Hitting the Mother Lode!

Me in my improvised "crash" helmet

Thwack!  Thwack  Thwack!  That’s me running into a brick wall.  Repeatedly.  So much so that I've taken to wearing a "crash" helmet.  (See the photo to right.)  No, not really, but I sometimes wish I could soften the blows.

 
I’m sure we’ve all run into a brick wall if we’ve been working on our family tree for any length of time.  In the beginning, I ran into many brick walls, and it was a long time between attempts to pursue a specific area of investigation.  As time has passed, however, the brick walls became fewer.

When I started my family tree about 30 years ago, there was no Internet so research was very limited.  Then along came the Internet.  At first it was a bit slow, and the data was limited.  Over the years, though, it got faster and the data became more plentiful.

My paternal grandfather and uncle were ventriloquists so that has been a specific line of research for me.  I started to look for any information on either of them about 15 years ago.  I don’t think I found anything on my grandfather initially, but I found quite a bit on my uncle. 

My grandfather was Howard A Olson, aka The Great Chesterfield.  To me he was known simply as Gramps.  He started as a ventriloquist in Vaudeville about 1910.  He also got married about that same time, had a family, and got a real job.  He did, however, pursue his love of ventriloquism over the decades. 

My uncle was Howard M Olson, aka Howie Olson and Chester LeRoy.  Gramps got Howie started in ventriloquism when he was about 7 or 8 years old.  Unlike his father, Howie was able to pursue ventriloquism as a life-long career. 

Armed with just their stage names, I did Internet searches and over the years I found more & more about Gramps & Uncle Howie.  Still, there were more Internet references about my uncle, because he went on to be part of a TV show in Wisconsin. 

As a child I remember outings with my grandfather and my parents.  We went to Show Folks of America parties, ventriloquist conventions, and the Vent Haven Museum (VHM) in Kentucky.  A couple of months ago I decided to write to the VHM to see if they had any information that would confirm my 60 year old memory about the family trip to the museum.  All I remembered was a garage filled with about 300 “dummies” which are nowadays called vent figures.

Museum sign as of 2016

I heard back from Lisa, the curator of the VHM, just a few days after I sent my initial email. (Yes, there was, finally, a website for the museum which made it possible to submit an online request.)  Lisa graciously replied and she included an attachment.  It was a scan of a letter that Gramps wrote to William Shakespeare Berger, the founder of the VHM, aka known as WS.  The letter outlined our planned trip to the VHM. Wow!  I hadn't expected that.

The letter about my family's trip to the VHM

Wait.  There’s more.  Lisa told me she had a file of correspondence for my grandfather beginning about 1910 and ending about 1970.  What?!?  Yeah, that’s right.  She had decades of correspondence in the file.  She also had a file on my uncle. Yippee!  I had struck the Mother Lode!

WS collected vent figures and anything to do with ventriloquism.  Over the years he corresponded with people from all over the world.  He exchanged letters with my grandfather and they visited each other in their respective homes.  Fortunately, WS created files and saved everything.  Additionally, he made arrangements for everything to be saved after his passing.  If not for that, the correspondence between WS and my family would most likely have been lost years ago. 

I expected maybe one email with a brief reply when I sent that first email to the VHM.  Instead I got a few dozen emails and about 250-300 scanned pages of correspondence. Again, I struck the Mother Lode! I was able to glean many new details to add to my family tree.  How often does anyone get that lucky?  It makes up for all those thwacks. 

If you have an ancestor who had a special interest, see if there is an organization that may have kept records of membership, correspondence, newsletters, or anything else that could be related to that interest.  I’m afraid many organizations are now defunct, and there won’t be any records left behind.  It doesn’t hurt to look into it anyway.

If you’re lucky, you may reach someone who knows something, and they’ll be able to send you some information.  The chances of hitting the Mother Lode are slim but you may find a few nuggets.

PS - I wrote this in April 2015, just 2 months after sending that first email to VHM.  I just discovered it in my computer files while doing some cleanup.  I’m not sure what I intended to do with it.  Perhaps I was just waiting to start a Genealogy Blog!