Author: Kathleen

The Llewellyn Project

Posted on by Kathleen

On Friday, I hinted about a project that I have coming up. I meant to have the entry ready to go for Sunday, but things got busy during my trip over the weekend and I didn’t get a chance. So I’m here now to give a little info on it.

I often talk about my Great Grandmother’s journal here on the blog. The diary starts on January 1, 1923, or at least from what I can tell. So on January 1, 2011 I will be starting my Llewellyn Project. In a separate section of the blog, I will be doing a daily transcription from her journal. I will slowly work my way through the diary. Adding in pictures of relevant people or places when I can. The diary goes on for close to three years. This isn’t going to be an overnight finish. I hope to finally finish getting through it though. Sometimes it wasn’t more than a few lines, but those few lines are a great glimpse into the past. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I hope to!

January 1st is my deadline for my site re-design. If it’s done earlier, well that would be great!

Busy Busy Busy

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The day after we said goodbye to our dear old mailbox, I did something stupid. In hindsight, I probably couldn’t have avoided it. It was probably going to happen no matter what kind of circumstances led to it. Alright, I’ll tell you. I fell down the front porch stairs. I didn’t fall down all the stairs luckily. Just the last two. The first night I was afraid I broke it, but luckily it’s just a sprain. The problem is I’m a horrible patient. The first two days I had problems getting comfortable whether I was sitting or standing. Now the problem is not over-doing things now that I’m finally on the mend. I just can’t sit still!

Click for full size

The second thing I’ve been doing is troubleshooting my new website design. I like keeping you guys updated on my progress because it keeps me from quitting. This design is all my own. I haven’t modified any templates to suit my needs. So it’s a labor of love that is taking awhile to do. My current issue is getting all three columns to line up. I need that middle one to scootch over a bit so the blog sidebar can move up in line with the rest of the layout. You can’t see it but it’s there all the way at the bottom. Then I’ll conquer the customization of all the WordPress things like the look of a blog entry and the sidebar customization. I’ll tell you though, more than once I’ve wanted to download a theme from somewhere and just be done with it! This will be more satisfying by far.

Hopefully it gets figured out by January 1st, because that’s when I’m starting my Llewellyn Project. I’ll tell you more about that during Sentimental Sunday.

The Comedic Chapter

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One day, I hope to write a memoir. Not to publish or distribute. Just a  way to maybe connect with future generations of my family. Llewellyn’s journal has made me feel connected to her and I want to recreate that in some small way.

If I were to write my memoir, I’d include all those funny child anecdotes, and not to mention all those teenage years where I was unruly and needed a good talking to. I’d be sure to include how I dealt with the fact that I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. All that drama and deep thinking wouldn’t be a very accurate portrayal of my life. To be perfectly honest, we’re pretty funny in this family. Our family is not only filled with drama, loss, and tears. We’ve had a whole lot of laughter too. The latest adventure I’m definitely putting in my memoir. It would be titled “The Comedic Chapter”.

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Surname Saturday: Parkin

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This is the last surname I’m highlighting on my Dad’s side for the blog! I didn’t mean to take so long in getting this written up but I had an early wake-up today and decided to get it done.

Where does the Parkin name originate from?

This surname has been a source of frustration for me for a long time. First we thought it was Perkins, then Parkins, and finally Parkin. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was completely wrong at this point and I ended up with the surname of Parker. My Parkin family originates in England. The father of my “first family” came to America through Castle Garden in October of 1874 and his family followed in July of 1875.  According to the Public Profiler Surname Distribution Map, in 1881 the Parkin surname was most concentrated around the midlands of England. That would make sense because my Parkin family departed England by way of Liverpool.

Did the Parkins stay in New Jersey?

Yes. I haven’t found all the girls after they married yet, but it looks like the Parkin family was a small but close one.

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Update from Yesterday

Posted on by Kathleen

I can’t help myself. I have to chart out all those children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Reuben and Anna Webb. See yesterday’s post for the catalyst to this list. For those that aren’t me and aren’t familiar with the way my family tree works. The Webb family is on my mother’s side of the family. My maternal grandmother’s to be exact. This family has been for the most part verified by me because for some reason I love the Webb family. Reuben’s family is actually all researched by me, so that’s why I’m so anxious to pinpoint all these kids. The hard part is not counting the kids born AFTER my 1905 target date for the article written and not counting children that had passed away before 1905.

Reuben Thompson Webb married Anna Sidwell 16 May 1835 in Brown County, Ohio [1. Brown County, OH Marriage Records 1818-1939, FamilySearch].

Living Descendants in 1905

Okay, I did leave in all 6 of Reuben and Anna’s children. Elizabeth died in infancy and I think James died after or during the Civil War. In all, I’m really surprised how off I am! This shows that you shouldn’t be too confident just by using census records! I had a few marriage indexes to help at the time but most of this research was done in the early stages of my genealogy. So really I’m anxious to see what else I could unearth now! I’m going to have to make time for that this weekend or during the week sometime!

Alternative Methods

Posted on by Kathleen

I like to keep things honest on this blog. So I have to tell you, I haven’t touched my genealogy since at least Sunday. I did index some records for FamilySearch during Glee this week, but that was about all I did in the genealogical sense. I also haven’t gotten any further on getting my WordPress design done. I’m about to the point where I’m going to have to call relatives for a bit of a pep talk. Low self confidence never helps these situations. I’ve been putting it off way too long!

I did have a comment on my last entry that was caught in my SPAM filter. I have both Akismet and a CAPTCHA image running though so it might not be SPAM. The poster said they were trying to view my blog on an iPad and it wasn’t working. So if any technology advanced people who have an iPad can let me know if this is a problem, I’ll try and fix it with the new design! It could just be that the iPad is like all those web browsers, it just doesn’t display proper coding like it should. Firefox and Opera are the only browsers I’ve seen that are most consistent when it comes to displaying code properly.

That’s not why I’m writing today though. I’m writing to inform you of alternative methods to finding genealogy records. A few years back (I can’t remember when), someone came across my family tree on Ancestry or this website (Can’t remember that either! Eek!). They said they had “found an eBay auction” they thought I’d be interested in. According to said auction, it was from an estate sale. At the time of the email, I wasn’t very good at checking my email regularly, so I was late for the auction. I did something I don’t regret though. I saved the preview pictures used in the auction.

Article for Reuben T and Anna Webb
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