Category: Research

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.

Oh well, We all get them

Posted on by Kathleen

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!

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.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Marriage Records

Posted on by Kathleen
Marriage Certificate of Clifford and Jane Redford

In my eyes, marriage records are a beautiful thing. I could say it’s beautiful to know a couple started their life together. That’s very true. However, my favorite part of marriage records is that they have maiden names and parent names for the women. One of my oldest and most often gripes is trying to figure out where the girls in the family disappeared to, or where they came from. It’s a common one among all genealogists.

This particular marriage record really opened up doors in my research. The biggest one being Jane’s last name. We knew it was Parkins/Perkins something. This verified for me that it was in fact Parkin. The great thing about this is it even went a step further and gave me her parents names. I’m not always so lucky to get all these facts. In fact, I was hesitant about this record when I got it because my Aunt had told me she always understood that Jane led a hard life and was orphaned young. That is all true. So I was worried that the information on her parents wouldn’t be known at the time of her wedding. From this record, I was even able to find that Jane and her siblings may have been orphaned and they did bounce around a lot, but it was always to other family members. I can’t speak for what happened in those households, but at least the family names were kept in memory so that I could find them today.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers that I occasionally participate in.

Helpful Maps of Scotland

Posted on by Kathleen

Apparently when you’re researching your family history in Scotland, your Google Earth knowledge doesn’t help a whole lot. It helps for sure, but it’s hard to really see the lay of the land so to speak. I found two great maps though that really helped me. I found these through Google Image Searches. – I really don’t get paid by Google to say these things all the time, I just REALLY like Google. –

Scotland Clan Map. Wikimedia

The first one is this Clan Map. There are all kinds of clan maps around. I like this one because it’s basic and easy to read. I just wanted to see a general area of where the Clans were based.

Continue reading “Helpful Maps of Scotland” →

Goodbye Brickwall, hopefully

Posted on by Kathleen

It came yesterday! Well technically it came on Saturday. We usually get Saturday’s mail when we’re out getting Sunday’s paper. It’s just the way we work it. I can’t believe this baby was in the mailbox all night and I didn’t know it! I ordered this record online on August 1st. I was prepared to wait 4 to 6 weeks like normal. I can’t believe it’s already here.

I have to move past that though and actually look at the record. It was two pages. In fact I was very familiar with the format of it because I’ve been transcribing some marriage records like this for FamilySearch indexing in my spare time. The first page was a bit harder to read but it does give me a few things. It gives me the marriage date of 23 Apr 1896. So now I know that Robert married just 6 months before his mother passed away. It also gives the witness to wedding, one Sarah T Adams. Since the person marrying Robert and Mary was named J S Adams, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say Sarah was his wife.

Now onto the page pictured on the left. The address of 1845 Broadway is actually new. I hadn’t seen that one. Looking it up on Google though, it’s not out of the circle that the Moores lived in during their time in Brooklyn and it’s almost right next to the cemetery where they would bury Robert’s mother in 6 months. Robert’s occupation as an Insurance Agent is nothing new to me. He definitely did that for awhile. Father was William H Moore. Still all good information. Oh wait, there it is. Mother’s Maiden Name. I won’t keep this from you. When it comes to finding out this woman’s maiden name I have the worst luck in the world. When I got the record out of the envelope, I was so scared to even look for this section. Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t blank! It’s always blank! Not this time though. Looks like her maiden name was Starret. I could be wrong but it’s definitely a starting point!

Now lets move onto Mary E Johnson. The only things I’d known about her was what was listed on censuses and William’s (her son) birth certificate. The residence of 196 Macon Street, Brooklyn definitely gives me a starting point for her. Imagine looking for Mary E Johnson in Brooklyn, with parents born in Ireland. Now we move down the record to her parents. Oh! Oh! I’m just going to cry now, both her parents are listed. Arthur Johnson as her father and Annie Moffot (?) as her mother! Of course, if anyone has better ideas for the mother’s name, just let me know. I’m open to discussion.

I did a quick search of Arthur Johnson with a wife Annie. Believe it or not, the best matches came to a family living in Babylon, New York in 1870 and 1880. I want to look in the New York State Censuses before I rush to judgement though. I especially want to look in the 1892 one. That would be 4 years before this marriage, so I would imagine that would be my best chance of  a good match!

Mary Menzies-Winters

Posted on by Kathleen

I’ve been hard at work tracing down my Menzies ancestors. I thought I didn’t have much on this line of the family. Then I found a few things that helped me over a brick wall. So now I’m trying to go slowly and search out these families. For anyone keeping count, though I don’t know why ^.^, my new family-file is up to 270 people. This is all sourced information without me going bonkers on the “allied families”, so this is a big accomplishment for me. It’s so hard for me not to go crazy collecting relatives.

I thought I’d share one of my interesting finds with Mary Menzies-Winters. Mary is the sister of my 3rd Great Grandmother, Jennie T Menzies-Love. She was born around 1840 in Lancashire, England (most likely Liverpool). According to a listing I found on the Love-Menzies Family Outline, she married a man with the surname Winters. So that was my first step in locating her after she disappears from her family household. I found her in 1870 in New York City living with her husband Jacob Winters and their 6 children. By 1880, Jacob was gone and Mary had remarried a man named Theodore Thomas. When I went to the 1900 census, I’ll be honest, I did I quick search for a Mary Thomas, but nothing came up. So I just set out to find her children. My reasoning was, if her children were centrally located, most likely that’s where I’d find Mary.

Continue reading “Mary Menzies-Winters” →

I Love Technology

Posted on by Kathleen

Let me be up front. My usual operating procedure is I get really excited about something, spend all my time on that one thing, then I lose steam. I’m working on spreading myself out a little more in all aspects of my life. I really don’t multi-task well is what I’m getting down to. So we’ll see how my new outlook affects me in August.

Website Re-Design: This is still in the works. I haven’t given up on it or my previous design. I just want to tweak it a bit more. I’ve also decided to actually learn the coding I’m using instead of just trying to manipulate things from a ready-made template. I’ve been much happier with my TNG websites after I ditched the templates and made my own design. I’m hoping the same goes for WordPress. I really want a better integrated website. I’m good with HTML and CSS, so I just have to learn what I need to about some WordPress coding to make my designs work.

Continue reading “I Love Technology” →