In honor of Earth Day, I’m going to show you a little glimpse into what we worked on recently. Our first vegetable garden. It’s our first try, and we’re still noobies when it comes to things like this, but we’re trying. That’s all that really matters right?
After I made my Mays Family post yesterday, I went back through the Kentucky Death Records on Ancestry.com. I decided to just put random details in there and see what came up. You may not be able to tell from the size of that death certificate but that is Jurena Mays’ death certificate. It shows her married name as Adkins. So that was a nice little hint. It also showed her parents as William Mays and Anna Click. That answered the questions about whose family she belonged to, but not my questions about why she showed up out of the blue in 1870.
Having the tip of the married name of Adkins, and the Informant name of Milburn Adkins, I set about finding Census records for Jurena. What happens next is why I took a two day break from the Mays family. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
1900 was the first census I tried to find. I couldn’t find Jurena anywhere. I tried all the combinations I could, but I couldn’t find her. So I jumped to Milburn Adkins. In all the remaining census years Milburn has a wife whose name varies. The birthday never various. The birthday matches up with Ellen Mays, but her name is mostly listed as Eliza, except for one year when she was known as Eliza Ellen. So my immediate next thought was that this must be Ellen’s husband and he acted as informant for his sister-in-law. Only when I started relaying this information to my Mom. She broke out her old notes, she had a complete different husband for Ellen.
It’s about that moment, I threw my hands in the air. Put on my fluffy pajamas, and grabbed myself a cold drink. I was done. So now I’m going to take a break from the Mays family and focus for a bit on the Taylor side. They are so much easier to locate!
I remember now why I allowed my Mom to have control over the Mays Line of our tree for so long. It gets very confusing. With that many different people I guess it’s only a matter of time. Since I’m determined to do things right this time, I found that I was trying to ignore big discrepancies between Census years.
In the 1850 and 1860 census years, the children of William and Anna Mays were very easy to match up. The birth years weren’t off by more than a year or so. I was able to figure out who everyone was by name and age. It was glorious… Then I went to 1870. Things just got complicated.
For better or for worse, I went ahead and just deleted my “old” Mays family tree from my website. It started as just deleting the living individuals. It evolved into a small rebellion on my part. People who have visited this site since it’s inception know how many times I’ve deleted everything and re-added everything. Not to mention when I’ve accidentally broken the website coding. This is how we learn though right? Well, I just forced myself over the ledge for the betterment of my family website.
Some may not like that I put all my research and documents out there for the data loggers and research thieves out there. I don’t mind though. As long as I’m not harming anyone living, I don’t see a problem with it. It’s amazing how much my genealogy world has widened just by reading blogs by other genealogists. I’ve always had all my information out there for the world to enjoy and yes people use a lot of what I put out there. I don’t mind though. It’s such a good feeling to be able to help someone in their own research. My family from all over enjoy being able to see all my research, especially since we usually only see each other once a year at the reunion. I don’t exactly carry the whole of my research with me. Sometimes some pictures, but usually only my laptop.
Continue reading “I made the plunge…”I may or may not have spent my last two evenings lost in Google Earth and Panoramio. I don’t mean to be distracted by these things but I can seem to help it. I’ve realized over the last couple of weeks that I haven’t done much traveling at all. Back and forth to family reunions doesn’t count as traveling. Especially since they are usually quick weekend trips. I long to travel. I don’t know how well I’d hold up, because I’m kind of a homebody, but I’d like a chance to try.
In these contemplations, I also realized I have a great obsession with medieval castles. I have certain obsessions with certain time periods and the medieval time period seems to be another one. I can’t help it. I don’t romanticize it, I promise! I know it was a brutal and bloody time. It’s the architecture and families and that fascinate me. Family dynamics are so complex and unpredictable. Maybe that’s why I love genealogy so much too.
I’m big on full disclosure, as you all know, so I have to be upfront about my recent distraction. It wasn’t just castles I was caught up in. I was caught up in Scottish Clan histories and matching up castles with clans. I brought up a list on Wikipedia of all the castles in Scotland and I started trying to plot them in Google Earth so I could come back to them anytime I wanted. It was wonderful.
The photography on Panoramio is just gorgeous. I’ve got to read the Terms of Service and stuff before I post any pictures from there. I might have to contact the original photographers. It might be months before I build up an awesome Castle post, but boy do I want to. I get so inspired when I see the great things other people do. I even played with my camera yesterday. Found settings I never knew existed. Someday I’ll have a new camera, until then mine will work to get the logistics down.
I better go get the laundry in before I get distracted again! Sorry for no pretty pictures this time, I’ll just have to leave you with one of Castle Menzies from one of my Google Earth Adventures!
I’ve put this off for a long time but now I’m breaking it out and working on it. I am restoring a damaged photo of my Grandfather, Stanley Mays. It’s one of the few pictures we have of him, and it’s certainly the best one. So here’s my progress so far.
Not bad so far if I do say so myself! This is only after a few minutes of doing it so I had some progress to show. 😉
I’ve been going through person by person, census by census. I’m trying to do this all correctly which means if something comes up, then I have to ask questions. I’m currently trying to cite all the census information for William Harmon Mays and his family. He and his young daughter moved to Ohio after his first wife died. In Ohio, he then met and married my Grandfather’s mother, Iva Belle Moyer, when she was hired to look after his daughter. This is all per my Grandma.
So now I’m left with getting all the factual evidence. I may never get “evidence” for the nanny part, but I can at least document the marriages and death of the first wife, right? Maybe not. We’ll see.
There are some trees out there that give the marriage date of William and Sarah Elizabeth McDaniels. Until I find the documentation, I’m going to leave that off, but the date sounds right. So at least I have a place to look. The not promising part of the picture is that Kentucky didn’t regulate recording marriages until 1958. So I may be out of luck, but hopefully there will be something on a local level.
Continue reading “What does this mean? Anyone know.”The other day, I posted about the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. What you didn’t know was that I was playing with a blogging program while I was typing up that post. It was tons of fun, and I decided that I will use it more! I’ve had it on my computer ever since I tried it for Great Grandma’s Journal transcription. I forgot all about it until this weekend. Then I got curious about how it could work for what I blog about now. Well color me surprised! There’s a lot packed into this program! It’s called Windows Live Writer.
I liked being able to see what it would look like with my layout. Depending on your blog layout, you will see more or less here. I just like seeing how it would look on my background.
Continue reading “My Tools: Windows Live Writer”It’s kind of ironic that last Thursday I posted pictures of my family at The National Mall before I was born. On Saturday, my mother returned to the scene of the crime, so to speak. We live close to D.C. but we never go. We’re way to used to non-City traffic. Ours isn’t exactly Montana, but it sure isn’t D.C. either! My mom was navigating for a co-worker, who was driving a group of kids to The Mall for the Cherry Blossom Festival Parade.
She borrowed my camera to take pictures while she was there, and let me tell you, I want to go there myself RIGHT NOW! I haven’t been since an Elementary School field trip (much like the kids who got to visit this weekend). Since it’s been so long, I haven’t been able to see the World War II Memorial in person. Boy do I want to! I am so fascinated by World War II. I collect books, movies, pictures, anything that has to do with World War II. Yes I am watching The Pacific and yes, it’s amazing!
I decided to share the pictures she got. So enjoy!
I finally feel like I have moved back into my domain. Over the past week, I’ve been working on a new website for my Uncle. This gave me the motivation to dig around in the coding for both this blog, and the main site. Well, I’ve finally got a fairly uniform looking website! I could have added the side menu from the website here too, but felt that wasn’t necessary. The buttons at the top of the page will take you where you most likely want to go on the main site. The buttons are the same on both sites. Though I may change the order of the buttons a bit later today. Just to satisfy my need to change my mind. 😉
moore-mays.org main site
moore-mays.org blog site
I won’t lie to you, there are a few things I might still tweak. They are only cosmetic things in the big picture though and you likely wouldn’t notice them. I hope everyone who visits this site enjoys it as much as I do!