The Mystery Of George William Smith & Everything Else On The Planet.

George William Smith. My Father’s Father’s Mother’s Father. Got that? Until 2017, when I descended into the endless plummet known as genealogy, his existence was unknown to me. I was not aware his daughter, Myrtle Marie Smith was my Great Grandmother. You see, within two weeks of signing up for a genealogy website, I acquired more information about my paternal Grandfather’s family than I had learned in 39 years prior. I also learned that family secrets, they are plentiful. That if something is made quiet long enough, it might just die within a generation, and the next generation will in theory be left oblivious, all the while wondering “What the hell was that? "Why is this happening?” Quick example, my Mother’s first cousin was unaware that she suffered from schizophrenia until I told him. Four months ago. He’s 76. Also, keep in mind, four months ago was sixteen years after she passed away. Hell, even I didn’t learn about my Mom’s diagnosis until my Dad and I were standing in the hallway at the hospital, when he decided to tell me, “You know the last time your Mother was in the hospital the doctor in the psych ward said…” He told me that the day before she died.

Enough about secrets, George William Smith.

For my Great Aunt Grace, who was George William Smith’s granddaughter, there is evidence that she too was met with brick walls, and no answers. I have her correspondence from distant relatives in which one of her steadfast questions was evidently, “Do you know anything about my Grandfather George Smith?” The most revealing reply is included in a letter from 1972, from a woman who's signature I can not make out, but who would have been an in-law of Grace's Uncle, and son of George Smith, Harrison Smith.

It says, “Sorry, none of us know anything of your Grandfather. I don’t believe that Harrison had any knowledge of your Grandfather or his whereabouts. Probably too small then he left them. As I told you before, Leah (Harrison’s wife) said he just went away.”

It’s a strange notion to think that forty-seven years after the fact, I’m trying to flesh out the work of family that I never met; a woman who to me was no more than a faint long distance voice on the phone, a birthday card in the mail and a stranger in a casket because of my Father’s own generational brick wall of silence and false comfort.

Where Grace ended left me with this beginning. “George W. Smith,” possibly “George H. Smith.” No birthdate. No death date. No parents, siblings, place of birth, residence. Nothing. That’s how he stayed, for a solid eighteen months. No new clues, one, because Pennsylvania’s records from that time are in no way complete, and two, because his name was GEORGE SMITH, which as you might imagine, was a needle in a haystack in a maze that leads to a locked vault. Yes, there were a LOT of George Smith's.

Then, one day, after looking under rocks I found a DNA match, and that match also included a George Smith amongst their branches. George Smith, unlocked. From that information alone combined with my Aunt Grace’s notes I was able to fill in the paragraphs of his story, but even then, it raised more questions. The DNA match had an entirely different lineage than mine.

"Probably too small then he left them. As I told you before, Leah said he just went away.”

Where he went away to was apparently Empira, Pennsylvania (which appears on no present day maps, and is nowhere to be found from Google searches), but that’s edging close to “spoiler alert” territory. Let’s start at the beginning, even though that’s the last place I ended up.

George William Smith. His death certificate says he was born July 15, 1856 in New Jersey. That is the only record of his birthdate I have, and it was provided by his second youngest child who filled out the details. However, was he really born in New Jersey? He seems to flip flop on his birthplace. On the 1880 census, his birthplace is listed as “New Jersey.” The 1910 census, "Pennsylvania", though under the heading “Birthplace of Father,” “Birthplace Of Mother,” New Jersey is listed. Then his death certificate, "New Jersey." So, that’s the first part. Either George didn't care much for censuses, or, he genuinely had no idea where he was from. I suspect it may have been the latter.

After that, his life on paper is barren until he is age 24. On the 1880 census, a 24 year old George Smith is listed as a “labourer” at a logging camp in Highland Township, Pennsylvania. That same year, he fathers a daughter, Nora Blanche Smith, with my 2X Great Grandmother, who herself is a small collection of confounding dead ends, and mixed information. Elizabeth Jane Hannold. “Jennie”, which I learned after much confusion, was a common “short form” of Jane. Her Father, Thomas Fulton Hannold, my 3X Great Grandfather was also a “woodsman” so perhaps that’s where the two sides meet? Then, there is “Hannold”, originally Hanhold. A massive, ever breeding family of German descent who by the time of Jennie's birth were already in America for more than a century. Hannold's very much populated that area, while tending to stick to those of the same ilk, marrying amongst themselves, and another local German family, the Showers (originally Shauers) for many generations. It appears the gene pool gets thinner and thinner as the family’s numbers continue to explode. According to a historian I’ve spoken to looking for assistance with George, the Hannold’s had “…quite a reputation…” in that area of Pennsylvania. It is through this branch of the family that I am distantly related to Scientology founder, and renowned conman L. Ron Hubbard.

Between 1880, and 1891 George and Jennie have 5 children. Nora Blanche, my Great Grandmother Myrtle Marie, Estella “Stella” Levila, Grace N, and Harrison George. I have thoroughly fleshed out all of their trees. My story checks out, and matches up entirely with what information Great Aunt Grace was able to ascertain through family while they were living.

This I am certain of, you can not believe everything you see on genealogy sites. (In fact, I implore you not to. There is too much you will miss, and any lazy misinformation will infect your tree until your only option is to delete a person and start over.)  My Great Aunt’s notes, acquired from relentless correspondence, and road trips to visit family while also scouring municipal records in Pennsylvania way back when have confirmed my hunch in regards to the haste of family tree building with this branch of the family. Of the following, I am also certain, the extensive family trees I have found that are fleshed out from the “Hannold Family Records” have their information completely wrong. George Smith is sometime’s listed as “J. William Smith,” and oddly, listed as his children with Jennie are an entirely different set of names. Lottie, Bertha, Lawrence, William, Bessie, Ida. (Sometimes, also a Clarence, Elmer, and Hellen.) On every one of these trees, not one of the aforementioned names has been fleshed out by the people who have listed them. Not one contains information outside of a birth year, and those composing these family trees do not appear to be a descendant of any of these mystery names. Yet it is taken as fact, to the point where people have sent me a message to tell me I'm wrong. Excluding my cousin’s family tree, there are eleven others on ancestry.ca that contain Jennie Hannold, and her husband George Smith. Not one of those trees list my Great Grandmother Myrtle and her siblings as their children, even though DNA results link me to Myrtle, Jennie and George. Going further, it also links me to the family of Jennie Hannold’s descendants.

Once again, we’ll return to this. “As I told you before, Leah said he just went away.” A DNA match showed me where George went. In 1897, George somehow ended up 85kms east of Clarion and his now estranged family, in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, where, at the age of thirty-nine he married one Emma Margaret Crooks. The marriage license says his place of residence at the time is “Empira, County Of Elk, Pennsylvania.” "Empira" that place I mentioned before that seems to have never existed, even on maps from that time? His age is listed as thirty-eight. The license states that he was previously married, but that his wife is dead. The listed date of death? September 16, 1896. In the “real world,” Jennie Hannold would die June 9, 1901 from cancer. “Duration of sickness - 15mo.” His occupation is listed as “engineer.” Now, what engineer means, I’m not sure. Maybe it meant something different in 1897. However, there it is, twice in the documents I have. So, in addition to labourer, coal miner, woodsman there is also “engineer.” The head scratching however does not end there. There is of course his new bride Emma Margaret Crooks. Multiple censuses have her year of birth being 1861, which would make her roughly 35 or 36 when she married George Smith. Her age on the license is listed as 28. On this license, her name appears three times. Emma M. Cooks. Emma C. Cooks. Emma M. Cooks. Cooks, not Crooks. C not M. She would die in 1914 from “cirrhosis of the liver.”

Here is where “The Story Of The Miracle DNA Match” comes into play. Eva Mae Smith. Now, on paper she is my “Half 2X Great Aunt.” The genetic link is with her Granddaughter, and Great Granddaughter. And so, after 18 months spending absurd amounts of time searching George Smith running into dead end after dead end, eyes dry and bloodshot, answers showed up on my computer screen. Eva Mae Smith was, dramatic pause, the daughter of George Smith and Emma Crooks! From that, I discovered George Smith’s death certificate, and of course the previously mentioned marriage license. That’s how George H, George W or possibly J. William definitively became George William Smith. On that death certificate I learned he also had another daughter. “Rosie Smith of Corsica, Pennsylvania.” Why his 16 year old daughter is responsible for his death certificate and all that entails raises even more questions. Nonetheless, there was now “Rosie” and “Eva Mae.”

While these may seem like answers, they are answers with many strings attached, and each string is attached to a tangled knot of more questions. The last answer I have is George William Smith died, age sixty in Clarion, Pennsylvania on July 27, 1916 from “Miliary Tuberculosis,” as alarming amounts of people on all branches of this family tree did. Of his seven children, only three made it past the age of sixty, those who did moved far away from home. Harrison and Stella both died in their twenties of tuberculosis. Blanche died at forty-six from “myocardial degeneration.” Myrtle, my Great Grandmother died at fifty-six of breast cancer. No one I have talked to can tell me one thing about any of these people. Nothing. George is buried in Asbury Cemetery, in Strattanville, Pennsylvania according to his death certificate, which is also where Jennie Hannold, the wife he abandoned is buried. Yet, you won't find their graves. According to genealogy websites specifically focusing on Pennsylvania cemeteries (yeah, that’s a thing), neither have a headstone. Another big, "Why?"

Jumping to now. As we find ourselves in the present, crafting our temples of memory, our imaginary legacies with selfies, carefully selected memes, bon mots and staged photographic perfection that can later be airbrushed, just take a second and ask yourself this, what are your Great Grandparents names? Do you know? Where were they from? What did they do? When did they die, and how? Were they in a war? Their parents? The people that raised, or, as I’ve learned maybe didn’t raise your own Grandparents. You know that one thing you do or say that’s leaves you thinking, “Oh man, my Dad used to do that?” When you make a certain noise, or you say a particular phrase, maybe it's even your cadence, or how you walk; consider for a second that maybe your parents also do that because it was absorbed from their parents. Now consider that maybe your Grandparents absorbed those same quirks from their own parents, and that at the end of the day, you’re carrying a piece of a hundred year old family fingerprint that still exists, except you don’t know it does. The people in our trees that sadly, most of us appear to have forgotten, they are a part of you. Don’t kid yourself. My Mom used to say when I was young that I did and said certain things just like my Grandfather would. When I was in my late teens, I would answer the phone and people thought I was my Dad. “You sound just like your Dad!” When my friends, or my youngest nephew's friends meet one of us for the first time, they are often mildly spooked by our mannerisms, and how similar we speak. My Grandmother would often speak almost melodically, like notes that could be charted in a music score. Her Father was Manx. Listening to old recordings of Manx being spoken, and the resulting Manx speakers who also spoke English as their original language faded from their culture, I hear the same vocal inflections I would hear in my Grandmother’s kitchen, albeit without the smell of instant coffee. It's all right there. You just have to find it, and when you do, acknowledge that it isn’t really yours. It’s part of something bigger, and isn’t meant to be forgotten.

George Smith is still a mystery. I believe I may have found his parents, and in turn his siblings. For about one hour yesterday, I was completely sure of it. Eureka! A DNA match, and now, it appears as though that match may just be associated with the plentiful Hannold DNA that even now, still floats around all corners of Pennsylvania. I was led there by a legal document my Great Aunt acquired that placed George Smith in Limestone, Pennsylvania. It is written in the legalese of 1900, so I’m not entirely certain what it means, but there’s George. There exists a census from Limestone, including a child, George Smith, as well as three siblings. In the following censuses, two of those siblings disappear, George being one of them, yet there is no death record for either, and neither are buried in the cemetery in which the rest of the family is buried. According to the census, their father does well with his farm, so I don't believe he wouldn't have the money to bury children he may have lost. Is that four year old George in the census George William Smith? If so, where did he go, and why? Where did his brother Perry go? The man who may or may not be George's Father, Lucius Smith is listed as being born in Connecticut, then Kentucky, and then Connecticut according to two different censuses, and his death record. Again, “What does THIS mean?!” Connecticut and Kentucky are not easy to confuse. Lucius married a German woman, and if I’ve learned anything from all of this, it’s that Germans certainly stuck together, so perhaps Smith was once Smit or Schmidt? Then, if this census is correct, the DNA match I discovered is connected to George’s brother William. He would be the matches paternal Great Grandfather. Her maternal Great Grandfather? The first cousin of George’s first wife Jennie. James Hannold. Is the match from the Hannold or the Smith? Am I right about this one? I'm not sure. Congratulations. The next generations have been made oblivious. “Shhh…”

Now, here I am, a half century after my Great Aunt Grace started her quest, trying to solve a riddle for which every answer that matters has now been buried for good, and with it a piece of both herself and I. I did not meet Grace, but for the exception of attending her wake. When she passed, she was a stranger that left me some money in her will, enough to buy the first and only electric guitar I have ever purchased. I still have it, I always will, because now, Grace is nothing close to a stranger.  I find pieces of myself in her.  I did not meet Grace’s brother, my Grandfather, who died when I was twelve, and who lived roughly forty-five minutes away for the twelve years of my life he was alive. I did not attend his funeral. Nor did my Dad. The names of myself, my sister, my Mom, my Dad. There they are, all of us listed in his obituary. Why? “Shhh…” followed by a “Don’t ask.”

Grace was one of seven children. Three made it to adulthood. To Grace, her maternal Grandfather was a mystery, and her three other Grandparents died before she was born. She had no children. Her Mother died relatively young. I can associate with much of this. In a daze, I watched a lot of branches fall to the ground before I was thirty.

Documentarian Ken Burns said he's forever looking to the past in an effort to, “…raise the dead,” having experienced his own loss at a young age. That makes perfect sense to me. I know it’s what I’m doing, and I’d wager it was what Grace was doing too. It’s not just answers we are looking for. These people that are now just historical records, for whom I’ve spent so much time searching, two years ago, they did not exist. Now, it's fills my time. By 2008, most of my family no longer existed, and, I took them all for granted or tried to avoid them. Now, I feel pretty confident I have made them meet in some kind of middle, were they both can be real as long as I remember them, because of my many regrets, the largest was forgetting them while they were here. If other family wants to see them too, I’m happy to share it, and I’m even happier they want to see it. There they are. There we are. Here we are. I realize it likely isn’t healthy to replace those I’ve lost with more dead people, but I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I know they are gone, yet here I am looking for my Mom and Dad, and my Grandparents, and their parents and so on, largely because I’m still looking for myself, and everything I tried to forget when I was younger.

As for George William Smith, well, I guess sometimes you just have to accept that your 2X Great Grandfather was in all likelihood, a giant lying scuzzball.

Shhh….