Old Newspapers Reveal Surprise

It shouldn't be a surprise any more, really. I mean, once I discovered that my great-grandfather, Daniel Hardie, had 3 wives, the second of whom had an illigitimate child prior to the marriage, I should be inured to surprises. I guess having ingested some silly childhood mental mantra-myth that goes "no one in our family (except poor, unfortunate Uncle Eddie) has ever been divorced" explains why I am surprised by today's findings reported in the 1924 Utica Observer-Dispatch and in The Ostego Farmer and The Ostego Republican.

Background
Mary Brown (1888-1976) married Pearly Hanlon in 1907. They had 2 children. Last March we visited her grave in Oneonta, NY. She was buried in a plot with her children, notably sans first husband Pearly. I was curious where he was buried -- and actually still am. I figured Pearly had died prior to Mary's second marriage. Au contraire!

News Articles

Pearly Hanlon of Oneonta, charged with desertion of his wife and children, threw himself upon the mercy of the court and sentence was suspended on the plea of his attorney Tennant. He assured the court that a position was awaiting him on the D. & H. and that arrangements had been made to have the company pay a stated sum to the wife.
-- The Ostego Farmer, March 7, 1924

Several cases appear reflecting matrimonial infelicity. Among these is one in which May (sic) Brown Hanlon seeks a divorce [OMG] from Pearley (sic) Victor Hanlon, and there is another in which Pearly Hanlon is seeking damages from William T. Norwood for alienation of affections.
-- The Ostego Farmer, March 1, 1935

Alienation of Affections

At common law, alienation of affections is a tort action brought by a deserted spouse against a third party alleged to be responsible for the failure of the marriage. The defendant in an alienation of affections suit is typically an adulterous spouse's lover . . .
-- Wikipedia

It may be readily obvious, but Mary Brown's second marriage was to one William T. Norwood. So much for my mental mantra-myth . . . How on earth do such myths get transmitted anyway?

An SS-5 Form Points the Way

I've been doing some family history research for a friend and sent off for her grandmother's 1937 Social Security application, her SS-5 Form. My friend did not know much about her grandmother's family so I was hoping for some leads from the SS application. I wasn't disappointed; the form listed the applicant's parents' names.

Armed with this information, I was able to discover a good deal about her family, who have farmed in Gibson County, Tennessee for many generations. I was struck by the fact that one ancestor, Samuel Hughes, was born in 1805 in North Carolina. I wonder when his parents arrived in America? Differently from my own ancestors, my friend's ancestors have deep, even pre-revolutionary war, roots in America.

One interesting discovery was that David (Davy) Crockett, himself a descendent of pre-revolutionary war ancestors, was an early settler of Gibson County, Tennessee. At first, when I saw "David Crocketts" on 19th century US census records in the same civil district as my friend's ancestors, I smiled, not yet knowing that these Crocketts were actually relatives of the famous man himself! Nice.

Patrick Brown 1841-1901

To the best of my knowledge, Patrick was born in Murraugh Parish, County Cork, Ireland in February of 1841. He immigrated to the United States about 1851, along with his parents, James Brown and Johannah Murphy, as well as his sister, Ellen, and his three brothers, John, Michael, and James. The 1860 US Federal Census indicates that Patrick, his parents, and his sister Ellen could neither read nor write.

Patrick was 43 when he married Mary Watson in 1884 at St. Mary's Cathedral in Ogdensburg, New York. Mary died at home from Typhoid fever in 1899 at age 44. Tragically, Patrick died two years later at age 60. While in the process of oiling a staging platform in the elevator of the Rutland Transit company, he fell 14 feet and fractured his skull. He died shortly afterwards. In September 2007 we found the grave site of Patrick Brown and Mary Watson in St. Mary's Cemetery in Ogdensburg, New York.

The story in the Ogdensburg Advance News reporting Patrick Brown's death states that he left "a family of five children, the oldest a girl of fifteen years of age". My grandfather, James Lawrence Brown, was eleven at the time of his father, Patrick's, death.

Beginning

After thinking about my own blog for the last few years, this evening I finally took the plunge into what appears to be the shallow end of blogspace. I was recently encouraged to do this by Tony's willingness to collaborate in the effort. We both thought it might be fun to have a place to share discoveries, travels, and adventures regarding our family history research. So, today we're up and off!

Fargo, North Dakota was a significant stop on the first family-history vacation we took. Tony had hooked up with the Red River Valley Genealogical Society in Fargo and we went there to see if they could help solve the question of where his great grandparents from Norway were buried. This was our first experience of sitting in a room with a bunch of records and books, splitting up the names we were interested in, and combing for facts.

At this stage, we now fall easily into this divide-search-conquer method of research in any library or archive or repository we visit. But Fargo was our first significant effort. Looking through cemetery records in that genealogy resource room in Fargo led us to Tony's great grandmother's final resting spot in Fargo. And an obituary in the Fargo newspaper led us to Tony's great granfather's grave in Fort Ransom, North Dakota.

That research trip to Fargo was the beginning of our genealogical travels. It was complete with searching funeral home records for ancestors, combing newspapers in the local library for obituaries, walking cemeteries in search of head stones, discovering previously known and unknown places where family members had lived, photographing everything that wasn't moving, and recording fresh findings on our computers each evening. The journey has yet to end.