Big time in Salt Lake City

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).

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.)

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. Hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice on Thursday night was a pleasure, as always.

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.

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.

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.

Nonetheless, I had a really satisfactory visit, and now there are some real clues to stalk.

Can't let them go

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.

Here are a few of mine:

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  “Fort Gunnybags”  

I’d like to know something about his early life, and who his parents were.

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.

What became of Albert?

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?

Oh the questions, the questions.

******

On a completely different subject:

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.”

“Bumping” smart phones with the app sounds an alert if the owners, contemplating intimacy, are closely related.

Oh.