This is why you don't tease dogs

I've been doing professional research for a few years now, and it has been an amazing and fulfilling career so far. I love being able to help people find answers to their family history questions and mysteries, and in turn I've been able to make some great discoveries in my own family. One downside, however, is I sometimes end up treating those rare moments when I get to do my own family research a bit like a they're a research project - pick something to search for, frantically search for everything I can find as fast as I can find it, quickly document it, and move on. I don't often give my findings time to sink in and affect me. 

 I've been taking advice from a genealogist I follow named Heather Murphy, and slowing down a bit on my research. Starting with the intention of going slow is a few feeling, and I really like it. So today I set out to find some stories about my second-great-grandmother Maria Zitzmann aka Mary Hoffman. I'm super lucky to have a boatload of pictures of her and her family, but I still don't have too many stories about her and her life. I was hoping to find something about her marriage in 1919 to Christ Hoffman, but my searches at first turned up empty. Then a new idea hit me - find her address, and search for that. I went looking in city directories before her marriage, and found her in 1917, living at 1315 Cobban Street in Butte. Interestingly, the directory lists her as the widow of a man named Smith. That's really curious, as her daughters would later both state in their Social Security applications that their father was a man named Chris Schmidt, though DNA evidence points to them being half-sisters.

Now that I had her address, I searched through newspapers to see if anything came up, and I found a few really cool things! 

First I found a photo of my grandma Blossom's cousin Ellen Weyhe (listed as Ellen Whyte) taken when she was about a year old. It's a studio photo, with the name Dore Studio in the bottom right corner, with Ellen all dressed up in a cute little dress complete with baby shoes. 

Then I found two articles about something I'd never heard of, and my dad hadn't either when I asked him. Apparently soon after their marriage, Mary and Christ Hoffman owned a rather large dog and kept it in their yard. The first article said the dog had severely bitten the right hand of "the little Lohman boy," the son of Ed Lohman. A search of the 1920 census showed me this was Raymond Carrigg, the 13-year-old stepson of Edward Lohman, who also lived in Butte. The article went on to say the Assistant City Attorney filed a complaint against Mary and Christ's dog, saying he had appeared "to prove himself vicious" and notified them to not send the dog out of the city, as that might give "him an opportunity to bite some one else." The tenor of the article made it sound like the Hoffmans' dog was running loose in the city and just attacked the kid. The next few paragraphs talked about the dangers of the local dog population, and even suggested a law be made restricting the number of dogs citizens could own, based on their type of residence and the purpose of the dogs' being there. 

The next day, another article continued the story, but with significant changes to the story, starting with the headline - "Dog Is Acquitted Of Being Vicious Brute." Several of the Hoffmans' neighbors testified in court that the dog was kept in an enclosed yard. What's more, the pickets of their fence were too close together for the dog to be able to stick its head out between them, so that the only way for anyone's hand to be exposed to the dog would be to put their hand over the fence. Not only that, a number of boys (apparently including Raymond Carrigg) had actually attacked the dog by throwing sticks and stones at it. Mary Hoffman had been out at the time of the attack, and returned home to find her yard "littered with sticks, stones and other rubbish and that the coal scuttle was smashed, evidently by the boys who were pelting the dog." Needless to say, the case was then dismissed. 

I could almost see in my mind a group of youths having fun at the dog's expense, and then Raymond, goading him on by sticking his hand above the fence and thinking himself out of reach, gets bitten by the dog they'd been antagonizing. I kind of feel bad, but I feel he brought it on himself. It sounds like the dog was not injured in the attack, but I hope the Hoffmans at least got their coal scuttle replaced. I feel bad for the Hoffmans in finding their dog had been so cruelly treated, and grateful to the neighbors for sticking up for an innocent animal. 

PS - I looked up Raymond Carrigg's draft registration from 1942, which would mention any defining physical characteristics like scars, missing fingers, etc. Nothing was mentioned, so apparently he healed just fine from the dog bite. 

Military Monday - Don't mess with a soldier's mom

One of the great things about doing genealogy is finding stories about your relatives and the people they knew. Sometimes in researching an ancestor, something about a relative of theirs that I'm not directly related to will catch my eye for some reason, and I'll suddenly want to know all about that person. Such was the case last night.

I was going through another email from MyHeritage, sorting through the latest batch of record matches. Most of these were for Robert George Seadin, the first husband of Elsie Craddock, my great-grandmother Edna Craddock's sister. One of the records was the obituary of Elta (Hanifen) Wenger. Elta was the daughter of Daniel Hanifen and Mildred Seadin, Robert's older sister. That would make her Elsie's niece by marriage. The obituary listed a large number of family members as her survivors - her husband, Private First Class Merle Wenger, her parents, her brother and his family, her mother-in-law Mrs. Silvio Castiglioni, grandmother Mrs. Seadin, the names of her aunts and uncles (including Mr. and Mrs. Robert Seadin), her husband's father (listed at the bottom of the list, whereas his ex-wife was at the top), and all of her husband's siblings and their families. Family was obviously a very big deal for this family.

It struck me that Merle's parents were listed so far apart in the obituary, and that his mom was only mentioned (as was usual for the time) as Mrs. Silvio Castiglioni. I wanted to find out her first name, if only to complete Merle's immediate family in my records, so I went hunting. I soon found out that his mom, Irene Lucile Gibson (no relation to yours truly) was married four times! Her first marriage was to Fritz Wenger, and he was apparently the father of all her children. They divorced around 1941, and Irene married Jack Morello. They were married for less than two years when Jack died in March 1942 of endocarditis. Irene married again in December of that year, to Silvio Castiglioni. I also found another marriage record for Irene, in 1947 to a Robert Lomas. In it, her previous marriages were listed as "divorced (1) widowed (2)". I couldn't tell if that meant her first marriage was the divorce and her second ended with her being widowed (which meant she was leaving out a marriage, which I've seen happen several times), or that she was divorced once and widowed twice. I also wanted to find out what became of Silvio, so I went searching. What I found startled me.

I found a death certificate for Silvio, giving his date of death as 2 January 1945. So it seemed her marriage info to Robert Lomas did indeed mean she was divorced once (Fritz Wenger) and widowed twice (Jack Morello and Silvio). But what startled me was the cause of death - "inquest pending - due to shock and hemorrhage". The death was also labeled a homicide. Having Bertha Beilstein's story still fresh in my mind, I wanted to find out exactly what happened. I went to MyHeritage, as their newspaper collection is awesome and easily searchable. I soon found out what led to Silvio's death.

Merle was serving in the US Army at the time, but was home on an extended furlough to get some medical attention. While he was home, he received a phone call from his mother, saying her husband Silvio was beating her, that he had left the house and she was afraid to be alone. He went over to check on her, and then left to get his wife and car. When they returned to his mom's house, the door was locked. Merle shook the knob and asked who was there. Silvio came to the door with a pistol, and pointed it at Merle. Merle went for the gun, and the two fought over it, destroying windows and furniture in the process. The gun fired twice, one bullet hitting Merle in the right foot. Merle was able to get the gun from Silvio, and yelled for his wife and mother to get out of the house. While he checked to make sure they were safe, Silvio ran to his bedroom and came back - with a shotgun. How Merle had the nerve and courage to do this I don't know, but he stood his ground, firing once over Silvio's head, and told him to drop the shotgun. Silvio refused, and started shouting and waving the shotgun wildly. Merle shot Silvio in the side, stopping him. Merle stayed there until police and an ambulance came, and explained to the officers what had happened. Silvio was taken to a hospital, where he died a few hours later. The incident was still pending the inquest when the death certificate was issued, though I'm surprised no one updated it a few days later when the matter was resolved. A coroner's jury (who knew there was such a thing?) exonerated Merle of blame for the shooting.

I have to say I was very impressed by and proud of Merle for his heroism and bravery. He stepped right in to help his mother, and when a gun was pointed at his face, he didn't back down. He fought on despite personal injury (and he may have still been recovering from whatever malady prompted the extended furlough to begin with), and did what had to be done to protect his family. I don't know anything about his military service and what he did in the army. But I bet the last thing on his mind during his furlough was a life-and-death struggle with his stepfather when he was supposed to be resting and recovering. They say the World War II generation is the "greatest generation", and when I read of stories like this, it proves to me why they have that name - they earned it over and over again.

Learning about Mr. Ed

I've been on a Beilstein kick this weekend. I was looking through some of the records I have on my 2nd-great-grandmother Philena Emily "Lena" Beilstein, using Rootsmagic 7's Web Hints feature to link my tree to records in FamilySearch and MyHeritage. Pretty awesome little feature, I must say! While linking records to her entry in my family tree, I noticed that my data on her 2nd-to-last husband, James Edward Layfield, was a little sparse. My grandma told me that Ed, as he was known, was the husband she was happiest with, though I don't know exactly why that was (didn't think to ask what made her happier with him than the others). So I thought I'd do some digging and see what I could learn about him.

Lena and James Edward Layfield

 

I found he was born in Detroit about 1874. I'm not sure who his parents were - one record says they were Edward and Elizabeth (Williams) Layfield, and another says they were Charles and Annie Layfield. I spent a little time looking, but couldn't confirm either set of parents, so for now James' parentage is unknown. He worked much of his life as a cook, including some time spent working for a hotel in Butte, Montana, but also apparently (like so many others) worked in the mines in Montana. He was of medium height and build, with blue eyes and brown hair. By 1909 he had moved to Montana, as that's when he married Agnes Browning, daughter of D.H. Browning and Jane Garner. They had been married for 15 years, thought with no children I could find record of, when Agnes passed away.

A few years later, he and Lena were married in August of 1932. They lived on Utah Avenue in Butte while Ed continued to work as a cook. Then, in early 1937, Ed became ill and a short time later, passed away on March 14, 1937. He and Lena had been married just 4 1/2 years.

If Lena and Ed were only married such a short time, where did my grandma get the information or idea that Lena's happiest marriage was to Ed Layfield? Part of me wonders if it was because (as far as I can tell) Ed was the only husband Lena lost to death. I still don't know what became of Jack White, her 4th husband, or Charles Roper, her 6th and last husband (though I suspect he may have died while married to Lena, as she's listed in a 1948 Butte directory as Mrs. Lena Roper). Theirs wasn't her shortest marriage, and I don't really have any other details about it than that one statement from my grandma. But whatever it was about their marriage, it was enough to make an impression on Lena's granddaughter, who passed it on to me.

One interesting side note. Ed's first wife, Agnes Browning, was born in Utah around 1858. That would have been just 11 years after the Mormons first settled the Salt Lake valley, which got me wondering if she was Mormon. It also clicked in my head that Jonathan Browning, inventor/improver of some types of rifles, was Mormon, and I wondered if there was a connection. A quick search of FamilySearch showed that, indeed, Jonathan Browning was her grandfather's brother. It looks like Agnes never joined the church though. That gives her something in common with Lena's first husband, David Briscoe, whose parents were also Mormon and apparently raised their kids in the church, but David never joined from what I can tell. Who knows, maybe Lena and Ed talked about their quasi-Mormon former spouses?