Oh Canada...

As many of you know, our Lacey family has been in Salinas since, well, before there was a place called Salinas. According the information I have, my 3rd great-grandfather, Joseph Vanderlip Lacey, first came to California in the late 1850s with his family - his wife, Isabella; children, Mary and James; father, Isaac; mother, Maria; brother, Frederick; and two sisters, Arabella (in the photo on the right) and Augusta.

We have a letter written by my great-great uncle, Garth Lacey, which indicates that he believed the family had come from St. Catharine's, Ontario, Canada. Joseph was Garth's grandfather, putting him much closer to the events and much more likely to know at least some of the details of this family.

But none of this tells us how the Lacey family ended up in Canada, what they were doing there, or how long they had been there. In the mid-1800s, it was not uncommon for immigrants to come first to Canada, stay for a few years, then immigrate to the United States. Was this what our Laceys had done?

A look at the 1860 U.S. census was the first clue to our Canadian heritage. In it, the entire Lacey family mentioned above is living in Monterey, California. Every member of the family, with the sole exception of Joseph's wife, is listed as having been born in Canada. If this is true, three generations born in the country would certainly indicate more than a short stopover on the immigration path.

Several months ago, I went with my aunt and cousin to the Monterey County Historical Society to look for information on the Lacey family in their archives. Although we didn't find records on our direct ancestors, we did find an original 1861 marriage certificate - seen on the left - for Augusta Lacey (Joseph's sister). According to this document, Augusta was "a native of Thorold Upper Canada."

This was good information, and quite exciting to have found. I rushed home that evening, dutifully plugged it into our family tree and then proceeded to promptly do nothing with it. Great going, Colleen.

About four weeks ago, I dusted off this little fact and, just to see what I'd get, googled Thorold. It turns out to be a small town in Ontario, located very close to St. Catharine's. This was looking quite promising as the Canadian home of the Lacey family. Adding the name Lacey to my search turned out to be even more fruitful, with this post from a genealogy forum coming up as the first result. Voila! A Lacey family from Thorold!

But were these our Laceys? The patriarch on this family tree, George Lacey, did have a son named Isaac. The author of the tree does not have a birth date for Isaac Lacey (our Isaac was born about 1804), but does have a marriage date of 1826, to a woman named Maria Larroway (our Isaac's wife was named Maria). So far, so good...but that was all he had on Isaac.

Still, Thorold had only a few hundred residents in the first half of the 1800s. The odds of there being two Isaac Laceys born about the same time, in the same town, who both married a woman named Maria...well, those odds seem pretty small. To confirm, though, I decided to do a bit more research on the rest of the extended Lacey family of Thorold.

In the 1897 "Jubilee History of Thorold, Township and Town," the Lacey family appears several times. Among the information in this book is the following brief mention of Isaac Lacey's sister, Abigail:

"Abigail S. Lacey, wife of Robert W. Hagar and daughter of George and Elizabeth Lacey, was born July 28th, 1801 on lot 117, Thorold Township, and died at Salinas City, California, January 16th, 1884."

Now I was getting excited...what were the odds, even if there I accepted that there were two Isaac Laceys, that the sister of one would end up in the small pioneer town in California as the family of the other Isaac Lacey?

Robert Hagar turns out to have been Abigail Lacey's first husband; her second husband's name was Collins Matthews. With this information, I went back the 1860 U.S. census records. And what do you know...guess who I found living right next to Isaac Lacey in Monterey in 1860? Yup...Abigail Matthews!

So there you have it...our Isaac Lacey appears to be the son of George Lacey and Elizabeth Lee, of Thorold, Ontario, Canada. And before Thorold? Well, it appears that George and Elizabeth immigrated to Canada from New Jersey around the turn of the nineteenth century. Before that? Well, that answer's probably another few rounds of research away...

Those Who Served...

I realize I haven't had many posts lately - I have been researching, but I've been neglecting updating you all. Sorry!!

Today, in honor of Veteran's Day, I thought it would be appropriate to write a little bit about the veterans in our family tree.

On my mother's side:

My grandfather, Robert Chapman, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. His brother, Frederick William, served in the U.S. Army. Below is a photograph of the Chapman family during World War II. From left to right, Robert B. Chapman; Frederick W. Chapman, Sr; Bess Chapman; Elizabeth Chapman; Frederick W. Chapman, Jr.

Further back, in a different line of the family, my great-grandfather, Albert Dean Lacey, served in the U.S. Army during World War I. Dean reached the rank of First Lieutenant in the Army, although not much is known about his service. If it hadn't been for a brief line in his marriage announcement, noting that he had recently returned from the Army, I never would have known he served at all. I am submitting a request to the military personnel records office to get copies of Dean's service records and learn a bit more about his service.

---

On my father's side, the history of service starts with our current generation and goes back about as far as you can in American military history.

My cousin Jeff serves today in the National Guard, and his father, Ken, served twenty-six years in the U.S. Air Force.

My grandmother's brother, Joseph Hogan, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. My grandfather, Robert Charles Taylor, Sr, served in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Coast Guard, while his older brother, Frank, served in the U.S. Army. At my grandmother's house, I remember seeing a great picture of the two brothers in their Army uniforms. Unfortunately, I don't have a scan of that picture, but below is a picture of my grandfather when he was in the Coast Guard:

Further back, my great-grandfather, Frank Orson Joseph Taylor, served in the U.S. Navy during World War I. Like my great-grandfather on my mother's side, I don't know much about Grandpa Taylor's service, but I have requested his service records from the military personnel office.

Frank's younger brother (my great-great uncle), Robert Thomas Taylor, served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and Frank's sister-in-law, my great-great aunt, Theresa Bauer, was married to U.S. Army Pvt. James Costelloe, a veteran of World War I. Pictures of James & Theresa's headstones at Long Island National Cemetery can be seen by clicking here.

Moving even further back, my 3rd great-grandfather, Andrew Orson Taylor, served in the Union Army (NY 6th Regiment, Company G) during the Civil War. Andrew served as the company drummer, then fifer, and finally served as a private. At the Battle of Irish Bend (Louisiana) in April 1863, Andrew was hit in the leg with a musket ball, stabbed in the arm with a sabre, and then, while he was on the ground after the sabre wound, he was trampled by a cavalry horse. Fortunately, Andrew survived and went home to New York City, but he would suffer disability from those injuries on and off for the rest of his life.

Tracing the family back even further through Andrew Orson's mother, Marcia Merrill, takes me to the earliest veteran that I know of in my family tree - my 6th great-grandfather, Titus Merrill, who served with the Connecticut 8th Regiment during the Revolutionary War.

---

So there you have it - a lengthy history of service to our country on our family tree, people who sacrificed to give us the freedoms we enjoy today. God bless our veterans!

By George, There You Are, George!

Don't you just hate it when relatives go missing?

It seems that my family has a rather annoying trait of playing hide and seek with me - changing ages, changing spellings, moving...you get the idea. Those are the relatives who hide in the records. And then there are those relatives who hide in the graveyard...

Case in point: George Edwin Lacey (b. 1862, d. 1933), my great-great grandfather, and his eldest daughter, Zetta May Lacey (b. 1889, d. 1894), who died at age four after a bout with spinal meningitis while the family was living in Seattle.

For those who aren't aware, the Lacey family has lived in Monterey County for just shy of a thousand and one years. Or since about 1860. It all depends on who you ask. It stands to reason, then, that the majority of the Lacey family should be buried in this county. So, naturally, all my cemetery research has focused on our Ohio relatives, rather than those in my backyard who I could go see for myself. Makes sense, right?

Finally, about a week or so ago, I dragged myself down to the office of the cemetery in Salinas, where I believed most of the Laceys to be buried. The office looked up the names for me, and sure enough, I was soon standing in front of an entire plot filled with Laceys. George's parents, Joseph and Isabella, were both there, as was Isabella's mother, Mary Taylor, and Joseph's niece, Ada Josselyn. George's sister Clara was there, as were several of his brothers - Alfred, Albert, Claude and James - along with Claude and James' wives (Alfred died at age 3, and Albert never married).

George's brothers Leroy and Joseph Carlisle were missing from the plot, but given the fact that neither brother lived in Salinas, I hadn't expected that I would find them here. The same goes for his other sister, Mary, who died at the age nine, when the family was still living in Monterey. I suspect if I call the cemetery there, I may find her, but that's a search for another day.

The woman in the cemetery office told me that George was also in the Lacey plot, as was Zetta. I was surprised to hear Zetta's name, as I had assumed she would have been buried in Seattle, but nevertheless was happy to find out she was closer to home (I can only imagine having to call every cemetery in the Seattle area to track her grave down...yikes!). Only one problem - there was no marker in the Lacey plot for either George or Zetta.

A little further digging (figuratively, of course) turned up a bit of info I'd found on an Ancestry listing from a woman related to George's brother James' wife. Her research had indicated that George had been buried in Salinas, but had been moved in 1943. Given that his wife, my great-great grandmother May Ellen Riley, didn't die until 1947, I can only presume that she is the one who had him moved, and Zetta as well.

And there I had it, a full-fledged mystery! Where are George and Zetta? And why did May have them moved?

Last night, I finally made it to the public library before closing time (side note - libraries need better after-work hours!) and had a chance to spend a few hours scrolling through microfilms of the old Salinas newspapers. I wasn't able to find a full obituary for May - or for anyone in that time period, strangely enough, so perhaps they weren't publishing them at the time - but I did come across a very short blurb, only two sentences long, entitled "Many Attend Last Rites For Mrs. May Lacey."

The first sentence describes May's death and a bit of the service. The second sentence was my eureka! moment, though: "...and private interment that followed at Woodlawn Cemetery, South San Francisco."

A quick call to Woodlawn Memorial Park in Colma at lunch today confirmed my finding - not only is May buried there, but right next to her are George and Zetta.
South San Francisco? George and May were both brought up in Salinas (although May was born in San Jose), and lived their entire lives here, with the exception of the few years they spent in Seattle at the beginning of their marriage. Grandma Lacey, what were you thinking?


I don't imagine that I'll ever know the full story of why May moved her family. Was the Lacey plot in Salinas not nice enough? Was she concerned it wouldn't be big enough for all three of them? Did she have some sort of connection to the Colma cemetery?

Still, at least I've solved one part of the mystery, and now we know where these three Laceys are buried. There's a certain thrill that comes with solving a mystery...I think it's a little addicting!