52 Ancestors: Week Six - Surprise

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a year-long series created by Amy Johnson Crow. I'm a little late getting started, but hopefully I can write weekly now!

My grandfather did not have a good relationship with his father, Arthur Middleton Beem. What few stories he told were less than flattering. When I got serious about researching his life, I knew very little about Arthur Middleton Beem:

•  He was born in Wisconsin but grew up in Mattoon, Illinois
•  He was a Spanish-American war vet
•  He worked for the railroad, which eventually took him to Knoxville, Tennessee
•  He married Frances Horton in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1905
•  Arthur and Frances had five children, including my grandfather
• The family moved back and forth between Knoxville and Jacksonville, Florida until they finally settled in Jacksonville in the 1920s (according to family lore. Census records proved otherwise.)
•  Arthur spent the last few years of his life in Mexico, returning annually to Brownsville, Texas for medical exams, a requirement for his VA pension

Arthur and Frances Beem with granddaughter, Frances, mid-1930s

That's the sum total of what I knew about Arthur's life when I decided to delve deeper.  I started by trying, for the third time, to order his pension record. Thanks to a suggestion of requesting it using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), I actually received a copy of the record. To my great surprise, this is what I received in the mail:

Arthur's pension file as received in the mail, 2016

Yes, that is approximately 1,500 pages of records ranging from 1924, when he first applied for a pension, to 1954, when he died! The cover letter told me to guard this with my life, as the VA would not send this to me a second time!

My mom and I were leaving for a research trip the next day, so of course this went with us. (Fortunately, we were driving and not flying!) We spent the first night in the hotel room skimming through the record. We found several surprises:

• A thorough, although likely not complete, medical history from 1924-1954. Arthur applied for a pension increase almost annually, requiring a new physical each time.
• Arthur was a prolific writer. His requests were mostly denied, prompting him to write the VA pension board, his congressmen, and anyone else he could think of that might help him received the requested increases. He even wrote the congressmen for Mattoon, even though he hadn't lived there for 25 years!
• The family moved - and not just back and forth between Jacksonville and Knoxville. They moved every couple of months and lived in small towns all over North Central Florida. These towns included, but were not limited to, Citra, Montbrook, Green Cove Springs, Ocala, and Reddick.
•  In Green Cove Springs, he was a sharecropper. Eventually he and his landlord had an altercation, and he was shot in the face, losing his vision for several months. Although his vision did eventually return, he never fully recovered it.
•  He lived in several VA homes, including Tampa, Biloxi, and Brownsville (TX).
•  He moved to Mexico for health reasons in the 1940s and remained there until his death. In 1948, he married Modesta Mendoza, a 26-year-old Mexican woman.

These are just some of the surprises contained in the pension record. One of these days, I'll have time to go through the documents thoroughly to create a timeline. I'm sure I'll discover even more surprises when I go through that process and more fully analyze the information in the file.