Was Our Farmhouse a Kit House? 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Home Sweet Home”

The Peterson Family House: Lumber and Supplies Arrived By Train

Paul Peterson: 1867-1941 (Paternal Grandfather)

 

The house I grew up in and that my brother lives in now was originally built during my father’s childhood. He was born in 1917, so it was probably built around 1930. My father said the house was a “kit house”.

So what is a kit house? Wikipedia defines it as follows:

“Kit houses, also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses, mail order homes, or catalog homes, were a type of housing that was popular in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the first half of the 20th century. Kit house manufacturers sold houses in many different plans and styles, from simple bungalows to imposing Colonials, and supplied at a fixed price all materials needed for construction of a particular house, but typically excluding brick, concrete, or masonry (such as would be needed for laying a foundation, which the customer would have to arrange to have done locally).”

“Depending on the size and style of the plan, the materials needed to construct a typical house, including perhaps 10,000–30,000 pieces of lumber and other building material would be shipped by rail, filling one or two railroad boxcars, which would be loaded at the company's mill and sent to the customer's home town, where they would be parked on a siding or in a freight yard for unloading. Once the materials arrived, a customer would arrange for a local carpenter or contractor to assemble the house on a piece of property owned by the customer.”

My father remembered the train bringing the house materials. Rather than stopping in nearby Hanska, the train stopped about half a mile outside town. The train tracks crossed the rural road where our farm was located just a little ways from the house site. The rail car of materials was unloaded into my uncle’s field across the road so the lumber and supplies didn’t have to be transported as far. 

My father said that my grandfather, Paul Peterson, hired local people to prepare the foundation and construct the house. My brother jokes that the foundation installers didn’t use the best materials; our basement always leaked during spring snowmelts and after big rainstorms, and the concrete was a little crumbly in texture. However, the foundation has successfully held up the house for nearly a century.

Ad for a four-square kit home

I have been trying to verify that the home is actually a kit house. I’ve looked at a lot of the kit house catalogs for the era, but haven’t been able to identify a specific plan that matches our house. I can find similar designs, but the windows and door placement don’t quite match up.

The house style is a “foursquare”, described by Homesandgardens.com as “a two-story, cube-shaped single house characterized by a full or half-width front porch, a hipped roof, double-hung wood windows and dormer windows in the attic.” Other sites note that there are often four rooms on each floor. Our house is definitely a four-square, as it is cube-shaped, has a hip roof, a half-width front porch, double-hung wood windows, a single dormer in the attic, and four rooms on each floor of the house.

Another four-square style, fairly close to our home

Four-squares were popular kit home styles. Kit homes were available through general mail-order companies like Sears and Montgomery Ward, as well as through companies like Aladdin Homes and Gordon Van Tine, who only sold homes. So did Paul Peterson actually order a kit from a catalog from one of those major companies? Or did he work with a regional company that used a basic design to pre-cut a home?

Our house from the rear. Attic dormer visible at left, window on stair landing in center. Hipped roof.

I will probably have to search the archives of the local newspaper to find any answers. If the house truly was a kit home, I am sure it would have been a bit of a curiosity and would have been covered by the local paper. There would at least have been a mention in the gossipy community news items that residents submitted for publication. It would be fun to verify my father’s story.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_house

https://everydayoldhouse.com/american-foursquare-kit-homes-wardway/

https://searshomes.org/index.php/2014/10/14/montgomery-ward/

https://kithouses.org/topic/identification/

https://everydayoldhouse.com/foursquare-sears-kit-house/

Heading North to Break Down the Wall: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Brick Wall”

Where Have All the Wee Brothers Gone? Gone to Canada Every One?

Nels or Nils Wee: 1882-1938 (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
Henry Theodore Wee: 1884-1944 (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
Ingvald Julius Wee: 1886-1961 (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
Karl Jorgen “George” Wee: 1888- ?  (Paternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)

 

Brick walls in genealogy either come down painfully slowly, brick by precious brick as information is pieced together, or they collapse all at once with a fortuitous discovery. I made one of those lucky discoveries recently.

I had previously posted about the Wee or Vee brothers who emigrated from Norway and settled near their aunt, my great-grandmother Ragnhild Olsdatter Ve Syverson and her husband Ove in Brown County Minnesota. One of those immigrant brothers, Anders Olsson Wee (or Vee), had ten children who were raised near Hanska, Minnesota. I easily found records for most of those ten children, but three of them, sons Henry Theodore, Ingvald Julius, and Karl Jorgen, seemed to have simply disappeared from records. A fourth brother, Nels, disappeared for years before reappearing in Hanska burial records. The Wee brothers were one of my brick walls. This winter I returned to researching the family in the hopes that I would find some clue to the fate of the missing Wees. And amazingly I did, by looking further north to Alberta, Canada.

Nels, Henry, Ingvald and Jorgen were the second, third, fourth and fifth of Anders and Sigrid Wee’s ten children. Ole, the eldest son, was the natural choice for helping Anders with the farm and his youngest siblings, with the idea that he would take over the farm when Anders needed to step back. Anders and Sigrid’s daughters would marry and leave the farm, but what were the other sons to do? Anders’ farm wasn’t large enough to divide it among them. In 1890s Brown County, most men farmed or plied a trade like blacksmithing or cabinetry. Other options were professions like the ministry, medicine or law, but training for those professions required money for college, something immigrants like the Wees did not have. The Wee sons knew how to farm, but all the homesteads in southern Minnesota were already claimed, so farmland was no longer cheap to acquire: you needed a lot of money. If the four brothers wanted to farm, they were going to have to move. But where?

Ingvald had a fairly unique name, so I began searching for him first. He was born in January 1886, and appeared in the 1900 census as a fourteen-year-old. But by the 1910 census, he was gone. I found him on a census record from an area called Battle River in Alberta, Canada. Could this be the same man? The census record stated that he was born in 1886 in the United States, that he immigrated to Canada in 1908 and was naturalized in 1919. He was a farmer and stated that he was Norwegian and a Lutheran. The evidence suggests this is the correct man.

I found his homestead records from January 1908. He was only 22 when he applied for his homestead. The opportunity to acquire farmland without having to buy it was obviously the draw to Alberta. He was still on the same plot of land in 1916, and in 1931 as well, so he obviously proved up his homestead.

However, it must have been a lonely life. He never married; not surprising as there were few women in the area, and none who were single. He seems to be the only Norwegian on the census page, and the only one to immigrate from the United States. Did he speak English well enough to communicate with his neighbors? The photos of the area’s early years show a rather barren, treeless and flat land, and the community he lived closest to, Acadia, was very small. The census records say he lived in a wood house and had no radio. The house was valued at $4000, which was about the median value for the area. Was Ingvald happy there? Did he ever travel back to Minnesota to visit his family? Hanska was over one thousand miles from his Alberta farm.  

Acadia, Alberta in early 1900s when Ingvald arrived

Ingvald died August 21, 1961 at the age of 75 in Edmonton, Alberta. Edmonton was far from his farm—about 430 kilometers. Did he move there when his health failed? Did he have the financial means to support himself when he could no longer farm? And what happened to his land after he moved and died? I still have so many questions about his life.

Once I had located Ingvald in Canada, I looked for his brothers there as well. I found Henry on the 1931 census living in the region of Innisfail, Alberta, about 325 kilometers from the Acadia area where Ingvald lived. 

I believe Henry also homesteaded, although I have been unable to find his paperwork. There is a homestead application for a Henry Andrew Vee, but the birth dates are wrong, although that Henry was also born in the United States. Innisfail appears to have been a more prosperous town than Battle River/Acadia, so perhaps that is why Henry chose to homestead so far from Ingvald.

Innisfail, Alberta in 1909, one year after Henry Wee's arrival

I was able to confirm my 1931 Henry T. Vee was the Wee brother I was searching for when I discovered a 1923 border crossing document for Nels Wee, Henry’s older brother. Nels, then age 42, was on his way back to the United States from Alberta. He listed his last address as “Lomless, Alberta”, which I believe is some sort of misspelling. His next of kin was listed as his brother Henry, living in Disbury (near Innisfail), Alberta, and he states he was born in “Henskert, Minnesota”, a misspelling of Hanska by the U. S. Border Agent in Idaho where Nels was entering the country. Obviously, Henry and Nels were the sons of Anders Wee. Interestingly, Nels stated he was headed for Spokane, Washington. I wonder what motivated him to go there.

Knowing that Nels had been in Alberta, I started searching for him on the census records, locating him in Battle River, Alberta not far from Ingvald, in the 1916 census. Like his brothers, he immigrated in 1908 and was naturalized a few years later. He must have homesteaded as well; he was farming. And, like his brothers, he was living alone.

Nels Wee census record 1916

I have found no records of Nels in the Spokane area after the 1923 border crossing. It appears he was moving back to the United States, so I guess that something must have gone wrong with his homestead plan. Did he get a poor piece of land that simply couldn’t be farmed profitably? Was he a poor farmer and went bankrupt?

The only other record I found for Nels was his burial record. He died October 27, 1938 at the age of fifty-seven and was buried at the Lake Hanska Cemetery. This would indicate he returned home to Hanska at some point between his leaving Canada in 1923 and his death in 1938.

As for Henry, I found a voters record for him dated 1940, and his death record just four years later. He died March 17, 1944 at the age of sixty. He was buried in Innisfail Cemetery.

The final brother, Karl Jorgen or George Wee, took a slightly different path than his older brothers. He remained in Minnesota when they all moved to Canada in 1908. He appears on the 1910 US census at age 22 living with his widowed mother, brother Ole, who was running the farm, and three sisters and two little brothers. He was still using Jorgen as his name that year, and was working as a farm laborer, presumably for his brother Ole.

George Wee at far left of photo. His younger brothers Willie and Gilbert are in the front seat. Photo approximately 1914.

He is still living at home at the time of the 1920 census, although he is now going by the anglicized first name of George. His sisters are all married and out of the house, so the Wee farm residents include only widowed Sigrid, Ole, still running the farm, and George’s two younger brothers Willie and Gilbert, now in their twenties. It must have been an awkward existence for George—no wife and no land of his own as he entered his thirties. That may have prompted him to finally join his older brothers in Alberta. He appears on the 1921 Canada census as a farm laborer living with his employer, Clayton Wallace, in the Coronation area of Battle Creek, Alberta, not far from Ingvald and Nels. This must have been frustrating for George—once again he was working for someone else rather than farming his own land, and this time his boss was two years his junior.

George Wee working in Alberta in 1921

After that 1921 census, George simply disappears. I have found a 1930 census record for a George Wee who was an inmate at the state mental hospital in St. Peter, Minnesota. The patient was born in Minnesota in approximately 1890, and his parents were both Norwegian. The age is two years off from George’s, who was born January 26, 1888, but it is close enough to be a possibility. Inmate George Wee died August 18, 1946 in the state hospital. Is that the explanation for George’s disappearance?

Thanks to a chance discovery of Ingvald Julius Wee’s Canadian census record, the brick wall that blocked my finding the lost Wee brothers came crashing down. I had made a rookie genealogy mistake: I had kept searching where I thought the brothers should be, Minnesota, not expanding my search further afield. If I had thought about what those young men would have wanted, land of their own to farm, perhaps I would have thought to look towards Canada, where determined, hardy settlers could still get free land through the Canada homestead program. While I still have questions about Nels and George, I have so much more information about their lives than I did just a month ago.

 

Sources:

1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Ancestry.Com. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1556/records/761056689?tid=46986934&pid=322350819542&ssrc=pt

Alberta, Canada, Homestead Records, 1870-1930. Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60865/records/120180?tid=46986934&pid=322350819542&ssrc=pt

Alberta, Canada Deaths Index, 1870-1970. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61561/records/294572?tid=46986934&pid=322350819540&ssrc=pt

Henry Theodore Wee Findagrave Entry. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122467897/henry-theodore-wee?

U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1960, Eastport, Idaho. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1075

United States Census Records. 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930. Accessed on Ancestry.com.

Prairie Towns website. Historical photos of Alberta towns. http://www.prairie-towns.com/innisfail-images.html

 

Were My German Ancestors Fortyeighters? 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Migration”

 

Part of a Wave of German Immigrants: Hoffmans, Funks, and Streus

Johann Friedrich Streu: 1808-1883 (Maternal Third-Great Grandfather)
Friederica Christina Dethloff Streu: 1804-1883 (Maternal Third-Great Grandmother)
Sophia Maria Christiane Streu: 1840-1922 (Maternal Second-Great Grandmother)
Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman: 1836-1906  (Maternal Second-Great Grandfather)
Charles Nicolas Funk: 1817-1889 (Maternal Second-Great Grandfather)

A friend who is also working on her family tree recently asked me if my German ancestors were “Forty-eighters”. I had no idea what the term meant, and headed off to do some research. Wikipedia provided me with a basic working definition of the group:

“The Forty-eighters (48ers) were Europeans who participated in or supported the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe, particularly those who were expelled from or emigrated from their native land following those revolutions…In the German Confederation, the Forty-eighters favoured unification of Germany, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights.” (3)

Wikipedia noted that after the revolutions failed, many of these supporters elected to emigrate, heading for Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ancestry’s article on German immigration stated:

“Between 1848 and 1861, many Germans, known as “Forty-Eighters”, immigrated to the United States. While the exact numbers are unknown, the best estimates are that between 4,000 and 10,000 Forty-Eighters immigrated along with many other Germans who arrived at that time.” (2)

“Forty-Eighters could be found across the Midwestern landscape from the Dakotas to Ohio.” (2)

Illustration of Forty-Eighters boarding ships to emigrate from Germany

So were my German ancestors part of this movement? First, I needed to check on the years they arrived in the United States—did their arrival dates fall within the period from 1848 to 1861?

Yes, they all did. My second-great-grandfather Johannes Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffman (Americanized name of Henry), was born in Oedelum, Hanover, Germany on June 4, 1836, and arrived in the United States in 1855 at the age of nineteen. He would have only been twelve years old when the attempted 1848 revolution occurred, so it seems unlikely he was involved in the movement, unless his family members, who all remained in Germany, were supporters.

Henry and Sophia Hoffman

Henry’s eventual wife and my second-great-grandmother, Sophia Maria Christiane Streu, was born May 29, 1840 in Mecklenburg, Germany, to parents Johann and Freidrica Streu. The family seems to have arrived in America in 1857 when Sophia was sixteen. Her family moved to the Milwaukee area, and that is where Sophia met and married Henry. Milwaukee was one of the areas that Forty-Eighters settled in, so Sophia’s father Johann could have been a follower of the movement.

My remaining German immigrant ancestor was another second-great-grandfather, Charles Nicolas Funk, the father of my great-grandmother Hellena Funk. Charles was born May 12, 1817 in Prussia. He appears on the 1860 census as a cabinetmaker in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and was naturalized November 8, 1864. His arrival date in America is unclear, but was obviously prior to the 1860 census and at least five years before his 1864 naturalization—five years of continuous residence was required by the government. He was certainly old enough to have been involved in 1848, and as a cabinetmaker, he shared some of the characteristics of Forty-Eighters, who were more likely to have been educated or tradesmen rather than the very poor.

What other characteristics did the Forty-Eighters share? Many of them joined the Turners or formed Turner groups in the United States. According to Wikipedia, “Turners are members of German-American gymnastic clubs called Turnvereine. They promoted German culture, physical culture, and liberal politics.” (4)  I don’t believe any of my second-great-grandparents were members.

In addition, many Forty-eighters supported the Union in the Civil War. While I know that Charles Funk registered for the Union draft, he was already in his mid-forties by that time, so he was apparently never drafted and never served. Henry Hoffman also registered for the draft while living in Wisconsin in 1863, but also never served. He continued to farm and father more children throughout the war years before moving to Minnesota in 1870.

I do know that all three families—Hoffman, Streu and Funk—ended up settling near Mankato, Minnesota. As seen in the map below, that area of southeastern Minnesota welcomed large numbers of German immigrants. Mankato had a German-language Lutheran church that my ancestors attended, and a large German population. The nearby community of New Ulm was all German, and was definitely settled by Forty-Eighters. New Ulm still has an active Turner Hall and Turner group.

1872 map of German population, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

There is no definitive evidence proving that my three German ancestors arrived as part of the Forty-Eighters movement, although all of them arrived around the same time period and settled near the Forty-Eighter community of New Ulm, Minnesota. I will never know whether their political beliefs led to their decision to emigrate or if they were simply part of a larger German migratory movement. Ancestry reports that nearly six million Germans immigrated between 1820 and 1910, and only a small percentage of those migrants were Forty-Eighters.

 

Sources:

1. “German Immigration in 1848. https://www.ancestry.com/historical-insights/migration-settlement/immigration/german-immigration-1848

2. The Forty-Eighters of Germany Come to America.  https://www.junctionbooks.net/blog-2/the-forty-eighters-of-germany-come-to-america

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-eighters

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turners

DNA Reveals a Secret: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Family Secret”

 

Two Siblings Each Give Up a Child for Adoption

 

With the advent of widespread DNA testing, family secrets about children’s parentage are getting revealed. I have been contacted by adoptees or descendants of adoptees who can tell we are related through DNA results on Ancestry who hope that I have information about their birth families. Two of those contacts ended up being a big surprise for me. I realized that they were more closely related to each other than I’d suspected. Each one had the same grandparents, meaning that one each of their parents were siblings. These siblings had each given up a baby for adoption years apart and may have never known the other sibling made the same choice.

Since relatives of these siblings are still alive, I won’t be including any names, locations or years. So yes, this will be a short post.

So how did I determine these siblings were the parents in question? I used the Shared Matches function on Ancestry, that allowed me to see how the adoptees/adoptee descendants were related to me and to my various cousins. When I found the adoptees matched one step closer to a particular set of cousins than expected, I knew the parent was a member of that family.

Once I had that family targeted, I was able to figure out which sibling in the family was the likely parent. In one instance I received verbal confirmation from a family member who knew a little bit about one of the unplanned pregnancies, and a birth certificate obtained by the adoptee confirmed the other.

I don’t know for certain, but I believe that one of the two siblings never told any family members about their child, while the other sibling only told their parents, who kept the secret as long as they lived. I doubt either sibling ever knew they had a shared secret in common, or that they had both made the same difficult decision to give up their child.

I made the decision to keep the secret as well. The adoptees got their answers, and I left it to them to decide what they want to do with the information they have uncovered. As for my Ancestry tree, these adoptee cousins are connected to my tree, with explanations in the private “Notes” function. All the important parties are shown as “living” on my public tree, whether they really are or not, so no one else can see the names and relationships. I wrote up what I learned for my own personal genealogy research records. But that is where this information will remain. Those two parents wanted the information to remain a secret, and I feel it is not my place to reveal it to our extended family.

 

Sources:

DNA double helix horizontal by Jerome Walker. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DNA_double_helix_horizontal.png

What Happened to Isadora? 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Challenge”

Divorcee? Second Marriage? Early Death? The Mystery of Isadora Macbeth

Isadora Macbeth: 1876-? (Maternal First Cousin 3x Removed)

 

Female ancestors can be a source of frustration in genealogy. They can inexplicably disappear from records, leaving me to question whether they died or simply married and changed surnames. I wonder whether their death or marriage records exist but are just not yet available on Ancestry or Family Search, or whether they never existed in the first place or have been destroyed. Isadora Macbeth is one of those frustrating ancestors. She exists in a few records: I know when she was born, that she got married, and that she received a bequest in a will. But after that? Poof! She’s gone. So what happened to Isadora?

Isadora Macbeth was born July 7, 1876 in Blue Earth County, Minnesota. Her parents were Collin Macbeth and Ellen Downing Macbeth. She was the youngest of their six children. Curiously, the birth records seem to list her a male rather than a female, but I believe this was a transcription error, where the transcriber didn’t see the “a” on the end of Isadora, and the name was misspelled in the birth record index as Isidor with an “I” rather than an “a”. As a result, the transcriber assumed the child was male. Here is the index entry for Isadora’s birth.

Isadora appears on the 1880 census as a three-year-old daughter, so her sex was properly recorded there. Tragically, her father died three years later at the fairly young age of forty-nine. Collin had been a stock trader, and Isadora’s eldest brother Charles appears to have taken over the business. Perhaps he supported Isadora, her mother and any other siblings who were still minors until they were able to support themselves. As there are no 1890 census records, I don’t know.

Isadora’s next appearance in records comes in 1897, when she married a newly-minted attorney named Morton Wilkinson Brewster. A news article on the wedding notes the couple was “quietly married in this city (Mankato) last evening by Probate Judge Mead, but the fact did not leak out until this afternoon…The wedding was a surprise to their friends.” This news item seems to hint at some unusual haste in the marriage and perhaps a secret courtship that surprised their acquaintances as well.

The marriage did not result in a child, nor did it last. Morton Brewster married a woman named Maud Allen on December 29, 1903, just six years after his marriage to Isadora. I have found no divorce records, so I am unsure exactly when they separated. I had difficulty finding Morton on the 1900 census. I finally resorted to searching the entire 1900 census record for Wells, Minnesota where Morton and Isadora lived, and found only a partial entry—just the surname Brewster, that he had a wife who had no children, and that he was an attorney. It appears they were still married at that point.

Isadora’s mother Ellen died on July 14, 1905. She left a will that had been written a couple years earlier and lists Isadora as married. Interestingly, Ellen treated Isadora differently than her other children in the will. Isadora’s sister Jennie and brothers John, Colin and Frederick, each received lots of property in Mankato. Isadora received only a “life estate” in lot 5 of block 19 in Wells, Minnesota. Following her death, the lot was to be given to three of Isadora’s siblings.

Why the difference in treatment? Morton practiced law in Wells, Minnesota, and he and Isadora lived there. I hypothesize that the lot in question contained their home, which would mean that Ellen had purchased their home for them. Perhaps Isadora’s marriage was already crumbling when Ellen wrote the will in 1902, and Ellen was trying to ensure that Morton didn’t get his hands on the property. Obviously, Isadora was already divorced by the time Ellen’s estate was probated in 1905, as Morton had already remarried by that point. I’m sure Isadora would have found ownership of the property more valuable in 1905 than a life interest, so Ellen’s attempt to ensure Isadora had a place to live ended up leaving her without financial assets.

So what happened to Isadora after her divorce? I found a marriage record in Wisconsin for her. She had taken back her maiden name of Macbeth, and married Arthur Edward Hankin, a musician and telegraph operator, on Valentine’s Day, 1906. They married in Arthur’s hometown of Sparta, Wisconsin.  

After that marriage, Isadora disappears. I believe I have found another marriage record for Arthur a few years later. If it is for the same Arthur Hankin, did he and Isadora divorce? Did Isadora die?

I looked at other family trees on Ancestry that include Isadora, and I looked at the wiki tree on FamilySearch. None of these trees includes a death record or even a death date for Isadora. Like me , those researchers have found no end-of-life records.

Perhaps someday I will find a record or records that gives a glimpse of Isadora Macbeth’s life post-1906. Until then, Isadora remains a challenge.

 

Sources:

Isadora Macbeth birth record. "Minnesota, County Marriages, 1853-1983," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-BPTV-G?cc=1803974&wc=MRJR-VZ9%3A146277801 : 15 May 2020), 004540653 > image 998 of 2162; county courthouses, Minnesota. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-BPTV-G?i=997

Marriage Certificate for Morton Brewster’s second marriage. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-YP2W-D?view=index&action=view&cc=1803974

Ellen Brewster Will Record, 1905. Minnesota, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1801-1925. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/9070/images/007667673_00153?pId=4632107

Marriage record for Isadore May Macbeth and Arthur Edward Hankin. Wisconsin, U.S., Marriage Index, 1808-1907. Vol. 4, page 490. https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Marriage/MR1516492

Courting Couple: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Favorite Photo”

 

Ivan and Nora In Love: My Grandparents In Front of Their Future Home

Ivan Macbeth: 1904-1972 (Maternal Grandfather)
Nora Hoffman: 1899-1994 (Materna Grandmother)

 

I loved this photo as soon as I saw it in my grandmother’s old photo album. I feel that it visually captures a special moment in my grandparents’ lives—the point where they knew they were going to build a life together, but before their April 14, 1926 marriage actually started that chapter of their lives . The photo’s background also serves as a striking metaphor for that pivotal moment.

The photo depicts my grandparents standing against the roadcut carved into the hillside below the farmhouse they would move into after their marriage. Roads in the area were changing from narrow, muddy dirt roads traversed by horses, into gravel or paved roads wide enough for cars to pass each other. The county was widening and flattening out the road that wound from Eagle Lake towards Mankato. The equipment had cut down through the hillside to make the new roadbed. While my grandfather wasn’t a tall man—probably about 5 feet 8 inches, and he and Grandma Nora were sitting on a dirt shelf rather than standing up, given that there was at least three to four feet of dirt above their heads, it appears the road cut was at least ten feet deep.

I believe the photo was taken in the year before their marriage, since Grandpa Ivan is not wearing a wedding ring on his visible left hand. The trees behind them in the Macbeth farmyard still have leaves, so I am guessing the photo was taken in early fall. Grandma Nora is wearing a long-sleeved top and Grandpa is wearing a suitcoat, so the weather was neither hot as it would have been in summer, nor particularly chilly as it would have been in late fall. I am putting a likely date of September 1925 on the photo; about seven months before their wedding. The shadows are sharp, with the sun coming from the west, so the photo was likely taken in late afternoon.

Ivan and Nora were probably engaged by this point, or close to announcing their engagement. Even though they are a bit stiff-looking and aren’t holding hands, they are sitting close to one another, leaning towards each other. I can see from their body language that they are definitely a “couple”.

My grandmother, Nora Hoffman, was twenty-six when they married, while Ivan Macbeth had just turned twenty-two. My grandmother was always sensitive about the age difference, even lying about her own age on occasion. This is the first photo where I can really see how very young Ivan was, and how Nora looks more mature.

I love their clothes. They seem to have been dressed up for a date or a party. Ivan seems to be holding a scarf or soft hat, and Nora holds a lovely hat decorated with a small bunch of flowers. Her hair is bobbed in the flapper-type style of the 1920s. She appears to be wearing pale hose, and has shoes decorated with some sort of buckle. He is wearing a nice suit and dark tie, and has a handkerchief peeking from his suit pocket. He’s wearing dark dress shoes, and the narrow pants legs accentuate his lean, lanky build.

In this photo, my grandparents are preparing to set out on a new road in their life, so it is appropriate that they are posing on the new road being built in front of their soon-to-be home.

Returning to the Scene: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Overlooked”

 

Overlooked Information Provides a Richer Picture of Fourth Great Grandfather

Isaac White: 1742-1819 (Maternal Fourth-Great-Grandfather)

 

I was recently reminded that reviewing records of ancestors that I first researched years ago can provide valuable new information. While looking at a fan chart of one section of my tree, I noticed that I had no mother listed for my fourth great-grandfather, Isaac White. This prompted me to take a fresh look at his profile on my Ancestry tree. While I found two new records that added to my understanding of his life, most of what I discovered had been overlooked on my first pass through the records.

So what did I know about Isaac White? He appears to have been born around 1742, based on records showing his age at different points in his life, and his death record from 1819 which stated he was 77 years old at death. His entire adult life seems to have been spent in West Bagborough, Somerset, England, where he was a farmer. As rural farmers in the 1700s rarely moved any great distance, he probably was born in the same general area.

I had listed his father as William White, born in 1724. I apparently copied this information from other trees on Ancestry without taking the necessary effort to verify this parentage. I should have been a little dubious just from looking at the purported father’s birth date; William would only have been eighteen when Isaac was born. In addition, William White was born in Holborn, London, almost two hundred miles from West Bagborough. Why would he have relocated so far from home? Or why would his son Isaac have done so?

I looked at three other family trees that included birth records for Isaac. All used the same birth record, showing parents William and Ann, from the parish of Frome St. John, Somerset. Frome is forty-five miles from West Bagborough, which was a red flag. However, the bigger problem with that birth record was the date, which all three tree owners (and I) had blithely ignored: July 1754, twelve years after my Isaac’s likely 1742 birth date. The Frome parish record was probably for a completely different Isaac White. I have removed the record from my tree’s profile for Isaac White.

My searches so far have not turned up any likely parents for Isaac, so ironically my attempt to identify Isaac’s mother led to the removal of his father from my tree. My “brick wall” on Isaac’s parentage is now taller than ever.

However, I made two other discoveries that were very interesting. First, when I examined Isaac’s original 1773 marriage record, I noticed that he had signed his own name quite legibly, showing he was literate. However, his spouse, Elizabeth Cox, could only make her mark—a little oval shape. She obviously could neither read nor write.

I also examined a Land Tax Redemption Record from 1798 for West Bagborough. It shows that Isaac White was a tenant farmer – the “occupier” according to the terms of the record – of three parcels of land owned by what looks like “William Yeo”. The Redemption Records were taken nationwide in 1798 to assess a land tax on landowners. The records show the property owners, the names of the occupants/renters of the land, and the tax amounts owed. This is proof that Isaac was farming land in West Bagborough, but did not own his land.

The final discovery was the most interesting, and provides the best—and saddest--glimpse into the lives of these long-dead ancestors. Isaac White died August 15, 1819 at age 77. 

Someone in England uploaded the newspaper report of the inquest into Isaac’s death. The item is printed below:

It sounds as if Isaac was an alcoholic. He got so drunk at age 77 that he passed out in the yard, falling onto his back, and apparently asphyxiated on his own vomit. Since his wife didn’t go looking for him when he didn’t come home, it would appear that she was accustomed to his heading out to drink and not returning home for hours.

My new discoveries about Isaac White showed me the value of reviewing the data in my family tree. New sources may have been added over the years, like the newspaper item on the inquest. But even more importantly, valuable information can so easily have been overlooked in a first pass through records.

Sources:

UK, Land Tax Redemption, 1798 for Isaac White. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2319/records/502617?tid=46986934&pid=322190764690&ssrc=pt

Somerset, England, Marriage Registers, Bonds and Allegations, 1754-1914 for Isaac White. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60858

Inquest Verdict. Taunton Courier, Taunton, Somerset. Page 7, 26 Aug 1819.