Veterans Day, seems an appropriate time to remember these men of Company C, 66th Medical Regiment, U.S. Army who served during World War II. Their images were sketched about 1942-43 at Camp Maxey, Texas. The artist, LeRoy or possibly C. Roy, was a member of Company C.
Sergeant “Similink” in the upper left corner is my Dad. He told great stories about the men of his company and treasured this original sketch.
Boys of Company C
Taking the Census: The Day Dad Found Himself
Dad was 78 when he accompanied me to the National Archives Branch in Denver. He was not a researcher and had no idea that an ordinary citizen could look at census information. He just wanted to spend some time with me while I worked on a family history project.
Filing cabinets and microfilm viewing machines were packed into the archives reading room. Only the occasional whump of a file drawer sliding shut or the whir of film on fast rewind broke the silence. I settled Dad at a desk next to mine, loaded a census film for Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, and forwarded it to Holland Township, where he grew up. It was the 1910 census.
Now and then as I worked, Dad tapped my arm. “Here’s Isaac and Jeanette LaGasse; I used to walk to school with them,” he whispered. I nodded without taking my eyes off my own work. A short time later, another tap. “Here’s my pa’s friend, Ed Ten Haken.” And so it went. Dad spent a nostalgic afternoon following the census taker through his rural farming community, stopping in at the homes of school mates and neighbors long forgotten.
Everyone in the reading room that day heard Dad’s exclamation of delight when he found himself. He burst out with his customary, “Well, I’ll be switched,” as he pulled me over to look. There he was, Harvey Simmelink, age 9 months on that April day in 1910 when the census taker came to call.
It was a validating moment for Dad. According to Sheboygan County, his birth had never been recorded. It was scrawled in the family Bible and his baptism was noted in the church rolls, but Dad did not have a birth certificate. Finding himself officially listed in a government record somehow closed that one nagging hole in an otherwise complete life.
When I took Dad along that day, I was afraid he might be bored. Instead, he experienced an epiphany of wonder. I know my grandparents and those neighbors and childhood friends would be pleased to know that Dad stopped by to pay them a visit after all those years and found them at home.
(This story originally appeared in the New York Times on May 25, 2002 and The Saturday Evening Post Sept/Oct 2002.)
In 2012 the 1940 census will be publicly available, giving people the opportunity to rediscover themselves as my Dad did. This year, 2010, is a census year. The information we all contribute will not become public until 2082. You never know who, in that distant future, will be as excited to find you as my Dad was to find himself.
Please respond when the census form comes in the mail or when a census taker comes to your door.
Starting with Genealogy
Many writers I know, who work in historical fiction and non-fiction, got their start as genealogical researchers. It is a good beginning. You learn the importance of original documents. You discover that not everything written or told about a person is true. You dig deeper and become more resourceful. You network. One contact leads to another and you find photos and diaries and treasures in unexpected places. Research is addictive.
I credit James Schwengel, a teacher at Harrison High School in Evansville, Indiana, for starting me on the research path that supports my writing today. He taught biology. We were studying genetics and Mendel’s experiments with inherited traits in peas. The assignment: document five genetic traits (eye and hair color, hair texture, skin tone, and body type) for yourself, brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents.
With no brothers and sisters to record, I expanded to aunts and uncles. Asking questions about my grandparents and their brothers and sisters opened a floodgate of stories I had never heard. Mother pulled old letters from a trunk. My aunt produced photos I had never seen. I was hooked. For more the 40 years I have pursued family ties and worked my way back into the Netherlands of the 1500s to find the origin of my family name–Simmelink.
I applied those genealogical research skills when I first decided to write about Chipeta. I pursued original sources – census records, newspaper accounts, Indian agent reports, oral histories. After thirteen years and two biographies of the woman, I still discover new bits of information about her in unexpected places.
