Who was Lida?

As we read journal entries written by A.N. Bush from 1911-13, we encounter many names of characters who populated the lives of A.N. and his family. Some of the names are easy to recognize, while others take a bit of puzzling over.

Take "Eliza", for example.

Eliza Sloan Nolan was the daughter of A.N.'s cousin, Octavia Painter Nolan. Eliza was born in 1895 and was about 16 years old when the journal entries began. She was a student at Sacred Heart Academy in Salem, but her family lived 'way out in the Clear Lake area of what is now Keizer, which was too far for a daily commute. So Eliza lived in town with A.N. and his wife, Lulu Hughes Bush, during the week, and went home to Clear Lake every weekend. A.N. enjoyed Eliza's company and detailed their adventures together, from visits to the vaudeville theater to picnics at Silver Falls. Around the same time, A.N.'s sister Sally made a portrait of Eliza so we even know what she looked like. Although A.N. never gave her last name or mentioned the family relationship, "Eliza" was easy to figure out.

Lida, not so much.

"Lida" first appeared in A.N.'s journal in November of 1911. Lida (no last name given) lived in Eugene, but had come up to Salem on her way to Detroit (Oregon) where she had been appointed postmistress. She stayed with Sally for a few days and went to visit with Eliza's family in Clear Lake one weekend. In later entries it's clear that Lida had taken up her post in Detroit and found the snowy winter weather to be a challenge. From the context one can infer that Lida was an old friend or family member, someone who literally needed no introduction -- but her actual identity was never clear.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail message from a gentleman who lives in Australia, who has distant ties to the Bush family. He had been browsing through our online photo collection and was writing to correct some of our information. Turns out his ancestor, Colin McIntosh, had been married to one Eliza Zieber, another cousin of A.N. and Sally Bush. This Eliza, who was divorced from Mr. McIntosh by 1900 and was living in Salem by 1916, was also known as... Lida. Eliza "Lida" Zieber McIntosh.

We don't have any photographs of Lida (that we know of) and we still don't know very much about her. But now we can tell her relatives that she was the postmistress in Detroit during the winter of 1912, and that she preferred the whole back over any other piece of chicken.

That's who Lida was.

Research Karma

Here at the Museum, we've coined the term "Research Karma" to describe what happens when diverse threads of research come together in an "aha!" moment.

One of the first instances of research karma happened a couple of years ago, during a visit from Sally Bush. That's Sally Bush Petcoff, who is a descendant of Asahel Bush II's older brother Seth; she and her husband Tom were visiting from their home in Florida. In the course of our conversation, Sally mentioned that her father, Ralph, and grandparents had driven from Michigan to Oregon in the 1930s to visit our Miss Sally and her siblings. It was the mention of Michigan that reminded me (aha!) of a little album I has seen in our archive, filled with neatly annotated black-and-white vacation photographs, that was labeled "Unidentified." When I showed the album to Sally and Tom, she recognized the photographs and her father's handwriting. The album is no longer unidentified.

The most recent moment came last week, when we were preparing our current exhibit of autograph albums. We have borrowed several albums from the Marion County Historical Society, and were looking through them for signatures of Bush family members or other prominent Salemites. One of the names, "Ella Pohle," seemed familiar to me, so I went to check the records. It turns out (aha!) the Museum owns a dress that belonged to Ella Pohle McGowan. Ella's name seemed so familiar because her dress is currently on display, and I had reviewed the collection notes at the time we dressed the mannequin. Ella's signature is now exhibited next to her beautiful, bottle-green dress. We'll have to return the autograph album to MCHS at the end of the month, but we get to keep the karma!