52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 28

Elsie Metz 1902

The writing prompt for this week is Travel. While most of my ancestors traveled great distances to emigrate to the United States, and many more migrated across this country after they arrived, I have found no one in the family who traveled as extensively as my 2nd cousin, twice removed, Elsie Lauretta Metz. I wrote about Elsie, who was born in Cincinnati in 1880, and the wild weather she experienced while on a ship in 1912 earlier this year when the writing prompt was Storms. You can find that post here. I also had written about her family and attendance at the University of Cincinnati back in 2013, and the link for that post is here.

in December of 1911, Elsie applied for a passport at the age of 30 in preparation for some travel she was planning to do the next year. While I knew a lot about her 1912 trip due to a journal that was returned to our family, I had no idea of the extensiveness of her adventures until I was preparing for this post. Through a list tucked into her journal and also searches on ancestry.com I was able to find the following travel and passenger information about Elsie. I suspect that the list is missing some entries as well.

1889 traveled to Rome, Italy, according to her journal.

1893 traveled to the Chicago World’s Fair, according to her journal.

1899 and 1905 traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, according to her journal.

1906 traveled to Quebec and Saguenay, Canada, according to her journal.

1907 traveled to Europe, according to her journal.

1908 traveled to Cairo, according to her journal.

27 August 1909 sailed on the SS Kaiserin Augusta Victoria from Cherbourg, France to New York, New York, arriving on 3 September 1909. She spent the summer touring Europe with friends.

1910 and 1911 traveled to the Adirondacks in New York, according to her journal.

9 May 1912 sailed on the SS Cincinnati from Hamburg, Germany to New York, New York, arriving on 20 May 1912. (Her diary indicates that she left on the trip 30 January, 1912, so this ship’s list is only from the last leg of her journey.)

7 July 1914 sailed to Europe for extensive trip.

5 August 1914 applied for an emergency passport at the American Embassy in Berlin to immediately return to the U.S due to the outbreak of WWI.

22 August 1914 sailed on the SS St. Paul from Liverpool, England, arriving in New York, New York on 30 August 1914.

3 October 1914 sailed on the SS Lusitania from Liverpool, England, arriving in New York, New York on 8 October 1914. (This trip is puzzling to me - in light of the war, why would she have gone back to Europe that fall?)

1916 traveled to Lake Placid, New York, according to her journal.

1918 traveled to Chillicothe (Illinois? Missouri?), according to her journal.

1920 traveled to Luddington (England? Michigan?), according to her journal.

8 March 1921 sailed on the SS Fort Victoria from Hamilton, Bermuda to New York, New York, arriving on 10 March 1921.

1922 traveled to Ogunquit, Maine, according to her journal.

5 March 1923 sailed on the SS Fort Hamilton from Hamilton, Bermuda to New York, New York, arriving on 7 March 1923.

1923 traveled to Colorado, according to her journal.

1924 traveled to Alaska, according to her journal.

26 August 1925 sailed on the SS Paris from Plymouth, England to New York, New York.

1926 traveled to Ocean City, New Jersey, according to her journal.

27 August 1927 sailed on the SS Paris from Plymouth, England to New York, New York, arriving on 1 September 1925.

29 July 1930 sailed on the SS St. Louis from New York, New York to Cherbourg, France.

2 October 1930 sailed on the SS Milwaukee from Boulogne, France to New York, New York, arriving on 11 October 1930.

22 March 1932 sailed on the SS Florida from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida, arriving on 22 March 1932.

15 August 1938 traveled the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City, New Jersey with a friend.

1939 traveled to New York City for the World’s Fair.

16 March 1949 sailed on the SS Lurline from Los Angeles, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, arriving on 21 March 1949. On 10 April 1949 flew on United Airlines from Honolulu, Hawaii to San Francisco, California.

30 March 1952 flew Trans World Airlines from New York, New York to Lisbon, Portugal. On 30 April 1952 flew on Trans World Airlines from Madrid, Spain to New York, New York.

27 March 1953, travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and received a temporary immigration card there.

25 September 1954 flew on Royal Dutch Airlines from Amsterdam, Netherlands to New York, New York.

5 July 1955 flew on British Airways from New York to London, England, where she spent a month touring Scotland with a friend. From there they went to London to meet up with some friends before touring Ireland. She returned 19 August 1955 on British Airways from London, England to New York, New York.

17 June 1956 flew on Scandinavian Airlines from New York, New York to Stockholm, Sweden.

29 July 1956 flew on Pan American Airways from London, England to New York, New York.

31 March 1957 sailed on the SS Homeric from Havana, Cuba, arriving in New York, New York on 2 April 1957.

27 April 1958 flew from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

8 September 1958 flew on British Airways from London, England to New York, New York.

July 1959 flew Pan American Airlines from Nassau, Bahamas to New York, New York.

29 August 1960 flew on American Airlines from place unknown to San Antonio, Texas.

8 October 1959 flew on SR Airline from place unknown to New York, New York.

13 June 1962 sailed on SS Italia from Nassau, Bahamas to New York, New York, arriving on 16 June 1962.

one of Elsie's travel talks

Elsie never married, so much of the time she had traveling companions with her. In the early years it was her mother and her unmarried brother, though the extended trip she took in 1912 was done in the company of family friends. She was a woman of many interests, with both bachelor and masters degrees from the University of Cincinnati. She was extremely active in the Cincinnati social scene, and was a patron of the arts as well as an amateur actor and director of community plays. She frequently appeared in the Society Page of The Enquirer, Cincinnati’s daily newspaper, and on several occasions gave presentations about her travels. With at least 40 trips spanning 73 years, she certainly would have had a lot to talk about!

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 20

The writing prompt for this week, Another Language, stumped me for a bit. I don’t speak another language, and outside of a few German words carelessly thrown out by my father, no other language was ever spoken in our house. I don’t remember any of my grandparents speaking anything besides English.

truck of one of my Swiss cousins

However, when I traveled on my genealogy trip to Germany and Switzerland, language became a huge issue for me. Luckily most of the people I encountered spoke English. In both of the small hometowns I visited I was provided with a translator. The new relatives I met, with the exception of a couple of teenage girls, could only talk to me through the interpreter. That worked out pretty well, until the evening I spent alone with two cousins. They spoke no English and I spoke no German, and we went out to dinner together. Have you ever spent a few hours with someone and been unable to communicate? It was frustrating, for me as well as them, I’m sure. Not for the first time, I regretted not taking a German for Travelers class before I embarked on this journey. We resorted to drawing pictures on napkins, creating our own form of communication.

Kubler record

But most discouraging was the fact that all the records were in German, and in an old script to boot. I got to the point where I could at least recognize the name, and we took photos of the entries in each book. But there was no time to process how the people fit into my family tree. Between my photos and those taken by the man who was assisting me in looking for my family, I have hundreds of new names. Some I have been able to plug into my genealogy program, but many are stored on CDs that were given to me. I just don’t know what to do with them, short of hiring a German genealogist to make sense of all of them.

It is, indeed, another language. But it is all Greek to me.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 17

Kubler family stone

With the writing prompt being Cemetery this week, I immediately thought of the cemetery plot that has me the most puzzled. My second great-grandfather, Vinzenz Josef Kubler, died 19 September 1886 and is buried in the Connersville, Indiana cemetery aptly named City Cemetery. When I went to Connersville many years ago to research that branch of my Kubler family, I headed first to the local library.

It was there that I found a newspaper article describing the death of Joseph Kubler, which is the name he went by in America. He died in the St. Gabriel's Catholic Church following Mass one Sunday morning at the age of 38. The librarian indicated that most residents of the town who died during that time period were buried in the City Cemetery. Unfortunately (at least at that time) no records existed to show where he was buried within the cemetery.

Alfred Kubler

After driving through the cemetery I did locate the tombstone for Joseph. It is to date the largest monument of any of my ancestors. On one side of the stone was listed Joseph V. Kubler, along with his death date and how old he was at the time of his death. On the other side was Alfred, son of J.V. & J. Kubler along with his death date of 3 October 1885 and the fact that he was 8 when he died. That is clear enough, but there are four other small stones on the plot: Father, Mother, Alfred, and Henry.

Alfred and Henry (my great-grandfather) were both sons of Joseph and Josephine Kubler. Initially I thought Father and Mother referred to Joseph and Josephine. However, I later discovered that Josephine remarried after Joseph died, and again following the death of her second husband. I would imagine that she was buried with her third husband and not her first husband.

It is possible that they refer to Joseph’s mother and father, though the last records I have found for them are located in Cincinnati, and some of Joseph’s brothers had remained in Cincinnati as well. It would make sense that they would have their parents buried in Cincinnati.

Unfortunately, City Cemetery does not have records that indicate who might be buried beneath those small stones. The other occupants of the Kubler plot remain a mystery for now.

smaller Kubler stones

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 16

The writing prompt Storms had me a little stumped this week. I don’t know of any storm survival stories or storm chasers in my family, nor does anyone have a name that has anything to do with bad weather. But then I remembered my 2nd cousin, twice removed, Elsie Lauretta Metz.

Elsie Metz 1902

Born in Cincinnati on 24 May 1880, Elsie was the second and final child born to John and Isabella (Drescher) Metz. Their son Daniel was born in 1873. Elsie entered the University of Cincinnati (UC) in 1899, one of the 141 entering freshmen at a university of 1,145 students. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1902. She received a teaching fellowship in Modern Languages at the university for the 1903-1904 school year. She would later be awarded a Master of Arts degree from UC.

In December of 1911, 30-year-old Elsie applied for a U.S. passport, which was granted on 3 January 1912. This was in preparation for a 78 day cruise to the Orient aboard the steamship Cincinnati. As a single woman, she traveled with family friends Caroline Moerlein and her son William Moerlein. The Moerleins were part of the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company dynasty. Elsie kept a diary of her adventure, which surfaced a couple years ago and was donated to the Cincinnati History Museum. I was able to scan the pages of the diary before it passed on to the museum.

Cincinnati Enquirer article January 31, 1912

Vanderbilt Hotel

The beginning of the trip had a series of weather-related mishaps. The group first experienced ice and sleet on 28 January as they boarded a train in Cincinnati bound for New York City. There was more sleet when they arrived in New York on 29 January, and the Hudson River was frozen over as they made their way to the Vanderbilt Hotel. Newly opened on 10 January 1912, the hotel was built by Alfred Vanderbilt, great-grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. The sleet of the day turned into a blizzard by that night.

The Cincinnati left New York on 30 January, 1912. Elsie notes that they had “a rough stormy passage to Lisbon”, and that her female traveling companion was never able to appear on deck as she had “every disease known.” I’m sure that as First Class passengers, they were well taken care of, however. The ongoing storm was so bad that the ship was unable to land at Lisbon on 8 February, arriving the next day instead.

The ship traveled through more storms on its way to Cadiz, Spain. When they were finally able to dock, they found that their arranged trip to Seville was canceled because the railroads were washed away. Elsie records that “Spain suffering from worst floods known in sixty years.”

Eventually they made their way to more temperate weather, and she does not mention any other bad weather before returning to New York on 20 May 1912. But, at least at the beginning of the trip,  Elsie must have been wondering, what in the world have I gotten myself into?

Denver Post Story
April 17, 1912

On a side note, Captain Schulke of the Cincinnati reported that at midnight on 14 April he received a call for help from the ill-fated Titanic. While on the way to offer aid, the Captain was told that his help was not needed so he turned his ship back to its original course.

Elsie had many more traveling adventures in her life, including one where she had to get an emergency passport at the US Embassy in Berlin when WWI broke out in 1914 and she needed to get back to America. She died a spinster at the age of 93 on 21 March 1974.

Elsie Metz ~1954

Family Search 52 Stories Week 32

What was the first foreign country that you visited?

In 1984 my husband had a business trip that would take him to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for three months. At the time, any income earned in a foreign country was tax exempt in the United States, and Jim received an increase in pay for the time that he would spend overseas. So we decided to take advantage of the fact that his flights were paid for and enjoy a European vacation at the end of his work schedule in Riyadh. We settled on a 17 day, multi-country tour beginning in Rome.

The trip was booked, Jim had been ensconced in his duties in Saudi Arabia for two months, and I was working full-time at MOMEDICO when I found out I was pregnant with our first child. Surprise! This was way before the Internet was widely used, and home land lines had exorbitant rates for continental long-distance phone calls, much less international calls. I decided that I would not tell Jim about the baby until I saw him face to face, which meant no one else got to know the secret until we returned from our trip.

Making my first international flight by myself was a little scary, but I survived and Jim met me at the airport in Rome as our flights arrived on the same day. After catching up with all he had done and what had been going on with work and our families back home, I let him know that he was going to be a daddy. We had planned on having a family at some point, so fortunately he was overjoyed by the news.

Being in the first trimester of pregnancy, I was experiencing some morning sickness. Diesel fumes in particular made me nauseous. Fortunately Ritz was the universal cracker, and eating those helped immensely.

We met up with our tour group the day after we arrived in Rome, and the bus took us on a site-seeing tour of the city. One thing we liked about traveling with this particular group is that in each new city we visited they offered a half-day bus tour to get us acquainted with the area. Then we had free time to go back to see what interested us on our own. We were definitely among the youngest people on the tour, with the exception of a college student who was traveling with his grandfather.

Vatican - so young and skinny!

In Rome it was a great thrill to see the Forum, Pantheon, Colosseum, Arch of Titus, the Vatican and St. Peter's, and of course, Michelangelo's David. All the places you learned about in school, church, or saw in the movies - to see them in real life was a bit surreal.

We took side trips to Villa d'Este, a 16th century villa in Tivoli known for its terraced hillside gardens and fountains, as well as to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We climbed to the top of it, despite the lack of guard rails to protect from falls. Unfortunately our visit was marred by the fact that someone stole Jim's telephoto lens right out of the backpack he was wearing! That was particularly maddening in light of the fact that we were only days into our trip and would not have the use of the lens for the rest of our travels.

Villa d'Este and Tower of Pisa

From Rome we went to Venice before heading to Lucerne, Switzerland, then on to Paris (with a side trip to Versailles), and ultimately ending up in London. Since this post is about the first country I visited, I won't go into more details about the rest of the journey. For the most part we enjoyed traveling with the group as the company took care of all transportation, luggage, language barriers, etc., and breakfast was included each morning. Though we soon learned that the breakfast was the same each morning - no matter what country we were in. It included coffee, tea, juice and a hard roll with butter and jelly. By about the 8th day, one of the couples was missing from breakfast. When we saw them later, the gal explained, "We couldn't eat one more damn roll!" The rest of us could relate. But overall, it was a good way to be introduced to foreign travel.

Rialto Bridge in Venice, Eiffel Tower in Paris, and Buckingham Palace in London

Family Search 52 Stories Week 26

In my post for Week 22, the prompt asked about how my parents met, and then also how my grandparents met. While I knew the story about my parents, I was unsure about my grandparents. I was in Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago and took the opportunity to ask my two aunts the question of how their parents met.

How did your grandparents meet and fall in love?

Margie, me and Betty

There were eight children in my mom's family, with only two surviving today. Aunt Margie turned 95 recently, and her surprise birthday party was one of the reasons I was in Cincinnati. Aunt Betty's birthday was last month, and she turned 90. They are both an inspiration to the family as they are fairly healthy, active and living on their own.

While at the party, I took the opportunity to ask them if they knew how their parents had met. Aunt Margie did not remember ever hearing the story. Betty believes that Michael Crusham and Mary Barbara (Mayme) Metz met at a picnic in a park in Delhi (a township in Hamilton County).

I explained to them both that as I was looking through notes in preparation for some research I was going to do while in Cincinnati, I had found a reference to an interview I did with their older sister Marie back in 1994. Marie told me that Mayme had a friend named Rose Kenney, and she would sometimes spend the night at Rose's house. She thought that is where Mike and Mayme met. But she said that Mike also may have been a friend of Rose's future husband, John Buchanan. I shared this story with Margie and Betty, and neither one had heard this version.

So the bottom line is that I really don't know for sure how my grandparents met. What I do know is that they were married at St. Aloysius Church in Cincinnati on 21 June 1911. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in June of 1961. By November, Michael was dead.

Mike and Mayme, seated, along with Mike's brother
Edward and Mayme's sister Helen

Family Search 52 Stories Week 25

Last week's post reminded me of another story that involved plane travel. Here's my follow-up question:

To date, what has been your strangest plane experience?

me with Clinton Kelly of
What Not to Wear fame

I have previously written about this event on my other blog, but it is a good story and bears repeating. In May of 2010 I traveled to New York City to attend a book publishing conference. The conference went well, and I was eager to get back home to my family when the conference ended on Thursday. My first clue that it would not be smooth sailing was in the cab on the way to the airport.The cabbie asked me if I had called the airline as some flights had been canceled due to storms. I called my daughter on my cell phone and had her look up my flight on her computer, and American Airlines showed it to be on schedule. The weather in New York was fine, but apparently storms in the Midwest were causing problems.

At the gate it was apparent the flight would be late as there was no plane there. At 5:20 we finally boarded, and the plane left the gate around 5:45. Then we sat out on the tarmac for 2 hours. I counted 17 planes on the runway ahead of us. In the meantime I chatted with the gal in the center seat next to me, and the guy in the end seat. The gal had grown up in Ferguson and was on her way home for a baby shower. Her own, as it ends up. She is 7 months pregnant with her first baby, and since she now lives in New York the family was hosting a virtual shower so that everything would be shipped to her home in New York. Smart! The guy was on his way back home to Chicago via St. Louis, which I thought was odd since there are lots of flights direct to Chicago out of LaGuardia.

After 2 hours the pilot took us back to the gate because nothing was flying out, and with the new FAA guidelines he could not keep us on the plane longer than 3 hours. He knew there was no way we would get out before the 3 hour timetable was up. If the plane returns to the gate, then the 3 hours can start over again. Back at the airport we were asked to wait 10 minutes until a decision would be made on whether we would fly out that night or not. Then we de-planed and they said it would be 8:45 before a decision would be made. Around 8:30 the flight was canceled. No flights heading west were allowed to leave that night.

The people on the plane who had smart phones were able to schedule their flights for the next day. Those of us stuck in yesterday's technology had to do it the old fashioned way - we stood in line. One sole AA rep was trying to handle the entire flight. My pregnant seat mate and I decided to go upstairs to the AA counter where there would be more agents available. Big mistake! Since all flights were canceled, the line was atrocious. We headed back downstairs to collect out luggage, and seat mate got both of her phones (yep, she carries two of them!) going on the AA 800 number. She finally got through, and after she booked her flight she took my information and changed my flight as well. For herself, she was able to get a direct flight at 9:00 p.m. Friday night. For me? A 5:30 p.m. flight to Dallas, with a flight from Dallas arriving in St. Louis at 11:30 p.m. Friday night. Are you kidding me? According to the agent, that was the best thing they could do.

The luggage finally arrived and I bid farewell to my pregnant friend who was lucky enough to be able to head home to her apartment, and I went to tackle the next issue. Where was I going to sleep that night? I waited for my turn at the Airport Hotels phone bank, asking each person I saw if they could recommend a decent place in the area. We were all in the same boat, with no idea of which way to sail. I struck up a conversation with a nice, younger woman who also needed a place to stay. She had one hotel phone going and I had the other. We agreed that if either of us found a hotel with rooms, we would grab 2 of them. It was soon apparent that all the canceled flights had resulted in a run on neighboring hotels. A number of people headed back to NYC for the night. But new friend and I persisted. I was on hold with Holiday Inn Express when she struck gold with the Comfort Inn. YES! They had openings. Could we have 2 rooms? No, only 1 was available. I looked at my new BFF and said, "I'm not an axe murderess." She replied that she was not an axe murderess either, and with that we agreed to share a room. She told the man she would take a room with 2 beds. Uhhhhh.....the only room available was a king bed. Alrighty, then....We had agreed to share a room but did we want to share a bed? It was that or the airport floor. We booked the room ($180 per night for a Comfort Inn!) and headed out in the now rainy New York night to catch the shuttle.

At the Comfort Inn I called AA and again asked about a different flight. The frazzled agent said there were no direct flights available, but if I would hold she would check on some alternatives. She came back with a 10:00 a.m. US Airways flight to DC followed by an AA flight to St. Louis, arriving at 1:55 p.m. Much better than the 11:30 p.m. arrival time I was currently scheduled on. My new BFF Michele and I settled in for the night, but I have to say I did not sleep well. I never did get any supper with all the delays at the airport, so my stomach was a little upset. I didn't want to pass gas and embarrass myself with my new BFF. Plus I was afraid that since I had slept so poorly on my trip I might snore. Also not a cool way to impress a new friend. It was not a restful night. Michele got up at 6:00 a.m. to make her flight, so we bid each other a safe trip. Slept with Michele on a first date and never even got her last name. I am so loose!

Family Search 52 Stories Week 24

Not being inspired by any of the writing prompts on the list, I decided to come up with my own for this week's post.

To date, what has been your worst plane experience?

All of us have dealt with delayed or cancelled flights, screaming kids, the passenger who doesn't shut up for the entire trip, a seat mate who spills into your personal space, the person in front of you who reclines in your lap, the one behind you who kicks your seat, the unpleasant aroma of carry-on food or a filled diaper - I could go on and on.

But none of these things comes close to my story of being marooned - not on an island, but on an airplane. It was 21 March 1992, and I had a business meeting at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. It was a daylong meeting of marketing people from around the United States, so we had all flown in that morning and were flying home that night. Or at least that was the plan. We held the meeting in a room right at the airport for the sake of convenience. My trip home was on American Airlines Flight 1413, scheduled to leave at 6:14 p.m.

An unpredicted snow storm began that afternoon, and we were advised to change our tickets to an earlier flight. I was able to secure a seat on an American flight leaving at 4:15, and considered myself one of the lucky ones able to get out before the airport shut down. Some members of our group could not change their tickets.

My plane boarded at 3:30, and after a delay pushed away from the terminal and took its place on the tarmac waiting for clearance. That move ended up to be a costly one for all of us on the plane. Once another plane entered our gate there was no turning back. We sat on the runway for hours. My best move was hopping out of my center seat and claiming the two seats across the aisle from me so that I could spread out. We were all given our one soda and one package of peanuts (those were the days when you still received a drink and a bag of nuts for "free"), and that was it. We learned that there was only one runway open with 45 planes ahead of us waiting to take off. Additionally, only two of O'Hare's de-icing trucks were working.

There were no phones on the planes, and we were still years away from mobile telephones being a standard business travel accessory. I had no way to contact my husband, at home in St. Louis with our 6 year old and nearly 1 year old, to let him know the situation. He was sure that something terrible had happened to me.

The plane finally took off at 2:30 a.m., landing in St. Louis about 3:45 in the morning. Essentially we were on the plane for 12 hours. We barely got an apology as we deplaned. As for the people from my meeting who could not change their flights? They ended up being the lucky ones. They were able to spend the night in our meeting room where there was plenty to eat and drink. The rest of the airport ran out of food, and all the nearby motels were quickly filled.

I wrote a scathing letter to American Airlines regarding the incident. It will come as a surprise to no one that I never received a reply. I've taken the liberty of re-writing their 1990's slogan.

Family Search 52 Stories Week 16

This post is a couple of days late as I have just returned from being out of the country. Considering that fact, I knew I would have to select the following topic for my writing prompt this week.

What was the longest continuous vacation of your life? How long were you gone? Do you remember how much it cost?

My husband and I left on April 24th to travel first to Australia and then to New Zealand. This trip had been in the making for several years, and at 30 days length was the longest time we have ever spent vacationing. It was also the first time in 38 plus years of marriage that we have spent 30 days, 24/7 together! It was a good trial period for retirement.

 The destinations were ones we had talked about traveling to, but the biggest consideration was that a professor my husband had at Iowa State had relocated to Melbourne back in 1981. He had been telling us for years that we needed to come and visit him and his family. None of us were getting any younger, so we decided to make the visit happen.

We spent two weeks in Australia, visiting Sydney, Cairns and Melbourne, where we met up with the Sinatra family for a few days. From there we traveled on to New Zealand, connecting up with Paul and Kathy who joined us for the last two weeks of our vacation. Kathy and I went to high school and later Iowa State together, and Paul and Jim were fraternity brothers at Iowa State.

As I have blogged extensively about the 30 day vacation over at my Kim Wolterman blog, I won't rehash the trip here. At the moment I don't have a tally on what the entire thing cost, but you know what? I don't care. It was the trip of a lifetime for us, and that makes it priceless in my book.

Blue Mountains, Australia

Family Search 52 Stories Week 11

My husband and I are preparing for an epic travel adventure, so this particular writing prompt struck a cord with me.

If you could make a good living doing the one thing you love most in the world, what would it be?

Mazatlan

Because I love to travel and often photograph and write about my experiences, I would absolutely love to be a travel blogger. I know a number of people who do actually make a living doing exactly that. How great would it be to have someone else pay for your travel expenses in return for providing photos and reviews of the places you have been?

I already am a top reviewer for TripAdvisor as I use that site extensively whenever I am planning a trip, whether in my own town or abroad. So I have always felt it was important for me to contribute reviews as well to help other travelers. But I don't get paid for that, of course, and that is what makes the site so valuable. The reviews are honest opinions from people who visited, stayed or ate at the places listed on the site.

But if an opportunity came along for me to have my expenses paid in exchange for blogging about where I've been and what I did there, I would jump at the chance!

Family Search 52 Stories Week 5

As I mentioned earlier, I skipped the 52 Stories project in February as I was writing every day for the Family History Writing Challenge. As that extended a bit into March, I am just now getting back to 52 Stories.  Maybe I should rename mine the 47 Stories - ha!

This story concerns vacations:
What was the biggest, most exotic vacation you took with your family when you were a child? What memories stand out?

First of all, our family was not wealthy. I'm not even sure if we would have been considered lower middle class. My dad and mom struggled for years to pay off the expenses incurred when their first-born child, Roy, was born prematurely in 1942. Dad told me that before my mom was even released from the Catholic hospital, the nuns were already hounding him about how he was going to pay the bills. They arranged a monthly payment plan that took him years to pay off. The bills escalated when Roy was diagnosed at the age of 3 with aplastic anemia. While that took his life at the age of 7, dad continued to make payments on all the medical bills long after Roy was gone.

Vacations were a luxury our family could ill afford. We made trips from our home in Chicago and later Des Moines back to Cincinnati to visit relatives, and once in a while visited a nearby lake for a week's relaxation. So it was a complete surprise when my dad announced that we were taking a vacation to the Smoky Mountains in the fall of 1965, made even more surreal by the fact that they were pulling my brother Joe and me out of elementary school for a week. That was simply not done, and yet we did it.

Dad's Dairy Queen

Looking back on it, the trip was made possible because my dad had purchased a Dairy Queen in late 1964 or early 1965. This was during the time period that Dairy Queen pretty much only served ice cream treats. They did not have grills and fryers like they do today, but my dad offered loose meat sandwiches for sale. The whole family was put to work, with the older siblings working out front and Joe and me chopping onions and folding boxes in the back. Unfortunately that spring and summer were unusually cool and rainy in Des Moines, and people did not buy ice cream as expected. If it were not for the local business workers coming over to buy sandwiches, the Dairy Queen would not have survived the summer. By the fall, dad had enough and sold the business, thus the reason he had the time and resources to take his family on a trip.

View Master

We were not on the road very long before we came to the realization that all the fishing equipment had been left behind, as well as dad's camera! How were we going to document this trip? The thought of being on vacation and not having a camera nearly brings me to tears when I think of it. My camera is such a part of who I am, and my pictures help me to chronicle my journeys. Our fall back position was purchasing post cards and a View Master, which I still have packed away somewhere. While I would love to be able to open up one of mom's photo albums and see our trip outlined in chronological order, at least these other souvenirs help jog my memory about where we traveled. But how sad not to have any family photos from the trip.

My brother remembers traveling as far as Indiana and spending the night in a motel. He said the next day we stopped in Cincinnati for a quick visit before continuing on our way. The drive would have taken us through Kentucky, Tennessee and perhaps North Carolina. All of my recollections involve the area near Chattanooga, Tennessee. I remember walking the Swing-A-Long Bridge and being frightened when my dad made it swing as this suspension bridge spans 180 feet. At Lookout Mountain we walked to Lover's Leap and could see 7 states. And I vividly remember the Fairyland Caverns, where scenes from different fairy tales that were created by Atlanta sculptor Jessie Sanders could be viewed.

As I don't have the best recall in the world, I think the reason that this trip stands out so much for me, besides the fact that I got to miss a week of school, is that it was the first time just the four of us traveled, leaving my two older siblings at home as they were out of high school by then. Add on the fact that we actually went somewhere besides seeing family, and it made a lasting impression on me.

Family History Month Wrap-up

Busserach, Switzerland

I am wrapping up Family History Month and the month of October by taking all the notes from my recent Family Tree Tours trip to Germany and Switzerland and putting them into Scrivener. If you are unfamiliar with this writing program, I posted about it a while back. While I tried to stay organized on the trip, sometimes I made notes in a small notebook because I didn't have my iPad readily available, but there are also notes on the iPad. In addition I emailed home almost daily, and I tried to post frequently on my other blog. So I want to pull all of those things together and have them in one place. It is easy to copy and paste the documents into Scrivener, and then I can go back and remove any duplicate information and clean things up. Once I have done that my plan is to go back and do a little research on the towns and the historical buildings I visited so that I can add a little more "meat" to the story of my trip.

photo book cover

I have almost completed the photo book I am preparing about the trip, as that will be a nice way to give my family and friends an overview of the experience. I know for a fact that none of them want to see and look at all 2,000+ photos that I took! But for myself, I want something that will be more comprehensive. What the end result of that will look like, I am not sure at this point. Once I determine how long it is, I will figure out if it just remains in Scrivener or sees the light of day as an e-book or print book.

The Story of Elsie Metz

In a previous post I mentioned that my cousin had come into possession of a 1912 travel journal that belonged to Elsie Metz. Elsie is my second cousin, twice removed for those who are interested in the connection. Since scanning the journal, which covers a cruise she took from January 30, 1912 through May 20, 1912, I have been doing a bit of research on Elsie. Today I was excited to find a photo of Elsie from a 1953 trip she took to Rio de Janiero, Brazil. She would have been 73, though I can't say for certain that the photo used on the passport was taken that year. It was a thrill for me to finally put a face on the woman who has begun to truly fascinate me. The document also included her signature, which is a find as well.

Elsie Lauretta Metz

Elsie was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to John and Isabella (Drescher) Metz in 1880. She had an older brother Daniel who was born in 1873. Neither she nor Daniel ever married, and they lived with their mother and father. When the parents passed away, Daniel and Elsie stayed in the family home on Melrose Avenue. Elsie went on to get not only a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1902, but also became a Teaching Fellow in Modern Languages there in 1903. She received a Master's of Arts degree in 1913. It was fairly unusual for a woman to obtain a college degree in the early 1900s, particularly from a university that was not exclusively for women. You can see why I am captivated by this woman.

In 1912 she began to travel, or at least that is the earliest I know that she traveled due to the existence of the journal. It makes me wonder if the cruise she took in 1912 was part of her thesis for her master's degree? Additionally I have found records of her traveling by ship in 1914 (she requested an emergency passport to return home from Berlin, Germany on August 5, 1915 - WWI began in 1914), in 1921 from Hamilton, Bermuda to New York, in 1925 from Plymouth to New York, in 1930 from Boulogne, France to New York and in 1953 from Rio de Janiero to New York. I want to do a little research on the ships she traveled on to see if I can determine what the itinerary might have been.

Another thing I am curious about is where did the money come from? Her father died in 1921 and I do not yet know what he did for a living. Elsie herself may have continued teaching, so I need to check that out. Her travels always took place during what would be the school year however. I have quite a bit of research to do, complicated as usual by the fact that many of the records are in Cincinnati while I am in St. Louis. Time for another road trip!

A 1912 Travel Journal

Elsie Metz Travel Journal

My second cousin Joe Metz in Cincinnati received a call out of the blue one day last fall. A woman on the phone mentioned that she had an old travel journal written by Elsie Metz. It had been in the possession of a friend of hers who had died. The friend had been married to a Metz but they had no children to leave the journal with. As this woman didn't want to just throw it away, she went to the Internet and started looking for people in the Cincinnati area researching the name of Metz. She contacted Joe and he said of course he would take the journal. They arranged a meeting and she gave him the book.

Joe's intent is to give the journal to the Cincinnati History Museum with the understanding that they will scan it and then give scanned copies to him, me and the University of Cincinnati where Elsie received her college degrees. One of our other cousins works there, so he feels his request will be honored. I, on the other hand, am a little more skeptical. What if they decide it is not worthy of wasting their resources on? What if they don't give us a scanned copy? So I asked Joe if he would consider letting me take the journal back to St. Louis so that I could scan it. We met over President's weekend when I went to Cincinnati, and I have since scanned the journal. I will now return the original to him. I have not taken the time to read it completely through, but Elsie boarded the USS Cincinnati (and how ironic is that?) in January 30, 1912 in New York, and returned to that same city on May 20, 1912. What an adventure that must have been!

I am interested in this story for a number of reasons. Elsie was born in 1880, and was awarded a Liberal Arts Degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1902. She was selected to receive the Teaching Fellowship in Modern Languages there in 1903. How unusual for a woman to go to college back then, particularly at an institution that was not exclusively female. She went on to get a Master of Arts degree from the same institution in 1913. She was very well traveled as I can see not only from this journal but also passport applications and ship passenger lists. I knew of at least five times that she traveled by ship.

Once I read the journal I can determine if she has a story to tell - or maybe I should say one for me to tell. Wouldn't it be amazing to retrace her steps from 1912 and compare my travels to hers from over 100 years ago?