Ruby Tuesday....Searching for Martha

I'm not sure exactly when I discovered Martha's headstone at Orchard Grove.

I'm gonna guess it was probably between 1999 and 2001.

I remember looking up her name on the Internet. 

I would say I "googled" her, but I think it was pre-google.

I found nothing.

Every time a genealogy question came up in the family...
I would ask if anyone had ever heard of Martha.
I heard nothing.

I found the Kenney Record that Ruby had written...and I checked it for Martha.
Nothing.

I remember finding some records about Lulu Vandercar online and it was then I figured out that Aunt Lulu was related on both sides of the family....she was a Vandercar, who married a Tilton.
I knew that, but I didn't always get it straight.

I started to get interested in figuring out more of our Family History.
Honestly, most everything I found, most everyone already knew.
It was just the case of me growing up and getting to the age where you realize that these people...we're related to...are interesting people....and I wanted to know more about them.

I rediscovered the Bryant book and heard stories about the Turner side of the family from Jane Sanders.

But still no Martha.

Around, 2008 or 2009, I googled "A.S. Vandercar" again and found a question someone had left on Ancestry.com about Adna:

"I have been quoted from a book that 3 Vandercar families travelled together in covered wagons to Indiana where Adna Vandercar and his family settled in 1846. Don't know if the other 2 families also stayed in Indiana or went on to MI.
Anyone know of this story?"  2002

There was no response.

In 2009, New York Lisa was celebrating a Big Birthday in Vegas and we decided to go and surprise her.

I decided to extend the trip with a side trip to Arizona and reconnect with the original family genealogist...Ruby Lawson.

In the search for Martha, it was the first of many..."Hi, we're related...can I come talk to you," phone calls I've made ; )

Reconnecting with Ruby was the point of no return for resisting the accidental pull toward genealogy.
I had brought a brief case of Grandma Fern's pictures and Ruby told me something about each one of them. She spent 2 days pulling records from her "chifforobe" and her extra bedroom closet. She showed me a treasure trove of antique books and photos about Lowell, Lake County and our family.

But when I asked her who Martha Vandercar was, there was no answer.
When I asked about Adna Vandercar...she said..."Oh, Uncle Ab."
But she was talking about Albert Vandercar, not Adna.

Later that year, Mike and his kids came up for the Labor Day parade. We asked where they would be...he said at the cemetery with the Vandercars: Meaning, sitting by the Vandercar stones in the Lowell Cemetery.
Deandra got restless and I took off for a walk with her.
I had never really seen or taken note of these stones. I found Albert and Hattie and their parents Abram and Isabel. And a lot of other Vandercars all in a row.
More clues to the Vandercar line....

But nothing new to connect them to Martha.

(side note: If you want a profound memory keeping...circle of life...experience....take a walk thru a cemetery with a newborn in your arms and stand in front of her Great, Great, Great, Great Grandpa and Grandma's Headstone...and introduce them to her).



The treasure trove of Ruby's records and pictures stayed on my mind.
In 2011, I made a plan to go back with a scanner to get her collection digitized.

In preparation, I gathered her record book (names and dates) and a book of Kenney history that Carl Kenney, Jr. had written. I read the second on the plane and it made the first record book start to make sense. I felt like I was getting a grasp on this Kenney family and like I was starting to understand how all of these names that I have heard my entire life...connect together.

But WHO is MARTHA???

Scanning Ruby's pictures helped me put faces to the names....and stories.
I could follow along the record book and see faces....which made it easier to keep them straight.
I could read and listen to stories and mentally see their place in the Kenney record and start to see which branch of the family they belonged to. And Ruby talked and talked and talked about everyone from the Kenneys and the Tiltons to the Dinwiddies. She told me stories about her mom and Grandma Fern. Grandma Fern was pretty good about writing on the backs of pictures, but names only, not necessarily how they were related. Ruby told me who Stella "Grandma" Wallace was, about several Eberts, about Aunt "Tin" and the Craft Brothers and she told me how they all fit into the History of Orchard Grove.
Again, stuff that a lot of you already knew, but now it was making sense to me.

I came home from that trip and while looking up information on the Kenney General Store, I re-discovered the Lowell Library's "History of Lowell" page. I had been on there before and had found pictures of Dad from his high school days and about his telegrams home from the war.

It dawned on me that I had never searched for Adna and Martha Vandercar on the Lowell page.

I did and after 10 + years of Accidental Genealogy...

...I found Martha.


Directions to here:

Yep.
I waited for 10 years, you can wait a bit longer : )