I Remember Grawa

Adelaide, age 3 (earliest picture I have)

When I was growing up, one grandmother lived with us all the time, the other for 6 months of the year.  I don't think I really appreciated all that they did -- for starters, they took care of all four of my parents' children in an era when mothers were expected to be home.  No lunchroom at school: kids had an hour and a quarter to walk home, eat, and return for the afternoon.   She was there to nurture us and feed us every day, 24-7.

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Adelaide Copeland Harvey was born 3 a.m., 4 November 1893 in Lake Mills, Jefferson County, Wisconsin.  Her birth certificate lists her name as "Miss Harvey" daughter of Joe Harvey and Alice Copeland and siblings of "Riley, Cathy and Copeland."  The doctor recorded the birth the same day but no one ever went back and filled in the name.   She told me she was so sickly as a baby that she was carried around on a pillow -- maybe no one thought when she did live, to go back and tell the town clerk that she had a first name.

Luckily that wasn't as much a problem as I thought it might be when I tried years later to correct her death certificate.  Adelaide H Richardson died 6 August 1971 in Houston, Harris County, Texas, at age 87.  Only, a bit of arithmetic shows that she wasn't 87 but really only 77.  I decided that I should tell the folks in the State of Vital Records office that her death certificate was incorrect.  It took a number of months with notarized letters back and forth, copies of her birth certificate and certificates identifying her parents to finally get her death certificate amended.  Now, if you order a copy, at the bottom, is the "AMENDMENT TO CERTIFICATE OF DEATH" listing her mother's name as "Alice Copeland" instead of "Alice (don't know)" and date of birth as November 4, 1893" instead of "1883" --- type of document: "affidavit of granddaughter..." not mentioning any of the vital records I had sent.

So who was this Adelaide Harvey who married Robert W Richardson?  Definitely more than just someone who was 77 when she died from pneumonia, carcinoma of the lung, with contributing conditions of chronic bronchitis and asthma and carcinoma of the face.  To me, she was "Grawa," the name I gave her when I first tried talking.  She was the person who would always have treats for us children at lunch such as a homemake cake with butter cream frosting or send one of us out to buy one package of Paul Malls for her along with Hersey with almonds or Nutty buddies for everyone -- depending upon the season.

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Adelaide grew up the youngest of 4 children.  Her early years were near relatives in Wisconsin.  One day her aunt, Isabel Harvey Wegemann was minding her while making angel food cakes for the church supper.  Addie watched as her aunt carefully separated a dozen egg whites for each cake.  This became an all-day project as Isabel baked a dozen angel food cakes, all for the church supper -- no tasting!  Addie was devastated that she could not even have a little taste.  At the end of the day, Isabel made one more angel food cake for Addie to take home for dinner.  Every year thereafter, her sister Katherine made her an angel food cake for her birthday.  In later years, Auntie Kath would mail an angel food cake and we would look forward to the treat of eating of that very special cake.  It always looked somewhat battered and mishapened, but oh did it taste good.
[Katherine Harvey Rhodes, died 1964]
[Stories told to me both by Adelaide and by my mother]

Her family moved from Lake Mills, to Madison Wisconsin so two of her siblings could go to college.  Her mother ran a boarding house nearby while Kath and Riley attended the University of Wisconsin.  Then her family moved to Oak Park, Illinois.  After graduating from Oak Park High School, she married Robert Worthington Richardson on 15 January 1916.

This gorgeous wedding photo belies some of her challenges ahead.  When her second daughter was born, her mother moved in to help take care of the children and then died suddenly.  After her mother's death, depression set in and she was sent to the Kellog Institute in Battle Creek where they thought grains and special diet could cure many ills.  Her two daughters were cared for by her brothers and their wives while she was gone.  There was a comedy movie made about this health sanitarium, "On the Road to Wellville."  Years later, whenever we had popcorn, she always ate hers with milk on it -- "It's a cereal," she'd explain.  

She had asthma all her life, I remember her sitting on the side of her bed and wheezing and using her atomizer.  She developed sores all over her face as a young adult.  She saw doctors who never figured out what caused it, one even tried treating it with x-rays.  It think the sores all over her face probably itched.  Sometimes, she'd sit on the side of her bed and clap her two hands on her cheeks of her face.  It wasn't until the early 1950s that someone figured out that those sores were a staph infection, and they responded to treatment.

As a young mother, she developed cataracts in both eyes and ended up having surgery twice.  This was in the days when the patient couldn't move her head for a couple of weeks and would lie in bed with her head sandbagged in place.  Her first surgery was semi-successful, the second was a failure.  So, she lost the sight in one eye from an allergic reaction to the medication.  Not only did she lose her sight, but her brown eye turned blue.   

We grew up, knowing Grawa had different colored eyes and didn't see too well with her "good eye."  I didn't stop her from preparing meals, but it did lead to many things dropped.  Whenever she would drop something, she would yell "Nothing fell!"  If my mother was home, she would send a child to "see what nothing is this time."  We had a high-breakage rate for dishes dropped by Grawa, and so the first Christmas when Corning had "unbreakable" dishes, that was the family Christmas present.  My slightly unusual father, loved the fact that Corning would replace any dishes that broke.  When visitors came to our house, Dad loved to ask if they had seen these new unbreakable plates before and he would then "frisbee-toss" a plate to the usually horrified startled guest.

One really cold winter night, I was sitting in the living room and there was a loud crash in the kitchen, "Nothing fell!"  I went out to find Grawa had somehow dropped a gallon of root beer syrup [a Christmas gift from my best friend].  The glass jug hit the back edge of the washing machine, broke and there was root beer syrup going down the wall in the pantry behind and under the machine. While I spent the evening trying to clean it up [we eventually had to disconnect and move the machine to clean it up], my brother was in the basement with my father trying to thaw the frozen water pipes.  Dad came up for a break.  My brother came up and joyfully announced the pipes were dripping.  "If they're dripping, they're leaking and they're broken!"  Dad went downstairs to find root beer syrup leaking through the pantry floor into the basement.

Later in life, Grawa decided to get a glass eye that would cover her blue eye.  Each night Grawa would take her teeth out and put them on the dresser and then take out her eye and put it in an eye cup next to the teeth.  My youngest sister always assumed that's what everyone's grandmother did.  When she put the eye back in, it didn't always line up "just right" and she would need us kids to tell her if she appeared to be looking at the ceiling with one eye.  

Early Sunday morning before Christmas 1963, Grawa got up to go to the bathroom and couldn't seem to focus as well with her "good eye."  She woke my mother, "Alice, I can't decide if the house is on fire or if I can't focus" -- I heard my mother yell -- "Ted, wake up, the house is on fire!"  Once outside, my mother was checking to see that everyone was there -- the only one missing was my father. When she asked a fireman if he had seen her husband he replied, "Is he the stark-naked guy inside telling us how to fight the fire?"  

The fire chief had told us that the fire had smoldered all night, possibly started by something as simple as a mouse running in the walls--static electricity.  It started in the wall below the fire-break between the basement and kitchen.  It had just broken through the wall into the kitchen and was filling the house with smoke when Grawa woke us.  The chief said if we had slept another 10 minutes, no one would have gotten out.  

Thank you Grawa for saving our lives!

The grandmothers at our wedding reception:  Helen Markovich (Nona),
Adelaide Richardson (Grawa), Marion Dakin (Nana).  Before we left, I
tossed my bouquet and Grawa caught it.  She was always hopeful to remarry.
As kids we teased Grawa that when a workman left a ladder against the house
near her bedroom, it was so that she could elope with Mr. Reeves, the widower
who lived down the street!  When we got in the car to drive away after the
reception, Nana was in the back seat asking for a ride to where she was staying.

The link to this post is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-remember-grawa.html

©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich

"Photoshop" Early 1900's Style

Edward Olmstead and his wife Grace Alice Evans were married in 1892 and five years later started their family.   They had a family portrait taken after their four children were born:

Left to right are Charles Allen, Edward (Ed, father), Helen Elizabeth, Alice Sarah, Grace Alice (mother), Wilber Evans (Bill).

Fast forward, seven years after Alice was born, they had another child, Grace Louise.  So, how do you solve the problem of that wonderful family photo  hanging on the wall being incomplete?
Well, you "photoshop it" early 1900's style.

Pretty good job of photoshopping for an amateur long before computers, wasn't it?!
Except for Grace looking forward instead of at the photographer off to stage right, whoever did the cutting and pasting of the picture did a nice job of editing the family portrait, even lining up the shadows nicely.

Years later, one of Ed and Grace Olmstead's grandsons was showing me a copy of this picture and he mentioned that Grace Louise, the daughter, wasn't originally there and that he had a copy of that original.

Well, the scans of the two photographs arrived yesterday and with his generous permission, I am sharing them here.

Now, in our updated family portrait, left to right, we have:
Charles Allen Olmstead (1901-?), Grace Louise Olmstead (1909-1995), Edward Olmstead (1868-1959), Helen Elizabeth Olmstead (1899-1979), Alice Sarah Olmstead (1902-1996), Grace Alice Evans Olmstead (1868), Wilber Evans Olmstead (1897-1972)




The link to this post is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/01/photoshop-early-1900s-style.html
©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich

My Regrets and Redemption Lead to a Present for my Family

I am sure that all good family historians have moments that they regret ... I wish I knew what questions to have asked my grandmother, Nana, Marian Evans Dakin, before she died in 1974.  As a result of not knowing ANYTHING about the DAKIN family back then, my work was extensive to piece together the story. I only knew my grandfather's name (he died when my father was 2 years old) and that he had died in the 1918 flu pandemic, along with his son and mother-in-law in less than one week.

When I was in high school, Nana brought some small brownish pictures of something [she said it was a power plant that her husband Rob worked on] to share one year when she came for her annual visit.  Of course, I was the uninterested teenager.  I'm not sure anyone else in my family was much interested either.  I think she brought them out just once during her annual six-month visit.

Years later, I was a 20-something who would drive down to visit her in Connecticut.  I helped her go through various things in her house, and made note of who she wanted them to go to and what things were.  Of course, we didn't find EVERYTHING since there still were surprises when I was her executrix cleaning out her home.  By then, I had enough sense to start asking some questions about the family -- clearly not all of the ones I should have, but I made a start.  On one visit, I asked her about those pictures of the power plant.  "Of, those, I gave them to the power company."

I contacted the power company and was told they did not know where the pictures were, but they did share some information on the power plant which helped me to understand how it worked along with some of the history of the Bulls Bridge Power Plant in Gaylordsville, Connecticut.

What I never asked my grandmother was the "rest of the story" which turned out to be quite interesting.
This year's Christmas present for my family is what I learned about this story AND about the DAKIN family.

In my grandmother's desk, when she died, was one of the surprises for this executrix -- the negatives for the pictures my grandfather, Rob Dakin took of the building of the addition to the power plant.  This book, Bulls Bridge:  The Story of a dreamer, a family farmer, a camera and the building of a power plant, is the result of much research.  It is not only the story of the power plant but includes information on the DAKIN family line, all the way back to Thomas Dakin, the immigrant settler in Concord, Massachusetts by 1652.

The "Readers Digest" version of the story of the power plant is about a politician with a dream to harness the Housatonic River, a farmer who sells a convoluted part of his farm for the canal to be dug right across the fields and past his house, a farm boy who watches the canal and power plant emerge, and then, the power plant is finished and does NOT bring any power to the surrounding neighborhood!  The high school boy, goes off to college (first in family), comes back as an assistant engineer and works on the addition to the plan which brings power to the neighborhood and documents it all with his camera. His pictures from 1912 are included in the book.

I learned a lot about my ancestors as people as I researched this book -- this was not a compilation of just dates.  Oh how I wish I had the sense to talk to my grandmother about this before she died in 1974.

The link for this post is: http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-regrets-and-redemption-lead-to.html
©2013, Erica Dakin Voolich

Oh, What a Difference a Couple Hundred Years Make! ... The Sequel

Thomas was born “at Concord,MA 29 March 1723 and m. 1st before 10 3rd month 1744 (OS), prob. in Philips, Lydia, dau. of Thomas and Mercy (Coggeshall) Fish.  Lydia Fish was b. 10 Nov. 1725 and came to Beekman with her father and brothers Preserved and John Fish. [The Fish Family 37-8]

  Timothy came to Quaker Hill where he was taxed from Feb. 1744/5 through Feb. 1762 but we have not found h im taxed after that.  The will of Reuben Peckham written 19 July 1770 mentions “friend Ruth Dakin, dau. of Timothy Dakin of New Fairfield, Ct.” which would indicate that he had gone there [WN-YHS  VIII:43].  Timothy was assessed in Beekman in 1744/5 at £1 and the same in 1746/7, 1753 and June 1758.

   He was a customer at the Merrit store from 1767 on and traded with his son Thomas, Alexander Stewart, Amos Osborn, Ebenezer Hoag, Elihu Russell,  Joshua Sherman, Preserved Dakin, Robert Reynolds and Thomas Douglas.  [DCSB II: 56;; B:34; C:23; D: 20; E:10; etc.].

   He was mentioned on a road of 10 Oct. 1758 on a lot in the Oblong and also in the 1761 Oblong Quaker list.  [SBP 1:348, 113].  He was on the list of Quakers who enrolled 22 April 1755 and had to give a horse in 1757 and a steer and a heifer worth £9 in 1759 for not training in the Colonial militia.  [SBP 1:382, 383].  A deed of 1 April 1790, concerns land in lots 29 and 30 in the Oblong and mentions land Josiah Akin bought of Timothy Dakin [D 11:144].  This would be quite close to the Oblong Meeting House and in fact the Oblong quit rent list for 1761 has his name on a farm in lot 30, the same lot the Meeting House was in.  His farm was 48 acres and his quit rent was £2/2/1.  (His name was crossed out in this record, possibly because Akin had bought it by 1761).  He was very active in the Oblong Meteing and his name is on many pages of the Meeting’s records.  [FHL MF 17315, 1 through 527].

   In 1790 a Timothy Dakin was 3-1-3 in Pawling (listing between Ezra Sherman and William Russel) and in 1800 he was 1-1-0-0-1 and 1-0-0-0-1 between David Denton and Nathaniel Worden.  In 1799 Timothy Dakin of Pawling was assessed on a house and farm worth $423.75 and personal property valued at $40.  His ch. were  prob. all b. Pawling.  Lydia Dakin died on Saturday the 6th day of June at 9 o’clock AM 1812.  [PR 42].  She was probably the widow Dakin noted as a boundary in May 1810 in a mortgage on land in Pawling. [M 15: 494]”
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The Oblong, Quaker Hill: "The eastern side of the country had been settled by Presbyterians from  Connecticut, and the western side along the Hudson River by the Dutch.   The feeling between them was far from friendly.  Their disputes had been  very bitter, and Rye and Bedfore had revolted from New York's  jurisdiction.  Their whipping posts stood ready for the punishment of any  from the river settlements who committed even slight offenses within  their limits.  As these two peoples naturally repelled each other they  had left a strip of land, comparatively unoccupied, between them... Into  and through this strip of land the Quaker stream flowed. ..."  [from  Quaker Hill by Warren H Wilson]

In April 1755, Timothy was one of the thirty-eight Quakers in Oblong  who claimed exemption from military duty.  His occupation listed on the  application is farmer. In 1779, a year after Lydia died, all the slaves had been freed on  Quaker Hill.  This was preceded by a querie at New York Yearly Meeting  (May 30, 1767) brought by Oblong Monthly Meeting:  "It is not consistant  with Christianity to buy and sell our Fellowmen for Slaves during their  Lives, and their Posterities after them, then whether it is consistant  with a Christian Spirit to keep those in slavery that we have already in  possession by Purchase, Gift or any otherways."  In 1775 Yearly Meeting  was in favor of emancipation without conditions.  The final slave owned  by a Meeting member was freed in 1777 (a newcomer freed his slave in  1779).  Since Timothy and Lydia were a members of the meeting when the  querie was originally sent to the Yearly Meeting and since such queries  would only be sent if there was concensus in the Meeting (Quaker decisions  are made by consensus and women participated in Meeting decisions), we  know Timothy and Lydia supported the abolition of slavery.  Timothy was still living in Oblong in 1778: "On his arrival, September 19, 1778, Washington, with his bodyguard,  were entertained for six days at the home of Reed Ferris, in the  Oblong.... His letters written during his residence were all dated from  "Fredericksburgh," the name at that time of the western and older part of  the town of Patterson. ... The Meeting House was appropriated by the army officers for a  hospital, because it was the largest available building. ... the use of  the building for a hospital continued three and perhaps five months.  Meantime the Friends' Meetings were held in the barn at Site 21... There is no mention, even by inference, in the records of Oblong  Meeting that proves this occupation of their building by soldiers.  It  was not voluntarily surrendered; other records show that the use of the  building was supported by force; its surrender was grudging, not a matter  to be recorded in the Meeting.  It is characteristic of the Friends that  they ignored it. This toleration of the Hospital was never sympathetic.  A letter...  to the Governor of the State of New York, Hon. George Clinton, by Dr.  James Fallon, ... He could get no one to draw wood for his hospital in  the dead of winter..." [from Quaker Hill]

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Contrary to my Kids' Assumptions, I'm only 2.1% Neanderthal!

I signed up for the National Geographic Geno 2.0 DNA test.  This one is supposed to be my deep ancestry following back on my mother's-mother's-mother's-mother's, ... line.  I don't have that direct line back any further than my 8th great grandmother, and I've not proved the last couple of those steps, so even that is iffy.  The ones I do have of those generations were in Connecticut and Massachusetts -- so there is some hope of records once I have the time to spend on them.  Others lines on my mother's side lead to the Mayflower, early settlers of New Amsterdam, and Northern Ireland.

Before doing genealogy, I always assumed I was "Heinz 57" variety, probably from many things mixed together, not like my husband who had four grandparents from what is currently Croatia.

So when I got my results, my deep add-mix looks like this:

They have been taking samples from people around there world and using it as reference populations.

According to the Genographic Project, my DNA compares most closely to the British (UK) population:

and next the German population:

It appears to me that I'm closer to the German population mix and than to the British, when I look at the graphs.

Since my maternal folks that I know about came on the Mayflower to New England, or settled New Amsterdam in what is now NYC, or went to Canada in the early 1800s from Ireland (probably northern), the match of my ancestor's is not surprising here, when described above and with the yellow parts of the Heatmap below.  

The Geno 2.0 project also included what they call their "Heatmap for U5B"  since my Haplogroup was U5B2B. It shows the path out of Africa of my most distant ancestors and the part that is deepest red is where most of their descendants seem to have shown up:

Since this is on my mother's side, and not my father's (we can't trace my father's DNA  since neither he nor my brother is alive), I was surprised to see the red -- that is what I would expect to find as red if my father's DNA were traced -- I've got my father's tree back to the 1600 and 1700s in Sweden.  So I guess those folks before me in Northern Europe headed south before heading west to the north american continent.

Now, for my children who are always trying to get their mother into first the 20th and now the 21st century, here is that Neanderthal piece I mentioned:

I suppose I should remind them that if their mother is a Neanderthal, so are they!

The link to this post is: http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2012/12/contrary-to-my-kids-assumptions-im-only.html

© 2012, Erica Dakin Voolich

One of my Irish Ancestors WASN'T Dropped in Haviland Hollow by Aliens!

For years I've been looking for Mary Hearty who I knew was born in "Parish of Creggan, County Armagh the town land Dorsy," Ireland (if the handwritten note on the back of her 1849 marriage certificate is to be believed).  But how she got to Haviland Hollow where she lived and married Eric Helsten on 12 August 1849 (if the front of the minister's marriage certificate is to be believed), has been one of those "little mysteries" in life.

I had begun to wonder if an alien space ship had dropped her off in Haviland Hollow, New York because I could never find her on any passenger lists.

Then today I looked yet again, and I found on ancestry.com, a "Mary Hart" age 25 indexed as arriving on 17 June 1848 in New York.  Since Mary had told the 1900 US Census that she arrived 52 years earlier, an arrival year of 1848 sure sounded right.

Here is the actual document:

and looking closely at passenger number 70:

It sure looks like Mary Hearty (not "Hart" as indexed) age 26, 3 months (not age "25" as indexed) from Ireland planning to stay in US.

This information is from the Famine Irish Entry Project, 1846-1851.  Washington D.C., NARA.

The link to this page: http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2012/12/one-of-my-irish-ancestors-wasnt-dropped.html

© 2012, Erica Dakin Voolich

Fact Checking: Can a Woman Lose her US Citizenship by Marriage?

When searching for something else, a headline in a 1914 newspaper caught my eye:  “AMERICAN WOMEN DENATURALIZED BY MARRIAGE.”

  

The first two paragraphs:

     “Mrs Ernest Thompson Seton, vice 

president of the Connecticut Woman

Suffrage association, has just recently

returned from a short visit to Cuba.  

On her return to this country she 

had it forcibly and disagreeably

brought to her attention that the

United States penalizes women who 

commit the crime of marrying a for-

eigner by depriving them of their cit-

izenship.  Such women, although they

may be American born and of the

purest American ancestry, they are hence-

forth aliens, unless and until their

husbands consent to naturalize and

thus to carry their wives back to into

American citizenship.

     Ernest Thompson Seton, although

he has become so thoroughly identi-

fied with this country in the minds of

the readers of his delightful books, is 

an English subject.  He was born at

Shields, in the County of Durham, and

his first residence, when he crossed

the Atlantic was in Canada.  He and

Mrs. Seton were married in 1896 but

even after marrying an American wife

Mrs. Seton is powerless either to re-

tain or regain her status of American

citizen.  Hence when on the steamer

coming from Cuba she wished to land

at a port in Florida, she found that 

she was not allowed to do so.   She 

must proceed as an alien to a port 

designated for the entrance of immi-

grants and moreover she had to an-

swer the long list of questions which 

is put to the men and women who 

come to this country from Europe or 

Asia.  Had it been discovered that 

she was suffering from any contagious 

disease or had she been a poor wom-

an and therefore in danger of becom-

ing a public charge, she might have 

debarred from landing and de-

ported--not to her native country, for 

that is California--a state where wom-

en are really citizens and have the 

vote--but to the country of her hus-

band.”

Quick summary:  Mrs Seton, a resident of US, born in California visits Cuba probably on a vacation.  She discovers on her way home that she is no longer a US citizen because her husband is British.  She can’t debark at the port where she had expected to debark, instead she had to go to the port where aliens were processed.  There she was treated like an alien: lots of questions to answer, physical examination to determine if she had any contagious disease, and determination to see if she were poor and likely to become a burden upon society.  Such a surprise for what was probably a prominent woman who was married to a well-read author.  She had lost her citizenship by her marriage and the only way to get it back was to have her husband become naturalized!  She could have been deported “back” to not her country (USA), but to her husband’s country, whether or not she ever lived there!

[and yes I know California isn't a country, but they had given the women the right to vote before the 19th amendment was passed in 1920.]

When I read that story, I thought of my own great grandmother Martha Elnora Worthington.  She was born in Chicago in 1865; and in 1889, she married Harry Bogart Richardson who was born in Belleville, Ontario, Canada in 1863!  Did Elnora lose her citizenship?  Did Elnora ever leave the country after she was married?   Did Elnora have any difficulties?   

Time to Fact check the 1914 newspaper story, then answer the questions for Elnora.

Researching the accuracy of these claims, first brought me to Familysearch Wiki:

• "From 1855 to 1922 a woman took the citizenship of her husband. An alien woman who married a United States citizen became a United States citizen.
• From 1907 to 1922, a woman born in the United States who married an alien lost her U.S. citizenship and became an alien. For more information, read Marion L. Smith's article, Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802-1940."

Marian L Smith’s wrote two fascinating articles tracing women’s naturalization from 1802 through 1940.  These are in Prologue Magazine. Read the first and click through to the second one.  Relevant to our Mrs. Seton in the above article.

“After 1907, marriage determined a woman's nationality status completely. Under the act of March 2, 1907, all women acquired their husband's nationality upon any marriage occurring after that date. This changed nothing for immigrant women, but U.S.-born citizen women could now lose their citizenship by any marriage to any alien. Most of these women subsequently regained their U.S. citizenship when their husbands naturalized. However, those who married Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, or other men racially ineligible to naturalize forfeited their U.S. citizenship. Similarly, many former U.S. citizen women found themselves married to men who were ineligible to citizenship for some other reason or who simply refused to naturalize. Because the courts held that a husband's nationality would always determine that of the wife, a married woman could not legally file for naturalization.”

Clearly, in 1914, the immigration agents were correct to treat Mrs. Seaton as an alien, she HAD lost her citizenship because he husband had never naturalized.  But, the law eventually changed: 

“Happily, Congress was at work and on September 22, 1922, passed the Married Women's Act, also known as the Cable Act. This 1922 law finally gave each woman a nationality of her own. No marriage since that date has granted U.S. citizenship to any alien woman nor taken it from any U.S.-born women who married an alien eligible to naturalization.  Under the new law women became eligible to naturalize on (almost) the same terms as men. The only difference concerned those women whose husbands had already naturalized. If her husband was a citizen, the wife did not need to file a declaration of intention. She could initiate naturalization proceedings with a petition alone (one-paper naturalization). A woman whose husband remained an alien had to start at the beginning, with a declaration of intention. It is important to note that women who lost citizenship by marriage and regained it under Cable Act naturalization provisions could file in any naturalization court--regardless of her residence.”

All of the discussions in Marian L Smith’s two articles are quite interesting and worth reading.  She takes the process and fills in the details of the rest of the story and illustrates it for a variety of women examples.  Interestingly, the rest of the original article about Mrs Seton, discusses some other suffragettes who had this same problem and then talked about junior suffrage league meetings and organizing. 

It turned out that the issue of denaturalizing women was connected to the issue of women’s right to vote.

“The era when a woman's nationality was determined through that of her husband neared its end when this legal provision began to interfere with men's ability to naturalize. This unforeseen situation arose in and after 1918 when various states began approving an amendment to grant women suffrage (and which became the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920). Given that women who derived citizenship through a husband's naturalization would now be able to vote, some judges refused to naturalize men whose wives did not meet eligibility requirements, including the ability to speak English. The additional examination of each applicant's wife delayed already crowded court dockets, and some men who were denied citizenship began to complain that it was unfair to let their wives' nationality interfere with their own.”

Back to our Martha Elnora Worthington, born in USA, who married Harry Bogart Richardson, born in Canada.  Elnora was the daughter of a proud member of the Sons of the American Revolution.  Her husband was the grandson and great grandson of United Empire Loyalists.  Did she lose her citizenship by her marriage?  I know her son told stories of traveling to Ontario to visit relatives, so she did leave the country.

They were married in 1889, according to Familysearch Wiki quoted above:

• From 1855 to 1922 a woman took the citizenship of her husband. An alien woman who married a United States citizen became a United States citizen.

And Marian Smith says:

“Just as alien women gained U.S. citizenship by marriage, U.S.-born women often gained foreign nationality (and thereby lost their U.S. citizenship) by marriage to a foreigner. As the law increasingly linked women's citizenship to that of their husbands, the courts frequently found that U.S. citizen women expatriated themselves by marriage to an alien. For many years there was disagreement over whether a woman lost her U.S. citizenship simply by virtue of the marriage, or whether she had to actually leave the United States and take up residence with her husband abroad. Eventually it was decided that between 1866 and 1907 no woman lost her U.S. citizenship by marriage to an alien unless she left the United States. Yet this decision was probably of little comfort to some women who, resident in the United States since birth, had been unfairly treated as aliens since their marriages to noncitizens.”

The key to her citizenship is whether her husband naturalized.  Harry Bogart Richardson came to the USA in 1871 as an eight-year old child.  In the 1910 US census he lists himself as naturalized.  He would have automatically become a citizen if his father naturalized while he was a child and most likely his name would not appear on any naturalization paper, just the father’s name.  

I have not successfully documented his  father’s naturalization.  When I contacted NARA, they sent me copies of a pile of cards, all men were named William Richardson and came from Canada in 1871 and lived in Chicago.  There was no way to distinguish which was OUR William Richardson.