Tag Archives: Anderson

Pets Are Family, Too

A Post for the OTHER Family Members

Bogie the dog

I’m a family member, too.

Today he had a suggestion. “Are you writing about your family?” “Yes.” “How come there’s no one with fur or feathers in there?”

Bogie wants to know if there are other dogs in the family history, and so do I.  Has our family always been animal lovers? Most of the pets I have stories about come from recent history.

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The History of Animal Loves

The earliest ancestors on my tree were farmers and had a different attitude about animals. Animals worked just like everybody else. The Pilgrims, we know, included dogs on the Mayflower, although I don’t know about the Fortune, on which William Bassett sailed.

Jumping ahead to the 1800s, I know that my great-grandmother Isabella McCabe Anderson loved to ride her horse through the Ohio countryside, but of course although horses could become friends, they were a necessary adjunct to life.  My grandfather Doctor William Stout even had a barn behind his house in the center of Killbuck to keep the horses who pulled his wagon when he had to go on house calls in the countryside.

Speaking of Doc Stout, I have a picture of him and a matching one of his wife that would be absolutely wonderful had they not faded to unrecognizable blobs.  However, I can make out that there is a large dog sitting at the feet of Doc Stout.

And I have written about my mother’s pet Pony, Wrangles.

Vera Anderson’s Peggy, the Spitz

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” Will Rogers

From the time my mother was in college until  I was a baby, grandma owned her favorite dog ,  Peggy. A snow white Spitz, Peggy bridged four generations of humans. She frequently sat for portraits, including one that shows my great-grandmother Hattie Morgan Stout who died before I was born.

When I was in grade school, sometimes living at Grandma Vera’s house she no longer had dogs, but she did keep lovebirds in a cage. I indignantly thought that was cruelty. Birds should fly free. But they were beautiful and kept her from being lonely with their singing.

Mom and Dad in the 1930s with Banky and Wistful Lady

My mother and father adopted dogs before they were married, in anticipation of starting a family, but they apparently did not have much luck with the dogs. In July 1937, my dad adopted a Cocker Spaniel, complete with AKA papers. She was beautiful, and named Wistful Lady. Oddly, I never heard mother and dad talk about her, even when my husband and I later adopted a similar black Cocker Spaniel. We named the beautiful brunette after Elizabeth Taylor.

Cocker Spaniel, Wistful Lady

Paul Kaser’s dog Wistful Lady 1938

Back in 1938, in the letters exchanged during their courtship two months before they married my mother talks about a dog she had picked out, called Banky. I have no pictures, and no idea what breed it was, but it seems to be a sad story.

March 22, 1938
I went home last evening and I think Bankie is some better but still pretty sick. Mother saturated him with medicine then wrapped a towel around him and held him it seemed to help. Bob Cunningham sat and held him for a long time. He thinks it is a bad case of worms. Everybody has a new theory.

March 31, 1938
I really believe Banky is better, he was much stronger this morning and ate for me and ate some for mother today, but he surely does look sad.

April 7, 1938

I don’t think Banky is so good. He wants to eat all the time but gets weaker all the time. I am afraid he never will be a very swell dog. I guess I doomed him by picking him out for my dog.

Rabbits, Ducks and Chickens

My parents married just as World War II was starting, and took the war effort seriously.  In addition to planting a victory garden, they grew rabbits for food.  I vividly remember the raised rabbit cage that my father built in the garage, even though I could not have been more than three years old.  One time when he opened the cage to add feed, the tiny bunnies escaped and scattered around the neighborhood.  I thought it was great fun.  The raising of rabbits did not last long. I don’t know if my parents were too soft-hearted, or they didn’t want to traumatize me by killing what I saw as pets.

When my parents and brother and sister and I lived in Columbus, we did not have a dog, but I vividly remember the two ducklings that first swam around in a plastic dishpan in the back yard. They grew up, and learned to open the gate from the yard and neighbors discovered them waddling down our driveway and exploring the neighborhood.  Those were probably Easter ducklings.  I think they may have been released in a nearby park to live in the pond there.

Back then, around Easter time, you could buy colored chicks (and sometimes ducks) at the grocery store, hardware store, dime store, or just about anywhere. After we had moved to Killbuck, we had a clutch of those colored chicks.  It was not a good practice to sell chicks to people who didn’t know what to do with them, but my mom and dad had it all figured out.  There was a ramshackle chicken coup on our property, which Dad repaired, and the chicks grew to be great producers of eggs.  For a short while, I was the typical farm girl out collecting eggs in the morning.

Rex, Mack and Suki, the German Shepherds

One of the great tragedies of my pre-teens was the short time that we had a lovely German Shepherd puppy that I named Rex.  I had spent a lot of time with Rex and taught him quite a few commands.  When my parents decided that Rex was going to be too large for a town lot and would enjoy life more in the country, they contacted a farmer to come pick him up.  I sat in an upstairs window and commanded Rex, who was hiding under the porch to STAY. And no matter what they used to try to lure him out, he stayed.  Finally my dad came upstairs and marched me into my back bedroom and commanded me to stay quiet. Which I did–except for the tears.

Just as Ken and I followed in the Kaser footsteps by adopting a Cocker Spaniel, we later had two German Shepherds, Mack and Suki for characters in Three Penny Opera. I am amazed to learn we have no photographs of these two wonderful family members who lived in our new Scottsdale house until they both became too ill to continue.

Kitchen the Cat and others

Soon after , Rex was wrenched away, The Kaser family adopted a calico cat that I named Kitchen, because we had just redecorated the kitchen in the colors she sported–yellow, black, brown and white.  Kitchen soon had kittens, a varied lot of four, whom I named Sugar, Spice, Salt and Pepper. (Suppose this was foretelling my early interest in cooking?)

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

VMB 1952 with kittens, Killbuck house

Me in 1952 with some of Kitchen’s kittens at our Killbuck house.

Later, when the Kasers moved to Hilliard Ohio and I was in college, cats started adopting mother and father, and there were always cats around from then on.  When my father went out to start his car on a cold winter morning he always had to check under the hood to see if there were any cats keeping warm.

So Bogie–those are the stories of some early pets in my family including those I grew up with. Now, if you want to know about those who joined our family after Ken and I were married, read on.

——————
A fellow genealogy blogger decided to join me in this effort with her SECOND post on pets in her family. You can see her furry family members on her blog, Cow Hampshire

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Read more quotes at http://dogtime.com/dog-health/general/16344-25-famous-quotes-about-dogs#vuLpjS2xMDAL3b7t.99

and at http://goodreads.com/works/quotes/tag/pets/

Jeddiah Brink:On the Brink of Finding the Brinks

[NOTE, June 2016: See Additional information in brackets below. Another child discovered!]

For Mother. Sorry we didn’t know all these things when you were still here to enjoy the journey.

Harriette Anderson Kaser

Harriette Kaser and oldest great-grandson, 1989.

Although I’m not writing a specifically Mother’s Day themed article this week, I am thinking about my mother Harriette Anderson (Kaser) as I delve into the histories of her father’s family starting with Jeddiah Brink, mother’s great-uncle. (The picture above shows her with her great grandson, as I talk about her grandmother’s family–or from the kid’s perspective–his 3x great grandmother!)

Mother never met Jeddiah, because he died 7 years before she was born, but she certainly knew a lot of the Brink family members who lived around  Killbuck, Ohio.

Mary Brink Anderson and others

Guy Anderson and Vera (holding son Herbert). Guy’s mother Mary Brink Anderson on the far right. 1909 family gathering.

First thing I have to get out of the way–Mother was wrong.  She thought that Leonard Guy Anderson’s mother’s family was Dutch, although she never emphasized her Dutch lineage.  Now I’m wading through a swamp of misleading clues and seriously doubting the nationality of my grandfather Guy Anderson’s mother, Mary Veolia Brink (Anderson)(Kline)–particularly on her father’s side. So although I asserted in an earlier post about Mary Brink and her family that her mother (Middaugh/Meddaugh) and her father (Brink) were both Dutch, I’m going to have to do a lot of work to find the truth.

Unfortunately, I even titled that post about Mary V.  Brink, “The Dutch Connection”. Whoops. But not a total loss, because it appears that the Middaugh side of her family, which I’ll get to in the next month or so, actually WAS Dutch.

Mother would have loved this process.  She didn’t like being wrong, but after all, this wasn’t HER fault–she was just passing on information that had been given to her. But she did love digging into the past and discovering new things. So Happy Mother’s Day wherever you are, mother– I wish you were here to share this.

Jeddiah Brink 1846-1914

Born in February, 1846 in Killbuck Township, Holmes County, Ohio,  Jeddiah was the oldest child in the family of Abraham (Abe) and Dorcas Middaugh Brink. He had twelve sisters and brothers, although only seven would survive to adulthood.

My great-grandmother Mary V. Brink was born when Jeddiah was twelve years old.

Like most of the boys in the family, Jeddiah grew up working on the farm. I don’t know about his schooling, but I do know that he could read and write.

Between March and May of 1865, Jeddiah (then 19) lost a three-year-old brother,  a 13-year-old brother and a 16 year-old sister. Apparently some epidemic swept through the countryside.  But Jeddiah survived and married Susanah (Susan) Fortune  the following March (1866).

Jeddiah Brink marriage

Jeddiah Brink and Susan Fortune Holmes County, Ohio marriage, 1866

Susan came from a nearby farm family, and in the census of 1860, Susan Fortune, then 15 years old, was living with the Freshwater family. It was not uncommon for a farm family to “farm out” their teenage children to work on neighboring farms, and I assume this was the case, although I do not yet have a handle on Susan’s family. I’ll leave that to descendants of Jeddiah, since my main interest is in his sister Mary (my great-grandmother).

As newlyweds, Susan and Jeddiah must have lived with one set of parents, but I do not know for sure.  Their first child, Eleanora Celestra was born in February, 1867.  (Celestra’s middle name comes from the 16-year-old sister who died the previous year.)  Now a family of three, they needed a place of their own. After all, Jeddiah’s youngest sister, Ada Ethel Brink, was born the same year, so if they were staying with his parents, Abe and Dorcas, the house was full with a baby and five other children ranging in age from 8 to 17 years old.

Here is a picture of Jeddiah’s house, but I’m going to save the story of the house–and the EXACT location- for another day.

Home of Jeddiiah Brink

Jeddiah Brink home, Killbuck Township. Picture by Jim Smith about 1996

Once Jeddiah and Susan had settled into their new home, Jeddiah was busy farming and Susan was busy with babies.

  • 1867: Eleanora Celestra Brink
  • 1870: William Alfred Brink
  • 1871: Ida V. Brink
  • 1873: Ola May Brink
  • 1875: Viola Brink [Added.  Is listed in 1880 census.
  • 1879: Frank Brink
  • 1881: Jenny Brink [Jenny showed up in our research late, since she was not with the family in 1900, and married soon after]
  • 1883: Emma Brink

Life on the farm went on, the children grew, and in 1898, Jeddiah’s father, Abe died.  For a time Jeddiah’s mother lived with daughter Mary, and Mary’s son Guy Anderson and his first wife Lillis. So my grandfather, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother were all living together.

Like the terrible tragedy of 1864 and 1865, Jeddiah and his family had a bad time in 1898 and 1899.  A year after Jeddiah’s father died, his wife, Susan died at 54.  In 1900, we see just the Emma and Jeddiah rattling around in that big farmhouse. [Added Information: The youngest daughter Jenny, at 18, was working as a maid for the Clow family in Killbuck Township.] A few months after the census was taken–October 18, 1900 to be exact, Emma married Simon Gillmore, a farmer who also lived in Holmes County.

The new century was a time of big changes. Jeddiah’s first wife had died in 1899, and the following year, some time before June, his son Frank married Matilda Bellar. (The Bellar name will figure in the history of the house pictured above.) And as mentioned above, Emma married in October 1900.

By the end of that year, Jeddiah was truly alone. But he was not destined to be alone for long.  In 1901, he married Sarah ___________. [Added: Meanwhile, the youngest daughter, Jenny, married James F. Layland in December of that same year. ]Two years later, he moved with Sarah to Perry Township, Richland County, where he occupied a farm next to one rented by his son, Frank. His son William also lived in  Richland County in 1910, although he lived in Mansfield. Daughter Elnora Brink Schonauer moved to Richland County from Coshocton County between 1910 and 1920 and finished her life there.

On the 1910 census, when he is 64 years old, Jeddiah is still listed as an active farmer. His son Frank did not stay in Richland, or in farming. After serving in the army in World War I, he moved to Columbus, Ohio where he worked for the railroad..

On the 5 of December 1914, Jeddiah died in Richland County of “apoplexy”. His death certificate information was filled in  by his daughter Ola May.

Note: Ola May married a Lepley, as did her sister Ida!

How I am Related

  • Vera Marie Kaser Badertscher is the daughter of
  • Harriette Violia Anderson Kaser who is the daughter of
  • Leonard Guy Anderson, who is the son of
  • Mary Violia Brink Anderson (Kline), who is the sister of
  • Jeddiah Brink.
  • Mary and Jeddiah are children of
  • Abraham Brink and Dorcas Middaugh Brink

RESEARCH NOTES

U. S. Federal Census 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 (Killbuck Twp, Holmes County, Ohio) and 1900, 1910 (Monroe, Coshocton Ohio); 1910, 1920,( Perry,  Richland County, Ohio);1900 (TIverton, Coshocton, Ohio), 1910 (Mansfield Ward 2, Richland, Ohio); 1920 (Mansfield Ward 1, Ohio), 1930, 1940 (Mansfield, Richland, Ohio, 1910, 1920 1930, 1940 (Columbus, Franklin, Ohio).

Image of Holmes County, Ohio marriage license for Susan Fortune and Jeddiah Brink from Ancestry.com posted by user KMannery65.

Image of Richland County Death Certificate for Jeddiah Brink from Ancestry.com, posted by user KMannery65.

Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-2007, Ancestry.com and Ohio Dept. of Health, for Jeddiah Brink Richland County, 12-5-14,; Elnora Brink Schonauer Mansfield, Richland County, 11-11-26, Ida Brink Lepley, Holmes County 17-Aug 1942, Ola May Brink Lepley .

Florida Death Index 1877-1998, William Brink Pinellas Florida, 1948.

Ohio, Find A Grave Index, 1787-2012, Internet, Ancestry.com.  For Jeddiah Brink, Susan Fortune Brink, Elnora Brink Schonauer

Ohio Births and Chistenings Index, 1774-1973, Ancestry.com, Internet. For Frank Walter Brink, William A. Brink, Emma Brink.

Web: Ohio, MOLO Obituary Index, 1811-2012,  for Ola Brink Lepley January 1934, obituary in Coschocton Tribune January 28, 1934.

Holmes County Marriage Records 1789-2013, FamilySearch.org web site. James F. Layland and Jennie Brink, 08 Dec 1901; citing Holmes, Ohio, United States, reference p 233; county courthouses, Ohio; FHL microfilm 477,147.

Holiday Recipe: Mrs. Lanham’s Fruit Cake

Fruit Cake

Mrs. Lanham’s Fruit Cake ready for Christmas.

Mrs. Lanham, who made these fruit cakes, was short and well padded. She had one of those rubbery faces that results from having teeth extracted without replacing them with false teeth. She was loving and friendly, and could always be counted on to provide some sweets to a little girl.

You can see her at the top of the page in the picture of the Anderson restaurant. The woman 2nd from the right is Grace Lanham. Her arms are folded, her apron is tidy, and she has a net on her hair.

I always knew her as Mrs. Lanham.  She would have been about 47 years old in this picture, when she was working in the restaurant that Vera and Guy Anderson, my grandparents, ran in their home in Killbuck.

Even though she is not an ancestor–or even a relative–she did wear aprons, and she was a good cook.  So I was pleased to find a recipe card in my mother’s collection that was labeled “Mrs. Lanham’s Fruit Cake” with the note at the top, “Worked for Grandmother“, in case I had forgotten who she was.

This is definitely one of the easiest fruit cake recipes you will find. So you do not need to be intimidated. And if people don’t like fruit cake, call it “raisin cake.” It is, indeed very similar to Aunt Rhema’s raisin bars.

Permanent Wave Machine

Permanent Wave Machine used in 1940s

Mrs. Lanham lived just across an alley from the Andersons, in a tiny brick house that had once been a post office. The building later served as a beauty shop where I got my first permanent on one of those machines that looked like an instrument of torture.  But I digress.

 

 

 

 

This fruit cake recipe has to be one of the simplest ones in existence.  Of course, I couldn’t just let well enough alone. I had to add a few touches.  But I resisted gussying it up by putting red and green maraschinos on top of the dough to decorate it, but of course once you bake it, it is YOUR recipe, so feel free to gussy away.

fruit cake

Mrs. Lanham’s fruit cake. The one on the left has already been wrapped in a brandy-soaked cheesecloth.

I will admit that this is not a regular at my house, but only because I make Emily Dickinson’s  Black Cake every year. (Feel free to follow that link and compare her more complex cake, which I refuse to call fruit cake.)  I borrowed a bit from Emily, and wrapped Mrs. Lanham’s cake in brandy-soaked cheesecloth.  I don’t think she would disapprove (although she no doubt was baking this during Prohibition, and I can’t really see her buying bootleg liquor).  It is just that Mrs. Lanham’s fruitcake was probably developed during Depression and War years, when some products were scarce.

In fact, if you’re baking for someone with an egg allergy, note that this cake has NO eggs!

Mrs. Lanham’s Fruit Cake Recipe

Prep time 30 minutes
Cook time 1 hour
Total time 1 hour, 30 minutes
Allergy Wheat
Meal type Dessert
Misc Freezable, Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Occasion Christmas

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 cups raisins (or 1 C. mincemeat, 1 C. raisins)
  • 1/2lb butter
  • 1 1/2 cup water or coffee
  • 3 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

1. Cook together the sugar, raisins, sugar and liquid until butter is melted. Cool.
2. Mix together flour, soda and spice. Stir them into the cooled liquid ingredients.
3. Pour into greased loaf pan or tube pan and bake one hour in 350 degree oven.

Note

I thought the one teaspoon of cinnamon was not spicy enough, so I added another teaspoon, plus a 1/2 tsp of mace. That still did not make an overly spicy cake. You could add cloves or other spices to your liking.

On the recipe card, my mother noted "Nuts, etc. may be added." I decided to add some "etc." and put in some mixed candied fruit I had left from another project, as well as some currants.  I think I would prefer at least half currants.

As you can see in the picture, I used three medium sized disposable loaf pans, since I will be sending two of these to other people. That made for rather thin cakes, and I think it would be better to use two of that size, or just one loaf pan or a tube pan.

My final adjustment, was to wrap the loaves in cheesecloth soaked in brandy. It adds flavor, and also preserves the cakes. Highly recommended.

Permanent Wave machine picture from Health and Fashion Today.