52 Ancestors Week 3: Out of Place

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 3

The theme for Week 3 is "Out of Place." Have you ever found an ancestor in an unexpected location? What about finding a record someplace that surprised you? Or what about that one great-great-uncle who moved out West when everyone else in the family stayed put? This is a good week to write about them.

We would have a theme called "Out of Place" after a Connect-a-thon, right? Have you found anything this week that made you feel like things were out of place? Comment below or post a blog!

Comments

Why would a French-Canadian couple go to Massachusetts when her entire family went to Minnesota?! https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2023/01/52-ancestors-week-3-out-of-place.html

Answer 1

My parents are an Oklahoman father and a mother from an old-line German family.  My maternal grandmother's family - the von Oppen family - has been in Prussia, mainly as officers and civil servants for a long time.

I was fleshing out the descendants of one particular ancestor and ran across a distant cousin Wilhelm Gunther von Oppen (1888-1948) in of all places, Oklahoma.  He had settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and, at the start of World War II, he was detained as an enemy alien and interned at Stringtown, Oklahoma.  

There was even a roster of the camp that I found:

https://gaic.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Stringtown-31-Aug-1942-roster.pdf

He was definitely out of place.  My mother was shocked, too, and I still wonder what my father's family would have thought at the time about a future in-law being interned.

  

Answer 2

Hello Chris F.  I would like to participate in this photo challenge.  I have many photographs from my family in England and just bought a new printer/scanner.  Count me in!

Answer 3

Andrew Dods aka Dodds my husband's 2xGU. Dods-9, he emigrated with his parents and 6 siblings to Upper Canada in 1830 and then he disappeared. There were no records of him in Upper Canada at all.

4 (one had died of cholera) of the other siblings moved to Alton, Ontario, about 75 km and no roads. Google maps says it would take about 16 hours to walk there today. It probably took about a week or more with a horse drawn wagon.

Another brother John was also missing.

On one of those occasional times that Ancestry hints are correct, I had a hint for an Andrew Dodds in Carroll County, Illinois. When I looked at the tree it was the long lost Andrew! Not that the tree owner knew any history before 1839 when Andrew got married.

There were surprisingly records that included his father's name and 5 of his 6 children were named after his parents and his siblings.

The tree owner was thrilled to have family history back to the 1650s in Scotland and i was very pleased Andrew was found.

I have never found any records or hints or suggestions for John the other missing brother, he could have died in Toronto, he could have gone with Andrew to Illinois and died there, or gone somewhere else either in Upper Canada or the US.

Answer 4

In the category of coffin found in your backyard....May 2, 1872 Saint John, New Brunswick Daily News.

The coffin containing human remains found buried in the rear of M. Warwick's premises, Princess St. (St. John) Monday, was removed from its position and examined yesterday morn.  The remains are without doubt those of Mrs. Henry Thomas.  This lady was one of the Loyalists having come here with the second party in 1783.  She died in 1785 and was buried upon what was then a family lot, The Old Burial Ground not being then opened. (The graveyard, mainly for Loyalists, was closed in 1848 so they reburied Mrs. Thomas in the Methodist Burial Ground) Below, the place Mrs. Thomas couldn't get into.

Comments

I just added Mrs. Thomas to WikiTree.  She was Hyla (Brouwer) Thomas, the first wife of Captain Henry Thomas. My relatives are found with a daughter of Henry's second wife, who I will also be adding. http://wikitree.com/wiki/Brouwer-2160

Answer 5

I discovered a couple, Charles and Alice Peppiatt, who lived in Michigan but chose to be married in Ontario, Canada, just across the border from Detroit.  Apparently it wasn't unusual for couple from Detroit to do this, but Charles and Alice lived in Ypsilanti, a good 40 miles away by train in 1895, and they're the only couple in their extended family to do so.  Was there something nefarious going on? Could they have been eloping? Well, both their widowed parents lived in the same household with them afterward (in Michigan), so they couldn't have disapproved of the match.  The only other thing I can think of is they were first cousins, so maybe the marriage was illegal in Michigan but legal in Canada?  Or maybe they just thought it was romantic.

EDIT: Michigan law does indeed ban first cousin marriage, but a quick internet search didn't turn up when this law was enacted.  The Wikipedia article implies sometime around 1880.

Answer 6

My first cousin 3 times removed, Avery Long, who grew up in East Germantown, Indiana must have liked to be in new places, since he stayed in the military 28 years and traveled through the Dakotas and Wyoming; however, he must have felt out of place in the Spanish American War. 

This is a photo from the Library of Congress with no restrictions of Capron's Battery when they traveled to Cuba in 1889, then Avery Long went on to the Philippines in 1899. He is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

Answer 7

I wrote about my 4X-great uncle, Governor Joseph Kent of Maryland. He was described as a "mugwump," that is, a politician who changed positions frequently.  When I heard that word, I knew I had to write about him. 

https://annesgenealogyadventures.blogspot.com/2023/01/52-ancestors-2023-week-3-out-of-place.html

Answer 8

I've been working on my brick wall ancestor for months, her name is Georgia Ann Parker (Stewart-51030). All I had for her mother Lurena Emeline (Morgan-36813) was a name and a bunch of links to the Stewarts of Utah (a historical Mormon family). It didn't make sense to me that Georgia would move from Arkansas to Arizona with a bunch of family while Emeline moved alone to Idaho. I finally found Emeline's death certificate and sure enough she is buried in the same cemetery as her daughter in Arizona. The woman buried in Idaho was not "my" Emeline; she was a descendant of the Mormon Stewarts. Similar names, approximate ages, and sloppy guesswork had my Emeline moving to and dying alone in Idaho while her daughter moved to Arizona.

Answer 9

My mother was out of place after she graduated from high school.

She moved from East Texas (away from her family) to Arizona to marry a guy who had Arkansan roots. This was her first husband by the way.

Copy of the marriage certificate

Most of the African Americans moved out from the South to the West in the 1930s (especially Arizona).

Answer 10

This week, USBH Project is featuring three notables who were out of place during their time in history. 

Effa Louise Brooks Manly was the only woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

David Richmond and Franklin McCain are two of the Greensboro Four who sat at the all-white Woolworth's lunch counter and by doing so set off more sit-ins and protests resulting in desegregating the Greensboro lunch counter with more Woolworths soon to follow. If you remember what a Woolworths was you were born a while ago :-)

Comments

Woolworth was around when I was a kid in the 1980s in Tucson, Arizona.

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Yeah, there were a few Woolworths still around in the 1980s and 1990s in a few locations. When I lived in Quebec in 1991, there was a Woolworths up there. It was a very small one.

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We had (still have?) Woolworths stores in Australia (I worked for one), but I don't remember any with a lunch counter.  Our GJ Coles stores, however, did have lunch counters, because I remember my Mum and I eating at one in Brisbane.  I don't think they would have been similar to the American version, though, as they also had a small number of tables with chairs, so more like a Starbucks but with stools at the counter.

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Emma. thank you for undertaking these interesting answers. The original lunch counter is now in the Smithsonian.

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Oh wow! I had no idea. thank you for sharing, Joyce

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Here's the article.

Answer 11

The Better Part of Valor--

After marching from Greenbrier County, Virginia along the Kanawha River to its mouth at the Ohio River, Colonel Andrew Lewis's regiment arrived at a fort called Point Pleasant.

They arrived at the fort about the first of October, 1774. They were there for a week when a band of Shawnees attacked about sunrise on October 10. The battle lasted till about sunset.

According to an eyewitness, "among the soldiers was an old Dutch man of the name of Kishioner and his son Andrew, who, when the battle commenced hid themselves in drift wood under the banks of the Ohio--after the battle ceased at night, the old man crept out, and seeing danger was over called out, 'you may come now, Andy.'"

The old man was my 5th great-grandfather Matthias Kessinger https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kessinger-7 and his son Andreas, my 4th ggf. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kissinger-153

Answer 12

My 5th gr grandparents, Abigail (Robbins) and Deacon Noah Read-2976, are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Attleboro, Massachusetts, USA. I have taken pictures of their graves and posted them online. Occasionally, someone will remark that I must have the wrong information because their deaths predate Woodlawn by nearly 100 years. True. They were buried in the graveyard at the Second Congregational Church, but they were among 68 bodies who were moved in the 1830s to make way for the Boston & Providence Railroad. I appreciate that they were moved with care and their stones with them. That move may actually have preserved the stones from damage when the Old Kirk Yard was vandalized in 2011.

Answer 13

My Dad's family has lived in and around Alton, Illinois since the immigrated to the United States in the mid-1800s. My Mom's family has been in St. Louis, Missouri since shortly after they immigrated in the early 1900s. I was really surprised a few years ago when I accidentally discovered her grandfather living in my father's hometown! They were only there a few years, so it is really lucky to have found them there. I blogged about it here

Answer 14

This week's topic is a bit easier than the one of last week. (Well at least I have now an idea what to do for last week.)

For this week I took a family that emigrated from Germany to Nebraska. Christian Germeroth was born in Hesse, I didn't find a birth record for him, so I left the location the way it is. His son Conrad married a woman whose LNAB was registered here as "UNKNOWN". In his marriage record I found Mabel's LNAB. I posted a comment on Mabel's profile because it is greenlocked. Looking farther on FamilySearch and comparing it with WikiTree's database, I found Mabel's granduncle in WikiTree. So I started to expand the branch of Arend further down towards Mabel. This morning I was invited of Mabel's profile manager to the Trusted List of her, so I could change her LNAB and work also from her side to connect the branch.

Now, after I connected the branch, I will again leave the Trusted List of Mabel. But about 20 profiles are connected again.

Answer 15

I’m working on the profile of genealogist [[Ottosson-79|Nils Ivan Ottosson (1903-)]], who had a son named Rohl. It was a family name, and its presence in Västra Klagstorp of southern Scania goes far back. Which brings me to what is out of place: Scanian place names in  Normandy: Yvetoft Fultot, Borguébus and Brunneby to name a few - and of course Claxtorp! I guess you all know where this is going? Where did [[Normandie-54|Rollo (Normandie) of Normandy (abt.0842-0931)]] come from? Well, that depends on whom you ask, I guess. :)

Answer 16

In my youth, I was told about a great aunt on my father's side who was hushed up; allegedly, she was crippled and in a wheelchair, unable to walk. So when I focused on genealogy again after my return to Germany in 2016, I remembered that tale and decided to look for her. Imagine my surprise when I indeed found a great aunt with an unusual story that hadn't been mentioned to me: Catharine Margarethe Magdalene Ostermann was the next-older sister of my maternal grandmother's grandfather. Having been found pregnant at age 22, she married Heinrich August Scheele, the father of their yet-unborn child, in 1873, two months before giving birth to their son August. Nine years later, with a second son, George, still a little baby, they emigrated to America, settling in Jo Daviess County, Illinois. I guess a pregnant wedding and the renunciation of their German citizenship was grounds enough to cut them out of family lore. Considering that I was looking for a crippled relative hidden somewhere in a Northern German village, finding a healthy mother of two in Illinois felt definitely out of place ;-)

Answer 17

Not my ancestor, but my wife's great-grandfather, Samuel McCarthy. He showed up in South Dakota out of nowhere and married my wife's great-grandmother, and had a large family.

DNA testing has now proven that he was born as Samuel McCartney and had a previous wife and large family in Iowa. For reasons still unknown, he just left that family one day, and went to South Dakota, changed his last name slightly, and started all over again with a new family.

This was certainly not what we were expecting but the DNA evidence is overwhelming.

Answer 18

Probably the most out-of-place ancestor I’ve found so far is my great grand-uncle James Harold Manning, though an honorary mention goes to his brother  Frederick Charles Manning, who died in France during WW1. He and all his siblings were born in New Brunswick, Canada. James, however, is completely inexplicable - he went on a trip to Venezuela and died of malaria in 1924. Why was he in Venezuela in the first place? The world may never know…