The Two Jessie Martins

There were two Jessie Martins, one was a flesh and blood woman born in October of 1873 and the other was a Great Lakes schooner built in Muskegon, Michigan in 1881. This is their story.

The Martins were Scotch-Irish.  They emigrated from Northern Ireland about 1819 and came to the U.S. after a brief stop in Quebec. William Martin, Sr., Jessie’s grandfather, arrived in St. Lawrence County, New York married Mary Cady, and helped found the small town of Edwards.  Their oldest son, William, was born there in 1829, to be followed by six brothers and sisters. The Martins prospered in Edwards.  Family lore says the Martins were all teachers, but town history has William in the hotel and distillery business.  I expect there was more money to be made from whisky than from education.  The merits of a fine bottle of Scotch and a fine education are hopefully not mutually exclusive and William may have done some teaching as well.

Jessie Martin

Whatever their occupations in Edwards the family moved on to Michigan about 1855. William, Jr. met and married Rosa Blood and they settledin Muskegon where their first child, Jessie, was born.  In 1881 William commissioned Henry Footlander to build a Great Lakes schooner. Great Lakes shipping was a booming business.  The ships delivered supplies all around the lakes from Chicago northward.  They carried lumber and ore for manufacturing and food and other supplies to growing towns and cities. William named his schooner after his oldest daughter, Jessie.

Things went well until Nov. 23, 1882 when disaster struck.  The ship ran aground, but was not seriously damaged and the crewmembers were all safely removed.  On Nov. 30, William Martin engaged John Dibble to pull the ship off.  Here is an abbreviated account of what ensued from local newspapers

Schooner Jessie Martin

“At ten o’clock the tug, then lying abreast of the south pier, steamed away, the tow-line tautened, and the schooner came off the beach with a plunge, and seemed to stand on end between the seas, the water meanwhile bursting upward and madly sheeting all over her.  The next instant she plunged downward, covered with foam and spray, then mounted again bow up, as though she were going to leave the sea, the breakers still scattering over her, and continued her progress in this way under the strain of the tow line, striking the bottom so heavily with each descent as to jar all her timbers, and make the men on board afraid her masts would be unstepped and thrown out of her….What ensued was as speedy as awful.  The wretched vessel, lolling in the trough of the seas, so full of water as to be without buoyancy, pushed by the gale upon her port side and pulled by the towline upon the other, instead of coming around under the strain, was simply dragged down and rolled over like a log to starboard, settling upon her bulwarks until her masts lay in the water.  As she toppled, the sea burst all over her hull in a furious cascade, and her hatches fell off and floated away.  The men aboard as she capsized scattered out into her rigging in a wild scramble for their lives. Encumbered by their clothing, their struggles on an overturning ship, in the whirl of dying water, were of necessity terrible.  Three reached the main shrouds, two got to the fore cross-trees and one to the main. The remaining man, Mr. Dibble, had been in the passageway alongside the cabin on the starboard side, and the men in the shrouds could see him, near the surface of the water in that region, vainly trying to climb the main boom.  As he had but one arm, and was hampered by the abundance of his clothing, his efforts were ineffectual.  For a short time he moaned and struggled in the water., but gradually the sounds and motions ceased, and he slowly drowned.”

A truly heroic rescue followed, saving all of the remaining men.

The ship was eventually pulled to shore, but for William Martin this was a catastrophic loss.  The family fortunes never recovered from the loss of the Jessie Martin.

The Jessie Martin was sold to Charles Christensen of Wisconsin. On August 18, 1908 she was carrying a load of lumber when a gale struck off of Ludington, Michigan. The ship sprung a leak, the hull was broken in two and the Jessie Martin sank.  She remains on the bottom of Lake Michigan to this day.

In 1885 the Martin family moved to Oregon and settled in Dayton where William Martin tried to find work and 12-year-old Jessie tried to continue her education. In an article in the Capitol Journal of Salem, Oregon Jessie remembered, “that in those days there was an unwritten rule preventing a ninth grade in the schools. The pioneers felt if a person wanted more education than eighth grade he should get out and earn it.  We had a teacher in Dayton who gave us ‘bootleg’ education.  We would secretly agree some of us, to come to the school at night and he would give us ninth grade algebra and he sneaked in Literature too.”

At the age of 20 Jessie began a long career as a schoolteacher.  Her beloved sister Amy soon joined her in the profession.  Jessie and Amy Martin never married.  The article in the Capital Journal quotes Amy as saying, “Jessie had plenty of chances to get married too” and Jessie as saying, “I decided to take my chances alone.  After you marry old Harry takes place sometimes.”  I have no idea who old Harry is or what he might do, but it’s a direct quote.  Old Harry is mentioned several times in the article; if anyone knows who he is please contact me.

Amy and Jessie

Jessie continued to teach until1931 when she refused to go along with the new methods being used in the public schools.  A new movement called progressivism championed by John Dewey and Francis Parker was sweeping across the country.  This was all just too new-fangled for Jessie.  Never one to remain quiet she refused to go along.  There was a hearing where principals and supervisors testified that Jessie was “too old -fashioned.” She was dismissed for insubordination and never worked again.  Amy continued to teach and supported her sister.

1954 found the aging sisters impoverished and hoping to find a place in the Methodist home. I quote from the Capital Journal article of 1954, “The Misses Jessie Martin, 80 and Amy Martin, 72 taught for some 80 years.  Today they live in a four room tidy house on Lee Street, but they must move soon, because the teaching pension Miss Amy receives, $84.48, is not enough to cover living expenses for both. Other sources of income for the Misses Martin are precarious. The sisters sometimes rent a small house at $40, but taxes and upkeep prevent a steady income. The Misses Martin have decided to enter the Methodist home and to acquire the necessary fee they hope to sell both the houses. Wistfully Miss Amy spoke: ‘I always hoped we could have a place of our own to spend the rest of our lives, but I imagine it will be better this way.  I won’t break as many bones and Jessie won’t have to work so hard.”

Amy and Jessie

Amy and Jessie did move to the Methodist home where Jessie died in 1959.  In her last letter to my mother-in-law Amy speaks of Jessie’s memorial service, “She deserved all that was said of her and more.  In fact she had the best disposition of any member of the Martin family.  She was loyal and generous and kind.  There were so many things she would have liked to do but lack of money was the drawback for all of us.’ ”

Amy lived on for another 23 years and died at the age of 101.  Their story ended so sadly, certainly not what William Martin envisioned when he christened a schooner named after his oldest daughter one bright day on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Photo  of the Schooner Jessie Martin courtesy of   Historical Collections of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University”

February 22, 2010 | | Tags: , , , | Comments Closed

Where in the World is Sarah Riddner (in 1910)?

She should be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her mother.  She was only 2 at the time of the 1910 federal population census.

This family has been most elusive in the 1910 census.  Over the years I have tried every variation on the spelling of the last name that I can think of.  Finally, in the past year, I had some successes.

I know that her father (Ben Riddner) and her mother (Pearl Scheier Riddner) were in Milwaukee by about 1904 and married there in 1905.  I have copies of the application for the license (which gave their parents’ names – hurrah!) and the registration of the marriage.  I have a copy of Sarah’s birth certificate – she was born in Milwaukee in 1908.  There is no reason to think that the family would be anywhere else.  Except they don’t show up where I expected them to be.  And, except that the family story is that Ben left them and divorced Pearl, at some point, and moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Not clear when.

Then, having looked at everything (I thought), I went back and checked Ben’s name at ancestry.com again and – what do you know?! – a new database of crossings into the US from Canada.  And it turns out that Ben had been in Canada since sometime in 1908 until Dec. 1910.  So, no wonder I couldn’t find him in the census.  But what about his wife and child?

I started looking for Scheiers in the census.  I knew that there were Scheier relatives in Wisconsin in about the same time period.  I thought that a couple of them were brothers of Pearl, although I haven’t had evidence of that (beyond Sarah in later life calling them Uncle Doc and Uncle Louis).  I looked and looked for either of these in the 1910 census.  They, too, should be there and most likely in Wisconsin.  Eventually, and just recently, I finally found Abe (later Dr. Abe) under the name Abe Sheer (at least that is how it was indexed).  And, surprise!, when I looked at the image, he was living with his mother, Susie Sheir (Zissel or Zietle Scheier) and two sisters: Ida Sheer and Pearl Viddne (a misspelling of Riddner I never thought of).  A bonus.  I have some evidence that Abe and Pearl were brother and sister.  And found another sister.

But I still have missing Scheiers, and now I also have a mystery.  Pearl was still married at that point.  And she had a 2 year old daughter, who was not enumerated in the same household.  Why not?  Was Sarah living somewhere else at the time?  Why would she have been?  The remaining person I know about in this family, Louis Scheier, is still among the missing in the 1910 census.  The line for Susie or Zietle also shows that she had 9 children, 8 of whom were still living in 1910.  So I’m looking for at least 3 more Scheiers, somewhere in the world.  I have just finished going through the pages for the Ward and District that these Scheiers were in, page by page.  No Louis and no Sarah.  I tried looking at Heritage Quest briefly today, and still no Louis or Sarah.  So I have my work cut out for me.  Any suggestions are welcome as I make finding these two a goal for 2010.

February 16, 2010 | | Tags: , , , | Comments Closed

A Civil War Story

This is another vignette from my grandfather’s memory.  Lyle M. Denman (my grandfather) was 89 or 90 at the time my mother interviewed him for these stories.  It turns out that his memory was pretty good but not perfect (surprised?) which I know because a typed copy of a Civil War journal written by Grandpa Minor (Charles E. Minor) turned up in the family, to which Lyle added a couple of pages to back in 1969 when he was only about 73.  He gave details to some of these stories and remembered a little more than he did in 1985-86.

Lyle Denman about age 3-4

The stories I am posting now are from the interviews and I haven’t edited them for additional information from the earlier material.  I may expand them in the future.  Anyway, this is one of Grandpa Minor’s stories about being in the Civil War as told to the young boy, Lyle (picture to the right).
“At the time of the Civil War, President Lincoln called for 90-day volunteers. Many of the young men around Wakeman volunteered for the 90 days. And when the 90 days were up, a lot of them returned home. And my grandfather, in great disgust, always talked of them as the 90-day gang. He had very little sympathy or cared very little to mingle with those. He reenlisted for the duration and he stayed on until the, until the war was concluded. And then, following the surrender at Appomattox, instead of asking for a discharge to go home, he volunteered to stay on one year more as an officer to receive, to swear in the Confederates, the people who had seceded had to swear in and be registered as residents of the United States again — because they had seceded from the Union. And he spent one year at, I think it was Falls Church, Virginia, was his headquarters there. And all together, he put in a little over five years for the government at that time.

Now among the one or two little experiences he had. He had been wounded one time and he had been in the hospital. He was wounded five times. But one of the times, he had been in the hospital and he was pretty weak but it was a nice day, in April I believe he said. The weather was pretty nice but he had no overcoat and he went to the quartermaster and got a new overcoat. And it was a little bit chilly and he wanted — the field hospital was located some distance back of the firing line. He was an artilleryman and he made his way up to the field artillery was being fired.

Soldier in Greatcoat by Artillery

Union soldier in overcoat

The infantry was all ahead of them, down in the flats, and they were firing over the head of the infantry on the members of the South — as he termed them, as they called them, the rebels. And he noticed that they were having a problem and he walked over and talked with the commanding officer there and told them that he was an officer in the field artillery and could he be of any help. And he took his overcoat off and folded it carefully and set it on the ground at the base of a tree, because it had warmed up — and was over talking with this field artilleryman when, all of a sudden, come bouncing across the field, a cannonball came across the field, hit the overcoat that was folded up and ripped it to pieces, or tore it to pieces. Had he been sitting there, he would have been killed. He said he had quite a time explaining to the quartermaster what happened to his overcoat!

Another time, the cannonballs that were fired by the rebels, as we’ll call them, as they were called in those days. A cannonball came bouncing across a field there and this one man thought it was just about expended and he tried to stop it with his foot. The result was that he lost his leg. And shortly after that, a notice appeared on the headquarters: ‘Anyone attempting to stop a moving cannonball will be disciplined.’ ”

**************************************************************

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number (LC-B811-2582B)]

part of Selected Civil War photographs, 1861-1865 (Library of Congress)

February 8, 2010 | | Tags: , | Comments Closed

Little Bit 3

Friends

Pat and I are going to Newport, RI tomorrow.  Newport in February I hear you say? Place selection is part of a longer story, but we’re going to meet our other two best friends.  We live all over the country and we try to be together as often as possible, but it has been two years since last we met.

Two of us have lost parents since our last meeting.  There will be hugs and condolences and probably tears.  Then there will be laughter, loud, raucous laughter, eating, drinking and talking, talking, talking, possibly followed by more talking. Other patrons will be  driven out of restaurants by the energy field that we generate when we are together, also by the noise.

These women know things about me my children will never know and they know things about my family.

And so it was with my parents and their best friends and your parents and their best friends.  You remember, the ones who aren’t really family, but who you called  Aunt and Uncle when you were growing up.  If you are lucky enough that your parents’ friends are still alive talk to them.  If not, talk to the friends of your older relatives.  They’re usually far more pleasant about being interviewed than your blood relatives and they know things, all kinds of things.

February 4, 2010 | | Comments Closed

Stories Not Written

On a recent trip to Tucson we were taking a desert jeep tour with a local man who was interested in most everything about his area.  At one point, after seeing some petroglyphs, we got to talking about what happened to the early native groups who made the glyphs, and how no one really knows what happened to them or where they went.  There are certainly native American tribes in the area, and have been right along I gather, but no one knows about these prehistoric ancestors.  So we were speculating about it, and how it seemed possible that since they had no more writing than the petroglyphs there might have been an oral history tradition.  And that if (and of course this is a big if) the oral history was passed along a specific line of family or role it would have gotten lost if the line was broken for some reason.  This could have led to the next generation not knowing what had happened.  All of this made me think about the stories in families that don’t get written down, and get passed (if at all) by word of mouth.  And we all know how that works, by the time the story is told the third or fourth time it may bear little resemblance to the original tale.  (I think that’s where the story about my ancestor Salt being disinherited for marrying an Irish lady and having to come to America as a result came from.)  Or, if the story doesn’t get passed by word of mouth the next generation won’t know anything about it.

The post I wrote about my grandfather’s story from his grandfather about woodcutting on the Mississippi is one I never heard told, and I never saw written down.  If my mother had not interviewed her father and recorded those interviews I would not have had the chance to hear any of those stories.  My grandfather, who was a consummate storyteller, never lived close enough to our family for us to see him very often.  So when he and my grandmother did visit, or the couple of times that we visited them, it was such a special thing that there was little quiet time to sit with either of them and hear their tales.  I love listening to the tapes I have, and reading the transcripts I made of them.  More of those stories will be showing up in this blog as time goes on.

So again I say, if you have any opportunity to do so, interview your relatives and try to record the interview (video would be even more wonderful).  I’m planning to ask my remaining aunt to do another interview (she did one already for me).  I’m also thinking that my siblings should be asked to reminisce about certain events/experiences since I also know that we all remember things differently.

February 1, 2010 | | Tags: | 2 Comments »

© 2009-2013 The Genealogy Gals All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright