Genealogy Archives - Bob on Books

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.

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.