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...Quaker, Puritan, Recent Descent
One of many closely related William Ganes, he did as the others did, distinguished themselves by using middle initials or middle names. Senior and junior would only confuse people, when nephew and uncle and cousin could apply as easily to some. His father went by W.L. This William briefly became Will S. for his marriage, but multiple censuses show him only as Stanley.
Parents. As the "Gay Nineties" began, his parents married in Saline County, Kansas. Both born near the start...
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Scroll to ...
...Grave List (bottom)
...Critical Sources For Him
...Quaker, Puritan, Recent Descent
One of many closely related William Ganes, he did as the others did, distinguished themselves by using middle initials or middle names. Senior and junior would only confuse people, when nephew and uncle and cousin could apply as easily to some. His father went by W.L. This William briefly became Will S. for his marriage, but multiple censuses show him only as Stanley.
Parents. As the "Gay Nineties" began, his parents married in Saline County, Kansas. Both born near the start of the Civil War, gaiety may have offset the sharp reality of too many deaths and too much crippling. The bit salty Saline River joined with the Smoky Hill River just upstream of the town of Salina, to flow as one river downstream. Flattish, no mountainous river sides, the area was prone to and little protected from floods. The year was 1887. The next big flood would be in 1903.
His mother Almira, maiden name Cowan, born in Missouri, used the nickname Myra at her wedding to his Ohio-born father. His father was raised as William L. Gane, later went by W.L. His parents were that Robert Gane born in England and that Permelia Hoyt born in Ohio, like her son, raised in Chagrin Falls. Her New Englander parents named her to honor a grandmother back in Vermont, an accordingly older Permelia Hoyt, buried in Addison County. Permelia meant "she of the dark hair", similar to Melanie in that way.
Stanley's parents were still together, in Pratt County, Kansas, for the 1900 Census. His sister, Lura, was two years older than Will.
By the 1910 Census, Myra and W.L. divorced and lived in different states. W.L. stayed back in Kansas. Myra took the children to California, where the 1910 Census found the three living in Los Angeles County. His sister Lura worked as a milliner in a millinery shop; his mother Myra had "her own income". "Stanley" worked as a "presser" in a men's tailoring shop. His father, W.L., "toughed it out" as a lodger boarding in someone else's house back in Kansas.
Marriage. 1917 marked a big year. WW I reared its head. Historians say that many were isolationist in politics due to the Civil War, meaning that they wanted to stay out of any war going forward. Stanley married Gladys Pratt, California-born, in May of 1917, then registered on June 5, as legally required, with the local draft board (Gardena Precinct #3 in Los Angeles County).
People started to marry strangers out in California. That was perhaps a necessity, once so far way from families known well and long, "back home". The price paid? Often, more divorcing. However, Stanley and Gladys married for the long-term. Had they families known each other?
Gladys' surname matched Pratt county in Kansas, where Stanley once lived with his father. Was it a coincidence? Pratt County organized in 1879, less than a decade before Stanely's parents married, named for a "free-stater" called Caleb Pratt. "Free-staters" tried to stop those southerners wanting to extend slavery into the newly forming Western states. Each side, pro-slavery and anti-slavery, tried to move large enough groups into contested states, early enough to control the state constitutions about to be written.
A banker named E.B. Pratt "back home", pre-Kansas, in Chagrin Falls, Ohio advertised his bank in the same first issue of a brand-new newspaper in which Stanley's grandfather had appeared. Both on page 1, Stanley's grandfather's ad read simply as "R. Gane, horse shoeing" (source: Chagrin Falls Historical Society). The date was January 8, 1874, telling us the Ganes' big move from Ohio to Kansas came later. Had the grasshopper plagues of the late 1870s driven earlier farmers off of Kansas land? It became suddenly affordable?
Family Man. Of William Stanley Gane's California records, his handwritten draft registration survived, giving his birthday and birthplace, with Ellis, Kansas, presumably meaning Ellis County. He supported his mother and wife, the form said. The board wrote down "crippled arm" as a reason they might not want him as a soldier, then went immediately into describing his eyes as light blue and his hair as light. Like many no longer farming in that era, he was doing blue collar work, "battery service" for Western Electric, as the era of white collar office jobs had not yet arrived.
By the 1920 Census, he and Gladys and their toddler Mabel Z. Gane were visiting or living with his mother and sister at his mother's house in LA. "Doubling up" was common in their era, a way both to reduce urban expenses and also to get help and advice in raising that first baby.
By the 1930 Census, his sister Lura Gane had married Clarence "Gardiner". Their mother Myra went to live with Lura C. Gardner in West Riverside, while Stanley and Gladys moved to Baldy Mesa in San Bernadino County.
What happened to toddler Mabel? She should have been about 12 by the 1930 Census. She was not with them. Had she died?
The Great Depression was just beginning in 1930. A son named William would be born on Nov. 27, 1930, with them at age 9 for the 1940 Census. Historians say that the Great Depression caused enough poverty and joblessness that people without large farm gardens found themselves either reluctant to have more children or unable to do so. The father might travel away from home for long stints to find work. All this would not end until the next war, WW II. "Too old to go", Stanley registered anyway, in 1942. Registering as from Phelan in San Bernadino County, using his full legal name, he gave "Mrs. Gladys C. Gane" as the person who would always know his address.
Their addresses were rural delivery. Despite our now thinking of these California places as parts of big city suburbs and commuter zones, they still had large rural pockets then, with ranches and territory left wild.
Many people had learned how to make their own jobs. Stanley last listed himself as "Beekeeper and rancher" in 1942. With orange groves nearby, his honey could have been very good.
Both his mother and father would live well past age 90. His father lies buried alone in Kansas, the only Gane in Pratt County's cemeteries, with Great Plains winds blowing across Kansas and thus his grave. His mother Myra/Almira is not alone, but buried in the same California cemetery as Stanley. He died about 10 years after his mother; she had died in 1962.
The death record of Gladys said her own mother's name was "Jarrett". Her surname and her stone are not obvious? Located elsewhere?
Gladys and Stanley's son William, more toward the end of a braid of Williams than a chain of Williams, would live in San Bernadino County. He lived until Nov., 1987. That county's death record named his mother as Pratt, and cited his full name as William Harvey Gane. He would be buried in the national military cemetery in Riverside.
SOURCES-- Handwritten, microfilmed, viewable on-line.
WW I Draft:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-G1SL-9M9V
WW II Draft:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-7ZS1-2J
These sources and his Social Security death record all give June 22 as Stanley's birthday, using information provided by him. His SS record said he died in Phelan on Nov. 15, 1970.
In contrast, his county death record was filled out, not by him, but by some survivor. It was off by a week regarding his birthday. It gave his death as Nov. 29, two weeks later than given by the Social Security office, perhaps mistakenly using the day his death report had been finished and submitted by a hospital or coroner. Perhaps the date was simply unreadable, too faded, too blurred, etc., for accurate reading by the volunteers transcribing the record, hoping to make it searchable online?
HIS DEEP ANCESTRY. His parents had interesting family histories, those of his mother Myra/Almira Cowan were on her Quaker side, those of his father, W.L. Gane, included both his mother's Hoyts and his father's Ganes.
Maternal Quakers. Myra's mother, Sarah/Sally Brown, who married a Cowan, was born in Indiana, of Quakers from the South. The southern-born Quakers migrated northward from Kentucky and the Carolinas and so forth, to protest southern laws promoting slavery. Many then migrated westward, in steps, for example, from Ohio into Indiana, from Indiana into Missouri, from Missouri into Kansas. Perhaps they had felt encouraged into moving westward by free-staters such as Caleb Pratt?
Many southern Quakers had owned slaves once, but, through their experiences, grew to see it as dysfunctional. The War of 1812 was said to delay their migration northward. (The laws they fled varied by state, but were growing increasingly severe. The newest often forbade voluntary freeing of one's own slaves. They allowed recapture of slaves who had escaped to places where better laws forbade slavery and said slaves could stay free. They financed expansions intending to spread slavery into the new western states. And so on.)
Maternal Hoyts. In contrast, W.L.'s mother, Permelia Hoyt, was of the Hoyts who arrived to the New England colonies early in the Puritan era, beginning with a Simon Hoyt bringing many sons who fathered more. Slowly, over multiple generations, her particular Hoyts migrated up the Connecticut River Valley, moving through what are now three modern states (CT, by the river mouth; then up into MA; then further north into VT). These were then still disputed territory. Her grandparents married in Lanesborough/Lanesboro, Massachusetts, right after the American Revolution settled one dispute with the British, then established themselves next in Addison County, Vermont, did so before the War of 1812, the next land dispute with the British. Adding to neighbors, making the population more than the just the ex-British, were small "left-over" French and native populations from earlier disputes resolved in British favor. In contrast, some related Hoyts, distant cousins by Permelia's time, had moved southwest-ish along the Atlantic shore (away from where the Connecticut River emptied into that ocean). Those separating Hoyt cousins came from a later, less well-documented son or grandson of Simon Hoyt named John. Thei different direction took them into the Dutch-influenced territory of NY and Long Island. Many of New York's early Quakers had been active in the slave trade for a time, when living under the Dutch, as were multiple of the Dutch. Hoyt contacts with those Quakers included inter-marriage, with a change of name by some to Haight to help signal the change in region and religion. Permelia's grandparents thus knew of formerly Puritan Hoyts who had married into and become Quakers and then owned slaves.
Some slaves were asked to take the British side of the War of 1812, by moving into Canada with their "Tory" owners. (Tory meant British Loyalists, meaning loyal to a particular King, not to the country.) Though slave ownership was very low in the north colonies, the fewer slave owners there were early to give them freedom, but did not fully do so until after the War of 1812.
Paternal Ganes. Stanley's paternal grandfather, Robert Gane, came from an 1850's Britain that had rejected slavery in the 1820s, with some British Quakers insistent on the changes. However, many semi-hereditary agricultural laborers of varied faiths lived in rural Britain. Expected to work the land, but rarely to own it, did many feel nearly enslaved before figuring out how to emigrate to the States? That was the background from which Robert came.
Robert's original family, as seen in the 1841 and 1851 UK censuses, had teens as young as 12 and 14 working fulltime in rural areas identifiable as part of a big estate. They worked in hereditary "low" occupations straight from the "Dalton Abbey" storylines (the Masterpiece Theatre production by the BBC). Some in the family managed to escape all that. For example, Robert and his much younger brother Levi (believed to call himself William L. Gane once in the States) had managed to learn blacksmithing skills and cheesemongering, respectively, back in the UK. Each saved enough money there to emigrate to the US with a young wife, Robert before the Civil War, William L. Gane after. They did so about 10 years apart, in accordance with their age difference, then ended together in Chagrin Falls in 1870, before moving to Kansas later, where each left sons raising families.
SIDE NOTES:
(1) FINDING PERMELIA IN OHIO & KANSAS. Permelia Hoyt Gane's first name, like her own grandmother's, was often mis-rendered as Pamelia and Pamela. In her case, an 1880 census count in Kansas added Cornelia Hoyt to the list. This Permelia is best found in records by first locating her husband, Robert Gane/Ganes, the elder, or by searching for those old-time Hoyts living in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
(2) FINDING LURA, MARRIED, IN CALIFORNIA. His sister Lura would marry Clarence Gardner later in life. First listed on a Census with Clarence as "Gardiner" in 1930, middle-aged, they had no known children. They lived in Riverside County, nextdoor to her brother's county of San Bernadino. After Clarence died, she married neighbor Walter Haygood, who is buried near his own family in Los Angeles County, not in Riverside County. Lura's and Clarence's grave locations are not certain at this date, but they and Walter all died in Riverside County, near what had been Wineville. To take their ranch area out of the national news after some local murderers had been caught, Wineville was renamed Mira Loma after they moved nearby, soon after the 1930 Census. Unincorporated, it's former ranch land has since been swallowed by Jalupa Valley.
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Copyright by JBrown, Austin, TX, 2016. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page.
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