I haven't used this blog much but I have been collecting "stories" about my ancestors through genealogy. I thought I might share a few. This is about my great-grandparents on my mother's side.
Sort of a mystery of Charles Boettner Baird and Carrie Chapman Young Baird and their son, Douglas Baird Wright
I grew up with the story that Grandpa Wright's parents were killed in a car accident and made him and his sisters orphans. As the story goes, they went to live with a neighbor and one day another neighbor looked over the fence and said you have too many, we will take the little boy. And that was how Grandpa Wright went to live with the Wright family. Being a kid, I never thought too much about it. We had met his two sisters, Aunt's Charlotte and Idabelle. Both were married and had a good life.
Since becoming interested in genealogy all the main "characters" have died and I have been piecing things together. The story was not too far off as it turns out.
Using Ancestry.com, death records and census records I have found that sometime between 1900 and 1910 Charles Baird and his wife, Carrie, died. The 1900 Census shows them living at 129 Carr Street in Los Angeles. When I found this census I was surprised to find that there was another child, a girl, named Elizabeth Mary Baird! I'd never known this.
By the 1910 Census, their daughters, Charlotte and Idabelle had gone to live with the Vawters. Charlotte and Idabelle Baird are listed on 1910 census as "Wards," living with the Vawters at 504 Cherry. When looking at a map during that era this was just a street or two over from Carr Street.
Their son, Charley Baird (seems to have been born Charles or Charley in late 1900) went to live with the Wright's. The Wright's house at, 128 Carr Street, was just across the street from where he lived with his parents before their death. So maybe the "over the fence" comment is not too far off.
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| Douglas Baird Wright abt. 1955 |
Charles, renamed Douglas by the Wright’s, is listed with the Wright's as an orphan on the 1910 census and as their son on the 1920 census. The Wright's had no children and, as we were told, always wanted a son named Douglas. In the 1920's Douglas officially changed his name to Douglas Baird Wright.
Their oldest daughter, Elizabeth Mary Baird, was 17 in 1910 and I couldn’t find her anywhere in the Los Angeles area during that time frame. After much searching I finally found her on the 1910 Census living with a Boettner relative in Brooklyn, New York.
By the 1920 Census Elizabeth was shown as Mary E Montane, having married Peter Montane sometime between 1910 and 1914 when I found her on a passenger list returning from Cuba to New York.
The 1930 Census shows she married at 17. She and Peter and their only daughter, Charlotte are now living in Santa Monica, probably to be near her brother and two sisters.
All of the children remained in the Los Angeles area. Douglas lived in Newport Beach, California for a while in the 1930's, building the third house on Lido Isle and living there for a many years while maintaining a Chicken Ranch on Santa Isabelle St, in Costa Mesa, California. During WWII they lived on the ranch. Douglas and his wife, Mae, eventually moved back to Los Angeles County.
Looking through old pictures recently I found some old notes that said that Grandpa Wright's "real" parents are buried at Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. As the note says Charles died of TB and Carrie "died of overwork." I called the Cemetery and found that Charles Baird was interred on 8 January 1902 and Carrie Baird was interred on 29 Jan 1904. They are both at same place in the Cemetery. I am trying to track down their death certificates, I wonder what they will say?
