Reunited by Chance-- Papa's mother and her sister

Ancestry.com has digitized local papers from around the country and offers the encouragement that even ordinary people get their names in the paper.  Yes, indeed, even our Lawders.  Here's the first item of interest, this from the Marion (Ohio) Daily Star, May 4, 1914, on the front page, bottom right corner:

Reunited by Chance

Chicago, May 4----- After living for ten years within three blocks of each other, Mrs. Alice Lawder and Mary C. Dawes, sisters, were reunited by a newspaper story telling of the former's son, missing in Mexico. The women had not seen each other for fifteen years.

[End of article]

Alice L. is Papa's mother, whom Don Jr., Wally and Nancy knew well as children, and Mary is "Mamie" Dawes, Alice's half sister.  The missing son, I'm assuming, is Charles Vernon Lawder, Papa's half brother (Alice's son by her 1st marriage).   There is a tantalizing small b&w photo in our collection of a man in his 30s, his arm around a woman holding a toddler in a tropical setting.  On the back, in old handwriting is "Charles Vernon Lawder and family in Mexico City.  Please return [the photo] to Mrs. Alice Lawder, Clark Street, Chicago, Ill."   So now we have to find the newspaper story reporting his missing status or some other clue.  Nancy knew vaguely that Papa had a brother, but not much more had been remembered or shared. Alice Van Houten Lawder's first husband's last name was Van Lumbard and she was widowed when she married Paul Lawder in 1888.  Alice and Alonzo Van Lumbard had two children Mary C (later 'Mamie' Dawes) and Charles Vernon Lumbard. Both changed their last names to 'Lawder' after their mother's marriage to Paul.

Who Came First?

Susan Lawder Hyde has been doing family history research too and shares the fascination.  She has been working on Russell's family but is interested in doing some Lawder/Van Houten/Olsen/Thorsen research on their lives "on the other side", before they came to America.  I have had more than enough to do figuring out their more recent history and am much more interested personally in how their stories illuminate American times.   But Susan's got the "international Ancestry", the higher level, and it would be fun to know that part too.  I told her I'd give her my list of the emigrants/immigrants in each family.  If there's a competition, the Van Houtens are WAY the earliest, (beating even the Wolcotts I think).  Lawders are second in this focus group of Bano and Papa's grandparents' families.  The Danish Olsens and Thorsens came last, but all were here by the mid 19th c.  So, here's the line up:

From Houten, The Netherlands, comes Roelof Cornelise Van Houten (1628-1672).  I don't know the exact date, but Roeloff C came over early enough to get married in Rennselaerswyck, New Netherlands (Albany, NY) in 1643 to Gerritje Van Ness, born in Emberland, Netherlands.  (These Dutch kept great parish records.)  Both born abroad, they died in Bergen County, New Netherlands, AKA New Jersey.  No great photos on the web, but the facts about Houten are here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houten

From Ireland in 1801 comes Frederick Lawder (Papa's great-great-grandfather) and his wife Margaret Reid. (See previous post).  Lawders have been in Ireland for a long time... but originally from Scotland.

From Flensberg, Denmark in 1852, comes the young Jens Jensen Thorsen, soon known as James Thorsen.  He graduates from Naval College in 1845, then goes to California (Gold Rush?) where he becomes naturalized in San Francisco in 1852.  [My mom, Nancy, has the original naturalization paper!] Jens/James returns home to Denmark, marries Emma Bloch and has 4 children (including Bano's father James Bloch Thorsen) before emigrating for good to Chicago in 1869.  [Johnny Thorsen in Savannah has sent us some info on their crossing in 1869 and the names of the kids. ]  Denmark loses Flensberg and the rest of Schleswig Holstein to Germany after 1869 on and the Danish minority faced a dim future.  PS Flensburg today looks like a great place to visit (photo below)

From somewhere in Denmark come George Olsen and Emily Miller, Bano's maternal grandparents.  George was born in Denmark in 1825 and by 1860 was married to Emily and living with her parents in Memphis, Tenn. and in Chicago.  They are in both places for the 1860 census actually. Emily Miller was born in Denmark in 1837 and came over as a young child.  They married in 1859.

Have a go, Sues!  You're able to write right to this blog, so I hope you will.

Rynd --a good Lawder family name

I'm ready to be done with these Lawders and move on to the story of the Van Houtens.  (Preview:  I have an actual diary from 1845 that I'm so eager to tell you about.)  We're equally connected to both of course:  Papa had a mother (Van Houten) as well as a father (Lawder).  I am noting an irresistible bias toward the name that gets carried down the line....i.e. the fathers' names, despite my best intentions.

But before we leave the Lawders for the moment, I want to mention the name "Rynd".  I have five different 'Rynd Lawders' in my family database.  There were Rynds in every generation following the marriage in Ireland in the 1740s of Frederick L. Lawder and Rebecca Rynd.  Those two did not emigrate to America, nor did their son (1) Rynd born in 1746, but their grandson and namesake Frederick Lawder (1780-1866) emigrated to the US in 1801.  This Frederick married Margaret Reid in Virginia in June 1807.  They had a passel of children including Marion H.'s father (2) Rynd Lawder (1811-1841).  [Note: Marion H. Lawder and John F. Lawder, whom we know from previous posts, were the first cousins who married and had 4 children, one of whom was Paul Lawder, Papa's father.]  John F and Marion named their first child (3) Rynd Henry (nicknamed Harry) (1861-1918), probably after John F's brother (4) Rynd Edward (1837-1890) who reached the rank of Major in the Civil War and also moved to Missouri after the war.  In 1880 Rynd E. was Collector of Revenue in Audrain Co., MO and the father of 3 children, including a (5) Rynd Lawder Jr. (1876-1905).  This last Rynd that I have found was on the 1893 football team at the University of Tennessee and died at the young age of 29.  There are a few more Rynds (e.g., Rynd Lawder Stratton) found around the Ancestry.com site but I haven't attempted  to corral all the cousins across the generations.  Too many!  Just a little time with a family tree convinces you that the whole world is basically related if you go back 5-6 generations!

So who's going to be the first in the next generation to revive the name Rynd?  Meanwhile the mysterious photo above is a photo of a "rynd" or 'rind", the iron piece in the middle of a millstone.  See wikipedia if you don't believe me.

Two Missouri Contemporaries: Mark Twain and John F. Lawder

I was just reading about the newly released autobiography of Mark Twain, and with these Missouri Lawders still on my mind, I noticed that Mark Twain and Papa's grandfather, JFL, were born only two years apart and died within 4 years of each other.  Twain in in his youth and early adulthood in Missouri and JFL there from his early 30s on.  [Here's a photo of MT in 1867; in that year, JFL had just moved to Pleasant Hill].  Twain was of course on the Mississippi River on the eastern border of Missouri, while JFL was in northwestern MO, closer to the Missouri River.  Don't you imagine that JFL would have read the works of Mark Twain?  Huck Finn? Twain was the most famous man in America in his day and the extra interest of following a local boy made good were sufficient reasons to think that an educated man such as JFL would have read Twain.  I can imagine that John's grandson (our Papa) read Twain as a boy as well....  Twain would have been a model for aspiring writers of the next generations such as young Don Lawder of Kansas City.  Both Twain's romance with the West (both did stints in Western mining although Papa's only lasted a week) and eventual move East to pursue and enjoy his career had parallels in Papa's life.  I'm not comparing Twain as a writer to any Lawders, just thinking about what those Lawders were reading and thinking.

Business notice from the Pleasant Hill Weekly Leader, 7/28/1871

Report of Death of John F. Lawder (1833-1908), Papa's grandfather

You can't make this stuff up!   The "disciple of Blackstone" didn't "take hold" in Harrisonville as he had in Pleasant Hill.  These towns are just a few miles from each other, but H'ville was the county seat and perhaps more competitive.  Or perhaps something happened that he stopped living with his wife, took a last stab at a career in OK?  John F. had arrived in Missouri at a time of great opportunity and chickanery.   I didn't follow it all, but in one day in 1869, he bought 110 properties "on the courthouse steps", i.e., from foreclosures.  Yet there was no family fortune available later to take care of his children in their old age.  Their costs of education would have been great, I suppose, at the residential schools for the deaf, but still.... there's more to this story. He left a mark, he "had his friends and his enemies", and he was a "picturesque character".    Did his son Paul, Papa's father, show any of John's entrepreneurial and "picturesque" characteristics?  Certainly Papa did.  We may need a novelist in the family to weave this story beyond the bare bones. If only Papa had written this story!!!

Note:  if you want to enlarge the image (who doesn't?), click on it and use your computer's zoom in features).

  

 

Obituary for Papa’s grandmother, Marion H. Lawder (1840-1894)

As I’ve poked around, I’ve gotten more interested in Papa’s grandparents, mainly because there is so much information about them.  No silence here !  They both made a mark on their communities, as you will see in their obituaries.  And, I know where they lived, the exact building where John F’s law office was, have seen many of the deed transfers of land that John bought as he took advantage of growth in Missouri.  The obituaries are a treasure of information!  I have to thank the Cass County (MO) Historical Society and the Pleasant Hill (MO) Historical Museum for the amazing information about these two.   Marion’s obituary is shorter and won’t scan well, so I’ll write it out below:

As published in the Pleasant Hill Times, in 1894:

“LAWDER—All who knew her will feel that the church has sustained a great loss in the death of Sister John F. Lawder.  She died at her home in Paola, Kans., June 8, 1894 at 7 o’clock p.m.  She was born September 9, 1840 at Palacios, a port on Matagora Bay in the Republic of Texas.  Her father dying shortly after her birth, she, with her mother removed to Fleming County, Kentucky, where she remained until 1851, when, with her mother she went to Lavoca, Texas, living there until the fall of 1859, when she visited her relatives in Kentucky and Ohio.  When on this visit, she was married to John F. Lawder, in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 1, 1860.  Of this union were born five children, three boys and two girls, the last child, a girl, dying in infancy.  The other children survive her.   She and her family moved from Cincinnati to Pleasant Hill, Mo., in October, 1865, thence moving to Harrisonville, Mo., in February, 1877, and to Paola, Kans., in 1890.  Sister Lawder, early in life united with the M.E. Church, South, and remained a consistent member to the time of her death.  While living at Harrisonville, she was for years president of the Women’s Missionary Society and manager of the Juvenile Society.  Under the greatest suffering she always exhibited a uniform patience and cheerfulness, and an unfaltering faith in her blessed Saviour.  This sweet experience she maintained to the last, coming to the end of life in great peace.  Earth is poorer and Heaven is richer by the death of Sister Marion H. Lawder.”

Beautiful!  So much detail about her path in life and I am impressed by the respect for her volunteer work and leadership.  But a couple of questions:  why no mention of her husband John F. as surviving her?  He lived until 1908.  In the 1890 census, they are living in different places, he in Drexel MO and she in Paola, KN, but they are not far apart.  I know she was living with her son Paul, wife Alice and their 5 yr. old son, "Dono", their nickname for Papa.  Was her husband John the cause of her “greatest suffering” or was it having 4 deaf children, or was that phrase a cliché of the time? In the next post, I'll print the obituary for John F. Lawder, prominent local lawyer who died alone in Oklahoma in 1908.   

"Children of Silence" - or with their own language?

Why Papa Knew Sign Language: I was stunned to learn that Papa's father, Paul Lawder and Paul's 3 siblings were all deaf and dumb, as they called it. On the 1890 federal survey of deaf families, Paul and his "hearing widow" (Alice Van Houten Lawder) reported that they had one child, Donald (that would be Papa). The survey also noted that all of Paul's siblings were deaf from birth, Rynd Henry the oldest, Elizabeth G, known as Bessie, Paul (our great-grandfather), and John McDole Lawder, the youngest. They were born in rapid succession between 1861-1866. (A 5th child died at the age of 9 months). The survey also asked if the deaf person's parents had been related before they married. "Yes, was the response, "they were first cousins". Now this was not as rare then, and even now it's not unfamiliar in other parts of the world, but John F. Lawder (son of Rev. William Lawder and Catherine McDole) and Marion (daughter of William's brother Rynd Lawder and Mary Quinn) must have each had a dominant gene for deafness. More on John F and Marion in the next post.  [Photo above is not our family, but of children from the Colorado School for the Deaf and Dumb around the same time].

Being deaf in the 19th century: What was that like for children or for their hearing parents?  I imagine the children growing up (born in Cincinnati, Ohio) in Pleasant Hill, MO, then Harrisonville, MO, and now I've seen those towns and rolling agricultural lands surrounding the small brick downtowns. I've confirmed with the registrar that they all attended the Missouri School for the Deaf and Dumb in Fulton, MO for different periods of time, and at least Bessie and Paul also attended the Illinois Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb in Jacksonville, IL (just north of St. Louis).  These were two of the first schools for the deaf west of the Mississippi River. They were residential schools and Bessie and Paul were both there at the age of 7 yrs. They would have been introduced to American sign language and what we'd call today the deaf culture. Many students at these residential schools married someone they met at these schools. [If you are interested in more on this general topic, there’s a fascinating brief history of deaf education in the US, “Through Deaf Eyes” ].  Our four Lawders also had each other at home too. Did they make up their own language before they went to school?

What happened to them when they grew up? We know Paul married Alice Van Houten in 1888 and had a son Donald (Papa) a year later. They also raised Alice’s daughter Mary (“Aunt Dot”) from her first marriage. Paul died in Kansas City in 1915 at the young age of 49, leaving his widow Alice and his 20 year old son Don. In the census of 1910, Paul is listed as having no occupation. Don was working as a reporter already and Alice was working at “the Cooper’s on 36th St” as we know from Papa’s Mother’s Day letter to her. What did Paul do all day? Did he communicate with his son? his wife?

Did Papa know his Lawder aunt and uncles? They were all in KC or nearby. His oldest uncle, Rynd Henry (“Harry”), died unmarried in 1918 at the “Jackson County Home” in Kansas City. That doesn’t sound like a good ending. Bessie, Papa’s only Lawder aunt, married a William C. Johnson in 1889 in Harrisonville. Was he deaf? Then I lose track of her. The youngest of the deaf generation, John McDole Lawder also married. I was excited to find that John and his wife Rose had a son, John Clyde Lawder. Throughout the census years, J. Clyde continues to live with his maternal grandparents while John and Rose Lawder live in Kansas City, he as a gardener on a fruit farm and she as a laundress. My guess is that Rose was also deaf but their son was born hearing and they had him raised by his hearing grandparents. [I don’t have evidence of this but as I’ve been living with these people, so to speak, I can’t help filling in the blanks.] Clyde Lawder was 8 years younger than his cousin Donald (our Papa) but lived till 1980. He and Papa may have been the only progeny of the 4 deaf children of John F. and Marion Lawder. Did Papa even know of his cousin Clyde?