Me. Here. Right Now.: John Richard Smith

Showing posts with label John Richard Smith. Show all posts

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Bad, Bad Henry Burton

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JOHN R SMITH > NANCY SMITH m (1) George Royce (2) Henry Wallace Burton

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When John R Smith married Nancy "Nannie" Baker, little did the family know the name "Nannie" would carry on through three generations. You can read a little about John and his daughter Harriet here and about daughter Ollie here and son Alfred here.

The 2nd Nannie: Nancy Smith
Royce Burton

John and Nancy had daughter Nancy "Nannie" Smith on 13 Dec 1877 in Nebraska. She would marry George Royce, originally of Iowa, on 19 Mar 1896 in Garretson, Minnehaha County, South Dakota. George was born 18 Jan 1872.

Nannie's parents and some of her siblings moved along with the Royce's to California. While living in San Joaquin County, California. George made his living as a carpenter. By 1900, Stockton, which is located in the "Central Valley" of California and highly agricultural, had become an industrial city with streetcars, banks, hotels, and theatres. Main Street was its major commercial area. They would have nine children together before George died on 03 Aug 1915 in Stockton,

About the time of George's death, Henry Wallace Burton was just finishing his second term at San Quentin. This time for an unnamed felony. His career of crime might be quite lengthy, but all I have to go on is the two times he was incarcerated in San Quentin and his time at the Tulare County jail.

He was born in Greene County, Iowa 11 Jan 1884 to James O. Burton and Caroline "Carrie" Utter. The family moved West from Iowa to Tulare county before 1900. In 1908, Henry was a butcher and 20 years old. He was also on his way to prison for assault with intent to murder. He was sentenced to six years and was out in slightly over four years in December 1912. His second term for the "felony" started in late 1914 and he was in prison for 10 months, getting out in later 1915.

His 1908 and 1914 intake photos from San Quentin

Detailed description of his body at San Quentin

On 16 Jan 1920, he married Nancy "Nannie" Smith Royce and they lived in Stockton. He was some years younger than her. If his life of crime wasn't over, he didn't go back to the penitentiary. He was a dairy farmer and most of the Royce children resided with the couple on the 1920 census. Henry wouldn't make it to the 1930 census. He died on 06 Jun 1929 at the age of 45. He and Nannie would have one daughter, Nancy "Nannie" Violet Burton. Nannie would not remarry.

Nancy Smith Royce Burton died 09 Jan 1946 in French Camp in San Joaquin County.

Nancy Burton married William John Sohriakoff, born in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents on 23 Oct 1924. Nannie would die on 13 Dec 1976. The couple had four children. William died 25 Jun 2003 in Grass Valley, California.

Monday, March 6, 2017

The Double Tragedy of the Alfred Smith Family of South Dakota

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JOHN R SMITH > ALFRED SMITH m Maggie R Johnson

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You can read about John R Smith and his daughter Harriet here and about his daughter Ollie here.

Alfred Smith was born 16 May 1867 while his parents lived in Iowa. They moved on eventually to South Dakota. His parents then moved on to Ripon, San Joaquin County, California, but some of the children remained in the Midwest including Alfred.

He met Maggie R. Johnson, who was born in 1874 in New York and married her on 15 Dec 1892. The couple would have eight children; one died in infancy, one died in a tragic accident that would make headlines for days, one would be the victim of another accident during a snowstorm.

Mabel Smith was born in 1909. Her family lived in Mitchell, Davison County, South Dakota. She was your typical 10-year-old who one Saturday afternoon set out to visit friends. When she hadn't arrived home by supper, her parents began to worry. They set about searching for her to no avail. Several hours later, the sheriff was notified and Al Scott's bloodhounds spent hours searching for the girl. Early on, they had some hints that she had been in the area near her parents' home, but as nothing turned up, they turned to other sources who had purportedly seen the girl and headed down to the railroad yard. The trail was cold there. They gave up in the early hours in the morning with intent to start again later that morning.

Reportedly, the girl had been seen speaking to a "strange Negro man," earlier in the day. The only negros in the area were two laborers who had been rooming in the area while they worked on the road gang. The sheriff was quick to point out that they were well-known in town and were also not in the area on the day of the disappearance. Talk of the "strange negro," died out.

Common old house porch cistern trap door

On the 21st of October, three days later, her body was discovered in the cistern under the porch of the home of the C. E. Thompson's, a short distance from her home. She had drowned. Cisterns in old homes were not uncommon. They typically used the roof as a rain collection surface, gutters and downspouts delivering the water into the cistern. They were often built under porches, with a trap door over the entrance to avoid accidents. The vault below held the water which was typically accessed by a pump in the house and used for laundry and cleaning rather than drinking. In the Thompson home, the cistern door was not near the back porch entry, where the child had entered, so it was unclear why she had raised the cistern door and gone in if it weren't at someone else's hands.

Her mother believes she was murdered. This article, which was newswired to nearby Aberdeen, makes clear that it was a mystery that would have no clear solution, despite the fact the coroner's inquest came back with a ruling of accidental and not homicidal causes. No suspect was ever located.

Just three years later, young Archie Alfred Smith, on his way home from work with his coworker, Orvis Yahne, would walk the tracks in a blinding snowstorm and be hit and killed by the train snow shovel. He was 21 years old.

Alfred died 03 Apr 1936 in Davison County and Maggie died in Stellacoom, Pierce County, Washington on 25 Nov 1951.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

The Other Newcombs of South Dakota

JACOB SMITH > JAMES SMITH > JOHN R SMITH > OLLIE BEATRICE SMITH m Robert Kingsbury Newcomb

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You can read a little bit about John Smith, who went to California after living in Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, here. The Newcombs in this story shouldn't be mixed up with the Newcombs that married into the Munson family elsewhere in this blog. If there is a connection, it goes way, way, back and I'm not dealing with it!

Olive Beatrice "Ollie" Smith was born 26 Mar 1876 in Nebraska. Several of her siblings settled in South Dakota and did not go on to California with their parents. Ollie met and married Robert Kingsbury Newcomb and married him on 06 Nov 1897 in South Dakota. The couple settled in Ramona, Lake County, South Dakota. Robert had several jobs during their marriage, but in about 1915, he started to experiment with breeding and incubation of chicks. He studied and perfected his methods and in 1929, opened the Sunshine State Hatcheries first state-of-the-art location in Madison.

Before long, he had several locations throughout the state, which were operated by his four sons: Bob, Chuck, Parker, and Lyle. I don't know what became of the hatcheries, but a news item from 1962 indicated that Lyle's son, Lyle Ralph, had declared bankruptcy and was no longer in the hatchery business. Farming operations and technology kept improving and with the loss of three of the sons by the mid-1950s, my guess is that the effort slowly fizzled out. I'd be interested to know what the end of the story was.

Madison location of the Sunshine State Hatcheries

Ollie died 07 Sep 1949 in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. Robert died 14 Dec 1955.

Ollie and Robert had eight children:

1. Mable born 28 Oct 1898 and died 03 Jan 1899 in South Dakota.

2. Robert "Bob" Kingsbury Newcomb Jr. was born 30 Oct 1899 in Lake County. He died on 08 Apr 1952. Terrible floods swept through parts of South Dakota that week. Bob was trying to keep flood waters out of the basement of his Lake Kampeska home when he succumbed to a heart attack. He was listed as the first victim of the floods that year. During the war, he was regional director of the Civil Aeronautics Association for seven states. He operated the hatcheries at Flandreau, Sioux Falls, Arlington, Salem, Bryant and Huron at various points. He was also the founder and operator of the South Dakota Turkey Breeder's Association. He left his wife and two sons.

3. Lyle Smith Newcomb was born 27 Nov 1901 in Ramona, Lake County. He operated the hatcheries

Lyle Smith Newcomb

in Huron and Madison and died after a lingering illness 23 Sep 1950 in Madison. He left four children and his wife Vera.

4. Parker William Newcomb was born on 27 May 1903 in Lake County. He married Myrtle Dahl, who had a child from a previous marriage. They had four children together. He died 17 Aug 1957 in Lake County. During World War II, he served as a Lt Colonel in the US Army and served a full career in the South Dakota National Guard. He is also listed as having worked in the hatcheries.

5. Emma Mary Newcomb was born 21 Nov 1905 in Hamlin, South Dakota according to her birth index record. She married Fred John Kaske, who served in World War II. They moved to Ventura, California. Emma died 29 Nov 2001. They had two children.

6. Charles B. "Chuck" Newcomb was born on 13 Sep 1907 in Hamlin. He married Camilla Euphame Steensland on 08 Jun 1934 on her parents' farm. They lived in Arlington until 1939 when they moved the family to Sioux Falls to work in the hatchery business. The couple had six children. Chuck died in April of 1986, but Camilla lived to be 100 years old and died in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 05 Aug 2013.

Camilla Steensland

7. Florence Faye Newcomb was born 24 Apr 1909 in Lake County. She and her husband Lewis Arthur "Arthur" Larson had two children. She died 02 Mar 1991 in Durham, North Carolina. Arthur died 27 Mar 1993 in Durham. I'll be writing separately about them.

8. Doris R Newcomb was born 08 Oct 1916 in Lake County. She married Gordon Norbraten on 07 Sep 1938 in Hutchinson, South Dakota. They had one daughter. Gordon died 07 Aug 1975 in Miami-Dade County, Florida and Doris died 16 Aug 1995 in Lee County, Florida.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Smith Family Stories

This is sorted by the children of Jacob Smith and Mary Catherine "Cathie" Randolph

Jacob Smith Line: Mary Catherine Randolph, Sarah Jane Smith Doole, and Isaac Smith

ELIZABETH SMITH - Believed to have died young. No mention is made of her in sister Sarah's obit.

SARAH JANE SMITH
Jacob Smith Line: Mary Catherine Randolph, Sarah Jane Smith Doole, and Isaac Smith
Hang Down Your Head, Frank Doole

The Monteith's married three ways into the Smith family early on. They are pretty interesting!

THE MONTEITH FAMILY STORIES

Andrew Monteith Family of Wigtownshire, Scotland
William Boyd Monteith
Beloved Mary Welch Monteith Meets a Tragic End
The Great Chicago Fire & the Alexander McCullochs
Edward Boyd Monteith: Father of the Smith Wives
George Monteith of North Dakota
Jane Monteith, Nurse & Her Husbands
Race to the Finish: Fred C Monteith & Martin Rector
Sideroad: The Preston Family
Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Quackery

THE LICHTY FAMILY STORIES

The Lichty Family of Somerset County, Pennsylvania had many of its members pioneer in Black Hawk County. Most of them became exemplary citizens, leaders, captains of industry, lawyers, doctors, and highly successful farmers. Many held crucial roles in the development of the city of Waterloo.

Sideroad: Gabriel Bickley Lichty, MD, Abortionist

Sideroad: Lewis Lichty, Servant of the People

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

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.