100 Days Men: A memorial of Eugene Place

The Leonard line, as it runs through Michael, has ancestors who fought in every conflict since Europeans arrived on this continent. From King Philip’s war through World War 2, his ancestors have served, but thankfully none in his direct line have lost their lives in combat. Today, for Memorial Day, we remember one of his extended family members who gave the ultimate sacrifice: Eugene H Place.

Eugene, who was Michael’s 4x Great Uncle, lost his life in the Civil War. He was the grandson of one of the first Americans to settle in the Wisconsin territory (Finding the Yeomans), and came from a family that was staunchly committed to Abolition. In-fact, the farmers of Eastern Racine County were notoriously anti-slavery. Eugene’s parents, Thomas and Susan Place, owned a large farm in Mount Pleasant, WI in the neighborhood of the unknown safe house that Joshua Glover was smuggled to after he was freed from the Milwaukee jail. His older brother Luther enlisted as a regular in the Union army when he was 19 years old. Eugene, at 16, was the oldest son left to help on the farm. Many of the boys Luther’s age enlisted the day the war broke out, and Eugene’s younger sister would marry one of those men when he returned from service.

“100 Days Men”

Thomas and Susan had 4 sons. Luther was born in 1844, Eugene in 1846, Thomas Jr. in 1847, and Theron in 1853. Thomas was lost as an infant. By the Spring of 1864, when Eugene turned 18 years old, the Union campaign in Georgia was gaining momentum. The Governor of Ohio proposed a surge of lightly trained soldiers to replace seasoned troops who were doing rear-guard duty. The concept of a short-term enlistment for these rear guard troops was immediately adopted by President Lincoln. The 80,000 soldiers who joined were known as “100 Days Men” and Eugene enlisted 3 months after this 18th birthday (100 Days Men). The Place family’s two oldest sons were now serving in the Union Army.

The impact of the 100 Days Men like Eugene was just what the Union had hoped for. By the time they mustered out in September of 1864 Atlanta had fallen. Sherman was resting and preparing for his glorious March to the Sea while the regulars re-positioned to their original posts.

The Wisconsin 39th Regimen mustered into service on 3 Jul 1864, and he was assigned to Company D. The 3 Wisconsin 100 Days regimens were sent to Memphis after a week of training. They performed guard and picket duty while the veteran troops they replaced shifted to the battle for Atlanta.

On 21 Aug 1864 the Wisconsin 39th was the only of the 100 Days forces from Wisconsin to see combat. Confederate Calvary under Nathan Bedford Forrest attempted a raid in Memphis to capture Union commanders, but they were ultimately rebuffed. During the time of the raid, Eugene was likely already in hospital in Memphis suffering through his last days of the disease that would take his life. He died on 23 Aug 1864 at the age of 18. His body was returned to Racine where it was buried in a family plot in Mound Cemetery.

Mound Cemetery

Thomas Place arrived in Wisconsin Territory at age 16, before the Native Americans had been pushed off this land. The first winter Thomas worked for the French fur trader in the area. He became acquainted enough with the local Potowatomi band that he was invited in the winter of 1835 to a mound-building performed for the death of a tribal leader. Those ceremonies were held in an area of Racine that was dotted with burial mounds. Now almost 30 years later, that land had become the cemetery Thomas buried his middle son.

Photo of a granite headstone reading "Eugene H Place", Company D 39 Regimen, Wisconsin Volunteers. Feb 28, 1846, Aug 23, 1864. Son of Thomas and Susan Place.

The impact of the 100 Days Men like Eugene was just what the Union had hoped for. By the time they mustered out in September of 1864 Atlanta had fallen. Sherman was resting and preparing for his glorious March to the Sea while the regulars re-positioned to their original posts. 3 men of the 39th died in combat, while nearly 10 times that many would fall to disease. In November President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address memorializing the men like Eugene who died for this country. By April 1865 the war ended.

Eternal Sacrifice, and Gratitude

Michael’s maternal line was just starting to taste their first freedom in this country. That was in no small part due to the sacrifices of men like Eugene H. Place. The Place family’s commitment to the ideals that people like Michael should be treated like human beings gave his later ancestors some of the rights the Place’s themselves held dear. The could now own property, vote, and to serve this country.

Without the sacrifices of men like Eugene, generations of people like Michael with African ancestry would likely still be enslaved in the brutal system the Southern States fought so traitorously to preserve. On this Memorial Day, it’s with profound thanks for the wonderful life we all enjoy today that we thank Private Place, and the countless others like him, for their service, their commitment, and their sacrifice.

A Profile in Political Courage: E. A. Morse
An Ancestor Stands Against a Tyrant and Fellow Republican

The political upheaval the United States has experienced over the last decade can seem so extreme it’s historically unprecedented. At times it has felt that the country was facing a challenge to its democratic traditions unlike anything we’ve ever faced. However, our family history reminded us that the country has faced this political tyranny before, when one man wielded control over the White House and both houses of Congress due to Republicans not having the will to stand up to an American despot. It also reminded us that we can celebrate that ancestor who dethroned that tyrant with a courage and sacrifice that seemed completely absent from today’s Republican Party.

Elmer Morse, portrait, c. 1910 (P17-0054) — Elmer Addison Morse, c. 1910

Michael’s 2xGreat Grandfather Elmer Addison Morse was born and raised in the farming community of Franksville, WI but he was elected to Congress in 1906 as a Representative from Antigo, WI. E.A. (as he was known) was aligned with the Progressive wing of the Republican Party and was one of the founding members of the National Progressive Republican League along with Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette in 1911.

The Progressive bloc of the Republican party came from the Panic of 1893 (Panic of 1893) which was so devistating to the economy many started to re-evaluate their political positions. The Republican party had become very business aligned, matching the historic position of the Democrats, but more and more citizens in the electorate saw the monopoly’s, the trusts, the Guilded Age businessmen as the main problem in the United States. At the same time there was a clear undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the greed of the market praying on people as they increasingly left the farm for urban jobs, and a feeling that the Federal government should protect people from predatory business as well as use it’s power to improve the quality of life amongst the public¹. The Progressive wing of the Republican party was born of this movement, as politicians across the country started openly agitating for this new political perspective.

“I believe the Republican party is progressive to the core, and I want it thoroughly understood that I am not a stand-patter in any sense of the word.

The Republican party was born to make men free from slavery, and I believe that there is vitality enough in it still to free this generation from the aggressions of Trusts and oppression of Monoploy, and to protect the remainder of our natural resources from being plundered by the favored few, to the entitlement of the many.”

E.A. Morse, 1910

By 1900 the Progressives were gaining steam, with the ascension of Vice President Teddy Roosevelt to be the 26th President, Bob La Follette being elected Governor of Wisconsin, and a significant bloc in the Republican-majority Congress. Upon his election to President in 1904 Roosevelt leaned in to his Progressive nature and pushed reforms such as eliminating the rampant corruption in politics at all levels, seizing land valuable in natural resources from private companies to ensure those now Public resources would be used for the public good, initiating actions to break up the large company “trusts” that monopolized large sectors of the US economy, creating Federal agencies to regulate the safety of Food, Medicine, and Meat for the first time.

During first Roosevelt’s Presidency, and then Morse’s time in Congress, the main block to many Progressive reforms was the Republican Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon. “Uncle Joe” Cannon was a conservative Republican and led the “Old Guard/Stand Pat” wing of the Republican Party. He served as Speaker of the House starting in 1903 and quickly amassed an unprecedented amount of power. He was not only Speaker, but he was also the chair of the House Rules Committee which determined how bills could be debated, amended, and voted upon. Bills couldn’t reach the floor unless Cannon approved of them, and he alone could determine what form they would take if they reached the floor for a vote. Additionally, he solely appointed all committee members, of both parties, which ensured that the blossoming group of Progressive Republicans were kept off of important committees and could leverage very little influence.

His power was such that even the Presidency was diminished under Cannon! While Cannon was a key foe to Teddy Roosevelt, the election of William Howard Taft in 1908 led to Uncle Joe taking complete control of the Republican Party and thus dictating the actions of the Senate as well as the President. One man now controlled two of the three branches of government.

In the 1908 Presidential election, the majority of Republicans (and all of the Progressives) ran on a platform of lowering tariffs. Protectionist tariffs had been passed years earlier, but since they were designed more to protect business interests than consumer interests, prices on key consumer items had skyrocketed. Cannon understood his power, and sensing that Taft was not as formidable as Roosevelt, he decided to break Taft of any Progressive leanings while crippling the Progressives. Against the wishes of almost the entire party, Cannon ensured that the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff was signed into law.

The tariff bill was a thinly veiled punishment to those that challenged Cannon, and a threat to those that supported him, in a bid to ensure they continued that support.

Instead of the promised reduction of tariffs, Payne-Aldrich raised them on many of the 2000+ items listed. The few reductions were largely given out as political favors. The Republicans ultimately felt that failing to pass any tariff bill would be seen as a fiasco for the party, and they chose party above the relief they promised their constituents. Cannon recognized that and used it to bend the party to his will, and even many of the reformers (likely even our E.A.) fell in line and supported the bill.

Time_Magazine_-_first_cover — Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon on the cover of the first issue of Time Magazine

Taft spun the bill that had been forced upon him by Cannon as “the best tariff bill that the Republican Party ever passed.” Taft also admitted that he put the interests of the party over the interests of the country: “I believe…the interests of the party required me to sacrifice the accomplishment of certain things in the revision of the tariff which I had hoped for, in order to maintain party solidarity.” Cannon had become the single man in charge of the American political system, and he effectively controlled both the Executive and Congressional branches of government. From this time on he was widely referred to as “The Tyrant from Illinois”.

E.A. Morse ran openly against “Cannonism” and was a part of a minority group of Republicans that bucked the party and stood up for what they felt was right. They wished to protect and expand the democratic institutions of this country and they did so at the risk of their political careers.

The Progressives had plotted their attack on Cannon for several years, and openly voiced their intention to break his power. But it took a long time before they finally found their opening and executed their courage move to stand up to Cannon. When they did move, they politically neutered him in spectacular fashion.

On March 17, 1910, the House was in session but lightly attended. There was a quorum, but many regular Republicans were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and had either left for the week, or a long weekend. Many had celebrated well into the night and were in no shape to return to the Capital even if they could be found. It was during an otherwise routine management of House business that the full group of Progressive insurgents struck out at Cannon.

George Norris, a Republican from Nebraska, had been laying it the weeds waiting for this moment. For two years he’d carried the text of a resolution in his pocket to amend the House rules to remove Cannon from the chair of the Rules committee and to strip him of his ability to appoint committee members and leaders. There had been a seemingly innocent debate the day before on if bills could be introduced directly to the House floor if they dealt with a Constitutional question. Cannon and Stand Patters ruled that it was permissible, even if the bill was not pre-printed and that the House as a whole would have to vote directly on those bills. Cannon couldn’t control those bills from being debated and voted upon.

St. Patrick’s Day morning, Norris, sensing his opening, copied the text of his resolution on the back of an envelope and rose to introduce a “resolution privileged by the Constitution.” Cannon, not knowing the danger of what was unfolding, allowed Norris to proceed. Very quickly it became apparent that Cannon had accidentally allowed a direct challenge to his power and he didn’t have the votes to stop it. One of Cannon’s allies made a Point of Order that Norris’ resolution wasn’t privileged, and that set off 26 hours of political gamesmanship. Ultimately Cannon couldn’t muster the votes and allowed the Point of Order to be voted on by the House. 42 Progressive Republicans joined 149 Democrats to ensure that Norris’ motion passed, largely because there weren’t enough regular Republicans available to beat back the challenge.

This move broke the greatest concentration of power in American political history. Cannon’s hubris and display of punitive power in the tariff bill hadn’t broken the Progressives, it laid the groundwork for them to rise up and seize control back from Cannon.

These Progressives voted for Country over party, and saved this country from tyranny but at the cost of their political careers. In the 1910 election Democrats took over the House, while many of the Progressives survived re-election. However, the 1912 election was a disaster for the Republicans and the death of the Progressives in the party.

The Progressives planned to seize control over the Republican Party during the 1912 Presidential election, but they didn’t anticipate Teddy Roosevelt’s return to American politics and his usurping of the Progressive Party. The Republican Progressives were planning on their electoral reforms helping Democratic Progressives joining them to defeat the Democratic candidate, however Roosevelt had no support amongst Democrats, so when La Follette finished 2nd in the Progressive nomination even Roosevelt admitted the Democrats would win the 1912. Additionally, a dethroned Cannon had enough power to ensure that each of the Progressives that voted to remove him faced well-funded challengers in their House elections, as well as newly drawn districts that disadvantaged them. He also pulled strings to make sure that promised Federal projects like new Post Offices which were key to legislators in Progressive districts were delayed until after the election.

Article, EA Morse, Marshfield Times (D17-0020) — E.A. Morse campaign ad defending his stand against Speaker Joe Cannon and “Cannonism” and making no apologies.

In E.A. Morse’s case, in addition to facing a Democratic “wave” election in 1912, the Old Guard Republican governor of Wisconsin helped ensure that this district was merged with another and that he faced a challenge from a popular Republican Secretary of State. In the end, Morse was handily defeated and returned to private life, in no small part due to his challenge to Uncle Joe Cannon.

Morse left public life after his loss, and had a long career as the principle of the Morse-Tradewell company in Antigo which specialized in insurance, banking, and logging. Their logging operation was so great that at one point they were the largest private holder of land in Northern Wisconsin and had a private railroad, including a steam engine, that would haul their timber for sale to the shipping depot in Lena, Wisconsin.

We don’t want to ascribe only the noblest of intentions to our ancestors, and there are troubling aspects of E.A.’s life and politics. In-fact, by 1932 Morse rant again for Congress in support of Herbert Hoover despite his overseeing our decent into the Great Depression, and explicitly denied any Progressive alignment. But that’s true for all politicians and in his case he was a part of a small group of Republicans that stood up for what was right and for what was best for the democratic institutions of this country over his political career, and he’s a heroic legend in our family. Each House Progressive paid for their courage by losing their seats soon after their insurgency.

We saw during the 2nd Impeachment of a Republican President 110 years after Morse and the Progressives stood up for what was right that the Republican Party couldn’t muster 3 people courageous enough to put an insurrectionist tyrant in check. The risk of losing their seats continues to allow a single man to dictate policies that the large majority of Americans are deeply disturbed about.

Just know we’ve seen this before, where one man stood above the Constitution and the country, and that it took just a handful of people to let their courage and sense of duty to what was right and best for the country be greater than their own needs. We can be proud our relative stood on the right side of history and ignored the political cost.

Let’s be honest, it wasn’t the “public” it was white, Protestant men…no one else had power in the politics of the United States in the late 1800’s. ↩︎

In Remembrance: Leila Maude Smith

In this week’s “In Remembrance” we’re featuring Leila Maude Smith (1909-1918) who died on this date in 1918.

Leila was the youngest daughter of William Arthur Smith (1880-1954) and Alice Maude (Crippen) Smith (1884-1958) (a descendent of Israel Standish), born on 18 Jun 1909 when the family was living near Otisville, Michigan just outside Flint. She was the youngest of two daughters and William Arthur and Alice Maude (they variously went by either their first or middle names) were farmers.

The family had survived the Spanish Flu epidemic intact, but Leila died on 22 Apr 1919 of inflammation of the medulla oblongata at the age of 8. The death certificate said the cause of the inflammation was unknown, and today what’s called brainstem encephalitis is known to often be caused by Listeria infections. Tragedy struck the family almost exactly a year older when her older sister Cleah passed away at the age of 14.

The Smith’s adopted a child the wake of Leah and Leila’s deaths (Bill) thinking they could no longer conceive children of their own, but 6 years later Maude gave birth to their third child Elizabeth when she was 41 years old. The Smiths would later adopt another girl, Ruth.

Keeping a critical eye on our research
Sometimes the excitement of the find blinds us to records that don't match out ancestors

Keeping a critical eye on our research <h4>Sometimes the excitement of the find blinds us to records that don't match out ancestors</h3>

We’ve inherited a lot of family treasures since we became known as the group preserving the publishing our family history, but only one is on our desk at all times: A very old, unattractive portrait of Samuel FB Morse. The first great historian in our family was Myra (Tradewell) Morse (1870-1962), and she and her cousins spend decades building out a family tree we still use as a base today. She established our family line to her GGF Charles Edwards (1768-1811), who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War so she could establish her Daughters of the American Revolution membership in 1904. She also established a link for her husband Elmer A Morse (1870-1945) (link) to his 2xGGF Samuel FB Morse, and this little portrait of the inventor of the single-wire telegraph and Morse code was venerated and displayed in the Elmer and Myra’s house proudly.

The only issue was, neither of those facts were true. A Charles Edwards might have been a soldier (still open for debate), but the link to that Charles was specious and called out by the organization in later years. Myra was a State DAR leader and lost her membership in the organization because they had re-evaluated her research and found it lacking what’s required as proof. Her daughter saved the day by identifying a new ancestor with qualifying service, getting her membership under that soldier, then Myra re-applied under the same ancestor and regained her membership. Also, there was no direct relation from Elmer to Samuel FB Morse (they are 4^th Cousins, Twice Removed). His 2xGGF was Samuel Morse, but they were born 50 years apart, in different States, never lived in the same State and our Morse died while telegraph Morse was still in his teens.

This is the kind of thing that pollutes the Ancestry.com algorithm and becomes cannon, and we almost plowed through doubt even as we thought we were being skeptical and reserved.

We keep Samuel FB’s portrait on our desk to remind us of how we can manifest results we want by bending facts in ways we aren’t even aware of. Myra did great work, there’s no way she just made this all up on purpose. And we were reminded of that this weekend when we followed that same path despite all of our efforts to avoid this.

It started Friday night, on Instagram, when one of my favorite creators Jen, The Formidable Genealogist (https://www.theformidablegenealogist.com/), posted an announcement that Ireland would drop (what we read as) the fully searchable 1826 Ireland Census at midnight. This was a massive breakthrough for us, and despite cooking dinner (with a glass of wine) we tried the site a few times to see if it dropped early. It did come online Friday night and we did some searching on the couch watching TV that evening.

The reason this was so exciting for us that the oldest Leonard ancestor, Michael (1799-1861), arrived in the US around 1830 with 2 young children and no record of a wife. John (1828-1891) and Ann (1829-1906) always listed their birth location as Tipperary, Ireland but we’ve never been able to establish they actually arrived or how the family looked at the time. Ann’s obituary said her “parents” arrived in the US when she was “just a child”, and settling in Quebec, Canada before moving to Lockport, New York. We know Michael remarried around 1841 in Lockport, and had 4 children with his new wife, and in the 1850 US Census Michael had moved to Wisconsin with John and Ann, his new wife, and the 4 children. The questions are numerous: Did he arrive with his first wife? If so, did she die before having any additional children? Were there additional children that we have no record of that didn’t make the move to Wisconsin? It all makes so little sense that we, along with a great researcher on Ann’s line, have never been able to gleen any fact about this family pre-1841, and we’ve hired professional genealogists in Canada to help attempt to establish Michael’s arrival details (he likely arrived in Quebec, not the US and moved).

With that backdrop, it was exciting to have a census just 2-4 years before Michael’s emigration, and we woke up Saturday morning and immediately searched and we found 162 Michael Leonard’s captured in the census! Narrowing to just Tipperary, and found 7 Michael’s, but only 2 were close enough in age to possibly be ours. The 17 year old was still living with his parents, and his record wasn’t of any value. But another was 32, and it stopped us in our tracks.

Image of a table listing Michael Leonard's from Tipperary County, Ireland in 1926 — A list of all Michael Leonard’s in Tipperary

He’s obviously 5 years older than our Michael, but given the uncertainties of the time that is not entirely unreasonable. He lived with his father-in-law and his aunt, as well as his wife Mary but it was the children that made us gasp. Michael and Mary had John (age 6), Mary (age 4), and Annie (age 2). These ages don’t match entirely, but they are in the range and reviewing all of the Michael’s within the age range throughout all of Ireland, we didn’t find another John and Ann siblings. This felt huge, not proof per se but a huge lead that could mean we were going to break down a brick wall. If we squinted hard enough we could chalk all the dates up to the fog of history, this matched the family pattern we we’re desperately searching for, and with no other matching pattern from that critical year we were pretty certain this was our family!

It wasn’t until we started typing up this finding to share with our newly hired genealogists that reality smacked us in the face: this wasn’t the EIGHTTEEN twenty-six Irish census, it was the NINETEEN twenty-six census. A full 100 years later than we’d read it, well after Michael, his children, and many of his grandchildren had passed away. This census had zero value to our research.

32 year-old Michael Leonard and his family, from the newly released 1926 Irish census…NOT our ancestor!

Once we misread the original IG post, the various 1926 designations escaped us. When we found a record that MIGHT work, we mentally twisted it until we were pretty sure it did work. Had that been an 1826 census we would have started treating that as a valid record despite knowing better. Sure, it could be a thread to pull, and we would have shared with our researchers, but it proved nothing and shouldn’t go any further until we knew it did. This is the kind of thing that pollutes the Ancestry.com algorithm and becomes cannon, and we almost plowed through doubt even as we thought we were being skeptical and reserved.

And it happened as we were staring at Samuel FB Morse trying not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors.

In remembrance: Elizabeth Frost

This week’s In Remembrance highlights one of Antigo’s forgotten matriarch’s, Elizabeth J (Frost) Boerner, who died on this date in 1943.

Elizabeth was born 4 Aug 1861 in Shiocton, Wisconsin to Asahel Frost (1828-1897) and Rosetta (Newell) Frost (1829-1892) at a time when Shiocton was a booming logging town. Asahel was a farmer and later a carpenter and Elizabeth was the middle of 9 children. Both the Frost and Newell families trace their arrival in North America to the early 1600’s and they largely followed the pattern of several generations residing in Massachusetts and/or Connecticut, then migrating to New York after the Revolutionary War for 1-2 generations, then on to Wisconsin.

She married John J Kupps in Shiocton on 16 Mar 1876 when she was 16 years old, and he was 27. Unlike Elizabeth’s family line, John was born in Bohemia and he and his parents arrived in the US only about 20 years before his marriage. He worked as a laborer in the lumber industry, which was winding down in Shiocton, and they moved to Bryant (in NE Langlade County) in 1885. Bryant, and which was the next logging hot spot in Central Wisconsin.

John and Elizabeth had two children, Emma Marrion (Kupps) Leonard (1879-1953) and Kathryn (Kupps) Driscoll (1882-) before moving to Langlade County. John was hired by T.D. Kellogg in Antigo in 1891 and the family moved into town soon after.

Elizabeth was widowed in 1899 when John passed away at the dinner table after, as the local paper put it: “a severe fit of coughing. Arising from a table he passed through the kitchen and reached the outer door when his strength apparently failed. He stopped to rest on the steps and leaning his head back on his wife’s lap, he quietly and silently passed away.” Family lore, shared by Emma’s granddaughter Peggy, has it that John had stopped off at the tavern unexpectedly for a few and when he returned home well after dinner Elizabeth refused to make him a plate, so his mother (who was visiting) agreed and Elizabeth went upstairs angry. John subsequently choked on dinner because he was so drunk, and suffocated. His official cause of death was heard disease, so we can take the story for what it’s worth!

Elizabeth raised her daughters alone until Emma married Dan Leonard in 1902 (In remembrance: Dan Leonard), and Kathryn married Jess Hawkings in 1904. She lived with Dan and Emma until remarrying Louis Boerner (1850-1935) around 1906. Louis was also a widower, and a Naturalized citizen originally from Germany, who brought two children into the marriage: Erma and Edward (adopted from the State Home when young). The Boerner family was well known in Antigo, and Louis’ father owned the main daily newspaper. He was a furrier and well regarded as his was about the only fur store in town at a time when fur was very common.

Her stepson Edward was killed in action in WWI, and she lost Louis in 1935. Her Grandson Floyd Leonard (1906-1941) was killed in Egypt one week after WWII was declared. Elizabeth died after a long battle of what was then called “Bright’s Disease”. We now know it as Chronic Nephritis, and is usually a byproduct of high blood pressure and heart disease, which are mentioned on her Death Certificate.

An American Genealogy

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Tag: Family History