McMurray Family, Payne Family (Click for Family Tree)
Edward B. Payne is that ancestor that engenders obsession in at least one family historian known to this author. Accordingly, his name is frequently put into search boxes when there are a few idle moments, when it really is time for sleep, or at those moments when the yearning to know more about him just won’t quit. Since he was a minister, writer, lecturer, founder of a Utopian colony, close friend of Jack and Charmian London, etc., there are probably close to 1,000 known mentions of him in print found online.
The above booklet was one of the results from a recent online search. But why would this show up in a Google search for “Edward B. Payne”? About to move on among the hits, a slight pause brought this to mind:
Tuesday’s Tip: Don’t discount Google hits too quickly
Painful as it is to admit, Google is smarter than humans in so many ways (not all ways, thankfully). At least, Google can ‘read’ SO much faster than I can, whizzing through books and websites in seconds to bring me just the choicest morsels I am searching for, or didn’t even know I was in need of. This is one prime example.
Google had a reason to choose this link, so it was important to not pass it up, and figure out a connection. To find that connection, first a look at the Table of Contents was in order, but no Edward B. Payne (lovingly called EBP in our household) there. Next, a quick skim through the book, thinking my eyes would pick his name out of hundreds, but really, the booklet was mostly about why cremation was a good option, the process, etc. No EBP jumped out. At the back of the book, however, were testimonials with a name attached- this might be the answer. Sure enough, a page-by-page search pulled up his name, and this quote:
Thus it turns out that “Edward B. Payne” actually did fit in with a cremation search result for a number of reasons, so it was a good to follow and analyze in greater detail. Here are a few things we already knew, which should have tipped us off that this was a good search result:
- Edward B. Payne was a close friend of Jack London, who was cremated and his ashes placed at the rock now in Jack London State Park; Jack’s wife Charmian was cremated and ashes placed there as well.
- EBP’s first wife, Nanie M. (Burnell) Payne was likely cremated, as she is listed on a funeral card at Cypress Lawn Cemetery & Crematorium, but under “Interment Location” are the letters, “N/A.” This card was created in 2011 after our research request, and we have been unable to get any earlier paperwork from the cemetery. She is not listed in the genealogy section of the Cypress Lawn website, either, and has not been found on Find A Grave. . This lack of burial evidence suggests she may have been cremated and her ashes scattered, or kept in an urn on a mantel.
- Russ Kingman, author of “A Pictorial Life of Jack London,” was the founder of The World of Jack London Museum and Bookstore, in Glen Ellen, California, and a noted Jack London researcher. In a personal phone call around 1991, he told me
that he thought Edward’s ashes had been spread at the same rock as were the ashes of Jack and Charmian (Kittredge) London.The moral of the story? Follow our Tuesday’s Tip, and don’t quickly discount Google search results until you have eliminated them through other knowledge of time or place, or until you have checked out the result thoroughly!
Notes, Sources, and References:
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