Ancestors Ancestors
Hi Robin,
I'll start off with my mother's side of the family, the Smiths. I'll just put down what I can remember. Pardon the writing, I'm too lazy to edit for style.
Your grandmother's name was Mildred Josephine Smith. She died of breast cancer in 1967. Her older sister, Mary Cecile, is now almost ninety. John, a younger brother, died in the '70's. John was a lawyer, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a classmate of John F. Kennedy (they were graduated the same year; I don't know if Uncle John knew Kennedy personally).
Your great-grandparents were Mary (nee Tourjean) and William P. Smith.
Mary's parents were French Canadian, from Quebec province, I believe. Somewhere in the latter part of the nineteenth century, they migrated to the Dakota Territory, what is now the state of South Dakota. (I don't recall her father's first name, I'm still trying to get hold of my aunt Mary), but his surname was Tourjean, or Turjean. Possibly it was anglicized as Turgeon. Anyway, it was French name, but in the South Dakota pronunciation it came out as "TUR-jin", rather than "toor-ZHAWN".
His first name may have been Edward, or Edouard. Anyway, he was your great-great grandfather. I'm pretty sure he farmed, and he may have engaged in trade as well. Tourjean drowned in the Missouri River sometime in the late 1880's or early 1890's. He was crossing the iced-over river in winter with a wagon and a team of horses, the ice broke and the horses drowned--Tourjean and whoever else was with him made it to shore. In the spring Tourjean went back in a boat, in hopes of retrieving the horses' harnesses. The boat capsized and he drowned. There may have been someone else with him in the boat; I'm not sure about that.
Tourjean and his wife were Catholic, and they had several children. Mary (or Marie, at that time), your great-grandmother was the eldest. After her father's death, her mother, your great-great grandmother eventually married another Frenchman, this one surnamed Chevalier, and had more children. Marie never changed her last name, however, and remained a Tourjean, or Turgeon, until she married your great-grandfather Smith. I do seem to remember her telling me that her stepfather was a kind and generous man who treated the Tourjean children as his own.
When I was a little kid Grandma Smith used to teach me words and phrases of French, her first language (She also used to give me dimes to go to the pool hall and shoot eight ball--in those days in Stickney pool was a nickel a game, snooker a dime). She didn't learn English until she started elementary school. By the time she was an old woman I think she had probably forgotten most of her mother tongue; at any rate, her English was completely natural and spoken without an accent, Still, there was something of the old Frenchwoman in her manner. I remember hearing that before she married Bill Smith, she homesteaded on the South Dakota prairie with Bill's sister, Mamie. They lived in a sod hut.
I saw of picture of the Turgeon clan once, taken before their father drowned. I remember Tourjean, the father, had head of curly hair—slicked down—and a dapper moustache. Marie, your great-grandmother, was in her teens at the time the picture was taken. She was a tall, dark-haired girl. I can just barely remember seeing the photo.
I'm not sure when or how Mary met your great-grandfather, William P. Smith. It may have been in church, since both of their families were devout Catholics. At that time in South Dakota there were few interdenominational marriages; religion played a bigger part in people's lives than it does today. I remember hearing that a priest told Bill and Mary that they should court at least five years before marrying, and I think that that is what they must have done. Mary was probably in her late twenties or early thirties when she married; Bill was probably in his early- to mid-thirties.
Mary and Bill were both natives of the prairies of east-central South Dakota. You come from pretty hearty stock--life on the prairies in those days was hard.
Anyway, Mary married Bill somewhere around 1910, and they had three children, Mary Cecile, Mildred, and John. Grandma Smith died a few months after my mother died, in 1967. She was in her eighties at the time.
I wish I knew a little more about the French side of the family. Mary had a lot of brothers and sisters, and half-brothers and half-sisters. I knew her half-sister, Chevalier's youngest daughter, Cecile, when I lived in California in the '80's. She too was an old Frenchwoman at heart, played piano and made great crepes. Cecile was the last of the bunch (she died in 1995), I believe, though there are still distant cousins in the Bay Area.
Mary's husband Bill, your great-grandfather, died in 1960. They are buried in the Catholic cemetery just east of Stickney, South Dakota, the same place your grandmother and grandfather are buried.
Here's some more:
Your Grandmother Fox's maiden name was Smith. Her father's name was William
P. Smith. I'm not sure
what the P. stood for, but I'll try to find out.
Bill Smith was the son of "Irish John" Smith, who came to America from
Ireland as a boy. I believe he came with his
mother. I'm not certain what happened to his father, your
great-great-grandfather. I think I once heard it said that he was
an Irish Republican who was hung for killing a British soldier. Sounds like
invention to me, but who knows? Anyway, I'm pretty sure Irish John's mother
came to America's shores as a single parent. I've also heard that originally
the family name was McGowan, and that they hailed from County Monahan, in
what is now the Republic of Ireland. I don't know how the name got
changed--maybe it did have to do with the death of a British soldier. Or
maybe custom's officials at Ellis Island (in New York harbor, where
immigrants from Europe were processed in the nineteenth century) decided to
give the family an Anglo-American name.
The family may have lived in the East for a time, but eventually they
settled in Wisconsin. Irish John either joined or was conscripted into the
Union Army during the Civil War. He served with a Wisconsin regiment and was
wounded at the siege of Vicksburg in Mississippi in 1864--a musket ball
passed through his shoulder. He was probably about seventeen at the time.
For three days he lay wounded on the battlefield, without food or water,
until stretcher-bearers finally came for him.
When he was an old man he had a bust photo taken, shirtless, displaying the
entrance and exit wounds left by the musketball. I remember seeing the picture
when I was a
little kid, at the old family farmhouse in Kimball, South Dakota. It was a
cameo--front and back--and it sat on an end table in the parlor of the house
that Irish John built. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
After the war Irish John went west to the Dakota Territory. At that time
veterans of the union armies were eligible for land under the Homestead Act.
The government gave them one hundred sixty acres, a plow, and a mule. If
they stayed on their land and worked it for five years, they became the
legal owners of the land. And that's how Irish John got his farm in South
Dakota, just outside of the town of Kimball, east of the Missouri River,
near the Bijoux Hills.
John married an Irishwoman (sorry, I'll try to get the name), also the
daughter of an immigrant. Good Catholics that they were, they had thirteen
children. Five died in infancy--there wasn't much medical care on the
prairies in those days. Besides your great-grandfather Bill, there were:
Mick, Pete, Johnny, Mamie, Elizabeth, Genevieve, and Frank--your
great-uncles and aunts. Frank was the youngest; I'm not sure who the eldest
was. Frank worked the farm until he was in his eighties. He and his wife
Eleanor both died in 1995. By that time they were living in an old folks'
home, the farm implements had been auctioned off, and the farmhouse
abandoned.
Interesting anecdote: when he was a young man, Pete Smith, your
great-grandad's brother, quit the farm. Didn't say where he was going, just
up and walked off. Nobody heard a word
from him for seven years, not a letter, not a postcard. Then he came home
one day and never left the farm again. They say he traveled all over
America, and maybe to some foreign countries too, saw what he wanted to
see, did what he wanted to do, and then headed back home to the South
Dakota.
Pete was a drinking man; he never married.
Anyway, your great-grandfather Bill didn't stay on the farm, either. I'm not
sure where he went to school, but he became a banker. He married Mary
Turgeon (see my other e-mail) and settled in Stickney, South Dakota, about
forty miles
southeast of Irish John's farm in Kimball. He ran the bank in Stickney.
During the Great Depression, in the nineteen thirties, the bank failed. If
Bill
could have kept the bank open for another few months, it would have probably
survived under Roosevelt's National Recovery Act, which rescued a lot of small
banks during the Depression (check your history books). Bill later became
the postmaster of the Stickney post office, but his daughter, my Aunt Mary,
always told me he missed banking and never quite got over the closure of his
bank.
Bill died in 1960, of pneumonia. I was six at the time, so I still have some
memories of him. He was in poor health in later life; he suffered a
debilitating stroke in his late seventies--that's how your my mom and dad
ended up back in South Dakota (they were both native South Dakotans but they
met and married in California--married on Valentine's Day 1953, today would
have been their forty-seventh anniversary!). They left California to return
to Stickney to help care for Grandpa Smith. Grandpa walked with a
cane after he had his strokes, and when I ran by his chair he used to hook
me with the handle of the cane. Once I was playing cops and robbers and I held
him up--to
my surprise he reached in his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar and
handed it to me; that was big money in those days.
If you want to know a little more about Irish John's farm, ask your dad--he
and Michael spent a lot of time there when they were boys. The place was
huge--had to be with all the folks living there. It was two houses really.
Had two big farmhouse kitchens, one on each side. I think they expanded when
one or more of the boys married and had children of their own--I know a couple
of the sons spent their whole lives on the farm. All the bedrooms upstairs
were painted a different color. Ask Tom.
Well, I hope this helps you a little. Probably some of my reminiscences are
irrelevant to your project, but most of the facts are there, at least the
ones I know. Some of the dates are approximate. The writing doesn't read as
smooth as I'd like it to, but in
the interests of getting it to you right away, I'll forego rewrites and
editing. Say "hi" to Autumn and Brian for me. I'll do my dad's side of the
family later this week. Right now my hands are cramping--I haven't typed
this much in...well, maybe my whole life! Good luck with your paper.
More later,
Robbie
Family Stories