I don’t know how it happened, but it did. In my family when there is some kind of havoc, I’m in charge of what I call the “Command Center”. I’m usually the one who is home at the time of whatever havoc is occurring. There is a certain responsibility in this position. The main responsibility is to REMAIN CALM. This is the first time I’ve been mobilized and it certainly isn’t going to be the last.
The photo I was going to post today will have to wait. I was entering the Mays family into my family file yesterday. The Mays family is always a frustration for me because the sheer amount of them. They also loved to name their kids the same 10 names. It wasn’t uncommon to have 3 cousins, named William, and they were all born within a year of each other. That’s not what I’m writing about today though. My mystery is with Henry Mays.
He first shows up in 1900 with John and Celia Mays. He is listed as their son, with a birth date of 1885. This was always a little sketchy for my Mom because this puts him at 13 years younger then his nearest sibling. I did find another male child that was still born in 1875, so that pushes it to 10. Still, that is quite a leap. Mom always suspected that Henry might have been John and Celia’s grandson, born to their daughter Nancy. Nancy was 15 at the time of Henry’s birth. There is absolutely no evidence of this though so he’s John and Celia’s son in my mind.
Every genealogy researcher eventually comes across Ellis Island. For me, my first experience was when my mother started to get me into genealogy. She was researching the Thorward Family. There was a ship manifest from Ellis Island that listed George Thorward. I’m sorry, he was listed as Georg Thorward. To be perfectly honest, there were two manifests. There you’ve dragged it all out of me. One manifest was from 1898 and the other from 1901. Funny enough, both trips were made aboard the ship Southwark. In both trips, his departure city is listed as Antwerp, Belgium. That’s a good clue to keep in handy when I finally start trying to track him in Germany.
He most likely was making trips back to his homeland for some reason or another. That or he was going there on business. I wasn’t even a twinkle in the universe yet, so I can’t tell you exactly. I can theorize though, which is one of my favorite things to do by the way. Ask me next week and I’ll spin you a yarn about his trip home for a cousin’s wedding, or maybe how he was going home for his granny’s funeral. It’s just how I get kicks. As long as I’m not passing these stories down to my currently non-existent grand kids, I figure it’s harmless fun. You should see what I do when there are traffic jams, boy can I spin some yarns with that!
So there’s some sentimental reasons I feel a kinship with Ellis Island. Technically, I haven’t found a single relative that actually immigrated through Ellis Island. All my relatives came before it opened in 1892. In fact, besides George’s trips I don’t think I’ve found more than two other relatives passing through on trips abroad.
You probably can imagine my surprise when I found the building you see above. My mother has a little bit of a Christmas Village obsession. Every now and again, Cecil’s Country Store will have a blowout sale. They sell all kinds of buildings for Christmas villages. It’s an awesome place to go and look through. It’s actually an old post office and store from 1906. While Mom was salivating over houses, castles, and other buildings for her village, I ran across one box that said Ellis Island. Then I looked closer and the price tag said $5! Well, I got in the spirit of the moment and just went for it! Sure it’s only a small part of the actual building. Could you imagine fitting a reproduction of the whole thing somewhere? Where would you even put that?
I know it’s not exactly the most meaningful purchase I’ll ever make but it was one of the more sentimental. In the few hours I’ve had it setup on my desk (what a great way to avoid clutter!), I’ve already looked at it and smiled more times than I can count.
Randy Seaver puts up a fun genealogy mission every Saturday night at his blog, Genea-Musings. Here is this week’s challenge!
1) Pick one of your ancestral lines – any one – patrilineal, matrilineal, zigzag, from a famous ancestor, etc. Pick a long one if you can.
2) Tell us which position in the birth order that your ancestor was in each generation. For example “third child, first son.” Also list how many children were born to these parents.
3) Share your Birth Order work with us on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, etc.
I chose my Taylor line because it’s the one that goes back the farthest. These are coming straight from the tree my Grandma gave me in eighth grade so I haven’t gotten solid proof on the farther back generations yet.
1. Kathleen Moore (1983- ) third child, second daughter of William and Georgia (Mays) Moore (1 son, 2 daughters)
2. Georgia Mays (1959- ) sixth child, fourth daughter of Stanley and Emogene (Taylor) Mays (5 daughters, 2 sons)
3. Emogene Taylor (1929-2005) sixth child, second daughter of Marshall and Lula (Applegate) Taylor (5 sons, 3 daughters)
4. Marshall Taylor (1892-1958) second child, first son of George and Mollie (Webb) Taylor (4 daughters, 7 sons)
5. George Taylor (1862-1913) fourth child, second son of Marshall and Cecilia (Heaverin) Taylor (6 sons, 5 daughters)
6. Marshall Taylor (1823-1899) first child, first son of William and Nancy (Matthews) Taylor (3 sons, 2 daughters)
7. William Taylor (1797-1849) fourth child, fourth son of Bartholomew and Leah (Staton) Taylor (5 sons)
8. Bartholomew Taylor (1756-1847) first child, first son of Abraham and Mary (Walker) Taylor (4 sons, 5 daughters)
9. Abraham Taylor (1726-1792) second child, second son of William and Sarah (Cooper) Taylor (3 sons, 3 daughters)
10. William Taylor (?-1773?) (4 sons, 2 daughters)
11. John Taylor (?-1748?)
Bartholomew is really the farthest I’ve researched back. He’s the Revolutionary War veteran. What I’ve been trying to do is get the birth, marriage, and death records for these main ancestors before I move on. That hasn’t exactly happened the way I wanted. I had the best of intentions, really I did! William and John, numbers 10 and 11 respectively, didn’t get birth order numbers so I guess they don’t count. I found their siblings names in wills of the parents so I don’t have birthdates for the siblings, therefore I can’t determine where everyone is in the birth order yet.
Thanks Randy for yet another fun little challenge!
My internet took a vacation yesterday. I guess everyone needs a vacation every once and awhile even my internet. So because of my internet’s decision to take the day off, I didn’t get a chance to post my take on the Open Thread Thursday at GeneaBloggers yesterday. I was really interested in what people said about this since I’m neck deep into a website redesign! I took notes and tested a few things with the itty bitty internet connection that I had. So here’s my take on what’s necessary!
Continue reading “Open Thread Thursday on Friday?”The last time I posted about the Menzies family, I didn’t know anything about the members of the family who stayed in England. Only a few snippets I had from some letters between siblings, William and Jane. Using clues from those letters and a marriage record from the FamilySearch records, I think I’m getting somewhere with mapping out William’s life.
On FamilySearch I found a Liverpool marriage record between a William Menzies and Ellen Patterson. At first I was thinking it wasn’t much help, because how could I be sure it’s my guy. Then I remembered the Love-Menzies Family Outline. It has a bunch of Menzies information written at the bottom. At the bottom were a bunch of Walkers and Pattersons. Sure if the wife married in, the Patterson name would be lost. It’s a little too coincidental for me though! I haven’t marked anything down yet, but I’ve made note of the marriage record. My next step was to search the 1861 England Census to see if I could find my William with a wife named Ellen.
Last night, I sat down and decided to finish off my 10 pages of indexing the South Carolina Estate Files. It was a great experience. I learned a lot about how estate files worked, I made improvements on deciphering handwriting, and I helped out the genealogy community! It was a win win situation.
I can’t say it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I found it a bit of a challenge, but a fun one! It was a big eye opener for me in terms of what the country was like at the time. I was indexing estates from 1849, so it was before the Civil War. It was so strange to see people referred to like they were. I just can’t imagine living in a world where that was happening. Even though I’ve always known about that dark part of our history, this made it so much more real to me.
Once I got into the swing of indexing, it was much easier and I got a bit faster (which wasn’t the point of it, I was previously doing just 1 page every few days). Those last 6 pages flew by! Between these records and indexing for FamilySearch, I’ve realized how much I really enjoy the challenge of deciphering handwriting!
Once I knock out this site redesign in the next few weeks, I’m definitely doing another 10! If you’d like to volunteer too, you can sign up at the LowCountry Africana website. This is a very important project and even if it doesn’t pertain to your family, you could be helping out someone else!
In the same batch of travel photos as the last Mystery Monday entry, we have these two.
Things I know about these photos:
Things I’d like to know about these pictures:
Mystery Monday is an ongoing series I’m doing here on my blog. It’s also now a GeneaBloggers blogging theme topic. Feel free to post about your own mysteries!
After much debate with myself, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a second letter, but the second page of the first letter. I say that because of the context and because there wasn’t an address at the top of this one. So there ya go! Please note that I’m transcribing this as it is written. So spelling and grammar aren’t my fault! 🙂
Dear Jean, We have our troubles hear as well as you have in America all our troubles seems to come at once. I am very sorry to inform you, that Sister Ellen lost one of her little Boys last Saturday afternoon he died of Dropsey brought on by Scarlet Fever. Sister Ellen is in a sore way about him. There was no person at home but herself. Charles is in Alexandra Egypt and expects to stop there if he can get work he will be very much put about when he receives the news of the loss of his son. I would have gone down to Liverpool if I could off been spared Ellen was to bury him last Tuesday. I want her to come and spend a few weeks with me has soon as the wether gets warmer. I hope she will it will do her good I have forgotten to state in Alex letter that I shall be most happy to receive poor George. Lickeness, God Bless him I sincerely hope he is alive I will make Brothers Jamesh ?? as soon as I have time tell him to write a few lines to me when he as time you will please give mine and my wifes & childrens love to my mother and all my brothers and sisters and receive the same yourself. I will send you and mother a nice present before long you will excuse this short letter has I am afraid of its being over weight. Write soon again and believe me to remain your ever affectionate and loving Brother
W Menzies
I was writing up a post about William Menzies. When I tried to find the entry where I transcribed his letter, I couldn’t find it! It’s here somewhere, but for some reason it’s disappeared and it’s not tagged with the Menzies surname. Don’t worry, I’m going to fix issues like these when I redo the site (which is still ongoing, code is so consuming but I love learning it). In the meantime, I’m going to devote this entry to William’s letter so it’s easy to find. Then I’m going next door to play with the dogs because I think I need a dose of cute.
Depot St Rosehill (? Could be wrong)
Derby Jan 15 /63
My Dear Sister Jean,
I now avail myself of the present opportunity of answering your very affectionate and ever welcome letter, and at the same time thanking your for sending me the lock of poor Margrets hair which I intend having put in a broch. I am very sorry to hear such bad news from my Dear Friends in America and feel very much for my poor Mother. I wish I was there to comfort her in all her trouble. I expect to come and see you all some day has I am quite sure I will never stay in England all my life as I am quite tired of it, I want to come and see you, and I will never be satisfied until I do come if it is only for a visit for a few weeks. I am happy to learn that Brother John has been doing so very well has to aquire property and will be most happy to hear of his arrival amoungst you all in New York. I supose he is not married yet, let me know if your next if soon is the case
That’s where the letter ends. There’s possibly another page to the letter. This is just a photocopy given to me by my Aunt Diane. There are several more letters also. Possibly more than I have. I’ll post the second letter tomorrow!