It was winter when I retired, a fitting time to stay indoors and begin to explore my interest in genealogy almost immediately. As I explain in the introduction of The Secrets of Benjamin Fox, my cheat sheets were hand written notes compiled by my grandmother in the mid-70’s. Her accuracy is truly phenomenal, in fact I came to trust her notes better than some other information I found. Grandma knew that her husband Royal’s grandfather was Andrew Jackson Fox and Andrew’s father came across the plains, but she did not know his fathers name.
Having used ancestry.com since 2010, I already had a meager tree, so picked up where I left off, refamiliarized myself with what I had and delved into expanding it. Many is the time as a genealogist I have done a mental double-take, shocked to disbelief at what I’d found. Three months into retirement was one such very special moment.
I already had Grandpa Andrew in my tree and his father Ephraim as well. While researching Andrew’s siblings I eventually reached the youngest, a sister named Mary Catherine, born 1865. Every individual and time frame presents the genealogist a different set of stumbling blocks and tracking Mary was no different. That is, until I suddenly became aware I had located her unclaimed ashes. Still almost in disbelief, I began filling out forms, applying to the Oregon State Mental Hospital to reclaim my Aunt Mary’s remains.
Later in the fall of 2017 UPS brought me two packages. One was a box with an old brass can, spotted green with rust. Holes were drilled in the lid that was still sealed to the can. Also in the box, packed with as much reverence as possible, was a beige tube with Mary’s ashes. The other package were all of Mary’s records, detailing both nurse and doctor notes.
It has been said on Findagrave that the Oregon State Insane Asylum was virtually a cemetery. Thousands of individuals were cremated and their ashes placed in those brass cans, to be sat on dank shelves under the building, or in stone outbuildings, left to rust. When the cans were located information was posted online. And that’s when I discovered Aunt Mary.
In her file are a picture when she was admitted and besides the doctor and nurses notes, there are notes from her husband and a couple of her children. Mary died in 1936. Despite repeated requests to a variety of addresses, administrator were unable to find her kin. In time she was placed with thousands of other cans and left to decay for 81 years before I found them.
After that long in utter darkness, forgotten and given no thought, I did not have the heart to scatter Aunt Mary’s ashes. Instead they sit near the wood stove, on a window sill that looks out over the Fox farm. At least for now there is a dawn and a dusk and warmth and laughter in the room she rests in. Her brother Andrew’s picture hangs over the window above.
Mary’s full story is told in book three of American Fox Tales, “Ephraim Fox, An Oregon Pioneer Story”, coming 2023.