John Wagner part II

I think it is time to work on the family history again. A few more pages about John Wagner and then we will leave him. He wasn't in the picture very long and I'm amazed how much I was able to learn about him.
The woman who gave me the pictures was the daughter of the couple below left. Her father was the executor of John's estate and I was able to track her down because her parents had never moved from the house they lived in in 1942. I sent a letter to that address but unfortunately her mother had recently died but mail was still being forwarded to the daughter.

We met her when we were in Chicago and she tried to be helpful. She found a few things that her father had kept which she was glad to give me. Entries I found in an old telephone directory suggested that John and Gladys may have lived apart for a time after the death of the first child.

Wagner-Rozsa

Now it is time to bring Jimmy's father into the picture. The text below is laying over the ships manifest from http://www.ellisisland.org/ You can go to the site and search on Rozsa and find the entry.

There is, I know, at least one typo in the above (serching instead of searching. I fix it I will have to remake the page so it will take a little time. I now know how to do it so I can edit text later.

The picture of Julius Rozsa, Sr and the woman I presume to be his wife came from Elizabeth Braddy, the niece of John Wagner (Julius Rozsa, Jr.) The other two photos came from the daughter of John's friend and executor.

Happy birthday Grandma, we miss you

This post isn't about her, but she would have been 93 today.

I am trying to work ahead on my posts so that I can look at them with fresh eyes before I post. This one needed so much work in the text that I had to start fresh so it may have errors. I try.

I included these pages from the James Sykes family bible for reference. I don't plan to use them on a page but may put them in an appendix. The children's names are interesting. The first child was named Mary Caroline. Mary was the name of James' mother and Caroline Holman was the aunt with which Sarah lived after her mother died. Carlton was the maiden name of Sarah's mother. Was Winnie meant to be a nickname for Winnifred or was it for Wingate, Mary Sykes middle name? I don't know who the others were named for, if anyone, but there was another Mabel Sykes in Chicago perhaps a little younger than our Mabel. She was a photographer and you can find reference to some of her photos on the web.

Winnie & her sibs

These pages are drafts. My editor is distracted by problems with his computer. While he is unavailable, feel free to suggest corrections.

You may have noticed that both "Gram" and Gladys went by their second names. Gladys told me her grandmother called her "Sally", a common nickname for Sarah but I never knew her to be called anything but Gladys. I have many letters written to Gram and in all she is called Winnie. Her name was Florence Winnie. I have the family bible pages for the James Sykes family and I guess I need to scan them, too.

All four of the Sykes siblings died of cancer. Brest cancer for Gram, bladder cancer for Walter & Marion. I'm not sure about Mabel. James Sykes died of stomach cancer. That may have been why my father was unwilling to treat his heart problem. Gladys lived to 90 but she too had cancer.

Anniversary poem

I realized that the poem written by James to Sarah was not readable so I transcribed it.  The sorrow he mentions is the death of their first two children, both died in infancy.

Clark & Sykes

The embroydery scissors and pin were in a box of sykes artifacts. I realize now that I didn't include a picture of the pin. There is a gold pin, surrounded with rubys that contains a locket of hair. The pin belonged to Sarah and I would guess that the hair was from one of the lost babies.

The Daguerreotypes had come from Opal. I found a note to Dad mentioning that she had sent them but it did not itentify the people. It is my guess that they were the four married children of Richard and Mary Sykes but that is just a guess. I think it is safe to assume that at the very least they were family members.

The anniversery poem mentioned the two lost babies their first two children. Their sixth child also died in infancy. Sarah Sykes gave birth to six girls and one boy.

Sarah Jane Clark family tree

This fan chart was sent to my dad by his Aunt Opal. It seems to be pretty accurate. Everything I have checked by looking in genealogy books and sending for records substantiates what is here.

It would be interesting to learn more about some of these people, why was Samuel Wardwell accused of witchcraft, why did William and Sarah Clark go to Alton Illinois?

Richard & Mary Sykes

Much of the research for this project was done when I still lived in Los Angeles. Some of the documents and notes I had seem to be missing so some facts are from memory. I will keep looking for the documents but I have boxes and boxes of photos and papers.

Finding where Mary Wingate Furber fit in the Furber family line was a challenge. It seemed logical that she would be the grand-daughter of Richard Furber and Mary Wingate Furber but I could account for all of the daughters of their sons and she was not one of them.

Eventually I found some information on the web which indicated that she was the daughter of Alice Coleman Furber who had married a cousin, William Furber. Alice had been the child of Richard's first wife, Alice Coleman. She must have liked her step-mother to name her daughter after her.