…and those who went with and before them
This site includes scattershot, but hopefully accurate, info about the ancestors of my four grandparents:
– Emily Harriet Strother (1904-2000)
– Bert Laraway Smith Jr. (1903-1981)
– Lilly Charlotta Ljung (1894-1977)
– Fritz Stenstedt (1893-1963)
When I run across an intriguing fact or story, mostly via ancestry.com, I drop it here. I only include stories about people who are no longer living, and in most cases are long gone….
At 4:52am on the 26th of January, 1942, a torpedo from a German U-boat missed the West Ivis, an American merchant ship sailing a few hundred miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Someone aboard noticed the torpedo trace, and the West Ivis went dark and silent.
The West Ivis was two days out of New York harbor with 45 men aboard, including my dad’s uncle Arvid, the ship’s second mate. Surely Arvid would have been awake, or quickly awakened, when that torpedo trace was spotted.
Just over an hour later, at 5:56am, a torpedo struck the West Ivis underneath the stack, and a second torpedo struck in the engine room. The boat broke in half, and within 14 minutes, it sank. The U-boat crew saw lifeboats but did not question (let alone rescue) the stranded crew. The U-boat, U-125, was captained by Ulrich Folkers, a U-boat “ace” who sank 17 allied ships during WWII.
Unescorted merchant ships like the West Ivis were sitting ducks. The West Ivis had nine U.S. Navy guards on board to maintain and operate the boat’s one 4-inch gun, four .50-caliber guns, and four .30-caliber guns. Was there any way these nine guns could pick off an underwater predator like U-125, and in the dark, no less? I think not.
The West Ivis never reached any of its intended destinations—Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Buenos Aires. No radio signals were received, and no trace was found of the ship or its crew. Arvid’s brother Al Berglof, who lived in San Francisco, was listed as Arvid’s next of kin and would have been notified that Arvid was missing and presumed dead. A Swedish friend of Arvid’s named Anders Kruskopf wrote a flowery eulogy for him in Vestkusten, which was a Swedish-language newspaper for ex-pat Swedes in California. Here is the article, dated April 9, 1942, translated from the Swedish:
Arvid Young in Memoriam
Serving in shipping, the lifeblood and artery that nourishes the free nations, stood the sea captain Arvid Young. In the waters where the “vipers” lurked in the Atlantic, his life was sacrificed in this service, when the ship on which he served was swept away. In the “Evening High School of Commerce” in San Francisco, we acquired with him the teachings and ideology of the New World. Even here, Arvid Young revealed a disposition of pure selflessness and always spread a glimmer of pleasure around him. With youthful enthusiasm and joy of work, comforted by his never-failing bright faith in life, he began his career at sea. So he went, this gentle, faithful son of a Swede! When the storms of destruction have subsided, his name will stand indelibly on the list of those who gave their lives for the building of a better world. In his memory, we allow ourselves to quote from Karl David Wirsén:
“… att slunga en tindrande gnista bland världens flämtande irrbloss ut
och tvinga töcknen att brista
och göra på natten ett slut;
att lysa och värma och sträva
och, stupande, ännu en ljusflod stro —
det vore ett liv att leva,
det vore en död att dö!”
(“… to hurl a twinkling spark among the world’s panting flames
and force the mists to burst
and put an end to the night;
to shine and warm and strive
and, falling, another flood of light sprinkle —
it would be a life to live,
it would be a death to die!”)
From Isak Johansson to Arvid Young: A Swedish immigrant’s tale….
On November 23, 1899, my great-grandmother Johanna Alexandra Johansson gave birth to her tenth and last child, Isak Arvid Johansson. Later, the family changed their last name to Ljung. After emigrating to the U.S., Isak Arvid Ljung became Arvid Ljung, and then Arvid Young.
Isak Arvid was one of my father’s 14 uncles, all of them born and raised in the vicinity of Stensele, Sweden. (For context, all 14 are listed in the table at the bottom of this post.)
What was Isak Arvid’s youth like in Stensele? We don’t have details. Given what we know of his sister Lilly’s (my grandmother’s) education, he probably received at most an elementary education, and he could read and write. He did not marry. Maybe he worked on the railroad. He grew up in poverty.
The family would have received letters with news from Isak Arvid’s three brothers who had left Sweden: Al Berglof (born Pehr Alfred Johansson), who emigrated to San Francisco in 1896 or 1897; and Viktor and Hugo, who emigrated to Canada in 1902 and 1908, respectively. Their father died in 1922, and the Inland Line of the Swedish railroad was completed all the way to Storuman in 1923.
Maybe all of this contributed to Isak Arvid leaving Stensele in 1924. (The same year my dad was born in Stensele, incidentally.) Isak Arvid travelled to Gothenburg, a journey of over 1,000km, probably by train most of the way. On January 19, 1924, he boarded the first ship to bear the name SS Kungsholm.
The Kungsholm landed in New York on February 1, 1924, a journey of 14 days. Maybe that’s when Isak Arvid discovered his penchant for the sea? On the New York passenger list for the Kungsholm‘s arrival, he is listed as Isak Arvid Ljung, occupation “railroad worker.” His American contact is his brother Al in San Francisco. Isak Arvid is described as blond, with blue eyes and a fair complexion.
Isak Arvid somehow made his way from New York to San Francisco, and on August 5, 1924, he filed his intention to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen. This document describes him a little differently: Isac with a “c,” brown hair. One imagines a clerk in a hurry.
His occupation is listed as “Bookkeeper”—maybe he helped with the books for Al’s tailoring business?
On June 19, 1925, now going by Arvid Ljung, Arvid graduated from the Lincoln Evening School in San Francisco. (Note that this was not the historic Lincoln school on 5th in San Francisco, because that burned in 1906. Nor was it Lincoln High School, which was established in 1940.)
From 1926 to at least 1930, Arvid’s address was the YMCA at 220 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco. He applied for U.S. citizenship in 1930, signing a form stating his intention to “renounce absolutely and forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to Gustavus V, King of Sweden.”
While his brother Al clearly helped him get settled, it is not clear whether Arvid lived with Al for any length of time. But Arvid’s 1930 citizenship application lists his address as 109 Buchanan Street in San Francisco—Al’s address.
Somewhere along the line, Arvid became a merchant marine. In 1933, now going by Arvid Young, Arvid applied for a Seaman’s Protection Certificate, a document that identified him and vouched for his U.S. citizenship. In theory, this document would offer protection from “impressment” while at sea. When he applied (August 10, 1933), he listed his last ship as the West Cape, on which he was an able seaman.
At 5′ 5.5″ (1.67 meters) and 147 lbs, Arvid was not a large man. The photo below shows him wearing a suit and tie, but looking relatively unkempt compared to his ever-impeccably dressed and groomed older brother, Al. (More on Uncle Al later.)
In 1938, Arvid’s brothers Viktor and Hugo visited Arvid and Al in San Francisco, and the reunion of the four brothers from Stensele, Sweden, was written up in Vestkusten newspaper. Before this meeting, the four of them had never been in the same place at the same time.
Meanwhile, Arvid’s career as a mariner moved along. In 1939, a local newspaper reported that he was promoted to chief mate, and in 1941 he was promoted to master. He was at sea a lot, and his YMCA address might have been his permanent address for collecting mail.
In 1939, Arvid’s mother died. Three years later, Arvid died. It would have taken time for the news to reach his siblings in Canada and Sweden, all of whom were still living. His eldest brother, Johan, was 67 at the time.
It seems likely that some men died immediately when the torpedoes struck the West Ivis on January 26, 1942, but we know that some made it into lifeboats. Was Arvid one of them? And if so, how did he die? It is not a pleasant thought. The only one of my father’s 14 uncles to die younger than Arvid was my grandfather’s brother Sören, who died in 1919 at the age of 12.
And finally, for the sake of context, let us enumerate my dad’s many uncles, shall we? Last names that they chose in adulthood are shown in parentheses.
| Dates (age at death) | Bros. of Fritz Johansson (Stenstedt) 1893–1963 (70) | Bros. of Lilly Ljung 1894–1977 (83) |
| 1874–1949 (75) | Johan Ljung | |
| 1877–1972 (95) | Pehr Alfred Ljung (Berglof) | |
| 1879–1969 (90) | Viktor Ljung (Young) | |
| 1887–1963 (76) | Axel Ljung | |
| 1890–1962 (71) | Hugo Ljung (Young) | |
| 1895–1949 (54) | Robert Johansson | |
| 1898–1948 (49) | Aron Johansson | |
| 1899–1961 (61) | Per Hugo Johansson | |
| 1899–1942 (42) | Isak Arvid Ljung (Young) | |
| 1902–1967 (64) | Johan Johansson | |
| 1903–1956 (52) | Gustav Johansson (Elke) | |
| 1906–1991 (85) | Knut Johansson (Fällstam) | |
| 1907–1919 (12) | Sören Johansson | |
| 1911–1965 (54) | Karl Johansson |
Note how (relatively) young most of my dad’s paternal uncles were when they died. Only Knut made it past 70. Something to explore in another post….
uboat.net, “Ships hit by U-boats: West Ivis,” https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/1296.html, accessed Dec. 21, 2024.
Find a Grave, “Isak Arvid Young,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86282231/arvid_isak-young, accessed Dec. 21, 2024.
Wikipedia, “Swedish American Line,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_American_Line, accessed Dec. 21, 2024.
Gotherburg, Sweden, Passenger Lists 1869-1951; New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957.
Swedish Wikipedia, “Inlandsbanan (Inland Railway),” https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inlandsbanan, accessed Dec. 21, 2024.
A year before she died, I asked my mom, Dorothy Smith Stenstedt, to tell me about a few old Smith photos, and I wrote down what she told me. I’m not sure right now where the photos are! But I want to record the things she said. Here goes.
She said that Honey (Bert L. Smith, Jr.) was born in Elko, Nevada, and that his father was in “banking and various enterprises.” This seems to mean, in part, that Bert Sr. invested in mining operations … sometimes luckily, sometimes not. At some point, the family lived in Oakland, yes, and then my mom mentioned “Aunt Beulah’s vase.” It was important enough that I wrote it down. Beulah was Honey’s mother’s sister. If only we could ask Dorothy which vase this was, and why it was worth mentioning!
Onwards.
Mormor (Emily Strother Smith) was born in Plano, Texas, and soon moved to Dallas. Honey’s family moved to Dallas when he was in high school, and they met as juniors at Oak Cliff High School (now W. H. Adamson High School). Bert had a motorcycle with a sidecar! No wonder Emily fell in love with this “California Yankee,” as Emily’s father called him—this “diamond in the rough,” as Emily’s mother called him. After high school, Honey returned to California for college at UC Davis, which at that time was called the Northern Branch of the College of Agriculture, an extension of UC Berkeley. His education prepared him for his career at the Farm Bureau, where he counseled local farmers on best practices and available resources.
During these college years, Emily lived at home in Dallas and attended Southern Methodist University, driving a Model-T Ford to school, and playing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. At some point, she served as the first-chair violinist. Given that Bert and Emily had a long-distance relationship for a few years, I would love to see the letters they might have written.
Apparently
The word apparently is important in my reporting of what Dorothy said that others said that others said. After Honey’s father died in 1922, Honey’s mother split her time between Honey and Honey’s sister Margaret (whom he always referred to as “My Sister Margaret”). Apparently, Margaret said “I don’t want our mother to work so hard when she’s at your house,” which made my grandmother Emily very angry, because apparently, there was no stopping Grandmother Smith from helping with things.
These are my only notes from that interview with my mother. It is incomplete, as is so much when a person dies. If she suddenly reappeared from the other side of the veil, I wouldn’t start by asking about Aunt Beulah’s vase. But we might get to it eventually.
Harriet Leslie Smith was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, in 1873, the fourth and youngest child of James Arnold Smith and Harriet Laraway. Harriet senior was 41 when our Harriet was born—pretty old!
James was a woolen manufacturer, maybe having learned the trade from his own father, a blue dyer named Channing Smith. James’s personal estate was valued at $123,000 in 1870—about $2.7 million in today’s dollars. And in 1870 the Smith household included a “domestic servant,” a young Irish immigrant by the name of Katie Keeland. (No doubt Katie experienced the world quite differently from her employers, the WASPy, blue-blooded Smiths.) One of Harriet’s great-great grandfathers was George Claghorn (1748-1824), the master shipbuilder of the U.S.S. Constitution and a descendant of four of the people who traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620. So Harriet and her siblings were born into a storied and established Massachusetts family, one with money.
About those siblings:
In 1885, the Colorado state census shows Harriet and her parents in Boulder, Colorado. Did they move there for a time, or did they just happen to be visiting Mary Etta when the census was taken? In any case, they were back in Massachusetts by the time Harriet went to high school, because she graduated from Worcester High School in Massachusetts, and then attended the Boston Cooking School, class of 1895. The 1914 Woman’s Who’s Who of America says that Harriet also completed a “special course in bacteriology” at the University of Nevada in 1898. Harriet (and her family members) spent a lot of time riding the rails!
Somehow (through Mary Etta?), Harriet met a widowed cattle broker from Longmont, Colorado, by the name of Frank N. Shiek. They married on November 22, 1899, in Longmont, when she was 26 and Frank was 36. They settled in Wheatland, Wyoming, a little town in the middle of nowhere, even by today’s standards. Harriet’s platinum engagement ring featured a 2-carat diamond, six sapphires, and eighteen 1/4-carat diamonds. Notice the way she holds her left hand in the photo, as if to make sure we see it….
After being a cattle broker, or maybe along with being a cattle broker, Frank Shiek was a banker. In 1909, he was vice president of the Bank of Wheatland; by 1912, he was that bank’s president.
The Wheatland World, later called The Wheatland Times, was a weekly paper focused on the small town of Wheatland, Wyoming, and in Harriet’s day, some of the paper’s reporting seemed a bit like … well … gossip! Here’s one of the paper’s many mentions of Frank and Harriet:
“F. N. Shiek returned Saturday from Colorado and will remain. Mrs. Shiek is in Denver receiving treatment and will remain some six weeks longer.”
The Wheatland World, Vol. 7, No. 19, February 8, 1901
Receiving treatment for what? She lived another 54 years, so if she had a life-threatening illness, the treatment worked. Harriet’s sensitivity to hay fever is mentioned in The Wheatland World on a separate occasion, when Harriet and Frank went to Long Beach, California, to avoid “hay fever season.” But a six-week treatment in Denver for hay fever? I don’t think so, and if that’s what it was, the paper could have mentioned it without impropriety.
Could the treatment have had anything to do with Harriet’s fertility? Her long stay in Denver happened after she had been married for a little over a year, long enough for her to have lost a pregnancy; or long enough for her to have tried to get pregnant, failed, and become worried. Did she and Frank even want to have children? We may never know. But of Mary Etta, Oscar, Bert, and Harriet, only Bert passed along the particular Smith genes that I inherited, the genes of James Arnold Smith and Harriet Laraway.
In Wheatland, our Harriet was a frequent participant in local social events. She gave speeches, did readings, and wrote articles. The October 18, 1901, Wheatland World reports that she read “Casey at the Bat” at a library association evening entertainment. In 1905, the paper included an excerpt of a speech that Harriet gave in Sheridan, Wyoming, after she became president of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs:
The great Emerson said that civilization was the power of good women. If this be true, it may be well for us to consider for a moment the civilizing force to be found in the 700,000 federated club women in the world. The weak women, the women with lazy brains, are not found in the clubs and so not found in our federations….
When any man attacks the question of woman’s club for the given reason that they tend to develop qualities not womanly, he does no harm to the club movement. We have nothing to fear from such charges. The clubs have been too real a factor in developing in the modern woman a broader mind, a larger charity, a keener insight and more unbiased, more accurate judgment.
Mrs. F. N. Shiek, as quoted in The Wheatland World, September 29, 1905
In 1906, the paper reports that Harriet “went to Cheyenne Monday and gave an elocutionary recital Tuesday evening which the papers of that city pronounced the best of the season.” In 1907, she wrote an article in the Wyoming School Journal (quoted in The Wheatland World, January 18, 1907) explaining the importance of educating girls to make them fit to be homemakers. She wanted a Household Economics course added at the University of Wyoming, along with a “Cottage for Girls.” But she was writing to convince the Wyoming state legislature to fund these ideas, and the state legislature was made up entirely of men (until Mary Bellamy was elected to it in 1910). And so I wonder whether, in 1907, talking about women as potential homemakers was Harriet’s way of making sure that her message received a hearing. And maybe a Household Economics course would act as a foot in the door for women to participate more completely at the university. Harriet was a member of the Ebell society later in her life, a group that worked to promote women’s education and participation in cultural and intellectual life. And what did she think of June Downey, her brother’s sister-in-law? (More about June below.)
The 1914 Woman’s Who’s Who says that Harriet was an Episcopalian, a Republican, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and a member and officer in several large clubs. She was also someone who, it seemed, cultivated a presence and a persona in society. When she married, or soon after, she changed her middle name from “Leslie” to “Leyla,” though I can’t find anything about why or how that happened. But “Harriet Leyla Shiek” definitely sounds more interesting than “Harriet Leslie Smith.”
Harriet and Frank seem to have lived in Wyoming from 1900 to at least 1920, but clearly Harriet spent time with family elsewhere, including her brother Bert’s family. I think the photo below was taken in 1910, not long after Bert, Bert’s wife Fanchon, and their children (Margaret and Bert, Jr., my grandfather) moved to this house in Oakland, California. Harriet is on the far right, looking like the fussy Victorian aunt I always imagined when I heard tales of “Aunt Harriet.” The cute little guy looking bored in the front row is my grandfather. His mother, Fanchon Downey Smith, sits in the center, and between her and Harriet is Fanchon’s sister Beulah. Beulah and Fanchon were born and raised in Wyoming.
Only four names are given for the ladies, and the fourth is labeled as “Aunt Jane.” Could Aunt Jane have been Aunt June, Fanchon’s half-sister June Downey, also of Wyoming? June had dark hair and wore round glasses, just like the woman second from the left. June was a psychologist, and the first woman to hold a head position at a state university. She published many research articles, along with books, plays, poems, and stories. She never married. If indeed this is Aunt June in the photo, I wonder if the three aunts (and the mystery woman on the left) traveled together—by train, of course—from Wyoming?
The Bert Smiths moved into this house sometime after May 2, 1910, because the 1910 census shows that on that date, Bert, Fanchon, Margaret, and Bert, Jr., resided in the Bakersfield Township in southern California. And according to the California death index and her obituary, Aunt Beulah died Dec. 13, 1910, right there in the very house shown in the photo, with her half-brother Stephen Downey, Jr., in attendance. That puts the photo between May and December, 1910, making my grandfather 7, and his sister 10 or 11.
Below is a photo from nine years later, labeled by my mother. I didn’t crop it, because the composition is interesting. Why isn’t it centered? Was someone else planning to be in it? Where is Fanchon? Could she have taken the photo? What’s behind that door? Margaret’s pose makes it almost casual, almost candid, like the picture before the real picture. The sheer number of photos that exist of my grandfather Bert as a child make me wonder if the family had a camera of their own. Anyway, this post is about Harriet! I like her dress.
I don’t think Frank came with her on these trips, or wouldn’t he be in the photos? Harriet and Frank had been married 20 years when the photo above was taken, and Harriet was 46.
Here’s Harriet with grayer hair, though I don’t know when this photo was taken. She and Frank had traveled to Long Beach, California, often during their years in Wheatland, and sometime between 1920 and 1930 they relocated to Long Beach permanently. It seems to have been their retirement destination, and a place they frequented from 1912 onwards. Harriet’s obituary in the Long Beach Independent is headlined “Mrs. Shiek, Here Since 1912, Dies.”
The photo below was apparently taken in 1939, when Harriet was 65 or 66, not long before Frank died. This is probably Long Beach, outside 291 St. Joseph Ave., the house where they lived from at least 1925 until Frank’s death in April of 1940.
Harriet lived in Long Beach as a widow for the next 15 years, traveling to see family and taking other, perhaps more exotic, trips. When she was 67, she went on a cruise to Guatemala aboard the S.S. Ulua, leaving New Orleans December 25, 1941, and returning a week later. In 1945, she flew from Mexico City to El Paso, Texas—and I imagine there are other travel records I’m just not finding.
This headshot, dated 1950, is from the Wyoming State Archives Photo Collection. It is labeled “MRS. FRANK N. (HARRIETT) SHIEK, 1ST PRESIDENT OF THE WYOMING FEDERATION OF WOMEN’S CLUBS, STUDIO PORTRAIT, SOFT FOCUS.”
The Wyoming Federation of Women’s Clubs still exists as part of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and their website includes this image showing Harriet’s place in their history:
Harriet died on April 23, 1955, in Los Angeles, California, at age 81. Strangely, given how much documentation I’ve found about the rest of her life, it was challenging to track down an obituary.
But I found one at last! And it says she is survived by her niece Margaret Smith Prestridge and two nephews: Bert L. Smith (my grandfather) and Leighton W. Smith.
Seeing Leighton W. Smith listed there is a shocker! It seems that Harriet’s brother Oscar J. Smith had a child after all. More on Oscar later….
Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Books.
“Frank N. Shiek,” in The Gast-Paul Directory of Bankers and Attorneys and Digests of the Laws. United States: Gast-Paul Publishers, 1912.
The Federation Bulletin. United States: Massachusetts State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1908.
General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Wyoming, https://www.gfwcwyoming.org/about.html.
Leonard, John William, “Harriet L. Shiek,” in Woman’s Who’s Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada. United States: American Commonwealth Company, 1914.
United States Federal Census: 1870 and 1880 (Leicester, Massachusetts); 1900, 1910, 1920 (Wheatland, Wyoming); 1930 and 1950 (Long Beach, California). Colorado State Census: 1885.
Wyoming State Archives Digital Collections, http://spcrphotocollection.wyo.gov/luna/servlet.
Consider Eliza Beebe: bearer of children, granddaughter of the American shipbuilder George Claghorn, born in Salem, and holder of a quintessential 19th-century American name—Eliza Beebe. Awesome. Hmm, maybe her mom was friends with Felicity Merriman….
At 17 Eliza married Channing Smith in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Channing worked as a woolen dyer. Two years later, they lived in the vicinity of Blackstone, Massachusetts, and they stayed there until Eliza and Channing both died in 1878. That gives her over 50 years in one place—not bad.
Eliza started having babies at 18 and kept at it until she was 43. She seems to have had in the neighborhood of 13 children, including twins Henry and Hiram in 1846, though it’s hard to get an exact count at this distance in time, especially if you consider the possibility of infant mortality and miscarriages. However you look at it, she spent a lot of time pregnant.
Eliza’s fourth child was my 2nd great-grandfather James Arnold Smith.
Eliza Beebe (1805-1878)
. James Arnold Smith (1830-1894)
. . Bert Laraway Smith (1863-1922)
. . . Bert Laraway Smith Jr.
Eliza was the granddaughter of George Claghorn, master shipbuilder of the U.S.S. Constitution. Eliza pops up as a hastily typed aside in some applications for membership in the American Sons of the Revolution; for example, the photo above shows the application of Oscar Smith (my 2nd great-uncle), applying for membership by way of his father’s mother’s mother’s father, the aforementioned George Claghorn. Eliza is named in passing.
George Claghorn is one of my 5th great-grandfathers. (In theory I have 64 of these, but that far back in the past there might be some repeats, which would mean I have fewer than 64 of them.) Lots of George Claghorn’s papers are preserved in the National Archives; here’s a sample of his handwriting and signature.
Fannie Fisher was Bert Jr.’s grandmother, making her one of my eight 2nd great-grandmothers. She married a man who became famous, and she died young.
She was born Sept. 27, 1842, but where?
Was it in Maryland, as stated in her obituary? Pennsylvania, as stated in the U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedules Index of 1850-1880? West Virginia, as stated on her daughter Fanchon’s death certificate?
Was Fannie a nanny?
The 1860 U.S. Federal Census for Cumberland, Maryland, shows an 18-year-old “Fanny Fisher” living with James Morgan, Elizabeth Morgan, and their two young children.
Fannie married Stephen Wheeler Downey: a catch
Did this happen in 1861 in Maryland, as some random ancestry.com person’s tree tells me? Maryland is believable, because Downey enlisted in the Union army in Maryland in the fall 1861, which can be deduced from his Wikipedia page…which I will not link to, because this post is about FANNIE! And 1861 is believable because their first child, Buelah, was born in 1862, possibly in December.
Another source put the wedding on the 13th of Sept., 1862, in Laramie, Wyoming, but Stephen Wheeler Downey didn’t move to Wyoming until 1869, so let’s stick with Maryland. He was in the Battle of Harpers Ferry, which spanned Sept. 12-15, 1862. Who knows, maybe on the first day of the battle he was wounded and sent back to Maryland, and on the second day of the battle he married a very pregnant Fannie? It’s a better story that way! 🙂
Fannie and Stephen had two children
> Beulah (1862-1910)
> My great-grandmother Mary Fanchon (1865-1946), aka Fanchon Downey Smith, aka Bert Jr.’s mother.
Fannie died in May of 1870
She was 28, and her daughters were 5 and 8. Her obituary and the Mortality Index both list her cause of death as consumption, now known as tuberculosis. The obituary in the Laramie Daily Sentinel says, “She came to this city last fall, an invalid in the last stages of consumption, and though the salubrity of the climate here probably prolonged her life some months, her disease was too far advanced to make recovery possible.”
Maybe the family moved to Wyoming in part because of her health? But that’s not the official story. A Wyoming history website puts it like this:
In 1869, [Downey] followed his brother, William O. Downey, a surveyor, to Laramie, Wyo. The move came at a steep price, however, because Stephen’s wife died shortly after they arrived.
Looks like Fannie’s obituary was published one day after her death, so one imagines it was already written. Maybe she helped write it.
In any case, she had to know she was dying. How did she handle it? Did she talk to the girls about it? Or did she hide it from them? Leave things vague? Even if they didn’t know for sure that their mother was dying, they had to know she was sick.
Eventually, liquid replaces the lungs, the suffering patients cannot get enough oxygen, and respiratory failure occurs, they can no longer breathe and they drown. It’s painful, it’s drawn out. It’s an awful way to die. But before any of this happens the disease weakens you, diminishes your capacity for work, and puts your family and friends, and anyone else you come into contact with, at risk.
— From McMillen, Christian W., “Discovering Tuberculosis,” Yale University, 2015, as quoted on tbfacts.org
And if she hadn’t lived as long as she did, I might not be here!
Fannie Fisher (1842? -1870)
. Fanchon Downey (1865-1946)
. . Bert Laraway Smith Jr.
I wonder many things about Fannie. I want a photo! Was her real name Francis, Frances, Fanny, Fannie? What were her parents’ names? Was Fannie a nanny? How did she meet Stephen Wheeler Downey? How would she have felt if she’d known that her husband would go on to remarry and have a lot more children??
Emily was a Strother, and The William Strother Society has a database that lists almost 77,000 Strother-connected individuals. The photo shows the Strother family in 1896 at Duck Creek near Garland, Texas. Emily’s father, E. B. Strother, is sitting on the porch on the far right, with his back to a post. He is 23 years old and has been married to my great-grandmother Lena Hill Snead for two years at this point, but Lena isn’t in the photo.
The matriarch in the chair on the porch is my 2nd great-grandmother Emily McCullough Strother, who grew up on a farm in Kentucky. If you squint just right, doesn’t that look like a pistol she’s holding in her right hand? Okay, maybe not…but I bet she knew how to use one, even if she didn’t carry at family reunions.
The dog in the foreground is not identified.
I’m not sure which of the Williams the Strother Society focuses on, but here’s how Emily is apparently descended from William Strother IV (1630-1702, b. Northumberland, England):
William Strother IV
. Jeremiah Strother (1655-1740, b. Virginia)
. . Christopher Strother (1715-1785, b. Virginia)
. . . James Strother (1763-1843, b. Virginia)
. . . . Green Bower Strother (1804-1872, b. N. Carolina)
. . . . . Joseph Sale Strother (1836-1903, b. Alabama)
. . . . . . Edwin Bower Strother (1873-1958, b. Dallas, Texas)
. . . . . . . Emily Harriet Strother
I looked more deeply into Channing Smith because I love that name, and he turned out to be quite interesting! Channing was one of my 3rd great-grandfathers:
Channing Smith (1797-1878, b. Massachusetts)
. James Arnold Smith (1830-1894, b. Connecticut)
. . Bert Laraway Smith (1863-1922, b. New York)
. . . Bert Laraway Smith Jr.
In 1811, at age 14, Channing was “bound out” as an apprentice to learn the trade of the woolen dyer. His apprenticeship lasted until he was 21, and then he practiced his trade until he retired at age 68.
I learned all this and more in an article that his grandson, also named Channing Smith, wrote in 1917. It’s called “Textile Manufacturing in Retrospect,” and it’s available here: https://books.google.com/books?id=6C8wAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA144
The elder Channing’s father, Joel Smith (1770-1800, b. Connecticut), died when Channing was three. I wonder if that led to Channing’s need to learn a trade so young, at 14? Or maybe 14 wasn’t young by the standards of the day?
The photo above shows a snippet of the 1850 U.S. Census in Blackstone, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Channing’s wife was Eliza Beebe (1805-1878). Listed below Eliza on the census page are four of their children; six more children are listed on the next page, which I couldn’t fit into the screenshot.
The census shows that Channing and Eliza’s sons John and James and James were also dyers. James, as shown above, was my 2nd great-grandfather.
All my recent Swedish ancestors are from the area around Stensele, home of Sweden’s largest (? or oldest?) wooden church. I found this 1933 photo of the church on to https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/stensele/historia.
In more recent photos, tall trees stand alongside the church—this is the only photo I saw that shows the whole church.
In 1933 Fritz was 40 years old, and Lilly was 39 and had given birth to four of her five children. Her father, Anders August Johannson Ljung, had been dead for 11 years.
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