Happy Thanksgiving!

Bob Greenley, World War II,
Someplace in the South Pacific

Happy Thanksgiving! Along with my grandparent's trunks, I recently started looking through my father's World War II memorabilia. And I found this Thanksgiving Menu. And better yet, his writing on the back ... from 70 years ago. My father served in the South Pacific for more than two years.  The war ended Sept. 2, 1945. Because my father was one of the last to arrive with his unit in 1943, he was one of the last to leave. He traveled home on the USS Guam.

I hope every one's Thanksgiving "goes off very nicely".

My father on the far right.  

The Greenley story ...

The research I've done about the Greenley history goes back about 240 years to Yorkshire, England. George Greenley was born in 1775 in Yorkshire, England.  George married Ann Pashby, July 23, 1797. They had six children that lived to adulthood.  I know four of the children immigrated to Iowa. The six children were: Richard, George, Bella, John, Benjamin, and Joseph. Richard, George, John, and Benjamin all settled in Dubuque County, Iowa. Richard was the first to arrive in 1831. John and Benjamin came together (with families) in 1838.  George arrived later (after the Civil War).

Flixton/Folkton, Yorkshire, England

The Greenleys who are reading this blog, are descended from John. John(age 33) and his wife Alley Jane (Dobson)(age 32) arrived in the United States July 18, 1838 with their children Ann (8), Jane (7), George (6), Elisabeth (4) , Maria (2) and William (1).  Also traveling with them were Benjamin (John's brother) and his wife Mary.

John and Benjamin followed their brother, Richard, to Cottage Hill, Dubuque Co., Iowa:

John and Alley's youngest son, William, is our ancestor. William married Adeline Radford. They had seven children.

Ellsworth Elmer Greenley 1864–1918

Elliott Eugene Greenley 1866–1928

Emma Ellen Greenley 1868–1936

Ervin Edwin Greenley 1870–1955

Duella Eliza Greenley 1872–1949

Alvin Watson Greenley 1874–1960

John Wilmer Greenley 1876–1955

Here is one of the photographs I recently received from Aunt Mary.  There are many professional photographs with a beautiful album that belonged to Ellsworth. Some of the photographs have "Greenley Photography" imprinted on the matte.  I went searching for a photographer in the census records,  and found in the 1900 census,  John W. lists his job as "Photographer."  I am working on scanning the photos for the next blog entry.

Top Row: Ellsworth, Emma, Elliot, Duella, John
Seated: Ervin, William, Adeline, Alvin

Ansel Greenley, WWI Vet, part 2

In a post from July, I wrote about my grandfather's service during World War I.  You can read it here: Ansel Greenley, WW I Veteran.  It looks like my grandfather was quite the ladies man in his day.  He kept a collection of letters from that time, most of them from women who wrote to him while he was in the service.

 One of the letters, dated Oct. 18, 1917, is written by Ansel to his mother.  (The link will take you to a copy of this letter.)  The other letters are to Ansel, from various women.  One of the women, Grace, is his girlfriend.  Another woman, Ella, also writes to him regularly.  From the letters I can tell that Grace, Ella and Ansel were all friends from Wagon Mound, New Mexcio.

In the letter he wrote to his mother, he is in San Franscico, waiting to hear what he will be doing next. In the letter, he fully expects to serve in the Navy four years.  His actual service was less than two years. (Enlisted June 1917 - discharge January 1919).  The war ended Nov. 1918. I wondered why he didn't have to serve his full four years, and found that the war department didn't want to keep such large military after the war ended - so they released men from their service early. His father's death in Sept. 1918 may have been a factor in his early release also.

One passage from his letter to his mother I found particularly interesting:

"I have not wrote to Grace for about a month guess she thinks it is time to get a new man. Well I hope she has good luck. I am getting along fine. I have found out which one of the girls thinks enough of me to write anyway. But then I never met a girl that would wait four years for me so I sould worry. Four years is a long time for the most of them. If it was not for getting a little mail once in a while I would quit them all except the one that writes the most and it might be best do do that anyway." (sic- I did some minor editing to assist readers.  Editing included adding punctuation and capitalization)

Grace Seely, Ansel's girl friend during war

From that quote you get the sense he is not completely committed to his girl friend, Grace.  Grace's letters are beautifully written. She is a teacher/principal in Wagon Mound.

Letter from Grace

In her letters it interesting to read about life was like in 1918. She writes of her father's purchase of their first car and visiting Ansel's family. In one letter, she is visiting her grandparents in Des Moines, Iowa.  Her grandfather, obviously wealthy, has a chauffeur that drives them around the countryside. She also talks of the noise from all the cars in the city. This romance lasted throughout the war and for awhile after Ansel returned home.  From other letters, I know they were no longer a couple in April of 1920 when Ansel meets Mary Maddux.

One other woman, Ella Kronig, writes regularly also. Her letters are harder to read (not as nice penmanship - and like my grandfather, has difficulty with spelling!) But her big personality comes through.  From her letters, Grace is quite jealous of Ella and the friendship she has with Ansel.  

There are also cards from other women included in this set of letters.  Two different women from New York send cards to Ansel.  And then there is this picture:

Ansel Greenley and unknown woman

There are about four pictures like this in my grandfather's stuff.  Different men are all photographed with this woman on their lap.  From other letters (from shipmates) it looks like they had these pictures taken after the war was over, and before they went home.

Memories of Grandma Greenley

The following memoir was written by my brother Dale Greenley, of his memories of our Grandmother Mary (Maddux) Greenley.  She was born near Montrose, Colorado in 1896, and died in Roseburg, Oregon in 1967.  He asked me to fact check his info.  And, because of the information in the trunks and other reserarch, I realize there is some incorrect information in his narrative. 

Dale talks of my grandmother's move to New Mexico from her childhood home in Colorado in 1920.  We now know that the Greenley's sold their home in New Mexico to Mary's brother, Edwin, and her father, Isreal Oliver Maddux.  She took with her, Eugene (age 8) and Lois (age 4), her half-siblings. 

I included pictures from the family photo album that connect with Dale's narrative.  One other thing that I noticed is in Dale's description of their trip to Oregon from Colorodo that it took several months.  Well, the dates on the photos indicate the trip only took a couple of weeks.  I am sure it felt like months to the travelers.

With the tragic events in Roseburg this week, I am feeling much love for my hometown. And much pride in our family's connection to this beautiful town.  I just emailed Dale, and he confirmed that one of the victims was a close friend.  Larry Levine was the writing instructor killed at Umpqua.  He and Dale were fellow fly fisherman.  Dale has been interviewed by several news sources the last two days.  He wrote that he was interviewed by AP, Yahoo, and the Washington Post.  I went to Yahoo and found the following:

Yahoo News - Larry Levine

Grandma Mary Greenley

Dale Greenley

     I can see her now, standing at the kitchen stove with a white dish towel draped over her head, hunched over a simmering pot of water containing menthol extract.  The pleasant, pungent aroma masked the normal faint skunk odor that permeated the house, but I could never understand how she could inhale those hot, humid fumes.  Grandma was a devout Adventist and a great one for “taking cures.”  She was very health conscious and adhered to the strict vegetarian regimen preached by Ellen White decades before being a vegetarian was popular. 

     Born near Montrose, Colorado in 1896, Grandma Greenley’s ancestors on both sides had been among the earliest American colonists, spreading from Jamestown in the 1630s and involved in the Revolutionary War.  Her later ancestors were among the earliest Adventists, dating from its formation in 1863.  In spite of this distinguished ancestry, she had led a rough life.  Her mother died when Grandma was 14 with the cause of death listed as “mania.”  From letters Grandma’s father later wrote to her, he didn’t seem to be any saner than her mom.  Her father quickly remarried and Grandma inherited the task of tending to her step mother’s two children.  Sometime during World War I, Grandma’s older brother spirited her away from the madness and took her to the Greenley ranch in Northeast New Mexico where he was a ranch hand and she became the ranch cook.  There she met and married Ansel Greenley.  My dad, their first child was born there in 1921.  Some years later they lost the ranch, and moved to Rocky Ford in the arid, wind-blown plains of Southeast Colorado. 


 There, amid the dust, the depression, and poverty, she raised five children, after losing one of the twin boys when he was eight months old. In 1936, they loaded their possessions on a wooden-wheeled flatbed trailer, hitched it behind a 1929 Model A Ford pickup and spent several months traveling with their possessions and children to Roseburg where Grandpa had secured a job as a cook at the Veteran’s Domiciliary.

On their way to Oregon - left Rocky Ford, Colorado June 30, 1936.  In the picture Bob, Ansel (Bette in front of Ansel), Mary (with Everett in front of her), Lela (with Bill in front of her)

Camping on the trip to Roseburg

From the pictures grandma religiously took, you could tell the trip west was a sad-sack operation and I’m sure the care and feeding five children and a demanding husband was no easy task.

First home in Roseburg on Harvard

     As a very young child, I remember them living in a white, two story house on Harvard where Long John Silver’s now sets.  Sometime in the late 1940s, they settled into a house perched on the hill above the end of Broad Street, looking down on the airport.  When I was in high school, they sold the bottom corner of their property the people who started Nottingham Nursery. Their home there is the house of my memories. 

     A petite, frail lady, she didn’t say much and never said a bad word about anybody, but she had resolve, developed over many years of enduring a humorless, domineering husband.  Short brown hair, only lightly flecked with grey, wrapped a kindly, compassionate face with a small nose that sported her dainty wire-rimmed glasses.  On this hill, she tended a large garden, her grandchildren, her daily diary and her photo albums.  The diary and photo albums are now valuable family treasures.  Not only does her diary offer a wonderful window into the past, every photo in the albums have the names, the location and a brief account of what is in the photo.  They are priceless for the information they carry.

     When we came to visit, the kids made a bee-line to Grandma’s chair next to an old Singer treadle sewing machine. The top left hand drawer contained a box of Luden’s menthol cough drops.  We lined up when Grandma opened the little drawer and then handed each of us a cough drop.  I still love those cough drops and without fail, the sight the distinctive orange Luden box or the smell of menthol flashes fond memories of Grandma Greenley.  After the cough drops, we went to the closet under the stairs to the attic and got out a big cardboard box full of old toys.  There were red, green, blue, yellow and orange wood blocks in many different dimensions that we fought over, an old Pluto-like jointed dog figure on a spring loaded disk in a wood cylinder that did funny dances when you pushed on the bottom of the cylinder.  There were numerous other toys that I have long forgotten, but also in the box was a dried Flicker wing.  The bright orange feathers on the underside of the wing always captivated me and made that wing my favorite item in the box.

     On a local grandchild’s birthday or on a visit from the out-of-town grandchildren, she stood each up against the door frame of the kitchen.  Once properly positioned, she told us to stand straight and tall, and with a book placed on the top of our head, drew a pencil line on the frame.  She then printed the child’s name, age and date above the line. I wish that when the house was torn down, someone would have had the presence of mind to salvage that door frame.  If our visit turned out to be an extended one, I loved to go up in the attic and either play with the large collection of old marbles that Uncle Everett had won in school, or read some of the old “National Geographic” magazines stored by date in long shelves against the wall.  

    In her later years, she began a trend of increasing restrictions on her diet and the last year or so of her life, she was eating nothing but a gruel made of mashed peas and carrots.  She was a thin, frail lady to begin with but in the end, she had withered to skin and bones.  I was in college when she passed away and I found it difficult to deal with.  It seemed that such a kind, gentle and loving person as Grandma Greenley deserved a better life.  Fortunately for me, there are flickers on the hill behind my house.  Every time I see one, grandma’s flicker wing comes to mind and I am taken back to that big box of toys and my wonderful Grandma Greenley.

Going on a Cat Hunt

My Grandma Greenley (Mary Maddux Greenley (1896 - 1967) kept a diary starting in 1909 and continued throughout her life.  Most of the entries are just a record of daily activities. But there are some gems of stories among the mundane.

In her dairy, my grandmother wasn't always careful about spelling and punctuation.  For the ease of reading, I've re-typed the story (I also scanned the original so you can see her words), but I've corrected some of her mistakes to make it easier to read.

Mary Maddux Diary - Oct. 23, 1910

Sunday, Oct. 23, 1910: Just eating our breakfast and thinking about washing when Earenest came out and told us to prepare for a cat hunt.  Tickled to death.  We hitched up the big wagon. Went down to the shop where and took in Edwin and all the dogs and a couple of his friends. The older of them having a camera. We went up Spring Creek.  Struck a cat track, but did not get him. Had our pictures taken once with Edwin Kelling, Ruth and myself with all the dogs and a gun in ourhands.  And then Ruth and I alone with the dogs and gun.  When we came to the cider mill we went in, had our picture taken with Mr. Kelling, Ruth and I with a glass of cider held in the air. Also the cider mill man.  But best of all we went out and got a little young pig apiece and had our pictures taken with one in our arms. And then Mr. Kelling had his picutre taken with a bigger pig in his arms.  The first pictures taken yet of us in our overalls.

Ruth is her cousin, Edwin is her older brother.  I don't know who Mr. Kelling is, but I presume a friend.  
When I started going through her photo album, I found one of the pictures she described!  

Sunday, Oct. 23 1910  Mary Maddux and cousin Ruth Maddux

The Mystery of George Brown

One of the most exciting finds in my grandparents' trunks was a handkerchief.  Yep, a simple handkerchief.  

George Brown's life has been a mystery  One of the best parts of researching family history is the journey. Sometimes the journey's end is anti-climatic. Sometimes the journey's end is a treasure. Whether ho-hum or a treasure, finding the answer to a long lingering question, it is the BEST!  And the handkerchief gave me  answers to long my lingering questions about George Brown.

Growing up, Greenleys were always tall.  I was one of the tall Greenleys.  At 6 feet tall, I was told I took after my great grandmother, Mary (Brown) Greenley (1867 -1938), who was also six feet tall.  Looking at the old pictures, I realized our "tall" gene was not a Greenley gene, but in fact, came from my great grandmother.  She married Elsworth Greenley, who was not tall.

So I started looking at the Browns. Mary had two brothers.  Mathew (1858 - 1911) and George (1855 - 1881). When I went to Iowa a few years ago, one of my goals was to find out more abut this family. In the Cottage Hill cemetery, I found the graves of Mathew and his parents.  But George was not buried at that cemetery.  I even went to the local library to search for obituaries.  No George Brown listed.  I did discover Mathew died a bachelor in 1911.  

Searching for George Brown, born in 1855 in Iowa, was frustrating.  Ancestry.com brought either too many results - or results did not match.  The last record I had of George Brown was the 1880 census.

The Brown household in Dubuque County, Iowa in 1880:

Name	Age
Joseph Browm	49
Jane Browm	45
George Browm	24
Mathew Browm	22
Mary Browm	13

As you can see in the above chart, George Brown was living at home with his parents and his two siblings.  

A few years ago, my uncle sent me some items he had found in the family bible.  One of the items was a school award given to George Brown.  On the back of the card, was a hand written note.  "Uncle born Geo. Wm. Brown Oct 3, 1855   Died (killed) July 8, 1881, by falling rock."

WOW!  The answer to my question!  

Reward of Merit present to Mr. George Brown circa 1860.

He probably never married.  So the story ended with a falling rock when he was 25 years old.  My niece, Paige, who was living in Iowa when I visited, wondered where a falling rock would have come from in the flat Iowa landscape.  That observation was very astute come to find out.  My presumption had been that he died in Iowa, since he had been living there in 1880 census.  Well, I discovered that was an incorrect assumption.  (Assumptions are dangerous things in genealogy.)  

In the trunk I found this very cool handkerchief.

Handkerchief belonging to George Brown

The note with the handkerchief adds a piece of information that I didn't have before.  George Brown was killed by a falling rock in ... South Dakota! So I went to ancestry.com, to search with that additional information.  I found a picture of his gravestone.  And he was killed, by a falling rock, in DEADWOOD, South Dakota! 

George Brown's grave marker in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood.

I do wish I had a picture of George Brown, but haven't found any.  But it does make a good story.  Having a relative who lived and died in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1881, makes me want to go back and watch all those movies!

History of Deadwood, South Dakota  and yes, George Brown is buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery, the same cemetery as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

Memories of Grandpa by Dale Greenley

My older brother, Dale Greenley, has written about our grandparents.  Born in 1946, he is one of the oldest grandchildren, and grew up in Roseburg, with grandparents nearby.  The following memoir is about our Grandfather, Ansel R. Greenley.  Dale gave me permission to post this on the blog with the warning that not everything was fact checked.  This is a memoir, not a work of journalism, but provides valuable insight into our family's oral history.

Grandpa Greenley was a large man.  Standing 6 feet 6 inches tall with a full head of upright snow white hair and crystal blue eyes, he was an imposing figure.  On top of that, he was an ornery old cuss.  When he was sitting in his easy chair in the corner of the living room beside his big wood-laminated Philco console radio, his grandkids quickly learned that climbing into his lap would not result in a loving hug.  That was what Grandma was for.  Grandpa was born in Independence, Iowa in 1892. The family later moved to take over a large cattle ranch near Wagon Mound in Northeast New Mexico.  Grandpa and his younger brothers were raised as cowboys. 

As kids in the early ‘50s, cowboy and Indian games and movies were our favorite pastimes.  Grandpa, however, always took the shine off of them by telling us that no real cowboy would dress the way they did in the movies or abuse his horse by galloping all over the place.  Much to our chagrin, he relentlessly found fault with every facet of our beloved cowboy and Indian heroes.

With the onset of WWI, Grandpa enlisted in the Navy and with typical Greenley communication habits, he didn’t learn about his father’s death until he returned to the ranch after the war.  What he found was the ranch in disarray and his younger brothers fighting about it.  The good thing he found there was Mary Maddux, the ranch cook whose brothers were cow hands on the ranch.  He married her and in February of 1921, my dad, Robert, was born.  After years of struggle, the family lost the ranch and Grandpa moved his family North to Rocky Ford in Southeast Colorado.

The struggle continued as the Depression hit and his family grew to include three more sons and two daughters.   All I know about this period is what little my dad, not a story teller, mentioned on occasion.  Grandpa had a Raleigh route, selling household items door to door, similar to the Avon of today.  Dad told about the flat, dry, dust-blown landscape and the abject poverty they lived in.  The only good part of life he recalled was the great Rocky Ford watermelons in the summertime.  In 1936, Grandpa got a job as a cook at the Roseburg Veteran’s Administration.  How he managed that from Colorado, I have no idea.  He loaded all the family and possessions on an open wooden-wheeled flatbed trailer pulled by a 1929 Ford pickup and headed for Oregon.  It took them 5 months, working along the way for gas and food and enduring the death of one of the twin brothers. It was not an easy trip.  When I complained about the work dad had me do as a child, he would say that compared to harvesting sugar beets, what I had to do was a snap.  One of the things they had done along the way was to work in the sugar beet fields in Idaho.  Dad said it had to be the worst work in the world.  Also, I remember using the derisive term “Okie” to describe some undesirable person and Dad gently reminded me that the only difference between him and an “Okie” was just a few miles of flat, brown prairie.  Unfortunately, I didn’t read the “Grapes of Wrath” until after Dad died.  There are many questions I wish I’d have asked had I realized what they went through to get here.

1953 - Ansel Greenley on the job at the VA Hospital

Grandpa with his sons in 1967
Bob, Ansel, Everett, Bill

When the Greenley family finally arrived in Roseburg in August of 1936, Dad was 15 and thought he’d died and gone to heaven.  They found a beautiful blue-green river full of fish flowing through a town surrounded by green forested hills and inhabited by numerous deer and other small game.  At that time, Harvard Avenue was bounded by big truck farms that were open for post-harvest gleaning so all the fruits and vegetables you needed were free for the picking.  Dad said that after coming here, it was the first time in his life he hadn’t felt constantly hungry.  After some time, Grandpa settled his family in a two story white house on the corner lot of Harvard where Long John Silver’s now sits.  When I was a babe-in-arms, Grandpa and Grandma bought what we would now call a shack, perched on the side of the hill at the end of Broad Street overlooking the airport.  It had a small kitchen and bath, a living room and a bedroom.  An attic was accessed by steps from a hall way that connected the garage, all heated with a wood stove in the corner of the living room.  The house was perched on posts, making the area under the house a good place for skunks to live.  My memories of Grandpa and Grandma Greenley’s house include the faint skunk odor that always permeated it.  A significant part of their life on the hill included maintaining a large garden and gathering fire wood.  Using a buck saw, Grandpa fell Madrone trees on the hill, drug them down to the house, then bucked the logs into firewood and stacked it inside the garage.  I find it ironic that 60 years later, I am doing the same thing to gather my firewood.

Grandma and Grandpa were long-time Adventists.  Ancestors had been involved with the formation of the church in 1863 so their roots went deep into the church.  They followed Ellen White’s prescription for a long and healthy life by being vegetarians.  Grandma was much more fervent about it that Grandpa.  At Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners, Grandpa could be caught snitching pieces of turkey when he thought no one was looking.  Also, when the house on the hill was torn down, the spaces between the studs in the garage were filled with 20 years’ worth of empty Copenhagen cans, remnants of Grandpa’s days as a cowboy.

After Grandma passed away in 1967, Grandpa sold the hillside property and we moved him into the little house I had been raised in on Bradford Street.  In 1969, while I was in Korea, he passed away in his big easy chair beside his beloved Philco radio.  A radio that now resides beside the easy chair in my house. 

circa1965 from left to right: Grandpa (Ansel Greenley), Ross, Susan, Grandma (Mary Maddux Greenley), Dale
in front: Marianne and Lance

Ansel Greenley, WW I Veteran

Ansel Ray Greenley was 25 years old in 1917.  On April 6, 1917, America declared war on Germany, starting our involvement in the war.  After the declaration of war, the Selective Service Act was passed, and every male between the age of 18 and 45 was required to register for the draft.  As a genealogist, these cards are treasure trove of information. Ansel filled his out June 5. It shows he lived in Shoemaker, Mora County, New Mexico.  He was single and working as a farmer.  He gives the name of an employer, but I can’t read the writing. It tells that he is “tall and stout” and has "light blue eyes" with "light brown hair."

World War I Registration for Ansel Greenley

State Historical Service, Page One

State Historical Service, Page Two

Ansel Greenley - World War I

Then after the war, the State Historical Service had each soldier fill out a questionnaire about their service during WWI.  (See images below). In this questionnaire we learn Ansel completed 8th grade, his church affiliation was “Prodison”(Protestant).  He reported for duty in El Paso, Texas on June 12, 1917. He was discharged on Jan 8, 1919 in Philadelphia, PA.  His rank at discharge was fireman second class, USN.


He is then asked to give details as to all subsequent movements during the war.  Well, he is not a prolific writer. He writes one paragraph,

“I was at the following stations:
NJS San Francisco, Calif., NJC Mare Island, Calif., R.S. at Cavite P.I.
There I went aboard the USS Tjisondari which came back to San Francisco, Calif. From there we went to New York from there made three trips to France.  Grandfather Wm. Greenley was in Civil War.

So he started out in San Francisco, then went to the Phillipine Islands (What the heck?), then traveled back to San Franscico to the East Coast (so he went through the Panama Canal?), then took three trips from the east coast to France.

Here is information about the USS Tjisondari and its service during the war.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-t/id2783.htm


From the trunk, are his neck scarves from is naval uniform (You can see them in his photo) My grandmother wrote the note attached to the scarves.

Ansel Greenley's neck scarves from his WWI uniform

Ansel keep letters from three different girls during the war.  One was clearly his girl friend.  More about this in the next blog entry! Oh and unfortunately, he didn't keep any letters from his family!

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Ansel meets Mary

April 9 - May 13 Diary entries

Mary Maddux met Ansel Greenley for the first time on April 1, 1919.  Their courtship was short. On April 11 she writes, "Ansel & I setting up (dog gone)."  One month later, on May 10th, she writes, "Mrs. G, Ansel & I went to Las Vegas.  Ansel & I were married (2pm) by minister Hubbard. Mother and Mrs. King were witnesses. Bought new skirt, came home Edwin mad all had supper. Down to Mothers staid there all night." I am presuming "Mrs. G." and "Mother" are referring to Ansel's mother, Mary Ella (Brown) Greenley.

Mary Maddux was 23 years old in April of 1920. According to the 1920 census (The census information was taken on Jan. 20, 1920) She was living with her father, Israel O. Maddux (age 64), her brother Edwin Maddux (age 33) and half brother Eugene (age 7) and half sister Lois (age 4). They lived in the mountains near Montrose, Colorado.  She mentions the towns of Delta, Ridgeway and Grand Junction. The Gunnison River ran through their land. One of the first entries in her diary, on May 6th, 1909, she writes that they arrived at their "mountain ranch on Iron Springs Mesa."

To begin, I am going to start with the "story" I was told about Mary Maddux's leaving Colorado and arriving in New Mexico. These entries tell a different story of her arrival in New Mexico than I had expected.  It really is an example of how the "narrative" changes over time with re-telling by different people.  My understanding (until reading the diary) was that Mary was taken by one of her brother's (I always had presumed it was Ralph) to be a housekeeper for the Greenley Ranch.  The brother was concerned for her living with her father, and taking care of her younger half siblings.  They wanted her away from that way of life.

From the diary,  I know that the mother of Eugene and Lois died in Sept. of 1919 (she died in childbirth - more on that story later).  Her name was Beatrice (Crouch) Maddux.  Mary called her "Bee" in her diary.  


The events in the months leading up to Mary Maddux's arrival in New Mexico are somewhat puzzling.  The following entries show that the family is leaving Colorado for New Mexico. It looks as if Edwin was the  brother that orchestrated the move. In the diary, I find the entry on Feb. 4th, "Edwin went to New Mexico." On Feb. 18th, "Edwin and Mr. Toblman came back from N.M. Edwin running around on business. Papa moving from hills. Elmer and Tuck were down to see about buying our land."  Then on March 18th, "Cill C (I can't read her writing, I can tell it is a name) took Edwin and I up to Rigeway and sold our land to the Israel boys in his ford. From other items I have found in the trunks, it looks like Edwin and Mary had a separate "claim" from their father's land. On March 19th, "Edwin and Mr. Watson went to N.M."

April 1, 1920 Diary Entry

Mary (Maddux) Greenley (1930s?)

Ansel Greenley (1930s?)

Then on April 1st she writes the following: (I scanned this entry from the diary, so you can see what she wrote in the image)
"Lois, Eugene & I boarded the train for N.M. was delayed on Marshal Pass and missed the train at Pueblo. Went to bed, took the train for Trinidad 3am. Got there 7am, got tickets, had breakfast and took the S &F for Shoemaker 10am got to Shoemaker 4pm. Edwin, Edward & Ensil Greenley meet me. came home in ford found a big family still living in the house having big time."


It is fun to see her misspelling of Ansel - and you gotta wonder what the "big family still living in the house having a big time" MEANS.  Was it the rest of the Greenley family??  What is a "big time"? is that a party of some sort?  Well, she took the children with her! And not only is Mary living with the Greenleys, but so is Edwin, Lois and Eugene. In the diary she rarely mentions Papa, Edwin, Eugene and Lois after marrying into the Greenley family.  On May 11 (the day after they got married) she writes, " Mother, Ansel & I went to Wagon Mound with Mr. & Mrs. Dulin. bought the Dulins out, came home & found Papa there. Introduced him to my husband. He did not care but felt bad to have me leave. Staid all night down to Mother's. Olive doing my wash at home. ("Papa" is Mary's father, Iseral O. Maddux. "Mother" is Ansel's mother.)

Part two of this story will focus on the Greenley side.  If you want to "follow" this blog you can sign up to get email notification when I new entry is posted.