Throwback Thursday: Hotel Bryant in Elgin, Iowa

After serving lunch to her patrons on October 12, 1909, Mary Bryant hung up her apron for the last time – at least, for now. The 67-year-old widow was taking a much-needed vacation from running her hotel by Elgin railroad depot. She and daughter, Myrtle, planned to spend a year traveling and visiting family.

That evening Mrs. Bryant handed the keys to Sam and Ella (Shaffer) Greenley. Sam was a long-time drayman, hauling goods to and from the railroad, so living next to the depot was advantageous. Sam could continue his dray service while Ella handled the day-to-day business of Hotel Bryant, including running the restaurant.

They had their share of trials, especially with accident-prone Sam. On February 15, 1910, Sam ignited gas can fumes while tending to the hotel fireplaces. The explosion rocked the house and left Sam with a badly blistered left arm, not to mention burning off his eyebrows and part of his mustache. That summer he broke his foot, dropping a massive block of ice off his dray cart in the July heat. 

Despite these setbacks, the hotel was successful. Business was lively, with railroad employees becoming regular lunch customers. When October 1910 rolled around, Mrs. Bryant took over again and the Greenleys moved out – and into the Center Street home where the Bryants spent their year of leisure. 

They took with them a rocking chair, left on the porch of Hotel Bryant by the “railroad boys” in appreciation for all the meals they’d eaten at Ella's table.

Another cousin, and some inspiration

One of the side benefits of researching your family history is meeting people you never would have encountered in everyday life. Even better, most of them are your (distant) relatives.

I was very pleased to meet my distant cousin, Barb, and her husband a few weeks ago. We share common Shaffer ancestors, and both have roots in small town Elgin, Iowa, though neither of us grew up there. She lives outside of Chicago, but is a University of Iowa graduate whose mother grew up in Cedar Rapids. We corresponded for more than a year about finding a time to meet so that I could scan family photos (my long-time passionate obsession) and we could compare notes on the family.

I was fully prepared to drive to Illinois to meet them. I find the more obliging I can be the more willing people I've never met are to let me rummage through old boxes of familial detritus searching for gems. We finally had a weekend planned, when at the last minute it fell through. Barb said, "You don't by chance have this weekend free?" Lucky enough, I was. Suddenly, a trip years in the making was tomorrow. Fortunately, Barb planned to come to Iowa. She wanted to see where her mom grew up again after several years. Considering it cut my trip from five hours to 50 minutes, I was happy to agree.

We met at their hotel lobby, where I had access to an outlet to plug in my scanner. Barb brought bags of photos, many from the 1920s and earlier, all of the Capper branch of the Shaffer family (My great-great-great-grandfather, John D. Shaffer, had a sister, Emeline, who married Thomas J. Capper).

After scanning was done, we decided to head to the Czech Village for dinner. While the main purpose of this trip was family history, the highlight might have been enjoying dinner and drinks with them. We talked about travel, writing (Barb and I both have journalism backgrounds), and all sorts of associated things. It was lively and relaxing and truly fun. I left feeling inspired to commit to actually writing a family history of some kind. Thanks for that, Barb!

Now we're connected on Facebook and I hope to keep in touch, like I do with so many distant relatives I've met in the 15+ years I've been researching my heritage. I'm now starting an outline for a biography of John D. Shaffer that I hope to begin writing this fall. There are so many stories to tell in my family tree, and I was struggling to figure out how to tell them all. The reality is that I don't have to tell them all. Not at once, anyway. One story at a time, step by step.

I'm looking forward to the process (I say now, having written exactly zero words). I hope that doesn't change.

Fingers crossed.

Racine Reactions

Lately I've made it a goal to plan at least one family history road trip every summer. Sometimes it doesn't happen in the summer exactly, but it happens at least once in a calendar year.

In 2017, I drove to Denver, Colorado, to see my dad's cousin. The trip was double duty, as the primary intent was to attend my cousin's wedding. The secondary reason was to visit cousin Cindy, talk family stories, and scan family photos. The trip was a success in all ways.

This year, I decided to plan a trip that had family history as the primary focus. There were so many places I could go, but one has always been on my list: Racine County, Wisconsin. Racine is where the Foxwell and Richards side of my family first settled when they arrived from Cornwall, England, in the 1840s and 1850s. The family lived there for several decades before my lot drove a covered wagon west into Northeast Iowa. Still, some of the family remained in Racine County, populating the small towns of Yorkville, Raymond, and Caledonia.

Before setting off to Wisconsin, I made sure I knew what I was looking for. I knew the family had deep Methodist roots going back to England, so I searched for Methodist churches in the area. The only one to come up in the rural towns was in Yorkville, and their website, which included a rich history curated for their 175th anniversary last year, said they were founded by the Foxwell-Shephard family.

I arranged to meet the church historian on a Friday morning and was there bright and early at 8:00am. I wasn't sure what I was going to find, so I didn't know how long I'd be there. She had been gracious enough to look through books before I arrived and confirm there were, in fact, Foxwell entries in the church registers. Among the most precious to me was the baptism of my great-great-great-grandmother, Catherine (Foxwell) Richards, who was baptized with her younger sister the day after Christmas, 1857.

Original baptism record for my ancestor, Katie Richards,
and her sister, Mary Ann Foxwell.

There were many other entries, including baptisms, marriages, and burials. This included records going back two more generations, with Foxwell matriarch Ann (Harris) Foxwell being buried in the churchyard in 1858.

After the church, I spent some time with the historian at a local coffee shop, where she told me more about the church today, as well as the town. It was nice to get a contemporary perspective on a village where so many ancestors spent their formative years.

Since the cemetery was small, I parked in the front and walked it alone. Familiar names were visible along every step: Foxwell, Moyle, Richards, Shephard, Waldron. I always find it rewarding to be able to pay my own respects to people whose names and stories I've studied for such a long time. Next time, I'll remember to bring flowers.

Family Search Finds

Online databases seem to be growing exponentially, and not just on pay sites like Ancestry.com. One of my biggest discoveries of late came almost by accident on FamilySearch.org, and the lead came from a podcast.

I spend 90 minutes in the car every day commuting to and from work, so podcasts are an essential part of my daily life. Most of my favorites revolve around true crime (My Favorite Murder, Casefile), food (Gastropod, Milk Street Radio, Munchies), or pop culture (Pop Culture Happy Hour). I would love to add a family history podcast to the mix, and I've sampled a lot of them. I just haven't found the right one yet.

Often the first thing I look at when trying to find a podcast is how long it is. That sounds terrible, as length does not equate to quality, but I'm a pragmatist. My one-way commute is 45 minutes. I want an episode that will run at least that long so I'm not left fumbling to switch episodes midway home.

A lot of the genealogy podcasts are much shorter than that, maybe 10-20 minutes. Others that are longer just don't interest me. That's the tricky thing about family history. It's an intensely personal pursuit. If you have a podcast that talks about research in New England, but your roots go back to Germany in the 1870s, then you're left with an "appreciation" for that podcast, but not a desire to listen to it.

One day I was sampling one of the shorter podcasts, one that promised kind of a weekly digest of new things available for researchers. I'd love to give them a proper shout out here, but I'm sorry to say I didn't add them to my regular podcast list and I don't remember the name! Perhaps later I'll look it up again and add an addendum to this post. The one episode I listened too mentioned the addition of new German records on Family Search. I have used FamilySearch.org many times, but not for a while, as I had run out of new things to discover. This podcast, however, piqued my interest. As soon as I could get to a computer I went hunting.

I have a lot of German roots, and my own last name has been one of the hardest to research, primarily because of spelling changes in the mid-19th Century (from Stäcker to Staker) and other geographical conundrums previously explained in this blog. Through church records sent from Germany I was able to locate my great-great grandfather and his two sisters, but what happened to those sisters remained unknown. I had the married name of one, and I knew in 1910 my great-great grandfather, Henry, returned to Germany to visit them both. The church archivists, however, could not come up with death dates.

Then along came FamilySearch.org! One of the new records eluded to in that podcast were civil records for Kreis Steinberg, the region of Germany where a lot of the Stäcker family was located. It took almost no time at all after a a few queries to locate the first, then the second sister in civil death records. This led to the husband of the youngest sister, and the identification of two children.

Now, I make it a habit of checking every week to see what new records have been added to FamilySearch.org. There are still a lot of questions on that side of the family, and I'm hoping one week the new records added will be the puzzle pieces I've been looking for.

P.S. I'm open to good genealogy podcast recommendations if anyone has one.