Mr Lillatson asked us to work over time on Income Tax forms. Stayed until about 6:15 and then took train to Montclair and trolley up. Had to go to choir rehearsal. E walked home with me. He was down to Newark and went to the Terminal Theater by himself last night.
The last time I posted my statistics was in October, oy!
Okay, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. I won’t make excuses. It just didn’t happen! My individual count is up by 63. I do have to say though, ALL 63 are completely cited. Nothing is in the file without a source citation. So 63 is a bigger number then what you first think.
Continue reading “Statistics: February 2011”Took a ride to Roseland in afternoon. Pa closed store all day.
I don’t know if you can tell or not, but I’m kind of obsessed with City Directories. It started when I was going through them on Footnote.com and learning so much about William Moore. Now it’s a full blown obsession. I just can’t believe the things I’ve learned just by looking up people in the directories. Today though, I found something even crazier then I’ve found in the months since my first look.
From the directory excerpt you see above, what interests me most is the second Thorward on the list.
Continue reading “Seriously, Use City Directories”— George died April 8 1940 age 88
Week 7: Toys. What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?
It goes against everything in me to only choose one thing. I have no idea why I’m like that, but I am. So I’ll just make a brief mention of the other toys I loved. My Little Pony. There I said it. I had more My Little Ponies than I did Barbies. I had Barbies too though, and my Momma made their clothes. How awesome was she? I also loved, loved, loved C.U.T.I.E. figurines. If you do a google image search you can find them but I have a link that does better. There was another toy I loved, they were little clear, plastic princesses I think but no one remembers their names. It reminds me of when I was trying to remember the name of a cartoon I watched as a kid. All I could remember was the little girl in the yellow dress flies out the window with a koala bear. My momma was stuck on David the Gnome. She sure loved David the Gnome. HA. It was called Noozles by the way.
Back onto the subject, I’m here to talk about my number one love. They were called Little People and they were made by Fisher Price. I loved these things. I loved them to death. I even talked about them way back in Childhood Car memories week. This one is made out of wood, and it was bought off eBay probably around 10 years ago. I don’t know what happened to my Little People. Most likely they were given to a family friend who had little girls, much like my Barbie collection. The set I had were plastic. If you want to read about the complete history of these (I’m the only one right? haha), there’s a great write up of their evolution here: link. On that page, the ones I’m familiar with are at the bottom of the History page. I had a million of them though and I had all kinds of accessories. It was my most played with toy and it’s the one I associate with my childhood.
My favorite thing to do was make families, and have them go about their day to day. I’d pick up the kids with the school bus and I’d drop them off all over the house on the “bus route”. It’s probably why I’ve switched to The Sims 2 as I got older. Same concept, just on a computer!
Sadly, Little People are no longer how I remember them. A quick trip to the Fisher Price website will show you how they’ve changed. Visiting the website made me want to go out to the shed and dig out the school bus and house (also from that eBay purchase) I know are in there somewhere. It could be fun to compare them right?
Little People today. Picture from Fisher Price website
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is a weekly series thought up by Amy Coffin and hosted by GeneaBloggers. It encourages genealogy bloggers to share their own memories and history, so that we don’t forget that one day, our own stories will be important to future generations.
Yesterday, I was trying to catch up on my genealogy blog reading. The over 500 still unread blog posts in my Google Reader tells me I didn’t make much progress. You see, I have a few favorite blogs that I like to read through first. They’re the ones I’ve been reading the longest.
That’s when I came across Randy Seaver’s blog post, Tuesday’s Tip – Use the list of FREE Online Vital Records Databases on LearnWebSkills.com site. Of particular interest to me was the Vital Records section where the FREE links were. I jumped to New Jersey because New Jersey has been a big problem for me so far. (Note: I’m starting to think I’ve built New Jersey up in my mind as a big hassle. I now realize it might not be as bad as I make it out to be.)
That led me to the New Jersey State Archives website. They have a full list of databases that are searchable online! The unfortunate thing is it also led me to the biggest pet peeve I have.
Please, Please, Please. I’m begging all website developers out there. CHECK YOUR DESIGN IN ALL WEB BROWSERS. No it’s not fun to test in Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari but I do it anyway. Most times there are two categories where websites end up. In the works and doesn’t work category. Most times your design will work in Internet Explorer and not any other browser. Sometimes it will work in Chrome but not Internet Explorer. (Rarely though.) The thing is, it’s all the same code but unfortunately the browsers all process the code differently. I’ve had it all be a horrible jumble in Chrome because an errant SPACE in my .css file. So please, just check it. You want to make sure no matter what browser your visitor is using, they see your vision or even just the content.
Now back to the real reason for this post. You may or may not remember a few months back when I speculated maybe I had found George Thorward in the 1870 census but wasn’t quite sure? Well I didn’t ever get any farther on that. I’ve been searching on and off trying to find immigration records for George but just haven’t found them yet. I would love to head to the Caldwell Library and see what kind of books they have.
Here’s the 1870 census again for reference. Line 18 is my 3rd Great-Grandmother, Josephine Doremus and line 9 is the suspect, George Yohn.
Here is the record I found on the New Jersey State Archives website yesterday. I should have known this would just lead to more questions! In fact, I had even more after I tried explaining to my Dad last night, because he doesn’t ‘get’ the genealogy thing and so it helps me to bounce things off him. That’s when I know whether something is concrete or not.
So here are my questions. What’s with the Yohn? If they were married under the Yohn name, does this mean they legally changed it at some point in time? Their first child, Frank Thorward, was born in 1872. Was Frank born a Yohn? Was Thorward the original name but changed to Yohn at time of immigration? Or was Yohn the original name and he just wanted to change it? Aunt Lori told me George had a brother that also lived in Caldwell but they had a falling out and never spoke again. Is the brother a Yohn or a Thorward? Maybe this is why I didn’t have any evidence of a brother yet.
If you haven’t guessed yet, I didn’t catch up on my Google Reader blog posts.
I know, I have a very strange sense of humor. Most genealogists I come across get the cemetery fun thing though. I mean I don’t see them as horrible, scary places. I see them as peaceful places to visit our ancestors.
So, onto the fun. Once I got the death certificate of John Menzies, it was time to dissect the information. Which I’ve done on the blog. After the dissection is time to follow leads. The lead I’m exploring today is the cemetery where John was buried, Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
My first stop was Find a Grave to see exactly where the cemetery was and if there was already a listing for John.
Mama and I went down to Claridge Theater and saw “Kentucky Derby”.
I made some progress in the Menzies line of my family tree!
Things that match up:
New facts:
I do wish that it had his parents names on here, but beggars can’t be choosers! I have a tentative set of Menzies in the Scotland parish records on FamilySearch that I’ve found and think is John’s parents and siblings. It would have nice to have known, but I’ll just keep digging!
Meeting of Alethea class at Lillian Burtis’s. Margaret down to meeting. E met me after meeting and went home with me.