Winnifred R Smith

A Surprise Addition to a Familiar Family

Genealogy is a never ending quest for more information about our ancestors. Even ancestors who have been well researched can still yield surprises as new records become available. A few months ago, I was looking at some probate records that had become available for an ancestor that I was pretty familiar with. As I was reading the pages of information included in the file, I noticed a new name – Winnifred R Smith – that I had never run across while researching this family.

The subject of the probate record, William Roderick Smith, was my husband’s direct ancestor. He died a young man as the result of suicide and my husband’s family had changed the details surrounding his death as they passed the story down through the generations. You can read a more detailed account of William’s life here.

I had thought the probate file would be an interesting read, perhaps giving more detail into the estate of William who was said to have left his family “well provided for.” I knew he left a young widow and several children behind. I knew the manner of his death. What I did not recognize was the name at the end of the list of his children: Winnifred R Smith. Who was she?

Winnifred was listed following the other known children of William and his wife Lila, but I had never seen her name on any census records for his family, or run across her name in any of the obituaries for known family members. Winnifred was also absent from the family’s burial plot in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.

The other children were all listed in birth order throughout the documents in the probate file. The last record in the file was dated 1893 which was about 11 years after the birth of the youngest known child, Ralph. Was Winnifred another child? Was she a niece, or maybe an adopted child? Why was she never listed with the family anywhere other than the probate record of William?

William R Smith died by suicide in October 1886. His obituary stated that he left behind his wife and 5 children. William and Lila had 5 known children; however, one child – a daughter Nellie – had died approximately 5 years before her father’s death. The first time I read the obituary I had assumed that the obituary was in error and that they had meant to say that the couple had had 5 children.

In looking back through the census records for this family from 1875 to Lila’s final census in 1930, I noticed that in the 1900 and 1910 census Lila states each time that she is the mother of 6 children with 5 living. If this was in error, it would be unusual to be repeated over multiple census years. This missing child is not accounted for in earlier census records and in the 1885 Wisconsin state census, there is no list of names, but this child was not represented in the count for the family.

If Winnifred was the missing child of this couple, she would have been born after 1885 then, but where was she in the later census years? I looked at the census records for each of her siblings and the known siblings of her parents and there was no Winnifred in any of their households either. I looked at all of the obituaries for members of the William and Lila Smith family next and there was no mention of Winnifred in any of them.

Assuming that Winnifred WAS the missing child of this couple, the little information that could be inferred showed that she was born between the 1885 Wisconsin census and William’s death in late 1886 as she was not counted in the 1885 household but was numbered in the children left behind after William’s death.  Winnifred would have been alive at least until the 1910 census based on Lila’s statement that 5 children were still living (Nellie having died about 1880).

So – if you were a young lady from a family of means in the late 1800s/early 1900s where would you be living if not with your family? I thought it unlikely that she would have been hired out as a servant in another household since none of her siblings had been. The only other possibilities I could think of were that she was living out of state with extended family, or that perhaps she was in an institution. I changed my search parameters and Winnifred R Smith appeared in an institution in Chippewa County, Wisconsin.

This Winnifred was on the 1900, 1905, and 1910 census records in the Wisconsin Home for the Feeble Minded (later known as the Northern Wisconsin Colony and Training School) . Her birth date was listed as Sept 1886, 1886, and 1887 respectively. Her birth place was simply Wisconsin on available records. I contacted the facility, which is still in existence under a new name, and they were very helpful. Unfortunately, only one page of her file survived. Winnifred R Smith was listed with a birth date of only 1887 and a death date of 7 April 1912. The record simply lists Milwaukee under the heading of “County” – there is nothing to indicate if Winnifred was born there, or was admitted from there, or anything to give more context to that location. She died of tuberculosis and her remains were listed as “sent to Madison”.

I sent to the county for a death certificate, and I was informed that they could not locate a death certificate for her. I then sent to the state to see if they might have a death certificate on file for her and luckily they did!

The death certificate states that Winnifred R Smith was born in Milwaukee on 12 September 1886. Her father’s name was simply “deceased” and her mother is listed as “Leila” – no maiden name. The death date and cause of death match the information from the Home for the Feeble Minded. The attending Dr Wilmarth states that he had been caring for Winnifred since August 1897 – very shortly after the home opened up. There is no burial information on the death certificate.

The date of Winnifred’s death is also interesting in that the oldest son of William and Lila Smith had a daughter born about 6 weeks after Winnifred’s death. He named his daughter Winnifred Rosamond Smith. It would not be a large stretch to imagine that an older brother would name his new daughter after a sister who had just passed away. Being the oldest sibling, he would have had the most memory of his baby sister – he would have been about 14 when his sister was born.

I am fairly confident, based on current available evidence, that Winnifred R Smith was the youngest child of William and Lila Smith. She was born about a month before her father’s suicide. She was numbered in the children in her father’s obituary. There was no mention of her disability or birth defect in the coroner’s jury testimony from her father’s suicide, so I do not think that Winnifred’s ailment was a factor in his death.

Winnifred was listed among Williams’s children in his probate documents. The last document was dated 1893 when Winnifred would have been about 7 years old. Perhaps her disability was not immediately apparent. It is also possible that her disability was acquired as the result of an illness or injury (although I do feel this is less likely as these tragic cases were often reported in newspapers of the day).

In the 1890s in the US, people with mental or physical disabilities were often sent away because they were a source of shame and embarrassment to their family. The Wisconsin Home for the Feeble Minded was considered to be a state of the art institution at the time that it opened in 1897. I do believe that Winnifred’s family was probably doing what they were advised was the best thing for her. Whatever Winnifred’s condition was, she was said to have been unable to read, write, or speak English on the census records available.

A disabled daughter would not have been listed in the wedding announcements or obituaries of her family due to the stigma associated at this time in history. The one piece that I have trouble fitting is the supposed burial location of “Madison” on the record from the institution. There were no family members living in that area at the time of her death and the rest of the family is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. Could that be an error? Was she possibly buried in the cemetery at the institution? The person I spoke to about the Home for the Feeble Minded told me that the cemetery was not well tended for many years and unfortunately many of the records they had have since been destroyed or lost. I don’t hold out much hope of ever finding her burial place with any degree of certainty.

Brief research on the state of mental institutions in the US in the late 1800s/early 1900s gives a very depressing glimpse of the life Winnifred would have had at such a place. Those inmates who were able were put to work in various ways to help support the institution. Overcrowding became a problem fairly quickly and those with the most profound problems probably suffered the greatest amount of neglect and what would certainly be called abuse today. I like to believe that the majority of the poor treatment of these inmates was due to ignorance and the primitive methods of care that were the standards at the time (page 16).

Winnifred had a short and tragic life but she was a member of our family. I am happy that I found her and restored her to her proper place in the tree. I was so touched that her brother Eugene named his baby daughter after his sister. I find it sad that Winnifred was allowed to fade from living memory for several generations but I am happy that future generations will know her name and her story.