Andrew A. Hall

I am continually amazed at the courage and perseverance of my ancestors, particularly those who were part of the pioneer movement in our country.  My great great grandfather, Andrew Hall, was quite a character and tougher than most.  The Hall family left their home in New York and moved to Michigan.  Andrew and Olivia had two daughters, Ada and Nina, and a son, Edward.  Another son is a mystery.

Andrew A. Hall > Ada Clemina Hall > Horace C. Crofford > Virginia M. Crofford > Teresa Zaun Austin

Andrew worked in the copper mine in Ontogogan on Lake Superior. According to Ada, he was present in the mine the day they broke into a chamber and found dead men and some "queer" tools. This may be a reference to the more than a hundred "ancient mines" or artificial caverns discovered in this area.  He was also there when they pulled out the largest piece of solid copper (527 tons) ever taken from the ground (see Minestota Mine). Ontonagon is part of the Keweenawan peninsula where large deposits, "geological freaks," of copper were found.

Miners at Minesota Mine

Ancient Mine Pits

Minesota Mine - productive years,1855-1862

By the time the Civil War started, copper mining was at a "low ebb."  In 1861, Andrew got caught up in the fervor of a patriotic meeting and signed up to join the Michigan Volunteer Infantry. According to Wikipedia, Colonel John C. Robinson recruited volunteers and led the Michigan Volunteer Infantry.  Robinson trained his men in Newport News, Virginia:

John Cleveland Robinson

Robinson was soon sent to Detroit as an army recruiting officer, and for a short time, assisted Governor William Dennison in raising troops in Columbus, Ohio.[2] In September 1861, he was appointed as colonel of the 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry, a regiment he helped recruit.[2][3] That autumn, he was also promoted to major of the 2nd U.S. Infantry in the regular army, concurrent with his assignment in the volunteer army.[1] Within a few months, he was commanding a brigade of volunteers at Newport News, Virginia in preparation for the Peninsula Campaign.

According to my great grandmother Ada, her father's departure left their family with little means of support and they nearly starved.  Their clothes fell apart when it rained. Andrew's $13 a month barely met their needs.  He began laundering men's shirts at 10 cents each to make extra money, and loaned money "at usurious interest" to other soldiers in order to send money home to his family.  When he became a surgical assistant, he was able to send decent money to his family.

Serving under General McClellan, Andrew took part in the Seven Days march to Richmond, carrying a very heavy case of surgical instruments.  However, he became ill and was hospitalized in New York for six months.  He came home weighing only 85 pounds and was an inch shorter than before he left.  He was too weak to work for a time.

In 1864, Andrew was repairing railroad cars in Marquette.  Ada's dates conflict with the 1870 census. According to the 1870 census, he was living in Delton, near Detroit in the southern part of Michigan, and was working as a watchman at the "furnace." By Ada's account, they lived at the Jackson Furnace in 1867 in the northern part of Michigan, and moved from there to Brainard in 1869, then to Fargo, ND.  Ada wrote that Andrew worked as a bridge builder.  He built the first frame house in Fargo as well as several other buildings in Brainard.

From Fargo: History: "Law and order followed with the arrival of new settlers on the first train of the Northern Pacific to cross the Red River on June of 1872."

Andrew became discouraged by the hard living in Michigan and was beaten by the plague of grasshoppers that destroyed their crops and their homes. In 1875, they heard that the government was going to build a fort near the Black Hills. Settlers were given permission to accompany the army to the Black Hills, so the Halls moved to Fort Lincoln for a time.  During this time, Ada taught school at Fort Lincoln and was present when Custer's men left for the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.  According to Ada, who was also a writer and historian, the settlers traveled by wagon train in a long, tightly guarded procession to the Black Hills. Families were cautioned to stay together to be assured of safety.  One couple did not follow this advice and were found dead, scalped by Indians.

They moved around, living in Central City, SD, then Bear Butte Creek.  He received his pension and an inheritance from his father around 1880, so he bought cattle and horses.  By 1886, they had settled on a ranch near Buffalo Gap by the Cheyenne River.  They lived on this ranch for many years.  Young men would come visit and see the girls on the Hall ranch.  "Old Man Hall" was the subject of a little ditty they would sing for him.  In 1890, there was the threat of an Indian uprising because of the "Messiah Craze"*, so men gathered at the Hall ranch for mutual protection.  Horace Crofford was among these men.  Horace and Ada were married the next year.

Andrew and Olivia Hall later moved to Newcastle, Wyoming.  In the days before his death, he deeded his land to Ada (copy of deed can be seen in Ancestry.com).  Andrew is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Newcastle.

*The U. S. government had seized Lakota lands.  Bison were hunted to near extinction.  Treaties with the Indians were not implemented.  An Indian prophet had a vision of Jesus returning as a Native American and restoring their lands.  The Indians began performing the Ghost Dance, in which they believed they would be protected from the white man's bullets, and that the ghosts of the ancestors would return to earth.  This was referred to by the white people as the "Messiah Craze."  The white men feared this Ghost Dance and believed an uprising was imminent.  An unfortunate series of events led to the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota in 1890.

Georgia Ella Powell and Census Issues (resolved)

My great grandmother Georgia Ella Powell (Nannie) married John Adam Zaun (Poppoo) in 1903.  She had five children: Pauline, Bill, Ernie (my grandfather), Jimmy, and Agnes.

Georgia Ella Powell > Ernest Earl Zaun > John B. Zaun > Teresa Zaun Austin

I have vivid memories of my great grandparents and great aunts and uncles in Richmond. My father was deeply attached to his relatives in Richmond and we would make at least one or two trips a year to visit family.  I knew my second and third cousins as well as most people know their first cousins!  But there were no children our age around when we visited Nannie.  While the adults sat and talked in the stuffy little house on Penick Road, my sister and I would wander around outside looking at the fish pond and all the cement animals in the yard (chickens, squirrels, frogs, etc.), or  we would run up and down the white board fence with the playful palimino pony across the road.  In the house, there were a few old toys - an ancient iron canon that was my father's childhood toy, a grotesque grinning rubber frog, and a beautiful cloth doll that became a black mammy when her skirt was flipped upside down.  Not much for children to do there, so we had to work hard to entertain ourselves.  I don't remember eating or drinking anything while we were there either - I can't imagine children of today enduring such a visit!

Visit with Nannie at Aggie's house, December 1964

[Click Here] to read a previous post and view photos of the house on Penick Road.

I am so thankful that even as a child, I had the presence of mind to talk with Nannie about her family, and to get information for our family tree.  I remember her lying in bed with tears streaming down her face because she could not recall a brother's birthday, or the name of a sibling who died shortly after birth.  I wrote all of her information on a cardboard family tree which I still have.

In researching the Zaun family on Ancestry, it is easy to confirm the name and dates of people because I knew them personally. However, a curious detail has come from my research.  In the 1930 census, it says that Georgia was born in Iowa.  IOWA?  I can find no documentation of her parents ever living in Iowa. Furthermore, the 1930 census is inconsistent, showing Iowa as the birthplace of Georgia on her record and on Pauline's, but shows her birthplace as Virginia in the records of her other children, Ernie, Bill, Jimmy, and Agnes.

1930 Census:  John A. Zaun, Georgia E., Pauline, John A. Jr., Agnes, Jefferson M. Powell; boarder, Johnson Campbell.
Above, see: Earnest Zaun (my grandfather), Jacqueline, and John B., age  3 mos.

The 1920 census consistently names Iowa as her birthplace in all the individual records for her and her children:

1920 Census:  Adam J. Zaun (he was called Adam), Georgia E., Pauline W., William J., Ernest E., John A. Jr., Georgia A. (Agnes) 

Could two different census takers 10 years apart be wrong?  The 1930 census information could be dismissed because of inconsistencies, but the 1920 census is clear.  If the information is incorrect, why would both documents contain the same error?  But unless I find another kind of proof, I have to conclude both census documents are incorrect.  The 1940 census gives Virginia as her birthplace:

1940 Census:  John A. Zaun, Georgia, John A. Jr.

Evidence proves that her parents, Jefferson Monroe and Marie Louise Powell, lived in Richmond in 1880 and again in 1893, but I can find no record for Georgia's birth year, 1885.  It seems highly unlikely that Jefferson and Marie would go briefly to Iowa and have a child, then return to have their other children in Virginia... DRUM ROLL.... but they did!

UPDATE! July 11, 2015:  In Marie Louise Powell's obituary, which I just obtained from a cousin on Ancestry, it says that the Powells lived for a brief time in the Valley of Virginia and in the "Middle West!"
So an Iowa birthplace for Georgia Ella Powell now makes sense.

Fort Lee, New Jersey

My Aunt Teeny gave me a framed picture that had been sent to her mother years ago.  It was a sepia-toned picture of an old Episcopal church. Under the picture it said, "Episcopal Church Parker Avenue, Fort Lee, N. J."  She supposed it was the Abbott family's church and wondered if it would help me with my research. 

[Bonnie Abbott Bryant and May Abbott Cowan, half sisters of George Wright Abbott: George Wright Abbott > Jacqueline D. Abbott > John B. Zaun > Teresa Zaun Austin]

I first had to find out the name of the church.  I did a search on Google maps of Episcopal churches in Fort Lee, and there was only one that possibly fit our family's location in the city.  But this church was on Palisades Avenue, and it was much larger.  Hmmm.  I zoomed in and looked around a little in street view and discovered that there was a Parker Avenue that ran parallel to Palisades behind the church.  A closer inspection found that the larger part of the building facing Palisades has been added onto the original smaller building facing Parker.  Bingo!  It was called the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Then, on a whim, I lifted up the corner of the picture and to my surprise found that it was a postcard!  There was writing on it too... it was a message sent to my great great Aunt Rebecca "Bonnie" Abbott Bryant from her sister May in 1917.  Rebecca's grandson Matt is one of my newfound cousins on Ancestry, so I wrote to him about the postcard.  Very cool.  He told me that it was May's grandson, Ray Eggers, Jr., who compiled most of the Abbott family genealogy back in the days when it took a lot of years of traveling to get information.  Coincidentally, I am in possession of all of Mr. Eggers' correspondence with my Aunt Miriam.

I've been wondering how the Bryants and Abbotts met each other.  The Abbott family were well known piano makers in Fort Lee.  Charles Bryant from Virginia became a piano dealer in Fort Lee.  Rebecca Abbott married Charles' brother William Bryant.  Charles' sister Ida - my great grandmother - married Rebecca's half brother George Abbott.  Did they meet through the piano business or did they meet in that little church on Parker Avenue?  Who met who first? (Later I learned that William Bryant had taken the new railroad to NJ from Southampton, Va. to find work, and met Bonnie Abbott, a coworker in a hat factory in Fort Lee. That was probably the first Bryant-Abbott connection). 

I bought a book from Amazon called Music in New Jersey, 1655 - 1860.  I was hoping it would answer these questions, but it included only a couple of pages about the Abbott Piano Factory.  Still, very interesting. Post Script: I gifted the book to Matt and Natalka Weismantel.

Asking the Right Questions

erroneous obit

I had reached a stalemate with my family tree - sketchy details with lots of contradictions and unclear relationships.  I started asking questions, and writing them down.  I identified potential sources of information and tested them out. Answering one question led to three more questions.  I am filling up a notebook with questions!  My notebook has tables, and charts, and maps, and lists... organizing the information in a variety of configurations brings up even more questions.  This strategy has given my research such a giant boost, I can't keep up with all the information I'm digging up!

I started with my simplest question:  Was my great grandfather, George Wright Abbott, the son of Gertrude or Sarah?  Records showed Sarah was his mother, but his obituary named Gertrude (his father's first wife).  I knew Gramp Abbott lived with his daughter Miriam when he died - surely she would have known the identity of his mother?  My potential source:  Aunt Teeny (Miriam's daughter).  When I asked, Teeny told me that her mother Miriam had collapsed when Gramp died and was barely able to function much less write an obituary, so the people at Bliley's Funeral Home wrote it.  So there it is:  the obituary is wrong because strangers wrote it.  Mystery solved.  I am confident in saying that Sarah was his mother.

Another question:  Who was Ida Rene's mysterious first husband?  As far as anyone in the family knew, my great grandmother Ida was married only twice - to William B Butler and to George W Abbott. However, the transcription of her marriage record to William Butler gave her name as "Ida Rena [Bryant] Williams."  So who was this Williams guy?  Also, curiously, Ida and William Butler were married in Princess Anne County, though her family was from Southhampton County.  How did she end up in Princess Anne County? This question took me on an adventure to unexpected places.

from Wikipedia:  Princess Anne County in 1895

I decided that the key was with Ida's twin sister Addie.  I started following tangents on her life.  Addie's grandson Charlie Fletcher told me years ago that the family once lived in Princess Anne County, in the Blackwater area.  So maybe this was the connection to the Williams fellow?  Another Ancestry researcher wrote that Eley Bryant, Ida and Addie's father, farmed the "Land of Promise Plantation" in Princess Anne County.  A search on Google maps proved that Land of Promise Road intersects Blackwater Road in what is now Virginia Beach.  This researcher also wrote that Eley was Southern Baptist - the nearest baptist church at the time was located at the corner of Princess Anne Road and....drum roll....Williams Farm Road. Williams?! Could this be the family?  My mother used to buy vegetables from Williams Farm when I was little.  I still haven't identified Ida's first husband, but I'm getting warmer.  The next step is to search the church's records or the Virginia Beach Courthouse records.

Land of Promise-Blackwater - still mostly farms

The Addie tangent led to answers to other questions that I wasn't even asking.  I discovered that she and Blucher moved to Ocean View by 1930.  She and her mentally disabled adult daughter Ruth lived in the same boarding house on Peachtree Street as her son Blucher, his wife Catherine, and their sons Phillip and Charles. This possibly explains why my grandfather Ernie moved from Richmond to Ocean View when he came to Norfolk to look for work - he briefly lived in a boarding house near Addie.  It also ties in with Charlie Fletcher's stories about growing up in Ocean View and remembering my grandfather there.

This tangent led to yet another discovery, one that has been haunting me ever since my son Adam bought a house on Newport Avenue in Norfolk.  Which house on Newport Avenue did my dad live in as a boy? In a search for my grandfather Ernie's address in Ocean View, I stumbled on his address on Newport Ave in a 1952 city directory - there it was - 4306.

"Gramp" standing in front of 4306 Newport Ave in 1954.

4306 Newport Ave today