The Mystery That Started It All

I've had a love affair with genealogy for over 25 years that I can trace back to a single school assignment. When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher required us to create a family tree. I'll be honest and say I don't remember the context of how it related to what we were studying in class, but I do remember being excited to interview my grandparents about their families. I was fortunate enough to have all 4 grandparents living at the time and even one set of great grandparents. I had also known another great grandmother who passed when I was 8 years old. What I didn't know when this project was assigned was that neither of my grandfathers had grown up knowing who their biological fathers had been. I diligently worked on my school project and was able to go back many generations on my paternal grandmother's family, but for both grandfathers, there was precious little information. I was frustrated and intrigued.

The mystery of my paternal grandfather's birth actually changed the course of our family history significantly - in trying to find the truth, my grandparents had adopted a new name. I can still vividly recall sitting with my father's parents in their living room near the big front window talking about how we had become the Philipps family. 

My grandparents Jack & Ni, 1995

I always knew my grandfather as John Rothrock Philipps, but he was raised as John Anthony Rothrock aka Jack by his mother Charlotte Helena Mary King Rothrock (1894-1953) and her husband Lester Everett Rothrock (1894-1957). He was born October 2, 1922 in New York City. His mother and stepfather raised him along with his two younger brothers, William Henry Rothrock aka Bill (1927-2016) and Richard Edward Rothrock aka Rich (1939-2020), in Rutherford, New Jersey. After graduating high school, my grandfather enlisted in the army in June 1942. He served in World War II as an airplane bomb site technician - his vision prevented him from becoming a pilot like he'd hoped. After leaving the army, he worked in technical writing and sales. 

My great grandmother Charlotte King Rothrock and my grandfather John Rothrock Philipps, 1943

But back in 1994, all of this information was new to me. Prior to this interview, I had no idea my grandfather had any siblings. While my grandmother talked often and fondly about her family, I had never heard Grandpa say anything about his family.

Rothrock Family in Gloucester MA, 1948

My grandparents explained that our very name was the reason.

It began with their love story. My grandmother Naomi told the story, with Grandpa chuckling and filling in a few details along the way. My grandparents met sometime in the late 1940s through a friend of hers at the bank where she worked. Her friend's husband had known my grandfather in the army. My grandmother was initially resistant to being set up because she was 7 years older than Grandpa, but she relented and they had a good first date. So good, in fact, that my grandfather proposed at the end of the date. My grandmother told me she thought he was crazy and didn't take the proposal seriously. A relatively short courtship followed and on December 31, 1949, my grandparents were married in her mother's home at 72 East Passaic Avenue. They were married as John Anthony Rothrock and Naomi Speer Rothrock - their wedding bands engraved with their initials. I suppose I looked incredulous so they took off their rings and showed me. 

How had they gone from the Rothrocks in 1950 to the Philipps in 1951? 

It was because of a fight, my grandfather said. Apparently, he had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with his parents - his stepfather had been abusive to him while he was growing up and there were frequent arguments. He didn't tell me the details of the fight - perhaps he no longer remembered them himself - but what Grandpa said was that he was having an argument with his parents not long after his marriage and they blurted out that Lester wasn't really his father. My grandfather was 28. He said he was hurt and he was angry. He decided to take action. 

So he went to New York City and requested a copy of his birth certificate. I remarked that I was surprised that he had never seen it before since he was an adult and had served in the Army. My grandparents told me it wasn't common for people to have copies of their birth certificates back then - that they weren't necessary for obtaining other forms of ID. When he got the certificate, it listed his father as Gilbert Philipps. My grandparents then mulled over what to do with this new information. They were still very upset about the fight and were considering changing their names to match the birth certificate. They talked to some friends who were attorneys and were told that they could call themselves whatever they liked without going to the court to change it. After all, the birth certificate said he was John Philipps, not John Rothrock. My grandfather settled on John Rothrock Philipps, dropping his former middle name and adopting his stepfather's name in its place. This decision in and of itself probably wouldn't have shattered his family of origin if he'd gone about telling people in another way.

Remember the saying "Hurt people hurt people"? Well, still angry and feeling spiteful, my grandfather announced his name change at the wedding of his younger brother Bill in November 1950. 

And that was the end of his relationship with his parents and his brothers. He was cut off. I have no doubt he felt righteous indignation about the situation and felt he had no reason to apologize. Even now writing this story down 70 years after it happened, I feel sadness for everyone involved. When my grandfather died from lung cancer in 1997, my grandmother told me she'd tried to reach out to his brothers to tell them the funeral details. She said they'd responded that they were sorry for her loss, but it didn't really affect them because they hadn't had a brother for so many years. It didn't have to end that way. But I digress...

Great grandmother Charlotte at Lake Walkill, NJ 1952

A few years later, my great grandmother Charlotte got sick. It turned out to be terminal cancer. My grandfather went to see her in the hospital as she was dying. They said their apologies and expressed their love for each other. And then she dropped the last bombshell - Philipps wasn't really his biological father's last name.

She wanted to be completely honest with him since she knew she didn't have much time left. Great Grandmother Charlotte told him that his name was Gilbert McCarthy and that she had met him while she was working at a residence hotel as a maid. He was a traveling salesman from Boston. His best friend was his brother John, who was an attorney. She thought he was about 15 years older than her. And it turned out he was married, which is why she made up a last name for the birth certificate. She selected Phillips because it was a common last name in her area of New York - but she misspelled it as Philipps.

It's not clear to me if Charlotte knew Gilbert was married during their affair and I don't think it was clear to my grandfather either. My grandfather was not sure if his mother ever told his father about her pregnancy, if he'd ever known he was born. My grandparents said they knew they weren't going to change their names again after the revelation - they'd already named my Aunt Peg - but they did want to see if they could find Gilbert. My grandmother Naomi volunteered for the Red Cross during World War II. So back in 1953, she reached out to those old contacts to see if they could find Gilbert McCarthy. They didn't get anywhere and eventually dropped it. Since this was 1994 and the everyday use of computers and the internet was becoming more of a thing, I was convinced that I could find Gilbert.

And I did. But that is a story for another day.

💕 Happy 71st anniversary to my grandparents, Naomi Speer Philipps and John Rothrock Philipps.💕

Finding Lottie

I began tracking our family's history more than 25 years ago because of a project in my high school English class. I spent time interviewing my grandparents about their parents and grandparents and used my computer to draw a tree. One basic tree and I was hooked.

This story is going to focus on my maternal grandfather's family. My grandfather William Anderson's side of the family was complicated - he grew up not knowing who his father was (I'll come back to this story another time) and on his mother's side, there was another mystery lurking: an adoption. When he initially told me about his family, I focused on his mother, Helen Vondersmith Anderson Fredriksen. She was born April 7, 1903 in Passaic, New Jersey. Her parents were Reginald Bertrum Anderson (1878-1939), an electrician, and Helen McCleece Anderson (1882-1907). 

Helen McCleece Anderson and daughter Helen Vondersmith Anderson, circa 1905

My grandfather never knew his grandmother Helen because she died soon after his aunt Ruth was born. His grandfather remarried Edith McEwen (1885-1980), a Canadian nurse who cared for baby Ruth when she was hospitalized after Helen died. I spent quite a few years tracking both lines of the family, getting back as far as the 1400s in France on the McCleece side. I was extremely pleased with my progress.

Reginald B. Anderson, wife Edith M. Anderson, daughters Ruth, Helen & Edith, circa 1915

Then around 2000 or 2001, I sat down to talk to my grandparents about what I'd found and ask for more details. I remarked that it was odd that Cornelius McCleece and his wife Helen Ann Van Riper McCleece had been married for 22 years before Helen McCleece Anderson was born - how unusual it would have been to become parents in one's forties in the late 1800s. My grandparents chuckled and said, "Well, Helen was adopted by the McCleeces. She wasn't their biological child." 

After a brief moment of kicking myself for the 5 or so years I'd built up the McCleece-Van Riper tree, I started to get excited about solving the mystery of who Helen McCleece Anderson's biological parents were. My grandparents told me that Helen's birth mother had lived with the McCleeces before Helen was born. Since Helen was born in 1882, I decided to take another look at the McCleeces in the 1880 Federal Census. Sure enough - there was a young girl living with them, Lottie Smith.

18 year old NY-native Lottie Smith listed as "boarding" with the McCleeces

My next step was to try to find out what happened to Lottie - why would she decide to give the McCleeces her daughter? I will admit all kinds of scenarios ran through my mind - she'd become pregnant by a beau and wanted to hide the illegitimate conception or maybe she'd had an affair with old Cornelius. The truth turned out to be much more mundane, but considerably sadder. It would take me a few more years to unravel it.

A cousin Wendy Litland Rusho (a granddaughter of Great Aunt Ruth) contacted me about the tree I had built and we got to talking about Helen McCleece Anderson's adoption. She said she had a copy of her adoption papers that listed her birth father as Joseph Searle. Once I had his name, it was easy to figure out why Helen had been adopted.

Biographical and genealogical history of the city of Newark and Essex County, New Jersey. New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1898.

At 26, Joseph Searle was already widowed with one daughter when he married 19-year-old "Lottie Fisher" on November 30, 1881. I noted the difference in last name from the other sources, but figured it might just be a clerical error since there were more references to his bride as Lottie Smith. Less than 9 months later on June 8, 1882, Helen McCleece Anderson was born as Ellen Elizabeth Searle. Then just a few short months later, Lottie Smith Searle died at the age of 20 leaving Joseph widowed with two young daughters. It is not clear how the conversation came up, but an agreement was struck with the long married, childless McCleeces to take the daughter of their former boarder. Almost exactly one year to the day of Lottie's death, Joseph married for the third and final time - Ellen Elizabeth Paxton, with whom he would bear 4 more children. It is not clear if Helen McCleece Anderson was aware of or in contact with her biological father or her 5 half siblings.

While this solved the mystery of who Helen's birth parents were, it didn't help me trace her maternal family. Lottie was no doubt a nickname - for Charlotte I assumed - and Smith was a very common last name. The first clue I had to tracing Lottie's family was her death record - it stated that she had resided in NJ for 4 years before her death. That would mean she arrived from NY in 1878. I began looking at the NY census records for 1870 to find a family with a Lottie or a Charlotte born in 1862. I had two candidates, but I couldn't go any further without more information.

23andMe Results

Back in 2013, I opted to have genetic testing done through 23andMe. I downloaded the raw data and uploaded it to as many other genetic genealogy sites as I could - including GEDmatch. GEDmatch has become infamous in the past few years because of its use to help catch the Golden State Killer. Every month or so I would log in, hoping to find a new relative that would help me link Lottie to her family. Last December, I got my Christmas miracle.

On GEDmatch, a man named Tom Fisher shared 41 centimorgans (cM) of DNA with me. [Centimorgan is a unit of measure for DNA; the total cM a person has on all of their chromosomes is about 7400.] His daughter in law Stefanie managed his account and had created an extensive family tree. On the tree, I found Tom's great aunt Charity E. Fisher, born in 1862. Her younger brother Christopher Fisher (1865-1952) was Tom's grandfather, making Tom my second cousin three times removed. In speaking with Stefanie, I learned that the family was not able to trace Charity after 1875 and never knew what happened to her. Here's what I believe the records and the DNA show us:

Charity's younger brother, Christopher Fisher

In Saddle River NJ 1858, Rinear (or Rynard) Fisher married Charlotte Sears, the daughter of Moses Sears and Charity Smith. They settled in Ramapo, Rockland County, New York - near the area that Charlotte grew up. The couple went onto have 7 children - Charity was their 4th child and first daughter. In 1878, tragedy struck the family when Rinear died. Charlotte Sears Fisher was left with 7 children between the ages of 10 to 19 and no means to support everyone. The older children were dispersed to live with other people, while Charlotte kept the youngest two children with her. By 1880, Charlotte had remarried, but the family was already separated around New York and New Jersey, never to completely rejoin.

I'm still not sure how Charity Fisher aka Lottie Smith ended up boarding with the McCleece family. It is entirely possible that her father had known them from his time growing up in NJ. However, I have not yet made any distant family connections between Rinear and the McCleeces. I'm also still not sure why or when Charity began calling herself Lottie Smith. Perhaps she was always called Lottie after her mother Charlotte, even though she appears to have been named for her maternal grandmother. Perhaps she chose the last name Smith - that of her namesake - to reinvent herself after being sent to NJ when the Fisher family broke apart. I'm not sure I will ever be able to answer these questions, but I do know that I am satisfied that I've solved the mystery of Helen McCleece Anderson's adoption - 137 years after it happened.

A Tale of Two Colstons

Today on Twitter I was amazed to see a statue of Edward Colston, a notorious slave trader, being hurled into the sea off the coast of Bristol, England. 

Source: CNN

I was shocked not so much because protestors managed to get the statue down or that I'd never heard of Edward Colston before, but because I knew the name Colston. It was one of my brother in law's paternal family names. They are from Alabama. Take a moment to think about the likely connection. It's sobering.

So I dove back into my BIL's side of the tree again after not working on our genealogy for a couple of weeks. The furthest Colston ancestor I can document thus far is Isaac Colston, born in December 1837. He was my brother in law's great-great-grandfather; my nephew's 3rd great grandfather. 

Interestingly, I first find Isaac in the 1867 Alabama voter registry. This registry was created in accordance with the Second Reconstruction Act passed on March 23, 1867. All males above the age of 21 were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the United States and register to vote by September 1, 1867. This registry is one of the first government documents to record the names of black males living in Alabama.

Source: 1867 Alabama Voter Registration

Isaac married twice - once to an older woman named Priscilla (born between 1820-1823) and second to Margaret Sanders (born about 1845) - and had a total of 10 children (who survived long enough to be counted on the census anyway). In the 1870 and 1880 federal census records, Isaac is living with his family in "Blacks Bluff, Wilcox County, Alabama" and he is listed as a farm laborer. 

1870 Federal Census via Ancestry.com

I was curious to see where this was. You can find it in what is now known as Coy, Wilcox County, Alabama. The area is currently called Black Bluff and refers to a cliff along the Alabama River. A closer look at the map on Google and I was struck by what was within walking distance.

Black Bluff and its neighbor Dry Fork Plantation

Dry Fork(s) Plantation is said to be one of the oldest buildings in Wilcox County. It was built between 1832-1834 by two enslaved men named Hezekiah and Elijah for James Asbury Tait. The plantation was documented on March 29, 1936 as part of a Historic American Buildings survey. You can see the entire collection of those pictures on the Library of Congress website.

Cabin? Try slaves' quarters. Source: Library of Congress

In 1860, Wilcox County had 18,790 enslaved people according to the Federal Census Slave Schedule. There were 524 men between the age of 22 to 23. Isaac Colston was presumably one of them, though it is very difficult to determine where he lived specifically. James Asbury Tait died in 1855. In 1860, his son Robert is listed as owning 148 slaves. There are 3 men in that list of 148 people who were the right age to be Isaac. And then I came across this transcription without a date...

Could this be our Isaac?  Source: Auburn University

Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, the Dry Fork property is still in possession of one of James Tait's descendants to this day. Here's a write-up in the Wilcox Historical Society newsletter from 2005:

"Dry Fork was approved for inclusion into the National Register of Historic Places in 1998 and was placed on the registry in 1999. It is one of the oldest documented homes still standing in Wilcox County and is a fine example of late Federal style double-pile house form containing examples of folk versions of Federal-style woodwork. It was constructed for James Asbury Tait during the years of 1832-1834 by carpenter/joiners Hezekiah and Elijah. Restoration of the home began in 1998. James Asbury Tait was born in 1791, the only child of Charles and Ann Lucas Tait to survive infancy. He grew up on his grandfather’s plantation in the Broad River country near Savannah, Georgia.

The floor plan specified that the house should have eight rooms with four on each floor. There are two porches on the front, although one appears to be a later addition since James Asbury Tait’s Memoranda does not mention it. All rooms are 18 feet square and with 11-foot ceilings downstairs and 8 ½ foot ceilings upstairs. The original house required more than 25,000 board feet of cut lumber, and the roof was covered with 6,000 wooden shingles. The chimneys required 12,000 bricks, made from clay on the plantation. Gail and James Edwin (Jim) Tait, great-great-grandson of the builder, have beautifully restored the original home just described, and have constructed majestic additions to the original structure. Appurtenances and gardens result in a one-of-a-kind property that one has to see to fully appreciate."

I find it very telling that there's such pride in the story of Tait family and that the two men who built Dry Fork were referred to as carpenters and not slaves. White Americans tend to love glossing over the atrocities of chattel slavery. Don't believe me yet? Well, take a look at the marketing videos the Tait family has created for their plantation.

That's right. Not only do descendants of the original slave owner still own the plantation, but they also host weddings there. Nothing says romance like starting your marriage on grounds where torture, rape and murder were par for the course, amirite? In a somewhat satisfying twist, restorer and great-great-grandson James E. Tait had some shady business dealings and tried to mortgage the plantation to pay off debt, went bankrupt in 2007-2008, the property is technically in possession of other family members now and I can't find a functional website for the wedding business.

So back to our Isaac. A lot of questions still remain to be answered. How did he get the surname Colston? I can't find any white Colstons in Wilcox County as I had originally suspected would be the source of the surname. But I do find Tait plantations (yes, the family had others) in all the hamlets Isaac and his descendants lived. I think the only way to settle it will be to examine the Tait family papers through the Alabama state archive ("Of special interest are the notes beginning in the back of the volume on slave families, which also notes the year of birth of children from 1784-1844, and who the parents were"). Next, when did Isaac die? I last find him and Margaret in the 1910 Federal Census, living in Canton with one Anne E. Tait as a neighbor. I don't see either of them in the 1920 census so I suspect they passed away in the intervening 10 years. Where was Isaac buried? I find no older Colston burials listed on Findagrave or Ancestry.com. I also get no results when I search his name on Newspapers.com. These may be questions only solved by actually visiting Alabama or they may not be solvable at all because of a lack of records. Therein lies the rub when you are tracing black American families.

I'm not disheartened though. Yesterday, British citizens took a stand against revering one Colston in order to affirm the value of a whole lot of other Colstons. It gives me hope that plantation weddings and other thoughtless, cruel behaviors that prop up systemic racism will be a thing of the past, at long last.

If you have American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) in your family tree and you want to learn more about how to research your lineage, please check out this helpful guide compiled by Claire Kluskens for the National Archives.