Taking Secrets to the Grave

Secrets are hard to keep. On the other hand, some people are able to take secrets to their grave.

I have always known since I was a small child that I was adopted; in fact, it was a point of pride for me. I can remember telling my childhood friends that I was better than them because “my parents chose me (as opposed to their parents not being able to chose them).  My adoptive parents were very open: I knew names, locations, and the story behind the adoption of my brother and me (we are biological brother and sister).  So, for me, there were no secrets. But for my biological family, secrets were not found out until after the holders of the secret died.

Hattie & Elmer, 1972

You will notice in that last sentence that I said “holders of the secret.”  There was only one secret, but four holders of that secret: Elmer Vigoren (1903-1975) and Hattie Bourque Vigoren (1902-1985), my biological maternal grandparents; Violet Vigoren Curfman Evans Hendsbee (1923-1995), my biological mother; and Robert Douglas Evans (1919-2011), my biological father.

Let’s start with Elmer, Hattie, and Violet. Violet’s first marriage produced a child, Wayne Curfman (1941- ). Her marriage fell apart and she left Wayne with her parents. They still had a child at home, Harry Vigoren (1929-1946).  Then, Violet married again, Robert Evans. They had two children my brother Douglas (1948-2003) and me. The marriage was breaking apart, so the two of us were also left with Violet’s parents. Now, Elmer and Hattie had four children under their care. To make a long story short – my adoptive parents Frank and Florence Newhouse, adopted Douglas and me in 1949.

Through internet searches on my part to find medical information, I met my maternal biological family in 2002 (remember, I knew names). The family, for the most part, is living in California. Wayne Curfman, my half-brother, said that one day my brother and I were there, and then we were gone: He would have been about 8 years old at the time. The extended family would get together for Christmas, including my biological mother and grandparents, and there would be a discussion as to what happened to the “missing children.” My mother and grandparents knew where we were and what happened to us because they had kept in contact with my adoptive parents. However, never a word was said.

Violet & Robert, 1946

My father, Robert Evans, eventually remarried and had a family. He died in 2011, and his son (my half-brother) Robert Evans, Jr., and daughter-in-law, Barbara Stewart Evans, found me in 2012. They had requested his personnel records from the Department of Defense in order to find out about his various medals, awards, etc. In those records they saw a notation that in 1946 he had a wife and two dependents. They were shocked. Using the internet, they found me. Robert had never revealed to anyone in his family, including his siblings, that he had had a prior marriage. I had not tried too hard to find my birth father because of his somewhat common name and I knew he was from the St. Louis, Missouri, area. For me, there were just too many to try to go through.

So, my question is, how does someone keep a secret – like having children and even a marriage – to their death?

According to the July 2017 issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, keeping secrets is “stressful because you . . . keep thinking about that information, which reminds you that you have a secret.”

So, did Elmer, Hattie, Violet, and Robert keep thinking about my brother and me? Did they want to share the secret but were afraid of the judgment of others? Did this secret cause them stress? I guess we’ll never know.

I Married My Cousin

Last year I was updating information on my husband’s (James Robert Oliver) family tree. I kept coming across familiar names, and I just knew that these names were also in one of the other four trees on which I work. Not one to let a mystery stare me in the face, I started going through those other trees looking for those familiar names: Brewer, Morse, Perkins, Sargent. Bingo! I found the connection – my adoptive mother’s family. 

Florence - 1943

It turns out that John Perkins (1583-1654) and Judith Gater Perkins (1588-1654) are the primary connection. John and Judith Perkins are my mother’s (Florence Marie Swinburne Newhouse, 1907-1997) 9th great-grandparents, and my husband’s 10th great-grandparents. I told my husband about this discovery that he and my mother are 10th cousins, which made us, husband and wife, 10th cousins 1x removed. He certainly was not sure what to make about this. I thought it not only interesting, but funny – I had married my cousin! 

It turns out this Perkins family is well-documented. I had not really

Jim 2014

bothered to pursue this line, but I needed to find out more. I found I could go backward from John to William Perkins (1380-1451) where my mother and husband shared common “great-grandparents.”

John Perkins, along with his wife and children, left Bristol, England, on December 1, 1630, aboard the ship Lyon. He arrived in Boston on February 6, 1631. John’s children are where the relationship between my mother and my husband becomes less direct. John’s daughter, Elizabeth Perkins (1611-abt 1670) is my mother’s 8th great-grandmother; John’s son Jacob Perkins (1624-1400), is my husband’s 9th great-grandfather. From there forward, the relationship between my mother and husband becomes one of cousins, aunts, and uncles. 

This just goes to show if we go back in time, we are probably all related.

In Honor of Mother's Day: A Pioneer Girl

Her name is Florence Marie Swinburne Newhouse, and she is my mother.  She was born in 1907 in Wales, North Dakota, which was founded in 1897 in the extreme northeast part of the state; it’s almost in Canada.  In 1900, the population was about 350 people; 1910, 790 people; and today, 30 people.  Today, it is what we would call a “spot in the road.”  It is approximately equal distance from Winnipeg, Canada, and Grand Forks, North Dakota.  Living in North Dakota in the early 1900s certainly made one a pioneer.

Florence was the oldest of six children:  five girls and one baby boy who died on the day he was born.  She lost three of her younger sisters during different flu epidemics.  She would talk about how her mother sent her running to get the doctor when one of her sisters became sick and then going to her room to pray to God to save her sister because she had been taught that God answered prayers.  Despite her prayers, her sister died.  She said she had a hard time believing in God after that because he had not answered her prayer.

Her father, Richard “Dick” Swinburne, was what we would call today a commodities dealer:  he bought and sold potatoes, cattle, etc. in North Dakota and later in Minnesota where the family lived in Bagley, Minnesota.  In Minnesota Florence’s father also had the only gasoline service station which she helped to run.  In fact, when working one day at her father’s service station she waited on my father, Frank Newhouse, who was on vacation with his brother in northern Minnesota.  He told her to look him up if she was ever in Rochester (the southern part of the state).  When she eventually got a teaching job in Rochester, she did look him up; and, as the saying goes, “the rest is history”:  They were married in 1938.

She was a “pioneer” in working in her father’s service station; maybe that’s what made her so handy—she could fix just about anything.

During the Depression, her father sent her to Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota:  It is consider one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the nation. As a stipulation of being able to go to college, Florence had to help the next sister go to college, which she did out of her teacher’s salary.

It turned out that my mother was not able to have children.  So at the unheard age of 42, she and my dad adopted my brother, Douglas (1½) and me (almost 3).  Today, not much thought would be given to an “older” mother, but in 1949, this was certainly a “pioneer” step to take. 

I do believe she loved being a mother and doing all those “motherly” things we think of mothers doing during the 1950s:  she baked, canned, and froze food; she knitted me two sweaters every year with matching wool skirts (to my friends envy); she served our favorite foods on our birthdays; she introduced us to pizza (which my brother and I were not too sure about eating); she let me ride my bike wherever I wanted to go; she let me play outside until dark; she let me go ice skating after dark at the local skating rink; she let me have friends over when I asked. 

Florence was a daughter, a sister, a wife, a daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, but most importantly, a mother.  I know that she always wanted the best for me, and she wanted me to be the best that I could be.  

 Linda, Florence, Douglas Newhouse

Florence Marie Swinburne Newhouse (1907-1997)