Personal Interview: When an Interview Flops!

Where the Smiths-Smulls First Collide
James Smith & Jennie Smull Wedding
My interview subject's grandparents

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH

PETER SMULL > JOHNATHAN SMULL > JENNIE ELNORA SMULL

I had traced a woman, who was still living and in her 90s, AND was willing to talk to me after a brief phone call. She is related to me on both the Jacob SMITH and Jonathan SMULL sides of the family so I thought this was going to be a major score. The trip would be 300 miles round trip to the southwest part of the state and would take an entire day of my copious free time.

I arrived and was let into their home by their 69-year-old son who I'm sure wanted to be there to ensure I wasn't an ax murderer. The couple I would speak to were both from the Plainfield area originally and lived there from the 1920s through the 1940s with stops in Cedar Falls and Ames. They maintained close ties to their extended family and the town where they started. They settled in another small Iowa town, where he worked as a large animal vet. The Dr., though a couple years older, seemed to have better recall than his wife.

The problem was that the Mrs.was lost in specific stories, which she repeated verbatim throughout the time I was there and then asked me repeatedly who I was and who I was related to. It reminded me a great deal of conversations I had with my great grandmother as she slipped in and out on a dime into her Alzheimer's ravaged mind.

Jennie Smull & James Smith
She is my great grandmother's sister.
That looks like a wedding cake
for an anniversary
but then look none too happy, do they? 

Her recollections and storytelling ability were naught. The Dr. was able to fill in some blanks and I was able to pull some information out of him without too much effort, but it had entirely shifted the focus of the interview. And, they were lovely and gracious people, I'd just arrived 10-15 years too late.

I spent about an hour there and got a few little nuggets on them, but little else. With the exception of a photocopy of a photo that ended up making this 300-mile trek part of the discovery of 2016 for me. I'm not going to publish that here yet.

They handed me a sheet of paper with a photo of my entire family - my great grandparents and all of  their kids, including my grandmother. It was taken, it appears, in the late 1920s  and is the only photo in existence that includes all of them. I'd never seen Edwin Smith, my great grandfather, nor Mary, who I've written about here before. And, now I've seen them.

After I left there, I traveled back towards home, but veered even further north and went to the Willow Lawn Cemetery in Plainfield. I'd been there once before, early in my genealogy work, and took selective photos of those I knew were related. I had no idea where the journey would end up taking me then and went home with a few dozen photos.

This time, I walked the cemetery again and again focused only on those I knew were related to me and it took 2.5 hours to take all the hundreds of photos.

I'll not look at this as a wasted day.