One of the purposes of this blog was to be able to find and share as much information as possible about the Northen and Wilkins families from all of those connected with it, so it was exciting last month to hear from two cousins from the Wilkins side of the family Micki Mitts and Karen Near. Micki and Karen and the daughters of Beryl, Elvera Wilkins’ younger sister and my cousins. Since what they had to say will probably be interesting to anyone reading the blog, I’m going to combine them in a new post here.
When I wrote the post about Uncle Mickey, I was relying on information that I had looked up in research along with a few very old memories. Micki’s reply confirms some of what I wrote, corrects a few things and add a number of new facts.
From Mickie Mitts:
“In response to your article “Uncle Mickey” my father also know as Arnold Abram Near nick name “Mick” to whom I was named after “Mickie Near” His story began being born to Wellington who was from Canada and being of Scottish & Irish decent. I traced the Near’s back to the early 1800’s in Canada and having come from Scottland and Ireland their name was Mac Near. They dropped the Mac and went on to use Near. So Mac became a nickname for my father Mick. They crossed into the US and by 1915 he had 2 children already and 8 more to come. My father born in 1920 and moving to Oklahoma lost his 13 year old brother as well as 2 siblings before this. I can only imagine arriving in Oklahoma in the thirties during the depression and dust bowl and the hard times that were present. Being migrant farm workers at that time they moved on to Shasta Ca. where 2 more siblings were born and died. I can only imagine being a young man at 18 living thru the depression and deaths of siblings and I’m sure these were hard times to say the least.. So the information is correct that my father was arrested in 1938 and sentenced to five years in San Quentin at the age of 18.The charges were burglary, so he must of been poor or hungry. My mother Beryl never knew this and I imagine it was something he wanted to put behind him. He went on to serve in WWII and was active in several combats while serving our country. He married my mother and they went on to having 6 children. He was an Iron worker at the time of his death in 1958. He died in 1958 of a Aortic Aneurysm and my mother Beryl was 3 months pregnant with me. Oddly enough I went on to have an Aortic Aneurysm at the age of 47 which nearly cost me my life. I not only got his name but also the very medical issue he died from at 37 for. My mother only stayed with Grandma Wilkins for a matter of a couple months with my sister Karen and the rest of the children went to his relatives. He left her a life insurance policy along with cash which she was able to buy a home with. He will be remember as a fine fellow with a good sense of humor who was taken from this earth to soon. God Bless him and may he rest in peace.”
To me it is amazing to hear how the Great Depression that we all learned about back in junior high school is made so much more real when you hear about on the lives of our own family members, particularly, effects that, as Micki points out went on to shape the remainder of a person’s entire life.
Micki also goes on to say, “I also need to had that in 1961 my mother Beryl married Frank Liska a fine fellow as well. It amazes me that a man with no children would marry a widow with 6 kids. He owned a Mason business in Santa Ana which your father was employed by. We later moved to Paradise, Ca. where my mother and Frank remained in the same house and married til his death in 2006. My mother Beryl passed in 2015.”
Micki’s sister Karen added her perspective:
“What I remember most about Grandma Wilkins is she always seemed to go with the flow, a very mellow woman. When she would visit she always said there would be no leftovers for Smokey, (our dog) because the altitude made her so hungry. She sent me a dollar every year for my birthday, until she died, I was in my early thirties then. I always wondered how she remembered all of us, there were so many grandchildren.
I also remember your Mom & Dad visiting us, we took a ride through the Feather River Canyon. We had stopped along the way and Dad told all the kids to stay off the road, so your mother laid right in the middle of it, I remember her as being very funny. Aunt Elvera was my mothers favorite sister
Mom told me that her Grandma & Grandpa did not live together, but were not divorced. I don’t remember much of it anymore, but I got the feeling her Grandma was a little uppity.”
Karen’s comments got my attention for a couple of reasons. The first was the anecdote about my mother laying down in the middle of the road. I did not know that story but it sounds exactly like something that she would do. The second is a bit more mysterious. Where Karen says that her Grandparents were not divorced but did not live together. Assuming that Karen means the Wilkins side of the family, this is corroborated by the 1940 census where our great-grandmother Katie (Sitzman) Wilkins was living with Grandma and Grand Wilkins in Orange County, California while her husband Ed Wilkins was listed as living in a different part of the state. It may also account for the fact that in one census, Ed was listed on two different censuses, one in South Dakota and one in California.
Northen History 