A SCRAP OF PAPER

Catharine is a family name, frequently spelled CathErine, but always with a C. I’m quite proud of that as my middle name is Catharine, after my great grandmother Catharine Owens. Someone at the hospital corrected my mother’s spelling, so I am legally, CathErine. I don’t think I even knew Catharine’s last name for most of my life, but my mother did have it written down in the main genealogy papers that she gave me sometime before her death. She had her birth date written down as well and she came from Bala, Wales. Not too helpful, with names as common as Owens, Thomas, and Catharine. There was a Robert Owens that I had heard my mom talking about in Nepesta, CO but I never made the connection. To make a long story short I didn’t have any hope of ever tracking down anything about that part of the family.


In my life, I had gone with a guy back in High School, who went into the Marines. He came home on leave after his basic training, and we got engaged. It only lasted a couple of weeks after his leave ended, I was all of 16 at the time! I never heard from him after that, and I lived my life. A year or so after my mom died, though he contacted me on face book, and we are together again.

While I was going through some of the papers I had brought home from my mother’s I found a scrap of paper from back in my high school days. I had been doodling and writing his name while I was talking on the phone. Funny to have found that so soon after we had gotten back together, kind of cute, but just a scrap of paper, didn’t need to keep it, toss it in the garbage.

WAIT!!! STOP!!! HOLD ON!!! What’s written on the back of that doodling scrap of paper? A list of names, all with the last name of OWENS!!! AND another column titled married name, giving the spouses name.

It’s amazing what I was able to do with that one little piece of paper that I almost threw in the trash. I would never have been able to do anything without it. I did recently find a really old book that had a bio of Robert Owens in it and it did list some of his brothers and sisters, but not all of them and not their spouses, and as I say I didn’t even realize that Robert Owens was related to my great grandmother.

Having all the children’s names, I was able to find out the ship that they came to the US in, and find them in the census for Licking, Ohio. Once I knew their parents names, I was even able to find them in a census for Wales. And slowly, with the names of the brothers and sisters, I am finding out the descendants of my great great grandparents, and maybe someday, I will actually be able to contact a distant cousin from that family.

DAISY NEFF

I was fascinated by this picture when I found it among my grandmother’s pictures. A friend, but who was she? I still haven’t found the answers I’m looking for. In March of 1895, Daisy is living with a family named Pownell, in Halstead, Kansas according to the Kansas state census. Two months later she is dead from injuries suffered in a tornado. A tornado did in fact hit Halstead, Kansas on May 1, 1895, killing a number of people. Daisy is the only member of her family listed in the Pownell household that year, but a Halstead Independent news article from August 4, 1977 says that “Daisy Neff and her mother were in the chicken house, and were blown over into Smith’s pasture across the road, and through the wire fence.” The census doesn’t list her as being in school or working at any particular job, so I don’t know why she wasn’t living with her family. I think that her family is that of John and E J Neff, living in Rock Creek, Wabaunsee, KS according to the 1895 Kansas census. I have never seen anything about her mother dying, and Daisy is the only Neff buried in the Halstead Cemetery around that date. I have not been able to find that particular family in the 1880 federal census or in the 1900 federal census. The Pownell’s had a son about her age living at home when she was there. Were they planning on marrying? She was about 18 years old at the time of her death. How is it that my grandfather had a picture of her? Was she a special friend? He was single and would have been about 27 when this happened. I did find a couple of answers about this picture, but there are still many questions. Some will never be answered, but maybe someday, I will be able to find out more about her family.