Climbing the family tree
BY JONNA BRIDGMAN
Special to the Dalhart Texan
There is a song by Kaci Musgraves titled “Family is Family”. I think it must have been written especially for my family! Almost everyone tracing their ancestry will find some nuts and squirrels among those branches or skeletons in the closet.
A number of years ago, we learned that an ancestor came to the colonies because he was a horse thief in England. I would like to apologize to the descendants of the horse owner, but I’m glad that Burlingham Rudd committed that crime and my family ended up in America. Burlingham was my five-times great-grandfather. After his death in 1790, his estate inventory included one black woman. I also found slave holders on the Bridgman side. Yes, we’ve come a long way.
Up another branch of my maternal family tree was William Berry, my four-times great-grandfather. William was born October 2, 1735 in Maryland. During the American Revolution, William joined other militia, or Overmountain Men, in attacking Loyalist forces during the battle on Kings Mountain. This was a decisive battle in the Southern Campaign. Unfortunately, this ancestor was killed during that battle. He already had children, including a son, James Malcomb Berry, my three-times great-grandfather. William Berry was buried near Blacksburg, South Carolina.
My paternal grandparents, Abraham and Susanna Schellenberg, were Germans from Russia. (No, son, we are not Russians.) The history books tell that Katherine the Great, empress of Russia, was German. She opened up land for immigration around the Black Sea to any Germans willing to make the long journey. These Germans were promised they could keep their languages, religions, and be free from conscription. When these rights slowly started to disappear, many began to leave the area and come to South America, Mexico, Canada, and the United States.
Grandfather came to America with his first wife, who bore him eight children. (Ancestry calls Katharina Lohrenz Schellenberg my step-grandmother. I think that’s odd.) She died and he met my grandmother at a Mennonite Brethren meeting in Minnesota.
Someone suggested to Susanna Flaming that she would make a good mother to Abraham’s small children. At first, she turned down that idea but later changed her mind. That marriage lasted until grandfather died in 1920. They had twelve children, my dad being one. Grandmother died in 1924. Obviously, I never knew these grandparents. These ancestors spoke low German. This has nothing to do with high or low class society, but with the area of Germany. Grandmother and Grandfather never learned English.
My uncle, A. L. Schellenberg, was the first in the family to come to Dallam County in Texas. He started the Coldwater Community, 25 miles north of Dalhart, consisting of German Mennonites. The house he and his wife Sarah built is still standing, but no one has lived in it for years. This uncle died before I was born. He was a pillar in the Mennonite Brethren church. He also owned a machinery business.
My mother told me that during the dust bowl, many people still owed A. L. money. They just left the equipment, covered up with a sand drift, and headed for California. My uncle told the story that while standing out in his field during a bad duster coming from the north, a strong wind blew off his hat. He watched it roll south. Three days later, a heavy wind from the south brought it back to him. Sounds like a tall tale to me.
My maternal grandfather also died before I was born. James M. Rudd was born in 1873. An inspiring story my mom told about him was that he had a serious talk with his children and told them, “We might be poor, but we will talk like we’re not.” My mother always modeled good grammar. I can’t explain the reasons why certain words are right, but know what feels good. I can still hear my mother say when someone asks where an item is at: “Behind the at!”
My maternal great grandfather, Martin Van Buren Rudd, was born in Alabama on February 3, 1842. He fought in the War between the States on the Confederate side (of course.) I have visited his grave in Ardmore, Oklahoma. In that cemetery there is a section of Civil War veterans’ graves with small Confederate flags. Martin Rudd’s is not one of them. I don’t know why.
Many people have interesting last names. Often, their surname relates to the occupation of an ancestor. Bridgman might have once been the man who watches the bridge. Now, I have to talk about that pesky “E” and what happened to it. Really, no one knows. One of my husband’s cousins does have an “E” in his name. It just comes and goes! There is a town in Illinois named Bridgman (no “E”).
My maiden name was Schellenberg, with my middle name being Lu (often being misspelled by others as Lou.) It took me until the third grade to learn how to spell that. Then I married and along came another set of problems. My maternal great grandmother’s maiden name was Weed. The younger generation gets excited about that.
Every one of my dad’s siblings (male or female) have Flaming for a middle name. Using the mother’s maiden name in some way is quite common. Several in my family use a president’s name as first and middle. My husband’s paternal grandfather was George Washington Bridgman and his maternal great grandfather was Zachary Taylor Emanuel.
Another interesting fact about my maternal grandparents is that they were step-siblings before marriage. When they married it created a scandal in the family. They were ostracized by some family members. We explain (to make it sound nicer) that they never lived in the same house before marriage. It gets confusing because my grandmother had a step-sister who was also her sister-in-law! My maternal grandmother (who I called grandma) was Lula Berry Rudd. Grandma’s mother was Louiza Wilson Berry and her mother-in-law/step mother was Louisa. This can get confusing! Louiza Wilson Berry died when grandma was three. No one knows where she is buried or even why she died. It has become a waste of time to search on “Find a Grave” for her final resting place. Grandad died on February 13, 1937. Grandma remained a widow for around eight years and remarried on September 25, 1945. All the family called her new husband Uncle Bill because he was my Aunt Dorothy’s (aunt by marriage) uncle. It was said that Uncle Bill married grandma because she had a washing machine and she married him because he had a bathroom. This is true love! I’m assuming they lived in his house.
Several years ago I joined Ancestry.com and also did my DNA. The results showed that I was one percent Nigerian. Now, how did that happen? We had always heard that my maternal ancestry contained some Native Americans. Nothing showed up in my DNA. My husband’s paternal grandfather could have qualified for the Dawes Rolls in Oklahoma. He was too proud and never applied. Back then people didn’t want to admit they had ancestors who were Native Americans. One would think that my mother-in-law, Oleta Littleheart Emanuel Bridgman, was descended from an Indian tribe. I have found no evidence of that.
Now, I want to talk about politics. (Yes, that subject always raises its ugly head.) My mother's ancestors came from the south and always supported the Democratic Party. My grandma, Lula Mae Berry Rudd Gens, was a good Baptist but tended to be prejudiced. Only after 1920 could women vote. Some women fought long and hard for the 19th Amendment. My dad, John Flaming Schellenberg, was from Kansas, which was a border state with most people favoring the north. Daddy was a Republican. Mother and daddy usually cancelled each other’s vote.
I was blessed to have in my possession the “Blue Book.” It is named that by family because of the color of the cover. A Schellenberg uncle compiled it back in the early 1950’s. I could never have found all those large families’ names and dates on my own. With an Ancestry membership one can see “hints” that may or may not relate to a distant ancestor. It pays to really be careful in accepting a hint.
Because of doing my DNA, I learned that I still had a living cousin in Oregon. Although the Schellenberg family was large, there were only 24 grandchildren. Some of my aunts never married and another one never had children. I am the youngest cousin by ten years. I called my cousin, Renetta in Oregon, and we chatted for some time. She had no idea that she had a Texas cousin. During the summer of 2021 my daughter and I took an Amtrak trip to visit another Schellenberg cousin, Dean and wife Karen, in southern California. After a short visit with them, we traveled further north by rail to meet Renetta in Oregon for the first time. What an adventure.
In researching the Bridgman family, I noticed that my husband’s great grandparents had the same last name before marriage. It turns out that they were (first) cousins. This is illegal in about half of the states today. British royals have married relatives to secure alliances and maintain bloodlines.
Of course, in every family, there are tragedies. In my family there are a number of suicides and homicides. Babies have died before they had a chance to live. War takes out some. My husband’s uncle, Oland Emanuel, died in the Pacific during World War II. I never knew Oland's mother, but I don’t think she ever got over losing her only son.
Along with interesting facts and some sadness, we get “gifts” from our ancestors. These come in the form of diseases and disorders which are genetic. One of my sons has hemochromatosis which is too much iron in the body. When I learned that my California cousin also had this condition, I sent off for our grandparent’s death certificates. Remember, they died in 1920 and 1924. Other than taking my money, these results told me nothing other than grandmother had Tuberculosis. Knowing about hemochromatosis wasn’t common in those days.
My mother and I both suffered with bad backs. This was diagnosed as genetic scoliosis. I remember a maternal uncle always wearing a back brace, so he must have also had this condition. My mother had a genetic heart disorder, but no one in the family has been affected. Several in the Bridgman side are affected by kidney problems. Now, is stubbornness genetic? For some reason, Germans are known for their stubbornness.
Now, how did I come to be born in Dalhart with ancestors from so many different parts of the world? My dad, John Schellenberg, came to the Coldwater community after his brother had started the settlement. He quickly put up a bungalow (my mother later called it a shack.)
My mother, Claudia Rudd Schellenberg, grew up in Texhoma and Goodwell, Oklahoma. After getting a degree in home economics from PAMC (Panhandle Agricultural and Mechanical College, now called Oklahoma Panhandle State University) in Goodwell, she looked for a job. It took a year to finally learn of the opportunity to teach in a two-room school–in the Coldwater community. Times were hard in the “dirty thirties” and she felt blessed to have that job teaching first through seventh grade students. She boarded with A. L. and Sarah Schellenberg and ended up meeting my dad and fell in love . She never did like teaching, so when John proposed, she accepted. They married on June 27, 1937. Eight years later, I came along.
Tracing your roots can be interesting, exciting, and sad. The languages spoken have gone from British English and Low German to widespread American English. Is Redneck or Texan considered a language? All of us sometimes wish we were different from our parents. But, remember, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” Some people are not interested in their roots at all, and that’s okay. I have enjoyed the journey.
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