Losing the Trail: Harriet Smith

Vineyards in a much younger San Joaquin County, CA

Jacob Smith > James Smith > John R Smith > Harriet Smith Robinson

Damn. Stuck. Can't go any further with this relative. One of the greatest frustrations in my genealogical life is women. Women who get married. Just about every dead end I have is related to a young woman in a family who marries (we know not who, because of a lack of trails to that husband) and we never see her again. Or women in marriages who remarry after the death of their first husband and the trail to the second husband is not in the available records. Or women, who lose their spouse and somehow history loses them completely.

These occasions also give way to my imagination. I begin filling in the blanks. With this case, I imagined a full story, but only have a couple of details. And I learned a lot about a lot along the way. Leaving it to the details only...

Harriet Smith was third of 12 children of John Richard Smith and Nancy Catherine "Nannie" Baker. The Smith's lived in Fennimore, Grant County, Wisconsin, for some little time before heading to Iowa and then South Dakota for a spell. They then headed way West to San Joaquin County in California. San Joaquin is part of the great California bread basket - the Central Valley - home of some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. Sometime after 1900, the Smith's bought land in Dent Township, which in 1910 had a population of about 2,000 souls. This is in what is now the Manteca, California area.

Sawtelle National Soldier's Home, Malibu

Nannie died in 1910. John farmed with his son Samuel and both tended vineyards and sustenance farmed. I would suspect that they sold their grapes to any one of the up and coming wineries in the area. John, a former Civil War vet, was residing on and off from about 1914 at the Sawtelle National Soldier's Home in Malibu, Los Angeles County, due to heart problems. He was last admitted there on 07 Oct 1921, but returned home and died in Ripon, San Joaquin County, California on 22 Nov 1922.

Harriet, born in  Iowa on 07 Mar 1871, married Frank L Robinson in 1888. They lived in Oakland, California in a very diverse working-class neighborhood. Frank was a bridge carpenter. Many bridges were built in Alameda County during the 1890-1920 time frame. In 1918, Frank died. No record of his death was found yet, but it could have been accident or illness. Construction was a dangerous business back then.

Oakland California in 1912

This left Harriet with three girls to finish raising. I suspect that the first two, Alice and Mattie, got married somewhere between 1910 and 1918, but the trail is lost. Young Dorothy, however, remained with her mother.

Having lived in this part of California for many years, my research led me to some interesting places that I can picture as it is today. Newark, which now has a population of about 55,000 people, is part of the sprawling and endless corridor between Oakland and San Jose. Then, it was agricultural land. Newark Precinct was for farming, not freeways.

Rasmus Albertsen Family

Back then, dairy farms were rife in this part of California and a full 65% of the dairy farmers in the state were Portuguese. The Danes accounted for a large number as well. There was a dairy farm in Newark Precinct where I found Harriet in 1920. She and her daughter were classified as "servants," cooking for the many German and Swiss dairy hands. The farm manager and Harriet's boss, was Rasmus Albertsen, who lived on the property along with his wife Catrina and daughter Ruth. Rasmus had come to America from Denmark in 1905 and his wife in 1915. He would go on to own his own dairy in the same area in California that Harriet's father farmed.

Harriet then drops off the face of the earth, along with her daughters. The next time I can find her is in the California Death Index, where it says she died in neighboring Contra Costa County on 12 Mar 1937. Did she live in a facility? Did one of her daughters take care of her? What did she do in the intervening years?

This is one I have to chalk up to the imagination, because I see nowhere to go.