A Shot Rang Out and Tore Apart a Family

One day a shot rang out and Lizzie Tolles was wounded. In 1895 a Douglas County, Oregon, grand jury determined there was enough evidence to charge Edward "Ned" Trent Bridges, Jr. with assault with the intent to kill. Justice seemed as slow then as it does today because the final judgment in the case was not rendered until 1899.

Douglas County, Oregon, Courthouse; courtesy of Genealogical Society of
Douglas County

Perhaps in preparation for being found guilty, Ned Bridges and his brother-in-law, Enon Lilly, did some fancy land trading. Ned sold his land to Enon and then, in turn, Enon deeded the land to Ned's wife, Mary Etta (Lilly) Bridges. My supposition was these transactions were to ensure the land could not be taken as a result of Ned's legal troubles.

Ned must have held out some hope that he would not have to go to jail because he was enumerated in the 1900 census with Mary and three of their children. Their son, Edward Trent Bridges, III, must have died sometime after his birth in 1891 and before 1900 because he was not included in the enumeration of the family. But sometime after the census, Ned did a runner.

He simply disappeared.

He and Mary had married on 7 January 1886 in Mercer County, West Virginia. Ned was son of Dr. Edward Trent Bridges, Sr., and Sarah Pope Claytor, daughter of Harvey Claytor[1] and Adeline Walker. He was 25 years old and Mary was 15. She was the daughter of Johnson Keatley Lilly and Alabama Gore. Ned and Mary had four children in Mercer County before Ned's grandmother, Adeline (Walker) Claytor, died. She made her grandson, Ned, Jr., the executor of her will. The Walker and Claytor were families prominent Virginia families and owned large plantations. Though the Civil War wrecked havoc on their financial position, there was still plenty of money.

Ned's inheritance enabled he and his family, along with his brother-in-law and his family to move to Oregon. The brothers-in-law bought a tract of land together in Douglas County on 9 May 1891.

Ned and Mary's oldest daughter married Authur O. Parks in 1907. Mary and the two youngest children, Bruce and Lucy, lived at 441 Fowler Street in Deer Creek, Oregon. Mary worked as a dressmaker to support her family. Her children also contributed to the family coffers as Bruce worked for the railroad as a fireman and Lucy was a clerk for a dry goods establishment.

And Ned, well, he was still alive and kicking. His runner had taken him almost 700 miles south to Butte County, California, where he boarded with Nathaniel and Clara Burns and worked as a hired man for a blacksmith. I don't know if he kept in touch with Mary and his children or not, but Mary had clearly had enough of her absentee husband. She was granted a divorce on 24 March 1919.

News-Review, 24 March 1919; courtesy of Newspapers.com

Ned Bridges, Jr. died on 22 June 1928 in Butte County, California, and was interred in the Old Oroville Cemetery.

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[1] Harvey Claytor (1800-1871) was my first cousin five times removed. This is the second new branch I've been able to add to my family tree as a result of DNA matches with other people who are related to Harvey Claytor, including:

In Celebration of Black History Month (or More DNA Discoveries)
Savior of the USS Indianapolis Survivors

DNA Discoveries: Who Was Ernestine "Stina"?

In the ongoing, never-ending quest to learn more about my mother's ancestors, she graciously provided a sample for DNA testing less than a year before her death in 2014. When the results were available, the only matches she had that were not very distant cousins were her three children. Since her death, six of my eleven maternal first cousins have tested and another million people have had their DNA at Ancestry. So Mom's match list continues to grow.

Many of my maternal relatives share several matches with people who had a woman named Ernstine "Stina" (Seler) Beich in their family trees. Stina was married to Carl August Beich (1846-1927). Both had been born in what is now Poland and consistently listed their place of birth as Poland or Russia (the borders were ever changing). They considered themselves to be German. Stina or her husband must be related to my Mother and other Lange-Schalin relatives. So I gathered all the information from source documents I could find.

Carl August Beich and Ernestine "Stina" (Zander) Beich;
courtesy of Ancestry member racarroll1

I believe Ernestine to be the youngest child of Johann Gottfried Zander and his wife Anna Susanna Wilde. They were my three times great grandparents as I descend from their daughter Juliane Zander (about 1835-1906), who married Gottlieb Schalin. 

Willamette Valley Death Records; courtesy of Ancestry.com

Ernestine was born in 1846, married and had eight children before she and her family immigrated to Canada in 1893. Carl August Beich and two of the older children, Gustav and Pauline, arrived in Baltimore on 3 June aboard the S/S Weimar. The ship's previous port of call was Bremen, Germany. Stina followed on 10 October aboard the S/S Stubbenhuk.[1] With her were her children, Edward, Adolf, Rudolf, and Hulda. Only two children remained in Russia, their oldest daughter, Amalie "Mollie," who had recently married Heinrich "Henry" Konkel, and their son Julius, who was 11 years old.

Carl Beich returned to Russia in 1899 and returned aboard the S/S Tave with their son Julius, daughter Mollie, her husband, and their three oldest children. They arrived in New York City on 27 April 1899. When the 1900 census was enumerated, Stina, Carl, and their four youngest children lived in Caledonia Township, Wisconsin, where Carl owned a farm. Their son, Julius, also worked on the family farm.

On 17 November 1908 Rudolf, homesteaded land in Bruderheim, Alberta, Canada. Two years before, he had homesteaded another piece of land but abandoned it because the land "wasn't was good represented to me." By 1916 Stina and Carl lived in Bruderheim. None of their children lived with them and Carl's occupation was listed as retired farmer.

Declaration of Abandonment for Rudolf Beich; courtesy of Ancestry.com

Stina and Carl traveled to Salem, Oregon, several times in their later years to visit their children who lived there. Perhaps it was on a similar trip that Ernstine (Zander) Beich died as her death occurred on 20 August 1917 in Salem. She was interred in the Lee Mission Cemetery.

Carl continued to live in Bruderheim and traveled to see his children in Wisconsin. He died on 11 October 1927 in Merrimac, Wisconsin and was interred in St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery.

Their children:

1. Amalie "Mollie" Beich born 1871; died 25 October 1945; married Heinrich "Henry" Rudolf Konkel
2. Gustav Beich born 1874; died 1964; married Anna Behnke
3. Pauline Beich born about 1877; died 1908
4. Eduard or Edward Beich born about 1881; died before 1900
5. Julius Beich born 31 December 1882; died 4 March 1959; married Ida A. Messer
6. Adolf or Adolph Beich born 12 January 1886; died September 1962; married Grace Staudenmayer
7. Rudolf or Rudolph Beich born 20 February 1887; 23 March 1972; married Anna Krause
8. Hulda Beich born 18 December 1891; died 19 June 1973; married 1) Charles Edward Haughey and 2) Samuel Edward Alexander

Solving Stina's correct surname and her parents connected my Mother, siblings, cousins, and me to nine new cousins!

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[1] Some of my Schalin family and their fellow church members immigrated to Canada on the S/S Stubbenhuk the same year.

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness: Saved from Goodwill

At last summer's Lange Cousins Reunion, my 94-year-old Aunt Katherine (Walter) Lange asked me to "look into" her father's family. She knew his name and the name of his father, but that was pretty much it. The Walter family was extremely interesting to research and I was able to trace the family back to Nicola Walter (c1720-1804). He immigrated to Philadelphia with his wife and children in 1751 aboard the Rotterdam from the Rheinland-Pfalz area of what is now Germany. I was even able to locate a book entitled Nicola Walter and His Descendants by Helen B. Walter and Robert J. Walker. A wonderful fellow Ancestry.com member sent me a digitized copy.[1] I was able to send Aunt Katherine a copy of that book, a report about the Walter family from my database, and several blog posts I wrote about interesting family events.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by another Ancestry.com member. She had found a photograph at Goodwill in Oregon, which she purchased. She did her research and discovered I had Ethel Marie (Callan) Andrews and her daughter, Betty Jane, in my family tree. She messaged me and asked if I would be interested in the photograph. Of course I would! And several days later the photograph arrived in my mailbox.

Ethel Marie's parents were William J. Callan and Mabel E. Spencer. Mabel's parents were James D. Callan and Virginia Marie Walter, who was a great granddaughter of Nicola Walter, making her daughter, Ethel, my aunt's 2nd cousin once removed.

Photograph of Ethel Marie (Callan) Andrews and her daughter, Betty Jane Andrews

Typed on a sticker affixed to the back of the photograph:
February 1930 - Ethel Marie Andrews holding daugher, Betty Jane - 10 mos. old,
Shore Rd., Brooklyn, NY

Ethel Marie Callan was born on 10 December 1905 in Washington, District of Columbia. Sometime before 1930 she married Byron Franklin Andrews and they lived in Brooklyn, New York, when the 1930 census was enumerated. Byron worked as an accountant. In 1940 their family moved to Queens. Byron Andrews died on 31 January 1989 in Loudoun County, Virginia. Ethel Marie (Callan) Andrews died on 12 January 1999 in the same county. They had two children:

1. Betty Jane Andrews born about 1929 in New York
2. Byron Franklin Andrews born 12 April 1933, died 28 October 2004

While I am thrilled this lovely photograph was saved from Goodwill, if a closer relative of Betty Jane Andrews (maiden name) would like the photograph, I am more than happy to send it. It is framed. I have also digitized it and added it to my online family tree.

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The full text of the book has also been microfilmed by the Family History Center and the microfilm may be ordered and sent to your local center.

"Oh, Come on! We Can Look"

When my Polish researchers sent me a marriage license for the daughter of my four times great grandfather Marcin (or Martin) Schalin, it was new information. I hadn't previously known about Anna Rosina Schalin. I learned she married Christoph Arnholtz on 24 January 1816 in Maliniec, Kolo, Wielkopolskie, Poland. That sent me to the Master Pedigree Database maintained by the Society of German Genealogy in Eastern Europe (SGGEE) to see if Anna and Christoph were included and found them. The database indicated they had a son, also named Christoph, born about 1826 in Police, Kolo, Wielkopolska, Poland.

Son Christoph married Anna Rosalie Buech on an unknown date and they had three known children. Then the trail ran cold at SGGEE. However, after entering the names and birth dates into my family tree, I discovered their son, Carl Ludwig Arnholtz's wife, Rosalie Juliane Schechinger, lived with her son, Adam, and his family in Strathcona, Alberta, Canada in 1911. There was no mention of her husband, Carl Ludwig, on the census form, even though it indicated she was married. I found the passenger list for Adam's family but not his mother, who did not appear to travel with him. Adam immigrated to Canada aboard the S/S Bremen in 1907, leaving Bremen, Germany on 11 May and arriving in Quebec on 22 May.

Adam wasn't the only son to leave Russia. His brother Friedrich, still single, also left and settled in Portland, Oregon, about the same time according to his naturalization papers. Once in the United States, he went by Fred. He married Ernestine "Tinnie" Ganske sometime before 1912. They had six children children, including daughters Esther Nettie and Evelyn Mae who married two brothers named George and Raymond Rueck.

In 1987 a long article about George and Raymond, their spouses, and three other siblings and their spouses was published in The Oregonian on 10 April entitled, "Commitment upholds long-lived Rueck marriages." When Raymond and Evelyn (Arnholtz) Rueck celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary that year, they became the fifth Rueck sibling to pass the half-century mark.

Five Rueck siblings and their spouses; article courtesy of the Oregon
Historical Society

There was one passage in the article that made me laugh out loud:

Another reason the five marriages has [sic] lasted is, Ella May Rueck said, "We don't have our eyes on other men."

"Oh, come on! We can look!" joked Evelyn (Arnholtz) Rueck.

I just loved her sense of humor; she reminded me of my Dad and his telling his children after we were married we could look but couldn't touch. It was Rule No. 1. Another one of his adages was, "Just because I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the menu," about giving pretty girls a second look. Then he would quickly remind us of his first rule! He had all sorts of pearls of wisdom that I still live by today.

I find it hard to believe an 1816 Polish marriage registration led me to an article in Oregon newspaper over 170 years later and half a world away.

How I got there:

Christoph Arnholtz (c1787-unknown) married Anna Rosina Schalin (c1792-unknown)[1]
>Son Christoph Arnholtz (1826-unknown) married Anna Rosalie Buech (1829-unknown)
>>Son Carl Ludwig Arnholtz (1848-1936) married Rosalie Juliane Schechinger (1849-1937)
>>>Son Friedrich "Fred" Arnholtz (1889-1948) married Ernestine "Tinne" Granske (1893-1933)
>>>>Daughter Esther Nettie Arnholtz (1912-2006) married George Rueck, Jr. (1910-1996)
>>>>Daughter Evelyn Mae Arnholtz (sister of Esther) married Raymond Rueck (1914-2003)

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Anna Rosina Schalin was my three times great grand aunt

52 Ancestors #3: Tough Life, Tough Lady

Ancestor Name: Lela Ann (HARBERT) Amsberry (1873-1952)

Lela Ann Harbert was born on 13 March 1873 in Mason County, West Virginia, to Elbert Francis and Sarah Ellen (Shriver) Harbert. The Harbert family had lived in what became the State of West Virginia since Virginia was a British Colony.

Lela was the third of nine children and her father was a farmer. Like many of his contemporaries, he decided to migrate west and homestead land in Custer County, Nebraska. In April 1887 he followed his friend and neighbor, Francis Everett Amsberry, who had moved his family to Nebraska by renting a half of a box car in 1885.

But life out west did not go well for the Harbert family. Lela's mother died in 1888 when her youngest daughter was just 17 months old and Lela Ann was 15. The younger children were farmed out to willing friends and the older ones were left to fend for themselves. Their father was no longer much of a presence in their lives.

On 25 March 1889 in Custer County, 28-year-old James Martin Amsberry, son of Francis Everett Amsberry, married 16-year-old Lela Ann Harbert. According to a poem he wrote about his wife in 1913, he fell in love with her two years before when he went back to West Virginia to collect debts from people who owed his father money.

In two separate claims James acquired 240 acres of land in Custer County and by 1900 he owned the farm and a printing business. He and Lela had six children between 1890 and 1907.

The James Martin Amsberry Family circa 1896.
James is holding Tinsie Ethel, Roy Frances and Carl
Everett are standing and Guy Matthew is on Lela's lap;
photo courtesy of Ancestry.com member ChrisIller.

In 1902 Lela's brother, John Harbert left his wife, who he married in 1896, and young son. Lela was incensed after a visit from her brother. She wrote to his estranged wife, Jennie:

"He told me he intended to get loose from you as soon as he could but when he investigated he knew he had not a ghost of a chance...He has been running around with Emma Bennett, a woman of disreputable character and also has two illegal children...to parade around the street with that dirty thing...He has acted so mean with us about the rest he owes us that I won't keep no secrets for him. I am done with him...I guess if he lands in the pen, it won't be any worse disgrace than we are enduring now anyhow...I want him to have to pay you about $50 a month, and have to keep on the wrestle to earn it and not have so much to spend with some other woman about like Em Bennett or pour it down his neck.[1]

In 1915 James and Lela's two oldest children, Carl Everett and Roy Francis, and their wives moved to Oregon. A few months later Lela, along with her two youngest children, Hugh Martin and Vivian Louise, followed her older children to Oregon, leaving her husband behind. James followed the next spring after selling his newspaper, The Miller Sun, a public auction. I get the sense James didn't have much business sense as the family always seemed to struggle financially.

Amsberry Men: Father, James Martin
Amsberry on the left and his oldest sons,
Carl and Roy to the right circa 1916;
photograph courtesy of Ancestry.com
member cfm1151

Times were hard for the family in Oregon. They survived on apples the first year. They built a wooden platform and erected a tent and that's where they lived through the winter before Lela's husband arrived. That summer the men built a primitive house. Lela's daughter Vivian described what happened next in her book, My Mother's Daughter:

"The next few years are rather mixed in my mind. Apparently Mama became tired of carrying water uphill from the spring, and eating whatever wild game my brothers could trap and retrieve ahead of the coyotes. So without fanfare, she bundled me up and took me off again into an unknown world. I saw my Dad only a few times after that.

Mama never seemed to be out of a job...Another time she took care of an invalid lady in Portland. I remember how upset she became when Dad called on her there. I couldn't understand what was going on, but not terribly long after that Mama started talking about a divorce...She was repelled at the sight of Dad and equated her life with him as a form of slavery thus befalling every married woman. She grouped all the male gender together as having a single purpose in life, that of 'using' the female counterpart for his pleasures. The very odious overtones of her remarks scarred me for life. For years I thought of sex as a dirty word and something to be hidden in a closet!"

Lela Ann (Harbert) Amsberry date unknown;
courtesy of Ancestry.com member
Brian_Harbert

Lela Ann (Harbert) Amsberry lived a sometimes tragic and always difficult life but I think of her as a tough woman mostly for warping her youngest daughter's view of men, marriage, and sex. She seemed a cold, unforgiving woman. Her life perhaps marred by tragedy and what for her was an unhappy marriage. Sadly, her husband loved her until he died in 1939, likely at the Oregon State Hospital for the Insane where he had been an inmate on or before 1930. He wrote in his diary, "One thing if it is the Lord's desire, I hope to be restored to the mother of my children, the wife of my youth." 

This is my entry for Amy Johnson Crow's 52 ancestors in 52 weeks challengeoptional theme Tough Woman.

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[1]Excerpted from Echoes from the Blockhouse: The Thomas Harbert Family Saga by Brian and David Harbert.

Lela Ann Harbert was born on 13 March 1873 in Marion County, West Virginia, to Elbert Francis and Sarah Ellen (Shriver) Harbert. The family moved to Mason County, West Virginia, before 1876 and then to Custer County, Nebraska, in 1887. She married James Martin Amsberry on 20 March 1989. They had six children between 1890 and 1907. In 1915 Lela Ann moved to Oregon with her two youngest children. She divorced her husband between 1920 and 1930. He died in 1939 and she died in 1952. They are buried beside each other in the same lot in Multnomah Park Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. So James got his wish and was reunited with "the mother of my children, the wife of my youth."

Dead Poets Society

Miska Muska, Mickey Mouse

Do you remember the Disney television show, "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?"

Robert Wayne Amsberry, my 6th cousin, was a radio personality in Portland, Oregon, during the early 1950s with a daily half-hour show, "Uncle Bob's Squirrel Cage." He was musically inclined, a natural entertainer and had a flair for voice characterizations. A friend of his invited him to come to California and join Disney Studio's music department. He was so enthusiastic about the assignment and did so well performing the songs, that he was invited to join the cast of of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show the first season. He was one of the least-known of the three adults in the regular cast.

Bob Amsberry in his soda jerk role. Photo courtesy of OriginalMMC.com

Bob described his role on the show as that of a utility infielder. He wrote the skits and many of the songs, handled the guest stars and other acts and performed some of the character parts.  His best songs were considered to be Super Goofy Shuffle, Doin' the Donald Duck Walk, and Dry Gulch Cowboy. During the second season he was the Blue Team leader. Season three was his last season on the show as his work didn't find much favor with Walt Disney.

After leaving the show in 1957, Bob moved back to Portland. On November 10th of that same year, he was killed in a single car accident at the age of 29, leaving a wife and two children behind.