Author: Nichelle Barra Page 63 of 91

Genealogy Round-Up March 14th-20th

On 20 March 2015

Happy first day of spring! Although we had a smattering of snow last night, our trees are beginning to bud and I have the beginnings of tulips coming up. My allergies are loving this! 🙂

If you are in the Northern Indiana area, the South Bend Area Genealogical Society is putting on their annual Michiana Genealogy Fair this Saturday from 9am-4pm! Harold Henderson will be the main speaker! Check out more information here.

I will also have a table set up where I will be doing a giveaway for a FREE 5-Hour research package! So stop on by!

Resources

Do you have Swedish ancestry? ArkivDigital is having a free weekend this weekend! Check out more information here.
SeekingMichigan.org new records! I posted about this on Tuesday as have numerous others, but in case you still haven’t heard there are now death certificates from 1921-1939 on SeekingMichigan.org. The indexes for death records from 1940-1952 will come out in a few weeks and they will be adding new certificate images as the privacy restrictions come off every year. Be aware that this news has caused their site to be flooded with viewers so it may be slow!
Ohio is going to open their adoption records for those who were adopted from 1964- Sept 1996! Check out more in this article here.
Sad news on EOGN. The Kansas Supreme Court has proposed restricted access to Kansas marriage records. You can read more here.
Milford, Michigan now has their obituary index from 1929-1949 online. Check out more here.

Interesting Articles

Tour a Jewish Cemetery in Poland by drone! Check out the video here and about the drone here.
The Archivist of the US has challenged everyone to a transcription challenge! See more about it here and here.
Do you have photographs that are just too much to keep? There is a project called THTK (short for “Too Hard To Keep”) run by the photographer Jason Lazarus. He takes photos that people would rather not have anymore and instead of destroying them, he places them in an online repository. You can read more about the project here.
Crestleaf shared an article on how to use your Facebook photos to tell a story on Crestleaf. Check out the article here.
Going to the Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamboree? Applications are not being accepted for the 2015 Suzanne Winsor Freeman Student Genealogy Grant! See more here.

Videos/Webinars

TapGenes was a semi-finalist in the RootsTech Innovator Challenge. I find the idea to be rather interesting and I’ll be curious to see how it all pans out once it’s up and running. If you’re curious, check out the video here that explains what TapGenes hopes to do.
Christa Cowen (the Barefoot Genealogist) shared a video about the Ancestry shakey leafs and how to go beyond them in this 30 minute video.
She also shared another 34 minute video on doing genealogy on a budget which you can check out here.
And just one more from Christa Cowen about documenting your research (23 minute video). Check it out!
Interested in using Evernote for genealogy? Check out a short video from Lisa Louise Cooke on using Evernote here.

Happy weekend everyone!

Wordless (Not Really) Wednesday: Tintypes

By Nichelle Barra

On 18 March 2015

In Personal, Pictures

I have two tintypes in my photo collections. I actually didn’t realize I had tintypes until I sat down with them trying to date them. Tintypes are made of iron and are therefore magnetic and these proved to be so.

This photo is marked as Gard Witherell, my 2nd great-grandfather. If that is so, then this next picture I can assume is his mother, Lily, along with another woman.

These two pictures match enough that I believe they were taken at the same time. If that is so, then my great-grandmother’s notation that this is her husband’s mother, Fanny, is incorrect. Besides that, the fashion in this image goes more with the mid 1880’s, which would match the age of Gard above.

I do believe then that here I have a picture of my first (and most frustrating) brick wall: Lily (McLeod) Witherell.

Exciting 🙂

Tuesday’s Tip: New Records on SeekingMichigan.org

By Nichelle Barra

On 17 March 2015

In Research, Resources

I no longer live close to my hometown where many of my ancestors lived and died. Well, close I suppose is a relative term but it’s not a trip I could make comfortably in one day. I use what I can online and then I have a list I continuously make for what I need to get the next time I am up there.

However, that mainly means just my hometown county, which isn’t the only place where my ancestors lived. Most of my maternal line comes from Tuscola County, not Saginaw County, in Michigan. That list is long and I have yet to get anything from there because when I am in Saginaw, I tend to work on Saginaw records.

SeekingMichigan.org is a site I’ve discussed once before and you may have noticed I get a lot of my death records from that site. Well today I heard some wonderfully happy news! The death records have been expanded! They now have records from 1921-1939 that are fully imaged and indexes from 1940-1952 are to be added soon as well.

So, can this help me to solve some family mysteries? Maybe, but at the very least this will give some wonderful clues on that side of the family!

Here’s some of the new information I got today. My 3rd great-grandmother is Rachel Henderson. I wasn’t positive on her maiden name but I at least knew when she died, 1927, as well as as some other identifying information from census records and the like. She was 7 years out of reach on Seekingmichigan.org until now and I am happy to report, her death certificate is there with enough identifying information to confirm this is my Rachel:

Here we have Rachel Henderson. Her death date matches what I knew, her husband’s name is the name I had, she lived in the right location, and her daughter, Mary (Henderson) Lyons, is the informant. So I’d say that’s a pretty good match for my Rachel! And did you see what else was there? Her parents names!

Now I have MORE to research! I don’t know any genealogist who wouldn’t love that!

Enjoy and happy hunting everyone!

Researching on FindMyPast

By Nichelle Barra

On 16 March 2015

In Personal, Research

Wells Cathedral, England By Mattana (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Recently, FindMyPast had a free weekend, so I of course set aside time to explore the website and all that it has to offer. Free weekends are a great time to test out a website and see if I’ll add it to my subscriptions!

FindMyPast has a lot of British records, so I decided to look into my maternal line; specifically at my 3rd great-grandmother, my most recent British immigrant. Her name is Hannah (Stock) Gainer Brion.

I knew of her life in the United States more than I did of her brief life in England and I had a vague idea of her parents names because of that.

Now, even though I started with Hannah, I ended up focusing my research on her parents: Forest and Tryphena (I LOVE it when people have unique names mixed with a common surname!). Mainly because there wasn’t much on Hannah’s English life because the family moved to Michigan sometime between 1851 ((“1851 England Census,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2015), entry for Hannah Stock (age 1), Westbury. Somerset; PRO HG107/1934, folio 90, p. 14; Wells Union registration district, Wells district, ED 5, household 59.)), when Hannah was a year old, to 1855, when they show up in the 1860 census record with a five year old son born in Michigan ((1860 U.S. census, Macomb County, Michigan, population schedule, Clinton, p. 383 (penned), dwelling 2787, family 2917, Forest Stock and family; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2014); citing NARA microfilm publication M653, roll 553.)). There really wasn’t much, then, on Hannah’s life in England besides a census and a birth record((“England & Wales, Free BMD Index: 1837-1915,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2014), birth entry for Hannah Stock; citing Wells Oct-Nov-Dec 1850, vol. 10:505.)).

So on to her parents! I do find a marriage record for Forest Stock and a Tryphena Hockey ((“England & Wales, Free BMD Index: 1837-1915,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2014), marriage entry for Forest Stock and Tripphena Hockey; citing Wells, Somerset County, Oct-Nov-Dec 1849, vol. 10:793.)) in the database- yay! A maiden name! That, however, doesn’t lead to much on Tryphena (YET!), but I do find more information on Forest, who was a farmer according to the two censuses I already mentioned.

Forest was baptized 30 May 1825 in Westbury, Somerset, England and his parents are noted as William Stock and Ann ((“England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” databse, Ancestry,com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2015), baptism entry for Forest Stock, 30 May 1825; citing England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; FHL Film 1526056, item 11, p. 32.)), but I don’t find him with his parents again but may have found him in an 1841 census but I need to connect him to those people he’s with somehow.

And that seemed to be about it for records (so far) in England. This was a surface search though, so keep that in mind. I wasn’t digging too deep at this point.

However, as I filled in the information on my Ancestry.com tree, I noted some things coming up. And here, to me, is a very sad story. Forest and Tryphena moved to America between 1851-1855, as already noted. I imagine that the reason they moved was because of the farming and land opportunities that America had that England did not. Of course, then the Civil War began. Although relatively new to this country, Forest obviously felt pretty strongly about this war because he enlisted in a Michigan regiment((“U.S. Civil War Solider Records and Profiles, 1861-1865,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2015), entry for Forest Stock (Co. C., Mich. 1st Inf.), enlistment date 3 Dec 1861.)).

And died.

In 1865, there is a Forest Stock listed who died in Florence, S.C. of disease((“U.S.., Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, 1861-1865,” digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 March 2015), entry for Forest Stock, 8th Mich. Vol, 24 Jan 1865; citing Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, compiled 1861-1865, pg. 105; NARA Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917, RG 94.)).

So here he was, still in a relatively new country that broke out into war and he decides to participate, leaving his wife and young family at home. And then, in an even more foreign place, he dies of disease. I can’t imagine how hard that had to have been and it broke my heart a bit for this family that was trying to make something of themselves in a new place.

Now, did I learn all of this through records found only on FindMyPast? Well, no. I did not. In fact, every record I found on FindMyPast, I could find on Ancestry.com (I have the world subscription) and then some (you’ll note that all my citations are from Ancestry.com, not FindMyPast). So, although my weekend research did give me new results that I wouldn’t have found without the focus I had, thanks to the free weekend, I do not feel a subscription is necessary; yet. Maybe I didn’t look with the right people to see the unique records that I know FindMyPast has, nonetheless, no new subscription.

At least my wallet was relieved.

Did you find anything new and interesting because of the free FindMyPast weekend? Or do you already have a subscription to FindMyPast and wish to share about it? Please comment below!

Happy hunting!