Up a Tree

 My paternal grandfather, Michael -- I'm at least the third in a line of Michaels, though we all have different second names -- seems lost to history, at least so far. Though I thought he was an Irish immigrant, a document prepared by my father lists his father as having been born in New York City.  My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, does have some documents that give a bit of insight into who she was. She immigrated from Germany, making her one of two grandparents who I know immigrated from another country, preserving my second-generation American credentials to an extent.  My daughter dug up a couple of documents related to her immigration, one her application for naturalization, the other her Declaration of Intention, both one page documents. Despite their brevity, I learned that she was born in Kesselbach, a town in western central Gernany, about 33 miles northwest of Frankfurt, and came to America when she was 22.  The Crown Princess Cecilie, the ship t...

 I want to look at a couple of items from my maternal grandfather's military service record today before switching over to the other side of the family for the next couple of weeks. As I mentioned before, grandfather William was a member of  the U.S. Marines. He enlisted in the service in 1900 at the age of 21 and was sent to Washington, D.C. Two years later, he was sent to Annapolis, Maryland, and a year later was posted to Culebra, V.I., as it's listed on his record. I mistakenly assumed, when I first read this information, that he had been sent to the U.S. Virgin Islands, but it turns out that Culebra was part of the Spanish Virgin Islands, consisting primarily of Puerto Rico, Isla Culebra and Isla Vieques. It would be worth your while to read up on the USVI, which the U.S. bought from the Danish, and learn about its history with piracy and slavery, but I won't deal with it in this blog. Some believe Christopher Columbus stopped in on Culebra, or Isla Pasaje (Passage Isl...

 I've mentioned before that my maternal grandfather, William, served in the U.S. Marines. I'm still trying to find out how that happened, given that he was born in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, which was noted in his service record. His record came from the Department of the Navy, and given that I know basically nothing about military history, I assumed that at the time of his service, the Marines were a part of the U.S. Navy when he served and later were separated to be a standalone branch of the armed forces.  I was wrong. Now whoever reads this may scoff and say, "Well, of course. Everybody knows this." In that case, you may skip the rest of this post. But if, like me, you had the same misconception, allow me to tell you what I've discovered. My views, I realized, were primarily formed from my consumption of popular entertainment -- movies where members of each service ride each other about which is better, whose function is more indispensable, those sorts of thi...

 If you don't understand the title, then you're not a die-hard James Bond fan. Elliot Carver was an owner of mass media with a megalomaniac, of course, bent. He ran his empire by creating the news he served up to his customers.  Watch old films and you'll see the old time newspapers portrayed as being less than scrupulous, and that reputation turns out to be somewhat deserved. The Chicago American , the paper that reported the train wreck in the first part of my last post, was a Hearst newspaper and published for the first time on July 4, 1900. It relied primarily on street sales rather than subscriptions, which meant breaking news was its bread and butter. I can see the newsies running around downtown Chicago crying out headlines for the big event of the day. It was merged and renamed numerous times in its history, finally folding in 1974. Among its employees was a night city editor (a position I once held) named Harry Romano. From Wikipedia: "Romy" a stout, ciga...

 Here is an account of the accident as it appeared in the Pensacola Journal. William's wife was named Katharine, but she is listed in this article as "Kaye." Remember that in the Chicago American  article she is called "Kate." I dug up some information on the American, including an anecdote about one of the editors that sounds like something you'd see in a movie. I'll post that on Sunday, Feb. 14. Pensacola Journal 1909-09-05 ROBBERS WRECK THE ROYAL BLUE LTD. ON THE B. & O. EXPRESS CAR CONTAINED A LARGE SUM OF MONEY FROM NEW YORK. THREE KILLED AND FIFTY INJURED. LIFE CRUSHED FROM ENGINEER, BAGGAGEMASTER AND CHIEF BOILERMAKER OF DIVISION -- FISH PLATES REMOVED AND RAILS MISPLACED AT THE MOST DANGEROUS POINT ALONG THE ENTIRE LINE. New Castle, Pa., Sept. 4. (AP) -- The wreck of train No. 5, The Royal Blue Limited on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, which occurred at 12:25 this morning, is now believed to have been caused for the purpose of robbing the e...

 Among the documents my sister sent me was a poor photocopy of an article from the Chicago American, dated Sept. 4, 1909, about a train wreck that occurred in Pennsylvania. She sent it because two of the people involved were from Chicago and were related to my maternal grandfather, William G. Kayler.  I investigated the relationship and ran into an anomaly. The passengers were William's wife and son, but the woman is not my grandmother, and the son is not either of the men I know as my uncles.  The cutline for the accompanying photo of the son, Harold, states that the duo were traveling to Chicago to a new home. Harold was 2 or 3 at the time -- available information on his birthdate doesn't line up with the age given in the story. I can only conclude they are a family William had before he married my maternal grandmother, nine years after this incident. As no one who would know for certain still lives, I'll just live with the mystery. Subsequent research turned up another...

 My maternal grandfather, William, died in the 1920s at the age of 47 from "chronic pulmonary tuberculosis. Presumably he picked it up during his service as a Marine, possibly while serving in Culebra in the U.S. Virgin Isles.  My grandfather,  William Consumption, as TB was once known, has attacked humans and, as it turns out, other mammals for thousands of years. Robert Koch discovered the bacterium, M. tuberculosis in 1895, and the development and use of X-rays shortly after made it possible to diagnose the disease with certainty.  The disease was especially prevalent among the poor, as you might guess, given the lack of sanitation available to them, poor nutrition and other factors that usually combine to make diseases more of a problem for those without means. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it may have been the leading cause of death in the U.S., with some 25 percent of deaths being attributed to consumption. By the beginning of the 20th century, improvements i...