The Cemetery that Moved: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “At the Cemetery”

 

The Houston Family, Provine Cemetery and the Propaganda Power of the Tennessee Valley Authority

William “W. L.” Houston: 1867-1917 (Maternal 2nd Cousin 2x Removed)
Mary Nall Houston: 1879-1910 (Wife of Maternal 2^nd Cousin 2x Removed)
 

While I was reviewing Ancestry records for cousin William Houston and his wife Mary Nall Houston, I was surprised to discover a link to a database called the “Tennessee, U.S., Relocated Cemeteries Index, 1787-1975”. I had never heard of this database, and had no idea why William and Mary, who were born and died in Kentucky, would be included in such a database. I did some research and discovered that the database was created by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the country’s “largest public energy provider” which also manages the Tennessee River to prevent flooding. The TVA built a series of hydropower dams on the river, creating huge reservoirs that flooded towns, farms, homes and cemeteries along the river. The database lists all the graves that potentially were to be or actually were relocated before their cemeteries ended up under water. The list was huge. I was stunned. I am ashamed to admit I never thought about the personal costs to communities and families that lived in the path of huge hydropower projects like the TVA. I wanted to learn more, and I wanted to know what happened to William and Mary Houston’s graves.

William Lee Houston was Bruce’s second cousin twice removed, the son of George Houston. George was the nephew of Bruce’s second-great-grandfather William Parker Leachman. William was born on September 15, 1867. He became a farmer in McLean County, Kentucky. On October 18, 1899, when he was 32 years old, he married nineteen-year-old Mary Nall. The couple had two children, Mary Lee and George Garrison Houston, before Mary’s death in 1910.

Tragically, the children were orphaned just seven years later when Willie died unexpectedly on February 4, 1917. His son went to live with Mary Nall Houston’s brother and his family, and daughter Mary Lee married William Kennedy two years later.

                                       Gravestones of Mary and William Houston

William Houston and several of his brothers and cousins all lived and farmed around the community of Gilbertsville in Marshall County, Kentucky. When William and Mary died, they were buried in the Provine Cemetery, which was probably in Gilbertsville as well. 

Town of Gilbertsville in 1938, before it was razed by the TVA.

The town lay on the banks of the Tennessee River, and when the TVA decided to build a dam and create the Kentucky Lake Reservoir in the late 1930s, the area was condemned and bought up through eminent domain. The entire town of Gilbertsville was demolished in the 1940s and relocated west of the original site, which is where the dam now lies.

Downtown of the original Gilbertsville, Kentucky, circa 1938. All these buildings were razed.

I searched for the original location of the Provine Cemetery. Nothing. Not one record. I found a document that mentioned the full name of the cemetery was the Provine Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery. When I searched for Provine MB Church, I once again found no records. The church no longer exists, and there is no history that it ever existed. Even Findagrave is totally silent on the fact that the Houstons and hundreds of other people who had been laid to rest in the original Provine Cemetery were now in New Provine Cemetery, located in the community of Benton, miles west of the town of Gilbertsville. The cemetery description on Findagrave says nothing about the first Provine Cemetery. It is as if the existence of the original cemetery is some deep, dark secret.

Location of New Provine Cemetery in Benton area.

When I studied maps of the new cemetery, I could see it lies next to the Briensburg Baptist Church, which has its own cemetery on the opposite side of the church. A third cemetery is located across the road—perhaps another “relocated” cemetery? I wonder if the church donated or sold the land as an act of charity towards the displaced dead and their families. 

New Provine Cemetery

The New Provine cemetery is obviously a newer cemetery. It lacks any mature trees, and is quite barren. Knowing that much of it consists of reburials makes sense. The rows of graves are ruler-straight with no empty spaces between graves. I examined the list titled “Provine Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Marshall County, Kentucky TVA Cemetery Relocation Project 1940-1942”. The list included the names of 375 people buried at the original Provine. When I compared random names from that list with the TVA records of relocated graves, all of those individuals appeared in the TVA records, with the notation that the graves were relocated in 1942. Much of the New Provine Cemetery is obviously made up of graves from the original cemetery.

This must have been huge news at the time. People who had lived in the area for generations were now being forced to sell, and they probably received less than market value as compensation for their lost homes, businesses and farmland. And all those cemeteries—all dug up and moved to different locations. People must have been upset. There must have been concerns over how government money was being spent and about how families were being hurt. But bizarrely, I can barely find a mention of what was happening in the local newspapers. Why?

The only newspaper mention of Provine Cemetery’s relocation is a public notice posted by the cemetery’s board on the relocation, asking interested parties to attend a meeting with a TVA representative to “express your desires”. One of the board members was John Houston, William’s brother. The Marshall County Courier didn’t cover what happened at the meeting or how the community felt about the decision to dig up the graves and move them. Once again, why?

Marshall County Tribune Courier notice, Feb 13, 1942

Apparently, the governmentmade sure to suppress any dissent. Newspapers were discouraged from covering the personal tragedies involved in this forced relocation of thousands of people. A book by Laura Beth Daws and Susan L. Brinson argues that the TVA ran a very successful propaganda campaign to create a positive image in the press. A review of the book by Charles Kenneth Roberts in the Journal of Southern History stated:

“Through a blitz of press releases, speeches, photographs, and carefully cultivated relationships with reporters and editors, the TVA ensured “overwhelmingly positive” media coverage (p. 94). Thanks to these efforts, the media, especially local papers, told the stories and used the interpretative frameworks that the TVA wanted. As a result, Daws and Brinson note, ‘Two potentially contentious issues were noticeably absent from press releases: the removal of families and displacement of graves from the reservoir areas’(p. 105).”

The horrifying thing, from a genealogical perspective, is that it appears records of the lost communities, property records showing ownership of farms and business, and even pre-TVA maps of the areas were destroyed, so the history of what existed before the creation of the TVA and Kentucky Lake is mostly gone. The only pre-TVA dam plat maps that still exist were created by the TVA to detail the properties that were to be acquired. The only reason the maps exist online today is because they seem to have been “liberated” from the TVA by one single person.

Houston family farms marked in red. 1938 TVA plat maps.

These plat maps show some of the farms still owned around 1940 by William Houston’s brothers and relatives: Joe, John and “Hum”, which I believe was William’s brother Herman or “Herm” Houston. Herm was also buried in Provine, but he died after the creation of Kentucky Lake, so he was buried in New Provine and wasn’t relocated like William. It is sad to look at the map and see all the land the family was forced to give up. They had to relocate, just as their brother’s coffin was relocated.

Photo of workers clearing the land to be flooded by the Kentucky Reservoir, early 1940s

I am grateful to have discovered that William and Mary’s graves were relocated. It led me to learn about the human costs of the Tennessee Valley Authority. School history books portray the TVA as all positive, bringing reliable and affordable electricity to rural areas. But progress came with a high price tag for many families who had built their lives along the Tennessee River.

 

Sources:

Roberts, Charles Kenneth. Review of The Greater Good: Media, Family Removal, and TVA Dam Construction in North Alabama, by Laura Beth Daws, Susan L. Brinson. Journal of Southern History 86, no. 1 (2020): 216-217. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/soh.2020.0028.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/748731

https://tva-azr-eastus-cdn-ep-tvawcm-prd.azureedge.net/cdn-tvawcma/docs/default-source/environment/land-management/cultural-resource-management/tva_cemetery_data_12-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=4facc689_2

Relocated Cemeteries: Tennessee Valley Authority. https://www.tva.com/environment/environmental-stewardship/land-management/cultural-resource-management/relocated-cemeteries

Provine Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Marshall County, Kentucky TVA Cemetery Relocation Project 1940-1942. Submitted by: Bill Utterback http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000033 http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/marshall/cemeteries/provine.txt

https://history.ky.gov/markers/site-of-old-gilbertsville

Photos of old Gilbertsville. https://www.fourriversexplorer.com/kentucky-dam-historical-photos/

 

 

The Alice, Texas Surprise: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “Unexpected”

An Unexpected Two Year Sojourn in Texas

Willis Smith: 1853-1928 (Maternal Great-Grandfather)
Cora Leachman Smith: 1864-1943 (Maternal Great-Grandmother)
Lorene Smith Jandy: 1903-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)

 

While reading Lorene Smith Jandy’s memoir, I discovered that she, her parents and some of her siblings had spent two years of her childhood living in Texas. We always knew that she was born in Oklahoma Territory before it became a state, and that her early childhood was spent in New Mexico. I assumed that she lived there until the family relocated to Kentucky, where she attended school and graduated. I believed we were the first members of the family to have called Texas home when we moved to San Antonio in the late 1980s. The discovery of the Smith family’s sojourn in Alice, Texas was unexpected. We now live just 220 miles from where Lorene and her parents spent about two years.

Willis, Cora and Lorene Smith, probably a few years after their time in Texas

Lorene Smith was born in Oklahoma Territory in 1903, but her family moved to a homestead near Clovis, New Mexico while she was very young. When she was about six years old, the area suffered a series of severe droughts that led many homesteaders to give up their land and move. The homesteaders were desperately poor and the crops were failing; people were nearly starving. The Smiths were in the same situation. Lorene recalled:

“Wheat was the main crop that Dad and the boys would try to raise. One year we planted 50 acres and not a grain came up. So by the end of four years most people were just packing up and leaving any homes and barns they had built. They couldn't rent them, they couldn't sell them, they couldn't do anything but leave them behind. Thus ended our stay in New Mexico. People left and went anywhere they could go, principally back east. There was no point in trying to go farther west at that time with the drought hitting.”

Homesteader home in northern New Mexico abandoned around 1910

The family was still living in Curry County when the 1910 census was taken, but they seem to have moved shortly after that. Clovis was in Curry County, which lies along the Texas border in the northeastern part of New Mexico.

Map of Curry County, New Mexico with Texas border highlighted in red.

Probably the proximity to Texas led the family to move there rather than go back to Kentucky, despite having no family or friends in Texas, while they had extensive family support back in Kentucky. I find it a surprising decision. Lorene wrote:

“We moved to ten acres near Alice, Texas, about 40 miles from Corpus Christi, where we lived for two years. Dad did not have a church in Alice. He may have had a church at a town called Bentonville, but this is no longer to be found on a Texas state map. Dad earned almost no salary in Alice. Home missionaries had no status in Texas and we were considered ‘poor white trash’… Our nearest neighbors were Mexicans, Jose Moreno and his sister Josefa, who married a Cardona. These two equally poor families lived fairly near us… "

Alice, Texas marked in yellow with red dot. Bentonville is second red dot. Corpus Christi at far right.

We lived in a very small rudimentary, one-story frame house built up on stilts about two feet off the ground. The dogs lay under the house in summer to keep cool. Our "box house" was made of wide vertical plank siding and had two big rooms and two small. A huge, spiky century plant, which took up most of the front yard, was our only decoration. True to its name, the century plant blooms only once in a hundred years. Ours didn't bloom for us but looked old enough. I can't remember any lawn grasses there but recall the Mexicans always sweeping the bare dirt of their yard. We had no fireplace because it was not supposed to get cold there, but once in a while we had a "norther" that would blow down and our neighbors would come over shivering under shawls and say "Mucho frio." Those are my main memories of Texas. When I lived there, I loved the song "Juanita" and thought that Texas was a wonderful state and was very loyal to it. You heard a lot about the Alamo and Texas history. I have not been able to hold such a favorable opinion of Texas since I grew up.

Dad and Charlie grew sugar cane for hay. The rows were planted close together and they mowed the field with a large mower. The end of the blades stuck out and cut off one leg of our collie dog so that it had to be put out of its misery, probably shot. It was Charlie's dog and he cried terribly over losing it.

I remember another incident when I must have been seven or eight years old. Our cow, which was penned in a small corral, had gone rabid. She was butting her head into the heavy black iron kettle that held her drinking water in typical rabid response. Charlie had to lasso her from his perch in a tree by throwing a rope over her horns and tie her to a tree to prevent her breaking out. We had drunk her milk the night before. Mother called a state office in Austin and was assured that the family was safe since the infection was in the cow's blood stream, not its milk."

I did a little research on the Alice, Texas area, discovering that Bentonville, where Lorene thought her father might have had a church, was an unincorporated town with only fifty residents which lay seven miles from Alice. I also discovered that while the Smiths were living there, farms around Alice were starting to transition from cattle ranching to growing crops and vegetables as farmers turned to irrigation. This explains the Smiths’ sugarcane crop, which requires a lot of water. Lorene made reference to this in another section, stating:

“This was a truck farming area and Texas had good soil. We tried to grow strawberries but the big cutter ants took over. These ants would tear off a piece of leaf, hold it above their heads like an umbrella, and march back to their anthills. I can still see Mother and Charlie wearing leather gloves going down the rows of strawberries and squeezing the ants to death with their fingers. It was the only way we could get rid of them.”

Alice, Texas downtown around 1910.

The area near the Rio Grande and the border with Mexico was also dealing with attacks from bandits and revolutionaries from Mexico during the 1910s. The state sent the Texas Rangers to deal with the border raids, and later the federal government sent the National Guard and other military units to stop the incursions. As one might expect, relations between white residents and Hispanic residents like the Smiths' neighbors were tense during this time period.

From 1912-1916, the town of Alice became the headquarters for the Texas Rangers serving in South Texas. The Smiths seem to have lived there from about 1911-1913, so they were there when the Rangers were working out of Alice. Lorene’s recollections of her school days featured a reference to the Rangers’ status in the community:

"We lived two miles from town. I walked to school, attending my first real school there. After they tested me on reading and spelling, I was put into third grade with Miss Sadler. (Note: Lorene was probably seven or eight years old—young for third grade) The teachers stressed multiplication tables, and I remember a boy named Robert Ross who could recite all twelve tables as smoothly as the barking of a dog. None of the rest of us was that good. I had to struggle a little bit with my math. I got along all right there in school so far as my own lessons were concerned because I was as quick as any of my older classmates.

I had the unhappiness of having to walk home with two girls named Schoenbaum. Their father was a Texas ranger and they were, in their own opinion at any rate, high in Texas rural society. Schoenbaums lived a half mile or a mile away from us. They had a big old ranch style home and mulberry trees, a typical Texas setting. They had a brother named Gayhart. Lottie Schoenbaum was in third grade with me and her sister Cathy was younger. We would walk home down the road of sand six inches deep, and I remember we had to pass Dr. Atkinson's home. We could have a heavy downpour and in half an hour the sand would absorb the rain, so the road was never muddy and one could go barefoot. Lottie was always teasing me, belittling my book satchel, my lunch pail, or anything she could. My cloth satchel advertised that "My Mother uses Kingfisher Flour."

One day I went home crying and Mother said in anger, "I just wish you were big enough to knock Lottie down." Of course, she didn't mean it and didn't think I could do it. But I took my cue from her remark and a few days later when Lottie started in, I just dropped everything and started to pummel her. It took her so by surprise that I won the fight, even though she was bigger than I. (This tactic of taking people by surprise has stood me in goodstead through the years in dealing with and disciplining school kids. Take them by surpriseand you can pretty much do with them what you want.)

Lottie then became a friend of mine, one of those peculiar twists in human nature. ManySaturdays I would be invited over to their home and we would have good times together. We used to climb trees and eat mulberries; that was the one thing that was plentiful.

Many years later Mr. Schoenbaum was sent to prison for shooting and killing a man who was having an affair with his wife. I lost all trace of the Schoenbaums and practically everybody else in Alice when we left there after two years. It's about the only place I ever lived where I didn't keep contact with people afterwards.”

I was fascinated by Lorene’s story of the Schoenbaums, so did a little research. Given that she was so young when they lived in Texas, her memories were amazingly good, but there were some striking differences from the actual facts. Researching the story was an unexpected bonus.

While Lorene had the names of her schoolmates, Lottie and Cathy, correct, she was a little off with her memory of their last name and their brother’s name. “Gayhart” was actually Gerhardt, and the surname was Schoenbohm. Lottie’s father was also named Gerhardt, and he was a German immigrant to the area. He was not a Texas Ranger. He was employed by the Texas Mexican Railroad as a conductor and station master in Alice for fifteen years. Probably a different classmate of Lorene’s had a father in the Texas Rangers and she confused the two fathers.

Texas Mexican Train Depot where Mr. Schoenbohm was stationmaster. Circa 1910.

Lorene’s memory of Gerhardt Schoenbohm’s fate was also a bit off. Rather than many years later as Lorene claimed, the shooting occurred in 1914, only one year after the Smiths left Alice. On August 18, 1914, Schoenbohm travelled by train to Brownsville. He was partially disguised, having colored his hair, darkened his skin, and shaved his mustache. He checked into a hotel under an assumed name, Lee Burgess. He had sent a letter to a man named Ed Dubose, asking him to meet him at the hotel.

Dubose was anxious about the meeting, so enlisted his brother, H.G. Dubose, the head of the United States Immigration Service in Texas and a former Texas Ranger, to accompany him to the meeting. Both Dubose men carried pistols. When they arrived at the hotel, a gunfight ensued. Witnesses said fifteen to twenty shots were fired, and when the shooting stopped, both H.G. Dubose and Schoenbohm were dead. Ed Dubose was injured. He refused to say much about the incident, including why Schoenbohm wanted to kill him. He simply claimed self-defense, and was fortunate that a hotel employee said Schoenbohm fired the first shot. Ed Dubose was never charged with a crime.

Corpus Christi Caller headline from August 18, 1914

The Corpus Christi Caller Times reported that “the theory has been offered that domestic difficulties in the Schoenbohm family was one of the reasons.” So Lorene was probably correct that Mrs. Schoenbohm’s infidelity led to the incident. However, Schoenbohm paid a far higher price for his actions than Lorene’s claim of a prison sentence. He paid with his life.

As for Lorene’s friend Lottie, her family moved to Corpus Christi after her father’s death. Following her high school graduation, she married a classmate in 1920. She had several children, and seems to have had a good life.

When the Smiths left Alice around 1913, they moved back to Kentucky. Willis Smith found a job as a minister in Dawson Springs, and the family remained there for the rest of Willis’ life.

I am so glad that Lorene wrote about the Smith family’s years in Alice, Texas. I have been unable to find a single record that shows they lived there, so without her memoir, those two years would be nearly forgotten. This unexpected discovery enriched my understanding of Lorene’s childhood.

 

Sources:

“Alice Texas: 1900-1990”. MB50’s “Liquid Mud” Rant. https://mb50.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/alice-texas-1900-to1990/

Corpus Christi Caller Times. Corpus Christi, Texas. Headline. August 18, 1914.

Vintage postcards of Alice, Texas.

 

Ministry vs. Academia: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “A Turning Point”

 

The Road Not Taken: Ed Jandy’s Choice to Leave the Ministry and Pursue a PhD

Edward Clarence (Jandesek) Jandy: 1899-1980 (Maternal Grandfather)

 

As a young man, and a new husband and father, Edward Jandy stood at the junction of two different paths in life. He needed to make a choice about his long-term career. Should he continue working as a minister, or should he pursue a PhD in the field of sociology with the intent to become a college professor?  

Ed Jandy started his college career at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois. The college only offered two year degrees, so he transferred to Coe College in Iowa to complete his undergraduate degree. He basically started his college career over again, entering as a freshman with only some transferable credits.

Ed in his Blackburn College sweater, with college friends, circa 1922

He began his career in the ministry while at Coe. He became friends with an older student, a Seth Huntington, who was working as a student pastor. Religious discussions turned into true friendship and a job offer. Ed explained in his memoir as follows:

“Somehow an acquaintanceship became a true friendship, perhaps because he learned that I had an interest in religion and the church, as well as in social problems.  He once complimented me by saying that he wished he had my command of language and public speaking, and suggested how important these were for anyone considering the ministry;  peripherally in my mind was the thought that I would perhaps head for the ministry, but the impulse to do so, or the urge, was not a dominating one.

I became a student pastor.  Early in my sophomore year a representative of the Congregational Church contacted me.  He said a small town, Vining, Iowa, 45 miles west of Cedar Rapids, needed an interim pastor.  This man said he had made inquiries around the campus and my name was proposed.  But I am sure it was my good friend Seth Huntington whose recommendation determined the man's visit.  “Why me? And what makes you think I would be interested?”  And so on, he told me to give it some thought.  An English teacher, a woman whose advice I sought, helped me to decide.  “It would be a rich experience for you, help you to sort out some of your religious thinking, and give you invaluable experience as a public speaker,” she pointed out.  “All you do is read some favorite chapters of the Bible, pick out some thought that appealed to you and build your sermon around it.”  By request I went out to Vining one Sunday;  they liked the sermon and me, and invited me to serve until they found a permanent pastor.  This was not a full-time job;  only weekends did I have to go out.

Ed during undergrad years.

Ed remembered his congregation as middle-aged, friendly, and uncomplaining when Ed had no time for pastoral visits. He would drive out on terrible roads on Saturday to a rented room in Vining, where he would prepare notes for his morning’s sermon. In 1925, he married Lorene Smith and they moved to Hillsdale, Michigan where Lorene had a secretarial position. Ed finished his undergraduate degree at Hillsdale. He recalled:

“I was not unhappy to leave the pastorate [in Vining].  Yes, it was a rich experience in interpersonal relations and public speaking.  Too, it helped me to sort out some theological and religious ideas.  I never then or later wrote out a sermon; all was from notes.  Once an outstanding minister from Chicago addressed our student body at Blackburn.  As he spoke, a spring wind blew his notes off the lectern, but he went on as if nothing had happened.  As we left the hall, I determined to myself that the time would come when I too would be able to speak from or without notes.  It did!”

Hillsdale College, Michigan.

He returned to the ministry while at Hillsdale. Ed described his decision as follows:

“A fellow senior about my age was pastor of Congregational Church at North Adams, 8 miles from Hillsdale. He invited me to give a sermon one Sunday during his absence.  I did so and enjoyed the service and the congregation.  This, it turned out, was a "trial" sermon.  Later a committee from this church asked me to take over when my fellow senior left. …I moved to North Adams, house furnished by church, and awaited return of Gram and our daughter. The house was large for our family; cold in winter, heated by a pot-belly stove.”

The Congregational Church in North Adams circa 1920s when Ed was the minister

Ed was first completing his B.A. while working as a minister, and continued once he started graduate school. Hillsdale College was only seven miles or so from North Adams, so he was able to keep up with both endeavors. However, when he started his graduate work at University of Michigan, his balancing act became more difficult. He felt some guilt and regret that he was unable to devote more time and attention to his church congregation. He recalled:

“I had to travel 90 miles from Ann Arbor to Hillsdale every weekend. Fortunately, I did not have a heavy load of pastoral work - visiting members of the congregation, etc. The people of North Adams were good to us, easy to get along with and satisfy. On Saturday afternoons and evenings I would prepare my Sunday messages while in North Adams. Our baby was easy to care for and we used to leave her in the basement alone in her carriage while the service went on, and she generally slept all through the service. After Jimmie Richards came up, things went easier for Gram and released me psychologically from any economic or other worry, to know that Gram now had it much easier in the care of the house and the child.

I sometimes felt guilty over the fact that I put in so little time at the church in North Adams, but the congregation never complained about this. Moreover, my situation now was such that benign neglect was inevitable; my grad work was now the important assignment and necessitated the bulk of my time and energy. Fortunately, our family never had any doubt or conflict over all this. Gram was as happily occupied in her teaching as I was in my University of Michigan work.”

Ed wrote about his choice between two careers: the ministry and academia. He recalled that his faith was formed from regular Sunday School attendance in Chicago. But, he noted, he never felt a true calling to become a minister.

“Let me emphasize that I never was a burning religionist. Though I was mildly intent on going into the ministry in my Blackburn days, even such intent as I still had, began to erode as a freshman at Coe. But my interest in the church and its activities did not diminish. My subsequently becoming a student pastor at Coe and later at Hillsdale eroded rapidly any drift toward the ministry as a career. Further, as church converts might put it, "Many are called but few are chosen”.  My interest in religion became more refined and rational as a result of my growing interest in history, psychology, and philosophy. To sum up this phase of my life experience as a student pastor: it helped me earn a living; it gave me an opportunity to become a good public speaker, to think on my feet, and to speak only from notes, a practice I continued as a university instructor and later professor, all my academic life. Lastly but not least, my interest in religion and the church had a profound and lasting effect upon my moral and social ideals.”

Ed went on to note that religion remained an important influence in his and Lorene’s lives, stating:

“Though I could not pretend to be the quintessence of the church goer, we have supported the church financially for years, and in the past several years I was in charge of an adult Sunday School class and courses in Comparative Religion, The Role of Religion in Life, and even now The Bible and You. Let me emphasize that Gram always had a role in all these decisions and activities, from my early Blackburn days up to now; too, that we grew together in our marriage, both in religion and in socio-political, economic enlightenment.”

Ed and Lorene, early in marriage

Ed’s memoir is an incredible resource that few families have. Most genealogists have only the bare facts that point to job choices and career changes, such as census records showing a new job. The reasons and motivations that led to career decisions remain a mystery. We are fortunate to have this window into Ed’s feelings about the ministry, and why he chose to seek his doctorate and embark on an academic career. It is an especially important resource since my husband, Ed’s grandson, had no idea that his grandfather had ever served as a minister or seriously considered the ministry as a career. It was never discussed during my husband’s lifetime. He even believed his grandfather had never been a religious person. This is a reminder that our understanding of even our living relatives’ lives can be very limited.

Sources:

Edward Jandy Memoir, pgs. 6-8. Held by family.

Family photos, held by family.

Wikipedia photo of Hillsdale College.

Vintage postcard of North Adams Church.

Fifth Avenue Apartments: 52 Ancestors Prompt “An Address with a Story”

 

Our First Home in Texas and Our Daughter’s First-Ever Home: 11530 Vance Jackson Road in San Antonio

 

In response to the prompt “An Address with a Story”, I originally planned to write about my ninth-great-grandfather’s home in New Hampshire, which is now an inn. But after reading Amy Johnson Crow’s email about the prompt, I changed my mind. She wrote, “So many stories are tied to a place. (For me, it would be my Grandma’s house.) What is a place that has special meaning for your family?” Suddenly, I started thinking about how my children won’t remember the first homes they lived in, since they were toddlers when we moved away. I decided they should know about the places that were their first-ever homes when they were born. I decided to start with my daughter, our eldest child, who was born in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1987, Bruce completed his PhD and got a post-doctoral position at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio—more succinctly known as UTHSCSA. We moved from the University of Chicago’s Married Student Housing in Hyde Park to an apartment complex in northwest San Antonio. The complex was known as Fifth Avenue, and it was an attractive collection of two- and three-story tan buildings with white trim set on rolling, wooded terrain.

Our apartment was the second story on the right. Drainage basin visible to right, big trees made the grounds attractive and homey.

Fifth Avenue was quite the change from our apartment in Chicago. We’d been living on the third floor of a brick walk-up at 56^th and Maryland Avenues in Hyde Park, a location at the very edge of the white area surrounding the University of Chicago. Crime was high—the building’s exterior wall had a white emergency phone attached to it, and all you had to do to alert the University Police Department (which was a huge force for a college police department) was to knock the receiver off the hook as you ran by if you were being pursued, which actually happened to students while we lived there. The apartment was old—probably built in the 1920s, with hardwood floors and huge windows. Roaches were a problem. Appliances were ancient.

In contrast, Fifth Avenue was a newer complex with new appliances, including in-unit washer and driers—a huge plus. Our second-floor unit had two bedrooms, one of which was in the third-floor loft area with a view down into the living room. Our cats loved to romp up and down the staircase. We loved the fireplace and the balcony, which looked out on trees and a grassy drainage basin that wandered along the edge of the complex. There were only eight apartments in the building, which kept it quiet, especially since we were at the rear of the building away from the parking lot.

Fifth Avenue Balcony similar to ours. This is a current photo. Complex now called the Henry B. 

The area felt safe and walkable, and I took advantage of that. I would walk along Wall Road, which led downhill to a neighboring complex. Huge live oaks and pecan trees lined the street. Fifth Avenue was conveniently located near a branch of the public library, so I would walk there once a week to find books. The commute to UTHSCSA wasn’t bad, and there was easy access by car to a bank, a drugstore, a supermarket and a church I sometimes attended.

Wall Road and the neighboring complex, Sutton Place. I walked here while pregnant and with the baby.

Here are some of the little stories about our nearly two years there:

When we first moved in, it rained every day for two straight weeks. The drainage area next to our building became a raging stream. My former co-workers in Chicago had talked enviously of my move to “sunny San Antonio”. I started to wonder if we needed to build an ark.

The lot across the street from Fifth Avenue was vacant, but far from empty. The house that was once there had been torn down, but stone and low walls remained, and the land was lushly covered in trees and underbrush. I found an old arbor on the property with a blooming maypop or passion flower climbing it. I had never seen passion flower before, and was delighted. There was also an amazingly fragrant wisteria in bloom there.

Fifth Avenue was the home of the players from the local minor league baseball team, the San Antonio Missions. They were the Double A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers pro team. Most of the players were young and single, and spent a lot of time in the pool area when they weren’t playing ball. They were pretty nice guys—I never heard about any problems from them.

Pool area at Fifth Avenue, favorite hangout for the San Antonio Missions ball players.

There were huge pecan trees growing along the drainage basin, and I couldn’t believe that the nuts would fall and just lay there, uncollected. Pecans were an expensive luxury back in Minnesota, while here they littered the ground and were ignored. I was hugely pregnant with Amanda, but would waddle around in the drainage area with a paper grocery sack, collecting nuts. I’d shell them to eat and to cook with, and sent boxes of them to relatives as Christmas gifts. I also discovered, to my chagrin, that fresh nuts would go rancid in less than a year.  

When Amanda was born, we had the crib upstairs, along with the baby swing. I had a c-section, so shouldn’t have been running up and down the stairs, but I did anyway. When she had colic, I would walk with her in the Snugli, a front-facing baby-carrier, out to Wall Street, and around the outer parking areas of Fifth Avenue. Bruce could hear us returning—the poor little baby would still be crying. I’d put her in her carseat on the dryer as it ran—the vibration from the motor and rotating drum would put her to sleep.

Amanda in her crib in the loft bedroom at Fifth Avenue

Our cats loved Fifth Avenue, although they tried frequently to escape. We bought a harness for Schmutz so we could walk him, but he went berserk every time we put it on him and would flail and contort himself until he somehow managed to wriggle free. He was a regular Houdini. Once he made it to the bottom of the stairs from our front door, and then froze, confused about where to go. He started circling the building, pressed so tightly to the exterior wall, but still streaking faster than our legs could carry us. I think he was even more relieved than we were when we caught him partway through his second circuit around the building and dragged him inside.

The two-story apartment felt more like a house than any other apartment we lived in. It was a good place to start our lives as parents.

Sources:

Family photos.

Census Data Confirms Family Story: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “What the Census Suggests”

Girl’s Disability Confirmed by Census Data

Laura “Leurana” Robertson: 1838-? (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
 

While researching the children of Aaron Fairfax Smith, my husband’s third-great-granduncle, I found an interesting note on the Findagrave entry for Aaron’s daughter Eudoxia. The entry stated she gave birth to two children, son Aaron Smith Robertson and daughter Laura or Leurana. “Laura was retarded. Her date of death has not been found,” the entry read. I was a bit startled, and not just by the out-of-date terminology for a mental disability. Did the bio writer know about Laura’s disability from other family members, or was there some sort of record to be found? I began to investigate Laura’s life.

Laura was born in 1838 to parents Alney Robertson and Eudoxia Smith Robertson. Other trees list her birth date as June 5, but I have found no birth record to confirm that date. Her brother Aaron Smith Robertson was born a year later on September 22, 1839, and her mother Eudoxia died five days later, probably from some sort of childbirth complications.

It is unclear what happened to the two babies after Eudoxia’s death. I was unable to find any obituary notice for Eudoxia, and I can’t find 1840 census records for her husband Alney. The 1840 census for Eudoxia’s father, Aaron Smith, shows he had two young children in his household, but it is unclear if they were Eudoxia’s babies or his own youngest children.

The 1850 census finds Laura and little Aaron living with their grandparents, Aaron Fairfax and Judith Stum Smith. The census taker erroneously listed them with the surname “Smith” instead of Robertson.

The 1860 census provides some shocking clarification. By then, young Aaron was out of the house; I could not find him on the census. He enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 and died the following year from typhoid before he had a chance to fight in the Civil War. But Laura was listed as a member of her uncle Presley Smith’s household. (See below.)

1860 Census for Aaron Smith family

The 1860, 1870 and 1880 census forms included questions that other censuses did not, and that is where I hit paydirt in regards to the Findagrave claim about Laura. On the 1860 census, there were boxes to check off for a range of disabilities. The categories included: “Blind; Deaf and Dumb; Idiotic; Insane; Maimed, Crippled, Bedridden or Otherwise Disabled.” The box for “Idiotic” was checked off for Laura, along with boxes in the Education area that reported she could neither read nor write.

1860 Disability Checklist for Laura

Laura also appears in her Uncle Presley’s household in 1870. That census featured a question regarding disabilities. It read, “Whether dead and dum, blind, insane or idiotic”. The census taker was required to write down the disability. He wrote “Idiot” for Laura.

1870 Census record for Presley Smith household

Laura listed as "idiot"

Laura appears on the census one more time in 1880. She is 42 years old and still living in Presley Smith’s household. Once again, the census form offers boxes to be checked if the household member has a disability, and once again, Laura is marked down as “Idiotic”.

1880 Census for Presley Smith household

I have been unable to find any additional records for Laura, and I have been unable to locate her grave. I checked all the cemeteries where other Smith and Robertson family members were buried, but could not find her. Perhaps she was buried in an unmarked grave. I could find no newspaper accounts of her death either. I will continue to look.

The census records provided me with important information about Laura that I could not have found elsewhere. In fact, they were the only records that I have found for her. The censuses confirmed that she was disabled, and also showed that her mother’s family stepped up and took care of her, probably for her entire life. Her disability must have been profound, but first her grandparents and then her uncle made sure she had a place to live. I hope she felt loved, safe and secure.

Sources:

1850 United States Census. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/8054/records/17408881?tid=81812584&pid=262735890530&ssrc=pt

1860 United States Census. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7667/records/39548628?tid=81812584&pid=262735890530&ssrc=pt

1870 United States Census. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7163/records/18749732?tid=81812584&pid=262735890530&ssrc=pt

1880 United States Census. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6742/records/17797750?tid=81812584&pid=262459902845&hid=1039306957855&_phsrc=UCj3626&_phstart=default&usePUBJs=true

Almost Invisible: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “A Quiet Life”

 

The Brief, Quiet Life of a Young Mother in the Early Nineteenth Century

Eudoxia Smith: 1815-1839 (Maternal First Cousin 4x Removed)

 

The abbreviated life of Eudoxia Smith Robertson was, sadly, an all too common fate for young women in the early 1800s. She led what seems to have been, from the minimal documents left behind, a quiet, simple life. She was a daughter with many siblings, married as soon as she reached adulthood, and then became a young mother, a common trajectory among her peers. She shared the fate of far too many young women in that era: motherhood ended her life. A new little baby came into the world, but Eudoxia was unable to care for and raise him, slipping into death just days after the birth.

So what do we know about Eudoxia? She was born November 12, 1815 to Aaron Fairfax Smith and Judith Stum Smith. She was the third of their eventual eleven children, so she probably grew up helping to care for her younger siblings. Her father was a farmer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

She had an unusual name. Her siblings were given traditional Biblical names such as Margaret and Moses or family names like Presley and Edward Rumsey. The name Eudoxia stands out—perhaps as an infant she stood out to her parents, prompting them to choose a more exotic first name for her. The name Eudoxia is Greek in origin and means “good fame” or “good judgment”.

On September 11, 1837, she married Alney McLean Robertson. She was twenty-one and he was twenty-three. He was the son of another farmer in Muhlenberg County. I was unable to find a marriage record or a newspaper account of the wedding, and I am not sure where the newlyweds made their home. Perhaps they lived with Alney’s parents.

Eudoxia and Alney became parents nine months later. Daughter Laura Robertson was born June 5, 1838. Just a year and two months later, they had a second child, a son they named Aaron Smith Robertson in honor of Eudoxia’s father. The little boy was born September 22, 1839. Eudoxia must have suffered childbirth complications or a post-birth infection. She died five days after the birth at the age of twenty-three.

Eudoxia was buried in the McDougal Cemetery in Paradise, Kentucky. She has a beautiful headstone featuring a weeping willow and a poem that in part reads “o Sister dear”. It appears her siblings may have paid for and erected the headstone.

Image of headstone showing the weeping willow.

Her little son, Aaron, died at the same young age as his mother. He enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. He held the rank of corporal in Company I, and was assigned to Camp Caloway near Hartford, Kentucky. He contracted typhoid, and died March 11, 1862 in Nashville, Tennessee at the age of twenty-two. I have written a separate post about Eudoxia’s daughter Laura, which will follow this post. Eudoxia’s children’s burial sites are unknown—they had no loving siblings to pay for their burials.

Like so many women in our family trees, Eudoxia’s life story is one of silence. She appeared on no official records, she left no personal records, no photos, and sadly no descendants. She lived and worked in homes owned by men—first her father’s home and then her husband’s. Women in that era worked hard—their days were busy from morning until night with essential chores. But their stories remain untold. I honor these quiet, forgotten lives. Women like Eudoxia deserve our respect.

Sources:

Findagrave Entry for Eudoxia Robertson. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39541268/eudoxia-robertson