My Dear Aunt Shirley

My dear aunt, born Shirley Ann Tangen in February of 1945, passed away on March 28, 2020.  Because of all the Covid-19 restrictions, her immediate family was not able to have a service with extended family and friends. I decided that I would share a few memories and photos that I have to celebrate her life. The family may have some these photos but there was a housefire sometime after they moved to Oregon and how many of those were lost or who they went to, I do not know.  My mother, Bernadine, was Shirley's oldest sister and was already married.  In fact, when my parents were getting married in June of 1944, Shirley was a little "bun in the oven" and the parents hadn't told anyone of their suspicions yet. They were waiting until after the wedding! I think a lot of these photos were taken by my parents on their annual visits.  Since Mom was already gone from home, she didn't grow up with Shirley who was twenty two years younger. Shirley was more like an older cousin to me than an aunt.

Shirley Ann Tangen, 6 years old.

Shirley's father, Ole O Tangen, was son of Ole K Tangen and Ella Mae Dokken, who were Norwegian immigrants and came to this country in 1868.  (Ole K's parents were Knut Olsen Tollefsrud  and Guri Johnsdtr Aavestrud who remained in Norway.)  Ole O is the young man on the far left in the photo below.

Ole K and Ella Mae had nine children. Most of their children grew up and many became homesteaders in the Dakotas and many of their descendants are still there.  Ole O (the O doesn't stand for anything other than to differentiate him from his father Ole K) had a homestead there for awhile in Sioux County, North Dakota (1915 census). Ella Mae's parents were Nels Olson Dokken and Kristina (Christine) Trustem.  They had immigrated to the US in 1867.  They settled in Iowa near Hanlontown.

Nels Olsen Dokken and Kristina Trustem.

My mother, Shirley's oldest sibling, said she thought that this is a photo of Ole O while he was in the Dakotas.  She wasn't sure if it was Wisconsin or Dakotas but it does look like Dakotas to me!  Sometime after he began homesteading in the Dakotas, Ole O enlisted in the army in WWI and worked with the military police.  Family lore is that he was part of the security at the signing of the treaty at Versailles but we have found no way to confirm that.  He enlisted in the Army on March 29, 1918  and was discharged on July 11, 1919.

After the war, he returned to North Dakota.  He fell in love with Kathryn, daughter of Charles Vandervort and Mary McCauley.  Kathryn was only a few months old when her mother died of typhoid fever and she was raised by step-mother Ida.  Charles worked for the railroad as a machinist. Charles parents were James Baker Vandervort and Anna Mary McIntyre.  Charles' family could trace linneage back to 1624 in New Amsterdam, now Manhattan.  Mary Ann's parents were Peter McCauley and Annie Lauless, who both immigrated separately from Ireland in the mid-1800's.

VANDERVORT HOME IN TOMAH, WISCONSIN.  Charles Vandervort is in the middle of the photo and  Kathryn, his daughter and Shirley's mother, is the little girl second from the left. Ida (step-mother) is between them.

Ole Tangen

Kathryn Vandervort

Ole and Kathryn were married in 1922 the same year that Ole K passed away.  They left the homestead and came back to Iowa to try to help keep the family farm running. They did what they could to help but were not able to turn it around in time and they lost the farm for taxes.  After that Ole and Kathryn moved to Wisconsin where they would rent farms and work to support their family.  His mother, Ella Mae, lived with them until she passed away in 1942. My mother loved that their grandmother lived with them and was very sad when she passed away.

This was one of the last family photos that were taken right before they moved across the US  to Oregon. No hint of Shirley yet at the time of this photo.  This next photo is of Ella Mae with her son Ole and grandchildren, Bernadine, Marjorie and Bruce.

Shirley was not yet born while the family lived in Wisconsin.  In 1943 or thereabouts the Ole O Tangen Family, two parents and five kids, drove across the country from Wisconsin to Oregon.  Ole was apparently planning on farming but  what he had arranged before they moved fell through..  I believe he ended up at some point working at the Alcoa aluminum plant.  If I find any relatives with more information I will be happy to edit this along the way.

The Tangen family moved to Oregon in 1943 and moved into a house on Division Street in Gresham sometime within the first year or so.  Here is a birdseye view of their property.  I don't know what year this was taken but looks very much like what I remember.  

  

The large building in the center of the photo was a tire company business.  Just above that you can see a long and skinny driveway with a house and garage near the back of the property.  The house sits almost dead center in the photo a quarter of the way down from the top. My parents (my dad was in the Air Force) tried to make sure that we would get back to see family as much as possible. I have lots of fond memories of the time spent there.

 This is sister L along with Shirley at six months old.    

These two  may be the earliest photos of Shirley.  Photo says this is with sister Marjorie and that Shirley is 6 months old.

Shirley's dad Ole was a kind and loving man!!

And this is one of the earlier ones with just Shirley and her parents.  

Easter would have been on April 21st in 1946 so Shirley here could be about 14 months old. Kathryn must have been taking the photograph!

 Shirley and her mom in 1946

Shirley hanging onto the dining room chair.  The table, chairs and buffet came from Ole and Kathryn and my mother said they were a wedding present from Charles and Ida (stepmom) Vandervort.  I think they were to go to someone else after Grandma Kathryn passed away, but after 10 years of the dining room set sitting in my parent's basement unclaimed, I took them and we've lived happily ever after!!  I figured if they ever got claimed I could give them back but no one has asked in 30 years.

 Looking good!!

 Things weren't apparently going very well this fine evening!  

 At some point in time there was a fire in the house.  I don't know if this is some of the debris left over or what this was.  I don't have personal memories of it!

Bernadine with Shirley, along with sister M.

I love this photo of Shirley and her parents.

 Looks like this is birthday #6!

This is the way that I remember the grandparents home.  This is the same house from a different vantage point.  We spent hours playing croquet in this yard.  There was a hammock in the backyard along with an Italian prune tree.  Yum! I can't be sure but based on age I think it is likely that it could be Shirley in the photo or myself on a visit. Most likely Shirley.  This home is where all of my direct memories of Aunt Shirley begin.  

Sister L and M with Shirley in the center! 

 Shirley in 1951 at six years of age.

Around 6 years of age! Center of the photo!

 Shirley at 6 years of age.

This photo says the date is 1954 so Shirley - 4th person from the left - would have been about nine years old.

This photo also says 1954 on it.

 Teenage Shirley with  parents and sister L.

I remember one time we visited and grandma always made huge molasses cookies  - with icing on them - mmmm!.  Shirly is on the left side of this photo and at about that age she "predicted our future" with a needle and thread.  She held the thread and the needle would act like a pendulum.  However times it crossed your wrist and in which directions was the objective of knowledge.  I was supposed to have five children - a boy, three girls, and a boy.  Oh well, so much for that!!  I also remember little bowls of vanilla ice cream with LOTS of Hershey's Syrup.  If Shirley was to rein in the cousins she wasn't very effective.  She had the room that looked out over the garage and she would climb out and sit on the roof.  We thought she was so clever and grown up!  My memories are only for the various trips that we made.

 Same visit with all the sibling.   This was likely taken not too long before Ole passed away from Leukemia.  

 This is a photo of the siblings in 1975 -- oldest to youngest - Bernadine, Marjorie, Bruce, M, L and Shirley.

Shirley was married twice.  With her second husband Alan she had their son who shared his first birthday with them in 1981.

In 1986 this is photo of Shirley at her oldest son's wedding.

Around 1990 Shirley and her husband took a trip to Hawaii

This photo was taken about 1997 at a 50th wedding anniversary party.  Shirley is second from the right.   

(I do not identify names of living people in my blog other than with an initial or just by relationship)

It is sad that Shirley had the misfortune to pass away during this Covid-19 pandemic (of other causes) which has impacted our lives in so many ways.  I am sure she was welcomed into heaven by a large group of extended family and friends but we were unable to give her an appropriate send off. I would have loved to have been there to remember so many things with others who love her. I know that the Lord knows our length of days from beginning to end and was not caught by surprise. I hope that these early photos and memories are a blessing and a virtual contribution celebrating her life. Go with Jesus, Aunt Shirley. He loves you and we love  you as well. You are not forgotten.

The Daunting Task of Finding Generations of Grandparents

This blog has covered a lot of topics over the years so I'll just remind those interested (or that just happen by), that I segued my Lighthouse blog into mostly family history because of inheriting at least a couple of thousand letters.  Most of the letters span from 1880-1930 to and from my great grandmother and her mother and grandmother as well as a variety of their other extended family members and friends. I also spent the last couple of years adding all my Great Uncle George's WWI letters (a separate blog linked here)  from "Somewhere in France."

My husband has been very supportive of this amazing history project and we have made several trips to New England to find relatives.  We started our search at Topsham, VT, then later went back another generation to Washington, NH and then an even further generation back to family in Dedham, MA.  After piecing together a lot of scattered information over the past couple of years and tracking down marriage and death certificates, I was able to document being a direct descendant of Francis Cooke who came to Plymouth, New England, on the Mayflower along with his son John in December 1620.  We have had a lot of fun tracking down and "visiting dead relatives" around New England over the last decade.  They are all really quite cooperative being "at home" when we drop in although they are not much for conversation.

Before 2006 I knew none of this. Our success with this endeavor is much due to the excellent record keeping of the Topsham, Vermont Town Hall which is where we began.  If we had started elsewhere we might have given up long ago.   Several years ago we documented the life and death of Rosina Healy Richardson and her husband Robert Richardson.  Their daughter Rosina Jane Richardson Stevens had lamented in a thin journal of the unexpected loss of her mother in June of 1872.  In the second entry of her journal she talked of having visited "the grave of my mother" and noted that a "stream ran by it."  When we visited the same spot year 146 years later the stream (Tabor branch of the Waits River) was still alongside, chiming over the stones in the river bed on its way to join the Connecticut River as tho no time at all had passed.

It seems like we are making progress as we hunt down relatives and documentation, but as we fill in blanks here and there, at the same time new paths keep opening up to us and what we haven't researched keeps expanding.  Every generation we add doubles the number of parents and so the more we know the more questions come up that need to be answered. The number of direct grandparents keeps expanding exponentially.  Here's how it works.

First generation 1 - just me
Second generation (my parents) -  2
Third generation (grand parents) -  4
Fourth generation (great grandparents) -  8
Fifth generation (g-g grandparents - 16
Sixth generation (g-g-g grandparents (In my case includes Rosina Healy Richardson, the lamented mother and her husband noted  above) - 32
Seventh generation - 64
Eighth generation  - 128 (we are starting to get a lot of grandparents)
Ninth generation - 256
Tenth generation - 512
Eleventh generation - 1024
Twelfth generation - 2048
Thirteenth generation - 4096
Fourteenth generation - 8192  (This is where Mayflower and Francis Cooke come in.)
Fifteenth generation - 16,384
Sixteenth generation - 32,768
Seventeenth generation - 65,536
Eighteenth generation - 131,072
Nineteenth generation - 262,144
Twentieth generation - 524,288
And look what happens at the Twenty First generation - 1,048,576

(To my surprise a distant cousin posted this exact mathematical information on Facebook since I had completed the math on this draft - altho hers was written so it looked like a conifer "tree."  Hers was much more artistic and creative in style, but the info is the same.

Not many of us family history addicts get past thirteen or fourteen generations no matter how far and wide we search (unless one discovers direct royal ancestry and that is usually well documented -- that hasn't happened to me so far), but there is no shortage of little branches that we can explore while looking for yet another elusive grandparent or a flock of grandparents, aunts and uncles.

This last October 2019 we went looking for details for another branch of the family.  Rosina Healy Richardson (the lamented mother referenced above) had passed away in June of 1872.  Rosina was married to Robert A. Richardson, the man whose face is featured in the photo above --taken on  his 80th birthday in 1885.  Robert's father was Robert Fletcher Richardson.  Robert Fletcher R was the son of Zechariah Richardson and Sarah Barnes.  We have not adequately confirmed the identity of  Zechariah's Richardson parents but we were able to establish the connection to Sarah's parents while visiting our living family in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  Sarah's parents were Captain Thomas Barnes and Rachel (Barrett) Barnes of Merrimack, NH.  Rachel lived about 4 years after her daughter's wedding and passed away in 1777 in Merrimack, NH. Rachel and her husband Capt. Thomas were land owners in Merrimack and there is a photo in the Merrimack History Book of their original home. It was later dismantled with plans to rebuild it elsewhere in town but that never happened.  Surprisingly, my brother and his family live only about two or three miles from the site of the original Town Hall of Merrimack and the cemetery where we found our great-great-great-great-great Grandmother Rachel (Barrett) Barnes.

After young Zechariah and his wife Sarah moved to Francistown NH they had several children, one of whom was Robert Fletcher Richardson born on October 17, 1778.  Robert Fletcher Richardson married Dorcas Hardy of Bath, New Hampshire.  Their son Robert A was also born in Bath, NH and later they moved to Topsham as well.  When we first visited Topsham Town Hall we hadn't know the maiden names for either Sarah or Dorcas so it has been fun matching records in these various locations.  Zechariah and Sarah, son Robert F and Dorcas and grandson Robert A and his wife Rosina all began elsewhere but all ended up buried in Topsham, VT.

Captain Thomas  Barnes, when widowed of Rachel Barret Barnes, later moved to Vermont and married again.  He is buried in Pomfret, Vermont.  Rachel is buried in the old Turkey  Hill Cemetery seen below.  Ancestry.com information indicates that there was a smallpox epidemic in Merrimack in  1777 so that might have been her cause of death. They must have been very interested and involved in the Revolutionary War that was underway at this time!  Following are pictures taken of our adventure in Merrimack.   Last photo is of the only Merrimack casualty in the Revolutionary War.

Original Cemetery in Merrimack ,New Hampshire

Original meeting house which was used until 1872 when a new building was built.  Fire destroyed the original building in 1896.

Here is an overview of the cemetery with Rachel's headstone being the closes on the right side of the photo.

Lichen loves to grow on this slate but other than that, these stones are very hard and have withstood almost 250 years of weathering.  Much better than other options! 

My husband knew our goal was to have a legible photo of the stone and so he had brought the little brush from my brother's home and off he went to work on it.  

Momento Mori

Erected in memory of Mrs. Rachel  Barns the wife of Captain Thomas Barns who departed this life April 26, 1777 AD, 53 years 2 months and 9 days.

(A Momento mori is a reminder that death comes to all and to live well the time allotted to you.)

Here is information above and below about meeting house and cemetery that is available at this location.

Merrimack only lost one soldier in the Revolutionary War.  Reuben Cumings, honored here, joined the military when 14 and fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill.  He was later promoted to drummer.  He died and was buried near Fort Ticonderoga.

2019 Snow Pocalypse

 

This year started out here in the Pacific Northwest with quite a mild fall and winter.  We were having a great time enjoying that weather and commiserated with our extended families about the historic Arctic Blast (Polar Vortex) of cold that invaded the Midwest and brought even that section of the country to a halt with temperatures of -28 degrees F for our families. Then came February 2nd --  Groundhog Day where Punxsutawney Phil (the little rat) assured us of an early  Spring. The next day (Super Bowl Sunday) it started snowing. It started accumulating and by 10:00 in the evening we were getting some significant inches.  I discovered that my phone has a mind of its own regarding stills and videos!!  So I ended up with lots of teeny videos and no stills. So I can't use the photo taken Sunday evening!

On Monday morning the 4th at 7:30 we continued with the first round of snow until we had a full six inches by the end of the day.

Feb. 4th at 7:40 in the morning - quite a first snowfall of the year,

On the 5th at 1:00 in the afternoon we got a little break and some sunshine!  I planned a work trip up north for the 6th and the roads to the freeway turned out to be a bit of a mess but the highway was clear.  Usually about this time we get those nice warm breezes off the Pacific and soon our snow melts away.  Rather than the typical cycle this time we got more cold and more snow.  A lot of the original snow had melted or settled but round two was on its way.

   My husband woke me up at 2:00 in the morning on the 9th and said I "had" to get up and take a look! A couple of days before he had suggested the same thing but I figured it  would look the same in the morning so what was the rush!  But this time I cooperated - like to do that every now and then.  "Out of My Window I can See" across the row of backyards.

At the same 2:00 AM summons --, across the cul-de-sac.  The large Japanese maple is very weighed down with the snow.  

 Five hours later on the 9th - another brighter view of the soft fluffy flakes. 

 Another view of the front yard 9th at 7:30 AM 

Around the neighborhood on a snow day!

 Since there was no trash pickup that week because of the snow, the whole neighborhood has photos of the garbage cans waiting in vain on the curb.

Another view of  the 9th in the morning

9th - temperature gauge tucked out of the way.  this was at my parents home for decades and it still works very well! 

My Husband's picturesque Weeping Japanese Maple Art 

 

The snow system kept on coming and our church cancelled services for Sunday because of the steep  hills to try to get up to get to the building AND an even more  precarious concern of stopping at the light at the bottom of the grade when driving back home. So we stayed  home and stayed safe.

By Sunday evening the 10th the blanket had become thicker and thicker - around 10 PM

 10th in the evening -- the snow is not built up from shoveling snow.  The footprints are mostly the dog and cat and occasionally the husband.  It was still snowing!

Feb. 11th in the morning

11th at 5:00PM

 

 

11th 7:30 PM - looking at the snow in the driveway waiting behind the car tucked nicely inside the dry garage.  I often say that my favorite room in the house is the garage.  I never have to scrape the windows or get rained on while unloading the groceries. 

 Across the cul-de-sac

 11th -- well look at that.  Super Bowl was over but our Seahawks Wreath was still up!  The only color in this series!  Lots of little icicles hanging there above the wreath.

Feb. 12th at 7:30 AM

Obviously we've had a little melting here and there!

Snow covered backyard view.

 

 Truck with an all-around berm of snow! 

Pretty much the height of our snow.  A lot of work to remove it!

 12th at 7:PM.  I had been considering the 13th for  my weekly trip north but I think not.  I think this was the full depth of our snowfall.  Just shy of 16 inches in the center and this does not take into account some melting the week before, settling and evaporation.  I put a contract out on Punxsutawney Phil and started hoping for spring. He really is cute but  his job skills are abysmal!

After this things slowly began melting. Actually, was very happy that it stayed chilly and that we didn't have flooding all over the region!  We've done that on occasion too!

 

 

The deck had been shoveled off as it began to melt -- 13th in the afternoon.

February 15th - slowly the snow disappears!

The squirrels even seemed to get into the act and created a snow-squirrel of their very own design! This was completely undesigned or touched by human hands.

15th - snowmelt is picking up speed

After ten days I venture out.  The rest of my family had been coming and going but I just worked away with all the heat blowing and coffee dripping in the pot!  Why risk life and limb when you can stay home and get just as  much done. 

 Finally the mossy yard is restored to it's splendor and the regular spring bulbs continue to find their way to the surface with hope for the warmer days ahead.

 Now it's the 22nd and there are more predictions of snow for next week.  I hope the forecast is overblown.  NOO SNOOOOW

This  may be the first time that I EVER recall a February without at least one warm weekend.