Witnesses to history . . .

. . . seems that description could describe everyone who has lived on the planet.  Each person's story could wrap around an important historical event; of course some occurrences are far more dramatic than others; however, I've chosen two examples from my family background to discuss how they were witnesses to history.

Rock Springs, Texas, destroyed . . .

The very first thing that came to my mind with that introductory phrase is the horrific Rock Springs, Texas, tornado of April, 1927, later determined to be of an F5 intensity.  Many of my kin and allied families experienced that devastating storm first-hand, and we have heard some of their memories.

My father, Ira Kelley, was a witness from afar, along with his parents and brother.  Dad remembered that they watched the approach of the thunderstorm from their ranch; the sky turned green, he told me, as the ominous clouds passed over them.

Only later did they learn of the near obliteration of the town of Rock Springs and the extensive deaths and calamatous injuries that resulted as the mile-wide tornado tore through the area, exploding & obliterating buildings, destroying most of the town, causing fires, and leaving survivors exposed with no shelter from baseball-size hail and debris, and with all communication systems demolished, no means to call for help from a distance.

We’ve spoken with McCaleb kin who were caught in the storm as one family member was sucked out of the house by the 200 mph winds and dragged for a substantial distance, sustaining life-long crippling injuries.

All families of that area were impacted by that catastrophic event.

From the National Weather Service re the deadliest Texas tornadoes:

Repercussions for war orphans . . .

One of the most puzzling historical events we have uncovered in researching our genealogy is the case of Daniel Coykendall, my three greats grandfather, of Sussex County, New Jersey.  I can’t imagine that we will ever know the reasoning that went into his decisions, so we are left to wonder.

Whatever his reasons, his actions impacted not only his family at the time, but had repercussions throughout their lives, and undoubtedly subsequent generations and those allied with them.

The mystery in my mind begins with the early demise of Daniel’s wife, Julia Ann Perry, who succumbed at age 36, leaving motherless her five or six surviving children (I believe four predeceased her - there's a bit of confusion on the family's makeup), including my three greats grandmother, Ada Belmont Coykendall, who was the eldest at age 11.  The youngest, Julia Etta, was only two months old, leaving me to wonder if her mother’s death was related to her birth.

A sad circumstance for all, without a doubt, and unfortunately,  one that has been told through the centuries, but that is not the mystery.  Daniel’s actions subsequent to his wife’s demise are what set me to wondering.  A mere five months later, he enlisted in the New Jersey Militia of the Union Army to fight in the Civil War, leaving those children without any parent at home.

Through a serendipitous series of events, many many years later, we became acquainted with the Swenson family, descendants of Ada’s little sister, Julia Etta, who married a Rutan.  From those cousins, we learned about some of the impacts of Daniel’s decision to enlist in the Army.

The disastrous result of Daniel Coykendall’s military tenure was that he was captured by Confederate forces during a skirmish between the Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Spotsylvania, and imprisoned at the infamous and deadly prisoner-of-war camp, Andersonville Prison, in Georgia.  It was there that he succumbed to disease from the inhumane conditions in which Union soldiers were kept, dying just four months later.  

45,000 men were detained at Andersonville Prison/Camp Sumter, four times its capacity; 13,000 of them died horrible deaths there due to disease related to starvation, polluted water, lack of sanitation, and conditions that one witness described thus: "(the scene) almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect; stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin”.  

The horrific situation was so dire that the camp’s commander, Captain Henry Wirz, was tried & convicted of war crimes & executed after the war.

We have been to the camp's site - it’s set aside as a National Historic Site & Prisoner of War museum - and visited Daniel Coykendall’s grave; his is marked, but thousands are buried in unmarked mass graves.

 

So that horrifying circumstance aside, I move on to how Coykendall’s military enlistment impacted so many of those who came afterward.  From conversations with our Swenson cousins, we learned that Daniel & Julia’s children were taken in by relatives, primarily the Perrys.  Of course they represent a microcosm of the effects of the American Civil War.  In a document entitled “New Jersey’s Civil War Orphans, 1865-1871, the family of seven is listed as “very destitute”, as were thousands of others.  Ada's age was against her being fostered for long; she was soon expected to make her own way.

I wish that I could have known Ada Coykendall.  From my perspective, I think her sad & tumultuous early life was replicated throughout her tenure on this planet.  As always when looking at the snapshots of someone’s life in the past, it is possible only to surmise what was occurring between the known events.  Certainly the early-life traumas affected the family; the Swensons related to us some of it that was passed down to them verbally and in old letters, which they shared with us; those documents include a letter written by Ada to her sister referring to her "troubles" - the sudden deaths of her second husband and son, but I digress.

 

We know that by 1870, when she was 19, she was employed as a domestic worker just prior to her marriage to my three greats grandfather, John J. Rhodimer.  After they relocated to Colorado, she divorced Rhodimer in 1894 after the births of six children, stating that the reason for the divorce was cruelty and that he was in the penitentiary.

In 1895, she married Edward Nicholson, a blacksmith as was John Rhodimer (The marriage was evidently in a double ceremony with her son Lewis Beemer Rhodimer).  Ada & Nicholson divorced in 1908, the same year she married Samuel Hagerty, who left her a widow two years later.

Her years were troubled as she struggled with poverty, and many losses: she lost an infant daughter, and two of her sons predeceased her.  My cousin Jerry knows about Ada from his family’s perspective.  “She was an angel”, he relates, as she cared for her granddaughter, Gertrude, during her illness with and death from tuberculosis.

These are the only photos we have of Ada.  I'm hoping to find something better.  Perhaps the girl with her is Gertie, who lived with her.

This is Ada's granddaughter Gertie:

As we traced Ada's multiple residences around Denver, they seemed to be primarily in quasi-industrial/commercial areas, most of which were demolished in urban renewal projects.  We located about a dozen places where she resided in the last 20 years of her life, and finally as a boarder, seeming to indicate a lack of stability and/or resources.

Ada and her siblings were unwitting and certainly unwilling witnesses to history, to a war that brought untold death & suffering to so many, with ramifications that continue to this day.