Family Lore

By Matthew Clarke

Nothing beats the thrill of pursuing the secrets of the past—especially your own family’s past. Whether scouring archives, discovering old letters, or consulting with relatives, the process of piecing together your personal history is what makes genealogy so exciting.

But once you’ve made your discoveries, what do you do next?

Matt Nickerson has an answer: write a story. A private historian, Nickerson helps families turn their genealogies into compelling narratives that they can share as books, websites, or videos. A former reporter and editor with two degrees in history, he wears many hats. Last fall he donned another when he taught “Secrets in the Tree,” a writing-focused genealogy seminar offered through the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminar Program.

Genealogy seminars are among the most popular courses in this Newberry program, which offers affordable, non-credit seminars across a wide range of subjects in the humanities. Usually, genealogy seminars introduce budding genealogists to the field, acquainting them with research methods and online databases as well as the unique genealogical materials available at the Newberry, one of the leading centers in the United States for genealogical research.

By contrast, Nickerson designed “Secrets in the Tree” for those who had already conducted much of their research and wanted help turning their discoveries into a story.

“The purpose of the seminar was to teach people to write family history,” says Nickerson. “In my mind, family history is no different from any other type of history—it’s just done on a smaller scale. And the aims are the same as any other type of history: to enrich our lives with stories and help us learn from the past.”

Over four course sessions, students honed their skills using newspaper archives, census reports, and county records while also learning how to conduct interviews, identify and engage audiences, and meet deadlines. All this work culminated in each student writing an essay narrating an episode in their family’s history.

Like other adult education seminars during this pandemic year, “Secrets in the Tree” met using Zoom, allowing students from across the country to participate.

“In a time when we’re unable to safely gather in a classroom, virtual seminars have been an invaluable mode of connection, bringing together learners across the United States and the world,” said Sarah Wilson, the Newberry’s Seminars Manager. “Seminars like Matt’s have widened our community and allowed new participants to experience our collections while also making connections with each other.”

During the seminar’s first session, each student presented an artifact from their family’s past. Cherished heirlooms, these objects introduced the students to one another and anchored the narratives they would develop as part of the class.

One student held up a blues album recorded by a relative. Another shared family recipes that had been passed down from one generation to the next. A third displayed a rifle from the Civil War. Soon, the students were off, planning, organizing, drafting—and making some important discoveries along the way. Just ask Helen Murray, Lance Potter, and Lauren Young.

Helen Murray is a Chicagoan through and through. Raised in the near western suburbs, Murray, now in her late seventies, has lived in the city for the past fifty years, working first as a community organizer and then as a high school history teacher. She comes from a long line of Chicagoans, her immigrant ancestors having settled in the city in the 1800s. She also comes from a long line of storytellers.

“I was raised in a family that told stories,” Murray explains. “There were many stories about the lives of grandparents and great-grandparents: where they’d lived before immigrating to the United States and what happened when they arrived and afterwards. I loved these stories, and often asked questions about the details.”

A photo of the Murray family taken in Joliet, Illinois, in 1890. Nellie Murray is in the back row, second from the left. Ellen Dixon Murray and John Burns Murray are the middle two adults seated in the front row.

An especially intriguing story involved a lawsuit that occurred soon after Murray’s family arrived in the United States. The details were hazy; according to family legend, Murray’s great-aunt had been involved in a horrific railroad accident as a young girl in Bloomington, Illinois. The family, represented by Adlai Stevenson, a future vice president of the United States then at the very beginning of his career, successfully sued the railroad company.

Could this family lore be true, Murray wondered? Earlier in her research, Murray had found partial copies of transcripts of trials involving the case as it moved through the court system. She had always wanted to do the intensive research required to learn more, but life got in the way, and she was forced to set the project aside. Then one day she received an email from the Newberry promoting “Secrets in the Tree.” She realized that the seminar might offer the opportunity she had been waiting for.

“I thought I could use Matt’s course as an inspiration to get back to this unfinished project,” Murray says. “I was also looking for help in better focusing my future research. And I thought Matt’s writing background would be a real asset.”

Soon enough, Murray was off and running, tracking down missing details in old newspapers and scouring the court records of McLean County, where Bloomington is located, and the State of Illinois. In short order, she had supplemented her existing research with new information and had completed a first draft of her story.

Coming into the seminar, Murray had known a good deal about her family’s arrival in the United States. Her paternal greatgrandfather, John Burns Murray, emigrated from Ireland in 1849. Fifteen years later, in 1864, John moved from Duchess County, New York, to Bloomington, Illinois, taking a job as a machinist for the Chicago & Alton Railway (C&A). He had married another immigrant, Ellen Dixon, in New York, and the couple had three children. Then, just a few years after their move, tragedy struck.

As Murray writes in her essay:

One hot July afternoon in 1870, Ellen asked their seven-yearold daughter Nellie to fetch the daily paper. Protected by the sun in her Shaker bonnet, Nellie waited for the watchman’s signal to cross the many tracks that led in and out of the Chicago & Alton train yard. She knew the routine, as did all the local pedestrians. After she got the go-ahead from the lone watchman to cross half-way she did so and waited. While positioned where she’d been sent and waiting for the okay to continue, a slow-moving engine and tender began backing up. Before she had a chance to react, Nellie’s leg was pulled under one of the tender’s wheels and she was terribly injured. The butcher across the street watched the event and ran to assist her. It was his wagon that carried the child to her home, where she was laid upon a feather bed on the parlor floor. Two doctors were called. One of them removed her dangling leg and two fingers of her injured hand. For days the child was delirious, tended to night and day by her parents.

This page from a transcript of the lawsuit unearthed by Helen Murray shows that the Murray family was represented by Adlai Stevenson’s firm, Stevenson & Ewing.

The C&A was one of the most powerful railroads in the country, but that did not stop John from taking action. He went to the company’s headquarters in Chicago to request compensation and was rebuffed. He was undeterred, and he knew where to go for help.

“This very poor immigrant family made the life-changing decision to engage a local law firm,” writes Murray. “One of the partners was Adlai Stevenson I. Winning would be an uphill battle. The first court case was decided in the family’s favor. The railroad appealed. They then won a second time. The C&A again appealed. Finally, the case was referred to the Illinois Supreme Court—and the family won. Nellie and the Murrays were awarded a settlement.”

In order to provide for Nellie, the family invested the settlement money in property in Bloomington and Joliet, where the Murray Building—a mixed-use apartment building erected in 1885 at Chicago and Cass Avenues—still stands.

In addition to giving Murray time to focus on the project, the seminar led to important research developments. For example, the transcripts she had previously unearthed provided fascinating insight into the legal proceedings, documenting Stevenson’s role in the case. Yet parts of Murray’s copy had always been illegible. Thankfully, through research she conducted during the seminar, she was finally able to acquire complete copies of the documents—a major step forward.

Murray credits the seminar with encouraging her to finally write her essay. She has further research to do, she says, and she looks forward to visiting the Newberry and spending time with materials in the collection.

“When my research is finished, I intend to share the essay with other extended family members, and perhaps publish it in a history publication,” she says. In addition to advancing her own genealogy work, she appreciated the opportunity to learn about other students’ stories in the seminar. “In some ways, my favorite part of the course was learning about the interesting subjects and research of the other participants. Each had a unique American story to share.”

That’s certainly true of Lance Potter. Now 64, Potter grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. He spent much of his life in the hotel industry and is now an avid traveler. “Travel is my life’s passion,” he says. “I’ve visited 123 countries. Just before the pandemic kicked in last year, I was finishing my fifth around-the-world trip.”

The curiosity that draws him to travel may also be what led Potter to genealogy. His mother helped, too. She was the first in his family to research their history, amassing a collection of documents that included Civil War muster rolls discovered at the National Archives. Later, she passed these documents on to her son, alongside something else: a Civil War-era medal that had turned up in her own mother’s home in Lansing, Michigan.

The Potter family believed that the medal had been awarded to Potter’s great-great-grandfather, David Rife, for sharpshooting. Nobody knew for sure. Where did it come from? When was it awarded? Was it really for sharpshooting? Potter took it upon himself to find answers.

Over the years, he had uncovered some details of his family tree, relying on family documents, census records,

This Civil War medal—bequeathed to Lance Potter by his mother—was awarded to Potter’s great-great-grandfather, David Rife, by the State of Ohio.

A page from the muster rolls used by Potter to trace the career of his great-greatgrandfather during the Civil War.

and the genealogy website Ancestry.com. In 2017, Potter attended a genealogy seminar led by the Newberry’s Curator of Genealogy and Local History, Matt Rutherford. “That seminar reinvigorated my interest in genealogy and made me aware of the resources at the Newberry,” Potter says.

Recognizing the value of these adult education seminars, he enrolled in another the following year, hosted by the Newberry and conducted by the Ulster Historical Foundation. The experience prompted a trip to Northern Ireland, where Potter made new discoveries about his family’s past. But he still had not solved the mystery of the Civil War medal.

Like Murray, Potter saw “Secrets in the Tree” as a chance to bring his project to fruition. In particular, he hoped the seminar would connect him with new materials that could shed light on the medal’s origin and the life of his great-great-grandfather.

His decision paid off. “Matt [Nickerson] led me to a number of sources I was not familiar with, including WorldCat, GoogleBooks, and Hathi Trust. He also directed me to county histories and histories of specific Civil War regiments, which proved very helpful. Before the class, I had no idea how many sources were available online for free.” Soon, Potter had made a series of important discoveries about the exciting life of his great-great-grandfather, David Rife, and the medal he had inherited.

Potter already knew that Rife had been born in Ohio in 1840—one of ten children, all boys—and grew up working on his family’s farm. He also knew that during the Civil War, Rife had enlisted in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry 61st Regiment. The regiment’s first battle occurred on August 22, 1862, at Freeman’s Ford on the Rappahannock River in Virginia. Rife would fight with the 61st in the battles of Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and Atlanta. The regiment had started with 914 men. By the war’s end, only 60 remained. Rife was one of them.

This much Potter had known. After consulting the sources suggested by Nickerson, he unearthed new information: rather than escaping the war unscathed, Rife had been injured with a wound serious enough to send him to a hospital hundreds of miles away.

“After only nine months in the infantry, David was promoted to Corporal,” writes Potter. “His regiment participated in the Battle of Peachtree Creek during the Battle of Atlanta on July 20, 1864. Casualty reports show David sustained a ‘slight wound’ to the arm. ‘Slight’ seems to be a term used very loosely to indicate ‘not-life-threatening’— and little more. It is reported that two-thirds of arm and leg injuries ended with an amputation in the Civil War. This ‘slight wound’ sent him to the hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, for seven months.”

Further investigation revealed that two months after his arrival, Rife was well enough to begin helping out around the hospital. Soon, he had recovered and rejoined the army. By March 1865, he was back in North Carolina, where he fought in the Battle of Goldsboro.

It turns out that the medal awarded to Rife and passed down through the generations was not for sharpshooting. Instead, it was a reenlistment medal awarded by the State of Ohio when he rejoined the army after his convalescence. The state awarded about 20,000 of these medals to soldiers who had signed up for a second tour of duty during the war.

When the war ended, Rife returned to Ohio. He married, had five daughters, and spent his life as a farmer in Walnut Township. The 1870 census shows Rife sharing a homestead and farm with an extended family, including an 86-year-old grandparent. Potter determined the location of the family’s property in Walnut Township. Using Ancestry.com, he even identified the house—still standing—that may have belonged to the family.

Since completing his essay about David Rife, Potter has begun a second piece about another ancestor. Eventually, he hopes to self-publish his family stories as a book. In the meantime, he is sharing his results with his brothers and cousins.

“Genealogy is like a lifeline for me,” he says. “It makes me feel connected to my ancestors and an ancient past. I feel knowing where my family came from has tremendously enriched my life.”

Lauren Young could not agree more. Originally from San Diego, she spent most of her career in education. In 1998, after serving as a faculty member in the College of Education at Michigan State University, Young joined the Spencer Foundation, a Chicagobased philanthropic organization that supports education initiatives. As a program director, Young headed institutional programs in South Africa, Russia, and the United States, before retiring a few years ago. At 73, she is one of the oldest members of her large family and has taken it upon herself to fill in the gaps of its history for the benefit of younger relatives.

“I feel deeply the importance of creating and maintaining a record of those who came before us,” she says. “When times get hard—and especially for us African Americans times will be hard—I want younger family members and others to know about the character, faith, grit, and humanity of our ancestors that enabled them to persevere. My purpose is to pass on the family story and in so doing provide, to the extent that I can, some sense of the individuals who came before us—and add to the record of this country these names of individuals who helped to build it.”

Like Murray and Potter, Young was drawn to “Secrets in the Tree” when she first heard about the seminar last fall. She had a well-developed family tree and many stories, but she wanted to piece those stories together into a cohesive whole. “I was looking for a way to create a narrative that presented information both from documents and records as well as from family recollections and stories. It seemed that ‘Secrets in the Tree’ would provide me direction on how to better do that. And I was not disappointed.”

Young was especially interested in finding out more about her first known ancestor on her father’s side, Edmond Walls. Family lore had it that Walls was enslaved in Virginia in the early nineteenth century and eventually fled with his wife to Canada via the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, it was said, he returned to the United States, settling in Kansas.

Young had never seen any proof to confirm the story. She hoped the seminar would change that.

On the first day of the seminar, she joined others in sharing an heirloom from her family’s past: a yellow and brown baby’s quilt created by her grandmother 100 years ago and given to her when her own son was born. “The quilt is special because it is a rich artifact from a family that had so little,” she says. “It’s a wonderful reminder of the beauty that can be created with whatever is at hand.” The quilt was not associated with Walls, but Young felt it symbolized the family bonds that characterized ancestors like him.

Before the seminar, Young worried that she might not learn anything new about Walls. “He was an enslaved man in the 1800s, so I didn’t think that I would find much to add to the family lore,” she explains. But she was pleasantly surprised. At Nickerson’s suggestion, she started searching through Canadian census reports and other historical directories for her ancestor. She soon found a record of Walls and his family in a nineteenth-century Ontario census report; they had settled a plot of land in Sandwich, Ontario, right across the river from Detroit, and had occupied a log cabin.

“I can’t describe the rush of emotion I got when I found the record of Edmond and his family in Ontario,” she says. “It confirmed an important part of the family story. And many other things also began to make sense.”

For example, Young’s family tree listed one of Edmond and Elizabeth’s sons, Waskey James, as having been born in Xenia, Ohio—a stop along an Underground Railroad route leading from Virginia to Ontario. If Edmond and his family fled to Canada, they likely took this route from Virginia, and Elizabeth had given birth to Waskey James along the way. Noting, too,

Left: A baby’s quilt created by Lauren Young’s grandmother and passed down to her.

Right: A late-nineteenth-century photo of Edmond and Elizabeth Baker Walls. Born into slavery in Virginia in the early nineteenth century, Edmond fled with his wife to Canada before returning to the United States after the Civil War.

that “Waskey” was not a family name —nor a name she had ever heard —Young began to suspect that the child had been named after somebody who had aided the family in Ohio.

By the end of the seminar, Young felt that she had established without a shadow of a doubt the truth of the family legend: Edmond Walls and his family had escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. They had lived in Canada for about a decade. And they had returned to Kansas after the Civil War.

“Constitutional amendments outlawing slavery and granting certain civil rights to Black American citizens were ratified during Edmond’s time in Canada,” Young writes. “Further, the Homestead Act, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, promised 160 acres of land in Kansas and other states to those who would live on the land, build a home, make improvements, and farm for five years. Visions of a more hospitable social environment, tales of rich soil and abundant crops, and stories of free land available in the Free State of John Brown pulled Edmond and his family back to the United States around 1874.”

As part of the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminar Program, Young had completed a draft of her ancestor’s story, combining the narrative she had been told, the documents that had been handed down, and the evidence from the Canadian census reports, nineteenth-century Kansas newspapers, and other genealogical materials. Yet she’s far from done with the project. In the future, she intends to expand the story further.

“My plan is to create a book to share this family story with cousins and other family relatives, and perhaps others. My hope, too, is that some members of the family will pick up where I will leave off.” The gravestone of Edmond and Elizabeth at Newbury Cemetery in Newbury, Kansas.

Matthew Clarke is Communications Coordinator at the Newberry.

Registration is now open for the Summer 2021 term of the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminar Program. Browse the schedule of classes at newberry.org/adult-education-seminars.