Category: Research

One Year and Four Months Later

Posted on by Kathleen

On March 16, 2011, I posted an entry that basically turned into a pep talk for myself. I can’t even believe it was that long ago that I made that pep talk to myself. In that year and four months, so much has happened. Grandpa Moore moved into our house from Seattle, Washington in May of 2011. In May of 2012, Grandpa passed away. We’ve added new additions to the tree and we lost a few too.

In the scope of my family file cleanup (I’m adding a category for that.), I was a year in already at the time. Or close to a year. I had finished up my Dad’s side of the tree and I was working on my Mom’s. In that year, I know I’ve expanded even my Dad’s side, but my Mom’s has grown a lot too.

Continue reading “One Year and Four Months Later” →

I’m Home Again

Posted on by Kathleen

Whew, that was quite a trip I took. We started out in Avoca, New York. The site of our annual family reunion. Only, this year the 4th of July was on a Wednesday and it was very confusing to the planning of the festivities. So, it ended up being just us visiting with the New York branch (with a little South Carolina thrown in!). ha. We stayed overnight. On our way to visit my Aunt Barb in PA, we visited Aunt Diane and Grandma Moore in the cemetery. This was my first time up to New York since Diane’s funeral, so it was an emotional visit.

Valley View Cemetery; Avoca, NY
Valley View Cemetery; Avoca, NY
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A Tale of Many Sisters: Finding Emma Carter’s Mother

Posted on by Kathleen

Most of the times, my genealogy days turn into a long day of entering information into my family tree program of choice. I love the record keeping part of genealogy. The one part I didn’t realize I enjoyed so much is the mystery-solving aspect. Every so often, I can’t be satisfied with just entering names and dates and making lists of places to search newspapers for. Every once and awhile, there are members of my family that just jump out and say investigate me more!

Emma Carter was one of these people. Emma first showed up in the 1870 Census, living with Rachel Miller-Carter and her family. Emma was listed as being 8 years old. That presented a problem to me. Rachel’s husband, Levi Carter passed away in March of 1860. So was Emma an illegitimate child of Rachel’s? Rachel was listed as being 52 years old in 1870, so I was a little doubtful of that. I next started wondering about Rachel’s daughters. She had four daughters and three that were living with her in 1870: Betsy, Sina, Eliza. I eliminated Hannah, the married daughter because I had her tracked through my life. She is my 3rd Great Grandmother. If she was Hannah’s daughter, I would have either known about it already, or I wasn’t going to find out by my usual means. So I decided to eliminate her for now, but not permanently.

I jumped ahead to the 1880 Census, the first one to show relationships, to see what that would bring me in the way of information.

1880 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 0996. Brown County, Ohio. Lewis township, Higginsport precinct, ED 198, p. 342-C (stamped), dwelling 215, family 233, Rachel Carter; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).
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Proof I’m not the first Genealogist in the Family

Posted on by Kathleen

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.

click for full size
click for full size
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My Orange Highlighter Went Crazy

Posted on by Kathleen

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.

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Who I’ve Found in the 1940 Census

Posted on by Kathleen

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).))
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Double Wedding

Posted on by Kathleen

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.))

Time to revisit Naming Patterns

Posted on by Kathleen

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!

A Source Lesson Learned

Posted on by Kathleen
Brown County, Ohio Marriage Records, vol 1, 1857-1860
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;
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!