What photo?
That was close: I was uninspired by this week’s theme - Favorite Photo - and nearly decided not to go with it. Certainly, I could choose an alternate subject or simply not write anything; however, I seem to have taken it as a bit of a challenge to go with the subjects suggested by Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks", and thus far, I have - all three weeks of it.
No doubt it is impossible for me to select a favorite photo, but since this is a genealogy blog, it needs to be related to that. That exceedingly broad category selected, but then what? Of course we have taken many photographs of ancestral homes and collected images of our forebears, and I have an emotional attachment and a story to go with each and every one.
The searches we’ve done that located mostly-but-not-always-abandoned houses in which our relatives once lived are what makes them interesting to us. We’ve driven up and down streets in the older sections of towns seeking particular homes, often in places that have been altered drastically in intervening years. The passage of time, coupled with economic and societal changes often results in residential structures being razed, moved or otherwise altered, as freeways are constructed, railroads come and go, and for any number of other reasons.
Homes in rural areas are sometimes scavenged for materials after abandonment, or simply deteriorate under the ravages of weather when not maintained.
For those reasons, evolutions of neighborhoods and changes of ownership, ancestral abodes are often difficult and/or impossible to locate.
We were thrilled to find the only one remaining of many houses in which my great great grandmother Ada (Coykendall) Rhodimer (later Nicholson) resided in Denver. The others had succumbed to urban renewal projects. When we arrived at the appropriate address, we found the house occupied and knocked on the door. A woman answered and was understanding about why we wanted to see and photograph the house.
She was in the process of moving furniture and needed help with a table, so we pitched in and got the job done before taking our photographs and having a tour.
Also in Colorado, we located the house in which my grandfather Clyde Leroy Catron grew up, and were welcomed there, too. An old photo includes his father, James Andrew Catron and mother Mary (Molly) Elizabeth Taylor (who, by the way, lived in Prescott and is buried here) with children.
It was our great good fortune to be introduced to a lovely man by the name of Arthur Beck. In addition to just plain enjoying his company and tales of exploits with humongous dangerous boars, and tidbits of outback Texas history, often tragic, sometimes hilarious, he was the lessee of several ranch acreages that had been under the ownership of our family in the past, thus he was able to take us to those places that were otherwise inaccessible by mere mortals without gate keys.
One such ancestral location had been the home of Frank & Martha (Mattie) Ellen (Owen) Winans. It was a modest log house sheltered by live oaks on every side. It was those trees that created the “ick” factor of the day; we experienced something that I had never known previously was a thing - the oaks quite literally rained ticks down on us!
In addition to our two youngest children and my father, we were privileged to share that day with kinfolk - Luther & Frances Winans. Frances & I became closely acquainted as we picked ticks off of each other.
Despite that very distracting element of tick showers, we were enthralled to see the home of my great great grandparents. Frank & Mattie raised seven independent children out there (one died in infancy) - offspring that went on to ranch in Texas, teach school in Colorado, run a trading post in Alaska, homestead in New Mexico, prospect/mine/trap, work as a jeweler & a telephone lineman, serve in municipal positions, and just generally live interesting and fulfilling lives.
Perhaps their wanderlust and individualistic characters were formed in part by what might be a somewhat hands-off parental bent. It’s easy to judge people by snippets shared and remembered about them. At the risk of oversimplifying, I especially love one of the stories I heard about their parents: that when it was time for Frank to hook the team up to the wagon for the long drive into town, Mattie jumped right up on the seat to go with him, leaving the kids at home to fend for themselves.
As an aside, my father once told me that his parents took him & his brother Lewis out to shelter safely at the Winans place during the 1918 flu epidemic. The Winans couple were Grandpa Zack’s grandparents through his mother Julia.
Luther remembers . . .
Happily, our tour continued on another ancestral ranch: we were taken to the abandoned headquarters of the spread once run by Frank & Julia (Winans) Kelley. There we found quite a few outbuildings, fences and corrals still semi-intact. The substantial dogrun house was open to the weather but still in pretty good condition.
Behind the main house we found a one-room structure, that thanks to Dad’s memory, we know had been the dwelling of my great great grandfather, James Kelley, in his last years. James is the same one I wrote about previously when we found his & Eliza’s place in San Saba County.
His tiny abode contained a table, chair & a bed in addition to a wood stove. Dad remembered seeing him standing in the doorway. There was a now-rare puncheon floor consisting of split logs with the adze-smoothed sides forming the floor.
Cousin Luther was in bliss as he recalled riding over there from his parents’ ranch to the west (or was it a different direction?); at any rate, he had wonderful memories of his days growing up in that Cedar Creek area of Edwards County and visiting the Kelleys.
A lost (and found) iris garden . . .
"Old John" is how we refer to my four greats grandfather, John Chilcoat. He & my gggg grandmother Huldah have been elusive with details about their lives. That he served in the Pennsylvania militia during the American Revolution is a certainty, but how I wish I could find out more about Huldah; I don't even know her maiden name.
What I do know is that she raised her six children in the Missouri wilderness until her death, probably in the 1840s. Perhaps the mystery surrounding her made it even more fulfilling to locate the remains of their log house (thanks to the señor's skill at deciphering historic maps), surrounded in that outback countryside by hundreds of yellow irises, undoubtedly planted there by Huldah to bring beauty to her surroundings. I like to think that she brought starts of those flowers with her, possibly from her birth home in Maryland. Naturally, we have some of those flowers at our home, and have shared them with friends, too.
Meanwhile in the big city . . .
Many of the ancestral places we’ve tracked down and visited are little more than rubble heaps, sometimes sites only with no trace of habitation.
Not so with my maternal grandmother’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. Many a happy hour was spent there: Roses in the front yard, pyracantha and various flowers along the porch, back yard gardens blooming riotously under her grapefruit tree and sweet peas on the back fence. It is from her and my mother that I surely have my love of growing flowers, while Dad gets credit for vegetable farming.
We’ve been by Grandma’s house a number of times: the last was a few years back when I marched up to the door to announce that I was going to take a picture of the house. The welcoming homeowner invited us in for a look around, during which I maintained a running commentary about what was different, the same or how it used to be.
How odd, though, to find the place with nary a green growing plant besides a shrub and a tree or two where once lush grassy lawns and riotous flower beds had been. What are the chances that the woman now living there (she vowed to henceforth characterize herself as the caretaker of Grandma’s house) is allergic to flowers, grass & green growing things!
Then . . .
. . . and now . . .
Meanwhile in the bigger city . . .
Lest anyone think we only search out western ancestral homes, I will include the very different scenarios when we find ourselves east of the Mississippi. When we went on the hunt for residences formerly occupied by the señor’s grands and great grands, it was a horse of a different color.
Finding our way in the concrete jungle that is Chicago was quite a rude awakening, especially when we discovered that the neighborhoods had altered drastically, and I don’t mean that they had improved.
The quest for his great grandparents Wuehrmann's residence found us idling along a street that put me in mind of a mouth in need of a dentist. A few isolated tall buildings - many with windows out or boarded up - were interspersed with vacant trash-strewn lots; posted addresses were few and far between.
As we approached our best guess as to the correct place, we did indeed find an intact two-story structure.
On the sidewalk in front was a woman in a lawn chair enjoying a quart of beer. I can wander alone in the trackless back country from now until doomsday; however, put me down in the city and my nerves are a-jangle. So there we were: our objective located. I would have been fine with snapping a photo and moving on, but oh no, that would never do!
Discussion ensued about what tack to take; I lost. Chris decided to approach the Sunday morning imbiber. To protect my children above all else, I got into the driver’s seat, kept the car running and prepared to completely abandon my spouse if the need arose, or if my hackles hackled any higher.
It was a near thing when I watched as he and the woman talked, and both of them turned and walked into the building without so much as a “How do you do” to me as I kept my foot on the accelerator, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.
They were nowhere in sight for an extended period of time, during which my head was on a swivel to insure that no one was sneaking up on us. In the cavalier way that only Chris can manage (a la Alfred E. Neuman - What, me worry?), he eventually reappeared by sticking his head around the corner of the building and motioning for us to approach. In truth, I wondered if perhaps he was being held at gunpoint and I should drive away for help. Finally, as his motionings became even more animated (was someone poking the gun into his back?), I gathered my children (who may be wondering cosmically why they chose these particular parents) and approached trepidatiously.
After that, it seems a bit of an anticlimax, but we were over the moon about seeing the place. Wilhelm Julius Gustav Wuehrmann resided therein with his wife Johanna Friederike Auguste Margaret Gebken (and no, I have no clue why they felt the need for multiple monikers).
As a paperhanger & painter, the ground floor was his shop, and the family lived upstairs - five children in all, including Chris’ grandfather, Johann Friederich Heinrich (Hans) Wuehrmann, known later as Fred.
In the ensuing years, the building was modified to then-modern standards, as in drop ceilings, plaster-boarded walls, and so on. At the time we stopped in, it was in the process of restoration. It was fascinating for us to see what was beneath the plaster board that had been removed: there were wide swaths of various patterned wallpapers - we assume as samples for customers to see.
Out of the frying pan . . .
Moving on to locate the señor’s other great grandparent’s abode, the tenor of the neighborhood declined to an even more alarming degree, so much so that when we located the building, I took photos quickly from inside the car as we continued rolling. One of our bright ideas was to get a look at the back via the alley. That got us hemmed in and things began to look sinister as men in an open-door bar who spotted us began exiting and coming in our direction. We managed to extricate ourselves without harm, but it was an adrenaline-pumping experience.
That structure was designed & built by Chris' great grandfather, Johann David Dalk, and was where he and Martha Margaret Agnes Mahn raised their three daughters and suffered the loss of an infant son. We have the handwritten specs that Dalk made for the house's construction - what a treasure!
The stories of our escapades seeking ancestral homes abound, and include outright trespassing, rifling through paperwork left in abandoned rat-infested houses, finding a nest of baby vultures in the kneehole of a desk behind noisome jumbled mounds of left-behind furniture and personal belongings, digging up flower bulbs in long-neglected flower beds, and so much more.
Now the real question is: how did any of that relate to this week’s suggested theme: “Favorite photo”, and the answer is: I am clueless. I thought maybe I’d skip that theme because it did not blow any air up my skirts, but that seemed like a cop-out. So then I thought I might write about Francis Winans who was born in 1790 because surprisingly, we have an awesome portrait of him.
Instead, my fingers, when applied to the keyboard, took on a life of their own, and there you have it - many photos and many stories.
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