July 30, 1999
Dear Creighton,
Thank you for your letter. The family history information you sent me was complimentary with mine, because you have information which I did not have, whereas I have information which apparently you do not have.
Do you recall that there was an old family tree which showed us as being descended from the sister of John Paul Jones? I spoke to Newell Jacobson about that years ago. He said that he had that family tree in his possession. Do you have any way of finding out what happened to it?
As you know, I have a trove of old photographs of our relatives dating back to 1866 and perhaps even earlier. I also have original letters written in Swedish. All this was apparently collected by our great-aunt Henrietta Jacobson. However, most of these photographs do not have names written on the back. I do not know whether these are all our relatives or not. All the photographs which were clearly of our relatives I scanned and posted on my web sites long ago.
I have just now taken the Graham family history you sent me and posted it on my web site at http://www.samsloan.com/graham.htm . The advantage to this is that inevitably I will be contacted by our long lost or forgotten relatives who will be surfing the web.
Already, I have been contacted by our long lost cousins, Joyce and Jackie Sloan, who found me by surfing the web. They live in Dallas/Ft. Worth.
The address of Joyce and her daughter Cheryl is MissyJ@primenet.com . They live in Phoenix.
Perhaps more importantly, I have located our half-brother's descendants, who found me on the web. As you know, our father was married twice. He had a son by his first marriage.
The son was named Fred LeRoy Sloan and was born on February 9, 1932 in St. Elizabeth Hospital in Chicago. Our father lived with his wife and child at 2050 Bingham Street, Chicago, IL.
Although that son is now dead, his children have contacted me after seeing my web site. Their grandmother, whose name was Marion June Dossing, remarried and the son of our father was adopted by a man named Osborne, so his children are also named Osborne. They lived in Redwood City, California (coincidentally the home of the Osborne Computer?). The addresses are Fred J. Osborne, fjosborne@ozeng.com and John Osborne, josborne@kraft.com .
I went to Chicago on April 10-12 for the US Shogi Championship and while there went to the Department of Vital Records. I was able to look at the property records for 2050 Bingham Street and 2052 Bingham Street and I found that the houses on these lots were built by Thomas Bayfield, the father of our grandmother, Emily Bayfield.
Because I have never been able to find any record of a family named Bayfield but one of the properties was once owned by a man named George Bay, I have a theory that the original name was Bay and that Thomas may have changed his name to Bayfield. Do you have any comment on that?
In Chicago, I was able to find the case numbers of the divorce cases of our grandfather, Howard Creighton Sloan, from our grandmother, Emily Bayfield Sloan, Case 28 S 483549 (1928) and of our father from his first wife, Case No. 33 S 587513 (1933). I ordered a copy of these files and paid by blank check, but they have never arrived.
Our father married our mother on June 27, 1937 and you were born exactly nine years later.
Our mother was listed in the First and the Second Edition of Who's Who of American Women, but not in the third edition (I wonder why). I went to the library and made copies of these entries which I now enclose. My mother also said she was listed in Who's Who in the South and Southwest, but I have been unable to find the listing.
Here is the biography of our mother, as published in "Who's Who of American Women".
SLOAN, Helen Marjorie, physician; b. Spaulding, Iowa., March 17, 1910; d. Wesley and Mary (Graham) Jacobson; Asso. Edn., Cottey Jr. College Women, Nevada, Missouri, 1930; B.A., U. Iowa., 1932, M.D., 1936; m. LeRoy B. Sloan, June 27, 1937 (div. Aug. 1956); children - Samuel Howard, Creighton Wesley. Intern, Norwegian-American. Hosp., Chicago., 1936-37; resident pediatrics Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, 1938, psychiatry Psychopathic Hospital, University of Iowa., 1939-40, 41-42; Commonwealth Fund fellow child psychiatry Mental Hygiene Clinic, Louisville 1942-43; psychiatrist. Memorial Guidance Clinic, Richmond, Va., 1943-52; psychiatrist, dir. Lynchburg Guidance Clinic, 1952-, Tidewater Guidance Clinic, Williamsburg, Va., 1952-57. Fellow American Orthopsychiatric Assn.; member. American Psychiatric Assn., American. Academy of Child Psychiatrists, Phi Theta Kappa, P.E.O. Episcopalian. Home: Trent's Ferry Rd. Office: 512 Clay St., Lynchburg, Va.
You raise an interesting question of whether our father really served in the Army as he said he did. He always said he got out of the Army because of a ulcer, but I believe he also claimed that he had caught a spy. There was a trove of old letters to our mother which was in her house. I saved this all from going into the trash dump by having it put in Joe Buck's barn on Elon Road in Madison Heights, Virginia. Included were letters my father wrote to my mother in 1943 saying that he had failed the Washington State Bar exam and he wanted to come to Virginia where he would not have to take a bar exam to be admitted to practice law and he also wanted to have a child (which turned out to be me, so if our father had passed the Washington State Bar I would never have been born).
I believe that the letter from our father to our mother said that he was hoping to be discharged from the Army.
There was also a letter from Uncle Newell to our mother dated about 1943. He was then in England and was hoping to get out of the Army and to be home soon. Little did he know he would be shipped to France and he would later serve in the Battle of the Bulge.
Unfortunately, Joe Buck burned all of these letters and fled to Tennessee and not more than a few survived.
I hope that this answers some of the questions which you asked in your letter.
The Graham family history you sent me contains an error in that it says that Tessie, the wife of Cassel Jacobson, died on 10 Aug 1989. However, she seemed fairly alive when I last saw her in 1991. I looked in the Social Security Death Index at http://www.ancestry.com/ssdi/advanced.htm and I found that there was a Tessie Jacobson who died on that date in 1989, but she was clearly a different person than the wife of our uncle.
What is the source of that Graham Family history? I would like to correspond with that person, plus I have some photographs.
The biggest problem I have is the lack of any information about our grandfather, Howard Creighton Sloan. All I know is that the census report for 1920 says that he was born in Pennsylvania. I have not been able to find out when or where he died, except that it was not in Chicago. If you could find out where he died, I could try to obtain his death certificate. (This will also put an end to the persistent rumor that he was heir to fifty million dollars.)
My son, Peter Sloan, is a talented artist and he often tells people that he is related to the famous painter and cartoonist, John Sloan, who did a similar type of art. John Sloan was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in 1871. I bought a book entitled "John Sloan's New York Scene" and the picture of John Sloan on the cover looks exactly like the person in the pictures of our grandfather, Howard Creighton Sloan, who was born in Pennsylvania on March 18, 1873, which I have posted at http://www.samsloan.com/sloan-gg.htm and http://www.samsloan.com/sloans.htm .
The resemblance is uncanny. They have the same hair part, same glasses and same ears. They could almost be the same person. I think it is entirely possible that they were related, perhaps even brothers.
These pictures of our grandfather, Howard Creighton Sloan, were provided to me by Jack and Wanda Sloan. However, Jack and Wanda do not seem to know much more about him than I do.
Sam Sloan