Rusty Wright: 0:02

What was really amazing is the attorney that he had, for that was his first ex-wife's attorney.

Crista Cowan: 0:11

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. Welcome to another episode of Stories that Live In Us.

Crista Cowan: 0:37

I am so excited to have my producer, Lisa Elzey, back with me again today, and we are going to be sharing a story about an entire cross-country journey, and I'm really excited to have our guest on in just a few minutes. But first I thought we could spend a few minutes with Lisa, having her share with us a little bit about her journey into this particular story. Lisa, thanks for being here. I love it. Thanks for having me. So you and I have worked together at Ancestry for over a decade and this particular story plays a really important role in your journey at Ancestry. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do I know, but I guess our listeners don't know and how you got into this story?

Lisa Elzey: 1:27

Okay, so at Ancestry I am a senior story producer and that's just a fancy title, I think, for explaining the fancy title for saying that I find stories. That's my job. I find stories in customer trees when we need them and then out to customers. For some reason I can find stories for media, for some of our television shows, for commercials. That's my job is to find story, which is a fantastic job. I love it. I'm so blessed.

Lisa Elzey: 1:57

When I was first at Ancestry we had an opportunity to work with Henry Louis Gates Jr from Finding your Roots. You all may have known him. We call him Skip. He goes by Skip, so when you meet him he says call me Skip. So we got to work with Skip and write some really great family history articles for the Huffington Post and we thought the best way to go about that would be to go to one of our inboxes at Ancestry and see if there were some questions that maybe we could help answer or follow up on. Or you know, just finding again, I find stories. So this is one of the places I could find story and so we found bunches of questions. I mean just so many things and we have a timeline, so I couldn't work on anybody's brick walls or any of those things.

Lisa Elzey: 2:43

But there was this one email that was so just simple in its presentation. It was saying hi, I would like to know more about my grandfather. I know he was born in Florida or lived in Florida. I don't know much about him because he died when my dad was young. So that means there were no stories passed down right, because this person's father was about three or four when his dad was young. So that means there were no stories passed down right, because this person's father was about three or four when his own father died. So he wanted to know more about his grandfather. I was like, okay, I could probably do that. So I thought let's just dive in and see what I could find. So I found or he gave the information in the email and I just started researching, and that's kind of how the story began.

Crista Cowan: 3:25

Whenever people come to us with questions like that, it is always kind of a challenge, because some people have been doing family history for years and they have very complicated brick walls and that's not something we can solve in an afternoon. But some people do have simple questions and it feels like, oh, that should be completely doable. But then when you actually get into the research it ends up being a little complicated or convoluted, and so as you dove into what appeared on the surface to be a very simple question, it did turn into something a little bit more long term, but you were all in by that point.

Lisa Elzey: 4:00

Yeah, I was all in. I mean again, I had a deadline, I had chosen this person to be, you know, part of the article for Huffington Post. So what happens is I do the research, I come up with story, I craft story, I write the article initially, then I send the article to Skip and then Skip goes and he puts in his own little pieces, he Skipifies it, I guess you could say with like just the way that he talks and things and his own insights into research.

Lisa Elzey: 4:23

And the way that he talks and things and his own insights into research and you know, he's an amazing researcher and historian, as you all know and he puts in his bits and then we combine it and then it's all zhuzhed up and that's what we put in the Huffington Post. So I had a. You know, I had to get this done and so I couldn't be like, oh, this is being too hard, I need to change. So I'd already kind of all in at that point. And so this is Florida. I had never researched in Florida before. This is my first foray into that state as far as genealogy, genealogical research, and so it was really fun to get to know those records, get to know what they have and what they don't have. As every state, you know, there are certain states. I'm sure those that are listening that love to research are like oh yeah, that's, one of my states is one that's hard to research. So Florida was great.

Lisa Elzey: 5:09

But I was trying to find this guy and his name was Leland Wright. Now Leland. You'd think I'm going to find Leland, like that's not a John, or you know it's Leland, and I couldn't find him until I realized he went by Lee. So as soon as I typed in Lee, wright and all the different places, things started coming up. But again, wright is a very common name. So we kept finding, kept finding things, not him, finding things, not him. We found him in the 1930 census. That was the record, the only record that this person, his name's Rusty, rusty Wright, the man that wrote in. It's the only record that Rusty told me he had was the 1930 census. He just kind of didn't know where he was in between, and so it just put me on this journey of finding different marriages. He had three different wives. The last one, I believe, is Rusty's grandmother.

Lisa Elzey: 6:01

And my favorite part of this story, with the beginning of it, I found his World War One draft card. Now you'd think, world War One draft card? Yeah, sure, big deal. It was a big deal Because, as I'm looking at this card, you've ever looked at a record and you don't really read the whole record. You just kind of go oh great, I got his name, I got his birthday, there's a signature, cool. Now you got to read the whole record because on the other side of that draft card it tells the location where he filled out the draft card, it just says very, very small, very simply county jail. Dun, dun, dun dun like county jail.

Lisa Elzey: 6:37

This is a story producer's goldmine, like, okay, we've got a story, now this is is going to be great. That was the story that he was filling out a draft card in jail and it was so exciting to find that for Skip to then, you know, put his own spin on it and we had some good times with that.

Crista Cowan: 6:54

So I love this idea of a single record, like a draft card that sometimes seems so innocuous but that is available for almost every single man that was living in the United States at the time that was over the age of 18. And one little piece of information on that one little record that it can lead you into a story. I think that's an important thing. But you mentioned you have to read the whole record, you have to look at both sides of the card, you have to turn the page, you have to see all the context for it, because the story comes out of that. And then you have to string together the pieces with the newspaper article and the city directories and all the other parts of records that tell that story. But now you do have a story, but Leland's story doesn't end there, because even though you'd got this great story for this article, there was more that you wanted to discover.

Lisa Elzey: 7:50

Yeah, I felt I mean I had this story for the article, so that agenda was was reached, I could check that box. But the box I don't feel like I could really check was helping Rusty find out more about his grandfather. I mean I could say, oh, here's his draft card. He filled it out in jail but it wasn't really who he was and I wanted to give Rusty a little more than that Because I don't know. I just felt like that's the right thing to do. So I kept researching as I did, as I do. I kept researching about Leland and I found out so much more about him and his life. But even more interesting was his birthplace. He was not born in Florida, he was born in Arizona.

Crista Cowan: 8:33

How does a man born in Arizona end up in Florida?

Lisa Elzey: 8:37

Yeah, that is the question. So I couldn't stop there, I had to keep going. So I found out all this information about his occupations and experience and his family. But I'm like he's born in Arizona. There's something here. So I traced down the parents. The parents are from Texas, their mom's from Texas, they got married in Texas. Then they started traveling west and they were hitting the Oregon Trail. And on the way to the Oregon Trail, leland was born in Arizona. So okay, born in Arizona.

Lisa Elzey: 9:10

They took almost a year and then they ended up in Oregon and I was like, oh my gosh, we have an Oregon Trail story. We have a man that then ends up on the other side of the country in Florida, like, okay, why are they going to Oregon? They're getting land, like what's going on? And sure enough, they were homesteading in Oregon. And then we have all the homestead records. And for those of you that are researchers out there, it's exciting when you have more records to go. Oh, I'm going to go dive into that. And those of you that aren't researchers, maybe you'll understand why it's exciting, because it's finding more pieces of the puzzle. Right, it's those pieces of puzzle together and finally being able to see the full picture, which is so cool. And then we found out more about mom and dad. So mom and dad had married in Texas. Like I said, they had Leland in Arizona, moved to Oregon, then had the rest of their family in Oregon. I think they had eight kids, a lot of kids, eight or nine and then mom and dad divorced later.

Crista Cowan: 10:04

Which is unheard of at the time.

Lisa Elzey: 10:06

Right, not, that's not something that happens a lot. But Leland left. He left 18 years old, left Oregon and headed out out East, out to Florida. He uh, on his way, kind of stopped Midwest and caught him in the census in the Midwest and then he ended up in Florida. But the rest of the family stayed in Oregon. The mom remarried, had another, you know a whole nother family. Dad kind of disappeared. I was like, where did the dad go? So Leland's dad and I found him in newspaper articles in Oregon seeking family. So there was a whole article about how he was seeking his three daughters and he put their names in there and he was seeking them. So there was a whole article about how he was seeking his three daughters and he put their names in there and he was seeking them. And I'm like, why is someone seeking daughter? That means there's an estrangement, that's happened or someone's been displaced, like something's happened. And so I dug and dug and dug and that's when all of the richness came to light.

Crista Cowan: 11:03

Yeah, you think you know, we think we know the story, we think we know, oh, this is what happened to grandpa. Or sometimes the story is a little bit shrouded in mystery or mist and we think, oh well, if I just look at the records it will tell me what happened. It's not just that the records then start to tell the story. The records start to lead you on a path to more questions and more stories and more information, and piecing all of that together leads an even broader story starts to emerge. I wish I had a good analogy for that.

Crista Cowan: 11:37

This idea of one little piece of the puzzle shows a part of the picture, but as you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, a more complete picture emerges and it can change our perspective about how we view the past and our ancestors and I know this isn't your family story, it's Rusty's and our ancestors.

Crista Cowan: 11:59

And I know this isn't your family story, it's Rusty's. But as you were putting these pieces together, you were starting to really come to know and understand Leland's parents and what they went through and some of the factors that came into play to the breakup of their family and to the disbursement of their children. And and that's when you start to see that there's a bit of compassion. Maybe that comes in for the choices that people make and how those choices affect so many other people, and that's as I watched you do this research and watch this story unfold. That was one of the things that I think I gained for Leland and all the things he went through, and then also for his parents and his siblings and all the things that they went through as well.

Lisa Elzey: 12:46

My analogy would be you know, if you sit in the front row of a theater, you're only going to see so much of the show. You have a really close view of the actors faces, their expressions and you can really zero in on that actor and what they're doing. But if you sit in a balcony and watch a show completely different experience and you're going to see all the things that have been produced on that stage, right, you're going to see all the nuances, the dancers or whatever, the colors of the lights, the way they shine. You're going to see a lot of different things.

Lisa Elzey: 13:16

So, sitting in different places in the theater, really an important thing, and I was being really close up. I was all about Leland, right, and so then I just had to kind of take steps back and broaden my perspective and try to see the full picture. And so when I did that, I found this record set again in the newspapers that led me to see that the family had broken up, like not just the divorce but the whole family, like had broken up, and dad was kind of alone and he was looking for his daughters, and the place that it said he was looking for his daughters was at the poor house, the poor farm.

Crista Cowan: 13:51

That's where he was. That's where he was.

Lisa Elzey: 13:53

Yeah, he was looking for them while he was at the poor house, and the poor house at the time, where he was in Oregon, is now what we know as the Oregon State Hospital.

Lisa Elzey: 14:05

So when you hear Oregon State Hospital, think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the movie.

Lisa Elzey: 14:11

That outside facade of that hospital that you know Jack Nicholson is in is the Oregon State Hospital, and so I think no one was around. He had no family helping him, so really it was just the only place he could go, which is really sad, and I just got really, really emotional about it. And I got emotional because this was one of my very first big stories that I found at Ancestry. Now when I say big story, there wasn't a celebrity involved, but this was my biggest epic saga of a story and I was answering a question for a customer and that started Rusty on a journey that I'm sure he'll talk about of connection to family members he never knew he had because he couldn't get past the lack of information about his own grandfather, so again opened up tons of doors for him. He's had a wonderful experience connecting and all of that, but I was so excited to be able to be a part of this journey to find the story that could help reconnect this family.

Crista Cowan: 15:15

It's interesting because you helped him uncover this story and I'm excited to talk to him about his experience. But you're right that one story leads to another story leads to another story and ultimately it all gives us perspective and we all decide what kind of a journey we want to go on. So I'm excited to talk to Rusty and hear a little bit more about his perspective of this story and the journey that he is still on to continue to reconnect with family members and to continue to find his story. So hi, rusty, thank you so much for being here.

Rusty Wright: 15:51

All right, thank you.

Crista Cowan: 15:53

You have an amazing family history story and I'm so excited to dive into it. But before we do, I would love to hear from you just a little bit about what it was that got you interested in learning more about your family story.

Rusty Wright: 16:22

My grandfather passed when my dad was three months old and nobody knew anything about him. So my aunt asked me to get involved in and help her and she had just a few things that she knew about him. And when I got ancestry on on my laptop I started into it and I got stuck and then there was this little blurb that came up and said you know, if you need help, email this email and and with your questions. And I think it was about a month and a half, maybe two months, and I got an email back and they needed more information. So I called my aunt and she was nine years old at the time her daddy passed, so she didn't know too much about her memory, other than a couple of things about he might have been arrested and put in jail and he was a boat captain. So I sent that email back. Then, a little while a month or so later, I get this information about going on Huffington Post and there's this big, huge article about his life and that was just amazing.

Crista Cowan: 17:28

Will you tell me this? Your grandfather? What is his name?

Rusty Wright: 17:34

Leland Wright. My dad was three months old when.

Rusty Wright: 17:38

Leland passed and my aunt was nine years old and my dad had my Uncle Bo, which is James Wright, then his older brother, which is George, then his older brother, which is George Leland Wright, and then my Aunt Viola. Then there were two others that my grandmother had from her previous marriage females, my Aunt Wendata and my Aunt Cora, and that's their family. My family and my Aunt Viola was one that engaged me into finding this research out, and she was able to get that information before she passed she had had a heart attack and a stroke. When I called the place where she was at, nurse held the phone up to her and she was couldn't speak too much to me, but the nurse said she's shaking her head, yes, and then she had tears rolling down her eyes.

Crista Cowan: 18:52

That's so sweet. I love that that she was able to, that you were able to share that information with her. Okay, so let me just make sure that I understand correctly and that we've got this all clear for everybody. So when your grandfather died, your dad was three months old and there were four children total of his, and then he had two stepchildren. Did I get that right Correct? So your Aunt Viola then had some information about her father, but it was pretty limited and a little bit sketchy, which it sounds like. Was there anything else she knew about him? You said she knew he might have been in jail, she knew he was a ship captain. Anything else?

Rusty Wright: 19:33

The other thing was that he went to a school out west for welding or something. The other thing was that he went to a school out west for welding or something and that come up to be, you know, he went to this school for boiler makers, so and he had been in that profession. So that was three things that really confirmed it.

Crista Cowan: 19:52

So you write into Ancestry looking for somebody to help you learn more about your grandfather. With the limited information that you have about him and Lisa, who everybody knows, is my producer she was able to dive into the family history research a little bit and do you remember at all what some of the first pieces of information were that she gave you back about your grandfather and about his life?

Rusty Wright: 20:22

It was amazing to see the detail and the information that come from that, with his draft card being listed to address in county jail, being listed to address in county jail, and then the newspaper clipping that was with it explained why he was in the county jail, and then the information about him being a boat captain here in Florida. It was just, it was amazing and it had all come together and it was on point to exactly to what my aunt had remembered, except for the reason why he was in jail so can you tell us what that reason was that he was in jail?

Rusty Wright: 21:08

he was in there for selling alcohol and in the newspaper clipping, uh, he's quoted in there as saying the police have nothing on me. Um, back then it was, uh, before prohibition. So florida was a dry state that I found out and when they broke into his house they found the still and it was non-operational so they couldn't charge him. So he got out of that one, like he said. What was really amazing is the attorney that he had, for that was his first ex-wife's attorney.

Crista Cowan: 21:49

Aren't you a police officer?

Rusty Wright: 21:52

I spent 17 years as a deputy sheriff in St Lucie County 17 years as a deputy sheriff in St Lucie County. I retired from there and I was off for two weeks and I've been a special deputy US marshal now for four and a half years.

Crista Cowan: 22:12

Well, there you go. So, with that kind of a background, what was it like?

Rusty Wright: 22:14

finding out that your grandfather was a bootlegger. We had fun with that because, um, when I was with the sheriff's office, when we found this out, um, I said how coincidental is that. Then then the newspaper article which is, he quoted something that a lot of people say you know, the police don't have nothing on me and and we had a big laugh about that, it's uh, and you think about, here's his, his grandson, he's long for us. He was doing some things he probably shouldn't have been doing. I guess he was a self-made man and lived his life on on his terms, because you know, he lived and worked here and he did really well, because in his first marriage he had built a houseboat in Miami. Him and the family moved into it and one evening one of the daughters knocked over an oil lamp and the boat caught fire. He came in and rescued the kids and his wife from a burning boat, but the insurance back then the boat was worth in contents like $2,000.

Rusty Wright: 23:55

So if you think about the amount of money that he had put into, that back then he had really worked hard and saved and made something of himself. Yeah, so you start to, through this draft card, through these newspaper articles, you start to get a little rest of. My uncles would have been around to be able to hear that, but fortunately that didn't happen, but you got to share the story with her, which I love.

Crista Cowan: 24:23

In the process of learning more about your grandfather and his life, there was some cross-country information that kind of came out. Do you remember where was your grandfather born?

Crista Cowan: 24:36

He was born in Maricopa, arizona, right, and then he died in Florida and so there's some questions there, right, that like how does somebody get from Arizona to welding school wherever he went to welding school and then ends up in Florida? And as the research was done and the information was uncovered, there was a whole story that unfolded about your grandfather's parents and his brothers and sisters and kind of the journey that they went on. Do you want to tell that story in your own words?

Rusty Wright: 25:06

My great-grandfather had been married in Kerr, texas, and he and his wife decided to go to Oregon for the free property back then and they had to take the Oregon Trail to get there. By the time they got to Maricopa Arizona that's where my grandfather was born and then no more kids until they got to Oregon. Then they had quite a few more. They lived there, they had their property. My great grandfather, james Wright, lived and worked in there and he actually got divorced from his wife my great grandmother and according to the newspaper articles and information that was produced by ancestry that was found, he had got injured in town. I think he was hit by a car, broken up a leg or an arm or something of that fashion, and he went to. Then was the state farm, which ended out to be the Oregon State Hospital.

Crista Cowan: 26:16

So at the time it was probably something like a poorhouse, and then there was some, it became a state facility. Yes, yes.

Rusty Wright: 26:27

Okay, and so he lived out the rest of his life there and so he lived out the rest of his life there. Yes, and that story is quite got a lot due to it, because in the medical records that I received from there that were his, along with a picture of him and his handwriting where he signed it, nobody has ever seen that before. When you take that picture of him and you take that picture of my little brother, they're exactly the same. There's no way, no two other than once a month he might get gone for a week, then come back, but he actually died because of an injury he sustained from his roommate.

Crista Cowan: 27:20

Oh no.

Rusty Wright: 27:21

Yeah, he had got a broken femur, got infected, and that's what took his life.

Crista Cowan: 27:26

And then. So then explain to me a little bit about why nobody knew what had happened to him. So he's in the state hospital. This information has been uncovered in your family history, but nobody knew that for a really long time. And why do you think that was?

Rusty Wright: 27:42

The newspaper article put out when my great-grandfather died was to the two daughters that he had. Nobody responded was to the two daughters that he had and nobody responded. And back then they put everything in newspapers. So people read newspapers back then so the biggest thing was it's like nobody cared and it was.

Crista Cowan: 28:07

It's real sad and so the state. Because nobody claimed him, the state put his ashes on the facility, on the property there, with a lot of others who found themselves in the same situation, and we were able to identify which set of ashes were his. Which set of ashes were his, and tell me a little bit about the process of what you went through to claim those and what's happened since then.

Rusty Wright: 28:39

The Oregon State Hospital and the governor did a video segment and it's called Library of Dust and if you go on and Google it there's a short video that you can see. They had found a room on the property of Oregon State Hospital which had a room downstairs that looked like somebody had just been sitting there and that was their place to work. There's a little desk, a pencil and a book, and the book had numbers and names in it. Book and the book had numbers and names in it. And lining the walls there's I think it was over 3 000 copper cans. Each can is stamped with numbers that correlated to the name in the book and therefore when I went on there and plugged in my great-grandfather's name, it matched the number in the book and therefore we confirmed that he was there and that that was him, and then the medical records and the pictures and it all come together.

Crista Cowan: 29:49

That moment when you found out that your great-grandfather had been left alone and that he was never claimed, that his ashes were still there among 3,000 others. What were the emotions that you were feeling when you heard that news?

Rusty Wright: 30:07

It got real emotional and it still is. But it was very exciting for me to find out, but not to be able to tell the other family members that it passed away was hard. But the aunt got to hear it and that's that was the, the icing on the cake that was.

Crista Cowan: 30:34

That was just amazing yeah, it is amazing and have you been able to claim? Those ashes are like is there a plan, or has there been a plan for what to do with them?

Rusty Wright: 30:49

yes, I did all the paperwork, received the death certificate and we sent that all out there to the hospital and requested everything that he had went in with. We got back, except for a pocket watch. In your museum out there there's a pocket watch and one day I want to go visit and look at it because I don't see if his initials in it. It's fine that they have it and they. You know that's part of him. That's still there maybe. Um, but we did get the paperwork, medical records and they, the governor, set aside money for people to claim their, their relatives and give them the proper burial. They sent me a container which the copper can, the original one that he was in, and also a vessel that was in the wall.

Rusty Wright: 31:49

They have a memorial memorial wall with all these people in there that are unclaimed, and they retracted it. They sent it to me. I have it. We're in the processes of putting him with his oldest son, which is here in Stewart.

Crista Cowan: 32:09

And his oldest son is your grandfather and his oldest son is your grandfather, leland Wright. Yeah, you went on this journey looking for your grandfather and you uncovered a whole other story about your great-grandparents and their family, the journey on the Oregon Trail, and really got into the story about your great grandfather and what happened to him and how he ended up in the state hospital and unclaimed at the end of his life. So there is another element to your family history journey, which is the whole experience with DNA and you took a.

Crista Cowan: 32:47

DNA test and started making some additional connections. Can you tell us about that test?

Rusty Wright: 32:51

and started making some additional connections. Can you tell us about that? Yes, it's been amazing and it still is. And there's a young lady who's a cousin of mine that lives down here in Florida and through Ancestry and the DNA stuff she had contacted him. They have met and the dad had no idea. The dad had no clue that he had a daughter. It's been exciting to see the good things that come out of this and the conduit between ancestry and the DNA and helping people find their families. It's amazing.

Crista Cowan: 33:37

So, as you took the DNA test, one of the things you started to discover was your grandfather's siblings that stayed behind in Oregon had children and had grandchildren and those were the people that were showing up on your DNA match list right and had grandchildren and those were the people that were showing up on your DNA match list right.

Rusty Wright: 33:53

There weren't too many rights on that side of the family that were showing up and I've since have gotten a few more from California, from where some of the siblings moved to California from Oregon and some of their kids and their grandkids hopefully will start doing some DNAs out there and get at it in. But I know they're there. But we'll see what happens and hopefully you know, as I look in this, updates on the on the DNA that will, uh, get more interesting. I'm sure it will. It's just going to take time and them to do the test yeah.

Crista Cowan: 34:39

So, as you, as you've identified who all of your grandfather's siblings were, it sounds like some of them you've found because you've done the actual family history research to discover who. You know where those siblings went and who they married. And then some have just popped up on your DNA match list.

Rusty Wright: 34:56

It's still evolving and I check it every month to see all the new ones and then I'll send them a text or whatever, and a lot of times I get replies back and yet some people you look on there and they haven't been on in a couple months or whatever. But it's been amazing and it continues to just be incredible.

Crista Cowan: 35:28

And that sounds like that's what set you out on your journey a little bit, and now, because of the knowledge and information you've gained, you've been able to take that to other people that you're related to, whether you found them through research or whether you found them through DNA. It sounds like you're doing some really great things with the information you found in your family history. So, as you think about what's next for you on your family history journey, what is it that you hope for next?

Rusty Wright: 35:58

I hope that help keep other people finding their their families, which continues to happen all the time. You may pass a family member in the grocery store and you don't even know it.

Crista Cowan: 36:10

Yeah, and it sounds like you're. You've become a little bit of a dot connector, connecting people and relationships and helping them understand where they fit in the family tree. I think that's a real gift and I love hearing that you're invested in that.

Rusty Wright: 36:26

Well, ancestry is the conduit that's made this possible.

Crista Cowan: 36:33

Well, Rusty, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your story. It's a sweeping saga of family history that sounds like it is still unfolding.

Rusty Wright: 36:45

Oh yeah, Every time I get on this app on here, it's amazing.