The all-too-short life of Emory Dale Dickson

In my research into my wife's ancestors, I came across an interesting relative - an older brother of her Grandma Charmaine named Emory Dale Dickson.

Emory was the second child and first son of the marriage of Charles Dickson and Valda (Honold) (Camper) Dickson. He was born in LaPorte, Indiana, on 10 April 1929, just six months before the stock market crash later that year. He is listed with his parents on the 1930 and 1940 censuses in Indiana, with nothing remarkable in either one. He was just an ordinary kid, as far as those records show.

However, on 26 May 1947, just a month and a half after his 18th birthday, Emory passed away. According to his death certificate, the cause of death was congenital heart disease. What struck me was the duration of the illness - "life." He had been born with heart problems, and those problems eventually killed him. That put a completely different spin on his life - instead of being just a normal kid, maybe there had been hospital visits, or sleepless nights for mom and dad, or worries about when he went out to play. Open heart surgery wasn't available during his life (the first successful open heart surgery was in 1951), but I'm sure doctors did all they could for him at the time.

One cool thing I found was some actual pictures of him from 1940 and 1941. He would have been about 11 or 12, and was a student at Star City High School (which apparently included kids from a lot younger grades than 9th). They're not the best quality, but they are pictures of him. He has a goofy kid's grin, much like I see on my own sons' faces all the time. I wonder if he knew about his heart problems then, and had any premonition that his life would be so brief. I kind of hope not, so he could just enjoy being a kid, making the same memories and doing the same things other kids did.

You think you know someone, or Why one record isn't enough

I've focused a lot on some of my thornier lines the last few months, I wanted to try something a little different today, and look at some of my wife's relatives. My documentation on them is pretty sparse, mostly because I know her family is researching these lines. But that's no excuse to be lazy, so I set about getting some proof for these names, dates, and places in my files.

I started with her dad's maternal grandparents, Charles Dickson and Valda Mae Honold. I had a couple censuses with them, 1930 and 1940, showing the couple with their children, including two children of Valda's from a previous relationship. The 1940 census lists them both with the last name Dickson, while 1930 census lists them as Jacqueline and Ardelle Benford, leading to a normally reasonable conclusion that Valda's previous husband was a Mr. Benford. But I couldn't find any records for Valda marrying a Mr. Benford. So what was the deal?

I went after more records on Jacqueline and Ardelle, both of whom passed away years ago. Aside from that census record, the name Benford had no connection to Jacqueline that I could find. And for Ardelle, it showed up as his middle name, but never again as a last name. Instead, both of them showed in multiple records as Jacqueline and Ardelle Camper. Apparently their father was a man named Clarence Kyle Camper! For the 1930 census, my guess is when the household member gave the names of the children, the census taker heard Ardelle Benford, and assumed Benford was his surname, and hearing that Jacqueline was his full sister, gave her the same name, instead of their original surname Camper.

Once I had that bit of info, things fell into place. I found some newspaper articles about Valda requesting a divorce from Clarence Camper, on grounds of "extreme cruelty." I've often wondered what constituted cruelty in earlier times, and one article about Valda and Clarence's divorce provides interesting insight. The examples of cruelty Valda provided included refusing to pay household bills, contribute to the support of his wife and two children, but mostly it was his refusal to sleep or stay in the house with Valda. Instead, he slept in his car or on a chair in the kitchen. Valda filed for divorce in March 1927, and was granted the divorce on 24 October 1927. The timing of the divorce is very interesting, as both Charles and Valda's obituaries stated they were married on 29 October 1927, just five days after the divorce, and neither obituary mentions Clarence Camper or the Camper surname at all. This marriage must have been a better fit, because they remained married until Charles' death in 1985.

Clarence Camper went on to marry at least two more times, to Edna Montgomery in 1951, and Elma Montgomery in 1964. He gained a stepson named Burton Montgomery from one of those marriages, and apparently had another daughter named Hazel. Interestingly, his obituary also names Jacqueline and Ardelle as his children, but gives Ardelle the surname Camper (Jacqueline was listed as Jacqueline Easthan, and I still don't know where that surname is from, as the only spouses I've seen for her are Prosser, Metcalf, and Hedstrom).

It just goes to show the importance of collecting as many documents on our ancestors as we can. Getting one document is a good start, but there may be errors (like this Camper-Benford mixup), or it may tell only part of the story.

Terrible coincidences - a mother and daughter

I had some time tonight to do my own genealogy (yay!) and wanted to look into my wife's 3rd-great-grandmother, Augusta (Gast) Smith. I'd gotten a message recently from a DNA match to my father-in-law, who had some info on Augusta I wanted to corroborate, so I went digging.

I found that I didn't have a death certificate for Augusta, just an extraction from some La Porte County, Indiana health records with her death date. While looking for an actual death certificate (which I hoped would name her parents), I found her mentioned on the death certificate for her daughter, Olive Myrtle (Smith) Bloomhuff. Olive died on May 10, 1930 at the young age of 46. The cause of death was listed as: "death post operative: mid-thigh amputation. Elephantiasis lymphangiectatica." The words I could understand were awful enough - having a leg amputated at the mid-thigh due to some form of elephantitis-type disease. I did a little more digging, and if I'm reading things correctly, the disease she died of was filariasis, a disease caused by an infestation of filarial worms in the lymphatic system. The worm larvae are often transmitted by mosquito bites, and the infection directly leads to elephantiasis. Talk about an awful way to go. No info is given on the duration of the disease, so I can only hope she didn't have to suffer long.

Having found this information, I wanted to find Augusta's death certificate and see if she had a less traumatic cause of death. After looking through Indiana death certificates for a bit, I found hers. Augusta passed away on February 16, 1910 at the age of 47, very close to the age her daughter was when she died. The cause of death was difficult to make out, but thanks to the eagle eyes of Judy Russell, I learned how Augusta passed away. Her cause of death was listed as: "hemorrhage during operation to remove a tumor fr Large Fibroid and large Ovaries" (with nephritis, a kidney inflammation, contributing). Immediately I saw the similarity - she went in for an operation, which ultimately caused her death. A mother and daughter, similar in age, similar cause of death. Two tragedies, decades apart, yet so similar it's eery.

To be clear, I have nothing but respect and admiration for those in the medical profession (including my brother and sister). Having spent time in hospitals, I don't know how those who choose that profession can handle doing what they have to do, including sometimes seeing a patient die, not to mention having to be the person that has to pass that news to the patient's family. I have seen firsthand how difficult their job can be, and the effort, energy, and devotion that is put into efforts to save a person's life. It just surprised me to see that a mother and daughter left this world under circumstances that were so similar. I wonder what Augusta and Olive's family thought of those circumstances, and how they dealt with the losses.