For years I’ve suspected that my Great Grandmother, Llewellyn Thorward-Moore, was researching her family history. I’ve come to that conclusion because of the notes and papers she left behind. This week, I’m starting to go through some of Grandpa’s final papers. These are the ones he kept with him. In those papers, I found some pretty cool evidence that I’m not the first one in the Moore family to be obsessed with tracing our roots. I only wonder how far they got and if there are any other surprises to find one day.
On Monday morning April 16th, I walked two envelopes out to my mailbox. One was addressed to Kentucky, the other to New Jersey. My mail delivery doesn’t come until close to 4pm, so the envelopes sat in the mailbox for hours before they even left my street.
It would be a gross understatement that I’ve recently become re-obsessed with office supplies. After making a Genealogy Binder, it was all downhill from there. Unfortunately, I was very sick all week and I’m just now coming back around. Funny how that happened. You get sick on Saturday and then by time Saturday rolls around again, you’re finally feeling human again. I hate being sick, I’m so glad it doesn’t happen often. I’m not one to sit still for long!
Before the “Great Illness of 2012”, I had started to decide what my next project was going to be, since I’m going to finish my new file soon. Okay in a couple of months is still soon, it’s been two years! There’s one thing that’s been bugging me and I figure it’s going to have to be that… I have to go back to the Mays and finish them off.
You may be a little surprised to hear me say that. However, when I got lost in the Mays’ the first time around, I was sinking fast. They’re hard to comprehend on the best of days. This project had seemed to be going on forever and most of that time was on the Mays’. So I made a decision to not go insane researching all of the Mays’ children who descended from William Mays and Frances Adkins unless I could find solid links to them. So there are four Mays children who I skipped the first go round because there was no clear (i.e. easy) connection between them and their parents. Mostly because they were not living with or next to their parents in the 1850 US Census.
I’ve been indexing and searching the 1940 index since Monday. I’m sure plenty of you have too. For me, I wasn’t in a huge rush to see the images because obviously it’s another 10 years before another census is released. However, I was still excited to see the images! So I tried first thing and of course, there was an overload. As a website designer I’m very familiar with website overloads and slowed servers. So I was a bit disappointed in that, but decided to just try again on Tuesday.
The images are going up in many different places, the official 1940 US Census site, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, and My Heritage. There are probably more, but those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. For me, I’ve been mostly using the My Heritage site. It works best for my needs and it’s been super fast. Even in full screen view. So because of that I’ve been able to find all my grandparents and Great Grandparents in the 1940 Census already. Which is what I was hoping to find most. I’ve got some more generations in certain (more rural) parts of the country, but for now I’m just going to share my Grandparents and Great-Grandparents.
William L Moore, Llewellyn T Moore, William T Moore ((1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 2340. Essex County, New Jersey. West Caldwell township, ED 373, sheet 02-A, family 38, William L Moore; digital image, My Heritage (http://www.myheritage.com).))
I know I’ve suspected it before on my Taylor lines, but I’ve never actually found the records to prove a double wedding until now. Only this isn’t my Taylor line, but my Moyer/Evans line.
click for larger size
On October 17, 1901, brothers James Franklin Evans and William P Evans (they aren’t added to the website yet, still gathering their details), married twin sisters Nora and Cora Fiscus in Clermont County, Ohio. ((Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1899-1903, vol 26, p. 350, no 700, J F Evans-Nora A Fiscus; Family History Library, 35 NW Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.)) ((Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1899-1903, vol 26, p. 351, no 701, W P Evans-Cora A Fiscus; Family History Library, 35 NW Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.))
Fun fact: James was also a twin, but his twin sister Angeline did not partake in the double wedding, she married Robert Dunbar the previous year. ((Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1899-1903, vol 26, p. 161, no 18904, Robert C Dunbar-Angie Evans; Family History Library, 35 NW Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.))
I’ve recently gone hog wild on the Scotlands People website. I must admit, this time I didn’t even use the FamilySeach indexes to help me along. Probably not a smart move on my part, but oh well now!
All that matters is that I have many names to analyze for the Love family.
To start off, I’ll be using the naming pattern that I wrote about here and Irish ones found here to “guess” what the key names will be to go back one generation from my current Love family generation wall, Andrew Love.
WHAT I CAN “GUESS” ABOUT ANDREW USING SCOTTISH PATTERNS AND ANDREW’S CHILDRENS’ NAMES.
Andrew’s father is possibly named Robert.
Andrew’s mother is possibly named Jean.
Andrew’s fraternal grandfather is possibly named Andrew.
Andrew’s maternal grandfather is possibly named William.
WHAT I CAN “GUESS” ABOUT ANDREW USING IRISH PATTERNS AND ANDREW’S CHILDRENS’ NAMES.
Andrew’s father is possibly named Robert.
Andrew’s mother is possibly named Jean.
Andrew’s third son was possibly named after Andrew.
Andrew’s third daughter was possibly named after her mother, Agnes.
Andrew’s oldest brother is possibly named Thomas.
Andrew’s second oldest brother is possibly named William.
WHAT I FIGURED OUT ABOUT ANDREW’S PARENTS AND SIBLINGS FROM THE ACTUAL RECORDS.
Andrew’s father is named Robert (Scottish – 1/4, Irish – 1/6)
Andrew’s mother is named Jean (Scottish – 2/4, Irish – 2/6)
Andrew’s fraternal grandfather is named James (Scottish – 2/4)
I don’t have Andrew’s maternal grandfather yet (Scottish – 2/4)
Andrew’s third son is named Andrew (Irish 3/6)
Andrew’s third daughter is named Agnes, like her mother (Irish 4/6)
Andrew’s oldest brother is not named Thomas, but he did have a brother named Thomas. (Irish 4/6)
Again Andrew’s second oldest brother is not named William, but he did have a brother named William. (Irish 4/6)
IN CONCLUSION
Naming patterns aren’t an exact science.
Just because the Loves stuck to more of the Irish patterns doesn’t mean they’re Irish. It also doesn’t mean that they aren’t Irish. It just means that they used family names.
Naming patterns are fun to use, but usually I only find that the parents part of them fit into my families.
Aren’t naming patterns a great way to make you look more at your family? I’m very excited to have found all 9 of Andrew’s siblings (I think that’s all!) and even his parents and grand parents. I’m once again blocked. I haven’t completely filled in Robert Love’s parents and siblings. I don’t even know if I have them all. What I do know is that in Beith parish, there is a farm/village called Hoodsyard and it’s because of Hoodsyard that I was able to distinguish my Loves from all the other Loves. Now to figure out where the other ones fit into the family!
Brown County, Ohio Marriage Records, vol 1, 1857-1860
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned during my cleanup is to always track down what the original source was. For me, I like to know what website I got each record from, but that’s not the most important part of the citation. When you’re citing your sources, it’s most important that if something crazy happens, you could actually track down that original source again if the need arose.
For example, say one day (a horrible day) FamilySearch lost all their servers and records. (I did say a horrible day.) In light of this unfortunate (and completely fictional) incident, I decide I’m going to Brown County, Ohio to research the Carter family because that’s where I am in my cleanup. Well, I knew I last left off with Daniel Moyer and his wife Hannah Carter. However, I want to look at their marriage record for more clues, or even the same time period of marriages to track down their siblings. Well, you can’t always do that from what you get from the FamilySearch indexes. They don’t always leave reference numbers.
This is where my lesson comes in. I’ve started going to the very first images in a group of images and the picture above is what I find. This gives me the exact direct source information for the marriage record of Daniel and Hannah. With this information, I would know exactly where I’m going at the Brown County Courthouse in order to find this record in it’s original form.
Probate Court, Brown County, Ohio, “Marriage Records, 1818-1939”, 1857-1860, vol. 1, p. 147, no. 7723, for Daniel Moyer-Hannah Carter;
Not that there was much information on the original record, but you never know!
Today is a very special day, and I didn’t even know it. Today is the two year blogiversary for Misadventures of a Genealogist! That’s pretty special for me. I can’t help but think of all the cousins and relations I’ve met through this website. The biggest thing this blog has given me though is the foundation to learning more about my passion of genealogy. Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve learned so much from my fellow GeneaBloggers.
Even though I’m coming up on the end of my family file cleanup, (which I started sometime in 2010), sometimes I just love to dig into my Original file and clean that up a little too. I just can’t seem to let it go. Am I going to always have two working files? Or will I eventually scrap the original? I just can’t decide. I don’t think I’ll ever fully delete the original file.
With all the new databases that come out on a regular basis, sometimes I want to just dig into that old file, and just test the waters out a bit. Sometimes it’s really just to see if the database is going to be a very prolific resource for my family tree. I’m never really sure if the more rural areas of my family recorded the vital records or not. I know it wasn’t mandated until the 1900s in those states, so I know it’s a toss up.
Two of the databases I’ve really been digging into is the Ohio, County Births and Ohio, County Marriages databases over at FamilySearch. I’m digging up my Ohio roots right now on my file cleanup, so I’m really able to progress. I’ve already had some of these records recorded, but only from an index at FamilySearch, so I didn’t have all the information from the original record.
Ohio Birth Report, 1856-1909
Yesterday though, I wanted a little break from the cleanup. So instead of just sitting in front of the TV watching the Housewives on Bravo, I opened up my Original file and I printed out the above report. The great thing is that I used the instructions discussed by Russ Worthington on his blog about preparing for the 1940 U.S. Census. Only I didn’t prepare for the 1940 U.S. Census.
I prepared for the Ohio, County Births database. I filtered in individuals with a Birthplace containing Ohio. Then I filtered out anyone born before 1856 and after 1909. Voila. I had an Ohio Birth Report to work from. It turned out to be 18 pages long, but my printer prints on both sides of the paper, so I went ahead and printed it out for ease of use.
After all that preparation was done, the dryer buzzed and my full day took over. Hey, I have the list though, which means now when I have some extra time, I can just bring up the Original file, take out the list and work from that. The great thing is even if I input information into my old database, I always have that up when I’m working from my new database. So I can easily find my sources and information in my old program once I get to that person in the new database.
Sure it might not make much sense to work in such a haphazard way, but then again if it wasn’t that way, it wouldn’t be me researching. It’s how I roll. That’s right, I roll back and forth over and over again.
Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1881, p. 516, no 299, Lafayette Moyer-Mollie Howell;
One of the reasons I haven’t been posting much is because I’ve been catching up on my family file cleanup. It’s been going really well. I’m onto the Moyer line of my family tree. I’ve also been soaking up the Ohio, County Marriage and Birth images that were added to FamilySearch. At first I wasn’t going to do new research into Daniel Moyer’s (my 3rd great grandfather) brother. I know he had siblings, and I knew I’d get back around to it, but I couldn’t help myself with these county marriages. What would a little search hurt right?
Well, I found Henry Moyer up to the 1880 census. I know he had two children, Emma and Lafayette. I was having problems finding the children after they left their father’s house. For Lafayette it would be the 1900 census and Emma the 1880. As you all know, the girls take a little more leg work. Well, I found Lafayette in the marriage records as you can see above. However, it was a pleasant surprise to also find that Henry Moyer, appeared with the couple. This is the first time I’ve actually had a parent appear with the child. Lafayette was well over the age of consent (21), so that wasn’t the reason why.
I think what I want to do is learn more about the marriage records from the 1800’s and figure out what little surprises like this could actually mean about the family.
