Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time at my grandparents house on my maternal side. They lived about an hour and a half away in a tiny town called Forman which had a population of almost 500 in 2023. I used to spend summers there and we celebrated most holidays with them. Before we moved to Alaska, we were able to attend the Martin family reunion every summer. My grandpa LeRoy, who did the majority of the work for the reunions before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, was one of 17 children (16 living to adulthood) so you can imagine how many people came to these gatherings. I loved them. Hanging with the cousins and catching frogs with Great Aunt Linda, one of my grandfather’s sisters. But what I liked the most was hanging out with the adults as they played pinochle and told stories and talked about family that had long since passed.

That’s where it all started, I suppose. My interest in genealogy. My mom’s brother, Joe (or Jodie to close family) was the chosen one. He was always the one that had the most information on the history of the Martin and Amerman families. I’ve never had a chance to ask him how he got interested in it or when he started working on it, and he probably doesn’t remember anymore. When he realized that his memory was starting to go (likely a combination of chemo brain and a family history of dementia), he shipped 5-6 boxes of his collection to my mom. So far I’ve looked through two of them. Contents include: black and white photos from the early 1900s, death certificates, marriage licenses, and so many other things. I’m excited to continue his work. I just need to figure out who I will pass it all on to someday. 

The last time I was able to talk to Uncle Joe about our family history, we focused on my grandpa LeRoy’s (Martin) side of the family. As stated previously, he was one of 17 children born to Charles Romig Martin and Ida Beryl Waldo, who would have been my great-grandparents. 

ADHD Moment: when we were down to clean out and sell my grandparents house after they passed away, my cousin and I drove out to the Stirum cemetery. The area that my grandparents lived in was mostly farmland with tiny towns scattered about, so small that the surrounding towns bussed their kids into Forman for school. Even today, Stirum is mostly dirt roads, a cafe, a bar, a handful of homes, and businesses that haven’t been open for decades. My cousin wanted to drive out there to visit the grave of a friend of hers that passed away before they graduated highschool. As she was paying her respects, I wandered around and stumbled upon the Martins. I had never been to this cemetery before. I stood there for a while and just took it all in. I can’t really remember how old I was. Twenty-one, I think. But that moment is what really made me decide to get serious about learning about my family history and trying to preserve it. 

Anyway, I never got a chance to meet my great-grandparents. Charles died about a year before I was born and Ida the same year I was born, just three months before I was born.

Fun fact: Charlie and Ida were married on my birthday, September 30th, in 1926 in Britton, South Dakota. 

Now, Martin is a pretty common last name. I was still pretty new to researching at this time and I knew trying to follow that branch of my tree was going to take a little more work, so I concentrated on Ida’s side. Ida Beryl Waldo was born to Arthur Waldo and Selma Gullickson in 1910. 

I grew up hearing some weird stories about Arthur Waldo (1878-1969), nothing good really. I’m willing to bet that because he was 10 years older than Selma (1888-1911), he got her pregnant and which prompted their marriage. It appears that he was married previously, and definitely married after his marriage to Selma. There were two children born to Arthur and Selma. My great-grandma, Ida (1910-1989) and Eva (1908-2003). Arthur and Selma got married in 1907. 

I avoided researching Arthur for a little bit because I wasn’t sure what kind of nasty things I would uncover about him; my mom always said he was a bit of a creep. Instead I focused on Selma.

Selma died in 1911, one year after Ida was born, when she was 22 years old. According to the 1920 census for Cogswell, North Dakota, both Eva and Ida were living with Selma’s parents, Lars and Mary Gullickson. Arthur Walso is also listed as living with them with the “widow” marital status. When we get to the 1930s census, Ida has already married Charles Martin and had their first child, Vune.

But let’s return to Selma. No one could ever tell me how she died or how old she was when she died, but we knew she died young. It then became my mission to track her down. Considering she died in 1911, I had a pretty strong suspicion that she was the victim of tuberculosis (TB). I was able to order her death certificate from the North Dakota Vital Records website. Unfortunately the first one I received had the cause of death covered up. I ended up ordering a second one with a screenshot of my family tree and how I am connected to her.

Then it came. I had been researching and trying to find information on her for over a year, possibly two, and now in my hands was the one piece of paper I had been looking for. It felt like I was opening a college application letter to see if I got in, except more anxious, believe it or not. I sat down and opened it…

I was right. Pulmonary tuberculosis with TB of the knee joint. The death certificate states that Selma had been suffering from it for the last two years. If she died in 1911 and her children were born in 1908 and 1910, they are extremely lucky that they did not contract it themselves. If they did, I wouldn’t be here and the Martin family would look very very different. If you scroll back up and look at Selma’s picture, it makes her complexion and the look of utter exhaustion make sense. 

This, I think, was the first time I was really excited about finding what I found. You get a little bit of a thrill out of finding something that you’ve been waiting for. That’s what keeps me going. The thrill of the hunt; and I’m nowhere close to done. I take breaks from time to time as I wait for more documents to be uploaded to ancestry and work on trees for other families and friends. This is something I would love to do on a full time basis, but likely not feasible at this time. I want to be able to actually go to some of these locations myself and look at the actual physical records, which is expensive to do from Alaska. It would be much easier to go on that journey when I eventually move back to the midwest. 

But for now, I continue to gather records, update my tree, and enjoy the hunt.

The title of this post was a nod to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. Head over to youtube to give it a listen!

BONUS PICTURE

Standing: LeRoy Martin (grandfather), Lonnie Martin (my mother), Anna Martin (grandmother)
Seated: Arthur Waldo, Ida Waldo, Anna Martin on Ida’s lap (aunt), Marty Martin (uncle)
On the floor: Joe (or Jodie, uncle)