Matilda Catherine Bowers

Parents: J. Bowers, Diana Connell
Birth date: About 1859
Marriage date: About 1885 to Robert Jackson Connell. She was about 26 and he was about 29. They had five children: Docia, Broadus Robert, Luther Wilburn, Charlie Lee, and Cora Lee. Charlie and Cora were twins.
Death date: 18 June 1901

Matilda was born a short 2 years before the outbreak of the American Civil War in Lexington county, SC. Her father was not listed in the 1860 census with her family, so I'm guessing he had died sometime between 1858 and 1860. The family also moved from where they lived in 1850 to live right next door to a John Connell in 1860.

Sometime around or before 1885, Matilda married Robert Jackson Connell in Lancaster, SC. According to the information on FamilySearch (gathered by people other other other than myself), he was her first cousin; Matilda's mother and R.J.'s father were siblings. Matilda and Robert's first child--Docia--was born in 1886, followed by Broadus in 1891, Luther in 1895, and the twins Charlie and Cora in 1896. Sometime after Charlie and Cora were born and before her passing in 1901, the family moved to Camden, in Kershaw County, SC. I'm sure she worked hard keeping her family fed and helping to do work on the farm in between giving birth to her children. Matilda passed away in 1901 at about the age of 42.

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I wasn't able to find very many records for Matilda, but I did find two sources that give enough information to infer important dates and happenings in her life. Those sources would be her headstone at Malvern Hill Cemetery and the 1860 Census. The death records for her daughters Docia and Cora strengthen the link to the woman recorded on the headstone and Robert Jackson Connell, and help prove that she is the wife

Headstone at Malvern Hill Cemetery in Kershaw County, SC
In 1860 Census

In children's death certificates:
Docia
Cora Lee

Hog killing time

Hog killing time came to Camden when the cold settled in. Granddad J.C. loved it because they'd have fresh pork, ham, side meat, and sausage. They used everything they could; even the fat was 'rendered' to get out bits of lean meat in the middle of the fat for eating and to prepare the fat for other use. Granddad said they'd render the fat by putting it in a big black washpot with a fire underneath it. It would melt and be like grease, and they'd get cracklins out of it, which they mostly put in corn bread. The cracklins were the bits of lean meat they got out of the fat. They also ate fatback from slaughtering the hogs, and Grandma Laura would slice it up in thin pieces, fry it, then they'd eat it with veggies and seasonings. Granddad J.C. loved eating fatback with the skin still attached because it was nice and crunchy. Fatback is different from bacon, which was made out of the lean side of the pork. Granddad said that the pig might have 2-3 inches of fat on the outside of the body, and that it protected them from snakes. I had no idea that pigs were so fatty!

June Lucile Connell: Military Nurse

Granddad J.C. volunteered some information about his sister June the other day when I was talking with him. He said that several of his older siblings went to serve their country during WWII--three of his older brothers and his older sister June. When he said that, my curiosity was piqued. Women didn't usually go overseas to war in that era, did they?

Well, this one did.

June signed up to volunteer her services to her country as a nurse when she was about 21, and was assigned to the USAHS Marigold (United States Army Hospital Ship Marigold). This was the first Allied ship to reach Japan (according to Wikipedia :P, but also according to Granddad) after the Hiroshima bombings in 1945. June eventually became a nurse lieutenant, and when she came home was a nurse in Charleston. Later, she transferred to the VA hospital in Tampa, Florida where she met a man "by the name of Reynolds," as Granddad put it. They had one child together in addition to the two he had from a previous marriage. June later graduated from the University of Tampa and taught elementary school in Florida for the rest of her working life. Granddad said sometimes he'd go down to Florida to spend Christmas with her family.

The USAHS Marigold (picture found here)

Family neighborhood

When Granddad J.C. was a kid, they had a little neighborhood of family members living nearby. It looked something like this:

I don't remember if Granddad said that his aunt's house was his great-aunt's or if it was just his aunt, but he said it's where Lena (a cousin of ours) and her family lived when I was growing up. Granddad said that it was like a small neighborhood with all of the family so close by. I'm sure they could see each other's houses from their own homes because Granddad said there were no trees around when he was a young boy -- all the land was used for farming crops like cotton, corn, pea vine hay, and oats for the mules.

The roses that grow along some parts of McRae Rd. and Canada Drive were planted by Granddad JC's grandfather Robert Jackson Connell. Evidently Granddad JC's mother Laura really liked the roses as well, because she planted some next to her house. Granddad said that Robert Connell's house was situated in the bend of Canada Dr., smack dab in the middle. He had crab apple and mulberry trees near his house, as well as an old Model T car that Granddad JC would play in as a boy. Granddad said that the house was nice, but that after Great-great-granddad Connell passed away it fell into disrepair and eventually couldn't be used because his family took wood from it for fuel in the winter.

Bird Brushing and Broadus Connell

I asked Granddad J.C. if his parents did anything with him and his siblings at bedtime. I wasn't sure what I'd get since there were so many kids, but I thought I'd ask. It turns out that his parents did do special things with their children at night. Laura would make sure her children said their prayers at night, and Broadus (pronounced "Broad [as in Broad Street] - us") would tell them stories from his childhood. I asked Granddad if he remembered any of the stories, and this is the first that he told me:

They would go bird brushing on the farm -- you probably don't know what that is; let me explain. They cleared a lot of land to make room for plowing and farming. When they cut down the trees, they made piles of brush. Birds would settle in the brush at night. In the morning, Broadus and 3 or 4 other kids would ease up to the brush pile. One kid was on one side while the others waited on the other side with big limbs. The kid with the side to himself would make a lot of noise, and the birds would fly out on the other side where the other kids waited with their clubs. The children would hit some of the birds out of the air and bring them home to be prepared for eating. I asked Granddad what kind of birds they were, and he said they were birds like robins and jays. Then he said that there were hard times in those days. I guess even fairly well-off farmers with a lot of land still had hungry times in those days.

Source: Granddad J.C.

Callie Ann or Anita Nolan

Parents: James R. Nolan, Nancy B. Odum
Birth: About 1868
Marriage: July 1, 1888 to James Henry Thompson. Callie was about 20 and James Henry was 21. They had three children: James Oren, Lillie Belle and Susie Ella
Death: Around 1898

I didn't find many records for Callie A, so her story will be short, unfortunately. Her mother was probably Nancy Odum and not Susan Chapman, James R's second wife and the woman who raised Callie. Nancy married Callie's father in December of 1866, and Callie was born around 1868. In the 1910 census, James R and Susan are listed as being married for 38 years (if that number is accurate, that would put their marriage around 1872) and that Susan was the mother of 5 children, all living. We know that Callie had passed on before the 1900 census was taken, so since all of Susan's children were living, Callie had to be Nancy Odum's daughter, and her younger sister Viola was most likely Nancy's daughter as well.

In 1880, Callie was 12 and lived in Clayton County, Georgia, just south of Atlanta. Her father was a farmer. She married James Henry Thompson in Coweta (pronounced Cow-ee-ta) county, two counties to the east of Clayton county, where her family was then living. Her first child (James Oren Thompson, Sr.) was born in Newnan county in 1892, so we know that she and James Henry lived there for at least a little while after they married.

When Grandma Izzy became interested in family history work, she asked her father (J.O. Thompson) about her grandmother. He did not know the exact date that she passed away, but said that he was eight years old when his mother died.

Sources: Cousin Rita, Grandma Izzy, and the records listed below:

Marriage of James R. Nolan and Nancy B. Odum

Callie Nolan's childhood family (1880 Census)

Marriage to James Henry Thompson:

Henry W. Marcus

Parents: ?, Mira Marcus
Date of birth: May 1862
Marriage: early 1890's to Mattie Young, they had two children: Lela and Laura
Henry had another son named Ivey. I don't know anything about Ivey's mother.
Date of death: October 6, 1901

Thank goodness for censuses, or I would know next to nothing about Henry Marcus. From stories that I've been told by my relatives that have done more extensive research on him and his family, it seems that his mother was mistress to a wealthy man in the area who supported her and her children but remained anonymous.

Henry was the oldest of at least four children and grew up near the mountains of NC. He apprenticed with a blacksmith in a nearby town in 1880 when he was 18 years old, and probably for some time before and after that.

Henry's 16-year-old brother Hosea was working as a servant at the same time for a farmer and his wife that lived in Johns River Township, where they grew up. I couldn't find any records for their younger brother Noah besides the 1870 Census shown here. However, I did find a Laura Marcus Allen that was living close to a Hosea A. Marcus at the time that they both passed away in/near Carrabus county, NC. I'm guessing that they are Henry's younger siblings. I found one other record for Henry's sister Laura--it appears that she and her mother were working as servants in 1880 (Laura was 14 at the time). I'm guessing that Henry's father must have passed away and had not been able to leave anything to Mira and her family. For some reason, Hosea and Laura are listed as being two years younger than they would have been if the 1870 census's ages were correct. As teenagers, I'm sure they cared very much about their actual age, so I wonder what made them claim that they were younger than they actually were?

Between 1880 and 1900, some significant things happened. Henry fathered a son, Ivey--I wasn't able to find any records for Ivey's mother, but that doesn't mean she and Henry weren't married. Of course, that doesn't mean they were, but we can't assume anything. Henry also moved to South Carolina at some point, and met Mattie Young. The two were married in the early 1890's and had two girls, Lela and Laura.

About Henry's death--the story goes that Henry had been incarcerated and escaped. There was already tension between him and Mattie, so when Mattie asked the town law enforcement for advice, he told Mattie to shoot Henry Marcus if he tried to go into the house. He did come by, so she took out a gun and told him to leave or she'd shoot. Henry came up to the house, and well, she shot. It's a sad story, but definitely an interesting piece of our family history. Evidently there's a news article about it, but I don't have it, so we'll have to suffer without the official story until I do.

1870 Census

1880 Census

1900 Census

Grupenhoff Christmas and entertainment

I asked Granddad Jerry if he recognized the picture of the house on Bouton Avenue that I found in Google Streetview and posted on this blog in the article on Josephine Plogsted. In reply, he told me that he remembered Frank living on Bouton Avenue, but that he'd never been there. I remembered him saying that his family "went to the Grupenhoff's" on Christmas afternoons, so I asked for clarification. I got this wonderful reply:

"To be correct, I should have said "We celebrated with the Grupenhoff family." Initially It rotated between us, Ed & Edna Grupenhoff, Bill & Clara Grupenhoff and Bill & Ceil Barlow. In the early 40's Ed & Family moved to Baltimore. Sometime later both Clara and Bill Barlow. The rotation between the three siblings continued long after your grandmother and I moved away. I remember my Grandfather Frank at some of these Christmases. He was a pinochle player who played most days after he was retired at the firehouse.

"My only cousins were Ed and Edna's children, Dave and the twins Lynn and Lyle. Dave went to the U of Cincinnati where he was one of my apartment roommates and my partner in Badminton in Intramurals. We lost either in the Finals or Semis.

"Dave, who died this year, was far and away my best and most frequent bridge partner. We had a good career with a Sectional Swiss Teams Championship where we defeated the current World Mixed Champions and a 3rd (of 430) at the National Swiss teams. Cousin Lynn was the partner with whom I won the second most Master Points. I also won master points with family Uncle Bill, Aunt Ceil, Mother, Father and your Grandmother (A Sectional Non-Masters Pairs).

"Which all leads up to what happened at the Grupenhoff Christmas. They were all good bridge players. We ate, exchanged presents and played cards. Initially we played Tripoli, than switched to Bridge when I learned to play.

"Last update on Grupenhoff family. Lynn and I are the only ones left from my generation. Lynn is a bridge star. She is annually in top 200-500 players in the US. She is the top woman in MD,DE,WV,VA Region."

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I think it's really neat that my ideal Christmas celebration is almost identical to how the Grupenhoffs celebrated. Eat, exchange presents, and play games (and/or visit) with family members. Perfect!

Frank Henry Grupenhoff

Frank was a trunk maker, a home owner, and a single parent. He buried two children and his wife within seven years of each other. He lived through the Great Depression and both WWI and WWII. He must have had some kind of staying power. What a man!

According to a book written by my sister when she was in elementary school, Frank's family was the first in their neighborhood to get a car. Her source was probably our father.

Parents: Frank Grupenhoff, Mary or Maria K. Wissing
Birth: April 12, 1874
Marriage: October 29, 1902 to Josephine Plogsted. He was 28 and she was 20. They had six children: Cecilia, Edward H, Rosella Marie, William B, Clara A, and Josephine Agnes
Death: March 23, 1953, aged 78 years

1880 Census - Frank was 6. At this point, he was in a single-parent family, as his father had died when Frank was only 3. Mary, Frank's maternal grandmother, was also living with his mother, his sister Clara, and Frank himself. Frank and Clara were the youngest of their siblings, and their older siblings Henry and William are not listed on this census. I wonder if family members had taken the older siblings to lighten the financial burden from Frank's mother? Well, what I do know is that later, Frank's older brother William was living with his mother.

1899 City directory of Cincinnati. He was living at the same address (531 Woodward) as his mother Mary, brothers William and Henry, and sister Clara. William is listed as a porter, Henry as a varnisher, Frank as a trunk maker, and Clara as a cigar maker. If you'd like to see the directory, send me an e-mail. Someone else helped me find it, and I believe it would infringe copyright to post it here.

I couldn't find Frank in the 1900 census, although I found his mother, brother William, and sister Clara at the same address as in the directory. They were renting there, and at least five other families lived at the same address, so I'm guessing that they lived in an apartment building. The address listed on his marriage license is different from the one he lived at in 1899, so it's possible that he moved to the address listed on his marriage record between the compilations of the directory and the census. Frank was 26.

Marriage License, 1902:

The addresses listed for Frank and Josephine on this marriage license are very close to each other--not even half a mile apart! I'm sure they met because of their proximity to each other. Frank was 28 at the time of his marriage. I wonder why he waited so long (for that time period) to marry? Was he focusing on supporting his mother? Was he searching for love? Was he working on becoming financially stable? Whatever the case, he and Josephine Plogsted were married by a Catholic priest in October of 1902 and started their family immediately. 1903 brought Cecilia, Edwin came in 1904, Rosella in 1906, William in 1907, Clara in 1909, and Josephine Agnes (Granny Jo!) in 1910. By the 1910 census, the family had purchased a small home on Bouton Avenue and were working on paying it off. Frank must have been successful in his profession of trunk maker to make such an investment.

1910 Census:

The decade between 1910 and 1920 brought much sorrow to Frank's life. His daughter Clara died from severe burns she received in an accident, WWI started, his daughter Rosella died of diphtheria, and finally, his wife passed away from heart failure. See the post on Frank's wife Josephine for more detailed information on the three deaths.

After his wife died, Frank's mother came to live with him, I'm guessing to help with the children. It's possible that she came to receive the support of her son in her old age, but I find that doubtful since Frank was recently widowed and at the time of her death, Mary was living with her son William (see the addresses on her death certificate). The draft registration lists details that we already know but also has a physical description: Frank was average height and weight, had gray eyes and "light" hair.

Death certificate for his daughter Clara (1912)
1914 WWI starts
Death certificate for his daughter Rosella (1915)
WWI Draft Registration. (1918)
Death certificate for his wife Josephine (1919)

1920 Census:

In the 1930 census, Frank is listed as a carpenter in the home building industry instead of as a trunk maker. Cecilia was staying at home to take care of the house, Edwin worked as a production man (whatever that means--maybe it's a precursor to engineering?) in the soap industry, and William worked as a clerk for a roofing company. The census notes that Frank's family did not have a radio at this point, even though his daughter Jo and her new husband Cliff already had one.

Jo was the first of Frank's children to marry (in 1929), and his children Cecilia and Edwin married soon after. William took a little bit longer (according to information done by other researchers), but was not living with Frank for the 1940 census anyway. William was a grown man of 30-something by this point, so I'm not surprised. Frank lived in the house at Bouton Ave up through the 1940 census, but decided to move to Woodward St sometime before 1953.

1928 Mary Wissing mother of Frank passes away.
1929 Josephine Agnes Grupenhoff (Jo) and Clifford Winspear White's marriage
1929 The Great Depression
1930 Census
1939 WWII
1940 Census

Death certificate (1953): Frank died of "Chronic myocarditis" -- in other words, chronic heart problems. He had moved to 217 Woodward St., Cincinnati, Ohio, and was living there at the time of his death. His mother is listed as living (renting) at 531 Woodward in the 1899 Cincinnati directory, and Google maps shows these two addresses as right next to each other.

Josephine Plogsted

Parents: Frederich Henrich (Henry) Plogsted, Marie (Mary) Appleman
Birth date: September 14, 1882 (September 25, 1882 according to death certificate)
Marriage: October 29, 1902 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Frank Grupenhoff. Josephine was 20 and Frank was 28. They had six children: Cecilia, Edward H, Rosella Marie, William B, Clara A, and Josephine Agnes.
Death date: March 29, 1919, at age 36

The earliest record I was able to find for Josephine was the 1900 census. She was 17 when it was taken, and from it, you can see that her parents were both born in Germany, had been living in the US for 32 years each, and were naturalized citizens of the US. They rented a house on Colerain Avenue in the city of Cincinnati, and young Josephine worked as a dressmaker. At least half of the families listed on the same page as the Plogsteds were also immigrants, mostly from Germany.

Soon after this small glimpse we get into her life, she married Frank Grupenhoff, also a son of German immigrants. At the time, she was still working as a dressmaker, and from the marriage record, we see that they were married by the Reverend J. M. Felden, a Catholic priest. Josephine was still living at Colerain Avenue -- she was living at 3661 Colerain Avenue, to be exact. That address is in the middle of a street now!

It appears that Josephine spent the rest of her life at a cute little house at 4940 Bouton Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her husband Frank were there for the 1910 census, and it is the address on her death certificate. I found a picture of the house on Google Maps Streetview. Look!

Image from street view on Google Maps

When you look at the house with satellite view, you can see the roof over the porch and room next to the porch is flat. I don't know if these were additions after the Grupenhoff family moved out, but I can just picture Josephine's children playing on the porch and climbing out of the windows to sit on the roof when they could get away with it.

Unfortunately, Josephine had to experience the tragedy of two of her children passing away before she did. Clara, the second youngest, died in 1912 from shock she experienced after receiving severe burns. Her death certificate lists "Shock [for?] multiple burns accidentally received (set fire to clothing with lighter match)" as the cause of death, but family lore says she and the other children were playing by a brush fire and her dress caught fire as she tried to jump over it like the other children (source: my dad). She was only three years old. I can't imagine the agony that Josephine must have felt, and I wonder if she blamed herself for not watching the children more closely.

Rosella Marie, the third oldest, died just three years later of diphtheria, a bacterial infection that is now essentially eradicated in industrialized nations because of vaccines. The doctor visited two days before Rosella passed on, but evidently there was nothing he could do, because she passed away on September 16, 1915. Rosella was only 9 years old. (I had to do some digging to find Rosella Marie's death certificate, and I had a really neat experience after I found it that I wrote about here.)

Josephine Plogsted passed away in 1919 at age 36 of heart failure or "acute myocardial insufficiency," according to the death certificate, and the secondary cause was asthma. She had been doing poorly for at least two days--and probably more--before her death, because the death certificate shows that she had been attended by a physician two days before her passing. Her oldest child Cecilia was only 15, and her youngest--my Granny Jo--was only 9 years old when they lost their mother.


Sources:

1900 Census:

1900 Census

Marriage license (1902):

Marriage license, 1902

1910 Census:

1910 US Ohio Census

1920 Census (to give an idea of where her family was when Josephine passed on):

1920 US Ohio Census

Rosella Marie Grupenhoff, you matter. You are not forgotten!

I just had a really sweet experience.

While researching Granny Jo's mother Josephine Plogsted, I ran across what seemed to be a death record for her daughter (Granny Jo's older sister) Rosella. There was only bare-bones information on FamilyTree from people who had researched the family previously--a birth date and place, her name, and that she had passed away "about 1910".

Since I had found a probable death record that indicated that Rosella passed away in 1915, I started to do a little digging. How could I verify this information? Well, I got some help from people that know more about family history than I do and found the full death certificate. Rosella was 9 years old when she passed away from diphtheria, a bacterial disease now mostly eradicated in developed countries because of vaccines. Excited about my new find, I entered in all the new information I had on her, attaching the source to her profile as I went. When I finished, I stopped for a moment and looked at her fleshed-out profile with satisfaction. I looked at her sweet name--Rosella Marie--and was struck by a sudden feeling of joy that she was not forgotten. I felt that Rosella had been waiting and waiting for someone to remember her, to remember her short life in a busy city filled with many people apparently more important than her.

Rosella Marie, you are Important.

Rosella Marie, you are not forgotten.

I remember you.