My Search For
The Beach Sisters
Of
Canada, Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska
And
Points West

By: Tim Duffie

Defining The Mystery

I have three family pictures that I knew only as "Grandma Duffie and her sisters". What little I knew from family history at the outset of my research was:


The sisters pair off into "couples". One is the chaperone.
The "girls" introduce their "beaus" to the chaperone.
The chaperone falls asleep, and the couples do a little "spooning".

For Larger Views, Click On Each Picture. To Save Each Picture, Right Click And Select "Save Picture As...."

Determining The Participants

By the time I received these pictures from my sister, all those who could have identified these women were gone, so I didn't know the who, when, or where of them. Prior to this search, the only name I had was Grandmother Sarah Ann Beach Duffie, the "chaperone" who falls asleep in the chair and allows the young couples to "spoon". My initial goal was to put names and faces to each sister. That lofty goal may never be reached. However, I believe I have put together a reasonably accurate family history, all of which was accomplished without ever leaving my office.

Left: Great Grandfather Hugh Percy Beach in front of his sod hut in Arnold, NE, ca 1886. The Custer County Nebraska Historical Society has suggested that Solomon Butcher might have taken this photo. Based on estimated ages, the woman on the left is probably Henrietta Beach (Anderson); I believe the woman on the right is Emma Beach (Carlyle). The boy is probably one of the twins: Alex or Will

Our childhood memories of Dad's family were centered on Canada. Our paternal grandparents, Blake Monroe Duffie & Sarah Ann Beach, were both born in Canada. They were married there on December 24, 1910 and spent their first few years in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, before moving to Buffalo, N.Y. They were living in Canada when Dad was born in 1914.

As children we had met several of Dad's aunts on the Duffie side in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Buffalo, New York. However, with the exception of meeting his Uncle Will in 1960, we had little contact with the Beach side of his family. We had reason to believe that there was a connection with the U.S. somewhere in Grandma Duffie's childhood. We had heard stories of her crossing the American west in a Conestoga wagon as a child. There were stories of her growing up in a sod hut on the prairies of Nebraska. Family legends worthy of Abe Lincoln's childhood abounded of her walking in knee-deep snow to retrieve water for the family in the winter.

I decided to take this on as a research project. I began my research using exclusively ancestry.com, rootsweb.com, and other internet research sites. I started with the fact that Grandmother Sarah Ann Beach Duffie had traveled from Canada to Shelby, Ohio, in 1914 for Dad's birth. His middle name, Anderson, came from the doctor who had delivered him. The doctor was also somehow related to Dad. My first goal was to locate that Shelby, Ohio, family, and learn of their relationship to Dad.

I found Dr. Willis & Henrietta Anderson, Shelby, Ohio, in the 1900 census. By a stroke of luck, my grandmother-to-be, Sarah Ann Beach, was staying with them at the time, which verified the link I was looking for. She was listed as "sister-in-law" to the head of the house. She was the sister of Dr. Anderson's wife, Henrietta.

I had located the first of the mysterious sisters, and I was certain she was one of the women in the pictures: Henrietta Beach Anderson.

Now I had to figure out how Grandma Duffie had gone from Canada to somewhere in Nebraska, to Ohio in 1900, then to Canada to meet and marry Blake Monroe Duffie in 1910.

I mailed letters to everyone in Shelby, Ohio, with surnames that matched all those I found on the 1900 census on the same street as the Anderson home. I received a phone call from a woman who had been a neighbor to the Andersons in the 1920s. Through her I located a second cousin, Bruce Dillinger, in California. He sent a picture of Rachel Beach (right). The picture was taken in Broken Bow, Nebraska, ca 1890. He also told me that she had married Clare Bloomfield in Shelby, Ohio, in 1910.

I now had sister number two, Rachel Beach Bloomfield, and I knew the most likely location of the sod hut and knee-deep snow drifts.

While searching for the Beach family, I was also researching our GGrandparents: Hugh Percy Beach & Elizabeth Mary McCall. I learned that

Hugh & Elizabeth Beach left Canada in 1880 and set up home in Ashton, Osceola County, MI. After a short time of failed crops, they boarded the infamous Conestoga wagon and moved west, ultimately ending up in Arnold, Custer County, Nebraska.

At some point over the next few years Hugh Percy Beach posed for the picture in front of his sod hut home. According to a source at the Custer County Museum, the famous photographer Solomon Butcher probably took the picture. He was known to have taken hundreds of pictures in the area.

With the discovery of Henrietta and Rachel in Shelby, and thanks to dozens of archived articles from Mansfield, Ohio, newspapers, as well as a wealth of archived data available on Canadian genealogy, I soon had identified all of The Beach Sisters:

I believed the pictures had to have been taken sometime close to 1910, and I needed a major event that would bring this widespread family together. When I learned that Agnes Beach died in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1910, I believed I had found that major event.

However, from that information I also concluded that Agnes was probably not in the pictures.

So who was the seventh woman?

To solve that mystery I turned to another of Hugh & Elizabeth Mary Beach's children: Dr. William Henry Beach.

From childhood I had known that Dr. William Beach and his wife (right) were medical missionaries in Siam in the early part of the 20th century. During my research I'd learned that they worked at the Overbrook Hospital in Cheng Rae Province, Siam. They were in and out of Siam from about 1913 until they had to evacuate in 1939 at the advent of WWII. Dr. Will did return for an additional tour or more after the war. His four decades of travels left behind a long list of immigration records as he traveled to and from Siam.

The ship's list of their return to the U.S. aboard the Minnekahda in 1930 showed his wife's name as "Elizabeth Beach", and it stated that she was from Fremont, Ohio. The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center website includes an obituary index for many Ohio counties. William and Elizabeth were known well enough to rate full obituaries in the local Fremont, Ohio, newspapers. I located Elizabeth's obituary and learned that her maiden name was Wolfe. This information was critical.

As I began to put together Elizabeth's family from various census reports, I learned that the Wolfe family was heavily involved in Beach family affairs from Elizabeth's marriage in 1910 until the 1930s. Census reports for 1930 indicated that during a tour in Siam from 1924 to 1930, Will and Elizabeth's children were living with various Wolfe & Beach families.

Peter N. Wolfe was seven when his cousin, Margurite Beach, came to live with his family in Bay Village, Ohio. Peter's widow, Margery Wolfe, told me that William and Elizabeth had met while working at the Wesley Memorial Hospital in Chicago (below right). Elizabeth was a registered nurse. The Wesley Memorial Hospital is now the Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Margery also told me that Uncle Will was sponsored by the Overbrook Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA. I e-mailed the church, and the pastor provided the information regarding Overbrook Hospital in Siam.

Determining Time & Place

After chasing the family cross-country from Canada to Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Ohio, and even Siam, I ultimately concluded that Ohio seems to have been the central location for all major events in the Beach family.

To draw a reasonable conclusion based on time & location, I needed to place each of the Beach sisters from 1910 thru the 1930s:

While the term centrally located is relative, Shelby, Ohio, was more so than any other family home throughout the years. For those coming in from Oregon and Idaho, it would make no sense to pass through Shelby enroute to Sarah's home in Buffalo, N.Y. They had all been at Henrietta's home at one time or another, so going there for a get-together would make sense.

Another indication that Ohio was a central location for the family is the fact that Dr. William Beach's wife, Elizabeth Wolfe, was from Fremont, Ohio. In the mid-to-late 1890s William was working at the Wesley Memorial Hospital (below right) in Chicago, Illinois. Elizabeth Wolfe was a registered nurse there. For reasons that will be obvious later, the locations of William & Elizabeth Beach over the years was critical to determining the identity of those in the pictures.

For almost four decades Will and Elizabeth were medical missionaries at Overbrook Hospital in Cheng Rae Province, Siam. Therefore, they passed through Ohio several times from about 1910 through the 1940s. We know the following of their four decades from 1910 through the late 1940s:

As of 1930 the William Henry & Elizabeth Wolfe Beach family was dispersed as follows:

During the 1920s

Another opportunity for a family gathering was on Will & Elizabeth's return in 1930. The ship's list linked above for their return on July 21, 1930, shows them living at 2238 Woodward Ave., Lakewood (Cleveland), Ohio, at the time. That may well have provided another photo opportunity since it is possible that the west coast families would have travelled to Ohio to welcome Will & Elizabeth home, as well as to bring Richard back to his parents.

I found no other records showing Elizabeth or the children returning from overseas. It is likely she set up home in Lakewood, Ohio, the location William gave on subsequent returns as his home. The following is a complete listing of the ship's lists I've located that included William H. Beach.

Another family homestead that may have made a trip from the west coast worthwhile was Homer M. & Mary Elizabeth Beach Robinson. Homer's parents, George M. & Rosena Robinson, were both born in Ohio. Homer's older siblings, Josephine (abt. 1852) & Ella (abt. 1854), were born in Ohio, then the family moved to Wisconsin sometime before Jonah was born (abt. 1857). We could assume, therefore, that Homer would have family, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, etc, that he would visit on a trip to Ohio.

My Conclusions

It is critical to allow for the ages of each sister at various times. Ages have to reasonably match what we see in the pictures.

Name Birth Year Age 1910 Age 1920 Age 1930
Emma Beach Carlyle 1870 40 50 60
Henrietta Beach Anderson 1872 38 48 58
Mary Beach Robinson 1874 36 46 56
Sarah Beach Duffie 1878 32 42 52
Agnes Beach 1880 30 N/A N/A
Rachel Beach Bloomfield 1887 23 33 43
Gertrude Beach Mills 1891 19 29 39
Elizabeth Wolfe Beach 1885 25 35 45

In spite of all the data I've uncovered about family movement on into the 1930s, most of which I have presented here simply for the sake of some sort of documented family history, early in my research I determined that the pictures had to have been taken sometime within a two or three year range of 1910. In 1910 the youngest sister, Gertrude, was nineteen. The oldest, Emma Beach Carlyle, was forty. I can believe that the women in the pictures range from nineteen to forty. A decade later those numbers become twenty-nine and fifty. I just don't believe any of the women in the pictures were in their 50s.

William and Elizabeth Wolfe Beach were married in December, 1910, and their first child, William, was born in Minnesota in 1911. They were in Siam where their daughter, Margarite, was born in 1913.

The only possibility between 1910 and 1913 would have been if they returned to Ohio for a going away gathering before leaving for Siam. However, that would have required that Sarah (by then married and living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) and Emma (living in Forest Grove, Oregon) return to Ohio. Somehow I don't see that happening.

I considered the possibility that the pictures were taken before the family left Nebraska. However, Hugh Percy Beach died in 1900. Elizabeth Mary, Mary Elizabeth, Rachel, and Gertrude moved to Ohio sometime after that.

October 5, 2007, E-Mail from Marcia Beach Ditter, Granddaughter of Dr. William Henry & Elizabeth Wolfe Beach: "...in the 1904 family portrait I am certain that the man in the center is my grandfather. The other must be Alex. I never met Alex as he was killed in a train wreck somewhere in the northwest. I do not know if he was engineer, conductor or what. I just remember grandfather telling me about the train wreck and showing me pictures of same."

 This family portrait (left) was taken in 1904 when Gertrude was thirteen. From appearances, I believe she is front row, left. GGrandmother Elizabeth Mary McCall Beach is front row, second from the right. My instincts tell me that the daughter front row, second from the left, has the appearance of the eldest daughter assuming the role of mother's caretaker. That's a natural pecking order in most families. If my instincts are true, then that is Emma Elvira Beach Carlyle. According to Bruce Dillinger, Rachel's grandson, and the source of the picture, Rachel Beach is back row, second from the left, all grown up from her 1890 Broken Bow, Nebraska, picture. Bruce stated that his mother believed the woman to the left of Rachel was Henrietta Beach Anderson.

That leaves only front row right, and back row, second right: Mary Elizabeth, born 1874, and Agnes, born 1880. Right front looks older, so I believe that is Mary Elizabeth. If all else is correct, then Agnes is back row, second right.

The gentlemen are probably the twins: Will and Alex, but neither looks like any pictures we have of them. From another picture taken of them later, they were apparently not identical twins.

This appears as though it could have been taken in the same place as the three pictures in question. I have no doubt that it was taken at the home of Dr. Willis and Henrietta Beach Anderson in Shelby, Ohio.

From this picture we could conclude that it was possible for them to have posed for the Beach Sisters pictures at that time. However, there were only six sister present for this portrait. Sarah Ann Beach is missing, and she was in the series of pictures.

The picture to the right is further evidence that the three pictures could not have been taken anywhere near 1930. The picture includes Emma Beach Carlyle, Will Beach, and Henrietta Beach Anderson. GGrandmother Beach is sitting. Henrietta died in Portland, Oregon, in 1936 while visiting her sisters. This picture was probably taken then.

This picture was taken at least twenty-five years after the Beach Sisters photos.

The most favorable opportunity for all the family to get together at a time when the age of all the sisters was appropriate was 1910, with a one or two year variation. The year 1910 brought several major family events and corresponding ideal circumstances for a family gathering:

Agnes died in October 1910. I can think of few events more likely to bring all of the sisters to Ohio than the death of their sister. The only sister who had to travel any distance in 1910 was Emma Beach Carlyle coming from Forest Grove, Oregon. Sarah Ann Beach was in Canada. It would be a relatively simple trip to Ohio for a family gathering. If Emma arrived in time for a family gathering early-to-mid October, Sarah could be there, also. She could stay through November then return to Canada for her marriage on December 24th.

Henrietta, Mary, Rachel, and Gertrude were already in Shelby.

Will and Elizabeth were either in Chicago working and not that far away, or they were in Ohio making preparations for their upcoming wedding.

While the death of Agnes would weigh heavily on their minds at the time, Rachel was a newly wed, and Sarah and William each had upcoming weddings. The family would have some reason for the type of levity displayed in these pictures.

Therefore, I am going out on a limb and state that the pictures were taken in October - November 1910 in Shelby, Richland County, Ohio. The participants…

October 4, 2007: I Love It When A Plan Comes Together!

I just had a significant portion of my conjecture confirmed when I received a phone call from Marcia Beach Ditter, the daughter of William Hugh Beach, and Granddaughter of William Henry & Elizabeth Wolfe Beach. She confirmed that her grandmother, Elizabeth Wolfe Beach, is in the pictures. She is sitting on the lap of her "beau", far right couple.

I believe the third from the right in that picture appears to be the youngest. Gertrude Beach was 19 in 1910, so I believe that is her.

Beyond those two, and excluding Grandma Duffie asleep in her chair, I still haven't got a clue!