Where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing

Photo of Michael in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, from December 2023.It’s been a while since I published a blog post here, and I feel an explanation and an update are needed.

It’s a story of discovery that began with an exploration of possible Jamestown ancestors and blossomed into the discovery of an amazing community of researchers; a commitment to helping grow a single, global, narrated family tree; and untold surprising discoveries—including most recently the discovery that my father’s second wife may have been murdered by a known serial killer. Continue reading

Gertrude had a baby brother?

Receiving loads of old papers and photos has been a godsend for me as a family historian, but sometimes they come in like a tsunami and I don’t have time to properly pore over everything before I must turn my attention back to work and the rest of my life. So it was with me and a couple of boxes of family-history-related items I brought back with me from my grandmother’s house after talking with her for several hours about family history. Normally I would have taken months to go through every last tidbit I brought back, but before I had a chance to do that I travelled to my grandmother’s home town (Wadena, Minnesota) for 10 days and I came back with enough data and scans to occupy me for a couple of years.

Among the items I brought back from my visit with Harriet were a number of photos and written notes that Harriet herself had inherited from her aunt Eva (Scott) Martes, who died on November 22, 2006. Eva was the younger sister of my great-grandmother Gertrude (Scott) Askew (1897–1980). I had time to scan a few hundred photos and sheets of notes before I had to set the project aside to prepare for my Wadena visit. Continue reading

Mystery Scott photo album, part 1

Today’s post is about a photo album that’s intrigued me since I first saw it about four years ago. I’ve shared a couple of the photos from the album in previous blog posts, referring to the album in which I found them as an album that probably belonged to my great-great-grandfather Frank Scott. The album itself is quite fascinating and is filled with photos from the 1920s of a well-to-do couple named “Roland and Flo” who apparently liked to travel quite a bit.

The photo album presents a comfortable but curious mix of people from two distinct socioeconomic strata. The first group includes my known Scott relations (my great-grandmother Gertrude Scott Askew, her sister Cassie Scott, her father Frank Scott, and his second wife Lois Lanudge Scott)—poorer folk working multiple jobs to make ends meet and living in rural Wadena county, Minnesota. The second group appears to center around the couple named Roland and Flo—an apparently well-heeled and well-traveled couple.

But who were Roland and Flo? Until last week, despite having records on over 13,000 people in my family history database, not a single one of those people was named Roland, and none of the women named Flo or Florence were possible candidates for Flo in the photo album. Continue reading

Mystery man—plea for help with identification

2011-11-22-017This post is about a man who was either part of our family or was close to our family, but I don’t know exactly who he is. I have at least eight photos of him (one additional photo is uncertain), and nothing is written on any of these to help identify him. I’m hoping that someone reading this recognizes this man or has additional photos of him, perhaps even some that may yield clues as to his identify.

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The first photo of Horace Scott?

1885 ?- Frank ScottWhile working on a future post about some of the earliest family photos I’ve seen, I had a revelation that I’d like to share with you. One of the most exciting discoveries that I can make when going through old family photos is finding a photo of an ancestor for whom I thought no photos existed. My 3rd-great-grandfather, Horace Scott (the subject of two previous posts: here and here), is one individual whose face I figured I’d never have the chance to see. He was born in 1842, he went off to fight in the Civil War at age 20, he caught tuberculosis two years later in 1864, he was discharged a year later, and he lived only five more years, dying of tuberculosis in 1870 at the age of 28.

I had no photos of Horace Scott that I knew of, and I didn’t expect to ever find any, although I figured I’d keep looking just in case.
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Horace catches his death of cold

F5.largeIn a previous post, I introduced Horace L. Scott, my 3rd-great-grandfather (he was the paternal grandfather of my great-grandmother, Gertrude (Scott) Askew). In that first post, I laid out all I knew about Horace at that time. Horace was born in New York, around 1842, and he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. While serving in that war, he appears to have either been injured or become ill, as he applied for an invalid’s pension in 1870, five years after the war, when he was only about 28 years old.

Sometime between 1870 and 1875, Horace died and was buried in Alden, Illinois. His widow Caroline and their children moved to Deer Creek, MN, to live with her parents. Was Horace wounded in the Civil War? Was that the cause of his status as an invalid after the war? Did it contribute to his premature death?

I applied to the National Archives for copies of Horace’s Civil War service records and any pension applications that he, his widow, or his children might have filed. I recently received two packages from the National Archives with 65 pages of scanned documents about Horace. One of the packages contained a copy of Horace’s Civil War Military Service File, and the other package contained a copy of his Full Civil War Pension File. Among the pages of these scanned documents were answers to my questions about his infirmity and death.

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Frank Scott’s second wife & TB

Maritime-Tuberculosis-Association-Billboard-1930s1-300x197Growing up, I learned only bits and pieces about my great-great-grandfather, Frank Scott. His first wife (Maggie McAllister, my great-great-grandmother) unexpectedly died at the age of 38 on June 11, 1910, leaving Frank with four young daughters. After his wife’s death, he placed his daughters with family members, so perhaps my great-grandmother’s bond with—and memory of—her father wasn’t as great as it would have been had the family not been broken up. My grandmother Harriet has fond memories of driving with her “grandpa Scott” in his delivery truck, and of visiting him at his pickle factory. Frank died when Harriet was only 13, so her memories were perhaps not as full as they might have been had he lived longer.

I was told that he remarried after his first wife died, but all I was able to learn about this second wife was that her name was “Loie.” I was also told that Frank died of tuberculosis in a “sanitarium” in November, 1937.

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A tintype photo of Frank Scott

This post is about a photo I didn’t even know existed until last August, when I found it among some old photographs in my grandmother’s house.  I never saw it displayed when I was growing up (and my grandmother displayed a lot of photos throughout her house), which makes me think she received it rather recently from a relative (presumably Eva Scott) in Minnesota.

An identification as well as the source of the identification are written on the back of the photo: “Frank Scott said Myrtle Soule, April 5, 1953. Died Nov. 1937.”

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Two deaths at Deer Creek

For this post, I want to relay a newspaper article from 1910, and give it what context I can from other sources.  I have several second-, third-, and even fourth-generation photocopies of the article, but I have not yet found a physical or digital copy of the original article.

In the span of about a week, the lives of Frank Scott and his four daughters were turned upside down. Frank’s wife Margaret got sick and died suddenly and unexpectedly. Her funeral was immediately arranged, and when her funeral procession passed Frank’s house, where his infirm step-father Nathaniel was staying, Nathaniel died. His step-father’s funeral was arranged and held two days later, and then Frank was left alone with his four young girls, aged 3–12. Continue reading

A postcard to Frank Scott from his sister Mate

Another quick post while I’m scanning photos.  This one is an Easter-themed postcard written to Frank Scott by his sister Mary “Mate” Scott on Saturday, April 11, 1914—the day before Easter.  She’s not a big fan of punctuation, and he’s apparently not the greatest correspondent.

The postcard was mailed from Deer Creek, MN, to Menahga, MN, a distance of about 30 miles.

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