Category: Research

I’m participating in Women’s History Month writing prompts during the month of March! I love writing prompts because they give you a subject to write about that you might not have thought of yourself. These prompts were thought of by Lisa Alzo of  The Accidental Genealogist.

March 1st: Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.

I think I do a very good job of hiding my undercover preference for my Great-Grandmother Llewellyn Thorward-Moore. Okay, so I don’t hide my obvious preference well. It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t tell you why I feel so connected to her. It might be because I never got to know her, but everyone around me has such warm memories of her. Even when I receive emails from long lost cousins, they tell me all the great memories they have of Llewellyn. I also have learned a lot about her through her records and pictures.

I’ve learned so much about her that I don’t think I could really pin down anything that I’d want to learn. Through her notes, correspondence, photos, and other’s memories I’ve learned more about her then I can ever imagine. Most special to me was seeing genealogy notes. She had obviously been trying to figure out her own family tree from what I can tell. I have her wedding gift registry which gives me the names, addresses, and gifts received for her 1926 wedding to William L Moore. There are little notes about all the milestones from my Grandpa’s early years. Llewellyn left a perfect trail for me to follow in researching her life. I just wish I could say the same about her grandfather! ha.

Really my future goals for researching Llewellyn is just to continue to pour through her journal and documents to get a glimpse into what her life was like. I also hope to continue to hear stories about her from my father and his sisters. They have great stories about growing up with her and William!

About 2 weeks ago, I had a conundrum with George Yohn/George Thorward. The next step in my dilemma was to ask questions. Who else should I ask but my Grandpa Moore! The thing is I’ve had a lot of genealogy conversations over the years and the one thing I forget to do is take notes. I don’t know why I fail to do it everytime. It is what it is. This time was different though.

My next step in this process? Actually having specific questions first. I just realized out of the many, many hours I’ve talked family history with my Dad’s side of the family, we’ve never discussed the Moores except for a little nugget Aunt Lori had for me. So I need to ask Grandpa about what he remembers about the Moores. Then I need to verify the dairy information he gave me last time because I wasn’t clear on it before.

The inset of the picture above is awhat my original notes look like. I am a messy note taker but I can’t stand trying to read those kind of notes on a regular basis. So I got myself a separate notebook just for my neat notes.

I even took both sets of notes with my handy archival pen! I’m learning here folks! Slowly but surely!

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.

— George died April 8 1940 age 88

Continue reading “Seriously, Use City Directories” →

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.

Who are you George?