Review: The Buster Clan

June 15, 2023June 14, 2023 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

The Buster Clan: An American Saga, K.P. Kollenborn. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2023.

Summary: What began as genealogical research into the Buster family turns into an account of the American story from the Revolutionary War to the present.

It began as a genealogy project by the author to trace her family roots in the Buster Clan. From the first generation of William Buster, she traced 3,380 who carried the name and estimated over 100,000 descendants. As she traced the migration of subsequent generations from their Virginia roots to Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and to California and learned their stories, she recognized that this family story was the American story in microcosm.

William arrived from Northern Ireland as an indentured servant on a tobacco plantation, completed his indenture and married and migrated to the Shenandoah Valley. Intermarrying with the Wood’s clan, one son fled to the Carolinas and four served in Revolutionary War militias. After the war, they established comfortable livings as farmers. In the third generation, Joshua would migrate to Kentucky, become a general in the War of 1812, fighting along with Anthony Wayne, and a senator.

Living in the South, the history of the Busters was the history of slaveholding, as well as slaves who were given the family name, including Garret, a racially mixed servant of Joshua, eventually being permitted to purchase his freedom. It is fascinating how many Busters are named Claudius, including one who joined Stephen Austin’s migration to Texas, fighting in the Mexican-American War. Other Busters were part of the gold rush, mostly unsuccessful. Another Buster descendent was the product of intermarriage with the Chickasaw fought to represent Native American interests. George Washington Buster, meanwhile, was at work creating the Greenbriar Spa, with sulfur waters reputed to have healing powers.

Of course, a number of Busters fought for the South in the Civil War, and some, in border states remained loyal. In Missouri, they were divided. They sought to reconstruct themselves after the war. Some became cattle drovers. They contended with or went along with the rise of Jim Crow and the Klan. Others migrated to the mining towns of Colorado. There were Busters among the Texas rangers. Another, a descendant of slaves started an automobile company. Busters fought in World War I and returned with shell shock. During the depression, Floyd, who was deaf, would play professional baseball while his brother Budd became an actor in the burgeoning film industry. The story of post-World War II is the advance of Buster women as teachers, doctors, and even a governor! In the latter half of the twentieth century, a Buster led research on in vitro fertilization, another, Bobette, in research on the film industry, and Kendall in the area of sculpture.

Busters fought in every American war, represented different sides in our most fraught internal struggles, helped push the nation westward and contributed to education, film, scientific research, government and politics, and the arts. Kollenborn’s tracing of the lineage and their representative stories makes her case that these three hundred years of a family’s story is in fact the story of America.

The one thing that would have been helpful, given how many Busters there are and all the different branches of the family would be to have some genealogical chart or system for keeping it all straight–who was related to whom. You know how it is when you hear a large extended family talking about their relations–aunts, uncles, nephews, great grandparents, first and second cousins. You may get it if you are part of the family. Otherwise you just nod your head.

Kollenborn’s basic idea is fascinating–to see how a family can tell something of a nation’s story in miniature, including all the fraught details. She skillfully links family, local, and cultural, and national history together in a fascinating narrative. And she makes you wonder if you could do this with your family.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from BookSirens.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — The Insurance Man

October 8, 2022October 14, 2022 / rtrube54 / 7 Comments

Cover of an insurance policy taken out on me the year I was born. Photo by Robert C. Trube

Both my grandfather Trube and my father worked as insurance men for The Prudential for a time, my grandfather until he retired, and my father early in his working life. The policy pictured above is one I own that my dad took out on me the year I was born. He made annual payments on it for 20 years of $22.79 and then gave it to me. I took a loan on the cash value to buy my first car because the interest rate was so much lower than car loans. True confession time–I just paid off that loan this year. I had paid a yearly interest fee for many years of $17 and just decided, probably more in the interest of tidiness than anything, to pay it off.

It reminded me of a job that, for the most part, no longer exists, that of the debit insurance man. That’s what both my dad and grandfather did. Debit insurance is life insurance under which the payment is made weekly, biweekly, or monthly. It was a way that lower income families were able to purchase life insurance. My father sold insurance and collected debit insurance payments for an area that covered much of Youngstown’s lower West side. Many of his policyholders worked in the mills. Given the risks of working in the mills, life insurance was an important protection. I remember my father speaking of insurance payments to widows of men who died in mill accidents. It could not lessen the grief, but it was something.

My dad called the territory he covered “the debit.” Much of his work was to visit each of the policyholders and collect their payments. There were no automatic deductions or online payments back then. Many didn’t have checking accounts and so sending money to an office through the mail was risky. In the insurance business back then, the office came to them, and my father made his living on a tiny commission he received on each payment.

You can imagine that it wasn’t an easy life. My dad only did it for a few years. But I remember how much he enjoyed the people he visited, especially around the holidays, when he was invited in for a drink, or to have a bite of the holiday spread, or walked away with a plate of cookies. The rapport and trust he built led to referrals, allowing him to serve others on the lower West side.

Debit insurance is not the most cost effective form of insurance. Home collection and commissions added to the cost. Not all insurance agents were reputable. But it was the way many lower income people could buy life insurance. My father and grandfather felt they represented a reputable company (which still pays me dividends on that little policy) and that they provided an important service to their policyholders, celebrating with them when life was good, and grieving when it wasn’t. It was personal, dealing with things we don’t like to but must think about.

That policy? It now costs me nothing but isn’t worth very much in today’s dollars. As much as anything, it is a reminder of my father, who made this provision many years ago. It reminds me of one piece of my family history. And it reminds me of how much our world has changed.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Translating Your Past

March 11, 2022March 10, 2022 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Translating Your Past, Michelle Van Loon. Harrisburg: Herald Press, 2021.

Summary: A guide to making sense of one’s past and how our family history, traumas in previous generations, our genetic makeup, and for many, how adoption help us understand our lives and place in the world.

For many of us, our family stories have chapters or whole parts that are opaque to us. Or some of the pages are missing. Yet our families literally have made us who we are right down to our genetic material. The stories include the good, the bad, and the ugly, and known or unknown to us, have contributed to who we are. Knowing those stories give us a better sense of our place in the world and a better self-understanding. It might be something as simple as the baldness that runs in my family to a propensity for alcoholism or particular health issues. Tragedies in previous generations get passed down and color our existence. Yet the stories are often gibberish to us. We need help “translating.” That’s what this book is about.

Michelle Van Loon shares out of her own journey including the traumas that touched her grandmother and mother. She acknowledges that we might not always want to know our family’s past but observes that what remains concealed cannot be healed and we miss out on the treasures, the gifts that have come to us through our forebears. She argues for the importance of our family histories from scriptures that make so much of genealogies and family history. In some way, the whole Bible may be read as a family story culminating in Jesus the Messiah, and leading to our eventual incorporation into that family.

She discusses genetic testing, the predispositions to certain diseases they may reveal and the surprises for those who discover their genetic heritage is not what they thought. Yet this genetic code reveals the unique way our inheritance from two different people makes us utterly unique creatures in the image of God, a source of wonder. We also receive unwanted gifts in the form of intergenerational traumas that may be transmitted in epigenetic expression, activating genes that may otherwise be silent. It can be hard to understand why God permitted this trauma, but Van Loon addresses finding hope that these need not have the last word in our lives. There are also patterns that often repeat from generation to generation. In the case where these are unhealthy, understanding is the first step, an important one of honesty. This may make sense of the unwritten “vows” we make. And this offers the chance of breaking free, of establishing new patterns. Sometimes the “gaps” reflect hard things, and the perpetuation of the family a certain resilience.

Adoption creates a unique situation as one comes to grips with both the birth families from which one arises and the family that has given a home and their love. She discusses the core issues adoptees face: loss, rejection, shame and guilt, grief, identity, intimacy, mastery and control and the options adoptees now have to relate to both families. The question of who our people are takes us as well into our race and ethnicity, and how these have shaped us.

Van Loon expands “family” to our faith communities, and doing so makes me wonder whether the physical communities that our families have inhabited also shape our stories. My wife and I grew up in the same town and have become aware of the values and outlooks that came from growing up in that town and their influence on our families and our shared family.

Ultimately, Van Loon believes our stories, even with their hard parts, may speak of the story God is writing in our lives and encourage us. I find this so. Both of my grandmothers’ Bibles sit close at hand as I write. My one grandmother died when I was very young and I have no memory of her, the other later, but to know of their faith, and to have heard stories of my one grandmother’s prayers for me from those who knew her, and to see how God has answered those is powerful–how God has worked across generations. I am not simply the genetic inheritance I’ve received from them, but I share in their spiritual inheritance as well, a source of profound thanksgiving. I’m grateful for this reminder from Van Loon’s book.

Her book includes two helpful appendices–a toolkit which may be used to discuss or personally reflect on the chapters as well as a second that provides specific resources for tracing our family histories.

Genealogy research has grown in popularity over the years. The genetic tools add a new dimension. What Van Loon offers is perspective that helps us translate information into meaning–leading to healing and growth in some instances, pride and thanksgiving in others, and a greater sense of our place in God’s world.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Where We Came From

May 5, 2018May 5, 2018 / rtrube54 / 13 Comments

1910 Census Record for the German Orphan (Protestant) Asylum via FamilySearch

In a number of these posts I’ve written about some of the early families who came to Youngstown and where they came from–towns in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Recently, my sister-in-law emailed about our own family roots. I knew some of this but had a lot of question marks. She’s a realtor, and pretty resourceful when it comes up to searching for information. She filled in a few gaps and sparked my own curiosity that led to filling in a couple more. It also left me with some new questions.

I always knew that my grandfather had grown up in an orphanage in Pittsburgh and was pretty sure his father’s name was George. I didn’t know the name of his wife or why my grandfather and his brother Jack and sister Mary ended up in an orphanage. My sister-in-law confirmed that my great grandfather’s name was George, he was born in Kentucky, and my great grandmother was named Mathilde, born in Pennsylvania and deceased young sometime after the birth of her last child. A 1910 census record at a genealogy site listed all the residents (forty-seven) at the orphanage where my grandfather grew up, including my grandmother and four siblings (there was also an Ernest and an Emma). It was listed as the German Orphan (Protestant) Asylum.

I remembered my grandfather taking me there one day as a child but had no idea where it was. Some sleuthing confirmed that it was the German Protestant Orphan Asylum, located in Mount Lebanon. I was able to match up the superintendent (or matron) of the orphanage listed on the census with a listing in the Directory of the Philanthropic Agencies of the City of Pittsburgh. We don’t know, but we suspect that my great grandfather, faced with raising five young children on his own after his wife’s death decided that this was too much, and placed them in the orphanage.

My sister-in-law also found my grandfather’s 1917 draft card. By that time, he was working in an ammunition factory run by Standard Steel Can in Butler, Pennsylvania. At this time, his father George is listed as still living, residing in Etna, Pennsylvania. My grandfather married shortly after this time and moved to Warren, Ohio where his brother also lived. My father was born in Warren in 1920. A census record from 1940 showed that my grandparents, my dad and his brother had moved to the West side of Youngstown, living in the duplex across the street on North Portland Avenue from where we grew up and my parents lived for 65 years. This was a fact I had not been aware of! At that time my grandfather is listed as a bakery supervisor, probably at the Wonder Bakery plant down the street on Mahoning Avenue. I remember him talking about driving a delivery truck for the bakery and wonder if this is what brought him to Youngstown. Later on, he sold insurance for the Prudential and moved to the South Side.

Looking at the 1940 census records, I realized that there must be one in the same batch for my mother since she and her family lived on South Portland. She was 20 at the time and listed as a “new worker.” My grandfather on my mom’s side is listed as a policeman with the steel mills (I believe U.S. Steel). A year later, my mom and dad were married, less than six months before Pearl Harbor.

All the things my sister-in-law uncovered filled in some gaps and raised some questions as well. I have no memory of my grandfather’s brother Ernest, and very little of Emma. I wonder what brought his father’s family to Kentucky and how George and Mathilde ended up in Pittsburgh. I suspect work had something to do with it. I’m still not sure why my grandparents started out in Warren or exactly when they moved to Youngstown. I wonder how much my grandfather and his father stayed in touch after he was placed in the orphanage. Apparently my grandfather knew where his father was living to list him as next of kin. And we still don’t know who George’s father was and where he came from. Likely from somewhere in Germany.

Germany-Kentucky–Pittsburgh–Mt. Lebanon–Butler–Warren–Youngstown. That’s the path that my father’s family took to get to Youngstown. I hope I haven’t bored you with these efforts to learn more about our family history. Maybe it has sparked an interest to discover the path your family took and how it ran to or through Youngstown. Like many of you, our family is now scattered around the country. And like you, Youngstown was a significant part of our family history, as well as the place of my birth.

My sister in law did a good part of her research on FamilySearch, a free genealogy website that I’ve used for other research on Youngstown families. It just hadn’t occurred to me to use it to look into my own family roots! This was where she accessed census and other records connected with my grandfather and his siblings.