When MyHeritage user Jennifer Rich had a child, she decided to fill out a baby book. It got her thinking about her father and his grandparents. “He had always spoken of his beloved grandmother Lavinia and how we would visit her on the family ranch in Sonoma,” she says. “I just started wondering, how come he never spoke of his grandfather, and who was he?”
Jennifer Rich
So Jennifer asked her dad, and all he could tell her about his grandfather was that he was a doctor in San Francisco, where he had an office… and that he had apparently died as a result of some kind of trolley accident in Mexico. “When my dad told me this I thought, ‘What?… Really… and yeah right!’”
Jennifer eventually looked into it… and the story she uncovered was both entirely different and even more unbelievable than the one she had first been told.
A discovery in the rain
Her research started with a simple search for her great-grandfather’s grave on a graveyard record website, where she instantly got a hit on his name. “I cross-checked his name on MyHeritage and started finding records that matched the dates,” she says. “But surprise, he was NOT in Mexico like my father thought. He is located in Petaluma, CA, about 50 miles from our house! I told my dad and he couldn’t believe it.”
There were a number of photos of the gravesite, but they weren’t very clear. Jennifer agreed with her father that they would go visit it as a family, but she found herself itching to go so badly that she just couldn’t wait.
Jennifer’s dad, Roger
“The weather wasn’t very clear outside, it looked like it could rain,” she recalls. “I couldn’t wait for my dad to go out there. I just could not get what I had found out of my head. I needed to see it right now. So, I told my husband, let’s take a drive.”
Jennifer packed up her husband and their now-7-year-old daughter and they hit the road. “We took the drive two counties away to a cemetery I had never been to and had no idea where this grave is,” she recalls. “But looking at some of the pics already posted I could tell it was near the front area.”
They arrived at Cypress Memorial and it was pouring rain outside. “My husband is getting frustrated because it feels a bit muggy, and are we really doing this right now in the rain?” But Jennifer believed that maybe she could spot it after studying the photos online — and spot it she did. “Boom, there it was, the biggest monument around! I found him, and in the rain. It was one of the greatest feelings to find him for my dad.”
Dr. George D. Rich’s grave at Cypress Memorial
Jennifer ran back into the car, soaking wet, and called her dad. “‘You’re not going to believe this! I went ahead and found Dr. Rich’s plot in person!!!’ My dad was so thrilled.”
A couple of weeks later, Jennifer went back to the gravesite with the rest of the family. “Nobody had been to the grave in over a hundred years,” says Jennifer. She noticed that there was an inscription on top of it, but couldn’t make it out. An employee at the mortuary suggested trying a rubbing, and gave Jennifer a blank sheet of paper and a black crayon. So Jennifer and her mom stood over the top of the plot and her mom held down the paper while Jennifer rubbed the crayon over it. Words began to emerge: “Here rests a woodman of the world,” and then “Dum Tacet Clamat” — Latin for “Though silent, he speaks.”
This was the first of many “wow moments” and incredible discoveries Jennifer has made about Dr. Rich that she has been able to share with her dad, who is currently 86.
An unexpected headline
After Jennifer found the grave, she ran some newspaper searches in hopes of finding a simple obituary. “I found countless articles regarding his death and how he was part of a Masonic group called ‘Woodmen of the World’ and how a band played at his funeral procession throughout the streets of Petaluma to his final resting place,” says Jennifer. “So after I found everything I could find about his death, I started looking to see if there was any validity to the story of what my dad had heard about some trolley accident. So I started researching the newspapers, I typed ‘Dr. George D. Rich + accident’ and found a front page article about him.”
“Horrors of War in West Mexico Are Described by Refugees on Newport,” The San Francisco Call, May 29 1911. Source: OldNews.com (click to zoom)
Wait, what? War in West Mexico? Refugees?!
Through further research, Jennifer was able to piece together the whole story.
The real story of Dr. George David Rich
Jennifer’s great-grandfather, George David Rich, was born in Missouri in 1872. He graduated medical school as an ear, nose, and throat specialist in St. Louis Medical School around 1895, and started a practice in Colorado, where he was living at the time. Later, his whole family decided to move west to Sonoma County, California. It was there that George met Lavinia Morris, whom he married in 1901.
They had three children: George David Jr., who unfortunately died at one month of age; Donald, Jennifer’s grandfather; and Dorothy.
George opened a very successful practice at the James Flood Building in San Francisco.
An ad for George’s San Francisco practice in the San Francisco Call, December 3, 1905. Source: OldNews.com (click to zoom)
However, the office was damaged in the San Francisco earthquake of April 1906, and he had to relocate to Petaluma, California. He took up an office at the Brown House, located on the corner of Pioneer Street. Jennifer says that the house still stands.
Ad from the time Dr. Rich had his practice in Petaluma, in the Petaluma Argus, July 27 1906. Source: OldNews.com (click to zoom)
“But business was a lot slower than when it was in San Francisco,” says Jennifer. “Times were rapidly changing. Opportunities were rising. He decided to branch out to new endeavors.”
The family in the 1910 U.S. Census: Lavinia, 25 years old, and the children Donald, 6 and Dorothy, 2, at Lavinia’s parents’ place in Sonoma. Source: MyHeritage
“With the onset of his debilitating disease of tuberculosis, it seemed like a win-win to go to Mexico to explore the possibilities of copper mining,” says Jennifer. “In 1910, he traveled far and deep into the jungles of Mexico, near Guadalajara.” Less than 6 months later, revolution swept the country.
“It was anarchy everywhere,” says Jennifer. “All over town, he would hear cries of ‘Viva Madero.’ It was time to leave.” Fleeing for his life, George somehow made his way towards the coast. “He was held up several times along the way and had to give up most of his money and ammunition,” says Jennifer. “One of the insurrectors had 13 notches on his pistol. He was pretty sure it was Pancho Villa.”
When George finally made it to the port of San Blas, “the Pacific mail ship steamer, the Newport, was awaiting the fleeing passengers. However, they would not anchor any further than 100 yards. Along with a few others, he was lucky to find a fisherman with a small boat who agreed to rush him through the waters at godspeed. It was in the dark of the night using only the moonlight to guide their way quietly through the water. That way they would not be detected by the rebels. He was so very lucky to have made it.”
When they arrived in San Francisco on May 29, 1911, “a sea of people was awaiting their arrival with newspaper men with cameras to take their pictures. Their story was headlined across the world. It was a front-page story. The whole world was watching.”
“Can you imagine what his family and friends thought and their reaction when they opened the paper that morning?” says Jennifer. “They probably thought he was dead by then. Telephones did not exist during this time, only telegrams, and telegraphs were certainly not in the home and all of Mexico lines were cut off anyway. He was like a hero when he stepped foot on American soil. He was very glad to be home.”
After all the excitement settled down, George’s tuberculosis eventually got worse, and he died of the disease on August 15, 1912.
Announcement of George’s death in the San Francisco Call, August 16, 1912. Source: OldNews.com
So, as it turns out, there was no basis to the trolley story… but Dr. George Rich had fled the Mexican Revolution! “I was very unaware of anything about the Mexican Revolution,” says Jennifer. “When I first read the article about Dr. Rich fleeing Mexico, I was very confused. I had heard of a Mexican Revolution only from movies, as I don’t ever remember learning about it in school. So I did a lot of self-teaching about the Mexican Revolution and matching Dr. Rich’s experience to the timeline. It is an incredible story.”
After cleaning up the family plot, Jennifer posted the photo of it on Google, and it was viewed more than 20,000 times in under 6 months. “Who knew my great-grandfather would still be so popular?” she laughs.
George’s grave after cleaning
Jennifer’s story highlights the incredible impact old newspapers can have on genealogical research — from debunking the incorrect story about his death to discovering the true story of his adventures in Mexico, his actual cause of death, and valuable details about his life and career. Check out OldNews.com today to unearth amazing stories about your own ancestors.
Many thanks to Jennifer for sharing this mind-blowing story with us! If you’ve also made an incredible discovery on MyHeritage, we’d love to hear about it. Please share it with us via this form or email us at stories@myheritage.com.
The post She Discovered Her Great-Grandfather Survived the Mexican Revolution as a U.S. Refugee appeared first on MyHeritage Blog.
Source: My Heritage
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