Memento Mori: Armistice Day - 11 November 1918

Listen to the Moment the Guns Fell Silent Ending World War I. A new exhibit at the Imperial War Museum uses seismic data collected during the war to recreate the moment the Armistice went into effect.

[Imperial War Museum]

You can read how the sound was re-created in this Smithsonian article..

 © 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: George Henry Thomas (1887 - 1970) Soldier

George Henry Thomas is the oldest son of Ashtabula (Lyle) and Seth P. Thomas, which makes him one of my third cousins, twice removed. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on August 2, 1918, as a private.* He rose rapidly to private, first class in early December, was named a corporal several weeks later, raised to a sergeant in January, 1919, ending as a sergeant 1st class in March and being honorably discharged on April 2, 1919. I haven't been able to learn if he was ever sent to Europe.

[George H. Thomas in suit, tie & jacket, undated; posted by VickieHill56 on an Ancestry.com tree.]

[Registration State: Ohio; Registration County: Gallia; Roll: 1832199. Source Information

Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm.]

[Ancestry.com. Ohio Soldiers in WWI, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: The Official Roster of Ohio Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the World War, 1917-18. Columbus, OH, USA: The F.J. Heer Printing Co., 1926.]

[George H. Thomas in uniform; posted by VickieHill56 on an Ancestry.com tree.]

[George H. Thomas & friends in uniform; posted by VickieHill56 on an Ancestry.com tree.]

[George H. Thomas (top left) with Barracks buddies; posted by VickieHill56 on an Ancestry.com tree. ]

[George H. Thomas (front center) with WWI buddies, packed and ready to go; posted by VickieHill56 on an Ancestry.com tree. ]

*It appears that he joined a regiment of engineers but I haven't been able to find out more about his service.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: Pete Slater Writes Home - March 31, 1919 (Part IV)

In this last installment of the letter written by my great uncle Pete Slater he detailed his experience in the advance troops of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive* which ended on the day the armistice was signed and "the big show was over."

[29 May 1919, Page 8 - The Severyite at Newspapers.com]

*Here's a good source of information including some photographs of the offensive.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: Pete Slater Writes Home - March 31, 1919 (Part III)

Continuing with the third part of Pete Slater's letter to his great uncle describing his experiences on the battlefields of France during World War I. Up to this point in his deployment he had not seen much action but that changed. During this action all the officers and half of the men in his company had been killed.

[22 May 1919, Page 10 - The Severyite at Newspapers.com]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: Pete Slater Writes Home - March 31, 1919 (Part II)

Here ise the second of a series of articles from the The Severyite of a letter sent by my great uncle George Logan "Pete" Slater to his great uncle Albert Ross Tomlinson back in Kansas describing his experiences during World War I.

[15 May 1919, Page 8 - The Severyite at Newspapers.com]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: Pete Slater Writes Home - March 31, 1919 (Part I)

In my post last week I shared a clipping from The Severyite with a letter my maternal great uncle George Logan "Pete" Slater wrote to his uncle A.R. Tomlinson* just before he was shipped off to France and lamented that we didn't know more about Pete's wartime experiences.

I spoke too soon.**

This week I found a series of articles in the same newspaper referring to another letter Pete wrote to his uncle from Germany four months after the Armistice was signed.

[8 May 1919, Page 8 - The Severyite at Newspapers.com]

 
Come back next week for the next installment.


*Alfred Ross Tomlinson (1847-1923) was Pete's maternal grandfather's brother.
**Hint: I've found that relying on a single search on Newspapers.com doesn't turn up everything on the subject you're searching for. Every time I repeat my search I get new hits. It pays to try and try again!

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: United States Formally Declares War on Germany - April 6, 1917

President Wilson declared war on Germany 101 years ago today. Newspapers in Greenwood County, Kansas, where my Slater kin were living at the time, were weeklies published on Thursdays but their readers wouldn't have been surprised because of articles like this one from the preceding day's Democratic Messenger:

[5 Apr 1917, Page 1 - Democratic Messenger at Newspapers.com]

Seven months later a letter from my maternal grand uncle George Logan "Pete" Slater was published on the front page of the Severyite:

[8 Nov 1917, Page 1 

The Severyite at Newspapers.com]

I've written several posts about Pete's military record which you can find here and here. He had joined the U.S. Marines in 1915 at the age of 29 and had been just promoted to Corporal around the time of this letter.

I haven't found any more reports from Corporal (later Sergeant) Slater so I don't know what he experienced during his tour of duty abroad.

This is the man who ran for the U.S. Congress as a Socialist several times in the 1930s.




© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Pigeon Bus, Verdun - 1916

During the week Bonnie and I spent in Paris during my 2014 trip to France one of the places we went was the  Musée de la Grande Guerre. Opened in 2011 on the site of the 1914 Battle of the Marne, this museum houses a collection of artifacts of World War I imaginatively displayed. There are even full-size recreations of the types of trenches used by the opposing armies on opposite sides of the largest hall.

My single favorite item in the museum was this "pigeon bus" used by Allied forces as mobile coops for homing pigeons.

[From my personal collection]

Although Union generals made extensive use of the telegraph during the American Civil War fifty years before, battlefield conditions in World War I made it impracticable because the lines were either lost in the mud or destroyed by enemy action. That left homing pigeons as the best choice for carrying messages.**

 According to Google Translate, the label for this object also on display at the Musée describes it as a "hand-made pigeon holder"

[From my personal collection]

*If you want to read more about the use of these birds during the war, here's a link to a Smithsonian article on the subject.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: Mississippi World War I Statement of Service Cards and Indices

Herbert W Porter's service card, from the Mississippi World War I Statement of Service Cards and Indices.

My great grandmother Letta Estella Porter's brother Herbert W "Dutch" Porter (1899-1975) was a World War I veteran, but I just couldn't find his service record anywhere (Ancestry, Fold3, or FamilySearch records).

He was a printer born in Mississippi and later lived in Chicago, where he also served as a chaplain for the Illinois Reserve Militia (World War II) association, but I suspected he didn't originally enlist in Illinois.  Following a lead in a Biloxi, Mississippi newspaper article that listed him among other local boys signing up with the Mississippi 2nd infantry (he spent much of his youth in nearby Gulfport), I went to the Mississippi archives, and sure enough found his service record!

This was a good reminder to me to always check state sources.

Thank you Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

A later picture of Herbert "Dutch" Porter with his nephew, sister Letta Estella's son Tracy Warren, in 1942, I think in Michigan. By this time Herbert was a Chicago resident.  Courtesy of Tracy Warren.

My cousin James Turnbull helpfully translated the service record:
Enlisted in National Guard Gulfport Mississippi

Company G 2nd Infantry Mississippi National Guard to Nov 19, 1917
Company D 140th Mechanized Battalion to March 6, 1918
Company D 142nd Mechanized Battalion to November 1, 1918
Company D 148th Mechanized Battalion to discharge

Private 1st Class 1/17
Corporal March 14 1918
Sargent June 21 1918



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Hill Freeman Warren (1896 - 1956), MD

We've been searching for my grandfather James Chappell Warren Jr.'s older brother "Henry H." for a long time.

[Year: 1900; Census Place: Justice Precinct 1, Johnson, Texas; Roll: 1649; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 0053; FHL microfilm: 1241649. Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.]

As Christine wrote in a post focusing on their father James Chappell Warren Sr. in January of 2015:

"His son Henry was not on the 1910 Census but Nannie counted him as still living.  I am unsure of Henry's fate as I don't find him after the 1900 Census."

As you can see in the 1910 U.S. Census, although only two were still living at home, Nannie stated she had three surviving children at the time.

[Year: 1910; Census Place: Justice Precinct 1, Johnson, Texas; Roll: T624_1569; Page: 17B; Enumeration District: 0042; FHL microfilm: 1375582. Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: Thirteenth Census of the United States, Washington, D.C.]

His maternal grandfather was Henry Hill Freeman so we assumed that Henry's middle name was probably Hill too but never found a trace of that name in subsequent censuses, military or school records, or Texas death records. In our family tree Henry's profile ended in 1900. What happened to him?

Last Sunday night, since I planned to write about my great great grandmother Nannie Freeman Warren in my Monday Is for Mothers post, it seemed a good idea to take another look for her oldest son. I knew from experience that trying to locate a Henry H. Warren had proved fruitless so I decided to see what an Ancestry.com search for an H. Warren would turn up.

[Ancestry.com]

Well, the age was right and we thought there was a "Hill" in his name but Connecticut? However the next record, from Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936-2007 database, was dispositive:

[Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA:

Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.]

I had found my missing great uncle!

We still haven't found Hill Freeman Warren* in the 1910 U.S. Census but we know where he was in 1915--studying medicine at Vanderbilt University. We even have a portrait of him.

[Ancestry.com. U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012 (database on-line).]

[Detail of above yearbook page]

Hill was active in college sports. How good was he? A student representative speaking for Vanderbilt's Medical Department at a Faculty-Senior Dinner on April 16, 1915, said in part:

[Vanderbilt University Quarterly, Volume 15. page 114.

Source: Google Books]

From records published during World War II listing retired naval officers we learn than Hill enlisted as an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy on August 20, 1917, was ranked a lieutenant on June 6, 1920 and left the service on October 22, 1923.

[Ancestry.com. U.S., Select Military Registers, 1862-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors. Original data: United States Military Registers, 1902–1985. Salem, Oregon: Oregon State Library.]

From the 1920 U.S. Census we learn that Hill was then living in Newport, Rhode Island, with his Connecticut-born wife Grace (Morris) Warren.

[Year: 1920; Census Place: Newport Ward 5, Newport, Rhode Island; Roll: T625_1670; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 59; Image: 1095. Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

The couple's firstborn, Morris Hill Warren. was born in 1921 and their second child, Elizabeth, came into the world on May 20, 1923, only three weeks after my father Tracy Stuart Warren's birth in Texas.

By the 1930 U.S. Census, Hill, Grace and their family were settled in New London, Connecticut, and he was a general practitioner. His mother-in-law Grace (Morley) Morris was living with them. (They owned their house but didn't have a radio.)

[Year: 1930; Census Place: New London, New London, Connecticut; Roll: 282; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 0026; Image: 317.0; FHL microfilm: 2340017. Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.]

All five of  them were still living together in New London in the 1940 U.S. Census and Hill was now calling himself "Physician & Surgeon."

[Year: 1940; Census Place: New London, New London, Connecticut; Roll: T627_524; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 6-44. Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.]

And the Warrens are listed in the 1945 New London City Directory.**

[Ancestry.com - U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995]

As i knew from the first post-1900 record I found, my "lost" great uncle died on October 13, 1956 in Hartford, Connecticut. So far I haven't located his obituary or place of burial.




*He appears never to have used his first name as an adult.
**Checking the listings, Grace Morris was still living with them.



© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.