Portrait of oldest Olsen children, Viggo, Anna, and Clara, mid-1860s

Who remembers this group portrait from Bano's?  Or Mom's apartment in the corner behind the palm tree?  Mom knew that one of the girls was Clara, her grandmother, but I only realized the identity of the others recently.  The portrait is done in charcoal in the mid-1860s of the three oldest children of George and Emily [Miller] Olsen.  The Danish-born couple had met and married in Memphis, TN in 1859 and moved to Chicago as the Civil War was starting. They seem to have been pretty prosperous from the start (portraits already!). And the children came quickly.  From left to right, the children are baby Viggo (b. 1863), their firstborn Anna (b. 1861), and 2nd daughter Clara Estella (b. 1862).  [Their sister, Dagmar, mentioned in the previous post, wasn't born till 1866.]

Clara died of the flu or grippe, at the age of 29, leaving her husband James B. Thorsen and their four children, Blanche (Bano), Alice, Mitchell, and George).  Two years later, James B. married a still younger Olsen sister, Florence (b. 1871), who had four more children and was "Grandmother Florence" to Nancy, Wally and Don (and some of my generation who remember her).

Anna Olsen (later Anna Grund) had several children all of whom Aunt Alice kept track of.  The one my sisters and I remember is "Aunt Elinor" [Grund] Reynolds.  Viggo we don't know much about at all (yet).  He married (Hattie) and had a daughter Harriet and made his living working in construction with his father.

History of Mom's treasured Danish coffeepot

A hand-written note inside tells the story.  The note is from Dagmar Olsen Faye to her niece, Blanche Thorsen Lawder (our Bano).

“Chicago, March 9, 1940

My Dear Blanche,

When I visited Petrea  ….berg in Copenhagen in Sept. 1892. In serving coffee after dinner, I admired her coffee pot. And she said it had been her Grandmother’s.  Petrea and My Mother [Emily Olsen] were 1^st cousins and both born in May 1837.  When Mother and Father visited Copenhagen in 1895, Petrea gave Grandmother the coffee pot – with the request that she give it to her daughter, Dagmar Faye, with her love.  – Although Mother used it many years, she eventually gave it to me.  – and I have had many coffee parties and dinners when I have used it..   And I can [illegible]…It has given me great pleasure to be able to give it to you – and to know that you are enjoying it.  As I wanted someone to have it that remembered and loved Grandmother in her home.

Lovingly and Sincerely Yours,

Aunt Dagmar

So much of the past is with us

Jill, Nini and I are spending the night at 221 Mass. Ave., and began to look through an old box of papers from Bano and Papa..... many letters and disintegrating clippings.  This letter from Papa to Bano struck a chord.....

[1929, written by Papa, Don Lawder to his wife Blanche in CT.  Papa was in Chicago with his dying mother, Alice Van Houten Lawder]

9:15 pm

Monday

Dearest Blanche-

You may have a wire from me by this time—I mean by the time you receive this.  She is going.  Probably will not last the night.  It is better so. Her mind is now blank. She could only be a helpless, mindless invalid and even that for only a short time.  The clot has been on her brain so long the tissues are dead. While it has been a strain, still some sort of philosophy has kept me up. Still keeps me up and now I can see her pass away with a fortitude I did not possess a week ago.

I was here when she was conscious. I told her I wouldn’t leave her till she was up on her feet again. She knew that I wouldn’t –and I have so much to tell you of our last days together – they were wonderful—full of understanding.

Somehow my mind goes back to when I was five or six years old.  My grandmother was dead, Mother’s mother.  All I remember is seeing her in her casket—and I also remember riding in a hack on the way to the cemetery. I thought to myself, “I hope my mother won’t die until I am old enough to stand it”. I was six years old then.  Well she didn’t. She stayed to the last- stayed until I had built up my philosophy-then she peacefully departed.  I speak of her now as if she were already dead. To me she is. I have no more emotion to give. That side of me is dead—exhausted.

How thankful I am that I have you—love—a home—children- While the old passes, the young come on with their dreams, their ambitions, their need of protection, to take ones thoughts away from the other end of the road of Life. Dear Girl, you are never absent from my thoughts. I hope you haven’t worried. I haven’t written because my brain seemed dull. I couldn’t do more than carry on here—I thought of you, I intended to wire oftener but somehow the power of volition – of action- was not in me. The days dragged on—each very much like the other—it seemed that time stood still and I, with it.

Good night dear. Don’t worry about me. I have the undertaker and cemetery all taken care of. It only remains….. (last page missing).

Goshen, New Hampshire-- perfect summer on Rand Pond

Here's some more recent history for a change.  Well, 50-some years ago actually, but it's MY life and memories.  In the mid-1950s, Bano and Papa (my grandparents Blanche [Thorsen] Lawder, and Don Lawder Sr., for any unrelated readers) bought a simple summer house on a tiny pond in Goshen, just 10 minutes south of Sunapee, NH.  Michael and I were driving to a friend's house in Sunapee on Friday and took the back route, up route 10, the road that pre-dates the interstate I-91.  I hadn't realized that we'd drive through Goshen, still a picture-perfect, tiny town with a white grange hall, town hall and congregational church that is the definition of summer to me still.  We asked at the general store for the location of a pond and fortunately the town has only one, Rand Pond.  We turned off the main road onto Brook Road and followed a small brook (duh!) 3 miles up to Rand Pond Road.  The road is just as I remember it, hard-packed sandy dirt.  And I'm pretty sure I found the right house, #110.  A little cleaned up, and there's a new shed, but the big rock dividing the shore line was familiar as was the view of the campground across the pond to the right.  (The campground has been there since 1912, I was told).  We used to walk  down there to the little store to buy Charleston Chews.  There was a place up the road where we took big bottles to collect spring water.  The spot is still there!   The pond looked beautiful actually.  Cousins Bruce and Susan will remember this spot.  Jill too maybe.

The Blind Fiddler, Papa's grandfather on his mother's side

Obituary for Peter R. Van Houten as published March 8, 1876 in the Western Christian Advocate (publication of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church), copies held in the Special Collection on the Ohio M.E. Church in the Archives of Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio.

Van Houten --- Rev. Peter R. Van Houten was born near Paterson, N. J. in 1814, and died in Delaware, O., January 20, 1876. When but an infant, a mistake in medical treatment induced lameness, so that until five years of age he was unable to walk, and during the rest of life he walked with difficulty by the aid of two canes.  When nine years of age, by an accident, he lost his eye-sight.  Crippled, blind, and poor, there seemed no hope for him but entire dependence on charity.  But he possessed more than ordinary determination, hopefulness, and mental power.  He soon learned to support himself by his rare musical ability, and the “Blind Fiddler” was in great demand at all the marry-makings in the vicinity of his home.  Converted in 1837, he joined the Church, and renounced attendance upon sinful pleasures and pursuits, and with it, it seemed to him, the hope of self-maintenance.  In 1839 he was licensed to preach, and from that time to the last week of his life he traveled as an evangelist, and was well known in many parts of the land.  In 1845 he came to Ohio to reside.  His acquaintance with the Bible was very thorough.  His knowledge of books, marvelous for a man of his opportunities, would have done credit to any one possessed of sight.  His library, read to him by his faithful wife, was well selected and carefully studied.  His preaching showed original thought as well as deep feeling.  He labored to the last, though under the added weight of a painful disease, and reached his humble home only in time to die.  In full confidence in Christ, he bade farewell to his wife and daughter and opened his eyes at last in heaven.

[End]

Sunbury Cemetery:

 “The blind preacher’s monument, to which was awarded the first premium of the second annual state fair of the State of Ohio, Sept. 27, 1851”.  [Hmmm. The date of this award is puzzling because his first wife, Alice, didn't die till October 1852.] The tombstone has many names on it, his parents, all of his siblings and his daughter Mary R.W. who was never buried there.]

Peter Van Houten (1814-1876) Writes to YOU: the background

I transcribed the handwritten journal (excerpted in the next post) of the Reverend Peter R. Van Houten, my great-great grandfather on my mother’s side.  The journal has been in my mother’s possession.  She is Nancy Lawder Wolcott and the journal came to her from her father, Donald Lawder, and to him from his Aunt Mamie (Mary R. W. Van Houten) Dawes, (daughter of Peter R. Van Houten and his first wife Alice White).  Mamie Dawes is the “little Mary Rebecca W” spoken of in the end of the diary.  It is the last days of Alice White’s life that are recounted, dialogue and all, in Peter Van Houten’s diary.  Peter V. H. was crippled at age 4 from medical maltreatment, and then suffered again when he was blinded in an accident when he was nine years old.  He found his calling in the Methodist Episcopal Church while still in New Jersey and pursued a travelling preacher’s life until a week before he died in 1876.   He dictated his journal to various amanuenses (mostly his wife Alice) as he mentions in the journal.

I have transcribed most of it: sketchily in the first section detailing his travels and preachings; but have included every word when the material was more personal.  The complete original will soon be held in the Archives of Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio.  They have Special Collections on the history of Delaware and on the Methodist Church in Ohio, both important to Peter.  It is good home for the diary.  It would continue to fall apart in generations of attics. It’s an amazing experience to read your 2x or 3x great-grandfather’s words.  I am happy to bring it to the attention of the rest of Peter’s descendents and to the descendents of his brothers and sisters.

I corrected more of the spelling as I went along.  Not as historically accurate, but easier to read.  My explanatory comments are in brackets here and there.

Peter Van Houten (1814-1876) Writes to YOU

Excerpt from his journal (1845-1852).  Peter is sitting at the bedside of his dying wife, Alice.  This is one of their conversations over the 4-5 days before she dies.  He writes:

 "She wishes to know if I had any objection of her sending a present to each of her friends. I told her I had none whatever and whatever she wished for them to have I would either take myself or convey to them.  She seemed very much pleased and said my little testament--give to my mother and have written in it “presented to Rebecca White by her daughter Alice while on her death bed” with this prayer to be added: “Lord save my mother, Lord help my mother to meet her daughter in heaven. Galena, Delaware Co., Ohio, Oct. the eighteenth 1851.” Also one ready-made dress.  Give my bonnet and another dress to my sister Pollie. And another to my sister Harriet which is not made. And a fourth one which is not made to my sister Lucy. She said nothing about sending anything to Warren. She then spoke of little Mary, our only child living who was only three and a half years old, and said my silk apron, veil, parasol, and silver teaspoons, keep till she is grown up as they will not damage by keeping. [jwc: amazingly my Mom has these very teaspoons (shown in photo above).  No one knew whose initials they were until we read Peter's journal.  The initials are Alice's, A. E. V. H. ]  The thirty acres of land in Pennsylvania belongs to her also by heirship and if she should not live then I give it to you. She several times expressed a doubt of Mary living long and at one time said she is so subject to the croup that I think she will be with me by next spring. She remarked after a while, I suppose you will change your situation though I have said nothing to you about it. I exclaimed, “oh Alice, how can I give you up, how can I live without you?” She replied: “I suppose it will be hard, Peter, but nature has so constituted us that time will measurably heal the wound caused by the death of a friend. We conversed about two different individuals whose names it would not be proper here to mention, either of which would be suitable and desirable. I observed that my case would be a critical one as those whom I might desire and with whom I might be suited I could not obtain and those whom I might obtain would be neither suitable nor desirable. I once made a good choice with whom I was suited.  But never expect to be suited as well again. Whatever I have said or done that had a tendency to hurt your feelings, I heartily regret. it is the bitterest ingredient in the cup of my affliction. Home was a desirable place to me and never contented when absent I most fervently hope you will forgive all the past, she replied, “I do, with all my heart and I hope also you will forgive me.” I observed most cheerfully do I forgive.  Oh the solemnity of that hour conversing in the valley of death. Our feelings eternity alone can develop and I would here say to husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers and sisters, be kind and courteous, love as brethren and do good to each other as you have opportunity for the neglect of duty towards your friends and the doing or saying to them that which you ought not, though in themselves they may be of small importance for the time being comparatively speaking, yet they will be keep arrows in your hearts in that day when you are called to die or to stand by the side of a friend when bidding adieu to earth and its cares."

Trip back in time to Delaware, Ohio

This will be just the first post on the Lawders and Van Houtens of Ohio.  I have so much to share.  I know you need a family tree diagram to follow this and I'll figure out how to get it on this blog.  Here's a start, a quick summary of the Lawder side, going from youngest generation to the first born in America:

8.  "the grandkids' generation: Liam, Olivia, Nora's Bryn, et al.)
7.  Our kids' generation "the kids" (Nina, Bryn, Cate, Nora, Jaymie L., Kate P et al.
6.  Our generation ("the cousins")
5. Our parents ("the parents":  Don Jr., Wally and Nancy)
4.  Donald Lawder (Papa) b. 1889
3.  Paul Lawder b. 1865 (Papa's father -- born deaf)   m. Alice J. Van Houten (mentioned below)
2.  John F. Lawder b. 1833 (Papa's grandfather, a lawyer, moved from Ohio to Missouri with his wife (and 1st cousin) Marion Lawder (both their obits are in earlier posts of the blog, you can search on their names)
1.  Rev. William H. Lawder  b. 1809 (Papa's great-grandfather father of John L. and six others, born in Virginia in 1809 m. Catherine McDole (first generation born in the US of this line of Lawders)
  (Will soon share a lengthy obit for William and also for Catherine, from the archives at Ohio Wesleyan)
* The immigrant: Frederic Lawder, (Papa's great-great grandfather, born in Ireland in 1780, died in VA 1866), m. in Virginia to Margaret Reid.

The Delaware Ohio trip was fascinating.  I have to get a little quiet time and start to send out the stories.  LOTS of information, all interesting, some amazing, some sad.  Three Lawder brothers, Papa's great, great uncles, had studied at Ohio Wesleyan University for more than a year in the 1850s-60s, their father (Rev. William H. Lawder, Papa's great grand-father) was a Methodist Episcopal minister and served on the board of Examiners at OWU in the latter half of the 19th c..  And Papa's mother in the 1870s attended a year of prep school there and a year of studying classics and piano, before a disastrous marriage in 1875.  Disastrous in that it was abusive* and ended in divorce and a custody struggle for the two children of that marriage.  I believe, but don't have specific evidence, that some time after Alice was granted a divorce from Alonzo Lumbard, she took their two children, Charles Vernon and Mary G. (who became known as "Aunt Mamie" to Papa and his children) and fled to a safe location where she had a connection.  That was Missouri, to the home of John and Marion Lawder.  Shortly afterward, she married their son, Paul Lawder, and they had a baby, Donald (our Papa) in 1889 in Paola, Kansas (not far from the Lawder's Missouri home. Paul L. would seem like an unlikely choice since he was both deaf from birth and ten years younger than Alice.   But such is fate and the rest is history.  PS. BOTH of their mothers (Marion Lawder and Sarah [Thrall] Van Houten) joined them and were living with Paul, Alice and their three children in the 1890 census.  

* I now know about Alice's first marriage in painful detail because in the Delaware County records of court proceedings, I read Alice's own statement detailing the physical abuse, her constant fear for her life, and Alonzo's failure to support her and the children.  It was shocking to read and I almost felt guilty for bringing it to light.  At the same time, it was an example of how intimate historical research can be when you really "meet" these people from the past and their stories, although only just part, come out.  


Alice and Alonzo's son Charles Vernon Lawder is the subject of an earlier post on his career as a gold mine "shift boss" and his death in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1918.  Search the blog for that story.

Papa in his office at The New Yorker - 1952

Papa in 1921

Written on back of photo: "Papa at lakeside home on Lake Michigan".  They lived in Chicago/Evanston still 1926.

Does Bruce look a little like Papa?

Here's a photo of Papa, Donald Lawder, Sr., taken in Paola, Kansas in 1891 perhaps.  Papa was born in Paola, and lived there from his birth in 22 Sept. 1889, until 1895 when he moved with his parents, Alice VH and Paul Lawder, his step-sister Mary (aka Aunt Dot)  to Kansas City, Missouri.

"Disappeared in Mexico" in 1918; Papa's vaguely recalled brother, Charles

While in Mexico, I got to wondering about the b&w photo of a man in his 30s with a woman and child.  Hand-written on the back are the words "Charles V. Lawder with his wife and child in Mexico City.  Please return [the photo] to Mrs. Alice V.H. Lawder, Clark Street, Chicago".  And we know (see earlier post) that there was an article in a Chicago paper in 1919 about Charles' disappearance in Mexico.  And we now know that Charles was Papa's half-brother, Alice's son by her first marriage.  Anyway, I didn't do any Mexico-specific research, but just spent a couple of evenings on Ancestry.com.


Bingo:  I found Charles and his Swedish-born wife, Anna Maria Nylander, living in Savage Basin, Colorado in 1910.  He was a shift boss in the Tomboy gold mine at 12,000 ft. of altitude, just above Telluride.  Shortly after that, they moved to a gold mining community in El Oro, Mexico.  They had a daughter born in 1912, Alice Maria, presumably named after Charles' (and Papa's) mother Alice.  In 1918, Charles died at the age of 40, not killed by Pancho Villa or anything "romantic" like that, rather he took ill with pneumonia and died three weeks later in November 1918.  I saw the scanned copy of the death report filled out by the American Consulate in Mexico City.  And also the passport application that Anna Maria Lawder filled out just 3 months later in order to leave Mexico to return to the US.  (Mike and I were in the neighborhood where she was staying in Mexico City at 51 Calle Madrid).  On the application, she lists her maiden name as Nylander, her year of immigration from Sweden to Ellis Island as 1895, and indicated that she was heading to Chicago with her daughter.  She received her passport 6 months later.  


Then the record goes blank for 11 years.  Did she go to Chicago to meet Alice V.H. Lawder, her mother-in-law?  Did she see her brother-in-law, Don Lawder (Papa)?  Did Papa even know that his brother had been a real miner/foreman?  He must have.  I lose track of Anna and Alice until 1930, when Anna M. Lawder and her 17 yr. old daughter Alice M. Lawder turn up in East Orange, New Jersey in the federal census.  That's the last I have found, of Alice (cousin to Don Jr., Wally and Nancy) but I know that her mother died in 1978 at the age of 101, in East Orange, NJ---unbeknownst for nearly 50 years to her nearby Connecticut relatives (us!).

I'm going to Delaware, Ohio ---home of Van Houtens and Lawders

I just wrote this letter to the Delaware, Ohio History Museum to see if I can get some advance help in using my couple of days there.  I have about 20 people on my family tree who were born or lived in Delaware, Ohio, both Van Houtens and Lawders.  The letter gives you an outline of why it's an important place for us and this link gives you a picture of it in the early 20th c Vintage postcard views of Delaware, OH:

Hello,

I 'm planning to visit Delaware (from my home in Massachusetts)  for 3 days next month, May 23-25 just for the purpose of finding out more about my family connections in Delaware.  I have been working with ancestry.com and related resources and am really excited about having a chance to visit.  I hope you can help me do some advance planning to use my visit well.  Here are the family connections in Delaware that I know about ( I have more details on them, but am just giving you the names an rough dates at this point):

Margaret [Lightpipe] Van Houten moved to the Delaware area in the 1840s from New Jersey after her husband David Van Houten died.   She brought 8 or so children, some adults, one of whom was Peter R. Van Houten.  Peter and his 2nd wife Sarah Thrall are buried in Sunbury Cemetery in Delaware.  Peter had a daughter from his first wife (Alice White), Mary Rebecca W., who was raised by Peter and Sarah.  Peter and Sarah soon had a daughter of their own, Alice J. Van Houten (b. 1855 in Delaware, OH), my great-grandmother.  She took some classes at Ohio Wesleyan Seminary, married a dentist in 1875 (Alonzo Lumbard, b. 1847 in Ohio) and they were living at 1 David St. in 1880.  They had two children, Charles V. and Mary.  After Alonzo died, Alice moved to Pleasant Hill, MO with her two children to marry Paul Lawder (b. 1865 somewhere in OH), my great-grandfather.  Paul Lawder's father, John Lawder, was living in Delaware,OH in a boarding house in 1850, possibly as a student, before he became a lawyer.  John Lawder was born in New Philadelphia, OH.  From 1888 on, the my direct family story moves to the Kansas City, Missouri area, but there were lots of Van Houten cousins still in the Delaware area.

I have a few daguerreotypes that I'll bring with me.  The principal artifact that I have is a hand-written diary of Peter R. Van Houten, Methodist-Episcopal itinerant minister in the years 1845-1851.  The diary was  dictated by Peter since was blind and is mostly a dry account of his preaching travels, where he stayed overnight, the verse he preached on, and the locations.  The tone changes dramatically in the final pages where he recounts the bedside conversations with his dying wife, his first wife Alice White (b. in PA, died and buried in Sunbury Cemetery in 1851).  I can send you my transcription of this part of the diary if it is of interest to you.  

So, that's the outline!  I would love to see any locations in Delaware (the cemetery, the college, the street locations where any of them lived), the general feel for the town in the latter half of the 19th century.  And I'd like to know more about your research resources.  I'm curious how the Van Houten Lawder connection came about, possibly through the church connection.  Paul Lawder's mother was an active volunteer in the ME church in Missouri.  One puzzle is why educated young widow, Alice V.H. Lumbard, goes to Missouri to marry the somewhat younger and deaf-since-birth Paul Lawder.  I am imagining Paul's mother, Marion, reaching through the Ohio ME church connections for a suiitable wife for her hard-to marry son.  (Marion and her husband John Lawder actually had 4 deaf children, the oldest three of whom were born while the family was still in Ohio).   Anyway, the stories go on.  I did have a chance to visit the Kansas City, MO area, including Pleasant Hill and Harrisonville, last June and enjoyed picturing the Lawders there.  They came as Ohioans taking advantage of the defeated confederate state of Missouri.....

Any suggests that you have for my visit or for research that you might be able to do in advance for a fee, I'd be interested in.

Many thanks,

Jaymie Chernoff