History's Mysteries

• Elizabeth Clute Grandus Becker's third wife bears the name of Clute, as did her presumed mother-in-law, also called Elizabeth. The Clutes had been living in the upper Hudson valley almost as long as the Beckers and many branches of this family continue to flourish even to this day. We know nothing of the younger Elizabeth's parents. Was she a distant cousin to her mother-in-law? Was she the widow of some ill-fated Clute husband (she was already 33 when she married Grandus)?
• "Orrville" Sam King The grandfather of our grandmother Dorothy first appears in Orrville, Ohio in 1842, his birthdate. He married a Fanny Yoder and is presumed to have been a member of the Mennonite community that migrated there from Pennsylvania in the early 19th century. Who were his parents and what were their origins?
• Lemuel Churchill Years of research have left us befuddled about the origins of this Vermont farmer who was born July 18, 1808 and married Sarah Jane Burditt (1811-1880) in 1833. We have it from fellow researchers that some of their children were born in Clarendon, Rutland County, Vermont. The family moved to Illinois around 1847, where he can be found buying land in eastern Will County. A number of Churchill families had migrated to the Rutland area from Connecticut starting before the Revolutionary War. Despite multiple visits to this beautiful country and hours spent poring over birth, death, marriage and probate records, much information about the interesting Churchill clan has been gained, but none whatsoever about the parentage of Lemuel. Records in the town of Rutland from before 1850 are no longer available, those in the town of Poultney (burial place of Nathan Churchill who died in 1835 at the age of 79), from before 1862 were lost in a fire. Was Nathan the father of Lemuel? Will we ever find out for sure?
• Raymond LaValliere Grandma Dorothy's first husband married her when she was only 16 (in 1926) and they are rumored to have had a son who was given up for adoption, perhaps to neighbors and old family friends, the Rickenbackers. She married Grandpa Ray Becker by 1929. Who was Raymond LaValliere? Who adopted his son and is that son still alive today?
• Who are the people in this picture? This picture comes to us along with the Becker Family Bible (the source of much of our info about Grandus' family, BTW), but is not physically attached to it. We estimate that it was taken sometime between 1870 and 1915.
  
  
  

  The best guess I can come up with is that it is Frederick Mohr and his wife Lizzie Burkhardt, who were the parents of George Van Patten Becker's wife Emma. Frederick was born in 1850 and if you judge the age of the man in the picture to be about 50, that would place the date at 1900 or so. However, Fred and Lizzie had 10 children, all of whom were born before 1902 and are all listed in the 1910 Census as living in the same household. Why would only 4 of these children be included in the picture? If the picture were taken as late as 1915, when Fred was 65, some of the children had grown up and moved away, but if you consider that the second-youngest daughter, Lizzie, had three younger brothers and one younger sister, then one of these five kids would be missing. Who knows? Recently, her granddaughter Helen identified the young woman second from left in the back row as Emma Mohr.
  

  By the way, the 1910 Census shows the family in Palos Township, Illinois, as follows: Fred, age 60, Lizzie, 50, Emma, 29, John, 27, Phillip, 25, Lena, 24, Albert, 22,Lizzie, 21, August, 18, Minnie, 14, Harry 13, Walter 9.
  

  If, on the other hand, this is a picture of Grandus Becker and family, then it would have had to have been taken before his death in 1878, but he didn't have 4 children of anything close to the apparent ages of these four. Not very likely.

This page was last updated on October 01, 2005