In my decision this afternoon to work on family history stuff, I have made some interesting discoveries. At least, they were interesting to me. Most people will find them pretty boring, I will admit it.
I started looking at things pretty randomly. I then decided that I wanted to attach files to some of my family names on my tree. That is something that has not been done. There are a LOT of names on my tree, but nothing to really document them. Of course, I say there are a lot of names but a lot of them are not in FamilySearch.org yet. I found out that there was not a lot of information linked to me in Ancestry.com either. It was there, I just had to link it up.
Of course, I then found what we like to call the “rabbit hole” around here…
I was the “white rabbit” and I was gone…
I was actually sitting on the couch next to Lance and he asked me what I was doing. I showed him what I was doing. I showed him that I was looking at information about different family members on my family tree and attaching it to their names so I could piece their story together later.
At the time I had up a picture of an old yearbook page. It just happened to be the 1950 yearbook for the University of Wyoming (Laramie, Wyoming). On that page was my grandfather, Louis P. Hellewell. It caught Lance’s attention because I chuckled when I found my grandfather on the page.
He is the first person the left of the 2nd row. Lance got one look at the image of the page and he says “that looks like a really old picture. Like 75 years old.” I laughed and said, “It is old, but not quite that old. It was taken in 1950.” I pointed to the person that was relevant and explained how it was his grandpa’s dad. “He looks so young!” Yes, he was so young in that picture.
The part that I found interesting in this is that it documents the fact that he was actually an aspiring “medical student” at one point in his life. The story I have been told in passing is that he intended to go to medical school upon his return from the Navy. He was doing the necessary studies, however, he ran out of money and became an engineer instead. This page documents that he was at least in “Pre Med” in college as a member of Alpha Epsilon Delta.
Incidentally, my dad and his twin brother would have been about 2 years old around this time (depending on when the picture was taken). They were born in April 1948.
Now to find stuff to connect his Navy medical training to this information.
Of course, the search of “juicy” or “interesting” information does not stop here. I wanted to know more about everything I could find. I wanted to link this information to the people in my tree.
I am not 100% sure why I decided to look for information about my maternal grandfather, Allen P. Adams. I suppose I wanted to know if I could find something as fun as that yearbook page. My paternal grandfather is still living, after all, so if I can find something that fun on him what can I find on my maternal grandfather? He has been deceased for almost 19 years, surely there is something fun for him.
I did find something.
I found my Grandpa Adams Military Service Card. I thought it was interesting because it actually showed quite a bit of information about him that I knew. I knew that his rank was “SK1/C” or “Store Keeper 1st Class” as I was always told. I knew that he was in the Navy.
What I did not know outside of the fact that he served in WWII was when he served. This record shows when he was inducted (January 6, 1944) out of Fort Douglas, Utah and when his service was terminated (February 7, 1946) in Shoemaker, California. Doing the math, he only served 2 years.
Per the back of the card (and personal knowledge), I know that he served over-seas, though it does not say where. I know that he served in the Philippines. I do know that he served overseas from September 28, 1944 until February 2, 2046. He was with E10-40. I will have to look up what that means, but I assume that is his regiment number.
If I do the math, I know that he was just shy of his 29th birthday when he was “inducted.”
I also know that he was married to my grandmother at this time. I am not sure what the rules were for providing information for these cards was when it pertained to the other people on the card, but I know that “Kristy Adams” is not my grandmother’s “legal” name. Growing up, that is what I always heard her referred to as. He always called my grandmother “Kristy.” In fact, I remember everyone referring to her as “Kristy,” but I know that her legal given name was “Kristiane.”
My assumption on her usage of “Kristy” started long before even the 1940’s because of the persistent and consistent misspelling of her given name.
I found a misspelling of my maternal grandmother, Kristiane Ruby Jensen’s, name as early as the 1920 US Census. My grandmother was 2 years old. As indicated in the snapshot from the census record image, her name was spelled “Christiana” at that time. Per personal knowledge, we know that was incorrect. We can thank my Danish roots for the spelling on that as her father is indicated as being from Denmark on this census. My mother has always told me that it was the Danish spelling.
I know that she put Kristy as her name on the Birth Certificate of their stillborn child in December 1942. She was 25 years old at that time. I had a nice smile creep across my face as a saw my grandfather’s signature on this document. It was a very familiar signature. His signature was the same all these years later. Some things change over the years, but for my Grandpa Adams, evidently his signature was not one of them.
Interestingly enough, I knew that her name was incorrect on their headstone in the Houston National Cemetery. I am not 100% sure if it has been corrected as there have been changes made at the cemetery. However, the image (not a very good one) online at findagrave.com is an image that clearly indicates that the common misspelling followed her in death, “Kristiana.” Yes, that is an incorrect spelling on their headstone in the Veteran’s cemetery in Houston, Texas. Supposedly, they were redoing the headstones to upright stones, but I am not sure if it theirs has been redone yet. I am also not sure it will be corrected anytime soon if not.
I am sure if I kept looking I could find more instances of my grandmother’s name with incorrect spellings. Unfortunately, with the name incorrectly spelled it makes it a bit harder to find her on records because there are so many different ways it could have been spelled incorrectly I have found.
I am looking forward to unwinding some more about these people and walking further back their lines to find out more about them over the next few weeks.
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