My Children’s Maternal Genealogy
The Hagamans
Jessica, Samantha, and Jacob’s maternal grandfather was Ronald Dean Hagaman (born January 23, 1944, in Santa Monica, California, died December 1, 2024). He was the assistant chief of police in Independence, Missouri; and former Book of Mormon preacher. He was estranged from all of his nine children, from 1994, so my children did not know their grandfather although he lived in our city. His mother died when he was a teenager, his mother was an orphan, and his grandmother was an orphan. His grandfather was an orphan too. Both of his grandfathers abandoned their families. His father was indifferent towards his children and grandchildren. He is an Isaac Hale of fathers-in-law.
Ron Hagaman is the son of Orlin Robert Hagaman, who was born at Rockwood, Ohio, August 1, 1903. Orlin homesteaded in Alaska, family tradition says, and upon the Great Depression he settled in Santa Monica, California. Orlin then became a gardener at UCLA and a Book of Mormon preacher like his father. Without having primary sources to rely upon, I am skeptical of the coincidences between Orlin and his father. Orlin’s father was Oscar Edward Hagaman (born September 16 or 26, 1878 in Rockwood, Ohio). When his son, Orlin, was born, Oscar became a Book of Mormon preacher. Oscar was also a farmer who homesteaded in Ohio and Illinois, and then Alberta, Canada, and Walla Walla, Washington. He then settled in the San Fernando Valley, California, where he worked as a carpenter and set builder for the early movie industry in nearby Hollywood. One day he went to work and never returned, leaving Orlin’s mother to raise her family.
Orlin’s mother was Mary Grace Siefken (born in Calwei, Ostfriesland, Germany, February 21, 1879). According to relatives I have interviewed and others who have written to me, Mary emigrated from Germany (tradition said England) with her uncle when she was 11 years old, a year after her father emigrated and a year or two after her mother died. She was later adopted by a Book of Mormon believing family, Robert and Melvina Heavener, the sister of Israel L. Rogers (the publisher of the Joseph Smith Translation in 1867) near Plano, Illinois. Mary Grace Siefken was the daughter of Mathias Siefken and Hilka, and the granddaughter of Johann Harms Siefken (born about 1810 in Hannover, Prussia, now Germany).
Orlin’s paternal grandparents were Hiram Hagaman (born October 15, 1852 in Pennsylvania) and Sarah Caroline Langdon (probably Irish, born September 13, 1858). Hiram Hagaman’s parents were John Hagaman (died in Carroll County, Ohio about 1847 or 1848) and Mary De Groff of Pennsylvania. Someone in this family line fought in the war for Independence, making my girls Daughters of the Revolutionary War. The Hagaman line continues back in published records beginning with Ronald Dean Hagaman, Orlin Robert, Oscar Edward, Hiram, John, John, Barnet Hageman, John Hegeman, Adriaen, Hendricus, Adriaen, Henrick, Jacob Lambertsz, Lambert, and Jacob.
The Hagamans were Dutch, not Pennsylvania Dutch, which would have been German. They were from Holland in the 1600s, but since they were some of the earlier settlers in New Amsterdam and the Hudson Valley, some relatives believed incorrectly that they were Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsche, German). According to published genealogies and information provided to me by relatives of my children, the earliest American immigrant was Adriaen Hegeman (born in Elburg, Gelderland, Netherlands, 1624). Adriaen married Katryna Margits (Mar 22, 1650) and settled in Flatbush, Kings County, New York, where he died in 1672. Included in the Hagaman genealogy are famous surnames such as Van Dyke, Van Horn, De Graaft, and Van der Fliedt. The earliest Hagaman recorded was Jacob Hagaman (Hegeman), born in 1520 in Harderwijk, Netherlands. The DeGraaft family have among their ancestors Jean Vermiglia, an early Italian religious reformer who came to the Netherlands by way of Switzerland and England. The DeGraafts are also descended from the French noble families of LeConte and DuBois.
Ron Hagaman’s mother was Lessie May Rush, who was the daughter of Willis Richard Rush and Alice Jane Johnson, Book of Mormon believers in Independence, Missouri, and who both came from neighboring farms on the Carroll-Henderson county line in Tennessee. According to family history and perhaps a family Bible in my possession, this is the genealogy of this family. W. R. Rush was born June 21, 1872, at Wildersville, Tennessee, the son of a farmer, A. E. Rush. My latest research suggests, however, that Willis was born June 21, 1872 of parents W. C. Rush and Artemesia (Artie) B. Kinzer. W. C. Rush was born in North Carolina, and Artemesia was born about 1847 in Tennessee. Her parents were Michael Kinzer and Millie A. Estes (married in 1827 in Maury County, Tennessee). There is much to study of the Kinzer and Estes line in Maury County, and perhaps the parents of Millie were John and Martha Estes. Artemesia was listed as a widow by the 1880 census. Willis kept a diary from 1894 to 1915, detailing his addresses in Jackson County, Missouri, and as a migrant farm worker in Kansas. He lived at numerous sites in Independence and Lee’s Summit, including the Stritt farm, near the Little Blue River that we Hajiceks can see from our window. He also lived on the Brown farm (six miles east of Lee’s Summit), Crow farm (2 miles south of Independence), Sunset farm (eleven miles south of Independence), and Hidelburger farm (S. McCoy St.) and at 900 S. Osage and 824 S. Pleasant in Independence. His ancestry was said to be Irish and Dutch, but nobody knows. Alice Jane Johnson was born August 4, 1874 or August 12, 1875 at Huntingdon, Tennessee, the daughter of a farmer in Carroll County, Tennessee. Her ancestry is said to be French and Irish, but nobody knows. The children of W. R. Rush and Alice Jane Johnson were also said to have some Indian ancestry. The Rushes lived in Tennessee until the winter of 1901-1902. Lessie May Rush was born six miles east of Lee’s Summit, Jackson County, Missouri, July 26, 1904 or 1905. W. R. Rush was a painter by trade, but he could not find work so he worked in the wheat fields at Lyndon, Kansas, where Alice died while Lessie was just 11 years old.
Willis R. Rush was incapable and unwilling to care for the twelve living of fourteen children (ages 1 to 22). Lessie stayed at the Saints’ orphanage (Children’s Home) in Lamoni, Iowa, until she was taken to the Heavener family near Chicago, the same family that had raised Mary Grace Siefken, hence setting up the subsequent marriage between Orlin Hagaman and Lessie May Rush, since the mother of Orlin and later the future wife of Orlin were raised by the same family. Lessie worked for the hospital that later became the Independence Regional Health Center (where two of my Hajicek children were born), as a nurse, and died in 1960 when Ronald Dean Hagaman was only 16 years old.
The McGuires
Jessica, Samantha, and Jacob’s maternal grandmother is Dorothy Lee McGuire (born November 15, 1943). Their mother was estranged from her mother from 1989 to 2004, because generations of mothers in that maternal line do not speak to their adult daughters, so my children barely know their maternal grandmother even though she lives in our city. She is my children’s biological grandmother, through one of her four natural born children, but she also adopted six other children. Her parents were Clifford E. McGuire (born December 15, 1910, died September 6, 1987) and Roberta Lee Henson (born May 29, 1916). She and her four brothers were each divorced when I wrote this, whereas my mother and her four brothers had each remained married. The McGuire/Henson genealogy here is based on my personal interviews and friendship with Roberta. Clifford ran an orange grove in California before they retired in the Missouri Ozarks. Clifford’s parents were Edward Wright McGuire (born September 7, 1887) and Cora Lee McGill (born July 11, 1891); his paternal grandparents were James H. McGuire and Susan Arterberry (a Campbellite) of Alabama; and his maternal grandparents were Melacthon B. McGill (born May 30, 1857) and Martha Viola Turlington, Baptists of Alabama. Turlington is an English surname. The McGuires were Irish.
Roberta Lee Henson’s parents were Herman H. Henson (born October 4, 1889 in Texas) and Surilda (Rilda or Lizzie) Jane Phelps (born November 11, 1891 in Kentucky). According to Roberta, Surilda Jane Phelps was baptized in about 1913 into an Oklahoma church that is said to have kept all property in common in the tradition of Lyman Wight’s colony in Texas. This would seem, however, to have been within the umbrella of Joseph Smith III. She said that the missionaries that visited there held their meeting under a cottonwood tree. I did find Herman and Rilda newly married in 1910, and the parents of Herman, all in the 1910 and 1920 census at Stephans, Tillman, Oklahoma. Roberta said Surilda Jane Phelps had some Indian ancestry. Roberta’s maternal grandparents were Lorenzo Phillip Phelps (born December 5, 1868 in Pulaski, Kentucky) and Nancy Ellen Bray (born October 16, 1869 in Kentucky), both Baptists from Somerset, Kentucky. Lorenzo’s parents were Robert M. Phelps, born in Kentucky, and Anna Phelps of Pulaski, Kentucky. Roberta’s paternal grandparents were William L. Henson (born in Decatur, Alabama in February 1840 to parents from Tennessee and Alabama) and Susan Jane Smithwick (family tradition is that she was born in Texas, 1855; but census records state July 1855, in Arkansas, to parents from North Carolina and Arkansas; the confusion may originate from him being from Texas, and her living married to him in Texas at the 1880 and 1900 censuses). They married in Washington, Arkansas, September 28, 1870, when she was 15 and he was 30 and more than twice her age. Henson could be a Norwegian surname, but they had red hair like Scottish, according to the family; and Smithwick is likely an English surname. Folklore says the Smithwicks were part of Lyman Wight’s early colony in Texas. Roberta said that Mr. Smithwick, of the family of Susan Jane Smithwick, was put in charge of Lyman Wight’s colony whenever Wight left on a mission. So it sounds like Susan Jane Smithwick was born into the Wight colony in 1855, and her son Herman H. Henson was born into the supposedly extinct Wight tradition in 1889, and his wife Surilda Jane Phelps was baptized into this tradition with his father and mother present at about age 21 when he was about age 23, three years after their marriage. Their daughter Roberta, then, is raised in the teachings of Joseph Smith III who retained an affinity for other traditions such as the Temple Lot church.
I researched this Smithwick connection, and sure enough, Noah Smithwick was a blacksmith and miller involved with Lyman Wight and the Mormon Mills settlement near Smithwick, Texas, and near Austin, Texas, in the period between 1845 and 1855. He bought the Mormon Mills from Wight in 1853. Smithwick was born in North Carolina on January 1, 1809, the state where the father of Susan Jane Smithwick was certainly born. The trouble is, there is no Susan Jane Smithwick living in the colony with Noah Smithwick in the 1860 census. In the 1850 census, 52-year-old Noah and his 51-year-old wife had children aged 9, 7, 4, and 2; and in the 1860 census they were aged 18, 15, 13, and 8 (apparently the 1850 7-year-old did not survive, and the 1860 8-year-old was new). None of them was named Susan or born between 1852 and 1860; but it is plausible that he had a polygamist wife who returned to Arkansas in 1855, since he was living in a polygamist Mormon community. There is no Susan Jane Smithwick living in Arkansas in the 1860 or 1870 census, nor anyone who could plausibly be her parents. After the death of Wight in 1858, most of the Mormons had joined other Mormon groups. I am supposing that Susan Jane Smithwick eventually became a follower of Joseph Smith III. Noah Smithwick left for California in 1861 with three of the remaining five Mormon families, so it is reasonable to suppose that the Smithwicks married in with the Mormon settlement. But Susan Jane was in Arkansas getting married in 1870, not with the Smithwicks in California. Noah Smithwick wrote a book entitled, The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days (Austin: 1900), in which he treats the subject of Mormon Mills and Lyman Wight. Of course, I bought a copy of the first edition of the oft reprinted piece of Texas and Mormon Americana.