Abbie McCloud Henderson

My grandmother Virginia told me stories about her grandmother, Abbie. She didn't know much about Abbie's childhood other than that she was born in Montpelier, VT and ran away from home at the age of 14. It took us a long time to find Abbie's family in historical records due to spelling variations of McCloud. Eventually, we found family members listed as McLoud, McLeod, and McLeude. In 1860, Abbie was living with her parents Jonas and Mandana, her grandmother Polly McLoud, and six brothers and sisters in Calais, Vermont, about ten miles from Montpelier. Jonas enlisted and fought in the Civil War from 1863 to 1865. Then, about 1868, Jonas and Mandana relocated 1,300 miles west to Steele Co., Minnesota. Abbie wasn't listed with her parents in the 1870 census. However, we know she came to Steele Co. since she married Henry G. Henderson there in 1872. One might think Abbie and Henry would settle down near their families in Minnesota, but the West beckoned. According to family stories, Abbie was five months pregnant with her first child, Mandana Sara, as they traveled across the mountains in a covered wagon to Rio Grande County in southern Colorado. Henry, Abbie, and Henry's five-year old daughter Myrtle from his first marriage made the 1000-mile journey in the late summer of 1873 and are believed to be among the first white settlers in the area. In a future post, I will write more about what life was like for Abbie in Colorado.


View Abbie McCloud's American Journey in a larger map.

Mums (Maude Stephens Weaver)

Amazingly, six of my great-grandparents were alive when I was born. Most of them died when I was very young, but I remember "Mums," our family name for Maude Stephens Weaver, who was born in 1878, in La Porte, Iowa. Her husband James Baird Weaver (known as "Jay") was also born in Iowa. My only memories of Mums are of visiting her when she was confined to her bed. Going to the nursing home wasn't especially pleasant, but I feel fortunate to have pictures of my sisters and I standing next to her bed.

About 1966

What I've learned since is that Maude was the tenth child in a family of eleven. After her mother died when she was eight, Maude and her sister Eva were raised mainly by their older sister, Edith. About 1902, Maude and Edith and their families moved to Los Angeles. Later, sister Eva and her family also moved to Los Angeles.

Maude Stephens Weaver, born in 1878, died in 1967.

Over the years, Maude and Jay's home seemed to become the family gathering place. Maude had a piano store for a time, and on Friday nights, everyone gathered to listen to Your Hit Parade while Maude took notes to order sheet music for the store. Then they listened to the National Barn Dance. Maude and Jay also subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post, which was read from cover to cover and passed around the extended family. Eva's grandson Bruce Campbell remembered Maude having the moxie to try new things like going to a real Italian restaurant. She also introduced the family to such novel foods as grapefruit with a cherry in the middle, salmon loaf, lemon fluff and shrimp cocktail. In her later life, Maude would be remembered as very proper and naive, but she passed down a sense of occasion and a love of old-fashioned family fun that remains to this day.

Mums at the Piano Exchange at 345 S. Western, Los Angeles

Great-Great-Granny (M. C. Huggins Sprott)

Mary Constance Huggins is hugely responsible for my interest in genealogy. Born near Glasgow, Scotland, in 1860 to an American father and an English mother, she was deeply attached to both nationalities. On the one hand, she passed down handwritten copies of her paternal line, making sure her children knew that William Bradford, Mayflower passenger and governor of Plymouth Colony, was her 6th great-grandfather. On the other hand, she wrote about her mother's heritage as the daughter of an English solicitor, and recorded the details of her own childhood growing up in Scotland. Her mother, Hamer Sarah Clarkson Huggins, had died when Mary Constance was seven, and her father, William Beers Huggins died in 1875. Con, as she was known, came to America in November, 1876. Several of her older brothers and sisters had already moved to America and in 1876, her half-brother Will and his wife Ozella, traveled to Scotland to bring Con and her younger brother Harry to the U.S. The four of them took the Victoria from Glasgow, stopping in Ireland along the way. They visited with Aunt Lizzie Catlin (their father's sister) in New York, then went to Mansfield, Ohio, where Con attended high school and then Ohio Central Normal School, earning a certificate to teach kindergarten in 1877. She taught kindergarten for six months, but in 1878, Will bought a sheep ranch near Emporia, Kansas and headed west. Their sister Beatrice went with Will and Ozella, and Con soon joined them.

Mary Constance Huggins (Sprott)

William Huggins was about 17 years older
than his half-sister, Mary Constance.

What was a Normal School?

Ohio Central Normal School

More about Mary Constance's brothers and sisters

Claude Walts

Claude Walts, the son of my great aunt Edith, and her husband Fred, moved with his family from Iowa to Los Angeles about 1907, when he was 12 years old. The family lived in what cousin Bruce Campbell called "old Hollywood," north of Sunset and east of Hillhurst. Fred was a carpenter for the studios, and Claude owned a horse so he found plenty of work as an extra in the Westerns.

He must have used some of his earnings to buy a snappy little car. When Claude registered for the draft in 1917, he was a horseman employed at the Silver Lake Stables. His address was 969 N. Figueroa, in Echo Park near what is now Dodger Stadium. If Claude seemed to be living an exciting life, it all ended quickly in 1918, when he succumbed to the flu during the pandemic that swept the globe and killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. Claude's final resting place is the Hollywood Cemetery.

You can read more about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 at this link: http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

Uncle Fred

My dad remembers Uncle Fred Walts, a tall elderly man, who wore a suit and tie to family picnics at Griffith Park in the 1940s. Uncle Fred was married to Aunt Edith, my great-grandmother Maud's sister. Fred was born in New York and met Edith in Iowa. They moved to California about 1907 and Fred worked as a carpenter building film sets in Hollywood. Fred and Edith had two children, Claude and Viva. In 1918, when Claude was 22, he became ill during the influenza pandemic and died. During the epidemic, young adults were especially vulnerable as their bodies over-reacted to the virus. Claude was buried in the Hollywood Cemetery. Edith and Fred were close to Maud and James throughout their lives, and can be seen in many family photos.

Uncle Fred is in the back row, middle, and Edith is next to him, looking at her nephew Gerald Campbell. Taken about 1933, this photo also shows (L to R) James and Maud Weaver and their daughter, Evelyn. The woman next to Edith is her sister Eva Campbell. Eva's grandson Bruce is wearing the white shorts.