King Rat

Washington Initiative Measure No. 594

Initiative 594 would apply currently used criminal and background checks by licensed dealers to all firearm sales and transfers, including gun show and online sales, with specific exceptions.

Gun Show photo by Michael Glasgow (CC By)

While I tend to be a bleeding heart liberal, I’m generally less supportive of gun control measures than a lot of other folks. There’s essentially two things I want to see changed about guns in the United States. The first is that stupid people should not possess or own guns. Who should decide what and who is stupid? Me. Of course, that’s not going to happen. But that’s my ideal.

The second is I’d really like to see a change in culture away from a hard-core attachment to guns. That’s not a law thing; that’s a culture thing. Guns aren’t needed and aren’t useful in 99.9% of the cases people think they are. For example, open carry. To give an analogy, I think flip flops should not be worn except at the beach, pool, or locker room and yet people wear them everywhere. I do not, and would not, support any banning of flip flops. But that doesn’t mean I think people should wear them. Please, stop wearing flip flops. Similarly, leave your gun at home. I don’t think open carry should be encouraged, but I think it should be generally lawful.

So that brings me to I-594. I-594 is not a litmus test for me. I think people can vote in good conscious for this measure without earning my ire. There are two questions that determine my answer to this initiative. The first is, will this do any good? The second is, is it worth the loss of freedom to transfer or sell a gun without a check?

I’m going to delve into the second question first. The answer is, I don’t think so. The burden on a person selling a gun is not substantial. TA quick search says the cost for this is generally less than $100 currently. The wait will be between 0 and 10 days, depending on the results. Generally the check happens instantly if a person doesn’t have issues that need to be dealt with. After 10 days, the sale/transfer can go through even if the background check hasn’t come back.

For the sellers, the burden is the cost. If the cost to purchase a gun goes up, people will buy fewer guns. Licensed gun dealers already factor this in, and they are doing just fine. Unlicensed gun dealers are basically free riding. Truly private sales/transfers between known people will be more inconvenient. I don’t see much more burden for doing this than registering a car though, and that is a pain in the ass, but it’s something we live with and accept. For purchasers, guns will be more expensive and there will be less reason to purchase privately and more reason to just use a licensed gun dealer in the first place. The only real burden is that people who are ineligible to purchase a gun will not have as large of a loophole to get one.

So, the first question: will this do any good? That’s much harder to answer. Few jurisdictions have had background check measures for long enough to have good data. And any changes aren’t going to be easy to measure given that people can and do work around them. If effective, background checks will be more effective when people can’t go to the next state over to purchase a gun without a check. Residents of Spokane can easily evade this because they are 30 minutes away from Idaho which doesn’t have background checks. All this makes it hard to know.

Additionally, if there’s any effect, it’s hard to see it because so many other things affect gun violence. Something might reduce gun violence by 5% but the economy goes south so crime in general goes up by 10%, which obscures the effect of the first. You can’t just look at the fact that gun violence in Colorado went up after they passed background checks in 1999. There are so many causes that extracting that information requires university-level studies.

The pro I-594 web site gives out some statistics, such as 39% fewer law enforcement officers murdered with a handgun in states with background check laws. The web site does not give the source for that. It also doesn’t say fewer than what, what the time frame is, how this was measured, what the confidence is, etc. The Officer Down Memorial page gives the stat that 39 police officers have died in 2014 due to gunfire. That tells me any measurement of law enforcement deaths in background check states is going to have a low sample size. Other measurements might not have that issue, but it’s really hard to tell given what the pro I-594 group posts.

I looked on JSTOR to see if I could find anything. Unfortunately, the only study I could find using background check as the key term wasn’t looking at background check efficiency. It looked used measures of background checks as a proxy for determining gun ownership and effects of that on suicide rates.

At the risk of falling into the trap of something must be done. this is something. therefore this must be done. I’m planning on voting for the measure. My gut feeling is that it will help reduce incidence of bad people having guns, but only slightly, given that people can work around it. I don’t have anything except gut feeling at this point, because actual numbers are so hard to come by. Sorry, pro-gun people, but keeping the government from funding these studies means I have to go with my gut. I hope a local university will actually study the effect and we can revisit the policy in 5 or 10 years. If it’s not working at that point, I’ll support dumping the law.

The argument that it’s a burden or infringing on rights doesn’t hold water with me. California has done this for decades and it’s not a gun free zone.

Gramps 4.1

I’m finally upgrading to Gramps 4.1, which changes how it handles places. It now builds a hierarchy of places.

Which means I now have some issues:

Do I make overseas colonies children of the controlling country? I’m thinking so, but in most cases they weren’t considered part of that country the way that Iowa is considered part of the US. What do I make the contained in relationship to mean?
Particularly if I don’t make them contained in a parent, what type do I assign to those territories? Colony? Possession?
The hierarchy also has a concept of time, in that a division can be part of different containing places over time (e.g., Deadwood part of Dakota Territory until it became part of South Dakota). But it doesn’t seem to have a way to specify that a place is independent for a time and not independent (e.g., Bavaria was an independent kingdom until German unification). I’m not sure how to handle that.

Washington Initiative Measure No. 591

Kicking off my 2014 General Election ballot is Initiative 591, which prohibits government agencies from confiscating guns or other firearms without due process, and prohibits requiring background checks unless there’s a national requirement to do so.

This initiative is an easy no. We already can’t confiscate guns without due process. A person’s guns have more protection than their houses.

The real goal of the initiative is the second part. The proponents want to prevent background checks. Basically, they want people to be able to sell guns to felons and the mentally ill. Those are the people that background checks catch. Not that background checks catch everyone forbidden to have guns. But it doesn’t make sense to prohibit the checking completely.

Jesse James, half-length portrait, facing front, holding handgun in left hand at his waist

We have another initiative on the ballot on background checks. I’ll post about that one next. In the meantime, remember that these people want to sell guns to known criminals, like Jesse James.

Weiss to Weiss

I’ve found a couple of intriguing entries in the indexes to the land records of Grant County. Both of these clipped images are from the grantee index. The first name is the person who purchased property. The second is the person who sold it:

Peter Weiss to Anton Weiss

Paul Weiss to Anton Weiss

The first is a sale from 25 Feb 1863 from Peter Weiss to Anton Weiss, my second great grandfather. The second is a sale from 14 Jun 1864 from Paul Weiss to Anton Weiss.

What do you think the chances are that these men are related to Anton? I’ve no idea actually, but it’s the only connection I’ve found between Anton and any other person named Weiss, save for the names of his parents in Germany. Are they cousins? Siblings? Completely unrelated? I don’t know. Time to do more research.

Sister Genevieve Parker

The featured picture is in a photo album of images from my great grandparents travels.

I didn’t know how Sister Genevieve Parker fit into my family tree. None of my branches contained anyone by that name, but nuns sometimes adopt new names when they take their vows. Last fall, after I tracked down my third great uncle James Parker in California and some of his family, I suspected Genevieve belonged in that branch of the tree. But where?

I still don’t know exactly who she is, but I know where she fits. To kill some time while I was in California last week, I was doing some unfocused searching for a daughter of James Parker, Mary. I’d suspected she was the Mary Parker who married a Thomas Lyons. I found an index death record that could be her then a copy of the death certificate, and those indeed indicated she was a daughter of James Parker. And today I found a copy of her obituary:

Look in there! Her sister is the Very Reverend Mother Genevieve Parker! And a little bit of Google searching brings up an item on Genevieve Parker from the web site of the Immaculate Heart Community:

Mother Genevieve was elected the first Mother General of the newly established California Institute of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She guided the Community for nine years. Mother Genevieve was instrumental in securing the separation of the California IHMs from the Spanish Community. The negotiations for independence of the California group went on for several decades. With the help of Bishop John J. Cantwell the separation was completed in 1924. …

She guided the Community as an able administrator until her resignation in 1933. She died in July of that year.

Their web page had this image of Mother Genevieve Parker in 2014:

Pretty much the same person! And now I have a date of death and a pretty good starting point on digging up the rest of her life.

Interestingly, I still don’t know exactly who she is. In the 1870 U.S. Census, James Parker has 4 daughters: Catherine, Mary, Ella, and Frances. In 1880, his daughters are Kate, Ella, Fanny and Theresa. Mary is Mary Lyons. Ella is Ellen Parker Murphy. I suspect Theresa married a Frederick Donaldson, though I haven’t proven that. That leaves Catherine or Frances. At this point, I just don’t know which of the daughters she is.

New online tree

When I started working on my genealogy, I used Geni.com. Later, I moved my main genealogy tree to my own personal site running PhpGedView. Unfortunately, that software project hasn’t had new features added in years. I also started using Gramps for managing my research and stopped updating the online tree. But that doesn’t work so well for sharing details of my research. I’ve told stories here, but I haven’t updated a public tree.

Today, I finally got a replacement online family tree site running. Instead of the using data from the old site, I exported the data from Gramps and uploaded it. It’s better researched than what I had previously put online.

Poke around if you want to see what I’ve got.

Mary Murphy Parker 1804 — 13 Aug 1887

After 3 years of researching Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy, I have found when they died. The marker for Patrick Parker that I previously found in Saint Mary’s church cemetery, east of Ackley Iowa, is indeed my third great grandfather. His wife Mary died on 13 Aug 1887 and was buried in the church cemetery. Her name no longer appears on a marker in the cemetery. I suspect that it once was on the same headstone as Patrick’s, but the top portion was damaged and removed.

This morning I found her obituary by serendipity. I have been working my way through scans of the baptismal register for Saint Mary’s (a project I will write about soon) and came upon an entry for Stephen Patrick Parker, son of Thomas Parker and Ellen Clinton. It had a date for the baptism, but not for his birth. The baptism was in 1885, and there’s a possible match for this Stephen Parker who was said to have been born in 1888. I decided to do a quick search of the keyword Parker in the Ackley Enterprise on NewspaperArchive.com for the years 1885 to 1888, to see if I could find his birth. I have not found it yet, because I found something else.

That was a brief mention that Julia Parker Kenefick had attended the funeral of her mother. It was third in my results list and was published on 19 Aug 1887 on page 5 column 3.

Mr. and Mrs. M. Kenefick, of Belmond, attended the funeral of Mrs. Kenefick’s mother, Mrs. Parker, last Monday.

It did not come up in the search, but in column 6 on the same page appeared a notice of Mary Parker’s death.

Mrs. Mary Parker died last Saturday morning at the residence of her son Mr. Patrick Parker, in Washington township, Butler county. She was eighty-three years of age and has [for] the last three years been quite feeble. Mrs. Parker was the mother of ten children, nine of whom are living. She was one of the oldest settlers having located at Ackley in 1870. The funeral took place last Monday morning and was lagely attended, Rev. Father Burns officiating. The remains were laid peacefully to rest in the Catholic cemetery.

Mary Parker died 13 August 1887 at the home of her son in Washington township, Butler County, Iowa. She was buried in the church cemetery with Reverend Father Burns officiating. L.H. Burns was the parish priest of Saint Mary’s in Ackley, meaning Mary Parker was buried in their cemetery. And meaning that I have enough evidence that I will consider the Patrick Parker buried there to be my third great grandfather.

First cousins, Patrick Parker and Leonard Parker

Last month I requested a copy of the pension application for my second great grand uncle, Stephen Parker, from the National Archives. I got the first 100 pages on CD today. Much of it I already know. But there are some great pieces of evidence in the file that solidify and confirm important details about Stephen and his family. One item was very new information though, and stood out.

Below is the deposition of Mary Morkin née Parker. She was the daughter of Leonard Parker, who lived near my third great grandfather Patrick Parker in Blanshard township in western Ontario. Leonard and Patrick also have records that put them together in County Westmeath and in Lanark County of Ontario. Other family researchers had written that they were brothers, and I’d tended to go with that assumption as well. Mary Morkin gives the most direct evidence so far that they were in fact related. She testifies that Stephen Parker’s father (Patrick) and her father (Leonard) were first cousins.

Eliminating the possibility they are brothers is going to make looking at any possible records a better process. For instance, I won’t reject families with a Patrick Parker as incorrect matches if there’s no sign of a Leonard in the family. Or if descendants of Leonard Parker take DNA tests, we’ll expect them to be much more distant genetically.

There are more things to glean from this file, but that’s the biggest in the first batch.

Maggie Burk Parker

The aforementioned Stephen Parker married a Margaret Burk in 1873 in Webster County, Iowa, most likely at the Catholic Church. I’ve also previously noted that their daughters became teachers in the Seattle Public Schools. I’d really like to find out more about his family, so the last week or so I’ve spent looking for records on Maggie.

Margaret and Mary Parker in 1909 Seattle Directory

Ancestry has a good collection of Polks city directories for Seattle, so I looked for her and found her in most of them from 1910 to 1924. Where she was missing, Ancestry was missing pages. One of those was 1909, and Margaret wasn’t to be found in 1908. So I hopped on the bus and went to the Seattle Public Library to look at their collection of directories. Margaret was in 1909. So that puts her arrival in Seattle in 1908 or early 1909. Her daughter Agnes was listed as a teacher at the Ross School in the 1906 directory. As best I can tell, Margaret and Mary arrived together and then the three of them rented an apartment at 1321 E Union where they lived until Margaret’s death in 1924.

The image above is the location in 2011. I haven’t researched the property properly, but the apartment in the background is 1319 E Union and there is no 1321. Either the apartment was renumbered, 1321 was located in the parking lot in the image, or I have the wrong location. The apartment building shown was built in 1909.

I also finally ordered the death certificate for Margaret, which arrived today. Most of it I knew because the folks from the Family History Library indexed a lot of the fields, including the names of her parents. The death certificate did give an exact date of birth for Margaret, if it can be believed. It also has a cause (pneumonia) and exact place (Columbus Sanitarium) of death, which are also new to me. The date of birth may be helpful in finding out who she is.

There are some additional queries I’ve sent, which I haven’t yet received returns for. I wrote to the Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle seeking information on her funeral, if they have it. They replied via email that I’ll need to query Saint James Cathedral. I sent a letter to Calvary Cemetery, hoping they have some records on her that will reveal something about her. And finally I sent a letter to the Webster County Genealogical Association asking if they’ve got anything on Margaret or her marriage. The Family History Library says it has a book listing marriages compiled by the W.C.G.S., so I figured I would go straight to the source before getting a copy of the book. Hopefully they’ve got Margaret in an index somewhere with a connection to Webster County.

More on Stephen Parker

Since I last wrote about Stephen Parker, I’ve learned a bit more about how to do genealogy and have gained some confidence in pursuing leads.

I mentioned it only in passing on this post about my 2nd great grandmother Mary Parker, but that search turned up the baptismal record for her brother Stephen as well. Most of the records about Stephen Parker give only an approximate age for him, and it usually worked out to be around 1837. But the baptismal record for him puts his date of birth as 2 Jun 1835. I’d thought I wouldn’t ever find a real date of birth for him.

At the Iowa Historical Society a couple of years ago, I couldn’t find any record of his death in the county microfilm holdings. The only things I found were obituaries in their newspaper holdings. The Historical Society also did not have any records from the Hospital for the Insane where Stephen had been committed.

Recently, I wrote to both the Independence Mental Health Institute (M.H.I.) (the successor agency to the Iowa Hospital for the Insane) and to the Buchanan County Genealogical Society looking for how I might find information on Stephen Parker. The fellow who answers email for the genealogical society went above and beyond what I’d hoped, which was contact information at the M.H.I. beyond what I could find on the web site. He looked in the society’s records and after finding nothing, made a trip to the courthouse on my behalf. Unfortunately, he found that no deaths had been recorded at the county from 1889 to 1897, or that those records had been lost. Then he also provided me with instructions on how to request information from M.H.I.

At the same time, I received a response from M.H.I. with the formal version of the same instructions. Having information from the genealogical society on how to navigate the complicated forms was very helpful. I sent those in. M.H.I. didn’t have much information on Stephen Parker, but they did provide the specific date he’d arrived and date and time of death, which turned out to be a day earlier than indicated in his obituaries.

I also requested Stephen Parker’s civil war record from the National Archives. That wasn’t too interesting, but it did provide a physical description for him that came with his oath when he enlisted. He’s described as 5 foot 10 inches, hazel eyes, brown hair and dark complexion on 18 May 1863 when he enlisted.

Stephen Parker - Enlistment Oath — Stephen Parker – Enlistment Oath

He didn’t last long in the military, being discharged on 6 Aug 1862 at Fort Hamilton New York fir disability, not even three months later. The only information on that comes from the one line notation in the register of enlistments for him.

I’ve also looked for Stephen Parker in the census. He appears with his parents’ family in 1852 in Canada and in 1860 in Wisconsin. In 1870 and 1880, he’s recorded living in Clarion Iowa as a farmer. In 1870 on his own, and in 1880 with a wife and two young daughters. But he was already marked as insane by then, and in fact I believe was not even living with the family despite being recorded there. He’s also recorded on the supplemental schedules for the insane in the 1880 US Census. The records from M.H.I. indicate he’d entered the hospital on 14 Feb 1878. In 1878, there are several entries in the Wright County court docket on a guardianship being established for Stephen’s financial affairs, including this petition from May 1878 saying he’d been committed:

Petition for Appointment of a Guardian - Stephen Parker — Petition for Appointment of a Guardian – Stephen Parker

The next census where Stephen Parker appears is in the 1895 Iowa census, where he’s still listed living in the hospital. Where I haven’t found him is in the 1885 Iowa census. He doesn’t show up in the indexes for that year, and there are 124 pages for Independence. I haven’t yet had the patience to read through those pages one by one to see if he shows up in some fashion.