The Lewis Side of the Family – Getting Started

Having traced the Northen side of the family from John Northin – the first known Northen to land in Virginia – in 1636 up through my father James Edward Northen, I want to move on to  to the Lewis side of Dad’s family. One of the things that made the Northen side of the family easy to track was that John’s son Edmund moved up in the Richmond County area of Virginia in the 1600’s and the branch of the family that led down to us, pretty much stayed there up until the beginnings of the twentieth century.  With the Lewis family, that is not necessarily the case.

Before going on to try to discuss the people on the Lewis side.   I’m going to include a diagram that helps explain some of the problems with tracing the family.

 

I think being able to picture some of the relationships makes things easier.  One can try to begin by backing up from my grandmother, Mattie Lewis. The first couple of generations back are pretty uncontested, even if not much is known about the individuals. John Pierce Lewis was my great grandfather and John Ball Lewis my great, great grandfather.  That is documented; we even have a picture of John Ball Lewis.  Beyond that, though, things start to get murky.  Approaching the tree from the other end we have the original John Lewis, sometimes referred to as John Lewis the emigrant who came to Virginia in 1653 had three sons.  This solidly documented as well – literally, because we have his grave marker. The question is whether we came down through his son Edward (what I thought after my original investigation) or his son John, Jr. (which some family trees suggest). One of the things that makes figuring this out tough is the large number of Lewis men named John or William.  Almost every family had a John or William and in several cases there may have been two children named William or John, especially if the first had died or if the father remarried when his wife died.  Even the unusual name Willoughby in the middle of the pack is not totally certain because he had a son Willoughby as well.  Before the United States was officially a country in the late 1700’s there were no official censuses taken or birth certificates recorded. Being a Protestant colony, there were also no baptismal records.  As a result, many people who lived a pretty average life were not documented and even those who were frequently were wrong about birth and death dates. Fortunately, unlike with Northen, few people misspelled Lewis as a last name.

 Another thing that makes research in the earliest days of Virginia slippery as well was the constant changing of the names of places.  Though it’s a bit of a detour, I’ll just give a quick explanation. England (including Wales) during the 1600s was divided into shires.  They are pretty much like a county is today or a township on the east coast.  There was usually a manor or important town in the middle of a shire. John Lewis originally came from Monmouthshire, the shire around the town of Monmouth, in Wales.  [Side note: our word sheriff comes from “shire reeve” or the person who administered the shire.] About thirty years after Virginia was first settled at Jamestown, the settled areas were developed into eight shires after the way things were done back home in England.  Shortly after, however, the shires changed into counties. These counties were large and kept splitting. So for example, the area where John Lewis first settled had originally been called Charles River Shire and changed to Charles River County. Then right after that it was split and became part of New Kent County, and New Kent County split again and became King and Queen County.  So, John Lewis property ended up being in King and Queen County, though that was not the name of it when he moved there.  This can be quite confusing when trying to figure out where someone lived.

            That’s it for the prologue on the Lewis family.  In the next blog I’ll take a look back at John Lewis, the original emigrant.

U.S.S. Case

After the last post describing Dad’s time in the Navy, Eli sent me a link to a blog that described life aboard the U.S.S. Case (see below).  Dad was aboard the Case from  Mach 1, 1941to December 6, 1942. which includes the time that he was at Pearl Harbor during the bombing.  The blog is located at http://home.comcast.net/~wgoffeney/Case/usscase.htm and makes for really interesting reading. In addition to realizing that I made one big mistake – the Case was a destroyer not a light cruiser – there were two really interesting things that I found out that I think are worth mentions.

 The first is that it was only by the intervention of fate that Dad’s ship survived the attack.  The U.S.S. Case came into Pearl harbor because it was scheduled to have repairs made and was supposed to be in dry dock.  Just a couple of days before, another ship, the U.S.S. Shaw had some damage done that require repair so they pull into the space in the dry dock where the Case was supposed to be and the Case was moved further down the Harbor. When the attack came, the Shaw was hit twice with bombs, causing it to catch fire and much of the boat sank. Somewhere back in the corner of my memory, it seems that I must have hear this before, but if I did, that memory was lost so I was really interested to find out about it.

 The other thing that really struck me is how the narrative on this site dovetails with the account of Mom and Dad’s marriage.  Remember that they drove to Reno, Nevada and were married on Nov. 2, 1942 because they had to marry quickly before Dad went back out to sea.  Here is what the blog says:

 The Case stayed in Pearl Harbor for two days when orders were received to escort a convoy to San Francisco. Case departed October 20, 1942 and arrived at the West Coast October 30. The ship entered Mare Island Navy Yard for further upgrading of our armament and minor repairs. The crew was divided into three sections with each section getting a three-day pass. This would be the most liberty the crew would get in a more than a year’s time. November 11, 1942 saw the ship clearing port, herding a group of merchant ships into some semblance of order, and setting a course for Pearl Harbor again.

If they arrived Oct. 30, then a three day pass would have given them just enough time to go to Reno and be married on Nov. 2.  Perhaps they were given an extra day or two in order to be married, but this was during the war. so maybe not.  At any rate, just as Mom said, they had to be back within about a week since the ship was clearing port on Nov. 11.   The account of the ships activities in the Aleutian Islands, shortly after this is also well worth reading and gives some insight into the reasons that Dad did not like being up there.

James Edward Northen – Part 2

            The letter that Dad received from the Navy told him to report for training on October 6, 1938.  Over the course of the next few years he was transferred from one ship to another. The available records only go up to 1943, but the bare outlines of his first years in Navy life can be summarized in the chart below.

Date	M or C*	Ship	Rank	1st Rec’d	Comments
2/28/39	C	Raleigh	Sea2c		Received from Chaumont 2/28/39 Transferred to Reid 2/28/39
3/3/39	C	Reid	Sea2c		From Culebra, West Indies to Ciudad Trujillo, DR Transferred 3/2/39 to USS Ranger FFT R/S Puget Sound, WA
6/3/39	M	Reid	Sea2c
6/12/39	C	Reid	Sea2c		San Diego to Fleet Tactics. 6/5/39 Transfer to U. S. Naval Hospital for Treatment
6/30/39	C	Reid	Sea2c		From San Diego to San Francisco 6/27/39 Received from U.S. naval Hospital San Diego.
9/30/39	M	Reid	Sea2c
8/31/40	C	Reid	Sea1c		8/21/40 Trans. to U.S. Naval Base Hospital for Medical Treatment
103140	C	Reid	Sea1c		10/17/40 Received from U.S. Naval Hospital in Honolulu, T. H.
2/28/41	C	Reid	Y3c		1/31/41 Change from Sea1c to Y3c
3/3/41	C	Reid	Yeo3c		From Pearl harbor to Sea 3/31 – Trans. to USS Case for Flag Duty Allowance
9/30/41	M	Case	Y3c	3/1/41
10/31/41	M	Case	Y3c
3/7/42	M	Case	Y3c
3/23/42	M	Case	Y3c
5/1/42	C	Case	Y2c		Change from Y3c to Y2c
6/30/42	M	Case	Y2c
9/30/42	M	Case	Y2c
10/2/42	C	Case	Y2c		From Dutch Harbor, Alaska to Sea 10/4/42 Executed agreement to extended enlistment 2 years 10/6/42 Extension of enlistment 2 years, otherwise hon. discharge
12/6/42		Case	Y2c		Trans. To USS Markab
1/31/43	M	Whitney	Y2c
3/31/43	M	Whitney	Y2c	1/14/43
4/19/43	C	Whitney	Y1c		4/1/43 From Y2c to Y1c Trans. To Commander naval Base Noumea for duty to anti-submarine warfare training unit #1
12/17/43	C	Buchanan	Y1C		To RODP Navy 1`40 for Duty with Gunnery and Torpedo School “Into dangerous waters”

 If the records are correct, the first ship that Dad was on was the U.S.S. Chaumont. This is probably the ship that he left Norfolk from and he must have been assigned to it pretty quickly because only four months later he was being transferred to the U.S.S. Reid.  The chart gives only the basic framework of what Dad actually experienced.  Twice he was in the hospital for treatment and the information ends on the rather ominous note that the ship was heading “Into dangerous waters.”  This was in 1943 when the war with Japan was still going strong.

 Dad rarely made mention of what happened aboard the ships during these years.  The two instances that stand out for me are his mention of being in the Aleutian Islands.  He said it was the coldest place he had ever been and the fog was constant and so thick that you could not see your hand in front of you.  He even grew a beard when he was there, a beard that he said was red.  The other thing he used to refer to was going down to the Solomon Islands and Australia.  There were very few things that Dad would not eat, but one of those was mutton.  He said that when they were in Australia that was all they were fed and that he got so sick of it that he could not even look at a piece of mutton.

 Of course, the family knows that Dad’s personal history intersects with public history on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor.  While one sees recorded interviews of Navy veterans who were there and describe in detail what they experienced, Dad would never really talk about it.  I know only that he was on the U.S. S. Case, a light cruiser and that the attack was a complete surprise.  Dad says that it happened early on Sunday morning when most men would normally sleep in. He remembered that there was one group of men who were up early to go out on an outing, a hike I believe, but most were still asleep or just getting up.  He did not describe the damage around him except to say that despite all of the fighting, his ship survived. Somewhere in my memory, I have the vague sense that Dad was wounded and had piece of shrapnel in him, but I don’t think it was from Pearl Harbor. Two years ago, when I visited Oahu, one of the highlights of the trip for me was being able to see where Dad’s ship would have been located.  It was in the east part of the harbor along with two other ships – past the aircraft carriers – so one can see how the attacking planes were on their way back up into the air when they passed over the Case and that the case would have been merely shooting at them to try to bring them down.

Less than a year after a year after his experience at Pearl Harbor, Dad married Mom (Elvera Catherine Wilkins).  They met when Dad was stationed in San Diego. Though Dad never really talks about how they met, Mom used to say that it was on a double date with a friend who brought someone along for her. She also said that her parents liked Dad immediately.  They were married on November 2, 1942 in Reno, Nevada.  As Mom told it, they were planning to wait a while to be married but that Dad got orders saying that he was going to be shipped out shortly and he did not know for how long he would be gone or where he would return when that tour was up.  They decided to go to Reno to get married because in Nevada they could get the blood tests done quickly.  According to Mom (if I’m not mistaken), they really did not have time for a honeymoon. Dad was shipped out a week later, not to return for a year.

One interesting observation that can be drawn from the ship records above, though, is that just one month prior to their marriage, Dad had signed an agreement to extend his enlistment in the Navy for two more years.  Perhaps that re-enlistment was what triggered his sudden deployment.  Trying to put myself in Dad’s place, it is interesting to speculate why he re-enlisted.  The biggest factor was probably the war was in full throttle and he felt it was his patriotic duty to remain in the Navy.  It is also nice to think, however, that he was in love with Mom and saw his future with her rather than returning to what he had left in Virginia.  Perhaps, he felt that having a job in the Navy gave him a secure means to support a new wife and would make marriage possible.

Whatever the reason, Dad’s re-enlistment began the spinning of a web that would keep him in the service and the both of them on the move for another sixteen years.  Mom and Dad began with modest resources.  Mom has said that when I was born in San Diego in 1946, their apartment was so small that my bed was a dresser drawer.  Just where Mom and Dad lived before I was born is all pretty vague to me, but as near as I can reconstructed, the list of places after my birth were:

• San Diego
• Honolulu
• Alameda
• El Sobrante
• Alameda
• Long Beach
• Berkeley
• Concord
• National City
• San Diego
• Santa Ana (Baker St.)
• Santa Ana (Van Ness St.)
• Orange

I think that soon after I was born and Dad was shipped out again Mom and I went to live with her parents in Santa Ana, but I’m not sure, and I think that at some point early on we lived in San Francisco.  All of these places other than Honolulu were in California, and until the last few moves when he had retired from the Navy, within driving distance to a Naval Base.

To say that the Navy shaped Dad every bit as much as his early childhood is to overstate the obvious.  He’d joined the Navy hoping to be a radioman and perhaps learn code, but because he’d learned to type in high school, he was put into an office and –as Dad used to say – he never got out.  As World War II was just winding down it was time to re-enlist again and, not knowing what to expect in the aftermath of the war, he signed up once more.  Then along came the Korean War…and what sights and sounds he was witness to there, who can say?