Last night as I sat down to my home computer after a long day at work I was prepared to throw in the towel, and order a birth certificate from the Los Angeles County recorders office.
I hear it is often called hitting the wall. When you reach that point in your research when you just can't seem to get a break, and move forward. Many long hours has gone into my quest to find the ancestors of one of my dearest aunts. Aunt Pat. Countless email letters sent to family members over and over with no response. The long phone call interviews getting bits and pieces of information, most of it wrong. Not intentionally, but wrong none-the-less.
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| Pat Mellen |
I knew her as Aunt Pat!
I have fond memories of her. Many visits to her home as a young boy. She would always make me a sandwich, cutting off the crust of the bread, and cutting them into small bite-size wedges. She kept a very neat and tidy home. My mom would sit in the living room with her in fancy chairs with wooden arms sipping tea, and talking about who knows what. I was only permitted into the living room on one occasion to see her sea shell collection which she had so meticulously arranged on a glass table in the front window. Then it was off to the swimming pool in the backyard with my uncle Ivar to play and cool off during the hot Southern California summer. Every year she would send me a valentine, and a birthday card, and I often received a package in the mail at Christmas time with a tin of sweets! She loved sweets, and took joy in sharing them with me.
I feel my Aunt Pat played some roll in sparking my interest in genealogy, and family history. I remember her giving me a small white card with a baby in a basket printed in black ink on the front cover. It had deckled edges and a soft cotton texture. Inside, and onto the back cover she had written the names of my grand-mother, and grand-father, and some other people I had never met, and didn't know. I don't remember what ever happened to that card, but to this day I can still see it in my mind, and remember the soft sent of her perfume that lingered on the paper. So, yes, I would have to say it left a major impression.
My research has grown over the years, so much since that early white card with the names written into it. I now have well over twelve thousand names in my tree, and it continues to grow daily. So, I felt a deep trouble, why I couldn't find who my Aunt Pat was, and where she came from. Who did she descend from that made her so special in my heart.
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| Ivar & Pat Mellen |
Currently I am indexing the 1940 U.S. Census. I have indexed over three thousand names over the past couple months. One thing you learn quickly when indexing is that you need to have skills to read other peoples handwriting. I have become a master at using "wildcards" when trying to figure out how to spell someones name. This just dawned on me last night, why not try it with my research to find the parents of my aunt. Most of my research has been on Ancestry.com, but I also use FamilySearch.org, and Findagrave.com to name a few.
Everyone was fairly sure that her fathers name was William. You can just imagine how many William Millers there are or were in Los Angeles, California during the 1930's. Not only that, but her mother I was told was Mary. So, here I have been looking for a Bill and Mary Miller living in Los Angeles during the 1930's. I think I found over seven hundred thousand different combinations of those names just on Ancestry.com. All I knew for certain was the date of her death. When I used that on Ancestry.com I found a Jane L Mellen in the Social Security index. She had died before my Uncle Ivar, so I was fairly positive that he completed the information for her death certificate with some degree of accuracy after being married to her for sixty years.
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| Pat Mellen a UCLA Bruin, 2nd in from the right |
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| Thomas William Tatton 1862 - 1933 |
The name Thos W Pattor that I found on the 1930 census form was Aunt Pat's Grand Father on her mother's side. His correct name I discovered was Thomas William Tatton. See why you need to use "Wildcards?" Tatton is A surname which I found very common in the Homewood Cemetery. I further discovered that Thomas William Tatton was from Worcestershire, in the midlands of the United Kingdom. He arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1871 at the young age of eight or nine years old. Arriving with his parents, Thomas and Jane Elizabeth Tatton. Thomas married a Scottish girl by the name of Agnes Gilchrist Sword. He was a coke drawer by trade. I had an idea of what that meant, but had to look it up anyway just to confirm. It appears he worked on furnaces in the steel industry for years. He quickly advanced to become a puddler. I found Thomas William Tatton working as a furnace worker on three census sheets from 1900-1930. Well over thirty years. It appears from the documents that I have found so far, that he had only three daughters. One of which, Mary Louise Tatton was the mother of my Aunt Pat.
So, to wrap up this story. Aunt Pat was born Jane Louise Miller (March 17, 1921), and died Jane Louise Mellen (March 16, 2001), but through her entire life, and even to the census taker on April 04, 1930, Marie L. Brown. She was Patsy, my Aunt Pat!
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| Pat Mellen, granddaughter Megan Myers, Ivar Mellen and grandson Travis Myers sitting in the living room I remember all these years. |
It may appear that I have only been able to add one or two more generations to her branch of the family, and it may not look like much on a family pedigree, but it is the journey which is my reward! It has been A Long Way Home! For my Aunt Pat, and equally so for myself as I took her journey back.
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| Ivar & Pat Mellen Their daughter Patricia & Charles Myers, grandchildren Megan & Travis Myers. |
Patsy and Ivar are both gone now. They had two beautiful daughters of their own, and four grandchildren before their passing. There has been one recent addition making one of her daughters a grandmother now herself.