Monday, August 13, 2012

Birth Family Background

I spent the weekend trying to track down Henry's birth family on genealogy and history websites in order to try to get a more complete picture of his early life. Thanks to the mad genealogy skills of my husband John, we've got a fair certainty of who his family was. Also thanks to my dear mother, Marion Joanne (Lahr) Wank. The memories she has have been invaluable in tracing down different threads and coming to a reasonable conclusion in the research. Note to readers: If you have older or elderly family members, get their oral history documented while you can. Even if you aren't currently researching your family, you or one of your relatives will someday be glad you did. And don't throw away any old documents that have names, dates, and places attached. You never know what clue they may hold. Digitize, digitize, digitize!

I will also note that what started as an amusing hobby is rapidly turning into a full-time job. I've begun to realize why family genealogists all seem to be retired. I did some genealogy back before there were huge amounts of files on the internet, and that involved even more work and time. I'm in awe of documentary editors who did this work prior to the digital age.

What we now know (please add "with reasonable certainty" to that phrase when I use it) is that Henry was the youngest of five siblings born to Scottish-Canadian immigrants Thomas John(T.J.) MacLennan and May Marion (Ermina) Castle. T.J. and Marion emigrated with T.J.'s brother, Andrew, from Canada when the two oldest boys, James and William, were very young, in the late 1860s. The US Federal Census of 1870 has them in Bay City, MI and lists them as all born in Canada. The boys were then six and five years old, respectively. A subsequent census lists T.J. as having parents born in Scotland, so that branch of the family probably didn't stay in Canada for more than a generation.

The census lists T.J. as being 30 that year, so he was born circa 1840. His occupation is described as "Lumber Merchant", which lines up with my mother's recollection that Henry came from a family who worked at a lumber mill. T.J.'s brother, Andrew, was 33, and he is listed as a cabinetmaker. Bay City was a booming lumber town in this era, with numerous sawmills lining the Saginaw River. It may be that, as a lumber merchant, T.J. emigrated in order to deal in Canadian timber, considered superior to lower Michigan timber. The importation of Canadian timber was common until 1909, when an embargo shut this practice down. The last of the big sawmills closed and was demolished in 1935.

Marion's age is listed as 29 in 1870, but her age changes in subsequent censuses. Her death record indicates that she was born in 1837, so there could be some gallantry of the time involved in the reporting. T.J.'s age remains consistent, so it's possible she was a bit older than he was.

Over the next ten years, three more children were born to the couple. The next child, Alice M., was born on August 22, 1870, two months after the census was taken on the 6th of June. You will hear more about Alice later, as she is mentioned in both Henry's, and one of Camilla's, letters, and my mother remembers someone matching her data. After Alice came Francis (Frank) Joseph, born on January 7, 1873. Lastly, we come to Henry (aka "Harry"), who, as we already knew, was born on February 17, 1875. The entire family shows up in the 1880 census, which has the first mention of T.J.'s parents being born in Scotland. Different censuses required different information to be gathered. So, there were eleven or twelve years separating Henry from his eldest brother, James.

We lose track of T.J. around this time, and we know that Marion remarries. Her name was Decker at her death. We also know that Henry was in medical school at about 1900, and married Camilla around 1901, and he is located in a city directory in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1905. May Marion(II), my grandmother, was born in Bay City, when Henry was working as a doctor in a sawmill. Helen was born in Battle Creek in 1907.

There's still a lot more searching to do to connect the dots from 1880 to 1905, but that's the gist of where Henry came from. I'll post a little more of the WWI correspondence before the day is over. Tomorrow I'm off to Florida to visit my sister, who has some more correspondence, memorabilia, and pictures which should help fill in Henry's post-war years a bit. If we're very lucky, there may be some earlier clues in her files as well.

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