52 Ancestors - #12 Pearl Burris - A Gold Miner with Diamonds in her Eye Teeth

Pearl Burris was born on March 5, 1888 in Tuscumbia, Missouri. Her parents were Burrel Williamson Burris and Rosetta George.  Her sister Opal (born September 9, 1891 and died July 7, 1892) and her brother W. Edgar (born March 9, 1889 and died March 1890) did not survive past one year of age. Her younger sister Ruby (my paternal grandmother) was born April 24, 1902 in Pueblo, Colorado and was 14 years younger.

 Pearl with Friend

Pearl married Charles W. Pardew on December 24, 1906 in Howell, Missouri when she was 18 years old and he claimed that he was 21 even though he had been born in 1888 also. They were divorced some time prior to October of 1912. He remarried on October 21, 1912 while he was living in Viola, Arkansas. Pearl and her parents had lived for three years in Viola, Arkansas after her sister Ruby’s birth in Colorado in 1902 so that must be where Pearl met Charles.

On February 28, 1913, Pearl was staying at the Metropolitan Hotel in Springfield, Missouri. On August 5, 1913 she was sent a postcard c/o Colonial Hotel in Springfield which was then forwarded to Richland, Missouri. 

In Kansas City, Missouri on March 21, 1914 Pearl B. Burris Pardew married Neal Christ Toft. She was 26 years old and he was 20.

On February 9, 1916, Pearl Toft was living at 762 Euclid, St Louis, Missouri.

Pearl’s mother Rosetta was very ill and in the hospital in Chicago where she died on August 27, 1920. Pearl and Neal Toft were living in Chicago, Illinois when they applied for US Passports on December 20, 1920 to leave the United States through the Port of New Orleans on January 1, 1921. On the application she obviously felt that the US Government did not need to know how old she was because she claimed that she was born in 1892. This was not true according to my grandmother and father and not possible according to the 1900, 1910 Censuses.  

At the time she applied for the passport she was 5’ 4” tall, had a high forehead, straight nose, medium mouth, round chin, oval face, fair complexion, brown hair and blue eyes. 

Pearl's passport photo

She is shown as returning by herself on the SS Governor Cobb to Key West, Florida from Havana, Cuba on March 18, 1921 – and she is listed as single.

In 1930 Pearl is living in Jackson, California and Neal is living in Missouri. She was still living in Jackson when her father died February 3, 1934.

In 1936 Ruby, her husband and three younger children left Missouri and moved to California so Pearl could help them out. My father was out with his dog hunting raccoons on Christmas Eve; they left while he was out and he came home to an empty house. His Mitchell grandparents took him in. Ruby and her family then moved to Seattle and Pearl helped them get a place and purchased the necessities for the family.

In the late 1930’s Pearl had a gold mine in Alaska that she worked. She would often answer her sister Ruby’s tearful pleas for money in 1938 with checks of $50 to $100.

The caption on the back of this picture was written by Pearl: At entrance of mine. Note miners cap and lamp I have on. Front of cap.

On the fifth of November 1945, Pearl married Walter Turner in Ketchikan, Alaska Territory. Pearl was 57 years old and Walter was 49 years old.

According to my grandmother Ruby, Pearl also did not feel that the US Government had any business knowing how much they made on that claim and she left the Alaska Territory with her money in a money belt (a theme on both sides of my family) prior to Alaska becoming a state in 1958. Pearl also left the Alaska Territory with a lot of nice jewelry – diamond watches and rings, and a ring with a gold nugget on it. Pearl must not have trusted banks either because she kept part of her money in bags of gold dust and diamonds. Pearl also had diamonds put into her eye teeth. 

Pearl owned several homes in California including one in Indio. Pearl and her husband had purchased property in Mexico and had moved a lot of their money there in preparation of permanently moving to Mexico. 

Pearl and Walter were killed in a horrible car/semi truck accident in Imperial, California on June 2, 1960. Pearl was 72 years old and Walter was 64. They were most probably heading to or returning from their home in Mexico. The medical examiner determined that Pearl had outlived her husband by a few minutes. There was a will leaving her sister Ruby $1, but it was unsigned and since Pearl had never had children Ruby inherited everything. Ruby spent a lot of time tearing out walls and searching for hidden money. There was no record of what they had in Mexico and Mexican officials could “find” nothing.

Ruby would come to visit us in Portland and let my sister and I wear the diamond rings and watches when we were 8 and 9 years old. And yes, Ruby managed to spend every dime in a few years – as her sister Pearl had feared.

A Certificate in Genealogy from the University of Washington

They are now accepting applications, and I have decided to sign up for the 2014-2015 Certificate in Genealogy program at the University of Washington. It starts September 25, 2014 and go until June 4, 2015. There is never going to be a really good time to devote every Thursday evening to something for nine months so I might as well do it now before I retire since I work about a half hour away from the University of Washington and I won't be able to afford to stay in this area once I retire.

http://www.pce.uw.edu/certificates/genealogy-family-history.html

From the website:

Learn to do professional-level genealogical research into your family history. Work with an array of resources – including cemetery, military and naturalization records – to help you uncover fascinating stories about your ancestors. Conduct research that illuminates the political, economic and social context of your family’s past. Interpret historical documents and photographs. Develop interviewing techniques. Gain problem-solving strategies to overcome investigative roadblocks. Produce a substantial narrative of your family’s unique story.

• Development and completion of a personal research project
• One-on-one consultation with instructors and written feedback on projects
• Access to databases and interlibrary loan at UW libraries

The application process required a credit card (of course!) a 250 word letter of application your experience doing genealogical research and the areas of family history you intend to explore in your final project and a resume describing education and applicable experience. I was very disappointed when it did not ask for my student ID# - which I have remembered for 43 years - 7135351.

The total cost of the program for nine months and 9 Continuing Education Credits is $2,337 which is a $50 application fee, tuition of $719 per quarter and a $44 per quarter registration fee. This is a bit more than my first year at $150 for 15 credits per quarter and my second through fourth years at $188 per quarter.

My son thinks it is a waste of money - that I could just learn on my own and my daughter laughed when I told her I was going to sign up. Not sure of what to think of that. I am certainly hoping that I am going to enjoy it. I do know that back in the day - a very nice, retired gentleman was taking a class every quarter and really enjoyed it. I would meet with him to help him with the math in Astronomy class.

52 Ancestors - #11 Lionell Burris Mitchell - The Inventor of the Stooley

(Thanks to my brother Terry for the Stooley story which took place between 1959 and 1961 – I was only 6 or 7 at the time.)

“When we lived in John Day, Oregon, Dad’s pride and joy was his 1957 Mercury Montclair with the Turnpike Cruiser engine. Unfortunately, it was also our eldest brother Marc’s pride and joy when it came to setting speed records (he was in high school at that time and we were surrounded by curvy mountain roads and long flat desert roads.) One morning after Marc had been out with the Merc the night before, Dad came into the house and demanded to know why Marc had been driving at a certain (excessive) speed. In spite of Marc’s denials, Dad insisted that he knew exactly how fast the car had been driven.  This went on for some time, and Marc asked Dad how he knew how fast he had been driving. Dad’s answer was that he had installed a ‘Stooley’ on the car.  He explained to Marc that a Stooley (short for stool pigeon) was a device trucking companies used to record all kinds of data on how their trucks were driven.  I don’t know if there was such a thing nearly 50 years ago (all cars basically have them now), but Marc was convinced.  Off he went to the local service station. He put the Merc up on the hoist. He looked everywhere he could under that car, under the hood, anywhere he could think to look. No luck. He could not find the fabled Stooley. Finally, in desperation Marc asked Dad to show him where this magical device was.  Dad explained that it was all very simple: He took the car out on the road, drove it at various speeds, and after each run at a particular speed, he would look at how long the bug splatters on the windshield were.  Armed with this information, Dad could always tell exactly how fast Marc had been driving.  I don’t recall whether Marc started washing the car more often or not.

Dad was really quite an inventor (as was his father), and the Stooley is a prime example of how his mind could work. The Stooley was a marvel of invention: no moving parts, very reliable and accurate, and completely undetectable.”

Even more remarkable was that everything that Dad knew was self-taught. At this time he was an electronics technician for the US Forest Service stationed at the Malheur National Forest. In 1961 – he was transferred to and put in charge of the Mt Hood National Forest communications in Portland, Oregon – and of all fire communications for Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. He continued to invent a number of things and managed to save the US Forest Service hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, the move to Portland was not good one for the 1957 Mercury Montclair. Our brother Marc stayed in John Day for a couple of years and then joined us in Portland to attend college. I-84 proved to be flat, fast, and too tempting for Marc going up the Columbia River Gorge one night and he managed to put a rod through the engine and then continued to drive it until it was dead. This was the summer of 1964 and we were leaving the next day for a family vacation to the coast. I was totally humiliated and wanted to duck my head as we drove into the resort in a ghastly ancient 1940 something loaner car with the trunk tied down with rope. The mechanic was not able revive the Merc.

DNA Results for Three Siblings

All I can say is that I wish I knew what our parents results would be!

Here is a post by The Legal Genealogist describing the results for four of her grandparents twelve children who were full blood siblings. Her first chart shows the amount of DNA each sibling has in common with the other and then later in the article she talks about how many DNA matches each sibling had with possible cousins and how many they had in common. With a total of 1,681 matches for all four by the end of February, there were only 159 that all four had in common.

Here is a great example from the Ancestry Blog on DNA inheritance that uses children's letter blocks.

 

When you see the results below REMEMBER my previous post that the most redheads are found in Scotland! (Well, 13% for Scotland with 10% in Ireland.)

What is it with the switched Europe West and Great Britain for Terry and then Lisa and me?

I haven't had time to check the matches we have in common on Ancestry.com but I did recognize about a dozen that we have in common with a quick look.

Terry	Maevè	Lisa
Europe West 62%	Europe West 6%	Europe West 8%
Great Britain 18%	Great Britain 82%	Great Britain 54%
Iberian Peninsula 8%	Iberian Peninsula 8%	Iberian Peninsula 9%
Ireland 6%	Ireland 1%	Ireland 11%
Scandinavia 5%	Scandinavia < 1%	Scandinavia 15%
Italy/Greece < 1%	Italy/Greece 1%	Italy/Greece 2%
	Europe East 1%	Europe East <1%

Area Definitions: 

Europe West
Primarily located in: Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
Also found in: England, Denmark, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic

Europe East 
Primarily located in: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia Also found in: Germany, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Estonia, Bulgaria

Great Britain
Primarily located in: England, Scotland, Wales
Also located in: Ireland, France, Germany

Iberian Peninsula
Primarily found in: Spain, Portugal
May also be found in: France, Morocco, Algeria, Italy

Scandinavia
Primarily located in: Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Also found in: Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, the Baltic States, Finland

Italy, Greece
Primarily located in: Italy, Greece
Also found in: France, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, Turkey, Slovenia, Algeria, Tunisia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo

Ireland
Primarily located in: Ireland, Wales, Scotland
Also found in: France, England

52 Ancestors - #10 B.W. Burris of Missouri

My paternal great great grandparents were B.W. (Burrel Williamson) and Rosetta George Burris.

(Photos from original oil paintings)

 Burrel Williamson Burris was born near Tuscumbia, Miller County, Missouri, on June 25, 1858 and died at his home 2 1/2 miles north of Raymondville, in Texas County, Missouri on February 3, 1934, making his age at time of death 75 years, 7 months and 8 days. He died peacefully in his sleep. His daughter Ruby, her husband Champ and his three grandsons were living with him at the time. His daughter Pearl was living in California.

B.W. taken sometime before 1934

 

B.W. was married to Miss Rosetta George on April 14, 1887.

They had four children - the first was Pearl born March 5, 1888.  W. Edgar Burris, their only son was born on March 9, 1889 and died a year later in March 1890.  Their second daughter Opal was born September 9, 1891 and died July 7, 1892. Opal and Edgar were both buried at the Hawkins Cemetery in Brumley, Miller County, Missouri. B.W. went from Miller County to the west and spent several years in the western states; he homesteaded for a while in eastern Washington State near Ellensburg in Kittitas County and then moved to Pueblo, Pueblo County, Colorado where they finally had another child, my grandmother Ruby who was born April 24, 1902. From Colorado they then moved to Arkansas, where he engaged in the mercantile business for three years. He came to Texas County, Missouri and located at Raymondville in 1907, where he conducted a mercantile business until 1924, and later moved to his farm where he resided at the time of his death. He was buried at the Allen Cemetery outside of Raymondville next to his wife Rosetta who died after a serious illness and months in the hospital in Chicago on August 27, 1920. 

At some point in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s my father (their grandson) Lionell Burris Mitchell purchased a headstone for their graves since as he put it, “their two gems couldn’t be bothered to do it.” I visited their graves in August 2002 while on a motorcycle trip across country where we did 5613 miles and 18 states in 17 days. One day was spent traveling to cemeteries in Missouri to visit graves of family members – my friend Val commented later that my family was a little stuck up – not one of them talked to us after we traveled all that way to see them. The same could not be said of the townspeople. It was early on a Sunday afternoon and the Baptist Church was just getting out when we stopped and asked for directions in Raymondville to the Allen Cemetery. They were very nice and invited us to the church picnic! B.W. had been a member of this church for 48 years before his death.

In 2002 I had known that B.W. and Rosetta had two children who died in infancy but all I knew about them was that the girl was Opal and the other had been a boy. Nothing else. I was disappointed that I did not find their graves on our trip but a few days after we were home I did another internet search and found that the records for the cemetery they were buried in had been added a few months before. I learned a valuable lesson - just because it isn't there when you search for something - doesn't mean it won't be there when you search later.

Information on B.W. Burris from Lionell Burris Mitchell and Houston Herald Obituary of B. W. Burris