Truitt, Texas: Burial Location of Lou Tatum (Part 2)

This weekend I found an opportunity to drive out to the Truitt Cemetery (alternatively spelled "Truett") I described in Part 1. I was alone driving back to Midland from seeing my brother in Dallas for his birthday. I took the detour down to Winters, TX which is about 30 miles south of Abilene (as the crow flies). The cemetery is actually about 10 miles ENE from Winters (again, as the crow flies).

I managed to find the small cemetery, which is about 1 acre in size. It was way, way, way out in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing but farmland around it. It seems to be the only thing left of the town of Truett.

I knew from Google Street View that there would be a gate to get through once I turned off the highway, but I was unsure whether it would be locked or not. Fortunately it was not. I went ahead through the gate, but I still have no idea whether I was on private property or not.

I drove through the gate and went about a 1/2 mile down a dirt road, which was less a dirt road and more a set of wheel ruts in the ground. It was admittedly an eerie thing to be doing. Finally, I found the cemetery.

I would estimate there were about 60 graves in this cemetery. I was quite excited to finally find a headstone for my great-great-grandmother Tatum, and with so few graves I figured it would be easy. My hopes were soon dashed as I discovered that about half of the graves had no name on the gravemarkers. Those markers were really just slabs of limestone plunked down to mark the grave. I walked all over the cemetery visiting every spot at least twice, and was disappointed to not find her.

Some of the graves had these small, rusted metal placards which were placed there by the memorial service company in Winters, such as the one below. They were mostly illegible as the elements had rusted away the words. I even tried to take an etching from my pencil and paper across them. I had no luck with that. Nonetheless, I imagined that one of these could belong to my great-great-grandma Tatum.

Finally, there was a small, mysterious building in the back of the cemetery. I figured it was some kind of storage shed, so I poked my head in to check it out. I discovered that it actually housed two graves side-by-side. It was infested with wasp nests and spider webs, so I was hesitant to go in. However, I wanted to make sure I didn't leave the cemetery without being absolutely sure I couldn't find my ancestor, so I gathered my courage and went in. I read the placard on one of the graves and it was not her. The topsoil over the other grave was sunken down about 1-2 feet in places, and I didn't dare try to check that one out. Way too creepy. Unfortunately I didn't snap a picture of the inside of the building.

I finally resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to find her grave, but I still took a moment to soak in the location and the experience. The only sounds I could hear were the wind, the occasional bird, and the dry grass crunching under my feet. Way, way out there on a quiet and lonely parcel of land in west Texas my great-great-grandmother is laid to rest. I took comfort in knowing that my grandmother had preceded me in daring the wilds of west Texas. She must have been a tough, strong, and incredible woman. As vast and wild as that location is today, in the earliest decades of the 1900's it must have seemed like the edge of the world. As I scanned the horizon and admired the plateaus and cloudy skies, I wondered what life must have been like for her on those plains. Unencumbered by the comforts of modern technology, she knew a very different world than the one we now have. A much quieter world, for sure.

The dozens of nameless grave markers, as well as the dozen or so infant graves, were a somber reminder that, as we read in the Bible, "all flesh is grass". We are born, we live, and we die. If we are lucky we will be remembered. There are innumerable people who have lived incredible lives who are now lost to us. We don't know them, but they were once as full of life, joy, sorrow, and passion as we are today. Will I end up in a forgotten grave someday? Will my descendants wonder about my life? Will a great-great grandson or granddaughter feel inexplicably compelled to find my grave? What will they imagine my life was like?

I'm grateful for the peace that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings to me in searching for answers to these questions. None are forgotten by God. He knows them, loves them, and we too will know them someday.

I'm grateful to have the resources to do this work. Doing family history can sometimes lead you to unexpected places, both physically and spiritually.

Truitt, TX: Burial Location of Lou Tatum (Part 1)

I had a "hint" on my Ancestry.com family tree for the burial site of Lou Tatum (nee Small), my great-great grandmother (Me-->LeeAnn Trapp-->James D. Trapp Jr-->Ella Mae Tatum-->Mary Louana Small).

She was buried in a (now) abandoned ghost town called Truitt, Texas, which happens to be only 2 1/2 hours away from where I live. I intend to try and visit this location sometime in the next few months. It may be on private property, and it might be behind a locked gate, but it is worth a try.

Here is her "Find-a-Grave" record.

A picture of the location:

Her obituary:

There is as sign on the highway north of the location with a sign confirming that I've correctly identified the location:

Here it is on the map:



One website described Truitt this way:

Truitt was located ten miles east of Winters off Highway 1770. The town was named for the baby son of one the merchants, Truitt Billups. A post office was acquired March 21, 1904, with the appointment of John L. Golden. John Golden’s store was on the east side of the one street running north and south, and the Billups General Mercantile was on the west. The mail was delivered from Winters by John Brown the son of the justice of the peace. The post office was closed in 1912. Doctors Ash and Pool had their offices in the Branham drugstore. A Dr. Watson came in 1909 but moved to Crews two years later. A Telephone system was installed in 1904, with the office in the Billups store. There was also a hardware store and blacksmith shop on the east side of the street.
Arthur Nichols started a gin and store in 1906. School was in a one room building, but with two teachers. It was consolidated with the Meadows School in 1915. Elmer Burke the Baptist minister held services at the schoolhouse. At one time there were eleven dwellings in Truitt. When the railroad was laid through Winters instead of Truitt, the town was doomed. All the buildings were moved away the next few years and there is nothing to show where Truitt was located except the cemetery. 

Galicia--Austrian Partition of Poland

The current definitive English history of Poland is a two volume work entitled "God's Playground" by author Norman Davies, published by Oxford University. I've been interested in understanding exactly where the borders were between the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian partitions of Poland. This can be important for identifying the correct villages of origin, and locating vital records.

Here is the map of the Austrian partition (also referred to as "Galicia") as well as accompanying text below. This all comes from pages 103-104 of "God's Playground", volume 2.

And here is my re-creation of the map above in Google Maps. I included Swierczow, which is where the Piorek's came from, as well as Walke/Walce (west of the Galician border) because it is my only lead on where the Gemza's came from right now.

"Walki", Poland---Possible Origin of the Gemza Family?

On his naturalization documents Peter Gemza (my great-great-grandmother's brother) noted that he was born in "Walki, Austria". Of course back then the historic Poland had been divided into Austrian, Russian, and Prussian partitions.

I was able to identify a city in SW Poland (modern day) called "Walce", which, according to Wikipedia, was called "Walchi" in some books in the early 1800's. This is my only lead for the identification of this city.

I need to dig into this more, because "Walce" appears to have fallen outside of the Austrian partition, but not by a lot.

English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walce

Translated Polish Wikipedia (much more information): https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walce

Kissing Cousins

At a recent Trapp Family Christmas party I was told several times that James D. Trapp and his second wife, Mary Doolin, were first cousins. I already know that James' brother Eugene (Tank) Trapp married Mary's sister Bertha, so that means he married his first cousin as well.

I'm leaving this post here as a reminder to myself to investigate this story and try to find supporting documentation.

More Gemza Names: Great News and a Little Bad News

As I described in this post, I wrote to the Bridgeport, Connecticut Vital Records Office to request death certificates for Stefan Ramik and Peter Gemza (Stefan's Uncle). Those came today! The reason Peter Gemza's death certificate was important to get is because neither of Stefan's parents came to America so we don't have any records for them, but his mother's brother --Peter-- did come to America. His death certificate contains information about *his* parents, who would be Stefan's grandparents.

New Names:

• Stefan Ramik's Mother & Father:
• Joseph Ramik (my great-great-grandfather)
• Anna Gemza (my great-great-grandmother)
• Anna Gemza's Father & Mother (via the death certificate of Anna's brother Peter Gemza):
• Jacob Gemza (my great-great-great-grandfather)
• "Unobtainable"  (my great-great-great-grandmother)

Death Certificate for Stefan Ramik, my great-Grandfather:

Death Certificate for Peter Gemza, who was Stefan Ramik's Uncle:

Unfortunately it appears that Eva Gemza (Peter's wife) did not know the first or maiden names for her husband's mother. So we don't know Jacob Gemza's wife name, my g-g-g-grandmother. It says "Unobtainable".

The tree looks like this now:

Peter & Eva Gemza--Stefan Ramik's Aunt & Uncle: A Step Closer to Solving the Ramik Mystery

UPDATE: See the post immediately following this one. I now have the names of Stefan's parents, and of his mother's father.


I have been at a dead end on the Ramik line. I don't know Stefan Ramik's parents names, or anything about them at all. I have a feeling that is going to change soon!

In an earlier post I mentioned that my great-grandfather Stefan Ramik immigrated to America in 1904, at the age of 17, with someone named Piotr Gemza, but that I didn't know who Piotr Gemza was. I suspected that it was an uncle based on their age difference (32 and 17).

Then, in October 2015 Suzanne O'Connell (my mother's cousin, daughter of Aunt Ann Jaroszewski) wrote me the following in an email with important information I had somehow overlooked. I stumbled upon it this week and suddenly things clicked for me. Here is the email:

"My mom spoke to Aunt Cecele.  All she could remember was that Walter Gemza's mother was named Ava Gemza but it is spelled Ewa in Polish.  Walter Gemza is Stepahn Ramil's first cousin.  Stephan's mother and Walter's father were sister and brother.  She remembered the sister - in- law's name because she was the one around and Walter's father was dead.  Stanley Gemza was Walter's younger brother.  The reason I am mentioning him is because he and his wife, Anna, lived in my mother and father's neighborhood in Trumbull."

Suzanne has been incredibly helpful and kind to me in my research. She is my link to Aunt Ann's and Aunt Cecele's living memories. In the above paragraph she confirms a few things I had already worked out, namely that Walter Gemza was Stephan's first cousin. The additional detail of his Aunt Ava Gemza, though, is a small breakthrough that I had previously overlooked until now.

So, on a hunch, I did a search for Peter and Ava Gemza and I struck gold. Peter and Eva Gemza (née Wojcik) and their children are in the census for 1920 and 1930, living in Stratford, Connecticut. They had at least five children: Walter, Mary, John, Stanley, and Nellie. My g-grandpa Stefan Ramik seems to have been close to Walter, because Aunt Ann previously mentioned that he worked in Walter's (illegal) restaurant at one point. Aunt Ann's memory checks out: Walter's naturalization papers state that he works in a "lunch and pool room", and the address directory records his profession is "billiards".

A year later, in September 2016, Suzanne wrote me the following:

"Mom says that Peter might be a younger brother of Stephan's mother or an older cousing but she really doesn't know because no one ever mentioned a Peter Gemza."

She was right in her guess that Peter was Stephan's mother's brother. It makes sense that she wouldn't remember him because Peter Gemza died in 1937, when Aunt Ann was only about 11. Furthermore, Ann's family lived on New York island between at least 1928 and 1940 (based on newspaper reports; see Stephanie Ramik's Ancestry profile) while Peter Gemza was always in Connecticut. So between the ages of 3 to 15 Ann lived quite far from Peter Gemza, and he died while she was still living in New York. Plus, it was her father's uncle, so probably not someone they talked about a lot.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this brings me a huge step closer to finding more names in my direct line. I don't know Stefan Ramik's parent's names, but I will soon because I just sent off for his death certificate (something I should have done before). However, Stefan's parents don't appear to have immigrated to the U.S.A., so finding *their* parents' names would be difficult. Fortunately I now know Stefan's Uncle Peter Gemza, who did come to the USA (he's the brother of Stefan's mother), and so he should have a death certificate stating his parents names. I'm going to request that death certificate this week, and hopefully both certificates will arrive in the mail shortly.

In summary, This is what I now know:

Soon we'll know the names of Stefan's parents, and the name of Stefan's mother's (and Peter Gemza's) father and mother. Then, from there, on to untangling the Polish/Russian vital documents.