Using Newspapers to Check a Family Story

     A number of years ago my Dad, Lester Albertson, told me that his Smalley grandparents had come from Kansas to Halsey, Oregon, for a visit in about 1917 because his grandmother was going to a national DAR convention in Portland. I doubted that it was completely correct because I had no record that she had belonged to the DAR. However, her obituary did say that she was a member of the WRC, Women's Relief Corp, which is a women's group of the GAR, Civil War Veterans. Also my father was born in October 1907, so would have been only 9 or 10 in 1917 and maybe would not remember the date correctly. The Smalleys were my great-grandparents, so I wanted to know if my father's memory was accurate. I believed that newspaper research could help me answer this question.

    First I checked to find if there was any type of national convention in Portland for the Civil War Veterans organizations since I knew she had belonged to one of these. Using the University of Oregon website, Historic Oregon Newspapers, I did find some articles in The Oregon Daily Journal from Portland in 1918. On May 10th it reported that the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) was planning for a national encampment in Portland that summer. There were women on the committee from the WRC, Ladies of the GAR and Daughters of Union Veterans. By August 9th the paper reported that there was entertainment planned for the delegates at the encampment to be held August 19th - 24th. Then on August 15th they wrote that 15,000 were expected to attend. There were large articles about the event on the front page on August 19th. One featured the WRC, stating their membership was 165,000 and they expected 500 or more of their members to attend the convention.

    Recently a newspaper from the town of Halsey, The Halsey Enterprise, came online at the U of O website, Historic Oregon Newspapers. It included papers from 1917 to 1920. So I could check for 1918. I searched for the name Albertson for a Halsey paper and found an article on August 29, 1918 which stated: "J. N. Elliott and family, who expected to start for Kansas Tuesday of last week, were delayed a day the arrival of relatives from the east - Mrs. E's parents, who are guests in the Albertson home." Mrs. Elliott was my grandmother's sister.

     Then I decided to check the subscription site, Newspapers.com, which has some newspapers for Goodland, Kansas. It was there I found the following article on August 15, 1918 in the Goodland Republic: "Mr. and Mrs. L. F. Smalley and Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Errington, of our county, departed Wednesday, for Portland, Oregon, to attend the National Encampment of the G.A.R.  Mr. and Mrs. Smalley will visit their two daughters, Mrs. O. J. Albertson and Mrs. J. N. Elliott, of Halsey, Oregon, before returning. They will be gone about two weeks."

     So by using three different newspapers, I can conclude that my father's grandparents did come to Oregon in 1918 to a national convention in Portland and visit family. Even if the convention was for the GAR, not DAR, and if was in 1918 rather than 1917, my father's story gave me the clues to discover an interesting
family event. 

Out of Place – John D. Bond

This year I am hoping to use many of the themes from 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks for 2023 as listed by Amy Johnson Crow. The theme for Week 3, Out of Place, seems to fit this John Bond.

There are five Bond relatives with the first name John on my genealogy website. John D., born in June 1855, was the 1st cousin of my great-grandfather, John Howard Bond, who was born a few months earlier in April 1855. They both were born in Oregon Territory: John D. in Lane County and John Howard in Linn County.

For the first part of his life John D. was where I expected him to be. On the 1860 census when he was 5 years old, he was in Spencer Precinct, Lane County, Oregon, in the household of his parents, George and Elizabeth (Stillwell) Bond. He aged appropriately and was 15 in the 1870 census still in his parents household. Their home was now listed as Springfield Township and he was working on a farm, but had attended school within the year. John's father, George, died in January of 1880. So single 24 year old John D. was in the household of his mother, Elizabeth, in Springfield Precinct when the 1880 census was taken on June 1st. Again his occupation was "works on farm." 

So what made me think that John D. Bond was "out of place"? It was when I was researching his older brother, William Harrison Bond. One of William's obituaries in 1917 stated that he was survived by 3 brothers, including "John Bond of Ithica, N.Y." Why was someone who had been living on the far West Coast of the United States be living on the far East Coast? I really do not know the answer to that question, but records show that John D. Bond was living in New York state at least from 1892 until his death in 1926.

The New York State Marriage Index, 1881-1967, shows that John D. Bond married Myrtle Marean on 25 Jun 1892 at Nanticook, New York. No doubt this was actually Nanticoke, a small town in Broome County, in south central New York, about  10 miles north of the Pennsylvania border. 

An entry on Find A Grave is for the gravesite of an infant son of John and Myrtle who died in 1893 and was buried at Allentown Cemetery in the hamlet of Glen Aubrey, in the town of Nanicoke.

The 1900 census does show John in the town of Nanticoke, age 44, with his wife Myrtie, age 28, and her parents were also in the household. But John still had the occupation of farmer and it was marked that he owned a farm with a mortgage. Since New York has a number of state censuses I was able to find John in 1905. He was still in Nanticoke, age 49, with Myrtie, age 33, and three sons: 4 year old George, 2 year old Theodore and Spencer age 10/12. Now John was a farm laborer working for wages. In another 5 years, John and Myrtie and their 3 sons were enumerated on the 1910 census in Lisle Township, still in Broome County. John was working as a farm laborer and the 2 older boys were attending school. By the 1915 state census the family was back in the town of Nanticoke and John was still working as a farm laborer.

A change comes before the 1920 census, for now John and Myrtie and Theodore and  Spencer have moved farther north to the city of Ithaca in Tompkins County. Their address was 1347 E. State Street and at age 64 John was working as a laborer in a factory. The 1925 New York state census showed that the family (including all three sons) was still in Ithaca, but at a different address, 202 Floral Ave. John has now retired, but George and Theodore were doing state road work and Spencer was working in a gun shop.

On September 25th, 1926, The Ithaca Journal reported the death of John D. Bond the previous day. His service was to be held on the 27th at the Beebe Mission. Then John was taken for burial back to Broome County, to the Allentown Cemetery where his infant son had been buried. Thus, John D. Bond was born in Oregon Territory before statehood and died in one of the original 13 Colonies.