Occasionally, I am asked which ancestor I would most like to sit down and talk with. That’s a complicated question. The relative I am most fascinated by is not actually an ancestor. Edith Rebecca McCauley is a member of the very large, complex Swartz family that I have been actively researching for decades now. She isn’t a close connection as she is my second cousin twice removed. She was the only child of a younger child of a younger brother of my 2nd great grandfather. But she was a unique, fascinating woman. Born at the end of the 19th century in a small town in Indiana to a much older father and a young mother who died when she was only 4, Edith graduated from the University of Michigan, moved to Washington D.C. where she became a teacher in an exclusive girls academy. She traveled frequently to Europe by steamship and to Canada via rail. She flew in an airplane from London to Paris in 1921! Edith retired in the 1960s from teaching and moved to a small town in South Carolina where she died in 1981 at the age of 86. She is buried next to her half brother in Los Angeles California. Edith had an amazing life for any period in history and especially amazing for a woman of her time and place. I would love to chat with her about all she saw and experienced.
However, the ancestor I’d really like to talk to is William Decker (1810, NJ -1870, KS.) I have so many questions, starting with what was your mother’s name, where in New Jersey were you born, and why did you (and your brothers, sister and father) move to Mifflin County, Pennsylvania? I’d also love to know the reasons for his nearly continuous migration in a large loop across the United States. Born in NJ in 1810, by 1830 he was in PA, in 1865 he was in Illinois, he made a very short stop in Iowa and in 1870 he died in Kansas. Along this route he buried his father (PA), married and fathered 3 children then buried his wife (PA), married again (PA), buried his youngest daughter and married off his oldest daughter (Illinois), separated from one of his two brothers (who stopped in Iowa instead continuing on to Kansas) fathered 3 sons (Illinois, Iowa and Kansas) and then suddenly, shortly after the move to Allen County, Kansas he died. He left behind 1 adult daughter (my ancestor), 3 very young sons and a youngish wife. He left almost no memories in the lives of any of these people. His daughter’s obituary called her father Luke Decker. His wife remarried very quickly. Their young sons appear to have been fostered out and had very little contact with their mother or half sister and there is nothing to indicate they knew their father’s name or birthplace in any of the scanty records they left. William left a number of records along the way but they are so disconnected across space that putting together the basic outline of his life has taken decades. What caused the nearly constant migration William? Where are you buried? Where are your daughters, first wife, mother and father buried? Where? Why? Sigh.