Research Challenge!

While I was in Salt Lake City, I had a few minutes here and there to do a little searching around in the book collection. I found something that struck me as a possible lead so I took a quick photo of the page with my iphone so I could come back to it and do a little background searching once I got home.

The book was an index to baptismal records from St John's Church in Portsmouth, NH from 1795-1884. The entry was for the baptism of 5 year old Charles Henry Thomas Stevens Hudgen in 1833. His parents are listed as Lewis Hudgen and Hannah Stevens. Hannah's parents were sponsors and were named Charles and Lydia Stevens.

The reason I was interested in this listing is because my oldest known immigrant ancestor is Charles Thomas Stevens of England, and later, of Portsmouth, NH. His wife was Lydia Jacobs. He is believed to have been born around 1754 and his emigration to America is currently unknown but it was before the 1790s, when he appears to have been married and settled in New Hampshire. He died in the 1840s at nearly 90 years of age and is buried in the crypts at the Old North Church in Boston. Charles and Lydia had several children, but up to this point only 2 have been identified by name; Charles T., born about 1815, and Mary T. Stevens Lovejoy, born about 1807. So the belief is that this Hannah Stevens Hudgen could be one of the previously unknown children of the immigrant Charles and that means another lead to finding out more about him. He is one of my brick wall ancestors in that I know next to nothing about his early life.

So, obviously I wanted to find out more about this Lewis and Hannah Hudgen of Boston. First place I turn to is the 1850 census. No luck there. Then I figured that if little Charles Henry was 5 years old in 1833, he would have been born about 1828 meaning the family should have been together in 1830. So I go to the 1830 census. No luck there either. Nor for the 1840 or 1870 census. I start searching for Charles across all census years in Boston and in all of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, no luck. Hannah, no luck. Lewis, no luck. Then I go to the Massachusetts Archives vital records search looking for either Lewis or Hannah's deaths (the search begins in 1841, too late to look for their marriage or for Charles' birth), no luck there either.

So where in the world is the Lewis Hudgen family that would have been at least a group of 3 at the time of the 1830 census, and who were living in Boston at the time of their son's baptism in New Hampshire in 1833?

Whoa!!!

With all the talk this week on various blogs, I decided to check out the google news archives search function again. I've used it previously but didn't have many outstanding results; I didn't find anything that I was looking for, but found a few items of small interest so it wasn't a total loss. This week though, I had a few new names to the tree to search and I think that was the clincher that led me to the explanation of a family story that I never thought I would understand.

The backstory here is that my maternal Great Grandfather, Charles L. Stevens (son of Lillian Bromagem and Charles T Stevens), was born in Toronto, Canada in the 1880s. Were any of the Stevens' or Bromagems from Ontario, or even anywhere near Canada for that matter? Big fat negatory on that one. The only family word on the story was that he was born there because his parents had gone up to Toronto for a wedding and his mother gave birth prematurely. No one seemed to know whose wedding it was. Over the years though, I've found more and more evidence of Bromagems living briefly in Toronto during the time frame Charles was born so I began to think that the story must be true, although the wedding part still didn't make sense. I just figured his parents went up there to visit Mary J Bromagem, Lillian's mother, and gave birth to my Great Grandfather while they were there. But there was still something else. When I discovered the Van Wormer connection (Lillian's eldest sibling, Eliza/Lida, married Clemson Van Wormer and Charles Stevens' mother married Clemson's father, Matthew Van Wormer), I found that the Van Wormers were also living in Toronto around the time Charles L. was born there. Again, just another piece of evidence to put towards the theory that he was born there while his parents were visiting their families...

that theory got blown out of the water this week thanks to the google news archives search (keep in mind, the article is from 1887, my Great Grandfather was born in 1888in Canada).

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E05E4DC1630E633A25754C2A9659C94669FD7CF

Hmmmmmmmm, now I really don't think they were up there for a wedding :)

Finally back...but there are problems in Chicagoland cemeteries

Well, after a couple of weeks and a ton of headaches, I've finally made it back home to IL. I've got a lot on my IL to-do list and can't wait to get started. I was actually getting ready to start #1 on that list last week and that's where I ran into some very discouraging, and potentially disastrous, information.

The very first thing I wanted to do once I got to IL was visit the gravesites of the James Bromagem family, as well as a couple of Stevens graves which are at a cemetery not far from that of the Bromagems. The Bromagems, Lillian Bromagem Stevens and Mary J. Braden/Hawkins Bromagem, are buried at Oakwoods Cemetery on the South side of Chicago, not far from where the Bromagems and Stevens family of the turn of the 20th century were living. Oakwoods is clearly printed on each of their death certificates, both of which were signed by the Undertaker. So I figured my first step was to call over to Oakwoods to confirm that they are still there. To my surprise, Oakwoods does not have any record of either of the two women, nor of anyone with the Bromagem/Brumagem (and other variations) surname. Ok, I have an idea as to a possible reason but I'll get back to that in a moment. Coincidentally, on the same day that I was making my phone call to Oakwoods I was stunned to read a news station ticker which read that investigations of misdoings are beginning at Oakwoods Cemetery and Mount Hope Cemetery. They are being investigated for situations reminiscent of the scandal at nearby Burr Oak Cemetery in a Southern Chicago suburb.

Burr Oak Cemetery is being investigated for double and triple selling cemetery plots. The story is that employees were targeting older, not maintained or visited plots, and reselling those plots sometimes two and three times over. In many cases, the bodies and bones of those who had been buried there initially were tossed into fields or hidden and scattered in out-of-the-way spots. Other gravesites just had bodies buried on top of one another until caskets would be unearthed by inclement weather or just by time alone. In the wake of that investigation, the state has created a Cemetery Task Force which will be responsible for investigating all reports of misdealings at cemeteries. Oakwoods and Mount Hope have now received reports against them and are to be investigated.

Finding out that Lillian and her mother, Mary, are not in the Oakwoods computer didn't initially scare me too much because it is possible that they could have been moved by the family later on. Lillian's husband, Charles, and their son, Charles L., were both buried at Mount Hope in 1926 and 1968 respectively. So it's possible that Lillian and Mary could have been moved there to be with the rest of the family at a later date. I was searching for a phone number for Mount Hope when I saw that news that they too are being investigated. So now I'm frantic about getting to the bottom of this. I'm planning to head over to the County Clerk's satellite office tomorrow to get the death certificates for the rest of Mary's children, Lillian's brothers and sister, and check the burial site for them all for other possibilities. The Oakwoods employee I spoke to, again, prior to my finding out about the pending investigations, suggested coming to the cemetery in person with the certificates so I'm hoping to be able to do that this week or next week at the latest. I'm really hoping I can sort through this and find out that it was just something simple and that their sites aren't involved in the scandals surrounding these cemeteries. Fingers crossed guys!

Welcome Home Lillian Bromagen Stevens

I had made contact with a new-found cousin a few months ago through a tree I have on ancestry.com. He had mentioned the existence of some photos he inherited from another family cousin and I asked if he wouldn't mind scanning a few for me to add to the collection I've been accumulating. Over the weekend he sent them and they were the most wonderful surprise I could have imagined. Included in the photo set was a photo of Lillian Bromagen Stevens taken around late 1908-early 1909. Nothing extraordinary in that, except for the fact that she was thought to have been long dead. Her only child, my Great Grandfather, claimed that he never knew his mother so we all figured that she had died when he was extremely young or even during childbirth (which we knew was premature). And yet there she was in this picture, holding my Great Grandfather's first-born child who was born in 1908. I had long suspected that something was going on regarding Papa's claim, the settling of Lillian's mother's widow's pension claim for one was a tip off that something wasn't right, but didn't have any proof. Til now. It's another mystery to try to solve, but more importantly I feel like she's made her way home. We can finally put a face to the name and place her with the photos of the rest of her family. And we as a family can recognize her, and that is so important. Being able to find the names of those who have come before us is one thing. It's exhilarating to make that connection for sure. But when you can actually see the face of that person you've been researching for months and months, or even years on end, there is something more. I don't know what happened to her, I don't know what her mystery is, but I'm glad I can see her face and be able to say that she's my Great Great Grandmother. Welcome home, Lillian.

A couple days off...

Well, with the first week of the blog behind us I took a couple days off to get caught up with some reading and to think about some new things to talk about. There really is a lot going on in the gene-world. I read two great articles on impressment and seamen protection certificates this week (again on the NGS website, hint hint for those of you who still haven't joined) The first was by Ruth Priest Dixon called Merchant Seamen Records: Genealogical Use and Availability" and the second was by John P. Deeben called "Maritime Proofs of Citizenship: The Essential Evidence behind Seamen's Protection Certificates, 1792-1875". There are two ancestors of mine who are said to have been impressed during the War of 1812 and I've been doing some research on trying to prove the family lore. Henry Sargent of Kittery, ME is said to have been "impressed" (as the unsourced page states) and sent to Dartmoor Prison until the end of the war. The same paper says that Charles Thomas Cazaiette Stevens was impressed and taken aboard a British Man-of-War and later spent time in a prison in Bristol, England. Henry's plight seems like it would be easier to prove since there are more specific records to search for, while Charles' situation is a little different and not as specific (just as a side-note, I've spent a little time researching British POW prisons during the War of 1812 period and was able to confirm the existence of a prison used to house American POWs in Bristol, called Stapleton Prison, however, no one at the Archives in Kew or with the Bristol Historical Society can tell whether records from the prison during this time still exist). In any case, learning about these protection certificates was really interesting and something that everyone with a mariner in their ancestry should take a look at.

Photo time cont'd

So here's a photo of Emma (nee Stevens) Biever. She was the sister of Charles T Stevens, shown below on the right. The resemblance between the two is pretty pronounced to my eyes. Both share a round face for one. You can view a larger version of the photo by clicking on it.

Photo time

So I figured what these pages needed right now was some personalization and some photos to lighten things up. One of the things I've gotten really interested in while working on family history research is comparing photos of family members. I've really gotten into looking at likenesses of ancestors and comparing them to likenesses of their descendants. So this may be something I continue on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. I'm going to start with this photo, probably taken around 1910, of my Great Grandfather, Charles LeRoy Stevens, and his father, Charles T. Stevens (b. 1858 Melrose, MA d. 1926 Chicago, IL). For those of you interested in Bromagen family history, Charles LeRoy is the son of Charles T Stevens and Lillie Bromagen, daughter of James Bromagen, granddaughter of Elias Bromagen and Cassandra McNulty of Ohio and possibly VA.

Pretty much from the time I first saw this photo, I never could find much resemblance between father and son. Later in life, Charles LeRoy did show more of a resemblance but I always figured he must have inherited his mother's look from his likeness in this early photo of him. Without a known image of Lillie Bromagen though, or either of her parents, I'll never be able to put the two together. In any case, Charles L and Charles T each seem to have their own look.

Now let's compare this photo of Charles T. Stevens to his sister Emma (nee Stevens) Biever and their mother, Caroline (nee Heal) Stevens Van Wormer.....