August 2008 – Edition 40

Then I came across the following article about the
same event: LEARNS CUSTOM RULES ARE
SERIOUS

NEW YORK. Oct. 28. The lesson that the
government
customs regulations are to be “taken seriously” was
learned at considerable expense this afternoon by
Miss Helen Jerrems, who gave her address as the
Hotel Metropole, Chicago. Miss Jerrems, arriving from
Europe with her mother, declared $220 worth of
dutiable goods, but inspectors found, in addition,
gowns and presents intended for friends valued at
$928. Miss Jerrems was asked if she had read the
warning that forfeiture of goods and imprisonment
were the penalties for failure to make a proper
declaration.

Surveyor Henry ordered the undeclared goods seized,
disallowed the usual $100 exemption for free entry,
and fixed the duty and penalties that Miss Jerrems
must pay at $1800.

Donald’s article attributed a different statement to
Helen, who “When arraigned before Special Deputy
Burveyor Smyths, blithely declared that she “didn’t
think the regulations meant anything serious.”

Wow! The authorities had certainly taken a dim view
of Helen’s little peccadillo. The sum of $1800 payable
by her was an enormous sum (possibly $200,000 in
today’s terms). Maybe the authorities thought that if the
generous Helen could afford to spend over $900 on
clothes and presents she could afford to pay $1800 to
the Government. It also seems that she would not
have got the seized items back.

Helen had obviously travelled in style also. Her ship
was the “Oceanic”. At 17000 tons the ship had been
the world’s largest liner in 1899-1901.

Donald’s article indicated that the authorities were
having a crackdown, so perhaps Helen was a little
unlucky getting caught.

In her casual approach to the law Helen had
something in common with her sister-in-law
Genevieve, who had been fined for speeding
some
years earlier. Readers may remember that an equally
impenitent Genevieve was fined for speeding in
the
town of Glencoe north of Chicago, however she
was
only fined seventy dollars. (JJ Edition#1, June 2005)

Who was Helen?

But who was this Helen? Although her correct
name
was Hellen most of the records refer to her as Helen,
so for the sake of simplicity I will call her Helen also. It
was obvious that the seven year old Helen could be
ruled out, but there was still a possibility that Helen
was someone I had not previously located. However
the reference to Miss Jerrems returning from Europe
with her mother (absent from the article located by
Donald) gave me a valuable lead. I looked up the
Passenger Records for arrivals in 1910 at Ellis Island,
the entry point at New York. I found that Helen
Jerrems had returned from Europe in 1910, and a
Mary Jerrems was on the same ship. The
Helen I
knew of had a mother named Mary, so this confirmed
the identity of Helen.

So what do we know about Helen/Hellen? She was
born in Sydney, Australia in 1870, with the middle
name Elizabeth. Her parents were William George
Jerrems (born in Gainsborough, England in 1843 and
Mary (nee Nicholl, probably born in London in about
1847). Unlike her siblings (William George,
Alexander
Nicholl, Arthur Wallace, Mae, Annie Letitia and Donald
Edwin) she never married, dying in 1943 in
Orange, near Los Angeles.

Helen’s Early Years

Helen spent some of her childhood years in Australia
and England before the family finally settled in
Chicago in the early 1880s. Her father took over a
sizeable portion of his father-in-law’s “Nicoll the
Tailor” empire, a very lucrative enterprise. Her parents
quickly settled into Chicago society and became
prominent in that society, frequently giving parties
(known as “receptions”) and attending dinners.
Helen’s father belonged to a number of clubs, also.

No doubt Helen, as the eldest daughter (by a
considerable margin, Mae and Annie were 9
and 12
years younger) would have assisted her mother at the
receptions and other functions. Her younger sister
Annie attended a “School for Young Ladies”
(known as a finishing school) so it is very likely
that Helen had
previously done likewise in the late 1880s. Helen’s
brothers also became prominent.

In the 1890s
William George and Arthur Wallace featured in the
social scene, belonging to many clubs, and Alexander
Nicholl became famous as a gridiron player. The
family spent the summer holidays in fashionable
places like Green Lake and Lake Geneva, where
Helen’s father owned a house.

How do I know all this? I took out a
subscription to a website (genealogybank.com)
which, like fultonhistory.com, has an enormous
number of newspaper records. However it covers a
wider area, including Chicago. I obtained about 1160
hits for Jerrems, a number of which were from the
social pages, covering every facet of Chicago social
life in minute detail. I soon found the problem that
Helen was named “Helen”, “Nellie” or “Miss
Jerrems”,
but later when her sisters were in their teens the
references were to “Misses Jerrems”. This left it to
me to guess whether Helen was included in that term.
One particular reference to Helen surprised me. In
1895 she took part in a fund raising function
organised by St Agatha’s Womens Guild,
dressing up
as an English woman. Google tells me that this is a
Catholic Church (still existing) founded in 1893. The
reason for my surprise was that her father belonged to
the Masonic Club and in 1892 was a parishioner of
Reverend William White Wilson (a Protestant title).

Helen’s Later Years

Helen dropped out of sight in the late 1890s and the
early 1900s. She seems to have alternated between
living in Chicago and in Pasadena (near Los Angeles)
with her younger sister Mae. Her father died in 1905
and her mother died in the late 1920s so it is likely
that when she was in Chicago she mainly lived with
her mother, particularly after her father’s death. Helen
received a larger proportion of her mother’s large
estate than her siblings, possibly indicating that she
helped look after her mother in her later years.

Helen’s Travels

Helen’s disingenuous statement that she did not take
the regulations seriously could have led a casual
reader to assume that she had not travelled overseas
before. But in fact she had travelled extensively.
Here is a list of her known travels:

(a) 1890 Seven months travelling in Wales
and the Continent by Helen,

(b) 1891 Four months tour on the Continent
by Jerrems family (presumably including Helen),

(c) 1892 Winter at Alexandria and Cairo,
followed by time in the summer resorts of France,
England, Wales and Scotland, by Helen,

(d) 1893 Trip to England by “Misses Jerrems”
(presumably including Helen),

(e) Trips to the Bahamas (1906) (probably a
stopover on a Europe trip), England (1907 and 1910),
and France (1922).

(f) In addition, it is likely that she travelled to
England on earlier unrecorded occasions with her
family to visit her mother’s siblings.

Conclusion

For Naughty Nellie the moral to the story was, no
doubt, that she should have taken the regulations a
little more seriously. Little did she know that almost a
century later her story would catch the eye of a distant
relative (the great grandson of her Uncle Charles) and
form the centrepiece of an article in the Jerrems
Journal.

Editor’s Notes:

We do not have a photo of Helen yet. Perhaps, one of
our readers will send one in to us. No mug shots,
please.

We have a terrific story in the
works on Annie, who attended the finishing
“School for Young Ladies”. Stay tuned.

They located a large family plot (there are 17 related
graves in it) which appears to have been purchased
by James Jerrems at about the time his first
wife (Ann)
died. In the photo we see Sandra next to the grave of
the long lost Civil War veteran Jesse Jerrems.
I had
suspected for some years that Jesse had died soon
after the Civil War. Sandra’s discovery of his
gravestone now confirms to my satisfaction that he
died in 1866, solving one of the great Jerrems family
mysteries.

Readers may recall from the article about James in
the July Journal that Jesse was the son of James,
who was in turn the brother of Sandra’s great great
grandfather Joseph. Jesse was therefore Sandra’s
great great uncle (don’t try to work this out, take my
word for it).

Jesse’s gravestone and an unrelated gravestone in
the background are marked with Stars and Stripes
national flags placed by the Veteran’s Association, a
touching tribute to the memory of these veterans
(Sandra had taken a flag to put on Jesse’s grave but
found when she got there that the gravestone already
had a flag).

Sandra’s search of the plot and subsequent research
at the cemetery office brought to light a lot of
information, some confirming or correcting our
previous guesswork, and some raising new
mysteries.

From Sandra’s perspective the fact that at least one of
the children of her great great grandfather Joseph and
his wife Sarah had been buried in the “James” plot
confirmed two important points. The first was
that our
assumption that James and Joseph were the same
people as the brothers Sandra had located in
Wappenham in England was correct. The second
was that James and Joseph (and their families) had
been in touch with each other after they had migrated
from England. Sandra does not have much
information about Joseph, so items like this could
help her in her research.

An interesting coincidence is that Sandra’s daughter
is named Sarah, which we now know was the name
of Sandra’s great great grandmother (the wife of
Joseph). Naturally Sandra and her husband knew
nothing of Joseph and his wife at the time their
daughter was born.

I will write further about the results of Sandra’s
research, but at this juncture I will leave our readers to
reflect on the sylvan setting shown in the photo and to
join me in a heartfelt wish to the numerous Jerrems
ancestors in the plot “may they rest in peace”.

Your family is my first appointment as a GA. The
Jerrems Family account is a small one, so I will be
able to give you personalized service. According to my
GA handbook, my mission statement is: “Don’t let
them do anything incredibly stupid.”

I am pleased to report that I have been able to meet
my objectives with one exception.

For most of the year, I have been able to contain that
pesky family ghost, Old Ray. He is really hard
to keep up with because he is so wispy and
unpredictable.

Look at that picture below; he crashed the Group
of Eight (G8) Summit in Toyako, Japan. Looks like
he just cracked an off-color joke.

Normally he spends his time on the beaches in Manly
Point near Sydney. And how does a ghost get a tan?

I will continue to track Old Ray so he does not
embarass the well-behaved Jerrems members any
further.