JAMES & LAURA GALLOWAY FAMILY
BY JIM HANSEN
This is a sad and eye-opening story. Karen and I were editing the index that Glenna Thompsen had created for 2 notebooks of original birth certificates. Ramona Mass Galloway was the full name of the child listed on page 40, but the year of birth had been written over. It looked like Feb. 28, “1918”, with a “7” written over the “8” in 1918. We were keeping the websites of Ancestry, Family Search, Findagrave, and the Walnut newspaper open for reference. We found a date matching the year of 1917 with one small problem; the child with that birth date was Genevieve Regina Galloway, a sister of Ramona. What? We then found the birth date for Ramona; it was Jan. 18, 1914. She had been born in Silver City, Mills County, Iowa, three years earlier. What was her name doing on this birth record in 1917? The family had moved to Walnut in January 1917, with Genevieve being born here in February, just one month later. We did not solve this mystery.
From here things went downhill fast for the Galloway family. James and Laura now had 3 little girls: Francis, born in 1912, Ramona, born in 1914 and Genevieve, born in 1917. In January 1918, Laura Galloway died of a brain tumor. The family had lived in Walnut only one year. Dad, a farmer, had a 6-year old, a 4-year old and an 11-month old. How was this going to work? The 1920 Federal Census was our next source. It took some time to find any of them in that year. All three girls had been sent to Grand View Farm Juvenile Home near Lewis, Iowa, where they would spend all the years of their youth. Dad was out of the picture.
We later found James E. Galloway. He had married Clara Zumwalt in 1930 in Yakima, Washington, where he spent the remaining years of his life. He died and was buried there in 1956. His second wife is buried with him.
A spark of good happened in 1940 after Genevieve married and moved to Washington. We hope daughter and dad found each other. Had dad been keeping track of his daughters all along?
JH