I’m chugging along in my Mays family research. That is, if chugging along means I work on it about half an hour every few days? That’s all my brain can take of these nomads. I’ve lucked out recently though.
Last week I was playing around with search terms on Ancestry and I hit a goldmine.
I decided to take a break from my Mays family this weekend. I love them, but they’re migraines waiting to happen. Researching the Mays family gives me the same feeling I get after I’ve taken a dose of Benadryl. Like I’ve got a head full of fog.
When I got started, I just typed in Helen Menzies at FamilySearch. She’s one I have information on but I still wasn’t able to find her after she left the family house between the 1841 and 1851 England censuses. I know from William Menzies letter that Helen/Ellen was married to a man named Charles, who traveled, and she had more than one son.
I found this record on FamilySearch and it matches beautifully!
Continue reading “Finding Helen”Two weeks ago, I visited Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell, New Jersey. This cemetery is most likely overflowing with ancestors of mine. Until I research more, I think I’ve hit the limit of my knowledge of them.
This is the closest I can come to laying out where my family plots are. They could be slightly off though. We weren’t exactly in the cemetery hunting mode. We were in wedding mode!
Continue reading “GEA: Prospect Hill Cemetery”When I was a kid, my Mom used to hate taking us to the store. It was a guarantee that one of us would get caught in the excitement at whatever store we were at, and we’d lose track of her. More than once my Mom has told the story of my sister walking into columns at the store, despite numerous warnings of “Amanda. Amanda. Watch out Amanda. AMANDA.” BAM. Of course I never did that… I did use to follow the wrong Mom around the store though… Okay so I did that last week.
Never has this handicap of ours become more apparent then it did today. I have a few hours to myself. So I decided to finally add some tombstone photos I took at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell to Find A Grave. First thing I noticed when reviewing the photos I’d added a few years back was that I missed a few! Somehow when I got all the Thorward photos from my very helpful Photo Volunteer, I forgot to add some of them! He left it to me, and look what happens!
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!
Theodore L Leonard
1862-1928
Grace M Love
Wife of Theodore Leonard
1873-1923
Tombstone Tuesday is a Daily Blogging Topic from GeneaBloggers.
We made it back from our weekend trip to Jersey. It was touch and go for a little bit, but we made it a little after midnight. I’ve been to very few weddings in my lifetime. It comes from living all by ourselves down here in Maryland. So I walked into this with my mind wide open.
Wordless Wednesday is a Daily Blogging Theme from GeneaBloggers.
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.
Continue reading “Surname Saturday: Parkin”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].
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!