Negative Results Prompt Re-evaluation: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Negatives”

Negative Results on Eldred Smith Children Leads to Tree Corrections

James Willis Smith: 1928-1935

Estella Smith: 1918-2004

 

Sometimes negative research results mean that I have made an error—I am searching in the wrong place, I have the ancestor’s name wrong, or I missed a death or marriage along the way. Sometimes there just aren’t any records to be found—the area where the ancestor lived didn’t keep records yet, or had lost them in a fire or flood or other disaster. And sometimes, negative search results prompt me to rethink and go back to the beginning, which I had to do when my searches for two of Eldred and Nina Smith’s children turned up negative.

According to most family trees on Ancestry, Eldred and Nina had three children: Robert Cecil, born in 1917, James Willis, born in 1928, and Estella, born in 1918. However, I noticed that Eldred’s obituary only mentioned one child, Robert. Robert’s were also the only records I was finding on Ancestry and Family Search. So what happened to James and Estella?

I quickly found an answer—a tragic answer—for James Willis Smith. I located James’ death certificate from Laredo, Texas, a certificate that left me with as many questions as answers. James died in Laredo on October 19, 1935, just six days shy of his seventh birthday.

The cause of death was listed as “lacerations of brain” due to “fracture of skull”. The injury was caused by an accident on a “public road—auto accident” that occurred on October 17. The location of the accident is the curious part: it happened in Sabinas Hidalgo, Mexico.

Sabinas Hidalgo, Mexico lies in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, and is about 85 miles southwest of Laredo. What were the Smiths doing in Mexico? They weren’t living there. The death certificate also stated that James’ father, Eldred Smith, resided in Jefferson, Texas, a town east of Dallas in northern Texas, a staggering 550 miles from Laredo. Given road and automobile conditions in the 1930s, the Smiths were at least two days away from home at the time of the car crash.

The death certificate also stated that the body was transferred for burial to Jefferson. I found the burial record in the Presbyterian Church records for Jefferson. The notes stated that little James Willis “was not a member but the pastor’s son and was buried in Jefferson. The funeral was in the church.” I was surprised by the notation that James wasn’t a member of the church until I realized the rite of confirmation was probably required to become a member, and James was too young to be confirmed.

The information verified my hypothesis that Eldred Willis was the minister of the Jefferson church, so why was he in Mexico that October? Given his choice of mission work in the 1940s and 1950s (described in the previous post), I speculate that he was in Mexico on a brief mission trip.

What a horrible situation! The family suffered a car accident far from home. Their little son was gravely injured and they were in a foreign country. They must have somehow arranged transportation back to Laredo to seek expert care for James. The doctor who signed the death certificate said he had treated James from 17^th—the day of the accident—to the 19^th when the little boy died, so they must have raced back to Laredo, desperate for help. I wonder if other members of the family were also injured. I could find no newspaper stories about the accident or James’ death, so it is impossible to know.

The photo below is the only one I have of the family with both Robert and James, probably taken about four years or so before James’ death.

So the mystery of James’ absence from records was solved. But what about Estella? The family photo does not include a daughter. Why were there no records for her? I couldn’t even find a birth certificate.

I had noticed that Estella had the same name as Eldred’s niece, his younger brother Charles’ oldest daughter. At first, this didn’t seem that strange. Many families, including the extended Smith clan, re-used names. There were several Willises and Roberts, for example. However, I began to wonder when I realized that the only record cited by all the family trees that included Estella as Eldred’s child was the 1920 census, when Eldred and his family were living in Kentucky. I re-examined the record. Eldred is listed as the head of household. The other family members include his wife Nina, son Cecil (Robert Cecil), brother Charles Smith and Charles’ wife Lillie Smith, and Estella Smith, daughter.

Looking at the actual census form, it is obvious that Estella, listed following the names of Charles and Lillie, is their daughter, not Eldred and Nina’s. However, all household members are supposed to be identified by their relationship to the head of household. The census taker in Jenkins, Kentucky had not followed that rule. Charles was listed as a “boarder” instead of “brother”. Lillie was listed as “wife” instead of “sister-in-law” and Estella was listed as “daughter” instead of “niece”. Therefore, when the record was transcribed and indexed, Estella incorrectly showed up as “daughter” in relation to the head of household, not as daughter to the household’s boarders, Eldred’s brother and sister-in-law.

I had made the same careless error as other genealogists had, adding Estella to my tree from a census transcription instead of looking at the actual record and evaluating its accuracy. I have now corrected my tree, removing Estella as the child of Eldred and Nina. The actual Estella Smith lived until the age of 85, dying in Kansas in 2004.  I am glad that I chose to re-evaluate my original data once my search for Eldred’s supposed daughter produced only negative results.

Sources:

Ancestry records of death certificate, burial record and census. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/60000444:6061?ssrc=pt&tid=81812584&pid=38443076738

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2272/images/40394_b062098-00211?pId=21577163

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61048/images/43102_3421606200_0462-00300?pId=52404

Seminary Yearbook Offers Window Into a Life of Service: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Yearbook”

Mechanic to Seminarian to Missionary Minister: A Life Transformed

Eldred Paschal Smith: 1892-1955

Lorene Smith Jandy’s second youngest brother, Eldred Paschal Smith, was a bit of a mystery. I had only discovered census records and draft cards, which offered brief and very scattered snapshots of his life. He changed not just cities of residence every decade, but also moved to new states. He changed careers as well. I was left with many questions until I found his obituary last month. To my surprise, the obituary ignored the years I was familiar with, focusing only on his career as a Presbyterian minister! According to the obituary, this career began at a seminary in Austin, Texas when Eldred was nearly 34 years old. So that’s where I resurrected my research: I searched the online archives of the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and found two yearbooks that revealed a new side to Eldred Smith.

Willis and Cora Smith in back, Nina and Eldred Smith in front

Eldred was born January 14, 1892 in Owensboro, Kentucky. He was the tenth of Willis and Margaret Benton Smith’s eleven children. Willis was a Presbyterian minister in the Owensboro area for decades before Eldred’s birth. Eldred was only six years old when his mother Margaret died of tuberculosis in 1898. Willis married Cora Leachman shortly afterwards, and in 1900 he moved his family to the Oklahoma Territory to do mission work and start churches. Eldred’s half-sister Lorene was born there in 1904 when Eldred was eleven years old.

Eldred and his younger brother Charlie grew up in Oklahoma and New Mexico with their half-sister Lorene. The 1910 census found him at age 18 living in Melrose, New Mexico with his father, stepmother and siblings, and working as a farm laborer.

Rev. Willis Smith returned to Kentucky sometime around 1914 0r 1915 with his wife and daughter Lorene, as they were in residence when Willis’ eldest son Frampton died in January 1916. Frampton’s obituary states that Eldred and Charlie were still living in Melrose, New Mexico.

Eldred must have moved to Colorado shortly after that; he registered for the World War I draft on June 5, 1917 in Denver, stating that he was working as a mechanic, was single, and was caring for his sister and three children (this may refer to his sister Maude Smith Douthitt, who was divorcing her husband and ended up living in Denver). This is very curious, as back in Jenkins, Kentucky, a young Kentucky girl, Nina Roberts, gave birth to Eldred’s son, Robert Cecil Smith, on October 21, 1917. Since Eldred told the draft board he was single just four months earlier, this may indicate little Robert may have been born out of wedlock. I have been unable to find a marriage record for Eldred and Nina, so cannot confirm when Eldred returned to Kentucky, and when he married Nina.

By 1920, Eldred and Nina were definitely married. They appear on the 1920 census living in Jenkins, Letcher County, Kentucky with their two-year-old son. Eldred, age 29, is working as a chauffeur/mechanic at a garage. Nina is only twenty, so had just been a teenager when Robert Cecil was born.

Thus far, Eldred sounds like he was an irresponsible, restless man—not your typical minister’s son. However, that image may be incorrect, or he may have repented and changed his ways, for he ended up following his father into ministry in the Presbyterian Church.

By 1926, Eldred and Nina had moved to Austin, Texas, where he enrolled at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Nina was also enrolled as a “Special Student”—women in that era were not allowed to become ministers, so she, along with other women and seminarian wives, took classes to prepare her for a supporting role in the church.

The seminary yearbook provided me with a photo of Eldred, who looked deceptively young despite his likely being several years older than most of his classmates.

The yearbook also had photos of the seminary campus and the dining hall—it appears to have been an attractive place to live and work.

The yearbook also provided information on Eldred’s first pastoral appointments: he spent the summer after his junior year (1928) preaching at a church in Junction, Texas, a small town 140 miles west of Austin, and after his senior year, he was posted to a church in Chaudrant, Louisiana.

Eldred and Nina’s second son, James Willis Smith, was born on October 26, 1928 while Eldred was a seminarian.

It isn’t clear when Eldred left the Chaudrant, LA church. He was still there at the time of the 1930 census. He also served as minister in churches in Mississippi and Texas. The 1940 census found him serving as a minister in Marion, Texas, just outside of San Antonio. When he completed his World War II draft registration in April 1942, he was the minister of a church in Brinkley, Arkansas. (His draft card also reveals that he was only 5 feet 2 ½ inches tall!)

His longest ministry was in Arizona. His obituary states that he took a position at the Leupp Presbyterian Navajo Indian Mission in July 1946. He remained as minister of the mission’s Presbyterian church until his death in December 1955.

The Leupp Presbyterian Church

Eldred was probably well-suited to this sort of life, having grown up in rugged New Mexico before statehood, another area with a large Native American population. His arrived shortly after the federal government closed the Indian boarding school in Leupp, where native children had been forcibly enrolled. Many Native American families had horrible experiences with these Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Students were punished for speaking in their native language, suffered hunger and were severely disciplined and sometimes abused. 

It is to be hoped that Eldred provided a more compassionate and decent example of white America to the Navajo residents. The school had made up the greater part of the town of Leupp, so Eldred’s church and mission lands, identified on the map below, were isolated outpostson the Navajo reservation far east of Flagstaff. Most of the Navajo did not speak English, as the article above alludes to in the mention of Eldred's interpreters, Mr. and Mrs. Everett Curley. It must have been a lonely life, but Eldred and Nina soldiered on for nine years.

Without the information in the seminary yearbook, I would have had a difficult time tracing the latter half of Eldred’s life. His first 34 years of life were a decided contrast to the last 29 years. I am so grateful that I found the last chapter of his life story where he transformed from a promiscuous garage mechanic to a missionary minister.

Sources:

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Bulletin (yearbook) 1928 and 1929. https://www.austinseminary.edu/library/austin-seminary-archives/digitized-resources

List of Navajo missions. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED068262.pdf

Cousins and Lobster Rolls: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Food and Drink”

The Original Lobster Roll and a Jazz-Loving Second-Cousin-Once-Removed

Charles Brasel Smith: 1913-1989

 

While a second-cousin-once-removed may seem a little distant a relative to be the subject of a blog post, the lure of the original lobster roll was too strong to resist!

Charles Brasel Smith was the grandson of Willis Smith’s brother Samuel Weir Smith, so he was Willis’ grand-nephew. Charles was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on May 28, 1913 to Clarence M. Smith and his wife Bess Kunuell. Clarence worked for the federal government as an agent with what is now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but was then just called the Indian Agency. Clarence died when Charles was only nine years old. The family remained in Muskogee, and Charles attended high school there.

Charles moved to Connecticut shortly after 1935. He met a young woman from the town of Milford, Connecticut, Iselin Jeanette Whitehead, and they married sometime in the late 1930s. Their daughter, Charlyn, was born in 1939 when Charles was 25 and Iselin was 21. Their second daughter, Wendy, was born in 1946.  

By the time of the 1940 census and his WWII draft registration, Charles was working as a musician for a local radio station, WICC in Bridgeport.

At some point a decade or so later, he made quite a career change. Iselin’s parents had divorced when she was quite young, and her mother had remarried to a man named Harry Perry, owner of a local seafood restaurant called “Perry’s”. Harry seems to have turned over the restaurant to his step-daughter Iselin and her husband Charles when he was ready to retire. According to Iselin’s obituary, they became the owners in 1955. Charles and Iselin ran the restaurant until it closed in 1976. Their daughters worked at the restaurant before their marriages.

The intriguing thing about Perry’s Seafood was that it was credited with having created the lobster roll sandwich.

Under Charles' ownership, the restaurant featured live music, uniting his two careers.

According to a June 14, 2010 news article in the Connecticut Post , the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, a 1999 book by John Mariani, states that the hot lobster roll

"may well have originated at a restaurant named Perry's in Milford, where owner Harry Perry concocted it for a regular customer named Ted Hales sometime in the 1920s. Furthermore, Perry's was said to have a sign from 1927 to 1977 reading, `Home of the Famous Lobster Roll.' "

Other restauranteurs agree. The owners of two other Milford restaurants who serve lobster rolls credit Harry Perry with the original idea, which involved chunks of lobster cooked in lots of butter and served on a hot roll.

Charles and Iselin continued to serve Harry’s creation throughout their years as owners of the restaurant. They eventually retired and moved to the Lehigh/Fort Myers area of Florida. Charles died August 27, 1989, and Iselin died May 22, 1996.

Charles never gave up his love of music. His obituary noted that he was a member of the Lehigh Florida Concert Band and the Grenadiers Jazz Band of Florida, the past president of the Pyramid Shrine Temple Brass Band, and a member of the Araba Jazz and Brass Band of Fort Myers. Lobster and jazz sounds like a good combination for a satisfying life.

Sources:

“Shell game: Milford claims bragging rights as home to lobster roll”. Connecticut Post; Frank Juliano Staff Writer June 14, 2010.  https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Shell-game-Milford-claims-bragging-rights-as-523288.php

Central High School Yearbook, Muskogee OK. Accessed on Ancestry. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/348313672:1265?ssrc=pt&tid=81812584&pid=262355921791

News Press of Fort Myers, Florida. 30 Aug 1989. Obituary for Charles Brasel Smith. https://www.newspapers.com/image/215698521/