Nicholson/O'Hagan Family Research in Washington, DC
This week I was in Washington, DC, attempting to learn more about the early life of my great-grandfather Richard Thomas Nicholson (later O'Hagan), his three sisters, Gertrude, Cora, and Grace, and their parents, Clarence and Margaret. In short, the family lived in Dickerson, MD until the summer of 1900, when they moved into DC. They lived in a series of places known from city directories: Brookville Rd. NW (1902), Wisconsin Ave. NW (1903), 3801 M St. W (1904), and 1043 33rd St. NW (1905). Richard was married in Rockville, MD in October 1902 to Decotie Salaria Hepler, who does not appear in any other known records, with the exception of a newspaper mention in August of the same year (for an unclaimed letter at the post office). Richard also appears in the 1905 Baltimore city directory, at 1537 Retreat St. That suggests that he left DC in late 1904, right as the information for the 1905 directory was being collected in both DC and Baltimore. Lastly, there is a girl, Marie Nicholson, who died in January 1905 at the Washington Hospital for Foundlings, aged 1 year, 7 months (resident there 1 year, 6 months) -- this was an orphanage. I want to know what Richard was up to, why he changed our surname, what happened to Decotie, and whether this Marie Nicholson is my great-aunt, plus some other details.
"The plaintiff Margaret Nicholson by her attorneys, Arthur Peter and Preston B. Ray, sues the Defendant, The Metropolitan Railroad Company, a corporation organized under an Act of Congress of the United States, and having its habitat in the District of Columbia, for that the defendant heretofore, to wit: on the 17th day of February, A. D. 1903, and for a long time prior thereto was a common carrier of passengers for hire in cars propelled or run by electricity, or other power, on or over certain railways managed, controlled and operated by said defendant over certain streets in the City of Washington, in the District of Columbia, and the plaintiff had occasion and desired to be transported by the defendant in one of its said cars over the line of said Railway, or a portion thereof, heretofore, to wit: on the 17th day of February, A. D. 1903, and was received by the said Defendant Company on one of its said cars, to wit: on the day and year aforesaid as a passenger for hire at the rate charged by the said defendant, which was then and there paid to the said defendant by said plaintiff, and it thereupon became the duty of the defendant to safely and securely transport and convey the said plaintiff to her destination and to then and there suffer and permit her to safely and securely alight from the said car, and the said plaintiff was thereupon transported by the said defendant in said car as a passenger until said car reached a point on said defendant's railway, to wit: a point on East Capitol Street at or near its intersection with Second Street East in said City, and the defendant thereupon proceeded to stop its said car and the plaintiff who desired to alight at said point was preparing and proceeding in the exercise of reasonable due care and caution to alight from said car, whereupon the defendant, not regarding its duty in this behalf, by its servants negligently and carelessly and without notice to the said plaintiff suddenly started its said car while the plaintiff was in the act of alighting therefrom, and the plaintiff through said negligence and want of care of the said defendant Company and its servants, and without negligence and want of care on her part, was thereby then and there jerked upon the isle or floor of said car and was thereby severely wounded, bruised and injured and the plaintiff's nervous system shocked and deranged, and the womb of the plaintiff displaced from its natural and accustomed position and hemorrhages made to flow from the plaintiff's womb, vagina and uterus, whereby and in consequence of which she has suffered and still suffers great mental and bodily pain, and has been permanently injured in her bodily health and strength, and her ability to perform her business or work as a sewing woman or dressmaker permanently impaired and destroyed, which said business or work the plaintiff avers she was engaged in on the 17th day of February, in the year 1903, and for a long time prior thereto, and by reason of said injuries, wounds and suffering the plaintiff has been compelled to pay and to incur the obligation to pay and will in the future be compelled to pay large sums of money for medical attendance, medicines and nursing in the treatment thereof; all to the great damage of the plaintiff. Wherefor she brings this suit and claims Twenty thousand Dollars ($20,000), besides costs."
On Friday I tried to do several different things. I started by attempting to locate the records from what was once known as the Police Court, which had jurisdiction over civil matters and misdemeanors in the time period I am interested in. I know that Clarence appeared before a judge there in 1902, and that Margaret successfully garnered some of Clarence's wages in 1906, during his serial abandonment of the family. According to Wikipedia, the Police Court was formed in 1870 from the combination of the Justices of the Peace and the Orphans' Court. In 1909 it was renamed the Municipal Court, which in 1963 was renamed the Court of General Sessions. In 1970, the Court of General Sessions was combined with the Juvenile Court and the Tax Court, and this entity was renamed the Superior Court, which name it carries today. So I thought records from the Police Court may be in the Superior Court, but after a visit to their civil records clerk, I was dismayed to learn that they only have a 40-year retention policy on their records. Since it is not a federal court, its records are not preserved by the National Archives. The Police Court records, then, may have been destroyed, or they may have been sent elsewhere at one of the various moments at which the courts were reorganized.
After that I went to the District Court around the corner, thinking that a conversation with their records clerk might at least turn up the location of the Police Court records somewhere else in the city. That conversation led nowhere, but he encouraged me to check again with the National Archives, knowing that some records have ended up there that were not originally within their purview.
Then I called the DC Archives, having learned that they have DC jail commitment records. I was not able to view the records the same day, but asked them whether they do research for non-local residents. Basically I want to see if Clarence or Richard ever served time in a DC jail between 1900 and 1910 (1906 in Richard's case). Then I schlepped up to the special collections library at George Washington University, having learned that they maintain records from the Joseph F. Birch & Sons funeral home, which operated in Georgetown during the time in which Richard's wife Decotie may have died. There is no DC death certificate for her, but, I thought, maybe there will be a mortuary record. Unfortunately these records are housed offsite, but they do small amounts of research for non-local residents, and I have asked them to search through the relevant ledgers for her name. Lastly, I then went back across the city to the Child and Family Services Agency, which I had read holds records from the Foundlings Hospital where Marie may have died. Basically I had not been able to get ahold of anyone by phone and showed up in person. I was redirected to their Assistant General Counsel, who redirected me to their records division (the contact information for which is not available online). We'll see what that turns up. I am hoping that there is something like intake records, or a case file, that might describe how Marie came to the home, who her parents were, and other details that might open potential doors.
In a future trip I want to locate the records for two DC hospitals where Richard's grandmother Cordelia may have died from cancer in 1899. The records of one, the Columbia Hospital for Women, which closed in 2002, are now housed with the private Excel Archives in Dulles, but I cannot get ahold of them. I've yet to locate the records of another, the District of Columbia General Hospital, which closed in 2001. I also want to look at Richard's sister Cora's divorce from her second husband, George Wallace, which occurred in Arlingotn in February 1921. I'll return to the Maryland State Archives to review the suit against Mahlon Browning, and to comb through the (unindexed) criminal dockets from the Montgomery Co., MD court, which might contain records of criminal activity in the family that may have led Richard to change his surname from Nicholson to O'Hagan.
If that doesn't turn anything up, it will be worthwhile to eventually make a trip to Baltimore, since their records are generally not housed in the State Archives. Again, I would be looking for records of divorce and criminal activity for Richard, and anything related to what happened to his first wife Decotie. It's worth emphasizing, however, that at this phase we have no reason to strongly suspect criminal activity on the part of my great-grandfather except for his change of surname. It may be that he simply wanted to start over.
I arrived in the late afternoon on Monday, and planned to get in a first half-day at the National Archives on Tuesday, only to be waylaid by their closure at noon that day due to light snow. Wednesday I went to Annapolis, MD to visit the Maryland State Archives. There I searched through marriage records and equity docket indexes from Montgomery Co., MD. I learned that Gertrude was not married in Montgomery Co. between 1907 and 1913 (though the 1910 Census indicates she was married in 1909 or 1910, and there is no record in DC), and that neither Cora nor her mother Margaret were divorced there between 1901 and 1919. (Cora married H.E. Brown in DC in December 1906 and Margaret, after a divorce, married Jefferson Jones in DC in April 1914.) In a separate statewide marriage index only available on the Archives computers, I learned that Grace did not remarry between 1920 and 1930, after her June 1919 divorce from H.C. McMullan in DC. In general, there were no relevant equity docket records related to my closest Nicholson relatives between 1851 and 1919 (see volumes here: http://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/series.aspx?id=C1125).
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| Maryland State Archives, Annapolis |
However, there was one relevant record under the name Browning, referring to my great-great-great-grandfather Mahlon Francis Browning. He was Clarence's father. (Nicholson comes from his mother, Cordelia, Mahlon and Cordelia never having been married.) It is a suit against him from January 1889 to foreclose a mortgage on land that he owned. Unfortunately the full equity books (i.e., beyond the indexes) are stored offsite, and so I was not able to read the entire text. However, I learned from this that Mahlon was still alive in 1889 (his date of death is unclear, but was before 1900), and that he seems to have lost his land before his death. This land may be the 99.25 acres of "Happy Choice" farm that he purchased from Thomas Hodges in January 1857.
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| Docket Record (case #46129) Nicholson vs. Metropolitan Railroad Company |
On Thursday I went to the National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue, where I searched through dockets from the US District Court for the District of Columbia: criminal dockets volumes 22-25; equity docket indexes volumes 7-9, covering December 1898 to February 1910; and law dockets volumes 50-52, covering August 1902 to June 1906. Essentially I wanted to know whether Richard had committed a crime that was recorded in these records, whether he was divorced in DC, etc. He does not appear in any of these records. From that I can conclude that he was never tried in the District Court (see below) and never divorced in DC. (The District Court had sole jurisdiction over divorces at that time, and he had left the greater area permanently by March 1906 at the latest.) From newspaper records I was also aware that his mother Margaret had sued the Metropolitan Railroad Company around 1903 or 1904. These records I located, in the law dockets. I had previously had a (somewhat sensationalized) theory that this case would be about her attempting to garner her son Richard's wages if he had abandoned the family, assuming that he may have worked for this company. (We know that he was a "motorman" from the city directories, and when he lived in Seattle in 1910 he also worked for the streetcar system.) It turned out to be none of that. Margaret had fallen on one of the company's streetcars in February 1903, and was severely injured. She was attempting to collect $20,000 in damages (case #46129). Curiously, her husband Clarence also sued the company (case #46130), although he was not even on the train. The two suits were consolidated and transferred to Circuit Court No. 2 (now the Court of Appeals), and later dismissed. I include here the declaration at the outset of the case; Clarence's is almost identical.
"The plaintiff Margaret Nicholson by her attorneys, Arthur Peter and Preston B. Ray, sues the Defendant, The Metropolitan Railroad Company, a corporation organized under an Act of Congress of the United States, and having its habitat in the District of Columbia, for that the defendant heretofore, to wit: on the 17th day of February, A. D. 1903, and for a long time prior thereto was a common carrier of passengers for hire in cars propelled or run by electricity, or other power, on or over certain railways managed, controlled and operated by said defendant over certain streets in the City of Washington, in the District of Columbia, and the plaintiff had occasion and desired to be transported by the defendant in one of its said cars over the line of said Railway, or a portion thereof, heretofore, to wit: on the 17th day of February, A. D. 1903, and was received by the said Defendant Company on one of its said cars, to wit: on the day and year aforesaid as a passenger for hire at the rate charged by the said defendant, which was then and there paid to the said defendant by said plaintiff, and it thereupon became the duty of the defendant to safely and securely transport and convey the said plaintiff to her destination and to then and there suffer and permit her to safely and securely alight from the said car, and the said plaintiff was thereupon transported by the said defendant in said car as a passenger until said car reached a point on said defendant's railway, to wit: a point on East Capitol Street at or near its intersection with Second Street East in said City, and the defendant thereupon proceeded to stop its said car and the plaintiff who desired to alight at said point was preparing and proceeding in the exercise of reasonable due care and caution to alight from said car, whereupon the defendant, not regarding its duty in this behalf, by its servants negligently and carelessly and without notice to the said plaintiff suddenly started its said car while the plaintiff was in the act of alighting therefrom, and the plaintiff through said negligence and want of care of the said defendant Company and its servants, and without negligence and want of care on her part, was thereby then and there jerked upon the isle or floor of said car and was thereby severely wounded, bruised and injured and the plaintiff's nervous system shocked and deranged, and the womb of the plaintiff displaced from its natural and accustomed position and hemorrhages made to flow from the plaintiff's womb, vagina and uterus, whereby and in consequence of which she has suffered and still suffers great mental and bodily pain, and has been permanently injured in her bodily health and strength, and her ability to perform her business or work as a sewing woman or dressmaker permanently impaired and destroyed, which said business or work the plaintiff avers she was engaged in on the 17th day of February, in the year 1903, and for a long time prior thereto, and by reason of said injuries, wounds and suffering the plaintiff has been compelled to pay and to incur the obligation to pay and will in the future be compelled to pay large sums of money for medical attendance, medicines and nursing in the treatment thereof; all to the great damage of the plaintiff. Wherefor she brings this suit and claims Twenty thousand Dollars ($20,000), besides costs."
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| National Archives from Pennsylvania Avenue |
On Friday I tried to do several different things. I started by attempting to locate the records from what was once known as the Police Court, which had jurisdiction over civil matters and misdemeanors in the time period I am interested in. I know that Clarence appeared before a judge there in 1902, and that Margaret successfully garnered some of Clarence's wages in 1906, during his serial abandonment of the family. According to Wikipedia, the Police Court was formed in 1870 from the combination of the Justices of the Peace and the Orphans' Court. In 1909 it was renamed the Municipal Court, which in 1963 was renamed the Court of General Sessions. In 1970, the Court of General Sessions was combined with the Juvenile Court and the Tax Court, and this entity was renamed the Superior Court, which name it carries today. So I thought records from the Police Court may be in the Superior Court, but after a visit to their civil records clerk, I was dismayed to learn that they only have a 40-year retention policy on their records. Since it is not a federal court, its records are not preserved by the National Archives. The Police Court records, then, may have been destroyed, or they may have been sent elsewhere at one of the various moments at which the courts were reorganized.
After that I went to the District Court around the corner, thinking that a conversation with their records clerk might at least turn up the location of the Police Court records somewhere else in the city. That conversation led nowhere, but he encouraged me to check again with the National Archives, knowing that some records have ended up there that were not originally within their purview.
Then I called the DC Archives, having learned that they have DC jail commitment records. I was not able to view the records the same day, but asked them whether they do research for non-local residents. Basically I want to see if Clarence or Richard ever served time in a DC jail between 1900 and 1910 (1906 in Richard's case). Then I schlepped up to the special collections library at George Washington University, having learned that they maintain records from the Joseph F. Birch & Sons funeral home, which operated in Georgetown during the time in which Richard's wife Decotie may have died. There is no DC death certificate for her, but, I thought, maybe there will be a mortuary record. Unfortunately these records are housed offsite, but they do small amounts of research for non-local residents, and I have asked them to search through the relevant ledgers for her name. Lastly, I then went back across the city to the Child and Family Services Agency, which I had read holds records from the Foundlings Hospital where Marie may have died. Basically I had not been able to get ahold of anyone by phone and showed up in person. I was redirected to their Assistant General Counsel, who redirected me to their records division (the contact information for which is not available online). We'll see what that turns up. I am hoping that there is something like intake records, or a case file, that might describe how Marie came to the home, who her parents were, and other details that might open potential doors.
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| George Washington University from H Street |
In a future trip I want to locate the records for two DC hospitals where Richard's grandmother Cordelia may have died from cancer in 1899. The records of one, the Columbia Hospital for Women, which closed in 2002, are now housed with the private Excel Archives in Dulles, but I cannot get ahold of them. I've yet to locate the records of another, the District of Columbia General Hospital, which closed in 2001. I also want to look at Richard's sister Cora's divorce from her second husband, George Wallace, which occurred in Arlingotn in February 1921. I'll return to the Maryland State Archives to review the suit against Mahlon Browning, and to comb through the (unindexed) criminal dockets from the Montgomery Co., MD court, which might contain records of criminal activity in the family that may have led Richard to change his surname from Nicholson to O'Hagan.
If that doesn't turn anything up, it will be worthwhile to eventually make a trip to Baltimore, since their records are generally not housed in the State Archives. Again, I would be looking for records of divorce and criminal activity for Richard, and anything related to what happened to his first wife Decotie. It's worth emphasizing, however, that at this phase we have no reason to strongly suspect criminal activity on the part of my great-grandfather except for his change of surname. It may be that he simply wanted to start over.
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