Mystery

(2) Who is James?

~ Kara Mills ~ Leave a comment

So at this point I’m giddy about the possibility of learning more about James. The mysterious family member that no one ever spoke of. As I detail what has been learned to this point it’s left me with more questions than answers. I’ll pop my questions in throughout the post but I would definitely love to hear what other questions you may have. Or, if there are things we’re missing, let me know!

James came to the United States from Scotland in his early 20’s with one of his brothers. Shortly upon arrival, his brother died (maybe was influenza?). He married my great grandma in Ontario, Canada in 1926. No ideas on how they met, she grew up in Kentucky and Arkansas and eventually came to Michigan. I believe James came through Canada to the US if I follow the records correctly. So perhaps at work, out on the town, who knows? That following summer, my grandma and her sister were born. They didn’t waste any time….I giggled when I realized that.

They moved around southeast Michigan for much of my grandmas childhood, finally settling in the Port Huron area when the girls were in high school. We believe that is around when their brother was born, although we cannot find any evidence anywhere beyond what we’ve heard. Even Cousin Scotland had no idea there was a younger brother.

Around 1958, after my grandma and her sister had both married and begun having children, James, great grandma and little brother moved to California. Here is what puzzles me. From what we know, James was a tool and die maker. In Michigan with a thriving automotive and industrial landscape. Why move to California? And why move away from Michigan when two of your three children are there, along with a growing number of grandchildren?

In 1960, within two years of moving to California, my great grandma was killed in a car accident. We have no details around the circumstances of the accident. It seems unlikely that records even exist from that far back but it would be interesting to know more. She was 60 years old and they had been married for over 30 years. According to family sources, my grandma was pregnant with my youngest aunt when she and her sister flew to California for the funeral. My great grandma was buried in Arkansas.

Here’s where things get fuzzy. From what we know, it sounds like there was very little contact between my grandma and James after that point. In fact, based on family conversations, I’m not sure they ever saw him again. Maybe they spoke on the phone? I do know that James did visit Scotland between that point and his death based on accounts from Cousin Scotland. It seems odd that you would travel to Scotland but not go to Michigan to see your daughters and 6 grandchildren?

To be honest, I think it was at this point where my spidey-senses began tingling. All of that feels really…off? Moving away from where your family is, where your work industry is and the your wife suddenly dies? I know I read and watch a lot of suspense novels and I have a wild imagination, but this is literally the plot of probably dozens of books. Not to mention, at that place in time, it was not as common to move cross country. I know he was not on LinkedIn participating in the Great Resignation looking for a new opportunity.

I digress. Here is where it gets really crazy. We don’t have solid timing on this, but sometime between when his wife died, likely the late 1960’s, he emigrated to Seychelles, Africa. Literally halfway across the world. While I had heard of the Seychelles, I admittedly had to Google where they were. How does that process work in the 1960’s? Also, the younger brother stayed in California. Did he meet someone in California and that’s how he heard about it? Was he running from something? Was he just a super free spirit? This one threw us for a loop. At least we now knew where the mysterious island was…

According to Cousin Scotland, while James was living in Seychelles, he married 2 more times. The first of those (his second marriage), resulted in 2 additional children, two boys. Grandma has two half-brothers! Our best guess is that they were born sometime in the mid-1960’s, younger than their own nieces and nephews. We do know not know if he divorced his second wife or was widowed, again. He married a third time, no children in that marriage that we’re aware of.

James did make a final trip back to Scotland around 1975. My understanding is that he just showed up and no one knew that he would be visiting. That was the time that Cousin Scotland met him in person. From the sounds of it, he was quite a character. There are no details on the reason for the visit, just that it was random and surprised the family. He returned to the Seychelles where he died in 1977. He is buried on one of the islands there.

Upon his death in 1977, the embassy had attempted to find his next of kin to close out his estate, which consisted of a house and a small bank account. He had his son in the US listed as next of kin. However, much like me, they were unable to find him. They reached out to his brother, Cousin Scotland’s grandfather, as the next option. He suggested that they contact his family in the Seychelles to settle the estate. That was the last they heard about it.

There are records that indicate his sons in the Seychelles reached out to his family in Scotland but we don’t believe that anyone ever met in person. I spent a lot of time looking them up online but, even with their full names, have struck out on all of the venues I can think to look. Clearly they take after their older brother and are great at staying off the grid.

At this point, we are happy to have the closure of knowing where James is buried and that in actuality, there really was no estate to “steal” since it would have gone to his most current family. We would love to know more about his personality and the reasoning for moving across the globe away from his family, but that seems pretty unlikely. Especially without having the opportunity to talk with his two younger sons, my great-uncles. I believe those are the closest links we have to learning about him.

Since learning of his move to Seychelles and that it’s likely we actually have living relatives there, we’ve all talked of making a trip to the country to at least see if there is more to learn. At a minimum, it looks like a beautiful place to visit, so it seems like a win-win.

This where we are stuck now. Outside of the standard Google and social media platforms and ancestry, what other avenues are there to find our missing relatives? Do we even try to find them? I definitely welcome all thoughts and suggestions!

(1) Let’s Catch You Up

~ Kara Mills ~ Leave a comment

The information I’m providing is based on recounts from family and memories of conversations with my grandparents. I’m certain I’ll be adjusting information as we learn new facts. I’m purposely leaving most names out until we have more information and permissions from people along the way.

If I’m being totally honest, as all of this was unraveling, I had pretty low expectations. Honestly, I still do to some degree. Maybe I’m protecting myself from disappointment? At this point, figuring out the mystery and learning about our family is really the main focus for me. Sadly, most of the people who could answer some of the questions that really plague me have since passed away. I have no stake in any of the family drama and really am more intrigued by the idea that we have family out there we’ve never met. However, it does seem that the more we dig, there are little nuggets that pop up!

This mystery revolves around my maternal grandmothers father, my great-grandpa, James. I never knew either of her parents. Growing up I remember being at my grandmas house a lot. She and I were very close, or as close as you could get to her, she always kind of had a wall up to some degree. I remember one time in college when I called to check in with her. As we were hanging up I said, “I love you grandma” and her reply was “Uh mmm ok, bye bye”. I just laughed because that was grandma. She wasn’t the hugging kind of person. Although the older she got, I think that ice melted some. I provide all this context because it seems those personality traits may provide a glimpse into her childhood.

My grandma is an identical twin and they have a younger brother we were told was 12-15 years younger than the twins. I remember being at my grandmas house when my great aunt, grandma and their cousin (on their mothers side) would get together every few months. Their cousin was really into genealogy and would bring all of her paperwork over to show everyone (I’ve dated myself, back then it was paper because it was before the internet). She had traced that side of the family back several generations and had stories to go along with it. I once asked my grandma about her fathers side. Her response was something along the lines of “there’s nothing to tell”. I would push a little more and then usually get an exasperated “oh I don’t know!”.

At some point before she passed away in 2006, we learned a little more, but it was always shrouded in mystery. What we knew was that sometime in the late 50’s or early 60’s, her mother was killed in a car accident. I was always told it was because there were not seatbelts in cars at that time. After her death, James moved to California with the younger brother and they did not appear to keep in touch. I believe sometime in the 1980’s she and her sister learned from their brother that their father had “died on some island” years earlier. [Full confession, I almost wrote “naturally” at the beginning of the coming sentence and realized that it probably isn’t natural but was a component of a lot of family baggage] This sparked a lot of unanswered questions so began the family tales. The story was that their younger brother had neglected to tell them James died because he had stolen the inherence. For the record, I am using inheritance loosely as there was no indication that they were wealthy. All we know at this time is her brother, now in his 70’s if still alive, lived in California and owned a car repair shop. I’ve tried repeatedly to locate that part of the family but even The Google can’t seem to the them. That’s impressive.

So that takes us to about where I was with everything during my recent attempts to fill in the family tree. I was utilizing some of the hints in Ancestry and was able to link some earlier generation names. However, the gap remained. I had virtually no information on James, not even a date of death or the mysterious island he apparently died on. I decided to take a break from it and figured maybe some other hints will pop up later on.

A few weeks later, I received a DM in the Ancestry app. The message asked if I was related to James and if it is the same James that has twin daughters with the names of my grandma and her sister. She indicated that she is the granddaughter of James brother and lives in Scotland. So a new distant cousin! I was astounded. She mentioned a few items about James and it was clear that she had met him at some point and had also heard stories growing up. I had so many questions I wanted to ask! Being the ever skeptic that I am, I figured the level of risk was slim as it was only a conversation. If it could get me closer to filling the gaps, it was worth it. Not to mention, learning more about family was the purpose of this, right?

So, you’re all caught up to the background as I knew it when I got that first message from Cousin Scotland, who is a lovely person by the way. As the messages continued, the facts that I knew and what people remembered seemed to be become clearer. It’s these facts that I will continue documenting. My hope is that at some point we can paint a picture of who James was, similar to how we can for many of our other family members. In the meantime, this process will serve as that much needed distraction!

Finding Distractions

~ Kara Mills ~ Leave a comment

My last two years are probably similar to what most people have experienced. Isolation, mental health roller coasters, new hobbies and time wasted on rabbit holes of mindless content online. I realized the other day that I did not write a single post in 2021. Maybe I was hoping that by not posting I could pretend that the evil twin of 2020 never existed. It wasn’t intentional, I do love writing. At one point I felt that sharing the challenges of being a working mom married to someone in medicine was an experience worth writing about. I found it therapeutic and felt that there was so much to say. I was struggling to find the right balance of wanting to grow in my career while supporting the insanely demanding career of a medical student and resident. Oh, and have kids too. Lots of them.

I had last posted that I was changing my perception of things, and to some degree I did. I lowered my bar. I’m not saying that pessimistically. I lowered it for what I felt was an acceptable reason given the current state of the world. For now, we are working on thriving while surviving. I began giving myself more grace. Are the kids healthy? Yup. Are they managing to not fall behind in school? Yup. Do we still have jobs? Yup. Ok, feels pretty successful to me.

Once I got to that point, I shifted to figuring out what I needed to begin thriving. I started with my mental health and focused on the depression and anxiety I’ve had my entire adult life. Instead of just dealing with it, I began speaking with a therapist and focusing on each piece of the puzzle. After that, I realized I needed something for me, a hobby. I love art but I do not have a dedicated space to paint and draw where little hands will not “assist”. Since I didn’t bake sourdough or get a quarantine pet, I decided to take up crocheting. True to my distractible nature, I have a lot of “works in progress” but have managed to finish a few things. Either way, it’s been a great distraction for me and for the most part, the kids leave it alone and I can take it with me when we’re running all over the place.

In addition to crocheting while surviving, I began digging into our ancestry again. Thankfully a few of hubs family members have records, pictures and stories they’ve shared along the way that I’ve been able to use while building out our family tree on ancestry.com. I was able to find pretty solid information several generations back for almost every branch of our family tree which was a fun distraction. I mean, it’s not pretty looking (I keep telling myself I’ll organize it better when I retire), but it’s made for some cool conversations.

Most notably, was learning about my maternal great-grandpa. For as long as I can remember, we never really talked about him, kind of like Bruno. My grandma never really elaborated about her father, and we knew not to push. All we were ever told was that my great-grandma died in a car accident and then he moved away. My grandma did not learn of his death until years later, but with very limited information. The family lore was that he died on an island somewhere. Having grown up in a small town where our entire family was basically born and raised, that sounded so exotic. I figured it had to be Hawaii or some other US island. My grandma, one of the most risk adverse people I knew, had to have gotten that trait from her parents. Right? Surely there are no adventurous genes in this lineage. Boy, we were in for quite a surprise. It began with an email from a previously unknown distant cousin in Scotland. It took the trajectory of our search halfway around the world and as of now has left us with more questions than answers.

If you need a good distraction during this time, join me and my family as we unravel this mystery through coming blog posts. Maybe 2022 will be the year we figure out who my great-grandpa really was.