Scrapbook Sleuthing: Mystery and Murder? How I Spent Hours Researching a Family Name Because of Tim Holtz
This blog post is a little different than my usual. It isn't about a scrapbook layout or mixed media project that I made. Instead it is about how I spent hours researching the name of someone on a piece of Tim Holtz ephemera.
I know what you are thinking. "Gee, Adrienne, that is kind of an odd thing to do." I know. But let me explain how it happened. I was looking through my Tim Holtz Field Notes ephemera pack for something to use on a future project that I was going to snap a few photos of the supplies I would use for an upcoming newsletter for my blog. That is when I came across it. A vintage library check out card.
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| The "Field Notes" ephemera pack from Tim Holtz and the vintage library card that started it all. |
As I saw the piece of ephemera in the pile and noticed the handwritten names, I thought about how Tim always said that his vintage pieces in his collections are scans of things he actually finds while antiquing. As I picked up the piece I thought, "I wonder if anyone has happened across the name or photo of a relative?" And that is when I read the name. Hallie Matherly. I stopped dead in my tracks, jaw hanging open in astonishment. Matherly is a family name.
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| The name Hallie Matherly appears second from the top. Matherly is my grandfather's last name. |
I just had to know if this person was related to me, however I knew that would be difficult to find out--but I was on a mission now! You see, my Opa (grandfather), Gerald Matherly, came from a large family. He had nine brothers and sisters. But that isn't what makes researching that side of my family's genealogy so difficult.
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| The "wedding" photo of my Oma and Opa, Ruth and Gerald Matherly. This photo was taken at my Oma's sister's wedding. Because my Oma and Opa didn't have their own wedding photos, her sister let her borrow her bouquet and get a photo. I scrapbooked this layout while I was caring for my Oma several years ago. She was suffering from age-related dementia and it was a very difficult time for our family. |
What makes it hard to trace my family's ancestry is the fact that my Opa's father, my great-grandfather David, was placed on a poor farm by his parents. If you don't know what a poor farm is, it (and the other more well-known term of poorhouse) was basically a catch all for the poorest and sickest people. Parents would leave children they could no longer afford there and those with mental illness or those with illnesses like tuberculosis who had no where else to go and couldn't afford treatment would live there. Conditions on poor farms were dreadful. Most people who went there, died there.
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| My great-grandfather, David, and his 5 daughters, circa 1953. Standing left to right Gladys, Margaret; seated left to right: Mary, Irma, David and Myrtle. This was one of the many photos sent to my Opa by his sister Myrtle. |
The fact that my great-grandfather, David, survived and was adopted was nothing short of a miracle. But it made tracing my family ancestry further back than him hard to do because we didn't have his birth father's full name, that we knew of, and only nicknames for his mother. My Opa's sister, Myrtle, wrote a very long, winding, handwritten and hard to understand family "history," mostly of the knowledge that she had and some of that knowledge was incomplete. Nevertheless, I was on a mission!
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| A portion of a newspaper clipping Myrtle sent my Opa of their father, David, his sister Ida and their half-brother J.D. Mitchell. |
So I searched Hallie Matherly using the best Internet research skills that I learned in my college journalism classes. My first hit was a 1940 census. Hallie married Rufus Matherly and they had several kids, including a Myrtle, which I thought was interesting considering my Opa's family had a tendency to name kids after other family members. But then I saw that they lived in Indiana during that census and that is when my heart gave a little flutter. My Opa was from Crawford, Indiana. Now that I had some other names of her family members, that made it a little easier to search this woman.
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| My Opa, Gerald Matherly, in uniform, and other members of his family. This was another photo Myrtle sent my Opa. |
I went back to my search results. The next was a newspaper clipping. This is where this story gets wild. Hallie, her husband Rufus and their daughter Myrtle knew of a brutal murder witnessed by their daughter/sister Goldie and they all lied to the police about their knowledge of the murder of Goldie's beau!
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| The newspaper clipping I found online about Hallie and Rufus Matherly and their daughters Myrtle and Goldie, all tied up in a murder investigation. |
Who are these people!? Are they related to me? Does it really matter? I have a Lizzie Borden on that side of the family (but I don't think she was that Lizzie Borden) and I've been told stories that somewhere on my Opa's side of the family that some ancestors were horse thieves. Now there are a few Matherlys in jail in California (where a good portion of the Matherly family now lives) for grand theft auto. My family (or someone's family who married into the Matherlys) went from stealing mustang horses to Mustang cars. But back to Hallie...I get protecting your daughter, but there is something gruesome about witnessing the brutal murder of your boyfriend and lying to the police about it. Why would you lie about something like that? Wouldn't you want the murderer put in jail?
Maybe there was more than one Hallie Matherly? I searched and searched and searched and I could only ever find the one Hallie Matherly and I never could figure out if she was related to me. I even tried searching my own known family members to see if there was new information that would lead me to a Hallie.
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| One of my favorite old photos of my Opa, looking dashing in his Army uniform. He was enlisted during WWII, Vietnam and Korea before retiring. When he was stationed in Austria after WWII, that is where he met my Oma--and why I refer to my grandparents as Oma and Opa! |
I didn't find the answer I was looking for, but I did find out that one of my living family members on the Matherly side is a genealogist! And thanks to my new searches and some of my genealogist family member's information on one of her blogs, I had updated information for my Ancestry tree. Though maybe my great-great-grandfather was murdered?!? But I digress. I finally found the complete name of David's father and his mother's actual name. And I even got names for David's parents--apparently I'm related to a Martha Stewart (whoa), which I find pretty cool because the much more famous and probably not at all related to me Martha Stewart is my "spirit animal" (I love her home decor ideas)!
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| Now I know that this man, labeled John Matherly in my family's old photos is actually my great-great grandfather! Previously, we only had his middle name of Thomas. |
But that is how I spent nearly 4 hours one night, researching a family name thanks to a piece of Tim Holtz ephemera. And I don't regret a single second of it! It was thrilling thanks to the murder and intrigue. But I'm forever grateful that it lead me to new information about my own family, even if I didn't find out whether Hallie is actually related to me--yet!
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| My Opa and Oma holding me as a baby. My Opa passed away when I was only a few years old, so I don't have many photos like this. |
So I guess the moral of the story is to look through your Tim Holtz ephemera--you never know what you may find. Oh, and Tim, hang on to that library card--it's probably part of an intriguing piece of history!
Happy Scrapping--I mean sleuthing!
Adrienne
16 comments
What a lovely story! Thank you for sharing it. I am so envious of those that know family names. I was adopted in 1964 and have no family information other than what nationalities I come from. I have always wanted to know at least what surname and clan I am from in Scotland. Bless you and yours.
ReplyDeleteI can't image how it feels to not know anything about your family. I hope that one day you find some answers. Thanks for reading my story!
DeleteWow interesting stuff you dug up! Thanks for sharing with us.
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by my blog and reading! It was a lot of fun researching it all.
DeleteWhat a fun time you had playing Nancy Drew! I have also fallen down the rabbit hole in genealogy research. I've had good luck using the free Family Search site. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by and reading and for the tip! I'll have to check that site out.
DeleteExiting to read! But she did not witness the murder of her daughter but a 54 year old man. Her daughter was also arrested AS a witness😊
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll have to go back and re-read the newspaper clipping later and adjust my blog post. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteWhat a treat to read! Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by to read my blog post!
DeleteWow...
ReplyDeleteIts amazing you managed to find out so much. Even the gory details of a murder. Even though you didn't discover if you were related, you uncovered so much about Hallie.
Imagine if Tim had not found the library record ... spooky
I think it was definitely fate that Tim found that library card! It was so much fun to research. I think I'm going to do more in the future just to see if I can't find out what happened to Hallie and if she is related to me.
DeleteWeird that I stumbled across your site. I am the granddaughter of your Opa's sister Gladys. I was fortunate to travel to Indiana with her in 1987 and meet several of the Matherly's. I only previously knew Mary, Margaret and Irma as they lived close. This is such an interesting read. Not sure how valid this is but there was always a story about the family having Algonquin somewhere in the mix. Would be interesting to track that to see if it is true?
ReplyDeleteHi, Michele! Great to meet a relative online through this post! It was a fun night of sleuthing. My mom (Gerald's daughter) has taken a DNA test and she didn't have any Native American ancestry. But I too have heard the stories that there was--perhaps from somewhere else on that side of the family? Thanks for reading!
DeleteHi - I'm so glad I found your site. I was just researching 'Hallie Matherly' myself from my own Tim Holtz ephemera! I index names for the LDS church and often look up the people I index. And, as you probably know, the LDS are kinda famous for their family history activities, so it's always a good thing to learn more about your family, even if you aren't related to the Hallie Matherly of Holtz fame. I'm a retired professor of Library and Information Science and am making a dark academic junk journal for myself, so the names on the library card piqued my curiosity. Who were they? Were they real? What were their lives like after they read the book? Did they read the whole thing or just what may have been assigned for class? : )
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely an interesting night of looking up stuff about this woman. Still not sure if I'm related, but maybe one of these days I'll find out for sure.
DeleteI'd love to hear your thoughts!