Marion Dee Yule (1886-1918)

Marion Dee Yule - Plot # L-233, Mt. Tam Cemetery

I drove back up to Mt. Tam this morning to find the gravesite of my great grandmother, Marion.  I was disappointed to find that there was no headstone, nor were there markers for the plot to her left, and two to her right.  I plan on contacting Mt. Tam again to determine if there ever was a headstone, or if it is indeed covered by quite a lot of dirt.  If none exists, I'll acquire a marker and place it on my next visit.  I think that it will be good to have in the event that anyone in a future generation wants to visit (and I hope they will).

I left some flowers, took some photos of the area, and spent a few minutes telling Marion what I was up to and a little bit about her daughter, her grand-children, great-grand-children, and great-great-grand-children.

I wish she could tell me how she came to live in San Francisco, where she found the money to buy a plot of land in Kentfield in 1913 as an unmarried woman, what she planned to do with that land before her life was cut short at the age of 31.  I have so many questions and I'll have to keep searching for the answers.

Partial View of Plot L

View from Plot L

Partial Layout of Plot L

Map of Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery

Grave-hopping

My husband and I went graveyard hopping last Sunday.

After months of waiting, I had finally learned the plot location of my great-grandmother (Marion) at Mt. Tam Cemetery, so we drove up to San Rafael to see it. Unfortunately, there is no plot map and the plot areas aren't clearly marked. After two hours of searching up and down muddy hills, we caved and headed south to the Golden Gate National Cemetery where her husband, my great-grandfather (Paul) is buried. 

Thanks to the organization skills of the US military, we found Paul's gravesite in less than 5 minutes. I left some flowers and took a few pictures. He is buried with his 3rd (possibly 4th) wife, Anna. He served in the US Army and was stationed in Hawaii during the Spanish American War after an injury during basic training left him unable to serve in combat.

I decided to call Mt. Tam Cemetery the following day to follow up and fully expected to be put off again for months.  A lovely woman named Mary-Kay politely took my name and said she call me back later in the day.  I was shocked when she called me the next day to tell me that we were in the right place looking for Marion's grave, but the gophers had dug up dirt that obscured the headstone.  It's now been found and maintenance is going to clean up the area so when I visit again I'll be able to spot it.  I suppose 98 years of no one visiting does that to a grave.  Mary-Kay mailed me the plot map along with a map of the entire cemetery (which I will post because I can't possibly be the only one looking for one).  

I'm terribly excited to visit my great-grandmother's grave in the coming weeks.

Was it Murder?

There is a standing theory in my family that Paul Yule (my paternal great grandfather) poisoned his wife (my great grandmother) by feeding her mushrooms.  Months of searching finally turned up her obituary which was published in the Marin Journal on Thursday, April 11, 1918 and reads as follows:

Woman Dies From Eating Toadstool

Mrs. Marian Yule of the Murray Tract, Kentfield, is dead, and her husband, Paul Yule is ill as the result of eating a toadstool which they mistook for a mushroom.  

Mrs. Yule picked the fungus in her yard Sunday, and Monday morning prepared it for breakfast. Her husband, arguing that neither of them was familiar with mushrooms, protested against their eating it, but Mrs. Yule declared that the plant conformed to all the tests she had heard of, insisted that it was a mushroom. Her husband, however, refused to eat more than a bite of it.  

Mrs. Yule was taken violently sick during the day and grew steadily worse until Wednesday morning when she passed away. She leaves an eight months old baby.  

The couple had lived in Kentfield about two years. The husband is a carpenter.  

The funeral was held this morning at Sawyer’s Parlors, with Rev. Chrysler of the Methodist church officiating, and burial was made in Mt. Tamalpais cemetery. Mrs. Yule was 31 years of age.

I have contacted the Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery to confirm her burial location and to hopefully get a picture of her headstone.

The question of whether Paul purposely killed Marion is still open for discussion.  My cousin, who coincidentally knows something of mushrooms, told me that if she truly was familiar with mushrooms she would never had made this error.  Further, if Paul had eaten even a bit of this thing he too would have died.  My aunt backs the theory of suspicious poisoning.  It seems that when Charlotte (the eight month old baby) was growing up, there was a lot of talk in the neighborhood about how she best mind her behavior lest she also become a victim to her father.

I guess we'll never really know, but I feel a bit of closure having found her actual obit and at least got Paul's side of the story.

Why the Women Disappear

If you've ever done any sort of family research you will notice, as I have recently, that after the women marry they very nearly disappear from the public record.  No longer are they known by their own name, they are hereafter known as Mrs. [insert husband name here].   Historically, I find this is true when the women have been homemakers.  As CEO of their household they are responsible (literally) for the care and feeding of their husbands and children.  What they don't receive in return is a Social Security Number and Social Security benefits unless it's through their spouse.

Social Security is a means to track individuals during the time they are employed and also when their benefits cease upon their death.  Without that numerical assignment there is no "person" to track.  The only women I have been able to locate via their death records are the one's who had SSN's.  Those without or who were cremated rather than buried are simply gone - POOF!.  Unless someone has documented first hand knowledge in their own family tree (which I can also search on Ancestry.com), I fear these women will forever be lost to history.  Times have changed and women born in the latter half of the 20th century are much easier to locate.

These are just some musings from a lazy Sunday afternoon.

An Incredible Diary

My cousin uncovered what may be either the diary of our great, great, great grandmother (1816-????) or her daughter, our great, grand Aunt (1834-1891) both were Eliza Wilson and either are a possibility.

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/womenstraveldiaries_wtddy07001/

Duke University claims that it is likely the diary of Mrs. Robert Wilson (my 3x great grandmother).  However, I find it suspicious that 19 pages in to the document she has never referenced a husband or children who she would have been missing terribly.  Instead only being incredibly sad at missing her brother whom she thought she might not see again.  There were 10 children in the Wilson family and the youngest was my great, great grandfather, William Epiphanius Wilson (1844-1916).  He would have been 10 at the time this diary was written and I have a hard time believing his mother would leave him behind to pursue this mission.

The Wilsons were missionaries.  Robert was a reverend and later, his son Epiphanius entered the clergy, founding Christ Church in Bronxville, New York.  The connection between the Eliza who wrote this diary and the Wilson family is entirely plausible.  It may be that I won't be able to confirm the connection to our family until I finish it.  Reading the diary is a bit of a chore, but it is fascinating none the less.

It seems Eliza was traveling from England to India during the Crimean war.  She references a ship "Arethusa" which may be the HMS Arethusa.  According to Wikipedia, that ship was  the "last major ship of the Royal Navy to enter an engagement under sail power only (1854, during the Crimean War)".  While Eliza was on her journey, her party stopped in Malta where she recalls seeing a number of Russian soldiers with bloody fingerprints on their guns.  She was quite disturbed by the sight of this and questioned the point of "this war".

I'm off to continue my reading.  Eliza has just departed her ship and has entered Egypt and the city of Alexandria.

A mystery solved on the Yuul/Yule/Juul side...

I think it is safe to say that I am now obsessed with Ancestry.com and any other means of searching for ancestors.  I was up late (again) on Friday night and found something interesting about the Yule side of the family.

Let me start with a little background…

When I first started putting the tree together I knew of my grandfather, Paul Yule (1876-1955).  Searching records I came up with a WWI draft registration card with a name I didn’t recognize - Frederick Marius Yule.  Why (I thought to myself) would this record be showing up?  I clicked on it to view the original record and saw that Paul was listed as Fred’s nephew.  I was able to connect the two because Paul did in fact live in San Francisco at the time and via other records I was able to determine that they were both from the same town in Denmark.




Subsequent searches on Frederick turned up other records that listed his mother as “Cehngraf”.  I also found Paul’s mother’s name “Charlotte Zehngraf”.  The connection was clear since Paul eventually named a daughter after his mother.  What was confusing, however, is how an uncle and nephew could have mothers with such similar names.

On Thursday, I upgraded my Ancestry membership to include international records; and on Friday night I started searching the Danish registries.  All I really knew was that  Paul and Frederick were both born in Aalborg (Ålborg), Denmark and had mothers named Cehngraf/Zehngraf.
This is where things got exciting…

I did a search for Paul Yule and was presented with a baptism record for Poul Juul, mother Charlotte Zehngraf, father Christen Juul.  Eureka!  I had found Paul’s parents.  I was thrilled.  Then I found three other records for Paul/Poul’s siblings: Christian Anthony Rabek Juul (abt 1874), Gebhardt Juul (abt 1875), Josva de Lemos Juul (abt 1878), and an another older brother born around 1872 - Frederik Marius Juul,  (note: my grandmother Charlotte’s name is listed as “Juul” on her birth certificate).

Obviously, I have no idea why Fred would refer to his younger brother as nephew, but here it was.  Maybe it was due to language differences between Danish and English.  Now I have been able to unite them on the tree and solve a tiny mystery.  Fred later moved from Yakima, Washington, where he was a farmer, to San Luis Obispo where his brother lived - presumably to retire in a warmer climate.  Fred died in SLO in 1953, followed by Paul in 1955.

A new path has opened and the search continues…

The Journey Begins...

September 18, 2014 - About two years ago I opened an account at ancestry.com and starting gathering information about my immediate family.  I had very little to go on - just a few names -  but slowly things started to come together.

I do not have biological children of my own, so this blog is a gift to my cousins and their children and for anyone else who might be doing research on this branch of the family.

On the Wilson side I started with Michael Lambert Wilson (Jr.), my paternal grandfather.  That led me to his father, Michael Lambert Wilson (Sr.) and then to my great, great grandfather, William Epiphanius Wilson and finally to my 3x great grandfather, Robert Wilson.  There are some exciting and fascinating discoveries on this side of the family that deserve far more detailed storytelling and a some dedicated attention.

The Yule side has proven challenging.  First off, until about a year ago the name of my paternal great grandmother’s name was unknown.  Then my aunt found my grandmother’s death certificate which contained some clues.  My grandmother was Charlotte Antoinette Yule, her father was Paul Yule and her mother was Marion Johnson Dee.  I have hit something of a dead end going back any further than those generations.  There are a couple of interesting detours that I’ll document in individual pages, but overall I am eager to make a breakthrough on this side of the family.
The organization of this blog will be as follows:  I will create individual pages to document the history of each primary individual and I’ll add to the main page anything that is a new discovery to the overall research.

If you are reading this and have information that will help me map this history, please post a comment.  I am also open to sharing information with others who are doing similar research.

Onward…