“Notions and Fancy Goods”, Jobbers, and Heirlooms

This is me with my great-grandmother, Florence Mary
Stoddard Leach (c. 1973). I am called Lynn, but my first name
 is Mary, named after my mother, her grandmother,
and her great grandmother, Mary Bedell Stoddard.

In the fall, as I was cleaning one of my bureau drawers, I came across a small collection of heirloom pocket watches I have been entrusted to keep safe. They are all originally from either my great-grandmother, Florence Mary Stoddard Leach, or her parents, Henry Clay and Mary Bedell Stoddard.

Florence Stoddard, (unnamed seamstress), and her mother Mary Bedell Stoddard
in front of their home in Reed City, Michigan (c. 1905)

One week, after listening to a GenealogyGems Premium Podcast (199) Heirlooms–Capturing their stories and passing them on, I was inspired to really look at these watches. I gingerly figured out (with Jim’s help) how to open them—did you know that it kind of opens like a butterfly and has an inner cover that can be inscribed? Well, one of them is inscribed…it says “Mrs. H. C. Stoddard from Her Husband. Dec. 25th 83” (Obviously this is 1883, not 1983– they were married in 1872).

How sweet, I cried! I was overwhelmed with emotion as I held this pocket watch that was almost 140 years old my great-great grandfather, Henry Clay Stoddard, had given to my great-great grandmother! On the inside front cover was a photo of my great-great-grandmother, which I hypothesize my great-grandmother put inside so that she could have her own mother close to her heart after her mother passed away in 1909 (my great-grandmother lived until 1974!).

I have created a googleform to catalog the family heirlooms and I plan to catalog most of the family heirlooms this year. I would like a photo to go along with each description (of course!), so I asked for a ShotBox for Christmas so that I can take professional looking photographs with good lighting without shadows (hard to do in my Victorian House!). It wasn’t a beautifully inscribed pocket watch, but I love the fact that my husband shows his love for me by supporting me in this crazy hobby! Thanks, honey!

One thing that the special guest on GenealogyGems podcast shared was the importance of including background information, whatever you know and can find about the items. The companies that made the heirloom can be interesting in and of themselves! (I know, just one more thing to research, but the rabbit holes are fascinating.)

Pyrography of Gibson Girl by
Edward James Leach (bef. 1919)

This week, as I was packing something up in the guest bedroom, I looked to another heirloom hanging on the wall. It is a woodburned wooden plaque of a Gibson Girl, my grandmother identified as something her father EJ Leach (Florence's husband)

Edward James Leach

had made. It was not my intent to sit down and catalog this heirloom at that very moment, but I was intrigued. Because my grandmother had written “Gibson Girl” and “woodburning tool” on the back, I started by googling those words. 

Saturday Evening Post Advertisement

• I learned that woodburning is actually a craft called “pyrography” (maybe you already knew that?!) and have done some of your own during the 1970s craze. 
• I learned that the Flemish Art Company in New York held the market on creating pyrography kits

and that they tool all forms, wooden boxes, wall hangings and even leather items. In my search,
I came across an article about a 91-year old collector of Gibson Girl pyrography she’s found in antique stores and e-bay. 

• It also took me down the path of Charles Dan Gibson, the creator of the images of a Gibson Girl and to an exhibit on the Library of Congress page (an amazing resource for me on my journey for other reasons).

• In my search of a Catalogue of the choices of kits, I came across advertisements by the Flemish Art Co. in the Saturday Evening Post and also a fascinating magazine called “Fabrics, Fancy Goods and Notions: A Journal of Information for Jobbers and Retailers of Dry Goods, Fancy Goods and Notions”.

(Thanks to Google Books)  Okay, it took me a moment to figure out what this meant and who the audience for this journal would be! Maybe you ready know what a “Jobber” is? Or maybe you know the contemporary meaning? But in 1903, a “Jobber” would be a wholesaler or distributor. Learn something new every day!

1904 Issue of Notions and Fancy Goods

I think my great-grandfather did a great job with this project and I appreciate that I have learned something more about him and the craft of pyrography. I know this was a “kit” and I can not yet be certain that it was put together by the Flemish Art Co, but I’m tracking down leads and imagine someday I might even find a picture of the kit in some catalogue for Jobbers that has been digitized!

A Picture is worth MORE than a 1,000 words!

 Anyone who knows me, knows that I love pictures! 

I love taking pictures (my kids know this all too well!), looking at pictures, scrapbooking about pictures, collecting pictures, sharing pictures, and including pictures of people and places in my family trees.

Our daughters, they still laugh like this when they are together!

Having photos of my family (and my husband’s family) is important to me. The names and dates and even stories about people just don't “bring them to life” like a photo does. Last year, I made it my project to decorate our upstairs hallway with a family tree of photos. (It wasn’t my idea, I used this blog to guide me). I love walking by it every day and seeing the people who made Jim and I who we are. But I also recognize that just one photo of a person is not enough, because one quick moment in time can’t possibly give a sense of who they were as a person. Pictures may be worth 1,000 words, but a life can never be summed up in one photo!

About 25 years ago, my search for old family photos truly began. 

It wasn’t intentional, it was “just one of those things”. My dad and I were at the Hitching Post Antiques Mall in Tecumseh, Michigan (close to our family cottage). We were both drawn to the postcards and we just started looking through the Michigan and Sand Lake Collections (n.b. there are two Sand Lake’s in Michigan) and I found a postcard of this photo. It was labeled “Opening Day, 1907”.

Lodge Hoowanneka, Opening Day 1907, Sand Lake, Lenawee County, Michigan

While it’s a fun picture, it has so much more significance! The sign on the cottage says “Lodge Hoowanneka”, which is the name of our family cottage on Sand Lake!! It was one of the first really old photos I saw of our cottage. We since have found many more, but finding this at an antique store gave me the desire to look for those proverbial needles in a haystack and I have been sifting through old photos and postcards at every antique store I can get to, looking for anyone or anything connected to my husband or my family.

I also started using a variety of on-line tools. 

(Now they are plentiful, just see the recent FamilyTree Magazine article that outlines 13 really amazing repositories of photos. Ancestry.com and myHeritage are there, but there are lesser known ones like DeadFred and Digital Public Library of America. Warning–you will tumble down the rabbit hole!) 

Post on Genealogy.com Surname Forum

In 2010, one of my first amazing finds was this one of my great-grandfather, Edward James Leach, when he was a student at Olivet College (1901-1902). (This is where he met my great-grandmother, she was also attending Olivet College.) I don’t remember exactly how I ended up at genealogy.com where they host surname forums, but I found a post from 2003 by a genealogy angel who said she had a photo of Edward Leach. I contacted her and she sent me a beautiful print (for a price). I later found out that she did this as a business, she owned an antique store in Northville, Michigan.

L: Bartley Thomas, T:Howard Ellis, B: Edward Leach, R: Maurice Jones
Olivet College, c. 1901

Paying it Forward

This experience planted a seed that continued to germinate as I went to antique stores. 

Over the years, while I haven’t found a whole lot of our own families, I asked myself, wouldn’t I appreciate, and be really surprised, if someone looked through antique stores and shared with me a photo of one of my ancestors? So why don’t I become one of these genealogy angels who connects old photographs with their descendants? I look for semi-identified photocards, my favorite time frame is 1880s-1910s, research the people and then try to build out trees to people who might be living now. I didn’t keep track at the very start, but since 2013, I have been successful in connecting nearly 50 photos. I don’t charge a fee, I tell people, this is truly my hobby and joy to reconnect them with family who will appreciate it. 

I have two favorite picture/stories from this experience so far. One was from an 84 year old woman, Rowena, who wasn’t directly descended from the adults in the photo, but she personally knew all of the people in the photos because they were cousins. She had never seen any of these photos and was truly thrilled to own them and share with family. A second, Dave, was so excited by my find of his grandfather that when he received it, he took the photo and put it next to the 50th anniversary photo of his grandparents and sent it back to me to show me the resemblance. Some day, I’m hopeful that someone does this for me, but in the meanwhile I will just take joy in those that I connect with others!

Rowena's cousins

David's Grandfather

What made me think of this today?

Well, last night watching Lisa Louise Cook’s Elevenses with Lisa episode from 1/13/23, she shared a new-to-me resource, ArchiveGrid. This is an amazing free platform brought to us by the same people who created WorldCat. Everything in an Archives can’t be digitized, there just isn’t enough time (I saw for myself this very fact in the Bucknell University Archives today!) but ArchiveGrid is a catalog of the holdings in Archives around the world (yes, not just the U.S). I tested the waters last night and BINGO!! 

In a collection at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan, they have a file called, “Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County photograph collection” that contains 5 envelopes and in them includes two exciting finds. The first is a photo of the family home/farm of Samuel Obed Tubbs (1834-1917), my great-great grandfather! Samuel Tubbs was married to Francis Eliza Randall (1837-1924), who is the daughter of Timothy Castle Randall (1806-1849).

Francis Eliza Randall (1837-1924)
my great-great grandmother

Samuel Obed Tubbs (1834-1917)
my great-great grandfather

The collection says that it includes photos of Timothy Randall’s children and grandchildren. It doesn’t identify who exactly, so I’ve asked for all of them! They aren’t digitized so I haven’t actually seen them, but they are ordered and I will patiently (or not so patiently) wait the 6-8 weeks while they digitize them. Jim said I could just wait until the summer when I am at the lake and go myself….clearly I’m not THAT patient! 

This won’t be the last time I blog about my photos or finding them, I am certain!

In the meanwhile, wishing you lots of luck finding your own treasured pictures worth more than 1,000 words. 

The Rabbit Hole Sometimes Works!

Repeatedly over the past year, I have heard (from Lisa Louis Cooke in Genealogy Gems), read (in Family Tree Magazine), and learned in my Boston University Genealogy course that your family history journey should always follow a research plan. I actually know from my day job that the research question and plan should always guide your work, but somehow when I have limited time and BSOs (“bright shiny objects”), I would rather follow the BSOs down a rabbit hole to the next interesting link, than stick to the plan. 

The logic behind sticking to the research plan is that you can keep track of what you’ve done and not done, so that you don’t retrace your steps over, again and again! In the long run, it actually saves you time. (In 40 years of family research, I can tell you that I’ve done this a few times and although amazed at what I learned in the moment, I am a bit dejected when I realize that I already “knew it” from a decade before and “wasted” the precious time I have to search.)

Having said that, this week, I did chase that BSO and spent hours down a rabbit hole that actually paid off!! So, I’m going to recount my rabbit hole experience….

• Starting point: I have mentioned before that the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) is an incredible FREE resource to family historians. They offer FREE webinars and I just had to go to the one offered last Thursday night. They hosted the webinar, “21st Century Italian Genealogy” with President of Italian Genealogy Group*, Michael Cassara. (Michael Cassara is a professional genealogist and lecturer based in New York City, specializing in Italian/Sicilian genealogy, 20th century US immigration, and genealogical technology.) Something I definitely didn’t want to miss!

• The BSO: I have seen several different books in the Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing, but Michael helped me to see these in a different light and suggested that we search their publications. Great idea!

•  I put it on my list of things to do for my Italian research. As a backstory, my great-grandfather, Emanuel Antonio Mazziotti (aka “mystery orphan baby”) worked as a stone mason/builder/laborer on Rockefeller’s Estate Kyuit and is said to have worked on the Japanese Teahouse. (I have found the house he lived at with many of his wife’s family, the Mortelliti’s, while working on the estate but that’s a story for another day.)

• So, I started with the state of New York. There were over 700 books that related to New York, so I narrowed my search and tried “Elmsford”, “Kyuit”, “Pocantico Hills” and unfortunately nothing came up. I decided to just skim through all of the 700 titles. Although there were some promising ones, a quick search through the table of contents and the allowable on-line content, I didn’t find anything interesting.

• I moved next to Pennsylvania. At this point, I was no longer looking for any of my Italian family and just curious to see if I could find anything about Jim’s PA family. PA had over 450 titles. I searched them 48 at a time. Although lots of interesting titles, one even about Slovakian’s in Pittsburgh (my Slovakian family didn’t settle in Pittsburgh), but nothing that produced anything fruitful.

• Finally, the last state, which has lots of promise for both Jim and my family is Michigan! Arcadia had 749 titles with lots of promising titles like, Dutch Heritage in Kent and Ottawa Counties for Jim’s DeBoer, Van Dam, Van der Veen family who settled in Grand Rapids, MI! Or Ann Arbor in the 19th Century for my Tubbs and Orcutt lines. All were interesting but nothing really jumped out to me.

The GEM! It came when I spotted two books in the series, Houghton County 1870-1920 and finally, Hancock.

Images of America Series, Hancock (2014)

My grandmother, Elizabeth Leach Tubbs, was born in Hancock in 1914, and her father, Edward James Leach, was born in Houghton County, close to Hancock in Schoolcraft in 1883. In 1917, the Edward Leach family of 4 was living in Hancock at 520 Hancock Street, according to his WW1 Registration** and working as a Civil Engineer at the Copper Range Rail Road Company in Houghton (just across Portage Lake from Hancock).

World War I Draft Registration Card 

Portage Lake Baptist Church
Hancock (2014), p. 66

While I was amazed that this lovely book existed about this very small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this in and of itself was not the GEM. The GEM came while I was flipping through the pages of the book on-line, I came across a photo of the Portage Lake Baptist Church. The name meant nothing to me, since the Leach family attended the First Congregational Church, but it was the photo that jolted me. I KNEW this church, I had seen it before. It was, I was fairly sure, the church in the background of a photo that I knew well.

First Congregational Church,

Hancock (2014), p. 63

Florence Stoddard Leach with son Clay, c. 1910
in Hancock, Michigan

I shrieked when I figured this out and promptly interrupted the pinochle game happening at the kitchen table to share my discovery. Both my father-in-law and uncle-in-law promptly agreed they were the same church. My husband, Jim, however, was not entirely convinced. He wondered about the bridge ("elevated Front Street") and couldn't be sure based on the elevation of the landscape.

I took several more hours to try to figure out the angle of where the photo was taken. I searched the Library of Congress and found the Sanborn Maps of 1900 and 1917 of Hancock and found that 520 Hancock St. was a short walk to Portage Lake Baptist Church, where there was a very large field "behind" the church.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Hancock,
Houghton County, Michigan.Sanborn Map Company, Jun. 1900. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn04045_003/

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Hancock,
Houghton County, Michigan. Sanborn Map Company, Aug, 1917.
Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn04029_002/

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Hancock,
Houghton County, Michigan. Sanborn Map Company, Aug, 1917.
Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn04029_002/

In addition, in 1900 there were wooden bridges both in front and behind the church. I learned that the elevated Front Street had been replaced by changing the elevation of the ground, somewhere around 1906. The book's photograph was taken in 1894, so by the time my photo was taken, the one bridge had been replaced by land. Jim is now convinced but shakes his head in wonder why I even care.

You might shake your head like Jim, but I can't tell you how happy I am to now have identified where my great-grandmother and great-uncle were standing when this photo was taken. I think I need to go visit the U. P. this summer and see it for myself, although sadly the church has been converted to an auto repair shop.

Well, this BSO turned out to be a real GEM, and I am so very happy I turned down the invitation to play pinochle with my husband, my father-in-law, and my uncle-in-law and instead spent hours searching through this series while watching their games at my in-laws kitchen table Friday night. It was a win for everyone, well, almost, Jim didn’t win a game that night.

Maybe I will just pretend that my research question was, “Can I prove that this photograph of my great-grandmother Florence Stoddard Leach and her son (my great-uncle) Clay Leach was taken in Hancock, MI? And identify the church in the background?” 

Sure....this wasn’t really a rabbit hole, it was my plan all along.....

*If you are interested in Italian family research then you do need to join the IGG or at least join their FaceBook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ItalianGenealogicalGroup. As a member of the IGG, you have access to the archive of back issues of POINTers (Pursuing Our Italian Names Together), the American Journal of Italian Genealogy (1987-2013), which is in the top 10 list of Family Tree Magazine’s “10 Key Italian Genealogy Resources” (by Sharon DeBartalo Carmack).

 

**Source Citation:Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. (Michigan; Registration County: Houghton County Draft Card: L.

Original data:United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm. (I do also realize that his birth is recorded here at 1884, but his birth date was 1883.)

My First Brick Wall

 Anyone who researches family history knows about "Brick Walls". They are the person with a dead end. You don't know a lot about them and because of that you generally don't know their parentage, when they immigrated or where they originated from. I have a lot of brick walls, but maybe that's because I know a lot about both Jim and my families. I have traced many lines back to the 1600's (and unproven lines back to several centuries earlier) and I am even working on a supposed Mayflower Ancestor, but I still have brick walls. (As a mathematician, I find it fascinating to think that every generation creates a factor of 2 lines so by the time you go back just 6 generations, you are talking about 2 to the 6th (or 64 lines!) so everyone WILL have brick walls, somewhere.)

The first brick wall I hope to make progress on this year is my maternal great-great grandfather, Henry Edward Leach. I actually know quite a bit about Henry and I even have a photograph of him, taken presumably around the time of his wedding, 16 May 1882 to Flora Elizabeth Croft (b. 1854). 

Henry Edward Leach (c. 1834-1892)

Henry and Flora were married just over a year, when Flora died (1 Sep 1883) presumably after complications from the birth of their first child, Edward James Leach (b. 26 Aug 1883).

Flora Elizabeth Croft (1854-1888)

This son, Edward, is my great-grandfather. He also died young (in his 30's), but that is a story for another blog.

According to the:  1) 1880 Census (Year: 1880; Census Place: Schoolcraft, Houghton, Michigan; Roll: 581; Family History Film: 1254581; Page: 572A; Enumeration District: 008; Image: 0820), and 2) Michigan, Marriage Records, 1867-1952, Ancestry.com, 2015, Henry was 47 years old on the 1st of June 1880 and 48 years old on the 16th of May 1882, which suggests that his birthday was between May 16th and June 1st 1834. 

In the Portage Lake Mining Gazette, Houghton, Michigan, the following was transcribed: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/houghton/multiple/newspaper/mg1882.txt

1882 May 18-PORTAGE LAKE MINING GAZETTE, HOUGHTON, MICHIGAN

MARRIED- 1882 May 16, Thursday, at the residence of bride's mother in Hancock;

Mr. H. E. LEACH of Lake Linden and Miss Flora F. CROFT.

Uploaded Sept. 2001 by Dick & June Ross

Henry was a bookkeeper/clerk in Lake Linden, Houghton County, Michigan (Upper Peninsula) and listed as a boarder in 1880. I can't locate him in the 1870 Census in the U.S. and I also can't find any immigration or ship manifests that can confirm his arrival. He and his parents are reported to have been born in England. His wife, Flora, and her family moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from Canada and earlier Scotland. Maybe he came from England to Canada? Or maybe he came directly from England to the U.S.? 

My hope is that when I go to the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, IN next month that they can help me find something, although I certainly welcome suggestions. In the meanwhile, I am applying what I learned last summer from the  Genealogy Principles Course through Boston University to develop my research plan. I am also using one of my recent Christmas presents (thanks, Kim!) to learn how to use Evernote to do a better job of keeping track and taking notes.

May you have as much fun on your brick walls as I do!