tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-295696542023-12-08T03:45:01.461-08:00family linesthis and that in the world of genealogyMary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-9134470334339011502017-01-01T14:28:00.001-08:002017-01-01T14:28:49.227-08:00Hail and Farewell<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you know, I haven't been writing much here in recent months. It's not that I've lost interest in genealogy — far from it! But I need to put my efforts into creating narratives for family members — pieces that are longer and more detailed than what works within the confines of this fomat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, this is a farewell to the <i>Family Lines</i> blog. If anyone is interested in communicating with me about subjects or family names* I've written about in the past, I can still be reached at <a href="mailto:famfinder@sonic.net"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b>famfinder@sonic.net</b></span></a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was always my intention not only to share personal research discoveries but also to offer a few tips that might help readers in their efforts. Here are some of them again:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. In genealogical research, the first rule is to work back in time from the present. But don't stop there. Move laterally to include spouses (and their parents), siblings, and children of your ancestors' siblings. Sometimes their stories are the most interesting of all, and in any case, their lives will often give clues to help you trace your direct line.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Remember the public libraries in your areas of interest. Many of them have online catalogs these days and may hold unique items such as local newspapers, indexes, photographs and other genealogical treasures. I have found their reference staffs unfailingly helpful.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. Look for genealogical and/or historical societies in those locales. Join up and submit queries to their newsletters. Membership lists will often include surnames being searched. They, too, are often repositories of special material you may not be able to find anywhere else.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. Don't set unrealistic goals that can just discourage and overwhelm you. Choose a line to work on, and then a single generation of that line. Break it down further — say, all the folks who lived in one county, or the young men of an age to have served in the Civil War.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. Never, ever, expect your family's history to be "done." You may choose to wind up a particular project at some point, but there will always be more for someone else to work on. On the other hand, don't let its open-ended nature keep you from writing about it. Go with what you have — you, or somone else, can always add more later.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6. Remember that showing where you got your information is absolutely vital. If Grandma said it was so and that's all you know, put that down (with Grandma's full name). If you read it in a book, list the book's title, author, publisher and date of publication. If your source is a copy of a copy of a pirated family tree (you know who you are) list as much as you can about the tree's authorship, and where it is posted. Then the next person to pick the threads will know where she or he stands. Treat ALL undocumented statements as clues, not fact, and try to confirm them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those are some tenets I try to follow. I hope they help you. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So long.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Cain, descending from Thomas Cain (d 1795), mostly in Delaware and Indiana. From there the family spread out to various parts: New Jersey, Tennessee, Kentucky and California.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Howard, descending from Frederick Howard (1795-1853) who apparently was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, but moved first to Kentucky and then settled in Indiana.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Tanner/Blount/Waldron with roots in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.</span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-86390956647525976912015-11-10T09:33:00.000-08:002015-11-10T09:33:13.350-08:00Never perfect, but good enough<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such a long time since I’ve added a post! Bear with me -- there is much to report. Besides working on a narrative about my Cain ancestors, I’ve spent a week in Salt Lake City, done some traveling, and dealt with various at-home projects that just don’t seem to end. In other words, life intervened.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cain story is ready for the printer, if I don’t find one more minute piece of information to add, or notice another comma out of place. What do they say? “Perfection is the enemy of good.” Just as no family history is ever complete, this small sliver of mine is only tentatively “done” (and I can never claim perfection). But at this point I really need to say “enough” because there are other lines I’d really like to return to!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What have I learned from doing this? For one thing, trying to write something down as a story instead of just a string of charts and notes really makes me look much more carefully at what I’ve gathered. New information comes online every day, and some of my earliest research was done well before the existence of FindaGrave, Ancestry, or that online treasure, FamilySearch. New sources for obituaries, in particular, have provided a wealth of fascinating data. And I learned a particular lesson: if, for whatever reason, you cannot find an obit for a particular individual, try to find one for a spouse, child, or sibling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another lesson: when one puts something iike this together, patterns emerge that may have been hidden before. Looking at a person singly, or just with his/her immediate family, is what I often do when entering new data. But writing about that same person as part of an extended group makes certain information stand out. Sisters who married men sharing occupation, siblings who left home and ended up in the same place elsewhere, relatives who died within days or weeks of one another -- that sort of thing invites further examination.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s been a rewarding effort, and one I hope to reprise with other ancestral lines in due time.</span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-61708179369566369582015-06-19T11:49:00.000-07:002015-06-19T11:49:25.158-07:00Why I love Laura<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">When I read to my young children many years ago, our favorite books included </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">the “Little House” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, for its gently fictionalized depiction of the author’s pioneer life. On a cross-country road trip we even visited DeSmet, South Dakota, where there is a Laura Ingalls Wilder museum. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczjo87WCt0N7zQ-9mMk2pfjNj4fv33OvQYQSXOKwLzT7MFgCqh7o7lZG1cdMSHFEMqZD_toWigXcrMBIxGRjqQgmloV4imtajE2YshsRhpEIJrVTp4sXLIiZETEIaxaNsbrBjOw/s1600/pioneer+girl.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczjo87WCt0N7zQ-9mMk2pfjNj4fv33OvQYQSXOKwLzT7MFgCqh7o7lZG1cdMSHFEMqZD_toWigXcrMBIxGRjqQgmloV4imtajE2YshsRhpEIJrVTp4sXLIiZETEIaxaNsbrBjOw/s200/pioneer+girl.tiff" width="191" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This was long before genealogy grabbed me by the throat, mind you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you may recall, Laura’s family, Pa and Ma, Carrie, Mary, and Laura herself, lived in Wisconsin, Kansas and Minnesota in the post-Civil War period. Their tales of log-cabin living, threats from wild creatures, and plagues of grasshoppers, were counterbalanced by accounts of Pa’s fiddling and singing, the girls’ playthings, and the descriptions of the endless prairies, ice-bound lakes and dark woods where they made their home at various times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To me it was simply a delightful set of stories from a far-off time and place, with no particular relation to my own experience. So when “Pioneer Girl: the Annotated Autobiography, Laura Ingalls Wilder” came out recently, it caught my interest just for that reason.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, it turns out the scholarly notes that accompany the text are enough to make the genealogist’s heart sing. Not only do the editors pay homage to census and vital records for research, but the work also includes period photos, maps and references to such sources at the Bureau of Land Management, and it is rich with historical details about the realities of living on the land in that time and those places.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there is a more personal reason I find the book of particular interest. From 1877-1879, Laura’s family lived in southwestern Minnesota’s Redwood County. And I have a letter from my grandmother’s sister, written in 1885, when she was in adjoining Murray County. Lizzie Records and her husband Josiah moved there from Indiana in the 1860s, so would have been in the region at the same time as the Ingalls family. Now, to me, that is an interesting coincidence! And it tells me what living conditions might have been like for my own kin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lizzie was writing to my grandmother, who had evidently asked for some family information. She said: “Well, for a history of my life in the last twenty years, we came to this far off western country twenty two years ago, the same fall your Ma died. … It seems but a day since I left my motherland and yet it seems like ages to think of the changes that has taken place.” They had five children, more or less contemporaries of the Ingalls offspring.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That letter is a treasure to me, and its significance is enlarged now by the knowledge that she and her family lived so near Laura and her family, and probably shared similar experiences.</span><br />
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-90189523739521266312015-05-12T11:07:00.000-07:002015-05-12T11:09:53.329-07:00Who ARE they?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Annabelle Cain</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Genealogy is all about tracking down relatives, living and dead, though mostly dead. We all know that. But then there are the ones who perch out on the edges of our family tree -- clinging there by reason of a previous marriage, informal adoption, or some other situation. And while they may not be the main focus of our research, they ARE there … sometimes just pleading for recognition. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A couple of my puzzles were not really on the margins, but did remain elusive for a long time. Franklin Lee Parkison, my grandmother’s cousin, was one of what I call the “lost boys,” single, with no fixed address. His widowed mother remarried and it appears they barely kept in touch. I finally found him through a death certificate which had mispelled his surname.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH4x3r5Oy2vSbFEApg3W-4knHr9NAZru8aJROx1knJg2lJA6mztY1cPDnDO416pR5cUg5_gh-b0gAV8NvTr78Cugu-VEoiZdFfsveHZQSIYrIV3kYaVNBVrOSJpOmHuMIIPXzfBg/s1600/Annabel+Cain+--Aug+1898+Kingston+IN+-+Version+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another was Albert Kelsey Thompson, also a cousin, also single and also on the move. I THINK I’ve found him, in the potter’s field section of a Sacramento, California, cemetery.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Then there are the youngsters taken in by families, for whatever reason. Often they are given their adopting/fostering family’s surname and their own biological past is virtually erased. While I am not so concerned about delving into that past, I am quite interested in learning what became of them in later life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently I rediscovered a girl named Jessie in our Indiana Cain clan, one of at least three children who had been adopted, informally or otherwise, by Sarah Cain and her husband, Orlando Hamilton. Although obviously quite young in an 1886 family photo, she was identified as the wife of another adoptee in the same family. Though my proof is not rock-solid, I now feel sure she not only grew up in the same household as this fellow adoptee, but later did become his second wife. Of course I’ll keep checking for any new evidence that might prove (or disprove) the matter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But now I’m turning my attention to another young woman, Annabelle, who was found in the 1900 census for Middlesex County, New Jersey, as part of the Albert Cain family. That record states she was an adopted daughter, born January 1886 in England. After that -- nothing. Family members I queried long ago (all gone now) remember nothing more of her, but I can’t let it go. Is she the Annabel, also spelled “Anna B.” who is shown as the wife of Jack/John Coffey in subsequent NJ census records? The birth year is close, the birthplace is England, the year of immigration close enough. This Annabelle is buried in Groveville Cemetery, according to FindaGrave, with a stone that simply shows her years of birth and death. Without a more specific date I cannot get a death certificate, and searches for obituaries have so far come up empty. No NJ marriage records online -- as far as I can tell, and no children’s birth records which might show the mother’s pre-marriage name.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, it is a work in progress. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who are you looking for these days?</span><br />
<br />Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-89962040216574514732015-02-07T13:15:00.000-08:002015-02-07T13:37:17.378-08:00Five Generations, Sixty-Five Years, Twenty-Six Hundred Miles<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Browsing through old family pictures -- and discovering ones that haven’t been scanned yet -- I came up with some pretty interesting juxtapositions.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To the left, below, are Dr. Cornelius Cain, my great-grandfather, Rev. John Wesley Cain, his son, and Howard Hamilton Cain, his grandson (and my father). This was taken in Clarksburg, Indiana, in about 1899.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The next shot is of of Howard holding <i>his </i>son, Thomas Hayden Cain, in 1943, in Riverside, California.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The color photo, taken about 1966, shows Thomas again, and Jonathan Minton, <i>my</i> son, in San Mateo County, California. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Not satisfied with just a beard, or a mustache, like his two forebears, Tom is sporting both.</span><br />
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<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-SdJ_JXgYh14%2FVNZ9T7dVduI%2FAAAAAAAABWQ%2F_IpGTdZmaQE%2Fs1600%2Fimage0-4.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS4yuWvfBU9HaMqyd637G8Wi3BqRwBWD-vYWJfX_a44A9ihOOOVzBy1pcncw_nXCLFiXm2EP3ePNQTPqWtTz9mxI_rBpVyPNvgyLWHO4YhbdXuRsZimXG6GQBKIEU2iaY5ZIgifg/s1600/image0-4.jpg" -->Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-86934477439034566962014-12-08T10:30:00.000-08:002014-12-08T10:30:58.105-08:00The Census Taker is Your Friend<div style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plowing through various census records to help me locate ever more relatives, I am reminded once again of how useful they can be.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But reading the column designations at the top of the page, even on a large computer screen, can be difficult, and it is easy to forget that certain questions were asked at different times.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 1850 census stands out, of course, because it was the first one to list the name of every person in the household. It gives age, sex, color, birthplace, occupation, and more. It does NOT, however, show relationships, so we cannot simply assume the oldest male and female were husband and wife.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nc3TuTo0qGVaj1NLGiVZTAO-_x5XeCzDojhaBOj1lrKWS_McG5VYzGvcfkeib9iBkCddNzIR-3nf-_12NbIOngN_8DDrY1PPmQntcj02ZRd0xO8F4B5IR7eE0x1UtieXxBQVMQ/s1600/census+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nc3TuTo0qGVaj1NLGiVZTAO-_x5XeCzDojhaBOj1lrKWS_McG5VYzGvcfkeib9iBkCddNzIR-3nf-_12NbIOngN_8DDrY1PPmQntcj02ZRd0xO8F4B5IR7eE0x1UtieXxBQVMQ/s1600/census+shot.jpg" height="149" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact it was not until the 1880 census that relationships were listed, so always look there for confirmation. This census also showed, for the first time, the birthplaces of everyone’s parents (as reported by someone in the household).</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a beginner, I didn’t pay much attention to the other questions that were asked at various times. But when I got stuck trying to find descendants of a particular cousin, I realized the 1900 and 1910 census listed how many children the married females had, and how many were still living at the time. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both these years had other nuggets of information as well. In 1900, the exact month and year of birth was asked for each person. If married, the number of years married was listed. In 1910 and again in 1930 and 1930, the males were asked whether they were veterans. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Also in 1930, age at first marriage is recorded, rather than number of years married. Be sure to get that right!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Immigration year and naturalization are noted from 1900 to 1930.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everyone was pretty excited when the 1940 census came out, and it does have a lot of information, such as each individual’s residence in 1935. But, with the exception of the two persons singled out on each page to provide more detail, birthplaces of parents are omitted.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And don’t give up on the pre-1850 censuses just because they offer so much less information. Heads of household are listed by name, with age ranges and gender given for others. From the broadest categories in 1790 (two ages ranges for males, none for females), to the decade-specific ranges for both sexes in 1840, there are clues to be derived. Also, in 1840, there is a separate listing for Revolutionary War pensioners.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The subject of census records for genealogists could fill a book, and in fact it has. The one I use is <i>The Census Book : a Genealogist’s Guide to Federal Census Facts, Schedules and Indexes</i>, written by William Dollarhide. Published by Heritage Quest in 1999, It does not, of course, have a rundown on the 1940 census, which was just released for public use in 2012, but there are plenty of online sources for that data.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a complete rundown on the contents of each census year’s questionnaire, go to <a href="http://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main-Page">familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main-Page</a> and enter “US census” in the search box. Look on Cyndi’s List (<a href="http://www.cyndislist.com/"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">www.cyndislist.com</span></a>) for downloadable forms.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A whole lot of clues here, but we have to remember, the veracity of the answers depends on both the skill (and penmanship!) of the census taker and the knowledge/truthfulness of the informant (marked with an x in 1940, but not indicated in earlier records).</span></span><br />
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-86853704955701816012014-10-07T10:24:00.000-07:002014-10-07T10:24:26.570-07:00Hidden Names<div style="font-family: Arial;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Don’t you wish our ancestors made more generous use of their middle names? I have at least three men whose full given names elude me, though there is plenty of room for speculation. Deeds, probate papers, marriage records (these are before birth records and no baptismal records have come to light) -- all carry very specific, but unrevealing, middle initials. And these names might lead to more family history, if I knew them.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnFxLgeXDmz6vxoCM3Abhef55bBFxy9-aHjF5DMGvfyALU-XZyfFCB-LgCXsqS91zZa9SoejPKSckGuALo8rNqe7QDuTqWKKhbDiF3G17AB_kZsgBBXjmnH-06Oru28FioH_D_vA/s1600/John+M+Cain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnFxLgeXDmz6vxoCM3Abhef55bBFxy9-aHjF5DMGvfyALU-XZyfFCB-LgCXsqS91zZa9SoejPKSckGuALo8rNqe7QDuTqWKKhbDiF3G17AB_kZsgBBXjmnH-06Oru28FioH_D_vA/s1600/John+M+Cain.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here is one:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">John M. Cain (pictured at right), was born in Kent County, Delaware in 1810, the son of John Cain and Elizabeth Morgan. So what are the odds that his middle name is Morgan? He is not their first son (that was Cornelius, my gr-grandfather), so naming patterns don’t seem to be in play. However, this is the only of John and Elizabeth’s seven sons to even have a recorded middle initial.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another later example: Daniel M. Howard, my grandmother’s half-brother. who died in the Civil War. His father was likely named for a circuit-riding Methodist preacher by the name of Samuel Parker. Daniel’s younger brother was Jasper Newton Howard -- there were many Jasper Newtons born around the same time, possibly named for a pair of then-popular Revolutionary War heroes. So, in this family at least, so-called naming patterns are completely out the window.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The third puzzler is Thomas E. Sherwood (b ca 1795, KY), my great-great grandfather. His daughter, Nancy Jane Sherwood, named her first two children William Enoch (b 1850) and John Edwin (b1853). The family, so far as I have been able learn about it, had no males with names which had “E” initials. The boys’ father, David Hammond, did have a half-brother named Edwin. Does that leave Enoch as Thomas’s middle name?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, tantalizing clues, but no definite answers. So far.</span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-86932937719251879152014-08-05T14:58:00.000-07:002014-08-06T14:36:39.376-07:00The risks, the frustrations, the fun ...<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">When I sit down to do some serious research, whether trying to fill in gaps, add new family members, or expand a particular record with new information, something invariably pops up which has a pull I cannot resist.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> “Look for connection. Allie Lee Gabbert, Buchanan Co (MO), 1882-1942, m. Wm A Ebling. Sister: Nannie Gabbert m. Fr Dennis, dau Engene psychic.” </i>This was a recent culprit, a note in my own handwriting, with absolutely no indication as to its source.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By now I don’t even remember where I found the scrap of paper, let alone when or where the information was jotted down. But once it resurfaced I couldn’t let it go. The Gabberts are a particular interest because my great grandmother’s sister was Mary Ann Sherwood, born about 1829 in Bartholomew County, Indiana. She married Ransom Gabbert in February, 1850, and they were in Buchanan County, Missouri by the time that year’s census taker came around. They had at least three children, William Edwin, James George, and Mary Frances (Mollie), and it has been a project of mine to try to follow the descendants down to the present day. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Allie Lee Ebling was was buried in Amstrong Cemetery, Rushville, Buchanan County, along with her spouse, William A. Ebling. A photo of their gravestone is shown on the invaluable Find a Grave website. (Thank you, Tom DeBerry) Allie Lee’s birth name, Gabbert, and William’s full middle name, Anderson, have been added, presumably by Mr. DeBerry, along with the names of William’s parents.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I still have no idea where I got the information that she had a sister Nannie, or a niece named Eugene, who was a psychic, no less!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">This was a pursuit I could not resist. There are ten Gabberts listed in Armstrong Cemetery, some of whom I know to be Ransom’s relatives. And there are 43 Gabberts, all told, named in Buchanan County cemeteries. (Sadly, most of the listings do not indicate placement within plots, which would be a useful clue to relationships.)</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, I have found evidence of this Allie Lee, but not her supposed sister Nannie, mother of a psychic. And I have no idea of their parents’ names.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My concern is with their possible connection to Ransom, so I needed to look for their parents’ names. But I was so intrigued by the psychic that instead I looked for evidence that Nannie’s daughter was really named “Eugene,” and was said, by someone, somewhere, to dabble in the supernatural.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nannie’s marriage to an E.F., or Frank, Dennis had been indicated in two census records, and the second one, in 1910, did show a daughter, Eugene, age 5.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Searching the web for the name “Eugene Dennis” brings up endless stories about a prominent member of the American Communist party, a man by the same name. Excluding “Communist” in my search query, however, yielded several references to the young woman in question, who apparently made quite a name for herself in the 1920s. Stories appeared in newspapers as far afield as Spokane, Washington, about her uncanny abilities, and several ads proclaimed her vaudeville appearances. The last record I could find was her presence in her brother’s household, with their mother (yes, Nannie) in the 1930 census for Los Angeles. She was 25, single, born in Kansas, and her occupation was listed as “physic” (sic) in the “theater industry.” </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">California death records show Nannie Dennis died in 1942 in Los Angeles, that her father’s surname was Gabbert, and that her mother’s birth name was “Bilderbock.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a hunch I went back to FamilySearch and came up with a marriage record which showed that Thomas Gabbert and Angeline Bilderback married in 1856, in Buchanan County, Missouri. Bingo!</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 1870 census shows the Buchanan County family of Thomas and Angeline Gabbert with Nancy, age 3 mo (born after date census was supposed to represent, but listed anyway, with a September birthdate). Also listed were Alexander, age 12, and Mary, age 7.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ten years later there is Nancy B, age 11 with her family, which now includes a younger child, Edward, all still in the same place.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These records are still too early for Allie Lee who was reportedly born in 1882, but they pretty well establish that this is the Nancy/Nannie Gabbert of my ephemeral note.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, is her father related to Mary Ann Sherwood’s husband, Ransom Gabbert? And if so, how? Stay tuned.</span></span><br />
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-40555674916885247282014-05-07T09:54:00.000-07:002014-05-08T11:00:33.981-07:00Of birthdays and bearded men<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She must have been quite a woman. Married and widowed three times, she was the mother of eight sons. In her 40s, she was said to have travelled with her husband and all those youngsters, on foot, from Delaware to Indiana.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8hyphenhyphenQsgn_r0xT6Xhf9Kb-RelFMiW-F7pTNy_UpVBED3AVn61W_5jTl32atTE64idXiaF3mMXzl4k7ElBacctTqijUJLxMwbPxHYv7ZTa_cw5a0ISnYTgP-ppXAlJjJlvP61pamJg/s1600/Four+Cain+Bros+1899+-+Version+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8hyphenhyphenQsgn_r0xT6Xhf9Kb-RelFMiW-F7pTNy_UpVBED3AVn61W_5jTl32atTE64idXiaF3mMXzl4k7ElBacctTqijUJLxMwbPxHYv7ZTa_cw5a0ISnYTgP-ppXAlJjJlvP61pamJg/s1600/Four+Cain+Bros+1899+-+Version+2.jpg" height="400" width="350" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sons of Elizabeth Morgan Wright Cain Holland</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Elizabeth Morgan’s obituary said she was born May 7, 1779 -- 235 years ago today. The daughter of Thomas Morgan and Elishua Finsthwait, she was first married to John Wright, who died before 1805, leaving her with a young son, Marcellous. In 1806 she married again, to John Cain. From this union came seven more boys (and, one article has it, a daughter who died in infancy). Property records show that in March, 1827, she and John sold their Kent County, Delaware, property. In November of that same year they are recorded in far-off Brookville, Indiana.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">John Cain died soon after, “from over-lifting a sawlog,” according to one of his sons. But Elizabeth and her fatherless brood survived and seemed to have flourished. Her </span>first<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> husband's, son, who took his stepfather’s surname, moved to Benton County, Tennessee, where his descendents still live. John’s offspring chose to stay closer to home, settling in various Indiana counties. Among their occupations, as recorded in census records, were farming, papermaking, carpentry, shoemaking, and tailoring; one became a physician. (Marcellous was said to have been a stagecoach driver; he married an innkeeper’s daughter named Sinda Rilla.)</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Longevity was the norm in this clan. At least four of the sons lived into their late 80s and early 90s. Elizabeth, who is my great-great grandmother, died January 30, 1875, at the venerable age of 95. A third marriage, to a man named John Holland, lasted only a few years, leaving her once again a widow.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The four longest-lived Cain brothers, staunch and bearded, are pictured in a group portrait taken in 1899, probably in Connersville, Indiana, where at least one of them was living. Prints of the original photograph have been handed down through the generations, and a cousin and I </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">have been able to identify all four men by comparing notes.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently, however, I came across a copy of the picture evidently clipped from an unnamed newspaper and posted on Ancestry. As with so many images and factoids on that site’s family trees, it has been copied here and there with little or no attribution. Who posted it in the first place? In what publication did it originally appear? Was there an accompanying article? I’d love to find out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the meantime, Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Morgan Wright Cain Holland! Your sons must have been proud of you.</span></span><br />
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-82318972890018105082014-02-28T10:25:00.004-08:002014-02-28T10:25:45.937-08:00Some thoughts while away <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifGRzG0zsLsxZo8h-CxUgXdzrYuBI_Mq0lFH5MeS1nCMj1nWx_isTnoXKy82fMIh5HLPgvx9S3TMzBNQtwoDyfc9yAqW9w-mnDZ1cCTtEjdsGrHFXYcGKldvIu74VWWL6Q29gz3Q/s1600/Cain+clan+plus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifGRzG0zsLsxZo8h-CxUgXdzrYuBI_Mq0lFH5MeS1nCMj1nWx_isTnoXKy82fMIh5HLPgvx9S3TMzBNQtwoDyfc9yAqW9w-mnDZ1cCTtEjdsGrHFXYcGKldvIu74VWWL6Q29gz3Q/s1600/Cain+clan+plus.jpg" height="400" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ruth, Florence, Gertrude Cain, Claude Murvin,<br />Tommy Cain, Mary Jean Koos</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s been a long time since I sat down to look at my genealogy projects, and I miss the fun, the satisfaction, and even the occasional frustration of it all.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two trips -- one for fun, one less so -- and planning for some household remodelling have kept me away from this most engrossing pursuit for far too long. But thoughts do keep occurring, and one of these days I’ll be able to plunge in again. Perhaps, in the meantime, I need to follow the suggestions we’ve all read, about taking small steps when there’s no time to settle down with the Big Ones.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One modest task comes to mind immediately (because the evidence is sitting right in front of me): sorting the most recent family Christmas letters and photos, making sure they are dated with the year and the images are properly identified. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The group on the right include three of my aunts, an uncle, my little brother (now in his 70s) and a cousin. Who besides me would know all their names?</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another is the perennial need to straighten up the work area. Folders pulled out and never put away, half-finished lists, books than need to go back on the shelf. I am an inveterate list-maker and inventory-taker, but later, looking at the incomplete results, I am often puzzled at what prompted their creation. Then there are the newly-purchased books, the journal articles, and the many printed-out references that need to find a home -- preferably someplace where I can find them again. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That brings up another question. How do you file items of general interest -- about places, events, living conditions -- in short, matters that are not about your family members but most likely had an impact on their lives? I have a file cabinet full of carefully labelled folders for the states and regions where my ancestors lived, with emphasis on their home counties, local topography, etc. But I almost never consult it! There needs to be a better way, and if you have any suggestions, I’d be delighted to hear them.</span></span><br />
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-59529862290344743992014-01-03T13:41:00.000-08:002014-01-03T13:41:27.250-08:00Quantity or quality?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0ZTsGfWAlvcZSwRKDPM1Ukqxc1Tevb2lUWDHgALozZCZmyec-NDlUkyd_pfPssvJTNEMSQTmIZmbtUplpyuAEOuv0TEOx_0bqkUZ6oNiyDnSWLRRSUxYVRMDrGJgKJlLN6OsCw/s1600/attila+edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0ZTsGfWAlvcZSwRKDPM1Ukqxc1Tevb2lUWDHgALozZCZmyec-NDlUkyd_pfPssvJTNEMSQTmIZmbtUplpyuAEOuv0TEOx_0bqkUZ6oNiyDnSWLRRSUxYVRMDrGJgKJlLN6OsCw/s320/attila+edited.jpg" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Great grandpa?</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do you feel envious, or skeptical, when you read about someone who has zillions of relatives in his family tree? Or who claims to trace her illustrious forebears back to Charlemagne? (Funny, no one ever brags about being descended from Attila the Hun.) Are these people simply collecting names, harvesting them from other trees just because there might be a tenuous link? Online family trees are great enablers in this respect, as there is endless space for adding names, and, sadly, very little on the need for valid sources.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While I’m chasing faint connections in an attempt to identify some first-name-only references in an old letter, these questions do come to mind. I am looking at a family related only by marriage -- my great-grandmother’s in-laws from her first brief union. This spouse was David Hammond, son of Nathaniel Hammond and the second of his three wives, Hannah Van Meter. All told, Nathaniel fathered 17 children we know of, and of course most of them married and reproduced abundantly. From various clues in the letter, written to my grandmother by her aunt, I am guessing the people she named are part of this enormous Hammond clan, most of whom lived their lives in 19th century Indiana.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The researching involved is sort of like trying to solve a tantalizing puzzle with many equally tempting off-shoots, which means I can easily lose sight of my goal -- simply identifying the names in the letter. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am reminded of Stephen Leacock’s words: </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Lord Ronald ... flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” But I do try to keep to the point. It is a fascinating family, but only one individual is connected to my line in any way. The letter’s references are my excuse for digging further, but how does one decide where to draw the line? </span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-55885611865013023482013-11-23T10:07:00.002-08:002013-11-23T10:11:08.972-08:00Big time in Salt Lake City<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just back from my periodic foray to the Family History Library, for a week of immersion in genealogical research, and a chance to reunite with a group of fellow conspirators from the Midwest. The weather was cool but mostly dry (as a Californian, I earned a few laughs for wearing a jacket outside when the temperature was in the low 60s).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is always a treat to be there and learn what changes are taking place in and around town. The local rapid transit system goes right to the airport terminal now, for one thing. The Salt Lake Plaza Hotel has remodelled most of their rooms, for another (and my closet was cleverly concealed behind a huge mirror -- took me a while to find it). In the library itself, there is at least one photocopier right out on the third floor (US/Canadian books), as well as the film-to-print-or-flashdrive equipment on the second floor. (I haven’t investigated the lower floors where my Minnesotan friends hang out, looking for their Swedish, German, and Norwegian lines.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We hiked over to the LDS office building most days for hearty but very inexpensive lunches, and were in time to see the holiday decorations being put up in Temple Square. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice on Thursday night was a pleasure, as always.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My big find was on Ancestry.com (their “institutional” version is free to use at the Library). Browsing for Lewis Hartwell Thompson, whom I know had come west by 1860, I found him in a database of “California Pioneers,” with place and date of his birth, and the names of his parents. A real piece of luck! The list had been compiled by the California State Library (applause), originally from Hubert Howe Bancroft’s seven-volume History of California. Of course, if I had thought of it at the time, I could have followed up by looking at the books themselves, since the Family History Library has a set in print and on film.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another rather intriguing clue I picked up was the discovery that my great-grandmother, Nancy Jane Sherwood, had signed her name “Nancy Sexton” in some probate documents after the death of her first husband, David Hammond. I was looking for some clue as to when she might have married my great-grandfather, whose surname was Howard. I had always thought he was her second husband, but it seems there was another brief union first. Unfortunately this all took place in Jasper County, Indiana, before the time of their 1864 courthouse fire. So, no marriage records are available, and I will have some digging to do in order to learn about this Mr. Sexton.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were a couple of other pieces of information which came to light in my searches, but as we all know, the longer you work on this, the fewer the discoveries. At first it is like skimming the cream off the top. Later is it more like sifting through already-mined sources to find a tiny nugget or even a bit of gold dust.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nonetheless, I had a really satisfactory visit, and now there are some real clues to stalk.</span><br />
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<br />Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-83876905589475414462013-09-08T11:34:00.000-07:002013-09-08T11:34:05.828-07:00The joy of sleuthing<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“Perhaps the most satisfying task is to assemble in chronologic order all those bits and pieces of information from all those varied sources and watch a life appear before our eyes...”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This anonymous quote from an old genealogy newsletter really resonated with me. It <i>is</i> a satisfying task (and can be nearly endless if you let it). We never can really know all there is to know about another person, especially one who is long gone, but, oh, the fascination in seeing a personality develop from a complete blank to a recognizable image. It may stay somewhat faded and fuzzy around the edges, but does gradually come to life, like a photograph in a darkroom bath.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another source of satisfaction comes in working on a specific puzzle. Sometimes, when the very “dailyness” of daily life just gets to be too much, it’s a pleasure just to sit down and tackle something completely different, like the question of whether Uncle Wally really had six wives, or who that mysterious person was in Grandma’s household, circa 1880.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUbvDQ9tfSqNUzkfoxRmmF_9b8c4ucLH3_mGHqoAYgL490fa8w3Sg1sLPuBby9VKE1rtUmaB9G5VBDAO7Q721QBspzyY9ouf_i7Wqih4n3CBtVex2ruMFVXtqcR9YZkOC3iCbjsQ/s1600/puzzle+piece.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUbvDQ9tfSqNUzkfoxRmmF_9b8c4ucLH3_mGHqoAYgL490fa8w3Sg1sLPuBby9VKE1rtUmaB9G5VBDAO7Q721QBspzyY9ouf_i7Wqih4n3CBtVex2ruMFVXtqcR9YZkOC3iCbjsQ/s200/puzzle+piece.tiff" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And it’s so much easier to find answers now! You must have seen those endless ads for cable TV, with kids harking back to the “old days” when you couldn’t record four programs at once while watching something else. (My question is -- who on God’s green earth thinks there are that many programs worth watching, much less recording? But I digress.) We researchers of a certain age could do them one better, reminiscing about our “old days” in genealogy, when there was no internet, doing research in books often meant waiting weeks to get them from distant libraries, and one had to be a detective to even discover where specific public documents or books were likely to be found.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My earliest experience in trying to learn something about an 18th century ancestor came when I received, on inter-library loan, a book from San Francisco’s Sutro Library: <i>The Calendar of Kent County, Delaware, Probate Records, 1680-1800</i>, compiled by Leon de Valinger Jr. How thrilling to find an abstract of Thomas Cain’s will, made 20 October, 1799! Being such a newbie, I didn’t feel compelled to look for the original document until years later, but the book’s entry did give me some very helpful information, and confirmed much of what my grandfather had written down about what was <i>his</i> great-grandfather’s family. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It was a thick old volume, so fragile I couldn’t take it home, but had to use it in the library. Now, paperback reprints are available, and the work has been digitized so it is fully searchable online. Not only that, but an index to the original probate files can be examined at the Delaware Public Archives website, as an aid to obtaining copies of the original documents.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Carping about the so-called tribulations of early television-viewing makes me snicker, but when I recall what it was like to do family history research just a few years ago, I am truly grateful for modern technology.</span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-17117828164611422412013-07-25T13:02:00.002-07:002013-07-25T13:02:18.251-07:00Copy once, look twice -- or something like that<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I have written before about the importance of looking hard at even the most tentative clues in genealogy -- census records that don’t seem worth examining because the dates, birthplaces, or even surnames seem too far removed; references in letters that don’t look pertinent, and on and on. Well, here is another example, from my own research:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I’ve always copied down a lot of items just because they seemed, at the time, to have some connection to my surnames, however slight. But all too often the notes get consigned to a folder where they lie, forgotten. In this case, while trying once more to find out what happened to my great-aunt’s son, Franklin Lee Parkison, I was going back through a collection of those set-aside notes. What caught my eye was a pencilled notation I must have made in the days before computers, from the WPA’s “Index to Death Records for Jasper County (Indiana), 1882-1920.” It read: ParkiNson, Frank S., white, male, single, age 56, died 19 July 1919, Rensselaer, Indiana. Well, to start with, the surname has an “n” (but Parkison is often misspelled that way), and the middle initial is wrong. Then, my faulty math led me to dismiss the possibility that this might by my guy. Let’s see, 56 from 1919 means a birth year of 1863. Oh oh. That actually matched what I did know about Frank’s birthdate, as did the likely place of death. (I knew from a letter by his mother that he had been in that area three years earlier.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As anyone else who searched in Jasper County knows, there hasn’t been much available at the Family History Library (though they seem to have acquired more public records recently). So my searches there have not been fruitful. In a flash of inspiration (why did it take me so long?), I decided to go directly to the source for this WPA index. It was a simple matter to contact the Public Health Department in Rensselaer and learn the procedure for obtaining the death record for this so-called Parkinson individual.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When it arrived, lo and behold, the names of his parents matched, confirming that their “Frank S. Parkinson” was really MY Frank L. Parkison! (Unfortunately the document was a transcription, not a photocopy of the original, so I couldn’t tell how the errors happened.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This solved, for me, what had been a very long-standing search for the date and place of Frank’s death. (There was another Frank Parkison in the area at the time, which confused matters somewhat.) Now, with a confirmed date of death in hand, I have queried the local library to see of there was a death notice or obituary which give more information.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">How many other notes to I have lying around, just waiting for a fresh look and possibly a new interpretation? What about you?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On another note:</span></span></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I recenly mentioned a newspaper article about the smart phone app that Icelanders have, which can confirm the relationship between two possible “kissing cousins,” a necessity in this enclosed and isolated society, where nearly everyone is related to everyone else. As it happens, I was travelling in Iceland last month (really!), and was able to ask our tour guide about it. She confirmed the program's existence as well as its usefulness "for the young people, of course." Nice to get it from the source!</span></span><br />
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-91841504322342405532013-06-08T10:07:00.000-07:002013-07-25T12:54:48.217-07:00New conclusions from old clues<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Sometimes old documents, revisited, shed new light, as in the following case:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The re-reading of a newsy letter to my paternal grandmother, written by her older half-sister, recently stirred me to action -- suddenly I was determined to try to find out more about the people whose names were scattered in its pages. The missive was dated July 14, 1916, just a few weeks before its writer, Jaley Howard Parkison Green, died in Kansas City, MO. My grandmother, Mary Elizabeth "Matie" Howard Cain, was living in tiny Rome City (Noble County), Indiana, at the time, but both women had grown up near Rensselaer, in Jasper County, Indiana.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ0Y6DhemXIfyDNGwwFQSuRHBNgjZGJmRKOmQE9_hjNdkJMlBkT0AoPT99IWlhBkxlSLggpzF5ffmFFWqSFe-Krgjg8VrVawrzXRGkRGL_vWGwm1hFfUSytowIdiE-zqHASjSOEw/s1600/Scan.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ0Y6DhemXIfyDNGwwFQSuRHBNgjZGJmRKOmQE9_hjNdkJMlBkT0AoPT99IWlhBkxlSLggpzF5ffmFFWqSFe-Krgjg8VrVawrzXRGkRGL_vWGwm1hFfUSytowIdiE-zqHASjSOEw/s400/Scan.jpeg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jennie Parkison (L), and Mary E. Howard</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Jaley writes about hearing of “Jennie Moody’s passing away so peacefully with all her children with her for weeks before.” She adds some details about those attentive children, then continues: “Jennie was a little school girl when I lived at her father’s home when Frank (Jaley’s son) was 5 years old. Jennie was a sweet good little girl and grew to make a good mother of a lovely family…”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I knew that Jaley had been widowed in 1862 when her first husband, Benjamin Franklin Parkison, died in the Civil War, and that she had borne a son, Franklin Lee Parkison, five months later. A quick look at the 1870 census for Jasper County showed her and Frank (by this time 7 years old) in the household of William Kenton Parkison, who was Benjamin’s brother. Also in the household was Jennie Parkison, age 13.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Parkisons were a well-established, and prolific, family in the area, but since the only link to my Howards was this brief marriage, I had chosen not to follow up on their various other families or offspring when I first learned of the connection. I told myself there were far more closely related names I should be examining.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That resolve faded with my decision to work on Jaley’s references. Various online searches yielded the fact that one Jennie P. Moody in fact had died on July 4, 1916, in Jasper County. And if my Jennie was living in the William K. Parkison household in 1870, as both the census and Jaley declared, it was apparent that the intial “P”in her married name stood for Parkison. Later I found confirmation in a marriage record for Jennie Parkison and Granville Moody, in the same county. So that nice little bit of research added some background to the remarks in Jaley’s letter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">[These searches, as you know, aren’t done in tidy chronological order. You start with what you have -- a married name and approximate death date in this case, with reference to a time and place that might be confirmed by the census, and go from there.]</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But that wasn’t all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> I keep a journal of my genealogical efforts, for inspiration and enjoyment, and yesterday I was browsing recent entries when a sentence jumped out at me: “Scanned a photo of Matie with a playmate named Jennie.” Oh yes!! From the styles, and my grandmother’s known birthdate, I estimated the year at about 1867, and the two girls were surely close family friends in order to have posed for a formal photograph.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The 1900 census shows Mary J. Moody (by then Jennie was Granville’s wife), was born September, 1856. My Grandmother was born a year later. All these facts, put together from a letter and a photograph, and supported by census, marriage and death records, convince me that the “Jennie” of the picture is Mary Jane (Jennie) Parkison Moody. So now I not only know who the Jennie of the Jaley’s letter is, but I have what is most likely a picture of her as a child!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It does go to show that it is important to return again -- and again -- to documents and photos for new clues, or old clues that lead to new conclusions.</span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-76492786791644596452013-05-04T13:32:00.000-07:002013-05-04T13:36:36.846-07:00In the news ...<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A brief article by David Wiegand in this morning’s <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> caught my eye:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">PBS is planning to launch a new TV series patterned after a popular Irish program called “Genealogy </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Roadshow.” It is to begin filming in July and will focus initially on families in San Francisco, Detroit, Nashville and Austin. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Sort of a hybrid of “History Detectives,”and “Antiques Roadshow,” the program’s premise is that residents who think they might have a significant ancestral story will bring them to the show’s producers, and local experts will do the research. (I am always surprised that so many owners of the most fascinating books, photographs or other heirlooms on these programs had never tried to work out their genealogical connections.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Irish series asks the following questions: </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Do you believe you are related to someone famous?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Is your family connected to a major historical event?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Do you need to solve a family mystery?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It is "exactly like Antiques Roadshow except that it deals in dead people rather than mouldy artefacts," according to the <i>Irish Independent</i>’s John Bolans.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In other news:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The new web display for <a href="http://FamilySearch.org/">FamilySearch.org</a> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">is up and running and I find it utterly baffling. To get to the Family History Library catalog takes three steps now instead of one. To find some concise “how to” information I wanted to recommend to a beginner took even longer.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What has your experience been?</span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-36003998732136575682013-04-28T11:50:00.001-07:002013-04-28T11:50:26.680-07:00Can't let them go<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Any serious (or even casual) genealogist can tell you that there are always going to be tantalizing puzzles, nagging gaps, and teasing bits of information that beg to be dealt with. Often they are not even about direct ancestors or close cousins, but the presence of an unanswered question alternately attracts and exasperates, and simply cannot be left alone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here are a few of mine:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lewis Hartwell Thompson, was born 1836 in Virginia, died 1913 in Fairfield, Solano County, California, and is buried in Corning, Tehama County. My great-grandfather’s brother-in-law, he was said to have once been a member of the notorious Vigilantes at San Francisco’s <a href="http://www.militarymuseum.org/FtGunnybags.htm">“Fort Gunnybags”</a> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’d like to know something about his early life, and who his parents were.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Lewis's son, Albert Kelsey Thompson, was born 1868 in Oregon. The 1900 census for Vallejo, also in Solano County, lists him as a single day laborer. His parents are in San Francisco, as is a brother. But he is not shown ten years later, unless he is the “A.F. Thompson, age 42, b U.S.” (wrong middle initial, right age) aboard the Steamship Catania, moored at San Franisco’s Powell Street Wharf. There is no mention of him in his father’s 1913 obituary, and he is not buried in the Corning family plot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What became of Albert?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My great-great-grandmother, Jaley Grant, was born about 1787 in Virginia, and married Frederick Howard 1817 in Bath County, Kentucky. She is in the 1860 census for Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, Indiana, with widowed daughter Maranda Kelsey (who later married the above-named Lewis Thompson), but by 1866 Maranda is out West and one can surmise that the aging Jaley has probably died. But when? Where?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Oh the questions, the questions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">******</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">On a completely different subject:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Did you know there is an Icelandic app for kinship? Apparently most of the population shares descent from a group of ninth century Viking settlers, and an app has been ceated to access the online database which holds genealogical details of nearly all of them. A recent Associated Press article said: “In Iceland, a country with a population of 320,000 where most everyone is distantly related, inadvertently kissing cousins is a real risk.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“Bumping” smart phones with the app sounds an alert if the owners, contemplating intimacy, are closely related.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Oh.</span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-2596797581046914382013-03-12T14:16:00.002-07:002013-03-13T09:33:42.806-07:00Background details<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Seeking names, dates, places, relationships -- it’s the great fun of genealogical research. So much fun, in fact, we may forget that some background reading is in order now and then. No instant gratification here, so it is not easy to tear oneself away from the treasure hunt long enough to sit down with a book and notepad (digital or analog).</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSZq38z0guHTfkS5CX2G6bUj8nTCjC-gK78ooPwyu5SBZSbSrKpx-LmFQa_w5_0UzPTdUq49lJuNMB731LgQgv93xhuoNbr5fsJbwOT2BLmXOoO9JTr0VE7l-Y8WMWmAZUHBP1Jg/s1600/another+bk+scan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSZq38z0guHTfkS5CX2G6bUj8nTCjC-gK78ooPwyu5SBZSbSrKpx-LmFQa_w5_0UzPTdUq49lJuNMB731LgQgv93xhuoNbr5fsJbwOT2BLmXOoO9JTr0VE7l-Y8WMWmAZUHBP1Jg/s320/another+bk+scan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In writing up a narrative for my paternal line, descended from Thomas Cain who settled in Delaware in the 1700s, I wanted to fill out the picture with some details on living conditions, social life, and what the surroundings were like, so it became necessary to turn to just such background material. Here is how you can do the same.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The first step of course is to learn what is out there. In the old pre-computer days, one went to the library and looked for appropriate subjects in the card catalog. Even children’s books could be helpful (and still can) in explaining matters (besides, they have pictures). If nothing came up, the next step was to ask the reference librarian if she or he could make some suggestions. Books not held locally could be borrowed on inter-library loan (ILL) though the process often took many weeks. And it was necessary to know the exact title, not just a subject.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It is a lot easier now. For one thing, there is <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/">WorldCat</a>, the online catalog of the holdings of numerous public and academic libraries. The researcher can inquire about books on his/her subject of interest without a precise title, and find records galore, with information on where the items are held. Another place to search is the Family History Library catalog, also online, at <a href="http://FamilySearch.org/">FamilySearch.org</a>. They do not lend books, but … there are plenty of options. Your local public library may be able to find a copy from an institution that does lend. This is the old ILL procedure, but today many libraries enable that process online as well. At most, you may have to go to your local public library and hand in your request in person. In my experience, the turnaround times are much shorter now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In all your searches for a “book” don’t overlook the possibilities of digitized works -- books you can read online. With a tablet or laptop computer you can download whole volumes for reading whenever and wherever you choose. Or you can simply read the books online as long a you are connected to the internet.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">FamilySearch.org has a “Books” choice, at the top of the home page. Enter a title or keywords on the Books site and you will get a list of items. Also, books that have been digitized will be so designated in the Family History Library catalog.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Google has a section named (at this writing) “Google Play.” More online books are found there, for reading online or downloading. And you can find other sources by simply typing in a book title or keywords such as "Delaware Kent history" (without quotes) on Google’s main page. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But suppose your subject is too obscure or narrow to be covered by a whole book? Try PERSI, the PERiodical Source Index, which is an index of nearly 10,000 genealogical newsletters, magazines, journals and other publications. If your library subscribes to Heritage Quest you can search PERSI online for articles of possible interest (the index is just for title and subject, not every word), or you can search the same service via Ancestry, if you or your library subscribe. Articles may then be requested by mail. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Did I say most of this is free? Downloading older digitized books, from Google and other services, costs nothing. (They are clearly marked.) There may be a minimal fee associated with ILLs (though I have never had to pay one.) PERSI requests have a basic $7.50 charge for up to five articles, and when the material is sent you will be billed an additional 20¢ per page. There is of course no charge for searching online catalogs or having the local public library’s reference person assist you. </span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-58325819355397542562013-02-10T11:37:00.000-08:002013-02-10T11:37:17.621-08:00Put it in writing ...<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Time for another blog entry and I am in the midst of trying to write up some family history, hoping to have something to pass along to interested parties in the next few months.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This continues to be remarkably rewarding exercise, and one that has transformed itself from simply one of captioning my precious documents and photographs to giving a reasonably detailed account of the family’s growth, movement and change over the years.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU6ebkx5OuEWuxHwsO7KuJ0WMli-bXjKaFMnxnqHUfTPFBdpSfBU_mZOe9cNoiytW6YpS4yYGQn1f7Zkv567ojPAe6q2KbtqC7QoeuxPIQsQhk4m6POxUCILSG4DvfGQDO4ChWKA/s1600/Jasper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU6ebkx5OuEWuxHwsO7KuJ0WMli-bXjKaFMnxnqHUfTPFBdpSfBU_mZOe9cNoiytW6YpS4yYGQn1f7Zkv567ojPAe6q2KbtqC7QoeuxPIQsQhk4m6POxUCILSG4DvfGQDO4ChWKA/s320/Jasper.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jasper Newton Howard<br />1851-1936</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It has spurred me to read more background material on the regions where family members lived, examine the possible reasons for their moves, and study the social conditions of the period(s). I have sent for magazine articles from PERSI, strived to find copies of original documents where I had only secondary references, and worked to obtain complete records where I had just a single item (such as a will, instead of an entire probate packet).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It has also encouraged me to explore the less-used features of my word-processing and genealogy programs in order to develop an appealing physical layout, with charts, maps and photographs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">AND it has pushed me to sharpen my writing skills so that the narrative doesn’t sink into a series of mind-numbing “begats.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">All this so the years of effort I have joyfully expended won’t be utterly lost on future generations. Wouldn’t we all like to think that after we’re gone our research would still count for something? If you are considering this kind of project (and I truly hope you are) there are plenty of books and articles to help you on your way. To get started, try <a href="http://cyndislist.com/">Cyndi’s List</a>, a genealogical treasure trove. Her topic “Writing your family’s history: general resources” can get you started. Enjoy your adventure!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In case you are unfamiliar with PERSI, it is an index to genealogical periodical articles maintained by the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The PERiodical Source Index is available online at home if your public library subscribes to Heritage Quest, or if you are a subscriber to Ancestry. FamilySearch.org has a good description of its offerings.</span></i></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-8801384435019247902013-01-18T09:46:00.000-08:002013-01-18T09:46:42.826-08:00Nancy, who are you?<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Do you read “The Legal Genealogist” blog? Informative, well-written, and entertaining -- though how the author ever finds time to do her own research is beyond me, since she posts every day. On January 12 she wrote about a mysterious Nancy, who died in 1886 and is buried in a Texas cemetery. It is one of those tantalizing problems that keeps the family historian digging.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And the article reminded me of my own puzzle -- another Nancy, whose children had the surname Howard and, after she died, were farmed out to various Montgomery County, Indiana, families. Try as I might, I have not been able to find out anything more about their mother.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She came to my attention because two of her youngsters were placed in the home of Alpheus Gregg, where they are counted in the 1850 census. Alpheus had been married to my relative, Amanda Howard, until her death in 1848 (same year as Nancy), and the Howard children’s presence there makes some researchers believe they are Amanda’s from a previous marriage. But I knew Amanda, my great- grandfather’s sister, was the daughter of Frederick Howard, and had been born in 1822. Furthermore, she was too young to have been the mother of the eldest of these Howard children.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So the question is: who IS Nancy Howard? Her name came from a court record collection, the Guardians’ Docket of Montgomery County, Indiana (1825-1874), which has been digitized and is online at the website for the Crawfordsville Public Library (bless ‘em). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have searched marriage records for a possible husband/father, not just in Montgomery County, but neighboring counties and nearby states as well. I have looked for men with the same given names (Augustus , Tilghman, Robert and George) in case a son was named for his father. To confuse matters further, there was a Tilghman Howard who was prominent in Indiana politics at the time, but his biographies tend to disprove any connection he might have had with my Nancy. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Still tantalized, still trying to find the answer.</span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-56924542527165462442012-12-09T11:28:00.000-08:002012-12-09T13:07:27.916-08:00Whither and yon<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I moan a lot about getting sidetracked when doing research -- straying from the ancestral line and wandering off into unmapped territory. At the same time I know it is important to learn as much as possible about the relatives and in-laws who inevitably beckon. Aunts, uncles, cousins all have something to contribute, and studying them may lead to new information about our own forebears. so where is the line between going off on possibly fruitless tangents, and doing worthwhile exploration? </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7quprAsVvcz2FvgYqYLmWqjoyXBmkwbp3R2YYSEVZzaHELS42Xvc2W1Akuy7LYToxd9Ps_ia3sKatefMmpmef3IH_E7D7Ixnj0Yo98iAWNbYD7DaZ6DG6lJNpVHoqLCukFV18Zg/s1600/COMPASS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7quprAsVvcz2FvgYqYLmWqjoyXBmkwbp3R2YYSEVZzaHELS42Xvc2W1Akuy7LYToxd9Ps_ia3sKatefMmpmef3IH_E7D7Ixnj0Yo98iAWNbYD7DaZ6DG6lJNpVHoqLCukFV18Zg/s1600/COMPASS.jpg" /></span></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The other day I was bemused by my own reaction to discovering (get this): the middle name of my grandfather’s second wife’s first husband. Well, middle names can be important identifiers, and while I know where Frank Martin Curry is buried, I wanted to confirm that the body of his remarried widow, Frankie Mae Hildebrand, was interred next to him instead of beside her second spouse, my grandfather. (In another case, I have a relative who is neatly interred between his first and second wives. You probably do, too.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In rereading a letter from my grandfather, with news of Frankie’s death, I learned that her daughter by that first marriage had died some 30 years earlier. That bit of information certainly narrows down my search for her! So looking for a seemingly trivial bit of information turned up something else at least as significant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In other news, I have still been trying to tie up some loose ends re the sons of a Howard cousin, Elvira Thompson. Her mother was born in Indiana, as were most of the other Howards of that generation, so I had been intrigued to learn that Elvira came west, married and eventually two of her sons were born right here in Northern California (Petaluma, Sonoma County, and San Rafael, in neighboring Marin County).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A vague reference to one son’s Navy service led me to write for his military records. With general dates (and a check for $60), I was able to obtain a thick packet of material for Rowland Maynard Thompson. When I read them, my mental picture of Rowland was completely turned around by the physical description they contained! </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In 1902 this young man was said to be 5’ 6” tall, with blue eyes, brown hair, and a “ruddy” complexion; he reportedly weighed 122 lb. But most intriguing was the entry for his physical characteristics: “ink marks right front arm.” A similar record when he re-enlisted four years later had more: “ 7” birds left arm and shoulder; coat of arms, dagger, “NSGW” right front arm; snake, left leg; fly right leg; bird top both feet … scar forehead.” In the interim he had gained not only a lot more “ink marks” but ten pounds in weight. In other words: short, stocky, scarred, and well-tattooed. Not as I had imagined him at all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Interestingly, Rowland’s precise year of birth is still in some question. The 1880 census shows him as three years old, and in 1900 he is reported as having been born in June 1877. But his death certificate gives the birth year as 1884 (the informant was not a relative), and when he enlisted he gave 1879 as his year of birth. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">One more item in these papers helped me locate his parents -- in 1902 he stated that his father was living in Corning, California. Since they were in San Francisco in 1900, I had wondered whether they left for Corning before or after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Now I know.</span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-49086149898851548272012-11-04T10:09:00.000-08:002012-11-04T10:13:50.165-08:00On putting our family histories into words ...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2l-LMs2kX2Pz9GFjAFhyZ8zXlMdTxTE4a99ZI9cQH_dIArJeYF-0_LvdkC0HaPVLUTdVSi4X-ypXvr4fJsotKKtHD3DN9yjERUvEHSc_mzin_ATSw3KY0V2q_77ZPAWZ9YDVYwg/s1600/Quill2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2l-LMs2kX2Pz9GFjAFhyZ8zXlMdTxTE4a99ZI9cQH_dIArJeYF-0_LvdkC0HaPVLUTdVSi4X-ypXvr4fJsotKKtHD3DN9yjERUvEHSc_mzin_ATSw3KY0V2q_77ZPAWZ9YDVYwg/s200/Quill2.jpg" width="91" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">How is it that writing seems so easy until we sit down to attempt it? This is not a novel, or an acdemic dissertation; it is about leaving something behind to show for all our efforts -- an attempt to put a family’s history into coherent, reasonably accurate form, without leaving potential readers confused or bored. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ah, the readers -- who are they to be? In my case, I hope it is simply some of the younger generation of people related to our family lines -- i. e., my children, their cousins, and future generations of same. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Is the writing to be an adjunct to a collection of documents and photographs? A series of captions with spare descriptions to hold them all together? Or is it a stand-alone story with citations or incidental references to the documentation? Or … something in between?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This issue is the one that gave me pause -- I began by planning simply to create some family-tree-type charts and add extensive captions for the volumes of material I had collected. In other words, it would be a kind of justification for all the years I had put into this work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Gradually, however, I came around to the notion that, for me, writing a narrative would be a better way to go; I could then include the documents as supporting material. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then there is the matter of structure. Should one start from the present and work back in time, as we are advised to do our research? And, if so, what line or lines do we choose to follow? Or should one start back with an earliest-so-far-discovered ancestor and come forward? In either case, the problem arises about how to manage the collateral lines that develop, so that the project doesn’t turn into a frustrating maze.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Once those matters are decided, at least provisionally (an outline is essential), how does one present the facts? Will the writing be a description of “how I did it,” or a straighforward depiction of the people and events? Or something else entirely?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And of course, how much information should be included? I had a single family line in mind, starting way back when and coming forward, and of course I wanted to make it as complete as possible, but that could fill volumes. The most satisfactory way to deal with that, it appears, is to break the work into sections, each based on a time period, or location, or major event.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No one structure/format/style fits every case, but these are questions every genealogist/author needs to consider.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">More about this later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the meantime, I commend to everyone the wonderful blog, <a href="http://www.legalgenealogist.com/">The Legal Genealogist.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Please take a look. The author was in the thick of the East Coast storm and her reactions are eloquent in their simplicity (posts of Nov. 2 and 3, 2012).</span></div>
Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-31420500850519431482012-09-13T11:17:00.001-07:002012-09-13T11:17:19.898-07:00To tell the truth<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If you want to bring to light the gaps and flaws in your genealogical research, there’s a straightforward solution -- try writing it down as a story. Not a chart. Not a “report.” A story. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HMV28E83bZomqTywa_AnRkQrQ_Yf1qldDWv_j0cKkWl6wuX2cex5W5XAiXjQQPki-C9_VB3mFG6WA2A0hxcWaylBTE0H57-DH4XL6LaIN-I2MlwnYpV6pinevrtx7GxJQFTYPg/s1600/Four+Cain+Bros+1899+-+Version+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HMV28E83bZomqTywa_AnRkQrQ_Yf1qldDWv_j0cKkWl6wuX2cex5W5XAiXjQQPki-C9_VB3mFG6WA2A0hxcWaylBTE0H57-DH4XL6LaIN-I2MlwnYpV6pinevrtx7GxJQFTYPg/s320/Four+Cain+Bros+1899+-+Version+2.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Four Cain brothers, ca 1899: Cornelius, John (standing),<br /> Jonathan, Eli</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And as you go along, make sure to confirm every statement of fact. Great-aunt Josie was born in Oklahoma. <i> Who says?</i> Cousin Bunkie was a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia. <i>When? What proof do you have?</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’m rediscovering the value of this process as I try to knit together the people and facts that make up one of my family lines. It isn’t quick-and-easy, but every step along the way gives me a sense of achievement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I chose to start with my earliest-discovered Cain ancestor, Thomas, who died in 1795 in Maryland or Delaware (not <b>that</b> far back, compared to some). As I work forward in time emphasis is on the direct ancestor in each generation, though I’m trying to give equal time to the wives, and am not overlooking the siblings and their families. To help make sense of the inevitable flood of names and dates, I am devising simple charts to accompany the text, and footnotes will refer to the documentation, much of which accompany the narratives. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Since I started doing genealogy many years ago, and have learned a lot since gathering those earliest pieces of information, it has been a journey of rediscovery. For instance, I never used to give much thought to the occupations listed in every census since 1850 (most of the men were farmers, but not all). In more recent censuses I didn’t always know enough to try to work out the home addresses, or make note of any property valuations that were given. There is so much more that census records can tell us than just name, age, and place of birth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And when I went back to unearth a paragraph in a county history about my great-grandfather, with an eye to finding a better copy, I read it more carefully. Dr. Cornelius Cain was married in Brookville, Indiana, but he began his medical practice in the nearby town of Laurel, the article said. This, I knew from another document, was where his father-in-law was a Justice of the Peace, and, later, postmaster. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I began to sort through the photographs and documents that will illustrate this narrative, and found that I still need copies of some original materials. Work at a project like this long enough and you begin to understand the importance of looking at the real thing -- not just a name in an index, a will abstract, or some other researcher’s notes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Those early research deficiencies need to be remedied, and in the process of doing that, I am making new discoveries and connections that had not occurred to me before. The point of writing the narrative is, in part, to make my research results more palatable to non-genealogists, but as I dig into it I am finding it is also a great way to tie up many loose ends, uncover and correct long-standing errors and omissions, and make new connections. So satisfying!</span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-2190424786070213092012-08-09T10:21:00.000-07:002012-08-12T21:44:03.341-07:00Making sense of the census<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSrxBCfYrdQj3DkZTPNgCEgUuDkwd_X_vITzHU57JAWbkg_y88Mr-Bxp3yhnkdeX3nUutlwcf2Oax-I0NRhERxN138CoMcT3NRj9BsDHHOzpu-tZLnZ72tclD02yGjy3IGPRfKrQ/s1600/Palm+School+1940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSrxBCfYrdQj3DkZTPNgCEgUuDkwd_X_vITzHU57JAWbkg_y88Mr-Bxp3yhnkdeX3nUutlwcf2Oax-I0NRhERxN138CoMcT3NRj9BsDHHOzpu-tZLnZ72tclD02yGjy3IGPRfKrQ/s400/Palm+School+1940.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Palm School, Riverside, California, 1940</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’ve been caught up in the FamilySearch 1940 census indexing efforts for several weeks and find that while it temporarily diverted me from my personal research, it has been a great experience. There were many benefits aside from the obvious one: helping make this mass of information freely accessible to everyone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">One plus is that I find myself looking much more carefully at ALL census records (and having more appreciation for the indexers in general). </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When doing my own research I always paid attention to the primary information: name, gender, age, birthplace, occupation, etc., but have now become much more aware of the additional informational bits buried in various censuses. To keep them straight I even made a cheat sheet:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1900 shows the year and month of each person’s birth</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> From 1900 on, immigration questions are included</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1900 and 1910 show how many children the wife bore, and how many were still living</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1910 also asked whether the adult males were Civil War veterans</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1930 asked the adults their ages at first marriage and whether males were veterans; if so, which war</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">1940 has a wealth of information. A couple of the new questions are: where one lived in 1935, and whether employed in 1939. It also indicates who in the household answered the questions. It does NOT list the birthplaces of each person’s parents, though, except for two people who are singled out on each sheet to provide additional information.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There are other questions found in various years, but these are the ones I found most important to keep in mind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">While Ancestry has proclaimed its completion of the 1940 indexing (done overseas on contract, so I have read), I’m awaiting release of the rest of the FamilySearch indexes, because I know how carefully they’ve been developed and vetted. Will, of course, eventually use both. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By the way, "History Detectives" is back for a tenth season! My local PBS station, KQED, actually preempted the first episode for their interminable begging, and hardly publicizes it at all but the program is now up and running. Check your local schedule. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">Later: Not again! The schedule shows KQED will continue to preempt it for the rest of the month. Boo! Hiss! Watch the episodes on your computer.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>PS: The cheery group shown above is my first grade class. Mrs. Mueller was one of the best teachers I ever had.</i></span></span></div>
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Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29569654.post-4693567453465634322012-07-03T12:23:00.000-07:002012-07-03T12:23:26.365-07:00Middling mysteries<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Don’t you love it when you discover a middle name? It can be a clue to an earlier relative, a mother’s birth name, or a naming tradition that’s been handed down through generations.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then again, it may just be … a name. But finding it is a small triumph, because it makes the individual’s story more complete.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiqNItXWLgWIriVxcxHfrBUSFjf3rFHCh-r6rLQ-oGSI4PF3FSxPvM1HtZ3iL2xwZysTKtGPEdToU3g-Lw7LogMvYmvpw_2wq8XaWyJdzZRTS1eWkePVe5rHBwulZ4p2nFfVP_eA/s1600/That+rocker+again+-+Version+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiqNItXWLgWIriVxcxHfrBUSFjf3rFHCh-r6rLQ-oGSI4PF3FSxPvM1HtZ3iL2xwZysTKtGPEdToU3g-Lw7LogMvYmvpw_2wq8XaWyJdzZRTS1eWkePVe5rHBwulZ4p2nFfVP_eA/s320/That+rocker+again+-+Version+2.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mary Howard Cain</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My father’s middle name was Hamilton, and of course I knew that from early days. I even knew that it was the surname of his aunt’s husband. But I didn’t realize the import given this family until I saw the impressive stone at the Kingston Cemetery in Decatur County, Indiana. It is labelled “Hamilton-Cain” -- not Cain-Hamilton, even though many more Cains than Hamiltons are buried there. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve mentioned my hunt for Elvira Amanda Kelsey, a relative in my Howard line, from which derives my own middle name. Elvira came west from Indiana with her widowed mother in the 1860s, married in Oregon, and had three sons: Albert, Parker and Rowland. It was easy to guess Albert’s middle name, Kelsey, from the initial K, but I nailed it down when I found Albert Kelsey Thompson listed in the Great California Voters’ Registers of the late 19</span><span style="font: 8.0px Arial; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> and early 20</span><span style="font: 8.0px Arial; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> centuries. Thank goodness he was conscientious enough to register! His brother Parker married well -- to a state senator’s daughter -- and his obituary carried his impressive-sounding full name: Parker Howard Thompson. (His mother’s father was Samuel Parker Howard.) As for the youngest, Rowland, it took a while for me to find his middle name -- he was simply designated as Rowland M. Thompson in census and Social Security records, and even on his death certificate. But his World War I draft registration card showed him as Rowland Maynard Thompson. I don’t know of any specific reason for that name -- yet. But I’m still working on his father’s line, and perhaps the Maynard name will crop up there somewhere.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A middle name I’m still looking for is that of Daniel M. Howard. He was my grandmother’s half-brother, who died at the age of 18 in the Civil War. He served in Company G, Ninth Indiana Infantry (Union Army), and was “slightly” wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. He “died of fever” while hospitalized, according to his military service records. But NOWHERE does his middle name appear.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">John M. Cain is another puzzle. His mother was Elizabeth Morgan (my great-great-grandmother, who lived to be 96), so it is a strong possibility his name is Morgan. But I am not going to assume anything! And since John died in 1828 it is quite possible I will never know for sure.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There could be a whole subset of genealogy about middle names, don’t you think? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A post script: Given names don’t always follow family tradition, as I’ve learned to my rue. After years of trying to find the source of the above-mentioned Samuel Parker Howard’s name, I learned that a charismatic Methodist circuit-riding preacher was in in the region around the time this ancestor was born, in Kentucky. His name: Samuel Parker.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Elmer Ellsworth Cain posed another puzzle, until I discovered the story of the Civil War officer who had led colorful military drills in various venues around the country. He put on quite a show with his Zouave-like troupe, and went on to achieve the dubious fame of becoming one of the first Union casualties of the war. His name was Elmer Ellsworth, and not only was my relative named for him, but he named his twin sons Elmer and Ellsworth.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So much for “family” names.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Mary Cain Mintonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02922775234248061086noreply@blogger.com1