Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting - February 14, 2019
The February 2019 meeting of the
Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library
on Thursday, February 14, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the
meeting to order.
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at petie8135@att.net,
about a gift membership.
February
Meeting
On February 14, 2019, Mike
Slater, member of the Madison County Genealogical Society, presented a program
titled Using DNA to
Solve a Family Mystery and Discover a Possible Love Triangle.
Mike has been seriously studying his family’s
genealogy since his wife retired in January 2016. The journey has taken him and
his father all over the Eastern part of the U.S. He has helped people with DNA
matches to him to figure out their own family tree.
As a kid, I asked my
dad and my mother all the time, “What am I?” My dad would say, half jokingly,
“You’re half Indian and half Chinese.” Even I, no matter what age I was, knew
that wasn’t true. When I took biology in high school, we did blood typing of ourselves, I said I was blood type B. My father was type O
and my mother said she thought she was type O too. So she said I couldn’t be
their son. But she double-checked and had forgotten that she was type B; so I
was safe.
I asked what is
Grandpa and my dad finally admitted that Grandpa was an orphan and he didn’t
know who his parents were. Grandpa died in 1970, the same year I graduated from
high school. So I did not have a lot of heart-to-heart talks with him as an
adult — none as a matter of fact. My grandmother, who died in 1984, used to
send me notes about the family. This is one of those notes and my
interpretation of it:
|
|
Winfield Slater Dec 12 -1898 - in Chgo Admitted Apr 20 -1905 by Mother-both Baptists __________________________ Mother’s name - Frances Conner Born June 26 - 1872 in Detroit Benj. Slater - Born May 12 -1872 In St. Louis, Mo __________________________ Mother’s step sister-Lizzie White 574 Clinton Ave-Detroit - |
According to this
note, my grandfather, Benny Slater, was admitted to the orphanage in Chicago in
April 1905 when he was six years old. His mother’s name was Frances Conner,
born in Detroit in 1872 and my grandfather was born in St. Louis. I had this
information, so the first thing I did when I moved to St. Louis in 1991, I went
down to the health department that handles the birth certificates in St. Louis
and requested his birth certificate. I did not get it — no such person born in
St. Louis.
The note said my
mother had a stepsister Lizzie White. That is not much help — it says they had
one parent in common. Which parent it is you cannot figure out. I did not know
whether Lizzie White was her married name or her maiden name. And Conners in
Detroit are a dime a dozen. That was one of the stopping places of the Irish
coming from Canada into the United States. You go to Detroit and you find pages
and pages of these people with the same name, and of course she had this “rare”
Irish name of Frances.
When my grandmother
died in 1984, we got to see all her papers. Among them was an order from a
judge sending my grandfather to Glenwood Manual Training School. It shows his
mother was dead and his father was going to Joliet State Prison, for stealing.
My grandfather was there until he was sixteen years old learning to be a
farmer. When he got out in 1914, a counselor from the school and he went to
meet his father on South Dearborn Street. The document refers to “Winfield
Slater as his supposed father;” Winfield Slater was an African-American. And
his mother’s name is shown as Frances Klitzian Winfield and Frances were
married in Chicago in 1898. Frances Slater died in 1907. Her death certificate
shows her age as 30, which means she would have born in 1877, not 1872. The
address on South Dearborn Street was in the slums, which were torn down to
build low-income housing, which has also been torn down and replaced.
I found out that my
grandfather was in Chicago. In the 1900 census, I found the Slatters and they
are listed as white. What is going on? First of all, the census taker would
show up and Benny would be at work and they would ask Frances and they would
say white. It also shows Benny born in Tennessee, not in St. Louis; Frances is
born in Michigan but in 1873, and my grandfather was born in 1898.
I wrote to Cook County
for the marriage certificate for Frances and Winfield, and my grandfather’s
birth certificate — no such things exist! My grandfather went through his
entire life not knowing when he was born — the 1900 census became available the
year he died.
I decided to find the
Slatters in Tennessee, and I did. In the 1880 census, the father is W.S.
Slatter, Lily is his oldest daughter, Benny is his son, and Lucy is his
youngest daughter. In the 1870 census, all blacks are supposed to be listed by
their name. I could not find them in the 1870 census at all. I found W.S
Slatter was 31 years old. That would make him born in 1849, his wife, Nanny,
was born in 1850 and in Tennessee in 1849 and 1850 they were most likely former
slaves.
I found a John T.
Slatter in Winchester, in Franklin County, Tennessee, that in 1860 owned two
boys an 11-year-old black, and a 10-year-old mulatto. If you go back 10 more
years to 1850, John T. Slatter is shown as owner of a 1-year-old black male —
that is probably W.S. Slatter. In 1870, slaves were allowed to pick their last
name. Many of them just picked their owner’s name because they known by that
anyway.
I did a study on John
T. Slatter all the way back to James Slatter in 1700s Virginia. His will lists
four children — two boys and two girls — and in the will, he gives them various
slaves by name. That family then moved to North Carolina. At that time, the
border between Virginia and North Carolina varied from year to year. I could
never tell if they moved to North Carolina or if the border moved. From there
they made migrations west — some of them went south to Georgia and some of them
west to Tennessee. I followed all of the four children and all of their
descendants all the way down, trying to find living Slatters that are actually in
my family, and I did!
Raymond and Victor
Slatter, who live near Paris, Texas, are my possible fifth cousins. Raymond has
children and grandchildren and Victor is not married. So I got Raymond’s DNA to
see if we really are fifth cousins. However, there was not a single DNA match
between Raymond and me.
So I decided to
research the black Slatters. In the 1887 Wichita, Kansas City Directory, W.S.
Slatter is colored and works as a plasterer, and is living with his oldest
daughter, Lilly. In 1900, W.S. Slatter was living in St. Louis with a new wife,
Mattie, and his son, Benny, said he was born in St. Louis.
In the 1900 census,
W.S. first wife, Nancy, was living in Winchester, Tennessee; she had six
children, all of whom were living. One of them was Lucy, and a son Horace who
was born in 1883. So somewhere between 1880 and 1883, Winfield left for
Wichita, leaving his wife with two kids. It does not say she is widowed; it
shows her as still married. Horace’s parents were born as slaves, but he went
to Tuskegee Institute and worked as a publicity agent for Booker T. Washington.
Horace was a well-known individual in Tennessee, unfortunately, both he and his
wife died of tuberculosis leaving no family.
What happened to Lucy?
In 1900, she was a teacher in Winchester at the black school. She received a
degree from Alabama A&M College and became a teacher. Her parents were
slaves, yet she went to college. She married George Barksdale and in 1910 lived
in Springfield, Illinois, with Winfield Slatter. I traced down some living
descendants of Lucy and discovered through DNA that we are not related.
So now, I had a
mystery. If Benny is not Winfield’s father, I am thinking all sorts of terrible
things that Frances might have been doing to produce my grandfather. She’s a white
woman living on the south side of Chicago with a black man. So the first thing
I did was unlink all of the Slatters from Winfield’s family tree. My
grandfather was just sitting there with unknown parentage, except for Frances;
we know Frances was his mother.
I got a DNA match from
a woman I did not know, Annette Hudson lives in California. I called her and
she told me this story about this family that has a DNA match to me. There was
a very famous lawsuit involving this family. I found the story in the 1912
Chicago Daily Tribune. On the front page there is a
two-column story about the lawsuit. This has been going on in Cook County for
thirty-three years. Frederick Klitzen, who was eleven years old when the suit
started, married Frances Conners in 1891. He died in 1901, his son Frederick is
now 18 years old (born circa 1883). Frances deserted him about 1898 and has not
been heard of since.
My grandfather was
born in 1898; Frances deserted her husband in 1898. She could easily have
deserted her husband early in 1898 and was pregnant and nobody knew she was
pregnant — not her, not Benny, not Frederick Klitzen (the father). She had that
baby and Benny thought it was his. He treated it like it was his and gave his
father’s name to the boy.
That is why our family
has changed their mind about Benny. Up to this point, he was a liar, a thief,
and who knows what else. After the first wife died, there was no marriage. I am
sure they were Irish Catholic;
there’s not going to be any divorce. She went off with the black man and had
that baby and there’s no birth certificate or marriage certificate.
In the 1920 and 1930
censuses, Fred Klitzen, who would be my grandfather’s brother, was listed as an
epileptic living in the state hospital. In 1940, he was living in the Alton
State Hospital. He died in 1941.
I learned several
things in this investigation:
1. Stories in your
family (Family Lore) may not be true. Just because your grandma looked like an Indian,
does not mean you are an Indian. It is only what they believe to be true. If
you look at my grandmother’s note, she wrote what my grandfather told her. It
was kind of true but not completely true. When you look at the official
documentation from the training school, they spell my grandfather’s mother’s name
as Klitzian, that kind of threw me for a loop for the
longest time. I could not find anybody with that name. When I used a wildcard
in the name search, the marriage between Frances Conner and Fred Klitzen popped
up almost immediately. I had seen it but I had ignored it because it was not
spelled “correctly.”
2. Government forms
may be inaccurate, because they only write down on the government forms what
you tell them to write down. My aunt died in Morris, Illinois, with my father,
her sister (my aunt), and my brother in the hallway. Her death certificate says
she died in Sarasota, Florida. My aunt lives in Sarasota, Florida; she was in
the hallway. Somehow that got put on the death certificate. Government workers
are great!
3. DNA does not
lie; but it is not proof in itself, it is only evidence.
This presentation was very well received and
provoked many questions and comments.