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.)