September 2018 – TrueStories

In my previous posts, I told the story of my paternal grandfather, who spent his early years at the New York Foundling Home, and came to Central Missouri on an “Orphan Train” and was adopted by the Fred Markway family.

My grandfather was known as Joseph Aner while at the Foundling Home. Recently, I was searching online and found a Joseph Auer who was born on April 30, 1896, my grandfather’s birthday. I sent away for his original birth certificate, and unbelievably, only five days later, I received this from the City of New York:

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My grandfather was born Joseph Auer and his mother’s name was Adelaide Auer. He was born at 531 E. 86th Street in New York City. I searched online to see if that building was still standing–no such address showed up. I continued to search and found that Misericordia Hospital used to be on that site, a hospital that was affiliated with the Foundling Home. This hospital primarily served poor women, many of whom were unwed mothers. This fit my family’s long-held hypothesis that Grandpa came from very difficult circumstances–after all, he was left at an orphanage.

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Misericordia Hospital has merged with other hospital systems and changed locations over the years, and currently is in The Bronx, another borough of New York City.

Grandpa’s birth certificate contained other information. First of all, no middle name was listed. My sister, Susan, remembers that Grandpa was bothered by this. At some point, though, he took on (or was given?) the middle name of “John.” The birth certificate also states that he was the first child born to his mother–there is no way to know if this is accurate, but DNA testing and research has revealed no other people that appear related to the mother (at least yet).

In my life, I was born in St. Louis, and my family returned to Jefferson City when I was three years old. I lived there until going to college at St. Louis University. I stayed in St. Louis to attend graduate school at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. In 1995, I returned to Jefferson City with my wife and son. A couple years ago, I returned to St. Louis.

Upon moving to Jefferson City, my wife commented on how many people inquired if we were related to the other Markway families. I told her the answer was always “Yes.” Below is a picture of my grandfather with his adoptive family–it is pretty clear he came from a different gene pool. Given that this Markway family was so large, and that many of them had numerous children, the family grew rapidly.

fullsizeoutput_c01 — Joseph Auer Markway (back row left), Fred Jr., Ben, Al, Herman Gangwisch, Henry, Frank. (Front row): Rose, Lena, William, Fred Sr. (father), Catherine Schnieders Markway, Mary Ann, Crecentia.

You may have noticed that I haven’t discussed my grandfather’s birth father in this post. The birth certificate lists a name, but the name likely is fiction. Through DNA testing and many hours of genealogical work, I have identified the likely father. More on him later…

grandpa ww1 — Joseph Markway (right), in his World War I Army uniform, with his friend, Lawrence Prenger.

In Parts I and II, I told the story of my grandfather, Joseph Aner Markway, and how he came to mid-Missouri on an Orphan Train from the New York Foundling Home. I had found some distant relatives through Ancestry DNA who did not connect to any know part of my family tree, and the common thread was a Van Sten family from New York, where Grandpa Markway was born.

Through further DNA testing with Family Tree DNA (ftdna.com) which offers a test that traces the male lineage within a family (Y-DNA testing), I found others who share male ancestors named Vanstone, from Devon, England. My research has found that Vanstone likely is the Anglicized version of Van Sten, a name that appears to have come from Holland and Belgium (countries were not well-defined hundreds of years ago as they are now).

I found another surprise with the Y-DNA testing, though–two of the three male relations that showed up were Vanstones, but one was not. The woman managing that DNA test told me that the descendants of her great, great grandfather do not genetically match with the descendants of his “brothers,” suggesting that he likely was adopted. In other words, he was a descendant of the Vanstones.

Anyway, back to my grandfather…yesterday, I may have found his birth certificate online. For the past 18 months, I have searched for any records of Joseph Aner (the name he was known by at the Foundling Home), Joseph Doyle (family lore was that his mother was named Doyle), and Joseph Van Sten (the family name of his apparent father). Nothing ever showed up in the New York records.

I searched other genealogy web sites that sometimes have different information. Yesterday, on Family Search, sponsored by the Church of Latter Day Saints, I was searching for Joseph Aner, when the site also showed birth records for the surname, Auer, and up popped a birth certificate for Joseph Auer with a birth date of April 30, 1896 (one of two birth dates I have seen for him–the other being May 1). The certificate showed the parents were not married. The mother’s name was Adelaide Auer and the father was listed as Thomas King, perhaps a fictitious name as often happened in out-of-wedlock births.

My grandfather reportedly had gone back to New York as a young adult trying to find his mother and had been told her name was “Abby.” Might it had been Addy? I don’t really have any information on this yet. Adelaide Auer disappears from the records at this point–she is not listed in the census records of the U.S. or any state. All I know is that she supposedly was 24 years old at the time of his birth, and that she was born in the U.S. The father supposedly was 38, assuming anything about the father on the birth certificate is accurate.

In all my research, I also found that when Joseph Markway registered for the draft in World War I, he was living in Nebraska and living as a farm laborer. I have no idea why he had traveled so far to work. Surely there was farm work in Cole and Osage counties at the time. Did he go to Nebraska because that is where he had first been adopted off an Orphan Train? (He reportedly had been returned to the New York Foundling Home when the mother in that family had died and the father could not take care of him.) Did he go to Nebraska with a friend as part of some adventure, or did he go on his own?

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I had heard that Grandpa Markway had owned a car dealership in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In searching the website, newspapers.com., I found advertisements for Cole County Motors, selling Hupmobiles, DeSotos, and Plymouths, with Joe Markway as the manager. My father had told stories of that time, where you not only sold a car to the customer, but you also had to teach them how to drive it.

Apparently the Great Depression was not kind to auto dealers, as the business disappeared, and he later became a mechanic for Arthur Ellis.

I have learned so much about Grandpa in my search, and I’m not finished. Along the way, I have also discovered some amazing stories about other parts of my family–stay tuned, those bits of history are coming soon!