Week 6: 2023 Social Media

“Have you found an ancestor via social media? How about the social column of an old newspaper? (Those were basically the Facebook of the day!) How about imagining what an ancestor would say on social media?” prompt given by Amy Johnson Crow for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.

For this topic the person who immediately came to mind is my grand uncle Lyman Marshall (1897-1975). He was the husband of my grand aunt Nelle (Siepmann) Marshall (1897-1988). Nelle was my grandmothers sister. I have talked about Nelle and Lyman before in other posts. These two opened their home to everyone. At least three of Nelle’s sisters lived in the Marshall household at various times in their life. Some of this I know from social media i.e. the newspapers from their time.

I thought I might have to wait for the next Census or two to find out where Kathryn was living the last few years of her life. Now I know she lived with Nelle and Lyman for the last four years of her life. She had lived in Belle Plaine with her brother Fred and her mom Catherine. Her mom died in 1950 and her brother in 1966. I didn’t remember where Kathryn lived after they passed away. We went to visit them in Belle Plaine when I was young, we also visited Nelle and Lyman in Cedar Rapids.

I have found births, weddings, deaths, social events, church events and military service all about their family in the local paper. All of these are gold mines for even more family. Such as this one from the time Nellle’s sister Gertrude was staying with Nelle and Lyman. It tells about them returning to the city after going to their brothers funeral. This told me where William was living at the time of his death and when so I could look for an obituary for him.

These two photos are how I remember Lyman and Nelle. A very loving couple and everyone was always welcome in their home. Lyman is the one who inspired me to write about the two of them for this post. When we went to visit Lyman would pull out a scrapbook he was making all about President Richard Nixon. He loved talking about Nixon and the many, many troubles he got himself involved in at the time. He would have an article from the paper telling about something Nixon had promised to do before he was elected, on the next page would be an article about what Nixon had actually done after he was elected. I truly wasn’t old enough to appreciate his Nixon talks at the time but looking back now I wish I had paid more attention. Lyman was a wise man.

When I talked with one of his descendants through Family Search and through Ancestry we both agreed that Lyman would have loved Facebook. I want to hear his thoughts about the political scene over the last eight or so years. He would have been on fire talking all of us through the misteps he saw.

I hope you are able to find many newspaper articles about the life of your family. I was surprised to find in 1918 they published a list of men who were called to service for that month in time. I knew this was done during the Vietnam War, I remember seeing and reading those. It just didn’t occur to me it would have started so long ago.