Digging up your roots .....

[Russell]

Hi Sarah

No. the chauffeur I asked about is a different Jack McKenzie. I reckon the Berlin family may have had more than one chauffeur.
Marion's brother seems to have lived a different life to his sister although they kept in touch.

If the passenger lists show a Jack or John linked to Leven in Fife that will probably be him.
I don't know whether Marion travelled out to the States first then sent for her siblings once she had saved money for their fares out.

Russell

[Russell]

Hi everyone
Greetings from an ecstatic, delighted, emotional and totally overwhelmed Russell.
Last night I had to give up on-line to let my poor daughter get to her bed. She shares her room with my computer and by midnight her eyes were needing matchsticks to stay open. She should be out in the States with her husband but Visa problems brought her home and the remedy involved a trip to Brussels to sort it all out,. So she is an involuntary guest at the moment.
It was just as well I had to stop because I was inundated with information and additional questions which my brain has still to sort out.

Thanks to Sarah, Jean, Malcolm, Marilyn, David we now know that Great Aunt Marion is on the 1910 and 1920 census with the Farnham family in New York.
She is on the 1930 census with the Irvin Berlin family out in Hollywood.
She took a trip to Honolulu in 1939 and sailed back on the S.S. Lurline.
Her home was 59 place, Woodside, Long Island, N.Y. so now I know exactly where her house was.
She took a trip back home to Scotland and sailed back to the States in the Queen Mary, no less, in 1938.
Her sister Phemie (Euphemia) also came home for a visit and returned to the States on board the S.S. Samaria in 1937.

Thanks to the generosity of so many people I have gone from a pictorial outline to a detailed, confirmed life history overnight.

Wheeeeee

An interesting fact is that she gives her birthplace as Edinburgh although it was actually Muse Lane, Milton, Glasgow. The family moved to Edinburgh when she was about 5. The moral is, don’t always trust the ‘factual’ details given in later life.
In the 1891 census aged 14 she is a fruiter’s message girl so her trip across the Atlantic paid off. In the same census she is listed as speaking English and Gaelic (her mother was from the Islands). I don’t suppose her Gaelic was used much in her later life.

Now to go plague my mother with a thousand and one questions
Q. Why didn’t you tell me………….?
A. Well you never asked.

I will try to post up some of the photographs so folks can see why I needed to know a bit more about her.

Russell

P.S. Have just spoken to the Radio Scotland folk – and been listened to! Don’t let my frustrations(now suitably mollified) put you off listening in.

[joette]

What a tale & all discoveries in the main on-line & with the help of TS in the main too!
What an interesting lady I would have loved to have heard her tales especially as I have been employed as a Nanny for so many years including some very aristocratic families.(we are talking British)
I too was interviewed by Digging-Up-Your-Roots but in my case despite some judicious editing I was pleased with the final broadcast which I felt gave a fair insight into what was aviable on the Poor Relief Records.
I was just unaware of my voice-did not sound like me at all! Poor Mum all that money on eleclution lessons wasted.

[SarahND]

Ah! Here is something interesting I found on my lunch break Marion was enumerated twice in 1920 and in the other one she has John staying with her!

Huntington Town, Suffolk County, New York
Morton Marion, head, 40, came to U.S. in 1907, born in Scotland, Nurse in private family
Morton John, brother, 38, came to U.S. in 1915, born in Scotland, shoemaker in rubber ****

So what do you think-- Looks like them, doesn't it?

All the best,
Sarah

P.S. Joette, don't worry about your voice. Everybody's voice sounds different to them when they hear it on a recording... It's a combination of imprecise recording and broadcasting instruments (costs a fortune to transmit all the frequencies over the airwaves, so they cut down) and the fact that you usually hear your own voice by bone conduction, through your own head, not through the air into your ears... if that makes sense?

[SarahND]

Hmmm. I found his WWI draft registration card. He is already in Suffolk County, NY (otherwise known as Long Island) and is a farmer. His closest kin is Marion, but he states his date of birth as 26 May 1881, age 37 in Sept. 1918. I assume you know the 1879 birthdate for a fact. Was it 26 May, at least? I can't imagine there would be two John Mortons, born in Scotland, living with their sister Marion on Long Island
All the best,
Sarah

[SarahND]

Well, just to balance things, do you think this could be him in 1930, now claiming to be born in 1875?

Township 9, Kern County, California
Jack Morton, 55, single, came in 1913, born in Scotland, a farm supt. He is now a naturalized U.S. citizen.