Dear Husband Doug opined that Amy Johnson Crow was anticipating something a bit more ethereal when she gave a prompt of "Spirits" for this 44th week of "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks." I readily admit that my ancestors, especially the women, show up in my head on a regular basis. When I proposed spray-painting the brass lamps that Inez inherited from Julia Grady, for example, the nightmares were brutal, so, with much scrubbing, I was eventually able to polish them to their original un-prepossessing color. Did Dora smack me upside the head the morning the antique appraiser was coming or did I just slip in the shower? But, while I have a generous share of stories about the influences of those who have passed on the present, my plan this week was to be clever and write about a relative who had a liquor store. Or so I thought.
James Russell Sturn was born in 1909, five years after my grandmother. His parents each had twelve siblings. His father, George Paul Sturn was the son of German immigrants and his mother, Myrtle Marguerite St. Peter, the daughter of French Canadians; Myrtie's mother was born in Detroit but it was an intensely Gallic Detroit at the time. Myrtie was 21 and George 24 when they married and their first child, Helen, was born less than two years later, but the ensuing five year gap, with no further children after Jamie in a devoutly Catholic household echoes with the suggestion of heartache and loss.
I don't know anything about Jamie's life as a young man. I find no newspaper mentions, although there are some for his sister. I have only one photograph that is labeled "James and Helen," in which I can recognize my grandmother but the other, smaller figure is out of focus and wearing very flouncy clothes. He's way too old for a Christening, way too young to be an Altar Boy... I'm open to suggestions!
Leaving school after the 9th grade, Jamie became a truck driver, likely through connections of his father, who owned a billiard parlor and cigar store. In the 1940 census, he is 30 and has a wife, Catherine L., 28, but the two of them were still living with Jamie's parents and he was still driving a truck. He...
Now, wait a minute. Did I know Jamie was married to a woman named Catherine? It rang a very faint bell. I knew he had been married to a woman named Ruth Obermyer because my mother wrote about her in the genealogy notes she left to me.
Jamie Sturn: "Brother of Helen. Owned the Black Label Distributorship (beer) in Monroe. He and his nephew, Erwin, Jr., were close and he worked for Jimmie during his summers away from school. Just as a matter of interest, he never warmed up to me either. However, his wife, Ruth, was very nice to me. Ruth had been a cocktail waitress I think. She was not sylph-like and had tiny feet. I often wondered how she could work in the high heels she always wore. Maybe one of the reasons Ruth was nice was cause the family didn't warm up to her either. She was a good cook and made great turkey dressing. Wish I had that recipe."
Jamie and Ruth were married in 1957. But Catherine... to heck with Spirits, who was Catherine L.? I put her name into the box and pressed "Search."
And then, just like that, a skeleton jumped right out of the closet. I found the marriage certificate for Jamie and Catherine Louise Cornoyer. In stark contrast to the census information, their marriage certificate -- and myriad other data I then found for Catherine -- shows that she was born in 1921. When they married in 1937, Jamie was 27 years old but Catherine only 17.
I expect you're thinking the same thing I did. Okay, first came "Ewwww!" But then "surely there must have been a baby?" And there was, but not for several years. James Edward Sturn was born in September of 1943, four months after Jamie had joined the Navy.
Jamie served on the USS Moale for the entirety of the war. The ship traveled from the Atlantic coast through the Panama Canal and saw extensive combat in the Pacific. Jamie returned home in October of 1945, to meet his son and become re-acquainted with his young wife, but that apparently didn't go well, as the two were divorced in February of 1946. Jamie was ordered to pay $7.50 a month child support and $1 a month in alimony. Catherine remarried three months later.
At some point, Jamie acquired the beer distribution business. He married Ruth Fetter Obermyer, the cocktail waitress, in October of 1957. They traveled to Ohio to marry, which was common for area folks looking for a quiet and quick marriage, so I doubt my parents (who had eloped to Georgia themselves two years earlier) attended the wedding. Ruth was also divorced, but was barely a year older than my mother, 32 to Jamie's 48. I expect that made it even easier for Ruth and Mom to become friends, along with the fact that Jamie's sister and brother-in-law wasn't particularly fond of either of them.
Jamie was only 52 when he died in 1962. He had a heart attack while driving in downtown Monroe, apparently dying immediately. There was a crash but the other driver was not seriously injured. Ruth obviously kept a firm hand on the arrangements as Jamie was buried at a community cemetery and not St. Joseph, which must have made Helen furious. Even more infuriating, Ruth inherited Jamie's business, which I think she sold. I know she returned to waitressing. In 1970, she married again but her husband passed away only nine years later and I think she kind of gave up on married life. Ruth lived to be 73, dying in 1998.
Somehow, this narrative took on the energy of trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen in the first place. So much for my brilliant idea about Spirits - Jamie didn't own a liquor store, he had a beer distribution business. But the real news here was that my father had a cousin. I suppose he must have known that, but if Mom did, she forgot it. So. Many Secrets. James Jr. was adopted by his mother's second husband and now lives in Ann Arbor. I wonder whether he knows any of this... or cares?
Because what is 'family'? Is any of it truly defined by shared DNA? Of all of these people, the one about whom I know the most is Ruth. She gave Mom a muskrat coat. It was the only fur coat Mom ever owned and I inherited it. I know it sounds absolutely disgusting, but it was definitely the warmest coat I have ever worn and, while not especially lovely, it was certainly imposing -- when you handed it to someone at Coat Check, they folded under the unexpected weight like a house of cards.
And Ruth, well, she served Spirits pretty much all her adult life, right?