The first hunt for Nishimura on the web came up with a Shoji Nishimura (1889-1944), a Vice Admiral with the Japanese Navy. He died in the Battle of Leyte Gulf website guiding the Fuso and Yamashiro Battleships among other destroyers and cruisers.

Both Nishimura and Sannomiya are surnames and the names of towns, streets, buildings, and companies around Japan.

If you have any information on this Nishimura woman, it might help fill in some blanks about the life of my grandfather. Please leave a comment below to help us uncover our ancestors’ past.

It’s really tough when much of the information you have on an ancestor is hearsay, gossip, rumors, and terrible family stories. But that’s all we have right now. We’re looking for more and we need your help.

Louella Brunner was born March 10, 1883 in Canada, according to her death certificate. She died May 3, 1930, in Portland, Oregon. Her father was from England, and her mother, a Canadian. Father was a Brunner.

We have one photograph of “Louella Pinder and son, Howard” when he was a small baby, circa 1905. This is our only clue as to the mother of Howard West. So I’ve been searching for a Louella Pinder for decades with no luck.

We discovered her death certificate very recently, giving her maiden name as Brunner. Yet, we’re not even sure Brunner is her real maiden name. She also went by Lula and Lulu. She may have been married to a Pinder, and we believe she was also married to a Moorhause (sp). We have a record of a Richard (Dick) Pinder and assumed him to be the brother, or maybe the first husband of Louella. We have a dead end address for him in Chicago from the 1920s.

Louella’s son, Howard West, was born in Michigan, Canada, Washington, or Oregon, circa 1905. We’ve never found a birth certificate for Howard West Sr. His father was Walter West, though rumors are that they were never married. Family stories tell of Walter faking a marriage to Louella in a logging camp somewhere in Canada, Michigan, Washington, or Oregon, and putting her on a train, supposedly to Oregon, promising to follow, but never did. We also have no knowledge that he knew Louella was pregnant at the time. He eventually moved to California where he married a woman with a child and there is no record of him ever having any other children.

Louella had a second child from another man, possibly a Moorhause. Her daughter, Carmen, was born circa 1908 in Portland.

In December 1908, Howard and barely six month old Carmen were put into the St. Agnes Baby Home in Portland, Oregon, by the Juvenal Court System. The story is that their mother abandoned them and a neighbor turned them over after weeks of waiting for Louella to return. There are family rumors of her having been institutionalized for alcohol, mental illness, possibly drugs, or just running off with another man, in Portland, Oregon, though I cannot find any records.

A few years later, Carmen was retrieved from the baby home by her father, who could not prove parentage to Howard, so he remained there until 1913. With unbelievable luck and coincidences, we found his orphanage records in Portland. Census records have him living with Louella and Lewis S. Parrett in Portland in 1920, though we know for a fact that he joined the military by faking his age circa 1920.

The 1920 and 1930 Census for Portland shows Louella Parrett living with Lewis S. Parrett.

Louella Parrett died as Lula Parrett in May of 1930 at age 47 in Portland of heart disease. The death record states that she had been in the United States for 25 years.

Rumors from daughter Carmen, and grandson, Howard West Jr., claim Louella came from wealthy family in Canada but was disowned for being a “bad girl”.

We’d love to trace Louella Brunner Pinder Moorhause Parrett, our mystery ancestor. Any help would be appreciated.

The spot next to his first wife, Nora Knapp Anderson, has a casket but no tombstone. It’s likely it’s Raymond Anderson, but the helpful caretaker probed with a pole to see if she could find a casket there (and did) and checked other “closed” or “unmarked but known filled” spots to see if any of them didn’t match up with her 3×5 card file, which might turn out to be my grandfather. Unfortunately, this method tells us that someone is buried there. It doesn’t tell us who. I’d hate to pay for digging up strange people just to run DNA tests to determine who is buried where and if it is my Grandfather Anderson! The cemetery lost him. Shouldn’t they bear some responsibility? So the hunt continues.

We spent hours walking every row of the small but populated cemetery, examining tombstones with dates from the early 1800s, many of them worn away to flat stones. Grandfather Ray Anderson was only buried 30 years ago. His tombstone should be easy to find.

We will contact the Masons who helped to bury him, and the undertakers, to see if they have some record of where he may lay. As for the tombstone, we don’t have a receipt in our records, so we’ll have to call around the various gravestone companies to see if anyone still has a record from 1974. They might have information on where the headstone was installed.

We have all the information on him, but it is frustrating not to be able to find his body in the cemetery.

Raymond Anderson was a long time member of the Masons and IOOF, and a union man, working as a welder in Snohomish and King Counties. He and his family lived in Sunnyside, which is now part of Marysville, Washington, in the same home for over 50 years. Hopefully someone will remember him or attended his funeral and can give us some clue as to where he might be buried in the cemetery.

It also pains the family who paid for the tombstone, only to find out that it wasn’t taken care of by the other family members. It brings up dark and sad memories of his fast and miserable death with cancer, and the heartache of his second and newly married wife trying to break the prenuptial agreement (for a couple of thousand dollars worth of nothing estate) and get money from the family, unexpectedly turning into a greedy, raging and demanding monster no one recognized. It’s a tough way to say goodbye, but now, 30 years later, new memories can be formed and now he’s gone missing!

If you have any information on where Grandfather Raymond Anderson might be buried in the IOOF cemetery in Monroe, Washington, we’d love your help.

UPDATE: 2010

After no luck tracking down any specific information, Raymond’s daughter, Ramona, bought a new tombstone similar to her mother’s and had that one replaced with both of their names on it, as well as her married names in order to preserve the family history identification process for future family members.

The family now has a place to go to remember this former teacher from a one room school house in Taylor Rapids, Michigan, the second generation of Norwegian immigrants. He traveled from the agricultural country of Lessor, Shawano County, Wisconsin, to the wild north lumber town of Taylor Rapids, Michigan, married Nora Knapp, then made his way with the Knapp family across the United States to Washington State in the Pacific Northwest. He spent the next 50 years in a very small two room home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains overlooking Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains in Marysville, Washington. Now he rests among beautiful trees at the IOOF cemetery in Monroe, Washington.

Consider yourself “found,” Grandfather Anderson.

We are still working hard to fill in the many blanks of our Anderson family line from Norway, including looking for another lost grandfather Anderson, Hans Anderson of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, if you can help us there.

Hans Anderson from Norway

Our original Hans Anderson arrived from Fredriksvern, Norway, to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, in 1851. He was one of six children, for whom we know nothing. We also don’t know his original name, his parent’s name, or what boat or port he arrived in. But we do know his children.

Hans Anderson (June 21, 1844 – September 1, 1924) married Sarah Olson (c1846 – 1930), also born in Norway, on June 15, 1867, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Sarah and Hans moved around a lot with their family, beginning in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and then moving in 1867 to South Dakota. About 1875, he and his family moved to Cicero, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, where he appeared on the 1880 Census. In 1894, they moved to Lessor, Shawano County, Wisconsin, until 1904 when they moved to Sawyer in Door County, Wisconsin. The Census reported that Hans was a farmer throughout his long life, dying at 80 years old.

Together, Sarah and Hans had 11 children of which 6 died very young. They were:

• Amelia Anderson
• Louis Anderson (c1869-?)
• Otto Anderson (c1870-?) married Julia
• John Anderson (c1873-1855) married 1) Helena A. Blickfelt/Swendsen (Svendsen) (1879-1906), 2) unknown, 3) Charlotte King
• Caroline Anderson (c1871-?)
• Shena Anderson (c1873-?)
• Gena Anderson (c1873-?) married John Swendsen/Svendson (1870-?), son of Christopher Svendsen (Norway)
• Mary Anderson
• Ida Anderson
• Anton Anderson (May 1880 – ?) married Lily (1880-?) in 1906 in Wisconsin
• Unknown Anderson

We are searching for the parents of Hans Anderson, or one of his brothers. We’re looking for immigration records, and pouring though old microfilms looking for some record of how he immigrated and what his original name was. It’s been very frustrating as the Norwegians changed their names, often drastically, from the original when they immigrated, making the process that much harder.

Helena Blickfelt/Svendson

What we do know about his life is that he was married to Sarah for most of his life. They were also blessed with many grandchildren. But all was not joy. When their son, John, lost his wife, Helena, leaving him with six living children to raise, the rest of the family stepped in.

Helena Blickfelt Anderson’s life was a tragic one. Born with a twin who died at birth, her mother died very soon after. According to family stories, Helena was unofficially adopted by Christopher Svendson and his wife, for unknown reasons. We can assume that the Andersons and Swendson families were close as Helena married John Anderson and John Swendson, Christopher’s son, married Gena Anderson about the same time in Wisconsin.

John and Helena Anderson Children, circa 1910

When Helena died, Hans and Sarah took in three of the grandchildren to raise. John and Gena Swendson took in two of the other children, repeating what his father had done with Helena many years before.

As age finally made it more difficult to live independently with three young children, in 1914 they moved in with Helena’s adopted family, John and Gena Swendson, reunited five of the Anderson grandchildren. Plus any children the Swendson’s had on their farm in Lessor, Wisconsin. One of those grandchildren, Raymond, became the Raymond Anderson whose grave has been lost in Monroe, Washington.

If you have any information on Hans Anderson or the Christopher/John Swendson (Svendsen) part of our hunt for our Grandfather Andersons, please leave a comment below. We’ve hit a dead end and we need some help. Thanks!

Update: 2006

We’ve found the father of Hans Anderson. On a whim, with only a day or two of notice, my mother and I caught a plane to Wisconsin to research both sides of her family. At the Michigan National Archives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, we found Andrias Anderson, and you can read the story in Finding the Citizenship Documents for Andrias Anderson.

We found his tombstone and most of his family and immediate descendents in the Our Savior’s Lutheran Cemetery in Lessor, Shawano, Wisconsin, helping to fill in even more blanks.

We’ve still a lot to learn about this man who made the long journey from Norway to New York with his family, his wife and what we believe to be only one of his six children, Hans, and to understand why he went to Wisconsin immediately, who came with him, and what was his life story before and after he arrived in the United States. We continue to dig, but now we have the oldest member of our Anderson line in place. It’s just a stepping stone across the see to uncover more information!