Looking for Kate

Last week I was in New York City and spent time at the Municipal Archives searching for any information about my great-grandmother Kate Higgins or her brother Michael, both of whom came to Indiana on an Orphan train in 1860 or '61.

Their parents were Irish, and we believe from a letter written later in life by Michael that her father was Thomas Higgins and they lived on Elizabeth Street, which runs about a mile between what is now Chinatown and Nolita (northern Little Italy). Based in what I have been able to learn about Elizabeth Street in the 1850s, the southern end of it was part of Five Points, the worst slum in NYC at the time. So, despite family legends about a dastardly uncle who sent Kate and Michael away to take their money--I suspect they were destitute.

Early birth records in NYC, which begin in 1847/48, then stop, then restart at 1853, were simple kept in ledger books. The books are divided up alphabetically, with everyoneborn to a parent with last name H appearing in the same section, and the books run chronologically (for the most part) from there. More often than not, only the names of the parents, sex of the child, address of the [parents and name of physician or midwife are included.

I came up empty, but I suppose many people simply did not register births in those early years.

So today, I visited Kate's grave at South Park Cemetery in Martinsville, Indiana. I took a picture of her headstone, and uploaded it to Find-A-Grave. I feel like I have somehow finally registered her as someone who lived in this world.

The Quarterfinals--George Smith Wilhelm in the Maternal Bracket

I play tennis and I love nothing more than to spend a week watching every match of a great tennis tournament. Small wonder, then, that tennis tournaments are how I think of ancestry.  But it makes a curious kind of sense.

Winner: me (1)

Finalists: the parents (2)


Semifinalists:the grandparents (4)

Quarterfinalists: the great-grandparents (8)

Round of 16: the great-greats (16)

and so on--each generation back in time yielding twice as many players/ancestors as the one it gave rise to.

For me, things get really interesting in the Quarters and the Round of 16. The ancestor I know the most about, because he left a 240-page memoir, is my quarterfinalist grandpa, George Smith Wilhelm. Just to give you a snippet of his life, I include a story from a brief period when he lived in Woonsocket, South Dakota (hometown was Portsmouth, Ohio). The plains were a revelation to him. The picture was taken while he was living in Woonsocket, circa 1882.

"One day in Woonsocket there was a “twister,” tornado, or cyclone—the first one of my experience! And while the majority of the citizens were safe in their cyclone cellars, I witnessed from the shop window the fury and grandeur of that storm. I did not know whether the shop and a friendly dog who was there with me could survive the storm, but I thought I might as well look at it and see for myself what a cyclone was like.

The roaring of the wind, the crash of falling signs [and] flying roofs was appalling. But when it struck a lumberyard, hurtling planks and boards filled the sky like a thousand gyroscopes out of control and thicker than any snowstorm.

Then the dog crouched and whined and came closer to me for companionship. Suddenly the storm lulled and all was peaceful again, but it took days to return the wreckage to their proper places and to reduce to kindling anything too badly damaged for its original use.

One of our farmer friends, a Mr. Briggs, was plowing in his field when the twister formed. He unhitched his mules, mounted one of them, and tried to get out of its path. When he saw he could not, he slipped off, gave the mules a slap and they just made the raffle while he grabbed a death grip on the tuft grass and held on while the storm drummed his legs up and down on the ground like you’ve seen a piece of paper wrapped around a bush or other obstruction fluttering in the wind.

He was home for quite a few days following the storm, and on going home found his wife with a big foundation stone poised over her, but it did not fall. His house was blown away and he lost a dozen haystacks that day." 

Orphan Trains and Google Books

My paternal great grandmother is one of my family’s enduring mysteries: Who she was? Where did she come from? How did she happen to come here?

Her Hoosier prehistory has been the source of speculation throughout my lifetime, and at holiday dinners her survivors compare what they know, what they think they remember, and what they speculate. Talk at Thanksgivings and birthdays and family visits has often cycled back to her—if only briefly—for much of my 50-some years. The same liturgy, over and over.

Here is what we know we know:

• She was our great-grandmother (there are no surviving children or grandchildren, only great-grands).
•  Her maiden name was Kate Higgins.
• She married Clint Cunningham in Martinsville, Indiana, on Christmas Day, 1873.
• She died in 1899, leaving behind her husband and three not-yet-adult children, including my grandfather James Theodore Cunningham, who died the year I was born—1957.
• Oh. And she was the only minor living in the household of James and Sarah Douglas of Martinsville, Indiana, in 1870. The Douglas’s were in their 40s in 1870, and she was 17. Kate’s birthplace is listed on that Census as New York. I learned that this year, and I’ve got proof.

Here is what we have heard or what we think we have heard:

•  She had a brother who was also adopted into a family that lived in a nearby town in Indiana.
•  She may have come to the Midwest from NYC on an “orphan train.”
•  An uncle from NYC came to visit Kate one day when she was an adult, but she refused to see him. There is longstanding family speculation that an uncle took unfair advantage of Kate and her siblings after the death of their parents, but there is no proof. Just intimation.
• While living in Martinsville, she may have been threatened by the Ku Klux Klan because of Irish-Catholic heritage.
• She died of tuberculosis.

Here the letter I sent today, based on information found late last week through Google Books, after typing the following into the search field: “Kate. Cunningham. Martinsville.”

Dear Mr. [New York Children’s Aid Society Archivist],

My name is Anne Cunningham Robinson, and I am searching for information on my paternal great grandmother, Kate Higgins, who apparently was placed by the Society in an Indiana home in 1860 or 1861 (the letter below indicates 1860, but I have seen other data that indicates it could have been 1861) . I’m specifically interested in learning the names of her mother and father, if known, and any other information on the circumstances of why and how she came to the Society. I am happy to pay associated fees.

We believe she was born about 1853 and first appears in the U.S. Census in 1870 as the only other person living in the household of James and Sarah Douglas in Washington Township of Morgan County, Indiana (Martinsville). We always had heard she had a brother who was adopted into another family in Indiana, and that there was an uncle in NYC who had something to do with her being placed out.

Last week I found the following letter in the Appendix of the 1883 annual report of the Children’s Aid Society (which I have transcribed; I found it online):

I.—Children in the Country

A STREET BOY’S SUCCESS
 

BROOKFIELD, Ind., Feb. 5, 1883.
Dear Sir—Not having heard from the Society since I’ve been grown, I thought I would write you a few lines. Mr. Macy was Superintendent when I last heard from there. I did not know whether he was yet or not. I and two sisters left that Society in 1860; was brought to Franklin County, Indiana. I was taken by a Mr. Job Parkhurst, had a good home, lived with him about five years, and his wife died, and he got me a home, and a good one too, with Mr. Benjamin Branch. He gave me a fair education, sent me to school in winter, and learned me to be a farmer.

He sold the farm and moved to a small town. There I learned the painter’s trade and that is what I am working at now, trying to support a wife and one little blue-eyed boy, four months old. I’ve been married three and a half years, am 28 years old the 25th day of December, according to Mr. Macy’s account.

I write to you to see if I could find out anything of my folks in New York. My father and mother are supposed to be dead. I can recollect some of my father and uncle and the Children’s Aid Society—a grand place it is, and may God bless the managers and all connected with it. My father’s name was Thomas Higgins; my uncle’s name was Thomas Bryant. I was born on Elizabeth Street. Dec. 25, 1854, I’ve two sisters—one older and one younger than myself. My oldest sister’s name is Kate Higgins—now Kate Cunningham. My youngest sister’s name was Ella Higgins. Kate lives at Martinsville, Morgan County, Ind. Ella lives at Indianapolis with a private family.

The way I know my uncle, I was begging something to eat; I called at a house in New York, asked of them to give me something to eat, and the man asked my name. I told him, and father’s also, and where I lived in Elizabeth Street. He then said: “I am your uncle,” and that is about all I can recollect. Seems like I was taken that night.

Now if you can tell me of any of my folks I would be ever so much obliged to you. I would like ever so much to hear from any of them. I will never forget the Children’s Aid Society. It did good work for me and a number of others that I know of. So I will now close, hoping to hear from you, if not too much trouble. So hoping God will bless you,

I remain yours truly,

Michael Higgins

Thank you in advance for any assistance or information you can provide.
Anne Pearce Cunningham Robinson

And thank you, Google Books.

For most of a year now, I have been researching my ancestry, and doing the majority of the work on Ancestry.com. At first it was a rush. I discovered that my 10th great grandfather is William Brewster of Scrooby, the spiritual leader of the Mayflower Pilgrims. This means that I am some type of cousins with Ashley Judd, Seth McFarlane, and Sarah Palin, among others. And while I do get a kick out of knowing that I have this very interesting connection to American history, I also know that I am like the 10% of all Americans who are descendants of Mayflower voyagers.


What has quickly taken over as a source of interest is discovering the details of my nearer ancestors, great grandmothers, and a particular great-grandfather whom I never knew. There have been questions asked about a great grandmother who may have been an Irish-born orphan and perhaps came to Indiana on an orphan train from New York City.  There was another great grandmother who was a concert pianist and reportedly committed suicide by shooting herself. That is her on the right hand side of the main photo--her name was Jennie Gifford Armstrong Pearce.


I am fortunate that my family has a respectable number of papers and photographs that give me insight to the lives of  many of these nearer relatives. And I am having a blast piecing their lives back together, rebuilding their stories from fragments.


The Ohio River does loom large in many of my ancestors' stories. Many came from north to south to live along the Ohio's northern bank. Others crossed from south to north, from Virginia into Ohio and back and forth along a very porous border that in the mid-1800s "separated" the Yankees from the Rebels.  It seems like life was hard and every day hard won for almost all of them. And their stories are an inspiration to me, over and over again.


I will share some stories soon about my Down Ohio family. And I hope that if I ever attract any readers, they (or you) will share your stories with me too.