Abigail (Faulkner) Kirkpatrick: 52 Ancestors #70

Abigail Faulkner, my 2nd great-grandmother on my direct paternal line and #17 on my Ahnentafel chart, was born 14 October 1808 in Maitland (part of what was then Douglas Township), Hants County, Nova Scotia.¹

Map of Hants County, N.S., 1878.² Maitland (in blue, NE corner) was split off from Douglas Twp. ~1835.

Abigail married Jabez Bradbury Kirkpatrick (later Kirk) on 13 Nov 1825,³ probably in Warren, Maine.

Although I have, elsewhere on this blog, named Edward and Margaret (Morrison) Faulkner as Abigail's parents, recent closer examination of my late brother's research files indicates that this was an early tentative hypothesis he had made, and that there is conflicting evidence he had not resolved. However, it seems certain that her father must have been one of the sons of Robert and Hannah (Faulkner) Faulkner, who were found in Douglas Township in an 1817 census of Hants County.⁴

Two other Faulkners near in age to Abigail are found in Warren in the mid-1880s, and are very likely her siblings. Olive Faulkner, born ca 1804 in Nova Scotia, married Philip Montgomery of Warren about 1824. The Montgomerys were closely linked with the Kirkpatricks: Philip and Olive named two of their sons Jabez K. and Silas K. (almost certainly for Jabez himself and his deceased brother), another son William married Jabez's daughter Eliza Jane, and both men were shipwrights who were almost certainly associated in the ship-building business. Also, a William Faulkner, born between 1800 and 1810, appeared briefly in Warren, in the 1840 census and in 1839-40 as a co-owner (with G. Boggs) of the brig Maumee, built by Philip Montgomery. None of these three Faulkners have been "placed" in a known Hants County Faulkner family, but the names given to several of Abigail's and Olive's children do suggest a close association to the Edward and Margaret (Morrison) Faulkner noted above. It's possible that Edward's brother William, who is supposed to have died unmarried, actually had a family after all.⁵

Abigail and Jabez had five children:

1. Silas (1827-1909), m. Sarah C. Sukeforth (my great-grandparents)
2. Jane Elisa (1829-1909), m. William H. Montgomery
3. Samuel L. (1831-1873), no known marriage
4. Martha A. (1834-1834)
5. Harriet F. (1835-?), m. (1) John Anderson, (2) Thomas P. King

After raising their own children, Abigail and Jabez adopted the newborn daughter of her (presumed) sister Olive's sister-in-law, who died five days after the baby's birth. (Baby Georgianna Oliver was also the first cousin of Abigail's son-in-law William Montgomery, husband of Eliza Jane.)⁶

Abigail died on 4 October 1891, and was buried beside her husband Jabez, who had died seven years before, in Newcomb Cemetery in Warren.⁷

Gravestones of Jabez and Abigail (Faulkner) Kirk, Newcomb Cemetery, Warrent, Knox County, Maine

     

Gravestone of Abigail Kirk

Rest of inscription uncovered

My descent from Abigail (Faulkner) Kirkpatrick:

• Jabez Bradbury Kirk(patrick) and Abigail Faulkner
• Silas Kirk and Sarah Sukeforth
• Chester F. Kirk and Mary Milliken Hodsdon
• Roger Kirk + Kathleen Marie Murphy (my parents)

 

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SOURCES

1. Cyrus Eaton, Annals of the Town of Warren, in Knox County, Maine, Second Edition (Hallowell, Maine: Masters & Livermore, 1877), p. 567. Eaton's source for her date of birth is not given, but was most likely calculated from the age at death on her gravestone.
2. A.D. & W.B. Roe, "County of Hants, Nova Scotia," map from Atlas of the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion of Canada (Philadelphia: Roe Brothers, 1878), p. 55; digital image, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (http://www.davidrumsey.com : downloaded 28 Jan 2019).
3. Eaton, p. 567.
4. Marshall K. Kirk, "Early Faulkners of Colchester and Hants Counties, Nova Scotia: Three Families" (typescript with handwritten notes, ca 2001); Marshall K. Kirk Research Files, privately held by Kathy Kirk McCracken, Virginia Beach, Virginia. 
5. Ibid.
6. Kathy Kirk McCracken, "52 Ancestors: #21, 'Great Grand Aunt' Georgianna: Real or 'Honorary' Aunt?," blog post, Pine Trees and Pedigrees (http://pinetreesandpedigrees.blogspot.com/2014/05/52-ancestors-21-great-grand-aunt.html : 27 May 2014).
7. Newcomb Cemetery (Warren, Knox County, Maine), Jabez B. Kirk and Abigail Kirk gravestones, read and photographed by the author, 14 Aug 2012. 

Jabez Bradbury Kirkpatrick, Shipwright: 52 Ancestors #66

Jabez Bradbury Kirkpatrick was born 10 May 1800¹ in Warren, Lincoln County (now Knox County), Maine, the eldest of nine children of John Kirkpatrick 2nd and Nancy Starrett. Jabez was named after his great-great-uncle, Col. Jabez Bradbury, once commander of the garrison at the fort that had protected the settlement on the St. George River during the French and Indian Wars.²

On 13 November 1825, he married Abigail Faulkner, daughter of Edward and Margaret (Morrison) Faulkner of Nova Scotia.³ Their 59-year marriage must have been an unusually long one for that era to prompt Cyrus Eaton to note in his Annals of Warren that in 1875,

The fiftieth anniversary or golden wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Jabez Kirkpatrick was celebrated on the evening of Nov. 13th, by a gathering at their house and presentation of gifts.⁴

Jabez and Abigail had five children:

1. Silas (1827-1909), m. Sarah C. Sukeforth (my great-grandparents)
2. Jane Elisa (1829-1909), m. William H. Montgomery
3. Samuel L. (1831-1873), no known marriage
4. Martha A. (1834-1834)
5. Harriet F. (1835-?), m. (1) John Anderson, (2) Thomas P. King

1850 U.S. census, Warren, Lincoln Co., Maine, Jabez Kirk household

When their youngest was 14, a new baby joined the family. Elizabeth (Montgomery) Oliver, the sister-in-law of Abigail's sister Olive – and a close neighbor on the road to Andrews Point – died when her daughter Georgianna was only 5 days old, and the Kirkpatricks adopted the newborn.

By 1850 Jabez, like some of relatives, had dropped the "-patrick" from his surname and was henceforth known as Jabez B. Kirk.⁵ Unlike the others, who had petitioned the legislature for a legal name change, his family's change was informal.

Jabez was a shipwright⁶ and carpenter.⁷ Among the ships he built was the brig E. W. Denton, in 1851.⁸ (There were certainly many more, but in most cases the builders are identified only by surnames, e.g., Burgess & Kirk, Creighton & Kirk, so I'm not sure if this was Jabez or another member of the family.)

At various times Jabez served as a town selectman (1834-41) and assessor (1832-34, 1837-38),⁹ and in July 1838, he was charged by the town of Warren with taking a census for the purpose of distributing Federal funds refunded to the states. The population was 2,143.¹⁰

Jabez died at the age of 83 on 26 February 1884 in Warren, and was buried in Newcomb Cemetery.¹¹

Jabez B. Kirk gravestone, Newcomb Cemetery, Warren, Maine

My descent from Jabez Bradbury Kirkpatrick (my great-great-grandfather):

• Jabez Bradbury Kirk(patrick) and Abigail Faulkner
• Silas Kirk and Sarah Sukeforth
• Chester F. Kirk and Mary Milliken Hodsdon (my paternal grandparents)

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SOURCES

1. Cyrus Eaton, Annals of the Town of Warren, in Knox County, Maine, Second Edition (Hallowell, Maine: Masters & Livermore, 1877), p. 567.
2. Ibid., pp. 58, 115. 
3. Ibid., p. 567.
4. Ibid., p. 480.
5. 1850 U.S. census, Lincoln County, Maine, Warren, p. 3 (penned upper left), p. 167 (stamped), dwelling 17, family 18, Jabez Kirk household; digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 10 Dec 2010).
6. Ibid.
7. 1860 U.S. census, Knox County, Maine, Warren, p. 317 (penned), dwelling 304, family 319, Jabez Kirk household; digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 6 Mar 2012).
8. Eaton, p. 677.
9. Ibid., pp. 659, 661.
10. Ibid., p. 341.
11. Newcomb Cemetery (Warren, Knox County, Maine), Jabez B. Kirk gravestone, read and photographed by the author, 14 Aug 2012. 

Mary Milliken (Hodsdon) Kirk: 52 Ancestors #65

Mary Milliken (Hodsdon) Kirk, date unknown

My paternal grandmother was introduced here four years ago, in Part 4 and Part 5 of my series on my grandfather, Chester F. Kirk. Being his fifth (and last) wife, and outliving him by 26 years, it's understandable that only a small part of her story was told then. Herewith, the rest of her story as I know it.

Mary Milliken Hodsdon was born 16 Mar 1882 in Andover, Maine,¹ the third of six children and second daughter of Silas Marchant Hillman Hodsdon and Kate Maria Rand. Mary's unusual middle name came from her great-aunt, Mary (Brister) Milliken, sister of Kate's mother Dolly (Brister) Rand.

There appear to be few records of Mary's early years. She grew up on a farm near Andover and completed one year of high school. We get only one glimpse of Mary with her family in the 1900 census before her marriage. At 18, she is the oldest child still at home, and employed as a chambermaid.² Had she met Chester by the time of the census, in mid-June? Probably yes; he was living in Andover, a boarder in a household several pages away in the enumeration.³

1900 U.S. census, Andover, Oxford County, Maine, Marchant "Hodgman" household

Lewiston Daily Sun, 3 Oct 1900

When I wrote about Chester, I noted that I had not found a marriage record for him and Mary, and that's still the case – but I have finally discovered when that marriage supposedly occurred. The "Lewiston and Auburn" column in the 3 October 1900 edition of The Lewiston Daily Sun carried a terse announcement that "The marriage of Dr. Chester Kirk of Lewiston and Miss Mary Hodsdon of Bangor [sic] occurred September 24."⁴ Family lore says that Chester and Mary took a trip to New York City and on their return, Chester announced that they were married; Mary's mother had her doubts, but evidently decided to take Chester's word for it.

Mary (Hodsdon) Kirk and Cecil

Their attempts to begin a family got off to a rocky start: Mary apparently had two stillborn children⁵ before giving birth to Cecil Mortimer on 25 Jun 1903.⁶ Cecil's death from meningitis in late 1905⁷ devastated her, and 12 years would pass before she had another child. It's unlikely that the addition to the household in 1906 of Chester's elderly father Silas, and Hazel and Kenneth, Chester's nearly-grown children from his second marriage, would have helped the situation.

Perhaps around this time she began to contemplate her potential future in a marriage, very possibly childless, to a man 25 years her senior, with a less-than-stellar record of financial responsibility and a penchant for horse-racing. Whatever her motivations, Mary began to build what would become a thriving career as a dressmaker.⁸

Lewiston, Maine, city directory, 1910

The earliest facsimile Lewiston city directory I can find is for 1910, where "Mrs. Mary Kirk" is listed as a dressmaker working from the family's home at 27 Elm Street.⁹ But I believe she began her business earlier; a database extract from the 1908 directory has the cryptic notation "(Lunt & Kirk)" under occupation, probably indicating some kind of apprenticeship or partnership with a Mrs. Lilla M. Lunt, who was also listed with that notation at a different address.¹⁰ (Although there are plenty of women listed in that directory with the specific occupation of dressmaker, so the odd notation of what appears to be a business name is puzzling.) She is consistently listed in later directories (through 1947) as a dressmaker,¹¹ but oddly not in the census until 1930 – in 1910 and 1920 she ostensibly has no occupation.¹² She taught a dressmaking class for the Women's Christian Association¹³ in 1910 and was an active member of the business community as a member of the Business and Professional Women organization¹⁴ in 1922. In a family memoir, one of her nieces relates:

Aunt Mary had a dressmaking shop at her home.... She used three rooms of her large house for the business and employed two or three other women to work with her, making elegant clothes for women who went to Florida in the winter.... Her customers... were the wives of doctors, bank presidents, Lewiston lawyers and judges.... She worked with velvets and satins, making lovely evening gowns and fancy clothes...¹⁵

Mary's father March Hodsdon died in 1911, and soon her mother Kate joined the Kirk household (Silas had died in 1909, and Hazel and Kenneth married in 1907 and 1910 respectively, so presumably the Kirks had a little room to spare), where she remained until her death in 1940. This was perhaps fortuitous, because Mary's long period of childlessness would end in 1917, and "Grammie Hodge" was there to help out when Mary, two days after her 35th birthday, gave birth to a daughter, Geneva Alice.¹⁶

Lewiston Daily Sun, 30 Jul 1919

About a year and a half later, she would find she was once again pregnant. This was no doubt the impetus for Mary and Chester to finally purchase their own home in lieu of the series of rentals they had occupied to this point. Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say, for Mary to purchase her own home: the deed to 30 Ware Street was in Mary's name alone,¹⁷ perhaps another sign that she was preparing for a future that, no longer childless, would almost certainly include a long widowhood (Chester was now past 60).

That deed was signed on 31 October 1918, and the family moved in exactly one week later, occasioning the first day ever spent by little Geneva away from her mother while she oversaw the move.¹⁸ Six months later, they welcomed their son, Roger Marchant,¹⁹ in the new home, with Grammie Hodge assisting at the birth.²⁰

The Kirk house at 30 Ware Street, Lewiston, Maine, ca 1950 (Mary's grandson on front lawn)

The two children were raised in the house at 30 Ware Street,²¹ with close ties to their mother's Hodsdon and Rand kin. Not only did their grandmother live with them until just before her death in 1940, but holidays, family reunions, and other occasions provided opportunities for visits with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Geneva's baby book reveals her "first visit at Rumford in August 1917,"²² while Roger's records his "first trip on [a] train" in June 1920, to Rumford and Roxbury.²³ These excursions were undoubtedly to visit Mary's sister Sadie (Hodsdon) Hall in Rumford. (I haven't yet figured out who was living in Roxbury.)

Excerpt from Roger Kirk baby book, p. 17

Lewiston Daily Sun, 28 Nov 1929 and 23 Nov 1932

In 1929, the Kirks spent Thanksgiving day in Rumford with Sadie and her family,²⁴ while in 1932, they hosted Mary's half-brother Walter Rand and his wife for the same holiday.²⁵ Sadie's daughter Ellie lived with the Kirks and helped out with the children from 1921-23 while attending Bates College (only a few blocks away), and many photos attest to the Hodsdon-Rand reunions of the late 1920s held at Roxbury Pond and the Farmer's Hill homestead in Andover.²⁶

Rand family reunion, Farmer's Hill, Andover, Maine, ca 1927 (Roger and Geneva Kirk, front row, right)

Mary's children grew to adulthood, graduating from the city high school in the mid-1930s. Geneva continued to live at home until she graduated from Bates College in 1937 and took a teaching position at Norridgewock High School,²⁷ while Roger went to work as an auto mechanic.²⁸ Both children were undoubtedly at home with their parents when Chester, "in failing health for a long time," died in July 1939, two months shy of 82.²⁹

Lewiston Daily Sun, 25 Nov 1942

Mary wasn't completely alone. Aside from her mother, who died in 1940, Roger remained at home until enlisting in the Army in 1942, and marrying Kathleen Murphy the following year. He wrote letters home and returned home to visit his mother as often as he could get leave, and the couple even lived briefly with Mary after Roger's discharge in 1946 before moving first to an apartment, and then to their own home in Mechanic Falls where they raised four children – Mary's only grandchildren, as Geneva never married.³⁰

Geneva, Mary, and Roger Kirk, 1941

For her part, Geneva returned home in 1940, working for several years as an instructor at the local hospital's school of nursing. Though she taught high school in Augusta from 1943 to 1949, it's likely that she spent her summers at home and came home on weekends as often as she could, especially after the wartime gas rationing ended. In 1949 she came home for good, teaching history at Lewiston High School for the next thirty years, and becoming both companion and caregiver to her mother.³¹

Mary (Hodsdon) Kirk, ca 1940s?

Mary, always what was known as "a fine figure of a woman," gradually became morbidly obese, eventually able to move about her house only with the aid of a walker and unable to navigate stairs. By the time of my childhood in the 1950s, she seldom left the house. Occasionally Geneva would take her on an excursion in her car, which she could get to by way of the side porch to the attached barn where the car was garaged. In summer, they would drive to Mechanic Falls for an afternoon visit with Roger and his family, though Mary would remain in the car in the driveway – two steps to the back porch prevented her from coming inside – while we children would come out and sit in the car to "visit" with her.

Because of her physical limitations, most of my memories of my grandmother are of visits to her house: Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners at Grammie's house were a standard ritual (Grammie still did the cooking), and my father would frequently drive us to Lewiston for a brief visit of an evening or weekend throughout the year. On occasion, one of us children would get to stay over for a longer visit. Though my grandmother no longer worked as a dressmaker, she still used her skills to make clothes for me and my dolls. I was fascinated by the way she could whip up a doll's dress from scraps, without using a pattern. (For that matter, I suspect my clothes were patternless as well.)

She also loved to assemble jigsaw puzzles (there was an enormous pile of them in the attic and I would get to venture up there to select one to work on), taught me to play dominos and several kinds of solitaire (shuffling the deck with an intriguing mechanical shuffler – similar to the one pictured at left, if I recall correctly), and knitted constantly, turning out mittens and scarfs and hats for us, friends, other relatives, and no doubt for charity as well.³²

Lewiston

Mary died 6 May 1965 in Lewiston's Central Maine General Hospital,³³ and was buried two days later with her husband and their infant son Cecil in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.³⁴ Her maiden name was unfortunately misspelled "Hodson" on the monument.


 
Children of Chester F. Kirk and Mary Milliken Hodsdon:

1. Stillborn (?) child, ca 1901
2. Stillborn male child, 1902
3. Cecil Mortimer (1903-1905)
4. Geneva Alice (1917-2007), unmarried
5. Roger Marchant (1919-1979), married Kathleen Murphy (my parents)

Kirk family monument, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Auburn, Maine

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SOURCES

1.  "U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007," database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 Jul 2015), entry for Mary Milliken Kirk (Mary Milliken Hodsdon), SSN 007-46-7608. I have been unable to find Mary's birth in the Maine Vital Records databases, though several of her siblings are recorded.
2. 1900 U.S. census, Oxford County, Maine, Andover, ED 177, sheet 7B,  dwelling 162, family 164, Marchant "Hodgman" household; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 Mar 2012).
3. 1900 U.S. Census, Oxford County, Maine, Andover, ED 177, sheet 4-A, dwelling 83, family 85, Fred Russell household; digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 10 Dec 2010).
4. "Lewiston and Auburn," marriage notice for Dr. Chester Kirk and Miss Mary Hodsdon, Lewiston Daily Sun, 3 Oct 1900, p. 2, col. 1.
5. “Maine Vital Records, 1892-1922,” database and digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 18 Aug 2014), Stillborn (male) Kirk birth, 8 Mar 1902, 2nd child. No record has been found of an earlier birth, implying a previous, unrecorded, stillbirth.
6. Ibid., [Cecil] Kirk birth, 25 Jun 1903.
7. Ibid., Cecil M. Kirk death, 9 Nov 1905.
8. Family lore says Chester was "unable to work" after sustaining some injury in a sulky mishap, and Mary took up dressmaking to support the family. However, the stories give no time frame for the accident and injury. Moreover, an accident involving injuries to such a prominent local man would surely have occasioned one or more newspaper articles, and so far none has surfaced. Chester maintained his Canal Street office and stable until at least 1920, continuing his veterinary practice to some extent from his home after that, and was still ice-racing until at least 1927. So I doubt that this purportedly disabling accident could have occurred early enough (if at all) to account for Mary's dressmaking ventures.
9. 1910-1911 Resident and Business Directory of Androscoggin County, Maine (Auburn, Maine: Merrill & Webber Co., 1910-1920), entry for Mrs. Mary Kirk, dressmaker, 27 Elm, p. 440; database and digital images, "Maine City Directories," Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 Aug 2014), under "Lewiston".
10. "Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Maine, Directory, 1908," database, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 1 Sep 2014), entries for "Kirk, Mrs. Mary" and "Lunt, Mrs. Lilla M."
11. Resident and Business Directory of Androscoggin County, Maine (Auburn, Maine: Merrill & Webber Co., 1912-1920), entries for Mrs. Mary Kirk, dressmaker; database and digital images, "Maine City Directories," Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 Aug 2014), under "Lewiston". Also, Manning's Lewiston, Auburn ... (Maine) Directory (Boston: H.A. Manning Co., 1930-1947), entries for Mrs. Mary Kirk, dressmaker, or Mary M. Kirk, dressmkr; database and digital images, "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 May 2014). 
12. 1910 U.S. Census, Androscoggin County, Maine, Lewiston, ED 18, sheet 16-B (handwritten, overwriting 17A), p. 3547 (penned), dwelling 173, family 236, C F Kirk household; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 Aug 2014). 1920 U.S. census, Androscoggin County, Maine, Lewiston, ED 17, sheet 19B,  dwelling 299, family 357, Chester F Kirk household; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 Aug 2014). 1930 U.S. census, Androscoggin County, Maine, Lewiston, ED 1-20, sheet 2B,  dwelling 42, family 47, Chester F Kirk household; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 20 Feb 2012). 
13. "W. C. A. Annual," Lewiston Daily Sun, 24 May 1910, p. 3, col. 3.
14. "BPW Whist," Lewiston Evening Journal, 18 Oct 1922, p. 6, col. 5.
15. Kate Hall Franklin Chadwick and Nancy Franklin Earsy, A Home-Made Life: Memoirs of Kate Hall Franklin Chadwick (Lexington, Mass.: YSRAE Publishing Co., 1995), p. 16.
16. “Maine, Birth Records, 1621-1922,” database and digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 Aug 2014), [Geneva] Kirk birth, 18 Mar 1917.  
17. Androscoggin County, Maine, deeds, 289:199, Frank H. Wiggin to Mary M. Kirk, 31 Oct 1918; digital images, Androscoggin County Registry of Deeds (http://androscoggindeeds.com : accessed 27 Oct 2018). Also, "Realty Transfers," Lewiston Daily Sun, 30 Jul 1919, p. 10, col. 3.
18. A Record of Our Baby's Life (New York: Dodge Publishing Co., 1912), baby book for Geneva Alice Kirk, p. 13; Kirk-Murphy Family Collection; privately held by the author, Virginia Beach, Virginia. The entries in this unpaginated baby book, in Mary (Hodsdon) Kirk's handwriting, are in varying inks, and appear to be mostly contemporary with the events recorded. An entry on p. 13, under the printed heading "Notes," reads "First day spent away from mother, Nov 7, 1918, at Mrs Warrens, while moving to Ware St." 
19. “Maine, Birth Records, 1621-1922,”  Roger Marchant Kirk birth, 1919.
20. Our Baby's Record (New York: Dodge Publishing Co., 1909), baby book for Roger Marchant Kirk, p. 11; Kirk-Murphy Family Collection; privately held by the author, Virginia Beach, Virginia. The entries in this baby book are in Mary (Hodsdon) Kirk's handwriting. Many relatively non-specific dates (e.g., month and year only), and sequences of entries in the same ink, indicate that many if not all of the entries were not contemporary with the events recorded. 
21. Photo of Kirk house at 30 Ware Street, Lewiston, Maine, ca 1950, Kirk-Murphy Family Collection; privately held by the author, Virginia Beach, Virginia.
22. Geneva Kirk baby book, p.13.
23. Roger Kirk baby book, p. 17.
24. "Thanksgiving in Lewiston-Auburn," Lewiston Daily Sun, 28 Nov 1929, p. 6, col. 5.
25. "Thanksgiving," Lewiston Daily Sun, 23 Nov 1932, p. 7, col. 5.
26. Group photo from Rand reunion, ca 1927, Farmer's Hill, Andover, Maine, in Geneva Kirk photograph album, Kirk-Murphy Family Collection; privately held by the author, Virginia Beach, Virginia.
27. "Geneva A. Kirk," obituary, Lewiston Sun-Journal, 5 Nov 2007, p. A5.
28. 1940 U.S. census, Androscoggin County, Maine, Lewiston, ED 1-28, sheet 2A, household 34, Mary M Kirk household; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 2 Apr 2012). 
29. "Dr. Chester F. Kirk," obituary and death notice, Lewiston Daily Sun, 14 Jul 1939, p. 20.
30. "Thanksgiving Diners in Twin Cities," Lewiston Daily Sun, 25 Nov 1942, p. 6, col. 1. Also, personal knowledge of the author.
31. "Geneva A. Kirk," obituary.
32. Preceding three paragraphs, personal knowledge of the author.
33. "Mary M. Kirk," obituary and death notice, Lewiston Daily Sun, 7 May 1965, p. 2.
34. Mount Auburn Cemetery (Auburn, Androscoggin County, Maine), Kirk family monument, read and photographed by the author, 13 Aug 2012. 
35. All otherwise unattributed photos,  Kirk-Murphy Family Collection; privately held by the author, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Christmas Heirlooms: 52 Ancestors, #60

This one is overdue ("Heirloom" was last week's prompt), short, and not about a new ancestor. But I already blogged about my one real heirloom – an Ingraham mantel clock – in part 2 of my series about my grandfather in the original 52 Ancestors challenge. So I decided to write about some special mementos from my mother.

Each Christmas, my father would bring home a Christmas tree. Somehow it always turned out to be just a little bit too tall for our nine-foot living room ceiling and had to have the trunk trimmed a few inches. And then we'd decorate the tree. ("We" being Mamma and us kids. Daddy got the tree and set it up. The rest was up to us. There was a clear division of labor.) I don't think "themed" trees had been thought of back then, and if department stores had aisles of color-coordinated ornaments and lights, I never saw them. The boxes of decorations that had been there forever (as far as I was concerned) were brought down from the top shelves in the shed, and we began.

There was a strict order to follow. The lights went on first, ancient strings with huge bulbs and aluminum star-shaped reflectors. A few bubble lights, about 6 inches long. I'm pretty sure none of them were UL-approved. Next came the tinsel garlands and paper chains, wound around the branches between the lights. Then it was time for the glass and paper ornaments: large ones first, distributed evenly around the tree, and then the small ones to fill in the spaces. Last was the strands of tinsel or "icicles," which we were supposed to install one by one all over the tree. (We usually ended up stuffing handfuls onto the branches.) Some of that tinsel was real metal (possibly lead) foil, slowly replaced over time with static-clingy plastic ones.

The most precious of my mother's treasured ornaments were the small silvered glass balls – less than an inch across – in red, green, blue, silver, and gold. Scarce in wartime, they had been bought for Mamma and Daddy's first Christmas together, and were to be handled with the utmost care. But she also proudly displayed the ornaments that her children made for her at school, like these "bells" made from paper egg carton wells, painted and sprinkled with glitter.

The silvering in the balls is pitted and dulled with age, and some of the delicate wire hangers have been lost and replaced by clunky new ones, but Mamma was still hanging them on a downsized tree long after we had grown up and left home. I now have one of the two boxes, as well as the egg-carton "bells," in my own ornament collection. How many generations does it take to make an heirloom, anyway?

(This post was inspired by the "Heirloom" prompt for Amy Johnson Crow's 2018 "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge.)

(Not) In the Census: 52 Ancestors, #57

This week's (OK, last week's – I'm running a little behind) 52 Ancestors prompt is "In the Census." I thought about writing about my ancestors who aged erratically (or, in some cases, not at all) from one census to the next; or the ones who were double-enumerated at one time or another; or some of the folks who turned up in unexpected places. But what really fascinates and frustrates me is the folks who don't turn up at all, even when you know exactly where they should be.

My primary examples of this phenomenon are close to home, indeed – my father and his sister in the 1920 census, and my mother's entire family in 1930. These anomalies occurred in the same city: Lewiston, Maine.

Where's Your Daddy?

My father was born in May 1919, and would have been less than eight months old when the census enumerator came around in January 1920. His sister, born in March 1917, was just under three. So where, in the dead of a 1920 Maine winter, would an infant and a toddler be, other than with their mother?

And yet, the census¹ reports the only members of the Kirk household (which is exactly where expected, at 30 Ware Street) to be my grandparents, Chester and Mary, and Mary's widowed mother, Kate Hodsdon (the children's only living grandparent, by the way, so they weren't off visiting granny and grampie). Even supposing that the family wasn't at home, and a neighbor answered the enumerator's questions, it hardly seems possible that any of the neighbors could have failed to mention two children in a family that had been at that address for over a year.

1920 U.S. Census, Lewiston, Maine, Chester F Kirk household

I have searched the entire enumeration district page-by-page, just to make sure they weren't in some addendum on a later page. I have also searched the Ancestry index for any Roger born in 1919 or any Geneva born in 1917, in the entire city of Lewiston, on the off chance they were with a relative that day (they did have an adult, married half-sister in the city) and got recorded with the wrong surname. Nope, those kids just aren't there. I have to assume this was a case of the enumerator leaving something out while making the final copy.

Ten years later, both children are right where they should be, with their parents. On the other hand, my mother's entire family is nowhere to be found.

The Missing Murphys of Middle Street

Bill and Glenna Murphy, with their daughter Kathleen (my mother), moved from Berlin, N.H., to Lewiston, Maine, before May 1923, when their second daughter, Theresa, was born. They moved from one rental to another for several years (they're listed at three different addresses in the 1924, 1926, and 1928 city directories, and a newspaper article indicates there was a fourth somewhere along the line), before settling permanently in a tenement apartment at 124 Middle Street.

1930 Lewiston, Maine city directory, William G. Murphy entry at 124 Middle Street

The first concrete evidence of their residence at 124 Middle is a listing in the city directory "for the year beginning October 1930."² This probably means they could have moved there after the April census date. However, I have another piece of evidence from a somewhat unusual source: a life insurance application for William G. Murphy, dated 19 Feb 1935, giving his current residence as 124 Middle St., Lewiston, Maine, and stating that he had lived there for 6 years. That would place his move to that address in early 1929. I'm inclined to consider this accurate, because someone who couldn't recall the exact year would be more inclined to round it off mentally and say, "I think it was about 1930 – say, 5 years ago."

So in 1930, I'm expecting to find the Murphys at 124 Middle Street. Only trouble is, they're not there. 124 is occupied by the Rudolf Parent household, and furthermore they're listed as owning – not renting.³ (The 1930 city directory, however, places them at 104 Ash Street, about five blocks away.) A page-by-page search of the ED, once again, turned up no William Murphy family. I backtracked to the Murphys' last known previous address – 17 Webster Street – but they weren't there either. And city-wide searches on Ancestry for anyone named Murphy, Glenna, Kathleen born 1921, or Theresa born 1923, failed to turn up any sign of a misindexed family.

1930 U.S. census, Lewiston, Maine, sheet 13A, for 124 Middle Street. Not William G. Murphy!

In this case, I'm forced to conclude that the enumerator somehow missed them completely. They may have been a second, overlooked household at 124 Middle (a possibility, since nearly every directory around this time period lists two families at that address), or perhaps it was simply a matter of timing – i.e., they moved before they could be enumerated at a previous address, but after Middle Street had been counted. Or ... there may be another explanation.

There are some definite oddities about that Middle Street census, if you compare it to the numerical street listings in the 1930 city directory. The previous page (sheet 12B) lists several families at 118 Middle (including the "Hodgon" [sic - Hodgdon] and Banville famiies which are also listed there in the directory), and then goes on to list a household at 120 and 122, followed on the next page (sheet 13A) by the Parent household at 124. This is then followed by six households at 128 and one each at 130, 132, 134, and 136; then a line is drawn and the rest of the page (and the following page) is Ash Street. And going back one more page, sheet 12A claims to cover 178, 174, and 166 Middle Street, followed by 158, 154, and 150 Ash Street – but sheet 12B starts with 150, 151, and 148 Middle Street.

1930 Lewiston, Maine directory numerical
listing for Middle Street (part)

What's wrong with this picture? Well, according to the numerical directory listing,⁴ after 118 there is a plumbing supplier at 120 (no individual householders); no 122 at all; two households at 124 (McEachern and Murphy); and the Dingley School (technically it has an Oak Street address, but it takes up the whole corner lot so there are Middle Street addresses there). And after Middle crosses Oak Street, the next house number is 143. In other words, there don't appear to be any such addresses as 128-136 Middle Street. As for the supposed Ash Street households on sheet 12A, many of the names appear in the directory at the same or nearby numbers on Middle Street, which seems to indicate that the enumerator simply wasn't keeping track of where she was! If that's the case, then I have to question whether the supposed Middle Street listings on sheet 13A – including the one for 124 Middle – are really for Middle Street at all. It may be that 124 Middle was missed completely, and the 124-136 households are for some other street entirely.

All things considered, it would appear that both my father and my mother, long before they met, were completely missed in the census as children, a mere mile – and 10 years – apart.


 (This post was inspired by Amy Johnson Crow's 2018 "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge.)

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SOURCES

1. 1920 U.S. census, Androscoggin County, Maine, Lewiston, ED 17, sheet 19B,  dwelling 299, family 357, Chester F Kirk household; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 Aug 2014). 
2. Manning's Lewiston, Auburn ... (Maine) Directory for the Year Beginning October 1930 (Boston: H.A. Manning Co., 1930), p. 240, entry for William G. Murphy; database and digital images, "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 Apr 2012). 
3. 1930 U.S. census, Androscoggin County, Maine, Lewiston, ED 1-26, sheet 13A,  p. 153 (stamped), dwelling 201, family 247, Rudolf Parent household, labeled as 124 Middle Street; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 Feb 2018). 
4. Lewiston, Auburn ... (Maine) Directory ... 1930, p. 501, numerical street listing for Middle Street; database and digital images, "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 Feb 2018). 

What Were the Chances? A Tale of DNA

About two and a half years ago, I took an AncestryDNA autosomal DNA test, and linked the results to an Ancestry member tree. I looked over my matches now and then, but practically all of them were in fourth cousin range and beyond, most of them had no tree or only a private one, and few of the ones who did have public trees had any apparent connections to mine. There were a couple of matches around second cousin range and a bare handful at third, but I hadn't gotten around to investigating them further.

Then, a few weeks ago, two new matches, both female, popped up at the very top of my match list – still in 2nd-cousin territory (I have no full first cousins), but the highest yet. The top match (500 cM) was administered by the second match (299 cM), so they looked pretty much like a mother and daughter. And based on one of our shared matches (one of the few which I had been able to identify from their posted tree), the match had to be through my paternal grandfather. Trouble was, the surname was completely unknown to me, and the tree attached to the top match was private.

Even taking into account the possibility of an outlier at the extremes of observed shared DNA ranges, 500 cM is almost certainly in the class that includes first cousins once removed, half-first cousins, great-great-aunts, and half-great-aunts, with a second cousin just barely possible. Anyone at the great-aunt level or older would have been deceased long before atDNA testing began. And, since I have no full first cousins and my grandfather had no siblings who lived to adulthood, I have no (full) first cousins once removed or second cousins on his side.

That leaves half-first cousins. Well, that had potential; before his fifth and final marriage to my grandmother, my grandfather fathered five other children (that I know of) with four different mothers, all before the turn of the 20th century. Thus I had four half-uncles and a half-aunt who could in theory have given me half-first cousins. However, the reality is a bit more restricted in scope:

• Half-aunt Hazel – four sons with children; one daughter, unmarried and childless
• Half-uncle Kenneth – married twice, no children
• Half-uncle Leonard – one adopted son, no biological children
• Half-uncle Chester – no record after birth registration, assumed died as child
• Half-uncle Vinal – died as an infant

In other words, my only known female half-first cousin had no children, male or female – and she died in 1995 and was thus certainly not my 500 cM match! Which left, well, no leads at all.

Unless...

What about half-uncle Chester?

A couple of years ago, I posted some speculations here, entitled Whatever Happened to Chester L. Kirk?, in a 52 Ancestors post. Chester L., the son of my grandfather Chester F. Kirk and Nellie Crosman (who, as it happens, was not one of Chester's five wives), apparently dropped off the face of the earth after his birth was registered. No death record, no census records, no marriage record... he just disappeared. It seemed likely he had died as a child and the record was lost or misfiled.

Research into Nellie's subsequent whereabouts eventually found her in Gloucester, Massachusetts, married to a William Mitchell, with a son Linwood Arthur Mitchell, but no sign of Chester L. However, certain interesting coincidences led me to conjecture that Linwood might actually be Chester, informally adopted and renamed, with a delayed birth certificate naming William Mitchell as his father, and stating a birth date exactly two years (to the day!) after Chester's actual birth.

But, as I said in that post, "Of course, I can't prove (lacking DNA evidence) that any of this is more than just speculation."

What were the chances?

No, there had to be some other explanation. Probably the shared DNA amounts were misleading for some reason (some kind of double-cousin relationship? IBS?) and it really was one of the descendants of my half-aunt Hazel. For that matter, it was hardly out of the question that grandpa could have had additional off-spring that just never came to light before. So I never gave Uncle Chester any serious thought, and with no other apparent possibilities, I started researching Hazel's grandchildren to see if one of them had married into the surname of my new matches.

Two days later, I received an email from a young women who was doing some genealogical research for her grandmother and mother. A couple of months before, she had stumbled across this blog, with its two-year-old post idly speculating about the fate of one Chester L. Kirk. It made for eerie reading, she said, because her family lore held a rumor that her great-grandfather wasn't the biological son of his nominal father.

Her great-grandfather was named Linwood Arthur Mitchell.

Her grandmother – Linwood's daughter – and her mother had just received their DNA test matches.

To a half-first cousin, and a half-first cousin once removed, respectively.

To me.

What were the chances?

Sarah C. (Sukeforth) Kirk

I've decided not to tie myself down to a "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" format this year (partly because it's already week 4!), but to go with a mix of sketches of individuals and families, family stories, transcriptions of important documents, a look at research in progress, an explanation of the sleuthing I did to track down an elusive ancestor, how I use Legacy Family Tree and/or RootsMagic (depending on whether I ever make up mind), maybe some select GeneaBloggers blogging prompts – in short, an eclectic approach. I hope there will be something of interest to everyone.

In my 2014 "52 Ancestors" series, I covered three of my four paternal great-grandparents. To start my new year, how about a look at the fourth, my great-grandmother Sarah C. Sukeforth. Although her middle initial appears in many of the records that name her, I have never seen anything that might indicate what the "C" stands for. A strong possibility however is Catherine, for her great-grandmother Catherine Newbert.

Sarah was born on 30 or 31 March 1838,¹ in the town of Washington, Maine,² the third child and first daughter of Simon and Jane (Miller) Sukeforth. She appears by name in the census only once with her parents, at age 12 in 1850,³ before marrying a young shipwright named Silas Kirk, in his home town of Warren, on 12 June 1856.⁴

Marriage of Silas Kirk and Sarah C. Sukeforth, 12 Jun 1856, Warren, Maine

A little over a year later, Sarah gave birth to a son, Chester, and in 1860, the family is living in Union.⁵ By 1870 the family has moved to Auburn, where Silas is working in one of the city's thriving shoe shops while Sarah is "keeping house."⁶

1860 U.S. census, Union, Knox County, Maine, Silas Kirk household

1870 U.S. census, Auburn, Androscoggin County, Maine, Silas Kirk household

The story not told by these two census records is that of Sarah's second child, Abbie, who was born in 1861 in Washington, Maine (perhaps at her parents' home? There is no record of Silas and Sarah actually living in Washington), and died in Auburn in 1867 at the age of five and a half.⁷

In 1875, they sold their homestead and moved again,^{8, 9, 10} this time to Freeport, where they are found in the 1880 census.¹¹ Silas has returned to his original occupation as a ship carpenter.

1880 U.S. census, Freeport, Cumberland County, Maine, Silas Kirk household

But again, the census fails to tell the whole story: five years after losing Abbie, Sarah had another daughter, Mabel, born in 1872. Sadly, this child lived only a little more than two years, slipping away in 1874.¹² I can't help but wonder if this final loss was what spurred Silas and Sarah to leave Auburn and settle in Freeport, where they remained for nearly 30 years. I have been unable to find birth or death records for either daughter, leaving their brief story to be told only on the family gravestone, and alluded to indirectly by the notation on the 1900 census that Sarah was the mother of three children, only one living.¹³ Did she have to answer the enumerator's (undoubtedly painful even 26 years later) question, or was Silas the informant? I'll never know. I hope she was comforted by the presence of her two grandchildren (Chester's children) in the household.

1900 U.S. census, Freeport, Cumberland County, Maine, Silas Kirk household

Sarah died at home on Friday, 26 May 1805,¹⁴ from "softening of the brain"¹⁵ (at that time, this probably referred to senile dementia). She is buried, together with Silas and their daughters, in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Auburn, Maine¹⁶ – on the land where she and Silas had lived, which they sold to the cemetery corporation in 1875.¹⁷

          

Sarah Kirke funeral article, Six Town Times

          

Sarah Kirk death, 26 May 1905, Freeport, Maine

Children of Silas Kirk and Sarah C. Sukeforth:

1. Chester F. Kirk, b. 1857, Warren, d. 1939, Lewiston, married five times
2. Abbie A. Kirk, b. 25 Jun 1861, Washington, d. 15 Jan 1867, Auburn
3. Mabel S. Kirk, b. 4 Jan 1872, Auburn, d. 21 Mar 1874, Auburn

My descent from Sarah Sukeforth:

• Sarah C. Sukeforth and Silas Kirk
• Chester F. Kirk and Mary M. Hodsdon (my paternal grandparents)

Silas Kirke family gravestone, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Auburn, Maine

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SOURCES

1. Greenleaf Cilley and Jonathan P. Cilley, The Mount Desert Widow: Genealogy of the Maine Gamble Family (Rockland, Maine: Knox County Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 1895), p. 170, Sarah Sukeforth b. 31 Mar 1858; digital images, Internet Archive (http://archive.org/details/mountdesertwidow00cill : downloaded 5 Mar 2012). This is consistent with the birthdate calculated from her death record (see footnote 2). However, her gravestone gives the date as 30 Mar 1858.
2. “Maine Vital Records, 1892-1922,” digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 7 Jan 2014), Sarah Kirke death, 26 May 1905; her age is given as 67 years, 1 month, 26 days and her birthplace as Washington.
3. 1850 U.S. Census, Lincoln County, Maine, Washington, p. 576 (penned), dwelling 296, family 296, Simon Suckforth household; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 14 Apr 2012).
4. Original Records of Maine Towns and Cities: Town of Warren, 1762-1938, digital images (PDF), CD-ROM (Rockport, Maine: Picton Press, 2005), pdf p. 42, Silas Kirk-Sarah C. Sukeforth marriage, 12 Jun 1856.
5. 1860 U.S. Census, Knox County, Maine, Union, p. 41 (upper left), 227 (penned upper right), dwelling 312, family 300, Silas Kirk household; digital image, ProQuest, HeritageQuest Online (access through participating libraries : accessed 7 Mar 2012).
6. 1870 U.S. Census, Androscoggin County, Maine, City of Auburn Ward 2, p. 35, dwelling 237, family 318, Silas Kirk household; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 9 Dec 2010). 
7. Mount Auburn Cemetery, Auburn, Androscoggin County, Maine, Kirke monument, read and photographed by the author, 10 Nov 2007. Also, Cilley and Cilley, The Mount Desert Widow, p. 170.
8. Directory of ... the Cities of Lewiston and Auburn for [Date] (Boston: Greenough & Co., 1874-1876), 1874-5, p. 226, entry for Silas Kirk, shoemaker; 1876-7, p. 230, no entry for Silas Kirk; database and digital images, "Maine City Directories," Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 Jan 2016). 
9. Androscoggin County, Maine, Deeds, 80:460, Silas Kirk to Mount Auburn Cemetery Corporation, 9 Aug 1875; digital image, Androscoggin County Registry of Deeds, Records Access Site (http://androscoggindeeds.com : accessed 25 Jan 2016); Silas is "of Auburn" at this time.
10. Cyrus Eaton, Annals of the Town of Warren, in Knox County, Maine, Second Edition (Hallowell [Maine]: Masters & Livermore, 1877), p. 567; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com/books : accessed 11 Dec 2010); Silas "r. Freeport" by the time the book was published in 1877.
11. 1880 U.S. Census, Cumberland County, Maine, Freeport, ED 33, p. 22, dwelling 203, family 222, Silas Kirk household; digital image, ProQuest, HeritageQuest Online (access through participating libraries : accessed 9 Mar 2012).
12. Mount Auburn Cemetery, Kirke monument. Also, Cilley and Cilley, The Mount Desert Widow, p. 170.
13. 1900 U.S. Census, Cumberland County, Maine, Freeport, ED 42, sheet 12A, dwelling 261, family 282, Silas Kirk household; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 9 Dec 2010). 
14. "Freeport Sentinel," The Six Towns Times, Cumberland Globe, Yarmouth Gazette & Freeport Sentinel (Portland, Maine), 2 Jun 1905, p. 6, col. 2-3, article about Sarah C. Kirke's death and funeral; digital images, Google News Archive (https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=UIW7YHcmbUEC : accessed 26 Jan 2016).
15. “Maine Vital Records, 1892-1922,” Sarah Kirke death, 26 May 1905.
16. Mount Auburn Cemetery, Kirke monument. 
17. Androscoggin County, Maine, Deeds, 80:460, Silas Kirk to Mount Auburn Cemetery Corporation.

52 Ancestors: #45, Whatever Happened to Chester L. Kirk?

Way back in Part 3 of the Chester F. Kirk saga, I mentioned, in a sidebar titled "What Happened to Nellie and Chester?", that Chester's son Chester L. and his mother Nellie Crosman appeared to have dropped off the face of the earth after she registered his birth. And indeed there were no death or census records to be found, and "no plausible Chester of any surname, born in Maine in 1893 with a mother named Nellie." Well, I wasn't about to let a half-uncle just disappear without a trace.

So I started hunting for any trace of Nellie Crosman, assuming that probably the reason I couldn't find her was that she had married after Chester L.'s 1893 birth and before the 1900 census. But despite the fact that Maine's marriage records are pretty complete starting in 1892, there was no sign of Nellie. So I decided to look further afield – and struck pay dirt just across the border in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Nellie Crosman, age 36, born Durham, Maine, married William F. Mitchell, a 53-year-old sailmaker born in Thomaston, Maine, both residents of Gloucester, Massachusetts.¹ But the date of the marriage was 13 November, 1907, which certainly didn't explain why I couldn't find Nellie in the 1900 census. So I went looking for William F. Mitchell in the 1900 census, to see if I could find any possible connection to Nellie.

Marriage of William F. Mitchell and Nellie Crosman, 13 Nov 1907, Portsmouth, N.H.

I found a connection, all right: Wm F Mitchell, sailmaker, was head of household in Bath, Maine, with wife Nellie M, purportedly married for seven years, with a 5-year-old son Linwood A. Their ages, states of birth, and William's occupation all match up exactly with the William and Nellie who tied the knot in Portsmouth a full seven years later.²

1900 U.S. census, Bath, Sagadahoc, Maine, Wm F Mitchell household

The 1910 census finds William F Mitchel [sic] in Gloucester, Massachusetts,³ still a sailmaker, with his wife (strangely, listed with a given name of "Crosman"), and their now-15-year-old son Linwood A. The Mitchells have now supposedly been married for 17 years.⁴ At least they were consistent about the fiction that they were married before Linwood's birth!

1910 U.S. census, Gloucester, Essex, Mass., William F Mitchel household

Conspicuously absent from both censuses is any sign of Chester L. Kirk, who should have been 6 in 1900. I was beginning to think perhaps he had died as an infant, after all, and the record was either lost or hopelessly mis-indexed. Granted, in both censuses Nellie stated that she had had only one child, who was living; but I've seen many such census records that ignore children who died in infancy.⁵ And in point of fact, Nellie had had another out-of-wedlock child, by another father, prior to Chester: Arthur Crosman was born 31 October 1892 in Lewiston and died of cholera in August 1893 in Lisbon Falls.⁶ Since she definitely failed to mention at least one deceased child to the census enumerators, it would hardly be surprising if she failed to mention a second one.

About this time I realized there should be a birth record for Linwood Mitchell, who, according to the 1900 census, was born in December 1894 in Maine. And indeed I found his birth record in the card index... sort of. There is no contemporaneous birth record. Typed additions to the pre-printed card form make this a "Basis Record of a Birth" (emphasis added) taken "From a Deposition,"  received by the Wiscasset town clerk on 14 November 1936.⁷ In other words, it is almost certainly a (very) delayed birth registration intended to establish Linwood's age for Social Security purposes, and the deposed date of birth – December 17, 1895 (a year later than indicated in the 1900 census) – is in fact the same as the date reported in the SSDI upon Linwood's death in 1979.

Which begs the question, why wasn't his birth registered at the time? I think it was registered. Let's look at two birth records:^{7, 8, 9}

     

Linwood Arthur Mitchell birth record⁷
Place of Birth: Wiscasset
Date of Birth: December 17, 1895

     

Chester L. Kirk birth record⁸
Place of Birth: Newcastle
Date of Birth: Dec. 17, 1893

Now, it's possible that Nellie Crosman gave birth to two sons, each on December 17, two years apart; that the first one died in infancy without leaving an extant record; and that the second one got born without leaving a contemperaneous record. Possible, but how likely, given that Maine's birth, marriage, and death records were standardized in 1892 and are pretty complete from that point on?

But, you may say, Linwood Mitchell's birth record was attested to by the midwife, Mrs. Walter Peverly. Why would she, if it wasn't so? Well, aside from the unlikelihood of locating a midwife who actually remembered the details of a birth some 40 years ago, it turns out that Mrs. Peverly was née Jennie Isabel Crosman – Nellie's older sister. The Peverlys lived in Lisbon Falls, 40 miles from Wiscasset – quite a trip to make in 1895 in the dead of a Maine winter to deliver your sister's baby, especially considering that Jennie had given birth herself just four months previously.

Two more points of reference exist for Linwood Arthur Mitchell:

• His WWI draft registration (5 Jun 1917) gives his birth as December 12, 1894, in Bath, Maine.¹⁰ The month and year correspond to the 1900 census; the date might be a slip of the pen. He was only about 8 or 9 when they left Bath, and he might well have just assumed he was born there.
• His WWII draft registration (26 Apr 1942), on the other hand, gives his birth date as December 17, 1895, corresponding to the "Basis Record of Birth," but, curiously, says he was born in Damariscotta – just across the river from Newcastle – instead of Wiscasset.¹¹

And finally, it's worth noting that William F. Mitchell, sailmaker, was living in Bath in 1897. Living on the same street was Herbert E. Crosman – Nellie's older brother (he moves to Portland sometime that year, while William remains in Bath until 1902).¹²

So this is my hypothesis about what happened to Chester L. Kirk:

Sometime soon after Chester's birth, single mother Nellie meets William Mitchell (40-ish, single, and childless), perhaps through her brother Herbert E. Crosman. Nellie moves in with William, who informally "adopts" Chester and renames him Linwood Arthur Mitchell, but they neglect to get married until some ten or more years later, five years after William moves his family to Gloucester, Mass. Nellie has another son, William L., in 1912; then William F. dies from heart disease in Gloucester on 10 September 1914.

Fast forward to 1936. Linwood, now married with two children, needs to apply for a Social Security card and asks his mother for his birth certificate. He may never have known that William Mitchell was not his father! His mother gets her sister, Jennie Peverly, to make a deposition saying she was the midwife at Linwood's birth, and naming William Mitchell as his father. She kept the December 17th date, but for some reason postdated it by yet another year, to 1895 (wonder how Nellie explained that to Linwood, if she'd been claiming 1894 for 40 years?), and selected Wiscasset (about 10 miles from Newcastle) as the place of birth. No one at the Wiscasset town office would be likely to have any reason to doubt the deposition, and certainly wouldn't associate it with a registered birth in Newcastle.

Map showing Wiscasset, Newcastle, and Damariscotta, Maine¹³

Of course, I can't prove (lacking DNA evidence) that any of this is more than just speculation.

Linwood Arthur Mitchell died in January 1979 in Manchester, Massachusetts, and the SSDI reported his date of birth as 17 December 1895 – just as that 1936 deposition stated.¹⁴ His grave marker likewise says he was born in 1895.¹⁵

Linwood A Mitchell Sr grave marker, Pleasant Grove Cemetary (Manchester-by-the-Sea, Essex Co., Mass.)

Is this the grave marker of my half-uncle? Was he really Chester L. Kirk, with a new name and an adjusted birth year? And if he was, did he ever know that William Mitchell wasn't his father, or that he had a double-handful of half-brothers and -sisters? Or was it all just a series of coincidences, and Chester was one of two half-brothers that Linwood never knew?


(Note: This post is in response to Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge at No Story Too Small.)

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SOURCES

1. "New Hampshire, Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659-1947," database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 May 2014), William F. Mitchell-Nellie Crosman marriage, 13 Nov 1907.
2. 1900 U.S. Census, Sagadahoc County, Maine, Bath, ED 209, sheet 8A, dwelling 139, family 183, Wm F Mitchell household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 May 2014).
3. Evidently they moved to Gloucester around 1902, as William was in the 1902 Bath city directory and in the 1903 Gloucester directory.
4. 1910 U.S. Census, Essex County, Massachusetts, Gloucester, ED 293, sheet 4B [possibly 9B], dwelling 67, family 92, William F Mitchel [sic] household; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 May 2014).
5. Quite possibly the mothers in such cases felt, with justification, that the question was an insensitive invasion of their privacy.
6. “Maine Vital Records, 1892-1922,” digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 6 Aug 2014), birth of unnamed child to Chas Libby and "Nellie", 31 Oct [1892], and death of Arthur Crosman, son of Chas Libby and Nellie Crosman, Aug 1993, age 9 months; the birth record has "D93 Arthur" noted on the upper left corner of the card, while the death record has "B 92" in the same location.
7. “Maine, Birth Records, 1621-1922,” database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 May 2014), "Basis Record of a Birth" for Linwood Arthur Mitchell, 17 Dec 1895 (received by town clerk 14 Nov 1936).
8. “Maine Vital Records, 1892-1922,” digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 9 May 2014), birth of Chester L. Kirk, 17 Dec 1893.
9. In both cases, the place of birth is ostensibly the father's residence. I have found no indication that Chester Kirk ever lived in Newcastle, or that William Mitchell ever lived in Wiscasset (though the latter is at least plausible).
10. “United States, World War One Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918,” index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 9 May 2014), Linwood Arthur Mitchell, No. 10, Order No. 1435, Gloucester, Massachusetts, precinct 1, ward 5, 5 Jun 1917.
11. “United States, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942,” digital images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 9 May 2014), Linwood Arthur Mitchell, Serial Number U2948, no Order Number, Gloucester, Essex County, Massachusetts, Local Board 71, 26 Apr 1942.
12. Directory of Bath and Surrounding Towns, 1897, Vol. II (Boston: W.E. Shaw, 1897), p. 124, entry for William F. Mitchell, and p. 85, entry for Herbert E. Crosman; database and digital images, "U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989," Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 May 2014).
13. Google Maps (http://maps.google.com : accessed 30 Nov 2014).
14. “Social Security Death Index,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 May 2014), Linwood Mitchell, SSN 011-07-4924.
15. Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 9 May 2014), database and digital images, memorial # 88317533 with grave marker photo for Linwood A. Mitchell, Sr (1895-1979), created by "Kate" (10 Apr 2012); citing Pleasant Grove Cemetery (Manchester-by-the-Sea, Essex County, Massachusetts).