My great-great-grandmother on my paternal side was Isabelle Gertrude Kendig. As a child, two tiny framed paintings hung on the dining room wall at my grandmother’s house. Grandma would point to each little girl and say, “This is Isabelle, and this is her sister Rosa.” Of course, now that I have these two little framed pieces, I know they are hand-painted photographs in ornate ceramic frames.
In fact, as a family historian, I am willing to accept everything related to the family. Any item could hold the key to a mystery or connect dots I have yet to see.
Specifically, if I have
the family “stuff,” I can
triple-check for clues.
For instance, family lore says that Isabelle’s husband, Martin Kendig, was arrested the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., because he looked very much like John Wilkes Booth.
In fact, he does look like Booth. Nevertheless, I haven’t found anything to validate this family tale. Despite scouring old newspapers and various accounts of that fateful night, I saw no mention of Kendig.
With this in mind, I decided to deepen my research on Isabelle and Martin. I chose to start by proving that he was in the D.C. area at the time of the murder (April 15, 1865). Moreover, my grandmother had laid claim to genealogy on my father’s side of the family. I had never done much exploration on my own. Vital records—birth, death, marriage, and federal census—are the building blocks of any individual in our family tree. So, I started gathering these first.
The first census record
I opened on Ancestry
was from 1860.
The Kendigs lived in Philadelphia with their two young daughters. Also, I noticed my great-great-grandmother was 36 years old and wondered how common it was back then to have children so late. In addition, the census record showed five other children living in the household, aged 7-18.
Unfortunately, the early Federal Census doesn’t list relationships to the head of household as later ones do. Therefore, none of the children’s names were familiar.
Furthermore, the 1870 Census shows them living in the District of Columbia. They now have a third child, a son named after his father, Martin. In addition, four young adults, aged 17 to 26, also live with them on this record.
I opened the 1860 census again and took a closer look. The child not listed in 1870 is the eldest, Anna Gassaway, but the other four are there.
Gassaway? I have never encountered the
Gassaway surname.
These two records show that the family moved during the decade between them, making it plausible they were in D.C. when Booth shot Lincoln. I am suddenly less curious about whether people mistook Martin for Booth.
I located Martin alone on the 1850 census at age 26 in California, so I turned my attention to Isabelle. An ancestry.com hint led me to find Isabelle Gassaway living in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., with her husband Stephen and five children.
I ransacked my mind for any snippet I heard in childhood that may have mentioned Kendig as a second marriage and turned up nothing.
Earlier, I mentioned that my grandmother had taken on her genealogy long before I knew I was interested. She was an old-school pedigree genealogist. She stuck to the bloodline. Conversely, most of us fortunate enough to ride the wave of digitized records enjoy researching to the left and right of our direct lines.
These two darling little girls in the photographs were far from the only daughters of a couple who found each other in their 30s. I pushed my chair back to locate the photo I had of Isabelle. I thought about how incomplete my assumptions were. Did my grandmother know about the Gassaways?
When I finally emerged from the depths of my research, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Isabelle had truly endured so much before she met Martin; this was a sobering realization.
She married her first husband, Rev. Stephen G. Gassaway, when she was 18 and had four boys and two girls in 10 years.
On the July 1, 1850 census, I found them living in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., with an infant son named Lewis.
I never saw him recorded anywhere after that, so I turned to newspapers.com and found a blurb about the baby’s death on July 7, 1850, a week after the census taker had counted him.
In November of that year, Rev. Gassaway preached to his congregation of 8 years for the last time. Then, he moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri, where a daughter, Clara, was born in May 1853.
Nine months later, an unspeakable tragedy occurred.
Rev. Stephen Gassaway was aboard the steamship Kate Kearny on his way to lecture in Springfield, Illinois, when the boiler exploded. The boat had barely pulled away from the dock in St. Louis.
His injuries were extensive. As volunteers carried him across the levee, someone in the crowd recognized his tie and identified him as Rev. Gassaway. Despite severe burns, a fractured skull, and a leg broken in two places, his friends carried him to his home. He died several hours later without regaining consciousness. He was 35 years old.
Isabelle moved with her five children,
ages 10, 9, 5, 4, and 1,
back home to her parents in Philadelphia.
Three years later, she married Martin Kendig, and their children were born over the following three years. This information challenges every assumption about my great-great-grandmother and her family. She was not the second-born child of a woman who found love in her thirties. She was the eighth born to a woman who had buried a son and lost her husband in a horrific accident.
If her second husband, Martin, was indeed arrested for the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, I wonder if it phased her at all. She had to know it was a mistake that would get cleared up. She was busy with eight children at home under the age of 14. I imagine her entire demeanor as a parent had to be influenced by the losses she had endured.
The portraits of these little girls made me think that Martin and Isabelle must have raised them in a refined, quiet home where they sat for photographs and were doted on. That is to say, I thought they were fancy.
Now, I wondered if their dresses were hand-me-downs.
not 2nd born.
Genealogy demands flexibility, openness, and a willingness to explore paths revealed by your work. It’s not just about tracing names and dates; it’s about piecing together the intricate riddle of human history. The winding nature of puzzling the bits and pieces of the past can forever change how you look at a family photo and ignite the fire to pursue more and more detail.
As you uncover records, letters, and documents, you piece together these fragments of their lives. However, the process is rarely straightforward. It’s more like navigating a labyrinth, where every turn might lead to a discovery or a dead end.
For this reason, you must be flexible and ready to change your approach as new information comes to light. One document might contradict another, leading you to re-evaluate your assumptions. For instance, a single name might have been spelled differently in various records, requiring you to consider all possibilities.
Openness is essential.
Genealogy often reveals unexpected connections and surprises. You might find that your ancestors came from a different part of the world than you thought or lived through historical events you never knew they experienced. This openness extends to understanding the broader historical context, as knowing the social, economic, and political environments of the times can provide valuable insights into your ancestors’ lives.
The journey of genealogy can transform you.
It changes how you see the past and understand your place in the present. Family photos become more than just images; simply put, they are windows into the lives of those who came before you. Each thread you follow can lead to a deeper understanding of your heritage and a stronger connection to your roots.
In Short, genealogy is more than a hobby—it’s a passion that fuels a relentless quest for knowledge. It teaches patience, perseverance, and the importance of context. The fire it ignites within you can drive you to explore archives, visit ancestral homes, and connect with distant relatives. Every tiny thread is a clue, and every discovery brings you closer to unraveling the rich tapestry of your family history.
Leave a Reply