Beacon Street

J. H. Carter: 1889 - 1952

Back in May, I blogged about my father and what a cool guy he was. I wish I’d known him longer. Wish I’d known him when he was a younger man. I think I take after him in some ways – I ponder, I reflect, I take forever to do the grocery shopping. So many labels to read, prices to compare, recipes to consider. Thinkers, he and I.

He, however, is the reason we are different. He was a father, my father, the father I knew all my life. He gave me siblings as well. He, on the other hand, was an only child whose father left him at an early age. My dad was, I believe, younger than ten when his father James left him and his mother in Carlsbad, New Mexico and went back to Arkansas where he was from. Pretty much end of story. Or so I thought.

While doing some genealogy work, I routinely ordered a copy of my paternal grandfather’s death certificate. I wanted to find out how he died, because my late father rarely said a word about him. My sister mentioned that Dad once told her he’d seen his father occasionally as an adult, and his father was living near Los Angeles. When the death cert arrived, I was quite surprised to see the informant’s name:  Mary Carter, spouse. Well, my grandmother’s name was Mabel, and she’d been dead for seven years by the time James passed away.

Also on the certificate I found his burial place. On Mother’s Day, 2009, my husband and I trekked down to Hawthorne, California, and with some assistance, found a grave site belonging to James Henry Carter. Nearby, about one plot’s breadth away, was a headstone for Mary Magalene Carter. The second wife. I sighed, I took a photo, and then I examined the brief eulogy:  Loving wife… and mother…” Mother?

Excited, I resumed my research. Mary had survived James by a couple of years. If she was, in fact, a mother, would it be reasonable to assume that the informant on her death certificate might be her child?

It took me awhile to get around to getting her death certificate, because all such requests now have to be notarized. I did finally get the cert last month, and couldn’t wait to tear it open. The informant’s name was Ellen. (To protect the privacy of those still living, I’m leaving out the family name.) I started Googling her name, and unbelievably, she came up on someone’s elaborately built family tree on-line. Her birth name was Flora Ellen Carter, and after some digging around I found her married name, and the names of her two children and their children.

I was astonished. My father had a half-sister, who was now also deceased. I had cousins I’d never met. How bizarre. But how to find them? Hmmm. Where would one go? FACEBOOK, of course!

And sure enough, I found Flora’s son (I’ll call him “Sam”, although that is not his name). Sam has a FB page. I couldn’t  see too much about him, but he looks like a nice man with an adorable twenty-something daughter who’s just recently had twins. They all live on the East Coast.

I wrote to “Sam” by FB message and explained who I was, and that I just wanted to get in touch. I have only one photo of my grandfather (see above), and I thought he might have a picture to share or a story to tell. This was a couple of weeks ago. He hasn’t written back, so, thinking perhaps he just doesn’t check in on FB, I wrote to his daughter, who seems much more actively involved in the social network community. She has not responded either.

It’s sad that after coming so far, I didn’t get a response. Maybe they think I’m a stalker. Maybe they don’t want old stories dredged up. Maybe Grandpa Jim was a black sheep. Maybe the whole family is running from the mob. Maybe they ARE the mob! Indeed, their surname is Italian…

For now, this is the end of the story. But if I get a response from my erstwhile relations, I’ll let you know!