In the summer of 1927, GC Wilkins, his wife Ora Roddy Wilkins and their four daughters, Mary 15, Jo 8, June 3 and Jane 14 mos. made a visit to Pawnee Rock Kansas. Pawnee Rock is a historic landmark on the Santa Fe Trail in present-day Barton County, Kansas. Located in the county’s southwest corner, the bluff, comprised of Dakota Sandstone, sits about 100 yards from the old Santa Fe Trail. Before this road was blazed, the large rock formation, rising out of the flat prairie, was a site where the Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Cheyenne  Indians held councils of war and peace. In 1908, the remaining portion of the bluff was acquired by the Woman’s Kansas Day Club, and the next year it was turned over to the State of Kansas as a historic site. On May 24, 1912, a stone monument was dedicated with a great celebration before a crowd of some eight thousand onlookers. The state park today provides a road that leads to a shelter house and monument on the summit. An overlook, monument, and historical signs now grace its reduced summit, where visitors can stand, witnessing the view that so many throughout history have shared. The site is open from sunrise to sunset.

 Russell/Grove Families and the 1918 Flu Pandemic

My first recollection of the mention of Aunt Cynthia Grove Russell was in 1962 when my paternal grandfather, John Edwin Grove, casually referred to her during a car ride return trip from Parker, KS to Wichita.

Parker was the hometown of my Grove ancestors and in 1962 we spent Memorial Day there (called Decoration Day by my grandparents). That visit was memorable as it is the first time I visited Goodrich Cemetery, the site of the graves of several generations of my Grove ancestors. It was also the first time my father, John Virgil Grove, pointed out to me his boyhood home on Taft St. in Parker.

On that car ride home, I started asking questions about the graves we had seen and how I was related to those Groves. In retrospect it was probably this trip that inspired my genealogical hobby.

My grandfather mentioned that the Russell graves we had seen were victims of the Spanish Flu. I knew flu as an illness but not a killer. So, I was curious how it caused death. My grandfather was 12 in 1918. He remembered his Dad’s sister Aunt Cynthia quite well and her children, Donald, Anna, Merle. By 1918 Cynthia had been a widow for 25 years. She was living in Kansas City and had become the matriarch of the Grove family.

Tragedy struck in January, 1918. Cynthia had moved from Parker to Kansas City where she died January 9, 1918 at age 64. According to her death certificate she had been sick ten days with catarrhal pneumonia. Aside from that her health had been good. Her son Donald Delos Russell, who also lived in Kansas City, became ill returning from the cemetery in Parker after his mother’s services. He had a cold which led to pneumonia causing his death on January 15, 1918, at the home of his uncle Charles Grove (my great grandfather) at the age of 34. Cynthia’s daughter Anna Belle Russell South also accompanied her mother to Parker and she “suffered from a nervous breakdown,” was sick ten days and died at the home of her uncle, Charles Grove (my great grandfather) in Parker on January 23, 1918, at the age of 45.

In the span of two weeks 3 Russell family had members died. By 1962 the family lore had attributed these three deaths to what was then called the Spanish Flu. Since two of the three deaths occurred at my grandfather’s boyhood home, he was likely a witness and had a vivid memory of their passing.

One hundred years later there has been further research into the 1918 Flu Pandemic. More is known about its toll and its origin. As of this writing there is a strong belief that the 1918 outbreak did not originate in Spain. As a non-combatant in World War I the Spanish were more open about the outbreak among the population there than were the other European warring countries who did not want to disclose any events that might be perceived to their enemies as weaknesses. So, flu deaths among troops and the general population was not widely reported.

While the so-called “Spanish Flu” did not originate in Spain, scientists are still unsure of its source. France, China and Britain have all been suggested as the potential birthplace of the virus, as has the United States, where the first known case was reported at a military base in Kansas on March 11, 1918.

Now here’s where family lore meets historical facts. The first known case in the US was reported at a military base in Kansas on March 11, 1918. That military base was Camp Funston, a U.S. Army training camp located on Fort Riley, southwest of Manhattan, Kansas

The first Russell death was in Kansas City on January 9, 1918, 67 days before the first reported case at Camp Funston. Based on today’s information it is unlikely that these three closely related deaths of healthy family members can be attributed to the 1918 Pandemic OR is it possible that there were flu deaths within the general population in Kansas in early 1918 that were not reported due to the rural nature of the population?

In early January-February, 1918, Dr. Loring Miner, a Haskell County, Kansas, doctor raised the first warning, reporting an "influenza of a severe type" circulating in the area. Haskell County boys may have then carried the virus to a Kansas army camp. From there, the virus caught a ride with tens of thousands of young soldiers on their way to Europe.

The deaths in Kansas City in October 1918 that were recorded as part of the pandemic were worse than the rate of other major American cities. *Over the next 27 weeks, the flu would kill an estimated 2,300 people in Kansas City, giving it a mortality rate greater than New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and even St. Louis, a city with more than 2.5 times Kansas City’s population at the time.

In Parker not only did the two adult Russell siblings succumb to pneumonia but the weekly Parker Message reported in the Thursday, January 17, 1918 edition an unusual number of deaths for a community of approximately 400.

It is about 145 miles northwest from Parker, KS to Camp Funston and about 122 miles directly west of Kansas City.

 

 

Mrs. Cynthia Russell W.J. Boyd
Wife of W.J. Boyd Don Russell

Andrew J. Hill JJ Deihm

Six Deaths in Past Week

It has been a long while since there has been as many deaths in this community as there has been in this past week.
Friday, the body of Mrs. Cynthia Russell, a former resident of Parker was brought here from Kansas City for burial. The obituary will appear next week.

A son of Mrs. Russell, Don accompanied the body of his mother here for burial was taken sick with cold and it developed into pneumonia causing his death Tuesday morning about 5:00am he leaves a wife and several children besides other relatives.

One week later the death of Anna Belle Russell had died bringing the toll on this small community to seven.

More recently I started using Newspaper.com to scour online newspapers to discover more about my ancestors and discovered this in the March 21, 1918 Parker Message

Mrs. Chas. Grove (Kate Short Grove my great grandmother) returned Saturday from a two weeks’ visit with her son Kenneth who is in camp at Camp Funston and her daughter, Mrs. J Brown (my grandfather’s oldest sibling, Fern).

SO, it appears at the exact same time that Camp Funston was experiencing great numbers of soldiers suffering from the start of the epidemic, our ancestors were there! Is it possible Kenneth was ill and that’s why they visited? How did they not get infected while visiting Kenneth. Or, did they get sick while visiting and had to stay for two weeks to recover?

©John M Grove 2020

 

DNA Testing

In 2012 I submitted a saliva sample for DNA testing to determine where my ancestors had lived.  I used the service offered to Ancestry.com members and here are the results.  I was at first surprised at the Scandinavian dominance until I read more about the Vikings exploration of Europe.  It now makes sense knowing that the Scandinavians were in Ireland and the UK and established civilizations there.    The disappointment was the absence of Native American. I hold out hope that my uncertain 5% may have some Native American or African American connection.

In late 2018 Ancesry.com notified me that new data had refined my 2012 Genetic Ethnic Summary.  Below is the 2018 update and my new DNA summary shows a trace of African DNA which in 2012 was not identified.

2018 Ethnicity Summary

England, Wales & Northwestern Europe48%

Ireland & Scotland47%

Norway4%

Cameroon, Congo, & Southern Bantu Peoples1%

Genetic Ethnicity Summary 2012

Your genetic ethnicity reveals where your ancestors lived hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of years ago.

• Scandinavian
   42%
• British Isles
   21%
• Southern European
   18%
• Finnish/Volga-Ural
   14%
• Uncertain
   5%

Margaret Cliff Grove 1905-1990

My paternal grandmother, Margaret Cliff Grove, was born on April 29, 1905, in Durham, Ontario Canada.  Her father, John Alfred Cliff, held management positions with the Portland Cement Company which for a time had her and her mother and two sisters accompanying him to Independence, KS from 1909-1914 for his job with the Portland Cement Company in Independence.

In April, 1924, Sarah Jane D'Arcy, Margaret's mother died.  Five days after her death, Margaret turned 19. Her two older sisters Anna Theresa 24, and Mary Clarissa (May) 28 were both married and raising kids of their own under 3 years old.

Their father, John Alfred Cliff, a widower at 63 was grieving and incapable of dealing with his rebellious younger daughter Margaret.  He was living with his middle daughter Anna and her husband Joe Bissonnette.

Oldest sister May who was living with her husband, Carl Smith and two children, Mary 3, and John Joseph under one year old were in Parker, KS.  May and Carl offered to have Margaret come live with them.  May probably felt her youngest sister would be a big help with her two kids and at the same time she and Carl could provide parenting that their father could not.  They also must have felt since Anna and Joe were providing for their father, John, it was their obligation to care for Margaret.

On December 3, 1924 Margaret left Canada crossing into the USA at Port Huron, MI.  She indicated in her documents she was bound for her sister's home in Parker, KS for an indefinite visit.  Her father was her nearest living relative and he was living at Stanley House, Muskoka Ontario.  She had $215 which would be equivalent to $2874 in 2012.

Margaret did not return to Canada for 23 years until 1947, for the funeral of her father.  She was accompanied by her sister May.  Her life had changed in those 23 years,  She married, had 3 children, one died at age 5. Her son served in the US Merchant Marines during WWII.  She had become a grandmother only a few months before her father's death and lost that three month old granddaughter just days before her father's death.  Her daughter was engaged to be married within the next year.  Margaret's children never met their maternal Canadian grandparents.

The following pictures were taken prior to1924 in Ontario and Independence KS. These images were in the collections of both Margaret Cliff Grove and May Cliff Smith.

May Cliff standing rear, Anna seated right,
Margaret seated left about 1908

Margaret in nursing school uniform
 age 17

Margaret and Anna

From 1924, when she emigrated from Canada to the US, she lived in Kansas, beginning in Parker and on to Wichita, Peck, and in 1990 she died in Haysville.

She raised two children to adulthood, John Virgil Grove and Jeanette Estelle Grove.  Her youngest son, Neil Cliff Grove died at age five to a sudden illness that was never really explained.  The family story was he was healthy in the morning and by afternoon he was dead.

Margaret had a career most of her life in personnel management with Wichita department store Buck's and later as a Switchboard Operator for Sedgwick County Kansas Courthouse.

At the time of her death in 1990 she had four grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

She and her husband of 42 years, John Edwin Grove are together  at Christian Hill Cemetery near Peck, Kansas.

Grumpy and the Pistol

The first time I saw this picture I was about 11 years old when my cousin Ed and I were at our grandparents house in Wichita (Planeview) KS.  We were both fascinated that this was our grandfather, Grumpy (Granville Wilkins) as a young man and he was holding a gun pointed at someone.  We could see faint handwriting on the image "daddy" which was no doubt written by one of his four daughters which could have been Ed's mother, June or my mother, Jane.

Grumpy was 71 in the summer of 1959.  Ed and I were his fourth and fifth grandchildren so he had plenty of grandfathering experience by that time and had probably configured several stories to be told to his grandkids.  My memory of Grumpy is a man of few words who only spoke when he was spoken to.  Ed and I began to ask about his childhood and the picture raised all sorts of questions.  Where were you?  Is that a real gun?  Who are you pointing at?  His response, Texas, yes and silence.

Our grandmother, Bomba (Ora Roddy Wilkins) died the summer of 1960.  Grumpy lived another 11 years.  Somehow the above picture came my way sometime after his death in 1971.

Since his death, as my interest in Wilkins genealogy grew, I have shared the picture with other family members asking those same questions Ed and I asked in 1959.  No one had any more information about the image other than confirming that it was indeed Grumpy holding the gun.  It remained a mystery why the original is torn, what is missing?

In 2011 after my genealogical research led me to distant cousin, Joe Wilkins the picture took on new meaning.  Joe is the grandson of Ellis Wilkins, Grumpy's older brother.  Joe is in possession of all of Aunt Addie Wilkins Schroeder's family photo collection which he shared with me.  Addie was the younger sister to Ellis, Jim, and Granville (Grumpy).  To my surprise her collection had an intact original of the pistol photo.  Unfortunately, Joe had no more information about the image than I had.  Joe Wilkins died in the fall of 2014.

So....the complete image shows a bit more detail.  The photo was done in a studio.  A backdrop and reflector can be seen.  The mystery remains as to who the person on the right may be.  Could it be his brother Jim?  Jim's life is somewhat of a mystery which I will explore in a future post.

In Memory of Silver Star WWII Hero Lucian France Wilkins 1917-1943

The following is a facsimile of a letter from Lt. Ralph Berryhill to Lloyd Wilkins, Lucian's older brother.  Lt. Berryhill was a close friend of Lucian Wilkins, both from Hugo, OK serving in the 45^th Infantry Division in the invasion of Italy. 

Transcribed as written.

Feb. 14, 1944

Dear Lloyd,

I recived your letter yesterday; I will be more than glad to answer your questions- In the first place I do know how you feal about Luke-& it is perty hard to belive- But it all true.

Luke and I got Our bars at the same time & was trainsferd to Co. “C” at the same time.  he had he 3 paltoon & I had the 2pl. we was together all the time & was the only person I new in the Co. you might have read semptin in the paper about mt. Molino or hill 960= there where he was killed.  We was making a attack one mt Molino – I was not with him at the time.  He was hit- He was leading the Co. with his platoon when we hit the Germans his pl. was shot up perty bad & he was trying to keep them together & get one top of the hill- he got on top and drove the Germans off, then he was coming bak to the Co. C.P. to get some orders on what to do he got back to the C.P. and was talking to Lt. Buckhner, ( who is wrighting you a letter to) when the Germans started shelling the C.P.  he was hit in the side. &  was trying to get another boy under cover when a nother shell landed and a pease hit him in the head & he was killed all at one.  So he was hit twice – but the first one would not have killed him if the second one had not have hit him.

No Lloyd he was not afraid to die if there was anyone who was not afraid to go it was Luke he was not scared of anything- He had plenty of guts- he told me several times if he had to get it that was the way he wanted it . you ask me if he was a good soldier he was the best Lloyd.

He is sepose to get a sliver star for his work that he was doing when he was hit-

He was buried in the Div. Graveyard- he was gotten out the same day he was hit=

He figgered he would get back home. But the law of averge will ketch up with you, we keep on going

We haven’t had any rest since we got here , there are 10 to 15 old men left in our Co.

His packet back and the rest of his stuff has been mailed home.

Lloyd if there is anything else your would like to now. I will be glad to wright you.

You & your family has my sympathy, Let me hear from you agin.

Love Ralph

An extract from the history of the 45^th Infantry Division by Col. George Fisher

The assault Companies were B and C of our First Battalion and K and L of our third Battalion.  These four companies were on the line of departure prior to 6:30 A.M. [30 Dec 1943].  At that time, six battalions of our artillery opened up in the Volturno Valley far below, and for fifteen minutes hurled shell after shell on Mount Molino, Hill 960, Mount Rotando ajd Hill 1000.  In the meantime the companies moved forward towards their objectives.  As the barrage lifted, the rapid fire of the German machine guns and the cough of their mortars began.  At 8:55 A.M. Company B, Commanded by Captain Orrin O. McDaniels, Tulsa, Oklahoma, reached the first knoll of Mount Molino and came under heavy fire from heavy mahine gun and mortar fire.  Bulletts ricocheted and whined among the rocks. mortar shells burst like bolts of lightening among the company.  Many bullets and fragments struck after objects than rocks.  It was estimated that two full companies of Germans held positions in the Mount Molino-Hill 960 sector assigned to our First Battalion.  These enemy were heavily reinforced.  Tanks of Company A, 751^st Tank Battalion, which had the mission of firing on Mount Molino from the road running west from Casale to Acquafondata, returned for more ammunition.  Then all artillery was lifted from Mount Molino with the idea in mind that the situation would be well in hand.  Ther Germans, however, continued to bring up reinforcements.

Company C battled its way over the rocks under heavy fire up Hill 960.  The Germans had no less than twenty machine guns well dug in on Mount Molino, and these together with others in the vicinity, poured a never ending hail of fire upon the assault companies.  Out in front of the advancing forces of Company C was Second Lieutenant Lucian F. Wilkins, a platoon leader, Hugo, Oklahoma.  Wilkins was [illegible] many boys from Hugo, Oklahoma who had come over seas as [illegible] that great soldier Lt. Colonel Howard [illegible] ?rys had seen the makings of a splendid officer.  On up the slopes went Wilkins of this embattled morning with his platoon following him.  At the head of his assault squad, Wilkins quickly destroyed two German machine gun nests.  When Wilkins and his men had gained the forward slope of the hill, they were pinned down heavy machine gun cross fire coming from a peak south of Hill 960 and from Mount Molino.  Wilkins’ platoon sergeant and runner were seriously wounded as were many others of the intrepid attackers, altogether twelve men were down.  To add to the misery, a raging blizzard swirled down through the mountains.  Wilkins ordered what was left of his platoon to return the German fire, and , with his communications line out, started crawling toward the Company command post to report the situation to 1^st Lieutenant Richard P. Blanks, Company Commander, Henderson, North Carolina, and to request supporting artillery and mortar fire on the machine guns which were pouring murderous fire on his platoon.  With bullets splattering and whining around his body, he made it to the command post.  For a moment it looked like a helpless situation there at the command post, since communications personnel were having great difficulty in getting wire lines through from Battalion headquarters and the area between the Company and Battalion Headquarters was practically all fire swept.  From his position on Hill 960, Staff Sergeant Robert Bruce Paris, Park Hill Oklahoma, one of the Chilocco Indian boys, seeing the havoc that was being wrought with communications by German fire, voluntarily worked his way down the hill and, under heavy mortar fire, went to meet a one wireman who was trying to lay the line and who had been pinned down.  Parris took the wire, worked his way to the company command post and the communications were in.  Throughout the day the brave Indian lad worked restoring communications as they would be disrupted by German fire.

MIA 2nd Lt. Lucian France Wilkins by Alex Poston

Frogville, Oklahoma, a town named after the alleged "giant duck-eating frogs" that make their home in the surrounding lakes and creeks, is a little speck of a town, barely visible even on a map, near the Oklahoma-Texas border. Chances are—if you could even find it— it would look much as it had nearly 100 years ago, when my distant cousin Lucian France Wilkins was born there, on November 29th, 1917.

Lucian was born at the tail end of what would later be known as the Green Corn Rebellion— a socialist-backed uprising of southeastern Oklahoman tenant farmers and sharecroppers in protest of military conscription and entry into the war in Europe. The rebellion itself lasted less than three days, but involved close to three hundred poorly-armed farmers and their planned march on Washington, D.C. According to the The New Day (1922) by Bertha Hale White:
"All of those who had participated in the uprising were soon under arrest,
and the net swept in others who had belonged to the organization, but had had no part in the rebellion. In all, nearly 300 men were involved, and when the case came to trial at Ardmore the following October 175 men received sentences ranging from 30 days in jail to 10 years at Leavenworth prison."
Perhaps it was the rebellious nature of southeastern Oklahoma at the time, or maybe just plain boredom due to life in a small town, but my grandmother June (Lucian's cousin) would likely say it was his being born with Wilkins blood that made Lucian and his older brother Lloyd into the town Hell- raisers that they were.
Lucian's mother, Minnie Wood, was half Choctaw and died when Lucian was only six years old. Her death had a devastating effect on Lucian's father, George "Ellis" Wilkins. The boys' aunt and uncle,

Celia Adeline "Addie" Wilkins and Frank Schroeder, took the boys in and raised them from then on, as

Ellis had reportedly become too distraught and turned to alcohol to help ease the pain of her passing. This was, Addie thought, not the right environment in which to raise two young children, and
though Ellis provided for the boys financially and wasn't technically "estranged," the boys, particularly Lucian, came to think of her as their mother. So much so that Lucian would later name her the beneficiary of his U.S. Army life insurance policy in the event of his death.
Lucian was the picture of the All-American youth in the 1930s. He attended high school in the neighboring town of Hugo, Oklahoma where he was by all accounts, one of the popular crowd (something quite rare in my family). Also a star athlete, he lettered in both track and field and football. Also during high school, Lucian joined the Oklahoma National Guard.
The Depression didn't ignore Oklahoma. In 1933, an out-of-work Ellis Wilkins moved with Lucian three hundred miles to Clinton, Oklahoma where Ellis' brother (my great grandfather Granville "Grumpy" Wilkins) lived. Lucian enrolled in Clinton High, where my great aunt Jo remembers how popular she became with the girls at school because her cousin was the handsome new boy in school.
It was also in Clinton that 16-year-old Lucian set in motion a family legend and town secret that still hasn't been brought to the surface.
The yearly football game between Clinton High and it's nearby rival, Elk City High School was coming up and Lucian was on the team. One day, he casually mentioned to his coach how his big brother Lloyd was the star running back of the far-away Hugo team. Clinton's coach evidently really wanted to win the Elk City game, so he conspired with Lucian to get Lloyd on to the Clinton team for the game, since no one in the Clinton/Elk City area would know who he was. According to most accounts, Lloyd never set foot in a Clinton High class room, but instead just showed up the day of the game, enrolled, and took the field that night.

Lloyd ended up only playing the second half, and only after Clinton was down. He promptly scored two touchdowns, won the game for Clinton, and was back in Hugo for school on Monday.
After graduating high school in 1938, Lucian was honorably discharged from the national guard in September of 1939. Less than a month later he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was shipped off to Fort Deven, Massachusetts, where in April of 1942 he was appointed temporary Staff Sergeant.
Almost a year later, as platoon leader of "C" company of the 45th Infantry Division "Thunderbirds", (whose insignia before the 1930s was a yellow swastika) Lucian took part in the Allied invasion on Sicily on June 10, 1943. He fought and survived the Battle of Biscari, where he received a battlefield promotion to Second Lieutenant— presumably due to the dead of his commanding officer.
For actions of bravery in this battle, he would be awarded the Silver Star, though he'd only receive it after his death. After Biscari, Lucian and the rest of the Thunderbirds of the 45th clawed their way north toward Rome.
On September 9, the 45th took part in the Allied amphibious invasion of Salerno, known as Operation Avalanche. Three months later, on December 30th, after taking several more towns, inching up toward Cassino, Lucian was reported as missing in action. Details aren't exactly clear on how this happened, but it wasn't until a friend of Lucian's, Lieutenant Ralph Berryhill, wrote his parents telling of his friend Lucian's death, that anyone in Hugo knew. Aunt Addie didn't even receive a notice of death, just a note from the War Department a few weeks after reading the letter from Lt. Berryhill, telling her he was missing in action. "I have nothing to write you—" the letter read, "Lucian is dead."
I have no doubt that similar stories of young American heroes could have been told in small (and large) towns all over the country just by changing the names of people and towns, but what's important is that this is Lucian's story, and a story of my family, and it helped me to learn a little more about who I am and where I come from.

Sources

Grove, John. Correspondences with historian, April 10th - 25th, 2012
Bibliography White, Bertha Hale. The Green Corn Rebellion in Oklahoma. Corvallis, Oregon: 1000 Flowers Publishing 2006
Telegram: U.S. Secretary of War to Addie Schroeder, February 1, 1944, Grove Family Collection
Lucian F. Wilkins Obituary. Hugo Daily News. Year Unknown (likely 1944)
Letterman's Award Certificates: Football and Track and Field:, Hugo High School, Hugo Oklahoma 1938. 

[Alex Poston's grandmother and Lucian and Lloyd Wilkins were first cousins)