Phyllis Zegers: 0:00

The hospital had was fairly new at that time. And so I started researching and I kept finding information about unclaimed pre-made at the state hospital.

Crista Cowan: 0:15

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. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. We have steadily been making our way from the west to the east as we do this America 250 celebration state by state. You may have noticed, or not, that we are visiting the states in the order in which they became states. And so it might feel a little weird today that we're jumping back to the West Coast to visit the state of Oregon. Oregon didn't become a state until after Nevada and Idaho and Utah. And so here we are in the state of Oregon, and my guest today is Phyllis Zagers. Now, Phyllis has such an amazing story, and I'm so excited for you to hear it. But before you do, I don't know if you're a genealogist or if you just enjoy the stories that we share here every week. But as a genealogist, there's this thing that starts to happen. As you're researching your family, you're looking through census records and passenger lists and cemeteries, and you start to notice the names of the other people, the neighbors on the same census page, the people from the same village that immigrated together, the people who are buried next to one another. And there's always questions. It feels a little bit like you're just leaving that name behind when you move on with your own family history research. Well, Phyllis is one of those rare people who has provided such an incredible service to the family history community and just to families in general, because she hasn't left any names on the page. She actively is working to make sure that everybody's story is told. There's the saying that history tells the story of the heroes, but family history tells the story of everyone. And Phyllis does that beautifully. And her work is rooted in Oregon. And it's such an incredible story, in fact, that Ancestry has created an entire podcast about some of the stories that Phyllis has uncovered. The podcast is entitled Unclaimed. Be sure to watch Ancestry Channels wherever you're listening to this podcast so that you can follow along with that story. But today you're going to get a little sneak peek of the work that Phyllis has been doing on this story of Unclaimed. Enjoy my conversation with Phyllis Segers. Phyllis, thank you so much for being here and having this conversation. I'm so excited to learn more about you and your family history. But before we dive into the family stories, I would love to hear a little bit about how you got interested in family history to begin with.

Phyllis Zegers: 3:46

Well, I had been working for 35 years as a special ed teacher, and I started looking at retirement and started thinking, what am I going to do? You know, how how am I going to entertain myself? And a friend said, you should really look into genealogy.

Crista Cowan: 4:06

Okay.

Phyllis Zegers: 4:07

And she had said she'd had a great time with it. And I thought, well, I trust her. Let me look into it. Okay. And uh I had um I had no idea whether there was good stuff out there to be found or not. Um but my brother-in-law had done a family tree um for as a wall hanging for my uh for my parents. So I had a place to start. And so I started there and I've been doing it ever since. How long is that? Oh, I would uh 20 years.

Crista Cowan: 4:44

Okay. Yeah so it's been a minute.

unknown: 4:46

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 4:47

So before you got involved in family history kind of formally, were you raised in a family with family stories or that talked about people from the past, or was this all new information you were discovering?

Phyllis Zegers: 4:59

Well, yes, family stories had been told, names had been bantered around, and I ignored them. And you know, I think everybody I talked to about doing their family tree, doing their family history, they all say, I wish I had asked the questions what when the people who were around who knew the answers. And uh I'm in the same boat, you know. So yeah, there were there were histories, and I would hear names uh Lewis and Starnes and Van Patten and um, but it really didn't mean anything. But I you know, I knew there were stories out there. And some of the stories I would roll my eyes and think, is that really true? You know.

Crista Cowan: 5:48

Um they were. Oh, well, I'm excited to delve into that. So were you raised, you were raised in in Oregon?

Phyllis Zegers: 5:57

I was born in Oregon. Okay. I was born in Pendleton, Oregon, in northeastern Oregon. And um, when I was five, my family moved to France. And we were there until I was 16. Oh, goodness. Yeah. And then my father, who was a civilian who worked with the military, um, he was stationed then in Illinois. And so there I finished high school, I completed college, I started my career, I got married, um, and very salmon-like, came back to Oregon. You know, I think when kids are in the military, um they they identify with where they're from because everybody is from somewhere else. Yeah, you know, I'm from California, I'm from Colorado, and me, it's I'm Phyllis and I'm from Oregon. And I always saw myself as an Oregonian, even though really you had lived there. Really, just basically for five years. Wow.

Crista Cowan: 7:06

So did you raise your children there or did you go back after they were grown?

Phyllis Zegers: 7:09

Um, moved out, moved back to Oregon um in 1975 with my husband. He totally trusted that Oregon was a lovely place, and um uh had two children and raised them in Oregon.

Crista Cowan: 7:26

So they are Oregonians as well? They are. And did you still have family in Oregon at the time?

Phyllis Zegers: 7:31

Yes, my parents came out here. My um, my brother, sister came out here for a while, and since then they've kind of most of them moved all over the world. But uh, yep.

Crista Cowan: 7:44

But it was a home base. Yeah, it was. That's lovely. So as you started into your family history journey with these echoes of memories of stories in your brain, was there like a first discovery that hooked you?

Phyllis Zegers: 7:58

Um finding out how many generations had actually been here. I knew about or I had been told about my great-grandmother having you know walked most of the way on the Oregon Trail. And um and that impressed me. But then to find out, well, when she got here, she was already third generation Oregonian. Well, her grandfather came out here in um 18, came out to Oregon in 1851. Okay. He had one of his daughters who came out even before him with her family. And then my two times great-grandmother, his daughter, another daughter, came out 20 years later. Oh wow. So the family, that same family converged on Oregon at different times. And where were they coming from? Uh they were coming from the from Kansas, from Illinois, um, mostly Midwest. But before that, um some of them had been born in uh Kentucky and Tennessee, and took a long time to move west, many hops. Yeah, you know.

Crista Cowan: 9:25

It's so interesting because when you look at the westward expansion of the country, you do see some really familiar um migration patterns from people from to certain places ending up in certain places. But it's always so fascinating to me that for all the people that came west, they still called it the Oregon Trail, whether they were going to Oregon or not, because because Oregon held such an allure for people. Um, so I don't know if we've we talked about this earlier or not, but um, my family moved to Oregon when I was 13. And I went to a half a year of junior high there and two and a half years of high school there before my parents moved on. Um, and then right after I graduated from high school, they moved back to Oregon so I'm I'm not an Oregonian, I don't identify as an Ogonian, but all of my younger siblings do because for them, that's where they all went to high school, they all graduated from there. Um, and my parents still live there.

unknown: 10:20

Uh-huh.

Crista Cowan: 10:21

And so I like I love Oregon it's so beautiful and and so diverse, right? Like my parents live in a little town where you can drive a half hour into Portland one direction or 45 minutes to Tillamook the other direction, and you're on the beach, and like just the beauty of the place and the accessibility of things, I just have always, always loved visiting there. And so to have such deep roots there, even though you personally only lived there for a little while as a child, to make that discovery, like has to be really grounding.

Phyllis Zegers: 10:51

Uh-huh. It it is, it's a beautiful place, and it's a state that I'm just so very proud of. It's so beautiful. And and like you say, you can um travel an hour and you're in a different world, an equally lovely world. Yeah, but now it's not forested, it's high desert, or it's coastal or mountains. It's it Oregon's got it all.

Crista Cowan: 11:18

Yeah, it does. That's lovely. And so your family started coming there in the 1850s, yes? The earliest was actually 1846.

Phyllis Zegers: 11:28

Okay. And then 1850s, some started showing up and um more in the 1870s, 1880s, and um yeah, they they came a lot of different routes. There were so many routes into Oregon. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 11:44

I mean Yeah, we talk about the Oregon Trail, but really, yes, there are.

Phyllis Zegers: 11:47

Yeah, I mean they came down what was what is called the Oregon Trail, but then there's decision points, you know. Do you put your ox team and your your wagon on a raft and and raft the Columbia? Or do you try to go the safer route, which was not always the safer route? You know, do you take the southern route? Do you go around Mount Hood, you know?

Crista Cowan: 12:12

I think I played that video game as a kid.

Phyllis Zegers: 12:15

Yeah, I mean, it's a great game. It's a great game. But they, you know, they played it in real life. Yeah. And uh so the decisions that they made, um, they were life and death decisions.

Crista Cowan: 12:29

So you did you know all four of your grandparents? Yes. Okay, you were raised close to them or for those first few years? And then when you lived in France, did you ever come back and visit or was that?

Phyllis Zegers: 12:40

Yes, we came back twice in that period of time. Okay.

Crista Cowan: 12:44

It's interesting because um I think you said you have grandchildren now and you don't live very far from them, but but any distance sometimes feels like too much distance. So to live on the other side of the world from your grandparents as a child without FaceTime, without the ways to communicate with them, I suspect. I don't know, I was raised with my grandparents a very prevalent part of my life. Um, was that difficult or you just didn't know any better?

Phyllis Zegers: 13:08

Um, I really didn't know any better. My mother stayed in real close touch with letters with her mom so we'd hear about what was going on. Yeah. Um, no, we were it was mostly uh our birth family that we were connected to. Yeah, I love that.

Crista Cowan: 13:25

Uh, do you still have some of those letters?

Phyllis Zegers: 13:28

Probably. I have so many things of my mother's. They, you know, it just I I can't let go of, you know. So yeah, there I have boxes of things.

Crista Cowan: 13:39

And things you probably wish you could ask about. Oh.

Phyllis Zegers: 13:43

A hundred percent.

Crista Cowan: 13:45

As you've been on this 20-year family history journey, uh, is there a story, a particular story that stands out?

Phyllis Zegers: 13:52

There were there were so many um courageous, adventuresome people that uh were were doing interesting things that are avenues into learning about history and learning about Oregon. Um, you know, they came different routes, they did different things after they got here, some held public office and so forth. And I think the one that um sticks in my mind right now for the moment is um uh uh a guy, he was my third uh three times great uncle. And he's kind of a composite character in my mind because he did it all. I mean, all those things. He came out from Illinois and he he came overland by wagon train, and um he got homestead land in the Willamette Valley because that was where everybody was going, was the Wammet Valley. And uh then he also decided he was also gonna get some land in northeastern Oregon and start cattle ranching. He did that for a little bit, and then he decided, well, his wife could take care of things and he was gonna go to the gold rush. So he did that, and most folks came back poor. And he came back rich. He ended up with about forty thousand dollars, forty to fifty thousand dollars in gold at the time. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. He ended up being um the um first county commissioner of Umatilla County and having a a big cattle ranch, and um he had six kids, and uh they ended up in uh interesting places in history in Oregon. But he uh he was still a young man and he went back to Illinois. I suspect he went back to Illinois to talk to his sister, who was my two times great-grandmother, to talk her and her husband into coming out to the Pacific Northwest. Okay, and um, which they did, but while he was there, he died. Oh no. Yeah. And his oldest daughter became incredibly depressed. Her mother was wealthy enough to try to find her help. She tried to get treatment in San Francisco and in Portland. And then um her daughter ended up in Oregon State Hospital. And that's that's where she died. How did that story come to you? How did you ferret that out? Well, I found um I wouldn't have known of her, um, except that her brother was a state legislator at the time. At the time that she was at the hospital. At the time at the time she went into the hospital. Okay. And newspapers reported on her going into the hospital probably because he was a state legislator and might have just ignored the fact that she went into the hospital, but because of his position, they thought it that was newsworthy. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 17:23

Old newspapers, ma'am, they told everything.

Phyllis Zegers: 17:26

Yes, they did. They didn't mind being the center of gossip.

Crista Cowan: 17:30

Nope, not at all. But what a boon to us as genealogists to find sometimes even just one or two little lines of text that can crack open a whole story and in this case connect you to this cousin, right? I love that. So um, in the process, you've also uh gotten involved with Find a Grave. What was it about Find a Grave that got you interested there?

Phyllis Zegers: 17:54

Well, I love Find a Grave because you can post uh pictures, you can do biographies, um, and you can link them with their uh parents, you can link them with their siblings, with their children, with spouses, and um it kind of forms a little bit of a family tree digitally, and you can kind of click your way through. And I like to use that to document.

Crista Cowan: 18:23

And so you have been a contributor to to to find a grave for a while, um, but you decided to take on kind of a unique project connected to the Oregon State Hospital, yes?

Phyllis Zegers: 18:34

Yes, yes.

Crista Cowan: 18:35

Tell us about that.

Phyllis Zegers: 18:36

Well, once I found this um uh first cousin three times removed, uh, that she had been institutionalized, I wanted to find out what her experience was like. You know, what was going on with state institutions at that time and what year was this? This is in 1890s. Okay. The hospital had was fairly new at that time. And so I started researching and I kept finding uh information about unclaimed cremains at the state hospital. And so I I started looking into it and found that there were 3,500 people who had died either at the state hospital or at the penitentiary or at what was later called Fairview or the TB hospital, um, whose uh if their bodies weren't claimed, they would be cremated at the state hospital and and then these cans of ashes would just be stored there. So um I thought these people sound very interesting. And uh I decided I would start researching them to honor them and put them on find grade because I could have a narrative I used to research them. I I needed to write the narrative, and I posted it, and then I um realized I could find living relatives, and so I started doing that. Did you work your way through all 3500? I have worked my way through 3500 twice. Wow. Uh I did I did the first batch and um then those that weren't claimed, I did them a second time, and uh and now I've started a third round. And I'm still finding information and I'm still finding living relatives that I hadn't before because there is so much more online. Yeah. I mean, there's there are documents, you know, that that are there today that weren't there literally yesterday.

Crista Cowan: 20:48

Yeah, yeah. I I often tell people when I go out and teach about ancestry that we're adding an average of about five million new records a day to the site. And that blows people's minds. Uh-huh. Um it blows my mind, and I've worked here for 20 years, but that's because 20 years ago when I started work here, we were lucky if we got three million records a month online. But the processes and the technology have advanced so much, and people understand the value of having those historic records digitized. So now, like it's a faucet that just keeps keeps running.

Phyllis Zegers: 21:18

Oh, yes. I mean, I just keep getting information, things that I would have thought was a cold case for me. Now I open it up, it's just brand new. Yeah. I mean, so much to go on.

Crista Cowan: 21:31

You know, you've done all this work with the Oregon State Hospital, you're on your third round through it. Do you see an ending point to that project?

Phyllis Zegers: 21:39

I don't know. I thought that I would just do it one time.

Crista Cowan: 21:43

Yeah.

Phyllis Zegers: 21:44

And yet there's so much more out there that keeps me going. I think I probably identified living relatives as many at the second round. Okay. So going into the third round was easy. And and now I do wonder, you know, what uh, you know, when is this gonna stop? I have thought, you know, every institution has this situation. And every funeral home has the same situation that they have uh unclaimed cremains. And and probably every coroner's office. Yeah. And so I think there are other places to go with this skill set. Yeah. You know, I might do that, yeah. But I I haven't squeezed all the juice out of the Oregon State Hospital orange yet.

Crista Cowan: 22:40

Yeah, but you have set such a good example, and maybe, you know, out with your background as a teacher, there could be some opportunity for you to help other people who want to volunteer, who want to contribute, to see ways to do that. And even if just telling your story inspires them to do that, I'm so grateful you shared that. Yeah. It's interesting though, as you think about these unclaimed remains at that hospital, they weren't claimed in life. What was it that made you think you might have success having them claimed so many years later?

Phyllis Zegers: 23:13

I didn't think about it. I was kind of naive and I just I realized that I could find a living relative, and I said, I wonder if they know. You know, could they possibly know? Maybe they don't, and maybe I'll just write them a letter. Yeah. And uh so I I did, and I was really surprised how important it was to them and how quickly they would write back and they would say, I got your surprising letter, and thank you. And it was so reinforcing that it was just I I kept it up.

Crista Cowan: 23:52

I love that. Um, and it's interesting because you have this personal connection to that, right? Through this cousin and her experience and your curiosity about that. But I think one of the things that we all learn as we get into family history, I think a lot of us kind of start naively thinking, oh, we're gonna climb the family tree, we're gonna make these discoveries. But sometimes when we go a little bit further afield to the aunts and uncles and the cousins, we gain this more complete picture of our family story. And she is as much a part of the family story as her dad, who went back to Illinois and died there, and how your family finally made it to Oregon. Like that's that's the whole story. Yeah.

Phyllis Zegers: 24:31

Yeah. It's uh I it's important for me to go into the the whole idea of family history with my eyes wide open to, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything, you know, and that's the reward is that you're gonna find these little gems, these little plot twists, you know.

Crista Cowan: 24:54

And now you're kind of a little bit like a fairy godmother, like sprinkling that accessibility to others, sending them magic letters they get in the mail.

Phyllis Zegers: 25:02

Well, that's interesting you should say that because a lot of times people say, You've inspired me to look into my family history. Yeah. Because when they do get the biography, they do get lots of hints on, you know, I found her in this census and I found him in this, you know, draft registration. And and I think they start to see I could do that. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 25:30

Yeah. That's so fun. Do you have a particular um connection you've made that's meaningful to you?

Phyllis Zegers: 25:37

Oh there have just been so many. I uh it's just I I couldn't pick out just one. It's so nice to hear what living living relatives feel about receiving the letter. Sometimes it's just that they're they're interested in the history and that it's that simple. And sometimes it's very important that now they connect with that um that person and they see what's happened in their own life, they see that has happened in her life or his life, or they they realize there's been a family lie that's been told. Yeah, you know. Grandma died in childbirth.

Crista Cowan: 26:32

Nope, she was put in the state hospital.

Phyllis Zegers: 26:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 26:36

Yeah. And so much of that was so shrouded in shame. Um, and in some ways, like, I mean, we still have a long way to go with mental health care and services, but I think we've come so very far because back then nobody talked about it. They made up lies to cover stories. Um, people were institutionalized for ridiculous reasons that today would not be considered institutional worthy. Um, and so yeah, as as you start to unpeel those layers, you're shining sunlight on things that have been in the dark for a long time.

Phyllis Zegers: 27:10

Well, and in fact, one, I remember getting this email and my heart just racing as I'm reading through it. She said, You rocked my world. And I'm thinking, is that a good thing or a bad thing? And she said, I never knew I was adopted. Oh, and um I had sent her a letter about a good an aunt, and she went to her mother and said, This woman says I have an aunt. I don't know of an aunt. And uh her mother said, Yes, your father had a sister, she was institutionalized, and he made me promise I would never have children, and you were adopted, and it it was from having received that letter, and she said, um she said that was so important and helpful to her because she had had all these suspicions all her life, and nobody seemed to be telling her that her suspicions were accurate.

Crista Cowan: 28:27

Yeah.

Phyllis Zegers: 28:28

And it she found it so valuable for her and her son to find out that this had happened. And I think perhaps her mother was waiting for the right moment to tell her, and when that letter showed up, it was the right moment.

Crista Cowan: 28:42

Yeah, so you provided that catalyst. So yeah, that's amazing. So uh Ancestry has created a podcast called Unclaimed about those cremeans from the Oregon State Hospital. Um, like when you first heard that Ancestry was doing that, what were your thoughts about that? Yeah.

Phyllis Zegers: 29:01

Well, I love these stories. I mean, every one of them is such an interesting story. And I thought, yeah, these stories need to be told. Yeah. You know, so so yay, yeah, go for it.

Crista Cowan: 29:16

Good. And what was your involvement in that?

Phyllis Zegers: 29:19

Well, they they asked for a list of names that would be um good cases to for them to look into, and I gave them a batch and and they started started looking into them and um they picked out several and and they did a fabulous job.

Crista Cowan: 29:37

Oh good. You've listened to the whole series? I have. I have, and it's outstanding. Okay. Well, I haven't I haven't heard it all yet. I've heard little clipses all so far. So I'm excited to be able to listen to it, not just to honor the work that you've done and the way that you help bring those stories to light, but also just because you're right, those people's stories deserve to be told because so many of them. ended their life alone and um in very hard, very sad conditions. And the one story that I know intimately because of a previous podcast episode we did, like just the thought that he was putting out newspaper articles looking for his children and trying to get anybody to pay attention to him in the last years of his life. It's heartbreaking to think about the conditions that some of them ended their lives in. As you contact these living descendants of these people whose cremains were unclaimed, I'm I'm sure you get so many different kinds of responses. But as you think about some of the responses that you've received, are there any that like stand out or are there any unusual experiences that you've had because of your connection to their families?

Phyllis Zegers: 30:46

Recently a man claimed the ashes of his great uncle but he lives in Canada. And he said this gentleman whose name was um Francis had never stepped foot in Canada. He said it would be wrong for me to bring his ashes here and I'd like his ashes to be somewhere in Oregon. And I volunteered I said you know I could do that. And so between the two of us we dug back into his biography and this man was um he was a dentist and he lived in Portland but he had a summer home on the North Umqua River and he apparently loved that so much because at that time in 1910 to get from Portland to the North Umqua River was a feat. Yeah I mean and he apparently did it several summers and we lived on the Umqua River. And I said it that's that's gotta be it. I mean we will take him to his fishing hole because he had it had been described where he where he had his cabin on the North Umqua. And uh my husband and I sprinkled um Francis's ashes in that the North MQ and the gentleman who claimed the ashes is a wildlife um artist and he does mainly watercolor and it at the time that we did the sprinkling there were mallards that were swimming around and and it was it was just perfect. It tied the two of them together. And he was I felt that Francis was was back home he was in his the place he wanted to be most that's so lovely.

Crista Cowan: 32:59

You're doing amazing work thank you um so you're gonna you're continuing on going through the 3500 again for the third pass.

Phyllis Zegers: 33:07

As you've become so immeshed in this work though has your own family history taken a back seat or do you still time it has taken such a far back seat. Isn't that so crazy?

Crista Cowan: 33:19

Yeah that it's that whole you know saying about the cobbler's children have no shoes right when we get involved in family history at a professional level or a professional volunteer level then sometimes our own family history does suffer. If you could magically wave a wand and have more hours in the day to spend a few hours on your own family history is there something you would pursue?

Phyllis Zegers: 33:42

I think the Oregon family would be would be one because it it's closer in time and the closer in time the more I trust the the data that I'm getting. So um and that's real accuracy is real important to me so I want to trust what I'm getting. So yeah I would I would pursue um more about the Oregon family and I have uh I have this mantra that um when I feel whiny and uh for whatever whiny reason you know my phone battery is low or whatever I I will say I am from sturdy stock yeah and I can quit whining and so this problem is nothing compared to the Oregon Trail.

Crista Cowan: 34:34

Yes you know I didn't have to decide whether or not my oxen wanted to get on the Columbia River or not you know but also I I also realize I am from very lucky stock because um realistically those folks were probably not showing real good judgment yeah you know I mean they were doing scary risks I mean it was it was they were huge risks and so you know yeah I'm of sturdy stock and I am incredibly lucky yeah well as you think about your great great grandmother you know her brother came back to Illinois presumably to get her he dies there why do you think she chose to come on anyway um by then that was the that was 1880 okay and uh she and her family got on a train a little easier yeah so as you think about this you know what was it is it six generations in Oregon am I counting that right yeah like that's those are deep roots like what is that like you obviously chose to go back there and raise your family there but you have stayed there like what does it mean to you to be an Oregonian I'm very proud of the state itself I you know just how lovely it is and how spunky the people are to have made it you know and to be there and it's just a a really great place to raise kids and um I'm glad I'm glad we did and I I guess I was uh when I lived in Illinois it was just assumed that of course I was going to be coming back to Oregon and so uh kind of salmon like I moved back to to Oregon. The analogy apparently is deep in your soul as a very Oregon reference absolutely well fellas thank you so much thank you for the work you do for find a grave thank you for the work you've done on this Oregon hospital I'm sure there are literally hundreds maybe thousands of lives that have been or will be affected by the work you've done and that's that's very like admirable to be willing to give so much time to a cause like that. Thank you.

Phyllis Zegers: 36:57

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