Lucky – is an adjective

1: meaning to have good fortune

2: happening by chance : FORTUITOUS

3: producing or resulting in good by chance

4: seeming to bring good luck (rabbit’s foot, heads up penny)

An interesting topic for week ten of 2023. I have had quite a bit of luck with my Genealogy journey, thru the years, starting with the dusty old box of photo’s that my Grandmother made me help her with when I was 13 years old. It truly was the event which marked the beginning of this journey. Thirty four years would pass by before I saw them again but the sight of my adolescent handwriting on the back of Grandma’s photos sucked me back thru a time machine to a hazy Michigan summer day at the picnic table with my grandparents as she flashcard style presented them to my Grandpa for identification. It was obvious to me that she had been trying to get Grandpa Everett to cooperate with her to get this job done and he really was not very interested. I have written several times about this event.

Stroke of Luck

Another stroke of luck was finding the Nine Mile Indiana Church in the early years of my search. Grandma Lillian and Grandpa Everett’s Bible showed that Everett’s Paternal Grandfather was James W Smith and his Maternal Grandfather was John H. Crites. I found a James Smith buried at the Nine Mile Cemetery in Nine Mile Indiana. His stone was in pieces but there he was. “Was this him?” I thought at first. The Bible distinctly stated James W. Smith.

There were many trips between Chicago, where I lived, and Michigan, where most of my family lived, that I would steal away a bit of time to visit Nine Mile, Indiana. At the time there was a lot to learn but I knew my Grandfather and his family came for this area. It was through James W Smith’s Civil War Pension file I could confirm that this “James Smith” was his father and I would find James W Smith’s gravestone a few miles away in Uniontown Cemetery in Wells County, Indiana.

In early December 2003, my husband and I visited Nine Mile United Methodist Church for their 150^th Anniversary Celebration. I learned about it on one of my frequent visits in those early days. We arrived a few minutes late and the service had already begun. We slipped in the back pew, hoping to go unnoticed. Within minutes I had the overwhelming sense that I belonged here. Tears flowed down my face for no apparent reason throughout most of the service. I just knew my family had been here. I could feel them all around me. After the service finished, we joined the congregation downstairs in the basement where they served coffee and cake. I explained that I was fairly certain that I was a descendant of one of their early church members. I told them that I was a descendant of James Smith who is buried in the old section of the church cemetery. The church members became excited that we were there visiting them on this special day. One church member felt fairly confident that in there historical records, they had information about my ancestor, James Smith.

This church member went in the backroom and returned with a box. This time the box was full dusty old historical church papers. We eagerly started to sort thru the paper eventually finding a small booklet which was written for the 100^th Anniversary in 1953. According to this document, James Smith was one of sixteen founding member of the United Brethren Evangelical Church in Nine Mile, Indiana in 1853.

“THE HISTORY OF THE NINE MILE Evangelical U. B. CHURCH”

“This church was organized at the home of John Miller by Rev. Casey with 16 charter members. Daniel and Lucy Ann Buskirk, sold one acre of ground for $ 10.00 to the trustees of the United Brethren Church, who were Gabriel Miller, Benjamin C. Davis, James Smith, Thomas Overly and Charles Miller, on January 3, 1853. For a period of five years, the meetings were held at the home of the John and Hannah Miller and at the homes of other church members, but in 1859, they erected a log church on the present grounds in section 7, Pleasant Township.”

Rev. P. Landen was then the pastor and dedicated the church. The membership continued to increase but the little log church was still their place of worship until 1868. In that year a frame building was erected. The new place of worship was called “Liberty Chapel”. For a few years the church had been served through the Ossian circuit, but in 1869 it was changed to the Zanesville circuit.

In 1879 the 27th annual session of the Auglaize Conference, of which this church was a member, was held at the Liberty Chapel Church. In 1891 Liberty was again placed in the Ossian Circuit which included Ossian, Bethel, Zanesville, Prairie Grove and Liberty Chapel It remained with Ossian until 1906 when it was changed back to the Zanesville circuit along with Bethel.”

The most interesting paragraph to me was the first paragraph. James Smith and Susanna Overly, Benjamin C. Davis and his first wife, Letishia Robinson, Thomas Overly and Emeline Asher, and John Miller and Hannah Smith all came to the Nine Mile Indiana area together between 1843 and 1847 from Darke County, Ohio. Susanna and Thomas were brother and sister. I believe that Hannah and James are siblings also or at the very least cousins. Benjamin C Davis’s wife, Letishia, died in 1851 and Benjamin married Margaret Smith, the oldest daughter of James Smith and Susanna Overly in 1852. Charles Miller, son of John and Hannah is recorded in the 1850 Federal Census as living between the James Smith Family and the Thomas Overly Family. James Smith was a farmer and Charles Miller a farm laborer. John and Hannah Miller are ten houses or so away. Benjamin Davis is found in Pleasant Township the same township as the church. The other families are in Lafayette Township which is across the road from the church.

The information that I stumbled on by going to a church’s 150^th celebration was a huge stroke of luck!

These Smith’s have been elusive to say the very least. I still can not be certain who the parents of James and Hannah are. I have also found a Kiziah Smith who married Daniel Overly. Daniel is a brother to Susanna and Thomas. James and Susanna had a daughter in a 1842 who they named Kiziah who died when she was 19 years old.

I keep working on these mysteries…and someday I will have another stroke of luck and we will get to the bottom of them.

Happy Hunting,

Jan

#52Ancestors

Andrew Anderson was a quiet man. I never heard him raise his voice. He was gentle and soft spoken. Grandpa Andrew lost his wife, Addie, in April of 1955. I was born a few months later in August. Grandpa spent over 25 years by himself after Addie died. He and Addie had eight children all of whom married and had children. Several of his kids lived very close by so he visited often but he also loved the peace and solitude of his quiet house that he had shared with Addie.

Our family kept him involved with our family events and holidays. He visited regularly and we have very fond memories of his visits. He came with us on all of our vacations. If we went to the Zoo, Grandpa came with us. Every time we visited the beach, Grandpa came too. He would sit in his chair at the edge of the water, with his pant legs rolled up and to watch us swim. I remember more than once a wave came along that caught him off guard and he got very wet but he didn’t care.

He had been around water all his life. He had been a sailor in Norway before he left for America in 1904. Once he arrived in Marine City, he work for Gus Englehart as a deckhand and shipmate on freighters on the Great Lakes.

A young Andrew and the crew as they sailed in the Great Lakes. Andrew is the man in the center of the back row holding the life ring.

After Grandpa died my Mother was going through his things to help settle his estate when she came across a thick stack of letters and post cards that he had saved. They were in his top dresser draw held together with twine. She opened the twine and the memories of them came flooding into her brain. She had remembered retrieving the mail and that her Dad would sometime receive letters which she could not read. The letters had very interesting and unique stamps on them. They were arriving in Michigan after very long journeys from far away places like Norway , China and Japan. She loved the stamps so much that she begged him for the stamps. After Grandpa read his mail, he carefully cut the stamps off and gave them to her before tucking the letter away for safe keeping.

The letters sat for decades in his dresser drawer. Periodically he would get one out, read it and place it back in the drawer with the rest. Mom could not read them. They were written in Norwegian. She wondered how she would ever figure out what they said. She wondered if he wrote letters back to his father and his brother. She thought that he did. She remembered him talking about it but she never really knew for sure. Mom would take the letters home and tuck them away in her dresser. Mom eventually found an address for her Uncle Haakon and Aunt Anna. She wrote a letter informing them that her Dad had died. She hoped that they still lived at the address she had found. She added that she hoped to stay in touch with them even though she had never meet them and had only limited postal contact with them. Several months passed before she finally received a letter from Anna. Anna wrote her a wonderful letter express her sadness about the news of Andrew’s death. And told her that Haakon was waiting in Heaven for Andrew’s arrival because he had died four weeks and four days before his brother. Anna did not know how to contact my Mother or her brother-in-law, Andrew.

In 1972, Mom received a surprise phone call from a man in Minnesota. He called her to say that your cousin (Haakon and Anna’s son and daughter-in-law), Bjarne and his wife, Sigrun, would be visiting him in Minnesota. Sigrun was his cousin. And that they would love to come to Michigan to meet Bjarne’s family also. He was calling on behalf of Bjarne. My Mother was delighted that her Norwegian cousin want to visit.

Bjarne and Sigrun arrived in the middle of summer and stayed with my parents. My mother invited all of her brothers and their families to come and meet them. They had a wonderful visit and soon after Mom and Dad were planning a trip the next summer to Norway to meet the family there.

It really bothered my mother that she did not know what the Norway letters said so when she and Dad visited Norway in the summer of 1973, she took the letters with her. Her cousin read them to her. She was thrilled. Her cousin Aslaug’s husband, Tormod offered to translate them for her if she would leave the letters with him when they came home. He promised that he would send the letters back with each translation. So Mom left the letters in Norway.

Aslaug and Tormod – Summer 1973

She anxiously awaited the arrival of each of the letters and it’s translation. After a few weeks, Mom received the first of what would be regular letters from Tormod. Each time she received a new translation she would be so excited. She would read them over and over again. I was a stay at home mom at the time and she would call me to tell me she had gotten another Norway letter. She would read it to me over the phone with such excitement! She would later tell me how disappointed she was that Grandpa had cut the stamps out for her when she was a child because the words behind the stamps were lost for ever. It took Tormod over a year to translate all the letters. Unknown to us at the time, his wife, Mom’s cousin Aslaug, was being treated for Cancer. She died fairly soon after their visit and before Tormod finished the translations. We were so sad to learn she had died.

These letters have become a family treasure. We cherish them and the translation which Tormod worked so diligently on for so long enabled us to see a side of our family which would have remained hidden had Grandpa not kept his letters and had we not been able to get them translated.

Happy Hunting,

Jan

#52Ancestors

Mae Evelyn Boyer was my Great Grandmother. She was the daughter of Austin and Mary Florence (White) Boyer. She was born in Rose Township, Oakland County, Michigan on October 29, 1883. She married George Stephen Losee on her 19^th Birthday, October 29, 1902.

Mae Evelyn Boyer on her Wedding Day.

George and Mae’s first son, Lester, was born in September of 1903. Two years later, in February of 1905, Lillian was born, then Wallace, two years after that in February of 1907.

This picture is identified as the Austin Boyer house in Clio Michigan.

It was shared with me by my cousin Nancy Redman. It is a picture of the extended Boyer family, Austin, all of his siblings and their families. I have tried to find a reason, an event or celebration, which would have resulted in this gathering but so far I have found none. Standing on the porch holding the toddler in white is Mae. She is holding Wallace and is standing next to her father, Austin. Lillian is on the step below her, standing between her mother, Mae and Austin, with Lester directly in front of Mae on the bottom step. We have estimated the year of this photo to be most likely the fall of 1907 based on the age of Wallace who was born in early 1907 and the fact that Austin Boyer died in May of 1908.

Austin Boyer’s Death Certificate

In the years preceding Austin’s untimely death, Austin and Mary Florence, with the help of George, Mae and other Boyer family members, were building a flourishing floral business in Clio, Michigan. After Austin’s sudden death in May of 1908, George and Mae play a pivotal role in the running of the florist. Three years after Austin died, George and Mae had their second daughter, Mary Florence in 1911 and then Ernest was born two years later in 1913. In the eleven years since George and Mae were married, they had 5 children.

On February 13, 1914, Mae left Lillian in charge of the younger children when she left the house to hang up laundry in the back yard. The temperatures in February had been relatively mild and it was a good day for hanging laundry on the line. Lillian watched the children as instructed. After what seemed like a long time, Lillian realized that her mother had not returned to the house. Lillian went to see what was taking her mother so long and she found Mae slumped over the wet laundry basket under the clothes line. Mae was thirty years old and Lillian was eight. Mae was gone way too soon and Lillian was way too young to be a witness of this event. The death of their mother would turn Lillian, her four siblings and their father’s lives upside down. Everything changed in an instant.

Mae Evaline Boyer Losee’s Death Certificate

George was left with five children whose ages ranged from 1 to 11 years old. I can not imagine how overwhelmed he must have felt. His relationship with his children would change forever. Lillian, Florence and Ernest went to live with Mae’s mother, Mary Florence Boyer, in Flint. She had left the florist business to George and Mae to run and bought a boarding house in Flint a few years after her husband died. She was renting rooms to factory workers as they came to Flint looking for jobs in the new automotive factories.

Mary Florence and Ernest at Grandma Boyers with Rex Boyer – 1915

Florence and Ernest were toddlers when their Mother died. George would never be able to care for his young children and run a farm. For years I wondered why Lillian was with Mary Florence since she really was old enough to help with the household chores at the farm. I assumed that she was needed to help take care of the toddlers at Mary Florence’s Boarding House. George and the older boys, Lester and Wallace, are found together in census records at one or the other of the two farms that George now owns in Clio and Gladwin, Michigan. I found out years later that it was against the law for a father to raise an under age daughter by himself after his wife died. Female daughters were generally sent to live with a Grandmother or an Aunt as well as the younger toddlers siblings.

Eventually George would remarry, but by that time the girls , Lillian and Florence had been raised by their Grandma for so long that they remained in Flint with Mary Florence. Ernest did go live with George and his new wife Alice when he was older and could help on the farm. The children seemed to see each other and their father regularly. There are pictures of all the kids together when they were young. Lester, attended the Doyle School with Lillian. Lester and Lillian are marked on the photo below with an x drawn with a pencil by Lillian. This Photo was taken in 1915 or 1916, a year or two after their Mom’s death.

Doyle Street School – 1915 or 1916

Lillian Losee

My preteen Grandmother making a fashion statement or playing dress up. I am not sure which! I always loved this photo of her. It is one of the few childhood pictures that we have of her. For nine years Lillian lived with Mary Florence in the boarding house. At the tender age of 18, she married Everett Smith on August 28, 1923.

Lillian and Everett Smith on their Wedding day.

On what would have been her Mother’s 41^st birthday, Lillian gave birth to her first child, Lucille Smith. Four years later on August 29, 1928, she gave birth to my father, Harold Smith. On September 08, 1928, Lillian’s Grandmother, Mary Florence, was walking along the interurban train tracks to go visit her granddaughter, Lillian and her new baby, Harold, as she frequently did, when she was struck by a train and killed at Crago Crossing. I can’t help but wonder how she did not hear the train coming. Had she lost her hearing? Did the train not use it horn?

Mary Florence’s Death Certificate

Lillian and Everett’s daughter, Lucille died at the age of six years old, three short years later.

Lucille and Harold Smith 1928 or early 1929

This is the only picture that Everett and Lillian had of both of their children together. Lucille died of Strep which had gone into her blood stream.

Lucille Smith’s Death Certificate

As I write this I am reminded of all of the sad events that shaped my Grandmother’s early life. By the time that Lillian was 26 years old, she had lost a grandfather, her mother, a her grandmother who raised her and her only daughter all within 23 years. I guess I had never really put all these events on a timeline. That is a lot of heartache in 23 short years for one person to bear. She experienced so many people who were gone too soon. Lillian was a strong woman.

Happy Hunting,

Jan

#52Ancestors