Among the Missing

I have to say that while it's been very gratifying with some of my early successes in uncovering the hitherto-unknown history of the Grace clan in America, I still have a lot of frustration from the remaining brick walls, and I've had little luck against them. I know I'm not going to stop trying, but it's still bugging me that I can't find the information even though I should be able to at least find more of the basics. But as usual, the Grace family trips me up with common names ... but also changed names in America. It's those stupid middle names that were not recorded before in Ireland (at least nothing I can find), that suddenly get used in America, but not entirely used all the time. So it's hard enough to find these folks with already-common names, but I have double the names to look for now, because I'm just not quite sure when they used their first name and when they used their middle name. 

Michael is the prime example. The eldest son, already an adult when they came over to America at 18. But I don't know what he was up to in America at first, mostly because the other Grace family in Warren/Clarendon had a son named Michael/Mike, so while I see mention in the local papers of someone named Michael/Mike, I wasn't sure which one it was, though I strongly suspect it was the older one, because that Grace family had been established for more than a decade in town before my Grace ancestors arrived. There was one article about a "Mike Grace" working in California for Standard Oil, but it referenced a wife; it could have been him, but I just don't have enough information to be sure. I was able to find marriage information for Michael, because in the notes that my grandmother had made based on her conversations with Ida Belle Grace, she remembered that Mike's wife was named Sadie with the middle name of Isabella. And I was able to find a marriage record in Ohio from 1888 for a Sadie Stitt (and further research found that her full name was Sarah Isabelle Stitt), though interestingly enough, her groom's name was "Burtman M. Grace" But then I found that Sadie was part of a larger family, the Workmans, and that the Workman family had actually published a genealogy, so I was able to find Burtman (now listed as "Bertram") again, only this time it shows that it was Michael, with the correct birth year, and listing Richard Grace and Ellen "Dreeland" as his parents. It also listed three children from them, and also had a death year and place for Michael ... 1904, in Pittsburgh, PA. 

I was able to fill in a few more blanks, but also there were tantalizing gaps; a child named Ralph Grace was listed as the firstborn in the Workman family history, only living 2 years, but while a birth and death date were listed in the published history, I could find no documents from the counties or towns where the birth and death were supposed to have happened. Next oldest child Isabelle Grace also had a birthdate in the Workman family history, but I could find no birth record for her in the county she was supposed to have been born. I was able to find a lot of other information about her, marriage, children, death, etc., but couldn't entirely confirm what the Workman family book had said. Youngest child was Richard William Grace (which I found interesting, because JW Grace's oldest son was also named "Richard William Grace"), but at least I could find a birth record for him (though it was filed in 1941 by his mother), showing that he was born in the West Virginia oil fields, and also recorded his father as "Bertram Michael Grace," indicating he was a laborer in the oil field, and says he was from North Clarendon (as a birth place, rather than Ireland), though in the Workman history, it does say he was born in Ireland. And then in Richard Grace's 1903 last will and testament, it mentions Michael (no "Bertram") and says he was in Woodsfield, OH, which was an oil boom town in eastern Ohio. But that's pretty much it for Michael. Sadie marries again in 1908, and the marriage certificate noted she was a widow, and I was able to research where she was the rest of her life until she died, as well as tracking both Isabell and Richard to the end of their lives, and of Isabell's children to the end of theirs (Richard married twice, but both marriages ended in divorce on the grounds of cruelty, and though he was a successful businessman, he ended up dying alone). I don't distrust the Workman family history, because in the entries about Sadie and her kids, the it was actually mentioned in that section that Sadie provided the information herself, and that Isabell provided more information after Sadie died. So I believe that Michael died in 1904. I just can't find ANY record of his passing. 

I've reached out to archives in Pittsburgh; no burial records exist for him there, no death records, nothing in the local papers. It's possible he could have died there and the body shipped back to eastern Ohio, where Sadie's family was from, and buried in a local cemetery there. I can't find any records of that cemetery, though. So I have to try to reach out to a local government there, or local historical society and see if such records exist. I'm not challenging the claim that he died, I just want PROOF. I want to be able to close the case, though I'd love to know how often he was Bertram, and how often he was Mike. Not that either name is easy to find; Michael Grace is too common, and while Bertram Grace most assuredly isn't, aside from someone really named Bertram Grace in Kansas, there's not a lot of other ones in the US, so my searches keep coming up empty-handed. I do wonder if he might have been in a hospital in Pittsburgh ... or perhaps in a jail? That thought crossed my mind. I did see a listing for a court case in West Virginia in the late 1890s for a case against a "Michael Grace" in the area he was known to be working in, so I wonder if he had gotten into trouble, and went by Bertram to avoid any identification as Michael Grace? That was an era when people didn't carry ID, and someone could change their name and background as many times as they wanted. So I have to try to do some digging. I know it would be easy to just take the Workman history on faith, but I just want some documentary evidence beyond that, because I know that even published histories could be wrong, and Isabel was a young adolescent when Michael died and might not have had all the details, and he might have died under unusual circumstances that even Sadie might not have known about. I don't know, I guess I'm grasping at straws, but I just want some more details to flesh out this life. 

The same is true for the eldest daughter, Bridget, who also appears to have changed her name. Though her name also appears to confuse some other folks who have her in their online trees, as they all call her "Bird" as a nickname. I'm not sure where that came from, aside from the passenger list in 1881 when they came over from Ireland. It looks to me like her name was written "Brid" as short for Bridget, but I guess some folks see it as Bird.I don't think she had a nickname, because at least no one in my family would've known much about her. My grandmother, who had talked about the family history at length with her mother-in-law, Ida Belle Grace, left notes about the conversations, and apparently Ida Belle never mentioned Bridget, because the only notes mention JW, Mike, Tom, Margaret (remembered as an "old maid" by Ida Belle), and Jim (and Ida Belle remembered he was in Burma). But no Bridget. The other Grace family in Clarendon also had a daughter named Bridget (as it seems every Irish family had a daughter named Bridget!), but she married before she came over from Ireland, so she wasn't Bridget Grace anymore, which allowed me to find a few stories about my great-great-aunt Bridget, who apparently worked in the kitchen in the finest hotel in Warren, PA. And also who apparently fell down some steps there and broke her ankle. And then I was able to find a marriage record for her. In July 1896, she married a man named John McDonald, from Fostoria, Ohio. He was 50, and she was 28. I find it interesting that none of the witnesses were her family, but I suppose in 1896, the only ones left at home would have been her father Richard, stepmother Ellen (I should call her "evil stepmother," based on Margaret's medical record interviews), Margaret and James. But still, at least her sister or brother could have been a witness. It's all conjecture, I know, but I wonder if perhaps she married against her father's wishes? There was the age difference, but by Irish standards she was an old spinster at 28, so Richard would have likely been pleased she married and moved out of the house. If the story about her working in the hotel was correct, it also makes me wonder if he was a guest at the hotel and met her there. 

Knowing that they were listed on Richard's will as living in Cygnet, OH, which is a small town in the western part of the state, south of Bowling Green, I actually found them in the 1900 US Census, living in Cygnet. Though in the Census, he listed his age as 48 (instead of 54, if we went by the age on the wedding record from four years earlier), though hers was correct at 32. But on the census, she was no longer Bridget, but was now "Elizabeth B. McDonald." I'm not sure where Elizabeth came from, or why. Again, perhaps it was a middle name, not previously recorded on her birth records from Ireland, but something she may have used to separate herself from any other Bridgets back in Ireland or even the Bridget Grace Malone in Clarendon. I don't know. On the Census, she did list her birthplace as Ireland (his was Michigan), and her parents were listed as born in Ireland (while his were born in Scotland). She had no occupation listed, but his was "Oil well pumper." Another oil man! It was not surprising they were in Cygnet, as that was ground zero for a massive oil boom in Western Ohio that lasted a few years. Turns out under the flat farmlands there was a large reservoir of oil, though it shouldn't have been surprising, because that whole area had been a giant swamp for probably thousands of years or longer, until settlers drained the "Great Black Swamp" (as the area had been called) to create farmland. So the conditions. But there was a huge boom going on there, and Cygnet was a wild open oil boom town. Most of the people on their Census page were oil workers, and not surprisingly, most of them were also from Pennsylvania (once oil was discovered elsewhere, Pennsylvanians flocked to the new fields, and there was a sort of mystique that the best oil field workers were from Pennsylvania). So I was able to move her story forward, just a bit. But the name change made it infinitely more difficult now, because her name became a lot more common, though I guess "Bridget McDonald" was also sort of common. And of course, her husband's name was quite common! 

And it's in Cygnet that things got a little hazy from that point on. Because I think I found a newspaper article about John McDonald, as there was an article from a nearby newspaper in 1902 about how Cygnet's town marshall was a man named Jack McDonald, and "formerly a strapping oil driller," but by then suffering from rheumatism, and so popular that the locals avoided causing crime because they liked him so much and knew he couldn't physically stop them. I also found some court cases involving John and Elizabeth McDonald about some property that they bought and were cheated out of. And then looking through Wood County, Ohio vital records, I found that a man named John McDonald died on November 30, 1907 in Cygnet, of Peritonitis, and then not much long after that, a notice in a local paper that some property owned by Elizabeth McDonald was sold. And that was it. I'm fairly sure that the death was likely the right John McDonald, but then again, it's such a common name that it's difficult to be sure! But from that point on, I lose them both from the storyline. The thing is, if John didn't die in 1907, then he and Elizabeth/Bridget could have moved on in search of more oil, which was EXTREMELY common back then, and headed west. There are so many people named John and Elizabeth McDonald out there that it's difficult finding them, if they did move on. And if he did die in 1907, then I have no idea what happened to Elizabeth afterwards. I would say she likely moved away, as there might not have been much reason for her to stay in Cygnet after his death. But I have no idea where she could have moved to. And there's always the possibility that as she was still a fairly young widow, she could have remarried, which would have covered her tracks even more thoroughly. I don't know if she remained Elizabeth, or went back to using Bridget. I've looked around Ohio, in Census records and newspapers, and also looked at Detroit, as it wasn't that far from Cygnet. And nothing comes up, nor do any records appear to be the right one. I've looked through death records, in case an obituary or a death certificate would have her father's name on it or a sibling's name, and nothing comes up. 

Unfortunately, there's not much help from her brother James, via his hospital interviews. In his interview from 1933, when he was purportedly sober, her name doesn't even come up! Nor does his sister Margaret's name, even though he was likely living with her at the time! In 1950, when he was admitted for alcoholic psychosis, he does remember her ... when he recounts his siblings, he mentions her as having died at age 65, cause unknown. Of course, in the same interview, he mentions his mother as living into her 70's and dying in the Detroit area in 1928 or 1929 ... but then in the same interview mentioned that his mother died soon after childbirth. I wondered if possibly he confused his mother with Bridget, and Bridget was the one who died in Detroit? But if she did, I sure haven't found anything to back that up. So these are my main Grace family mysteries now (along with their brother Patrick). Oh, there's the tale of Richard Grace Jr., one of the older sons, the one who didn't come with the family to America, and who died a few years after they left ... and according to James (in both interviews) that it was because of an infection he received after having a knitting needle shoved up his nose! I did look in some New Ross newspapers, but found no corroborating story, but I'd like to find more information on that ... at least to see if it's true! I think these are three folks on my tree who I will continually return to over time, and try again to find out more about them. There might be a new source that's become available, or I might come up with a new line of query to research ... I'm not going to give up, just because I want these stories to have a conclusion, instead of the names just disappearing. I'm not sure anyone else cares, because Mike doesn't appear to have any surviving descendants, so the only descendants of the family are Thomas's and JW's, and from what I can tell, no one else has delved this deeply into the family, so I guess it's my private little obsession. But I don't focus entirely on them, because there's still other parts of the family that need some deep dives, or some additional background research to help provide context into their lives and times.

Ida Belle Barry was no stranger to the oil business or oil men. This is because she was born on the "oil trail," as her father, John H. Barry, was an oil driller and operator, and moved the family around as he sought places to drill successful oil wells. Pretty much every place Ida's siblings were born was a place that John was drilling for oil. Ida was born in Bradford, PA; her sister Nellie was born in Warsaw, New York; sister Pearl was born in Manistee, Michigan. Brother John Cornelius Barry was born in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. Sister Florence was born in West Virginia. Brother Charles (who passed away at 1) and brother George were born in Wheeling, West Virginia, and sister Marie was born in Smithfield, West Virginia. It seemed like the longest they were in any place was eventually in Wheeling, as my research found that Ida was attending a Catholic School for girls in Wheeling. John Barry was working the giant oil field south of Wheeling. And sadly, it's where he met his demise in 1899. No one in the family knew much at all about him, but I found a newspaper article mentioning him as an "oil operator" who suffered a stroke on an oil rig, and was brought back to Wheeling for medical care. Apparently he died a few days later, never recovering. There was no death notice in the local papers, but I reached out to the big cemetery in town where he was buried, and they had a death date in the burial record, and it was just a few days after the article reported his stroke. 

There's always plenty of myths about those oil drillers who struck it rich, but reading the old newspapers of the era and the region, I'm struck by the sheer number of accidents and deaths occuring, and clearly there were a LOT of dry holes drilled. Yes, a lucky driller could strike it rich, but they could just as easily and quickly sink it into a dry hole and lose all their money in the blink of an eye. Or pour money into buying up leases in a promising area, finding no oil, and then having all their leases become worthless and impossible to sell. But it held America's imagination, especially in the latter half of the 19th century, when it appears that a lot of people were oil-crazy. Apparently, my ancestors were among them. John Barry was born in America, as far as I can tell, but was Irish by descent. His father, Cornelius Barry, was born in Ireland and came to the US, became a farmer, and lived a long life on his farm in rural Pennsylvania. I actually found several articles about Cornelius, who lived in the tiny hamlet of Cussewago in Crawford County. The articles were all about Cornelius turning 100 and later dying at 108 years old, though frankly, I'm very skeptical. Because pretty much every census record gives a slightly different age, and so while the newspapers made it sound like he was born in the 1790s, I think he was likely born in the 1810s. What I think is his naturalization record says he was born in 1812 (we're looking at a range from 1794 to 1814 ... that's a bit of a wide range, I would say) Back in those days, birthdays weren't that important, and so folks were often not quite sure what day or what year they were born. It's not like there was a lot of paperwork back then. I do wish I had more info on Cornelius, because I'm curious about him. He appears to have come from somewhere in County Cork, and likely came over to the US in 1825, according to a census record, though his naturalization record (or what I believe to be his, since I can't look at the original document, but instead I'm working with a WPA-compiled list) said he came over in 1836. So before the Famine ... which is interesting because it appears all my Irish ancestors came before or after the Famine. None were here because of it. I'd love to know why Cornelius came over. My guess is that he was in search of land, and may have gotten displaced in Ireland from Scottish laborers brought over by English landlords, or may have sought out religious freedom. I dunno, but those are common reasons for those who came over before the Famine. Either way, it looks like he brought property for a farm in 1843, and filed for naturalization for 1844. So where did he get the money? But he did own a farm, and at least according to an 1896 newspaper article, "he is erect, hale and hearty,reads the papers, and takes a lively interest in the affairs of his native country, Ireland." His obituary from 1901 noted "he had retained his faculties in a wonderful degree ... and within the last week had been up and around the house. He was of medium height, rather sturdy built, a typical hearty Irishman, and a man of fine character." Which frankly, is not a bad obituary. Though I still don't think he was 108 ... though possibly he was 89, still quite an old age back in that day. But apparently farm living agreed with him. Though his advanced age meant that he outlived his son John, who died two years before him. 

With John Barry's passing, it now fell upon his widow, Mary Catherine Logue Barry, to raise a family that ranged from 17-year old Ida Belle to 1-year old Marie. She had to be tough, and she had to be resourceful. Fortunately, she also was Irish, though born in Pennsylvania, in Butler County. But her father, Charles Logue, had been born in Ireland and came over at some point before the Famine. His father, Dennis Logue, had filed for naturalization and been naturalized in the mid 1840s, so there's a good chance they came over in the late 1830s. Again, not sure exactly where from, though there are hints here and there that they came from Donegal. They were among the earliest residents of Murrinsville (named after another Irish family that owned much of the land), and were among the first parishoners at the Catholic church built there for all the Irish Catholic farmers. From various old histories of Butler County that were published in the late 1800s and early 1900s and are available online, I found out that many of the families that settled in the county were from Donegal. Though of course, none of these mentioned WHY these folks settled the area. I'm sure the availability of land is a key thing that drew settlers there, but how did they hear about that area? What specificially brought them to that spot? I have a feeling that's a question I may never be able to answer. I don't know exactly when Dennis and Charles Logue came there, though Dennis did get naturalized in 1847. I also wasn't sure where they came from in Ireland initially; I suspected Donegal, because so many other families in the area were from Donegal, and there were other Logues in the area who possibly could be relatives as well, and apparently they were from Donegal. One thing that helped greately was that Dennis had another son, Cornelius, who apparently became a sailor at some point, and died in New Orleans in New Orleans of unknown causes. While digging to find anything about his experience in New Orleans, I did find that someone had compiled patient lists from one of the hospitals in New Orleans, and in the late 1850s, there was a patient listed named "Cornelius Logue" from Pennsylvania who was listed as born in Donegal. I feel strongly that it's the right Cornelius Logue, too. Though what is interesting is that my mother had written a document in college listing her family history, and she had down as her grandfather a sea captain named "Cornelius Grace," which wasn't actually correct, as her grandfathers were Richard Grace and John Barry. But I wondered if as a child, she heard mention of a man named Cornelius (possibly Cornelius Barry or Cornelius Logue), and heard something about them being a sailor ... though Richard Grace was briefly a boatman in New Ross, Ireland, and possibly captained his small boat, or perhaps it was the seafaring Cornelius Logue. Unfortunately, I can't ask her, so I don't think I'll ever know. 

But getting back to Mary Catherine Logue, she now had to move on with life and provide for her family. She moved out of Wheeling and down south a bit to Wallace, West Virginia. The town was experiencing an oil boom, and her brother John Logue lived in Wallace and was an oil driller. She acquired a large house next to him (though I'm not sure it was with her own money or with the financial help from her brother), and commenced to operate it as a boarding house/hotel. I even found newspaper accounts mentioning The "Barry Hotel" in Wallace. Business was likely brisk, because the town was chockablock full of oil-drilling rigs and likely more than quite a few oil men who were seeking oil, but also places to sleep. I truly believe that's how her daughter Ida Belle met a young oilman named John William Grace, freshly returned from Japan. We have some pictures of Ida Belle Barry as a young woman, and she was quite a beauty, with black hair and an intelligent face. And the only photos of John William show him as a very handsome man, so she may have been taken with him as he was likely taken with her. They were married on February 17, 1905. He was 28 (the wedding license he filled out said he was 26), and she was 22.

And they quickly turned to making children. Their first child, Richard William Grace, likely named after his grandfather, was born in 1905, 10 months after his parents married. He was followed by John Bernard Grace (always called "Bernard" in the family) in 1907, Eugene Patrick Grace in 1910 (perhaps named after JW's older brother Patrick?), Raymond Edward Grace in 1911, George Michael Grace in 1913, James Berry Grace in 1916 (who sadly passed away due to the Influenza epidemic in 1918), and Paul Lawrence Grace. The running joke in the family was that John William was always traveling for his oil work, and his occasional visits home coincided with Ida's pregnancies. It appears that the family primarily lived in Wheeling early on, but that Ida returned to her mother for each of her childbirths, as most of her children were born in Wallace. But that would make sense if Ida was giving birth without John present, and preferred the help of her mother for the birth and helping to take care of her and the baby after birth. It appears that by the 1910s or the late 1910s, that she may have relocated the family entirely to Wallace, which would make sense if John was rarely there, then she could rely on her mother for help, and also perhaps from her youngest siblings, who were also still in Wallace.

John's work in this timeframe is still pretty much unknown. In his World War One draft registration papers, he indicated he was working for Hope Natural Gas, which was a Standard Oil subsidiary that drilled for natural gas and supplied it to customers in Ohio through the East Ohio Gas Company. In the 1920 Census, he listed his occupation as working for South Penn Oil, which was also a Standard Oil subsidiary, and focused more on petroleum than natural gas. But there's no accounts in any newspapers that I've found that mention him. Until 1923, when he's mentioned as dying of a heart attack while working on an oil rig in Alma, Arkansas. There are several articles from local papers, and the story was he was working for another oil man, and was starting to swing a 16-pound sledgehammer to dress a tool bit (which was really an entry-level job on a rig, and something that he would have done in his late teens, not his mid-40s), and dropped dead right on the rig floor. Apparently he had just arrived in town, and it was suggested he was called in for a special job. And here the family stories kick in. As the story goes, the death was suspicious ... he was in Arkansas, he died under mysterious circumstances, and perhaps "his partner" absconded with John's oil leases (and of course, the insinuation is that he ended up getting fabulously wealthy from these). Apparently Richard William Grace, who was 18 at the time, was sent down from Wheeling to recover John's tools, and found them all missing and likely stolen. More evidence of something fishy. 

I'm sorry, but I call bullshit on all that. Granted, I think some of my cousins (and my mom) may have heard this very tale from Ida herself, as she lived until 1974, and was a very common presence in their lives. But I'm going on the evidence I can find, and while she was alive during all this, she wasn't in Arkansas; she may not have even known he was down there, until she was contacted about his death. The articles I found made it all seem pretty clear. No one aside from the guy who brought him in seemed to know him or anything about him. He wasn't a partner in any venture, he was a hired hand for someone else, who actually was a fellow Pennsylvanian (whose wife was from Warren) and likely knew John William Grace. And that partner was apparently quite respected in the local community, judging by stories in the local papers. And John died, and the body was sent back to Wheeling for burial. And even JW's brother James knew he died of a heart attack on the rig, as he recounted in both his 1933 and 1950 hospital interviews, so at least in the immediate family, there was no conspiracy theory about JW's death, it apparently came later among his grandchildren. As for the missing tools, it's unsure why Richard would have been sent for them in the first place, but it's unsure what sort of tools they could have been, because a lot of the drilling tools were used for a job, and then often weren't in any shape for the next rig job. Some were, but what was an 18 year old going to do? Take up the trade? Who was going to teach him? Even if he found all of John's things and brought them back, they might have been able to sell them. But I really highly doubt that John had much of value at the time. The fact that he was brought into this project in the first place suggests he was down on his luck as a wildcatter, and needing to get some sort of money because he kept drilling dry holes. That was also a longtime family story, sometimes he'd be successful and there would literally be piles of cash in the family house, and other times he'd be hitting a dry spell, and Ida would have to borrow money from her mother to keep the children fed and clothed. It sounds like he may have been in one of those dry spells. One of my cousins says he still has some of John's oil leases that he got from Ida herself, but what I've seen in my research is that most oil leases of that era were for a very finite and short period, and the driller had to start drilling by a certain time, or they'd lose the lease, so it's a very good chance that any of those leases are useless and expired probably by the mid to late 1920s. I keep bugging him to scan them and send them to me, but no such luck so far. I'm also not sure why Richard would have been sent, instead of Ida reaching out to John William's brother Thomas, who lived in Oklahoma, and was an oil driller. If anyone knew what the tools were and their value, it would be him, and he was also closer. But I suspect as I've researched along, that the Grace family wasn't that close at all, and the siblings likely didn't keep in touch much, if at all. And so Ida may not have known Thomas personally, just his name. 

One thing that made me wonder is that when John's obituaries were run in the local Wheeling newspapers (back in the golden days when a city like Wheeling would have several newspapers), the obituaries weren't even accurate as to the number of siblings John had; the Wheeling Intelligencer said he had three sisters and two brothers ... it listed Margaret, but then it also listed two of Ida's sisters! It did correctly mention Thomas and James (and noted that James was in England). The Wheeling Register did run a longer obituary of John a later day that actually had accurate information, though it also was interesting for its omission; it noted that he was "one of a family of seven brothers and sisters only two of whom could be located" ... located. Frankly, it appears that only three of siblings were still alive at that point, but as Ida likely contributed that obituary because of the details in it, it would seem clear that she didn't actually know if they all were alive, which indicated to me that he didn't talk about his siblings much. She probably never met any of them except for Margaret, who according to census records, lived with the family briefly. Thomas was out on the oil trail west, and James was in Burma and then England. And the others were likely already deceased. But as I said, I don't think Ida was in touch with Thomas, or else it seems most plausible he should have been contacted to go down to Arkansas and find out what happened and collect John's tools, since he would know what to look for, and what was valuable. But it's a moot point, as the tools were gone (likely split up and shared by workers there). 

There was also a weird postscript, because an obituary was also put in the Oil City Derrick, a newspaper in Oil City, PA. Oil City was once the literal center of the petroleum industry, a Wall Street of the oil business, so to speak. Those days were long gone, but the Derrick appears to have remained a newspaper that was more for the oil business than just local news. But it's a weird obituary, because it's a mixture of fact and fantasy. It starts by calling him the "nephew of the renowned Captain Peter Grace, the discoverer and pioneer of more new oil and gas developments than any man that ever made the oil industry a business." I'm not sure where that came from, because I looked into Peter Grace. He WAS a very notable oil producer, particularly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia (and a captain by virtue of his Civil War experience, where he also won a Congressional Medal of Honor). But if he was a relative of John William's, it was very distant. He came over many years before John William and settled in Massachusetts, and I've never seen anything before that connects the two of them. Certainly if he was a relative, it would be feasible that he was the reason that the Grace brothers entered the business, and he might have facilitated that. But I researched him, and I just didn't find any connections. If anything, I wondered if John played up the last name and suggested he was related to Peter, to help get him jobs and leases. The Derrick obit also said he "knew and had operated in every country - producing oil and gas." Well, if you count the US and Japan as "ever country," then that's correct, but as far as family stories and research go, he didn't operate anywhere else. He didn't even seem to roam the rest of the US, as it appears that he mostly stuck to Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and had a foray into Texas after the big (and short-lasting) strike in the Desdemona field, which the Derrick obituary also noted (his Wheeling obituaries also note his presence in Texas, and also saying the family never moved because of educational opportunities for the children, which were few and far between in Texas). The Derrick obituary also said he "was persuaded to go in Alma, Arksansas, to clean out a very difficult fishing job. He arrived at the well and as he stapped on to the derrick floor, was stricken with heart trouble - fell to the floor and never spoke a word." Which doesn't actually match up with the stories in the Arksansas papers, which said he had taken a few swings with the hammer first, before dropping to the floor dead. And another odd point in the Derrick obituary was that it said he was 32 years old. He was actually 46! (the Wheeling obituaries said he was 45). So there's a lot to pick through, but I was astonished that I had found so much regarding his death. I'm not sure what I have is completely and entirely conclusive, but I'll go with what I found rather than family stories, given that I've been finding that not all of the family stories ring true, or even in a few cases, have a grain of truth to them. 

Though one family story that I have I find rather interesting, in that for the rest of her life, Ida always referred to John William as "Mr. Grace." All very formal. But then another interesting aspect of the story is that now she was in the same position as her mother had been in. A young widow with an oil driller husband who died in the line of work, leaving her to raise and provide for a large brood of children. And coincidentally, John William Grace was buried in the same Wheeling cemetery as her father, John Barry.

JW

 It's kind of ironic that two of the Grace siblings that the family know mostly nothing about, I end up finding out more about them than the most important Grace, my great-grandfather John William Grace.  Though if it weren't for the hospital files, I wouldn't know as much about James and Margaret that I do. So I guess it's fortunate that Margaret was senile as she aged and James had issues due to his vices (alcoholism and going to brothels), as that led them to the hospital, whose records I was able to access.

No such luck with John William Grace (JW). But that's mostly because of the tragedy of his dying fairly young.  So very little of his story has filtered down to his descendants other than some family legends that may or may not be true. His children ranged in age from 5 to 18 when he died in 1923, and their memories of him may have been a bit hazy. Likely his oldest son Richard knew him the most, but if so, those stories haven't gotten spread to the various cousins. Richard and his children apparently were a bit aloof from the rest of the family and not as close, at least that's the feeling I got from my mom. Her father was one of JW's younger children, and was 10 when JW died, and if he had any particular memories of his father, he didn't appear to share them with my mom, or if he did, I never heard them from her.

The only stories I really heard was that he dropped dead while working on an oil rig somewhere down South, and there was some mystery about this, and a shady suspicion that his partner was somehow involved, and his oldest son Richard was sent down to pick up his tools, and they were missing. Apparently there were also something about leases on oil lands, and no one knew what happened to that. So it sounded like something sinister happened, with the feeling among family members that his partner killed him and absconded with all these fabulously wealthy oil leases.

Spoiler alert ... no.  I did actual research, and the story doesn't appear to be as dramatic as that. And while digging, I did find out a few things about JW, but frustratingly, not enough to suit me. He's still somewhat of a mystery in that there's long periods of his life that are just blanks.

What we do know is that he was born, like his siblings, in Ireland. While his oldest siblings were born in Kilkenny, he was built in Wexford, in Ballyanne, a little hamlet outside of New Ross. He came over to the US with the rest of the family in 1881, and settled into Clarendon, PA. I couldn't find anything about him at all from the days in Clarendon. The first time he was mentioned in any newspaper was 1899, when his stepmother, Ellen Leahy Grace died, and he was mentioned in the obituary as being in Sistersville, West Virginia, with brothers Mike and Thomas. There was a giant oil field in Sistersville, so the three were likely working the oil rigs there. I had found a newspaper account in 1898 of a tool dresser named "John Grace" who got injured on an oil rig in Stringtown, which was part of the giant oil field there in West Virginia that also encompassed Sistersville, so I do think that may have been him, and at the time, he was likely a tool dresser, and also a very lucky man, because the accident sounded fairly bad. 

 He doesn't show up in the 1900 census at all, nor did Thomas or Michael, either. But I actually found a passport application from him in 1901. It was filed in Pittsburgh.  In it, he claimed to have been born in Warren County, PA, which was false, but he may not have been naturalized, or wanted to not have to deal with any questions about his Irish ancestry for the passport, so instead he chose to claim that he is a native and loyal citizen of the United States. He also listed as his permanent address as Clarendon, though doesn’t give a street address, but it’s likely his father’s house, where James and Margaret also lived. 

He was 24 on his application, and listed his occupation as “Oil Well Driller.” His description was 6 feet tall, with a prominent forehead, dark blue eyes, medium nose, small mouth, medium chin, dark hair, a dark-to-sandy complexion (likely from spending time outdoors in the sun drilling oil wells), and a face with “regular features.” No destination is listed for the passport, but he requests that it be sent to The Forest Oil Company in Pittsburgh, PA. Some accounts list the Forest Oil Company as one of the larger oil producers in Pennsylvania with more than 3,700 wells on 25,000 acres of land. A number of historic sources indicate it actually was a subsidiary of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company which was quickly becoming one of the largest oil companies in the United States, though other sources mention that Forest Oil was only “allied” with Standard Oil, though it’s not clear how different than is from a subsidiary. An account from an oil industry journal in 1902 announced Forest Oil merging with South Penn Oil Company, and said both were now part of Standard Oil. 

Either way, it’s important because Grace family legend has always had it that JW Grace worked for Standard Oil, and it appears he may have, though likely for subsidiary operations more than the main company. And his passport was actually for an adventure on behalf of Standard Oil, as he was going to Japan. This was a story long shared in the family. Not so much about what he did there, but just that he went to Japan for Standard Oil, and apparently a photo had existed showing him holding his arms out while diminutive Japanese men hung down from his arms. A number of my mom's cousins also remembered playing with the various Japanese clothes and artifacts he brought back from Japan that were in the family (where are they nowadays???? No one seems to know, which is annoying!!!). But no one really has any details about his Japanese trip, other than it was for Standard Oil.

So it's time for the professional historian to go to work. After some digging in period newspapers, and some secondary sources, I found that Standard Oil was interested in expanding its operations in other countries as well as the United States, and had drillers in a number of countries, trying to find oil, while the company was trying to duplicate its American strategy, by purchasing and merging existing companies, all while trying to sink new wells. In Japan, the company had to follow Japanese rules requiring that any foreign enterprises needed to have a percentage of Japanese ownership and so in 1901 it set up the International Oil Company as a subsidiary operation of Standard Oil, but including some Japanese directors, so that the company appeared to have some degree of local ownership, though the Capital Journal newspaper of November 22, 1907 reported that the company’s directors had been “well paid for nominal services.” It’s unknown how the company got its volunteers to go over to Japan, but it would make sense if it recruited workers from its own ranks from its various subsidiary operations. I'd love to know if he was recruited, or heard about it and volunteered, but that's one of those things lost to history. The International Oil Company had begun operations in Japan’s existing Echigo oil fields, in the Echigo region of Japan, mainly in the Niigata prefecture west of Tokyo, along the Sea of Japan, but apparently the area was encroached by several other oil companies, all owned by the Japanese, so the company sent its drillers north to Hokkaido.

And now my sleuthing in old newspapers also started paying off. The Wheeling Sunday Register on December 29, 1901 had an article that announced a group of “Local Drillers Left Last Evening for the Mikado Land, Where They Will Work for the Standard Oil Company.” The group left Wheeling the day before, headed for Cincinnati, at which point they would then go to New Orleans, and on to San Francisco, where they would sail for Japan on January 10, 1902. The article noted that everyone in the group signed a two- year contract with Standard Oil. John Grace from Warren, PA was listed among the 5 drillers heading to Japan, “where they will actively engage in their profession.” The group was mentioned again in the San Francisco Examiner on January 3, 1902, which noted that they were staying at the Palace Hotel, and that Standard Oil had reports of new oil wells “in the land of the Mikado” and ordered “a number of practical oil-well borers and engineers to go over there and make a report on the new discovery,” primarily in the area around Tokyo (written as “Tokio” by the paper). The article also announced that the group was leaving the following day, bound for Yokohama.

The trail of their journey is picked up on January 5, 1902 as the San Francisco Call and Post announced the departure of the Steamer America Maru, a steamship from the Toyo Kisen Kaisha line which specialized in America-Japan passages; the paper described the ship as “the crack flier of the Tokyo Kisen Kaisha Line and can reel off her thirteen knots day in and day out without any trouble.” The paper also listed the cabin passengers, which includes “J.W. Grace.”  His name pops up on January 11, 1902 in The Hawaiian Star, which lists him among the arriving passengers on the America Maru. A rival newspaper, the Honolulu Republican announced the ship’s arrival the next day, and also notes that the ship is carrying “a party of oil experts who are going to Yokohama in the interest of the Standard Oil Company.” It appears the America Maru wasn’t in Honolulu long, as the ship’s departure for points east (Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama) was announced the next day; in each of these articles, key passengers are listed, and they all include J.W. Grace.  

Can I just say how amazing it is that so many old newspapers have been digitized and can be searched in so easily? Half of my family research has been located through old newspapers, and I almost get mad now when I can't find anything in them! But these old papers allowed me to track JW's trip all the way to Japan, so while I didn't have a whole lot of details about what he was doing in Japan, I knew where he was almost to the day on his trip, which helped a little bit.

 

But the newspapers DID help me fill in a least a tiny blank in his Japan experience, because in my searching, I found that his name came up later in a newspaper article in the Washington (PA) Reporter from June 21, 1902; the article, titled “Bear Hunting in Far Japan” is a story based on an article from a Japanese newspaper in March 1902 about three “local boys” from the area who were in Japan, developing oil resources; among the three was “J.W. Grace.” (though he really wasn't from Washington PA, but had lived nearby across the border in West Virginia). The article mentions that the three were working the International Oil Company, so I knew I had the right oil men. The newspaper said that the original article was from Sapporo, Japan (on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido), and I knew John William Grace was in Sapporo, because the family has a photo of a young, bearded JW Grace taken in the photo studio of Mishima Tokiwa in Sapporo, Japan (who was one of the earliest photographers in Japan).

 

The article describes how JW and another employee accompany the superintendent of the Hokkaido branch of the company on a trip 100 miles north of Sapporo, to locate a well on one of the company’s leases. The trio explored around and found the location of the well lease, and JW’s colleague felt it would be a good location for a well because “it isn’t worth a blank for anything else.” After a picnic lunch, JW suggested that the group try a little trout fishing in a nearby creek, which their escorts agreed that the fish were plentiful in the stream, so the three headed up the creek, and the article noted that the trio were also armed, the superintendent carrying a .38 Colt pistol, JW carrying a double-barrel shotgun, and the superintendent a .44 Winchester. JW was in the lead. Accompanied by their escorts, who also had a dog, the party stopped short because the dog started barking; JW immediately stopped the group, sensing that something was up ahead that was upsetting the dog. The three moved forward slowly, and then Grace pointed to a large elm tree in a stand of bamboo, where the others could see a bear in the tree, with a cub just above it. It was suggested that the superintendent try to scare the bear out of the tree as he had the gun with the longest range, and he took a shot that knocked some bark away. The other two men also fired, and that brought the bear out of the tree, apparently unharmed. But then the three realized they now had an angry mama bear on the ground, who was now heading their way, and they opened fire as it charged at them, before JW stopped the bear in its tracks with his shotgun, and then his coworker finished off the bear at close range. The coworker claimed the baby bear as a pet, and named it Grover. The Japanese escorts took the mama bear’s body, had it skinned for the superintendent, and they kept the meat for themselves. The article noted at the end that JW didn’t get his trout, but was hoping to come back, perhaps accompanied by a cannon. 

 

I don’t know if JW remained in Japan beyond his two-year contract (though when Richard died in 1903, his will noted that John was still in Japan, but the will was likely written months before his death, so John may have been at that time)
, but I found an article in several American newspapers from 1905 (it might have been a newswire story that others picked up) that recounted the experience of several drillers from Japan who had returned to the US. The article said that the men were among the original nine in 1901 who were picked and went over (and were likely colleagues of J.W. Grace). The men indicated that the International Oil Company was actually reducing the number of American workers employed, because over the past few years the Japanese were proving to be very competent at drilling and refining oil, and that “there is nothing there to attract a man who desires to work there.” The man quoted in the article said that of the nine men who went out in 1901 from Pittsburgh, most had already returned to the United States; he estimated that maybe there were only two left. He also pointed out the discrepancy in what the Japanese workers were willing to accept as pay versus an American; the Japanese workers were willing to work for $12 a month, while the Americans were used to getting $6 a day, and since Japanese rules prevented anyone from going into business as an independent operator, it wasn’t worth it for Americans to work in Japan. The man did say that after four years in Japan, he knew the language well enough to not need an interpreter, and he got to go all over Japan, so J.W. Grace likely also got to explore Japan and learn some of the language during his stay there. In 1907, Standard Oil essentially ended its drilling and exploring operations in Japan, selling or leasing its lands and resources to Nippon Oil, a Japanese company. But by then, John was long gone, back in the United States.

 

I know for a fact he was back in the US by 1905, because that's when he married my great-grandmother, Ida Belle Barry.

JW Grace in Sapporo, Japan

 

 

 

But wait, there's more!

 Digging for newspaper accounts on James Lawrence Grace allowed me to actually find the little ads that Margaret had put in newspapers, searching for him. She did put ads in papers in Ireland and the US, and I spotted ones in an Oklahoma City newspaper (where their brother Thomas was living), as well as Pittsburgh. It seemed like Margaret really didn't know where James was. It does make me wonder if his other siblings knew where he was and Margaret wasn't kept in the loop, so to speak. After awhile, I really got the impression that after Richard Grace's death, his children went their separate ways and likely didn't really keep in touch with each other. I would have thought that if James was really in danger or something had happened, that his surviving older brothers (Thomas or John William) could have gone after him, though maybe not. Maybe they didn't care? That's one of the mysteries I can't solve, and that will always haunt me, because there's literally no way to find out.

 It's also interesting to point out that even though Margaret came to Glasgow searching for James, and got a lead on him, she wasn't ultimately successful, in that she went home empty-handed, with no James. In fact, it wasn't until 1925 that he returned with her. And for the most part, that ended their stories. There were a few city directory entries showing them living together, then nothing, until I located their death certificates. Both died in hospitals, and neither body was claimed, but instead the bodies were disposed of through donation. A bit odd it seemed, but then again, that's how medical schools get their cadavers.

But thanks again to a lot of online resources from the Pennsylvania State Archives, I was able to actually find a digitized register of deceased individuals whose bodies were donated to medical schools ... and I was able to track down what happened exactly to the bodies of Margaret and James Grace. Both went to medical schools in the Philadelphia area, and both bodies were dissected over the span of two years, and then the remains were buried in a Philadelphia cemetery who had a specific area just for the remains of medical research subjects. Kind of creepy, but then again, dissecting cadavers gives medical students important lessons that help them become good surgeons and doctors. And finding the information allowed me to close the book, so to speak, on the two Grace siblings.

But it turns out that I wasn't yet done with James. I was researching the other Grace family in their town in Pennsylvania, trying to establish a definite family connection between them and my Grace ancestors. When I saw in Margaret Grace's hospital record that it mentioned that "her brother, Thomas Grace" had been an inmate at the hospital, I was a bit perplexed, because Thomas had a fairly defined trail out of Pennsylvania, and I could account for him up until the 1930s, so it seemed unlikely that he'd ever returned there. So I ordered the file, and it turned out to be the "other" Thomas Grace, from the other Grace family. His file was interesting, and it gave me hints that possibly the two families were related, but it also mentioned that other family members had been inmates there at the hospital, so I reached out to the archivist, and asked if there were any other files for a person named "Grace." She got back to me, and mentioned that there was a file for someone named "James Lawrence Grace."

Um, that was unexpected.  So I immediately ordered the file, and waited for it to be scanned and emailed to me. And yes, it was great-great-Uncle James. It actually was two files, because he had been in the hospital for several weeks in the early 1930s, and then for a longer stint in the 1950s. And it was interesting, because in a way it was two different guys, because the younger one apparently had been avoiding alcohol for a period of time, and may have been in the hospital because it was thought he was dealing with a brain tumor, and he was blaming the possibility on a venereal disease he contracted in 1917 ... likely in France while serving with the British Army, which was my guess. He also had the effects of Malaria, which probably came from his service in Burma. The doctors there ultimately concluded he was likely suffering from anemia. The patient interview was interesting. He remembered his mother's name, and indicated she died 11 days after his birth, which doesn't quite match up with her death register, but then again, it's not like he was going to remember that. He knew the deaths of his siblings, though couldn't quite remember their ages of death correctly; he thought Michael was 60 when he died (my research suggests he was 41), Patrick, who was 35 (he was likely 30, though that's a guess on my part), Richard  Jr. dying at age 15 (fairly close, it was 21 according to the dates on his birth and death registries), which James blamed on meningitis caused by a knitting needle being shoved up his nose! And he has John dying at 46, which was spot on, as I suspect they were the closest of the siblings. He did mention Thomas alive at 62, which was also close, as he was still alive and 60 at the time. No mention of Bridget, or even of Margaret, which is interesting, as he was likely living with her at the time. I wonder if they just didn't get along.

It does mention that he started working in the oil industry at 16, first by cutting wood to be used in the steam boilers on drilling rigs, and then operating a hydraulic jack to remove pipes on abandoned wells, and then by age 20 becoming a tool dresser, and working in oil fields up to the time he was in the hospital. He did say that he went to India (technically yes, since Burma was part of India at that time) at age 24 and worked for an oil company and apparently also a gold prospecting company! He then indicated he joined the British Amy in 1914, and then was discharged in 1919, serving in the Royal Engineers and remaining in England from 1919 to 1925, coming back to Pennsylvania.  

So my research was right!  Hot damn! He didn't mention getting sick and getting evacuated back to England, or working in England from 1915 until drafted in 1916, but everything else matched up. He says he had malaria in 1912 and was ill for several months, and then was sick in 1915 from something called "tropical sprue," and that may have been what sidelined him early in the war. He also admitted to getting VD in 1917, and being treated for it in England in 1920. He also claimed to have abstained from alcohol since 1920, which for a Grace male would be a pretty incredible feat (my family doesn't have a good history with booze). 

He was kept for observation for a couple of weeks, and released. So that first file really supported the research, and as a complete bonus, it had a PHOTO of him from 1933!  As far as I know, NO ONE else in the family had a photo of James. So that was a startling surprise. He did resemble my great-grandfather John, though in 1933, James was leaner and clearly older than the only portrait I have of John, and he also clearly had a lot of miles on his face. But he looked like a Grace. And now added to the passport photo of Margaret, I had three pictures from the Grace family, which was more than I think anyone knew existed.

The next file was from 1950, when James was 71. This time he was admitted because of "Psychosis due to Alcohol," and ordered by the court to be there for 90 days. There was no abstaining anymore, he was a SERIOUS drinker by this time. And his mind wasn't quite as sharp. He still remembered he was born in Ireland, and he remembered his father's name, but Ellen Dreelan from the 1933 report was now "Kitty Dreeland." The 1950 report did point out that Margaret was a patient there and had been there for 3 years. So it's interesting that her file doesn't ever mention that James visited her during her stay ... but yet he was actually in the hospital at the same time?  It was a huge complex from old photos that I've seen, so perhaps neither knew the other was in the hospital ... or cared.

His memory appears to be somewhat sharp, somewhat vague. He again reported that his mother died two weeks after he was born, and also mentions his father remarrying, and the family immigrating and going straight to Pennslyvania. He also mentions going to India and drilling oil wells in "Upper Burma," starting in 1906. He then mentions he couldn't get out of India due to the war, and so he worked for the British until 1916 when he was sent to France to join the British artillery, though he then said when he was with the British, he was made a captain (in 1933 he said "Private") and put in charge of water well drilling to supply water to the troops. So at least that part of the story appears to check out (well drilling, not being a captain). He claimed he came back to Pennsylvania in 1919. He also claimed he worked at the hospital in the late 1930s, though the interviewer noted that hospital records show he did work at the hospital briefly in 1943, and was discharged from being drunk on the job! The file also recounts some of the evidence of his prodigious drinking, with drunken sprees lasting from a week to six months in length, and his later escapades, where he'd buy 2 to 3 gallons of wine and drink it until it was gone, and once that was gone, drinking anything that had alcohol, whether it be bay rum, hair tonic, or "canned heat," whatever that is! But apparently he was a relatively pleasant drunk, and caused no problems, and was even very courteous even when highly intoxicated.

The interesting part is when James recounts his family background, because it's difficult to determine what could be factual, and what is utter fantasy, though some things are really clearly wrong. He claims his grandparents were named Thomas and Ellen Grace. Not sure where that came from, as it appears from the research that Richard's father was named Michael. He does remember Richard's name, and said he died at 56, which was actually fairly likely, as Richard's birth date is a bit questionable, either 1840 or 1846 ... so he was either 57 or 63 when he died. James actually listed what he said were some of Richard's siblings ... Julia and James. Maybe? If I could actually find more information on Richard, I could try to confirm that, but it's nearly impossible to do so at this point.  In this part of the file, he does remember that his mother's name was Ellen Dreelan ... BUT he indicates that she died in her 70s, "near Detroit in 1928 or '29." Umm, no. Definitely not. But that does make me wonder if perhaps he means Bridget?  Though he does mention her later when he's asked about his siblings; he mentions Margaret (and has her age right), he mentions John dying at 46 of a heart attack, again interesting that he knows that one well. He mentions that Thomas was dead at age 70, though in this 1950 interview Thomas was still alive, and would be for another 3 years, when he did die at age 80. This time he says Patrick died at 55, Michael died at 74, and Richard Jr. died at 32, though he reports again the knitting needle up the nose ... so maybe that actually was true?!? He also mentioned Bridget died at 65, which could be true, I could never find her after the early 1900s because her name was so common.

He does then detail his various whereabouts in the 1920s and beyond, apparently moving around a bit doing some oil field work, doing some woodcutting, taking care of cattle on a farm. He told of being a tool dresser in the West Virginia oil fields for six years, and then in Burma for 9 years as a driller. He went on further to say that after the war broke out the British engaged him to help work on fortifications on an island off Bombay, which is actually plausible ... as there are multiple islands off Bombay, and many of them held fortifications. He also said he was sent to the Persian Gulf to help put oil wells in order that the "Germans and Arabs had destroyed," which again is actually plausible, because the British did send a force from India into the Persian Gulf and landed to take over Ottoman Empire holdings, including oil fields. He then said he was sent in 1916 to France where he joined the artillery, but they found out he was a driller, so they had him drill water wells, and he did it until the end of the war.

He did say he was a captain in the British Army, which is so NOT plausible. He also claimed that when he was on leave in Paris, he met an American general and talked to him, and the General said he should join the American forces, but that he was too valuable to the British, who refused to let him go. That actually could be a bit believable. Though he then goes on to report that he returned to Pennsylvania in 1919, and detailed some places he lived and worked in the early 1920s ... but of course, there's a paper trail to show that he was still in England and didn't come back until 1925. But there is the possibility that these could have been places he lived after he came back to Pennsylvania, because the details he offered were quite detailed. 

He also admitted to never having married, and claimed that he was busy in India during his marrying years ... but then also admitting that in Burma he had a native mistress, an Indian girl who was the daughter of his cook, and that it was a common custom for the American men to have a native girl share their bed. He also claimed that he got VD in India, but that a local doctor cured him. But I think his interview from the 1930s was more accurate there, and he likely got it in France. He did remember coming to the hospital, possibly because of his VD, but he thought it was the late 1920s ... instead of the early 1930s.

It does sound like his hospital stay was beneficial, as he was attending AA meetings at the hospital and doing chores around the place. Interestingly, after he was discharged, the hospital followed him after he had been admitted to another hospital several times over the next few years, including when he essentially became a resident at the other hospital in 1954. 

 The file also noted that in case of his death, to notify several of the other Grace family members there in town ... so there was a relationship with them. Though when he died in 1959, it's unknown if they were contacted, but either way it doesn't matter, because his body wasn't claimed, as I noted earlier.

I'm amazed at how much I've been able to find out about this man. It's also ironic that I know so little about my own great-grandfather, but yet his brother I know more than anyone else among the siblings. Enough details of his life match up so that I can reconstruct his life pretty well, and there's so many colorful stories. He was always the most mysterious family member, because everyone had heard of him, but knew so few of the details ... but now I had them all. The mystery of James Lawrence Grace had been solved, and I was the one who did it.

But one thought does continue to nag at me ... the one person who would have REALLY enjoyed learning all of this was Mom. And she wasn't around for me to share it with.  I did share it with some of her cousins, and that helped, but it's still not quite the same. 

But I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep on digging into the Grace family background, but also in all the other families. 

James Grace in 1933

 

Go East, Young Man

Before I get into the mysteries of James, the youngest Grace son, first we have to talk about oil. Because when it comes to the Grace family, oil is absolutely crucial to their story and their lives. Because by the time they came to the US, Pennsylvania was deep in the grips of petroleum fever. The "oil business" is usually traced back to 1859 and Edwin Drake's oil well in Titusville, PA. It was a sensation to be sure, and was followed in short order by people drilling for oil all over Western Pennsylvania. Interestingly enough, this was LONG before the advent of the automobile, which today is the one of biggest users of petroleum. No, back then petroleum was viewed as useful for illumination and lubrication, and the biggest product (after some refining) was kerosene.

 It's hard to imagine today the absolute mania for oil back in Pennsylvania, especially after the Civil War, though once oil was found elsewhere in the area, especially West Virginia and then Ohio, and further west from there, it caused endless get-rich-quick dreams. And one of the areas where oil was struck was near Clarendon, PA.

And Clarendon was where the Graces went after coming over from Ireland. Initially in my research, I wasn't sure why. And no one in the family ever seemed to know why the family came to Clarendon. The only big industry in the town seemed to be tanneries, because the town was in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest area (even though the park hadn't been set up when the Graces moved there), and was surrounded by hemlocks, the perfect tree bark needed for the tanning process. And the only surviving census showing the Graces in Clarendon (1900, since the 1890 Census was lost to a fire), shows Richard Grace as a laborer in a tannery). 

But as I was able to uncover more about the boys, I found out that all of them got involved in the oil industry. The first hint I got was when Ellen died; her obituary mentioned that while James and Margaret were still living at home in Clarendon, "Mike, John and Thomas" were living in Sistersville, West Virginia and Bridget was married and living in Ohio. I was actually able to find after that a marriage registry for Bridget; in 1896 she married an older man named John MacDonald, an oil driller from Fostoria, OH. At the time they were in western Ohio, it was undergoing a major oil boom. But when I looked at Sistersville, it was going an immense oil boom in the late 1890s (some sources say it was the center of the American oil industry briefly in the mid 1890s, with a population that went from 600 to 7000 or more in short order). And as I looked deeper, the few sources I found told me that all three of the Grace boys there were oil men. I don't think at that point any of them were leasing land and putting in their own wells. No, they were labor. Tool dressers, riggers, and drillers, likely.  Mike was the first to marry, but also was an odd one, because it appeared he may have also been going by Bertram at times, or Bertram Michael Grace, though he was still referred to as Mike in the family. I'm not sure where Bertram came from, though it may have been a middle name, because once in America, many of the Graces suddenly sprouted and used middle names. John was John William Grace, or "J.W. Grace" in newspaper accounts, while Mike was "B.M. Grace in newspaper mentions or property deeds, and James was James Lawrence Grace, or "J.L. Grace" later in newspaper mentions. And in Ohio, Bridget went by Elizabeth, which might have been her middle name. Margaret and Thomas were the only ones who didn't appear to use middle names much. From what I understand through research, middle names were not usually on any official documents, like birth or baptism records in Ireland, but quickly became used to separate all the family members with the same names, thanks to the naming convention! So while a family may have had several generations named "John Grace," it was easy to separate them by referring to them with their middle name, like "John William" in polite conversation.

 Further locating of the sons was helped out inadvertently by Richard Grace dying in 1903 of influenza, because I actually managed to find his will on FamilySearch through a catalog search. And his will listed each of his children, and where they were at that time, so I was able to really locate them. Mike was in Woodsfield, OH, where I could find his marriage information and his children's information eventually; Bridget and her husband were in Cygnet, OH, which was ground zero for a huge oil boom in western Ohio, and I was able to find them there in a Census document and later some legal documents; Thomas and James were in Jacksonville, WV, which was another huge oil boom area known as the Stringtown Field, and John was in Japan (more about that later!).

But James disappears after that. And he was already part of a mystery, because everyone in the family among my mom and her cousins had heard of him, but they all had different stories, some of which I already disproved. A few heard he never immigrated with the family ... wrong, that was Richard Jr., and he was already deceased back in Ireland. My finding their passenger list, Ellen's obituary, and now Richard's will all disproved that. But the prevailing story was that he was in India ... he was in the British Army in India ... no, he was in the Royal Navy ... no, he was in the British Army, and he had been wounded, and his sister took care of him and nursed him back to health. Which sister? Well, his sister (some of the cousins didn't know there were two daughters, they thought there was just one). No, he was in Burma. And that's where it was left. No one really knew about James (some didn't even know his name, he was just the brother who was in the army in India), though everyone had heard of him, likely through their fathers, who were all the sons of John William Grace.

 

So I set out to work. I had subscribed to FindMyPast, the British genealogical site, to track my English ancestors, but I also used it to find anything on the Irish ones as well, and didn't have much luck. I used it to see if there were any military records for James, though unfortunately I soon learned that a great many WWI military records were destroyed when the building they were in got bombed during the Blitz in World War Two. Either way, I didn't find anything on James in the military records. But for the hell of it, while trying to dig things up on the English ancestors in the newspaper search on FMP, I tried searching on James, just using "James Grace" as a search term.

 

And I found something intriguing; a story in the Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette (England) from December 10, 1915 describes a meeting of the Crediton Board of Guardians, a group of trustees overseeing Crediton’s workhouse for the poor, and describes how a candidate for a position as porter had to withdraw, because a close relative had been killed, and didn’t want to take the post as it was too far from his home. The article noted that the clerk of the board “had received an application from Sapper James Grace, of the Bombay Volunteer Artillery, who stated that during the last eight years he had been in the oil fields of Burma, serving in the capacity of engineer. On the outbreak of the war, he had joined the British cause, but was shortly afterwards taken ill, subsequently being invalided to Exeter, where, after being restored to health, he was discharged. He had for some little time been employed in the Devon Voluntary Aid office, where he received information of the vacant situation, for which he was now applying.” At first blush, it could have been a completely different James Grace, but the fact that he was working in the oil fields of Burma does sound like the family story, since I knew he was an oil driller … so he could have worked for the “Burmah Oil Company,” (as it was spelled at the time) or he could have followed in his brother John William Grace’s steps, and headed to the Far East to drill for oil an exotic land (note that Great Britain ruled Burma at the time, and it was considered a province of India, so technically he was in India as much as he was in Burma).

 

 Nothing else came up, so I expanded further into "James Lawrence Grace," and suddenly MORE popped up. An article from The Western Times in November 4, 1916, nearly a year later, another newspaper in Exeter mentions a “James Lawrence Grace,” who was ordered to appear at the local barracks and be conscripted into the military as part of the Military Service Act of 1916, which made all men 18-41 eligible to be drafted. Apparently he showed up, collected a day’s pay, and then went AWOL. He was arrested, and claimed he was an American citizen, and had been living in the United States since childhood … which was true for our family’s James Lawrence Grace. The article gave his address as Sun Street in Exeter, and said that he had claimed that he became a citizen at age 21, but did not receive any papers at the time but had “been in communication with the United States;” so the local authorities had him escorted to an American Consul.

 

 A slightly different story, one with better details, appeared in the November 4, 1916 Devon and Exeter Gazette: the article focused on the case at Exeter Police Court and the issue with James Lawrence Grace, “described as a boring engineer” (English term for oil well driller, not an engineer who was dull) of Sun Street, and the charges of being absent without leave since October 28. Grace was asked what he would plead to the charges, and he replied that he really didn’t know whether he was “guilty or not under the circumstances,” claiming he was registered in England as an alien from a neutral country, “being an American citizen” (the US was not involved in the war at this time). When the clerk asked if he was willing to serve, Grace replied that he did not tell the officers in the recruiting barracks in Exeter that he was willing to serve. A clerk at the barracks indicated that Grace received a notice on October 12 directing him to report on October 28; Grace did personally go to the barracks on that date, documents were drawn up, and apparently, he signed a document about a separation allowance. The clerk said that he was considered a reservist under the Military Service Act, he received his 2 shillings, 7 cents pay, and signed for it, and then disappeared. 

 

 Grace said he went to the barracks to be examined by the doctors, claiming he “did not do this with a view to joining the Army there and then, but wished to undergo such examination in order to know the state of his health, which at the present time was not good.” He then claimed that he and another man were giving a pass by a soldier at the barracks, allowed to leave, but told to return the following Monday. He then claimed that he had been made an American citizen at age 21 (which would have been in 1899-1900, as he was 37 in 1916) in Pennsylvania, but when questioned further, said he didn’t have a certain paper, which the court clerk told him was necessary to “legally establish the manner,” at which point Grace said investigations were being made about his American citizenship and asked for the case to be held over for a few days, at which point that a recruiting representative said he would be given every opportunity for this, though he would have to stay at the barracks.

 

 So this helps to confirm that this was really our James Lawrence Grace, and also confirms the original story from earlier in 1916 in Devon. The story continued in 1917, with a follow-up in The Western Times on February 19, 1917. The small story indicated that Private J. L. Grace was charged a few days previously with being absent without leave since earlier in the month, and that Grace admitted it. He had been handed over to the military, but he stated that he went to the American Consul in Plymouth to get a passport, using a pass from the Exeter barracks on medical grounds, but did not come back on the date stipulated. The article mentioned again that he came to Exeter from “just before the war” from Bombay, where he had been in the Volunteers. The story ended with Grace being handed over to the military again. And then his trail goes cold; we don’t know if he did try to seek an American consul, or just tried to avoid the military whatever way he could, but he got caught up in the military draft, whether he wanted to serve or not, and lost his three-month effort to avoid rejoining the military, and was presumably shipped out to the Western Front. As for naturalization, he doesn’t appear in available Warren County, PA naturalization files; only Richard appears to be the only family member naturalized, but James could have filed papers elsewhere, though he may also have generally just claimed to have been born in the United States, like his older brothers did. And technically, he may have actually been naturalized because he was still a minor when Richard filed his papers, but there wasn’t any papers for James to prove it in England.

 

 But while his story appeared to end in 1917, continued research resulted in a discovery that that really broke open the story in a huge way. A front-page article found in the Glasgow Sunday Times on December 16, 1923 was about a woman from Warren, Pennsylvania named Margaret Grace who came to Glasgow looking for her brother James L. Grace. Jackpot! The story read:

 

A remarkable story was told me to-day by an American lady, who has just arrived in Glasgow from Warren, Pennsylvania, in the hope of tracing her long-lost brother.

 

She has come to Glasgow – a journey of 3500 miles – to find James L. Grace, said to have been a patient in a city hospital.

 

Grace, it is stated, joined the Royal Engineers on coming to Britain from India, where he had been engaged in the oil trade.

 

The missing soldier served with distinction in the British Army for four years, and is understood to have lived for several months in the South of England {note: Exeter is in the south of England}. He was discharged on the 21^st March, 1919, and having failed to learn of his whereabouts from the Department of State in America, Miss Margaret Grace communicated with Mr. Lloyd George, who was then Premier. She received a reply to the effect that James L. Grace had served with the Royal Engineers, and resided in lodgings for a period at 17 Sun Street, Exeter.

 

After being demobilized he is stated to have met several friends from America then in England, and at a later date to have been employed as an engineer at an oil works in the Midlands.

 

Advertisements soliciting information about the ex-soldier appeared in several newspapers, and in reply to one of these Miss Grace received a letter from her brother, who was then a patient in a Glasgow hospital, explaining that he had lost the power of one of his arms, and owing to this infirmity had been rendered unfit for work.

 

The ex-soldier made a fervent appeal for money, in response to which his sister wired a hundred dollars and later a draft for a considerable sum of money.

 

The communication, Miss Grace believes, was written by her brother, but a part of the money was returned to her, and despite the most exhaustive inquiries since, she had been unable to obtain any further information concerning him.

 

His sister now believes he may be resident either in England or Ireland, and hopes that any of the hospital medical superintendents or patients who have met the man will communicate with her at the General Post Office, Glasgow.

 

There is the possibility that Miss Grace has been duped by someone posing as her brother, but the lady does not hold that view.

 

 A follow up story appeared in the Glasgow Sunday Times a week later, on December 23, 1923: 

     American Lady’s Search of Scotland For Soldier Brother Who Went Missing

 

Owing to the extensive publicity afforded by “The Sunday Post” in the search for James L. Grace, the missing ex-soldier, whose sister has come from America and is searching Scotland for information, two important letters have been received.

 

One of the letters is from a man in Kelvindale Street, Glasgow, who states that James L. Grace served with him in France in No. 3 Water Boring Section of the Royal Engineers, being demobilized at La Flague immediately after the Armistice.

 

Another hospital is from a nurse in Dysart Union Hospital, Thornton, Fife, in which is enclosed a snapshot phot of a man answering the description of the missing soldier.

 

The photograph was taken while he was a patient in Horton War Hospital, Epsom, Surrey, but the name is given as J. W. Grace.

 

There doesn’t appear to be any further follow-up articles, but the Glasgow articles do confirm the earlier articles from the Exeter newspaper, that the James Grace in those articles was my wayward great-great-uncle, James Grace. So the story that he had been in India or Burma with the oil trade was true, and he did join the British Army there, and was ultimately sent to England, possibly to recover after an illness, and appears to have been discharged after his illness. Then he was out of the military, and somehow ended up in Exeter/Devon, working various jobs for several years, and then was drafted in 1916 when he would have been eligible under the draft act enacted then, though he tried to get out of it by claiming he was American into 1917. No naturalization documents have not been found for him, nor any passport application, though those were not in common use before World War One, and if the British knew he was born in Ireland, to them he essentially WAS a British subject still, especially as he couldn’t come up with the necessary paperwork to prove otherwise.

 

I had solved the mystery of James Lawrence Grace!  How cool was this?  The lack of surviving British military records from World War One made it hard to confirm the water boring engineer story. I did email the Royal Engineers Museum in England, and the curator there admitted they had no personnel records, but they also said that if the military had found out he was a boring engineer, they would have put him to work in that particular job, which was crucially needed on the Western Front, as supplies of water were difficult to secure during the war. She also directed me to the unit's war diary, and while it doesn't mention individual soldiers (other than a couple of officers), at least I know what they did and where they did it, as it's quite detailed about the wells they dug and how much time it took them.  

And while I've not found any newspaper articles about him serving as an oil driller in Burma, I did find a LOT of articles in American newspapers about other young men going to Burma to drill. It was surprisingly more common than I had ever thought, and from their articles, I had a very good idea on the things he experienced over there.

 

Nor have I been able to find any additional information about what he did in England after the war ended, but at least I have what the government reported to Margaret, which was printed in the newspaper, and that seems fairly plausible.  

But while I essentially solved the mystery, it turns out that there was even more information I was able to locate!