Surname Saturday: Parkin

Posted on by Kathleen

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.

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Update from Yesterday

Posted on by Kathleen

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].

Living Descendants in 1905

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!

Alternative Methods

Posted on by Kathleen

I like to keep things honest on this blog. So I have to tell you, I haven’t touched my genealogy since at least Sunday. I did index some records for FamilySearch during Glee this week, but that was about all I did in the genealogical sense. I also haven’t gotten any further on getting my WordPress design done. I’m about to the point where I’m going to have to call relatives for a bit of a pep talk. Low self confidence never helps these situations. I’ve been putting it off way too long!

I did have a comment on my last entry that was caught in my SPAM filter. I have both Akismet and a CAPTCHA image running though so it might not be SPAM. The poster said they were trying to view my blog on an iPad and it wasn’t working. So if any technology advanced people who have an iPad can let me know if this is a problem, I’ll try and fix it with the new design! It could just be that the iPad is like all those web browsers, it just doesn’t display proper coding like it should. Firefox and Opera are the only browsers I’ve seen that are most consistent when it comes to displaying code properly.

That’s not why I’m writing today though. I’m writing to inform you of alternative methods to finding genealogy records. A few years back (I can’t remember when), someone came across my family tree on Ancestry or this website (Can’t remember that either! Eek!). They said they had “found an eBay auction” they thought I’d be interested in. According to said auction, it was from an estate sale. At the time of the email, I wasn’t very good at checking my email regularly, so I was late for the auction. I did something I don’t regret though. I saved the preview pictures used in the auction.

Article for Reuben T and Anna Webb
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Mystery Monday: A Postcard

Posted on by Kathleen

It’s been a crazy week here in Maryland! The last few days have been spent dealing with flooding and repairs to our roof. Now that those crazy rain totals are behind us, I’m getting back into my genealogy. Here is this week’s Mystery Monday.

Things I know about this picture:

  1. This picture is on the front of a postcard. I’m assuming it’s from the same time period of the George Thorward car picture. His isn’t on a postcard but in a decorative postcard-like envelope. It is also labeled with ” 1st Car 1905″ and has a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it.
  2. Most likely the picture was from New York City. I’d have to look it up again to be sure. I’m thinking it was from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. In fact, the car looks like the 1904 First Rolls Royce.  Which would fit in with the 1905 date written on the George Thorward picture.

Things I want to know about this picture:

  1. Who is the family posing in this picture? I’m not sure but the girl looks familiar. So I might have more pictures of her in my files somewhere.
  2. Was this in fact taken at the World’s Fair? That would give me a date on the photo to better place the family.

Mystery Monday is a weekly series that I do here on my blog. It is also a blogging theme at GeneaBloggers now. Feel free to post your own mystery photos or stories and comment with the link!

Storm Center… Leeny?

Posted on by Kathleen

I don’t know how it happened, but it did. In my family when there is some kind of havoc, I’m in charge of what I call the “Command Center”. I’m usually the one who is home at the time of whatever havoc is occurring. There is a certain responsibility in this position. The main responsibility is to REMAIN CALM. This is the first time I’ve been mobilized and it certainly isn’t going to be the last.

Storm Center 2010
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Mystery Monday: Henry Mays

Posted on by Kathleen

The photo I was going to post today will have to wait. I was entering the Mays family into my family file yesterday. The Mays family is always a frustration for me because the sheer amount of them. They also loved to name their kids the same 10 names. It wasn’t uncommon to have 3 cousins, named William, and they were all born within a year of each other. That’s not what I’m writing about today though. My mystery is with Henry Mays.

He first shows up in 1900 with John and Celia Mays. He is listed as their son, with a birth date of 1885. This was always a little sketchy for my Mom because this puts him at 13 years younger then his nearest sibling. I did find another male child that was still born in 1875, so that pushes it to 10. Still, that is quite a leap. Mom always suspected that Henry might have been John and Celia’s grandson, born to their daughter Nancy. Nancy was 15  at the time of Henry’s birth. There is absolutely no evidence of this though so he’s John and Celia’s son in my mind.

John Mays household, 1900. Devils Fork, Elliott County, Kentucky.
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Sentimental Sunday: Ellis Island

Posted on by Kathleen

Every genealogy researcher eventually comes across Ellis Island. For me, my first experience was when my mother started to get me into genealogy. She was researching the Thorward Family. There was a ship manifest from Ellis Island that listed George Thorward. I’m sorry, he was listed as Georg Thorward. To be perfectly honest, there were two manifests. There you’ve dragged it all out of me. One manifest was from 1898 and the other from 1901. Funny enough, both trips were made aboard the ship Southwark. In both trips, his departure city is listed as Antwerp, Belgium. That’s a good clue to keep in handy when I finally start trying to track him in Germany.

He most likely was making trips back to his homeland for some reason or another. That or he was going there on business. I wasn’t even a twinkle in the universe yet, so I can’t tell you exactly. I can theorize though, which is one of my favorite things to do by the way. Ask me next week and I’ll spin you a yarn about his trip home for a cousin’s wedding, or maybe how he was going home for his granny’s funeral. It’s just how I get kicks. As long as I’m not passing these stories down to my currently non-existent grand kids, I figure it’s harmless fun. You should see what I do when there are traffic jams, boy can I spin some yarns with that!

So there’s some sentimental reasons I feel a kinship with Ellis Island. Technically, I haven’t found a single relative that actually immigrated through Ellis Island. All my relatives came before it opened in 1892. In fact, besides George’s trips I don’t think I’ve found more than two other relatives passing through on trips abroad.

Ellis Island Recreation

You probably can imagine my surprise when I found the building you see above. My mother has a little bit of a Christmas Village obsession. Every now and again, Cecil’s Country Store will have a blowout sale. They sell all kinds of buildings for Christmas villages. It’s an awesome place to go and look through. It’s actually an old post office and store from 1906. While Mom was salivating over houses, castles, and other buildings for her village, I ran across one box that said Ellis Island. Then I looked closer and the price tag said $5! Well, I got in the spirit of the moment and just went for it! Sure it’s only a small part of the actual building. Could you imagine fitting a reproduction of the whole thing somewhere? Where would you even put that?

I know it’s not exactly the most meaningful purchase I’ll ever make but it was one of the more sentimental. In the few hours I’ve had it setup on my desk (what a great way to avoid clutter!), I’ve already looked at it and smiled more times than I can count.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Birth Order

Posted on by Kathleen

Randy Seaver puts up a fun genealogy mission every Saturday night at his blog, Genea-Musings. Here is this week’s challenge!

1)  Pick one of your ancestral lines – any one – patrilineal, matrilineal, zigzag, from a famous ancestor, etc.  Pick a long one if you can.

2)  Tell us which position in the birth order that your ancestor was in each generation.  For example “third child, first son.”  Also list how many children were born to these parents.

3)  Share your Birth Order work with us on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, etc.

I chose my Taylor line because it’s the one that goes back the farthest. These are coming straight from the tree my Grandma gave me in eighth grade so I haven’t gotten solid proof on the farther back generations yet.

1. Kathleen Moore (1983- ) third child, second daughter of William and Georgia (Mays) Moore (1 son, 2 daughters)
2. Georgia Mays (1959- ) sixth child, fourth daughter of Stanley and Emogene (Taylor) Mays (5 daughters, 2 sons)
3. Emogene Taylor (1929-2005) sixth child, second daughter of Marshall and Lula (Applegate) Taylor (5 sons, 3 daughters)
4. Marshall Taylor (1892-1958) second child, first son of George and Mollie (Webb) Taylor (4 daughters, 7 sons)
5. George Taylor (1862-1913) fourth child, second son of Marshall and Cecilia (Heaverin) Taylor (6 sons, 5 daughters)
6. Marshall Taylor (1823-1899) first child, first son of William and Nancy (Matthews) Taylor (3 sons, 2 daughters)
7. William Taylor (1797-1849) fourth child, fourth son of Bartholomew and Leah (Staton) Taylor (5 sons)
8. Bartholomew Taylor (1756-1847) first child, first son of Abraham and Mary (Walker) Taylor (4 sons, 5 daughters)
9. Abraham Taylor (1726-1792) second child, second son of William and Sarah (Cooper) Taylor (3 sons, 3 daughters)
10. William Taylor (?-1773?) (4 sons, 2 daughters)
11. John Taylor (?-1748?)

Bartholomew is really the farthest I’ve researched back. He’s the Revolutionary War veteran. What I’ve been trying to do is get the birth, marriage, and death records for these main ancestors before I move on. That hasn’t exactly happened the way I wanted. I had the best of intentions, really I did! William and John, numbers 10 and 11 respectively, didn’t get birth order numbers so I guess they don’t count. I found their siblings names in wills of the parents so I don’t have birthdates for the siblings, therefore I can’t determine where everyone is in the birth order yet.

Thanks Randy for yet another fun little challenge!

Open Thread Thursday on Friday?

Posted on by Kathleen

My internet took a vacation yesterday. I guess everyone needs a vacation every once and awhile even my internet. So because of my internet’s decision to take the day off, I didn’t get a chance to post my take on the Open Thread Thursday at GeneaBloggers yesterday. I was really interested in what people said about this since I’m neck deep into a website redesign! I took notes and tested a few things with the itty bitty internet connection that I had. So here’s my take on what’s necessary!

Continue reading “Open Thread Thursday on Friday?” →