Carrie Asbury, "Floyd Todd's first wife"

There she is, standing on the right* of two older women: tall, young, beautiful. Her outfit is obviously more stylish than the dresses the other women are wearing. It looks newer, too. "Who is this woman?" I asked myself. "What happened to her? Why is her name so hard to remember?"

I dug. I had to find the answer.

She wasn't listed in my family tree--Floyd Todd was Margaret (Gray) Dunn's grandson through her daughter Viola (Dunn) Todd, and only one wife was listed for him, a Susie C. Rawlings. She lived a long time, so I thought she must be a subsequent wife. I found two marriage records with a search for Floyd Todd, one for Carrie Asbury and one for Susan C Rawlings. Success! I found her, and I had a name.

Carrie and Floyd were married on August 25, 1914. Floyd was 22 and Carrie was only 17. I'm guessing this picture was taken in late 1914. Less than six months after her marriage to Floyd, Carrie was taken by appendicitis on February 8, 1915.

What a tragedy! She was so young. In the picture, she looks happy. She was so full of life. Carrie passed away almost one hundred years ago, but I can still taste the excitement she experienced from being a new bride and being out on her own.


Carrie and Floyd's marriage record
Carrie's death certificate

*She is on the left of the picture, but she was standing to the right of the two older women.

John B Winspear

John Winspear was Minne May Winspear (Great-Granddad Cliff's mother)'s brother. He died at only 50 years old on New Year's Eve.

According to his death certificate, John died by "gunshot wound to the head" in December of 1923 at 2:30 A.M. "Whether suicide or otherwise [was] to be determined" at the time of the death certificate. Wow. He was a merchant, and I assume did not live a wild lifestyle.

Also according to his death certificate, John was a widower. At the 1920 census three years earlier, however, his wife was listed with him and his two daughters from a previous marriage. I found his two daughters in a 1930 US Census, so I know that at least they survived him. Was the death of his wife so devastating that he couldn't stand to be alive anymore? Was he murdered by a dissatisfied customer? (I doubt it) I guess I won't know. I hope he has found comfort and peace since then.

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.

Roger White

Roger Thomas (Jock) White--younger brother to Granddad Jerry--was loved by his family. He worked hard to help out and was well-liked by his peers. Unfortunately, he died when he was only a teenager. I recently interviewed Granddad Jerry about him, and this post contains the information I learned.

I happened to stumble across Jock's death certificate when looking for records on Clifford Winspear White. It gave details of Roger's passing. Roger was in a car accident when he was only 16 and died soon thereafter from head injuries. The death record says that he lost control of the car due to speeding and hit a tree and a ditch.  It was a poor section of road. (source: Dad) It also shows that the accident happened around  8:15 PM. He died just 30 minutes later, at 8:45 PM, according to the coroner.

This information is from the interview with Granddad Jerry: 

1. What’s your favorite story about him? 3 stories: 

1. How Roger got the nickname Jock. Granddad had toy dog with a red ribbon that said, “My name is Jock”. When Jock was born he was named Roger, but Granddad insisted on calling him Jock. Granddad Cliff would only call him Roger.  By the time Jock was a teenager, most people called him Jock. 
2. Never really fought with Granddad much. However, if Granddad could have gotten his hands on Jock one time he "woulda pulverized him!" There was a long driveway to the house about 150 feet long. Granddad bent over to pick up something, and Jock shot him with a BB gun from about 50 feet away.  Granddad was so mad he chased him to the house but Jock had locked all the doors. Granddad ran all the way around the house to find a way to get in to him -- and Jock did it all just for "fun." 
3. Used to play at Whiteacres a lot. Jerry was usually the youngest kid there. Small town. All kinds of kids played at Granddads – Granddad told me it was like Tom Sawyer where he plays with the Judge's kids down to the Huck Finn-type kids. 

2. What did he look like? 

Dark hair, a little taller than G’dad – maybe 5’9”

3. What kinds of things did you do together? 

They used to play board games in the house. Occasionally they'd play pick-up baseball, sometimes football or basketball. When Granddad was about 16, they shared chores like milking the cow. Jock would milk in the morning and Jerry would milk in the evening. There were sharecroppers taking care of farm when Cliff left, but when Granddad was about 16, Jo bought a tractor. Jerry and Jock would switch off; Jerry’d go to baseball practice when he got out of school, and go to sleep as soon as he got home afterwards. Jock worked from about 3 PM to 11 PM and Jerry would plow the fields from 11 PM to 7 AM. Granddad didn't recall any particular instance, but said they probably did things like haying together. The two would chase the cows around. They rode horses together to get the cows. Jock rode Babe and Jerry rode Gale. Neither were tall enough to get their foot in the stirrup from the ground, so Jerry helped Jock to mount. He would climb hand over hand up the stirrup to get on Gale. The mare would start walking as soon as Jerry's feet left the ground so he had to climb quickly because Gale would start trotting after about 150 feet. Jerry had a friend--Jack--who would give rides to Jerry and Jock on his bike. Jerry would ride on the bar between the handlebar and seat and Jock would ride behind. They also played policemen on their bikes.

4. How did he dress? 

He wore jeans and in the summer went barefoot. Granddad’s jeans had patches on patches, so Jock’s probably did, too.

5. Was he quiet or talkative? He was an average kid.

6. What did he like to do? Didn’t like to read like Jerry did. He liked farming more.

7. Did he go to church? 

Yes, Catholic church with Jerry and Jo. Sometimes they wouldn't go, but they went more often than not.

8. How was he like you? 

He liked sports, was competitive but not as much as Granddad is. He was a starter on the baseball team when he was a sophomore. Was more mechanical than Jerry. Good student (but that wasn't very important for either of them). Jock was relatively popular with his schoolmates. He was also in school government.

Jerry was still sort of living at home when the accident happened, but going to college. His official residence was Whiteacres, but it was his freshman year and he was living at the dorms at UC (University of Cincinnati). He came home on weekends to do farming.

J.O. Thompson's first family

I asked my mom's cousin Rita (my 1st cousin once removed) about J.O.'s first wife, Lula J. Hanson. Lula was only 13 when they married (J.O. was a few days away from his 22nd birthday), and she died when she was only 17. While looking at her information, I noticed that she and their two children all died around 1915, and I wondered if there was some sort of tragedy associated with their deaths. This is what Rita told me:

"Their children were Emma and then Leonard. Then in 1919 the great flu epidemic came along and got all three of his little family. Granddaddy about lost his mind. He was studying to be a preacher like his grandfather David Nolan. He took to hoboing on trains back and forth across the country and reading the bible as he went. He read it over and over. I believe that's why our granddaddy had the power to heal. He could stop blood and fire. He told God he couldn't go on and start another family if he might loose them like he lost his first. He asked for the power to heal and God gave it to him. And that is the story of J.O.'s first family."

Amazing story, right? Also definitely a tragedy. I had wondered what had taken J.O. away from his home in Georgia that made him end up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and now I know.

EDIT: Lula, Emma, and Leonard died of measles (source: Grandma Izzy); the flu epidemic came a few years after they had already passed away. When Grandma told me about it, she said, "Isn't it ridiculous that someone died from something as easy to cure [now] as measles?" She seemed to still feel the pain of their deaths, even though she had never met them.