole business with the mountain. You see, Uncle Sam owned his own mountain. Owning one's own mountain has to be a unique feature in any family tree. Yes, Sam bought 16,000 acres in North Carolina encompassing his own mountain. A place called "Grandfather Mountain." 

Yeah, that was Sam's. 

    

Wild, huh? Grandma Ogle's Uncle owned his own frickin mountain?

What can I say? They were even talking about Uncle Sam only a week ago on Instagram.              

          

I just figured you oughta meet him. 

To be continued...

☮

Grandma GoGo and the Indians   

GoGo's mother and father, Reeder and Electa Kraus

(Author's note: Sometime family history just falls out of the algorithm "like sands through the hourglass.")

As always, unapologetically unedited

I. 

The title of this blog post isn't entirely correct. Oh, now, it isn't way off. It's just that I've used a little bit of literary freedom in naming it, and, if you will, in pulling all this together.

You see, I've used it to honor my great-grandmother. This lady tenaciously saved used holiday wrapping paper and offered drinks of cold water from a tin cup on a hook by the sink that all were expected to unceremoniously drink from. (It was the best drink of water any eight-year-old kid like me ever had.)

Indeed, the title here is wrong. Affectionately called "Grandma GoGo" by some, there are few places where I would never expect to find mention of my great-grandmother's actual name, Mary Ogle. A stalwart Civil War widow and Mayflower descendant of William Bradford, finding her name mentioned near or adjacent to The Five Civilized Tribes was very much a surprise. Indeed, the first time I saw mention of "The Five" on this 1924 probate record, all I could think was, WTF? Not to go all woke on the subject of just what exactly constitutes "civilized," but really more curious as to why my great-grandmother's name should be mentioned in any collection of paperwork connected to the same.              

It didn't make sense.

The thing of it is, though, this post has little to do with Grandma GoGo and more to do with her father. Mary Ogle's life just happened to cross one of life's many intersections of circumstance that would bring her in a remote way connected to The Civilized Five. The truth of it is that this post has more to do with GoGo's father than anyone else. Yes, GoGo's father, and the strange accounting of what he left behind.

Mary's father (or GoGo's if you prefer) was a guy named Louis Reeder Kraus (1846-1920). Now I never heard much good about "Reeder" Kraus, but as I try to account for all of this, I will do my best not to pass judgment on him. Family legend was that he was hard-headed and cruel to his wife Electa, and that the family lived hand-to-mouth in late nineteenth-century Kansas. (I was likely subject to the hand-me-down version from Electa's descendants and not the Kraus kinfolk) The nuts and bolts of it, however, were that about 1904, there ensued a nasty divorce between Reeder and Electa, with each suing the other for desertion. In the back of my mind, I recall hearing that Reeder had refused to support Electa or their younger girls.        

        

                                        Reeder

All this divorce business caused the older boys to move away and the eldest girls to seek out husbands to get away from all the Kansas drama. Mention can be made that Grandma GoGo, at the age of fifteen, married a man in his sixties to escape Reeder's (and no doubt Electa's) bitter tirades against one another. Even Electa, tired and worn out from it all, would soon pass away, but not before more tragedy and drama were to play out. Dead ex-wives tell no tales except those of broken hearts. Whatever had happened between the two, or whatever ensued up to 1920, in the end wouldn't matter anyway.

By the 2nd day of that year, Reeder Kraus was dead.                    

                             

No, there isn't any murder mystery here. No, Electa didn't grab the gun and make her stand for women's rights. No, Reeder instead managed to get in the way of an oncoming train, or rather two oncoming trains. And as you can imagine, things got a bit messy from there. (Excuse my poor choice of words at Reeder's expense.) Now I have always wondered about the circumstances of Reeder's death that cold winter day outside of Emporia, Kansas. To me, there has always been something odd about it; something odd about how a sixty-six-year-old man was still out working in the railyards, and how something about it always felt more like a suicide than an accident. I have absolutely no reason to think this. After all, the coroner's ruling was that Reeder was simply crushed between two trains. Certainly a grisly end to a cantankerous son of German immigrants who may not have been the best at supporting his wife and seven kids. 

Again, not for me to judge (too much) and not for me to say.

What is for me to say is why a guy who was divorced (and did divorce) on the grounds of abandonment had so much property in another state? I mean, nobody mentioned before (outside of the newspapers of the time of his death) that Reeder Kraus owned at least one hundred and twenty acres of prime land in Oklahoma. Kind of a big asset to have for someone living hand-to-mouth and accused of neglect and abandonment. Beats me, Reeder.

                   

Enter the Five Civilized Tribes.

Enter my great-grandmother, GoGo.

II.

                             

I guess you could say that this is where the story both starts and ends. You see, I hadn't expected to be prompted by Ancestry.com's algorithm to look at a probate administration in Oklahoma for Reeder Kraus. I remember thinking, "Reeder died in Kansas. Why would there be a probate record in someplace called McCurtian County, Oklahoma?" Why was there a record of land ownership in some town called Idabel? And perhaps most interesting to me, why was there a bill of sale back to (you guessed it) The Five Civilized Tribes for a portion of it as part of the probate administration?

           

Three Hundred Dollars in his 1920 pockets? Is that weird or what?

There really isn't any mystery here. It's just curious that Redder managed to secrete away so much property, property valued at over $2000. And indeed, it isn't that curious that The Five Civilized Tribes showed up at Reeder's Oklahoma estate sale to buy back a small piece of ground that had likely been stolen or taken from them anyway. It was just curious to see in the file. It was just curious to see the division of Reeder's Oklahoma real estate among his children. I don't recall anyone ever mentioning Grandma Ogle's inheritance from her father. Who knew that GoGo had seed money all her own?          

Much of this has come up serendipitously as my sisters and I try to navigate the upcoming estates of our father and stepfather. Like I said, it isn't so much a mystery that GoGo had this inheritance that no one knew about, but more of how Reeder had been able to come by it at all. What had Reeder's plans been? Had he planned to escape to McCurtain County in his dotage and plant sweet potatoes? Was his land in Idabel just some folly or retirement dream? 

Indeed, what became of GoGo's share of Reeder's land?         

I assume GoGo managed her affairs wisely. She no doubt received her check from the Five Civilized Tribes or one on her behalf via her brother Roy. She probably discussed what to do with this great sum with her husband, Daniel. (Who one might even call "Grandpa GoGo") I like to think, though, that GoGo put her money away and saved it for the future. I like to believe that it was GoGo's cash (and previously Reeder's) that GoGo loaned my grandparents to buy their own investments on Willow Street in Long Beach and retirement property thirty years later in Riviera, Arizona. I like to think that it was GoGos' money, and with still a dab of the Five Civilized Tribe's cash sprinkled in that helped fund things like my father's RV dealership, and maybe even on some distant level trickled down towards me as I struggled to make that down payment on my first house.

        

Yes, GoGo's share of Reeder's money. Money that may have gone to pay for cemetery plots that GoGo purchased in 1932. GoGo worried that we might not all be together in the end.

III.

Anyway, as I said, there is no great mystery here other than one man's life affecting the outcomes of so many down the road. There are few anymore who would even remember the name of Reeder Kraus, or whether he was a good man or bad, and certainly none that would know that he ever left behind some land in Oklahoma somehow connected to the Five Civilized Tribes. Soon enough, even the name of GoGo will be forgotten. 

                          

There is, however, a small wooden chair. It was made by Reeder and still survives. It seems a random thing concerning a man's life. Yet still it's a creation that he honed a cared about as he crafted it for his daughter Mary, our girl GoGo. The chair isn't great stretches of land in Oklahoma, or great cash amounts coming in post facto from McCurtain County. But it is a lasting legacy.

     

It's a lasting legacy to Reeder and GoGo, and maybe just maybe a little bit, a lasting legacy to Reeder's dream about living among the land of the Five Civilized Tribes.

END

Regarding Harvey     

(Author's note: This post has nothing to do with Jimmy Stewart - but everything to do with Paige and Harvey. You be the judge.)

As always, unapologetically unedited.     

Dude, I've been ghosted. Not in the usual way, but genealogically speaking. Please bear with me as I navigate this ectoplasmic neighborhood to explain what the heck has been going on. You see, I need to get genealogically from the "Granddaddy of all Cool Ghosts," Phillip Babb of the Isles of Shoals, to the spectral residents of a house in the Antebellum South, owned by his very own descendants.

Got all that? Cool. I'm all for handing out quizzes at the end (or a couple of Advil, if you prefer).

        

Recently, I connected my new friend and client, Paige Dunham (never quite sure how to refer to someone you've never met?), to her ancestor, Phillip Babb (1634-1671). And, of course, as you might have guessed, Phillip Babb who happens to be that Granddaddy of all Cool Ghosts. (I'm not really sure he meant to be; it just sorta turned out that way for Old Phillip.) As you may recall, Phillip is believed to have been an irascible pirate (no proof) and is said to walk the small island where he once lived, scaring local residents and tourists with a long knife. Phillip, to his credit, was also the subject of several missives, one notably by author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Is that cool, or what?

Long story short, I recently wrote about how "Phil's" great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Babb, married a dashing eighteenth-century Quaker boy-toy named David Rees. They hightailed it South, setting up housekeeping in the charming vicinity of Newberry, South Carolina. From there, the dynamic duo went on to have oodles and scads of kids who begat many more oodles and scads, until pretty much everybody had forgotten about Grandaddy Phillip of the Isles of Shoals and the fact that the Colonial progenitor of all persons, Babb, was happily now a legendary ghost.

             

    Above: Unofficial family portrait of Elizabeth Babb and husband David Rees 

Connecting Paige Dunham to Phil's ghost wasn't all that tough, but needing further verification, I reached out to genealogist and author Daniel Greig Babb, an expert on (wait, that's a test question...) "all things Babb." I wanted to confirm the line from Phillip to Elizabeth Babb Rees, which he graciously did for me. This helped solidify my account of the old ghost and the lines connecting Paige to Old Babb. Daniel Greig Babb and I have stayed loosely in contact when, about a week ago, he messaged me to say:

"I'd like to introduce you to Beth Collins. It turns out you and she are researching the same line, that of Elizabeth Babb and David Rees." (Quiz question #2)

  

Above: Beth's mother, Emma Jane (Fry) Roberts (1890-1957), in front of the Laramore House           

After the normal emailed introductions between Beth Collins and me, and after determining which of Elizabeth Babb and David Rees's oodles and scads of children Paige and she were descended from, I asked in one of my usual, not-so-funny attempts:

"So, have you met your old ghost yet?"

The reaction I got was unexpected.

"Oh! How exciting? I didn't know about that one."

That one? 

Okay, call me crazy, as I'm no aficionado of grammar (obviously) or semantics, but doesn't the phrase "that one" imply there are more ghosts, or at least "more than one"? Are there more ghosts in Phillip Babb's family?

I will do my best to relay the story to you as it was relayed to me. Well, not exactly, but as you'll read, I think you'll see what's been going on in the Babbs' ectoplasmic neighborhood. There are a lot of parts to the story, and I won't be able to touch upon them all in this short post (which means I may flunk my own quiz!). But suffice it to say that a certain Antebellum house on Hawkinsville Road in Newberry, South Carolina, built circa 1820, eventually came into the possession of the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson and descendant of Phillip Babb, the Granddaddy of all Cool Ghosts. 

And his name was Harvey Roberts.

Now, if I have this right, Harvey inherited the house from his father, Eugene Summerfield Roberts (1888-1954), who had always admired it as a young man and wanted to buy it. The house was previously owned by a man named Laramore, and Beth (Harvey's niece) relayed the story to me that Laramore had committed suicide in the front room of the house. She said that the place was so haunted that when a burglar broke in to steal the antiques and valuables, he fled out a window, so scared that he left all the loot behind. But wait, there's so much more!

From Cousin Beth:

"Mr. Laramore committed suicide in the front bedroom, so he's the one that haunts it. Several aunts have seen him. An uncle that married into the family didn't believe in ghosts. The morning after the first time he spent the night there, he asked who was walking up and down the hall all night. When told it was Mr. Laramore, he believed."

         

   

The place grew in notoriety, and Harvey Roberts, an unmarried man some described as flamboyant, grew acquainted with and nurtured an association with newspaper reporter Violet Moore from The Macon Telegraph. The house became Harvey Roberts's life, as if the very spirits who lived there possessed him. Even when the house was badly infested with termites, he bought wood from a similar house and had it rebuilt.

---

Regarding Harvey:

"The house was my uncle's life. When termites got into the kitchen, he bought another house, tore it down, and used the tongue and groove wood to replace what was destroyed. The article mentions Violet Moore and her ghost stories. She was a family friend and wrote for the Macon Telegraph. The story of Uncle Harvey buying the rocking chair would have been something she pulled out of her hat and something they had a good laugh over."

           

---

The stories of the house and its hauntings are best related through the writings of Violet Moore, and I'll include a few excerpts here. I think Violet's stories about the house, the newspaper clippings, and Cousin Beth's emails tell it far better than I can. (And yes, there will be no quiz on all that today.) It's just fun stuff – knowing that a descendant of Phillip Babb and a nearer-than-distant cousin of Paige Dunham's owned a very old haunted house filled with ghosts in Newberry.

              

---

More on the House:

"The house is no longer there. In fact, the avenue of cedars leading to the house have been taken down, too. My uncle offered the house to the town, but the mayor refused it, so it was sold. Later, it was bought by a Montezuma man who always loved visiting the house. He made a fortune, started Steinhatchee Landing in Florida, bought the house, and moved it board by board to Florida. It was supposed to be a restaurant there, but a recession hit and I don't think it was ever rebuilt. It was the last remaining plantation house in the area; all the others burned. There are other classical houses, but they are all cotton houses from the 1920s. Ours was from the 1820s."

More from Cousin Beth:

"  I just have to laugh. Uncle Harvey said that when Miss Violet needed an article, she made up a ghost. 

        She is talking about Mr. Laramore there with a little embellishment. There wasn't a rocking chair on the front porch. If you look at the pictures, the side of the house is screened in. Everything happened out there in the summer - even the TV was there. I have one of those rockers that was on it and it hasn't rocked by itself the first time.

        The bed story is true. My mother had four sisters and when they came in from a party one night they just climbed into any bed (there were 7 bedrooms). She was in the bed and felt someone get into the other side. The next morning she found out that no one had slept with her.  

          Uncle Harvey slept in the adjoining bedroom, not the haunted one. We do think Mr. Laramore scared away some burglars one time. Uncle Harvey had a stroke and went into a nursing home. My aunt dropped in one time to check the house and found that the stereo had been dropped in the middle of the floor and a window broken. (This window was in the old trunk room which opened directly to the outside instead of a porch, link most of the windows). What the police figured was that the robbers were frightened while stealing the stereo so they dropped it and jumped out the window. As you can see from the pictures, the main level is really the second story. We credit Mr. Laramore for scaring them away. You read how the house was furnished with period pieces. They knew the robbers didn't know the value of things because the paperweights near it were worth a few hundred dollars a piece. The stereo was a cheap one Uncle Harvey bought when he inherited a collection of 78 speed records. ( I forgot I had them and donated them last year - there were 1,004 records"

---

Sadly, the house is no longer there, which of course sucks.

The best part of all this for Paige, though, is the discovery of her Cousin Beth Collins. Beth is an avid ghost hunter in the Savannah area. (I should mention she says a couple of cocktails always help when out ghost hunting!)

So, I guess we owe a big thank you to Phillip Babb, the Granddaddy of all Cool Ghosts, for bringing the family full circle and introducing us to interesting characters like Harvey Roberts and Violet Moore, and especially Beth Collins. 

You just gotta keep those old ghosts alive!

       

Paige's Cousin Beth - and the Savannah Ghost Romp 2014