This weeks challenge is “Favorite Name.”   I will need to go back the the early 1800’s to find my favorite name.

My 4th great grandparents were John Nerren (1800-1852) and Elizabeth Mooney (1806-1876.)  They had 10 known children, 6 males and 4 females.   Their names were typical of the era;  Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, William, James, John, Sarah, Mary, Eliza, Margaret and then that one person with a name that didn’t fit in.  That person’s name was Lorenzo Dow Nerren (1832-1916), my 3rd great grandfather.

Where did that name come from?  Well, after a Google search, it became very apparent.  He, along with 1000’s of men of his generation, were named after Lorenzo Dow, “an eccentric itinerant American evangelist, said to have preached to more people than any other preacher of his era. He became an important figure in the Second Great Awakening and a popular writer. His autobiography at one time was the second best-selling book in the United States, exceeded only by the Bible. ” (Note 1)

Carlisle Weekly Herald (Carlisle, Pennsylvania) · Wed, May 28, 1834 · Page 1

Note 1:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Dow

Week 5’s prompt in the challenge is “In the Census.”  In the Week 3 challenge about ‘Longevity’, I posted about my Great Grandfather, Mathias Schumacher and my Great Grandmother, Mary Timlin.

I think it’s time to finish this part of my legacy.

In the 1900 Census, I found the Schumacher’s living in Walle, Grand Forks County, North Dakota.

Mary had 7 children, with only 5 living in 1900.  She died in 1903 leaving her husband with those 5 young children to raise alone.

In 1910, Mathias was living in Hurley, Renville County, North Dakota with his oldest daughter, Julia.  But where were the other 4 children  living in 1910?

I found Edward Peter working as a servant to a family in Brandon, Renville County, North Dakota.

I found Margaret Ann “Maggie” working as a servant in Colquhoun, Renville County, North Dakota.

I found Susan Mae “Susie” living as a servant in Hamerly, Renville County, North Dakota.

I found Helen “Nellie” C  working as a servant in Colquhoun, Renville County, North Dakota.

While I have no personal knowledge about why, I do suspect that Mathias was not prepared to raise 5 children on his own and ‘farmed out’ 4 of his 5 living children to ensure that they had the best life available to them.  Since every one of them lived in the same county, I also believe that Mathias Schumacher was a well respected member of the community and they did what they could to help in the most difficult of times.

Week four’s prompt in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Week challenge is ‘Invite to Dinner.’  While he is not an ancestor, he is my 3rd cousin 4x removed.  His name was William Calvin Oates.  Anyone from Alabama may know who he was.

William Calvin Oates was born on 30 November 1833 in Troy, Pike County, Alabama to  William Truxton Oates and Sarah Sellers.  He died on 9 September 1910 in Montgomery, Montgomery County, Alabama.

William, as reported by others, had a very interesting life.

Oates was born in Pike County, Alabama, to William and Sarah (Sellers) Oates, a poor farming family. At the age of 17, he believed that he had killed a man in a violent brawl and left home for Florida. Oates became a drifter, settling in Texas for a couple of years before returning to Alabama at the urging of his younger brother John, who had been dispatched by the family to locate him. He studied law at the Lawrenceville Academy in Lawrenceville and passed the bar examination, and then opened a practice in Abbeville.^[1]

He joined the Confederate States Army in July, 1861 and entered the army as Captain, 15th Alabama Infantry Regiment and eventually became the commander of the 15th Alabama infantry regiment in the spring of 1863. He fought in the Battle of Gettysburg, leading his troops in a series of charges on Little Round Top, where his brother John perished. This became one of Oates’s significant memories of the war, as he believed that if his regiment had been able to take Little Round Top, the Army of Northern Virginia might have won the battle, and possibly marched on to take Washington, D.C. Oates later stated that if even a single additional Confederate regiment had joined the assault, the attack could have succeeded, turning the Union’s flank and threatening the entire Army of the Potomac.^[2][3]

Oates stated:

His [Col. Chamberlain‘s] skill and persistency and the great bravery of his men saved Little Round Top and the Army of the Potomac from defeat.

[If one more Confederate regiment had stormed the far left of the Army of the Potomac with the 15th Alabama,] “…we would have completely turned the flank and have won Little Round Top, which would have forced Meade’s whole left wing to retire.” He concluded, philosophically, that “great events sometimes turn on comparatively small affairs.”^{[2][dead link][3]}

Oates participated in the battles of Chickamauga, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. After transferring to the 48th Alabama, he was wounded near Petersburg, Virginia, losing his right arm, which ended his active service.

Oates resumed his law practice in Henry County, Alabama, and served as a delegate to the 1868 Democratic National Convention. From 1870 to 1872, he was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives. In 1880, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served seven consecutive terms. Oates married Sarah Toney of Eufaula on March 28, 1882, and they had one son, William Calvin, Jr., who eventually joined his father in the law practice.

Oates was elected governor of Alabama in 1894 in a bitter campaign. Two years later, he unsuccessfully tried to secure his party’s nomination as a candidate for the United States Senate. President William McKinley commissioned Oates as a brigadier general in 1898 and he served in the Spanish–American War. He returned to his law practice and speculated in real estate. He tried unsuccessfully to have a monument erected at Gettysburg to his comrades in the old 15th Alabama, including his fallen brother.

Oates died in Montgomery, and is buried there in Oakwood Cemetery.

Now for WHY I would want to ask him to dinner, of everyone one in my tree, is because of this:

Week 2’s Prompt is “Favorite Picture”

Who was George Roy Hutson?

Have you ever had a brick wall that you just can’t get past?  Well I did.  I wanted to know who my paternal grandfather was.

My dad, Robert Edward Shumaker was born on February 6, 1931 in Los Angeles, California to an unwed mother.  His birth certificate has the father’s name blacked out.  On my dad’s social security application it lists his fathers name the same as his own.  There was no Robert Shumaker who married my grandmother, Margaret Ann Schumacher.  So who was my grandfather?

It all comes down to taking an Ancestry DNA test.  Me, my brother and our Mom took the test to figure it out.  I would have tested my Dad, but he died in 1985.

When my parents were getting married, my dad’s uncle, Oscar Franklin filled out the marriage certificate listing my dad’s father’s name as Paul Simpson.

When the results came back,  I spent countless hours separating the DNA matches that were not in common with our mom.   We had a few 2nd and 3rd cousin DNA matches.  I was excited to figure out our connection.  Much to my dismay, they were all on my paternal grandmother’s side of the family.  The only other option I had was to search the last name “Simpson” in an attempt to find others with that last name in their tree.  I found a 4th cousin match and reached out to her.  The two of us racked our brains trying to figure out how the “Simpson’s” in her tree, that lived in Missouri, could be related to me and my brother, who’s grandmother never went to Missouri.  The mystery continued for months.  We about gave up.

One day my brother and I had a new DNA match.  She is a 2nd/3rd cousin match who didn’t match our mom.  She didn’t match our paternal grandmother’s family either.  It had to mean she was related to our unknown grandfather.  Her name is Kathy.

The excitement wore off rather quickly when I noticed she didn’t have a tree.  I clicked on her name to find the exact amount of shared DNA and low and behold, she did have a tree.  She just hadn’t attached her DNA to it.  Her tree had seven people in it.  I got busy building a tree to find our mystery grandfather.  She didn’t have any “Simpson’s” in her lineage.  Did I waste months looking for that name?  The answer turned out to be YES.

After I had a tree going back to 3rd great grandparents on both sides of our newly found cousin, I started searching the family names.   Several other 2nd/3rd cousin matches showed up during this time and that 4th cousin I had worked with previously had some of those names in her tree as well.  So I truly was not looking for a Simpson but someone most likely with the last name Hudson or Hutson in Perry County, Missouri.

Kathy is a descendant of James Bennett Hutson and Frances Ann Hudson.  They were her 2nd great grandparents.  James and Frances had eight children.  Six daughters and two sons.  Since I was looking for my grandfather, I concentrated on their two sons.  I was forced to rule out one of the two right away.  One of their sons, Walter Perry Hutson died on November 14, 1922.  That left their other son, George Roy Hutson.

My dad’s uncle, Oscar Franklin worked for a grocery store here in Los Angeles.  George Roy Hutson was a traveling salesman in the tea and coffee industry.  Walter’s children had moved to Los Angeles after he died in 1922.  There was more than one reason why George would come to Los Angeles.  His job and checking on his brother’s children.

How my grandmother met George Roy Hutson is a new mystery.  One that went to their graves.  It was something that was never talked about.

George Roy Hutson died in 1948 of the same thing my father did,  it’s in the genes.

What we have found out though, my brother and I now have about 30 DNA cousin matches to James Bennett Hutson and Frances Ann Hudson as 2nd cousin 1X removed to 4 of their 8 children and Kathy is one of them.

Me, my brother and dad c. 1961

Bennie Elsie Nerren was born in Alco, Angelina County, Texas on February 8, 1915 to Benjamin Holt Nerren and Meady Oates and died on June 28, 1990 in Culver City, Los Angeles County, California.  She was my maternal grandmother.  She was the 4th daughter born to them and her father was less than pleased so he named her after himself.  Oh how he wanted a son.  They never did have one.  Their 5th child was also a girl.

Benjamin Holt Nerren was murdered on September 8, 1929 in a craps game gone bad and Meady Oates died, alone, in a hotel room on August 27, 1934.  I’ll save their stories for another time.

I’ve never been able to find the marriage record for my grandparents, however, I’m thinking Bennie Elsie Nerren and Edward Thornwell Beauchamp married sometime in late 1931 since their only child, my mom, was born in May of 1932.

The Beauchamp’s lived a very modest life in East Texas.  There wasn’t much work during the 1930’s.  The lumber industry was pretty much all there was and even those jobs were hard to come by.  Edward Beauchamp even went to trial for stealing.

Port Arthur News
Jun 27, 1935

SENTENCE SUSPENDED IN RAIL TIES THEFT
Beaumont, June 27, …. Explaining that he stole junk rails to sell in order to buy food for his hungry family, Edward Beauchamp, 25, pleaded guilty in criminal district court today to the theft on March 11, of 65 old railroad rails from the Kirby Lumber company. The rails were valued at $1 apiece. The jury let Beauchamp off with a two-year suspended sentence. 

Times were still really hard on the family until 1942.  That is when the Beauchamp family moved to Los Angeles.  Edward’s younger brother and his family moved at the same time.  The four adults rode in the front and back seats of the car while my mom and her two cousins rode in the rumble seat all the way from Fort Worth, Texas to Los Angeles.  It was a bumpy ride from what I hear.

When the Beauchamp’s finally arrived in Los Angeles, my grandmother went to work for the first time in her life.  She started cooking at a bar.  The rib sticking kinda food to help absorb all of the alcohol.  She later went to work for Rockwell working on the assembly line.  She worked there until she retired.

My grandparents divorced around 1952 and she remarried to Cecil Paul Harp.  Edward died at 47 of a stroke in 1957.

Growing up my grandmother was a fixture in my life.  I would spend summers at her house even though we only live 40 miles away.  My mom would use that time to paint my room or some other activity that a 5 year old would cause a distraction.

Holidays were always a special time when I was growing up.  My grandmother and her husband would drive out to our house and she and my mom would always cook the turkey dinner with all of the trimmings.  My grandmother’s specialty was the cornbread dressing.  We never did stuff a turkey.  There was never enough in the cavity of the bird and it was too soggy.  My mom could never figure out the secret of making my grandmother’s cornbread.

My family moved closer to my grandmother in 1965 when my dad had a job transfer.  When this happened, every Saturday was pinochle night at my grandmother’s.   It always included dinner.  It could be comfort food like chicken and dumplings or fried catfish.  Everything we did was centered around food.  It is what sustains us and brings us together.

In 1980, my mom had to have surgery just before Thanksgiving.  She was still bedridden and unable to fix dinner with my grandmother.  I drove over to my grandmother’s house, picked her up and brought her over to our house.   She taught me everything she knew about making cornbread, the stuffing, baking the turkey and making pumpkin pies.  Somehow that Thanksgiving was a turning point and the baton was passed to me.  I have been cooking the Thanksgiving meal ever since.