Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

I didn’t realize how large my moms side of the family was until I started working on the family tree. I knew my grandpa LeRoy was 1 of 17 children born to Charles and Ida Martin (nèe. Waldo), but it looks a lot bigger on paper, once you add spouses, children and grandchildren. When I started working on my family tree, my goal was to find out where I came from. Ancestry DNA helped me with that. Now I’m going back through, double checking my work, and gathering more information. 

I’m learning very quickly as I go through the box of family history documents that my uncle sent me that there is a lot more than meets the eye. The last  box that he sent has been a gold mine, from birth and death certificates to letters that my grandparents kept for years.

Today I learned a little bit more about my grandpa’s brother Vernon Martin. Vernon was the 5th of 17 children born to Charles and Ida Martin on November 25, 1935 in North Dakota. 

I remember hearing stories about how Vernon died, and now I have access to the news articles (maybe even the original clipping) to support it. Vernon had died on February 6th, 1966, when he was 30 years old. He had stopped and was changing a tire along side the road on State Highway #46, close to Leonard, North Dakota, when he was hit by another car. The car was totaled and the trailer it was pulling was destroyed. He died almost instantly after being thrown 82 feet past his station wagon. 

Vernon was an Airforce veteran. He married Shirley Herzog.

After Vernon died, Shirley married Duane Finzel, a police chief. I found a letter written by Duane that was addressed to “Grandpa and Grandma”, who my mom confirmed would have  been Charles and Ida, Vernon’s parents. Not sure why he referred to him as that. I mentioned to mom that I found a letter and texted her: “Shirley and Duane? She left him for someone?”. Mom said “Vernon and Shirley, I’ll tell you the story. Too much to type. Vernon’s widow and her second husband. It’s quite a story.”

Below is a transcription of the letter. I did not fix any misspellings or grammatical errors.

“Grandpa and Grandma,

Where do you begin or say, maybe for a start it was nice to meet you good people and all your family and relations and hope we will continue to do so, our home or now a shell of a home is always and welcome any visits from any one of you.

They say after a love one departs, things start looking up. I for one will disagree. I built my whole short time of marriage around my wife. I never had much to show for it but a large and good kids for a family which I will say I’ve work hard for and will do my best to keep on doing so.

I still can’t believe that Shirley will never see them grow up, she was a mother and a mother and a half as she was for a wife up till the last year and a half, may be that when I started to lose her and love her more. I never knew until six months ago from Kurtiss she was going with this man person who even hated kids, and spend most of his life in and out of state hospitals, that’s one thing I can say, I never tasted any kind of dope or pills and why Shirley could trade her family and life away for him, but this is what she wanted and will have to except and live with and this may sound strange to you, but I hope she was happy with him, as she had work hard as a housewife and bored with it, a younger man, change of life, only she knows, if she only knows how lonesome I am.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming Shirley, we have had our own fights and ups and downs like any family, I wish but wishing is too late now, if I could pick her up and say I’m so sorry, I could never figure out every time I came home from painting the police would come up to the house and say we take Shirley to Jamestown now I know why.

The kids can’t figure it all out either. Shirley taught them right from wrong and she was doing wrong herself, they know I blame myself.

I tryed very hard to get Shirley back, and tryed to have her transferred to Fargo. I pulled my teeth, got different clothing, lost 30 pds, attended A.A. meetings, went to class with her, brought the family up for a visit, sent her money, food, magazines, newspapers, telegrams, had the [something] take to her, attended church every Sunday, what’s more, I poured out my love to her in letters sometimes twice a day, kids sent all their money to Shirley for cigs.

I’ve prayed more than any minister for Shirley with out success, if their is a God, I hope the wife is home with him. 

A very lonesome Daddy,

Duane

Thank you for the lot.”

So from what I’m understanding, Shirley just took off, leaving Duane with the kids, some of which were not his biological kids (they would have been Vernon’s). She ended up dead in an apartment in Williston, on the completely opposite side or North Dakota under suspicious circumstances, but ultimately the death was ruled “natural”. She was 38.

This kind of ties into a webinar that I watched tonight on “Navigating the Darker Side of Family History” that talked about the emotional and ethical challenges of working on your or someone else’s family history. I tend to forget that I am not easily shaken and I seek the morbid and gruesome stories, but that is not the same for other people. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to listen to the webinar, because this is not something that I’ve thought about. I learned a lot about how to address some of the darker stories when working on someone else’s family tree.

At the end of the day, when looking back on this series of events, a lot of lives were tragically taken from this world entirely too soon.