Amanuensis Monday: Murrays in the "Pullman Herald"

[Since part of my mission in taking my family history project public is to transcribe and share family documents, I have decided to participate in the weekly blog theme "Amanuensis Monday," started a while back by John Newmark of Transylvanian Dutch. As he explains, an amanuensis is "A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another." A weekly transcription project sounds like a great idea to me!]

Local newspapers can be a gold mine for the family history enthusiast. I feel lucky in that one newspaper containing many items about members of my family--the weekly Pullman Herald--has been digitized and made freely available to the public via the Library of Congress's Chronicling America project. The digital holdings run from November 1888 to December 1922. A few months ago, I made an effort to transcribe at least some of the news items about my relatives. Unfortunately, I decided to experiment by recording my findings in Google Docs. I won't go into the experience here, but suffice to say, my venture into cloud computing left me all wet. Now I am left with a very long Google Docs file that needs to be converted to something else. What a distasteful chore golden opportunity to post some of the highlights!

During this period of Murray Mania, I have thus far been focusing on my great-grandfather Frank Murray's journey to the area around Pullman, Washington, where he met his wife, Jennie Ryan, and where they raised their family. The posts in the series so far are

1. "Frank Murray pt 1: From Rocking Babies to Herding Cattle" (and its update), which took Frank from the family farm in Nebraska to the Pullman area, where he met up with his Kincaid relations and caught his first glimpse of Jennie Ryan
2. "Frank Murray pt 2: His Wild Irish Rose," about Jennie, her courtship with Frank, and her father's opposition to their marriage
3. "Frank and Jennie: Anatomy of a Marriage Record," showing how at least some aspects of the family stories are confirmed by online records

Today I'll post Pullman Herald extracts--mostly one- or two-sentence "local news" items--that continue Frank and Jennie's story from their marriage on September 25, 1913, until August 1922 (the Library of Congress's digital holdings stop in December of that year).

As I explained in detail in "Frank Murray pt. 2: His Wild Irish Rose," Jennie's father, Patrick Ryan, did not approve of Frank Murray as a potential son-in-law, and the couple married without his blessing. I carefully examined every page of the Pullman Herald from mid-September through mid-October 1913, and I didn't find any announcement of the marriage. (It was a short, weekly paper, so this isn't as big a task as it sounds.)

Before Frank and Jennie married, Frank lived with and worked for his cousin Charles H. "Charlie" Kincaid. Since Frank didn't have his own place to take his new bride home to, family stories have long held that the Klemgard family let the newlyweds live on (and farm) Klemgard land for a couple of years. The Klemgards were a prominent family closely connected to the Kincaids: Charlie Kincaid's mother was born Christina Klemgard, and the land in question would have been owned by one of her two brothers, James Solomon Klemgard or John Morris Klemgard. The Pullman Herald confirms the story and sheds some light on the arrangement:

Date	Text	Pub. Info
3 Oct 1913	C. H. Kincaid has moved to his farm at Granite. ... Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray will occupy the J. S. Klemgard farm, recently vacated by C. H. Kincaid, Mr. Murray and Mr. Kincaid having a joint lease upon that farm.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.

It appears that the land that Charlie Kincaid and Frank Murray had been working together actually belonged to Charlie's uncle James Solomon Klemgard. I don't know how long Frank's name had been on the lease, but when Frank and Jennie married, Charlie (who owned other land) vacated the Klemgard farm in his cousin's favor. Pullman Herald items over the next two years show that Frank and Jennie shared strong farming and social bonds with the Kincaids. At the same time, Jennie remained close to her Ryan kin, while Frank worked to build ties with his new in-laws. Key Ryan relatives were Jennie's father, Patrick, and her brothers, Thomas William "Will," George Edward "Ed," and Paul. (Note: the following items are a representative selection of Murray appearances in the Pullman Herald. There are too many to post at once--even if I'd transcribed them all.)

Date	Text	Pub. Info
24 Oct 1913	Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Kincaid spent Monday at the Frank Murray home.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
28 Nov 1913	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and Miss Bessie White were guests at the Will Ryan home Thanksgiving. ... Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Kincaid and children and Mr. and Mrs. Ray Tash were guests at the Frank Murray home the last of the week.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
5 Dec 1913	C. H. Kincaid and Frank Murray delivered in Pullman on Tuesday, 60 fat hogs.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
26 Dec 1913	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray, Mr. and Mrs. Will Ryan and children, and Ed Ryan spent Christmas at the Pat Ryan home in Pullman.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
2 Jan 1914	The little Misses Helen Kincaid and Nellie Ryan spent several days this week at the Frank Murray home. ... Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray spent from Sunday until Monday at the C. H. Kincaid home near Granite.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
16 Jan 1914	C. H. Kincaid and Frank Murray, assisted by several of their neighbors, last Monday butchered 23 hogs. ... Mrs. J. M. Klemgard, Mrs. Nat Bryant, Mrs. V. L. Higgins and Miss Belle Higgins were guests of Mrs. Frank Murray Monday. ... While rendering lard in a large kettle outside, on Tuesday afternoon, Mrs. C. H. Kincaid and R. L. Hollenbeck were severely burned about the face and hands when the lard exploded, throwing the burning grease on them. ... W. H. Kincaid of Pullman drove out to the Frank Murray home Tuesday, returning Wednesday.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
17 Apr 1914	Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Klemgard, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray, Mr. and Mrs. C. O. Kellogg, Miss Agnes McShane, Master Joe Kincaid, and Patsy, Mildred and Hudson Klemgard were guests of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Kincaid, near Chambers, on Easter.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
24 Apr 1914	Mr. and Mrs. Will Ryan and son, Mrs. Ed Hogan and children, Mrs. Frank Murray and Miss Agnes McShane, spent Sunday in Pullman at the Patrick Ryan home.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 3; view page.
1 May 1914	Mrs. J. M. Klemgard called on Mrs. Frank Murray Tuesday afternoon. ... Mrs. Frank Murray spent Sunday in Pullman at the home of her father, Patrick Ryan.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
29 May 1914	Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Kincaid and son, Jack, of Chambers, Patrick Ryan, Mrs. White and daughter, Miss Bessie, of Pullman, were Sunday guests at the Frank Murray home. [The author of the Ewartsville column doesn't seem to be well enough acquainted with the Whites to know that "Mrs." Ellen White was Bessie's unmarried aunt, not her mother.]	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 5; view page.
4 Sep 1914	C. H. Kincaid and Frank Murray have purchased a vitrioling machine which treats six sicks [sic] of grain at one time. The machine is the same as the ones purchased by Sherman Brannon and Frank Wilson from E. C. Spurlock of Colfax.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
1 Jan 1915	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and Mr. and Mrs. Will Ryan and children were Christmas guests at the Patrick Ryan home in Pullman.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
23 Jul 1915	Mrs. Frank Murray and baby returned home last Thursday from the hospital where Mrs. Murray underwent an operation a short time ago.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.

The growing Murray family then moved to a piece of land that is still known as "the Back Place." Grand*a Murray told my mother that Frank and Jennie had to move due to an upcoming marriage in the Klemgard family: the farm the Murrays had been renting was earmarked for the happy couple, Flossie Klemgard and "Dutch" Slusser. This story seems to be borne out by the Pullman Herald (see the entry for 24 March 1916, below).

The Back Place adjoined Ryan land and may, in fact, have been Ryan-owned (it certainly was in later years). I can't lay hands quickly on hard ownership evidence, but family tradition says that Frank and Jennie rented the Back Place from Jennie's father, Patrick. One consequence of the move was that Frank's farming ties shifted: instead of working with his cousin Charlie Kincaid, he began working with his father- and brothers-in-law--Patrick, Will, and Ed Ryan. The Murrays did maintain social bonds with the Kincaids, but the fact that the Murrays were now Ryan neighbors meant that they now saw the Ryans much more often:

Date	Text	Pub. Info
22 Oct 1915	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray have moved to the farm recently vacated by Grant Clark.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
31 Dec 1915	Mr. and Mrs. Will Ryan and children, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and baby and Ed Ryan spent Christmas in Pullman at the Patrick Ryan home.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
24 Mar 1916	Miss Flossie Klemgard, daughter of J. S. Klemgard, was married at Berkeley, Cal., last Sunday to Mr. Curtis Slusser. The young couple arrived in Pullman yesterday and will be at home at the J. S. Klemgard farm, 10 miles west of Pullman.	"Wedded at Berkley," sec. 1, p. 1, view page.
2 Jun 1916	Mr. Paul Ryan of Portland, Ore. is spending his vacation with his father in Pullman and his brothers, Will and Ed Ryan, and his sister, Mrs. Frank Murray, on the ranch.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 5; view page.
4-Aug-1916	Word has been received of the death of the father of Frank Murray at his home in Nebraska on Sunday morning. Frank Murray had journeyed there last week to be at the bedside of his father.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 5; view page.
18 Aug 1916	A RECORD PRICE PAID FOR BARLEY The local grain market is quiet just at present and the buyers seem reluctant to quote prices, probably on account of the threatened strike of railroad operatives. Farmers believe that prices will go higher and do not appear anxious to sell. Two large sales of barley are reported. Wilbur Henry, representing the Vollmer Clearwater company of Lewiston, Wednesday bought 4000 sacks of barley from Pat, Will and Ed Ryan and Frank Murray at $1.55 per hundredweight, the highest price yet reported. N. E. J. Gentry on Tuesday bought from C. A. Price 4000 sacks of barley at $1.50 per hundred. The only prices quoted yesterday were: Red Russian........$1.00 Club...............$1.02 Fortyfold..........$1.03 Oats...............$1.20 Barley.............$1.50	"A Record Price Paid for Barley," sec. 1, p. 4; view page.
18 Oct 1918	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and children spent Sunday afternoon at the Will Ryan home.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 3; view page.
3 Jan 1919	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and two children spent Christmas at the Pat Ryan home in Pullman.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 5; view page.
10 Jan 1919	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and children spent Saturday and Sunday at the Pat Ryan home in Pullman. Mr. and Mrs. C. O. Slusser and little son...and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and children spent last Thursday at the Oscar Kincaid home.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 8; view page.

Then, in 1920, the Murrays made their final move, from the Back Place (which was remote and hard to get to) to a new, more accessible farm Frank purchased. Because Frank and Jennie got on well with Jennie's brothers Ed and Will (and their families), Frank chose a piece of land that was near to both the Ryan land and the local country school. As before, the Murrays saw the Kincaids occasionally (Grand*a Murray remembered them mainly as people *e saw on holidays) and the Ryans often.

Date	Text	Pub. Info
2 Apr 1920	EIGHT REALTY DEALS IN LAST FEW DAYS Local Firm Establishes Record for Transfer of Property--Five Farms, Three City Residences Sold A new record for real estate sales was established this week by the Hazen, Hately & McClaskey Realty company, when transfers were made for five pieces of farm property and three city residence property. The total amount of the deals was $160,350. The Robert Neely farm of 229 acres on Union flat was sold to Frank Murray. This place is well improved and a first class farm. The place was bought for a home...	"Eight Realty Deals in Last Few Days," sec. 1, p. 1; view page.
23 Apr 1920	County Records ------- April 10, 1920 Deeds Robert J. Neely to Frank Murray, sh of nwq, nh of swq 3-13-44, part lot 1 of Sec. 4, part lots 2, 3, 4, of 3-13-44, $33,000.	"County Records" column, sec. 2, p. 12; view page.
23 Apr 1920	April 14, 1920 Mortgages Frank Murray to M. G. Bjord, part lot 1, Sec. 4, part lots 2, 3, 4, of 3-13-44, $3000.	"County Records" column, sec. 2, p. 12; view page.
7 May 1920	April 30, 1920 Mortgages Frank Murray to Thomas Halpin, sh of nwq and nh of swq 3-13-44, $8000.	"County Records" column, sec. 2, p. 9; view page.
31 Dec 1920	W. H. Pritchard butchered hogs on Monday. The men who assisted were Will Ryan, Frank Murray, Ole Ousley, Tom Alsup and L. R. Rucker. Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Rucker spent the day with Mrs. Pritchard.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 5; view page.
23 Dec 1921	Sunday a surprise birthday dinner was given in honor of Wm. Ryan and Ed Hogan at the home of the latter. Those present were Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and family, Mr. and Mrs. Grant Clark, Wm. Hogan, Arthur Ausley and James McGreevy.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 3; view page.
3 Feb 1922	Will Ryan, Frank Murray, and W. H. Pritchard butchered 24 hogs on Monday of this week at the Ryan home.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 5; view page.
4 Aug 1922	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Murray and children of Ewartsville called at the Chas. Kincaid home Sunday.	"Ewartsville" column, sec. 1, p. 3; view page.

All issues of the Pullman Herald after December 31, 1922, will still be in copyright until at least 2018, so if I want to follow the Murrays into 1923 and beyond, I'll have to see if microfilm is available!

Blog Pages Added for Ryan and Barnett Lines

Two new blog pages are up:

• The Ryan line, which gives a quick overview of my great-grandmother Jennie Ryan's family and ancestors
• The Barnett line, giving an overview of my great-grandmother Stella Lowen Barnett's family and ancestors

To say that these pages are works in progress would be an understatement. They'll evolve over time (probably dramatically) as I make corrections and figure out better ways to present my information.

Still, getting something up feels like an accomplishment. Now I only have one great-grandparent, Fred Matthew Waehlte, to add a blog page for.

Frank and Jennie: Anatomy of a Marriage Record

I'm always excited when I find out a person I'm researching spent some time in the Evergreen State. Why? Because the Washington State Digital Archives rocks! (...Rock?)

The Digital Archives is run by the Washington State Archives, itself funded and run by the state government of Washington. According to the latest numbers on the Digital Archives website, it already hosts 28 million searchable records, with more added every month. These are public records, publicly available: you don't have to pay any fees to access them, and you'll never be ambushed with login screens or ads for partner services.

I'm not against pay-to-access services, because I know how much work it takes to digitize records and maintain databases. But it's wonderful to see a state government making such a commitment to preserving its records and bringing them to a broader public than just folks who can afford to pay endless user fees or travel to far-distant county courthouses.

The folks who put together the Digital Archives put a lot of thought into the basic interface and how information is organized. Go to the home page and what's the first thing you see?

The search box, right next to a list of collections. Most other online archives I've visited want to tell you all about themselves first thing, maybe get you to stop by their offices for a chat. Or they're so desperate to explain how all their various digital holdings are organized (sometimes it doesn't seem that they are) that it takes you pages of reading to figure out how to access anything; by then, of course, you can't remember what led you to that site in the first place.

So, Washington State Digital Archives, you've impressed me with your handy search-box. Let's plug in my great-grandfather Frank Murray's name and see what you turn up.

The search is not case-sensitive, so I don't have to worry about capitalizing anything. The search engine also has some ability to return partial matches. If I give it a few letters, it'll search for everything that begins with those letters--so if I enter "Williams," it will also return results for "Williamson." One limitation is that it's not pre-programmed to search for nicknames or common spelling variants: my search for "Frank Murray" won't include any Frank Murrys or Murreys or men with the first name Francis. I don't mind this too much, though: I'd rather have a basic tool that works than a fancy one that doesn't.

The "Record Series" option defaults to "All Record Series," and that's where I've decided to leave it for now. I could have restricted my search to any of a number of categories from that drop-down list or explored the other clickable search options, but I haven't. So without any restrictions, here's what I get when I hit the search button (and you can click on this or any of the other images in this post for a larger view):

Great, huh? My search has turned up results in eleven neatly sorted categories! Very few of these are likely to be my Frank Murray (I know none of the military hits are him, for example), but the folks at the Washington State Digital Archives have presented me with several different options for narrowing my search. Let's see what happens if I just click the plus sign next to "Marriage Records":

Zoom! Sub-categories for individual counties! Now, since my family sources say that my great-grandfather married his wife, Jennie Ryan, in Whitman County in 1913, I could, at this point, click on "Whitman Marriage Records" and just look at the 2 results that are waiting for me there. To give an idea how the system works, though, I'll click "Show All Records" to see all the marriage-record hits for the different counties. 31 hits doesn't seem like too many to sort through.

As you can see, it's not only showing me all the Frank Murrays, it's showing me all the Franks who married Murrays. This is not always helpful, but I've quite often searched for one person this way and unexpectedly found another relative instead, so you never know.

If all the extra results are distracting me, I can always re-sort them by ANY of the result fields--groom's first or last name, bride's first or last name, marriage year, county, etc. All I have to do is click on the arrow right below the category name to re-sort--and I can toggle between ascending order (first to last) and descending order (last to first). This simple yet surprisingly uncommon feature is unbelievably handy if I want my search to be broad (all the Murrays) but I only want to look at a certain range of information in another category (the 1910s). If I sort the results by that other category, I can easily breeze past the totally irrelevant hits to the ones I think I might be interested in.

You'll also notice that I've been presented with a new, specialized marriage-record search-box just above my results. Nice! I can use it to quickly narrow my results or pursue other lines of inquiry. Say, for example, that I am intrigued by the seventh couple on my list, Frank Arthur Murray and Margie Marie Bacon, and I want to see how many other Franks married Bacons in the state of Washington. Do I have to trudge back to the main search page and fiddle around with advanced options just to satisfy my idle curiosity? No! I can be both curious and idle right here! And, once I've indulged my whim (I found nine Frank-Bacon weddings), I can then return to my previous search with a simple click of the "back" button.

As for Frank Murray and Jennie Ryan, they turned up right where I expected them to on the results list:

It looks like they really were married in Whitman County in 1913, just like all my family sources said. But why are there two results? I'll click on the first one and see what comes up.

Okay, now I have a specific marriage date and some bibliographic info on the record. But what I'm really interested in is that business to the side: "Images are available for FREE online." So what is this mystery record? Will they let me see it?

Hey! It's my great-grandparents' marriage certificate! How cool is that? I didn't have to pay a search fee or wait three weeks to get it--and I can order a certified copy right from the results page if I want.

Here's how Mom summed up the information that had been passed down about Frank and Jennie's marriage in some notes she made in 2005:

The young couple got married in the Catholic church in Rosalia, Washington, on September 25, 1913. Will and Jess Ryan were the best man and matron of honor at the wedding. Patrick Ryan [Jennie's father] did not attend because the groom was not a Catholic.

The marriage confirms nearly all the family's details. Frank and Jennie were indeed wed on September 25, 1913, at Holy Rosary Catholic church in Rosalia. The event was witnessed by Jennie's brother Thomas William "Will" Ryan and his wife, Jessie (Clark) Ryan. (Here Will and Jess have signed themselves as "T W Ryan" and "Mrs. T. W. Ryan.") The only family information this document has nothing to say about is whether or not Jennie's father attended the wedding.

But what about that other record? Is it just a duplicate? I'll cut to the chase and give you the goods right off.

The other record, it turns out, is a marriage return. As I understand it, a marriage return is/was a form (no idea if they're still used) that the person who performed the marriage filled out and sent back to the local government so that the marriage could be officially recorded. While the certificate gives details about the wedding, the return explains more about who the bride and groom were. A quick overview of the information on Frank and Jennie's marriage return will make it clear just how valuable a record it is.

According to this document, on his wedding day, Frank was a 30-year-old white farmer living in Pullman, Washington. He was born in Illinois, his parents were Maxwell Murray and Lucy Kincaid, and he had never been married before. Jennie, meanwhile, was a 28-year-old white Pullman resident (no occupation listed). Her parents were Patrick Ryan and Jane White, she was born in New York, and she had never been married, either.

Now, Frank probably wasn't actually living within Pullman city limits at the time of his marriage, and the ages that both he and Jennie gave were probably wrong. But this is could be the only official document that names both of their parents. This is especially important for Frank, who may not have ever had a birth record and may not appear in his parents' household in any surviving census (issues I'll be talking about in a future post).

These two documents, as you can imagine, are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what's available on the Washington State Digital Archives. Anyone who has relatives with Washington connections should poke around and see what they can find.

I should note, before I sign off, that the Digital Archives' marriage records almost always contain more information than is indexed and (therefore) searchable. The two documents I found are fairly typical: no information beyond the bride's name, groom's name, and marriage date has been indexed. So, for example, I couldn't run a Digital Archives search for "Lucy Kincaid" and expect to find Frank and Jennie's marriage return, nor could I look up the priest's name (which I can't really read anyway) and end up with a list of the couples he'd married. And there are gaps in the records, as in any other collection. Some originals have no doubt been lost over the years; some have yet to be digitized; and some are protected by privacy laws. So, as with any other type of research, the more information you already have, the greater your chances of uncovering something else will be.

Frank Murray pt 2: His Wild Irish Rose

This post is a follow-up to my earlier post "Frank Murray pt 1: From Rocking Babies to Herding Cattle." In part 1, I wrote about my great-grandfather Frank Murray's journey from his family's farm in Nebraska westward to Pullman, Washington, where he began working for his uncle, William H. "Bill" Kincaid. When we last left Frank, he had just caught his first glimpse of my great-grandmother, Jennie Ryan.

Frank Murray and Jennie Ryan, c. 1913. Excerpt from a family photo.

I don't know how Frank and Jennie actually met, but the family story about that first sighting (see part 1) suggests that Bill Kincaid or Bill's son Charlie may have introduced them, perhaps around 1910-1912.[1] Although Frank probably lived on Charlie's Kincaid's farm a few miles outside of town much of the time, he likely visited his uncle Bill in Pullman often. Jennie also lived in Pullman, with her father, Patrick Ryan. As two prominent, well-off landowners living in the same small town, Bill and Patrick were probably at least slightly acquainted.

View Larger Map

According to the 1910 U.S. census, Bill Kincaid lived at 1714 B Street, an address Google Maps puts at just a little over a mile northeast of Patrick Ryan's 315 West Main Street house. Google may not have the addresses perfectly placed, but at the right you'll see one possible route between the two houses, with Bill Kincaid's place as (roughly) point A and Patrick Ryan's as (roughly) point B.[2]

Frank most certainly found Jennie Ryan a woman worth traveling a mile for. Born in Lewis County, New York, in the early 1880s, Jennie was probably just a toddler when her parents, Patrick and Jane (White) Ryan, decided to move across the continent to homestead in Garfield County, Washington. Arriving around April 30, 1884, the Ryans laid claim to a plot of land on the cheerily named Deadman Creek near the town of Pomeroy.[3] According to Grand*a Murray's Jennie Ryan Letter, the homestead was very isolated: "It must have been a spartan and lonely life," *e wrote. Neighbors would have been spread far apart, and for the next few years (until the family sold the homestead and moved to Whitman County), Jennie had few playmates. Her two older brothers, Ed and Will, were probably too busy with schoolwork and farm chores to play much; her baby brother, Paul, wasn't born until 1888; and a ten-year age difference separated her from her only sister, Nellie.[4] This meant Jennie had to learn to amuse herself when she wasn't helping her family with chores. It also meant that she grew up a little wild. As Grand*a Murray wrote,

Jennie used to chase the wild range horses. She would hide behind some sage brush and jump out at them.

"It was a dangerous game," Grand*a continues--but then, Jennie could be dangerous, too:

Once she chased a little colt until it died from exhaustion. [Her father] spanked her, and that was the only spanking she ever had.[5]

As she grew older, Jennie learned to ride and to shoot, developing both skills to a high level of mastery. My mother tells me that Grand*a Murray and other relatives always said Jennie could ride a horse as well as any man. And according to the Pullman Herald newspaper, as a young woman Jennie won second place in a contest to find the "best saddle horse, ridden by a lady," proving she could not only ride a horse--she looked good doing it.[6] As for her marksmanship, Grand*a Murray contends she was a crack shot:

Once when she was practicing target shooting, a man held up his hat and said, "I'll give you five dollars if you can hit it." She took aim and shot a hole in his hat.[7]

I remembered hearing a different take on this tale, so I asked Mom about it. "Oh, Grand*a cleaned that story up," she told me. In the version Mom heard from various Murray relatives as a child, Jennie shot the man's hat from her own front porch--not from some shooting range. And she didn't make the shot on a bet, either: somehow the man had made her mad and she wanted to get rid of him, so she grabbed her gun and shot the hat off his head. Mom has no idea who the man was or what he'd done to irritate Jennie. When Mom was a kid, she says that the story was often told to illustrate Jennie's spooky-good marksmanship--but that whenever shocked and fascinated grandchildren like herself asked follow-up questions, the adults always quickly changed the subject. A century later, we'll never know what actually happened. But it's clear that Jennie's immediate descendants saw her as a woman who was capable of

1. shooting a hole in a man's hat to prove she could do it
2. shooting a man's hat off because he annoyed her

There are other stories I could tell here, too--more hints, around the edges, of a nasty temper. But I think I've given you a basic idea of Jennie's wild, strong-minded, Annie-Oakley side. Without question, she was a spirited woman.

At the same time, though, Jennie was a conventional farmer's daughter. Despite her occasional hat-directed violence, she spent most of her time, as girl and woman, taking care of family in one way or another. She fed chickens. She made jam. She worried (at least sometimes) what the neighbors might think. (I've already written about how sensitive--even vain--she was about her age.) Page after page of the Jennie Ryan Letter describes the many domestic chores Jennie grew up tackling every day, from hauling water and milking cows to baking bread and making clothes. Some of these tasks she seems to have genuinely enjoyed: she was a good enough cook to sell her wares when money was tight, and I think the name of the sewing club she started--the Pleasant Stitches Club--reflects her feelings about that occupation. She was a warm, hardworking, intensely social woman who welcomed guests and was always "ready to go"--out to local plays, festivals, and potluck dinners, over to neighbors' houses, or even just into town. She loved to visit with people, to laugh and joke and sing and dance. "Mother was fun," Grand*a writes simply.[8]

With such a potent blend of characteristics, it's easy to see why Frank Murray--a hardworking farmer who wasn't without his adventurous side--might set his cap for a woman like Jennie Ryan. Luckily for him, she liked the set of his cap, and the two decided to marry.

There was, however, a problem with the match: Jennie was a Catholic. I have no idea what faith, if any, Frank was born to, but he was certainly not Catholic.[9] Worse for them, Jennie wasn't just any sort of Catholic--she was an Irishman's daughter.

Jennie's father, Patrick Ryan, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, within a couple of years of the outbreak of the devastating Irish Potato Famine. Over the next few years, many neighbors, friends, and relatives left the Ryans' neighborhood for a better life in America. A group of these Tipperary refugees settled in what's called the Maple Ridge area of Lewis County, New York, and eventually Patrick Ryan's whole family emigrated to join them. The members of the "Maple Ridge Migration" were a close-knit group, sharing culture, faith, and family ties. At the center of this newly American Irish community was the local Catholic church--and not only did the Ryans attend that church, they helped to build it in the first place.[10]

In 1871, Patrick Ryan married Jane White, who'd grown up in a nearby Lewis County town. Although Jane was an American, both of her parents were Irish immigrants, and her family was, like Patrick's, Catholic. The Whites were so Catholic, in fact, that Jane's mother reportedly died in church--on her knees--praying. ("She must have been a saint," says the Murray-Ryan Packet.)[11]

So Patrick married into a family that was much like his own in culture, faith, and devotion. When he and Jane decided to take their children and move to Washington, they operated on the Maple Ridge model: they stuck with family (Patrick's brother Thomas also moved his family to Garfield County), and they stuck to their church. The Jennie Ryan Letter describes how, during the Ryans' early years in rural Washington--come blasting heat or winter snow--they'd ride in an open wagon across rutted dirt roads to Mass every Sunday. It was ten or eleven miles to the nearest Catholic church, so the round trip took all day. After the Ryans moved to Pullman, the situation improved: while there was still no Catholic church in town, there was at least a denser population of Catholics (many of them Irish immigrants or their children), and the local parish would send a priest around from time to time to minister to that flock. On such occasions, local Catholics would gather to hear Mass and receive communion--and often, they gathered at Patrick Ryan's house. One of Grand*a Murray's first cousins told my mother that Patrick's house was sometimes referred to as "Little Ireland."

Knowing all of these things, it's possible to imagine Patrick's reaction when Jennie announced her intention to marry un-Catholic Frank Murray. Jennie was, by this time, Patrick's only surviving daughter, and he must have had hopes that she would find some good, well-off, clean-living Irish lad to marry--a man who knew the old songs and would raise the grandkids to work hard, go to Mass, and hate the English. Patrick's other daughter, Nellie, had died tragically young around 1897--but she had become a nun! Now here was Jennie, ready to marry a man who, in Patrick's book, must have had at least three black marks against him:

1. He didn't own his own farm--or indeed any property (that I'm aware of). How would he provide for a woman who was used to living in town and having her own riding horse?
2. He wasn't Irish. True, Frank did have some Irish blood in him, but his parents hailed from Illinois, not Cork or Tipperary.
3. The clincher: not Catholic. Worse, according to my mother (who has trouble imagining her grandfather as strongly religious at any stage of his life), Frank may not have even been a regular church-goer when he and Jennie met.

Frank couldn't do much about (probable) objections number one and two, but he did commit to a Catholic wedding. This would have involved months of instruction and counseling by a priest. I don't know whether or not Frank considered full conversion, but the Ryan-Murray Packet is clear that he did not convert at that time. In the Jennie Ryan Letter, Grand*a Murray explains that Frank struggled to learn about Catholicism because, in those days, everything was still in Latin.

Merely meeting the requirements to be married in the Catholic church, though, was no substitute, in Patrick's mind, for actually belonging to that faith, and he refused to give his blessing to the match. The couple married anyway, in a small ceremony in the Catholic church in Rosalia, Washington. Patrick did not attend, and there was no announcement in the local paper.

Frank did, however, have some allies in the Ryan family: Jennie's brother Will and his wife, Jess, acted as best man and matron of honor. And as time went on and grandchildren began to arrive, Patrick warmed to his new son-in-law. Frank began seeing more and more of his new Ryan kin and a bit less of his Kincaid relations. In a future post, I'll pick up this story again and begin to explore what I think of as the Irishing of Frank Murray.

Notes

[1] Grand*a Murray's Jennie Ryan Letter says that my great-grandparents were married two years after they met, but Grand*a offers no further details. I don't know whether *e was estimating or guessing or where *e got that number. Frank and Jennie married September 25, 1913. Because of some tough family issues surrounding the wedding that I'll get to later in the post, I suspect that they courted for at least a year or two before marrying, hence my upper limit of 1912 for their first meeting; but I have no corroborating evidence for this other than Grand*a's mysterious "two years." As for my lower limit of 1910, this is based on two pieces of pure conjecture. Firstly, I imagine that Frank had probably worked on the Kincaid farm outside town for at least a few months before he and Jennie met--and we don't know that he was in the area until 1910. (For details about when I estimate Frank arrived in Pullman, see part 1, especially note 2.) Secondly, I think it's likely that Frank and Jennie started courting after Patrick Ryan bought his house in town in 1909 (see note 2, below). In Pullman, there would have been more places and opportunities than in the country for single people to rub elbows away from disapproving family members. Now, the whole purpose of this note is to broadcast how shaky my estimate is; I did, however, think it was worth attaching some time frame to their courtship, even if it was only a guess, just to orient the reader.

[2] The Ryan home is still standing today and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (as the William Swain House). Patrick Ryan purchased the home from C. H. Buell in 1909 and planned to move part of his family there within a week of announcing his intention in the 24 September 1909 issue of the Pullman Herald. (The brief announcement appears on p. 4, halfway down the third column of the "Personal" section). Regarding the Google map of the route between the Ryan and Kincaid homes, Pullman has changed quite a bit since the early 1900s as Washington State University has grown, but I used a 1913 map of the WSU campus (it was Washington State College in those days) to trace a route that would have worked back then. It may not be the route that people of that period would have chosen.

[3] According to Patrick Ryan's homestead records, which I photocopied at the National Archives in August or September 2009. 

[4] The names of Jennie's family members are consistent across Mom's Tree, the Ryan-White Tree, the Murray-Ryan Packet, and the Jennie Ryan Letter. They are backed up by family photographs, the memories of living descendants, census records, and official documents obtained through the Washington State Digital Archives. Unless otherwise stated, biographical information about Jennie and her family in the rest of this post is taken from one or more of the written family sources named in the first sentence of this note.

[5] Jennie Ryan Letter.

[6] "All Records Broken at 7th Annual Grange Picnic," Pullman Herald, 10 July 1908, p. 1. Online at the Library of Congress's Chronicling America newspaper collection (view page).

[7] Jennie Ryan Letter.

[8] This paragraph basically boils down and paraphrases information and descriptions of Jennie from the Jennie Ryan Letter and the Murray-Ryan Packet. My description of Jennie as a "conventional farmer's daughter" paraphrases a description in the Letter. Both sources talk about Jennie's cooking and sewing and how she started the Pleasant Stitches Club, though only the Packet gives the club's name. Both talk about the food she prepared and sold to local stores. The Murray-Ryan Packet specifically states that Jennie was hard-working, while the Jennie Ryan Letter lists enough tasks to make that fact plain. Both sources also dwell on Jennie's sociability and her love of music, though only the Letter mentions her sense of humor or how she was always "ready to go." I added one inference of my own: that Jennie worried about what the neighbors would think.

[9] The phrase "not a Catholic" is used repeatedly in my family sources to describe Frank's religious condition before he met Jennie. Nowhere does it say what he was, if not Catholic.

[10] Thomas E. Buckley, S. J., "The Ryan Family in Ireland and America," rev. 2005, online at http://mcgrathsearch.com/files/Ryan%20Family%20History%20-%20Buckley.pdf. Father Buckley is a descendant of Patrick Ryan's brother Thomas. Michael F. McGraw, whose website, mcgrathsearch.com, hosts Buckley's article, has further developed Buckley's idea of the "Maple Ridge Migration" through a great deal of additional research.

[11] Mom's Tree, the Ryan-White Tree, and the Ryan-Murray Packet all state that Patrick Ryan and Jane White married in 1871 in Copenhagen, New York; that Jane was born in New York; and that both of her parents were Irish. All of this information (except for the marriage location) is confirmed by census records.

How Old Are the Hills?

"Jennie was born in Lowville New York on Aug 30, 1885?"

So begins a letter Grand*a Murray wrote to help me out with a 7th-grade English project. Our assignment was to fill out a rough family tree and write a short essay about one of our ancestors. I had chosen Grand*a's mother, Jennie (Ryan) Murray, and Grand*a had sent me a wonderful, nine-page mini-biography to draw from. At the time, I was stressed about finishing the project and didn't notice Grand*a's question mark: skimming for details to put in my paper, I was just happy to have a date to write down.

Once it was in my essay, though, I became sure of it. I began to think of that date as a fixed point from which the rest of Jennie's life could be reckoned. How old was Jennie when her mother died? 15! How old when she married? 28! The sentences filled themselves in naturally, and as they did, I became more and more confident of the story I was building. For several years afterward, whenever Ryan or Murray family history came up, I would automatically relate it to that date: how long had such-and-such happened before or after August 30, 1885?

I didn't begin researching my family history on my own until a few months ago. By that time, I'd forgotten the date and hadn't looked at Grand*a's letter in years. What I recalled most about Jennie then was that there were lots of great stories about her. Because she was still so vividly remembered (and because I hadn't forgotten my junior-high confidence), I assumed that I didn't need to worry about the accuracy of the information my main written family sources gave about her. These documents, after all, were put together either by Jennie's children or with their help.

So when I found Grand*a's letter again recently, the deep uncertainty surrounding that first, most basic fact startled me.

"[Mother] would never tell us her age," Grand*a explains in the letter. "When we asked her she would say, 'I'm as old as the hills.' After her death the Ryan family said she was older than the date on her tombstone."

At first, I was horrified. If this information panned out and it turned out that the Ryans were right, it would mean that not only had my family sources gotten Jennie's birth date wrong, but that it was also wrong on her marriage return and her death certificate. If even official records couldn't be trusted for such a recent ancestor (Jennie died in 1947), how could I be sure of anything I learned about the older ones?

The answer, of course, was that I couldn't--not completely. Even when you're dealing with official documents, clerks make mistakes. People misread what's been written. Files get shuffled around and mixed up. Bugs chew holes in paper. Disasters strike. Ink fades. Knowing these things from the outset, I had already prepared myself for more and more guesswork and less and less hard evidence the further back I went. And I knew that I would be very likely to run into ancestors who didn't know their right ages or other information due to lack of education or just because their families didn't keep track. But the Ryans were proud of their literacy. They kept track. Jennie knew exactly how old she was. She just refused to admit it--and that was what took me off guard. I knew at once, though, that she couldn't be the only woman in my family tree who had withheld information from her children. Clearly, I needed to ease up on my assumptions and dial up my doubt-o-meter.

Once I'd taken a few deep breaths and adjusted my thinking, I realized what a wonderful gift Grand*a had given me: an insight into Jennie's character. This was a more than even trade for a little uncertainty about her exact birth date. How great to learn that she was so obviously sensitive about her age! The age she claimed to have been at marriage (28) was a bit late for the times, and her touchiness shows that she worried about how others might see her. But the fact that she chose to respond to the unwelcome question of "How old are you?" with a such a teasing non-answer also shows that she had a sense of humor--even mischief--about it.

At a recent family gathering, I mentioned this "old as the hills" business to two of Mom's first cousins. To my surprise, I learned that Grand*a had only told half the story. It seems that denying her age became a sort of game that Jennie played with her children, and it made such an impression that Mom's cousins had grown up hearing about it. Here's how the game went:

"How old are you?" (someone would ask).

"I'm as old as the hills" (Jennie would reply).

"How old are the hills?"

"As old as Anne."

"How old is Anne?"

"As old as I am."

So Jennie not only made her age a secret, she turned the secret into a riddle that looped back on itself. (And naturally, nobody I've asked has any idea who Anne is.)

At that point, I had already decided to call my family history blog "As Old As the Hills," but I knew when I heard the extended version of Jennie's tease that I'd made the right call. I like the fact that it makes a nod towards a family story, and that it's also an older figurative expression: on Mom's side of the family, at least, capturing a relative's way of speaking is sometimes the whole point of sharing a story about them. "As old as the hills" also draws a connection between time and the land--fitting, since most of my ancestors were farmers. At the same time, it's nicely vague: How old? Which hills?

And finally, it serves as a personal reminder to me to work carefully and avoid assumptions--but also not to take the whole project too seriously. The dead, after all, could be feeding me false information. Perhaps one day, after a long climb, I will reach a high pinnacle of understanding--only to find some long-dead ancestor has been pulling my leg the whole way.