Happy Easterday!
Genealogy and me
One of my ancestral names is Easterday. Every Easter we would check in and say hi. “Happy Easter-day!” we would say to each other, laughing in sarcastic amusement. None of us are particularly religious, but the Easter holiday makes me think of my ancestors, for more literal reasons.
My grandpa Harry Easterday passed away last weekend, six months short of 100 years old. He was incredibly supportive of me and my various pursuits, and he was one of the first to fully embrace my chosen name, at 96. He was looking forward to reading the next Captain Zeal book!
Last year I went on a huge genealogy kick, and I had a lot of fun learning about the Easterday line. As I was originally told, “There were two brothers who came from Germany, one was rich and one was poor. We are descended from the poor one.”
“Easterday” is translated from “Ostertag.” I believe I read somewhere that the Ostertags were supporters of Martin Luther in the 1500s, but it is difficult to pinpoint family lines earlier than the 1700s. In any case, Christian Ostertag immigrated from Germany to Maryland in 1739. It’s a little muddy trying to figure out who went where and when, but from what I gather, Christian Ostertag Sr., Christian Ostertag Jr., and Martin Ostertag Sr. passed through Pennsylvania before settling in Maryland. Christian Jr. sponsored his brother Martin to immigrate to Maryland in 1765 with Martin’s wife and two kids (including Martin Jr.). Martin Sr. and Martin Jr. served as indentured servants of Christian Jr. for five years.
Four generations later (and several Martins and Christians later, just to make it extra confusing), the Easterdays had moved around from Maryland to Illinois and Ohio to Michigan.
In Michigan, my great-great grandfather Thomas R. Easterday (1837-1927) was a reverend of the Presbyterian Church in Sault Sainte Marie. He had supposedly gone to school with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois. In Springfield, Thomas Easterday married Leora Tyson and they had two girls and one boy. The family moved to Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, in 1865.
Thomas’s son Ora (1882-1957) married Harriet Danforth (1880-1946) in 1908. Harriet’s family had moved from New York to Sault Sainte Marie around 1885, and then the Danforths moved to California around 1910. Harriet and Ora had close ties to both Michigan and California and continued to bounce between the two states. Ora was a bookkeeper working for an ice company in California for a while, and their sons Frank and William were born in California in 1909 and 1914.
In 1916, Thomas got sick, and Ora moved the family to be closer to him. Harriet is listed as a resident of California from 1916-1918, when Harriet’s father died. In 1919, Leora died and Fred was born in Sault Sainte Marie, so Harriet returned to Michigan after the death of her father. Thomas married the family housekeeper Effie Long a year later in 1920 when he was 83. In 1922, Harriet had her fourth son, my grandfather. By 1925, Frank was starting to leave the house looking for work at 16.
In 1926, Frank moved to California at 17 to live with Harriet’s sisters Belle, Dora, and May in Sacramento. He wanted to come home at some point, but Harriet told him to stick it out. Frank got into Sacramento Community College in 1927, and Rev. Thomas died in Sault Saint Marie. “The Marrying Parsons” was famed for marrying over 3,000 couples in his career, including Ora and Harriet.
In 1928, my grandfather was 6, Frank was 18, and Harriet was 48. Harriet was institutionalized for several months, but no one explained what happened to my grandpa. Frank’s grades began to tank, and at some point during the year he disappeared.
In 1929, the Easterdays returned to California, and Ora found work as a draughtsman. Grandpa was told they had moved to look for Frank, but nothing came of that search. Bill looked when he was about 14, and when he went to the same college, Bill came across one of Frank’s teachers who remembered him. Frank’s disappearance has haunted the family for the last 100 years. My grandpa was close to his parents and his aunts, and I think he probably helped his mom a lot more than he realized.
Grandpa grew up in California and went on to become a very thoughtful and studious man. He met my grandma when he was in the Army training to be an officer in WWII. Grandma was a librarian at the army base, and grandpa was looking for a book on thermodynamics. Grandma didn’t know what that was, but she knew where the books were! He went back a few days later to ask her on a date. They got married in 1947, had two kids, and in the 1950s grandpa earned his PhD in Nuclear Physics. Part of his graduate studies involved assisting with the nuclear experiments at Bikini Atoll, and I found some newspaper articles from the 50’s in which he was advocating for nuclear power.
I never did get him to talk about nuclear physics with me, but I would have loved to hear him talk about the new developments in nuclear fission. I’m sure he was excited to hear about it! Grandpa followed politics with a critical eye, and he always flew an American flag on his door because his neighbour once referred to him as “that liberal professor.”
Grandma and grandpa were both very educated (their bookshelves were full of Shakespeare and Nuclear Physics), loved reading and watching depressing movies, and they enjoyed birdwatching, walking outside, and camping. They would spend every summer in their trailer at Crane Prairie in Central Oregon, going for walks and watching chipmunks jump onto a corn cob tied to the awning. When grandma passed away in 2016, grandpa continued running the mini library she had started in their retirement home. The last time I visited grandpa was in 2019, and he insisted on using my chosen name despite having every reason not to at 96 years old. To him learning names correctly was a matter of respect, and he led the exercise classes at the manor right up until he started declining 2 months ago.
I don’t carry the Easterday name, but I’m honoured to gather and carry on the family stories. I’m still trying to determine what happened to Frank. I had wanted to find out before grandpa passed, but I’m hoping they’ve been reunited now.
Anyway, I’m thinking about my family extra this holiday. Happy Easterday!