Ø      Mary Sullivan Church (Aunt Maime), 1886-1965

Ø        Ella Sullivan Conway (Aunt Nell), 1888-1933?

Ø        Timothy Patrick Sullivan (Uncle Tim), 1889-1960

Ø        Genevieve Sullivan Delehanty (Grandma), 1891-1975

Ø        Cornelius Neal Sullivan (Uncle Neal), 1892-1946

Ø        Edward James Sullivan (Uncle Ed), 1894-1977

Ø        Grace Ann Sullivan Reiser Gorczyca (Aunt Grace), 1895-1978

 

This was a riotous group of people – loud, boisterous, sometimes obnoxious, mostly decent and kind, never dull.  In the words of Beulah "Billie" Lacount, one of my mom's oldest and dearest friends,

My siblings and I came to know four of the Sullivans:  Aunt Maime, Aunt Grace, Uncle Ed, and of course, Grandma.

Grandma lived with our family – mom, dad & siblings – for most of our childhoods.  She was a tall woman, nearly six feet, and fairly big-boned.  Her hair was gray and not quite shoulder-length.  She could make herself heard above the din if she wanted to, though mostly her voice was soft and lilting.  She had a gentle, open face, and an inquisitive sparkle in her eyes.  Her hands were big, her fingers and knuckles swollen with arthritis, though her touch was light and feathery.  Her lap was broad and comfortable.

 

Michael, Grandma, Tom (on lap), Fridley MN, Aug 1962

 

Lois Vosjepka, one of my mom's best friends whom us kids called "Aunt Lois," remembered Genevieve:

Aunt Lois was exactly right:  Genevieve was a simple, kind person of great inner strength, and she lived an extraordinarily difficult life.  She was simply the most wonderful human being I have ever known.  As I said, her siblings Aunt Grace and Uncle Ed were also a part of our lives growing up, as was Aunt Maime, though I have only a few foggy images of her.  Sue remembers her much better than I.  None of us kids ever met any of the others, though we did hear stories about Uncle Tim, the "jail-bird" and "three-time loser" who spent much of his life in prison.  More on that later.

 

♣

 

In the mid-1920s, when Calvin Coolidge was President and silent movies were all the rage, Genevieve Sullivan married John Delehanty.  She was around 35 years old.  It was her second marriage, as I learned years after her death.  Her first husband, named Raymond Reilly, had fought in World War I and died in the V.A. hospital.  She never told us about him, as was true of many other parts of her life.  She didn't want us to feel sad.

My hunch is that Ray and Genevieve had a baby and the baby died, but I'm not sure.  What I am sure of, even though I have no direct evidence for it, is that Ray's death broke her heart, that she went through horrible grief, then picked up the pieces, put herself back together, and moved on.

 

♣

 

After their wedding, Genevieve and John Delehanty set up house at 1512 Burns Ave. in St. Paul.  On June 22, 1928 they had a daughter, Elizabeth Jane Delehanty—my mother.  Genevieve was 37 years old.  Seven months later, John Delehanty died.  He was 42.  The death certificate says he died of a "decompensated heart" caused by "mitral insufficiency & myocarditis" that he'd suffered for the past 15 years—basically a heart attack caused by chronic heart disease.

Portion of Jennie Lang Sullivan's death certificate (d. June 27, 1944) with parents' names and birthplaces, and informant's name indicated.

 

Ella Kinsman, according to this document, was born in New York.  "Franz Lange," as Frank Lang sometimes signed his name, "came from Germany to the United States when he was a little fellow, with his two older brothers," according to his fourth wife. 

How do we know that?  Because 15 years ago I looked up Frank Lang's Civil War file in the National Archives, photocopied everything that looked useful, and filed it all away.  So let's dust off my great-grandfather's old file and see what it says.

 

♣

 

Franz Lange was born around 1842 in Prussia (the biggest kingdom in what later became Germany).  So he must have arrived in the United States in the late 1840s or early 1850s.  His brothers, names unknown, moved to Colorado, and he lost touch with them. 

When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Union Army.  He was around 19 years old.  He enlisted at Burr Oak, Michigan (Jennie Lang's birthplace) on August 10, 1861.  Twelve days later, on August 22, he joined his unit in Monroe, Michigan, a few hours east by rail.  That gave him 10 or 11 days to explore St. Joseph County, where Burr Oak is located.   For the rest of the war he served as a private in Company K of the 7th Regiment of Michigan Infantry, mostly as a nurse or medical attendant in the Union field hospitals.

He was described as 5' 7" and 150 pounds, with gray eyes, auburn hair, and a dark complexion.  (We have no photos of him, but the accompanying drawing of a Union soldier who just stole a chicken seemed like a pretty good representation of what he might've looked like, so we'll use it to help put a face on his name.) 

Franz Lange mustered out of his unit on July 5, 1865 in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and was discharged 11 days later, on July 14, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Two weeks later, on August 1, he was examined by a physician in Jonesville, Hillsdale County, Michigan—about 30 miles east of Burr Oak along the railway and the road that later became Old Highway 12—and found to be "½ incapacitated."

How did he get "incapacitated"?  As the "examining surgeon" described, repeating Frank's tale to him,

 "I was ruptured in Virginia in 1863 while marching during the night," Frank claimed in a later document.  He suffered a "herniated scrotum"—basically some of the contents of his gut pushed down into the little sac holding his testicles.  This injury was the basis for his claim for a pension from the government, beginning in Jonesville, Michigan, on August 1, 1865.

 

♣

 

Ella became pregnant around mid-February 1866.  So she and Frank probably became romantically involved pretty soon after Frank mustered out of the army.  My hunch is that he and Ella had met in Burr Oak before the war—remember that he enlisted in Burr Oak in 1861?—and that at war's end he went back to Burr Oak to see her.  It's also my hunch that Ella wanted to get the hell out of Burr Oak, was dazzled by Frank's worldliness and charm, and saw him as her ticket out.

In 1867, Frank, Ella, and baby Jennie moved permanently to Minnesota.  Three sources document the move.  The first, from a later investigation, says that on October 31, 1867 Frank Lang filed a "declaration of intention" in Minneapolis, Minnesota to become a naturalized citizen.  Baby Jennie's not yet a year old.

The second source is an "Examining Surgeon's Certificate" from Minneapolis of November 1, 1868, in which the examining surgeon noted that Frank suffered a disability resulting from "a scrotal hernia . . . the hernia is large and comes far down giving [him] much trouble about walking."  Now little Jennie is almost two.

The third source is the 1870 U.S. census for the 3rd Ward of the City of Hastings, Dakota County, Minnesota, taken on 27 July 1870, which lists the following household:

Jennie is four.  All these data fit perfectly with what we already know about Ella, Frank, and Jennie (as we'll see, "Ella" also went by "Nellie."  They also fit with Jennie Lang's 1944 obituary, which says she had one sister named Nellie (Nellie Atkins).  It has to be the right family. 

The census shows that Ella Kinsman was barely literate.  The census-taker checked the box marked "cannot write" for 22 year-old Nellie, though evidently she could read well enough to satisfy him not to check the box marked "cannot read."   There's also a checkmark in the box indicating that Nellie's father was of foreign birth, though it appears to be erased.  So it's unclear whether her father was born in the United States.  He probably was.

It's also interesting that her husband Frank Lang was not poor.  His "value of personal estate" was listed as $2,100—quite a bundle in 1870, quite a bit more than most adult men in the census.  His "value of real estate" was listed as $400, which means he owned some property, either their house or a workshop of some sort where he made barrels.

 

♣

 

 Among Frank Lang's papers was a certificate of divorce, which shows that sometime in 1870—less than two years after he, his wife, and baby moved to Minnesota, and just around the time of the 1870 census—Nettie Lang marched into the Dakota County, Minnesota courthouse and (somehow) filled out the paperwork for a divorce, which was granted on 25 January, 1871.  The certificate also says that Nettie received custody of their two children, "Jennie" and "Willie."  

Was this "Nettie" actually Ella Kinsman Lang, and the child "Jennie" my great-grandmother Jennie Lang?  The evidence indicates that it was.  The chronology fits.  The place—Dakota County—also fits.  Also, as we've seen, Jennie's obituary from 1944 said that she had one sister, named Nellie. 

What about this child named "Willie"?  The certificate of divorce is a typewritten copy made years after the original, which was doubtless handwritten.  Whoever transcribed it  probably mistook  "Nettie" for "Nellie," and "Willie" for "Nellie."  They would be easy mistakes to make. 

It thus appears that 23 year-old Ella (Nellie) Kinsman Lang sought and received a divorce from her husband Frank about three years after they arrived in Minnesota, leaving her with two small children to raise by herself.  It must have been a momentous decision.  Frank was fairly well-off, and she was barely literate and owned no property.  Also, in those days divorce carried a huge social stigma, especially for young women with children.

All this suggests that Ella Kinsman had an exceptionally strong sense of herself, that she was a young woman of tremendous will and determination.  Other evidence on Frank Lang's life shows that she probably had very good reasons for divorcing him.

 

♣

 

           Frank Lang appears to have been something of a scoundrel.  He was married at least four times.  His first wife, as we've seen, was my great-great grandmother, Ella Kinsman, with whom he had two children, Jennie and Nellie.  In January 1871 Ella (Nellie) divorced him. 

Within the year, on October 2, 1871 in the same city of Hastings, Minnesota, Frank Lang married a 19 year-old woman named Millie Tiner, born in 1852 in New York, the daughter of Irish immigrants.  It seems likely that he and Millie Tiner started having an affair, infuriating Nellie (Ella), who refused to put up with it, took the children, and left him, despite all the hardship it would cause.

Eight years later, on October 21, 1879, Millie Tiner Lang died of consumption (tuberculosis).  Three weeks after Millie's death, Frank Lang married for the third time, to a woman named Clara Morris.  Given this short span of time—a mere three weeks—it seems probable that Frank and Clara were romantically involved before Millie's death. 

Frank and Clara were married in Red Wing, Minnesota on November 18, 1879.  Clara had a daughter named Jennie from a previous marriage.  In 1883 Frank and Clara had a son, also named Frank.  On June 17, 1884, a year after little Frank was born, Frank Sr. and Clara divorced.  Clara died in Minneapolis in 1891.  After Clara's death, Frank Sr. took in his step-daughter Jennie, now in her teens.  This Jennie later moved to Seattle and married a man named Walter Thornhill.

Soon after he divorced his third wife Clara in 1884, Frank Lang married a fourth time, in Minneapolis, to a German immigrant named Henrietta Eikendorf.  Henrietta Eikendorf Lang claimed Frank Lang's pension money.  This is how all this information was generated—Henrietta Eikendorf Lang wanted Frank Lang's Civil War pension money, so the Bureau of Pensions of the Department of Interior launched an investigation into Frank Lang's marital history.  It's really quite elaborate, with lots of reports and depositions and so on.  In a revealing passage, in April 1918 Henrietta declared the following:

So, it appears that Henrietta and Frank, through the good offices of this mutual friend named Budd, began having an affair while Frank was still married to Clara, who was dying of tuberculosis, just as Millie Tiner was. 

To put it plainly, my great-great-grandfather Frank Lang sounds like a selfish bastard.

            There's an obvious question posed by Henrietta Eikendorf Lang's declaration:  Why did she call Ella Kinsman "Nellie Kinsman" if she'd never heard of her?  It's because that was the name Frank Lang wrote on a Bureau of Pensions form dated January 15, 1898.  One of the questions on the form asked:   "Were you previously married?  If so, please state the name of your former wife and the date and place of her death or divorce."  In the blank space next to this question, Frank Lang wrote:

This was the response that got the whole investigative ball rolling with the Bureau of Pensions.  As you've surely noticed, Frank Lang didn't really answer the question.  He never specified "the date and place of her death or divorce."  So, the Bureau of Pensions figured that maybe he was still married to this "Nellie Lang 'nee' Nellie Kinsman."  Later, after Frank's death, this incomplete answer ended up putting Henrietta Lang's claims to the pension money in doubt. 

It also meant that Frank Lang no longer recognized Jennie and Nellie as his children.  After his divorce from Ella, he probably never saw his daughters again.

 

♣

 

That single incomplete answer on this single form is the reason why the Bureau of Pensions launched this huge investigation, which continued for years after Frank's death, and which turned up lots of information but almost nothing about his earlier wife "Nellie Lang 'nee' Nellie Kinsman" or her children.  Of the dozen or more people interviewed who knew Frank Lang, none could remember her name.  The only documentary evidence that the investigation turned up regarding "Nellie" was the divorce paper from October 1871, granting a divorce to "Nettie Lang" from Frank Lang.

One person did remember Frank talking about his first wife.  His name was John Alexander.  He and Frank Lang were neighbors in Minneapolis, beginning in 1890.  In 1905, the year after Frank's death, John Alexander swore to the following:

John Alexander could not remember the name of Frank Lang's first wife, or her child, but he did say that she died in Minneapolis—which places her death sometime between 1871 and 1904. 

            Thirteen years later, in 1918, the Bureau of Pensions again interviewed John Alexander.  Here is what he had to say about Frank Lang's first marriage:

If we put both of John Alexander's statements together with everything else we know, the story seems to be the following:  Ella Kinsman Lang moved to Minnesota, had a second daughter, divorced Frank, and died in Minneapolis a few years later.  Someone in her family then came to Minneapolis to care for and raise Jennie and Nellie.  If so, we should be able to find them there.  We can surmise that Ella died before 1884, when Jennie turned 18.  So that narrows the likely range of dates for Ella's death to between 1871 and 1884.

 

♣

 

After the war, Frank Lang worked as a cooper (barrel maker) in Minnesota.  He moved around a lot, picking up stakes about every four or five years.  As best as I can reconstruct, he lived in Hastings (1867-72), St. Paul (1873-83), Wadena (1884-88), Minneapolis (1890-95), Cannon Falls (1896-1900), and South Haven (1900-1904). 

Frank Lang died on March 19, 1904, in South Haven, at 62 years of age.  According to his third wife Clara's sister Cora May, he "fell off a wagon and broke his neck on the farm."  Or, in the words of Frank and Clara's son Frank W. Lang, "he fell off a load of hay, hit his head and was killed."

 

♣

 

So we're left with a bunch of mysteries regarding the childhood of Jennie and Nellie Lang in Minneapolis.  Another real puzzle concerns my grandmother's grandmother, Ella (Nellie) Kinsman.  What was her real name?  Who were her parents?  Where and when was she born, and where and when did she die? 

Let's summarize what we do know.  She was born in the state of New York.  Her father might have been foreign-born.  She lived for a time in Burr Oak, Michigan, where she married and became pregnant by Frank Lang in February 1866—just after he had mustered out of the army.  Nine months later, still in Michigan, she gave birth to daughter Jennie.  She, Frank, and baby Jennie then moved to Hastings, Dakota County, Minnesota and had a second daughter, Nellie, in 1868.  She divorced Frank in 1871.  And, she was barely literate.

We also have reason to think that she died in Minneapolis sometime between 1871 and 1884, and that after she died her parents or other relatives raised her two children Jennie and Nellie in Minneapolis.

 

♣

 

So, since we know so little about Ella Kinsman's life in Minneapolis and her later death, what about her life in Michigan, before she moved to Minnesota?  Were there any Kinsman's in Burr Oak, Michigan in the 1850s and 1860s? 

In fact there were, but in the sources I've looked at none were named Ella or Nellie Kinsman.  I can't seem to track her down.  Here's what I've uncovered so far, beginning in the 1860s.  Think of these little hand-symbols below ( L ) as pointing to discrete sets of little facts, little factoids that a detective might put onto 3x5 cards and pin up on a bulletin board to help them solve a mystery.  There are 13 of them:

L  Factoid 1.   The only Kinsman's in St. Joseph County in the 1860 Census were in Burr Oak Township, listed as A. E. Kinsman, age 41, from Vermont, his wife Sarah Kinsman, age 37, from New York, and their six children, ages 2, 5, 9, 12, 14 and 16.  Their names (youngest to oldest) were Lelia, Martin, Martha, Clarence, Mary, and George.  Only the two year-old, Lelia, was born in Michigan.  The others were born in New York.  Also listed as part of their household was one "Susan Roggers."  The whole family therefore must have moved to Burr Oak from New York between 1855 and 1858. 

L  Factoid 3.   A notebook from the Burr Oak Public Library, titled "Deaths in Burr Oak Township, 1869-1905" (which I call the Burr Oak Deaths Notebook below) lists the following:

Ø	Sheldon Kinsman, 1818-1904.  Died age 86.
Ø	Sarah Kinsman, 1823-1889.  Died age 66 of consumption.  From New York.
Ø	Asa E. Kinsman, 1819-1899.  Died age 80.  From Vermont.

From this it seems reasonable to suppose that Sheldon and Asa (A.E.) were brothers.  Sarah, as we've seen, was Asa's wife.

L  Factoid 4.   Asa Kinsman tried to become something of a local political player in Burr Oak in the early 1860s, starting the year after the town was incorporated.  He had mixed success.  At the annual township election of April 1, 1861 he received a grand total of one (1) vote for Supervisor, from a total of 299 votes.  In 1863 he contributed $5 to the "Volunteer Bounty Fund," money that went for the upkeep of local Civil War volunteers.  In 1864 he was elected as one of four constables, with 194 votes out of 1,119.

L  Factoid 5.   The dates also fit very nicely with the history of Burr Oak.  According to a book called The History of St. Joseph County (1910), the village of Burr Oak began as a railroad town, along the path of the Michigan Southern Railway, in the early 1850s.  Settlement started in 1851-1852 with a couple of houses, a store, a tavern, and a post office.  It became incorporated as a village in 1859, and held its first elections for public officials in 1860. 

L  Factoid 6.   Fast-forward ten years.  According to the 1870 Census (available online), the only Kinsman's in St. Joseph County at that time were Sheldon Kinsman, age 53, from Massachusetts, his wife Mary Kinsman, age 49, from New York, and their five children.  They lived in White Pigeon Township.  (Their children were ages 14, 13, 11, 10, and 6, and named Sheldon Jr., Mary, Jackson, George, and Theodore.  The eldest, Sheldon Jr., was born in Indiana, the rest in Michigan.)

L  Factoid 7.  The same 1870 Census also shows Asa Kinsman, age 48, living in the Village of Lowell, County of Kent, Michigan (a few miles north of Burr Oak) with his wife Catherine, a 12 year-old girl named "Annette" (I think), and one "Benjamin Gain," a 22 year-old "Negro gardener" from Virginia.  Benjamin was probably their boarder.  Asa's occupation was "laborer."

L  Factoid 8.  According to his death certificate, Asa Kinsman died of heart disease on September 15, 1899, at 80 years of age, in Burr Oak.  (Actually 80 years, 3 months, and 16 days.  That means he was born May 31, 1819).  He was born in Vermont, the son of George Kinsman and Mary E. Kinsman.

L  Factoid 9.  Sarah Kinsman (Asa's wife), according to her death certificate, died of consumption in Burr Oak on January 16, 1889 at 66 years of age.  (Actually 66 years, 9 months, and 4 days.  That would make her birthday April 12, 1822.)  She was born in New York.  Her mother and father's names are "unknown."

L  Factoid 10.  The following dates for obituary notices in the local newspaper appear online in the Burr Oak Obituary Page Index:

Ø        Kinsman, Clarence E., 20 July 1933

Ø        Kinsman, Sarah (Rogers), 25 February 1892

Ø        Kinsman, Martin Peebles, 6 and 13 May 1919

Ø        Kinsman, Margaret (Snyder), 14 December 1905

Ø        Kinsman, Sheldon, 28 July and 11 August 1904

L  Factoid 11 (actually more of a summing-up than an actual factoid).   Sheldon's obituary date of 1904 matches the Burr Oak Deaths Notebook date of 1904.  Sarah's dates are off by three years (the obituary says 1892, while the Burr Oak Deaths Notebook says 1889).   Asa, who died in 1899 in Burr Oak according to the Deaths Notebook, does not have an obituary listed at all.  This seems strange.  Why no obituary for Asa Kinsman, a longtime Burr Oak resident who had been involved in the town's public life?  Perhaps his name was missed or misspelled when the online inventory was put together.

L  Factoid 12  (actually more of a deduction).   An important bit of new information here is Sarah Kinsman's maiden name:  "Rogers."  This matches "Susan Roggers" listed as living with Asa and Sarah in 1860.  Sarah Rogers and Susan Rogers (or Roggers or Rodgers) must have been sisters. 

L  Factoid 13  (more like another set of questions and a summing-up).  Why are neither Ella, Sheldon, nor Sheldon's family listed in the 1860 Census?  Perhaps they hadn't arrived yet, or perhaps I missed them.  In any case, the name Kinsman shows up in Burr Oak in 1857.  Asa was definitely there in 1860, Sheldon in 1870, and probably before.

 

♣

 

            So with these 13 little factoids pinned up on our imaginary bulletin board, let's get back to the main question:  What does all this mean for Ella Kinsman's ancestry? 

We've already summarized what we know:  She was born in New York state, and she had Frank Lang's baby in Burr Oak, Michigan in November 1866.  That's mostly it.  We can surmise that she was somehow related to Asa and Sheldon Kinsman.  What are the odds of two sets of unrelated Kinsman's living in Burr Oak in the 1860s?  Pretty slim.  Anyway, I hope she was related to them.  Because if she wasn't, all our clues are gone out the window, and we've hit a dead-end even worse than the one Tom and I hit 15 years ago.

Perhaps she was Asa and Sheldon's niece.  Or maybe she was Asa's daughter and her real name was "Mary Ella Kinsman," listed in the 1860 Census as 14 year-old Mary.  "Mary Ella" is a pretty common name.  If this were the case, she would've been 20 years old in 1866 when she gave birth to Jennie. 

Which of these ideas is right?  Or are none of them? Maybe these obituaries hold some clues. 

So I called the Burr Oak Public Library.  The woman said that they have all the obituaries online, but only if you're actually in the library.  It's a two hour drive from here, and it's the dead of winter and I'm not sure my little Honda will make it.  I'm supposed to call next week and talk to Divanne, she handles all that stuff, she'd be happy to help me.  So soon we'll see what those obituaries say, I hope.

 

♣

           

So, I finished writing up all this stuff about the Kinsman's and I began surfing around the Internet, looking for online sources in the Vermont area.  I stumbled onto a genealogy message board where I found a posting from one Margaret Bourdette, dated 29 July 2002.  It was in response to a question someone had posted about "Asa Kinsman."  It read:

I read this message and my eyes just about popped out of my head.  Bingo!  Everything fits!  This has to be the same Asa Kinsman!   Born in Vermont.  Birthday May 30, 1819 (I miscounted by one day).  Married to Sarah Rogers.  Three big fat home runs!  The odds that it's a coincidence are a million to one.

            So I emailed Margaret Bourdette, hoping she still has the same email address three and a half years later.  We'll see if she responds, and if so what she says.

           

♣

 

So while we wait to see whether Margaret Bourdette gets back to us, and wait to see what those obituaries might offer, let's continue with what we do know about our family saga.  What about my great-grandfather and Jennie Lang Sullivan's husband Cornelius Thomas Sullivan?  His death certificate, as we said, shows he was born in Bangor, Maine, on July 8, 1859, the son of Timothy Sullivan, mother unknown.  The 1870 Census from Bangor, Maine, shows lots of Timothy and Cornelius Sullivan's. 

There is, however, one listing of a Timothy Sullivan with an 11-year old son named Cornelius—which would be just the right age.  This Timothy Sullivan is listed as a day laborer, age 53, born in Ireland.  His wife is listed as Mary H. Sullivan, housekeeper, age 50, also born in Ireland.  They had six children, Cornelius the youngest, all born in Maine.  The oldest, Daniel, was 22 years old in 1870, which means he was born in 1848. 

This must be the right family.  Years later, Cornelius and Jennie named their first-born daughter Mary, and their first-born son Timothy.

So it appears that Timothy and Mary H. Sullivan came to the United States in the mid-to-late 1840s—smack dab in the middle of the Potato Famine.  As one textbook on U.S. history puts it,

 So, unless this is the wrong family, it appears that the Irish side of my family arrived hungry and penniless from Ireland, moved to Maine, and started a farm.  Their names are so common, and their were so many others like them flooding into the country, that the chances of tracing them back to Ireland would seem to be just about zero.  So that looks to be a real dead end.

 

♣

 

Until some of the mysteries surrounding Ella Kinsman are resolved, that's about as far back in time that I'm able to trace my family roots on my mother's side.  So, for now let's switch gears and go forward in time, to the Sullivan family in Northeast Minneapolis and the marriage of Genevieve Sullivan to Jack Delehanty, and carry the story forward to when my mother was growing up in Northeast Minneapolis.

 

♣

 

What was the "Nordeast" like in the late 1800s and early 1900s?  At that time, Minneapolis was a booming commercial and industrial city.  It controlled the commerce of the "grain belt," shipping millions of tons of wheat, corn, and other grains down the mighty Mississippi.  Factories and breweries lined both sides of the river as it meandered south and east toward St. Paul. 

Its neighborhoods were a patchwork quilt of white ethnic enclaves—Poles, Irish, Italians, Germans, Slavs, and others, all jostling against one another in a gritty, bustling, working class part of the city. 

In 1989, Richard Reiser (Grace's son) described in loving detail the house in which Jennie and Cornelius raised the seven Sullivan children – the house that was bulldozed to make way for a parking lot after Jennie's death.  It's a lovely description that offers keen insights into the family that lived there:

Richard lived in this house for several years, so he should know.  So many of his descriptions ring true from stories I heard from my grandmother, and from my memories of visiting my Aunt Grace's house in Northeast Minneapolis when I was a kid of 8 or 10—a different house, but probably much the same in many ways, with its massive, heavily upholstered furniture; the dark, heavy drapes; the thick carpets and rugs; the dusty, dank, musty smell; the feeling of being crowded and closed in by all the big chairs and tables and pictures and knick-knacks; the sense that I was stepping back in time.

            I remember my grandma always called the refrigerator the "icebox"—"say, Michael, run to the icebox and get some grapes for your gramma, will you my little lamb?"  Either that or the "Frigidaire," which must have been the brand name of their first refrigerator.

 

♣

 

Another letter of Richard Reiser's offered more details about the seven Sullivan siblings:

Again, much of this resonates with stories I remember from my mom and grandma.  For instance, Great Uncle Tim, the "jail bird":  my mom said he got caught three times forging checks and spent most of his life in prison as a "three-time loser."  She told the story in a very funny way, because, according to her, all the forged checks were for very small amounts – less than $100.  "For heaven's sake!" she'd say. 

Timothy Sullivan, or Uncle Tim, no date, out of prison, circa 1930s?

She thought that Uncle Tim learned to like prison and wanted to go back – especially the third time, during the Great Depression, when jobs and money were so scarce.  Three square meals a day, a warm place to bunk down at night, sports and activities of various kinds – "he was in heaven," she'd say.  He worked a lot in the carpentry shop and became pretty good at it, so she said, making little boxes and stools and all kinds of things.  I'm almost positive that he made the little stool and the sweet little wooden box in which I still store my old letters from my mom.

 

♣

 

Richard Reiser also offered some insights into Cornelius's personality as a father (again, his recollections were based on first-hand experience).  From his description, it seems that my great-grandpa was rather the autocratic type:

Emotionally distant, tough, and unyielding, but also rock solid, dependable, and a good provider.  Richard recalled that Cornelius helped fund his son-in-law John Delehanty's lawsuit against his business partner, a lawsuit over some $3,000 to $5,000 worth of assets.  Remember that?  As I said, grandpa Delehanty lost the lawsuit, though it speaks well of him, and of Cornelius, that Cornelius backed him in it.

 

♣

 

I remember my Uncle Ed very clearly, and with great fondness.  When I was a kid growing up in Fridley, he lived in a hotel in the skid row district of Minneapolis and would visit us every few months.  I know my mom felt a special obligation toward him.  Every morning around 7:30 she'd pick up the phone and dial the hotel and say in a voice I can still hear clearly, "Ed Sullivan please."  I thought it was so funny, because the Ed Sullivan Show was a big TV hit at the time.  For a while I thought we were a really special family, because she was calling the Ed Sullivan.

Whenever he came to visit he'd always bring a big glass jar filled to the brim with pennies.  "Oh, just some extra change I picked up here and there and thought I'd give to you kids," he'd mutter.  "I don't have time to count it all out, you'll all be doing me a real favor if you just take it off my hands."  I loved emptying the giant jarful of pennies onto the floor and stacking them up into little piles and putting them into rolls and taking them up to Gordy's Store across the East River Road to cash them in for dollar bills and divvy up the cash amongst my siblings.

            Years later I learned that before each visit, Uncle Ed would go to the bank and buy $20 worth of pennies in rolls.  Then he'd empty them all out into a big jar that he'd give to us kids.

            I also remember when he'd come to visit he'd be sitting in a chair, and I'd walk by and he'd look around slyly to make sure no one was looking, and he'd whisper, "Michael – come here!"  I'd come over to him and hop up on his lap and he'd say, "open up your hand."  Then very carefully and gingerly, he'd place a shiny new quarter into the palm of my hand, and gently roll up my fingers tight.  And he'd put his index finger to his lips, squint his eyes, and look slyly from side to side, making sure no one could see us.  Then he'd look me square in the face, open his eyes wide, and whisper, "Shhhh!  Don't tell anyone.  It's because you're my favorite!" 

I was so tickled.  Years later I learned that he did the same exact thing with Tom, Mark, Paul, and Sue.  I guess we were all his favorites.

 

♣

 

            One of the reasons why my mom felt a special attachment to her Uncle Ed was that he helped support my grandma and mom—whom everyone called "Betty" or "Bets"—during the hard years of the 1930s.  Still, as I learned years later, not everything was rosy in the Delehanty-Sullivan household.

            I've often wondered what things were like for my grandma and mom during the Great Depression.  As best as I've been able to piece together, a year or two after John Delehanty died in early 1929, leaving my grandma twice widowed and a single mother with a baby girl, catastrophe struck again when my grandma's sister Ellen died.  My mom called her "Aunt Nell."  Aunt Nell had two children, Bernard and Eileen, whom everyone called "Dolly."  I don't know what happened to Aunt Nell's husband.  He probably died too. 

In any event, my grandma took in both children.  I remember my mom said Aunt Nell was on her deathbed when she asked Genevieve to take care of Bernard and Dolly after she died.  Genevieve, with her heart as big as all the world, agreed.

So now it's around 1932 or 1933 and my grandma is responsible not for one child but for three:  little Bets, Bernard, and Dolly.  I think Dolly was the oldest, followed by Bernard, then my mom.

What a horrid predicament.  How in the world is a single mother with no marketable skills and three children to feed, clothe, and shelter going to make ends meet during the depths of the Great Depression?  From what I understand, she ended up working as a cleaning woman, scrubbing toilets and mopping floors.  Who knows where?—fancy hotels perhaps, or rich people's houses, or offices and department stores.  To this day I don't know how she managed.

It was also around this time that my Uncle Ed came to live with his sister Gen and the three kids.  He was a bachelor, a lush, and a womanizer.  "Uncle Ed was somewhat of a drunkard," as Richard Reiser recalled, "who could easily scare anyone, as he often did, when he drank.  Aunt Gen, I know, was afraid of him, but she needed the income and he was a generous person."

He was a generous soul, as I can personally attest, and doubtless he contributed substantially to the family's upkeep.  I'm sure that's why my grandma let him sleep under the same roof with her and the three kids and carry on as he did.

 

♣

 

            One of my mom's dearest friends was named Lois Vosjepka (pronounced "vos-APE-ka"; I've already introduced her, in the letter at the beginning where she remembers my grandma being amazed by electricity).  To me she was Aunt Lois, even though she was no blood relation.  She and my mom worked in the same insurance company after the war, and their future husbands were both architects on the G.I. Bill.  Plus they were both canny, shrewd, and funny, with wicked senses of humor.

            After my mom died I wrote Aunt Lois and asked her what she knew or remembered about my mom's girlhood.  Since they had met in the 1940s, everything she knew about it was second-hand from my mom or grandma.  Here's some of what she had to say:

As my mom described him (with me synopsizing here), he was a barely literate working class Irish bachelor who'd spend a lot of time at the local bar, get drunk, come home with his pals, and they'd all yell and holler and carry on and throw stuff around the house, then Ed would pass out, and in the morning he'd wake up with a terrific hangover, apologize about the all the racket and the mess, and go out and buy everybody a present.  She also remembered that he'd bring women home from the bar to "entertain" in his little room off to the side.  It probably drove my grandma crazy.

As Richard Reiser put it,

With Bernard very ill, Dolly left and never looked back.  She was young, around 16 or 17, I think.  Every memory I have of anyone talking about her emphasized how incredibly vain and lazy she was.  She spent all her time sleeping or lolling around in bed or dolling herself up in the mirror.  Hence her nickname.  She never lifted a finger around the house, never did a stitch of housework, and pouted and whined and demanded things from everyone around her. 

She had dreams, Dolly did, figuring that some wealthy man would be her ticket out of gritty working-class Nordeast Minneapolis.  So with her brother Bernard still very sick, she hightailed it off to New York, I think, leaving my grandma in the lurch.  Never wrote, never visited, nothing.  Disappeared.  She died in her 20s or 30s.  "Dolly went through life with many imaginary illnesses and she died young," Richard recalled.  "She never soiled her clothes or hands, was moody most of the time and was, I think, somewhat afraid of men in general."

In another letter, Richard recalled:

 

♣

 

 Bernard died soon after Dolly left.  At that point my grandma basically fell apart.  My mom told me some about it – not a lot, only that grandma had a really hard time.  Richard Reiser remembered much the same thing.  "Your Grandmother had a breakdown," he wrote, "between everything it's no small wonder, with Bernard dying, plus whatever else she endured."

 

Many years later, my mom recalled how sickly her mother was during these years.  As a small boy sitting on my grandma's lap, I remember looking up at these peculiar red-patchwork lines that covered her chest and neck.  I'd ask her about it, and she'd say, "oh, that's where I got a little burn one time, my little pet would you be an angel and run and get your grandma some grapes from the icebox?"

As it turns out, she was being treated for some kind of thyroid condition, or something like that, at the doctor's office or in the hospital, when the attendant forgot to turn off the radiation machine that was blasting away at her neck.  I guess the machine stayed on way longer than it should have.  She almost died from it.  It burned her neck and chest very severely.  It took her years to recover.  I think it bothered her till the end of her days.  I remember my mom saying it was really, really bad, and that much of the time she was very sick.

 

♣

 

            During the early years of the Depression, while my grandma is raising the three kids, scrubbing toilets and floors, dealing with her illness, and putting up with her brother Ed's nonsense, Grace moved in to Jennie and Cornelius's house.  They were getting old, and Grace's job was to do the housework and take care of her aging parents.  After Cornelius died in 1937, Grace got the house, in accordance with Cornelius's wishes.  Evidently this caused some friction between Grace and Genevieve, at least for a while. 

Grace's daughter-in-law was named Iris Reiser, born in England, Richard's "war bride" brought home after World War II.  She and Grace fought like cats and dogs.  They couldn't stand each other.  "She was horrible!" as Iris railed in one letter to me.  As Iris recalled,

Iris was probably right about Grace – she was a lunatic, and could be horrible, I'm sure.  Still, I remember my mom being very fond of Grace, very devoted to her, as she was to Ed.  She phoned her a lot, took her places, brought her home for visits, brought my grandma to her house, went visiting to her house.  My mom was a very forgiving person. 

So was my grandma.  Year later, Grace and Gen ended up being the best of friends.  I remember so clearly the two of them as old ladies getting all dressed up in their fancy hats and coats and shoes and stockings and going downtown together to go have a milkshake at the Walgreens.  Or, to the wrestling matches, with their nice lady handbags and in their favorite dress hats, shaking their fists and hollering their lungs out in the front row.  It was such a riot to see the two of them together.  They had the funniest way of speaking I've ever heard in my life.  Lord they were funny.

 

♣

 

L  "Oh yaaah, I'm goin' out an' getting' me a good feed, getting' me a good feed, I am!"   (Aunt Grace on her dinner plans.)

L  "Oh yaaah, went out wit' a fella t'other night an' strapped on the ol' feed-bag, got m'self a good feed wit' that fella, I did!"  (Aunt Grace on her dinner date.)

L  "Want any ice cream, grandma?"  "Oh, just a smell, my angel, just a smell."  (A tiny bit.) 

L  "The picture box ain't workin' no more, musta gone haywire."  (The TV had stopped working.  A television was a "picture box," and anything no longer functioning had "gone haywire.")

L  "Where's mom, grandma?"  "Don't worry, my little lamb, she an' your father gone off to the picture show."  (The movies.)

L  "Is the wrestling match over yet, gramma?"  "Purtineer, my angel, purtineer."  (It was "pretty near" over.  A word applied to just about everything).

L  "Well now, don't that beat all!"  (Two meanings:  (1) a conversation filler, said at regular intervals, generally meaning "isn't that interesting," and (2) absolute astonishment, as in "that is the most stunning and remarkable thing I have ever heard in my life").

L  "Well now ain't that rare?"  (See above).

L  "Oh, my, look at you, my gracious don't you all just run like the wind!"  (Grandma on our foot races.)

L  "Oh, now, you know my angel that after I'm gone I'll be lookin' over you all the time, lookin' down over you all the time, you know that now don't you my pet?"  (Grandma's response to my question about what will happen to her when she dies.)

 

♣

 

            There's a photograph (which I can't find for the life of me!) from about 1945 of my mom and grandma standing outside their small clapboard house in Northeast Minneapolis.  Betty is a young woman, maybe 17, straddling a bicycle in the front yard and looking ever so gay, her hair tossed slightly back, her body posture mildly provocative, her face puckish and light-hearted, expressing joy, ease, comfort, her Irish eyes smiling a deep-down happy-go-lucky smile.  Her mother, in contrast, is gazing at her sideways with an uneasy, cautious look, her eyes steely and furrowed, her lips pursed and rigid, no hint of a smile.  It's the picture of a fiercely protective mother worried sick about what's in store for her young, vivacious, happy, naïve, just-come-of-age daughter.  

It's a very revealing snapshot.  To my mind, one of the most remarkable parts of this whole story is how my mother weathered all the storms of the 1930s and came out on the other side such an incredibly joyous, lively, loving, funny person.  Her way of dealing with all the hard times and drunkenness and foolery of these years was to laugh at it—to look it square in the face, toss her head back, and laugh, laugh, laugh. 

She probably also danced and jigged and told jokes and giggled uncontrollably.  It probably drove Dolly crazy, just like Uncle Ed drove Dolly crazy.  Betty, in contrast, seems to have taken all his shenanigans in stride.  "We all called your mother, most affectionately, a little 'kissing bug' because she always liked to hug and kiss," recalled Richard Reiser. 

In another letter, Richard recalled: 

Aunt Lois also remembered a few things about my mom's childhood:

To my mind she showed remarkable resilience under exceptionally trying circumstances.  It's a wonder she came out the joyous, laughing, tender, riotously funny, eternally loveable person that she did.

 

♣

 

NEWS FLASH!    I've heard back from Margaret Bourdette! Remember the woman whose Internet posting on Asa Kinsman I stumbled into?  Well, in the past days she and I have been emailing back and forth about Sheldon, Asa, Ella, etc., trying to figure this whole thing out.  She has been incredibly helpful.

Margaret knows a lot about the Kinsman family.  She has a two-volume book called The Kinsman Family, by William Charles Kinsman II.  William Charles Kinsman II is, without a doubt, the world's foremost authority on this particular branch of the Kinsman family.  There are lots and lots of Kinsman's in his book, going way, way back in time – to the year 1605, to be exact!

This is, like, a big and well-documented family!  Goodness gracious me!  What have we stumbled into here??

 

♣

 

At this point in our story we have two choices.  Either we can draw up a pedigree chart and trace our ancestors back to the year 1605, or, we can reveal Ella Kinsman's real name, her parents' names, her birth place and date, and how she ended up in Burr Oak, Michigan.  Which way should we go, do you think?

 

♣

 

The town of Southport, New York sits nestled in the beautiful Cohocton River Valley in the gently rolling hills of Chemung County, just a stone's throw from the Pennsylvania border.  A few miles north of Southport sits the city of Elmira.  And there, squirreled away deep in the bowels of the Chemung County Courthouse, lies a document recording the birth of one Ellen Kinsman to Sheldon and Louisa Kinsman on March 8, 1848.  The online version of this document reads:

Southport Births in 1848:  Kinsman.  8 March.  Elect to Sheldon and Louisa

This "Elect" was doubtless misspelled when it was transcribed and put online.  Who names their kid "Elect"?  We also have more information now that shows without a doubt that this is, indeed, our Ella.

 

♣

 

Sheldon Kinsman apparently was married three times.

Let's fast-forward to 1861 and look at Sheldon and Mary's family in Burr Oak, Michigan.  Thanks again to Margaret, we have the 1860 Census from St. Joseph County listing them.  (I had missed it earlier on.  Idiot!)  I am taking the 1860 census forward in time one year, to 1861, the same year that Frank Lang enlisted in Burr Oak.  (I should also note that Ellen does not actually appear in the 1860 census.  Maybe, at the time the census-taker came around, she was off visiting her grandparents, or living with another relative, or working temporarily at a neighbor's farm, or somewhere else.  But she was definitely Sheldon's daughter, and she definitely gave birth in Burr Oak four and a half years later, so putting her here seems pretty reasonable.)

 

FAMILY OF SHELDON AND MARY E. KINSMAN, BURR OAK, MICHIGAN, 1861
Name	Age	Place of Birth
Sheldon Kinsman	44	Massachusetts
Mary E. Kinsman	40	New York
[ Ellen Kinsman ]	[ 13 ]	[ New York ]
Sarah Kinsman*	10	Pennsylvania
Sheldon Kinsman Jr.*	5	Indiana
Mary Kinsman*	4	Michigan
Jackson Kinsman*	2	Michigan
George Kinsman*	1	Michigan
Thomas Kinsman*	1	Michigan
* Ellen's step-sibling

 

Study this list carefully.  Think, from what we know now, about the family relationships it describes, especially for Ellen.

 

♣

 

Now for the clincher.  Here's the 1850 census from Southport, Chemung County, New York (again, thanks to Margaret!):

 

Ellen's name is spelled wrong – "Cinsman" instead of "Kinsman" – but it's got to be her.  Living right next door is her father, Sheldon Kinsman, age 33.

 

♣

 

So, given what we now know, let's try to construct a timeline of the major events in Ellen Kinsman's life.  Some of this is conjecture, and some of the details are probably wrong, but it’s the scenario that best fits the facts as we know them right now:

o       Birth   In Southport, Chemung County, New York, on March 8, to Sheldon and Louisa Kinsman.

o       Age 1  (1849)    Mother dies.

o       Ages 1-6  (1849-1854)   She lives partly with her father Sheldon, but mostly with Sheldon's parents, Mary and George Kinsman, in Southport.  Her grandmother Mary and step-sister Selma mainly take care of her:  feed her, bathe her, tend her while she's sick, tuck her into bed and sing her to sleep at night.  Her father Sheldon lives next-door.

o       Age 2  (1850)  She gets a step-mother, Margaret.

o       Age 3  (1851)  Step-mother Margaret gives birth to a daughter, Sarah, and dies. 

o       Age 7  (1855)  Father marries Mary E. Burr, his third wife, Ellen's second step-mother.

o       Age 8  (1856)  Ellen, father, step-mother, and step-sister Sarah move to Napoleon, Ohio, Wauseon, Ohio, and northern Indiana.  Step-brother Sheldon Jr. is born.

o       Age 9  (1857)  They all move to St. Joseph County, Michigan.   Step-sister Mary is born.

o       Age 13  (1861)  Working on the farm in Burr Oak.  Very little schooling.  Meanwhile three more step-brothers have been born:  Jackson, George, and Thomas.

o       Age 13  (Aug 1861)   Franz Lang comes to Burr Oak and enlists in the Union Army.  Possibly spends 10-11 days there.  She and Franz perhaps somehow connect.

o       Age 13-17  (1861-1865)  Dreams of leaving the drudgery of the farm.  Perhaps, she dreams of Franz.

o       Age 17  (Aug 1865)   Frank Lang is examined by a doctor in Jonesville, Hillsdale county, a few miles east of Burr Oak.  He comes to Burr Oak. 

o       Age 17 (Feb 1866)   Falls madly in love with Frank Lang, marries him, and becomes pregnant with his baby.

o       Age 18  (10 Nov 1866)   Gives birth to Jennie Lang in Burr Oak.

o       Age 19  (1867)   Moves to city of Hastings, Dakota County, Minnesota with husband Frank and baby Jenny.

o       Age 20  (1868)   Gives birth to Nellie Lang in Hastings.

o       Age 22  (July 1870)   Living in Hastings with two daughters, ages 2 and 4, and a lying cheating husband who works as a cooper.  Cannot write, can barely read.

o       Age 22  (1870)   Marches into the Dakota County Courthouse and files for a divorce from Frank Lang.

o       Age 23  (January 1871)   Divorces Frank Lang.

o       Age 30-something?  (1870s-80s?)  Dies, leaving her children with family members?  Unknown.

 

♣

 

The pivotal moment in her life seems to have come in the 1860s, when she met and married Frank Lang.  How did they meet?  Why did she decide to marry him, have his baby, and move to Minnesota?

Let's try to figure it out, building on what we know about her life and trying to imagine the rest. 

It's the summer of 1861, on the farm in Burr Oak Township, Michigan.  At 13, Ella's the eldest child.  She is probably also the family workhorse.  Daughters of poor farmers in this time and place do little else but labor.  Unlike farm boys, even poor ones, farm girls are commonly kept out of school so they can work.  So for Ella it's housework and farm chores, all day, every day, season after season.

Her mother is dead, all her siblings are step-siblings.  Her father is, well, her father – a good man, a decent, hardworking man, but very busy with the farm, emotionally distant, and not very understanding of what's going on in the heart of a 13 year-old girl.  The only person she feels any emotional connection to is 10 year-old Sarah.  She's much older than all the others, and except for little Mary they're all boys.  That's a lot of diapers to change, a lot of clothes to wash, a lot of mouths to feed.

Then in marches handsome Frank Lang, straight into Burr Oak, to enlist in the Union Army.  Nineteen years old, a German immigrant with at least ten years in America, he knows the ropes.  His English is excellent, and peppered with all the latest sayings.  Worldly, traveled, funny, he's a real charmer, a real sweet-talker.

Somehow he makes the acquaintance of 13 year-old Ellen.  Maybe they bump into each other in the town's general store.  Or pass each other walking along a country road.  Or exchange pleasantries in the churchyard after Sunday mass.  Or spot each other as the hog prizes are being announced at the county fair.  Maybe they share just a single, fleeting glance.  A glance that changed history and made it so you'd be alive.

Frank joins the army in Burr Oak on August 10, but doesn't actually muster in until August 22 in Monroe, a few hours east on the train.  He's got 10 or 11 days on his hands, and he's curious about what St. Joseph County has to offer.  In any event, somehow Franz and Ellen make contact.  Then Franz marches off to war.

The years pass.  More housework and farm chores for Ellen.  As she scrubs the boys' dirty diapers, peels the potatoes, husks the corn, makes the bread, milks the cows, and toils at all the other labors that keep her so busy, she dreams of leaving Burr Oak, of running off with a handsome young man and starting a new life.  That young fellow she bumped into, the one with the deep gray eyes and auburn hair, whose penetrating gaze she met and returned at the hog show, is never far from her thoughts.

Summer 1865.  Four years have passed.  The war is over.  And who strides back into town but dashing Frank Lang – more worldly and charming than ever.  Ellen, now 17, has blossomed into a lovely young woman.  Frank courts her, promises the moon and the stars, wins her love, and they marry.  She gives birth to a baby girl, whom they christen Jennie.  Within the year the new family is off to Minnesota, to start a new life together.

That new life, as we've seen, soon falls apart.  Frank turns out to be a louse of a husband and father.  Ella leaves him and vanishes from the records.  It's a big blank until daughter Jennie pops up again, married to Cornelius, in the mid-1880s.

 

♣

 

HOLY COW!   Believe it or not, I just received from Margaret Bourdette a digital photo of  the 1900 census record of Jennie and Cornelius Sullivan and their seven children in Minneapolis.  You'll never guess what it says.  Done guessing?  Okay, here goes:  there, at the very bottom of the list, is our Ella, plain as day.  I had never looked up the 1900 census.  Like an idiot, I didn't think it would help.  Though in some ways it wouldn't have mattered, since I never would've made sense of it without knowing what I do now.  What a kick in the head! 

In addition to listing Jennie, Cornelius, and the seven children, the census lists one Nellie Bla---.  I can't make out her last name.  Blair?  Blaine?  Regardless, it's definitely our Ella.   Born in March 1848 in New York, and living under the same roof as the rest of the Sullivan family. 

 

Wow.  Scanning the census page, it looks like her life took some interesting turns in the intervening 29 years, since 1871, the last date for which we have documentary evidence for her.  The census shows that after divorcing Frank she remarried a fellow named Blair or Blaine or something, who had died, leaving her a widow (the box on marital status is marked "Wd").  In 1900 she was working as a cook, probably for a local "feedhouse" (as her granddaughter Grace later termed such eating establishments).  Also, she never learned how to write.

She is also listed as "Head" of the household, along with Cornelius.  What a scream!  She must have insisted that the census-taker put her down as a second head of the family.  There's no other examples of such a thing that I can find.  Households are supposed to have only one head.  It's in the census rulebook. 

Looking over this census page, and knowing what we know about the Sullivan clan, I get the feeling that by this time, Nellie B----, at age 52, was one tough old bird.  I imagine her as a cook at the local feedhouse, barking at the waitresses to snap to!, what d' they think, they're the queen's royalty?!?  And living in that houseful of crazy kids:  Maime (13), Ella (11), Timothy (10), Genevieve (8), Cornelius (7), Edward (5), Grace (4).  She must've been tough as nails, not one to tolerate any nonsense from anybody, certainly not the kids, and not even her tough-guy son-in-law Cornelius.  I'll bet she could hold her own against the best of them, against any man, any woman, anytime, anywhere. 

And that she could be just as sweet as pie.

So it turns out that John Alexander, Frank Lang's neighbor in the 1890s, was wrong.  If he remembered correctly, then Frank lied to him by telling him his first wife was dead.  It figures.

 

♣

 

So that seems to put a pretty happy ending onto Ella's life, regardless of when she actually died.  What matters, at least from our vantage point a century later, is that she lived long enough to see her daughter Jennie get married and raise a family.  And, that she helped raise her grandkids, which surely was a source of enormous satisfaction for her.  That also means she helped raise my grandma, who (as we've seen) was eight at the time of the census. 

My grandma as an eight year-old.  That is really hard to imagine.  And, in a funny way, really easy to imagine.  I'll bet she was the meeker, quieter one of the bunch.  That she liked to play quietly, upstairs or off to the side in her special corner, away from all the ruckus and clatter.  And that sometimes her Grandma Nellie would come play quietly with her, shedding her tough-old-bird exterior for a few minutes to really talk to and be with eight year-old Genevieve, her little pet, her little angel, just as sweet as a little lamb.   

That feels like the most valuable thing to come out of this yellowed old page from the 1900 census:  that my grandma was loved and cared for by her grandmother, Ella Kinsman. 

I never knew.  What a treasure it is to know that.

 

♣

 

Well that sure clears up a lot.  It seems like a good time to return to the hunch with which we began these genealogical journeys:  that tracing my mother's side of the family back in time will show that each generation experienced an early childhood filled with the deepest warmth and affection and love.  

We are back to the 1840s, and it seems to have proven true in each case:

Elizabeth Jane Delehanty had the extraordinary love of her mother, my grandmother, throughout her childhood.  Endured her father's death, mother's illness, and uncle's bad example.

Genevieve Sullivan had the extraordinary love of her mother, Jennie Lang, and her grandmother, Ellen Kinsman, throughout her childhood.

 Jennie Lang had the extraordinary love of her mother, Ellen Kinsman.  Endured her father's abandonment.

 Ellen Kinsman had the extraordinary love of her grandmother, Mary Eaton Kinsman, and perhaps her step-sister Selma Kinsman, until she was at least six or seven.  Endured her own mother's death.

Three of the four suffered traumatic events as small children.  One's mother died.  One's father died.  One's father abandoned her.  These are facts we know to be true.  What we don't know, for sure, is that each of these women, as a little girl, received the extraordinary power of her mother's or grandmother's or extended family's affection and love, and went on to become incredibly loving herself.  We only know it's true for my mom (trust me on this one). 

For Genevieve, Jennie, and Ellen, on the other hand, we have no direct evidence for it.  But we have excellent reasons for believing it was true.  As I said at the outset, people aren't born knowing how to tie their shoes, or how to read, or how to love.  These things don't just happen.  They don't just appear – poof! – in mid-air.  They are created.  They are willed into existence by conscious, mindful, intentional actions, stretched over a period of time.  (In your case, Tim, learning to tie your shoes took all of about 20 minutes, but you already know that.) 

In the case of learning the power and knowledge of love, well, that strikes me as the end result of the most intentional, the most mindful, the most conscious actions of all.  More than teaching a child to tie their shoe, I'd say.  This knowledge of love must have been passed down.  It had to have been passed down.  No other explanation makes near as much sense.

 

♣

 

From this point the paternal lines of descent on the Kinsman side of the family are very well documented, thanks to William Charles Kinsman and his extensively researched The Kinsman Family.  We know who Sheldon Kinsman's father was, and his father, and so on, back to the year 1605.  That's 400 years!  All the way back to England!

Which is not to say there are no more mysteries.  Far from it – suddenly there are dozens more!  For one thing, to find Ellen's great-grandmother we need to leave the Kinsman clan – after this brief intersection with it – to trace her maternal roots.  Who was Mary Eaton Kinsman's mother?  Ellen's life also poses many unanswered questions, as does Jennie's. 

It's also doubtful that Charles Kinsman reported every single documented event having to do with this particular branch of the family.  In fact, from the information Margaret Bourdette sent me, it looks like he got some of the details wrong or mixed up.  That's inevitable – researchers always deal with fragmentary and incomplete data, as we've seen.  So there remain lots of stones unturned, lots of puzzles unsolved.  But now, finally, the broad outlines of my maternal ancestry at last seem clear – at least to the early 1800s.

 

♣

 

            I want to pause here to thank Margaret Bourdette.  Her help was the key.  Without it we probably never would've confirmed Ellen's parentage.  We'd be staring instead at a big fat dead end.  So thank you, Margaret Bourdette.  I hope someday I can repay the favor.

            Thanks, too, to that fleeting glance, to the winds of chance.

 

♣

 

Before we go forward in time again, let's carry the story back as far as we can right now.  According to Margaret's synopsis of The Kinsman Family, Sheldon Kinsman was the son of George and Mary Ormell (Eaton) Kinsman, born November 26, 1818 in Shaftsbury, Vermont, died July 28, 1904 at Coldwater, Michigan, and buried in Bronson Branch County, Michigan.  He lived in Elmira (Southport), New York, Napoleon, Ohio, Wauseon, Ohio, and Burr Oak, Michigan.

So the next step is to find Mary Ormell (Eaton) Kinsman's mother.  In the meantime, I need to get a copy of this book for myself.

 

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NEWS FLASH!   I just received another email from Margaret Bourdette.  Guess what??  At the present moment I find myself gaping slack-jawed at a printout titled "Ancestors of Mary Eaton."  It's nine pages long.  It goes back ten generations—ten generations!—to the year 1558.  I am not kidding.  On the very last page there's a guy named John Northend, born 1558 in Weeton, Rowley, Yorkshire, England.  This whole family goes back to the first settling of Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1620s and 1630s!  To the very first settling of Eastern North America by the British Colonists!  And then before that, all the way back to England, to before the birth of Shakespeare!  Good Lord.

This big long list that Margaret Bourdette so kindly sent me—a list that she herself created by dint of years of hard work—leads to one person, perched at the very top.  It's like a giant pyramid, with masses of people down below, ten generations' worth, all looking upward at one person.  The person sitting at the very top, the person to whom the entire list leads, is Ella Kinsman's grandmother, Mary Eaton Kinsman.  Now don't that beat all?

 

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We'll get back to that bombshell in a little while.  Right now it occurs to me that I know a lot more about my family's ethnic background than I did before.  My mother's side of the family, I had always been told, was pure Irish, Irish through-and-through.  That was probably Cornelius's idea, imposed on everybody else with his ethnic sledgehammer.  Looks like it wasn't really so.  Looks like Cornelius mixed his Irish with his wife's English blood, sleeping with the enemy, as it were.  What was the ethnic mix really?

•  Cornelius                   100% Irish

•  Jennie                         ½ German, ½ English.  That made:

•  Genevieve                  ½ Irish,  ¼ German, ¼ English

•  John Delehanty         100% Irish (informed speculation). 

That made:

•  Betty                           ¾ Irish, ⅛ German, ⅛ English

 

Looks like Betty was mostly Irish after all (though I have a hunch that it's a bit more complicated than this). 

For now let's assume these percentages are right.  If my father was 100% German, what does that make my siblings and me?  Just a mite more German than Irish, it would seem (9/16 German, 3/8 Irish, and 1/16 English, to be exact). 

Oh well.

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