Which Mrs. John?
Anybody who has done family history research can tell you it's sometimes a challenge. Especially the farther back you go, and also when you're researching the women in your family tree. I ran into a bit of a puzzle in that respect, in connection with two particular women ... both connected to my great grandfather.
Some time ago, I was looking through old newspapers in the area of Alabama where my paternal grandmother had grown up. I was searching various names from the family tree, so I entered "John Zahnd" in the search engine. I found a few things here and there, and then came across a group of listings for awards won at the North Alabama State Fair by "Mrs. John Zahnd".
I chased that rabbit for a while, and found that Mrs. John Zahnd had won these awards year after year, beginning in 1935, and continuing until 1947. As I looked at my family tree, I immediately concluded that the lady in question was my great grandmother, Nettie Blanche Wallace. She was married to John Arthur Zahnd, and would have been 38-39 about the time of the 1935 State Fair. Since she died of cancer in 1950, it seemed logical that she would have stopped entering things at the Fair as her health may have deteriorated towards the end of her life. Besides that, there was actually an award won in 1937 for coconut cake. And I'd heard stories about my great grandmother's coconut cake for a while. It seemed perfectly logical to me ... except for one little thing that triggered me to question the conclusion. A conversation with my Grandmother.
We had made a trip to Texas to visit, as we tried to do yearly for Christmas. I was painfully aware that my Grandmother was getting older, and I wanted to be able to see her every time we could. As I sat with her that day talking about family stories and discoveries I had made in my research, I mentioned the awards that her Mom had won at the state fair year after year. And what I got in that moment was a blank look and puzzled silence. Ok ... either she had forgotten all about it, or I had guessed wrong about who I was reading about in the paper. I kind of doubted that she had forgotten ... she remembered all sorts of things, and I would think that her winning awards all through my grandmother's teen years would have made enough of an impression that she wouldn't have forgotten.
So where did I go wrong?
One of the issues with researching women in old records is the problem that they are rarely ever known by their own name. They are nearly always known by their married name, or more specifically by their husband's name with "Mrs." tacked on the front of it. So, I had come up with a mystery of two Mrs. John Zahnds.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these newspaper reports may well have been talking about Nettie's mother-in-law, Florence Minnie Lawson. I had discounted Minnie originally, because she would have been about 65 years old in 1935, and to be doing that much cooking and canning through her 60s and 70s seemed less likely than Nettie doing it in her 30s and 40s. But honestly, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed possible.
Minnie was born in 1870. She grew up on a farm, and married a farmer. Cooking and canning and all those sorts of skills would have been a normal part of her life. She married Johannes Zahnd, the son of Swiss immigrants in 1892. Most everyone in the community called Johannes "John". They had a son named John Arthur Zahnd in 1894. He was my great grandfather, and Nettie's husband. And one of the things I hadn't thought about in connection to my dive into newspaper clippings was the fact that my great grandfather didn't typically go by John, even though that was his first name. From most things I've seen, he typically went by Arthur, possibly to differentiate himself from his father. So Minnie was Mrs. John, and even though Nettie was sort of Mrs. John, she was really more Mrs. Arthur. Hmmm.
One year of awards (1939) actually listed Minnie Zahnd instead of Mrs. John. I had initially read that as a one-off, thinking maybe she had just decided to take part because her daughter-in-law was doing it. When I started looking at the possibility that it was actually Minnie all along, I noticed that the awards for Minnie Zahnd that year were for some similar items that had won in previous years, and continued to win in subsequent years. She would have been about 69 that year. So what was going on in her life at that point in time?
John, Minnie's husband, had died in 1932. Three years before the recorded entries at the fair. Minnie is listed on the 1940 census as living with family. The recording of the information on Ancestry website is a bit quirky, but it appears she may have been living with her widowed daughter Irma, who was born in 1902. Irma was about 6 years younger than Nettie. So, even though Minnie would have been older, she may well have had others helping with the process. Or it may be that it was something that Irma was doing, but didn't want credit for doing. Occasionally the newspaper listed monetary awards for the winning items ... maybe it was a way to bring a few extra dollars into the household. It seems more and more likely as I dig that Mrs. John was Minnie all along, and I just made assumptions a little too quickly.
Minnie also died in 1950, just ten months before her daughter-in-law, Nettie.
I may never be able to unequivocally prove which Mrs. John is which, and I no longer have the ability to chat with my Grandmother about the whole thing, but I feel relatively confident that Minnie accomplished a whole lot more late in life than I had given her credit for. Sometimes the women in our family turn out to be amazing folks.
Awards won at North Alabama State Fair:
Apple preserves (1935, 1936, 1944, 1947)
Apples (1937, 1939)
Apples, dried (1944, 1945)
Asters (1946)
Beans (1944)
Blackberries (1936, 1941)
Blackberry Jam (1936, 1937, 1940)
Blackberry Jelly (1940)
Butter beans (1939, 1942, 1946)
Carrots (1935, 1943, 1944)
Coconut Cake (1937)
Corn, creamed (1944)
Corn on the cob (1944)
Crocheting (1943)
Cucumber pickles (1941)
English peas (1936, 1941, 1942, 1943)
Figs (1947)
Garden displays (1936)
Grandma's wonder bread (1936)
Grape juice (1944)
Grape marmalade (1941)
Grape preserves (1941)
Grapes (1944, 1946, 1947)
Huckleberries (1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1946)
Marigolds (1938)
Mixed pickles (1941)
Pear preserves (1945)
Pears (1935, 1947)
Pickled peaches (1935, 1941)
Plum butter (1937, 1941, 1947)
Plum Jelly (1935)
Snapdragons (1947)
Soap (1944, 1945, 1946)
Soup mixture (1938, 1941, 1943, 1947)
Strawberries (1935)
Tomatoes (1943)
Tomato Catsup (1935, 1944)
Tomato juice (1947)
Tomato pickles (1940, 1944)
Watermelon rind (1937)
Wax begonias (1937)
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