A Treasure Found

On May 11, 2021 By jenbumannIn cainLeave a comment

Yes, I know. It has definitely been a while. COVID-19 is all to blame. Can’t go anywhere, can’t get research done, can’t get records, or access to them. It has put a crimp in my work flow. But, I do try to plug away at it once in a while.

In fact, recently while going through my tree on my FamilySearch.org site, I kept seeing a picture of a Barry family that someone had posted about 4 months ago, I always ignored it. But this week I asked myself why was it here, and could this Barry family possibly be related to me? So, I actually did a little investigation into the matter. Come to find out one of my great Uncles is in this photo. One of my great Uncles I do not have a picture of, at all. This photo’s label was focused on the Barry family, which is actually no relation to me other than by marriage. And, the reason I didn’t understand why it kept showing up on my page.

William Cain was Gertrude Cain’s brother in fact he was the eldest son of John Cain and Carrie Rosa, born right after Gert. He married a woman named Lovina Philomena Barry in Oconto in 1902. William, his wife and family eventually moved out to Oregon and Washington state (a place a lot of other John and Cain cousins, aunts and uncles ended up).

William Cain is standing, his wife is next to him.

What is weird about this discovery is before I decided to investigate the photograph I had found the entry shown below regarding this same Uncle’s marriage to Lovina.

I had to read this document over several times before I was sure it was the same William Cain, because some interesting information shows up in his marriage record. Such as, his mother is named as Catherine Lavallee. If the clerk filled out the form, then Catherine could have been misheard for Carrie, or the record was transcribed incorrectly into the index. But, even more interesting is the reference of his mother’s surname as Lavallee. This was his grandmother Jennie’s surname at the time she died in the 1870s. And Carrie and her sister Ida were Rosas not Lavelleys. So I can only imagine what stories Carrie was telling her children, or how even she didn’t really know what was true. There was already the story being told, and passed down by her children, that Carrie’s father had died during the Civil War. We know that was not true, and it was her mother who probably told her girls this when they moved to Wisconsin, without their father.

Anyway, the marriage record does not contain earth shattering news or anything, it is just interesting. And, another reason to not always trust official records as the purveyors of truth. Sometimes they are just plain wrong. This is also a good reason to see actual records and not indexed ones. I have no idea if the transcription is correct, but, I don’t really care enough to see the actual record in this case. He is only an uncle, and I, apparently, know more than he did about his own family history.

In this case it is the picture that is a true treasure, and I thank the person who uploaded it very, very much. William was a very handsome man. As were all the Cain children so far as I have seen.

Hatch meets Brooks?

On January 15, 2020January 5, 2020 By jenbumannIn Brooks, hatch1 Comment

There might be a few more posts related to my Brooks or Hatch lines in Vermont in the next few weeks, as I have been going through updated newspaper databases recently, and found articles related to these families.

This particular recent find got me thinking about my great great grandparents:

‘Burlington Democrat’ (Burlington, Vermont–Thursday, August 31, 1871, page 3; *Newspapers.com [https://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/355390579]*

Dillon F. Hatch was just installed as an officer in this Templars group. He was all for temperance, as was seen a few years earlier where he was in the same group as his mother in Grand Isle.

In this same group just under his name is listed a young lady by the name of Miss Kate Brooks. Kate was Almyra’s older sister, by about 7 years. Hmmm.

In 1870 Dillon was in Louisiana working as a clerk:

Hatch H. F. 55, male, white, Banker, value of estate 10,000 born in Vermont [probably an uncle/cousin of Dillon’s although I don’t know who; b1815ish]
Hatch, Frank D. 21, male, white, Bank clerk, born in Vermont
Hatch, Joseph R. 16, male, white, attending school, born in Vermont
Details of 1870 federal census Louisiana, Jefferson Parish, 4th ward:
page 4, enumerated 10th June 1870, lines 1-3, house 16, family 31

A year later he is living in Burlington, and working as a pharmacist (his occupation as it appeared on his marriage record and in city directories). So sometime between June 10th of 1870, and August 8 of 1871, he moved back to Vermont.

He joins the Templars group because of his interest in temperance, meets Miss Kate Brooks, who introduces him to her family, and then he meets Almyra, who is the same age as himself. BAM! They fall in love, marry just over a year later, and live happily ever after. Well, that wasn’t in the paper, so I am definitely making that part up.

Almyra Brooks and Dillon Franklin Hatch were married 19 Feb 1873.

She married him in spite of that hairdo too!

I don’t actually know how these two met, but it does seem a very likely scenario. Although, Dillon’s job as a clerk in a pharmacy/apothecary could also have been their origin story. If only I had a time machine.

Yes, They Definitely Were

On April 4, 2019March 22, 2019 By jenbumannIn amundson, hammLeave a comment

For years I had been looking for evidence that my great grandparents Fred Hamm and Carrie Amundson had actually married, and my grandmother was in fact not illegitimate, which was thought that that might be why her Hamm grand-parents had raised her.

And then, miraculously, I found their divorce case mentioned in a newspaper, while searching for something else entirely, of course. Yay!! And then, I found their marriage record at the register of deeds office. Yay!! And just this month I found the actual church record for their marriage. Again, a total accident. Yay!

Apparently, some Swedish Lutheran Church records were recently added to the Ancestry.com databases, and while doing Amundson searches in Minnesota, I ran across the church record for Fred and Carrie in this most unlikely record series. I guess that’s why it doesn’t hurt to keep sticking the same names in the search box every few months, because something unexpected can turn up. This find certainly put me in a good mood.