Author: Kathleen

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Original

Posted on by Kathleen

The last week, I’ve been slowly entering my mother’s side of the family into my new family file. It’s a little slower going because there are more of them than Dad’s side. I also had a master list of birthdays I made at the family reunion last year for Dad’s side. So I was able to put them in quickly and use the source I titled, “2009 Family Reunion Master List”. I’m new to citing Personal Family sources, so I was a bit baffled at first on how to really cite it. Then I realized I was once again over-analyzing something. So I gave the title as stated above, I’m listed as the other, and in the description I wrote that I compiled the list by going around to everyone at the family reunion and getting their birth dates and marriage dates where needed. It turned out to be a big project for me that year!

On my Mom’s side I now have the original copy of the Family Tree. This is the one my Grandma brought when I was in the eighth grade. I ended up photocopying it at my Mom’s work, and I later reproduced it in Excel and re-printed it. In that time though, I think I might have tried to “fix” it. I think things got a little turned around. I’ve decided to no longer use my photocopy version. I am lucky that my Aunt sent Grandma’s copy to Maryland for me.

Taylor-Webb Family Tree. This has been missing the letters for as long as I can remember!
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Things I’ve Learned

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I am halfway through a 7 day free trial with Footnote.com. I’m trying to make the most of the collections that aren’t free since I can’t afford right now to have a second subscription website. These are the things I’ve learned so far:

City Directories aka The reason I get up early every morning this week.

  • William Wallace Love was not still living in Newark at the time of his wife’s death in 1890. They had to have moved to Roseland at the time.
  • I have listings for William W Love, grocer, for 1875 through 1884.
  • Some years there is a listing for Love Bros grocery. There was never an ad, but that would have been interesting!
  • William H Moore was not listed in Brooklyn in 1865. His daughter is born in New York in 1865, so they must have lived in another borough before their move to Chicago.
  • William H Moore has always been very consistent with the use of his middle initial. This is made funnier because I know how insistent my Dad is on using his. They wouldn’t have to do that if they’d stop naming their boys William! 🙂
  • William H Moore lived at 56 Foster for the majority of his time in Chicago, which was from 1866 to 1870.
  • I couldn’t find a listing for him in 1871 Chicago. This could be why Cook County couldn’t find a birth record for Robert James Moore in 1871. Maybe they moved out of the city? I’m going to try lining up his location with the Chicago fire and see if he would have been effected, though now I see he might have already left Chicago.
William H Moore, 1869. Chicago.
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Tombstone Tuesday: William L Mays

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This is the tombstone of my mom’s brother. He passed away when he was just 2 years old. He left a big impact in the family. Until her dying day, my grandmother was still mourning for the little boy she lost so early in life. I always found it kind of surreal that both of my parents lost brothers so young.

Tombstone Tuesday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers.

Surname Saturday: Menzies

Posted on by Kathleen

To be quite honest with you, I’ve started this post 8 different times. Each time I used way too many details then I really wanted to use. It’s just once I get started, I can’t stop! So here’s the run down on my Menzies family, without all the not-needed details.

My Menzies officially start with the marriage of John Menzies and Jane Ferris/Farish. Her last name could be either. I’m using Ferris in my database with an AKA of Farish, just to be safe. I recently found the Menzies family in Parish Registers that were indexed on FamilySearch. It shows the marriage of John and Jane on 27 May 1825. It also goes on to show the births and christenings/baptisms of their first 5 children (James, Margaret, Alexander, Helen, John). You can read about the place they are from in my last Google Earth Adventure. Their last 5 children (William, Charlotte, Mary, George, Jane) were born after the family moved to Liverpool, Lancashire, England. I’ve found 2 of the children in Parish Registers there.

In 1853, most of the family packed their bags and moved to America. Alexander was already settled there as a druggist and the family was living with him in 1860. I still have to trace the family that stayed in England. As for the family in America, I’ve found most of them in the New York City area. They seemed to stay close to each other. There are still some gaps to fill in but I hope to fill them in soon. It was from this original family that the Menzies married into the Loves.

Now we’ll get on to the bit of mystery from the naming patterns of yesterday. I did find a family that does match up very well with my Menzies family. If I’m correct, this is one more generation back. Looking at the Parish Registers for Morton by Thornhill, Scotland, I really think I may have discovered John’s parents and siblings (Mary, Alexander, Jean, Helen). Just using the search terms of Menzies in Morton by Thornhill brings up all kinds of matches that would fit into the naming pattern. I can’t just add them though because there isn’t any evidence of this connection. I did find a birth record for a John Menzies born in 1804. It lists his parents as James and Helen. These names match perfectly with the naming pattern if it is true. A lot of the kids also fit in with the siblings names. This isn’t concrete evidence though, so I can’t add them to my tree yet. I have set up a separate file just for these Menzies offshoots. I’m hesitant to add them to my new, improved file for now.

Next on my Menzies To Do List:

  • Locate a death certificate for Jane T Menzies-Love and her parents. I know all 3 died in America, most likely New Jersey.  I have a fear of sending away for New Jersey records, but I’ll just have to overcome it.
  • Find the England branch of the family and expand them if I can.
  • Fill in the missing censuses for the American branch. Most importantly John and Jane Menzies in 1870.

Scottish Naming Patterns

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I’ve had a pretty busy few weeks. If all goes smoothly, I will have a Surname Saturday post this weekend. I found something useful among some of my old papers that I wanted to share. To set the scene, I was trying to decide if I should mention a hypothesis I have about a generation of the Menzies family. I remembered that I had a list of 18th and 19th century English naming patterns. I decided to consult the list and if the names from the family matched the patterns, I’d go ahead and mention it. I’m sorry to inform you, you’ll just have to wait to see if it matched. Until Saturday, you can have fun with these helpful naming schemes. I’m unsure of the exact source. I’m pretty sure one of us printed it off in our beginning days.

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Oh well, We all get them

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I knew I was tempting fate. Did that stop me? Of course not. It was so simple the first time, surely the second time would prove just as simple, right?

I know where I went wrong. I didn’t find this record in any index before sending away for it. I was hoping a scribbled date on the back of a cemetery deed was enough. I assumed he died in Brooklyn since he lived there for over 30 years. That’s where assuming things get you! I’ll just file this one in my paper records right next to the one from Chicago. That one let me know they didn’t have a record of his birth in Cook County for Robert. They checked 1870-1872 and found nothing. These are the breaks, I’ll keep looking! If he didn’t die in Brooklyn, he must have died in New Jersey. I’ll have to check directories and other things to see if there is any record of him in Caldwell between 1920 and 1925.

Have some Stats

Posted on by Kathleen

Shortly after 10PM on Sunday night, I finished entering my Dad’s side of the family into my website. The above image shows the Top 30 Surnames from his side of my family tree. The surprising part is that LOVE is the top surname. I used to only have 12 LOVE family members in my family tree. William Wallace LOVE and his 11 children. Now I also have his parents and siblings. I feel very accomplished! I owe it all to the Diner Tree, which gave me a step in the right direction.

Entering the information manually this time gave me a great opportunity to sync the ID numbers between all mediums. Now my Family File (RootsMagic and FTM), my website (TNG), and all my files are organized by the same Person ID number. When I want to find anything having to do with Llewellyn in my photos, I know she’s located under number 0049. This ID number is associated with her in every aspect of my research so there is no confusion later.

I can’t wait to see what the stats are on my Mom’s side once I trim down all the extra families. I really did have an impulse problem when it came to entering people in the beginning. I haven’t decided if I’ll use the old tree as a guideline yet. I think it’s a valuable tool but I did find quite a few errors in it. I just feel better knowing whatever I put up now will be sourced and documented. The Taylor tree is probably the most popular line I have, and it’s also the most incorrect on the internet!

Mystery Monday: The Return

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Things I know about this picture

  • My Grandfather is the young child front and center. The older girl is holding him up.

Things I want to know about this picture

  • Who are the other children?
  • If they are related, which side of the family are they from? William’s? Llewellyn’s?
  • If it is through Llewellyn, then is it through the Thorwards or the Loves?
  • It could be a collection of children from different families, a family reunion maybe?

Mystery Monday is an ongoing series I’m doing to showcase the photos I am having problems identifying. I hope one day someone will land on the site and recognize a relative!

Don’t Forget to Document your Information!

Posted on by Kathleen

One thing I forgot to do when I started my family tree many moons ago was document what my immediate family was doing and when. I don’t know why I didn’t think it was important. How many times to I get frustrated that someone just up and moved to a whole new state? Well, I should be ashamed of myself for feeling that way! My brother moved to Miami, Florida shortly after he graduated high school and I never made note of it. Don’t worry I’ve corrected that mistake!

My new mission is seeking out the dates of where and what  my family was doing. We moved around quite a bit compared to previous generations. I want to at least make notes of it. I used to have all my Mom’s family homes marked in Google Earth but I didn’t know at the time how to back those up and lost them in a computer crash. I hope she doesn’t mind going over it again.

One of the valuable pieces of documentation given to me was my Dad’s Marine Corps DD-214. It’s basically a discharge paper you get when you are exiting the military. That’s his boot camp graduation photo up top, and I made sure to log that into my family file too. In my scanned image I didn’t crop out the graduation date and officers that are listed along the bottom of the photo, I’m sure I’ll want those later in case of file corruption.

Now all I have to do is figure out which one is my 17 year old father.