Kittie Bendelow, Missionary to Burma

I have a postcard addressed to Mrs. Bolt, my 3x great-grandmother, in care of Mrs. Bendelow at 320 Linwood Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. The front shows a picture of the Shwedagone Pagoda in Myanmar. Written on the front by the sender was the following description: “This building is just like the Burmese people, showy, [?], glittering on the outside, as far as they know how to do – and that’s all.” Makes me think the writer was a judgy white person. The card was postmarked 4 times, the first on April 21, 1906 at Thandaung, Myanmar, and the last was May 20, 1906 at Detroit.

So my questions were: Who sent this postcard to my great-great-great grandmother Mary J. Bolt? And who’s Mrs. Bendelow?

Searching for the name “Bendelow” in Detroit in 1906 led me to Miriam Jane (Keen) Bendelow. Originally from England, the Keen family came to the United States in the early 1850s when Miriam was about five years old. In 1860, when Miriam was 12, the family was living in Detroit. Miram married Edward Bendelow on January 3, 1876.

Miriam Keen Bendelow, c1884-1892

They had 5 children: Catherine Keen Bendelow (1880-1968; AKA Kittie), Charles (1883-1906), Edward Jr. (1885-1958), Cora (1888-1968), and Herbert (1891-1980). When Charles died on May 12, 1906, his obituary stated his address as 320 Linwood Avenue and 1502 Eighteenth Street.

Detroit Free Press, 5/13/1906, Page 5

According to the notes of the July 28, 1908 Detroit Common Council meeting, an ordinance was passed changing the names of several streets. Perhaps it had already informally gone into effect, since Charles died in 1906. Section 14 of the ordinance states “that the name of the street…known as 18th Street, extending north of [Grand] Boulevard, is hereby changed and shall hereafter be known as Linwood avenue.” (p. 1033). Detroit had a massive address renumbering effective January 1, 1921, so I’m not sure if addresses on 18th Street were changed in 1908 at the same time as the name change. Anyway, the point is the Bendelows lived at 320 Linwood in Detroit, the address to which this postcard is addressed.

Miriam’s daughter Kittie Bendelow graduated from the Washington Normal School in January 1901 and was assigned to teach at Amos School for a salary of $35 (not sure if this was weekly or monthly). According to the 1903 Detroit City Directory, she was teaching at Estabrook School and lived at home. She requested a leave of absence in December 1904. The June 3, 1905 Detroit Free Press tells us why, in an article titled “Two Young Women in Mission Work”: “Kentung, Burmah, will probably be Miss Bendelow’s field of work. She has been an earnest worker at the Eighteenth Street Baptist Church, and has been wanting to enter the Baptist mission field for some time. Her parents seriously objected, but Miss Bendelow resigned her position as a school teacher about six months ago in spite of their opposition to take up missionary work” (p. 3).

Picture from “The Helping Hand,” v. 32, no. 2 (Feb. 1905)

A “Farewell Missionary Rally” was held on September 3, 1905 at the 14th Avenue Baptist Church, with speakers including Kittie Bendelow (Detroit Free Press, 9/3/1905, p. 9). She left from Boston for Burma (now Myanmar) on September 23, 1905 as part of a group of 21 missionaries of the American Baptist Union (Detroit Free Press, 9/24/1905, p. 4). Kittie was financially supported by the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West. She arrived in Burma on November 6, 1905 on the S.S. Mandalay, along with Dr. and Mrs. Walter Rittenhouse.

Church Life, a journal produced by the First Baptist Church of Chicago, published a letter from Kittie dated March 29, 1906 in the June 1906 issue. Among other things, she states, “You may be glad to know I weigh 2 pounds more than I did in America. Since coming here, I have had fever for a week but am entirely recovered now and am hard at work on Karen” (p. 16-17). The Karen are a group of people in southern Myanmar. The mission Kittie worked at specifically focused on this group. Dr. Rittenhouse had a letter he wrote on April 6, 1906 published in the same issue of Church Life (p. 4). He discussed their trip and arrival (remember, Kittie was also with them):

Mrs. Rittenhouse and I spent a week in Rangoon, shopping and sight-seeing. Rangoon has several English stores with complete stocks of all lines, that at least remind one of Chicago department stores. Knowing this we had reserved most of our shopping for Rangoon. The new missionaries were entertained in the homes of the missionaries and teachers in the Baptist College… . The chief objects of general interest are the Swe Dagon Pagoda, and The Lakes, a beautiful public park on the outskirts of the city. Swe Dagon is the largest Buddhist pagoda in the country. We were there during the Feast of Lights. At night the place shows off to the best advantage. The light of the thousands of candles and the full moon, illuminate the tinsel and colored glass and hide the dirt and grossness.

It is so interesting to think that this recounting of the trip to the Pagoda is likely the same trip Kittie purchased the above postcard for my ancestor! Eventually Kittie was stationed at Schwegyin. In 1909, the secretary of the Michigan chapter of the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West, stated in the organization’s Annual Report, “We…rejoice in the work which Miss Kittie Bendelow is doing in Schwegyin, Burma, and desire to do more for her each year” (p. 51). Kittie earned a salary of $500 for the year. Also in the 1909 Annual Report, the Schwegyin mission was said to have 7 missionaries and 62 churches with a membership of 2,503. They also say that there were 16 baptisms during the year. In a letter discussing the Karen school (apologies for offensive language), Kittie said,

There are about 35 heathen Karen villages within half a day’s walk from Schwegyin. During the past few months, the teachers have been going out one at a time preaching in these villages, taking with them a few of the pupils to sing. The Karens love music so much that they come together to hear the singing and then there is a chance to talk to them.

In 1912, Kittie resigned from her mission – it was accepted with “deep regret” (Missions: A Baptist Monthly Magazine, v. 3, no. 11, p. 849). She arrived back at Boston on July 17, 1912. At the August 22, 1912 Detroit Board of Education meeting, it was noted that Miss Bendelow had returned from her leave of absence, and, at the September 12th meeting, she was assigned to Morley School with a salary of $80.

You might think this is the end of Kittie’s story – that she taught, got married (or remained a spinster), had kids (or not), and died. Not quite. According to a post on a Genealogy.com forum, “she married a Burmese man with the last name of Alexander and was disowned by her father, Edward Bendelow. She had 2 children, Charles and Jane. She was in a POW camp during World War 2, but made it out alive. She died in 1968 but never returned to the United States.” Let’s see what the documents say.

Kittie did leave Liverpool, England on July 17, 1914 bound for Rangoon. She was in 1st class on the ship Bhamo, and was listed as a 33-year-old teacher with her “country of intended future permanent residence” listed as Burma. She arrived in Rangoon on about August 1. She married a man named Stanley Alexander in Rangoon about 3 weeks later on August 24, 1914. This is the last mention I can find for her until her father’s obituary in July 1935, in which she is listed as one of his two daughters, “Mrs. Kittie Alexander.”

To conclude, I think I’ve solved most of the mystery. The sender was Kittie Bendelow, teacher and missionary to Burma, and daughter of Mrs. Miriam Bendelow, who was the recipient at 320 Linwood. Now to figure out how Mary J. Bolt knew the Bendelow family. Through the Baptist church? That would be new information for me! Was she friends with Miriam from somewhere else? She would have been about 13 years older than Miriam.

The Tragic Story of Betsey Bolt

James Bolt was born about 1804 in New York State. I believe his father, David Bolt, was the brother of my 4x great-grandmother, Hannah. James married Elizabeth “Betsey” Utter in the late 1820s in New York. In the 1830 census, James and Betsey were living in Andes, Delaware County, New York. Their daughter Louisa was born about 1830, and another daughter Polly was born about 1832. Their son Stephen was born about 1838, and another son Benjamin was born about 1840. Their last child Merritt was born in 1843, about 10 months before Betsey’s (spoiler alert!) disappearance in May 1844.

The April 1848 issue of the Journal of Insanity contains transcripts from John Johnson’s November 1845 trial for Betsey’s murder. So that is where I’m getting much of the following information. The main witness against Johnson, Ann Burdick, had been a patient in a psychiatric hospital and her questionable mental health was a roadblock to the validity of her testimony. In fact, this trial was “one of the first instances of expert testimony in the United States that could be regarded as falling under the general umbrella of forensic psychology or psychiatry” (Huss, M. T. Forensic Psychology. Wiley, 2008. p. 50).

According to James Bolt’s testimony, he and his family had been living in Greene, Chenango County in southern New York since about 1838.

Spafford, H. G. (1813) State of New-York for Spafford’s gazetteer
. [Albany: H.C. Southwick]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2011587198/.

In early April 1844, James moved his family to a farm belonging to John Johnson in Triangle, Broome County, NY about 10 miles west of Greene. James described his relationship with his wife during his cross-examination: “I had no difficulty with my wife, lived as happily together as men in general so, not any difficulty between me and my wife except that she wanted to go back to Delaware County where we moved from…”. His family had been acquainted with Johnson for about 9 years by that time. On the day of the move, three men, Nyrum Johnson (John’s son), Frederick Burger, and Harvey Hammond (Ann Burdick’s brother-in-law), moved all the household goods, while James and his oldest son, Stephen, went on foot, driving their animals ahead of them. Louisa, the oldest daughter, rode with Nyrum Johnson. Betsey and her baby Merritt rode in a wagon with John Johnson. Johnson passed James about four miles from Greene and beat all the wagons to the new house. By the time James approached the house, Nyrum and Harvey had already dropped their loads off and were heading away and Johnson had already been there and gone, dropping off Betsey and the baby.

When James arrived, he noticed that his wife was quiet and “cast down,” complaining of pain in her arms, unable to comb her hair. Betsey’s daughter Louisa testified that she overheard a conversation between her mother and Johnson later in which he asked if Betsey had told her husband anything. She said she hadn’t but should, and then he threatened her. Eventually Betsey did tell James what had happened when she arrived with Johnson at the house on moving day. She said that when they got there, Johson caught her and threw her on the floor, put the end of a buffalo skin in her mouth, and raped her. Johnson told her if she ever told her husband about it, “he would destroy her.”

James called a doctor to examine Betsey because she was so ill. Dr. William Purple, a physician in Greene, examined Betsey on May 7, 1844 and found her “weak and feeble…unable to discover any physical cause of her illness. She was agitated and disturbed, exhibited much anxiety, pulse weak and rather quick, nerves weak and irritable.” She said she couldn’t sleep and had no appetite. Purple prescribed “cathartics and anodynes.” James confronted Johnson after Betsey told him what had happened. Johnson said that James “would stand no chance” if he reported Johnson. Then Johnson admitted he had done wrong and would settle it with James with land or money, that James just had to name the price. James refused.

On Sunday, May 12, 1844, Betsey “had been deranged during the day and evening.” James had been locking the front door every night, but that night could not find the key. He brought in a barrel of milk to block the door instead. He left a fire burning all night. Most of the family slept in the main room where the door was. Betsey tried to leave the house once, but James stopped her and put her back in bed. Later she got up, checked the children, and “got her pipe and sat down by the fire and went to smoking.” James watched her awhile, but fell asleep. He woke up to the sound of the door latch. The door was left open and both pairs of Betsey’s shoes were left. She had been wearing a dark calico dress and stockings, but no shoes or bonnet. James went out to find Betsey, checking the well and around the house and garden. He then headed towards the woods. James and Louisa both testified that Betsey had been trying to run away to the woods all day. Neighbors joined in the search, and James afterward made some trips to “places where a deranged woman had been seen rambling about,” but none of them turned out to be Betsey. She had disappeared without a trace.

Brooklyn (NY) Daily Eagle, May 14, 1846, page 2

A neighbor, Vincent Van Arsdale, testified that he saw Johnson in a corn field at the end of June, 1844. Johnson was thrusting a stick into the ground and warned Vincent to keep a good lookout because he thought James Bolt had killed his wife and hidden her on the farm. Vincent told Johnson that he didn’t believe that Bolt killed Betsey. Two men, Fitch and Decker, testified that they had seen Johnson the day Betsey disappeared. He had been passing through Greene in a one-horse wagon and a man wearing a cloak partially covering his face was with him. Another neighbor, Allen Jeffers, said he heard a one-horse wagon going east slowly at 1 AM on the night Betsey disappeared.

A woman named Ann Augusta Burdick testified that in August 1845, she had been washing clothes at a spring near her mother, Amy Baxter’s, house. John Johnson and Mrs. Baxter were in the house, and when Ann tried to go in, the doors were locked. From outside, she overheard Johnson and Baxter talking: Johnson was asking her if “she could get rid of Mrs. Johnson as well as he did of Mrs. Bolt.” Ann then went to another door, opened a window and reached in to unlock the door. She saw Johnson and her mother on the bed. Johnson grabbed Ann’s arms and asked if she had heard him and if she would tell what she heard. Ann said she wouldn’t.

A couple of weeks later, Ann was at her mother’s house and Johnson arrived, asking if her mother was there, but she wasn’t. Ann’s husband came by and Johnson told her to hide in the other room. Mr. Burdick left and Johnson led Ann to the kitchen and tied her hands and then tied her to the bedpost. He tied a bonnet around her eyes so she couldn’t see. Johnson brought in a bag of bones and emptied it on the hearth. He told Ann to put them on the fire, but she fainted instead. When she awoke, the bones were burning. Johnson then took them out of the fire, laid them on the hearth, gave Ann an axe while he held another axe, and told her to pound the bones. Ann fainted again and woke up when he threw some water in her face. Johnson put the bones back on the fire and threatened to kill Ann if she told anyone. He said he would “serve [her] as he had Mrs. Bolt’s bones.” Ann described the bones and the bag, saying she saw what looked like a human head among the bones, but that she had never seen a human skeleton before. She also testified that the bones were purple before they went on the fire and white afterward.

Later when Ann returned home, two people grabbed her in her room. She claimed that one of them was wearing a dress and, after they left when she yelled, she found her mother’s cape on the floor. The next evening after she fell asleep, two men gagged and blind-folded her, and carried her out of the house. They tried to force her to drink something out of a vial, but she knocked it away. They carried her to a swamp and threatened her with a knife. They rolled her face down into a brook, put a couple of logs on top of her, and stood on top of them. She claimed one of the men said he had done enough for $5 and the other said “he had not got his pay for carrying Mrs. Bolt off yet.” Other witnesses later described searching for Ann in the swamp and finding her nearly dead in 3 – 4 inches of water, her hands tied and still gagged.

Johnson’s lawyer then cross-examined Ann about hysterical fits she had had in the past, trying to dismiss her testimony. Ann’s mother, Amy Baxter, testified for the defense and refuted Ann’s testimony, saying that the conversation with Johnson never happened and that she had never been on a bed with him. She described a fit Ann had in which she said she had visited heaven. Dr. Amariah Brigham, head of the so-called lunatic asylum at Utica, testified that Ann had been taken to the asylum on October 24, 1845. He described her symptoms and those of other “hysterical and nervous women.” The defense rested after Brigham said that hysterical persons’ testimonies “should be received with caution. They often say things in that state which they do not recollect when sane.” The jury returned a verdict of not guilty after deliberating for only 30 minutes.

The editor of the Journal of Insanity summed it up this way: “…Nothing has occurred since the trial…to throw light upon the mysterious circumstances of the affair. That a woman in a deranged state of mind disappeared as stated, several years since and has not since been found–and that another woman disappeared from her home in the day-time, and was found imbedded in a brook in a swamp, with her hands bound and a gag in her mouth and nearly dead, are facts.  How these occurrences were produced, we leave for others and for time to explain.”

Children

Left: Helen Moore, my great-grandmother’s sister, died at age 4

Another Randy Seaver/Genea-musings exercise! “Thinking about your direct ancestors back through 2nd great-grandparents – in other words, ancestors #2 to #31 on your pedigree chart – how many children did they have? How many lived long enough to marry? How many died before age 10?” So here’s mine:

• #2-3: R. Wells and M. Wilson – 3 sons, 1 daughter (3 married), 0 died before age 10
• #4-5: Edward Lee Wells (1905-1955) and Velma Irene Belknap (1913-1999) – 4 sons, 4 daughters (7 married), 0 died before age 10
• #6-7: Charles Thompson Wilson (1907-1989) and Helen Dorothy Oakes (1912-1988) – 1 son, 2 daughters (3 married), 0 died before age 10
• #8-9: Robert Luke Wells (1881-1919) and Nannie Jane Clark (1880-1969) – 4 sons, 1 daughter (5 married), 0 died before age 10
• #10-11: Earl E. Belknap (1895-1960) and Florence E. Bost (1896-1961) – 9 daughters, 1 son (9 married), 0 died before age 10
• #12-13: John A. Wilson (1874-1930) and Mary A. Thompson (1872-1940) – 7 sons, 3 daughters (7 married), 1 died before age 10
• #14-15: William Oakes (1888-1928) and Mae D. Moore (1892-1971) – 1 daughter (1 married), 0 died before age 10
• #16-17: James H. Wells (1840-1904) and Mary Ann Clark (1839-1894) – 5 daughters, 4 sons (8 married?), 0 died before age 10
• #18-19: Willis Clark (1834-?) and Sarah E. Wells (1838-1923) – 4 sons, 3 daughters
• #20-21: Arthur F. Belknap (1869-1955) and Martha Gisel (1869-1925) – 1 daughter, 4 sons (5 married), 0 died before age 10
• #22-23: William S. Bost (1859-1932) and Mary E. McCracken (1862-1911) – 4 daughters, 3 sons (5 married), 2 died before age 10
• #24-25: John Alford Wilson/Rustad (1833-1889) and Mary Ann Gibson (1837-1923) – 5 daughters, 3 sons (4 married?), 3 died before age 10
• #26-27: Archibald Thompson (1838-1931) and Elizabeth Dunning (1837-1912) – 9 sons, 2 daughters (6 married?), 3 died before age 10
• #28-29: Henry Ochs/Oakes (1846-1922) and Minnie Schroeder (1857-1936) – 2 sons, 2 daughters (4 married), 0 died before age 10
• #30-31: Fred L. Moore (1863-1924) and Mina Adell Bolt (1865-1942) – 3 daughters, 2 sons (3 married), 2 died before age 10

#33 Laughter

I love this picture of my great-great grandmother laughing. It’s fun to imagine who or what she is laughing at and what the occasion was. Maybe a picnic? The picture below shows from left, my great-great grandmother Mina (Bolt) Moore Thompson, Jessie (Johnson) Bodington, the sister-in-law of my great-grandmother, and my great-grandmother Mae (Moore) Johnson. I think this picture was taken sometime in the 1930s, since Jessie came over from England in 1929.

From left: Mina, Jessie, and Mae  

Week 33 (Aug. 12-18): Comedy

#31 George E. Bolt

My great-great grandmother Mina A. (Bolt) Moore Thompson had 2 brothers. The first was George E. Bolt, born in Plymouth, Michigan in 1861. The second was Isaac, born in 1863 and died in 1865.

George E. Bolt (photo shared by tdanna on Ancestry.com)

George Edwin Bolt was born January 20, 1861 in Plymouth, Michigan to William and Mary J. (Everitt) Bolt. George married Mary Emma Quick on September 7, 1880 in Detroit, Michigan (one of the witnesses was an uncle, Matthew Everitt). They had a daughter, Mary (or May) Emma Bolt, in August 1882. In the 1900 census, the family was living on Hubbard Avenue in Detroit and George’s occupation was tinter. According to the Los Angeles City Directory, in 1909 May was the widow of George Calton and the mother of 2 children. She was living in Los Angeles with her parents, where her father George was a shademaker. George Calton had died in Detroit in 1908, so I’m not sure why May and her parents moved to L.A. in 1909. In the 1910 census, George, Mary, May, Alta, and George were living in L.A. and George was listed as an expert tinter at a shade company. The 1911 L.A. City Directory lists George’s employer as the “Whitmore-Talbert Company” and the family was living at 116 W. Ave 34 (which was located less than 1/2 mile from the factory).

An image of the Talbert-Whitmore Company from the 1/1/1921 L.A. Times

The Talbert-Whitmore Company was incorporated in 1904 and moved to its factory at 2620 Lacy Street in L.A. in 1908. In 1921, the company had 50 employees. It was the “largest [factory] west of Chicago devoted exclusively to the manufacture of shade cloth and window shades” (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 1, 1921). Interestingly, the factory has now become a filming location as part of the Lacy Street Production Center. Their website has lots of cool photos of what the factory looks like now, including this one that shows part of the “shade cloth rollers” sign from the middle building above.

The family is listed as living at 58 Goodwin St. in the 1912 Detroit City Directory, so they must have moved back sometime in 1911-1912. so I think they must have moved back to Michigan around this time. May remarried in 1916 to Frederick Covert, moved to Washtenaw County, and had 3 more children.

In 1920, George and his wife Mary were still living at 58 Goodwin, and he was employed as a paint maker at an auto shop. By the 1930 census, they had moved back to Plymouth and were living at 370 Maple. George was finally retired. Mary died on December 3, 1933 at the age of 75. I’m not sure where George was in the 1940 census, but he died on December 30, 1944 in Pittsfield, Washtenaw, Michigan.

Week 31 (July 29-Aug. 4): Brother

#25 Earliest Photos

I saw this idea from Amy’s review of Week 25: “Debi shared the earliest photos of various ancestors. (I like how she broke them down by maternal and paternal sides).” So I’m going to give it a try!

Maternal

My 3rd Great-Grandfather, William Dillon Bolt (1835-1901)

My 3rd Great-Grandmother, Mary J. (Everitt) Bolt (1837-1918)

 

My 2nd Great-Grandmother, Mina Adell (Bolt) Moore Thompson, (1866-1942)

My 2nd Great-Grandfather, Archibald Thompson (1838-1931)

My great-grandfather, John A. Wilson (1874-1930)

My great-grandmother, Mary (Thompson) Wilson (1872-1940)

My great-grandmother, Mae Dillon (Moore) Oakes Smiechowski Johnson (1892-1971)

My grandfather, Charles Wilson (1907-1989)

My grandmother, Helen Oakes (1912-1988) on her mother Mae’s lap

My mother

Paternal

My 3rd Great-Grandmother, Margaret (Rhost) Gisel (1848-1939)

My 2nd Great-Grandfather, Arthur Belknap (1869-1955)

My 2nd Great-Grandmother, Martha (Gisel) Belknap (1869-1925)

My 2nd Great-Grandfather, William S. Bost (1859-1932)

My Great-Grandmother, Nannie Jane (Clark) Wells (1880-1969)

My Great-Grandfather, Earl E. Belknap (1895-1960)

My Great-Grandmother, Florence E. Bost (1896-1961)

My grandfather, Edward L. Wells (1905-1955)

My grandmother, Velma Belknap (1913-1999)

My father

Week 25 (June 17-23): Earliest

#16 William Bolt in Iowa?

I think I may have found my 3rd-great grandfather in an unexpected place. There is a William D. Bolt enumerated in the 1856 Pleasant Township, Wapello County, Iowa census. This William was 21 years old and born in New York (same age and birthplace as my William). He is listed as widowed with no children. This is a surprise. If he had a wife besides my 3rd-great grandmother, it is news to me! He was living with James and Caroline Hyde and their family. James and Caroline had been born in New York, but married in 1847 in Wayne County, Michigan. Their children had been born in Michigan as well.

In the 1860 Federal Census, William was married to Mary J. Everitt (having been married within the year) and living in Plymouth, Wayne, Michigan. In the same census, James and Caroline were living in with their children in Ypsilanti, Wayne County, Michigan.

I haven’t found that the Hydes and Bolts were related, but maybe they came from New York to Michigan together, and then William decided to join them in Iowa for a while before they all returned to Michigan around 1859.

Week 16 (April 15-21): Out of Place

#50 – Mina Bolt Moore Thompson

Mina Adell Bolt Moore Thompson, my great-great grandmother, lived for years with Bert Thompson while still married to my great-great grandfather Fred Moore! She and Bert were officially married about three weeks after Fred’s death.

Bert & Mina

Mina A. Bolt and Fred L. Moore were married on September 10, 1885 in Plymouth, Michigan. They had five children between 1888 and 1897. Two daughters died before 1900. Two sons, Glenn and Earl, and another daughter, Mae, survived into adulthood. In 1900, the family was living in Plymouth and Fred was a railroad freight agent.

I’m not sure what happened to the marriage between 1900 and 1910, but in the 1910 Detroit City Directory, Mina was listed as widowed. In the 1910 Federal Census, she was listed as married and was boarding with her daughter Mae. She was listed as the housekeeper for the head of the household, Alta Fisher.

Sometime between 1910 and 1918, Mina met Bert Thompson. She was listed as his wife on his September 12, 1918 WWI Draft Registration card. And they were living at 370 Maple Ave. in Plymouth. Meanwhile, in 1919, Fred was selling grapes in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

From the Sept. 10, 1919 Benton Harbor News-Palladium

In 1920, Bert and Mina were living as husband and wife on Columbia in Dearborn, while Fred was listed as divorced and living as a roomer with the Dean family in Benton Harbor. By March 1923, Fred was living in the Berrien County Poor Home. He died on November 4, 1924. On his death certificate, he was listed as widowed and his son Glenn was the informant.

This is odd, because Glenn’s mother Mina, was alive and well and married Bert Thompson in Toledo, Ohio on November 22, 1924. She was listed as divorced, but I’m not sure that Fred and Mina were ever legally divorced. Ancestors always keep you guessing!

Week 50 (December 10-16): Naughty

#35 Mildred Wade Bolt

Mildred Wade was the wife of my 1st cousin 4x removed, William I. Bolt. She was born July 22, 1856 in Hillsdale, Michigan. Both her parents died by 1870 and she went to live with her grandmother in Geneva, Ohio. In 1877, she married William I. Bolt in Jackson, Michigan. William was my great-great-great grandfather William D. Bolt’s nephew and the son of Isaiah Bolt. William was a plumber and Mildred was a teacher of elocution in Detroit. They lived at 1191 Jefferson Ave. In 1888, she founded the Detroit School of Expression and became its principal.

Various ads from the Detroit Free Press

In what must’ve been the annual back-to-school issue on Wednesday, August 29, 1906, the Detroit Free Press devoted a large section to “Schools and Colleges of the Northwest.” The paragraph describing Mildred’s school is as follows:

Mrs. Mildred A. Bolt, principal of the Detroit School of Expression, is not only a teacher of the highest ability, but she possesses those invaluable qualities of earnestness and enthusiasm which seem to be transmitted to her pupils, inspiring them to greater diligence and higher aims.

Mrs. Bolt studied elocution with Prof. Moses True Brown, of Boston; attended lectures under Prof. S. H. Clarke, at Chicago University and graduated from the Detroit Training School, where she studied under Mrs. Edna Chaffee Noble.

Under her immediate direction is a staff of highly efficient teachers, who assist her in conducting the classes in elocution, English literature, Delsarte, philosophy, Shakespearian study, voice training, dramatic reading, criticism, physical culture, deportment and general literature.

Five new teachers will be added to the faculty this year, making it possible to give an increased amount of personal attention to each student. The Detroit School of Expression is located in one of Detroit’s finest residence sections, 1191-1195 Jefferson avenue, and was established by Mrs. Bolt in 1888.

William died at the age of 50 in 1907. Mildred’s home continued to be at 1191 Jefferson until at least 1920. Mildred was well-known in Detroit society and was involved in the Detroit Shakespeare Club. She died of uterine cancer on July 24, 1922 at 3578 Joseph Campau, which was the home of Dr. and Mrs. Siefert. Louise Siefert was the Secretary-Treasurer of the school. I’m glad Mildred had a friend to go to at the end.

Ad for the school after Mildred’s death lists her as the founder

Mildred and William were buried in Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

From the Detroit Free Press, July 27, 1922

52 Ancestors #35 – School Days

#30 Fred L. Moore

A challenging ancestor to research has been Fred L. Moore, my great-great grandfather. The challenge came from a combination of misinformation and my own assumptions.

I first discovered his name from my great-grandmother Mae’s birth certificate. Then I found him in her marriage records. From there, I discovered his 1885 marriage certificate and the 1900 census in Plymouth, Michigan. After that came the confusion!

Fred & Mina’s marriage registration, 9/10/1885

In the 1910 U.S. Federal Census, as mentioned in the previous post, Fred’s wife Mina was boarding with her daughter Mae at a place in Detroit. She was listed as married. In the 1910 Detroit City Directory, Mina was listed as a widow. This made me think that Fred had died in 1909ish. In 1918, she was listed as Bert Thompson’s wife on his WWI Draft Registration. However, I have Mina and Bert’s marriage certificate and it lists their marriage date as November 24, 1924 in Toledo, Ohio. Hmm. 6 years after she is first mentioned as Bert’s wife and in Ohio?

So I went another direction. I researched Mae’s brother, Glenn Bolt Moore. He was also called Fred and worked on the railroad like his father. He lived in New Buffalo, Michigan. Poking around on SeekingMichigan.org, I found Fred Moore’s death certificate with Glenn B. Moore listed as the informant. Fred didn’t die in 1909. In fact, he didn’t die until November 4, 1924. Which explains why his estranged wife didn’t remarry until late November 1924. They were, for lack of a better term, waiting for him to die.

Fred Moore’s death certificate

Now that I knew Fred was living in Berrien County, I could narrow my searching. I found a few interesting newspaper articles detailing what he was up to in the 1910s and 1920s.

He was selling grapes in 1919.

He was visiting his sister in Illinois in 1920.

In 1921, he lived on a cherry farm.

According to the March 22, 1923 issue of the Benton Harbor News-Palladium, Fred was a resident of the Berrien County Poor Home (also called the Berrien County Infirmary). According to Deanna West, “Through the years the farm became a colony within itself with orchards, vegetable gardens, corn and grain fields, barns, cows, chickens and pigs. Everyone who was physically capable did chores that they could manage. One couple that managed the farm in 1924 and several years after, were Mr. & Mrs. Edward Israel, who became very well known in the area.” On his death certificate, it notes that Fred died at the Berrien County Infirmary at the age of 61 of “chronic paresis” which is defined as “a condition typified by a weakness of voluntary movement” including limbs, eyes, stomach, or vocal cords. To add to the confusion, it says he is widowed, even though Mina didn’t die until 1942.

So I guess the moral of the story is don’t assume someone is dead just because a city directory says his wife is a widow!

Citations:
“20 Years Ago.” The News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan). 12 Nov 1940, Tue. Page 2.

Death Certificate for Fred Moore, Berrien County. http://seekingmichigan.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/
p16317coll1/id/174162.

“For Sale – Grapes.” The News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan). 10 Sep 1919, Wed. Page 3.

“Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NQ3P-Z54 : 15 May 2018), Fred L. Moore and Minnie A. Bolt, 1885.

“Society.” The News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan). 28 Jul 1921, Thu. Page 4.

“Township and City Poor Supported at the County House.” The News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan). 22 Mar 1923, Thu. Page 9.

West, Deanna. (2010). “Berrien County Poor House aka Poor Farm — or — County Infirmary, Berrien County, Michigan.” http://berrien.migenweb.org/Infirmary/Infirmaryhistory.htm.

Wikipedia contributors. (2018, March 23). Paresis. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paresis&oldid=832006290.

52 Ancestors #30 – Challenging