Reconstructing My Daddo's Life As a Doughboy (Part 1)

On page 9 of the Thursday, 8 August 1918 edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette Times, my grandfather Jacob Shapiro of "65 Roberts Street" is in a list of Army draftees from "City Board No. 2, Third Ward" who were being sent by train to Camp Wadsworth in Spartanburg, SC.

I still have tears in my eyes!

Is "Kasoinah" Really Gascoigne?

The mother of my fifth great-grandfather Abner Rea (1776-1825) is believed to have been Joannah (or Hannah) Kasoinah, wife of James Rea. She was possibly born in present-day Henry Co., VA. Some researchers believe she was Indian with fewer still claiming more particularly that the Kasoinah surname is somehow Cherokee. (Cherokee is almost a default setting for Southerners in reference to their putative Indian ancestries.) Other researchers point out that there is no real evidence for Joannah/Hannah's Indian origins.

Kasoinah is, as best I can tell, a name unique to Joannah/Hannah. Google shows no other person with that name. But could Kasoinah somehow be connected to the French surname Gascoigne? The "-nah" syllable in Kasoinah is not too dissimilar to the "-gne" part of Gascoigne, if pronounced Gallically. If you say these names aloud, and even in different ways, they do share some characteristics. But Kasoinah is just too unlikely a surname if it belongs to only one person, which appears to be the case. It is some sort of flawed transliteration or misremembering, but I can't tell.

Self-Verifying an Old Suspicion

I recently had cause to obtain for the first time a copy of my Daddy's death certificate. I knew instinctively not to even glance at it in the presence of others there at the BVS because inspecting it would be pretty tough for me literally on the eve of the 15th anniversary of his death. And when I did look at it ---as I say, for the first time--- lo and behold, but who was the informant? None other than "Toby Petzhold." I was floored.

My best guess as to why I have that claim for all eternity is that it was related to my visit to Jerry Foss in Valley Mills, Bosque Co., TX at the Foss Funeral Home there on HWY 6 in town (which subsequently burned down, I am very sorry to say). My Aunt Shirley (Petzold) Kleibrink and her husband, my Uncle Bruce E. Kleibrink, accompanied me. I was the one who had gone up there to make the burial arrangements and to select his suit, which was the light blue seersucker suit he wore to my eldest brother's wedding. At some point, I may have provided the information on the certificate (my address is given as the PO box I kept at University Station on campus at the University of Texas at Austin throughout my college years and a little beyond, which is something probably only I would've known to say) and it somehow got typed up and sent to the doctor who cared for my father to sign, but I sure don't recall. Maybe I became the informant somewhere else altogether. Maybe here in town? That night was insanity itself.

Anyway, the point of my anecdote (besides providing searchable text) is that if even I can't account for my own role as an informant on a death certificate, then how well can I know the information on any certificate? Was it, after all, my Grandma calling her father in law's mother "Louise Faulkner" on his death certificate ---or was it someone else? Or were there other members of the family chiming in at the hospital with bits and pieces and her name got put on it somehow? People who have just lost a loved one are not always too clear.

Besides the interesting spelling of my name, the other error I noticed is that Daddy's birthday is wrong.

The idea is to document it all and let the preponderance of agreement between documented facts be the truth.

Nancy Adaline (Thompson) Bolinger (1861-1939)

I was also fortunate to have the chance to scan in other photos at my cousin's place. Here's one of my great-great-grandmother Mary Jane (Thompson) McNeill's little sisters, Nancy Adaline Bolinger. I believe she was called "Nan." I am presently reconstructing her family from the record. I would love to hear from any of her descendants.

Nan's husband was Henry C. Bolinger (1858-1928). I found and photographed their graves this past weekend in Cisco, Eastland Co., TX at the Oakwood Cemetery. Their graves are located up on the north edge of the cemetery nearest the railroad tracks and just west of the maintenance buildings.

Henry was from Arkansas, apparently. His middle name may have been Clay, but was possibly Charles.

James Theodore Petzold at about Eight Years

Thanks to my cousin, with whom I spent most of this past Monday up in Erath Co., TX, I am happy to share a great picture of my Daddy at about the age of eight. He's a good-looking boy, which is common to mutts (as our new President might say), and obviously a real charmer. I don't recall seeing this particular photo before, so this is a fortunate fruit of my genealogical field-tripping. Enjoy!

Valley Mills is in Bosque Co., TX. It is an ancestral hometown for me and the place on Earth where my body will be buried.

65 Roberts Street

I found my great-grandfather Bernard Shapiro in several Pittsburgh city directories from 1907-1914. His identity may possibly be mixed up at one point with a Benjamin Shapiro, but it appears that he is correctly identified for the most part as being a teacher living at 65 Roberts Street. Pretty amazing. More amazing still is the piece of information (see image above) in the 1930 edition of the city directory. It is a wonderful bit of evidence speaking to my great-grandparents' presence in that town. The notation (wid Bernard) is a beautiful touch. As Bernard had died a decade before, I find it wonderful that Fannie would still be so identified (in what was basically the phone book of that day) as a widow.

At some point after the family left 65 Roberts Street, they moved into 534 Herron Avenue. I don't think my grandfather Jake Shapiro was still living with them, but Fannie was living there with my Aunt Rose and Uncle Philip. Rose was apparently not yet married to Jerome "Jerry" Cohen, but she was working as a bookkeeper. There is no occupation listed for Philip because, I believe, he was already very ill with tuberculosis and would not live much longer, dying in 1933.

(Thanks to Eve and Don Krieger of Pittsburgh, PA for their efforts in making these directories available online.)

Style Points

I'm still working on my style and formatting for this blog, so I apologize for the sometimes uneven work.

The important thing is to get the information and images out there and available through search engines.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions.