Here is my next ancestor story, which is taken from my
husband’s side of the family again.
Little Annie as she was always known in family stories, was in reality,
Anna Marie Strate the youngest child of her parents and the daughter of Rasmus
Strate, 1857-1914, and his wife, Ane Mettie Marie Sofie Frederikke Thomsen,
1864-1886. Annie was born January 28,
1886 in Spring City, Sanpete County, Utah.
Annie would have been my husband’s first cousin, one generation removed
from their common ancestors. Her mother
was my husband’s grandaunt, and was one of his grandfather, Peder Engmar
Thomsen, anglicized to Peter Elmer Thompson, older sisters.
Annie’s mother died from complications following Annie’s
birth, almost a month later on February 25, 1886 and so she of course never
knew her mother. Her grandparents, Hans
and Karen Thomsen had left Spring City in September of 1881 and gone to the
Arizona Territory and were living in St. Johns until February of 1885 when they
moved to Old Mexico. After they heard
about their daughter’s death they came back up to Utah and took Annie back to
Mexico with them to raise. They were living at the Pratt Ranch in Cave
Valley in Chihuahua, Mexico when Annie came to live with them.
Annie had two older siblings, a brother and a sister, both
born in Spring City as well named, Rasmus Adolph Strate, 1882-1970 in
Porterville, Tulare County, California who married Katherine Groves Thompson
(no relationship) and Velettie Caroline Strate, 1884-1964 in Sacramento,
California who married Thomas Jackson Thomas and then Phillip Andrew Biesinger. Their father kept these two children with him,
but he could not take care of the baby too and that is why he let her go with
her grandparents. I have a picture of
Annie’s father Rasmus, her brother Rasmus and her sister Velettie, but not one
of her mother and they are the following.
I wish I had a better one of Caroline, and I do have a picture of Annie’s,
mother’s, tombstone though and it follows as well.
Annie
was barely a year old when her grandparents took her to Mexico and for the next
five years she followed her two young uncles, Hyrum and Peter all over the
place, as they were the only two still living at home. She was their little shadow, but stayed
closed to her grandmother for the most part.
In the spring of 1892, Annie and her grandmother Karen had their picture
taken in Colonia Juarez and this is the only picture I have of Annie as a child,
but none yet of her as an adult. Annie
was six years old and her grandmother was fifty-eight in this picture. My youngest daughter Amy, looked a lot like
Annie when was she was this age, and so we had a copy of this picture made and
hung in Amy’s bedroom. Her favorite
bedtime story was when I told her the story about the little girl who survived
the Indian attack.
That spring was probably the last time for quite a few years
that Annie still felt like a little girl, for that fall on what started out to
be a beautiful Sunday morning on September 19, 1892 the quiet was shattered as
renegade Apache Indians, raiding off the reservation, came running down into
the farm yard of the Pratt Ranch, shooting and screaming war cries, as first
Hyrum, then Peter fell from gunshots.
Hyrum they believe died almost instantly, Peter, my husband’s
grandfather, was shot at least twice in the chest, but somehow managed to crawl
away, after the Indians went into the house, over to the chicken coop and crawl
underneath it. Karen hearing the sounds I
am sure went running out to see what was happening. I am also sure she probably saw her sons
lying dead, as I am pretty sure she was probably thinking that, and then to
feel the tug of her little granddaughter, which brought her back to the reality
of what was happening around here. The
Indians seeing her standing there shot her and she fell and then they grabbed
Annie, but then put her down as they raided through the house and took food,
and whatever else they thought they needed.
While the Indians were tearing the house apart Karen who was not dead yet,
took Annie and hid her under her long skirt.
When the Indians came back out they didn’t see Annie, but they realized
that Karen was still a live, so a squaw took a large rock and bashed her head
in, this time she was dead. I wrote about
Karen’s story for Week #7.
Thinking the little girl may have gone for help and then
realizing that one of the boys was no longer lying where he had fallen, the
Indians mounted up and took off, leaving death and destruction in their wake. After they left, Annie looked out from under
her grandmother’s shirt and saw that she was dead, I can only imagine the
horror that little girl endured seeing her beloved grandmother with her head
all bloody. My husband’s grandfather,
Peter, motioned for Annie to come to him and I am sure she must have run as
fast as lightening towards him. They
laid under the chicken coop until they were sure the Indians were really gone
and then 14 year old Peter, told 6 year old Annie that they needed to go for
help. Their old dog had somehow stayed
out of the ruckus and showed up right when they needed him. Somehow Peter stood and while holding on to
Annie and with the dog there to warn them of any danger, they started walking
towards the Mortenson ranch which was a few miles away but the closest to their
ranch.
Peter soon stopped weak from the loss of blood
and set and leaned against a tree. He
told Annie that she needed to continue to walk down that road and she would eventually
see the Mortenson ranch. Annie was so
frightened that she at first refused, but Peter finally convinced her to take
their dog and she would be safe, while he stayed there at the tree. Peter said in later years that he thought for
sure he would be dead before Annie got out of his site and he didn’t want her
to be setting by him when that happened, she had already seen more than any
little girl should have ever had to see.
Meanwhile at the Mortenson ranch something just didn’t feel
right, James Mortenson went and saddled his horse and headed towards the
Thomsen ranch and the closer he got the more that feeling increased. It was coming on to dusk when out of the
evening mist he saw a tiny figure and a large dog, he recognized Little Annie
almost immediately and he knew that things were bad, she was covered in blood
and while he checked her over to see if it was hers, he finally got her to
talk. She said everyone was dead and
that Peter had told her to walk towards his ranch. James put her on his horse and took her back
to his ranch and then raised the alarm about Indians in the area. He hitched up his wagon so that he could collect
the bodies at the Thomsen ranch, Annie had told him that Peter wasn’t at the
ranch, but against a tree on the road towards his ranch. As James was going down the road he kept his
eyes open for Indians and for the tree, Annie said Peter was by. When
he saw the boy against the tree he knew he was dead, but as he picked him up to
lay him in the wagon, Peter’s eyes opened and he ask if Annie had made it to
the ranch and then he passed out, alive, but just barely, and so James went
back to his ranch with the boy so they could start trying to save his life.
In the mean time someone was able to find Annie’s grandfather
and he came to the Mortenson ranch where his wife, sons Hyrum, Peter and his
granddaughter Annie were. They buried
the two bodies the next day and as soon as Peter was able to travel they put
him in a wagon and took him and Annie to Colonia Juarez where they stayed with
Aunt Sena. Word was sent to Annie’s
father, Rasmus Strate in Utah, I am not sure how long it took, but he did come
and get Annie and took her back to Utah with him.
Annie soon met her two older siblings, and her father for basically
the first time, since she had been less than a year old when her grandparents
took her to Mexico. Annie’s father
remarried in 1894 and now she had a stepmother and soon Annie had half-siblings
being born, all in Spring City, starting with, Maybert ‘R’ Strate, 1895-1968;
Andrew Everette Strate, 1897-1961; Rulon Alfonzo Strate, 1899-1983; Fredolph
McKinley ‘Mack’ Strate, 1901-1988; Christie Marie Strate Beck, 1904-1992; Don
Carlos Strate, 1909-1983 and Dora Geneva Strate Madsen, 1912-1984. All of these half-siblings were buried at the
Spring City Cemetery, just like Annie’s father, mother and step-mother were.
Annie was living with her father on the 1900 census in
Spring City, but sometime between 1902 and 1904 she met and married Gabriel B. ‘Gabe’
May who was born in Owen County, Kentucky on May 2, 1876. Why he was in Utah, I have not been able to
figure out yet, but on their first child’s birth record it does say he was a
soldier, so maybe he was stationed at Camp Douglas and the 1945 state census in
Florida says he was a Spanish War Veteran. All the
old family records say that Annie and Gabe were married in Spring City on
November 17, 1904 but so far I have not been able to find an official record of
that marriage. They became the parents
of four known children, two boys and two girls.
Their first child, Gabriel Allen ‘Harry B.’ May was born in Salt Lake
City on January 28, 1906. Before August
of 1908 they had left Utah and gone back east to Indianapolis, Marion County,
Indiana where some of Gabe’s family lived.
Their next child, a daughter, Dolly Marie May was born in Indianapolis
on August 30, 1908 as were their next two children, Marie Geneva May on
September 22, 1915 and Walter Gene May on November 19, 1919.
Now I don’t know what is going on, but in Jefferson
County, Indiana on November 11, 1911 Annie and Gabe are getting married, again???,
and both are saying it is their first marriage, and it has the wrong birth date
for Annie. Jefferson County is almost
100 miles southeast of Indianapolis, so why they went that far to get married,
when the marriage record says they both live in Marion County, is beyond me at
this time. The only thing I can think is that maybe they
weren’t really married in Utah in 1904 and they have finally decided they might
want to make themselves legit, so to speak and so they go 100 miles away so no
one knows what they are doing. The
following is a copy of their marriage license from 1911.
In 1914, Annie’s father Rasmus Strate had died in Spring
City, and I doubt Annie was able to go back for his funeral. Annie and Gabe and their children continued
to live in Indianapolis, but things were to get heart breaking again for Annie
when on March 8, 1930 her oldest child, Gabriel Allen May, Harry as he was known,
was killed in a car accident where he suffered a fractured skull and broken
neck, when the car he was a passenger in was hit by a train. His fiancée Ina Smith, was setting in his lap
and suffered internal injuries, but apparently survived as I have not found any
newspapers stating that she had died.
Annie’s other three children married, Dolly Marie May
married Samuel Raymond Pullen, 1901-1965, on July 15, 1928 in Indianapolis and
after his death in 1965 she married a Mr. Kern, and I have yet to find his
first name or their marriage date. Mary
Geneva May married Robert Delmas Thrasher, 1911-1966, on March 30, 1937 in
Shelby County, Indiana and Walter Gene May married Velma Pauline Palmer,
1920-1990, on June 19, 1939 in Indianapolis.
I don’t know if it was just the memories of her son’s death or if they
just decided to leave Indianapolis for some other reason, but sometime before December
1938, Annie and Gabe moved to Miami, Florida and their three living children and
their spouses also moved there as well around the same time.
Annie and Gabe from everything I have found to
date only had two grandchildren, a grandson by their daughter Dolly, named
Robert Thrasher and a granddaughter by their son Walter, named Judith Ann May. I have been trying to track these two down to
see what pictures or stories they may know about their grandmother, but so far
I have not had any luck in locating them.
They were just a year or so apart in age being born in the early 1940’s. I did find a picture of Annie’s
granddaughter, Judith Ann May from the Manatee Junior College in Bradenton,
Florida year book in 1962 and it follows.
I don’t have any pictures of Annie when she was an adult,
nor do I have any of her children, but I do have a couple of her husband that were
sent to me by one of his grandnieces from the May side of this family, and they
are the following, taken on the beach in Miami in December of 1938.
Annie’s children passed away, Gabriel Allen May on March 8,
1930 as I stated earlier; Dolly Marie May Pullen Kern on June 9, 1989; Mary
Geneva May Thrasher on March 28, 1993 and Walter Gene May on June 27, 1990; all
in Florida except for the oldest child.
Annie’s husband Gabe was 10 years older than Annie, but died 10 years
after her in December of 1967 in Miami, Florida.
No one had followed Annie, genealogy wise, at least that I
am aware of, after she left her grandparents and went back to her father. My mother-in-law, just a couple of years
before she passed away in 2007, ask me if I could find out whatever happen to Annie,
so that is when I started looking for her.
I wish I had started looking sooner and then maybe I could have talk to
one of her children.
Little Annie, Anna Marie Strate May, passed away in Miami,
Florida on December 26, 1957 and was laid to rest at Lincoln Memorial Park in
Allapattah in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Her husband and two of her children and their spouses, Dolly and Walter,
are also buried there as well. I have
yet to find the cemetery that Mary and her husband were buried in.
What a life Little Annie led, from her mother
dying when she was barely a month old, to her grandmother and uncle being
murder right in front of her when she was six years old. Then to be taken back by a father she didn’t
even know, to siblings she never remembered seeing and then a new step-mother, it
makes you wonder if she may have suffered any kind of abandonment or depression
with the things that she endured at such a young age. Then to top it off to have her oldest child
be killed in such a tragic accident when he was only 24 years old. She must have had real strength and fortitude
of spirit to help her get through all she had to endure, through her almost 72
years of life.
