the snow storm
My mother sparked my genealogy interest again by putting together an expedition to Detroit to meet distant relatives connected several generations back-- nobody was from the area, so we convened at an airport hotel and I immediately realized that these people were much more hardcore than I was. I wasn't sure how this was going to work out.
One of them had arrived from Minneapolis on Tuesday and had been doing research the entire time. All sorts of adventures were recounted including tales of: hostile archivists (who knew they were out there), underfunded libraries (Detroit is still having major problems keeping their libraries open, the main branch remains closed on Sundays and Mondays, but that's better than when I visited in 2004), and spelling creativity (Schloff = Schlaff = Schlaf / Freidel = Fredel = Fridell = Freidell).
The trip was successful, yielding three key findings so far:
1) We found a two hour taped interview from 1969 with the brother of my great grandfather reminiscing about the family farm (now a park in Dearborn Heights, Michigan), diphtheria outbreaks, Henry Ford, that sort of stuff. He lamented the death of trains (he managed the main station in Detroit for awhile) and said "HOLY CATS!" and spoke with a little bit of that Minnesotan accent.
2) I learned a lot about cemeteries from a former seminarian who administers a number of 100-200 year old cemeteries in Detroit. I love experts who love what they do. You wouldn't think sitting in the office of some overly formal cemetery administrator for two hours talking about the history of mortuary science and various methods for mapping poorly documented cemeteries would be a fun, but it is. He also made some jokes about the local hostile archivists and the politics of it all. I figured he was probably just five years older than I was, but boy was he serious... so sincere though.
3) There has been a family legend that each of these disparate parts of the family knew and that is that my great great grandfather died in a snowstorm, leaving eleven children behind on the farm. I'd been going crazy searching newspaper accounts and we'd located death certificates but there wasn't anything about the cause of death. I'd been searching for weather records also and no sign of a snow storm. Anyhow... we're at their parish with the aforementioned expert and he digs through the records from the parish priest and finds:
Anno dmi 1887 die 17 Feb. sepultum est corpus Petri Schloff, mariti Catherinae Schloff, actatis 38 annorum, erat vis insanus et suicidium
So we thought, what does that mean? Did he freeze to death and it was deemed a suicide by the parish? He did die on his 37th birthday, what are the odds of that? The aforementioned cemetery expert pointed us to some local records, including the daily journal of the township mortician and sure enough, that settled it. From the Diary of E. D. Howe, February 15, 1887:
Rained some last night. Cloudy day. Peter Schloff, 4 miles s.e. of here cut his throat and died last night. Merritt and Mary came 4:27 this P.M. to stop over till tomorrow. Mr. and Mrs. Brown called this evening.
Lost in a metaphorical storm, perhaps.
One of them had arrived from Minneapolis on Tuesday and had been doing research the entire time. All sorts of adventures were recounted including tales of: hostile archivists (who knew they were out there), underfunded libraries (Detroit is still having major problems keeping their libraries open, the main branch remains closed on Sundays and Mondays, but that's better than when I visited in 2004), and spelling creativity (Schloff = Schlaff = Schlaf / Freidel = Fredel = Fridell = Freidell).
The trip was successful, yielding three key findings so far:
1) We found a two hour taped interview from 1969 with the brother of my great grandfather reminiscing about the family farm (now a park in Dearborn Heights, Michigan), diphtheria outbreaks, Henry Ford, that sort of stuff. He lamented the death of trains (he managed the main station in Detroit for awhile) and said "HOLY CATS!" and spoke with a little bit of that Minnesotan accent.
2) I learned a lot about cemeteries from a former seminarian who administers a number of 100-200 year old cemeteries in Detroit. I love experts who love what they do. You wouldn't think sitting in the office of some overly formal cemetery administrator for two hours talking about the history of mortuary science and various methods for mapping poorly documented cemeteries would be a fun, but it is. He also made some jokes about the local hostile archivists and the politics of it all. I figured he was probably just five years older than I was, but boy was he serious... so sincere though.
3) There has been a family legend that each of these disparate parts of the family knew and that is that my great great grandfather died in a snowstorm, leaving eleven children behind on the farm. I'd been going crazy searching newspaper accounts and we'd located death certificates but there wasn't anything about the cause of death. I'd been searching for weather records also and no sign of a snow storm. Anyhow... we're at their parish with the aforementioned expert and he digs through the records from the parish priest and finds:
Anno dmi 1887 die 17 Feb. sepultum est corpus Petri Schloff, mariti Catherinae Schloff, actatis 38 annorum, erat vis insanus et suicidium
So we thought, what does that mean? Did he freeze to death and it was deemed a suicide by the parish? He did die on his 37th birthday, what are the odds of that? The aforementioned cemetery expert pointed us to some local records, including the daily journal of the township mortician and sure enough, that settled it. From the Diary of E. D. Howe, February 15, 1887:
Rained some last night. Cloudy day. Peter Schloff, 4 miles s.e. of here cut his throat and died last night. Merritt and Mary came 4:27 this P.M. to stop over till tomorrow. Mr. and Mrs. Brown called this evening.
Lost in a metaphorical storm, perhaps.