Grave matters

Recently (October 2023) my immediate family's gravestones in the Midland (Michigan) Municipal Cemetery were expertly cleaned by Justin Frost's Past Preservation LLC in Midland.  Many thanks to Justin!  This is a significant item off my bucket list (as the last member of this branch of the Harlan family).  Here are before and after photos, courtesy of Justin.

 

Some Harlan judicial notes

In light of the recent passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination of my fellow South Bend resident Amy Coney Barrett to succeed her on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), I've been thinking about my (distant) relatives who served on the Court many moons ago:  John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911; served 1877-1911) and his grandson, John Marshall Harlan II (1899-1971; served  1955-1971).

One of the things I've learned is that positions on the Court are numbered.  There are currently nine seats on the Court -- those of the Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices -- and they are designated Seats 1 through 9.  Originally there were six seats -- those of the Chief Justice and five Associate Justices -- and just after the Civil War for a brief time there were ten until the number was restored to nine.  When a vacancy occurs -- through resignation (rare), retirement (less rare), or death (the norm) -- the successor assumes the designated seat number of the departed member.

Justice Ginsburg occupied seat 6, the seat previously occupied by Byron White (served 1962-1993).  Assuming the advice and consent of the United Stats Senate, Amy Coney Barrett will assume seat 6.

My third half-cousin (three times removed), the elder John Marshall Harlan, occupied seat 8, the seat later held by Potter Stewart, Sandra Day O'Connor (the first female Justice), and currently by Samuel Alito.

My fifth half-cousin (five times removed), John Marshall Harlan II, occupied seat 9, the seat previously held by Robert H. Jackson (Chief US Prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg where the surviving Third Reich leadership were tried following the end of World War II) and later by Antonin Scalia, Justice Ginsburg's ideological foe and dear (fellow opera-loving) friend.

While I lived in Alexandria, Virginia (2005-2011), I met an attorney who clerked for the younger Justice Harlan, and offered to share his memories with me.  Sadly, I lost his contact information and never made the connection before returning to South Bend.  Recently I met a gentleman here in South Bend who wrote a research paper on JMH II and has been searching his archives in an attempt to share it with me.  I'm hopeful his search will be successful, as I would welcome an opportunity to learn more about this distant Harlan cousin beyond what I've gleaned from Wikipedia and magazine clippings my paternal grandmother entrusted to me years ago.

Some Harlan questions resolved

 

Over the past few days I've managed to track down a few questions of my own regarding some of my Harlan ancestors and relations, which I've documented here:  https://sites.google.com/view/johnbelatharlan/harlan-relationships -- specifically my relationship to three famous Harlans, the two John Marshall Harlans of United States Supreme Court fame, and Josiah Harlan, of 19th century Afghanistan fame.

Some new items now draw my curiosity:

• Josiah's descendants, namely the line descending from his only (Alpheus-documented) child, daughter Sarah Victoria (1852-?) (#3732), who was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and on 25 May 1870 married Frank Stokes.  Josiah was my fourth cousin, six times removed;  his daughter was my fifth cousin, five times removed.  Someday I'll figure out how that all works -- maybe :-)
• Somewhere in the line I stumbled over a male Harlan who led the "George Washington Movement," which appears to have been the initiative to found George Washington University in DC.  Stupidly I neglected to jot it down, so I need to retrace my steps to relocate it.
• Which line my former Oxford, Ohio neighbor John descends from.

 

Late to the party but never too late

 

No doubt many of us came late to the family history party, acquiring our taste for ancestral exploration only after our grandparents and parents had passed away, possibly leaving us photographs, note cards and books, and family tree diagrams we may have seen and dismissed without interest in previous decades but in which we can now lose ourselves for hours at a time.

In the decade and a half since my mother died and I came into possession of the voluminous notes she and her father compiled during their lifetimes, I have divided my time between marveling at the wealth of meticulous research they conducted and documented, and kicking myself for not having appreciated and acquired the taste for genealogy earlier in life, when I could have shared it with them.

The further I delve into the riches left to me, the more I marvel at what my mother and grandfather accomplished -- and all without the benefit of electronically stored and accessible information and the now-standard resources of the Internet.  Feeding the fruit of my mother and grandfather's labor into the modern tools of family history, I'm amazed both by the accuracy of the information they assembled and by the labor intensity it involved.  Invariably I think about how much more they, or the three of us combined, could accomplish today with today's tools, and tomorrow's.