Above is a reproduction of a Currier & Ives lithograph showing people fleeing the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. I’ve always wondered if my Moore family were present in Chicago at the time of the fire but I’ve never pinned down their actual location or where they were in relation to the fire. Recently, I tasked myself with finding that information.
Continue reading “The Moores and the Great Chicago Fire”This Mother’s Day I spent some time showing my Mom how cool Google Lens could be, and I quickly identified many pictures from my photo archive. Here are some of the pictures we identified. The first location is from the set of 1960s photo slides. All the other locations I believe to be taken in the 1920s!
Trying to get a Google Street View image of President Grant’s tomb felt pretty impossible. With all the foliage and having to stick to the road patterns, I wasn’t able to get a clear view.
I hope seeing these image comparisons is as fun for everyone else as it is for me. I really love to put some context behind these images. In case you’re wondering how I know exactly when Llewellyn visited some of these places. That would be the Diary of Llewellyn of course. 😂 November 3rd and 4th, 1923
I’m still knee deep in organizing files and putting information back onto the database portion of the website. I thought I would post here the pictures I posted on my Facebook for family this weekend. It never hurts to get more eyes on a mystery so every once and awhile I post some pictures for them all to see if they remember or recognize anything! This weekend was a success because within 24 hours my cousin, Peter, had figured out where these pictures were taken. Not because he’d been there and recognized it but from some old fashioned searching!
We are in Cypress Gardens, Florida! Technically in 2025 we are in Legoland. Which I have visited with my niece and nephew and it’s very cool to see how Legoland is honoring the history of Cypress Gardens. There are call backs to the themes of the old botanical gardens. In fact its still a fully functional botanical garden.
Continue reading “Identifying More Locations: Cypress Gardens”Last time I posted, I mentioned I’m working on identifying some slides left to me by my Grandpa Moore. I’m going to share some of my identifications today. This has been a challenge for but also very fun. The challenge being that most of these slides are from the 1960s and not all of these locations exist anymore or look even close to the same. I’ll share how I identified them as I go.
Photo 1. Llewellyn Thorward-Moore at Ca’ d’Zan in Sarasota, Florida, 1962. Photo 2. From the Ca’ d’Zan website, photo credit to their website.
Continue reading “Identifying Locations”This is a special treat for those that followed along all those years ago when I posted The Diary of Llewellyn for 3 years. Many will recall midway through the Diary, my Great-Grandpa Bill started showing up with his future wife. One of their favorite activities to do was dance.
In fact, if you search this blog for “we danced” it comes up more than once!
This is one of my favorite photos because 50 years later and you can tell she still loved dancing with him!
Last time that I wrote here, I was wondering why Mary was so contrary. In that post I decided that I would need to search out more records for Mary’s children. I just didn’t have nearly enough evidence to decide if the family that lived on Long Island was the right family. The first step in that journey was to order the birth records of the other two known children in the family.
My great-grandparents, William and Llewellyn Moore, are the topic of this Tombstone Tuesday. Their tombstone looked like the top picture when it was placed there in 1980. When Grandpa Moore passed away in 2012, we buried him in the family plot and added Llewellyn’s death date to her stone.
On their stones are symbols for the Freemasons and the Order of the Eastern Star, both of which were a big part of their lives.
Tombstone Tuesday is a daily blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers.com. For a full list of topics, visit the website for details.
Welcome to another Wedding Wednesday! When I started posting this GeneaBloggers Daily Blogging Prompt, I never imagined I’d have more than that first entry. Until I run out of weddings to post about, I will keep posting. I’ve done my Grandma and Grandpa Moore’s 1951 Wedding in 3 posts (one, two, three) and my Grandma and Grandpa Mays’ 1947 Wedding. I also threw in a post for my Grandma Mays and her 2nd husband Wayne.
I’m moving up a generation in my Genealogy Do-Over, so it’s time for my Great-Grandparents to get their turn! We’re starting with William Lawrence Moore and Llewellyn Josephine Thorward. For an extra treat, you can always go back and read the Diary of Llewellyn.
One of my favorite finds from Llewellyn’s boxes is this wedding invitation from 1926. It’s almost 100 years old now, but in great condition. I have a few more items that pertain to their wedding day. A cool thing with this record is that to date, this is one of two mentions of Lewis’ middle name. There is clearly a G. after his name and I’ll have an eagle eye on all the other records I go through to see if I’ll finally learn what his middle name is. Probably George after his father, but you never know!
Continue reading “Wedding Wednesday: Llewellyn and William”My Mystery Monday to do list just keeps getting longer and longer. I’m currently scanning documents that pertain to my Great-Grandfather, William Lawrence Moore. Some I’d scanned before but could use a fresh scan. Others, I never scanned before so I’m getting my first look at them.
Perpetual Care
I know you guys must be getting sick of me saying what good record keepers my Great-Grandparents were. It bears repeating though since I just spent 20 minutes scanning correspondence between multiple family members about the family lot at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The above diagram was sent to William when he inquired in 1970 about keeping up the graves. From what I can tell Robert J. Moore Jr and his wife Gertrude were taking care of the graves until Gertrude’s death in 1970. Then Gertrude’s family and the Moores split the costs of perpetual care for the lot.
I had known the names of the people in the grave, but not in this detail. We called the cemetery back when we originally got the deed from my Grandfather. We just had the names, not the dates or anything like the detailed diagram above.
Continue reading “Just Call Me Confused”