I got another movie digitized this week, this one from late 61 to August 62. It included some footage in New Orleans, so I was hoping to see my maternal grandmother, but she wasn’t in this one. We’ll see what I get from the next film.
Genealogy, The First Part
I got a pleasant surprise in my email Tuesday morning: an email from the New Jersey State Archives with a copy of my grandmother’s marriage license.
I’d known from my dad’s records that Nan had married in New Jersey at a Methodist Church on October 19th, 1921. I didn’t really know why they got married in New Jersey, though. Edward — I never knew him so I never called him grandpa or grandfather or anything like that — had worked for the War Department during World War I. But they didn’t get married until 1921, three years after the war ended. Nan’s address on the marriage license was on 14th St. in New York City. Edward’s address was in New Orleans, on Coliseum Street.
I’m also not sure why they chose the church they did. My recollection is that they, or at least she was, Catholic. At any rate, the building is still a church, though it’s now First Hopewell Baptist Church. I’m not sure yet if Roseville ME is still active. I was amused to see that the minister’s last name was the same as one of my good friends. I’ll have to see if Jeff had any relatives who were clergy in New Jersey.
I’m also curious as to the relationship between my grandparents and the witnesses recorded on the license. Frida and Arthur Hartmann lived at 7 N. 7th St. in Newark. It wouldn’t be completely impossible or implausible for the Hartmanns to have been someone they’d met in DC or in New York. Then again, since I’ve found nothing at Newspapers.com to suggest this was a big affair, it’s entirely possible that the Hartmanns were just a couple that Nan or Edward asked to serve as witnesses. And the Hartmanns lived just around the corner from the church, so maybe they were just convenient witnesses.
So, as always in genealogy, one answer raises more questions. Still, it’s a nice endorphin rush.
Genealogy, The Second Part
As I said, one answer raises more questions. Or you never know where one thread leads.
I’ve been working on Diana’s line most recently, building out her great-grandfather’s siblings. It’s an interesting family. Minnie apparently married at 14. In the first two of her three marriages, she had 9 children, including six in 8 years.
Three of them died in their first year of life. Another died as an inmate in the Ohio Penitentiary Fire.
One of them—Charles Wesley Garrison—joined the Army in 1920. But I didn’t notice this for a long time, because it was sort-of hidden in his death certificate. But the other day I found his first marriage license and saw that he listed his occupation as “soldier.” I looked more closely at the other primary document I had for him, his death certificate, and noted that someone had answered “Yes” to “Was deceased a veteran?”
I keep a page on my genealogy site listing all the veterans in the family, so I decided to explore Charles’ military service to see how much I could document.
It wasn’t as easy as it should have been.
I have his full name and his date of birth, so you’d think I could find him easily enough, assuming his records weren’t lost in the 1973 fire.
The Search is On
Except he’d changed his name somewhere along the line.
I thought for a long time that perhaps it’d been an accidental misunderstanding. But the more I’ve looked at and for him, the more I think it was deliberate. It may not have been official, but I’ve never actively explored that idea. I may do that soon. My suspicion is that his name change may have been to distance himself from his brother, but that’s just a guess.
At any rate, once I searched his “new” name, “Charles Westley Gairston,” I found his Veterans Affair Master Index card, which gave me his serial number, enlistment, and discharge dates.
I learned eventually that the VAMI is not necessarily the be-all and end-all when it comes to those dates. A poster on Reddit explained, “[T]he enlistment and discharge dates aren’t necessarily their earliest enlistment or latest discharge. They’re just one set of dates that were given at some point when the veteran interacted with the VA.”
Good to know.
That VAMI card and his new name led me to a series of Monthly Unit Rosters. I eventually located 53 reports out of a possible 115, based on his enlistment date, second discharge, and eventual death date.
So far, I’ve established that he enlisted a total of three times, starting in September 1920. He served his initial enlistment, getting discharged in August 1923. Less than two years later, he reenlisted, but then was “discharged by purchase” just 38 days later.
I’d never heard of such a discharge. Apparently, for a time you could essentially buy your way out of military service.
He reenlisted again, probably in early December 1928, because he arrived in Fort Bliss on Christmas Day that year. He was “discharged for dependency” 15 months later.
My speculation is that, given William’s recent arrest and pending long prison term, his parents asked for him to be sent home to help take care of Minnie and his siblings. Why his younger brother, Arthur, couldn’t help is a question to ponder. Arthur was 24 at that point, married, and childless.
More threads. More questions.
Team 147
Since it was a night game last week, I finished my post before the game and didn’t feel like editing it over the ending.
I was watching a delayed stream for reasons beyond my control. I watched the first Hail Mary get blocked, and a minute later, the phone rang. It was Middle Son, starting to talk about the game. I was venting, because we played horribly overall, especially against an MAC team (even if they were the league champs last season). Then he made a comment about the finish, and I said something about seeing “Official Review” on the score bug. Middle Son stopped mid-sentence, then said, “Call me back when you see it,” and hung up.
Just about then, they announced the clock reset on my TV, and we all know what happened next.
I’m not going to comment on whether the time should have been added or not. I will say, though, that official clock management was a problem the entire game. I think that was the third or fourth clock adjustment that day.
I’m glad we won, but it shouldn’t have come down to that play against that team. We had three holding penalties on one drive alone. Sure, everyone expects mistakes the first couple of weeks, but that was just atrocious. Two illegal formation penalties?
Coach Whitt said after the game, “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” and he was right.
Michigan dropped out of the AP Top 25 after the near-loss, which wasn’t that surprising, given that we were #16 going into the game.
It’s safe to say after we beat Oklahoma this week that the team did the work.
We made some huge mistakes, to be sure, including giving up 30 yards on two stupid penalties that led to an Oklahoma field goal in the third quarter. But overall, we looked a lot better. Underwood broke loose on several runs and seemed just a little more sure of himself. The defense showed good improvement too, holding a well-respected team to just 10 points.
It was a pretty good showing considering Oklahoma was favored by five points. I’d argue this was a bigger win than last week, but the crowd on the field afterwards didn’t look as big.
Go Blue.
Elseread
This one is a stunner. Prible was convicted of five murders, including the deaths of three children, to cover up the first two killings of their parents. The only evidence tying him to the scene was the presence of semen in the mouth of the female adult victim. Prible testified that it was a voluntary sexual encounter hours before Nilda Tirado died. The prosecutor claimed, though, that it was impossible for semen to last that long, an apparent mischaracterization of the DNA expert’s testimony.
Be sure to click through and read the story at The Intercept.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for this post has been my Native American Flute playlist on Spotify.
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