Unbearable Loss - Sisters To The End

Oscar W Lindsey > Frank Simeon Lindsey > Fay Evern Lindsey married Marian Lane > Mildred Marie Lindsey and Lillian Lindsey Berry

Fay Lindsey met and married Marian Lane in 1929 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  To their union was born five girls and three boys. They resided in the Benton/Linn County area of Iowa.

All the girls married except for Mildred Marie.  She went by "Marie" for the most part. One day, she, her mother Marian and nephew Larry Berry and sister Lillian Berry were driving near Urbana when a car driven by James Scott crossed the center line and struck Marie's car nearly-head on.

The driver of the car that struck them died. Marie and Lillian also both died in the accident.  Sisters to the end.  No one was wearing seat belts.

After burying her two daughters, Marian recovered from her physical injuries and lived another four years, dying at age 83.

Next up:  A Tale of Murder

Unbearable Loss - A Fishing Trip With Pa

NATHAN FARR > WILLIAM FARR > WILLIS CORNELIUS FARR > ELNA ANN FARR

DR CHRISTOPHER RIBBLE > SUSANNAH RIBBLE m JOHANNES C KEGLEY > MICHAEL CAGLEY > JOHN L CAGLEY > MARY CAGLEY m Henry Noble > MONTFORD CAGLEY NOBLE

Montford Cagley Noble, 23, married a cousin, Elna Ann Farr, in Plainfield, Iowa in early July of 1919. She went with her husband, also of Plainfield, to their new home in Grand Island, Nebraska to start their married life. Not a month had passed when word came to her of the death of her father, a well-respected Methodist man and farmer, W.C. Farr, who was a mere 64 years of age. She returned for his funeral and then went back to Nebraska.  Less than a year later, she was dead from peritonitis following abdominal surgery at a Lincoln, Nebraska hospital.

Montford, or "Mont" as he was called by those who knew him, found a new bride in about 1921 in Nebraska.  Jeanette "Nettie" Forke was part of a large Elk, Nebraska farming family.  Her paternal grandfather had come from Germany and settled in Illinois.  Her father relocated from Illinois to give the wide open spaces of Nebraska a try.

Soon after their marriage, Nettie gave birth to their first child, Robert, on 14 Jun 1922.  They later had two more boys, Glen and Richard. The Noble's spent much of the next few years in Nebraska, but spent a few years in the Springfield, IL area.  Mont was a civil engineer.  In 1930 he was working for a steel mill in that capacity.


In August of 1939, Mont and his son Robert, now nearly 17,  took a fishing trip to Lac La Croix in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Lac La Croix is a border lake surrounded by what is now Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area to the South, and to the North lies Ontario's Quetico Park. The area is a protected canoe area with no public road access and some of the finest fishing in the world.

According to reports, the two had hired a guide to take them and a friend, David Simmons, into the deep pine forest and to the fishing areas. What started out a routine fishing expedition on August 10, 1939, ended with the deaths of both Mont and his son Robert, who were drowned after capsizing their canoe over a set of rapids.

The Forestry Branch at Fort Francis and Minnesota Game and Fisheries  were called in to do search and recovery and eventually, the provincial police arrived.  The bodies were located on August 14th.

In 1940, Nettie was living with her two sons and a boarder in Lincoln, Nebraska.  She lived on, never remarrying, until 11 Feb 1983 where she died in Los Angeles County, California at the age of 84.

Unbearable Loss - Drunk Driving

As I've traversed the family records, both far and near, in my quest to learn our family story, I've run across tragedy after tragedy.  Children by the score, lost before adulthood (what life was like before clean, treated water and vaccinations).  Sometimes half a mother's children would not reach maturity. It's heartbreaking.

But, perhaps none so much as when tragedy strikes twice in the same moment. I've run across three cases of double-loss so far in my journey.

Wilma and Berdine

The first was the case of sisters Wilma and Berdine. Wilma was 16 and had gone to a dance with her younger sister, age 15, and two boys.  On the way home, they apparently stopped for beer at a local tavern.  Reports stated that about a case had been purchased. In a later interview, Rutter observed during the trip that the 1939 model car Cadam was driving had reached 85 mph and had remarked upon it to the driver. At some point, the car they were riding in plunged through a bridge rail and soared 18 feet into the icy water below. Rutter was thrown clear of the car and was able to break free of the ice above him with his hand, sustaining only a cut hand in the accident.  The remaining three drowned.

Rutter had been the one who purchased the beer. In early 1952, the State grand jury declined to bring an indictment against the owner of the Horton tavern, John Karasch, for selling beer to minors. By mid-1952, Rutter was in the military and by 1953, he was back home, having been arrested for a break-in with Melvin Cadam, presumably related to the Cadam killed in the accident. From that point, he seems to have gone on and lived the life his friends did not get to live.

As a brief aside, the parents of Wilma and Berdine had lost two other sons in infancy.  Two of the remaining children did not live to 60 years old.  Of seven children, only one survives.

Jacob Smith Tree

WWII Brought Home: Harry F. Bradshaw, USN

Photo by C Voukon

I went to hang out with my uncle last week and he had a small treasure trove of old family photos. He also had some idea of who most of them were. Kindly, he let me borrow them and I've scanned as many as I could.

I ran across the photo of a young woman and, my curiosity piqued, I had to do a little research. I discovered the story of Seaman 1st Class Harry Frederick Bradshaw, one of scores of thousands of young Americans who lost their life in WWII.

Harry was raised in Nashua and Belle Plaine, IA, graduating from Belle Plaine High School in 1939 and joined the Navy soon thereafter. While on leave on May 4, 1941, he married my grandmother's sister's oldest (twin) daughter, Jeanette Janis Scoles. According to researcher Evelyn Park Blalock, they were childhood sweethearts. They were married by a local Presbyterian minister. Jeanette went to live with his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Ray Bradshaw in Belle Plaine and also spent time in Nashua, while Harry served.


He was stationed on the USS Arizona until October 1941. He served briefly on the USS Wharton to get stateside to San Francisco. He headed to a training in Virginia from there.  His final leave was in November of 1941 and he returned home to his wife and parent. He returned to Hawaii via the USS Neosha, leaving port in San Francisco on 30 Nov 1941. The USS Neosha arrived in Pearl Harbor on December, 6, 1941.  He was supposed to return to the Arizona on the 6th, but because of the emergency, he did not reboard the Arizona, saving his life.. Having survived the attack, his emergency orders had him transferred permanently to the Neosha on the 7th.

Harry is honored on the list of survivors inscribed at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Honolulu, Hawaii, and on the Tablets of the Missing in Manila, the Philippines. The U.S. Navy also placed a cenotaph memorializing Harry in Oak Hill Cemetery, Belle Plaine, Benton County, Iowa.

She was laid down under Maritime Commission contract by Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Kearny, New Jersey, 22 June 1938; launched on 29 April 1939; sponsored by Mrs. Emory S. Land, wife of Rear Admiral Emory S. Land (Ret.), Chairman of the Maritime Commission; and commissioned on 7 August 1939, with Commander AV. E. A. Mullan in command.

Conversion at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was completed on 7 July 1941, Neosho immediately began the vital task of ferrying aviation fuel from west coast ports to Pearl Harbor. On such a mission she arrived in Pearl Harbor on 6 December, discharged a full cargo to Naval Air Station Ford Island, and prepared for the return passage.

Next morning, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor found Neosho alert to danger; her captain-Commander John S. Phillips-got her underway and maneuvered safely through the Japanese fire, concentrated on the battleships moored at Ford Island, to a safer area of the harbor. Her guns fired throughout the attack, splashing one enemy plane and driving off others. Three of her men were wounded by a strafing attacker.

For the next five months, Neosho sailed with the aircraft carriers or independently, since escort ships-now few and far between-could not always be spared to guard even so precious a ship and cargo. Late in April, as the Japanese threatened a southward move against Australia and New Zealand by attempting to advance their bases in the Southwest Pacific, Neosho joined Task Force 17 (TF 17). At all costs, the sealanes to the dominions had to be kept open, and they had to be protected against attack and possible invasion.

As the American and Japanese fleets sought each other out in the opening maneuvers of the climactic Battle of the Coral Sea on 6 May 1942, Neosho refueled the carrier Yorktown and heavy cruiser Astoria, then retired from the carrier force with a lone escort, the destroyer Sims.

Neosho burning, 7 May 1942.

Next day at 10:00, Japanese aircraft spotted the two ships, and believing them to be a carrier and her escort, launched the first of two attacks which sank Sims and left Neosho-victim of seven direct hits and a suicide dive by one of the bombers-ablaze aft and in danger of breaking in two. She had shot down at least three of the attackers. One of her crewmen, Oscar V. Peterson, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts to save the ship in spite of his severe injuries suffered in the attack.

Superb seamanship and skilled damage control work kept Neosho afloat for the next four days. The sorely stricken ship was first located by a RAAF aircraft, then an American PBY Catalina flying boat. At 13:00 on 11 May, the destroyer Henley arrived, rescued the 123 survivors and sunk by gunfire the ship they had so valiantly kept afloat against impossible odds. With Henley came word that the American fleet had succeeded in turning the Japanese back, marking the end of their southward expansion in World War II.

Harry was declared missing on May 8, 1942.  He was declared Killed in Action May 8, 1943 and awarded the Purple Heart.

Harry Bradshaw is Declared Officially Dead by Navy Dept 

Word Received here by his widow Monday brings sympathy from Sec Knox

Mrs Harry Bradshaw received word Monday from the Navy Department that on May 8, 1943, he was officially declared to be dead.  He had been reported missing since May 8, 1942 when the tanker, Neosha, was sunk in the Coral Sea.  Harry was in Charge of laundry on the Neosha.  With the official declaration of his death, was a message of sympathy from Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, which read as follows:  "I extend to you my sincere sympathy in your great loss and hope you may find comfort in the knowledge that your husband gave his life for his couuntry, upholding the highest tradition of the Navy.  The Navy shares in your sense of loss of his service.  

Mrs Bradshaw is the former Jeanette Scoles.

Nashua Reporter, 16 Jun 1943, pg 1

My heart felt heavy for Jeanette who really never got a chance to start her life with Harry. I thought of the power of young love and how all of her hopes and dreams were dashed as it would for too many other young wives  She'd remember Harry, though, through the eyes of their child, Dennis, who was born nine months after that leave. Jeanette remarried many years later and died in 2004 in New Hampton, IA.

Waking the Dead

I'm really not morbid. No, I'm not. In fact, the fascination I'm finding in the stories of a bunch of dead people brings them to life.  My mom has been doing serious, and I mean serious genealogical research for a few years. It keeps her curiosity gene humming. We talk about her discoveries quite a bit. I've decided to do some filling in of my dad's side of the family though since she has only done the rudiments of research there.

I vaguely remember them, those great uncles and aunts. My great grandmother Florence I remember much better, but she died when I was 22 and I can sum it all up here:  He Looked Down Upon Me and Laughed. It's a family of farmers and laborers - just regular hard-working folk who were born, got married, popped out some kids, and died from what I've found so far. Stubborn, too, from what I hear. This makes "me" a little bit clearer.

While I would no sooner speak up in a room of strangers than I would give myself a lobotomy with a spoon and no anesthesia, I have absolutely no problem calling or knocking on someone's door if I actually want information from them.

Since I've moved here, I've been overwhelmed by a lack of interest in almost everything.  I'd rather watch the hours of DVR things I recorded all week in one sitting or take a nap and read a couple of books than leave my house to go anywhere.

But, I'm taking a road trip this Saturday to this family's town about 40 miles from here to gather some information and visit some cemeteries. I might even find a living relative or two to surprise.These are things I don't expect anyone to want to do with me, but when I mentioned I was going to my daughter, she wanted to go.  She plans on wearing her "Undertaker" cosplay costume so we can do a photo shoot by the tombstones. Whatever it takes. I like the idea of spending the day with her and it will be cathartic to leave town for a few hours.

I just wonder what I'll have missed on DVR this week.

It's Been Years. In Fact, a Lifetime

I didn't even realize this was still here. And, on the spur of the moment, I've decided to see where this takes me.

In the past two years, a lot has happened.  I uncoupled from whomever the latest love was. Moved to another part of the country.  Spent two years hating my job which wasn't the job I took but resolute that they will part with me and not me them. Severance, you know. Still waiting, basically, for the multi-year reorganization to finally catch me.  Lost two dogs.  Missed old friends.  Gained family. Found home again.

I'm going to try to put down my thoughts about what's happened and the impact it's had on me here. Reintegrating into the place I grew up has been full of ups and downs - most of which I've kept to myself. Which, I've learned, is what we do.