For Liberty-- Her Normans: a Virtual Cemetery

See all by JBrown, IA, MN, Calif, AustinTX

A Virtual Cemetery created by JBrown, IA, MN, Calif, AustinTX

For Liberty-- Her Normans

Grave List
THOSE GONE BEFORE. On her mother's side, Liberty's people were Pan-American and European.
A sign that Liberty's surname might be Sanchez? The birth of great-grandfather, Tom Erik Norman, in Brazil. His father's engineering work took them forest-to-forest. Sigurd's first wife died soon after a daughter's birth, in east Canada. Sigurd sent daughters Kate Aagot and Anna to Norway while he worked. He married Aagot, the aunt caring for them, before taking all to Brazil. Adding Tom, they returned to Norway. Inga added, they moved to Michigan. Grace added, they ended in Portland.
Sigurd's invention? The Norman chipper, still-used by woodworkers. Invented in the Great Depression, its patents ran out before Sigurd made money from it.
Liberty's great-grandfather (Tom) became a jeweler/watchmaker once grown, pre-Timex, pre-cellphones. Her grandfather Ed and the rest looked forward to Tom's return after closing his shop. He died in east Washington state, ripely old, decades after nearly dying as a young man, in a fiery crash. He was on a military plane making a training run. (His second wife, Betty, still lives in Wenatchee.
***
More Scandinavian ancestors to greet Liberty in heaven?

Matilda/Tillie, buried in Idaho, and her mother, Lucia Peterson/Parsons, buried in Brainerd, MN. (The Petersons and their widowed mother arrived in Minn. in sets, pre-1880, from part of Sweden called Scandia/Skane, near Copenhagen. An old book on Swedes in America wrote a bio for Lucia's youngest son Charles, or we would know less.)
Matilda's husband was ancestor A.E. Carlson, from Gotenburg, Sweden, buried in Portland, Ore., no headstone.
***
Liberty's great-grandmother Nancy? Her father, Kenneth Ward Williams, married Anne Lorina Carlson.
***
Good people can easily die too young. First, Ken's little sister Laurie died in a remote rural area of NW Idaho, after their father Edwin's work took them deep in to the mountains. Second, Edwin Williams was born in the last "wild west" days of California, below the lower San Francisco Bay.
Men there might disappear, no fault of their own. Edwin's father? "First he was there, then he wasn't".
His best old record shows him marrying a widowed mother in Santa Cruz County. Widower Louis Nelson Williams, born in South Carolina, had arranged for a Baptist minister to marry Mary Eliza French, the minister's spellings messing-up her name of Byerly. Some other men named Louis/Lewis Williams were in California then. Only one was from SC. Did he fib a bit on age, to appear young enough to marry the young widow Mary E? If so, we forgive him. His life appears hard, his first widowhood, his disappearance.
Who was he? "Best guesses": (1) he went by Nelson, to avoid the Louis/Lewis/Louie issue; (2) his job caused him to be away from home for the 1880 Census, leaving alone his wife and toddling son Edwin, plus her young son from her first widowhood, in "Redwood Twp."; and (3) if so, he was "Nelson Williams", "ox teamster", b. South Carolina, seen in the 1870 Census in a lumber camp on the north California coast.
Redwood? The 1880 census showed Mary amidst Faulkner's "East of Eden". There were Chinese woodchoppers. There was a railroad-building camp. There were large ranches with absentee owners and what might have been an oil drilling camp. Faulkner's story differed by adding prostitutes.
Redwood Twp. is now extinct. Assuming some old roads match those in 1880, their house was in the Los Gatos area, near the foot of a mountain road going up to a horse-changing station known then as Patchen. The horse-changing station would be put out of business soon by the incoming railroad, but a resort hotel remained open nearby for decades, until World War precautions filled the railroad's tunnel with rocks. Their marriage county of Santa Cruz was down the other side of the mountain (southwest?). Their house in future Los Gatos was on one old route from San Jose to Santa Cruz.
One witness to their marriage vows gave tiny Patchen as his address (J. Fowler). The 1880 Census that counted toddler Edwin in Redwood also caught J. Fowler as a farmer near the mountain top. His teen-aged boarder was Harry Williams, there as a "scholar", to be tutored. Harry seems likely a son of Nelson's, but that's unproven. Other sources mentioned Fowler doing viniculture (growing grapes for wine).
***
What happened to Louis Nelson Williams? One pattern of Edwin's mother, Mary Eliza, was to stay connected to others from the old places "back east". Looking for old in-laws (near either her Redwood Twp. home or Nelson's lumber camp) found a schooner captain named Thayer. His ancestors had intermarried with Mary's Frenches back in the early Puritan days, in Braintree, MA. This Captain Thayer's ship ran to and fro, out of the lumber camp's wilderness landing and San Francisco. Was that how Nelson might visit his family? Captain Thayer and his boat "went under". His lost crew? His passengers? Names were unknown, except for a few seen in a recovered log that was mainly destroyed. The name Nelson was visible, but that was all.
In the next decades, no more records were found of a Nelson Williams born in S. C. and living in California.
***
Mary waited the required years, then sued for desertion. That let her take young Edwin back to Michigan and to remarry. After she and her last spouse worked to build a farm, she became widowed again. She looked much like a "black widow" if you knew too few details.
***
Edwin Williams became a saw sharpener, a special skill, earning extra pay, but lost or damaged a finger, as it was not easy work to do perfectly, all the time. He married further north, in Lewiston, Mich., then had son Ken Williams, before heading for Idaho, with half-brother, mother and new family. Wife Lizzie Frank worked in a boarding house before marrying Edwin. Their marrying minister headed a Congregational youth group, so maybe she and Edwin met that way? She was young amidst 16 siblings.
Nancy remembers Edwin's mother-in-law, Lizzie Sr., as ultra-fundamentalist. Her photo shows hair still black at 80. Black-haired Lizzie was orphaned by her mother while young. With too few siblings, did she vow to have many children, so none would be lonely? A world apart, her young mother had been a Pennsylvania Mennonite named Susannah Krug. An ultra-fundamentalist church recruited Mennonites (in Paradise Twp.? it no longer exists).
Edwin's father-in-law was Peter Frank, Bavaria-born. Peter's mother (Apollonia G. Frank) was buried in a Catholic cemetery. Peter's father (John Frank?) was buried in a Mennonite one. Peter moved his family up by Pittsburg. While Lizzie Jr. still toddled, Peter took the family to Saginaw, Mich. He would homestead in a county settled by Amish and Mennonites. Lizzie's brother Martin died young, in a lumber camp, maybe his first paid job. When Liberty is in heaven, will she be expected to remember all their names?
***

=======================Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2017. Permission to Findagrave to use at this page. Descendants may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.

<a href="#JBbottom">Grave List</a>
THOSE GONE BEFORE. On her mother's side, Liberty's people were Pan-American and European.
A sign that Liberty's surname might be Sanchez? The birth of great-grandfather, Tom Erik Norman, in Brazil. His father's engineering work took them forest-to-forest. Sigurd's first wife died soon after a daughter's birth, in east Canada. Sigurd sent daughters Kate Aagot and Anna to Norway while he worked. He married Aagot, the aunt caring for them, before taking all to Brazil. Adding Tom, they returned to Norway. Inga added, they moved to Michigan. Grace added, they ended in Portland.
Sigurd's invention? The Norman chipper, still-used by woodworkers. Invented in the Great Depression, its patents ran out before Sigurd made money from it. 
Liberty's great-grandfather (Tom) became a jeweler/watchmaker once grown, pre-Timex, pre-cellphones. Her grandfather Ed and the rest looked forward to Tom's return after closing his shop. He died in east Washington state, ripely old, decades after nearly dying as a young man, in a fiery crash. He was on a military plane making a training run. (His second wife, Betty, still lives in Wenatchee.
*** More Scandinavian ancestors to greet Liberty in heaven?

Matilda/Tillie, buried in Idaho, and her mother, Lucia Peterson/Parsons, buried in Brainerd, MN. (The Petersons and their widowed mother arrived in Minn. in sets, pre-1880, from part of Sweden called Scandia/Skane, near Copenhagen. An old book on Swedes in America wrote a bio for Lucia's youngest son Charles, or we would know less.)
Matilda's husband was ancestor A.E. Carlson, from Gotenburg, Sweden, buried in Portland, Ore., no headstone.
*** Liberty's great-grandmother Nancy? Her father, Kenneth Ward Williams, married Anne Lorina Carlson.
*** Good people can easily die too young. First, Ken's little sister Laurie died in a remote rural area of NW Idaho, after their father Edwin's work took them deep in to the mountains. Second, Edwin Williams was born in the last "wild west" days of California, below the lower San Francisco Bay.
Men there might disappear, no fault of their own. Edwin's father? "First he was there, then he wasn't".
His best old record shows him marrying a widowed mother in Santa Cruz County. Widower Louis Nelson Williams, born in South Carolina, had arranged for a Baptist minister to marry Mary Eliza French, the minister's spellings messing-up her name of Byerly. Some other men named Louis/Lewis Williams were in California then. Only one was from SC. Did he fib a bit on age, to appear young enough to marry the young widow Mary E? If so, we forgive him. His life appears hard, his first widowhood, his disappearance.
 Who was he? "Best guesses": (1) he went by Nelson, to avoid the Louis/Lewis/Louie issue; (2) his job caused him to be away from home for the 1880 Census, leaving alone his wife and toddling son Edwin, plus her young son from her first widowhood, in "Redwood Twp."; and (3) if so, he was "Nelson Williams", "ox teamster", b. South Carolina, seen in the 1870 Census in a lumber camp on the north California coast.
Redwood? The 1880 census showed Mary amidst Faulkner's "East of Eden". There were Chinese woodchoppers. There was a railroad-building camp. There were large ranches with absentee owners and what might have been an oil drilling camp. Faulkner's story differed by adding prostitutes. 
 Redwood Twp. is now extinct. Assuming some old roads match those in 1880, their house was in the Los Gatos area, near the foot of a mountain road going up to a horse-changing station known then as Patchen. The horse-changing station would be put out of business soon by the incoming railroad, but a resort hotel remained open nearby for decades, until World War precautions filled the railroad's tunnel with rocks. Their marriage county of Santa Cruz was down the other side of the mountain (southwest?). Their house in future Los Gatos was on one old route from San Jose to Santa Cruz.
One witness to their marriage vows gave tiny Patchen as his address (J. Fowler). The 1880 Census that counted toddler Edwin in Redwood also caught J. Fowler as a farmer near the mountain top. His teen-aged boarder was Harry Williams, there as a "scholar", to be tutored. Harry seems likely a son of Nelson's, but that's unproven. Other sources mentioned Fowler doing viniculture (growing grapes for wine). 
*** What happened to Louis Nelson Williams? One pattern of Edwin's mother, Mary Eliza, was to stay connected to others from the old places "back east". Looking for old in-laws (near either her Redwood Twp. home or Nelson's lumber camp) found a schooner captain named Thayer. His ancestors had intermarried with Mary's Frenches back in the early Puritan days, in Braintree, MA. This Captain Thayer's ship ran to and fro, out of the lumber camp's wilderness landing and San Francisco. Was that how Nelson might visit his family? Captain Thayer and his boat "went under". His lost crew? His passengers? Names were unknown, except for a few seen in a recovered log that was mainly destroyed. The name Nelson was visible, but that was all.
In the next decades, no more records were found of a Nelson Williams born in S. C. and living in California.
***Mary waited the required years, then sued for desertion. That let her take young Edwin back to Michigan and to remarry. After she and her last spouse worked to build a farm, she became widowed again. She looked much like a "black widow" if you knew too few details.
*** Edwin Williams became a saw sharpener, a special skill, earning extra pay, but lost or damaged a finger, as it was not easy work to do perfectly, all the time. He married further north, in Lewiston, Mich., then had son Ken Williams, before heading for Idaho, with half-brother, mother and new family. Wife Lizzie Frank worked in a boarding house before marrying Edwin. Their marrying minister headed a Congregational youth group, so maybe she and Edwin met that way? She was young amidst 16 siblings.
Nancy remembers Edwin's mother-in-law, Lizzie Sr., as ultra-fundamentalist. Her photo shows hair still black at 80. Black-haired Lizzie was orphaned by her mother while young. With too few siblings, did she vow to have many children, so none would be lonely? A world apart, her young mother had been a Pennsylvania Mennonite named Susannah Krug. An ultra-fundamentalist church recruited Mennonites (in Paradise Twp.? it no longer exists).
Edwin's father-in-law was Peter Frank, Bavaria-born. Peter's mother (Apollonia G. Frank) was buried in a Catholic cemetery. Peter's father (John Frank?) was buried in a Mennonite one. Peter moved his family up by Pittsburg. While Lizzie Jr. still toddled, Peter took the family to Saginaw, Mich. He would homestead in a county settled by Amish and Mennonites. Lizzie's brother Martin died young, in a lumber camp, maybe his first paid job. When Liberty is in heaven, will she be expected to remember all their names?
*** =======================Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2017. Permission to Findagrave to use at this page. Descendants may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.