Relatives

            Let me try to explain something about my family that I have never been able to make any of my kids understand.   I’m fairly sure that my wife of 42 years doesn’t understand this, because if you explain it verbally it is quite confusing. 

            The question people often ask about my family is, "Are you related to Jesse James?"  As a kid we never really knew, but we would usually answer "Yes" because our older relatives told us that we were probably related, although no one knew for sure how, and, if you don’t know how, then you don’t know "if".  There was, however, good reason to believe that we were.  My great-great grandfather and my great-grandfather ran a Trading Post called James Crossing from the 1840s, when there were few white people in Kansas, into the 1880s.  The James Family Cemetery, at James Crossing, was the first white cemetery in Jackson County, Kansas; nobody has been buried there for a good deal more than 100 years now.  Anyway, From James Crossing to the Jesse James home farm in Missouri is only 60 miles, and there is evidence that Jesse and Frank James did hide out at James Crossing on occasion.  Also, my great-grandfather and Jesse James looked so much alike that if you put pictures of them against one another, one would assume that they were brothers.  There are a lot of other connections—the same names being used, people coming west from the same counties in Kentucky, etc. 

            Genealogy is much more organized now than it was 60 years ago, however, so the family genealogist (my cousin Joan) finally figured it out.  We are, in fact, related to Jesse James, but not through the Jameses.  We are related to Jesse James through his mother, Zarelda.  I believe, although I am not sure of this, that HER mother's maiden name was James, although it was an entirely different family. 

            That’s not really what I wanted to talk about.   I have an unusual series of relationships from which I am descended.  My grandfather, Isaac Burks, had an identical twin brother named Frank. 

            Isaac Burks               Frank Burks              Identical Twins

            My grandmother was Willa Mae Yates; she was called "Bill", which is why I am called Bill; I was named after my father, but called "Bill" after my grandmother.   Willa Mae had a sister named Mary, who we called "Mollie". . . for all I know her name may actually have been Mollie, but I believe that "Mary" is what is on her tombstone.   Aunt Mollie lived just three houses down from us and would babysit us sometimes, although she was quite old. Willa Mae and Mollie were the children of Abner Yates, who founded Yates Center, Kansas, or at least we were always told that they were, I don’t know.   Abner had something like 14 children.  One time for a class the teacher asked us to diagram all of our first and second cousins.  I had to explain that this would be completely impossible for me.   My grandfather, George W. James, had only one half-brother and a half-sister or something like that; I was never clear on that, but my grandmother, Jenny McCool, was one of 10 children, my other grandfather, Isaac, was one of twelve, and my other grandmother was one of 14.   God only knows how many second cousins I have.  In another generation genealogy will be so organized that somebody will be able to straighten all of this out in 10 minutes.   Also, I was never REALLY clear on who had 9 brothers and sisters and who had 11 and who had 13, but I’m telling you all this as best I can remember it.

Anyway, Willa Mae married Isaac, of course, but also her sister, Mollie, married Isaac’s twin, Frank. 

            All of these people were probably born in the late 1870s, I would guess.  The offspring of these marriages were then "Double Cousins", double cousins being cousins who are related both through their mother and through their father.  That’s not THAT unusual, but we’re just getting started.  

            Mollie and Frank Burks had several daughters, two of whom were named Jewel and Iola, whom we called Aunt Jewel and Aunt Ole (Owe-Lee).  Aunt Ole (Iola) was about 80 years old by the time she met my wife, but Susie and Ole just loved one another.  For some reason, they just clicked.  The first time they met I was walking Susie around Mayetta, where I grew up, and we walked past Aunt Ole sitting outside her house, in her driveway, in an old lawn chair.  She was nearly blind and I had not seen her in a couple of years, but I said "Aunt Ole", and she cocked her head as if she was not quite sure and said "Billy?"  She had recognized my voice.  She was a very dignified person, as my wife is, which, to be honest, is not something one could say about ALL of my old relatives. 

            Anyway, getting off the subject here.   Mollie and Frank had several daughters; they had Jewel, Iola, Opal, Violet, and Frankie; if they had any sons, I can’t remember that now.  All of these people lived around Mayetta and we called them all "Aunt".  I didn’t know Aunt Frankie well; she was the cutup in the group, the character.  Anyway, all of these girls were double-cousins to the children of Isaac and Willa Mae. 

            Now we get to the Jameses.  George James, born about 1865, married Jennie McCool.  He went to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush, probably in 1897.  On his way up there he met Jennie in Bellevue, Washington.  On his way back he stopped in Bellevue to propose to her, and they married, I believe in 1898.  I have a copy of their marriage license around here somewhere.  

            Anyway, George and Jenny had four sons and a daughter, Nell being the daughter.   The sons were Preston, Edward (who we called "Eddard"), George (who was called "Junior") and Ivan.  

            All of these kids were born between 1899 and 1912. As it happened, Preston James married Iola Burks, Aunt Ole:

            And then Edward James, Uncle Eddard, married Jewel Burks, Aunt Jewel:

            So the children of Edward and Jewel were Double Cousins, again, to the children of Preston and Ole. 

            Now, you may be thinking that this kind of thing is common in small towns, but I promise you, it is not.  There was no one else in Mayetta who had any kind of Double-Cousin in their family, let along anyone else who had TWO sets of double cousins in their family.   I’ve never heard of that happening anywhere else.  But we’re not finished yet. 

            My father was George James, the one who was known as "Junior" until he was 30 years old.  He married Mildred May Burks, who was a double cousin of Ole and Jewel. 

            Other than the generic term "cousin", there is no word for my relationship to the many children of Ole and Preston and Edward and Jewel, since I’ve never heard of anyone else who had that kind of a relationship.  What my father would always stress, in trying to explain this, is that there was no "intermarriage", since no one married anyone to whom they were related by blood.  But there was a large field of children who had different parents and some different grandparents, but who had exactly the same set of eight great-grandparents.   I didn’t know any of those great-grandparents: they were all dead before I was born, so I could never remember who was who in that generation.   We named my son "Isaac" because my wife and I both liked the name, and my Uncle Eddard was pleased that I had named him after my Grandfather, but I actually did not know until Edward said that whether my Grandfather was Frank or Isaac; I could never keep them straight. 

            Of those many children who had the same eight great-grandparents, I was the youngest, born in 1949.   Most of these cousins were men.   We had a million Franks and Isaacs in the family, which was bewildering.  My mother had two brothers named Frank and Isaac, who I just met once or twice and had difficulty sorting out.   Her sister Lori (or Lory or Laurie or Lorie or whatever it was). . .she had two sons, Frank and Isaac, who were severely mentally handicapped as a result of having scarlet fever when they were toddlers; I knew them well.  The oldest members of my generation around Mayetta were two boys named Bert (or Burt) and the other one was either named Frank or Isaac, but I could never remember which; they left Mayetta to join the war about 1942 and I didn’t know them well.  One of them became a career military officer and the other one became a well-known journalist who broke the news to the nation that fighting had broken out in Korea.  When he died NPR ran an obituary of him; he was rather a pompous sort.   All of these generally were successful people, except the boys who had scarlet fever.  My mother’s brothers, who I did not know; one of them was an executive in the oil industry, and there was something of a scandal in the mid-1960s when he divorced his wife of many years to marry his secretary, but I didn’t know him and he lived in Texas, so I wasn’t really up on the details.  It was kind of like a story cycle from "Mad Men."   The other one worked in the automobile industry and would claim that he drove back to Kansas from Detroit in 9½ hours or something.  Several of the women in that generation were school teachers, and they also were quite dignified women.  My Aunt Jewel and Uncle Edward had a boy named Frank James who became a Veterinarian in Michigan; he was younger and I knew him well, and my wife got to know him fairly well.  My family fell apart after my mother’s death; we were just scraping to stay alive, not able to afford much dignity, but I was always proud of my cousins. 

            There is a reason why I have told you all of this; it relates to an article I will publish later.  Appreciate your patience.   There will be a test on this material.