My Mouse is Broken

Random Genealogical Find - Annotated Family Genealogy

2012-02-19T13:29:00.002-05:00

A few years ago one of my aunts gave me the family copy of the Genealogy of the Sharpless Family (Gilbert Cope, 1887). [1] The book is not in great condition, so I spent some time this weekend assessing its state so I can order a box to house it. As a result, I spent several hours leafing through the volume one page at a time - something I've never done before. (It's 1,332 pages long.)

I found a number of interesting things inside the book, both its content as well as things stuck in amongst the pages. But one of the things I found most interesting were several entries where someone had annotated in pencil corrections and additional information.

Specifically, the entry for Margaret W(ilen) Sharpless:

The unknown "annotatee" added in a birth date for Margaret, and children for two of Margaret's children, Charles Delany and Rebecca Delany Collins.

Another one I found was the entry for Petera B(rown) Worrall where the name of Worrall's son, Charles Addams was corrected in pencil, and the name "Dorothy" (his youngest daughter) added at the end of the entry.

[1] Cope, Gilbert. Genealogy of the Sharpless family, descended from John and Jane Sharples, settlers near Chester, Pennsylvania, 1682: together with some account of the English ancestry of the family, including the results of researches by, Henry Fishwick, F.H.S., and the late Joseph Lemuel Chester LL.D.: and a full report of the Bi-Centennial Reunion of 1882. Philadelphia: Published for the Family under the Auspices of the Bi-Centennial Committee, 1887.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Two Degrees of Separation

2012-02-11T19:20:00.004-05:00

For this week's Fun, Randy Seaver challenges us to see how far back in time we can go with two degrees of separation. For those less familiar with the concept as relates to the game using Kevin Bacon and six degrees of separation, Randy describes this as, "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor."

I decided to examine my four grandparents.

The first (and easiest) scenario that came to mind was the first:

Scenario 1. Me - I knew my maternal grandmother, Mae Gouverneur Cadwalader (1923-2000). I remember my grandmother telling me stories about visiting "Bonnemama," her maternal grandmother, Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer (1860-1929).

So that takes me back to the 1860's. My maternal grandmother was the youngest of my four grandparents. I wondered if I could go any farther back with any of the others.

Scenario 2. Me - I knew my paternal grandfather, Richard Cranch Greenleaf (1917-2000). By the time Richard was born in 1917, his two grandfathers and all of his great-grandparents has passed away. I presume he would have at least met either of his grandmothers - Adeline Emma Stone Greenleaf (1849-1936) or Helen Coolidge Adams (1848-1929). But I don't know this for certain - I don't think I have anything (evidence or oral tradition) that proves he ever met them. But since they all lived in geographic regions not too far separated, Albany and New York City, I surmise he probably knew both women.

This presumably takes me back to the 1840's. But it's conjecture. And a similar conjecture scenario occurs with my maternal grandfather.

Scenario 3. Me - I knew my maternal grandfather, Joseph Harrison Worrall (1913-1979). My grandfather died when I was quite young, and at the moment I'm not recalling any stories I know about which ancestors he'd known. For this one, I used Reunion's timeline software to map out some possibilities.

The farthest back I could possibly go here is 1830 - birth date of his maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Wilen Sharpless Delany (1830-1924).

My final grandparent scenario is, for lack of a better word, frustrating. This is the line with the only one of my great-grandparents I knew. But it's also the line I know the least about. So how far back I go (at the moment) is limited by my research.

Scenario 4. Me - I knew my great-grandmother, Irene Gillespie McCormick (1891-1976). Irene knew her father, Henry Edward Gillespie (1854-1933) and her mother-in-law, Margaret Gilligan McCormick (1851-1927). The results would be the same for my grandmother, Irene's daughter, Ann McCormick (1919-1992). The difference here is I'm certain Irene knew her father, and fairly certain she knew her mother-in-law who was still living at the time of Irene's marriage in 1916. This cluster of family all lived in Albany, so I'm fairly certain Irene would have met her mother-in-law on several occasions at the very least.

From what research I've done about the McCormick family tracing their migration patterns, Irene would not likely have known older McCormick relations. But there were probably older Gillespie family ancestors Irene did know - I just need to find them.

Looking forward, Looking Back: The Biddle and Cole Families

2012-02-04T20:23:00.004-05:00

I had high hopes of getting this posted before the end of January. But yes, I'm emerging from an unintentional self-imposed hibernation of sorts to finally start getting some of the blog ideas that have been rattling around my brain out into the online world take on legs of their own.

By far my genealogical highlight of 2011 was a connection I made with Jim, another genealogical researcher whose family is tied to one of my own ancestral lines. Jim and I are not related in the traditional genealogical sense, but there is an ancestral history that ties us together.

One of my favorite finds last year was a newspaper article from the Springfield Weekly Republican (Mass.) dated 18 Feb 1932 with the headline, "Lenox Coachman Bequeathed Life Interest in $45,000 Fund." The article describes the bequests my 3rd great aunt, Emily Williams Biddle (1855-1931), made in her will. My main interest in the article at the time was that it pointed me to the burial location of Emily's parents and siblings. [see posts: Lost Biddle Children, Emily Williams Biddle] But I also enjoyed other pieces in the article which shed more light on Emily's character such as her directives for the handling (disposal) of her animals, but in particular bequests to her long-time coachman Michael Cole and various members of his family.

Jim and I first came in contact after he found my blog while researching his great-grandfather, Michael Cole. He knew that Michael had worked for Emily Biddle, that the turn of the last century placed him in Philadelphia as a carriageman, and that in later years, Michael owned a house in Lenox, Massachusetts.

I shared the article on Emily's bequests to the Cole family with Jim and we've been corresponding ever since. Jim's research of the Cole family has unearthed details about Emily Williams Biddle that I certainly would never have found on my own. My communications with Jim have solidified for me the principle of researching people in your ancestor's live beyond the family members.

In 2012, I plan to document through a series of posts, the evolving research on the Biddle and Cole families. Jim has given me his approval to share our story; in the short time he's been researching the Coles and Biddles has turned up fascinating details about both families that helps me get a picture of them beyond facts and dates.

Stay tuned!

Blog Caroling 2011

2011-12-14T22:02:00.002-05:00

I think I'm sneaking in just under the deadline for blog caroling this year. f ootnoteMaven has challenged us to blog our favorite Christmas Carol for blog caroling. Last year I blogged my favorite carol, The Little Drummer Boy, by the Harry Simeone Chorale. But as there are several other carols in my top ten list (though perhaps not as many as ten), here's this year's contribution.

I first heard this song a few years ago, and it was this version by Kenny Rogers and Wynonna Judd, which I think is just beautiful.

Wikipedia tells me that this carol was written in 1984 by Mark Lowry (lyrics) and Buddy Greene (music).

Random Genealogical Find - Post-Mortem Stereoscopic Daguerreotype

2011-12-03T21:55:00.003-05:00

Every so often, I run family names through Google to see what appears. Often, I've found some interesting things, but last night's discovery was something entirely unexpected.

I Googled the name of my 3rd great grandfather, "Jonathan Williams Biddle" and found a stereoscopic daguerreotype of him in an online exhibit from The Library Company of Philadelphia.
I've seen daguerreotypes before, and the Archives at my place of employment has a stereoscope and set of stereoscopic images, which I've tried, but this is the first time I've seen a stereoscopic daguerreotype. From what I can tell of the little device in the photo, the stereoscope is built into the casing of the daguerreotype.

But the even more interesting thing about this image, is that the image of Biddle was taken post-mortem. The caption states that the image was taken shortly after Biddle's death in April 1856, commissioned by his uncle (not named).

The above is a cropped portion of the larger image - for copyright reasons, I'm reluctant to grab the whole thing and post it here (tempted as I am). The see the entire post-mortem image, head over to: http://www.librarycompany.org/catchingashadow/section1/index.htm. Scroll down to nearly the bottom of the page to the entry reading:

Stereoscopic Daguerreotype of post-mortem portrait of Jonathan Williams Biddle displayed in Mascher's Improved Stereoscope. Philadelphia, 1856. Courtesy of the Print & Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.

Thanksgiving meme - Mayflower Line

2011-11-24T01:12:00.005-05:00

I haven't posted in a good long while, though not for lack of potential topics - life has just gotten in the way lately. Not enough hours in the day for my genealogy. Anyway, I was inspired by Randy Seaver's Mayflower Families series of posts yesterday and thought posting my own Mayflower line might nudge me to get back to blogging. And in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, it seems appropriate.

I discovered several years ago that I'm descended from William Bradford. This is the only Mayflower line I'm aware of at the moment:

William Bradford (1589/90?-1657) married 1623 Alice Carpenter Southworth (1595?-1670)
William Bradford (1624-1703/4) married 1650 Alice Richards (1629?-1671)
Hannah Bradford (1662-1738) married 1682 Joshua Ripley (1658-1739)
David Ripley (1697-1781) married 1720 Lydia Cary (1705/6-1784)
Gamaliel Ripley (1740-1799) married 1772 Judith Perkins (1747-1803)
Elizabeth Ripley (1776-1829) married 1798 John Adams (1772-1863)
William Adams (1807-1880) married 1835 Martha Bradshaw Magoun (1812-1885)
William Adams (1840-1888) married 1867 Helen Coolidge (1848-1929)
Margaret Adams (1876-1929) married 1898 Lewis Stone Greenleaf (1872-1947)
Richard Cranch Greenleaf (1917-2000) married 1939 Ann McCormick (1919-1992)

Source:
Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass., December 1620. Volume Twenty-two: Family of William Bradford. Compilted by Ann Smith Lainhart and Robert S. Wakefield (General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2004). Note: this source used for tracing William Bradford down to Elizabeth Ripley's birth in 1776.

Lenox Cottagers Urged Home from Europe at the Outbreak of World War I

2011-10-12T22:50:00.005-04:00

Lately I’ve enjoyed attempting to link my genealogical findings together to create more of a documented story – something to give insight into my ancestor’s lives beyond straight facts and dates. To this end, I’ve long used the society columns in the New York Times from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to shed light on the social activities of my ancestors with “cottages” in Lenox, Massachusetts. I’m a direct descendant of both the Greenleaf and Biddle families, but have allied connections to the Parsons family as well - all of whom owned cottages in Lenox in this time period.

One recent New York Times discovery is an article dated 15 Apr 1894 listing the Lenox cottages by name with their occupants. It appears that the vast majority came from New York, which may be one reason their social scene was covered as extensively as it was. [1]

Moving forward, on 2 Aug 1914, the New York Times headlines declared:

“Germany Declares War on Russia, First Shots are Fired;

France is Mobilizing and May Be Drawn in Tomorrow;

Plans to Rescue the 100,000 Americans Now in Europe” [2]

On that same date, an article was published listing Lenox cottagers currently in Europe, noting that efforts were being made to contact these individuals. Listed among them is my 3^rd great aunt, Emily Williams Biddle (1855-1931) and her older brother, Dr. Thomas Biddle (1853-1915). [3]

A follow-up article dated 14 Aug 1914, notes that the Biddles have decided to “pass the summer in Europe.” [4] A search of Passenger Lists on Ancestry.com revealed that Thomas and Emily Biddle left Europe in late September, sailing from Liverpool on the Campania, 26 Sept 1914, and arriving back in New York 4 Oct 1914 via Ellis Island. [5]

Other of my Lenox cottagers ancestors who were in Europe during the summer of 1914 were my great-great grandmother, Adeline Stone Greenleaf (1849-1936) and her son, Richard Cranch Greenleaf (1887-1961). Adeline’s husband, Richard Cranch Greenleaf (b.1845) had died in December of the previous year, 1913. Approximately six months after his death discussions were underway by members of the Lenox Club to purchase the Greenleaf residence, Windyside [6]

As of 16 Aug 1914, a New York Times article reports that the whereabouts of the Greenleafs in Europe was still unknown, though they were believed to be in the south of France. Apparently Adeline’s signature was needed on documents to complete the sale of Windyside to the Lenox Club. [7] Passenger lists indicate that Adeline Stone and Richard Cranch Greenleaf left Liverpool on the Finland, 4 Sept 1914, arriving in New York 12 Sept 1914 via Ellis Island. [8]

[1] “An Early Season at Lenox; Several New Cottages to be Opened in the Berkshire Hills,” New York Times, 15 Apr 1894. Online : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C15FD3D5415738DDDAC0994DC405B8485F0D3. Accessed 12 Oct 2011.

[2] “First Shots Fired in the Russo-German War.” (1914, August 2). New York Times (1857-1922),p. 1. Retrieved October 12, 2011, from ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2007). (Document ID: 105456133).

[3] "Urge Tourists to Leave Europe," New York Times, 2 Aug 1914. Online : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10F12F8385916738DDDAB0894D0405B848DF1D3. Accessed 12 Oct 2011.

[4] "Crosby Out of War Zone" New York Times, 14 Aug 1914. Online : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10910F93A5B13738DDDAD0994D0405B848DF1D3. Accessed 12 Oct 2011.

[5] “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Oct 2011), entry for Emily W Biddle, age 59, arrived 3 Oct 1914 on the Campania.

[6] Special to The New York Times.. (1914, June 22). MAY COMBINE LENOX CLUBS :Plan Is to Purchase Greenleaf Villa for a Home -- Berkshire Personals.. New York Times (1857-1922),9. Retrieved October 12, 2011, from ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2007). (Document ID: 100676302).

[7] "Lenox Gains Through European War," New York Times, 16 Aug 1914. Online : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F5071EF9385916738DDDAF0994D0405B848DF1D3. Accessed 12 Oct 2011.

[8] “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Oct 2011), entry for Adelaide [sic] Emma Greenleaf, age 65, arrived 13 Sept 1914 on the Finland.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Ahnentafel Roulette

2011-09-04T09:48:00.003-04:00

(Yes, it's no longer Saturday night, but better late than never.)

This week's fun from Randy Seaver at Genea-musings has several steps:
1. Determine how old your great-grandfather is now or would be. Divide his age by 4, and round to a whole number. This is the ahnentafel roulette number.
2. Use your genealogy software to determine which ancestor the number in step 1 corresponds with.
3. Give three facts about the person
4. Post your findings.
5. "Spin" again if you don't have an ancestor identified who corresponds to the ahnentafel roulette number.

My great-grandfather Gouverneur Cadwalader was born in February 1880. Had he lived, he'd be 131 today. Divide by 4, is 32.75, so I chose to round up to 33.

Using Reunion's ahnentafel report, I find that person 33 is my 3rd great grandmother, Mary Parsons Whitney.

Mary Parsons Whitney was born 6 Nov 1810 in Quincy, Norfolk, Massachusetts to Rev. Peter Whitney, and was baptized 11 Nov 1810 by her father. [1, 2]

She married Richard Cranch Greenleaf 10 Feb 1841 in Quincy, Massachusetts. The couple was married by her father, Rev. Peter Whitney. [2] She had at least two children: a daughter who was born and died in 1843, and a son, Richard Cranch Greenleaf (1845-1913).

Mary P. Whitney Greenleaf died 3 Apr 1889 in Boston, Massachusetts, at age 78 years and 5 months. The cause of death is recorded as "Senile dementia and Old age". [3]

Sources:
[1] Vital Records of Quincy, Massachusetts to 1875. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org (http://www.americanancestors.org), New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2005), (Unpublished transcription by Waldo C. Sprague from original records held at the Randolph Town Hall, donated from the estate of Mr. Sprague to NEHGS in 1962)

[2] Quincy, MA: Church records, 1762-1870. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org (http://www.americanancestors.org), New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2005), (Unpublished transcription by Waldo C. Sprague from original records held at the Randolph Town Hall, donated from the estate of Mr. Sprague to NEHGS in 1962)

[3] Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841–1910. (From original records held by the Massachusetts Archives. Online database: AmericanAncestors.org (http://www.americanancestors.org), New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004.) Vol. 402, p. 108.

Tuesday's Tip - Chronicling America - Historic Newspapers at the Library of Congress

2011-08-30T23:42:00.009-04:00

I've still got 17 minutes (give or take) left in Tuesday, and though I should probably be trying to sleep, I'm noodling around looking at historic newspapers online. And I stumbled across something that inspired me to write a quick Tuesday's Tip post.

I've been aware the Library of Congress's Chronicling America project for some time, but haven't done much active searching until tonight - mainly due to lack of content I'm interested in. But tonight I discovered the content has been greatly expanded since my last visit. I love how easy to search this site is, the resulting displays are easy to read, and there are some great features for downloading content easily.

I hit the "Advanced Search" screen, where I can first limit by state or specific paper, as well as by date range. There are also several boxes for text searching that correspond to standard Boolean search options: OR, AND, phrase, and proximity.

The results list is easy to read, giving you a snapshot of the page with search terms highlighted.

From each newspaper page, you can zoom in and out, navigate to other pages in the issue, or download PDF or JP2 files.

My favorite feature is the "clipping". Zoom in on the page to an article of interest, click the "clip image" button, and you get a snapshot of your zoomed article (complete with stable link) that can be printed or downloaded.

There are links to LC's U.S. Newspaper Directory (1690-present), making it easy to look up information about a particular paper. And if the digitized paper is included in Chronicling America, there are links to the digital content.

My biggest regret is that there isn't more content in some of the states I'm interested in, but I have high hopes that more newspaper content will be forthcoming on this site.

Who's Buried in Greenleaf's Tomb?

2011-08-29T22:22:00.006-04:00

Last spring I spent a few days in Boston and Quincy, Massachusetts. In part to get away for a few days, and in part to soak up a little family heritage by osmosis. I wasn't doing any hard genealogical research, but instead was just enjoying being in a place my ancestors once lived. As many genealogists and others who are family history minded will appreciate, part of my enjoyment was browsing cemeteries. And while in Quincy's Hancock Cemetery looking for a few family graves, I came across this tomb:

Any additional information that might have once been on the front of the tomb was gone, leaving me to wonder which Greenleaf (or Greenleafs) were buried there, and who Appleton and Woodward were?

So some time after returning hme, I started looking into this question. Being that this cemetery was in Quincy, my first stop for possible information was NEHGS' American Ancestors site. I found the following information in their database, Cemetery Transcriptions from the NEHGS Manuscript Collections:[1]

Greenleaf : 436+; Greenleaf (Tomb) Daniel & Thomas (with Dr. E. Woodward & _____ Appleton)

Appleton : 436; Greenleaf & Dr. E. Woodward (Tomb)

Woodward : 436; Dr. E. (Tomb) (with Appleton & Greenleaf)

So at this point, I'm still a little vague on Appleton, but I have the names Daniel Greenleaf, Thomas Greenleaf, and Dr. E. Woodward. I actually ended up going back to one of the Greenleaf genealogies, in this case the 1896 edition by James Edward Greenleaf [2], to see if these names might give me a hint as to the families buried here.

I found the above:

Thomas Greenleaf (1767-1854) whose sister, Elizabeth Greenleaf (1865-1839), married her cousin, Daniel Greenleaf (1762-1853). And Thomas' two daughters, (1) Elizabeth (1794-1854) who married William Greenleaf Appleton, and (2) Mary Ann (b.1796) who married Dr. Ebenezer Woodward.

Heading back to American Ancestors, I located information in their Quincy, MA: Church Records, 1762-1870 [3] database, that confirmed for me:

Dr. Ebenezer Woodward married Mary Ann Wroe Greenleaf on 13 Nov 1837.
William G. Appleton married Elizabeth Greenleaf on 19 Feb. 1835.

Is it perfectly complete research? No, but it gives me enough to hypothesize the occupants of "Greenleaf's tomb" might well be:

Daniel Greenleaf (1762-1853) and wife Elizabeth Greenleaf (1765-1839)
Thomas Greenleaf (1767-1854) and wife Mary Price (d.1855), and children:
Ezekiel Price Greenleaf (1790-1886)
Elizabeth Greenleaf (1794-1885) and husband William Greenleaf Appleton
Mary Ann Greenleaf (b.1796) and husband Ebenezer Woodward (b.1798)

If the Greenleaf Genealogy is correct, this branch of the family is extinct. Odd that an extinct family should be uncovered (unearthed?) some 125 years after their line died out.

I am still looking into this, trying to find any additional records for Hancock Cemetery that might confirm my hypothesis.

[1] Cemetery Transcriptions from the NEHGS Manuscript Collections. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2002.)

[2] Greenleaf, James Edward. Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family. Boston: Frank Wood, Printer, 1896. p. 210. Online. Internet Archive : http://www.archive.org/stream/genealogygreenl00greegoog. Accessed 29 Aug 2011.

[3] Quincy, MA: Church records, 1762-1870. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2005), (Unpublished transcription by Waldo C. Sprague from original records held at the Randolph Town Hall, donated from the estate of Mr. Sprague to NEHGS in 1962)

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Heritage Pie Chart

2011-07-20T21:26:00.006-04:00

Yes, Saturday was several days ago, but I wanted to complete this week's "fun" since it involves playing with data - one of my favorite activities.

So last Saturday (July 16th), Randy Seaver asked us to:

list our 16 great-great grandparents
determine countries or states these ancestors lived in at their birth and death
make a heritage pie chart for the country of origin (birth place) for these ancestors

Before doing this challenge, I spent some time playing with (calculating) the ahnentafel numbers for these folks. [See also my post, Calculating Ahnentafel Numbers] I used Reunion's ahnentafel report to generate the following:

16 Dr. Richard Cranch Greenleaf. Born on 12 Feb 1845 in Boston, Massachusetts. Richard Cranch died in Lawrence, Long Island, New York, on 4 Dec 1913; he was 68. Buried in Lenox, Berkshire, Massachusetts.

On 21 Jun 1870 when Richard Cranch was 25, he married Adeline
Emma Stone.

17 Adeline Emma Stone. Born on 14 Jul 1849 in Schooleys Mountain, Morris, New Jersey. Adeline Emma died on 17 Jan 1936; she was 86. Buried in Lenox, Berkshire, Massachusetts.

18 William Adams. Born on 31 Jan 1840 in New York. William died in Scarsdale, Westchester, New York, on 14 Jul 1888; he was 48.

On 14 May 1867 when William was 27, he married Helen Coolidge in Madison Square Church, New York.

19 Helen Coolidge. Born on 13 Nov 1848 in Connecticut. Helen died in New York, New York, on 20 Jan 1929; she was 80. Buried on 22 Jan 1929.

20 Thomas Joseph McCormick. Born in May 1850 in Ireland. Thomas Joseph died in Sprague Falls, Maine, on 27 Sep 1905; he was 55. Buried on 30 Sep 1905 in Menands, New York. Buried on 11 Jul 1906 in Menands, New York.

Thomas Joseph married Margaret Gilligan.

21 Margaret Gilligan. Born on 18 Jan 1851 in Ireland. Margaret died in Albany, Albany, New York, on 3 Jan 1927; she was 75. Buried on 5 Jan 1927 in Menands, New York.

22 Henry Edward Gillespie. Born on 23 Sep 1854 in New York. Henry Edward died in Albany, Albany, New York, on 27 Jan 1933; he was 78. Buried on 30 Jan 1933 in Menands, New York.

Henry Edward married Anna Ambrose.

23 Anna Ambrose. Born in Nov 1860 in New York. Anna died in Albany, Albany, New York, on 1 Sep 1934; she was 73.

24 Petera Brown Worrall. Born on 23 Aug 1844 in Media, Delaware, Pennsylvania. Petera Brown died in Roslyn, New York, on 16 Feb 1916; he was 71.

On 29 Dec 1868 when Petera Brown was 24, he married Mary Catherine Young in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

25 Mary Catherine Young. Born on 6 Jan 1845 in Leesport, Berks County, Pennsylvania.

26 Joseph Harrison Collins. Born on 5 Dec 1853 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Joseph Harrison died in 1887; he was 33.

On 18 Jan 1883 when Joseph Harrison was 29, he married Rebecca Sharpless Delany in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

27 Rebecca Sharpless Delany. Born on 17 Apr 1861 in Brooklyn, New York. Rebecca Sharpless died in Feb 1949; she was 87.

28 Richard McCall Cadwalader. Born on 17 Sep 1839 in Trenton, New Jersey. Richard McCall died in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on 9 Dec 1918; he was 79.

On 26 Nov 1873 when Richard McCall was 34, he married Christine Williams Biddle in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

29 Christine Williams Biddle. Born on 14 Feb 1847 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Christine Williams died in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 23 Mar 1900; she was 53. Buried on 27 Mar 1900 in St. Thomas Church, Whitemarsh, Montgomery, Pennslyvania.

30 John Ruckman Fell. Born in 1858 in Pennsylvania. John Ruckman died in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 15 Nov 1895; he was 37. Buried on 19 Nov 1895 in St. Thomas Church, Whitemarsh, Montgomery, Pennslyvania.

On 15 May 1879 when John Ruckman was 21, he married Sarah Rozet Drexel in Pennsylvania.

31 Sarah Rozet Drexel. Born on 28 Aug 1860 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sarah Rozet died in Whitemarsh, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, on 3 Feb 1929; she was 68. Buried in 1929 in Whitemarsh, Montgomery, Pennsylvania.

Birthplaces: United States = 14 (PA = 6; NY = 4; NJ = 2; CT = 1; MA = 1), Ireland = 2

I found the visual representation of this information quite interesting. Granted, this represents only the birthplaces of a single generation, but I tend to think of my ancestors as being more from Massachusetts than New York, but the above chart doesn't illustrate that with this particular set of data. I can definitely see myself using tools like this more to capture similar information.

Calculating Ahnentafel Numbers

2011-07-20T21:03:00.003-04:00

Genealogical numbering standards are something I'm peripherally aware of. I know they exist, I know my software can display or output them in various ways, but I don't really use any numbering systems in my day to day genealogical work. So how did I get to calculating Ahnentafel numbers?

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, in last week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, asked us to list our 16 great-great grandparents. Fine - this I can do. But I noticed in Randy's post that his 16 great-great grandparents were numbered from 16 to 31. I figured this numbering was a standard of some kind, so I turned to Google, and then found myself in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's article on Genealogical Numbering Systems helped me determine that the numbering in Randy's post was the ahnentafel system. I thought the Wikipedia article on ahnentafel was quite good, and in addition to explaining the system, explained a couple of ways to calculate the numbers. So I decided to try and calculate the ahnentafel numbers for my 16 great-great grandparents. Sure, Reunion could spit these out for me, but I liked the idea of doing the calculations and as part of that, understanding better the basis of the system itself.

I chose to calculate my numbers using Wikipedia's "second method," explained in the Ahnentafel article, using binary to represent each father ("0") or mother ("1") in the relation string, and then converting the binary number to a decimal. I worked from my father's paternal line to my mother's maternal line, and the results were:

Sara's father's father's father's father
10000 = 16
Richard Cranch Greenleaf (b.1845)

Sara's father's father's father's mother
10001 = 17
Adeline Emma Stone

Sara's father's father's mother's father
10010 = 18
William Adams (b.1840)

Sara's father's father's mother's mother
10011 = 19
Helen Coolidge

Sara's father's mother's father's father
10100 = 20
Thomas Joseph McCormick

Sara's father's mother's father's mother
10101 = 21
Margaret Gilligan

Sara's father's mother's mother's father
10110 = 22
Henry Edward Gillespie

Sara's father's mother's mother's mother
10111 = 23
Anna Ambrose

Sara's mother's father's father's father
11000 = 24
Petera Brown Worrall

Sara's mother's father's father's mother
11001 = 25
Mary Catherine Young

Sara's mother's father's mother's father
11010 = 26
Joseph Harrison Collins

Sara's mother's father's mother's mother
11011 = 27
Rebecca Sharpless Delany

Sara's mother's mother's father's father
11100 = 28
Richard McCall Cadwalader

Sara's mother's mother's father's mother
11101 = 29
Christine Williams Biddle

Sara's mother's mother's mother's father
11110 = 30
John Ruckman Fell

Sara's mother's mother's mother's mother
11111 = 31
Sarah Rozet Drexel

I used this tool to covert the binary numbers to decimal.

It took an evening to do, but was fun and productive genealogically in a new way.

Follow Friday - Lisa Alzo on Google News Archives

2011-07-08T23:22:00.006-04:00

Source of inspiration: Alzo, Lisa A. "Google's Archives: News You Can Use." Internet Genealogy 6 (June/July 2011): 7-9.

I've known about Google News Archive for a while, but haven't really spent much time with it. This is largely because I work in an academic library and have easy access to other subscription resource for newspapers. But after reading Alzo's article I decided to play with the Google News Archives and found a lot to like about using this tool to search newspapers for some of my ancestors.

I decided to try modeling some of Alzo's examples in her article using my own genealogical case study, Marion Constance Greenleaf (1871 - 1900). Marion Greenleaf was my great-great aunt, the older sister of my great-grandfather Lewis Stone Greenleaf. In the few years that I've been researching this family group, I've found them mentioned numerous times in the society pages of the New York Times recounting some of their years in Lenox, Massachusetts. Marion in particular has caught my attention - maybe because she died at age 29 on Christmas Eve of the year 1900. Or maybe because she was the oldest, but never married. But I've long wanted to do a more detailed tracing of Marion in the New York Times society pages, trying to develop a more thorough picture of this aunt who died young and left no direct descendants of her own.

My search was quite simple - a basic keyword search for the name Marion Greenleaf. The first page of results, 10 articles, were all highly relevant to my search for Marion. The results all mentioned the Marion Greenleaf I'm interested in, were published in the New York Times, published between 1892 and 1900, with the first hit being news of Marion's death from typhoid fever in December 1900.

The second page of results was also fairly relevant:
- 4 articles mentioned my Marion Greenleaf, and were published in the New York Times between 1893 and 1900
- 2 articles mentioned Marion's niece, Marion Greenleaf Nash, my great-aunt, presumably named after her aunt.
- 2 articles mentioned an unrelated Marion Greenleaf who apparently lives in Miami, FL - not the right person, but the results can't be faulted given my search
- 2 articles mentioned the words "Marion" and "Greenleaf" in close proximity, but not as someone's name

On the first page of results, nine of the articles were for "Marion Greenleaf", but one result had the spelling variant "Marian Greenleaf". Having noticed her name spelled as both Marion and Marian in the society columns I've read, I was pleasantly surprised that the variant spelling appear in the results set. I'm not sure quite why this is though, so would be cautious about assuming Google will return variant spellings automatically. A quick test shows the reverse is also true - a keyword search for Marian Greenleaf brings up articles with the spelling Marion Greenleaf - but the results vary from the first search.

Google's results nicely list the source of the original article and the date, so it is easy to see what the original sources of the news items are. The result listings also make at easy to see which articles have an attached fee for viewing at their publisher web sites.

Clicking through to the publisher's site, will sometimes provide additional information that helps me evaluate the article's relevance to my research.

In the above example from the Boston Globe, I get additional information on finding the article in the Boston Globe, plus a brief abstract. Noting which articles of interest carried a charge, yet having the basic citation information at hand, I was easily able to return to my employer library's subscription database resources to find this article available through other means. [Yes, this is not the Marion Greenleaf I started searching for, but her niece, my great-aunt. I did get some additional information from this obituary.]

But I think the feature of the Google News Archive I most like is the timeline.

The timeline serves several purposes. First, it quickly illustrates the date distribution of the results set. Second, clicking on a decade of interest will narrow the results further.

Looking at the distribution for the articles written in the 1890's, I can see a peak from 1892-1894. Drilling down further to examine 1893 in detail, I see that there is another peak in July-September, which logically corresponds with society news about the "season" in Lenox, Massachusetts.

My search could be improved by adding additional keywords, such as "Lenox" to the name "Marion Greenleaf," or by using Google's Advanced Archive Search which has additional features like limiting by date, source, or article price. In the end, I found some fairly interesting things in my search for additional information on Marion, but that's another post.

Wednesday's Child - Theodore James and Francis Edward

2011-06-08T22:43:00.005-04:00

I think this is the first non-relation tombstone I've highlighted in my blog. But I saw this stone in Copp's Hill Burying Ground during a recent trip to Boston. According to an entry on Find A Grave that I'm fairly certain is a matching entry, the stone is for the children of Samuel and Sally Brewer.

I didn't really think much of this particular memorial when I passed by it at first. But something caused my to turn around after I passed by, and as such I noticed the back of the tombstone.

I've found information on various sides of tombstones before, but this is the first time I've seen a stone that looks like it was made from a section of another stone. The more I explore the burial places of my ancestors, the more interested I am in finding out more about cemeteries, tombstones, symbolism, and such. I'm not sure exactly where to start looking to find out more information about tombstones and their construction, but I'll be interested to see what I can turn up.

This is the Face of Genealogy

2011-06-05T19:38:00.006-04:00

The seven sons of Richard McCall (1839-1918) and Christine Williams Biddle Cadwalader (1847-1900), taken circa 1891. The boy in the back row, middle, is my great-grandfather.

In response to Thomas MacEntee's call to action.

New Tag Cloud Tool - Tagxedo

2011-06-01T22:29:00.004-04:00

I've previously blogged on using Wordle to generate family name clouds - the first a surname cloud of non-living people in my database, the second a cloud of first names of the non-living. Tonight while reading the Flowing Data blog, I read about a new word cloud service, Tagxedo.

What's different about Tagxedo is that you can create your word clouds in shapes. So I hopped over to see if I could generate a word cloud in the shape of a tree, or something to highlight my genealogy.

Results:

I used the same process as in my two previous posts to generate the file. I then copied the text into Tagxedo. At first glance, Tagxedo seems to have a wide array of design options - color palettes, fonts, shapes, word orientation (horizontal, vertical, any which way) - as well as some more advanced features using color saturation. My settings are pretty basic - a tree using a color palette with a nature orientation, my choice of font, and selection of the horizontal word orientation.

According to the site FAQ, some Tagxedo features are open for free during the beta period which will then be locked down to premium account (i.e., non-free) users. I didn't see a way to create an account to save my cloud to a profile, so was hesitant to overly experiment with some of the options for saving clouds. I was able to download the cloud as JPG file directly from Tagxedo and could select from a wide variety of file sizes. Tagxedo also offered options for embedding content or printing.

I'll be interested to see how this service develops, and particularly what features remain free and which will switch to a premium account. I have fun playing with word clouds, but don't use them enough to warrant paying for the service. Wordle more than does the job for me at present, but I enjoyed playing with the shape option here to highlight the "family tree" aspect of my cloud.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Find A Grave

2011-05-28T21:30:00.004-04:00

Time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver! This week's fun is to search Find A Grave for ancestor's for whom we have no known burial location. Describe who you searched for and the first person you found for whom you did not previously have a burial location.

William Adams (1848-1888) - no listing
Henry Gillespie - no listing
Anna Ambrose Gillespie - no listing
Richard Cranch Greenleaf (1808-1887) - no listing
Mary Parsons Whitney Greenleaf (1810-1889) - no listing

Joseph Gillingham Fell (1816-1878) - Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

John Greenleaf (1763-1848) - listed with unknown burial location
Lucy Cranch Greenleaf (1767-1846) - listed with unknown burial location
William Greenleaf (1725-1803)- listed with unknown burial location
Mary Brown Greenleaf (1728-1807)- listed with unknown burial location
Richard Cranch (1726-1811) - listed with unknown burial location
Mary Smith Cranch (1741-1811) - listed with unknown burial location

I just started working my way backward through my direct ancestors for people for whom I had no known burial location. I had several "no hits" before finding an entry for my 3rd great grandfather, Joseph Gillingham Fell, in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. The interesting thing about Fell's entry is that it did include photographs of the crypt, and it appeared as though his wife's name, Amanda Ruckman Fell, was listed below his on the stone, though there was no entry for Amanda in Find A Grave.

The interesting group was the six people who I did find listed, and linked to each other as spouses, parents, and children, but for whom no known burial location was indicated. I admit I don't quite understand the point of entries in Find A Grave when there is no known burial location. Find A Grave does address this in their FAQ's (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=listFaqs#146), so I guess it's legit, but still a little aggravating.

I do have (at least) two ancestors who were cremated and for whom I'm fairly certain there is no actual burial location. And it looks as though, according to Find A Grave's rules, I could still create memorials for them.

A fun excercise that got me diving deeper into one of my favorite resources.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Wordle

2011-05-21T23:00:00.003-04:00

Tonight's Saturday night fun from Randy Seaver is to create a word cloud using Wordle. There are no restrictions on the content of the word cloud, and we can get creative in our use of Wordle's settings for the cloud's appearance. We then need to save the cloud as an image and explain how we did that.

I did this back in January, and created a surname word cloud of the non-living people in my database. Having played with this once before, I knew that my blog itself doesn't necessarily generate an interesting cloud. So I decided to do something similar to January's word cloud, only with first names of non-living people in order to see what the most common first names among my ancestors were.

To generate the file I used, I first one of Reunion's presets to generate a list of non-living people. (More details on that preset are in my earlier post.) I then marked the people on the list and exported a text file of their first and middle names. Reunion allows you to select which fields you want in text file exports, but there is no option for first names only.

I copied the text file to Wordle and to create the above cloud. The Wordle settings I used are horizontal layout, alphabetical tags, and color/font choices.

To create the image, I opened the word cloud in new window and made a screen capture (command-shift-3 on a Mac). I opened the screen capture in Preview, cropped it, and re-saved the .PNG file as a .JPG to upload to my blog.

I had originally hoped to do some more targeted files to analyze in Wordle, like descendants in a particular line to examine naming patterns, but need to poke more at Reunion to find the right settings and features.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Scavenger Hunt

2011-05-08T00:35:00.002-04:00

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings is a scavenger hunt. Randy lists 6 names and we need to find the name of the mother of each and the geneablogger to whom they are related. He asks that we tell how we did this and what we may have learned from our searches.

I used Mocavo for this challenge, doing a phrase search for each name listed, enclosing the name in quotes. I then scanned the results lists until I found blog entries mentioning the person, usually on the first page of Mocavo's results.

The first two were fairly straightforward, and I found the answers in a single blog post. But the last four names required me to use more than blog post for each person the get the appropriate names and relationships. And in one case, I used the person's Find A Grave entry to find his mother's name, as I wasn't easily finding it in the blog.

1. Lois Velleda Dreher - mother of Cynthia Beane Henry of Mountain Genealogists.

2. Mary Philomene Laurent - her mother was Olivine Marie St. Louis; Mary Philomene Laurent is the great-great grandmother of Brian Zalewski at Zalewski Family Genealogy.

3. Ernest Francis Sheern - great-great grandfather of geneablogger Sheri Fenley at The Educated Genealogist, his mother was Ann Emily LeSeure Sheern. (For this one I needed to combine resources. I quickly found Earnest Sheern listed on Sheri Fenley's blog, but used his Find A Grave page for his mother's name.)

4. Cecelia Jost - great-grandmother of We Tree's Amy Coffin, her mother was Cecilia Kurta. Amy has a wonderful series of posts called "The Search for Number 16" in which she tracks down Cecilia Jost's parentage.

5. Mary Jane Sovereen - her mother was Eliza Putman Sovereen, and she is the great-great grandmother of Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings.

6. Bethia Brigham - daughter of Anne (Richardson) Brigham, related to Elyse Doerflinger at Elyse's Genealogy Blog.

What did I learn from this challenge? The documentation and sources notes on each blog for these names was quite good. And the blog posts were generally tagged nicely, making it relatively easy to find related entries. I'm inspired to make sure my posts are well-documented with complete names and relationships, and written so they're possible for non-family members to follow. And it gives me thought for new posts I might include in my own blog.

(I started this before midnight Saturday, but goofed up while publishing and ended up with a Sunday date stamp.)

Wordless Wednesday - Fell-Van Rensselaer House

2011-05-03T23:47:00.010-04:00

Dome, Fell-Van Rensselaer House, April 2011

7. Dome [Part of a set of 10 photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey in the Library of Congress' Built in America Collection, American Memory Project. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.pa0843]

The glass dome pictured above is one of the last surviving original features of the Fell-Van Rensselaer house on Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Built by my great-great grandmother, Sarah Drexel Fell from 1896-1898, following the death of the first husband John Fell in 1895, this was the home of Sarah and her second husband, Alexander Van Rensselaer (1850-1933).

The interior of the house was gutted in October, 1974.

Sources:
[1] Library of Congress. Fell-Van Rensselaer House, Eighteenth & Walnut Streets, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA. Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). Online. American Memory Project (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.pa0843 : accessed 4 May 2011)

[2] Philadelphia Architect & Buildings Project. Van Rensselaer Residence. Online. (http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/pj_display.cfm/13631 : accessed 3 May 2011)

[3] Webster, Richard J. Philadelphia Preserved: Catalog of the Historic American Buildings Survey. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976. pp. 108-109.

Tombstone Tuesday - Emily Williams Biddle

2011-05-03T22:18:00.005-04:00

Emily Williams Biddle

About a month ago, I wrote a Wednesday's Child post on the "Lost Biddle Children" where I recounted finding the Biddle family plot in St. Thomas' Episcopal Church Cemetery in Pennsylvania. My narrative in the earlier post makes it sound as though I miraculously happened across the plot, which isn't quite how it came about that I was there looking for it.

The family group I'm discussing here are the following individuals:

Jonathan Williams Biddle (1821-1856)
Emily Skinner Meigs Biddle (1824-1905)
Children:

Christine Williams Biddle Cadwalader (1847-1900)
Charles Meigs Biddle (1849-1853)
Williams Biddle (1850-1852)
Mary Biddle (1851-1851)
Thomas Biddle (1853-1914)
Emily Williams Biddle (1855-1931)

According to Find A Grave, Jonathan Williams Biddle is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. So I didn't question that he was there, and assumed that the remainder of Jonathan's family would be buried in Laurel Hill as well. So I was actually a little surprised to discover while researching Emily Williams Biddle, that his family was buried in St. Thomas' cemetery.

I probably wouldn't have given much thought to Emily Williams Biddle except I recently found out that the family had a house in Lenox, Mass., a place several other ancestors have called home over the years.

I came across an article from the Springfield Weekly Republican (Springfield, Mass.), dated Thursday, February 18, 1932, which covers the contents of her will. Emily was the last surviving member of the above family group, survived by six nephews, the sons of her sister Christine Biddle Cadwalader. Among the bequests covered in the article, is:

"To St. Thomas's church, Whitemarsh, Pa., is left $2,000, the interest to be used 'to care for the lot where my father and mother and their unmarried children lie buried. And I wish my body to be buried alongside that of my brother, Thomas Biddle with a stone similar to that now over his grave to mark my grave.'"[1]

The lot contains individual headstones for Emily Meigs Biddle, and each of her children, Charles, Williams, Mary, Thomas, and Emily. What it doesn't contain is an individual headstone for Jonathan. There is a large horizontal slab listing Jonathan, Emily, and each of their five children buried in the plot.

So, I really have no idea which cemetery Emily's father, Jonathan, is buried in, and I admit I haven't spent much time looking yet. Another mystery to track down with this family.

[1] "Lenox Coachman is Bequeathed Life Interest in $45,000 Fund," Springfield Weekly Republican, 18 February 1932. Online. Genealogybank (http://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 3 May 2011).

Satruday Night Genealogy Fun - Problems in your Genealogy Database

2011-04-30T21:02:00.003-04:00

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings is another software challenge - by far my favorite type of Randy's challenges. So tonight's challenge is to find the data error or problem report in your genealogy software, create the report, and describe the number of problems and types of errors, as well as any surprising results.

My usual genealogy software is Reunion, and I have to say I had a fair amount of trouble finding a way to produce these reports. I found nothing easily in browsing Reunion's menus, nor did I have any better luck searching the help file for keywords like "problem" or "error". So I turned to the ReunionTalk online forums and finally found an avenue to an answer, one I never would have found on my own.

The date feasibility report gives common date errors such as birth, marriage, or divorce events occurring after death, births occurring before or after particular ages, or marriages before certain ages. This report is nicely hidden under "Reunion preferences --> Dates" not listed amongst Reunion's other report options.

I ran the report using the default options. Output is a plain text file. Mine contained 9 various date errors, combinations of:

child born after parent died - 3
child born before parents' marriage - 3
child born before parent was age 12 - 2
child birth date is after death date - 1

Most of these merit a second look at the data entry and sources consulted. One of the "errors" reported is in fact, not an error. My grandmother's eldest child was indeed born after her first husband died in World War II. And I expect at least one error in the "child born after parent died" category may be a similar case.

Reunion does have other error-type reports I've used before: unlinked people and duplicate people, which I run on a semi-regular basis, especially if I do any Gedcom importing.

But I had hoped for a report that would deliver a variety of different errors in one place. One of Randy's other respondents tonight was Caro from Caro's Family Chronicles who reviewed Family Tree Maker's Data Errors Report.

Since I have the Mac version of FTM on my laptop, I decided to try this report in FTM. I don't use FTM regularly, but do have an older Gedcom of my database there so I can play with different genealogy software. So I easily found and ran the Database Errors Report, doing as Caro did excluding "birth date missing" and "marriage date missing". I also excluded "children out of order". The resulting report listed 25 problems, including date errors and a few unlinked people. But by far the most common error FTM listed was women who were entered using the same surname as their husband. I know I have the tendency to make this error, but was surprised to find quite so many (7). I don't easily see a way to find women entered with the same surname as their husband in Reunion, but I'll keep poking around.

At a glance, many of FTM's errors look different from the Reunion errors, so clearly I have some work to do to check these and correct them if they exist in Reunion. I'll also import a new Gedcom into Mac FTM once I get the errors cleaned up. I guess none of the errors really surprised me, but I'm surprised at the number of them. This was a great challenge, and I'm glad to have a few more tools to help me keep my data clean.

Wednesday's Child - Finding the Lost Biddle Children

2011-04-06T22:53:00.007-04:00

Several Christmases ago, some old family photographs were circulated amongst the family, and in my possession I found a digital photograph of my great-great grandmother, Christine Williams Biddle Cadwalader (1847-1900) as a child. She was photographed with her parents, Jonathan Williams and Emily Skinner Meigs Biddle, and two younger siblings.

(Since I have only the above digital copy, I have no idea what form the original photograph takes.) Knowing that Christine was the oldest, born in 1847, I hypothesized that the photo was taken after 1850 and tried to identify the other children. The 1850 census listed the children in the household as:

Christine - age 3
Charles M. - age 1
Williams - age 1/12

Presumably Charles and Williams are the two other children pictured in the above photograph. But by 1860, the children listed in Emily Biddle's household (Jonathan died in 1856) were:

Christine - age 14
Thomas - age 6
Emily - age 5

But where were Charles and Williams, the two little boys pictured with their parents and older sister? I presumed they had died, but really wasn't sure where to go to find more information about the deaths of two small children in the span of 1850 to 1860.

So last week, I was wandering the church cemetery looking for more family graves when I found the Biddle family plot, not far from where Christine Biddle Cadwalader is buried with her husband and unmarried children.

In the Biddle family plot were three small graves, in a row.

Also in the plot was a large horizontal slab, listing the family members, among them three children.

There were Williams, who died in 1852, and Charles, who died in 1853, along with little sister Mary, who died in 1851.

I've come across child deaths in my genealogy before, and given the times, I shouldn't be surprised by it, and I'm not. But heartbroken, though, at the thought of this family losing three children in three years. I'm also a little haunted by the photograph of the children, which had to have been taken before Williams died in January 1852. The likelihood of having a photograph of two little boys who died in 1852 and 1853 seems remote, but I do have it, and can see their faces, and am glad to know where they're buried.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Surnames?

2011-03-26T21:58:00.002-04:00

From Randy Seaver at Geneamusings, this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is counting unique surnames in our genealogy management program, whether software or online based.

I have 305 unique last names in my genealogy program.

Using Reunion, this is how I did this:

Go into Reunion's "list" menu
Select "last names"
Select "all people"

The result, is a table that lists all unique last names, with a count of each, the earliest and most recent dates for each, and the number of living people with the name.

The top five surnames in my database are:

Worrall - 73 people - from 1719 to 2011
Greenleaf - 68 people - from 1652 to 2011
Cadwalader - 67 people - from 1677 to 2011
(tie) Adams - 40 people - from 1626 to 2011
(tie) Biddle - 40 people - from 1669 to 1945
(tie) Coolidge - 40 people - from 1728 to 1929
Fell - 35 people - from 1668 to 1961
Meigs - 33 people - from 1708 to 1905
Sharples - 32 people - from 1663 to 1851
Addams - 30 people - from 1746 to 1951

The list defaults to an alphabetical sort, but all columns are sortable in either ascending or descending order. The results can also be exported in a variety of formats. The default export is to a Word document, but there is also an option to export the surnames list as a tab-delimited text file, which enables it to be imported into a spreadsheet program like Excel.

WikiTree Widgets Up and Running

2011-03-24T22:30:00.008-04:00

I've been salivating for the WikiTree embeddable widgets ever since reading Geneabloggers' open-thread Thursday post on embeddable content a few weeks ago. I've been wanting a way to embed trees in my blog for some time -- mainly to give any family members who might be reading this a context for the people I talk about -- especially people less well known.

So a few days ago, on seeing that the widgets were out of beta, I signed up for WikiTree, uploaded a gedcom, and am ready to test.

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

I'm pretty pleased with how easy this was to get going, and can definitely see myself using this tool in future posts. My one issue at present is that most of the widgets are too big for my blog format. I tried modifying the blog template sizing, which worked okay, and is an option for the future. But in the meantime, the bare-bones 4-generation widget, which is the smallest, suits my needs.

Fearless Females - Day Fourteen

2011-03-14T22:44:00.001-04:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Newsmakers? Did you have a female ancestor who made the news? Was she famous or notorious? Did she appear in the social column?"

I have a variety of female ancestors who've appeared in various social columns over the years. I like social column postings. They help me place people in a context of location, amongst peers and friends, and help me relate to time and place in history, something I still struggle with in my family history research. But in thinking about this post, none of these social column postings are immediately leaping to mind as in any way more or less noteworthy than others, so I'm taking a different route.

Bucks County saint to be inducted into Women's Hall of Fame (phillyBurbs.com)

Drexel University founder, Anthony J. Drexel (1826-1893) was my 3rd great grandfather. Katharine Drexel was his niece, the daughter of his brother Francis Anthony Drexel. I can in no way do justice to Katharine Drexel's story in this short blog post. In glancing through some memorabilia from my grandmother's collection there's more to St. Katharine's story than the Philadelphia heiress who entered a convent. There's a young woman who lost her father and stepmother in a short span of time, inspired by missionaries wanting to aid Native Americans, who visited the Dakotas in 1887. Katharine entered religious training under the Sisters of Mercy in 1889, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891.

Mother Katharine Drexel was beatified by Pope John Paul II in November, 1988, and canonized in October, 2000. I remember my grandmother telling me about Mother Katharine's miracles as each new one was discovered, moving her farther along the journey to sainthood. I have her travel diary from her trip to Rome for the beatification in 1988, her entry for Sunday, November 20th starting off with, "The big day at last." My grandmother died in May, 2000, not living to see Mother Katharine Drexel sainted.

Last week, The National Women's Hall of Fame announced St. Katharine Drexel as one of its 2011 inductees. Located in Seneca Falls, New York, I hope to attend some of the festivities in September.

Sources:
Baldwin, Lou. A Call to Sanctity: The Formation and Life of Mother Katharine Drexel. Catholic Standard and Times, 1988.
Hanley, Boniface. A Philadelphia Story. Mother Katharine Drexel Guild, 1992.
"Katharine Drexel," Wikipedia. Online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Drexel. Accessed 14 Mar 2011.

Fearless Females - Day Four

2011-03-04T21:54:00.007-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post of photo too if you have one."

What a difference a year makes! When I blogged on this theme one year ago, I had no marriage records for either my grandparents or great-parents. Checking over my records just now, I have marriage records for all of them -- 2 sets of grandparents and 4 sets of great-grandparents.

One set of records, those for my great-grandparents, Lewis and Margaret Adams Greenleaf (the subject of last year's post) who married in Lenox, Berkshire County, Massachusetts in October 1898, were accessed and downloaded at Family Search. The others records I got by writing to various city or state agencies in New York or Pennsylvania. I have no family stories on any of them, though, and no wedding photographs, either.

So this year's story...

I have plenty of wedding photographs of my maternal grandmother's first wedding in 1942. Her husband, Rufus L. Patterson III was killed in 1944, shot down over Germany. [see Follow Friday post on World War II Casualty Lists] Rufus' mother was Elsie "Lissa" Parsons Patterson Kennedy (1901-1966) of Lenox, Massachusetts. Through this relationship with the Parsons family in Lenox, my grandmother met her second husband, Joseph Harrison Worrall (1913-1979). Lissa's younger brother, Herbert Parsons (1909-1995) married Margaret "Margot" Sharpless Worrall (1909-1986) in 1935. Margot's younger brother was Joseph Harrison Worrall, my grandfather.

This is a fairly scientific post. I wish I knew more stories, more romance, but can only guess and imagine at emotions and what happened in these peoples' lives. It's an interesting connection my family has as a result - these interconnected families with skewed generations. But this is an important baseline for other stories I have to tell. I haven't even begun to do justice to the story, to the people involved, but at least I've started laying the groundwork, finally getting it out of my head and into writing.

Follow Friday - NARAtions - Family Tree Friday: Digitized World War II casualties lists

2011-02-25T20:36:00.004-05:00

NARAtions » Family Tree Friday: Digitized World War II casualties lists on ARC

My grandmother's first husband was killed in action in World War II while flying over Germany in 1942. I have a vague recollection of seeing these casualty lists while researching her first husband a few years ago, but don't seem to have saved the citations or any digital images. So when I saw these posted this evening on the NARAtiosn blog (link above), I decided to take a second look.

Column 3, paragraph 11, line 3:
Patterson Rufus L O-815755 2 LT KIA

Rest in peace.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Go For A Better Google Search

2011-02-19T20:22:00.006-05:00

This week's fun from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings:

In this week's challenge, Randy Seaver points us to the site of Randy Majors and directs us to use his Google Custom Search box for marriages.

1 + 2. "Go to Geneablogger Randy Majors website (http://randymajors.com). Add his blog to your RSS reader, if you don't have it already." Done and Done!

3. "Read his blog post 'AncestorSearch Using Google Custom Search - BETA'." Done!

4-5. To summarize, test out the form, describe your results, how useful they were, and if there is anything Randy Majors can do to improve the form.

I tested the form with two couples.

The first were my great-grandparents, Gouverneur Cadwalader and Mae Drexel Fell Henry, who married in 1921. Mae's maiden name was Fell. She first married Howard Houston Henry in 1904, and he died in 1919.

My search terms:

Coincidentally, I received a copy of their marriage application from the City of Philadelphia in today's mail. The interesting thing with this couple is that they were married in one of their residences outside the city, in Montgomery County, though the application was made in the city. As such, I elected not to specify a location. I search under my great-grandmother's married name, 'Henry', and placed her maiden name, 'Fell' in the alternate last name box.

Results? I received only three hits, but they were highly relevant. One pointed me to a Google Books entry mentioning the couple (not new information), and the other two to pages from a family site indexing descendants of a particular line. The family site was new information.

The second couple I searched for yielded more interesting results, in part because I made an error in the entering their data in the form.

I was making dinner while doing this, so was a bit distracted and made a mistake in entering their names. The couple I was searching for was Jonathan Williams Biddle and Emily Skinner Meigs. What I entered was Jonathan Williams and Emily Meigs, lacking their married last name of Biddle.

Results? Four pages of relevant hits, many highlighting their middle names, exactly as I'd entered them. I haven't done a great deal of research on this family, so much of what I turned up was new. One entry in particular caught my attention, as one of the things I'd been wondering is about portrait paintings of the couple, specifically Emily. The entry pointed me to a book in the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/stream/loanexhibitionof00penn#page/66/mode/2up/) describing a portrait of Emily Skinner Meigs Biddle. I have no idea where the portrait is today, but maybe it's still in the family someplace.

How can Randy improve his search? Only one thing comes to mind -- launch the results in a new tab or window so I don't lose the form.

6. "If you like Randy's custom search, add it to your bookmarks or favorites." Done! Randy's search form is now in my toolbox at http://www.delicious.com/sarasancestors.

Using Wordle to Generate a Family Name Cloud

2011-01-29T21:36:00.006-05:00

Now that I'm finished Randy's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I decided to have my own fun by playing with word clouds.

Earlier today I was in a presentation where my boss had used the Wordle tool to generate a word cloud that described our library. A word cloud visually captures a snapshot of text and presents the words in different font sizes and weights to illustrated the frequency of a word used within that text.

This is a tool I've heard of before, and had played around a little with, but had never seen used in a meaningful or illustrative way. I wondered if I could find an interesting way to generate a genealogy-related word cloud. Particularly, I wondered if I could somehow extract surnames from my genealogy software and create a cloud that would illustrate how frequently a family name appears in my database.

I have to say I'm fairly pleased with the results:

For privacy reasons, I decided to first exclude all living people from my cloud, since there are a handle of names used in recent generations only among the living. To generate the data used (using Reunion):

Identified all non-living people using one of Reunion's preset searches. It finds all people with a death date, death place, burial date, or who is over 100 years. Imperfect, I know, since it is possible to have relatives living more than 100 years (I have none). It also omits anyone who has no birth or death dates at all -- many of whom in my database are in fact deceased. Nevertheless, I got a decent sized sample of 590 people.
I marked the resulting people Reunion had identified as non-living, then exported a text file of their surnames.
Copy and pasted the list of names into Wordle to generate the word cloud. Once in Wordle, you can play with fonts, colors and layouts, though Wordle determines the sizes of the words. (Regarding privacy: By not saving my Wordle to their gallery, the site claims none of my text was saved to their site: http://www.wordle.net/faq#secure)

My cloud turned out to be a pretty decent visual representation of the families populating my database. The largest names do tend the be the most populous. But in general most names in the cloud I can read with "the naked eye" (with a couple of exceptions) are families I remember researching and entering in Reunion.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Date You Were Born

2011-01-29T20:17:00.004-05:00

From Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings, this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun has to do with date research:

What day of the week were you born?
What has happened in recorded history on your birth date (day and month)? List five events.
What famous people were born on your birth date?

For each of the above, tell how you found out.

I used the Wolfram-Alpha search engine to answer all of these. Wolfram-Alpha is different from search engines like Google in that it delivers computations and factual information rather than linking out to external resources. It's not a resource I use often, but I decided to try it for this challenge, and I was able to answer all three questions with a single search.

I typed the date (month, day, and year) into Wolfram-Alpha's search box and received a page telling me not only day of the week, but other interesting facts such as time difference from today, official holidays or observances (if any), events taking place (including famous people born), anniversaries falling, and time of sunrise/sunset.

1. October 6 of the year I was born (I'm not telling which year) was a Tuesday.

2. As mentioned above, Wolfram-Alpha lists events and anniversaries taking place on a given date. Here are five for October 6th:

1769 - Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand
1889 - Thomas Edison shows his first motion picture
1908 - Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina
1927 - 'Jazz Singer' premieres
1949 - Mutual Defense Assistance Act is signed

Because Wolfram-Alpha is calculating these events based on the year I input in the search, everything listed takes place on or before the year I was born. To find events on recorded history that took place after I was born, I re-ran the search using month and day only. By omitting the year, Wolfram-Alpha defaults results to the current year (2011) and turns up a few more items:

2000 - Slobodan Milosevic resigns
1981 - Anwar Sadat is assassinated
1979 - first pope to visit the White House

3. The famous people Wolfram-Alpha lists as born on October 6th are mostly people I've never heard of. So either I was born on an odd date, or my general knowledge of 'famous people' is limited. (Probably it's a combination of the two.) Here are some I've actually heard of:

1887 - Le Corbusier (architect)
1914 - Thor Heyerdahl (explorer)
1970 - Amy Jo Johnson (actress - seems best known as 'The Pink Range' in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers)

Building a Research Toolbox - Open Thread Thursday

2011-01-20T22:29:00.002-05:00

From Geneabloggers:
This week’s topic for Open Thread Thursday is:

"Do you maintain a Research Toolbox? A group of links to genealogy research websites that you frequently use? A Research Toolbox could be as simple as an unorganized list of bookmarks or favorites in your web browser. Or it could be a website that you publish much like Cyndi’s List but for your own use or for a specific area of genealogy.

Tell us a) what’s in your Research Toolbox, b) what is the most unusual resource in your Research Toolbox, and c) how you keep it organized."

My research toolbox is an assortment of links of vital records sites, online books, maps, cemetery information, and blog posts on topics I want to remember.

I'm not sure I have many unusual resources. I think they're fairly standard as far as genealogical research goes. But if I had to pick one... I'd say either the Hamilton County Ohio Probate Court online archive of records, or my list of GEDCOM tags.

Why these? The Hamliton County, Ohio site is only unusual in that it's the only Ohio link I have in my family at this point. My 3rd great grandparents, Joseph Harrison Collins and Martha Ann Judkins are listed in the marriage register for 1849. The marriage records are arranged alphabetically by both last name and first name, which amuses me. For example, all the last names starting with "J" are together, then subsorted by first names starting with "A", then "B", etc. The other thing I like about this site, is not only are the records online, but a number were recreated after fire and water damage.

My other unusual resource is a list of GEDCOM tags. As a librarian whose origins are in cataloging, I like understanding how data is being imported, exported, and displayed in my genealogy software. I don't do nearly enough exploring with this as I'd like, but I've got the links in case I get inspired some snowy weekend.

I use the Delicious social bookmarking site to keep my links organized. Delicious allows me not only to make a list of bookmarks stored in the cloud that I can access anywhere, but to write notes explaining why it's useful (or other evaluative information). I can also assign tags (keywords) to the links to keep them organized. I can then sort my tags into groups (location, record type, family name, etc.) and keep a nice menu handy.

New York State Historical Resources

2011-01-18T22:00:00.002-05:00

I loved seeing Dick Eastman's post a couple of days ago, "More Than Two Million Northern New York Historical Newspapers Online," in which he points users to the Northern New York Library Network's historical newspapers site.

NNYLN is part of New York's NY3R's system. Various of the 3R's networks have being doing great things in digitizing their regional heritage over the years. The projects are also expanding across the state, with other regions beginning to digitize their own local papers.

The New York Heritage site seems to be becoming a gateway to the partnerships evolving in these efforts. (I don't know that it's an official gateway, but many of the 3R's are cooperating in its ongoing development.)

Genealogy Insider Photo Checklist

2011-01-18T21:55:00.002-05:00

From the Genealogy Insider, 'Got the Picture? Using Your Digital Camera for Genealogy.'

I really liked this checklist of sorts from the Genealogy Insider on digital photographs for genealogy. The gravestone and record/documents lists are pretty close to what I do currently. For the gravestones, I also always take photos of landmarks (buildings, fences, walls, trees, notable stones) near the site/plot I'm visiting so that I'll have a visual reminder to help me find the spot again on a return visit. Adding a ruler to photos of heirlooms is a great idea, and I'm embarrassed that it hasn't occurred to me before this.

Emily Roebling Cadwalader: Lying About her Age or a Reflection on the Men in her Life?

2011-01-14T23:23:00.009-05:00

Today's 'Genealogy Tip of the Day' by Michael John Neill of Casefile Clues is, What Were They Smokin' When They Gave that Information? I found this quite coincidental as for the last couple of days I've been amusing myself with an age mystery for a relative whose birth dates in various documents are quite inconsistent.

Emily Roebling Cadwalader (d. 1941) was the wife of my great-great-uncle, Richard McCall Cadwalader, Jr. (d. 1960) These two were never high on my list of relatives to research, so the fact that I'm posting on them is a bit surprising to me. This all started a couple of days ago when I was updating entries for the Cadwalader family to Find A Grave, and posted photos of both their graves. [Richard ; Emily]

I originally posted Emily's birth date as it appeared on her gravestone, September 9, 1881. Since I had done no prior research on this, and really had no intention of doing much more, I normally wouldn't have gone further. But coincidentally, a few days before I'd received a book via interlibrary loan on the Roebling family [1] which happened to be sitting next to me. So I looked up Emily Roebling and found the following:

"Charles Roebling married, January 25, 1877, Sarah Mahon Ormsby of Pittsburgh. ... Five children, including one dying in infancy, were born to the couple : two boys, Harrison Ormsby, born November 7, 1877, died January 12, 1883, and Washington Augustus, 3rd, born March 25, 1881, died April 15, 1912 ; two girls, Emily, born September 9, 1879, and Helen, born December 15, 1884."[2]

The book is unsourced and gives no basis for these dates. I took them with a grain of salt and shrugged them off. But it does note that Emily's brother, Washington, was born in March, 1881. If these dates were at all accurate, it calls into question Emily's Sept. 1881 birth date on her gravestone.

Next step... Ancestry.com. The 1880 U.S. Federal Census for Trenton, NJ lists 9-month old Emily M. Roebling living in the household of her father, Charles Roebling, with her mother 'Sallie' and 2-year-old brother Ormsby. The 1880 census form also asks for the month born, if the listed person was born within the last census year. Emily's month of birth is listed as Sept. The family was enumerated on June 8, 1880, making 9-month old Emily born in Sept. 1879 -- the same date as in the Roeblings book.

Emily's birth date is also listed as Sept. 1879 in the 1900 census, while living as a 20-year-old in her father's household. Her brother, Washington, also in the household, has a birth date of March 1881 --again agreeing with the Roebling biography.

However, after Emily's marriage, begins the period of irregular reporting of her birth date. In all cases, the fact the she was born in September remains consistent. Among census data, a passport application, and ship passenger lists, her birth year changes.

In thinking about this, I found several things interesting.

Emily birth date while in her father's household is consistently reported (based on sources found) as Sept. 1879.
After her marriage to Richard Cadwalader, her reported birth year changes, though month remains consistent.
None of the dates I found match what I believe to be Emily's real birth date - 9 Sept 1879, or the date on her gravestone - 9 Sept 1881.
Her husband's birth date for the same sources is consistently reported as 7 Nov 1878. The one exception I found in his reported birth date is his World War I Draft Card.
The date on the draft card -- 7 Nov 1877 -- is the only one to match the date on Richard M. Cadwalader Jr.'s gravestone.

I'm left wondering if the change in Emily's age was self-reported out of vanity of some sort. But I also wonder if her husband, who may have been reporting data on her behalf in generation of these sources, reported her birth date wrong -- but why? Might he not have remembered it consistently, despite being able to report a date for himself fairly consistently? Or more vanity? I have no answers, but I found it a curious problem. If I get to the New Jersey State Archives some day, I can look up Emily's birth certificate on microfilm.

[1] Schuyler, Hamilton. The Roeblings : A Century of Engineers, Bridge-builders and Industrialists : The Story of Three Generations of an Illustrious Family, 1831-1931. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1931.

Note: I borrowed this book as Schuyler wrote another work I used recently in my research, 'A History of St. Michael's Church, Trenton,' and was interested to see his treatment of the Roebling family.

[2] Schuyler, p. 315.

Edited for image readability.

iPhoto Settings to Upload Photos to Find A Grave

2011-01-12T21:24:00.005-05:00

I've accumulated a 'bunch' (more than a little, less than a lot) of photographs I've taken of ancestral graves from various cemetery visits. For a good long while I've been wanting to upload these to Find A Grave. But the photos are too large in their native format off my digital camera to meet Find A Grave's size requirements (200-800 pixel width, 350 KB size). And working with the image software I've been using (which I won't bother to name) has frustrated me no end.

So I was fiddling in iPhoto, which I use to organize my photos, preparing to export a file or two to try resizing (again), and accidentally hit on what is probably a basic feature in iPhoto that enabled me to easily resize the photos exactly as needed without a lot of extra editing.

My problem in the past was not paying enough attention to the available options when exporting a photo. (I export photos out of iPhoto for my blog and Find A Grave so I can post smaller sized images, as well as keep photos used in the blog and uploaded to Find A Grave together in their own folders. Thus the larger originals are retained, unedited, in iPhoto.)

This time I used the 'custom' size option, which enabled me to select the pixel dimensions of the exported photo. I like a dimension of 640 pixels on the longest size for basic service image, a standard I've been using for years because it generally displays well on most monitor resolutions without requiring the user to scroll.

The resulting image is the size I need in both dimension and resolution. I don't think iPhoto can replace my usual photo editing software, but I do think there are some basic things I can get a handle on to make my online life a bit easier. Perhaps a resolution for the coming year.

Wednesday's Child - Baby Christine

2011-01-12T20:25:00.003-05:00

I posted for Tombstone Tuesday last week about locating the graves of my great-great grandparents, Richard McCall Cadwalader and Christine Williams Biddle. Also in this plot were graves of three of their seven sons. Two more sons, my great-grandfather and another of the uncles are nearby in the same cemetery.

The collective in my family thought surrounding this family group is that of men and "the uncles". Seven boys, of whom we collectively have a number of photographs and one large oil portrait. Thus I was especially touched to find the tiny grave of the lone baby daughter, Christine, who was just one month old at her death in April 1887.

One interesting thing I noticed about this grave was the engraving on the top of the tombstone in addition to the more standard engraving on the side -- almost as if her parents wanted to ensure her tiny stone didn't get missed by those looking from above.

Library of Congress - Smith/Miller Interactive Family Tree

2011-01-08T23:39:00.002-05:00

I'm not related to the Smith/Miller family. I stumbled across this site a few weeks ago while doing research at work on Elizabeth Smith Miller. The collection at the Library of Congress is the Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911 -- one of the features is an interactive family tree. Laid out in pedigree format, you can zoom in and out, move around, hover over people to get additional information or print the whole thing out on a page. I thought it was a useful addition to an archival collection that mentions family members, though I did find myself wishing for source information associated with the tree, particularly if referenced in other collections at LC.

'The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries'

2011-01-08T22:53:00.004-05:00

Book reviews aren't something I've done before on this blog but I recently came across an extremely useful source that I want to remember and as such put a few notes down.

Trying to keep track of the evolution of places, place names, and their various boundaries is one of the more frustrating parts of genealogical research for me. My genealogical software of choice doesn't have any terrific features to assist me with this -- particularly in making notes associated with a particular location's boundary or name changes.

I've been working on my Cadwalader line of late, with an eye toward some day completing an application for the DAR. Back in November I was doing some research correspondence with a woman from the New Jersey State Archives (extremely helpful, BTW), and asked after any sources she could recommend to help me understand the changing county boundaries around Trenton. She recommended The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries, 1606-1968, by John P. Snyder (Trenton, NJ : Bureau of Geology and Topography, 1969).

The book goes into much more detail than I need at this point. But there are detailed timelines for each county in New Jersey, with additional notes the townships contained within a given county. There are plenty of state and county-level maps illustrating boundary changes over time.

My personal confusion lies in Hunterdon County, Burlington County, and Mercer County. My ancestors had property in the Trenton area, and I was consistently goofing up which county they and their estate was in at nay given time. Looking at a map of New Jersey's county boundaries from 1714-1775, I see that Trenton was then in Hunterdon County, though right on the Burlington County border, which appears to be the Assunpink Creek. I need to double-check my notes, as Hunterdon County comes up often in my research, my ancestors may actually have been in Burlington County.

Mercer county wasn't established until 1838 (16 years after the death of Lambert Cadwalader, my 4th great grandfather). Mercer was formed from a number of townships from Hunterdon, Burlington, Middlesex, and Somerset counties.

Tombstone Tuesday, Or, What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

2011-01-04T20:48:00.003-05:00

St. Thomas Church Cemetery, Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania.

A couple of cemetery-related events came together while I was home visiting my mother, in the town where I grew up, over the Christmas holidays. Many of my mother's ancestors are buried in this cemetery. I've slowly been locating their graves over the last year, taking pictures, and documenting for myself where my ancestors lie. I've been hoping to find my great-great grandparents, Richard McCall and Christine Biddle Cadwalader, for some time now. I knew they were buried at St. Thomas', but had no idea where.

So the day I arrived home, my mother and I set out to take some photographs, with maybe 45-minutes of daylight left if we were lucky. Not knowing where they were buried, we started at my great-grandparents' graves, but did not find other Cadwalader graves in the vicinity. But where else to look?

My grandmother had long told us about the family graves to be found "straight out the doors of the church and past the light post". But before I got into genealogy with any passion, I never gave much thought as to who we'd find there. However, with no better ideas, my mother suggested we head straight out into the cemetery from the doors of the church, past the light post. We did so, coming to some distantly related Cadwalader graves. Based on landscaping, we turned right and hoped for the best. After a little bit of walking, Mom noticed the grave of Alexander Cadwalader (1888-1918), the youngest of the Cadwalader siblings, who supposedly took his own life. We stopped, looked around, and realized we'd found the family we'd been looking for, buried together in a little plot.

Richard McCall Cadwalader (1839-1918)
Christine Biddle Cadwalader (1847-1900)
Thomas Cadwalader (1874-1933)
Charles Meigs Biddle Cadwalader (1885-1959)
Christine Cadwalader (1887-1887)
Alexander Cadwalader (1888-1918)

I visited the plot a few days later with my sister to take some additional photographs, and this time had no trouble finding my family -- straight out the door of the church, past the lightpost.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 22 - Christmas and Deceased Relatives

2010-12-22T21:20:00.002-05:00

From Geneabloggers: http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com/preview-advent-calendar-christmas-memories/

1. Did your family visit the cemetery at Christmas?

Did I? I'm embarrassed to say 'no' -- though I plan to this year, since I'll be in town. Did others? Yes. My grandmother would go lay wreathes on many of the graves, and knowing my grandmother, probably with clippers in hand to trim back any overgrown evergreens obstructing some of the tombstones.

2. How did your family honor deceased family members at Christmas?

Our family gathers every year around Christmas for a party. To honor those passed, we tell stories, laugh, and raise a glass in toast to them. As for me, I like to get a bottle of my grandfather's favorite champagne (when I can find it) to share with family and/or friends around the holidays.

The footnoteMaven's Tadition of Blog Caroling

2010-12-14T20:14:00.002-05:00

footnoteMaven is challenging us to blog our favorite Christmas Carols for Blog Caroling.

There are several carols I love for different reasons, but I think my favorite is The Little Drummer Boy. I don't think I've ever heard a version I didn't like, but the version by the Harry Simeone Chorale is tops in my book.

YouTube offerings of this carol didn't have wonderful accompanying visuals, but I like this one because my parents had an album with similar cover art back in the day, and I can still picture it when I hear the Harry Simeone Chorale sing The Little Drummer Boy.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 4 - Christmas Cards

2010-12-04T22:53:00.003-05:00

From Geneabloggers: http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com/

"Did your family send cards? Did your family display the ones they received? Do you still send Christmas cards? Do you have any cards from your ancestors?"

It's all about photo cards in my family. My grandmother always hung the photo cards she received on a ribbon by the fireplace, and then around doorways, or in a china bowl when the prime fireplace real estate was full. My mother and her siblings have adopted similar practices.

I don't think I have any cards sent by ancestors, but what I do have are photo cards they received from other families. After Christmas, my grandmother would usually place a selection of the photo cards received in her scrapbook, labeled for the year. I have several scrapbooks with such pages in them, the earliest of which (in my possession) probably dates back to the 1950's.

Do I still send Christmas cards? Some years. This year I should, since I have good photos from summer trips that rate a photo card this year, but my procrastination seems to be getting the better of me. Maybe there's still time...

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - What are your d'Aboville numbers?

2010-12-04T22:14:00.002-05:00

I'm back after a sizable dry spell. Randy Seaver has another Saturday Night challenge that uses your genealogy software to calculate d'Aboville numbers. See his post and instructions at Genea-Musings.

To summarize, Randy asks us to calculate our own d'Aboville numbers for the lines of our four grandparents, from the earliest known ancestor.

I've calculated what I think are d'Aboville numbers. Reunion doesn't use the term (that I can find), and these are called (in Reunion-speak) 'Legal Numbers'. But the numbering scheme seems to closely match the definitions of d'Aboville numbers that Randy identified. [See Encyclopedia of Genealogy and Wikipedia] The numbers are organized by generations, using periods to separate the generations, and does not change numbering for more than nine children. What Reunion's Legal Numbering system does, that neither definition above indicated, is add lowercase letters for generations where there is more than one marriage. First marriage = a, second marriage = b, etc.

Here are mine:

From Stephen Greenleaf (1652-1743) - 1.2.13.11.2.2.2a.3a.1b.1
From Thomas Joseph McCormick (1850-1905) - 1.6.1.1b.1
From Peter Worrall (b.1719) - 1.1.2.1a.2.4.2.1.1
From John Cadwalader (1677-1734) - 1.1.4.2.4.4.1b.1.1

How I did it:

Numbers can be made viewable on the family cards by navigating to Reunion Preferences and adding the "numbering" field to the default view.
Navigate to the ancestor for whom you want to calculate the numbering scheme.
Under the 'Change' menu, click 'Numbering'
Select the 'Descendant' tab
Select 'Legal Numbers'
Confirm the source individual. If you navigate to a married couple, you can select either spouse as the source of descendant numbering.
Click 'Assign'
Numbers are now viewable on each persons card.

All four numbers are viewable on my card, in the order in which I assigned them, separated by commas. What is less clear is if there's an easy way to remember which is which, should I forget. But it's also easy enough to clear them and recalculate.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Same Birthday as Yours?

2010-10-23T19:10:00.009-04:00

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings has this for this week's fun:

1) Is there a person in your genealogy database that has the same birth date that you do? If so, tell us about him or her - what do you know, and how is s/he related to you?
2) For bonus points, how did you determine this? What feature or process did you use in your software to work this problem out? I think the Calendar feature probably does it, but perhaps you have a trick to make this work outside of the calendar function.

There are no relatives in my tree who share my birthday. But I know there is at least one whose death date is my birthday. So in order to test the "Find Anything" feature in Reunion, I ran my birthday, 6 Oct, through as a death date.

Reunion has a pretty handy search feature called "Find Anything". I start with the conditions, "Death Date" "Is" "6 Oct" and get a single return, Lewis Kitchel Bridge my 4th great grandfather who died 6 Oct 1846.

My go-to feature in Reunion for finding things is "Find Anything". So given Randy's instructions, I decided to see what Reunion has in the way of a Calendar feature. I found Reunion's Calendar feature under the "List" menu and was able to select setting to retrieve all birth dates in the month of October:

Reunion returns exactly what is says it does -- a handy list of people whose birth dates are in October, including people who I know (or suspect) were born in October but for whom an exact date is not yet known:

Tech Tuesday - Ancestry's Person Viewer Solves a Mystery

2010-10-19T22:54:00.011-04:00

So in the last day or two, I've been interested in the launch and subsequent reception of Ancestry.com's Labs, one item of which is their new Person View feature. Person View seems intended to aggregate "the most likely evidence" of one person on one page, including data from records and trees from Ancestry.com, as well as including related Web records.

So of course, I had to try this and see what I got. To my great surprise, Person View answered one of my minor mysteries, but introduced an interesting data error/bug.

My test search was for Lewis Kitchel Bridge, my 4th great grandfather who lived in New York City in the early 19th century, dying in 1846. The Bridge family has been my family of focus in recent months, as I'm trying to get proof on the identity of Lewis' wife and the mother of my 3rd great grandmother, Adeline Bridge Stone.

Anyway, I searched for Lewis Bridge, male, born in 1799, father's name of Kitchel, and received a single page of results. The item that caught my eye, was near the bottom of the page, and was a listing of web records for Lewis K. Bridge, Jr. (son of Lewis Bridge).
The entry links to the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and lists Lewis Bridge Jr.'s death date as 7 Nov 1874. So I hopped over to the Green-Wood Cemetery and searched their burial records to find the following:
I've been trying to determine the current burial location of the Bridge family for some time. The key here is my use of the word current. Green-Wood Cemetery's records list note the 7 Nov 1874 date as a burial date, not a death date, which is correct as the Bridge family was moved there from the New York City Marble Cemetery in 1874.

I found the interment records on the NYC Marble Cemetery Web site some time ago.

The interment records listed at NYC Marble Cemetery include a removal date, and the removal date for the Bridge family is 7 Nov 1874 -- the same date they were buried at Green-Wood Cemetery.

I've been wondering for a while if they really were no longer at NYC Marble, and if not, where they were relocated, and am glad to finally find out. And I admit I never would have thought to use a tool like Person View to uncover this information -- I think I got lucky in that respect.

But back to the data in Person View. My issue here is that Person View is displaying a burial date as a death date.
And in this case the burial date in Green-Wood Cemetery isn't even close to the actual death date. Lewis K Bridge Jr. was interred in the NYC Marble Cemetery 14 July 1863, having died 10 July 1863. Yet the data mapping in Person View (information being pulled from Green-Wood and displayed elsewhere) reports a death date of 7 Nov 1874 -- the date the family was moved from one cemetery to another.

In all fairness, I have not gotten records from either cemetery beyond what is available on their web sites, and am trying to harmonize some interesting potential inconsistencies in the family plots. I think Person View has great potential, and I got lucky with my search in that it answered a question I had, but I think there are still a few bugs to work out.

Tombstone Tuesday - John Ruckman Fell

2010-10-19T22:27:00.005-04:00

John Ruckman Fell
1 Jan 1858 - 15 Nov 1895
St. Thomas Cemetery

First husband of Sarah Drexel, John Ruckman Fell died of cerebral apoplexy in 1895 in Philadelphia, leaving his wife and four children Amanda (b.1880), Mae (b.1884), Frances (b.1887), and John (b.1890).

John Ruckman Fell at Find A Grave

Tombstone Tuesday - Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer

2010-09-28T22:19:00.006-04:00

Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer
1860 - 1929
St. Thomas' Cemetery
Sarah Drexel Van Rensselaer at Find A Grave

Sarah Drexel was my great-great grandmother, daughter of financier (and 3rd great grandfather) Anthony Joseph Drexel. She married first, John Ruckman Fell in 1879. After his death in 1895 she married Alexander Van Rensselaer in 1898.

I create an entry for her at Find A Grave tonight, inscribing what is on the grave stone, though I'm not entirely certain the birth date is accurate. I confess it's been some time since I've done much research on her, but have a niggling feeling the August 28 date, might not be correct, and I've yet to find evidence to support the date. I mentioned in my post on Alexander last week that I have a copy of their marriage license. However, there's no birth date on the license for her -- only her age -- 37 years.

Alexander Van Rensselaer signed the license 18 Jan 1898. If Sarah Drexel Fell was 37 years old on that date, she could have been born at almost any time in 1860. Anyway, more work to do here.

As is usually the case with these little entries, this isn't near enough information to do my ancestor justice.

Picasa for Image Management

2010-09-28T21:53:00.004-04:00

Last Tuesday I was full of grand plans to upload gravestone pictures to Find A Grave for Tombstone Tuesday. While trying to resize my images to meet Find A Grave's requirements, I got frustrated pretty quickly with some of the intricacies and oddities of my current software (which shall remain nameless).

So I downloaded Picasa as an alternative. I like that it's free and works with Mac, but I really had no expectations otherwise. In the little playing with it I've done in the last week, I see that it has tremendous potential for organizing photos and may well assist me with efforts to better identify and organize what I've got on my machine.

I'm still not sure about editing capabilities, but I don't do a great deal of image editing. My immediate needs are resizing and organization, which Picasa seems to be able to deliver.

I got my images resized and uploaded to Find A Grave and am ready to move forward with other family memorials.

Bits and Pieces - Assorted Death Certificates and the Clues Therein

2010-09-22T20:37:00.003-04:00

I find it curious that the highlight of my day is receiving a death certificate in the mail. I'm not saying this is abnormal, but simply an interesting observation of where my current interests lie.

In the past week I've received three death certificates for ancestors in my paternal line, and while none of them provided huge clues or broke down brick walls, they all had little bits of value.

Adeline Emma Bridge Stone (1827-1855). Given the little information I supplied on the request form, I'm actually surprised I even got this. Considering that my 3rd great-grandmother died in 1855, there was little additional information on the form, but it is a record from New York City in the mid-nineteenth century. I've been working on determining the definitive identity of Adeline's mother, and had half-heartedly hoped this might help. Sadly it didn't. But it did answer another of my questions... What caused her death at age 28, leaving my great-great grandmother motherless at age five? Answer: pneumonia.

John Stoddard McCormick (1889-1948). I really wasn't looking for answers with this one -- more to bring his documentation full circle and complete as much as possible. One piece I've gone back and forth on with my great-grandfather is the year he was born. The month and day, December 8, has been consistent, but other information has pointed to either 1888 or 1889. His death certificate lists 1889. He was born in Connecticut, not New York, so I suppose my next step is trying to track down a birth certificate.

Margaret Gilligan McCormick (1851-1927). I love having this one. I struggled for quite a while to prove that Margaret was John Stoddard McCormick's mother and my great-great grandmother, and I cherish every piece of information that links us together. My great-grandfather, Dr. John S. McCormick provided the "personal and statistical particulars." This tells me her father was John Gilligan, born in Ireland, and her mother Katherine, also born in Ireland. Unfortunately, Katherine's last name is hard to read or even guess at. But it's a tidbit I didn't have before.

Tombstone Tuesday - Alexander Van Rensselaer

2010-09-21T23:12:00.005-04:00

Alexander Van Rensselaer
1 Oct 1950 - 18 July 1933
St. Thomas' Cemetery

Alexander Van Rensselaer was the 2nd husband of my great-great grandmother, Sarah Drexel Fell. Many of my maternal ancestors are buried at St. Thomas, and while I have a good start in getting photographs of their graves, I have a number yet to locate. Alexander's stone is the first in the group of photos I have on hand, so as I've been a bit lazy about posting of late, thought I'd get started.

I need to go back and get a better look at this stone, as well as several others nearby, as the dates are quite hard to read. I strongly suspect the birth date on this stone might be wrong.

It looks like the birth year on this stone says 1851, but I've got a copy of his marriage license to Sarah Drexel Fell, which says he was born in 1850, and I'm using the date from the marriage in my genealogy. (And I'm kicking myself for not being more detail oriented when I shot this photo last year -- lesson learned.)

On a side note, I had grand plans for this post, which I'm hoping will get me back on track with my genealogy blogging. I'd hoped to get Alexander's Find A Grave entry up, but I'm having trouble resizing the images appropriately, which is frustrating me no end. Anyway, here's the link to Alexander Van Rensselaer's entry at Find A Grave, images forthcoming (though not likely before midnight at this point).

And the article on his death from the New York Times that I'd hoped to link to seems only to be available for a fee. Hopefully next week will be better.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Elsie's Hideaway

2010-09-09T21:18:00.003-04:00

In June I wrote about Stonover Farm and our family visit to a place that had a deep connection to our past. This week I received an email from someone who also has a connection to Stonover Farm. In his honor, I'm posting this tidibt from our visit.

Rumor has it (rumors I've heard, anyway) that this little cabin nestled in the woods above the farm was the writing hideaway of anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons.

The Parsons family has a deep connection to Lenox. My family is related to them through marriage, and I admit I don't know quite enough to know what Elsie's ties to Lenox were, but regardless, it's a beautiful little gem of a place tucked away in the woods with a wonderful (possible) history.

Mapping Genealogical Data - The Albany Cluster

2010-09-03T22:21:00.013-04:00

A few weeks ago, a colleague introduced a group of us at work to a resource called Dipity (dipity.com). Dipity is a timeline tool capable of hosting images, video, and text, presenting the results in one of several formats: standard timeline, list, flipbook, or map.

As soon as I saw this, I started imagining how I could try it with genealogical data. I find the ability to map historic events the intriguing part of this resource and for quite a while I've been wanting to find a way to visually associate genealogical events with geographic points.

One of the timelines I've been working on is Genealogy Data Mapping. This is a pretty basic use of Dipity, where my timeline is entirely text-based and consists of genealogical events I could associate with specific dates and locations.

The first thing I tried mapping was census data. I liked the idea of this in order to visualize my ancestors' residential patterns -- places lived and approximate length of time spent in a given place before moving on. Census data has two specific data points to map: (1) an exact date, taken from census form images, and (2) location - city/town, county, state. On the surface this works, but the problem I had was capturing the richness of the family data in a census. Who exactly was I mapping and emphasizing -- the head of household? The family group? One of the children in his/her life over time? I played with a few census time/map plots, but the dissatisfaction frustrated me. Perhaps with a better defined goal for my census timeline, say mapping individual ancestors irrespective of other family members listed in the same household, I'd have better luck. But I decided to move on.

Dipity allows you to enter/map a specific street address in addition to basic city/state geographical data. Thinking about this, I realized I had another type of genealogical data at hand with date/location points -- city directories. I've used the Albany City Directories for the past couple of years to research my paternal grandmother's ancestors, establish relationships, and pinpoint death dates between censuses. As such, I had a nice little set of addresses tied to specific individuals for specific years. I realize city directories technically include an entire family/household, but the entry in the directory itself is for one person, and multiple independent adults living in the same household (borders, extended family, etc.) appear to be listed in the directory individually.

Using my city directory data, I was able to map a interesting cluster in the downtown Albany area:

My McCormick and Gillespie ancestors did a fair amount of moving around Albany in the early part of the 20th century. I found it interesting to see the actual locations of the addresses and noticed patterns of residence. Even though the families moved several times (if not quite often), they tended to stay in specific areas -- the Gillespies particularly tending to reside within the same few blocks. (Clicking on each pin point on the map will bring up the Dipity entry.

I do wish there was a way to color code the entries to distinguish families in the map view, but for a free tool, it's not bad and I think has some interesting possibilities for projects. My next Dipity project will use images to present a standard historic timeline of a single family line.

Genealogy Data Mapping timeline

Knowing Your Neighbors

2010-07-25T23:39:00.004-04:00

I've heard it said in genealogical research that one should pay attention not just to the family you're researching, but to their neighbors as well, who often turn out to be family members. I'm also reading Buzzy Jackson's book, Shaking the Tree: Blue Bloods, Black Sheep, and Other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist, and Jackson emphasizes the same point a couple of times. Nevertheless, a basic genealogical research tip I should be well aware of came sneaking up on me.

So last week I mentioned in my post on mapping Windyside that one of Richard and Adeline Greenleaf's neighbors with whom he agreed on the situating of the residences was Henri Braem. I found out recently (well before writing the post last week, but still recently -- within the last month) that the Braems were in fact relatives of the Greenleafs.

My research into Adeline Emma Stone Greenleaf's family has focused almost solely on the Stones - her paternal line. Mrs. Henri Braem, nee Emily M. F. Bridge, was Adeline Greenleaf's aunt -- the sister of her mother, Adeline Bridge Stone.

I really haven't paid much attention to the Bridge family, but they've recently sucked me into a bit of a research challenge which I'm greatly enjoying. But that's another post (or several).

So what's my point here? I'm not sure there is one, but there were a few related things niggling at my brain that I needed to put down:

Windyside
A recent connection with a distant relative through the Bridge family
Buzzy Jackson's book and the tip on neighbors

I guess I feel like the connection to the Braems is something I should have mentioned in my last post, since I knew about it, but failed to take in all the details of what I was writing about. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well, but maybe this is enough of a mental jolt so I'll remember to take a better rounded view of the individuals next time.

Visualizing History - Mapping Windyside, Lenox, Massachusetts

2010-07-19T19:08:00.005-04:00

Last night I wrote about the music room at Windyside, so tonight onward with a little more about the Greenleaf ancestral home, Windyside, in Lenox, Massachusetts. I was tempted to title this post for "Madness Monday," largely because I'm frustrated in not being able to better organize my thoughts in my posts on Windyside than for any other reason.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned one of the first books in which I read about the Greenleaf cottage in Lenox, Jackson and Gilder's Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930. [1] The book has a nice chapter on Windyside, which among other things, contains the following tidbit:

"Windyside was one of three neighboring houses constructed along the newly created Yokun Avenue in 1874-75. A gentlemen's agreement between the three new owners--Greenleaf, Danish consul Henri Braem, and New York lawyer John E. Parsons--accounts for the positioning of these houses at staggered intervals, allowing each an unobstructed southern view"--p. 40.

Not long ago, Ancestry.com release the U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918. [2] An 1894 map illustrates nicely the three properties -- Parsons, Braem, and Greenleaf -- and shows the staggering of the houses.

Judging from the positioning of the properties, I'd guess that south is to the left. I rotated the orientation of the map to make the wording more readable, and in the original image, what is now the left side was at the bottom, though there was no key indicating direction on the original image.

Sources:
[1] Jackson, Richard S, Jr., and Cornelia Brooke Gilder. Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930. New York: Acanthus Press, 2006.
[2] Ancestry.com. U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Various publishers of County Land Ownership Atlases. Microfilmed by the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Sentimental Sunday - The Music Room at Windyside, Lenox, Massachusetts

2010-07-18T21:13:00.006-04:00

I wrote in an earlier post about my mother's family ties to Lenox, Massachusetts, which I'd known about for as long as I can remember. What I discovered a little more than a year ago was that my father's family also had ties to Lenox, and were "cottagers" about the same time as members of my mother's family. This spring I returned to the Greenleaf ancestral home at Lenox and was able to walk in spaces I'd read about and researched in the past year.

Richard Cranch (1845-1913) and Adeline Emma Stone Greenleaf (1849-1936) lived much of the time in Lenox at a cottage on Yokun Avenue called "Windyside." The Lenox Greenleafs are one of my favorite family groups to research, largely because the New York Times covered much of Lenox society in their day, bringing these people to life in a way I haven't found in other sources.

Among the events covered in the Times were concerts and musicales given by the Greenleafs in the music room at Windyside. One notable architectural feature in the music room is a huge terra-cotta fireplace. I discovered this feature first in Jackson and Gilder's Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930, where they describe the fireplace as "a notable ornament in the history of terra-cotta ornament in America." [1] American Architect and Building News published a photograph of the fireplace in the January 31, 1885 issue:

The fireplace is described as "16 feet wide, 12 feet high, and 8 feet deep, ... executed in terra-cotta by the Boston Terra-Cotta Company." [2]

In September 1890, the New York Times reported:

"Mrs. and Miss Greenleaf gave one of the most enjoyable and successful germans of the season at the great Greenleaf cottage to-night. The house was beautifully decorated. The great music room was decorated with palms and tropical potted plants. The great fireplace and mantel, the largest and most elegant in Lenox, were decorated handsomly with autumn flowers and foliage." [3]

In September of 1883, the Times mentions a morning musicale and the only piece I've found thus far to mention the music room's organ:

"Mrs. Richard C. Greenleaf gave a musicale Wednesday morning, when Adamowski played. He was assisted by Mrs. John I. Kane and Mr. R. C. Dixey. This is the first time that Adamowski has been in Lenox this season. Among the selections that he played were a gavotte by Carl Berg, Hungarian Dance by Natchez, novelette composed by himself, prelude to the 'Deluge' by Saint-Saens, and barcarolle by Sitt. The large organ in the Greenleaf music room was presided over by Mr. Dixey, and Mrs. Eames played the piano." [4]

Sources:
[1] Jackson, Richard S, Jr., and Cornelia Brooke Gilder. Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930. New York: Acanthus Press, 2006.
[2] American Architect and Building News 17 (no. 475 : 31 January 1885). Online. Internet Archive : http://www.archive.org/details/americanarchitec17newyuoft. Accessed: 18 July 2010.
[3] "Society Still at Lenox," New York Times, 30 Sept 1890, pg. 4. Online. ProQuest Historical Newspapers : http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=103267939&sid=2&Fmt=10&clientId=8167&RQT=309&VName=HNP. Accessed 18 July 2010.
[4] "Not Ready to Leave Lenox," New York Times, 24 Sept 1893, pg. 17. Online. ProQuest Historical Newspapers : http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=109710066&sid=3&Fmt=10&clientId=8167&RQT=309&VName=HNP. Accessed: 18 July 2010.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - I Write Like...

2010-07-17T15:54:00.006-04:00

From Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings, this week's fun is to submit a piece of writing that exemplifies the best of your work to the web site: http://iwl.me. The site will analyze your writing and return a badge to post on your blog.

I decided to analyze two things. First, I copied 4 or 5 paragraphs from my most recent blog post, American Revolutionary War Relics?, and received the following:

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Next, I took 4 paragraphs from an email I'd written recently, topic being family and genealogy, and received the same result, James Joyce. I find this fairly amusing since I'm not sure I could read Joyce, so for an analytical tool to think my writing is like his is interesting.

So to see if I could get a different result, I took another blog post, Thomas and Margaret McCormick, and copied 4 paragraphs... James Joyce again.

So finally, abandoning analysis of my genealogical writing, I copied 4 paragraphs from an email to my friend Lisa -- no genealogy, just typical daily life update stuff, and got...

I write like
Margaret Mitchell

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

For Margaret Mitchell, who I have read, I feel like my life should be much more interesting than it was in the email I copied.

Anyway, it's fun to play with. My genealogy writing must have a certain pattern to it that matches Joyce in the analysis tool. I'm sure if I analyzed more blog posts, I'd eventually get someone else.

American Revolutionary War Relics? The William and Mary Brown Greenleaf Portraits

2010-07-04T21:15:00.004-04:00

Some months ago, while searching for information on possible family portraits, I stumbled across this book, Catalogue of the Revolutionary Relics Exhibited at No. 56, Beacon Street, June 1875, in the Internet Archive noting the existence of portraits of my 5th great-grandparents, William Greenleaf (1725-1803) and Mary Brown Greenleaf (1728-1807). [see p. 5.]

I noticed a couple of interesting things in the entries (no. 43 and 44) on page 5, listing the Greenleaf portraits. In this scan from the University of Michigan original, someone scratched out the artist name "Copley" and wrote in "Blackburn". I wondered if this was simply a typo, or if the portraits were ever actually attributed to Copley.

The second interesting point is the notation under Mary Brown Greenleaf's portrait regarding piercing by a British bayonet. I presume that to mean there is at least one hole in the canvas. How it got there is anyone's guess, but given that the family came from Boston, I suppose there could have been a British bayonet in its vicinity at some point.

Further searching turned up this book in the Google Books collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, by Bryson Burroughs (6th ed., 1922). Entries for the William and Mary Brown Greenleaf portraits on page 18 indicate both that the portraits are signed by Blackburn (not Copley) and attribute the holes to "bullet holes, which according to tradition were made during the Revolutionary War."

I found copies of the portraits in the book, Early American Costume, by Edward Warwick and Henry C. Pitz. But the black and white plates don't show enough detail to tell me if there are bullet holes. Both the William Greenleaf portrait (plate XXVIII-A, facing p. 129) and Mary Brown Greenleaf portrait (plate LI, facing p. 232) have specks that might be holes, but there's no way of knowing. I don't know where the portraits are today. This work also attributes the Greenleaf portraits to Blackburn.

It's probably safe to say that the works are by Blackburn, but there will likely never be a definitive answer about the bullet or bayonet holes. In any case, it still makes for a great story, made even better by finding it in print in a couple of places.

Sources:
[1] Ladies' Centennial Commission (Boston, Mass.) Catalogue of the Revolutionary Relics Exhibited at No. 56, Beacon Street, June, 1875. Boston: Ladies' Centennial Commission, 1875. Online. Internet Archive. http://www.archive.org/details/cataloguerevolu00bosgoog : Accessed 4 July 2010.
[2] Burroughs, Bryson. Catalogue of Paintings. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1922. (6th ed.). Online. Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=TPAoAAAAYAAJ : Accessed 4 July 2010.
[3] Warwick, Edward, and Henry C. Pitz. Early American Costume. New York: The Century Co., 1929.

Thomas & Margaret McCormick - The Answer

2010-06-26T23:37:00.003-04:00

Finally, an answer -- Thomas Joseph and Margaret Gilligan McCormick are my great-great-grandparents. I received a copy of my great-grandparents marriage license in the mail from the State of New York, and there they were, listed fully by name. I'm especially thrilled to have a last name for Margaret.

My great-grandfather's address at the time was indeed 281 Madison Avenue, Albany, which also solidifies the link I found in the City Directories last month and wrote about here.

I feel like I should write more, but it seems fairly concrete at this point. Both were born in Ireland, so I'll be getting into a phase of research I haven't done before with other branches of my family as these are my nearest immigrant ancestors -- new challenges ahead!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Prolific Dad

2010-06-19T19:19:00.009-04:00

From Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.
"1) Determine who is one of the most prolific fathers in your genealogy database or in your ancestry. By prolific, I mean the one who fathered the most children.

2) Tell us about him in your own blog post, in comments to this blog post, or in comments on Facebook."

I knew off the top of my head that there are several prolific fathers in my tree, so I started by looking at these directly.

Asaph Stone (1786-1854) and Jane McFarlane (1793-1854) had 13 children.
Daniel Greenleaf (1679-1763) and Elizabeth Gookin (1681-1762) also had 13 children.
William Greenleaf (1725-1803) and Mary Brown (1728-1807) had 15 children, 13 of whom lived to adulthood.

But I wondered if Reunion had a way for me to search number of children to see what other prolific dads might be in my tree, and if any could top William and his 15 children. So I used the "Find Anything" feature found the search quite straightforward. I searched for "# children" "more than" "15" and found two men with more than 15 children:

Josiah Franklin (1657-1745) who had 7 children with first wife Anne Child (d.1689) and 9 children with second wife Abiah Folger (1667-1752), for a total of 16 children.
Archibald McCall (1727-1799) and Judith Kemble (b.1743) had 18 children.

Archibald McCall was a merchant, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1727. He married Judith Kemble of New Jersey in 1762. The McCalls had 18 children born between 1763 and 1788. Of the 18, 3 died as infants, 14 lived to adulthood, and I don't have enough information about one to know whether she survived to adulthood.

Two of the McCall children married into the Cadwalader family. Archibald McCall (1767-1743) married Elizabeth Cadwalader, daughter of General John Cadwalader. Archibald's sister Mary McCall (1764-1848) married Colonel Lambert Cadwalader, John Cadwalader's younger brother. Mary McCall Cadwalader is my 4th great-grandmother.

Miniature of Archibald McCall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Additional sources on Archibald McCall and family:

McCall, Ettie Tidwell,. McCall-Tidwell and allied families. Atlanta, Ga.: Published by the author, 1931. Online. Ancestry.com http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=11964 : 2010. [See p. 614]
Wharton, Anne Hollingsworth. Heirlooms in Miniatures. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1898. Online. Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/details/heirloomsminiatu00whariala : 2010. [See page 12 for an illustration of the Archibald McCall miniature and page 14 for information on Archibald McCall.]

Mourning the Kent Children

2010-06-19T00:58:00.008-04:00

When I do genealogical research, I sometimes get stuck on something (or distracted by life) and set it aside for a while, never knowing what I might find that will pull my back in. For the last couple of weeks I've been cleaning up my sources in Reunion, intentionally being fairly mechanical about the process so as to actually complete it, but last night stumbled across a little tidbit while verifying a citation that pulled me into a family I probably wouldn't have spent much time (if any) on otherwise.

I was double checking the source of death information for Sarah Greenleaf Kent (1688-1723) in Newbury, Massachusetts. As I was checking her death date (12 Apr 1723) in the Newbury Vital Records [1], I noticed a death listing for her son, Stephen, on 1 Apr 1723. I wondered if there was an epidemic or some event in the spring of 1723 that might account for their two deaths so close together.

Sarah Greenleaf Kent is my 7th great-aunt (according to Reunion), and fairly far removed from where I've been focusing my research, so I had not yet recorded any children for Sarah and her husband, Richard Kent. Finishing my source clean-up, I headed back to the vital records database [1]. I found that Capt. Richard Kent and Sarah Greenleaf were married in Newbury, Massachusetts, 30 Jan 1709. So I searched next for Kent children born to Richard and Sarah between their marriage in 1709 and her death in 1723.

It seems that the couple had 9 children:

John, b. 6 Nov 1710
unnamed son, b. 31 Aug 1712, d. 31 Aug 1712
Elisabeth, b. 8 Oct 1713
Richard, b. 5 Oct 1715
Stephen, b. 18 Sep 1717, d. 1 Apr 1723
Mary, b. 12 Jun 1719
James (twin), b. 29 May 1720
William (twin), b. 29 May 1720
Daniel, b. 10 Nov 1721

At this point, I knew that at least 2 of the 9 children had died: an unnamed son, born and died the same day, and Stephen at 5 years of age in 1723. I went back to the vital records to search for deaths in Kent family between 1710 and 1723. In addition to the 2 deaths I already knew about, what I found was the following:

23 Jun 1719 - Mary died
10 Jun 1720 - William died
11 Jun 1720 - James died
10 Jun 1723 - Elisabeth died

I expanded my search for deaths in the Kent family from 1723 to 1733 and found:

10 Sep 1725 - John died

Seven of the 9 Kent children died between 1712 and 1725, six dying between 1719 and 1725. I have yet to find death information on the 2 (apparently) surviving Kent children, Richard and Daniel. In fact, going back to the vital records [1], it appears that Richard Jr. may have survived to marry Ann Hale. Several of the children of Richard Kent Jr. and Ann Hale Kent bear names of the deceased Kent children, including John and Stephen, as well as the family name Daniel. This leads me to suspect that Ann Hale Kent's husband, Richard, is the son of Sarah Greenleaf Kent.

While I don't usually use other people's family trees as a source of information, I did go to Ancestry to see if anyone else had connected Richard Kent Jr. (b.1715), son of Richard and Sarah, to Ann Hale. I searched for Sarah Greenleaf (1688-1723), and browsed 40 trees. 3 of the 40 had Richard Kent Jr. married to Ann Hale. The others either had no wife listed, didn't list Richard Jr., or listed Sarah Greenleaf as unmarried or husband unknown.

I still wonder if an event in the spring of 1723 might account for the deaths of Sarah Greenleaf Kent and her son Stephen. I know children dying young in those days was far from uncommon. But to find so many lost so close together rattled me a bit while I was searching. This might be an interesting case for me to hone some additional research skills.

[1] Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 (Online Database: NewEnglandAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2008). http://www.newenglandancestors.org/database_search/Vital_records.asp

Sentimental Sunday -- Stonover Farm, Then and Now

2010-06-13T19:35:00.008-04:00

Stonover Farm, January 1944

Stonover Farm, May 2010

Lenox, Massachusetts has been part of my family's history as long as I can remember. Stonover Farm in particular. The property originally belonged to the Parsons family, which my mother's mother married into not once, but twice (sort of). Her first husband, Rufus Patterson III, was the son of Elsie "Lissa" Parsons Patterson Kennedy, owner of Stonover Farm until her death in 1966. Some time after Rufus was killed in World War II, my grandmother married the brother of Elsie's sister-in-law, who was my grandfather. [Yes, the generations are a little goofy here.]

My mother would tell me about visiting Stonover Farm in summers with her older half-brother to see his grandmother, Lissa. Memories were always fond, and Lenox to me, even before I visited myself, was a clearly a special place.

A few years ago, my mother discovered that Stonover Farm had been turned into a bed and breakfast, and of course various family members talked of visiting. This year, we finally made the trip, turning talk in action (something we don't always manage).

I'd been to Lenox last year, but hadn't seen Stonover Farm. So finally seeing Stonover Farm was wonderful, but all the more so because I took the trip with my sister, my mother, and her two sisters (my aunts). Lenox is one of those places where I feel at home and connected and can see myself returning to time and again.

Genea-Musings: Family Association Wikis - Whitney

2010-06-10T22:03:00.001-04:00

Genea-Musings: Family Association Wikis - Whitney

Via Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings blog, I found the Whitney Research Group wiki. I love the idea of using wiki technology for collaborating on family research through a family association, and at quick glance this one seems particularly well done. The articles I skimmed on my Whitney ancestors often fairly extensive and nicely referenced. [See, for example, Rev. Peter Whitney (1744-1816)]

I stumbled across the Whitneys while researching my Greenleaf line, and haven't done much research into them. I always remember them, though, because one of my mother's closest friends is a Whitney, and I'd love, some day to figure out if we're related. But anyway, this resource looks like it will be extremely helpful in researching some additional background on the Whitneys and I'd love to be able to contribute if possible. I note that my closest Whitney ancestor, Mary Parsons Whitney (1810-1889) has no page of her own, but I think my research needs to be firmed up a bit before I start adding anything.

More Death Certificates, More Questions

2010-06-02T23:27:00.005-04:00

A few weeks ago, I requested the death certificates of William and Martha Magoun Adams from the New Jersey State Archives. Both are in my "Mayflower line", so while I didn't expect to learn anything new from these, having them helps solidify my research in this line of the family. The New Jersey State Archives has a small searchable index of death records from June 1878 to June 1885, and happily both deaths in West Orange, New Jersey fell within this small time frame. (I love requesting records from these databases since the results populate the request forms automatically.)

So when the photocopies arrived a couple of weeks later, the information was mostly what I expected: birthplaces, parents' names, and death dates, while secondary information, all confirmed information I had already. The major new information gleaned was their burial location -- both in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts. (I've already fired off a confirmation request to Mount Auburn.)

What I found odd was a fairly minor note on each certificate: How long resident in this state?
William Adams died first: 31 Aug 1880. So I didn't think much when the length of his residence in New Jersey was listed as 4 months.

Then I looked at Martha's death certificate. She died 13 Jun 1885, a little less than five years after her husband, yet her length of residence is listed as 11 years.

At first glance, the math doesn't add up. Assuming William and Martha Adams lived together during their marriage, I'd expect her length of residence to be only 5 years or so longer than his. But on the other hand, I guess it's not impossible that he was one place while she was in West Orange, but for six years? In the 1870's? I suppose the most likely explanation is that the information on one or both certificates is wrong. And at the moment I don't know that it'll make a huge impact on my research, but it's niggling at my brain. Something else to work on some day.

Memorial Day - Remembering Rufus Lenoir Patterson III

2010-05-31T14:45:00.005-04:00

Rufus Lenoir Patterson III (1922-1944), was killed in action over Germany Sept. 11, 1944. To honor him on Memorial Day, I spent a little time updating his pages at Footnote.com and Find-A-Grave.

Tombstone Tuesday - McCormick Family, St. Agnes Cemetery

2010-05-25T20:43:00.004-04:00

For some time now, I've been wanting to locate my great-grandparents' graves in Albany. Interestingly enough, it was through my continued search to link Thomas and Margaret McCormick with John Stoddard McCormick, that I found them at the St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands.

Some weeks ago, after following a link in a comment on Find-A-Grave, I found the Troy Irish Genealogy Society's index to St. Agnes Cemetery interment records. I knew from Find-A-Grave that Thomas and Margaret McCormick were in St. Agnes Cemetery, so using the TIGS's index, requested Thomas' record. I received a speedy reply and was impressed with the extra details written in on the returned form.

I then re-examined the obituaries I had for John Stoddard McCormick, Irene Gillespie McCormick, and John Stoddard McCormick, Jr. I found that John Stoddard McCormick was buried in St. Agnes Cemetery (according to his obit.). Irene's obituary did not name a place, but I decided to operate on the assumpotion that she'd be buried with her husband. John Jr.'s obituary stated he'd be buried in Albany (he died in Houston). I hoped that if he was moved from Houston to Albany for burial, that he'd also be with his parents (having never married). Since I was heading to Albany anyway to do research at the State Library, I decided to see if I could add an appointment at St. Agnes to my roster.

I sent St. Agnes a list of who I was looking for, including dates when and where they died. I spent about an hour with a staff member looking at copies of their index and she escorted me to their grave site. (Thank goodness because St. Agnes is huge and even with two maps at different levels of detail, I'm not sure I'd have found them on my own.)

And here I am, now with photo documentation and maps detailing where they are. The folks at St. Agnes clearly do a good job tending to the grounds, and promised they do some neatening up around the base of the stone, removing some old buried vases and some minor landscaping.

Margaret McCormick - Dare I hope, a breakthrough?

2010-05-20T23:05:00.005-04:00

I've posted about Thomas & Margaret McCormick and my ongoing quest to claim them as my great-great-grandparents. Thus far, a lot of my evidence doesn't prove anything. Thomas & Margaret had a son, John, also the name of my great-grandfather. Newspaper articles such as my great-grandfather's obituary, match names of his siblings with names of children of Thomas & Margaret found in census records. Maddeningly, neither his obituary, nor his marriage announcement (which I found today) reference his parents at all, much less name them.

So I spent the better part of the day at the New York State Library, hoping to fill in some holes and find something to connect these people. I spent a decent amount of times with the Albany City Directories (which I love) and found this entry in the 1915 directory:

The entry for the McCormicks notes 2 key things:
(1) Margaret McCormick, widow of Thomas C., is residing at 281 Madison Ave.
(2) John S. McCormick, her son, a student, is also residing at 281 Madison Ave.

Then tonight, while noodling around Ancestry I pulled up my great-grandfather's WWI Draft Registration card:
I'm certain this is his because of the birth date, birth place (not shown) and occupation. I noticed his address listed was 281 Madison Ave., which I'd seen earlier today connected to this family. The draft card, which has no year, also mentions that he was married at the time he filled it out.

John Stoddard McCormick and Irene Gillespie were married Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1916. Their wedding announcement in the Times Union (below) mentions they'll reside on Madison Ave.

This is the most concrete connection I have so far that links John Stoddard McCormick as the son of Thomas & Margaret McCormick. I have a several vital records requests in the queue with Albany, so am still hopeful of a more definitive source, but for now this is more evidence supporting the connection.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Richard Cranch Greenleaf Drawings

2010-04-29T20:57:00.006-04:00

My mother recently unearthed a set of drawings (at least I think they're drawings) done by my great-great uncle, Richard Cranch Greenleaf (1887-1961). They're in poor condition, so I need to somehow get them stabilized, or at least in decent acid-free housing. I'm fairly certain they depict locations in France. Each is signed and five of the six have captions (in pencil) in the lower left corner. I need to work on deciphering his handwriting to get more details.

The sixth drawing, shown, has a more extensive caption, indicating that it was used as the basis for a lithograph to benefit the American Red Cross. (Unless it's actually a lithograph rather than a drawing. I can't tell for certain.)

Family Tree Maker for Mac

2010-04-29T20:45:00.003-04:00

From Eastman: "Ancestry.com Announces New Macintosh Version of Family Tree Maker"

I'm not sure what it says about my life, that Family Tree Maker for Mac is the most exciting news I've heard in a while. I've needed to harmonize my Reunion database with my Ancestry.com online tree for a while, and the prospect of switching to Family Tree Maker (which I'm assuming will interface directly with Ancestry.com) puts this project in new perspective.

Definitely food for thought... more later...

Wordless Wednesday - Mystery Woman

2010-04-28T20:58:00.006-04:00

Okay, so this post isn't so wordless. But just a bit of back story as to why I chose it tonight.

Looking for other photographs yesterday for a project, I decided to look at originals instead of browsing files. I came across this one from my maternal grandmother's collection. There is nothing on the photo that tells me blatantly who it is.

A few clues:
1. The photograph is marked on the front, Broadbent & Taylor, I assume the photograph studio.
2. Additional details printed on the verso: S. Broadbent ; W. Curtis Taylor ; 914 Chestnut St. ; Philadelphia.
3. Penciled in the upper right, "April 1878"

I'm wondering if it might be Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer (b.1860) at age 17 or 18, assuming the penciled date is when the photo was taken. (See photograph on earlier post.) But maybe I'm reaching.

Madness Monday, or, Milestone Monday: My First Death Certificate

2010-04-19T20:32:00.003-04:00

So back in March, during the Fearless Females posts, I wrote about my great-great grandmother, Helen Coolidge Adams being my then brick wall. I've been trying to prove or disprove that Helen is the daughter of Henry Coolidge and Margaret Hawley. Well, brick wall no longer -- thanks to the good people at NYC Vital Records!

Not long after writing the Fearless Femals post on Helen back in March, I finally found her death notice in the New York Times. It was brief, but as it turns out contained vital information. The notice states:

"ADAMS--On Sunday Jan. 20, 1929, at the Hotel Devon, 70 West 55th St., in her eighty-first year, Helen Coolidge, wife of the late William Adams. Funeral private."
[New York Times, Jan. 21, 1929, p. 15]

NYC Vital Records general information states that death records are filed by place of death, so thankfully the death notice told me not only when and where she died (Hotel Devon), but gave me an exact address. And it was enough information to fill out the request for a copy of her death certificate.

Today I received my self-addressed stamped envelope back from NYC Vital Records. I felt like I was back in high school waiting for a college acceptance -- feeling the envelope for thickness to figure out whether it contained my desired information or was a polite "sorry no luck" letter. Happily, the envelope contained two sheets of paper, double sided copies each, containing Helen Coolidge Adams' death certificate.

Scanning it quickly I found that the certificate did indeed list her parents, as follows--

-- Henry Coolidge and Margaret Hawley.

In addition to her parents, the certificate also list other interesting information. Birth date and place, 13 Nov. 1848, Connecticut, as well as her place of burial, "Cremation Fresh Pond". Page two of the certificate was a statement signed by her son William, understanding her wish for cremation and releasing the remains to the undertaker. I'm wondering if I should take the "Fresh Pond" bit literally.

Anyway, now I have this link and am free to move forward by going backward to the Coolidge and Hawley families.

Thomas & Margaret McCormick

2010-04-17T22:18:00.002-04:00

I've been working on tracing my paternal grandmother's family (among other things) -- one of my few family lines for which I had no information existing beyond what I or a handful of other family members remember.

My grandmother, Ann McCormick, was born to Irene Gillespie and John Stoddard McCormick in Albany, 1919. She had one younger brother who never married or had children (that I know of, which in this case, sadly isn't saying much). Last spring I was able to track Irene's parents and found Henry and Anna Gillespie in Albany.

I also found a family that could be John's, Thomas and Margaret McCormick, but have yet to be able prove or disprove it. There's a lot that matches -- birth places, names of siblings, but no concrete proof, and with a name as potentially generic as John McCormick, I need more.

But in the meantime, I've grown oddly attached to Thomas & Margaret McCormick and think I'll be disappointed if they turn out not to be my great-great grandparents. I found their death notices in the Albany Times Union (in 1905 and 1927) which give me nothing more concrete than siblings of John. The siblings names match those listed in John's obituary and the 1910 census record I think is his.

A few nights ago I found their tombstone pictured at Find A Grave. It's a shared tombstone in the St. Agnes Cemetery, Menands (Albany County). The dates on the stone match the death dates I have for this couple from their death notices. Linking back to comments posted at the site, I found that the interment records at St. Agnes are being indexed online by the Troy Irish Genealogy Society. Thomas' record has been indexed, so I can request the interment record for $5, which I'll do Monday. I'm not sure what more this will tell me, and feel like I'm grasping at straws, but I can't help thinking it's another step forward, even if a small one.

So today I went downtown to the Rundel Building to use the NYS Vital Records index on microfiche. I wanted to see if I could find entries for the deaths of John S. McCormick (d. 1948), Thomas C. McCormick (d. 1905) and Margaret McCormick (d. 1927). I found entries for Margaret and John, as expected, but did not find Thomas listed among the 1905 deaths, which threw me. Two more records requests, which may or may not help, but another small step forward.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Family Timeline

2010-04-17T20:56:00.004-04:00

Original post at: Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - a Family Timeline This is my first time participating in Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, and I found this an interesting exercise. First the basics:

1. My genealogy software is Reunion (v.9.0b) and I created this timeline using the standard timeline report and made some very minor edits. The edits I made were mostly with the colors. The timeline default report was generated with each individual marked as a different color. Since the men and women are already distinguished from each other by the shapes of their bars (men are rectangles, women are rounded rectangles), I changed the colors to designate family lines. Reunion allowed me to save this chart as a JPEG. I then pulled it into Photoshop to crop the excess white space.

2. The timeline (sorted by birth date) shows my paternal grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents. My grandfather and his line are green, while my grandmother and her line are yellow.

My grandfather was born in 1917, when his mother was 41 and father 44 years old. In 1917, his two older siblings (born 1901 and 1904) were already in their teens. So I was curious to see what visualizing the generations would look like, knowing that he was born to older parents. I put in my grandmother's line in as a comparison to see how the generations of her family were compare to his. Looking at the timeline, Ann's parents, are noticeably younger than Richard's, by a good 10-15 years. And the age differences between their grandparents (my great-great grandparents) spans another 10-15-20 years.

So what does this mean to me? When I think about my family generationally, I tend to assume similar life experiences in terms of culture and politics of the day, but in looking at ranges of years they actually lived, with 10-20 year spans in difference, I wonder to what extent their life experiences (in terms of politics and outside influences) might have varied more than I image.

* Disclaimer: I haven't yet proven (or disproven) that Thomas and Margaret McCormick are John S. McCormick's parents, but for comparison (and out of curiosity) thought I'd put them in.

Occam's Razor, or Not Overthinking File Harmonization

2010-04-12T21:12:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Kelly at Family History Fun: A light bulb moment!

People who know me know that I have a tendency to overthink things. I also love playing with data, so while I've known for a while that I need to harmonize the records I have on Ancestry.com with my regular family tree data (in Reunion), I haven't thought of an elegant way to do it. I started imagining scenarios of trying to merge data and people using various incarnations of GEDCOM files when I happened to see this post [Family History Fun: A light bulb moment!] today. This is a simple and probably workable solution for me (I think).

Most of the work I've done in Ancestry is on my direct ancestors (on either side), rather than on the many extensive lateral connections I have documented in Reunion. I'm thinking that if I methodically work my way through the generations I have a fighting chance of recording the Ancestry records in Reunion, saving copies as I go along. (I have little space for extensive paper files, so would prefer to go paperless when possible.)

Cataloging Futures = Cataloging Past

2010-04-09T20:35:00.007-04:00

I saw this post from Cataloging Futures in my Google Reader today, where Michael Gorman, Janet Swan Hill and Arlene Taylor talk about living through rule changes in cataloging past. I studied cataloging with Arlene Taylor (more than 10 and less than 15 years ago), and this stream transported me back to grad school at Pitt. As I start thinking about how to wrap my head around RDA and subsequently train my staff, I can see myself returning to these streams for inspiration!

Handsomest Man in New York Wins Philadelphia's Richest Woman

2010-03-29T22:37:00.005-04:00

Found on Footnote.com

I found this article on Footnote.com and love the headline and image at the top of the article in the Chicago Tribune (Jan. 11, 1898, p. 8) announcing Sarah Drexel Fell's engagement to Alexander Van Rensselaer. I especially love the images of the couple and her yacht below them. The article spins the yacht and yachting as the main reason for their meeting and calls their relationship a "love match". The article also gives a decent amount of information about Sarah's yacht, the May, and mentions her rare place as a woman in the yachting world.

"Mrs. Fell is one of the half-dozen first class yachtswomen in the United States."

"She is one of six women members of the New York Yacht club. The privileges of such members are only available when they are on a cruise. They cannot use the clubhouse, and they cease to be members when they cease to be yacht owners."

I found this article while looking for items to create a Footnote page for Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer for Fearless Females.

Fearless Females - Day Twenty-Nine - Footnote Pages

2010-03-29T22:24:00.003-04:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Create a free Footnote page or Genealogy Trading Card at Big Huge Labs for a female ancestor. ... Tell us who you've selected and why and then post a link to what you've created."

I opted for the Footnote page. I've played a little with Footnote pages, but was intrigued (and a little intimidated) by the challenge of creating one from scratch. The other Footnote pages I've contributed to have all been automatically generated by Footnote and then I've added to them.

I created a page for my great-great grandmother, Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer (1860-1929). I selected her for a couple of reasons. First, I've mentioned her several times during Fearless Females month, so it seemed appropriate, and second, I thought there was a decent chance she wouldn't have a page already.

I didn't find lots of information right off the bat, but will keep poking around Footnote and trying to enhance the page.

Footnote page for Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer.

Fearless Females - Day Twenty-Three - Jane McFarlane Stone

2010-03-23T22:03:00.010-04:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Create a timeline for a female ancestor using your favorite software program or an online timeline generator such as OurTimelines. Post an image of it or link."

I like free tools. I really like good free tools, and I had fun with this one. I have no shortage a female ancestors to try this with (limited of course to those whose birth and death years I know). And I was tempted to try this with someone who died young -- to make display easier in case I had to use screenshots.
The custom timeline I created was for Jane McFarlane Stone (1793-1854). I chose Jane for one main reason -- she died in a tragic event -- the sinking of the SS Arctic off the coast of Newfoundland on 27 Sept. 1854. (see also Fearless Females Day Eleven) As she died at age 61, her timeline was quite long. I've captured only the first and last screens.
A few notes:
1. In looking at the bottom of her timeline, I was particularly struck by an event in 1848, "NY allows women to own real estate" (age 55). Her husband, Asaph, was a merchant, doing business in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, so this seems like something that might have impacted her personally.
2. The timelines are rather US-centric. Not completely, but this particular timeline has a lot of US history, politics, expansion, invention -- those were the times. But Jane was born in Scotland, immigrating to the U.S. in 1795. [1] So while she lived most of her life here, and most of these events are probably relevant, I can see that it might not work for all ancestors.

But I can see this tool coming in handy -- mainly to give me a better idea of events happening while my ancestors were living, and what might have impacted their lives.

[1] History of the Clan Macfarlane, Macfarlan, Macfarland, Macfarlin, by Mrs. C. M. Little (1893), p. 193. Available online: http://books.google.com/books?id=tUw3AAAAMAAJ (Accessed: 23 Mar 2010)

Fearless Females - Day Twenty

2010-03-22T21:13:00.002-04:00

Yeah, yeah, a few days late on this one too...

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Is there a female ancestor who is your brick wall? Why? List possible sources for finding more information."

I have a variety of female ancestors who are brick walls. But one of the more recent walls (one I hit so hard it knocked me off course for a while) is my great-great grandmother, Helen Coolidge Adams (1849-1929).

Helen married William Adams (1840-1888) on 14 May 1867 at Madison Square Church in New York, New York. I know from a marriage notice in the New York Post (accessed via NewEnglandAncestors.org) that she was the daughter of "the late Henry Coolidge".

Other genealogical sources she appears in mention her as "Helen Coolidge" -- no daughter of whomever, from wherever. Example from A Genealogical History of Henry Adams, of Braintree, Mass., and his descendants; also John Adams, of Cambridge, Mass., 1632-1897.
"William, b. Jan. 31, 1840. m. May 14, 1867, Helen Coolidge. He d. at Searsdale, N.J., 14 July 1888."

So I know her father's name was Henry, and that as of her marriage in May 1867, he was deceased.

I also have copies from Descendants of John and Mary Coolidge of Watertown, Massachusetts, 1630. In this genealogy (p. 188) there is listed:
"Henry (Coolidge), b. Oct. 17, 1815, a merchant of New York; m. at Ridgefield, Conn., Nov. 3, 1847, Margaret Hawley, b. 1824; d. 1906. Of four children known William, Henry, Helen and Fannie..."

But I'm not sure this is the right family.
1. In reading the content of the above entry, first of all I'm not sure if Henry died in 1906 or his wife, Margaret, died in 1906. If Henry, this is the wrong family since Helen's father died prior to 1867.
2. But, Ancestry has a U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedules Index entry for a Henry Coolidge, a merchant born in New York, who died in 1860 at 44 years of age in Fairfield County, Conn. The birth year fits the Henry Coolidge married to Margaret Hawley, as does the profession. Further, Ridgefield, Conn., where Henry Coolidge and Margaret Hawley were married is in Fairfield County.
3. 1870 Census. Lists Helen Adams as the wife of William (with 2 young children) in Scarsdale, New York on 21 July 1870. But there is also a Helen Coolidge listed with her mother, Margaret, and siblings William, Henry and Fannie, in New York, New York on 12 July 1870. Could be the same woman visiting her mother and family? Attempts to find the Coolidges in the 1850 or 1860 censuses have not turned up anything (and I'm not sure it'd tell me anything, anyway).

So I'm trying to prove or disprove the relationship between Helen Coolidge Adams and Helen Coolidge, daughter of Henry and Margaret Hawley Coolidge. Where to look next? Marriage and/or death records for Helen Coolidge Adams. Probate records for Margaret Hawley Coolidge.

Tombstone Tuesday - St. Thomas' Church

2010-03-16T21:26:00.004-04:00

St. Thomas' Church, Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania. Six tombstones lined up along the (south?) wall of the church, visible from the approach from the parking lot. These are members of the Fell-Van Rensselaer family, my great-great grandmother Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer (1860-1929), both of her husbands, John R. Fell (1858-1895) and Alexander Van Rensselaer (1851-1933) and at least one of her children. (See also my post for Day Three of Fearless Females.)

Just One Thing: Basic Chinese Sauce Recipes

2010-03-16T21:18:00.002-04:00

From Eat Close to Home, "Just One Thing: Basic Chinese Sauce Recipes"...

I've been in a sauce slump. I love Asian food and can usually do a decent stir-fry sauce without much effort, but have been coming up empty of late. So I Googled "Chinese spicy brown sauce" and turned up this trio of basics. Thank goodness!

I made the white sauce for dinner tonight, with shredded pork and broccoli florets, but made a few adaptations. I did not make the brown sauce as I don't have molasses, and ingredient-wise was looking at the white. So I tried stepping it up a bit by using tamari for the soy sauce, a larger amount of chopped garlic, and 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper, and was really pleased with the results. I'm looking forward to doing more experimenting with these sauces.

Fearless Females - Day Eleven - Loss of the SS Arctic

2010-03-14T14:59:00.005-04:00

Yes, I'm behind -- and I skipped a few posts. I got behind on posting last week, so elected to skip the posts for which I didn't have some easy answers. I may go back and revisit the post on religion (day ten), but for now, onward.

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Did you have any female ancestors who died young or from tragic or unexpected circumstances? Describe and how did this affect the family?"

I've already told the story of Marion Constance Greenleaf who died young, from Typhoid Fever at age 29. This story is about Marion's great-grandmother, my 4th great-grandmother, Jane McFarlane Stone (1793-1854).

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of the SS Arctic until about a year ago.

Jane McFarlane Stone, her husband, merchant Asaph Stone, and their youngest daughter, Mary all died September 27, 1854. Some time ago now, I stumbled across a resource in Ancestry, Simon Stone genealogy : ancestry and descendants of Deacon Simon Stone of Watertown, Mass., 1320-1926, and in looking up my Stone Family ancestors, discovered that Adeline Emma Stone's father's father, Asaph (1786-1854) perished, along with his wife and daughter, on the steamship Arctic.

The passage in the Simon Stone genealogy reads (under the entry for Asaph Stone):

"After a year of European travel, Mr. Stone, his wife and their youngest daughter, all perished while homeward bound from Liverpool in the tragic sinking of the steamer Arctic off the coast of Newfoundland, 27 Sept. 1854. Of the two hundred and thirty-seven passengers in the ill-fated vessel only twenty-one were saved, the crew seizing most of the boats."--pp.306-307.

I read a little about the event and the Arctic after that. The Wikipedia entry for the SS Arctic points to 2 books written -- one in the early 1954, and one in 2002. I've read Women and Children Last (1954), and still hope to move on to The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic (2002). [Wikipedia can be a decent starting point for research when an entry has citations/bibliography.]

I've also looked at headlines from the New York Times near the incident. I forget, with today's era of instant information, that news did not always travel as quickly as in 2009. The New York Times has a series of small articles reporting no news of the Arctic, and counting its days delayed from arriving in port until news finally arrives of the ship's sinking. One of the earliest articles I noted was Oct. 4, 1854, which states (in part):

"The non-arrival of this vessel creates some interest in business circles ; but no alarm, owing to the heavy weather which she no doubt encountered on her voyage."--"The Steamer Arctic", New York Times, Oct. 4, 1854, p. 4.

By Oct. 9, 1854, the Times speculates that the ship, then 20-days out from Liverpool, might have met with mechanical failure and returned to England, with more time anticipated before hearing anything as to the ship's fate.[1]

It is finally on Oct. 11,1 854, that the Times reports "Loss of the Arctic : Collision Between the Steamer and a Propeller off Cape Race : Apprehensions of the Loss of all but Thirty-two Persons."[2]

In no way can I imagine what this event must have been like for those aboard. I think at the very least what I can do at present is be one more person who knows this happened, who has a personal connection to the event, and will not forget it in her own lifetime -- for what that's worth.

The Stones are listed in the Times as Mrs. Stone & daughter; Mr. A. Stone.

[1] "The Missing Steamer", New York Times, Oct. 9, 1854. Available online. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=88141646&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=8167&RQT=309&VName=HNP Accessed 11 Mar. 2009.

[2] "Loss of the Arctic", New York Times, Oct. 11, 1854. Available online. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=88141833&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=8167&RQT=309&VName=HNP Accessed 11 Mar. 2009.

Fearless Females - Day Eight

2010-03-08T21:44:00.007-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Did one of your female ancestors leave a diary, journal, or collection of letters? Share an entry or excerpt."

I have some of my grandmother's travel diaries from the 1980s-1990s, which I love and am delighted to have. But for this post I'm going to highlight single letter from a bit farther back in the family history.

The letter is written on the exterior of an envelope, addressed to my great-great grandmother, Christine Williams Biddle Cadwalader (1847-1900), and states:

"Dear Christine-- I send you
these 3 old salt spoons,
marked L. M. C. Lambert
& Mary Cadwalader-- I thought
you might like to keep
them for Lambert,--& this
old spoon with the Cad=
Walader Crest. I had
put them away for Maria.
Alas!!
Affec.
M. C. M."

Neither message nor envelope is dated. M.C.M. is probably Mary Cadwalader Mitchell (b. 1835, wife of Silas Weir Mitchell) whose daughter Maria Gouverneur Mitchell died in 1898, unmarried. Christine Biddle Cadwalader died in 1900, so the note was likely written between 1898-1900. Mary Cadwalader Mitchell survived her daughter and died in 1914. Christine's son, Lambert Cadwalader (b. 1882), probably the one referenced in the note as the intended recipient of the spoons, was the younger brother of my great-grandfather. The spoons' original owners were in all likelihood my 4th great-grandfather, Lambert Cadwalader (1743-1823) and his wife Mary McCall Cadwalader (1764-1848).

Fearless Females - Day Seven

2010-03-07T21:43:00.002-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother's kitchen. Why is this dish your favorite? ..."

One the whole, my family (either side, really) isn't known for handing down shared recipes. Both of my grandmother's were good cooks, though at least one only developed the skill later in life -- after my mother had left home (or was at least away at school).

My grandmother's fish chowder is the one recipe I remember other members of my family wanting to replicate.

New England Fish Chowder

(Serves 8)

3 ½ to 4 lbs. of haddock or cod (with head and bones)

2-inch cube of lean salt pork (freeze to cut up easily)

2 medium onions, sliced

4 cups potatoes, sliced

4 cups hot milk

1 tablespoon salt

1/8^th teaspoon ground pepper

bay leaf (optional)

Simmer fish head and bones with bay leaf in 3 cups water for ½ hour. Drain, reserving the stock. Simmer fish in stock until just done. Cut pork in tiny pieces and fry to a light brown; remove pork scraps. Add onion to fat and cook slowly for about 5 minutes. Add potatoes and cook about 3 minutes. Add fish liquor and enough water to cover potatoes, cook until potatoes are nearly done; add fish, hot milk and seasonings. Simmer 10 minutes. Adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve with warm pork scraps.

Foxcroft Cookbook, 1969, revised 1989

I remember watching her make this every summer in Maine. Though by the time I learned, the whole fish with head and bones had been replaced by fillets and bottled clam juice. I can make a passable version, though I use clams, since I'm not a huge fish fan. But I never need the recipe to make it. It's ingrained in me from many summers watching, helping, and learning.

Fearless Females - Day Six

2010-03-07T21:06:00.004-05:00

Yes, I skipped Day Five. I've been having computer problems and now find myself a bit behind in posting for the "Fearless Females" series. For Day Five's theme, on marriage and how your parents or grandparents met, I do have a story in mind, but since telling it well will take some thought, I'm going to hold off for another time. So onto Day Six...

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor (wedding ring or other jewelry, china, clothing, etc.) ... "

I've got heirlooms -- various things my grandparents used to own. Some things they were the first owners of, others they inherited from their ancestors. But in thinking about all of these things, what would I consider worthy of description for a post? Probably the little things, the everyday items I remember them using mean the most, are the things I treasure most. Like what?

The cocktail glasses. When we were going through my grandmother's house some years ago, all the everyday china and glassware was laid out on the dining room table for people to look over and take what they wanted. Because these were the everyday items, most of us already had stocked kitchens and didn't need more things. But I took the monogrammed old-fashioned glasses, most having either my grandmother or grandfather's initials. I remember these glasses, or similar ones, throughout my childhood -- at family dinners or holiday parties. It's just a little thing, but I love having the occasional drink out of one. And I always think of them when I do. (Not to mention a single old-fashioned glass, rather than a double, is hard to find these days.)

The needlepoint. As early as I can remember, my grandmother was always doing needlepoint. Pillows, rugs, framed pieces, table tops, eye glasses cases... Each piece holds a different memory -- the summer she was working on a particularly challenging item, or the place the piece ended up living once she was finished. I have a few of her pieces, and love having them as everyday items in my home. The wall hanging of the Henley Regatta, the Social Register cover (yes, really), and the pillow. Pillows were what I remember the most, and one Christmas after my grandmother passed, my aunt Katie gave each of us one of my grandmother's pillows -- doing her best to match them to each of us.

Fearless Females - Day Four

2010-03-04T22:06:00.006-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post a photo too if you have one."

Sigh. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't have marriage records or photos for weddings of my grandparents or great-grandparents. That's not to say there isn't at least one story here.

So what do I know? Well, despite having spent my childhood growing up with my maternal grandmother (and grandfather until his death when I was 8), I actually know more details about my paternal grandparents and great-grandparents as I've done more research on them. My great-grandparents, Lewis Stone Greenleaf and Margaret Adams Greenleaf were married in Lenox, Massachusetts in 1898. Four years earlier, Lewis' younger sister Alice, married Margaret's older brother, William, on Jan. 1, 1894. I'm not yet sure to what extent Lewis and Margaret knew each other prior to the wedding of their siblings. My best guess at this point, is that given what seems to be the fairly small world of Lenox society, both families were acquainted with each other, but there's more work to be done here.

Details of the wedding of Alice Greenleaf and William Adams can be found in the New York Times , Dec. 30, 1893. (Not my great-grandparents, but at least it's close -- sort of.)

Cataloging Futures: Twitter cataloging sensation: FakeAACR2

2010-03-04T19:22:00.003-05:00

Cataloging Futures: Twitter cataloging sensation: FakeAACR2

This one especially resonates with me:

"1.9A1. Describe supplementary items that are to be catalogued separately as separate items. Optionally: dump them; they never existed..."

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Fearless Females - Day Three - Sarah and Sally

2010-03-03T21:37:00.004-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you've come across in your family tree."

My maternal great-great grandmother was Sarah Drexel Fell Van Rensselaer (1860-1929). Her granddaughter, my great-aunt, was Sarah Drexel Henry (1905-1977), called "Sally."

My mother told me that Aunt Sally always thought I was named after her. I don't think I was named after either Sarah, but my mother never told Aunt Sally that -- I think my parents just liked the name. It's odd really, I don't think of myself as having a family first name -- unless I have a reason to think about my name -- like now.

Fearless Females - Day Two

2010-03-02T23:03:00.004-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "March 2 — Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?"

Edith Judkins Collins (1884-1945), photo taken December 1885. Edith was my great-grandmother. Of the handful or two of photographs I have of my female ancestors (where th

ey are the sole subjects), I like most for various reasons, but this is one of my favorites. It is because the subject is a baby, that I love this picture more than others in my collection. I am amazed that this baby is my great-grandmother, who I never knew, and from whom I, my immediate family, and more distant cousins are all descended. This photo reminds me that we were all this young once, and reminds me that there is wonder in the future that we can't imagine. When this photograph was taken, right around her first birthday, could her parents (Joseph Harrison Collins, 1853-1887 and Rebecca Sharpless Delany, 1861-1949) have imagined their descendants living in the 21st century? Seeing my great-grandmother as a baby simply reminds me that what I'm doing as a genealogist isn't merely uncovering facts and connections forgotten, but in some cases reconstructing lives of those who came before me.

Fearless Females - Day One

2010-03-01T20:50:00.008-05:00

From The Accidental Genealogist: "March 1 — Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check."

My favorite female ancestor at this point is [my great-great aunt] Marion Constance Greenleaf (1871-1900). I think a lot of that is that given what I've learned about her so far, I can relate to her. The oldest of our siblings we're each unmarried. Granted, she died at age 29, and I'm currently 39, but since it's 110 years later, I'm willing to put us both in the "spinster" category. I have a good deal of information about her immediate family, parents and siblings, one of whom is my great-grandfather, as well as their family home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Her obituaries described her as an accomplished singer and news articles I've gathered from society pages give me a sense of her friends and relationships. One of the reasons she's one of my favorites is that I have a better sense of her as a complete person than I do any other other ancestor. And I'm sorry to say that part of this is probably due to her short life. For a more complete summary, see my earlier Tombstone Tuesday post on Marion.

The Runners-Up:

Great-great grandmother, Adeline Emma Stone Greenleaf (1849-1936)
5th Great grandmother, Hannah Lambert Cadwalader (1712-1786)

So where do I go next? Well, it depends...

Marion. I know the basics. I'm curious to learn more about her life, both through society articles (of which there are plenty), but also through learning more about the world in the years she lived. Marion was born in Hamburg, Germany and died in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Adeline. Marion's mother, I know most of the facts and am now at the point of wanting to reconstruct more of her family relationships (with her children, spouse, parents, and siblings). As well as consider the world she lived in: Civil War through World War I.
Hannah. Hannah lived long enough ago that her identity is very much integrated with her husband and father. Given that she lived in he eighteenth century, I really don't know the best way learn more about who she might have been.

For all three, for as much as I've learned, I'll happily take ideas for where to go next. For Marion and Adeline I've got census data and some society column articles from the period. For Hannah, I'm not sure what the best course of action is.

Fearless Females - Prompts for Women's History Month | GeneaBloggers

2010-03-01T20:44:00.003-05:00

Fearless Females - Prompts for Women's History Month | GeneaBloggers

One of the things I love about genealogy is giving voice to the women in my family who've come before me. Whether married women who've lost their identities once married or spinster ancestors that I want to bring to prominence, I love the idea of spending March highlighting my female ancestors.

Having glanced through the list, I probably won't do all (or may edit some to go back in time beyond my mother and grandmothers), but am eager to see what I come up with over the coming month!

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Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: Update: Researching the Genealogy of the Simpsons

2010-02-25T22:38:00.004-05:00

Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: Update: Researching the Genealogy of the Simpsons

I'm not sure I've ever watched an episode of The Simpsons before tonight, but after reading Dick Eastman's article, Researching the Genealogy of the Simpsons, yesterday, and then today's post, alerting readers to the episode's availability on Hulu, I was intrigued. And I have to say I found it an enjoyable episode (and it took up the half-hour between the local news and the Olympics). Not being a Simpsons watcher, I don't have a comparison point, but enjoyed Lisa's quest to find a heroic (or just plain respectable) ancestor.

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Soundex, or Better Late Than Never?

2010-02-25T21:50:00.006-05:00

"He went to a shelf near the microfilm room and pulled out a thick book. 'This here's The Soundex Daitch-Mokotoff Reference Guide. Soundex is one of the finest systems ever invented.' He led Katharine toward a table, still talking. 'It's a method of indexing names phonetically rather than the way they're spelled, which makes it easier to find names which sound alike but are spelled entirely differently. This is very important in genealogical research, since a name may be spelled several ways by different generations. Even members of the same family may change the spelling of their name.' The lecture went oddly with his appearance, for he reeled the long words off his tongue like he used them often. 'Soundex groups consonants under six categories of key letters and equivalents and ignores vowels, so several names have the same code.' He opened the guide."--Death on the Family Tree, by Patricia Sprinkle (p. 43)

In my ongoing quest for decent genealogical fiction (preferably mysteries), I recently found this paragraph in Patricia Sprinkle's Death on the Family Tree. (Review at LibraryThing). I've been working on genealogy for several years now, but haven't had to use Soundex but once or twice. I'd essentially figured out what it was and why it made sense, but didn't feel a driving need to use it. But I was nevertheless thrilled to find this nice concise explanation in a work of fiction. Maybe it's the cataloger in me, but thinking about Soundex as an index in the form of a Cutter table intrigues me enough to try it more often to see how my search results differ (and hopefully improve).

A little more on Soundex:

The Soundex Indexing System (National Archives and Records Administration). A short explanation, coding guide, Soundex coding rules.
Surname to Soundex Code (Soundex Conversion Program). Basically an online calculator that generates the Soundex code for a surname input.
Soundex Daitch-Mokotoff Reference Guide. Record on WorldCat.org.

One More Good-Bye to Dollhouse

2010-02-05T19:47:00.002-05:00

Beautifully written essay on what Dollhouse was and could have been.

From io9: Dollhouse Started With Desire, But Ended With Paranoia

10 Reasons to Miss Dollhouse

2010-01-29T20:38:00.002-05:00

From io9:

10 Reasons We'll Miss Dollhouse

Season finale airing at this very moment, which I'm DVR-ing so I can re-watch other recent episodes (and maybe Epitaph One) before the last episode.

Ancestry.com comes to iPhone

2010-01-19T23:00:00.002-05:00

Can't wait to start playing with this new (free) app!

New Ancestry.com iPhone Application Gives Access to Your Tree on the Go

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Madness Monday, or Census Frustrations Part II

2010-01-18T22:24:00.006-05:00

I'm trying to post along with the GeneaBloggers daily themes often enough to keep this blog going forward. Madness Monday is a theme I've struggled with, since I haven't yet uncovered any (certifiably) crazy ancestors. So this madness is in the form of a brick wall (sort of) and isn't directed at a particular person, but a family group.

I know there are perfectly valid reasons for people not to show up in a given census. I've been trying to find my great-great-grandmother, Adeline Emma Stone, her parents, and brother in the 1850 census. Mainly my determination derives from having found her or otherwise accounted for her whereabouts in every other census through 1930 (except 1890, of course) and I'm frustrated by this gap.

Adeline was born in 1849 in Schooley's Mountain, New Jersey. In the 1860 census, her family was in New York City. Her father, John Cameron Stone, married Adeline Emma Bridge in 1846 and died in 1862. I feel like I have a huge hole in this group by not finding them in one of the two censuses they were together, but I've had no luck turning up any of them at all. I browsed the Schooley's Mountain census for 1850 and found a family with remarkably similar names (mother & daughter Adeline, last name "Neighbor" of all things). But this family reappears in Schooley's Mountain in later censuses.

I haven't given up, but at least want to learn more about the family to come up with a plausible explanation for their whereabouts. Probably my next step is reverify her birth date and location, which I got from the Stone family genealogy, Simon Stone Genealogy: Ancestry and Descendants of Deacon Simon Stone of Watertown, Mass., 1320-1926, by J. Gardner Bartlett (1926).

A New Computer Revolution is Rising Around Us | Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

2010-01-18T22:08:00.003-05:00

I love the variety of genealogy content in Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, but especially love Dick Eastman's terrific technology articles. He takes the time to explain technologies completely and give good examples to illustrate his points.

One of today's offerings is about collaborative online databases and what he terms the "peer review" process in shared genealogical data. I've got a renewed energy to do some clean-up in my Reunion data and re-harmonize with a couple of the cloud services I'm experimenting with.

Tombstone Tuesday - Marion Constance Greenleaf, 1871-1900

2010-01-06T00:24:00.006-05:00

Marion Constance Greenleaf died of typhoid fever December 24, 1900 at the age of 29 years. The eldest child of Richard Cranch and Adeline Emma Stone Greenleaf, Marion was born in Hamburg, Germany, and lived a good portion of her life in Lenox, Massachusetts at her parents' home, Windyside. Notices of her death in the New York Times describe Marion as having a beautiful soprano singing voice, singing at "private musicales" and having studied vocal culture in Europe.

[1] "Miss Marion Greenleaf Dead. Succumbs to Typhoid Fever at Her Parents' Home in Lenox." New York Times, Dec. 25, 1900.
[2] "What is Doing in Society." New York Times, Dec. 26, 1900.

Census Frustrations

2010-01-03T14:16:00.004-05:00

I read an interesting post on The Unofficial Footnote Blog not long ago, comparing the ongoing census projects of FamilySearch with Footnote. Not surprisingly perhaps, a number of commenters questioned the purpose of additional census projects, particularly of Footnote, when Ancestry.com seems to have such a lock on the completeness of the data.

I wondered this myself, but interestingly enough, was able to find some ancestors using the Footnote census for 1860 who are eluding me in both the 1850 and 1860 censuses on Ancestry. Once I had the citation in Footnote, I could browse to the page in Ancestry and find the elusive ancestors. (I like using Ancestry to track records and compile complete-ish timelines for the folks I'm working on.) Seeing the corresponding transcription in Ancestry, it was pretty apparent why I hadn't found them -- the surname had been transcribed as "Greenley" instead of "Greenleaf" and the frustrating thing was, the original image was pretty readable both in penmanship and imaging.