Margaret Thompson Biddle, sans fur

The furs of Margaret Thompson, whose second marriage was to U.S. diplomat Anthony Biddle, Jr., were lucky to escape unharmed from German bombing in Poland in 1939, according to a diary she kept of what was apparently a very unpleasant evacuation ordeal.

“Yesterday morning it all began when Tony telephoned me at seven a.m. to tell me to gather everything together and come immediately to the Embassy as the truck with all the baggage, commissaries, etc., was being loaded. No taxis were available so I took a drosker and arrived with my gas mask, fur coat and bags in time,” Margaret wrote on September 2nd, 1939.

The next day proved to be the most terrifying of Margaret’s life. Tony Biddle, who was the U.S. ambassador to Poland, was stationed in Konstantian, a summer resort town about 20 minutes from Warsaw. German bombers made a ”power dive” and bombed the house next door to the one where Margaret and Tony were staying, along with their daughters from previous marriages.

A piece of shell dropped on the balcony where Tony was shaving, Margaret writes. Windows broke from the powerful vibration. The family rushed to the basement in gas masks.

Fortunately, Margaret’s fur coats weren’t harmed.

“As soon as we could collect our fur coats, passports, and absolute necessities, we came into Warsaw and are now settled in the chancellery and the truck has come and we have all belongings….”

It’s a good thing they arrived, because Margaret’s furs came in handy several days later when she and her husband [named the best-dressed man in America in 1960] evacuated to Krzemieniec, a hill town located in the southeastern part of Poland, near the border with Russia and Romania. The trip defined “eery” for Margaret as she passed long wagon caravans of troops, large army trucks, and tanks, moving steadily in the darkness.

The Biddles were lucky to find a house in Krzemieniec with running water and plenty of rooms.

“Believe it or not, Peg [her daughter] and I curled up on the floor on a blanket, used our jackets for pillows and our fur coats over us and slept for an hour and a half in spite of carpenters fixing doors that wouldn’t shut, chairs being brought in, floors being washed, and our Jewish landlords issuing orders in Yiddish! I can truthfully say I’ve never slept better or enjoyed anything more!”

That’s saying something, because Margaret shared in an $85 million estate left by her father, William Boyce Thompson. Margaret was his only child.

Margaret’s dog, Okay, a Great Dane, was a real sport throughout the ordeal, an ”evacuating ‘tweedie,’” in Margaret’s words. The poor dog, she wrote, “hasn’t missed a raid or dugout since the war started.” It was a good thing Margaret wasn’t taking Okay for a walk along the hillside on September 12th. It was bombed that day, two days after the Biddles had picnicked there with Okay.

The hillside in Krzemieniec where the Biddles successfully picnicked

The picnic, by the way, was a great success. It was on “a hill just outside the town where the ruins of an old fort are and you can see for miles around. The British and French Ambassador and Count de Largard (secretary to Ambassador Noel) and Mr. Shapiro (New York Times correspondent) were our distinguished guests.”

When the entourage crossed into Romania, Margaret, who wore a woolen skirt and sweater, “my evacuation costume,” wrote quite a thoughtful critique of the native dress, which apparently did not include ermine.  

“The peasant women are very picturesque in their gay skirts, and fascinating embroidered sheepskin jackets, but the boys are ‘something’ in their costumes of funny round hats, long straight white blouses (shirt tails out) and tight long trousers and some had on heavy sheepskin coats although it was very warm today.”

Margaret’s quest for a good bath–she went six days without one–took her to Cernauti, Romania, which she described as close to heaven–”you can have a comfortable bed, a bath, and delicious food.” After eating mostly bread, butter, beer, and cheese for a week, she had to admit that the “caviar certainly did taste good.”

Shirtless Biddle lends a hand in Poland

Margaret’s furs once again came in handy when the group left by train for the Embassy in Bucharest. While waiting on the train, more than 100 Polish bombers flew over the station. “Peg and I had a compartment and were able to stretch out and cover up with coats. I didn’t sleep very well, but was thankful to have a place to lay my head.”

After a busy schedule of diplomatic lunches, cocktail parties, and dinners during the following four days, the group headed for Paris. “I can’t believe that we are really on our way to Paris. All the Americans are together in one car and also the Nortons and the French Ambassador.” And, one can only hope, Margaret’s furs.

William Boyce Thompson, The Magnate

Stop the digital press–this blogger recently obtained copies of genealogy reports commissioned by William Boyce Thompson that shed light on the family’s distant past. Unfortunately, researchers working for The Magnate ran into the same dead-ends that befuddle family researchers today. That said, The Thompson Reports include some exciting new information.

H.H. Plate, Thompson’s secretary who in 1923 was sent on a fact-finding mission to Cobourg, Ontario, a small shipping town on the shores of Lake Ontario, found several locals who remembered that  William Thompson, Sr., came from Scotland as a youth.  More important, Plate  found a man, William Pratt, who remembered that his father, Thomas, emigrated with Thompson, Sr., from Cupar in Fifeshire, Scotland. Legend has it that the pair were among the lucky passengers rescued from a wrecked vessel.

This was the hottest lead turned up by Plate, who otherwise searched in vain for information that could trace the Thompson lineage back to Scotland. A local attorney first directed her to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where she hoped to find Thompson, Sr.’s tombstone, death or birth records, or anything listing his place of birth or parents. Plate kept a diary of her movements.

“I called on Mr. Denton, warden, who had keys to safe containing church records. He offered to open up the church for me that evening at 8 p.m. Went through the records from 1830 on. Did not find record of marriage of W.T. and M.M.R. [Margaret Maguire Robinson, his wife] but did find record of baptism of their 2 eldest children and the burial of William Thompson [Sr.] on Dec. 2, 1849.”

Unfortunately, the burial record contained little more than a date. The next day, though, the pair set out to find Thompson’s tombstone, hoping it might reveal his place and date of birth. A family Bible, referenced in the report, indicated that William Thompson, Sr., was born in Scotland in 1806.

Unfortunately, Plate discovered that interments were made some 30 or 40 years before to a new St. Peters cemetery, or in some cases to the Union cemetery. Incredibly, the remaining tombstones were taken and used as targets. Those that were returned were left in piles and eventually put in a shed.

“Mr. Denton secured two men to turn over the tombstones stored in the shed, taking entire morning for the job, but the William Thompson stone was not there. Even if it had been it might not have given his birthplace as only six of the several hundred had that information. Nearly all gave only name, date of death and age, and name of husband, or wife or father.” 

St. Peter's Church in Cobourg

Next Plate tried to find a record in the St. Peters church of a marriage between William Thompson and Margaret Maguire Robinson, who had been married once before, in Ireland, before she left for Canada. Eleven years before, The Magnate had  acquired a copy of the certificate of her first marriage.

 ”For 1831, only one marriage is recorded after May 26th-Sept. 4, by a substitute minister from Port Hope, the rector being away. The Thompson marriage may not have been entered through neglect. They doubtless were married in Anglican Church [typically referred to as Espicopalian in the U.S. and Canada] as her children by earlier marriage, as well as Thompson children, were baptized and confirmed in that church.”

Plate surmised that, since the rector had been away, the pair may have been married in the next-closest Anglican church in  Port Hope. Her intuition proved correct. The next day she found a marriage record of William Thompson and Margaret Maguire Robinson and obtained a certified copy. Unfortunately, it, too, listed little more than a date.

Still hoping to find some indication of where Thompson might have been born and to whom, Plate’s next tried fraternal organizations. She dug through records at local Masonic and Orange lodges. But in each case data for the years needed was missing.

Unable to find documented evidence, Plate began interviewing Cobourg residents who knew the Thompson family. Her best lead came from William Pratt, an old resident who as a child used to play with Hannah Thompson (Ough), the daughter of William Thompson, Sr., when she lived on King Street. The family eventually moved to John Street.

“He pointed out the house on John Street in which the Thompsons lived when Hannah was married,” wrote Plate, who had a picture taken of the house. “He thought William Thompson died there.” 

Pratt recalled that his father, Thomas Pratt, had come from the same place as William Thompson, Cupar in the County of Fife, a town that at the time was about the same size as Cobourg. ”He thought they came on the same ship which was wrecked on the shore (did not know where) and they had to stay there six weeks (presumably while repairs were made to the ship) before going on to Quebec. He could not tell me the name of the boat but said he would try to remember it.”

Pratt had another productive exchange with Mrs. P. Ewing (Jennie Ough), the sister-in-law of Hannah Thompson Ough. “She told me that the Thompsons rented the house on King Street for several years before selling it; that they then lived in Baltimore or Roseneath, coming to the house on John Street when Hannah T. was a young lady (she was nine when her father died). The house on John Street belonged to her father, Benjamin Ough, and Hannah T. and her mother moved in as soon as it was completed, having occupied a house across the street for a short time.”

Part of this story–the part about moving to Baltimore or Roseneath–was disputed by Plate’s next acquaintance, Mrs. Williams, a “delightful old lady in possession of all her faculties. She said she was an intimate friend of Hannah’s.  She told many little anecdotes, Willie Thompson with cat and canary; Hannah’s little finger.

“She said that she does not remember Wm. T. very distinctly except that he was quite a home-loving man. She said he was not distinguished in any way, but was highly respected. Said the family was poor, as nearly everyone in Cobourg was at that time. Crops were bad and money was scarce. (Mr. Hewsom said Cobourg at that time issued its own scrip.)

Sketch of Cobourg in 1830

“Mrs. Williams says she distinctly remembers that at Mr. Wm. T’s funeral the Orange men carried his casket on their shoulders to the cemetary. She says Mrs. Ewing was mistaken in thinking they lived at Baltimore. Never were out of Cobourg. Went from the little house on King Street to the double house on John and then across the street to the Ough cottage. She said the house on King Street was a little double house also. She said Wm. T. and the Oughs were all carpenters.”

Plate’s next stop, the offices of the “Star” newspaper, was a big disappointment. She hoped to find a death notice in the newspaper’s archives, only to discover that records from 1849 had been stolen. The Star was the only local paper published at the time.

Undaunted, the Magnate sent researchers to Scotland to run down the Cupar, Scotland lead. They spent 10 days in the Registrar-General’s office in Edinburgh, where all parish records prior to 1854 had been gathered, looking through data covering 50 parishes in and around Edinburg and Cupar. They found six William Thompsons born in an around Edinburgh in 1806, though none in Cupar. The information given was complete–it include the father’s name and the father’s business. But without William Thompson’s date of his birth or the name of his parents, it was impossible to determine which record was his.

The researchers then turned their attention to ship records, hoping to find the boat that carried William Thompson to Canada. Unfortunately, none of the shipping lines had passenger records going back to 1828.

Efforts to trace the lineage of Margaret Maguire were more successful. In Canada, Plate found a record of William Thompson’s marriage to Margaret Maguire Robinson in the parish register of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal church in Port Hope, dated December 29, 1831. The couple had four children, including a first Hannah who died early.

According to a September 25, 1923 letter from William Boyce Thompson to Hannah Ough, Margaret Maguire had previously married John Robinson in Belfast, Ireland on March 31, 1815.

Margaret Maguire

“Margaret Maguire’s marriage to John Robinson, a tailor, was objected to by her family and it is supposed that she never wrote to her people after reaching Canada,” the Magnate wrote. Or maybe his secretary wrote. “They had six children, none of whom is living, and the only living grandchild is Ralph Robinson, son of James Campbell Robinson.

“The Maguire family was well-known in Enniskillen, but Margaret is supposed to have been born in Belfast. Her father was a wholesale butcher and operated a tannery while one of her brothers was a wholesale boot and shoe manufacturer. One of her brothers was an officer in the English Army, and an uncle, a retired English officer had a large estate either in Scotland or Ireland, according to information furnished by John C. Slater, who married May Ough, the daughter of Hannah Thompson, William Thompson’s second daughter.”

But efforts to trace the Maguire family in Enniskillen and Belfast proved unsuccessful.

This is just one of several wonderful stories surrounding the Magnate’s Castle on the Hill, which was recently repurchased by the nearby Boyce Thompson Arboretum. After renovations, ironically complicated by handicap access requirements, the mansion will be re-opened for tours. But will the remodeling efforts, which may take several years, capture the soul of the place and its original occupant?  

Probably not. According to press reports, the tub on wheels remains in the house, along with some furnishings and art work left behind by the Magnate, who died in 1930. At last report, volunteers were making an inventory of things that belonged to the Colonel, who collected art and furnishings for the house when he sailed around the Mediterranean on his private yacht, the Alder. An August 25, 1960 article in the Arizona Republic, however, said that few furnishings remained in the house. 

One can only hope that subsequent owners didn’t walk off with the oversized armchair from which Thompson tried to avert the stock market collapse of 1929. They should put a reverential, museum-like rope around the otherwise undistinguished chair, like the kind you see at Monticello, so that no one can ever sully it. 

Dr. Franklin, the second owner of Picket Post, sits in the Magnate's legendary chair

Thompson reportedly spent $50 million from this perch on ”Black Thursday,” October 24, 1929. He was on a through line to Los Angeles and New York with other captains of finance and industry trying to avert the stock market’s eventual collapse. When the group finally decided it couldn’t stem the tide, Thompson told the telephone operator to “Let ‘er go,” referring to the phone line, and hung up.

One reason why it will be difficult to capture Thompson’s spirit in the remodel is that by 1960  fire had destroyed half the 26-room, 7,012-square-foot estate. Built for $1 million between 1924 and 1928, the Castle on the Hill originally consisted of four buildings–a square mansion and three towers, each built on a crag. The towers, which were lost in a fire, included personal retreats for Mrs. and Mr. Thompson, along with a tower for water and an elevator. 

Carved out of a crag, the Cliff House unfortunately is no more

Thompson spent most of his time in one of these towers, the Cliff House. According to a letter left behind by his nephew, Joseph Thompson, Jr., who helped design the house gardens and the Arboretum grounds, the Magnate only decided to build the Cliff House in 1927, after a stroke confined him to a wheelchair.  He picked the spot so that his third-story bedroom would look down 200 feet into picturesque Queens Canyon.   

Joe Thompson remembers that the cliff beside the Cliff House was blasted out to make room for second- story rooms that were occupied by Thompson’s nurses. The ground floor housed what was reportedly Westinghouse’s first electric furnace. Designed to keep the invalid Colonel’s suite at a constant 72 degrees, it was powered by Thompson’s Magma Copper Co. mine in Superior.

In the afternoon, Thompson’s French valet, Rochia, would lift him into his wheel chair and the pair would take an Otis elevator down to the Cliff Walk. As Rochia wheeled the chair along the one-eighth-mile, stone-walled trail, one can imagine Thompson checking the progress of his saguaro, inspecting a new plant, or watching Queen Creek jerk along its rocky bed.  

Another common destination was a settler’s cave that Thompson had expanded into a three-bedroom playhouse for his grandchildren. On special occasions, the Colonel’s entire 14-member entourage would descend into the Arboretum or Rose Garden to sing hymns. Thompson traveled to Picket Post in a private railcar–a spur was built from his mine to the house. While in residence, his railroad servants became his house staff. 

Thompson spent weeks working with engineers from his mining company trying to find the ideal site for his house. “Day after day he led his Magma engineers on scrambles over ledges and thorny desert slopes,” writes his biographer Hermann Hagedorn, “seeking, out of a plethora of building sites the one and only which should perfectly combine utility and romantic beauty.”   

Though Thompson at one time boasted that he owned the land here as far as the eye can see, he actually built Picket Post on land owned by the U.S. Forest Service that was originally part of Crook National Forest. He obtained the 400 acres through a land swap, purchasing land in Northern Arizona coveted by the Forest Service.  

Thompson is credited with designing the estate based on a monastery he once saw on a crag in Greece. But the working drawings were drawn by draftsmen at his mine. That’s was probably a good thing, because several detonations were involved. The top of the great rock pinnacle was blasted away to make room for the first story of the mansion. One can only imagine the regulatory hurdles for doing that today. 

Thompson also had a hole blasted through a crag to create the tunnel that connected his tower door to the Cliff Walk, which began fifty feet below the castle, near the gate to the Aboretum. He saw to it that one of his favorite plants, Job’s Tears, was planted next to the tower door. He could touch its berry-shaped petals from his wheelchair before he ascended to his bedroom.   

The walls along Cliff Walk were built by an independent-minded stone mason named Tom Doby. According to Joe Thompson, the Magnate developed a great affection for the Slovakian, who had sailed ships in a previous life. This fondness would manifest itself in merciless teasing that bordered on cruelty, a seemingly genetic Thompson trait. 

Fortunately, Doby learned to play along. Thompson would sometimes bait Doby by asking him to redo wall sections three or four times. After Doby, who was known for the artistry of his stone work, would threaten to quit and walk away, Thompson would say, “Come back here you dumb Pollack.”  Doby would return. This delightfully insensitive play ”went on all day,” Joe remembers. 

Joe remembers another incident, which is chronicled in William Boyce Thompson’s biography, when the Magnate made Doby pan for gold in Queen Creek. The sight apparently reminded Thompson–whose health was failing, maybe his mind as well–of his childhood in Montana. ”Doby would complain that there was no gold, but he kept him panning for days and would sit and watch from his wheelchair. In his will, he left Doby $80 a month for his lifetime.” 

Joe Thompson, who was charged with designing the gardens, had his work cut out for him, too. Uncle Will, he said, “wanted trees and shrubs and as it was all on rock it was necessary to build a series of walls to hold dirt. It took three months to build the walls and haul in dirt….We had three freight car loads of plants shipped from California.”   

After the Colonel died in 1930, the Castle on the Hill was locked up, art treasures and all. Owned by the Aboretum, it sat unoccupied along the highway for 16 years. Locals invented stories to explain it origins. According to one, it was owned by a king and queen. According to another, it was owned by a tramp who one day wandered into Superior, discovered the Magma mine, and made millions. In 1946, the estate was sold to the Franklin family, which opened it as a bed and breakfast and offered occasional tours.  

Ida Louisa Franklin, a writer, left behind a self-published book, ”A Copper King’s Castle and Aboretum” that was still available for sale when I visited the house in April 1999. Franklin, who had a strong imagination, thought the 26-room estate might be haunted when she first moved in. She wrote that her husband turned the front door key to the “ghost castle” for the first time with great trepidation. She later discovered ”secret” rooms in the house. She thought she heard animals or ghosts at night, only to find out that the popping and snapping was caused by the building’s copper roof contracting in the evening.  

The castle did contain hidden treasures and priceless architectural features, though. It had been left largely untouched. The Colonel’s clothing still hung in the closets. Italian paintings that Thompson had collected on Mediterranean cruises adorned the walls. The rooms still contained Renaissance furniture, including a set of Boulle furniture suite made for a Cardinal living in Naples. 

The Franklins also discovered a lava cave that was used to store linens; a wood-encased, walk-in refrigerator as big as a small kitchen; and a dumb-waiter to take meals from the first-story kitchen to the second floor. Above the entrance doors they confronted a circular wall plaque with a great knight riding on a horse.   

But that was nothing compared to the art collection in the library. In a study of the Rape of the Sabine Woman, a magnificently helmeted Roman carried a limp woman across his shoulder. In a long horizontal painting, an angel overshadowed by a great black wing bent low to awaken a sleeping bearded man. On another wall hung a small battered painting of the Annunciation, with the virgin receiving news from an angel that she would become the mother of Chris.  Near the sunroom hung a sensual portrait called Lady of the Tear. 

In the sunroom, there was a handsome table which the Colonel was said to have purchased after he watched a young girl dance on its top for bread and red wine for her family’s supper. When the Franklins moved in, the sunroom was empty. But it had once been planted with drifts of white petunias. When the Colonel’s daughter came for her first and only visit, the petunia garden became a ballroom with the finest dance floor in the Southwest.    

The home was filled with curiosities. On the wall above the Colonel’s bed was a bank of electrical call bells, each for a different purpose. The table in the west end of the library was a single slab of lignum-vitaie almost a yard wide and over seven feet long formed with the hardness and brilliance of marble. It was suspended by strong, simple stretchers of wrought iron. 

Joe Thompson, Jr., later told the Arizona Republic that the value of the furnishings in Picket Post was overblown. But William Boyce procured many of them in Italian antique shops, “taking a delight in beating down the dealers,” wrote  Hagedorn. He sent home three hundred tons of Renaissance garden sculpture, a church facade, a small temple, and countless pillars, and stone fragments.  

The Franklins appreciated the estate’s irrigation scheme. Overflow from the water tower would slip into the foundation plantings along Mrs. Thompson’s house. Each garden or terrace drained into a lower one, and the last cleft drained back into the creek, which was crossed by well tunnels.   

As the house looked in 1999

The Franklins sold The Castle on the Rock in 1948 to Willaim and Mabel Steinegger of Phoenix. In January 1963, the 32-acre property was bought by Richard Rose. The Roses kept their costs down by doing the upkeep themselves and allowing resident hosts to park mobile homes on the property, if they paid fees that went to insurance, taxes, and upkeep. 

When we visited the house in 1999, it housed an incredibly tacky personal curio collection. On tours, stories about miniature carousels and brass ducks inexplicably received equal billing with the Colonel’s dumb-waiter. Who knows, maybe the Colonel would have appreciated the lawn jockey in the front yard.

Joseph Ough

“In your mother’s family, and mine, there were those that were stars in a financial way,” wrote J.E. Thompson in a letter to his son, “but the man in my family, that in my opinion was the most successful was named Joseph Ough.”

According to family legend, Ough designed and built the dome over the capitol building in Sacramento. Jack Synder, a great-grandson to Ough, hasn’t been able to substantiate that. He is confident, though, that Ough at least designed wood carvings in the capitol building. He also left behind some woodwork in the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento.

Otherwise, not a lot is known about the work of Joseph Ough, who lived most of his adult years in Sacramento, where he designed and built homes. Ough’s home was at the corner of 8th and N streets, across the street from the the Leland Stanford mansion. Captain Roberts, an early steamboat captain on the Sacramento river, lived in the house across the street on the NW corner.

Though the Stanford mansion has survived, Ough’s home gave way to an earth-bermed government office building. However, several homes in the style of Ough’s home reportedly remain in old Sacramento neighborhoods. Synder’s parents still have the Ough’s very fine English Victorian parlor set that would have been in this house as well as an Eastlake bedroom set. 

Joseph Ough House

Census records indicate that Ough was born in Canada in 1841 and lived there until 1864, learning carpentry and architecture. He married Hannah Thompson in 1865. The couple had three children, two of whom lived to adulthood.

A history of noteworthy people from Sacramento says Ough moved to Pennsylvania for a year, then went to Cincinnati, where he worked for three years. In 1968, he went to Montana, no doubt following his brother-in-law, William Thompson. But a year later, he traveled to Sacramento, “overland, by the northern route, via Fort Benton.”

J.E. wrote to his son that Ough “designed and built the dome over the capitol building at Sacramento and it still stands to me a thing of beauty. Other parts of the the capital building have been damaged by earthquakes, but the most vulnerable part, the dome, is as built.”

The fact that he didn’t get to Sacramento until at least 1868 casts doubt on whether Ough designed the dome. Ground was broken on the project in 1860, though it wasn’t complete until 1874. The complex, ornate project literally drove one of its architects crazy. Ruben Clark was committed to a mental institution in Stockton in 1864 and died there two years later. The official diagnosis? ”Continued and close attention to the building of the State Capitol in Sacramento,” according to hospital records.

Ough, by comparison, seemingly remained grounded during his adult life. He found the time to create a beautiful Victorian sewing box, supposedly from wood left over from carving the Capitol, that’s in the possession of a Synder cousin. 

Another family story passed down to Synder suggests that Ough carved the bear heads on the main staircase. In any event, Ough made quite an impression on my great grandfather.

Stanford Mansion

“He loved to plan and build fine homes and did build the finest homes of his time. Uncle Joe’s home was on a corner opposite Gov. Leland Stanford’s home in Sacramento. They were great friends. Stanford a great money maker and Uncle an artist and a lover of [homes?], especially his own. The two of them would sit under a tree at nights on a wooden bench and talk of Cal., the past and present.

“Stanford told him that he was going to build Stanford University one night and asked Uncle Joe what kind of building he would build. The next night Uncle Joe gave Stanford some rough drawings showing in a way what the University buildings are today. Stanford wanted him to cooperate with the architects that he had. It meant a move to Palo Alto, so Uncle Joe said no.

“Love of home and building other homes held him back, I suppose. He had a good house, as he liked it, some other houses that he rented, a little money in the bank, a nice family, a contented mind. I call him a very successful man. My first son Joseph was named after him. I am glad because I loved him.”

This may be William Thompson, Sr.

Like most amateur genealogists, I have reached a maddening dead-end in the quest to trace my family roots. The end of the line is William Thompson, Sr., who appears to have lived most his life in Ontario, Canada, but was probably born in Scotland.

Thompson’s very common name, which shows up often in Census counts, church records, and other family trees, doesn’t help matters. Neither does conflicting information about him that has been passed down.

J.E. Thompson left a letter identifying his grandfather as “a British army officer [who] lived and died in Canada .” According to the book, Progressive Men of the State of Montana , Thompson, Sr., was born in Scotland and “emigrated to Canada in an early day, and as a carpenter, there passed the rest of his life.” This fact is born out by the 1880 Census, in which William, Jr., lists his father’s place of birth as England.

We know that the family at one time lived in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, a small town on the shores of Lake Ontario, about 118 kilometers east of Toronto. That’s because Cobourg is listed as the birthplace of William Thompson, Jr., who was born on March 1st, 1838. His grave stone lists that date.

A family tree left behind by Mabel Maud Thompson says that her grandfather, William, Sr., was born in Scotland in 1806 and moved to Canada. It lists 1849 as his year of death.

After Thompson, Jr., died, the Butte Miner carried his obituary, dated May 16, 1900. It says that the son was 15 when his father died. Other sources have this as early as 11; it must have been the stuff of legend. The obit says when Thompson, Sr. died in 1953, his wife, Margret Maguire, moved the family to Detroit .

Margaret Maguire

 That chronology is seconded by the Illustrated History of the State of Montana , published in 1894. It says that William, Jr., lived in Cobourg until he was 15—which would be 1853—and received a public school education. According to this source, after Thompson, Sr., died, the family in 1853 moved to Detroit, where William, Jr., learned the cabinet and carpentry trades.

Other clues to the past come from “The Magnate,” the biography of William Boyce Thompson (1869-1930) written in 1935. William Boyce commissioned genealogy research to assist the writer. According to the Magnate, William Thompson, Jr., was 11 when he left school; that would be in 1849. The Magnate says he was a licensed pilot on the Great Lakes at 16 in 1854.

The Magnate provides another possible link the past by identifying the family’s ties to Northern Methodism. That may help identify his birth record or his father’s marriage record, because they were all kept by churches at the time. But they aren’t readily available.  

Other sources create confusion about when William, Sr., died. For instance, the book “Pioneer Trail and Trials” by the Madison County History Association says that William Thompson, Jr., was 12 when his father passed away. That would mean William, Sr., died in 1850, not 1849. Genealogists can live with being off by a year. The book says William, Jr., left at that time, 1850, to find work to support his family, which lived in Detroit.

In any event, Thompson, Sr.’s wife survived him by many years. Margret Maguire was 12 years older than her husband (she may have even been married once before) and outlived him by 31 year. Maguire died in Sacramento, not Canada, as listed in some Montana history books, and is buried in Sacramento City Cemetery, Lot 97.

Maguire lived there for almost 30 years with her daughter, Hanna, who married Joseph Ough. This trail, only recently uncovered, may shed new light on the history of the illusive William Thompson, Sr.

That’s how James R. Boyce (1817-1898) begins his personal history of the incredible women in his family, and in his heart. As the letter to his grandchildren (dated October 23, 1893) makes clear, the one-time major in the Confederate Army, who became a merchant in Virginia City, Montana, believed in the nobility of womankind. He wanted to ensure that ensuing generations understood the great stock from which they came.

Boyce’s mother, Mary Child’s Smith (1786-1828), died when he was young, about 11.  She had married Richard Boyce in 1816 in Logan County, Kentucky. That’s where J.R. passed his early years, though the family eventually found their way to Boone County, Missouri.

“Of my own mother I can scarcely write. To me she was and is an angel, a ministering spirit, ever bearing herself as a calm, lofty character of great sweetness of temper and of marked intelligence, honored by all in her neighborhood as a very superior, highly cultivated woman of deep consistent piety and loved by all her children. They loved her to idolatry, and her step children to adoration.

“My mother died in 1818, when I was in my eleventh year, and my recollection of her is limited to that period. But from my aunt, Martha Smith, afterwards Martha B. Fester, I have learned much of the early history of my mother’s family, and from her I have learned to honor the progenitors of my mother. They were the Smiths, Marshalls and Childs, all the best and purest of old Virginia families.”

Boyce’s mother, Mary Child’s Smith, was the daughter of James and Mary Smith. She was born in Hardy County, Virginia, in the year 1780. Both families removed to Kentucky early in the year 1800, though Boyce didn’t know the precise date. After his mother died, Boyce was raised by his grandmother.

“My grandmother, Mary Childs, was well educated and a woman of very lofty character, raised in the best society of her day. She was a woman of marked intelligence, a good manager in her household, and as I recollect her, a lovely old woman, honored and loved by all.” More on Mary Childs later.

J.R.’s father, Richard, was a sheriff, judge, and plantation owner. He didn’t write much about the men in his family, though he said they were all good men. He preferred to write about the women, whom he said were “purer and better.”

J.R. married Maria Louisa Wright in Dec. 8, 1836, when she was 16.  He was 19. The couple lived in Columbia, Missouri, where J.R. worked as a merchant for 20 years. After losing his property after the Civil War, he moved his family to Montana and started over again. J.R. lavishes incredible praise on his wife, who was born in Boone County, Missouri, at the home of her grandparents. Her mother, Jane H. Wright, was on a visit to them when her first child, Maria Louisa, was born.

“Perhaps in her life a more devoted wife and mother never lived. One who more faithfully and conscientiously discharged her every duty as a wife and mother, deeply endowed with a sense of her obligations to God, and a profound reverence for all sacred things, was a living Christian, with her lamp ever-burning and ever reflecting the light of holy and devoted life, an example to her children and family. Patient, cheerful and consistent, ever careful, watchful and enduring, a living witness of the religion of Jesus. She was endowed by nature, cultured and trained to discharge the duties of American motherhood and wifehood. She died at Helena, Montana, June 28, 1875, and was buried in the Masonic burying-ground at that place on June 30th.”

Boyce held his mother-in-law, Jane H. Wright, in particularly high regard. Jane Wright was born in Virginia on November 30th, 1795. She was the daughter of William and Rachael Wright, and was married at Nashville, Tennessee, to her cousin Wm. Wright, in 1819 (who resided at Russellville, Ky.). 

“Jane H. Wright, your great-grandmother, was a beautiful woman with brown, piercing, luminous eyes—gentle as a lamb, loving, cheerful and bright. A splendid housekeeper; order and system reigned in her household, loving to her husband and children, yet firm and consistent, presiding over her household with a steady firm hand. She was a woman of great intelligence and marked integrity. Her daily life was a living comment and exemplification of the teachings of enlightened Christianity.

“Oh, how beautiful her life rises up before me, after a separation by death of nearly sixty years. I see her daily walk, her gentle kindness to her children and servants, and to the lonely boy (myself) whom she had raised from his eleventh year. I see her on her dying bed, calm, bright and happy, shouting her triumph over death, bidding her husband, children, myself, friends and servants adieu, and with a bright exalted smile passing to her bright home in Heaven. Can this be death? No! Oh no. It is just entering into Life. Her life here on earth was only a prelude to a brighter enduring life with Him whom she loved on earth.”

Boyce has fond memories of his mother-in-law’s mother, Rachel Sawyer Wright, who was born in Virginia in 1767 and died in 1852, at the ripe age of 85. But her life was a hard one.

“[She] was the mother of thirteen children, ten of whom grew to manhood and womanhood. She was a woman of inflexibility of character, more noted for her commanding energy and indomitable will power, yet ever just, conscientious and affectionate, commanding the love and veneration of her family. From affection for her, and their implicit and unquestioning obedience, none ever thought of questioning her authority or disregarding her commands, for they were the law of their youth and obeyed in after life with constancy and affection, feeling and believing the she was ‘always right,’ both in name and actions.

“She died as she had lived, calm and collected. When she realized that her dissolution was approaching, she was ready to meet it firm in faith, with a well grounded hope of eternal rest—always calm, firm and consistent in her walk and with a heart and hand ever open to relieve the wants and administer to the afflicted. Her home was always the abiding place of hospitality and the home of the preachers of her church (Methodist) who penetrated the then wilds of Missouri, in the year 1818, when but few houses of any size were erected in Boone County, Mo., and her house being large was for years the preaching place for all the messengers of Christ, who availed themselves of that privilege.”

But Boyce lavishes most of his praise on his grandmother, Mary Childs, whom he says was universally loved.

“I have often heard them say that they loved her better than they did their own mother. Her servants loved her as a mother and to her they ever appealed for sympathy and kindness and never in vain. She was lovely in life, and in death, glorious. Oh, how deeply on my young memory was impressed the scenes of her death. They were marked and peculiar. For months previous she had a presentiment of her death and talked of it to her family with all the calm confidence as of something that she knew, but did not dread, and only regretted because of her children and family. She met it according to her premonition, as calmly and as confidently as if going to sleep. After bidding her servants, friends, and last, her children and my father, a last, long farewell, and singing—

                                           “Jesus can make a dying bed

                                           As soft as downy pillows are

                                           While on His breast I lean my head

                                           And breathe my life out sweetly there.”

“She turned her face to the wall and went to sleep as sweetly as an infant, and opened her eyes in Eternity. These last senses of her saintly life and death are engraved upon my memory never to be afraid. Her dying admonitions, and her calm triumph, will live in my memory until I have passed thru the dark valley. Death was no monster for her. He was but the messenger to loosen the ties of life and introduce her to a higher and better life. Shall I say more? Only this, that your mothers on both sides have been noble women, not a blot to mar the fair pages of their history. Those who have gone were all deeply devoted to God and duty, and I hope, yes, believe, that those who follow the illuminated lives show have gone before will leave as fair and beautiful a record. May the great God grant it, my dear grand children.  

                                                                Your Grand Father, J.R. Boyce

October 2nd, 1893

Judah P. Benjamin

A highly successful attorney in New Orleans, Benjamin in February 1833 married Natalie St. Martin of an aristocratic creole family. The couple lived from 1835 to 1845 in an elegant townhome on 327 Bourbon Street. Then, in 1844, in a bid to impress his wife, Benjamin bought a sugar plantation in the town of Belle Chasse south of New Orleans. He promptly converted an old creole home on the site into a 20-room, Greek Revival-style mansion.

A rusted bell is all that remains from Benjamin’s 300-acre plantation, where he raised sugar, experimented with new refining technology, and made a fortune that he eventually lost by signing on a friend’s note. The bell sits atop a small marker along Route 32 in Belle Chasse, now a southern suburb of New Orleans, on the banks of the Mississippi River. Benjamin, the older brother of my ggg grandmother, who once lived at Bellechasse, reportedly had two hundred or more silver dollars melted into the bell to give it its beautiful tone.

Situated next to a public library and a high school football field, the monument notes that it doesn’t even sit at the exact location of Benjamin’s former plantation house. That would be 1100 feet away, to the north-northeast, close to the ferry landing. A local remembers the mansion resting on the site of the current waste water plant, which looks like it may have been built in the 1960s.

A search of the Louisiana archives, though, reveals that the mansion was moved from its original site in 1934. The 20-room house was originally constructed 1000 feet from the levee, but over time the river almost reached its door. The Judah P. Benjamin Memorial Foundation bought the property in 1924, with the goal of turning it into the “Mount Vernon of the South.” Ten years later, the association moved the house, placing it by the ruins of an old sugar house, and facing it away from the river.

The association managed to repair parts of the building through the years. But by 1960, it had turned into a gloomy eyesore, and a last-gasp effort to restore it failed. Unfortunately, the U.S. Historic Buildings Act, which created financial incentives for restoring historic buildings, wasn’t passed until 1966. It may have helped keep the building around.

According to architectural history books, the three-story home had a simple spacious interior, with large rooms on both sides of a central hall. Along the right side, a grand mahogany stairway with a subtle curve rose to the third floor. The hallways were 16 feet wide, with correspondingly high ceilings. White-enamel interior woodwork, silver-plated locks and door knobs, crystal chandeliers, and marble fireplaces adorned the interiors.

Porches, 15 feet deep with square cyprus columns, wrapped the house. They led to formal landscaped gardens. Flagged walks, flanked by Pittosporum hedges, created a path between garden beds of various shapes–circular, square, and crescent-shaped. Sage palms, lingustroms, laurestinas, and fine cedars shaded the walks. A wrought iron fence enclosed the grounds.

Natalie St. Martin

The Benjamins entertained lavishly at Bellechasse, which was even the site of a sugar symposium. Fine furniture, paintings, and bronzes filled the home. They were all confiscated by Union troops after the Civil War.

The plantation is pictured in at least two books– J. Wesley Cooper’s ”Louisiana: A Treasure of Plantation Homes” (Southern Historical Publications, 1961) and W. Darrell Overdyke’s ”Louisiana Plantation Homes: Colonial and Ante Bellum” (Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1965).

Getting to Benjamin’s in-town home on Bourbon Street is no easy matter. Party-goers flood the street, carrying cocktails, and enjoying street “artists.” This visitor’s attempt to take pictures of the old building, now a strip club, was rudely interrupted by the G-string-clad rear-end of a stripper backing out of a club across the street. Luckily, the visitor escaped unscathed.

But the experience only emphasized the current tawdriness of Benjamin’s formerly magnificent old home. It was difficult to appreciate the bracketed cornice and decorative frieze on the Italianate style side townhouse. One could  get only a cursory glance of the cast-iron balcony, from which Natalie could talk to her friends below, with its notable bow-and-arrow design.

Benjamin’s bid to impress his wife with fine surroundings didn’t work. After living at Bellechasse for roughly a year, while Benjamin spent most of his time working in town, Natalie grew bored and left with her daughter for France. Though the couple remained married for the rest of their lives, Benjamin would only see his wife and daughter on his annual summer trips to France.

Then along comes intrepid family genealogist Judy Herbert , who, based on her postings in message boards around the web, has spent a great deal of time during the last  30-plus years doggedly tracing the family lineage back to Ireland. We caught up with Judy recently to get an update on her progress.

Curator: Judy, how are we related? 

Judy: We share the same great grandparents , John McCullen and Margaret Wigmore.  John was born in New York,  and oral family tradition tells that the family first lived  in or near  Troy.  He married Margaret Bridget Wigmore, who was  born in New York City. They spent most of their married life living in the New York City area, raising nine children.

Margaret Wigmore

Curator: You knew my grandmother, Mabel Simmers?

Yes, she was my  grandmother’s (Sara “Sally” Harriet McCullen) younger sister. Aunt Mabel was so much fun to be with, and a really great lady. Unfortunately, with the way 3M moved us around the country when I was growing up, I never got to see as much as I would have liked of your grandmother–or mine for that mater!

Curator: Is there any truth to the story that my grandmother used to tell that we’re related to Lord Wigmore?

Judy: Mabel told me the same story. She had heard her grandparents say that we were descendants of Lord Wigmore. He is immortalized in a statue, you know, riding a horse, in one of the squares in London, across from the 3M offices. I haven’t proven it yet. Wigmore is an English name, and our Wigmores came to the U.S. from Ireland.  

Curator: When it comes to tracking down oral traditions, how often do you find that they are true?

Judy: About half the time. The other half of the time there is usually at least a shred of truth in them, so they are still valuable for providing clues. Often people are operating from imperfect memories. Occasionally, you’ll get what seems to be an outright, intentional falsehood, perhaps due to embarrassment, or to avoid sharing details about a difficult or painful situation. 

Curator: We share the same great-grandmother, a woman neither of us could have ever met, Margaret Wigmore. You have done some tremendous work uncovering family roots in Ireland. What can you tell us about her family?

Judy: We know that Margaret’s father was Stephen Wigmore.

Curator: Yes, Mabel left behind his death certificate. He died in November 1872 and was buried in the Calvary Cemetery in Queens.

Judy: He died of T.B. He came to New York from Ireland, only four years earlier, in March, 1868, on the ship, City of Antwerp. I’ve determined that Stephen’s father was James Wigmore,  who  married Mary Scanlon in 1836  in the Catholic Church at Donoughmore Parish, southwest of Mallow. They were both born about 1820.

Curator: Wow, that’s quite a find. I believe that Mabel was Protestant. Does this mean that her mother was Catholic?

Judy: The Wigmores were Catholic, at least from the time of  the 1836 marriage  and the baptisms of each of their 8 children. Either my grandmother Sally, or your grandmother Mabel, told me that the McCullen/Wigmore team was a mixed marriage. To keep peace in the families, John McCullen and Bridget Wigmore baptized every other child Protestant, and the ones in-between, Catholic.  While I haven’t found any church records for our McCullens or Wigmores in the U.S., John McCullen, Margaret Wigmore, and all four of their parents, are buried in Catholic Cemeteries in New York City and Westchester County. 

Curator: What else can you tell me about James and Mary Wigmore, the Irish-born parents of our great- grandmother, Margaret Wigmore?

Judy: They had eight children, who were  born in Fidane and Upper Lavally, located just to the  southwest  of Mallow, Co. Cork, in the southern part of Ireland. I have baptism records for the children–James 1837; Bridget 1838; Mary 1841; Jeremiah 1843, who I believe, was the twin of our Stephen, baptized on the same date in 1843; Catherine, 1845; Timothy, 1849; and Ellen,1857. 

Mary’s maiden name was probably Scanlon. One of the witnesses to James and Mary’s marriage was Jeremiah Scanlon who, I believe, was most likely Mary’s father or brother.  I don’t know whether James and Mary immigrated to the U.S., or remained in Ireland.  But their sons–Stephen, Jeremiah, and Timothy–all emigrated to the U.S.  James was still alive in November of 1870, when his son Timothy married Bridget Allen in Cork City. Some of the records in the Mallow area go back far enough that further research might reveal the parents of both James Wigmore and Mary Scanlon.

Curator: It seems as though the big leap was determining Stephen Wigmore’s parents. There was nothing left behind to figure this out. How did you do it?

Judy: Well, first I determined that Jeremiah Wigmore, also of New York City, was Stephen’s brother. One of Jeremiah’s children was buried in Stephen’s cemetery plot. Jeremiah’s parents are listed on his death certificate  as James Wigmore and Mary Scanlon of Ireland. Timothy Wigmore of New York City was another brother; he lived with his wife and children at the same address as Jeremiah in 1880. I later found Timothy’s death certificate; it showed James and Mary Wigmore as his parents.  It’s possible they had another brother, William, but the evidence isn’t as compelling with him.   

Curator: I read that you made a major discovery recently. Tell us about it.

Judy: Well, I located our Wigmores in Ireland, prior to Stephen and his brothers’ arrivals here in the U.S. As I mentioned, they were from Fidane and Lower Lavally, Co. Cork.  I really never expected to find their location over there, and finally ‘got there’, through finding the marriage of Stephen’s brother Timothy in Cork City, to his wife, Bridget Allen. I’m just really starting to dig into the records in Cork now.

Curator: Do you know who Stephen Wigmore married? This person would have been our great, great-grandmother.

Judy: Stephen married Bridget McEnery/McKerney/McInerny/McNary, who was born in the Republic of Ireland in 1849 or 1850. I’ve found four spellings of her maiden name. They married in about 1869, 1870. The 1880 census in NYC shows Mary McKerney living with them, enumerated as “Mother in Law,” a widow.

Curator: Was that Bridget’s only marriage?

Judy: No. Bridget also married a Ringrose, either before or after Stephen Wigmore died in 1900, but I strongly suspect Ringrose was her second marriage.  Bridget’s origins are very difficult to trace, perhaps impossible, due to the different spellings I’ve seen of her maiden name.  Heck…for all we know, we could be heirs to a Tabasco sauce fortune.  Or, if not heirs, at least entitled to a free bottle or two.

Curator: What can you tell us about the McCullen side of the family?

Judy: Mabel McCullen-Simmers, your grandmother, my great-aunt, had thought that John McCullen’s father was a Stephen McCullen, and that the family was from the Troy, New York area after immigrating from Ireland.  I believe Mabel was combining names of her grandfathers, and mentally transposed Stephen Wigmore’s first name, with her McCullen grandfather’s name. 

Curator: So who was her grandfather?

Judy: My research proves that her McCullen grandfather, was Maurice (the Irish spelling for what we in the States pronounce, Morris) McCullen, a shoemaker, who I believe is the M. McCullen, age 25, shoemaker, who arrived in NY aboard the ship George Washington on Oct. 4, 1852, from Liverpool. Our Maurice is surely the one who received his naturalization in NYC on Oct 19, 1868. Maurice is likely the Maurice McCullen that is listed in Griffith’s Valuation of Ireland from the late 1840s, in the northern end of Dublin. The McCullen name with that spelling, is found in the Drogheda area, and it is possible that he migrated south a bit to Dublin to work. 

Curator: Who did Maurice marry?

Judy: He married Mary Ann (known as Annie) Carr, the daughter of Edward Carr and Margaret McHolland, sometime before 1856. Maurice was born in 1825-26, and Annie was born in Ireland in 1827-30.  I don’t yet know whether they married in Ireland, or New York.  They were living on Hester Street in Manhattan in 1858 and had three children that I know of, all born in New York–Edward Jas., born 1857, our John J., born 1858-59, and James, born 1860-61. 

Curator: What became of the children?

Judy: Edward, the older brother, was a plumber and steam fitter who married Alice Pierce in about 1880. They had 7 children; only two surviving to adulthood. Our John was a painter (and decorator, per Aunt Mabel), fireman, and a member of the NYC Special Police.  Mabel also told me that he was involved in politics. James was a founder (he would have been casting iron or brass) who married three times. The  the first marriage was to Mary Conroy, with whom he had four children. The second marriage was to Jessie Baxter Taylor, and they had one son. His third marriage was to none other than your great-grandmother and mine, and the widow of his brother John–Margaret Bridget Wigmore.

Curator: That’s scandalous!

Judy: Yes. James died in 1935. Aunt Mabel never mentioned Margaret’s marriage to James, and I have not found their marriage record, so it is possible that they were living together as husband and wife without a ceremony. It is just as likely that I just have not found the marriage record yet.

Annie Carr-McCullen died in January of 1889, from a fall she took getting out of a chair 10 months earlier. Maurice McCullen died in September of 1894.  They are buried in Calvary Cemetery, in Queens.

Curator: Where does the McCullen name come from?

Judy: The McCullen name is a variant of MacQuillan–a name that you will find connected with the early days (16th century), at Dunluce Castle, in Co. Antrim, Ireland. You can read a brief history of the castle at this site:  http://www.northantrim.com/dunlucehistory1.htm. I took some photos there in August of 2009; it’s a breathtaking place.

Born in August, 15, 1846 in Boone County, Missouri, Annie traveled with her mother and father, Col. James R. Boyce, to Virginia City, Montana after the Civil War. She married William Thompson in 1875 at the age of 29. Thompson, who had come to Montana in 1863, was a prosperous lumber dealer and miner. 

The couple had children in quick succession but many died at an early age. The names of two children remain a mystery. J.E., writing about his childhood  from his death-bed, explained the harsh pioneer conditions in Montana in a series of letters to his son, William Boner Thompson.

“In pioneer days, doctors were not so good, drugs poor, and many kinds of foods did not exist there, but we had all the diseases there were. It is a wonder that children lived to grow up in those days,” J.E. wrote. 

“All grease was saved to make either soap or candles. Some oranges came in and were sold at 25 cts. each. Think of father’s struggle to feed and clothe a family and mother’s wonderful care of us all. It wore her out and she died in her early forties.”

“Mother died when I was about 15 [he was actually 19]. As I see it now, she knew her days were limited and wanted to leave a thought with us and did. She said over and over again that we were raised as gentlemen and wished us to always remain gentlemen. Many a time I have thought of her last message and it had great power in making me a better man.”

One son, Arthur H. Thompson, died in 1887 at a little more than one year of age. He’s buried, along with his parents and some siblings, in the Thompson colonnade at the Mount Moriah Cemetery in Butte. Little is known of second-born Lula, or Alvin, or Marvin. Even less is known of two children for which we don’t have names. Flora, who died in 1925, probably in her early 40s, is buried beside her mom in the colonnade. 

The Thompsons were stout Methodists. Another son, William Boyce Thompson, recalls in his biography, The Magnate, that preachers often came to dinner on Sunday night, sometimes joined by circuit riders holding revival meetings in town. The visitors ate so much at dinner that young William was often left with no more than a chicken neck. Many of his descendants went on to love chicken, too.

Montana winters must have been tough on Annie, who fancied herself a Southern girl. She was born in Missouri to a family that traced its roots back to Virginia. Her father, James R. Boyce, was a major in the confederate Army who lost his property in the war. After the way, he found his way to Virginia City, Montana in 1864 and established a general store.

Annie was 14 and living on a Missouri plantation when the Civil War erupted. She told her children that Southern troops hid in the woods not far from where she lived. After everyone else in the household had gone to bed, Annie and her sisters would cook meat and bake bread. The next morning they would casually wander into the countryside, cut into the woods, and feed the soldiers.

If Virginia City, where Annie and husband William first lived, was no easy place to raise kids, Butte was even worse. When the family moved to the hardscrabble town in 1880, there were hardly any trees. Annie would tell her children and husband that she dreamed of one day living again in a Kentucky cottage with flowers and views of rolling hills.

Instead, from the door of their bare brown house on Granite street, Annie looked out on smelters and roasting ovens that belched sulphur smoke into the sky night and day. The odor of rotten eggs was everywhere, even on lovers’ lips, wrote Herman Hagedorn in The Magnate. But there wasn’t a lot of polite society in Butte at the time.  The eastern labor brought in to work the factories didn’t keep the best company.

J.E. remembers Butte as “the toughest town in the world….There was a sharp line between the good and the not so good woman. More not so good. The fast houses were all in one district and it was a large district. Saloons were everywhere. The main street had at least one saloon and gambling house for every store.” 

Annie Marie had 10 children over the course of about 17 years. She lost her eldest daughter, Lula, in Virginia City. Her youngest child, Mabel Maud, was born in 1886 in Butte. Life as a Western pioneer certainly took its toll on Annie Maria, who died on November 17, 1894 in Butte, Montana.

Marie’s route was more circuitous, but equally daring. Taking her Hope Chest, which remains in the family, she traveled by ship from New England to where the Panama Canal is now. She traversed the isthmus by mule train then took another boat up the coast to San Francisco, where, finally, she was reunited with Fred. The pair married in January, 1883. According to her marriage certificate, Marie was 21 at the time.

While this love story was faithfully handed down through the generations, the eastern town from which Marie originated wasn’t. Neither was her mother’s name. Knowing at least her mother’s first name would helpful because it might help identify her baptism record. Marie’s death certificate lists Quebec as her place of birth, and we know she was born Roman Catholic. Unfortunately, Quebec church baptism records from the 1860s only list the mother’s name, and many Marie Gingras were baptized around that time.

Knowing Marie’s mother’s maiden name would be a major coup as well. It could open a closed door to the family’s lineage. 

All we know about Marie’s family is that her father was named Isaac (according to her death certificate) and both Isaac and his spouse were born in France (according to the 1920 U.S. Census). We also know from oral tradition that Marie was born into a large family, with as many as a dozen brothers and sisters. The 1920 U.S. Census indicates that her family may have been from Maine.

Marie was lucky to have survived her childhood, according to family lore. When she was young, her mother was taking the children by train to visit relatives or friends. They were late in getting to the train station and missed the train. Of course the mother was angry. But the train that they should have been on wrecked and everyone on board was killed.

Marie and Frederick eventually lived a properous life in San Francisco. Fred became a prominent real estate broker. They lived in a very nice house at 2750 Broadway on San Francisco’s Gold Coast, with views of the sea. The couple had two beautiful daughters, Marie Rose Pickering in 1886 and Rhoda Elizabeth in 1896, who traveled in the finest social circles.

Family peace was interrupted, however, when Marie Rose decided to marry her husband, Julius Kruttschnitt, Jr., six months ahead of schedule. The early betrothal made the newspapers. Marie Gingras was quoted as being suitably aghast that her daughter couldn’t wait until the end of her two-year engagement to marry. 

Contradictory written records make it difficult to trace Marie Gingras’ past. According to her death certificate, which would seem to be the most credible source, she was 74 years, 5 months, and 28 days old when she died on February 13^th, 1937. That would mean that she was born on 15 October 1862 in Quebec. 

Both the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Census appear to have her age wrong. So does a record for a ride aboard the Lafayette from Le Havre to New York City in 1922. Late in life, it seems, she liked to tell sources that she was 50, only adding to her mystery. Anyone with further information about Marie Gingas Pickering should contact the curator.