"Ohio"

During the last couple of years, I've done a fair amount of genealogical research and I've posted some of my findings under the tag: "Who Are These People?"

I thought I knew plenty about my ancestors, but I found out I didn't know much at all. This was especially true about my mother's ancestors -- particularly on her father's side -- but I found I didn't know much about my father's side, either. At least not as much as I thought I did.

One of the enduring mysteries on my father's side had to do with Ohio. In family mythology, Ohio was named as a stopping point on my paternal ancestors' journey to Iowa where I was born and my father was born and where his father was born. My father's grandfather and all but one of his grandfather's siblings, however, were born in Ireland. That wasn't the story I was told, as I was told very little, but it was the story in the records I found. There was a surprising amount of information about my ancestors available online.

The records indicated that my father's paternal ancestors emigrated from Ireland in 1850 or thereabouts. It's not entirely clear where in Ireland they emigrated from -- some possibilities include Counties Tipperary and Offaly (called King's County prior to Irish independence from British rule.)  I choose to think my ancestors' Irish home-place was in County Offaly because that was the historic seat of the family clan dating back into the dimmest mists of time. Tipperary borders Offaly, so it's certainly possible that the ancestral origin was in County Tipperary as I'd been told by my father, but he never mentioned a specific location within Tipperary.

The records indicate that by July of 1850, part of the family was living in or near Springfield, Ohio. The missing part is my father's grandfather James. James's father Alexander, mother Mary, brother and sister in law Charles and Anna, and sisters Mary and Sarah are all there, but James is not, nor is his brother John. This suggests to me that they had not left Ireland yet.

They don't show up in the record until the 1856 Iowa state census.

1856 is actually an earlier date for their arrival in Iowa than I had previously thought. The stories I'd heard and read said they'd arrived in Iowa in 1857 or 1858. Yet here they were in Pleasant Valley, Scott County, Iowa, in 1856.

Something had happened to cause them to leave Ohio within six years of their arrival. It wasn't just my father's direct ancestors who left Ohio, either. Another branch of the family that had settled in the Piqua area of Ohio -- forty miles or so north and west of Springfield -- in the 1830s also left for Iowa at about the same time -- mid 1850s -- as my father's ancestors. The other branch settled in LeClaire, Iowa nearby my father's ancestors (LeClaire borders Pleasant Valley) and the records get confused from that point because both branches used many of the same given names, and of course they shared the same surname. Figuring out just who is who is a challenge I haven't yet mastered!

Meanwhile, the chief mystery remained: what happened in Ohio that made them leave en masse like they did?

There were no stories about it that I recall hearing.

The record is scant. There is only the 1850 census stating who among my ancestors was in Ohio and where they were and what kind of work they did -- and how long they'd been there and where they'd come from (a year or less, and Ireland). There was also a listing in the 1840 census for the head of the other branch of the family -- which showed him with a household of 60, most of whom were young men, none named. Was this a monastery? I don't think so. More likely, it was a canal-building crew of Irish immigrants. By 1850, his household was reduced to 15 and included a number of named Irish immigrants.

By 1856, all of them were in Iowa. Both branches of the family were in Scott County in neighboring townships, essentially on neighboring farms, but my father's great-grandfather Alexander was listed as a "farmer" while his brother and neighbor Edward (assumed relationship) is listed as a "contractor." In other words he assembled and supervised work crews for others. That's essentially what he'd been doing in Ohio as well. It's not entirely clear what Alexander and his family had been doing in Ohio, as the only indication is the 1850 listing of Alexander and his oldest son Charles as "laborers" in Springfield.

As I say, there were no family stories about the Ohio sojourn. All that was said was that it happened. And then they moved on to Iowa.

In a history of Scott County that included members of my father's family, it was noted that "opportunities were better" in Iowa -- compared to "more thickly settled" Ohio. I got to thinking about what that could mean in a historical sense.

Edward had been in Ohio in the Piqua area since the 1830s, probably arriving from Ireland in 1836 or 1838. The area had recently been "cleared" of Indians, though there were still some there, and if I understand correctly, Indians still live in the area, descended from those who didn't move west when the rest of their tribes were forced out under the various Removal acts.

Not only were there still Indians in the area, there were also free Blacks, brought to colonize the area from Virginia.

The leading citizen was named John Johnston, a Scots-Irish immigrant who was styled "Colonel" and who had been made Indian Agent for the region. He held many other positions as well. It is my understanding that he was a primary recruiter of immigrants from Ireland and elsewhere to the region around Piqua. My assumption is that Edward and Johnston were working together to recruit Irish immigrants and put them to work on projects -- land clearance, road construction, canal building and the like.

It's possible that Alexander's intention was to go to Piqua and join his brother when he emigrated to America, but he only got as far as Springfield. My suspicion is that he ran out of money, and given the tenor of the times, it's possible that what little money he was able to bring with him from Ireland was stolen.

By the 1850s anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment had reached fever pitch in much of the settled country. Ohio was no exception. There were many incidents of violence against Irish immigrants (and others) throughout the period of Know-Nothing political control of the state. Violence against the Irish included destruction of (Catholic) churches and other property and the robbery and murder of Irish settlers. It was an ugly time, and for the most part there was no recourse at law. The law, such as it was, favored the mob and their terror and violence against the Irish. Needless to say, the Irish were not the only victims, but they were most definitely preyed upon by the dominant white "real" Americans.

Something happened to my Irish-American ancestors during this period to convince them to move on to Iowa. I don't know what it was but it had to have been pretty awful, especially for Edward and his family. They'd been living and working in Ohio for decades.

One generally doesn't pull up stakes without a reason.

I believe the reason that drove my Irish ancestors to come to America was a desire for land -- something they -- as Catholics -- couldn't own in Ireland.

Alexander and his family had only been in Ohio for a few years, but it's my suspicion that they found that no matter how hard they worked and saved, they could not acquire land of their own because they never had enough money to buy it. They couldn't own land in Ireland, either, because the British had seized almost all of it and forbade Catholic ownership of what was left.

Why stay in Ohio where the land situation was similar -- or even more difficult -- and where routine violence against Irish immigrants went unpunished by the law?

There were homesteads available in Iowa for the claiming. Claim the land, improve it, live on it, and it was yours. No one could take it from you simply because you were... Irish.

And so they moved -- dozens of them -- to Iowa, where "opportunities were better" in a land "less thickly settled."

They acquired farms in Scott County -- in LeClaire, Pleasant Valley, McCausland, and Princeton. There may have been others I'm not aware of. I know that later they would also acquire farms in neighboring Clinton County. My uncle Vincent painted this scene of the Princeton farm when he was 11 years old (c. 1912):

The Princeton farm stayed in the family at least until my grandfather died in 1941.

Family members did not actively work the farms after about 1880 or so. They were either left fallow --- especially during the Depression -- or they were worked by tenants. But the land and ownership of the land were very important to members of my family even after their active farming lives ended.

Equally important -- if not more so -- was the law and government.

In my grandfather's generation, all the boys became lawyers. I thought that was also true of the boys in my father's generation, but I found out recently it was not so. In fact, my father was the only attorney in his generation. So far as I know, there are no attorneys in my generation, but some in the generations to follow have expressed an interest in the law.

The law became so important to members of my family, I believe, because the law did not protect them in Ireland -- just the opposite -- and they soon found it did not protect them in Ohio, either. Coming to America may have been the adventure of a lifetime, but it was not a solution to their problems.

My grandfather and his brothers formed a law partnership in about 1894 with branches in Davenport and Clinton, Iowa. It appears to have handled general law and -- importantly -- real estate law. My father became a partner in the firm founded by his father and uncles, and then -- after their deaths -- he was the sole owner and proprietor. And his focus, from that point on, was abstracts of title and real estate law.

Back to what might have happened in Ohio, I've been unable to find any evidence that my ancestors owned and worked their own land either in Springfield or in Piqua. As I say, there's not a whole lot of evidence that they were there at all, but there is some, and what there is indicates that Edward in Piqua assembled and supervised work crews for others as a contractor, and Alexander and his boys worked as laborers on others' properties in and around Springfield.

There is no indication that they owned their own property in Ohio.

In Iowa, on the other hand, there's quite a lot of evidence of my ancestors owning and working their own land in Scott and Clinton Counties at least until the 1880s.

According to one account I read, the "Famine Irish" refused to take up land for farming in Ohio, even though farmland was available at almost no charge in the Western Reserve.

This is somewhat hard to believe but it may be true.

Those of my Irish ancestors who arrived in Ohio in 1850 would -- I have little doubt -- be classified as "Famine Irish" even though, from what I've been able to find out about the famine situation in the central part of Ireland, they likely did not suffer from starvation or disease - or eviction for that matter.

The Third Earl of Rosse was the British lord of the region, and according to contemporary accounts, he was a great defender of the Irish and he assured that the Irish in his domain would not -- and did not -- starve. He was almost alone in his sense of responsibility for Irish welfare. But he did what he could.

The Irish left Lord Rosse's domain anyway.

It was a terrible time for Ireland, and the Great Famine will forever remain one of the (many) black marks on the British Empire.

Once in America, the Irish faced many hardships, most of which were the result of poverty. Most Irish arrived in the United States penniless or deep in debt to whomever had paid their fare out of Ireland.

Opportunities to make a living were scant, and there were multitudes of "real" Americans eager to exploit Irish poverty and naivté to enrich themselves. While some Irish, like my ancestors, came to America specifically for freedom from oppression and for land, others came for no other reason than to survive.

One history I read suggested that the Irish grossly exaggerated the discrimination they faced in America, and to the extent they faced any discrimination at all, it was their own fault.

Another history, specifically dealing with Irish immigrants to Ohio, also blamed them for their own problems and misery. The Irish were said to be "uncivilized," "ignorant," "dirty," "violent," and often drunken.  They were lazy, contentious, immoral, and illiterate. Their Catholic faith was little more than a superstition. On and on. Any sort of stereotype you can think of was being cited in a current history of Ohio to justify the mal-treatment of Irish immigrants in the 19th Century.

Apparently, to this day, Ohioans have little regard for Irish immigrants of long ago, especially not for the "Famine Irish."

And yet the Irish experience and memory of discrimination and mob violence against them is "exaggerated."

Interesting.

Apparently anti-Irish prejudice and Know-Nothing-ism was not as strong in Iowa as it had been in Ohio.

I've wondered why my Irish ancestors didn't press on to California and the Gold Country when they finally decided to leave Ohio. The Gold Rush was going full blast when Alexander and his family (my direct paternal ancestors) arrived from Ireland in 1850. Emigration to California was still under way when they left Ohio for Iowa in or about 1856. The lure of the Gold Rush must have been strong, and yet it wasn't strong enough to get them more than a few miles across the Mississippi River. What kept them in Iowa was the land.

The land situation in California was complicated by the unsettled condition of the numerous Spanish and Mexican land grants -- grants that were supposedly guaranteed to the grantees in perpetuity by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo ceding California and the rest of the Southwest to the United States. That isn't quite how it worked in practice, but that's what it was supposed to look like. So there wasn't really much land available for homesteading in California, and gold-finding was not what it was cracked up to be.

In Iowa, on the other hand, once the Indians were forced out, there was abundant land for the taking. Homesteading was possible, and if land had to be purchased, costs were apparently within reason.

Once they had land, my paternal ancestors could begin to build a future.

Apparently, too, the law in Iowa was on the side of the settlers, even if they were recent immigrants from Ireland.

There is also a German side to my paternal ancestry, but we'll not deal with that here.

My sense is that land was not available for my paternal Irish ancestors in Ohio, there was an increasing level of anti-Irish prejudice, discrimination and violence in Ohio, the law did not protect the Irish in Ohio, and Iowa beckoned.

The road from Springfield and Piqua, Ohio, to Scott County, Iowa, was a long one, but it was taken around 1856, and from that point on, the story of what happened to my ancestors in Ohio was forgotten-- or at least never spoken of --  much as the story of what happened in Ireland fell into the mists of time.

But whatever it was, what happened in Ohio helped make them who they were.

All Kinds of Wrong

In my not abundant free time I've been trying to wade through the very poorly written and edited 74pg report by the Cuyuhoga County Prosecutor's Office  (scroll down for the report itself) that they say justifies the Grand Jury's no bill in the murder-by-cop of young Tamir Rice.

I didn't see McGinty's show-and-tell at which he apparently went through the report, but it's just as well. I would have been furious, and that's no good for my blood pressure.

The report is filled with so many typos and so much nonsense and outright falsehood that it takes your breath away. And it took more than a year for the "investigation" and the "process" to unfold, no? Why? As many observers have pointed out, there was more than enough evidence to hold both officers for trial, and it was obvious from the start.

In the case of a cop who kills, it's almost impossible to get a conviction, especially when the DA is acting as defense counsel as McGinty was in this case, but there is often no lack of evidence to charge and try the said cop in court. Of course, that almost never happens.

Yes, McGinty is acting as defense counsel for the police whose actions that awful day when Tamir Rice was shot by Timothy Loehmann at the Cudel Recreation Center were supposed to be evaluated by the Grand Jury with regard to whether or not there was sufficient evidence to charge and try them. That's all.

There was more than enough evidence to charge and try them. It doesn't mean there would necessarily be a conviction -- as I say, almost impossible to get -- but a trial in open court was certainly warranted. Instead, a kind of mock trial in which only the defense was present and only the defense was presented to the GJ by the DA was held behind closed doors. This is not justice, not even its shadow. This was farce.

The defense, yes. There was no prosecution, there was no attempt at presenting evidence for a possible prosecution of officers Loehmann and Garmback. The only evidence presented was a defense of their actions.

And then a defense of the DA's office for not presenting a case for prosecution.

How very circular. How very wrong.

There are many obvious falsehoods in this report, falsehoods upon which the DA rests his defense of the officers in the killing of Tamir Rice. The most glaring is the statement by Officer Loehmann himself, a statement which was apparently presented in whole to the Grand Jury, read by Loehmann to the jurors, a statement which he allowed to present without question or cross examination. By itself, this was a highly unusual and bordered on malfeasance. The statement itself was not new. It had been in the press before, and it had been picked apart because it is riddled with falsehood. But the DA chose to accept Loehmann's statement -- and the statements of other officers -- as true facts. They aren't. And if the goal is justice (it wasn't) the statements of police officers, especially of the killers themselves, have to be open to question. They weren't.

Instead, the DA sought evidence to corroborate, not to dispute, the officers' statements. When he believed he had sufficient evidence to do that, he advised the GJ not to indict.

Because the officers only did what they had to do -- based on the erroneous and incomplete information they had from a 911 caller and dispatch and the fear they felt due to the actions of their deceased victim. The officers had a duty and obligation to neutralize the active shooter threat that they believed Tamir Rice represented. And so they did, with lethal force, which is what they are authorized and empowered to do. The officers committed no crime, according to the DA, because in essence, they couldn't. There were many errors all along the way, he claimed, but the outcome -- a dead boy -- was not one of them. Based on the information they had and the actions of the boy, they had no choice but to kill him to save their own lives and protect the safety of others.

This is all kinds of wrong, but the DA in this case doesn't seem to recognize that.

The first thing to recognize -- which the DA doesn't -- is that there was no credible threat at any time to anyone from Tamir Rice that day. The only threat came from the police to Tamir Rice. Tamir Rice was not armed with a weapon, he had a toy gun. It's been called a BB gun or a "replica gun" (the term of choice used by the DA) but it was an Airsoft gun that could at worst cause slight injury if he had ever fired at anyone. So far as the evidence shows, Tamir never shot a plastic pellet from the gun at any time before or during the 911 call nor did he (nor could he) when the police arrived. He may never have shot a pellet at all. But even if he had, it wouldn't have been known to the officers -- because there was no report of his firing.

Nevertheless, the officers approached Tamir as if he were an active shooter and the situation was that of an active shooter causing multiple injuries and death. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. There was simply no call for treating him as an active shooter to be neutralized on sight. None.

Well, except for this: The report that was transmitted to the officers was that a black male was in the park aiming a gun at people. Bingo. That's all it takes in Ohio to justify police who kill them. It's happened repeatedly in Ohio (elsewhere too, but Ohio stands out because it is an open carry state. Well, for whites.)

All it takes to get a black male shot by police on sight is a 911 caller saying that an armed black male is waving his gun around and pointing it at people.

Bam! Or in Tamir's case, "bam-bam." Loehmann proudly says in his statement that he attempted a "tap-tap" by firing twice, but sadly only hit the boy with one bullet. No doubt he'll try to do better next time.

McGinty defends the "active shooter" approach to Tamir by saying that it was actually required of the officers by protocol, training and the law. They had no choice. Even though there were no reports AT ALL of anyone firing any weapon, because there was the potential that Tamir might become an active shooter, he had to be neutralized according to the protocols of the PD and the law in Ohio. They were not to assess; they were to act. And their act of killing Tamir was required of them due to the gravity of the situation.

This is so far from any sane policy, my head is spinning. It is practically the definition of "murder at will" -- because of fear that something might happen. This is almost the same excuse that was used to justify the killing of John Crawford III at that Walmart near Dayton. But there have been many others. All it takes is somebody calling 911 about a black man with a gun and reports of "pointing it at people." True or false, it doesn't matter. The black man will be a dead man (or boy) shortly.

True or false, it doesn't matter.

McGinty essentially says just that. The police are not to assess anything. They are to act on their split-second decision to neutralize (ie: kill) the reported threat. That is all.

Any delay or assessment of the true situation or any failure to shoot first before the victim can shoot at them is potentially deadly to them or others. Ergo, they are justified at law and by training  when they kill reported  "threats."

It doesn't matter whether the report is true or not. In the case of John Crawford III, the 911 caller made indubitably false claims about the actions of Mr. Crawford, and police acted on those false claims (of loading and aiming an automatic weapon at customers), and they were not held criminally liable.

In the case of Tamir Rice, the 911 caller repeatedly tried to clarify that the gun he saw the boy waving around was "probably fake" and the boy himself was "probably a kid." Didn't matter. That information was never passed on to the responding officers, but even if it had been, it wouldn't have made much difference, because they were psyched for an "active shooter" encounter, and because, according to McGinty's video enhancement expert, Tamir reached for the gun in his waistband.

 Talk about all kinds of wrong. The video is grainy and taken from a distance. It does not "indubitably" show Tamir reaching for the gun. McGinty says it is "indubitable" because his expert says so, but the expert is interpreting his own enhancement, not seeing with any sort of clarity what the boy is actually doing.

In my view, it's just as likely that he is taking his hands out of his pockets and attempting to "show his hands" as the police car skids to a stop. There is no sign -- whatever -- that he actually takes the gun from his waistband (as stated in Loehmann's account). McGinty makes the announcement that Loehmann's account is confirmed by this video enhancement, but that's false. That's not what it shows. But even if it did, it wouldn't constitute an actual threat to the officers or anyone else.

McGinty claims that the Airsoft gun "looks real" -- which it does -- but that's irrelevant if, as I suspect, neither officer ever saw the gun until after Tamir was shot.

And so it goes. The report is one falsehood after another, one irrelevancy after another, one wrong after another.

And cops who kill walk once again, because the DA does not prosecute cops who kill, the DA defends them.

America. 2015.

The Kunduz Hospital Atrocity

The number of killed and wounded at the Kunduz, Afghanistan hospital run by MSF is somewhat uncertain. Dozens are dead or injured, at any rate.

They were killed and wounded during a nighttime attack from above. At least one US AC-130 and possibly one or more helicopter gunships fired on the hospital's main building around 2am, largely destroying the hospital and causing significant death and injury to patients (some of whom are reported to have "burned in their beds") and to staff.

MSF has called the attack a war crime.

The Defense Department has characterized it as an "accident," or perhaps a "tragic" incident justified by reports of Taliban fighters using the site to fire on American and/or Afghan forces operating in the area to retake Kunduz from Taliban insurgents, yadda yadda.

MSF insists that there were no Taliban fighters on the grounds or in the hospital, and there was no firing from the compound before or during the attack.

Of course under the shadowy Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan and other theaters of our many overseas wars, it doesn't matter whether the reports of Taliban fighters using the grounds and hospital as positions from which to fire on American and Afghan forces are true or false. It only matters that there are reports of suspected enemy presence or action from such and such a location to unleash Death From Above. Confirmation is never required as actual confirmation might jeopardize a troop on the ground. Can't have that. Good heavens no.

Force protection is All Important. The deaths of untold numbers of civilians, and the destruction of protected infrastructure such as hospitals, power plants, water treatment and pumping plants, etc, matters far less (actually not at all) compared to the necessity to protect the force.

Such death and destruction is patently a war crime under various treaties, but it's routine in the US pursuit of Empire, and there is no plausible prosecutorial means to hold the Imperial forces liable. Much the same is true of Israel's actions in its attacks on Gaza. Israel routinely attacks and destroys protected sites and infrastructure, killing untold numbers of civilians and other protected individuals, and Israel justifies it through reference to reports of enemy action at or near these sites -- or doesn't bother justifying it at all, it just does it.

"Investigations" by the United States or Israel into these frequently repeated actions are typically farces which exist solely to exonerate those who conducted the operations. In any rational world they would be considered war crimes.

But we are not in a rational world.

We are in a world of illusion and deception, in which literally any presence or action -- or lack of action -- can be interpreted as a "threat" to Imperial forces, and such "threats" can be/will be suppressed with lethal force. There's nothing rational about it. It's all "gut" and "perception," illusion and deception. And above all, it's force protection. From phantoms.

I've compared these incidents with domestic police actions which result in death and destruction. It literally does not matter whether there is an actual threat involved in police use of lethal force. All that matters at law is that there is a perception of a threat -- or simply reports that there is a threat -- for domestic police forces to justify use of lethal force.

False or inaccurate reports are sufficient.

Thus, for example, John Crawford III and Tamir Rice were killed by police on the basis of false/inaccurate reports of 911 callers and dispatchers. It didn't matter what Crawford and Rice were really doing, nor did it matter that they weren't threats of any kind. All that mattered was that they were suspected and reported as potentially threatening.

That is sufficient justification for police use of lethal force in this country, and it is sufficient justification for military action overseas -- such as the constant drone attacks on "suspected militants," the frequent attacks on wedding parties by US forces and their allies, and the recent deadly attack on the Kunduz hospital.

In a rational world, they would be crimes against humanity.

But we are not in a rational world.

[Maybe some links later; busy day today.]

What I Learned This Year: Part The First

I have to start with how much I learned about my ancestry that I never knew before.

For example, I now know my mother's father's full name, where and when he was born, how, where and when he died, some of the highlights (well, low lights) of his career as a (petty?) criminal, how many children he fathered with how many women, and quite a bit about his family.

My mother told me she had few memories of her father because he died when she was five years old, and she had very few memories before she and her mother and stepfather moved to California from Indianapolis when she was six. I suspect she had no memories of her biological father at all. He was arrested for burglarizing a drug store in Indianapolis when she was six months old in May of 1912. He appeared in court a week later, and his case was given to the grand jury. In August, my mother's mother sued him for divorce. From that point, he disappears from Indianapolis.

Next time he turns up in the records, he's in St. Louis, working on the railroad. In 1914, his 'wife' in St. Louis (whether they are legally married or not, I don't know) gives birth to a daughter. And in December of 1916, he's killed in a horrible railyard accident. His death certificate lists the manner of his death as "Body cut in two."

In 1917, my mother's mother married again in Santa Ana, California, to a man who was a neighbor and possibly a friend and colleague of my mother's biological father.

My mother had been told that her father died in a streetcar accident in Indianapolis, but that wasn't so. She'd been told he was a streetcar conductor in Indianapolis, which he was at the time he met her mother, apparently. But he was living in St. Louis when he died; he was working as a railway switchman. His older brother was a Linotype operator for the St. Louis Globe newspaper at the time and had been living in St. Louis since about 1890.

At some point, Harold -- my mother's father's older brother in St. Louis -- seems to have married my mother's father's first wife Maud who had divorced my mother's father sometime before 1910. Or maybe he didn't marry her. They were living together as husband and wife, but who knows whether they were married? I don't.

I haven't been able to figure out whether my mother's biological father was legally married to anyone but Maud, as there seems to be no record of any other legal wife but her. But in those days, I've found, common law marriages were routine, and it's quite possible that his other wives were common law.

The problem is that my mother was sure there was a scandal when he died and it was discovered he had another family "at the other end of the line," as both wives and daughters appeared at his funeral. My understanding was that all this happened in Indianapolis, but it couldn't have. He died and is buried  in St. Louis. The only way it could have happened is if my mother (then a five year old girl) and her mother traveled to St. Louis for the funeral. I suspect that's what actually took place.

My mother was convinced her father was a bigamist because of the wife and daughter "at the other end of the line." But that may not be true. He may not have been a bigamist in the legal sense. I found no record that he was legally married or divorced from my mother's mother, for example, nor were there any indications in the records that my mother's mother and father ever lived together as husband and wife. Instead my mother's mother is listed as living with her mother and aunts in Indianapolis, even after my mother was born, until they moved to California in 1917 -- almost a year after my mother's father's death in St. Louis.

That story still holds some mysteries, but the story I was told, that my mother's father was a streetcar conductor who had died in a streetcar accident in Indianapolis when she was five wasn't quite accurate, and I'm pretty sure it's what my mother was told and passed on to me without any particular knowledge of her own about it. She said she remembered the little girl -- the two year old daughter of her father's other wife -- and she felt sorry for her. If that's true, then more than likely that meeting took place in St. Louis. But she never mentioned St. Louis in her tellings of the stories. I doubt she remembered where she was at the time.

My mother's father is buried in Friedens Cemetery in North St. Louis (actually in Bellfonatine Neighbors). This is about a mile from Calvary Cemetery where Dred Scott is buried, and about two miles from St. John's Cemetery where Mike Brown is buried.

In the early '80's I lived and worked for a time in St. Louis -- well, it was actually in Webster Groves -- but I had no idea that my mother's father ever lived or was buried there. Instead, I used some of my free time to go to Iowa where I was born and where my father had lived and died. I didn't check out his grave -- which I've never seen in person, though I have seen pictures -- but I did check out his house, and recapture some of my earlier memories of the town.

If I had known my mother's father had connections to St. Louis, I would have made a kind of pilgrimage to various sites I know about now, but had no knowledge of then. For example, the railyard where he died is still there by the Mississippi River. It looks like a Superfund site, but the tracks and much of the other infrastructure that existed in 1916 is still in place. The homes where he was listed as living are no longer there because they were torn down to build the freeways, but his older brother's place in Baden (north of St. Louis) still stands.

Baden, I found out this year, has an interesting connection with my father's family, too. In that case, though, the Baden is in Germany where my father's mother's parents were from. I'd been told they were Germans, but exactly where they were from was somewhat murky. Frankfurt, Prussia, Bavaria, Munich were all mentioned, but not Baden, interestingly. Apparently, from what I was able to find out, my father's mother's parents were from a little village called Weibstadt that has been absorbed by Heidelberg and therefore no longer exists. There may have been travels and sojourns elsewhere in Germany ("Germany" didn't exist at the time, either), but if so, it would have been when they were children. Both my father's mother's parents emigrated to America when they were 15 years old in 1855.

I was told that the family was "probably originally Jewish," but I have yet to see any proof of it. It's possible as there are Jewish families in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands with the same last name, but I haven't found any direct connection between them. At any rate, the family had long been Catholic by the time they came to America.

In researching the Irish side of my father's roots, I found there was a good deal of confusion and not a little Blarney. My father was convinced that we were descended from a prominent American Revolutionary family with deep roots in Maryland. Well... no. Not the way I found the line, at any rate. I will say it is possible that my father's Irish ancestors and the Maryland family he claimed descent from were related distantly, in Ireland, but there is no connection between them and my father's ancestors after 1700 or so. They may not even be branches of the same family as several independent and unrelated families use the same last name.

There was confusion, however, because apparently two brothers emigrated to America with their families at two different times and settled in the same places, first in Ohio and then in Iowa. Edward emigrated with his family in 1842 and settled near Springfield, Ohio; his brother Alexander emigrated with his family in 1850 and settled nearby. Both brothers and most of their families then moved to Iowa in 1857, where they appear to have taken up a number of farmsteads in the general vicinity of Davenport.  Edward and Alexander's families and descendants are so intertwined and they use many of the same given names so it's difficult to sort out just who was who. There are similar problems sorting out who the mothers were, as there were at least four different women married to Edward and Alexander, and indications are that two of them were sisters, and one may have been traded between the brothers, first married to one and then to the other.

I have not been able to unravel who is actually related to whom and how beyond my father's father's generation where it's pretty straightforward and clear. Earlier, however, it's very confused and confusing.

Again, this kind of informality of marriage and relationships was not uncommon in the 19th century. It seemed in fact to be a feature not a bug of the Westward Expansion. Today we might think it's very odd -- I certainly do -- but apparently it wasn't in those days, and people took it quite naturally.

We have a notion of Victorian patriarchy, prudishness and propriety that doesn't quite match the reality. 

My mother and her mother were part of matriarchies, for example, in which men were at best useful accessories and often enough were little more than despised interlopers. "Sperm donors."

From the research I did this year, I found that my mother's mother's mother, Ida, had been widowed in 1904. She set up a household for her mother, herself, her sisters (all widows themselves) and their children (two boys and a girl) in Indianapolis. Ida apparently inherited a lot of property from her husband -- who I found she hadn't lived with for years before he died as he had moved back to his parent's house to take care of his own mother who was apparently an invalid. Ida was left well off for the rest of her life, however, though her sisters were apparently not so well fixed after their husbands died.

My mother's mother, Edna -- Ida's daughter -- worked as a telephone operator at an Indianapolis bank managed by my mother's father's younger brother, George. I suspect that any memories my mother said she had of her biological father were actually of George, who would have been her uncle, but I don't know that for certain. All I'm sure of is that her father left Indianapolis sometime between mid-1912 and mid-1913 (when my mother was not even two years old)  whereas Edna and my mother stayed in Indianapolis until 1917 -- when they moved to California with Leo who became my mother's step-father.

I learned much more about other characters among my ancestors this year, people I'd only heard about previously. Many were long dead, but others were still alive when I was young though I didn't meet or know them.

One was my father's older brother Vincent. He was accused of and tried for the murder of his wife, Garla a couple of years before I was born. He and his wife cared for -- essentially they adopted -- my half-brother Terry after my father's first wife Ted (nickname for Thelma) died in childbirth.  Vincent's alibi was that he was with his mistress in town when Garla died, and he said he discovered her body at the foot of the stairs when he returned home the next morning. The prosecutor claimed that Vincent had beaten her to death as she had numerous bruises on her body. The cause of death was a brain hemorrhage.

My half-brother was apparently the only witness, but he could not testify due to his condition -- now called autism. He was 11 or 12 years old at the time.

Vincent was tried for murder twice. The first jury hung; the second acquitted him. I didn't know about the first trial until this year. My father had been one of his defense attorneys -- the only time he tried a criminal case in court -- and he kept voluminous records and wrote a newsletter for the rest of the family describing what was going on, but the records I've seen and the story he told didn't mention the first trial and the hung jury, just the second trial and the acquittal. That story included the fact of my half-brother's testimony to the judge in chambers, but not what his testimony was. My father's story was that the judge then directed a verdict of "not-guilty."

I didn't know what happened to Vincent until this year. He moved to Santa Barbara in 1947 with his mistress from Iowa and they were married. He died in 1962, in Santa Barbara. I had no idea he was there. From 1949 to 1953, I lived 50 miles north of Santa Barbara, and from 1953 to 1959, I lived in Los Angeles, a few hours south on Highway 101 from Santa Barbara. The only thing I knew about Vincent at that time was that he'd left town after he was acquitted and his whereabouts were "unknown."

Whether anybody (for example, my parents) knew where he was and just didn't want to say, I don't know, but I was surprised as heck to learn he was in Santa Barbara until his death, as I had no idea until I saw records this year.

There were many more things I learned this year about my ancestors and their relatives. I'm still attempting to process all of it. I've started to novelize some of the story as that seems to be the best way for me to understand what I've learned.

In some ways, I wish I'd known these things before now,  but in other ways, I'm not convinced it would make any difference. All my grandparents were dead by the time I was born, and the stories I heard about "my people" when I was young were not that far from true. I'm far from convinced the records I've seen this year are necessarily true themselves -- especially Census records, which are notoriously untrue.

People make up stories about their own past as well as that of their ancestors.

Maybe next year, I'll be able to fictionalize what I've learned this year...

Cairo Comes to Madison.... Maybe

About 10,000 people are reported to be gathering at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison to protest the newly elected TeaBagger Governor's demand that public employees be denied collective bargaining rights over matters of working conditions, pensions and so on. The TeaBagger governor, some clown named Scott Walker, is trying to jam the measure through the 'Bagger dominated legislature, and all hell is breaking loose.

Even the Packers have come to the defense of the public sector workers.

Obviously, this is serious as a heart attack. Walker, for his part, appears to be vying to out-dick Ohio's Dickhead Governor Kasich, who is trying for the same sort of unilateral overhaul of public employee rights.

All I can say about these pissant moves is that California's Own Orange Waxy Man, Ahnut, tried to blame the budget deficit here on public employees, specifically unionized nurses and teachers, and he was, to put it gently, taken to school. He was dogged everywhere, up and down the state, by nurses and other public employees who shamed the living shit out of him.

And that's what's going to happen to these yahoos.

Whether it will trigger an American Uprising, who can say.

But the fuse is being lit.