Finding an Out-of-Print Book: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Favorite Find”

Edward Jandy’s Book: Tracking Down a Copy of Charles Horton Cooley: His Life and His Social Theory

Edward Jandy: 1899-1980

While cleaning out my mother-in-law Laurel Jandy Aird’s house following her death a few years ago, we found a copy of a book written by her father in 1942. I had never heard about Edward Jandy’s book, a biography titled Charles Horton Cooley: His Life and His Social Theory, and was curious. Another family member kept Laurel’s copy, so when we returned home, I decided to acquire a copy so our children would have their great-grandfather’s book. After some searching online, I found a copy that was in good condition for a reasonable price of $14.99. I bought it, and it has become a favorite find.

I think you can learn a lot about a person by reading their written thoughts. I have barely started reading Prof. Jandy’s book, but it has already been illuminating. In addition, finding the book prompted me to do further research on Edward, and I turned up a research paper and several book reviews on sociology texts and books that he penned. I am just beginning to understand the breadth of his research and interests.

To provide some background, Ed was born on May 22, 1899 to parents Emanuel Jandesjek and Emily Tomsche Jandesjek. The couple had immigrated to Chicago from the Bohemian area of Czechoslovakia. Ed was the second youngest of their nine children.

Money was tight for the family, particularly after Emanuel died in 1905 when Ed was only five years old. Most of Ed’s siblings left school early to start working. However, Ed chose to put himself through college—not an easy task in the early twentieth century. He began his education at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois, and completed his undergraduate degree at Coe College in Iowa. From there he pursued graduate degrees in psychology and sociology at the University of Michigan, beginning in 1927. At some point, he "Americanized" his surname from "Jandesjek" to "Jandy". 

At Michigan, he studied under Charles Horton Cooley and was greatly influenced by him.  Following Cooley's death, Ed sought and received permission to write the biography and analysis of Cooley’s sociological theory as his PhD thesis. The book was published in 1942 and reprinted in 1969.

Dr. Edward Jandy, November 1940

It is interesting to read a non-fiction book from the 1940s, noting how the genre has changed over eighty years. The language in Ed's book is a bit more flowery and more abstruse than I am used to. Of course this is partly due to the fact that the book was written as a PhD thesis with an intended audience of fellow sociology PhDs rather than the general public. The most striking difference was Ed’s insertion of his own feelings and reactions in the text using the awkward reference “the author” or "this writer"; there was less emphasis on trying to make the text appear factual and without bias. Ed’s personality and attitudes were much more apparent than in non-fiction and biographies of current times.

Title page of Ed's book, held open with an Ethiopian knife Ed brought home from his time working in Ethiopia later in his career. 

The book also shows me how the field of sociology has changed. During the period Ed was pursuing his doctorate, the leaders in the field were trying to shift the emphasis in the field of social science away from the humanities toward a true science. From what I have gleaned thus far, Ed was drawn initially to the “social” or humanities side of the field, having come from an undergrad study of philosophy. Cooley was opposed to the push for a more scientific approach, which Ed agreed with when he first started his doctorate. However, by the time he was writing his doctoral thesis, he saw the benefits of using statistics and a more scientific approach to sociological problems. The following passage from the book’s final chapter demonstrates this change in his views:

“We come now to one of the most crucial problems that Cooley ever posed. It has to do with the making of sociology into a philosophy as well as an art. However ardent a disciple the writer may be, he is frankly of the opinion that here Cooley raised as many, or more problems than he solved…[T]here are some dangers in making sociology a philosophy and also an art…a sociology of this sort may find itself spread over a tremendous surface with corresponding thinness. It may find itself speculating to no definite purpose…”

“In our time, sociology can no longer afford to be autobiographical nor can sociologists presume that their own lives afford materials enough for the science they need.”

“If the author appears to be mildly skeptical and critical of some of Cooley’s views on science and method, it is hardly because he is not basically sympathetic with them. It is rather because he feels seriously that this whole problem of sociology also taking on the role of philosophy and art is one so crucial that it needs to be worked out much more adequately than is has been up to now.”

I am so glad to have found a copy of Ed’s book and to be able to understand what drew him to the field of sociology. I look forward to learning more about his work and research.

Sources:

Charles Horton Cooley: His Life and His Social Theory. Edward C. Jandy. Copyright 1942. Reprint 1969, Octogon Books, New York.

Out-of-Wedlock Questions: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Curious”

1904 Out-of-Wedlock Birth: Curious About Social Consequences in Edwardian Era Scotland

Margaret Fleming Spence Sutherland: 1884-1973

 

While researching Sutherland ancestors, I ran across information from another user’s tree on Ancestry that suggested a collateral ancestor gave birth out of wedlock over a century ago in Airdrie, Scotland. I was curious, which led me to do further research on the young woman. After all, during that era in America, out-of-wedlock births were considered very shameful; the mothers were often sent away and were encouraged to give up the child. However, that didn’t happen to this young woman and her child. And that makes the story even more intriguing.

Margaret Fleming Spence Sutherland, my husband’s first cousin three times removed, was born to Thomas Sutherland and Jeanie Spence Sutherland on June 26, 1884.  She was Thomas and Jeanie’s fifth child, named after their third child, Margaret Fleming Sutherland, who had died at age two in 1882.

Margaret’s father Thomas died at age 50 on June 25, 1904. Margaret had her twentieth birthday just one day later. It must have been a horrible time for the entire family; the chief breadwinner was suddenly gone just as the family was trying to deal with another family problem. At the time of Thomas’ death, Margaret was pregnant and unmarried. Her son, William Muir Sutherland, was born just a few weeks later on August 4, 1904. Another Sutherland descendant posted little William’s birth record obtained from a Scotland government website, and it clearly shows the only parent was Margaret, and the baby was given her surname.

William Muir Sutherland's birth record

Birth records from the era show that premarital sex was not exactly uncommon; many first babies made their appearance just five or six months after a marriage. However, marriage was the usual and expected outcome to a surprise pregnancy. So what happened to Margaret? She was nineteen when she conceived—not really a child anymore, particularly in that era. Was her lover already married? Did he die? Move away? Refuse to “do the right thing”? Was she a rape victim? We will never know the answer.

We will also never know what social consequences Margaret and her family faced. She continued living at home with her widowed mother and some of her siblings, so at least her family stood by her. The family relocated from a handsome home on Victoria Place to 140 South Nimmo Street in Airdrie, but that was likely due to the change in financial circumstances following Thomas’ death. It appears Margaret raised her son at the Nimmo Street location. Other trees report 1911 census data (records that I have been unable to find) that show Margaret, her mother and sister Bethia living there. I found a photo of Margaret and her young son on Ancestry; she looks happy and the baby, dressed all in white, appears to be a healthy little fellow.

It is hard to tell if Margaret’s illegitimate son affected her marriage and employment prospects. She didn’t marry until age 31, when young William had just turned 11 years old. However, that is only two years older than her sisters Marion and Jeanie, who married at 29. Two of Margaret’s brothers chose to emigrate to the United States, one sister never married, and the third brother remained in Scotland. Were any of their choices in life impacted by the societal reaction to Margaret’s unwed motherhood? Or was that irrelevant in how the community viewed the family members?

I briefly researched illegitimacy in turn-of-the-century Scotland. A paper by Dr. Janet Greenlees noted that Scotland had higher rates of illegitimacy than other areas of the British Isles, and that families tended to help support the unwed mother and her child and absorb them into the family unit. This matches with Margaret’s experiences. 

Margaret’s husband, Robert Hutcheson, was a 35-year old engine fitter from Airdrie, so he was involved in the same industry as Margaret’s father and brothers. Did she meet him through family connections? Margaret was listed only as “spinster” on the marriage record, so she wasn’t employed at the time of her marriage. Her address was still South Nimmo Street.

Margaret and Robert Hutcheson had three sons: Robert, born in 1917; Thomas, born in 1919, and William George, born in 1924. Robert Hutcheson seems to have had a good relationship with his stepson William Muir Sutherland, who went by the name “Roy” as he grew older. Robert served as a witness at Roy’s wedding on July 12, 1934. Roy married a young woman named Janet Watson, and he was working as a concrete mixer at the time. Roy and Janet spent their lives and raised their family near Airdrie. It does not appear that illegitimacy had a negative effect on Roy’s life, although it is impossible to know for certain.

Margaret was widowed at age 61. She lived in Airdrie until her death on May 23, 1973 at the age of 88.

Margaret in later years

My curiosity about Margaret’s situation wasn’t really satisfied, but the bare facts of her life show that she did a decent job raising her son, and that despite the stigma of unwed motherhood during the Edwardian period, she was able to marry and form a family. Those facts leave me with hope that her life was happy and that she and her family didn’t suffer cruelty from others because of her circumstances.

Sources:

Unmarried Motherhood in Scotland during the Twentieth Century: Mother and Baby Homes. Dr Janet Greenlees, Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. Nov. 2015. https://assets.gov.ie/118666/9b40ab74-fdc1-4852-a2f0-0fb419f3df52.pdf

Wedding Road Trip: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Road Trip”

Thomas Sutherland: 1891-1946
A “Gretna Green” Wedding

 

I had heard other genealogists talk about American “Gretna Greens”—towns just across state borders that were popular wedding sites for eloping couples either due to lax rules for obtaining wedding licenses or immediate issuance of licenses. Those genealogists suggested that when a wedding record can’t be found in the expected community or state, that you look for a record across state lines. Until I started researching my husband’s first cousin-three-times-removed, Thomas Sutherland, I had never found a Gretna Green marriage in our families’ trees.

Thomas Sutherland was born March 6, 1891 in Coatbridge, Scotland to parents Thomas Sutherland and Jeanie Spence Sutherland. He was the eighth of their nine children (the sixth to survive past the age of two).

Thomas’ father Thomas was an iron forgeman working in the family forge business in Airdrie. He died at the young age of 50 when Thomas was only thirteen years old. Perhaps finances were tight after his father’s death, for five years later in 1909, Thomas’ eldest brother John and wife emigrated to the United States, settling in Detroit. Three years later, Thomas decided to join his brother in America, setting sail on the ship Cassandra in April 1912. He landed in St. John’s, New Brunswick on April 30, 1912, stating on the passenger arrival form that he was headed to Detroit, presumably to stay with John Spence Sutherland. According to information provided on his naturalization documents, he traveled by train from New Brunswick to Detroit.

Thomas' arrival in New Brunswick

Thomas must not have enjoyed Detroit or perhaps wanted independence from his brother, for he quickly relocated to Pennsylvania. On his World War I draft card, Thomas states that he was working as a millwright for the McKay Chain Company in McKees Rock, Pennsylvania, and he was living at 746 Thomson Avenue. He was drafted into the army, serving as a mechanic in the Seventh Division Transportation Company from Dec. 5, 1917 to July 30, 1919, with one year of his service spent in Europe.

Upon returning to McKees Rock after the war, Thomas returned to his job at McKay Chain, and rented a room at the home of Herman and Pauline Schuette, where he appears on the 1920 census. The Schuettes’ divorced daughter Catherine Hough and Catherine’s eleven-year-old daughter also resided in the home. Thomas and Catherine were both 28 years old and probably spent a lot of time together. Apparently familiarity turned to love, for on July 6, 1921, the couple married in Youngstown, Ohio. (See Naturalization Papers)

But why Youngstown? The location confused me. At first I thought Thomas might have changed jobs and moved to Youngstown, but there was no evidence of that; he was still employed by McKay Chain at the time of the 1930 census, where he appears living with his wife Catherine and stepdaughter. There was no indication that Catherine Schuette Hough had any connection to the town either. The towns were about 65 miles apart. Why would they choose to get married there? I suddenly realized that they might have eloped—as a divorcee, Catherine might have preferred a quick wedding, and her first wedding was also performed in Ohio. I decided to do some Googling to see if there was any mention of Youngstown being a “Gretna Green” for Pennsylvanians.

To my delight, I found a wonderful You Tube presentation sponsored by the Mahoning Valley Historical Society and the Tyler History Center in Youngstown called “Bites and Bits of History: Youngstown as a Gretna Green”. The speaker and researcher, Roslyn Torella, explained that Ohio became a popular wedding spot for Pennsylvanians because Pennsylvania required that both the bride and groom be at least 21 years of age, while Ohio permitted 18 year olds to marry. A veritable marriage industry grew up in Youngstown, which became known as the “Marrying City.” Most couples arrived by train, and cabbies were good at identifying prospective couples, and would drive them to the license office at the courthouse, and then to a minister who would give the cabbie a kickback from the marriage fee. Two ministers, the “Marrying Parsons” of Youngstown, married 12,000 couples over a fifteen year period!

The “Gretna Green” industry came to a halt in late 1910, when an Ohio judge enforced Ohio laws requiring wedding licenses be issued only to brides who were residents of the county issuing the license. The courthouse in Youngstown then began turning away Pennsylvania couples.

So how did Thomas and Catherine manage to get married in Youngstown in 1921 when neither of them were residents of Mahoning County? Perhaps Catherine produced her original marriage license from her first marriage to Percy Hough in 1907, which claimed she was a resident of Mahoning County (and also claimed she was 18 even though she was only 16 at the time). On that certificate, she said she was born in what looks like “Louisville, OH” although records suggest she was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Or perhaps she just lied on the license in 1921 and made up an address in Mahoning County that she claimed as her residence. I can’t find Thomas and Catherine’s license or marriage record online, so can only speculate about how they managed to marry.

Sadly, Thomas and Catherine’s marriage didn’t last. While he claimed they were still married when he filed his naturalization papers in 1934, Catherine, now calling herself Pauline, had already married again around 1931 to an Anthony Woolman. She had a daughter with him named Jessica who was three years old in 1935 when they made the newspapers after having seen a suspected murderer. She filed for divorce from Woolman in April of 1943, stating in court that she married him in 1930 after divorcing her “first” husband. Presumably she means poor Thomas, but he was of course her second husband.

Thomas also eventually remarried. At age 55, he married Florence Sweet on March 11, 1946. The marriage record is rather interesting. He states he had never been married before, conveniently forgetting his nine-year marriage to Catherine/Pauline. He also swears he has no communicable disease. Florence states that she is a widow—as far as I can tell, she was a several-times-divorced woman, who most recently had gone by the name Florence Nagel, her third husband’s surname. In addition, both Thomas and Florence list the same home address, so were either both boarders in the same home, or were living together before the marriage.

Shockingly, Thomas is dead just months later at a Veterans hospital. The death certificate also contains some interesting information. The VA doctor reported that Thomas died from cerebral arteriosclerosis caused by “syphilis tertiary” and “acute and chronic cystitis”. Syphilis tertiary refers to the third phase of syphilis, which is neurosyphilis. So Thomas was untruthful in his marriage license when he said he had no communicable disease. The death certificate also stated that he had been under the doctor’s care in the Veterans hospital for these conditions from March 19, 1946 until the date of death on August 28, 1946. That means he sought treatment for third stage syphilis eight days after marrying Florence.

Did Florence know about his condition when she married him? He must have been in poor shape, after all. Perhaps the marriage was a practical arrangement, guaranteeing that she would care for him until death in return for inheriting his estate. Or perhaps he suffered a stroke or something shortly after the marriage that brought his condition to light.

Thomas was buried in the Union Dale Cemetery in Pittsburgh. His headstone shows the dates of his WWI military service.

Gretna Green elopements often sound very romantic, but in reality very few impulsive marriages are successful or lasting. Poor Thomas Sutherland may have thought he’d found the perfect partner in Catherine Schuette Hough, but like so many road-trip weddings, Thomas and Catherine’s journey together was a short one.  

Sources:

Divorce Court Double Play: Woman and Daughter Apply on Same Day. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh PA, 23 Apr 1943. Page 13. Accessed on Newspapers.com https://www.newspapers.com/clip/92181952/catherine-pauline-schuette-sutherland/

Headstone photo by Rob and Debi Felton, Findagrave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99022523/thomas-sutherland

Naturalization record from Ancestry.com: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2717/images/47295_302022005557_1077-00540?pId=696092

Death Certificate from Ancestry.com: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/5164/images/42410_2421401696_0668-02910?pId=6382158

The Sutherlands Hop the Pond: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Branching Out”

John Spence Sutherland: 1878-1965
The Sutherlands Branch Out Across the Atlantic

 

I made the mistake of assuming all my husband’s Sutherland ancestors remained in Scotland, as Margaret Sutherland, my husband’s second-great-grandmother, did. The family, after all, was quite successful. They owned an iron forge business and mostly lived in nice homes. Emigration was usually the choice of families who were struggling to make a living. However, several of Margaret’s nephews ended up branching out across the Atlantic to build lives in the United States. Margaret’s nephew, John Spence Sutherland, was one of those adventurers.

John Spence Sutherland, named for his mother’s father John Spence, was born on July 4, 1878 to Thomas Sutherland, Margaret Sutherland’s brother, and his wife Jeanie Spence. He was their second child and their oldest son. According to the 1881 Scotland census, Thomas was working in his father’s iron forge business as an iron forger. The family lived at 58 Wellwynd in New Monkland, Lanarkshire, Scotland. Thomas and Jeanie’s family eventually grew to include four daughters and three sons (two additional daughters died as toddlers), and they moved from the Wellwynd home to a fine home at 8 Victoria Place in Airdrie, a home known as Marchmont.

John’s father, Thomas Sutherland, died June 25, 1904. He was only fifty years old, so the loss was likely an unexpected shock for his wife and children. John was only 25 years old, and was left as the head of the family. His youngest sibling, William Spence Sutherland, was only nine years old, and even John’s oldest sisters were still unmarried. John had followed his father into the family business, and as of the 1901 census had been working as an “iron forgeman”. He probably continued in this position following his father’s death.

Marriage record for John and Isabella, posted on another tree on Ancestry.

John married two years later on December 21, 1906. His wife, Isabella Gardner, was 26 years old, and he was 28. A year later their first son, Thomas Sutherland, was born on October 3, 1907. His birth record lists the young family’s address as what appears to be “Amberside, Cary Street, Airdrie.” I can find no record of such an address, so I have probably misread the entry.

John and Isabella’s second son, Andrew, was born April 3, 1909 in Airdrie, but John was not there to witness the birth. He had left aboard the ship Ionian on January 31, arriving in Boston on February 10, 1909. He planned to go on to Detroit to find a job. What happened in Airdrie that motivated him to abandon his wife, however temporarily, just weeks before she was due to give birth? I would think the family faced some sort of financial pressure that caused him to act so precipitously. The address on baby Andrew’s birth record was different than just two years before—the handwriting appears to say Isabella was living at Greenvale on South Nimmo Street in Airdrie. Did the family fall on hard times?

John must have found work in Detroit quite quickly, as well as a place for his family to live, for Isabella and her two sons arrived in Quebec on July 29, 1909, also aboard the ship Ionian, just five months after his arrival. Imagine Isabella’s courage, traveling alone with a two year old and a new baby not yet four months old! The trip, as we see from the information on John’s naturalization papers, took at least ten days. Ten days with two tiny children, probably in shared quarters! I feel she must have been fairly desperate to undertake such a risky, long trip on her own.

Passenger list from the Ionian, July 1909 showing Isabella and two sons

The young family reunited in Detroit, and by the 1910 census they were living in a rented home at 24 Putnam Street (now the location of Wayne State University), and John was working as a “steam fitter” at a machine shop, a job that apparently involves installing piping.

By the 1920 census, the family had grown by one—daughter Isabella had been born June 29, 1920—and now lived in their own home at 320 King Street in Detroit. While the home no longer stands, similar homes remain on the opposite side of the street and were large, two-story brick homes—John was earning a good living to support his family, working as a machinist at an auto factory. The family also had three boarders sharing their home—all were machinists like John, so were probably co-workers.

The family’s financial situation had improved even more by 1930. John was now a foreman at the auto factory, and the family had moved to a more expensive neighborhood, owning a $9500 home at 2564 Elmhurst Avenue. The family was still there in 1940 as well, although John was now only a “production man” at an auto factory making a more modest $1200 salary.

John’s World War II draft card provides a little more information. John worked at the Highland Park Ford factory. The building is shown below during the war, with a note that Ford changed production at the facility from cars to tanks to support the war effort. John was probably proud to serve his country at work even though he was too old at 60 to go to war.

Records relating to the deaths of John and Isabella have been difficult to locate. I only found John’s Social Security Death Record, which states he died “Jan. 1965”. John and Isabella’s three children all went on to lead stable, middle class lives, so John’s choice to branch out from the life he knew in Scotland to unknown possibilities in a new country seems to have paid off.

Sometime in the 1920s, John became a naturalized American citizen. His application for naturalization can be seen below. Becoming a citizen seems appropriate for a man with a July 4 birthday. Perhaps he was fated to become an American.

Sources:

Information and document images from Ancestry.com

Onward to 2022: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Future”

I am so pleased with my progress in 2021. I only need to complete one more post, and I will have answered all 52 prompts! And I wrote extra blog posts as well—the final tally was 36 posts for my Aird family tree blog, “Another Tree to Climb”, and 25 posts for my Peterson/Macbeth family tree blog, “Twigs on the Family Tree”. That’s a total of 61 posts this year!

I discovered so many interesting stories—stories I would have failed to pursue or would have quickly forgotten if I hadn’t been motivated to research them further and write them up. Thank you to Amy Johnson Crow for organizing this wonderful challenge.

So what does the future hold? Yes, I am going to work on 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks in 2022. This will be a challenging year to find time to write and research. There are a lot of family obligations and joyous but time-consuming events, so I have decided to be realistic—I will answer as many prompts as possible, but I know I won’t be doing all 52 this year and I will be content with that.

I plan to once again split my responses between the blog for my family, and the one for my husband’s family. In addition, I will post the prompts out of order, answering the prompts when I run across the perfect story rather than marching along in the order Ms. Crow has set them out. For example, my first post of 2022 will be a response to the prompt for Week 5, February 1-7. I like to do this challenge my way—it’s been working so far, so why rock the boat?

So Happy New Year, and Happy Researching!