A different Van Buren

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

This past weekend, I drove to the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  It was a spur-of-the-moment road trip.  I am very fortunate to live only 3 hours away from this wonderful repository for genealogists.

It only takes me 3 hours 

Would you believe that I drove there to look at one, single book?  Crazy, right?  Don't worry -- I had plenty of other research to do, but really I went there to look at just one specific book.  I didn't learn anything new from that book, by the way, but that's the subject of another post.

I love road trips. My whole family does.  We love to just get in the car and go.  On the way to Ft. Wayne, I thought a lot about Jennie.  I always think a lot about Jennie.  I was thinking about why she is my favorite genealogical "brick wall."  I feel connected to her, in ways that are hard to describe.  The more I learn about the people who came before me, the more I understand my life and my immediate family, for better or worse.  Jennie and her family may have been highly dysfunctional, but I can't point any fingers.  After all, I am, as of one week ago, twice divorced.  There are events in my life that I will never get over. Jennie had plenty of that, too. She may not have been a warm and fuzzy person, but she was incredibly strong. I see her backbone in the strong and whacky generations that came after her.  But we really should get back to the story.....


This is where we left off:

Jennie wasn't born anywhere!

After getting frustrated with trying to pinpoint a place of birth for Jennie Louise Van Buren, I took a little break.  During that time, my mother was going through a box of memorabilia that belonged to Edith (Jennie's daughter) and her husband Theo.  In this box were treasures like the tiny violin my grandfather Arthur learned to play on when he was just a little guy.

Arthur Lloyd Irion ca. 1921

My grandfather's tiny violin.  We're not sure when the neck was lost....

And in this very same box was the scrapbook that my mother thought was Edith's, but on closer inspection, decided that it had to be Jennie's. It contains mostly newspaper clippings, in no particular order, as far as I can tell.  Many of these clippings are jokes that Jennie saved.

Like this one:

Or this one:

And this one:

(I have no idea which newspaper these are from, so please forgive the lack of citing the source.)

The scrapbook also contains many of Marion Franklin Ham's published poems.  Marion (Jennie's brother-in-law) was a Unitarian minister and gifted poet.

Jennie also saved other poetry and some news reports about birthday parties....

This party must have taken place soon after they moved to Chattanooga, TN

Or this little tidbit about their new cottage in Chattanooga

In between jokes, you might come across an obituary, like this one:

Lebanon Western Star, 25 August 1881

Georgie was Jennie and Arthur's 13-month-old son, Edith's only sibling.  He died one month before Edith was born.  What must it have been like for Jennie to bury her son in the hot August weather, being 8 months pregnant?  The cause of death was "Cholera Infantum", a bad stomach virus, which had a high fatality rate among little children back then. How sad this must have been for Jennie and Arthur.

George Walter Ham 1880-1881

On the very next page of the scrapbook, was the following death notice:

Death notice of James Van Buren, newspaper and date unknown

This made me sit straight up and pay attention.  Van Buren?  Van Buren!  But where?  And when? Who was this James Van Buren?

More determined than ever, I decided to finish looking through the rest of the book before trying to figure out who James Van Buren was.  In the following pages, there were more jokes, more poetry, other obituaries, and then:

Obituary of James Van Buren, newspaper and date unknown

No other person in Jennie's scrapbook can claim 2 death notices/obituaries.  James must have been a very important person in her life. There are no Slys or Averys in her scrapbook.  Just this mysterious Van Buren.  Could this have been her adoptive father?

It was late -- definitely time to go to bed -- but so what!  I fired up the computer and did an initial search.  One big puzzle piece instantly fell into place.