A/K/A

 

This is Faye, my grandmother's aunt.   She holds the keys to one of the biggest mysteries in my family tree.

It is Faye's sister, Blanche, who I recently discovered to be my hidden great-grandmother.  My grandmother Norma would have only been 5 years old when Blanche was murdered. Even before being orphaned, Norma was being raised by Faye and Blanche's parents as their own.  I do not know when or how Norma was told about her true parentage, but the secret was kept for decades.

There were many reasons for the secrecy.  By almost any measure, Faye and Blanche were the source of scandal for their family.  Besides the more typical things such as divorce and illegitimate birth, both Faye and Blanche were involved in nefarious (and apparently profitable) activities. By all accounts, Faye was in charge.  Blanche was the older sister, but never as tough as Faye.

The girls' father, Mose, was hard working, but poor.  The best job he ever had was as a mechanic for the Denver Rio Grande Railroad.  By the time this picture was taken, it was the Great Depression, and Mose was scraping by, herding sheep in the Utah mountains.  Blanche had tried, and fairly succeeded, to marry her way out of poverty.  Her first husband was from a well-off and respectable family.  When Blanche married her second husband, Norma's father, they lived in an apartment in the rich side of town, where the rent was four times what her father Mose was paying for his house. 

Faye left school early, and worked in a Salt Lake City ice cream parlor.  Could this be where she met her first husband ?  I don't know.  I have yet to track down any civil or church document for their union.  The only reason I even know his name is because one day, Faye's little brother was looking for his birth certificate.  Rifling through the Victrola cabinet where his mother kept all important papers, Lee found a Post Office Wanted poster-there was the face of his uncle Philip Chadwick, Faye's husband.  The flyer is long gone, but Lee pointed Philip out to me in a family group photo. The name is likely an alias, and I have not found any matching records of Faye or Philip.

I don't know what ever became of Philip, but Faye left Utah for Sacramento sometime before 1932.  This picture was actually taken on one of her visits home.  I imagine it was this trip when Blanche decided to try her luck in California.  Her second divorce is dated 1934.  Not much longer after this, Norma is listed in her grandparents' church congregation--as their daughter.

It was in the Coroner's inquest transcript of Blanche's murder that I found her alias--Dorothy Owens.  Someone identifying herself as a sister was interviewed at the time, and gave her name as Patsy Owens.  With these names, and an archivist's help, Blanche's mugshot as Dorothy was discovered at the Center for Sacramento History. Arrested with Blanche was a friend who used the alias Leta Owens. One look at her picture, and I could tell she was definitely NOT Faye.  I visited the Center myself, and searched through the mugbooks--I could not find anyone who resembled  Faye.  Since the girls came west in 1933, and Blanche was killed in 1937, there was no census taken in that time.  I did search City Directories, and found Dorothy and Leta, but not Faye.

As for the murder, Faye's account to the family and the coroner's inquest are vastly different.  Reading the inquest, it is clearly fiction.  Police corruption and vice are extensively documented in the newspapers of the time.  According to the family story, both Faye and Leta fled Sacramento immediately following Blanche's death.

Faye went to Hawaii.  She continued to return home on occasion, visits punctuated with trips to the bank to stash jewelry and cash.  Faye carried a handgun, and her Hawaiian husband ran a Tailor shop in Hilo, supposedly as a front for his heroin trade.  Faye's brother Lee could only tell me the husband's last name.  Another marriage document I have yet to locate . . .

In 1961, Faye came home to Utah after some trouble in Hawaii.  A friend had written home to Faye's mother, telling tales of outlandish behavior, public drunkenness, and morphine addiction. The friend said Faye had been taken to the hospital's psych ward.  The friend's letter, and those from Faye before this incident, came from an area notorious in Hawaii for prostitution and opium.

Lee drove his mother to Salt Lake to retrieve Faye.  They picked her up downtown-not at the airport. Her head was shaved and wrapped in a scarf to cover marks she said came from a fire. Supposedly the Tailor shop had burned down, and her husband died.  Before getting in the car, Faye pulled some papers out of her purse, crumpled and threw them to the ground. She set them on fire, and when they were completely destroyed, got into the car to go home.

Faye's erratic behavior continued, and she was admitted several times for treatment at the State Hospital.  I have read through her records, and not once did she give the true name of her Hawaiian husband.  Faye never had children, and died in 1968-taking her secrets with her.

I wrote to the Hawaiian Police department, and was rewarded with four accident reports and one incident report.  With these, I can place Faye and her husband in Hawaii as early as 1949.  I also confirmed that her story of a fire and dead husband was not true. I waited excitedly for the 1940 census, since I now know the street she lived on while married.  I searched the appropriate enumeration district and somehow cannot find her house number there, or any household that resembles hers.  Now I am waiting for the indexing to be completed.

Her lifetime of eluding detection has colored and thwarted my research.  I want clues to who really killed my great-grandmother in Sacramento, but without Faye's alias and their associates, I have only hypotheses. 

Rough Edges

This is Julia Ann Clark Harrington's trunk.  In 1860, she crossed the United States frontier as a widow, traveling with her adult children in a company led by her son-in-law Arba Lambson.  In this trunk she packed what she could not leave behind.  Julia was a registered midwife, and the one other piece of luggage she carried was a doctor's bag.  After arriving in the Utah Valley, Julia continued as a midwife--her legacy is commemorated in The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum.

A set of blue china dishes was brought to Utah in this trunk, some genealogical papers, and who can say what else.  What items would Julia have considered precious or necessary for this new life ?  She was not young or inexperienced--57 years old when she set out.  What balance of practical and sentimental influenced her choices ?  What experiences formed her expectations ?

All things considered, the trunk is in exceptional condition, preserved by a proud posterity.  The embossed surface is clear, colors still sharp. This is not to say there are no rough edges, dents, or scrapes to be found. A functional item such as this does not fulfill its purpose without incurring wear or damage-the broken strap is said to have happened on the original voyage.

As with most known ancestors-whether pilgrims, pioneers, or revolutionaries--their histories are told and retold.  Tragedies and victories alike are caressed by the repetition and become brilliant facets in the collective family memory.  Our predecessors take on heroic properties and set a standard to which we aspire.  But just as with this treasured heirloom, our grandmothers and grandfathers did not get their strengths or compassion without enduring human trials, nor were they pure saints.  I would feel hopeless to ever honor my forbears if I believed they never struggled with choices like mine, made mistakes, or never asked forgiveness for some careless hurt.

Julia's trunk is not fancy, but it's well built and true.  I'd like to think well built and true are lofty enough goals for me.

Pretty as a Picture

Lura Ann White Patrick-Grandma Patrick to me-was born in the frontier town of Mancos,Colorado in 1892. This is her Eighth Grade Graduation photo.

The family returned to Springville, Utah when Lura was ten years old. She married John Hulet Patrick and they raised eight children to adulthood. One baby girl died in infancy.

Her husband was a farmer, so Lura had plenty of work to do. She made her own soap from the fat rendered when her husband slaughtered pigs. This soap was used when she washed clothes--the old fashioned way--in pots of hot water she lifted, boiled, poured, stirred, and rinsed. She made bread daily, milked cows, and made butter. She traded this butter for goods and services--even paying the midwife in butter. She made the best pies.

She was smart and fair in teaching her children. Not one of them recalls her ever raising her voice in anger.

She excelled in gardening-cultivating roses and maintaining a large vegetable garden and fruit trees. She loved to browse through seed catalogs in her yearly preparations. Tagging along with her daughter (my grandmother)-I played in her garden while the grownups worked.

I treasure the memories of my childhood holidays--Thanksgivings at her house and Christmas Eve at my grandmother's house. I am willing to bet that every one of my first cousins would list in their top Holiday memories when Grandma Patrick gathered the kids of all ages around to read "Twas The Night Before Christmas".

Committed

This is The Utah State Hospital in Provo, Utah. When erected, it
was called the Territorial Insane Asylum. This building no longer stands,
having been demolished in 1981.

In my family history research, I have encountered no less than six individuals who were considered mentally ill or in need of confinement due to their unruly behavior. The one consistent factor in each of these cases was gender--so far I have only found women whose situations warranted family members signing them over to state care. Women who would not behave as expected, would not sit quietly at home.

Out of respect for more traditionally discreet, living relatives, I will refrain from pointedly identifying any of these women in this post. (Personally, after reading the files I have so far accessed, I feel only empathy for any past patient of a state-operated mental health facility.)

Of the six women mentioned here, four were patients at this hospital. Their commitments began as early as 1911; one benefited from medication and was released to her family, with three passing away still under supervised care, the last two in 1968. They were all committed by family
members who believed it was in the best interest of their daughter, sister, or wife to be treated by psychiatric professionals. Another young woman was only briefly signed into a slightly different institution--a school for hard-to-handle girls. Luckily for her, no one diagnosed her with any disorders that would put her on a mental ward, and she was released back to her family. The
sixth woman, was never placed in institutionalized custody, owing to a trust left by her father to be paid to whichever of her siblings housed and cared for his "beloved Margaret" .

Even today, science has only a modicum of understanding of the human brain and psyche. The root causes of depression and mental illness elude doctors, still. Medication, while widely available, is far from perfect. Movies have provided horrifying images of early insane asylums and the types of "remedies" given to patients. Salacious and extreme, many of these portrayals are rooted in fact.

What behaviors led to their commitment ? One girl suffered brain damage from a bout of spinal meningitis, three were diagnosed with schizophrenia--but today only one of those would fit the parameters of that illness. One misdiagnosis would now be known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (complicated by morphine addiction and alcoholism); the second case of misdiagnosed schizophrenia looks for all the world to be a case of heavy metal toxicity. The lucky girl with the trust fund predates much record keeping, so the possible cause for her developmental limitations escapes modern theorizing.

Over the years, psychiatry has been a forum for innovators, reformers, charlatans, opportunists, humanitarians, eugenicists, and experimenters. Influenced by social mores, religious beliefs, political platforms, and national budgets-public psychiatric care has fluctuated from custodial to moral treatment to genetic engineering to recreation therapy to simple sedation. More than one man found fame as a "medical genius" promoting worthless and harmful techniques backed by bunk research.

In the time periods experienced my family members listed here, the predominant accepted methods of treatment included electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT), insulin shock therapy(IST), hydrotherapy, and the administration of large doses of phenobarbital and thorazine.

ECT is fairly well-known and still considered useful in extreme cases of depression and catatonia. ECT evolved out of another treatment in which patients were administered seizure-inducing compounds. It was thought of as a sort of "restart" to brain energy . Eventually it was discovered
that the same, violent, bone-breaking convulsions could be produced much cheaper with electric current. At some point before 1960, anesthesia was introduced to the ECT process, and doctors took to calling ECT a "sleep inducing" process. Although anesthetized, the patients body would still arch and flail, the patient awakening to unexplained pain. ECT also causes permanent memory loss.

Insulin Shock Therapy consisted of patients being injected with large doses of insulin to induce coma. Five or six comas per week was the standard. Insulin draws sugar from the blood into muscles. The large doses of insulin stripped the blood of so much sugar that brain cells were starved of fuel, and would shut down. After 20 minutes to two hours of this near-death state, patients were drawn back to consciousness by administration of glucose. This treatment was accompanied by force-feeding through a stomach tube because the patients would invariably be unable to maintain healthy eating habits.

Hydrotherapy ranged from what could be considered a soothing soak in a warm tub to prolonged confinement in a tub of either hot or cold water-sometimes for days. Ice caps were made to facilitate long term application of ice to the head. Other variations included high force water jets
directed at the patient. This was described as "particularly rousing" for depressed patients. The most hated water "therapy" was the wet pack. A cold or hot water-soaked sheet would be tightly wrapped around the patient, with a wool blanket added around the wet sheet. Strapped to their
beds, they would be left there for hours or days.

Thorazine and phenobarbital figure prominently on the drug charts included with these files. They are both still used today, although phenobarbital is (and was) primarily meant to treat epilepsy, not schizophrenia. Thorazine today is administered in drastically smaller doses
than in the time referenced here. A seriously ill patient today would receive 100mg every 6 hours. Three of the women in my family were given 600mg-800mg daily, which at the time was nowhere near the highest doses some patients received of 5,000 mg. When the use of Thorazine was under review by a US Senate subcommittee, former patients testified to their lives in a "fog"
confined to a "drug prison", and being made into "an invalid, all in the name of mental health". The woman who likely was suffering from heavy metal toxicity was subjected to 209 ECT treatments, 47 Insulin Shock Treatments, and years of Thorazine dosage. Notes in the Nurse's Comments column of her daily charts show that each time she became "difficult", "argumentative", or "loud" she was sent for an electroshock treatment, always returning with "good recovery". Or just plain silent. I found these numbers listing her treatments included in a letter from one physician inquiring as to whether he could restart ECT treatment. Mercifully, the treatments were not resumed. When admitted, she denied hearing voices and doctors noted certain components of schizophrenia were not evident. AFTER years of "therapy" she spoke of hearing Japanese voices singing in her head. The constant strain on her body led to her death at age 39. The death certificate read "Cause of Death : Not determined-Presumably natural".

The notes from conversations with the woman showing signs of PTSD and opiate addiction illustrate the tenderness she still held for her mother and regret she had never had children of her own. She also died under supervised care-on home release.

As mental health historians point out, treatments were "the best care available at the time". A blessing in disguise, Utah's delay in erecting a building specifically for lobotomies resulted in none ever being performed at the hospital, as the procedure fell out of favor before the
facility was completed. However, mandatory sterilization was fairly common up to 1960. With the changing attitudes regarding therapy, a bowling alley and swimming pool were installed and later removed to make room for more beds. Patients went to dances and ward parties. Families came to visit, and patients went home for trial visits and work release.

Personally, in reading the history of mental health care, I am struck by the varying levels of compassion (or lack thereof) that has affected the course of psychiatry. The ability of some individuals to persevere. The disconnect some people are able to enact in order to separate themselves from other human beings and set in motion inhumane policies. I could go on and on
with my views of the social roots and implications of what is in these files.

But I'll just finish by quoting Bob Dylan :

"She aches just like a woman, but she breaks just like a little girl. "

Keeping and Sharing

This is Gloria. She is no relation to me. I met Gloria years ago, she has since passed away. When I met her, Gloria lived with her adult daughter, two great-grandchildren, a pug, and many cats. Siamese were her favorite. She was a unique person-and I mean that as a compliment.

Besides the menagerie, Gloria stockpiled things like VCR tapes-home video of her pets, she and her daughter compiled stacks of scrapbooks made from magazine pictures, and being legally blind (and maybe not so inclined), the house at times was a mess. Today, she would be called a hoarder.

At the time I met Gloria, I was married to a younger generation cousin of hers. Gloria was 78, so I thought she would be a good source of genealogical information. As we talked, Gloria showed me a treasure trove of old photographs, saved by her mother, Bessie. There were so many. It was like winning the lottery.

At that time I was working at a printing & design company. Gloria allowed me to take her photos and scan and save them to disks. There were many other people to whom these images were important. Eventually, I returned Gloria's photos and papers to her. First that job, then my marriage ended, and I moved out of the area. Months later, I went to visit Gloria. In my absence, some well-meaning people had come to Gloria offering help. They cleaned her house for her. Somehow, they had thrown away her photos and all of the genealogical papers with them. Although I was no longer tied to Gloria's family, I was devastated. I felt guilty-as if I had left the photographs unprotected. All those years of Gloria and her mother preserving their history were now gone.

Now having moved VERY far away from that part of the United States, I came across my original disks of Gloria's photos. I posted most of them on facebook. A friend of mine, who knew I was divorced and no longer "related" to the people in this family, wondered in a comment why I had kept the photos. Well, besides still claiming my two nieces from that dissolved marriage, I could not part with the pictures and their stories.

Recently, I was contacted by Gloria's granddaughter, Barbara. Through mutual facebook friends, she had seen the photographs I posted. She had never known digital copies had been made. I had passed around copies of the disks when I made them--but I didn't really know Barbara then, and so she never got a copy. Barbara had grown up in Gloria's home. After Gloria's passing, when the photos were nowhere to be found, she had thought they were lost forever. To be able to give back these treasures was wonderful for me.

When a grandmother of mine passed away, it took three years to sift through the contents of her home. Having survived the depression as a teenager providing for her younger siblings, she later found it impossible to throw things away. But among the fossilized food storage and enough chairs to seat a Sunday School, were amazing discoveries. Letters, diaries, artwork, handkerchiefs hand stitched generations ago, and of course photographs.

Just this week, someone shared with me some family photos I had never seen. I am grateful and supremely excited since she has told me there will be more to see.

So what's in that box under YOUR grandmother's bed ?

Great Expectations

With the recent proliferation of Genealogy-as-Television-Entertainment, I have been interested to watch other people being introduced to both their ancestors and The Search. Celebrities and "regular" people, alike.

Having been introduced to genealogy at an early age, and growing up in a community where Family History is a cultural pastime, I used to think everyone knew who their grandparents were, and their great-grandparents, too. When I moved out into the rest of the world, I found this wasn't the case. I have helped a few friends along the way to get started on their Family History.

Many people hope to find royalty or other famous historical figures on their tree. Others express a preference over which side of their family they wish to research. Both in "real life" and on TV, I have heard people say "I'm not interested in that side--they're no good".

I watched a storyteller named Chimamanda Adichie in a youtube video titled "The danger of The Single Story" (very worthwhile-just google the title). She illustrates how we tend to categorize people by just a narrow set of facts, and end up missing out on opportunities to learn from or be enriched by those around us.

Should I be mortified to find a photo of my 3x great-grandfather in prison stripes ? Should I be ashamed of the wild women on my mother's side ? Should I wave like a banner my Mayflower ancestor ? If my grandmother survived a winter in the depression by living in a grain silo, does that mean she never went to a dance with a boy ?

These facts about my ancestors are not their whole story.

One of the men in this picture was indeed my great-great-great-gandfather. He was imprisoned when the United States passed the law making polygamy illegal, and he would not denounce the wives he had already married. He also earned the respect of local Native American leaders in both frontier towns he settled. He composed poetry and hymns, though he could not spell, and could barely write.

The wild women on my mother's side ? The same ones who sent money home to their mother to buy a house? Or gave their father a car ? The one who drove back and forth every weekend for nearly a year to bring her hospitalized sister home to be with the family ? Sure they did things that shock me, but I proudly identify with their headstrong spirits.

That Mayflower pilgrim ? If he truly is my ancestor, do I chalk him as one of the "good guys" ?

I love getting to know my ancestors. Some are easily categorized as heroes, others need careful handling, but they are all real people to me. I find something in all of them that I would like to find in myself.

Mothers

Ten days before this past Mother's Day, my own mother died. It was not entirely unexpected, but it could have been years before it happened.

This picture tells more about my mother's life than any of the ones I used for her memorial collage.

In a spotless room, she is sitting as she was posed in a clean, white dress. Behind her, backed into a corner, with a most unhappy look on her face, is her mother.

The photographer was doubtless her stepfather. A hard-drinking, mean-spirited, Korean War veteran, he put them there in the corner.

My mother was raised by these two people, molded by their misbehavior, an injured bystander in their mutual betrayals, and the innocent victim of their unhappiness.

An only child, she had the best clothes, even her own credit card in High School-unusual I am sure in the mid Sixties. But alone, she had no one to defend her. No one to help bear the weight of the whispers of a small town.

She escaped, searching for peace. It is hard to find something you have never known. I know she will find it now.