An Incomplete Glimpse At the Joining of Two Flawed Family Trees

My Sister Sandy and I circa 1950

When I identified that nurse of yesteryear, Clara Barton, as part of my family tree(actually I referred to myself as a descendant, which may not be technically correct), Duardo Paz-Martinez did exactly what serious journalists do.  He consulted wikipedia, a participant-edited collection of assorted internet anecdotes about almost everything.  We take /DP-M and wikipedia at their collective word that Nurse Barton died without ever signing a marriage certificate.

Had Clara chosen to have offspring without the paperwork, it would have mattered not.  I'm not on board with the God of the Bible who killed the so-called love child of David and Bath-Sheba while giving the grownups mere wristslaps.  The statement in Exodus that "the sins of the father will be visited on the son" makes absolutely no sense to me.

So likely, Clara was just a loose branch on the family tree, not a direct forebear.  It was a branch of the family I never liked anyway, connected to my Great Aunt Harriet.  I never looked forward to our family's annual trip to Puyallup to see Aunt Harriet.  My dad would warn me not to hold my nose and emphasize the Puuuuu! in Puyallup in front of Harriet as residents of that paper mill town didn't like being reminded how their town smelled.  Aunt Harriet was the first adult who told me that "little children should be seen and not heard."  When she used the adjective "precocious," it didn't sound complimentary.  Years later in the 80's, I received a glossy folder from a lawyer in Palo Alto, California.  He said I was not receiving anything from the estate, but knew I would appreciate a dossier on the family's history.  I trashed it.

Years ago we did not have the information highway Duardo so skillfully utilizes.  As a kid I had two choices to copy homework assignments.  I could use the scholarly Encyclopedia Britannica and risk detection or use the everyday language of World Book.  I usually chose World Book, toning down the language into childish simplicity.  Erin H. Garcia once described the writing on this blog as that of a third grader, so I'm well practiced.  Greg Miller, a better father than me, bought his two toddler girls a leather bound set of the Encyclopedia Britannica for $700 at their adoption in the 70's.  I always worried that the volumes would be obsolete by the time his girls used them to copy their homework assignments.

My ancestry is both unremarkable and unscholarly.  My maternal grandfather, Adolph(before Hitler made this name unpopular) Joseph DeMan, was conceived in Belgium, but born in Republic, Michigan in 1885, the first of his family to be born in this country.  His father died in 1888 at the age of 44 .  Al Gore's internet says the date of his mother's death is unknown.  Supposedly, young Adolph started working in the mines at the age of 9, quitting school to help support his brothers and sisters.  The scars of strip mining are still visible around Republic, so that may be true.

He married a woman from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada and moved to Maple Valley,

A view at dusk of Mt. Rainier from
Maple Valley, Washington

Washington, eventually buying a small homestead.  He raised a family through the depression with a huge garden and frugality.  Leaks, garlic, onions, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, beets, carrots, etc. as well as raspberries, blackberries, apples and apricots were always there for the picking by neighbors and relatives.  The woodshed contained straightened nails, lumber, firewood, coal and barrels of rainwater saved from the roof's runoff.  Gravel was shoveled at sieves and sorted by size.  Grandma had a standing agreement will the grandkids to bake a pie for every pale of berries we picked.  In addition to the berries in the garden, the woods had huckleberries, gooseberries and thimbleberries.  I would usually mix my pails with blackberries and huckleberries or add some rhubarb from the garden whenever we visited Grandma DeMan.  

Grandpa DeMan was a self-taught wordsmith who sat in a chair by the coal stove, underlining his Bible with a red/blue pencil.  He would mark key words in one scripture in red, then in the next with blue.  If you stopped to talk, you would be engaged for an hour.  When I was 14, we had our first serious discussion.  He told me that when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden they were no longer simply naked, but now nude.  Getting the sense of his words, I suggested that they were exposed.  He liked that word and wrote it in the margin of his holy book.

Laurence, Mary Barton in Chehalis, WA
During Our 1982 Visit

My paternal grandfather, Laurence W. Barton, was born in Pierce, Washington.  He was a logger, cutting old growth timbers in Washington State.  He would cut a huge Douglas Fir, then drag it to the river with his powerful horse.  He marked the log with his name to get credit at the sawmill.  Grandpa Barton was an alcoholic who would fix up an old place, then destroy it in an alcohol-fueled fight with his wife.  In old age Grandpa Barton made holiday wreathes from tree trimmings and sold other forest products to be used as medicine.  At left is a picture of Grandpa Barton playing the saw as a musical instrument with Grandma Barton accompanying on the piano.

Pena Family, 130 King St.(now inside Gladys Porter Zoo)
Nena is in the front row, second from the right with her
head tilted.  The pic was taken in 1946,7

Nena was raised primarily by her grandparents, Guillermo and Rosa Pena who had 11 kids of their own.  Their small house at 130 King St. in Brownsville was enlarged several times with small add-ons almost like a small train. That was appropriate at the property butted up to actual tracks.  The small depression at the end of King St. is now part of the Gladys Porter Zoo.

An accident changed the dynamics of the family.  Nena's older sister, Teresa, drank from a bottle of lye from under the sink, burning a hole in her esophagus, requiring almost three years of hospital and outpatient care.

Nena's father, Manuel Perez, joined the U.S. Army, so his daughter could get treatment and moved with his wife and older daughter to San Antonio.  Nena and her younger brother Manuel stayed behind in Brownsville with the grandparents and their already large family.

Nena's mother, Flora Perez
Charro Days

Nena did accompany her family during two stints in Germany as her father, Manuel Perez, became a career man.  After retiring from the army, Mr. Perez joined the Border Patrol, later retiring from that as well.

My conversations with Mr. Perez years ago revealed a bitterness toward his native Mexico.  The family had their land and properties near Ciudad Victoria seized by the government.  His mother and father were not pleased with his choice of bride as Flora was not a Catholic.  Religious differences put a chill between the Perez and Pena families.  Also, Rosa Pena, Nena's red-haired grandmother proudly made clear to anyone who would listen, that she was from Spain, not Mexico.

Nena, following her father's example, served in the army from 1963-66.

Mean Mister Brownsville with
Father-in-law, Manuel Perez