Young Jimmy

I was surprised and pleased to find these photos. It is hard to imagine my father as a little boy. In many of these pictures he reminds me a lot of Eric.
I was very surprised to see the inscription saying that the picture had been taken "when he came east with his mother." He had always insisted that he had almost no contact with Gladys until he left Todd. I keep wondering, he told of having been put on a street car alone by Gram when he was quite young, the driver put him off where instructed and while he stood there alone and crying a woman came up and asked him if he was Jimmy; he said that woman was Gladys and she took him somewhere and there was a man there. Could it be that Gladys put him on a street car in Chicago, Christine picked him up and took him to his father?

We'll never know. As he grew older he forgot a lot and reconstructed a lot. Researchers have found that every time we visit a memory it changes a bit when we re-store it.

John Wagner documents

I am way behind in posting to the family history. I have been too busy with my other blog.

I decided to revisit John one more time. Not for a page in the family history book but to preserve some supplementary documents. How, you might ask, can I be sure that this man was the father of James Wagner. (click on the documents to enlarge and make readable)

Well, one of the documents entered into evidence is the divorce decree of John and Gladys. The testimony of his sister-in-law also states that he was married before ( to Gladys) and had a son named James Julius. Evidently he had no contact after the divorce as Salt Lake City is the last place he knew his son to be.

Although hard to read, the petition for naturalization indicates that Julius Rozsa, who asks to have his name changed to John Wagner, is the same man. He has a son named James, he has the birth date wrong but the place of birth is correct. The name of his wife and the residence are the same as the John Wagner who is clearly the father of our James Wagner.

If further evidence is required, look at the picture of Dick Wagner next to the one of John Wagner. Dick is a little younger in this picture taken in 1961 than was John in the picture taken of him and his second wife. The resemblance is striking. Dick said it was like looking in a mirror.

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.