Digging the Past

Another of my major interests of late has been genealogy. I have been digging in the past for clues about my family heritage, and my search has turned up some crazy stuff! We've got artists, dentists, farmers, a famous photographer, a famous serial killer, a reform school inmate, survivors of the SF 1906 earthquake, and a suicidal leap into the San Francisco Bay (in 1888!).

I first started getting into it just after my parents passed away in 1997-98. At that time, my siblings and I inherited a lot of little scraps of the past, and going through it all opened up a lot more questions than it did provide answers. So I began my search for information as to who was who and what was what. A lot of people get into genealogy, but only after they retire. Reason being, it takes a lot of time, and a lot of all-day trips to various libraries searching for little scraps of information. Well, since I am a freelancer, I have a certain amount of flexibility. So often when I have business to attend to in San Francisco, I'll take a wide swing over to the western side of the city and spend the rest of the day at the Sutro Library (one of the richest sources of genealogical data to be found on the west coast). I'll often be the youngest person in the film reader section by a good thirty years!

I had started focusing more on my mother's side of the family, simply because there was better documentation (going back to the 1600s and beyond). However lately I have been captivated by my father's side, and have traced roots back to Minnesota and New York in the early 19th century.

So here, in no particular order, I will list some of the interesting items that my research has yielded to date:

• I have long prided myself on being a native Californian. I have also long been a fan of the San Francisco 49ers football team. What I had never known was that I am actually a descendent of a 49er! My great-great grandfather Hans Butenop sailed round the southern tip of South America and entered San Francisco bay in August of 1849...the height of the California Gold Rush. However, he never went to the goldfields. Instead, he opened a grocery/liquor store in San Francisco, and did some grubstaking for the miners who were going inland to search for gold. Hans had originally come over from Prussia (modern day northern Germany) a few years earlier, and opened a hotel in New York with his brother. It was with the money he got by selling his interest in the hotel that he purchased the store in California.


• The site that Hans chose for his grocery store (with its upstairs living space) turned out to be interesting: 625 Pacific Street. I'm sure the neighborhood was fine when he first got there, but later he found himself to be smack dab in the heart of the Barbary Coast. Known for its saloons, bordellos, opium dens, and just all-around debauched nature, this became a sore point with Han's wife, and they later moved a few blocks away to a house on Filbert Street. I guess it was decided that the Barbary Coast was not a great place to raise two daughters (one of whom being my great grandmother Minnie).


• Hans mostly went by the name of Henry when he got settled in the United States. His son Henry Jr had a brief and troubled life. He married quite young, but got into financial troubles while in his twenties. After losing his wife and his job, he tragically ended his life by jumping off Meigg's wharf (present day site of Fishermans' Wharf) in 1888.


• My great grandmother Minnie is my hero. She was an accomplished artist (I actually have one of her paintings), which was rare for a woman of the late 19th century. It is from her that I attribute my own artistic tendencies. She married Harry Rulison in 1890. He died of tuberculosis in 1899, and she remained in San Francisco with their two daughters (including my grandmother Claire). Then in 1906, the great earthquake and fire destroyed the city. (The painting I have was pulled down from the wall of their house, rolled up, and stacked out in the street by the firemen--just before they dynamited their house.) She and the girls moved across the bay to Oakland, but she passed away the following year. My grandmother and her sister then went to Reno to live with their grandparents.


• Another branch of the Rulison family also ended up in San Francisco, though by then their branch had altered the name to Rulofson. (This was the branch of the family whose patriarch chose to fight on the wrong side of the American Revolutionary War. He fought for the British, and at the end of the war had to forfeit his land holdings in New Jersey, and took exile in the British-held region of Newfoundland. The family began coming back down to the United States a couple of generations later.) William Rulofson lived in San Francisco, and was a prominent photographer and pioneer in the early photographic artform of daguerreotypy. The studio of Bradley & Rulofson was famous for their portraiture work, and any history books covering 19th century Califonia are likely to have a few photos that were taken by William (my third cousin five times removed).
  In 1878, William died when he fell off the roof of his four story studio. Among the personal effects in his pockets there was found to be a locket with a portrait of a man who someone alertly recognized as Edward Rulloff. It turns out the Edward was hanged a few years earlier, having been found guilty of several murders (including those of his wife and infant daughter) in the New York area. Because William was a member of proper society, he kept his relation a close-kept secret...and nobody had any idea that Edward Rulloff was his oldest brother.


• Many of the Rulisons in our branch of the family tree went into the field of dentistry. This includes my great-great aunt Helen Rulison Shipley, who was the first woman to practice dentistry in the state of Nevada .


• It turns out that Henry Enoch was my ggggg-Grandfather. He built a fort on his land in Virginia, which later had a role in the French-Indian War of the mid 1700s. The surveying of his land prior to the building of the fort was conducted by a young man who would later change careers. His name? George Washington.


• On my father's side, it turns out we hailed from Montana, Minnesota, and on up into Canada. In fact, my GGG-grandfather (also named John Atkinson) was one of the founders of the community of Cottage Grove, Minnesota (on the Mississipi River, just downstream of Minneapolis). Here is a link to the Atkinson Cemetery, which he established in the mid 19th century. There is also a picture there of my GGG-grandmother's grave marker on there.


• My grandfather and namesake John Norris Atkinson was shown to have been a student at the Minnesota State School at Red Wing in 1900. Oops...it turns out that is a reform school. I've recently been doing some digging to find out what the story is there. (It could be rather minor--they tended to send kids to reform school back then even if they were just being "incorrigible".)

So it has been an interesting endeavor to try to unlock the secrets of the past. Sometimes exciting, sometimes dull, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes heartbreaking. But almost always fascinating!

I take a great deal of pride in knowing that my family was so involved in the early days of San Francisco, which has always been one of my favorite cities in the world (even before I had found out that so many of my ancestors lived there). However, that also guarantees that there will always be a fair amount of frustration in my searches, because the information is so scarce. You see, all of the early city records were stored in the Hall of Records, which was right next door to the old San Francisco City Hall. I use past tense because in 1906 the great earthquake badly damaged both buildings. A day after the quake, the huge fire that followed swept through that area. They say that the fire in the Hall of Records smoldered for several days, and there was not a thing they could do about it. All those land deeds, marriage licenses, birth and death certificates--all turned to ash. So most everything I know has had to come from the newspapers of the time, which can be pretty hit&miss.

But it sure is fun!!!