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Margaret Anne Jordan LaBelle (1925–2021): A Life Story

Posted on April 17, 2021April 28, 2021 by genealogic

My grandmother Margaret died last month. Obituaries are expensive, so hers was kept fairly brief. I completely understand that decision, but I also think people deserve to be remembered in more complexity than two paragraphs can offer. So I decided to write Margaret’s Life Story. Aided by the collection of documents, photographs, and memories people shared at the funeral, I’ve been able to put together an extended narrative and photo essay that will, I hope, honor her legacy and help her descendants learn about her life and times long into the future.

I am posting this today because it would have been Margaret’s 96^th birthday.

An Active Childhood

Margaret Anne Jordan was born April 17, 1925, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was the eldest child of Basil and Isabelle (Daly) Jordan, who had married in St. Paul the previous July. Margaret grew up on the east side of St. Paul with her younger brother Patrick. She attended St. Patrick Catholic School through eighth grade and then Johnson High School.

Portrait of Margaret and Patrick Jordan, ca. 1929. — Margaret and Patrick Jordan, 1929.

Margaret and Patrick picture in a photo booth. — Margaret and Patrick photobooth shot, ca. 1936.

The 8th grade graduating class of St. Patrick Catholic School. Margaret is farthest right in the front row. — The 1939 8th grade graduating class of St. Patrick Catholic School. Margaret is farthest right in the front row.

As a child, Margaret spent a lot of time with her maternal grandparents, Ed and Jane (Reynolds) Daly. In 1924, while Margaret was in utero, her grandparents had moved from a farm near Beardsley, Minnesota, into a house on Edgerton Street, just two blocks away from their soon-to-be granddaughter.

Some of Margaret’s most lasting childhood memories were of her grandfather. Ed had a job as nightwatchman for the Twin City Rapid Transit Company, which operated the streetcar system in Minneapolis and St. Paul. As an employee, he could ride for free. On his days off, he would ride around town visiting friends and chatting up the waitresses at his favorite restaurant on the corner of University and Snelling. When Margaret was nine or ten, she regularly accompanied him on his social rounds. She got to explore the city and meet all sorts of people. Her grandfather would jokingly introduce her as his “chaperone.”

Grandpa Ed Daly with Margaret and Patrick, summer 1928.

Passengers board a streetcar in St. Paul with the Cathedral of St. Paul in the background. — Passengers getting onto streetcar at west entrance to Selby Tunnel, St. Paul, ca. 1929.
Minnesota Historical Society, http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10732818.

Another distinctive memory Margaret had from around the same age was of clandestine meetings at her house. For sixteen years, from 1928 to 1943, her father Basil worked at the enormous St. Paul Union Stockyards in South St. Paul. During most of his tenure he was a teamster. Early in the Great Depression, he struggled to get enough hours, often working only half days, and Margaret’s mother Isabelle got a job at a local restaurant to help make ends meet. By 1937, Basil had the opposite problem, routinely putting in 60 to 70 hours a week—without overtime pay. (Basil’s compensation record and the rest of his personnel file are archived at the Minnesota Historical Society.)

The secret gatherings Margaret remembered her father hosting were organizing meetings for the union. Basil’s union activities were part of the broader Twin Cities labor movement of the ’30s. Based on the Minnesota Historical Society’s photograph collection, strikes at the stockyards took place in 1932, 1933, and 1938. Basil may also have taken part in the Teamsters strike of 1934, which was centered in Minneapolis. Margaret and Patrick knew about their father’s meetings but were sworn to secrecy.

Teamsters lined up at the St. Paul Union Stockyards, 1929.
Minnesota Historical Society, http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10669809.

Member of the workers’ organizing committee speaks during a 1938 strike at the stockyards in South St. Paul.
Minnesota Historical Society, http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10729180.

On November 11, 1940, Margaret was 15 and a freshman at Johnson High. It was a warm morning, so she wore only a skirt and blouse when she left her family’s house on Payne Avenue for her one-mile walk to school. But by the time she had to make the long walk home, a blizzard was raging. She recalled wrapping newspapers around her legs in a futile effort to keep warm. Like many other Minnesotans that day, Margaret survived the Armistice Day Blizzard—but barely. This experience too stuck with her for the rest of her life.

Two women in skirts caught on the streets of Minneapolis during the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940.
Minnesota Historical Society, http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10750540.

At school, Margaret was a very active student. She took part in Spanish club, bowling club, archery, and was on the Board of the Girls Athletic Association. She was part of a traveling folk dancing group and was also a talented speed skater. Margaret was especially proud of the school letter she earned for athletics at a time when most girls were discouraged from participating in sports.

Margaret's high school diploma. — A snapshot of her high school diploma.

Margaret graduated from Johnson High in 1943. This was in the middle of World War II. Many of her male classmates went off to basic training and then to Europe or the Pacific. Margaret started working as a Rosie the Riveter. Every day she travelled to Holman Field, an airfield across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Paul. She and several thousand other workers—mostly women—retrofitted B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with high-altitude oxygen and ventilation systems and new, top-secret H2X radar systems.

Margaret (back, facing left) and four other women in a training fuselage, perhaps photographed by staff from the Office of War Information (OWI), at the Northwest Airlines modification center at Holman Field. According to the names written on the back of Margaret’s small photo print, the women in the picture were Carol(?) Boger, Margaret Jordan, Alice Anderson, Dorothy Reiter, and Audrey Hane.

Retrofitted B-24 taking off from Holman Field. — A modified B-24 takes off from Holman Field.
Northwest Airlines via NWA History Center

In the fall of 1943, Margaret’s father Basil quit his job at the stockyards. He, Isabelle, and Patrick moved to Durand, Wisconsin. Since Margaret had a high-paying job at Holman Field, she stayed in St. Paul. She moved in with the family of her aunt Bessie at 331 Geranium Ave. Bessie’s husband Martin Aasen was a butcher at a Swift & Co. packing plant in the same South St. Paul stockyards complex.

Margaret’s grandfather Edward Daly had died in 1937, but her grandmother Jane Daly now lived with Bessie, Martin, and their 11-year-old son—Margaret’s cousin—Dick. Jane had early-onset dementia, and Margaret helped Bessie care for her until her death in 1945.

Margaret and Patrick with their mother Isabelle (Daly) Jordan and grandmother Jane (Reynolds) Daly, ca. 1932.

Margaret with her mother Isabelle when she was a single, young working woman living with her aunt Bessie.

When the war ended in 1945, all the men came back from overseas. For the rest of her life, Margaret bitterly resented being forced out of a good-paying job and into the role of homemaker. But that’s what she did, and she did it well.

A Wife and a Mother

Two of Margaret’s good friends from school were Dorothy LaBelle and Dorothy’s first cousin Marge LaBelle. Margaret had met Dorothy’s older brother Gerald back in her school days. She started seeing him after he returned the Pacific. Margaret and Gerald wed on June 20, 1946, at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in St. Paul—their home church.

Gerald LaBelle in Navy uniform, probably during the winter of 1943—after he enlisted in November ’42, but before he left for basic training? He enlisted with his friend Don Wagner, who married Gerald’s sister (and Margaret’s friend) Dorothy LaBelle in June 1943.

Gerald worked as a machinist aboard the USS Matanikau, a training and transport aircraft carrier in the Pacific, from September 1944 to October 1945. Note his insignia, which shows his rank as Aviation Machinist Mate 3rd Class.

Five children followed between 1947 and 1958: Gerald, Jr.; Greg; Maureen; Mark; and Ross. Their early years of parenthood were a challenge. Little Jerry, Jr., was born with cerebral palsy after a difficult childbirth. Then, as a small boy, he contracted polio. In 1951, Margaret and Gerald made the difficult decision to appoint a state guardian for Jerry. He lived the rest of his life in state hospitals or group homes before his death in 2005. (This was many years before in-home care for someone with significant disabilities was an option like it is today.)

Margaret and Gerald with baby Jerry, Jr., 1947.

Margaret with children Greg and Maureen, 1952.

In 1953—after a very brief residence in Belvidere, Illinois—Margaret and Gerald bought a house at 388 Geranium Avenue East in St. Paul, less than a block from the home of Margaret’s aunt Bessie. Margaret would reside in that house for the next 62 years.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Margaret was a busy mother and an active member of St. Patrick’s Church. As a mother, she did all kinds of creative arts with her kids. She made doll cakes, fancy sugar eggs for Easter, and marzipan candies in the shapes of fruits and vegetables. She was a cub scout den mother. At church, she helped organize and run the fall festival and spaghetti dinners, and she served as one of the “church basement ladies,” cooking countless meals for church functions. If that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, she also occasionally worked as a department store clerk. And she was a regular hostess. Her extended family—especially her many paternal cousins—were regular guests in her home.

Margaret and kids in front of the Tetons during a trip to California to visit Gerald’s parents and sister, August 1961.

On Her Own

Then, in 1969, Gerald abruptly left the family. The ensuing divorce and annulment left lasting scars on everyone in the family, but especially on Margaret. In fact, the divorce went all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where it helped establish case law that is still studied by prospective lawyers today.

In a few short years, Margaret effectively lost her whole family. Her mother Isabelle had died of ovarian cancer in 1967. Her husband abandoned her in 1969. One by one, her children left for the Air Force or college or to live on their own. And now she had to support herself.

Margaret's diploma from the University of Minnesota. — Snapshot of Margaret’s diploma from the University of Minnesota.

In June 1973, Margaret earned a two-year Certificate of Liberal Arts from the University of Minnesota. At age 48, this was one of her proudest accomplishments. She had also recently begun a new job at West Publishing Company. Margaret supported the company’s traveling salesmen, making sure they had everything they needed while on the road and arranging supply shipments as needed. It wasn’t the professional career she had envisioned for herself in 1945, but it paid the bills. And she made several good friends there. Margaret stayed at West Publishing until she retired in June 1990.

Margaret with her daughter Maureen and father Basil, Christmas 1976 at her house on Geranium Avenue.

Besides working, Margaret rededicated herself in her Catholic faith. She continued to volunteer at church, and she became a member of the Legion of Mary, an association of Catholics dedicated to spiritual and social welfare through prayer and apostolic works.

After she retired, Margaret went on numerous pilgrimages to important Catholic sites in North and South America, often with her friend Ceile Swenson. They visited sites up and down the U.S. East Coast and in South Bend, Indiana. In 1994, they visited Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and a year later traveled to the Shrine of Betania in Cúa, Venezuela, the location of thousands of apparitions of the Virgin Mary and a Miracle of the Eucharist Host. Then in 2000, they traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to join the studio audience as Mother Angelica filmed an episode of her famous TV show, which was broadcast on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). While in Alabama, Margaret and Ceile also stopped at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery and the newly built Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, both of which—like the EWTN network—had been established by Mother Angelica.

A few years later, Margaret took a different kind of trip. In 2004, when Margaret was 79, she had the pleasure to visit Ireland with her cousins Colleen and Cindy. Margaret was enormously proud of her Irish heritage—every branch of her family tree traced back to the Emerald Isle—so this was the trip of a lifetime for her.

A very cold and wet Margaret visiting the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, 2004.

Margaret’s Irish heritage touched every corner of the Emerald Isle. This map shows the (known) locations Margaret’s immigrant ancestors left behind in Ireland.

Inevitably, age eventually caught up to Margaret. In 2015, after 62 years in her house on Geranium Avenue and 90 years(!) as a member of St. Patrick’s church, Margaret moved into Cherrywood Pointe of Forest Lake. She lived independently until age 92, and then in assisted living until her death.

When she was in her 90s, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren enjoyed celebrating each birthday with her (except for her 95^th, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Her family brought brunch, played games, and kept counting higher every year!

Margaret with seven of her eight great-grandchildren celebrating her 91st birthday in April 2016. (An eighth and final great-grandchild would be born in 2018.)

She was a tough woman to the end. She survived a heart attack at age 85—followed by a triple bypass and surgery to clear her carotid arteries—a stroke at 86, and numerous serious illnesses in her 90s, including influenza. Even in her last week of life, she told visitors she planned to get better. The hardest part of her final years was the dementia which took hold after her stroke. But while her short-term memory failed, she could still remember details about being a child and young adult. During one visit in October 2019, I recorded her talking about her experiences in the 1930s and 1940s. That discussion informed some of this story.

Margaret Anne LaBelle died peacefully in her sleep, March 9, 2021, at Cherrywood Pointe of Forest Lake, following two months under the compassionate care of Ecumen Hospice.

A Difficult Life, But a Life Well Lived

A simple narrative like this can never capture the full picture of a person’s life. Margaret had a wide range of hobbies and interests. A true Minnesotan, she liked to fish. She loved reading, especially biographies and histories. From an early age, she had a fondness for painting, sewing, and gardening. She loved clothing and jewelry and collected all sorts of outfits over the years.

Margaret was generous—almost to a fault. She supported dozens if not hundreds of charitable causes in her life (perhaps including a few fraudulent ones). At Thanksgiving, she would gladly invite anyone in the neighborhood who had no place else to go. Even late in life—when she was well into her 80s—Margaret offered a room in her house to someone in need.

She was predeceased by her parents, brother Pat, and son Jerry, Jr. She is survived by her children Greg (Johnny), Maureen (Wes) Vanek, Mark (Jenny), Ross (Joni); grandchildren Erik (Jennifer) LaBelle, Carrie (Tim) Hill, John (Pam) Vanek; and great-grandchildren Ally, Cece, Lucy, and JJ LaBelle, Carson and Caleb Hill, and Eliza and Lena Vanek, as well as other family and friends.

Margaret was buried Friday, March 12, 2021, in Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights, next to her son Jerry LaBelle, Jr. Paul bearers were Ross LaBelle, Wes Vanek, John Vanek, Carrie Hill, Erik LaBelle, and Ally LaBelle. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, only Margaret’s immediate family attended the funeral. Margaret went out as she came in, a proud Irish Catholic. Father Tom Fitzgerald led her funeral service. And, at Margaret’s request, the service was full of Irish music: “Danny Boy,” Carrickfergus,” “Into the Mystic,” the ancient Irish hymn “Be Thou My Vision,” and the jig “The Irish Washerwoman,” among others.

Stereotyping Our Ancestors: The Irish and Potatoes

Posted on February 27, 2017March 1, 2017 by genealogic

Stereotypes are often created in order to demean certain groups of people. There is usually a kernel of truth behind them, to be sure, but in serving their more sinister purpose most stereotypes blow that kernel out of proportion and/or unjustly link it to other unsavory characteristics. Eventually, though, some stereotypes become little more than a harmless joke.

Original illustration, *Atlas des plantes de France*, 1891, Autor A. Masclef. Wikimedia Commons.

Take the Irish and potatoes. Even before potato famine of the 1840s, the widespread reliance of Irish tenant farmers on potatoes became the source of a handful of derogatory nicknames and slang among the English. (Even the word Irish itself was used as a mocking adjective.) Worse nicknames welcomed the more than four million Irish refugees who migrated to America before, during, and after the potato famine, including several based on potatoes. These stereotypes were far from harmless. Violence and political repression faced Irish Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic, and they were often considered a different race of people altogether. (Unfortunately, little has changed. We still see almost rabid hatred applied not to those who abuse power and wealth, but rather to those who are poor and seeking refuge.) Stereotypes were a way of not-so-subtly reminding everyone about the existing power dynamic—the Irish were second-class citizens. Behind the name-calling was an implicit threat of something worse.

But as we’ve seen repeatedly among oppressed groups of people, the Irish found solidarity in the very things that made them stand out. They took pride in eating potatoes and in re-creating a sense of community at the local pub. Eventually—it took at least a century—descendants of Irish immigrants integrated into broader American society and no longer bore the brunt of nativist sentiment. Light skin certainly helped. (Some Americans, including many Irish immigrants and of some of their descendants, found other groups to fear and to hate.) Still, despite all the pressure to assimilate completely, certain aspects of the Irish cultural legacy lived on, including a diet rich in potatoes.

In the Irish part of my family, the potato stereotype held fast and true. If anything, it grew stronger in America. My mother has fond memories of her grandparents Basil and Isabelle (Daly) Jordan. They were both American-born, but they retained important aspects of their Irish heritage. According to my mother, Basil loved potatoes. “No meal is complete without a potato,” he always said. And he meant it. He might have a fried potato for breakfast, boiled potatoes with his lunch, and meat and potatoes for dinner. He once told my mom she looked too thin (she has never had this problem) and should eat more potatoes.

Isabelle’s family, too, had deep, tuberous roots in Ireland. In fact, what prompted me to write this post was a recent discovery about Isabelle’s maternal grandparents, William and Mary (Cramsie) Reynolds. I was working on an article about the Reynolds family for an upcoming issue of The Septs, the quarterly publication of the Irish Genealogical Society International, when I came across a sale notice for the Reynolds’ farm in The Derry Journal. It was January 1881, and the family was preparing to leave County Derry for America that spring. With only a trunk or two to carry their most necessary and valuable possessions, William and Mary had to sell not just the farm land but almost everything on the farm too: livestock, stored crops, farm implements, household furniture, and more. They ran a modest farm and, as Catholics, were in fact fortunate to own the land they cultivated. Among their modest possessions, one thing caught my eye. According to the sale notice, “The Crop consists of Three Stacks Oats, a large quantity of Hay and Straw, and about Twenty Tons of Potatoes, of a superior quality.” It was true! Here was proof that some of my Irish ancestors grew—and apparently subsisted on—tons and tons of potatoes and little else, even thirty-five years after the Great Hunger. Twenty tons of potatoes was more than enough to carry the family of two adults and five children through winter with some to spare.

William Reynolds' farm sale notice — *The Derry Journal*, 11 Feb 1881, pg. 1. From the British Newspaper Archive online.

A final point. It’s worth remembering that many of the foods we identify with certain ethnic groups reflect not just voluntary cultural choices, but choices imposed by poverty. Irish peasants ate mostly potatoes and milk because they could afford little else. When we ask, “why did the Irish eat so many potatoes?” our answers are partly to be found in English colonization and the confiscation of land by Protestants. Held in poverty, most Irish Catholics could afford nothing but the potatoes they grew on their small plots of rented land. William Reynolds’ parents Frederick James Reynolds and Mary Hasson were apparently quite poor. They had emigrated separately to America in 1848, arriving in Philadelphia with little more than the clothes on their backs. (Philadelphia was not a welcoming place for Irish immigrants in the 1840s. When and why Frederick and Mary Hasson Reynolds returned to Ireland and how they acquired land there are some of the questions raised in my article.)

Like the Irish and potatoes, African-American “soul food” reflects a history of oppression. “Soul food” developed from slave cooking in the American South and, after the Civil War, in rural and urban poverty throughout the U.S. While we take pride in all the creative ways the Irish found to cook potatoes and the genius of African-Americans to create “soul food” from scraps, we must remember that if given the choice most of these people would have preferred the varied diets, unusual flavors, and luxuries (like sugar, tea, coffee, and better cuts of meat) that were eaten by the upper classes.

When we think about our cultural inheritance from ancestors in such groups, we ought both to celebrate the perseverance and resourcefulness embodied by their cuisine and recognize the systems of power that limited their culinary (and nutritional) choices in the first place. It’s OK to be both proud and upset by the truth of your family history. So have a laugh when you find proof that the kernel of a now-harmless stereotype turns out to be true, but remember that such stereotypes usually have deeper, more sinister histories. Consider this fact not just when researching your own family’s immigrant ancestors but also when you look at your neighbors today.

Real-life DNA Testing, 2017

Posted on January 11, 2017January 11, 2017 by genealogic

As I kick off 2017, I am working on (and waiting on) quite a number of DNA projects. Here’s a rundown. I hope these provide some ideas about different ways you might be able to use DNA to answer your own genealogical questions.

A client and I are waiting on the AncestryDNA test results of her brother as we search for information about their biological grandparents. Their now-deceased father was left at an orphanage as a newborn. While the ethnicity breakdown is somewhat useful, what we’re really looking for are relatively close cousins on their paternal side.

My dad and I are awaiting his AncestryDNA results, which he sent in before Christmas. I have spent years building out my family tree. It was a difficult “loss” when I found out my dad was not my biological father and that his ancestors were not also my ancestors, at least not genetically. (I’ve written elsewhere about how I have embraced having three full branches on my family tree.) So I’m excited to see the results for a family that, as it turned out, my own DNA couldn’t tell me anything about. My dad’s family tree is pretty interesting. The top half—his father’s ancestors—were all of Czech origin, but their surnames suggest a mix of Slavic, German (Bernklau, Fitzthum), and even Italian (Filipi) ancestry. The bottom half—his mother’s ancestors—were a muddled mix of people who traced their roots back through the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic. Before the branches converged in Illinois and Nebraska, they were English settlers in New Jersey, German and Scots-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Swedes from the New Sweden colony, Quakers around Philadelphia, and a mix of English, Scottish, Welsh, and French Huguenot settlers in colonial Maryland.

Sometime in the next couple weeks, I will be sitting down with my 91-year-old maternal grandmother to talk about her family history. I am hoping I can convince her to take a DNA test. (I won’t force her if she’s uncomfortable with the idea.) It’s always good to test the oldest people in your family if you can. My grandmother’s ancestry is fully Irish. Her fore-bearers came from all corners of the island: Mayo, Kerry, Laois, Wicklow, and Derry, plus a couple lines whose specific origin in Ireland I am still researching. I am hoping the cousin matches will help me prove a couple relationships here in the U.S. and back in Ireland.

Last week I met with my wife’s uncle. While we were researching my wife’s maternal family a couple years ago, we discovered that her great-grandfather Edward Van Loy had been born out-of-wedlock in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands. The document recording the marriage of Edward’s mother Theresia Gedaan to Alphonsus Van Loy includes a section in which Alphonsus agreed to recognize Edward and his sister Seraphina (who had also been born before the marriage) as his own children. My wife’s uncle agreed to take a Y-chromosome test to see if we can identify a probable surname for Edward’s biological father (or, less likely, confirm that Alphonsus Van Loy was in fact the father). We ordered the 111-marker test from FamilyTreeDNA—the most detailed one—to give us the clearest picture right from the start.

Angelique Gobin Gervais was born around 1830 in the Red River Settlement and lived to be about 95 years old. At her death in 1925, people believed she was even older, about 105 or 106. This photograph of her was originally posted on Ancestry.com by another decedent. We must always be wary of judging race by appearance alone, but Angelique’s facial appearance at least suggested the possibility of Native American ancestry.

Documentary evidence leads to the conclusion that one of my ancestors was a Native American woman who lived near the Red River of the North around 1800. She was possibly a member of either the Ojibwe or Assiboine tribe. I’m too many generations removed from her for Native American DNA to appear in my ethnicity chart. Her genes simply did not survive eight generations of random genetic recombination. I descend from the woman’s mixed-blood daughter Louise Godon and granddaughter Angelique Gobin. Unfortunately, the next person in the line between us is a man. In hopes of proving the Native American connection, I have reached out to a couple cousins who descend from Angelique or Louise through entirely female lines. I am encouraging them to take a mitochondrial DNA test. If everything is as expected, their mitochondrial DNA should come from one of the distinctive Native American haplogroups.

I will provide some short updates as results come in.

How Our Ancestors Voted

Posted on November 8, 2016January 4, 2017 by genealogic

Our ancestors were just as political as we are today. The issues may have changed—do you care more about currency backed by silver or about immigration and terrorism?—but voting is as important as ever. Since today is another monumental presidential election in the U.S., I thought I should write a short post about how genealogists can learn about the politics of our ancestors, using a few of my own relatives as examples.

The power of democracy

As the America nation expanded geographically during the 19th and 20th centuries, so too did the number of people who could vote. Through grassroots activism and the hard work of many individuals, earlier limits based on property, race, and gender gradually fell by the wayside. This ever-expanding democracy was one of the “pull”-factors that enticed millions of immigrants to the United States in the past two centuries. The immigration process can sometimes offer us our first tantalizing clues about our ancestors’ politics.

First of all, the date our ancestors left their homelands might suggest that they had a certain political affiliation in their native country. For example, 17th century migration from England to America happened in waves that were directly tied to changing political conditions in England: most notably the Separatist and Puritan migrations to New England between 1620 and 1640 and the Royalist “Cavaliers” who settled in Virginia during the English Civil War of 1642-51. Likewise, several German and Bohemian families in my ancestry left central Europe during the late 1840s and early 1850s, a time when political retribution was common after the failed revolutions of 1848. For people seeking a more liberal, democratic form of government, America was an obvious choice. If your ancestors were among these particular groups, you’ve got a good starting point for understanding how their political (and religious) beliefs fit into the context of their times.

I think it can also be suggestive to consider how long it took our immigrant ancestors to become U.S. citizens once they arrived. Some of them declared their intent to become a citizen within months after first setting foot on American soil. Others waited years, and some never even tried. Their haste (or not) in becoming a citizen gives us a clue to how engaged they were politically. Becoming a citizen meant earning the right to vote (if they were white and male, depending on the era). But just like today, some people were apathetic about participating.

My 4x-great-grandfather Abraham Pattison immigrated in May 1861, settling near Madison, Wisconsin. In October 1862, he declared his intention to become a U.S. citizen. — My 4x-great-grandfather Abraham Pattison immigrated in May 1861, settling near Madison, Wisconsin. Not long after, in October 1862, he declared his intention to become a U.S. citizen. He was eager to participate in American politics at a critical moment in American history. According to his son Henry, Abraham wanted to join the Union army but his wife implored him to stay home. In the end, they compromised. Abraham stayed in Madison, but he helped train and organize official recruits at Camp Randall before they left for the battlefronts.

Parties and issues

It is often quite difficult to know who our ancestors voted for or why. (Indeed, the secrecy of the ballot is one of its key features.) But sometimes you’ll stumble across a document that provides clear answers about their political opinions. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have ancestors in some of the few places for which voter rolls have been digitized. But even if you can’t find your ancestors in those records, you’ll probably still be able to learn something about their politics.

Abel Dunham (1819-1899) and his wife Rachel Harding (1816-1886) — Abel Dunham (1819-1899) and his first wife Rachel Harding (1816-1886). Photo shared on Ancestry.com by user RDunham35.

Some of our ancestors were outspoken about particular issues, and their views were recorded in newspapers or county histories. For example, one of my ancestors, Abel Dunham (1819-1899), was an outspoken abolitionist. His staunch Republicanism is noted in every county history sketch about Abel or one of his children. One sketch (of two) in Past and Present of Pike County, Illinois, reads in part:

Mr. Dunham was a prominent abolitionist, doing everything in his power to suppress slavery, and when the Republican Party was organized to prevent its further extension he became one of its stalwart advocates. Later he was again connected with a party of reform—the prohibitionist, for he was an earnest advocate of the cause of temperance and in fact his influence was ever given on the side of progress and improvement and for the amelioration of the hard conditions of human life.

Similarly, searching through newspapers I came across an article that helped me and my wife understand the political sentiments of her great-great-grandfather Erhardt Lenhardt (1844-1929). Lenhardt was a well-to-do immigrant brewer in Litchfield, Minnesota. Amidst the heated debates about currency leading up to the presidential election of 1896, Lenhardt was noted in the St. Paul Globe as one of the “influential Democrats” who had thrown their support behind Republican nominee William McKinley and the policy of “sound money.” It was an unusual position; most Democrats supported “free silver” that year. Indeed, “free silver” was the primary campaign issue for Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan.

Why did Erhardt Lenhardt cross party lines with his support? As it turns out, Lenhardt had invested $15,000 in a municipal bond from the state treasury department in 1895. He had a lot to lose if the value of the state’s fixed interest payments were reduced by inflation. Thus, the picture comes into focus. As a businessman and investor—more specifically as a lender—Lenhardt risked losing money on his investment if a flood of new (silver-backed) currency entered the economy and depreciated the value of each dollar he was supposed to be repaid by the state. That was enough for him to overlook other Democratic policies he might have supported and Republican policies he may not have liked.

The St. Paul Globe, October 5, 1896, pg. 8. — The Saint Paul Globe, October 5, 1896, pg. 8.

Political legacies

Political affiliations often pass from one generation to the next (although I’m sure we all know of counterexamples). One line on my Irish side voted Democratic for several generations, even as the party itself gradually moved from the right to the left on many issues. Abraham Pattison’s son Henry ran as a Democrat for Wisconsin state assembly from Pepin and Buffalo Counties in 1914. (He lost badly, receiving less than 15% of the vote.) As something of a consolation, two years later a Democratic senator named him postmaster for the city of Durand.

Some of Henry’s children and grandchildren were even more involved in the Democratic party. Henry’s grandson Basil Jordan (1902-1983), my great-grandfather, worked in St. Paul Union Stockyards in South St. Paul, Minnesota. He helped organize a labor union there. My grandmother remembers him hosting clandestine meetings at their house in St. Paul when she was a little girl. (The Twin Cities were a hot spot of labor activity during the 1930s, and the stakes were high.) Basil wasn’t a socialist or a Communist, just an everyday working-class Democrat who supported organized labor.

Francis "Fal" Pattison with Vice President Hubert Humphrey — Photo courtesy Mary Ann Pattison.

Basil’s brother Tom Jordan was raised by his grandparents Henry and Kate Pattison. As an adult, Tom was an active Democrat. He owned and operated the Prindle Inn in Durand, Wisconsin, and he sometimes invited Democratic politicians, including President Kennedy, to stay there. Finally, here is a picture of Henry Pattison’s youngest son Francis “Fal” Pattison with sitting Vice President Hubert Humphrey. I don’t know the story behind the photo, but the political affinity fits with what we know about the Pattison family.

Most of our relatives weren’t influential enough to be photographed with national political figures. Others, like journalists and judges, were ostensibly obligated to be keep their political views private. To give a final example using yet another Pattison, Henry and Kate’s son George Leo “Judge Lee” Pattison, spent 32 years as an elected judge in Buffalo County, Wisconsin. His job demanded impartiality, and George was proud of his track record. Though from a staunchly Democratic family, he was first appointed by a Republican governor. Perhaps most suggestive of his impartiality, he never had a decision overturned by the state supreme court.

To sum up this post, celebrate the fact that we live in a democracy and that you have the right to vote. Then get out and find the compelling political stories in your family’s past. What issues mattered to your ancestors? Did any of them run for or hold elected offices? Can you figure out for whom they voted and why? It’s a fascinating search, and it’s less trivial than it first appears. I think it helps inform the present. Most of us have ancestors with a wide range of political beliefs. (On my dad’s side are relatives who have been Republicans for as long as the Pattisons have been Democrats.) Just like today, it is more useful to try to understand why these people valued what they valued than to dismiss them out of hand for belonging to a particular political party.