In the last few days, I have been doing a lot of family digging on ancestry. I not only sent messages off to the Ring and Hager families, but I also found a lot of interesting information regarding Banta's extended family.
In the past, Banta's family has been oddly difficult to track, but luckily, several members of his extended family completely sketched out their very large family tree from three different perspectives. Those who are descended from Banta descend from his mother's family, the Darrow's. What made the Banta digging more interesting is that they have many photos of the family(not including the Banta's unfortunately). The most exciting part of this Banta digging is that many of his cousins looked so much like Frank! Even though there weren't any pictures of Banta's mother Fannie, there were pictures of all her siblings, so I can now piece together what traits were prominent in their diverse gene pool.
This woman here is Banta's first cousin Cornelia. She was a few years older than Frank(b. 1862). I specifically took an instant interest in her because she looked the most like cousin Frank. See below:
Something curious that I noticed while digging through the Banta-Darrow family tree is that the Banta line basically led to a dead end(not surprisingly I may add). Despite that, the Darrow extended family was quite interesting. As I kept sifting through all the photos of the Darrow family, all those kids looked very well dressed and well-off. I had been under the belief that Banta's family was somewhat poor, as little Frank worked tuning pianos as a child, but now that I've done some digging, it seems that all that wasn't entirely true. The Darrow family almost definitely was well off, as there are so many photos of the family, and they're all so well dressed in every one of them.
Here are a few examples:
Those are three of Banta's aunts.
I would hope that you're starting to see the resemblance here.
Clearly Banta's father John married up, into a family of rich New York carpenters, to one of the many heiresses of the Darrow trust. Any of the money that Banta had was because of his mother's family. It seems like from the way Frank was living during his recording days, he had some money other than that from making records all day and night.
However!
This begs the question, why were Frank and his wife Lizzie(as she's called in the family tree, I used to call her Liz to evoke Len Spencer's wife) both working in the Edison studio?
Lizzie did work for Edison it turns out, she was a secretary to the old man himself, while her husband wilted over day to day in the studio making hundreds of records.
When that came to mind it seemed a bit strange. Obviously if they had money Lizzie wouldn't need to be working, though they did even have a servant at home to tend to little Frank Edgar and Prudy. That I do not understand, it seems rather contradictory. Another contradiction is that little Frank worked tuning pianos as a child(when I say child, I mean it, not teen aged), but clearly his mother's family had money, so why was little Frank working so young?
I cannot answer these questions just yet, but I will continue looking to see if they could be sometime.
So I guess Frank wasn't like the Mike Bernard story of little tenement rat to rag-time stardom. I was really kinda hoping that that was what Banta's story was, as it seems almost like it was that glorious tale just by examining his misfortune in employment and health. I guess he drew the short straw when it came to the gene pool. He lived quite a miserable short life for a fellow who came from some kind of money.
Frank's cousins were also quite an interesting bunch, of most of them there were photos, which is great for me!
This boy was exactly the same age as Frank, born in early 1870.
There's good old Cornelia again!
In this picture she really does look like her cousin Frank. That long pointy nose, high forehead, big fawn eyes, and that slim face. So I guess that the verdict here is that Frank really looked like his mother's family. Somehow I had guessed that wildly while doing previous research on Banta before all of this.
I am so glad there were so many pictures of Banta's extended family! This makes me have hope that there's a picture of little Frank Banta floating around out there somewhere. It would certainly be awfully nice to see that.
Though, as I have observed from his cousin's portraits , I wasn't too far off in my depictions of little Frank in my artwork. Once again I am relieved at the accuracy!
And to think that I drew that last week before all this digging.
Before I did all that Banta-Darrow digging, I went in search for the Ringleben and Hager families. As far as I know now, there are no direct descendants of either of them(though I'm convinced there must be according to the records). Though I did find it interesting that Justin Ring's youngest daughter died in 2010!
Knowing that Ring's youngest daughter was born in 1919, I had this crazy idea that it was entirely possible that she was still living(it's possible!), but of course that wasn't true. It is comforting to know that she died only a few years ago, in the 21st century! A daughter of Justin Ring died in the 2010's!
What a concept.
The descendants of the Ringleben family are just barely related to Justin, branching off from his half-sister Rose(the whole half-sister thing is probably also an interesting story I bet). I do not know how extended Justin's immediate family was, nor that of his younger brother Frank. Justin's brother Frank lived until 1969! Whew! Those Ringleben boys lived quite long lives.
Well, now we await the word from the Hager's and Ringleben's. I sent off long messages to both families. Hopefully I'll hear back soon.
I have decided to wait out sending a message to the Banta-Darrow descendants, as I'd rather not over-commit myself to three recording star families at once.
Anyway...
That's all I got folks! There aren't any new fancy records to exhibit this week. It's been rather quiet with record listening recently.
I hope you enjoyed this!
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