My Genealogical Travels

Graveyards & Finding Graves

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:11:07 -0700

During the last Christmas holiday I found myself getting interested in a site called “Find a Grave”. The purpose of the site is to post the tombstone inscriptions of graves a person finds. It is quite the hobby for some people as they post thousands of tombstone inscriptions. My own account can be found at:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=46850449&

I am not a high numbers poster, but feel I have done a ton of postings at 135 memorials created and I manage 144 total, with some having been transferred to me. Which brings me to: these are memorials for people who have passed on. It is a place to remember people (and pets) with a memorial. I asked for my memorial for Ben Watrous to be put in the site’s “random walk”, where people can randomly stroll and read memorials. Ben’s birthday was June 11th, and over 20 people left birthday wishes for him. That was kind of nice.

I have focused on relatives I have in my own genealogical work, but am now just beginning to do a few tombstone shoots of others as I feel like it. This weekend I had a lady in Butte, Montana write me and ask if I could shoot the local tombstone for her little sister that died as an infant in 1967. I went out with my mom yesterday morning and did so. It was a good feeling to help some one out remember their loved one that way. A baby is not forgotten.

While out there, mom pointed at a tombstone that interested her. I shot the entire plot of the Terry family that lived in Stockton in the later half of the 1800s. Memorials were already created for all of them on-line, but not tombstones - so I uploaded them.

Next to them was an interesting tombstone monument that is at the top of this article for General David Fulton Douglass. I never heard of the guy so shot it. When I got home, I found he had a memorial that was one of those minimal ones created - birth and death year and that was it. The”general” had me curious so I devoted an hour to research David. I found the facts and created a biography for him. I sent it to the memorial creator, but I somehow doubt he will upload it as he has thousands of memorials and this one may not interest him. So in the interest of remembering David Fulton Douglass, I will post it here and note flawed as he was he deserves some remembrance:

General David Fulton Douglass

In 1839 he killed Dr. William Howell in a fight. As a result he served 14 months in prison in Arkansas. The Louisville Journal reported:

"On the 16th ult., an encounter took place at Little Rock, Ark., between David F. Douglass, a young man of 18 or 19, and Dr. Wm. C. Howell. A shot was exchanged between them at the distance of 8 or 10 feet with double-barreled guns. The load of Douglass entered the left hip of Dr. Howell, and a buckshot from the gun of the latter struck a negro girl, 13 or 14 years of age, just below the pit of the stomach. Douglass then fired a second time and hit Howell in the left groin, penetrating the abdomen and bladder, causing his death in four hours. The negro girl, at the last dates, was not dead, but no hopes were entertained of her recovery. Douglass was committed to await his trial at the April term of the Circuit Court."

During the Mexican War he served in the Texas Volunteers. He came to California as a teamster with his regiment where he settled in the Central Valley where he became a successful farmer.

In California politics Douglass served his district in 1849 in the first session of the California State Senate. He was elected as a brigadier general in the State Militia in 1850 by the legislature. Douglass was the appointed as the first US Marshall in California by President Millard Filmore. Again, in the 6th session of the Assembly representing San Joaquin County. From 1856-1858 he was the State Librarian of California. In 1856 he won the election for California Secretary of State as the Know Nothing party candidate.

My Great-Grandfather, the oil Promoter

Sat, 6 Dec 2008 11:29:44 -0800

I didn't get very far with my plans for doing genealogy this holiday weekend. I got carried away with exploring Facebook, and cleaning up the place a bit. I did manage to get my piles of boxes in a more orderly fashion. You know what i mean - all the files that should have been entered into the database long ago, along with documents and photos waiting to be scanned - or identified at the very least.

One item I found was my daughter's certified birth certificate - the same one she frantically needed when she moved to Massachusetts and needed to get a driver's license there. Well, I found it a year later neatly stored with photos of my favorite dog ever. She is now secure to know her valuable records are safe with me....

I also found a box of various copies of records and correspondence from about 15 years ago. In it I found a copy of a letter given to me by my aunt from a distant cousin in Montana written by the daughter of the sister of my great-grandfather (got that?). There were also a lot of records she also sent showing my Piper genealogy into the 1600s - today I know those are not correct.

But the thing that caught my eye was the discussion of my great grandfather - "he was quite the 'promoter' - the crook of the family". She went one to talk about how he was always after money from relatives for his schemes. My two living aunts kind of sigh when talking of him and not much is said.

One of the things you learn in life is things are not black and white. It is the same in genealogy - things come in shades of gray. It is no different with Thomas Abraham Neff Piper.

In short, he was born in Saline County, Missouri in 1870 and died in Columbia, Tulomne Co., California in 1947. He came to California as a young man. One of the first things I found almost 30 years ago was that he and my great-grandmother, Anna Lines, got married in 1892 - 9 days after my grandfather was born in Visalia. I had uncovered my first skeleton and as my dad said at the time, "Well, that explains a lot of things...". But those things are another story unto themselves.

In 1895 he was in LA as a miller. But by 1900 he was in Kern County working the oil fields. He worked the oil industry the bulk of his life. In his later life in the 30's he reopened a gold mine up the road from Columbia - the Shanghai mine. I fondly remember spending my childhood summers at Yankee Hill above the mine where he had built his cabin.

Earlier this year I got around to watching "There Will Be Blood". It was about a man working the oil fields of the southern Central Valley and the tale of how wild and vicious that industry was. It got me curious as little as I know of Thomas Piper, I did hear he had made his millions and lost them in his career.

I decided to search the newspaper databases - I had started using them on another family branch and was surprised how much could be learned.

I still know little about the Kern County oil activities of Tom Piper, but early on I found a USGS report from about 5 years ago about the Los Gatos oil wells. The interest of the report was to use the oil well logs to study the ground structure. In it they referred to this "T. A. Piper" as a very enthusiastic promoter. There were also references to the T. A. P. Oil Company that they presumed was Tom Piper's.

From mostly the San Jose Mercury I learned of the Los Gatos oil "rush" from about 1910-14. It seems Tom Piper was the lead promoter in this. in one issue about 3/4 of the front page of the Merc was reserved to Tom and his oil wells - photos and all. He was quite the promoter. Since then I have found family photos of my grand-aunt and grandmother in orchards printed on the back as "near the TAP well". These photos were vintage 1918 or so, but during the years he lived in San Jose.

OK, there was this time he was arrested for fraud, but he beat the rap. Some guy accused him of fraudulently misrepresenting the number of leases he held. He was eventually acquitted of the charge, but he was arrested jailed and the case went to trial in the glare of the newspapers. There was also the bizarre case in San Francisco where he was referred to as "half oil and half candy tycoon". He was accused of selling a candy store and factory that he didn't own! This was so bizarre I was not sure it was him, but the lawyer he retained for his defense was a San Jose lawyer he had used in other cases. The charges were dismissed in this case, and he ended up suing the accuser.

One of the things that stuck me were the quotes that paralleled the movie I referred to earlier. In the Merc they often quoted Tom Piper and they were like lines out of the movie. One being telling potential leasers to sign with nobody but him - to trust no others. Then there was the early besting of big oil to only later enter into deals with them. It was indeed a wild industry.

After 1914, the news trailed off and things got quiet. In the 1930s he again started making the news, but this time as a promoter of the Shanghai gold mine which he managed and later bought. Strangely this time the press releases and news seems only to have made the Los Angeles papers. This lasted only a couple of years and after that he was out of the news until he passed away in 1947.

Well, arrested twice that I know of - but never convicted. Was he a crook? I am not so sure of that versus being the last relic of the frontier way of doing business and having big dreams. And while his fortunes swung wildly over the years he died a modest man leaving his family Yankee Hill in the Sierra foothills to enjoy for several decades. I do thank him warmly for that.

Organizing the mess

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:34:43 -0700

I ran across a good blog on organizing your mess of genealogical files:

http://practicalarchivist.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-organize-photos-warning-this.html?sssdmh=dm13.165090

It is about saving and sorting photos but applies to all the stuff in genealogy. One piece of advice is “if in doubt, throw it out”. I have trouble with that one as I have photos of people that I have no clue who they are. I have had the photos for thirty years, and yet I think I am about to identify a bunch of them... if I can just get to them.

I started this renewed effort in early March after a couple of distant cousins in France were bugging me for information on my 5th great grandfather. I decided they were right, and I had to start getting information out there. I have had a Macbook for a bit over a year now and I love it. It is like it is made for genealogy in this modern age. I use Reunion software. I have had the software for a while, but in March I really started using it. The first order of business is cleaning up my cites - or lack there of.

OK, I am not a citation nitpicker. But I have decided - and the software makes it easy - to cite adequately to trace where I got all my information. I may not follow some citation format per the book, but I try and the source becomes obvious.

A of tonight I have cited 98 sources, linked to digitized copies of the sources, and facts in my database properly noted. In my indexed source directory I have left about 180 items indexed but not cited properly or linked to my database. Some are long and tedious to do I will note.

I also have probably on the order of 200-300 other fragments of sources on my computer in some form, plus boxes of material in hard copy waiting for me to go through. This does not count all the photographs and letters I have. Needless to say it will take some time to get organized.

Yet as I speak, more and more source material is showing up on the Internet and a lot of it is original images. When I take a break I meander the Internet and find out my great grandfather ran for the California state assembly from Los Angeles in 1900 as a Democrat and lost with 40% of the vote... I didn’t know that before. Another item to categorize and cite....

The point is I will never catch up. But I am endeavoring to at least leave a marked path and a foundation of organized history. So for now, I do a couple of cites a day, allow myself to wander the Internet a little bit, and organize a little bit at a time. I will soon get to the point where I have to digitize more records and that will slow down the work.

Oh, and so far I am not throwing out a thing in spite of what the other blogs say.... not yet.

The Watrous Trip to California

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:47:01 -0700

When Ellen Goff married Benjamin Watrous and traveled back to California with him, she took with them her father’s Bible.

Inside the Bible I had found the advertiser for the US mail line to California. Presumably this was the passage they booked to California.

In Ben’s 1890 biography it is stated: “Mr. and Mrs. Watrous set out for California a few weeks after their marriage, leaving New York in October, and arriving by way of Panama and San Francisco in Chinese Camp, Tuolumne County, November 13, 1863.”

The trip took them from New York to Aspinwall. Aspinwall was founded by Americans in 1850 on the Caribbean side of the isthmus of Panama in conjunction with the construction of the Panama railroad. This was the first transcontinental railway in the America’s spanning 48 miles across the isthmus. It was established for the California gold rush and was completed in January 1855. From the Pacific side the trip to California was completed by steamer. Today Aspinwall is better known by its Spanish name, Colón.

Once in California, Ellen & Ben used the Bible to meticulously record the births, marriages and deaths of her family. The last entry is her own death on July 24, 1893 when she passes away at the age of 46.

How Things Can Change Suddenly

Sun, 6 Apr 2008 23:36:12 -0700

In the spring of 1863, sixteen year old Ellen Maria Goff wrote her Uncle Henry a note stating she had talked to her mother and that she wanted the school teaching position offered her in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Her father had died in 1859 from typhoid fever and her mother was
now a widow with four children. Of the four, Ellen was the second eldest. Henry was two years older, but Mary Jane and Emma were 12 and 4 respectively. It was necessary to not be a burden.

So on May 2, 1863, Ellen was cerified to teach by the Longmeadow school district.

However, things were to change quickly...

Ellen’s Uncle Henry was Abel Henry Calkins, and was the brother of Ellen’s mother, Amelia (Calkins) Goff. The Calkins family was a long established family that originally was out of Connecticut. He was married to Sarah Maria Watrous. The Watrous - or Waterhouse - family was another long established family like the Calkins. Sarah had a brother Benjamin who in 1850 had left Massachusetts to go via the Isthmus of Panama to California. He arrived in San Francisco in August, 1850 heading directly to the southern mine area of the Mother Lode. Benjamin eventually settled in Chinese Camp, California and found there was better money to be made is stock raising.

It is not known exactly how matters transpired, but Benjamin had not been back to Massachusetts since going to California. But in 1863 in the midst of a Civil War he went back home to meet and marry Ellen. They were married September 2nd, 1863 just 5 days before Ellen’s 17th birthday. Benjamin was 32.

They left for California once again via the Isthmus of Panama and made their way back to Chinese Camp. It happened so quickly that one of Ellen’s young friends wrote her to say she had missed her leaving but had heard about the handsome stranger from California.

In Chinese Camp they had their first child, Willie in 1865. But Willie barely made it through his first winter, They had two more children in Chinese Camp - Fred in 1867 and Emma Jane in 1869. Emma was our grand-aunt Edie. I can barely sustain a memory of her when I was little.

In 1872 Benjamin built a new home for his family in Stockton, California. They went on to have two more surviving children - Alice in 1872 and Ben in 1875.

Ellen spent the rest of her short life raising her children and died at the age of 46 in 1893. She and her husband Ben encouraged their daughter, Alice to attend the university at Berkeley, but on Ellen’s death Alice came home.

Of the four children, only Fred had two surviving children - George who went on to have his family in Sacramento, and Ethel (Mary Ethel) who raised her family in Stockton.

Edie had a son, Raymond, but he passed away as a young man. Alice never had a child, but married and with her husband participated in the Klondike gold rush.

Ben married, but had no children as well.

But the pioneering Ellen who gave up being a teacher to come to California with the handsome stranger eventually saw all her siblings and mother follow her to California. Her mother is buried with her in the Rural Cemetery in Stockton.