A while ago Darrin Lythgoe, the creator of the TNG application that many Guild members use, asked me if I might know who a Mrs. Steadman might be who was at the center of one of the mysteries in his family’s ancestry.
Darrin was aware of my study of the Steadman families and was hoping to solve a mystery of who were the birth parents of his great-grandmother Stella Jensen (1894-1970). Stella was adopted by the family of Neils Hansen Jensen and his wife Nicolene Rolfson. As Darrin told me: “My great grandmother was adopted in Utah in 1894. For more than 100 years all we knew was that the adoption was facilitated by a family friend in West Jordan, UT named Mrs. Steadman.”
“We know Stella was born 14 Jun 1894, although there is no paper record of her birth.
I know from a christening record that her adoptive parents brought her home prior to 2 Aug 1894. That record lists her place of birth as Taylorsville, UT (West Jordan was a place within Taylorsville at the time). Everybody seemed to know where and when she was born, but the parents were kept a secret. It was all “under the table”, so there’s no record of the adoption. I’ve checked all the records of that time.”
“Utah didn’t start requiring birth certificates until 1905 (!!). Adoptions in Utah are no longer private when they’re more than 100 years old. I have searched them all more than once, looking for anything that could even remotely match. There is no birth record and no adoption record. We know her adoptive parents were friends someone close to the mother (Mrs. Steadman), so I’m sure that’s how they knew the exact date.”
The paper trail is very thin of Stella. She is found in the 1900 and 1910 census with the Jensen family with no obvious indication of her being adopted… except maybe that her parents were older, but still of child bearing age at the time of her birth. From this we do know that the adoption was prior to 1900.
Darrin followed this up with a DNA test a year or so ago. “A year and a half ago, I was able to use DNA research to pin my grandmother’s biological parents down to a couple in Utah named Thomas Clark and Eliza Ann Simons.”
“To give a summary of my research, I first contacted a DNA relative (2nd cousin) who was not related to any of the people in my known lines. We then compared our trees until we found a single node in each that could be our common link, and that was the Clark-Simons family. Further searching led me to other DNA relatives who were related to either the Simons *or* the Clarks, but not necessarily both. That’s what led me to conclude that I am related to both Thomas and Eliza. “
What makes the family of Thomas William Clark and Eliza Ann Simons interesting is that Eliza is a half-first cousin to Edith Eliza Simons who married Walter Steadman of the Lenham Steadman family that moved to Utah in the 1880s.
Based then on the DNA evidence, it would seem obvious that we have located Stella’s birth parents. Darrin is still looking for some documentary evidence – journal or diary records, letters, family records from Clark, Simons, or Steadman families to validate this.
Let me share some of the paper trail of the Clark family that add up to questions for me. Thomas and Eliza seem to have had several children in England before they came to Utah who died young. They had one known son (born 1874) and one daughter (born 1882) who survived, at least to the 1930s. If Thomas and Eliza had another child in 1894 when Eliza was 42, why would she have given the child away?
I could not find Thomas in the 1900 census, but I did find information on his death on 30th May 1902 in the Salt Lake City Death Register. Thomas at St. Mark’s Hospital at age 65 years and 6 days. He had been a resident of SLC for 20 years. He was a teamster and died of Cirrhosis of the Liver. He was married and was born in Essex, England. He lived at Roberts. Blk, Broadway. H. N. Mays, MD was doctor.
I did find Eliza in the 1900 census living with her daughter Emma/Emily. She describer herself as a Widow who had had one child who was living. By 1910, Emily was married and Eliza was living with Emily’s family as a widow who had had two children, both living. Aside from the obvious omission of the infants who had died early in her marriage in England, I wonder why she did not choose to mention a further child in either of those census. Based on the fact that she listed herself as a Widow in 1900 census, that suggests she and Thomas had separated.
This could be the answer to the mystery that has befuddled the Lythgoe family for 100 years. Or maybe not.
I have not had access to the actual DNA results in order to check out the centi-Morgan values of the various relationships. That is a challenge in that as we have learned from the discussions on DNA clustering, those numbers can tell you a lot about what sort of relationship exists and by looking deeper, might suggest names for the parents of the Clark-Simons family.
This illustrates how using DNA data can get you into the right family, but not necessarily to specific people. The first question in looking at the family has to be were there any other marriages between these two families? Might Thomas and Eliza have divorced, and then Thomas had a relationship with someone else in the Simons family who died giving birth the Stella?
Why was this particular Jensen family picked to raise Stella?
The story is not over. Hopefully, someone will have some information that can shed more light and bring Darrin closer to solving this mystery.
