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Monday, February 18, 2019

#52Ancestors: #FourGenerations Photo

I had an entirely different photo in mind for this week's #52Ancestors prompt but then I saw the sweetest meme video, captured by generations of families around the world, #FourGenerations. The name says it all, four generations gathered together culminating with the oldest generation. The years contained in those four generations is amazing to consider and their enthusiasm for being together is infectious. The meme began in China but has spread to all four corners of the globe. Watching their smiling, laughing faces it's easy to see "family is family" is a universal truth.



Slightly less enthusiastic is my own reaction to being part of a four-generation photograph when I was about four years old. I'm not sure what was happening that made me a good candidate for toddler anger management, but the photo below is of me, my mother, her mother, and her mother! An unbroken mitochondrial line! My great-grandmother traveled from Idaho to Washington for Christmas, I believe, several months after my parents returned from being posted overseas for three years. In the intervening period, they had acquired my brother and me. What the photo doesn't convey is that in her youth my great-grandmother had the same copper red hair as my mother did. My grandmother was a brunette, like her grandmother and as was I. I broke the chain, but if I'd had a daughter I always secretly hoped for another every-other-generation ginger!

What I love about multigenerational photos is the opportunity to really examine faces for similarities. Who has the same nose? Eyes? Smile? Oh, DNA results are great, and all, showing with scientific proof your connection to your parents, siblings and others, which satisfies our intellect. But it is the physical expression of those genes (phenotypes for science-types) that really speaks to our hearts in identifying the visible signs of that connectivity. 

Do you have four living generations in your family? Don't wait, join the wave and capture your #FourGenerations while you can. It will become a treasured memento for your family and future generations.

Monday, February 11, 2019

#52Ancestors: Love


I can't believe how much I have struggled with this week's Valentine's Day-themed prompt: LOVE

Well, you know what?

 I ❤ my ancestors!

I don't know why it took me so long to settle on that truth, but the fact is I have been fascinated with genealogy before I'd ever even heard the word. I was very blessed to have the opportunity to spend lots of time with both sets of my grandparents growing up as they lived in the same town. One of my favorite activities, whenever I visited my maternal grandmother, was to haul out an old suitcase she had in a closet full of old family photos. I loved looking through that suitcase! I asked, over and over, "Who's this?" "Who are these people?" "Where was this taken?" until I almost began to believe I had been there and knew them, too. My paternal grandmother's photos rested on a bookshelf up the steep set of stairs to the room my brothers and I stayed in when we visited. I snuck looks at those albums and tried to make sense of the old obituaries I found within their pages and how they were connected to the people pictured there. 

I had a rather nomadic childhood and, as I got older, I stumbled when people asked me where I was from or where was my hometown. Maybe this sense of rootlessness is one reason the ancestry bug infected me so early. But that isn't the whole story. In a recent New York Times article, Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History — and How to Do It by Jaya Saxena, the author writes "Whatever you do, be prepared to fall down a rabbit hole, Ms. Koch-Bostic said. “I think it appeals to people who love an intellectual pursuit, because that’s really what it is,” she said. “It’s solving a puzzle at the highest level, and the benefit is that you get to find out about your family.”

That intellectual, problem-solving element is certainly a big part of what keeps me interested... and challenged. I alternate between thinking my ancestors are leaving me a cosmic breadcrumb trail helping me find their stories and thinking they are playing a neverending game of hide-and-seek. I am constantly gleefully snickering "You can't hide from me!" and wailing "Where are you?" I am so glad that I am a mixture of heritages, all having immigrated during different time periods. I love that the stories of each of my ancestral lines is different from the others. I'm grateful for the experience I've gained researching my ancestors myself and not relying on others' {uncited!} trees. My Dad often lamented I was more interested in dead people than living ones but one of the greatest gifts genealogy has given me is the shared passion with my aunt. Who knew what wonderful adventures it would lead us on!

So, thanks, genealogy! I love you so!

Saturday, February 9, 2019

#52 Ancestors: Surprise!

This week's #52Ancestors prompt encouraged us to delve into a surprise encounter in our genealogy research. I have had many surprises across the years I have been researching my family, some welcome and others not so much! I'm still reveling in one of the most recent discoveries.

Researching my maternal grandmother's ancestry was where I began my genealogy journey many years ago. One of the first dates I remember discovering on my very first trip to the Family History Library was a marriage date for my great-great-great grandparents, Abraham Greenwalt and Louisa Billig. Both natives of Pennsylvania, they met and married in Adams County, Illinois, on August 14, 1856.1

From the federal census, I knew their oldest child was David Benton Greenwalt, born in adjacent Pike County, Illinois, in 1860, followed by my great-great-grandmother, Mary Rosalie Greenwalt in 1863. Abraham Greenwalt must have had a major case of wanderlust as the Greenwalt family moved from Illinois to Missouri to California, Oregon and finally Washington's Yakima Valley. Their next two children, Josiah Lincoln Green and Harriet "Hattie" Greenwalt were born in Andrews County, Missouri; son Walter was born near present-day Santa Clara, California, and daughter Zelma in Jackson County, Oregon.

For years I researched this family and its collateral lines. There are not any surviving bible records, but the timing of the Greenwalt children's births suggested there might have been other children who died young or other circumstances leading to gaps. I have always been fascinated by cemeteries and try to visit the final resting places of my ancestors as possible. Find a Grave has enabled me to do that virtually when the opportunity to visit in person has not yet presented itself.

In particular, I have enjoyed using the Find a Grave featuring allowing you to connect memorials and recreate families virtually for my ancestors. It's a great opportunity for me to work through my research and search for family members not buried near other family members. I was recently set about linking Abraham and Louisa's children to them when I was stunned to discover two children already linked to Abraham Greenwalt.

SURPRISE! 

It's a boy! It's a girl! 

WHAAAAT? My first thought someone had made a mistake, but as I looked further I was both excited and saddened to realize that their first two children had both died young.

In the 1860 federal census, Abraham and Louisa are childless.2 It's not unheard of that a couple could be married four years and not have any children, but I guessed there had possibly been a miscarriage, or two. David wouldn't arrive until after the census has been enumerated in December of 1860. Now armed with more concrete evidence that a son and a daughter had both been born to the couple before 1860 I set about trying to learn more. According to his headstone, Stephen D. Greenwalt died on September 22, 1858, at the age of 1 year, 2 months and 16 days.3 Using a genealogy date calculator a birthdate of July 6, 1857, is likely.

Daughter Susan's headstone has been badly damaged over the years, but her death date of January 6, 1860, is still readable.4 With that date in mind, I turned my attention back to the 1860 census, this time to the mortality schedule. There was little "Susannah" listed as having died of "inflammation on lungs" at the age of two months in January of 1860, which she had been suffering from for seven days.5 I always advise people to take advantage of any surviving mortality schedules, but this time I failed to heed my own advice!

So, the moral of this story is to check the cemeteries in the community where your ancestors lived for not only the people you know of but also leave yourself open-minded enough for ancestral SURPRISES, as well!



References
  1. "Illinois, County Marriages, 1810-1940," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-YTX7-K?cc=1803970&wc=326D-YWL%3A146384001 : 3 March 2016), 1870158 (004539871) > image 246 of 735; county offices, Illinois.
  2. Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 04 February 2019), memorial page for Stephen D. Greenawalt (6 Jul 1857–22 Sep 1858), Find A Grave Memorial no. 46273259, citing Akers Chapel Cemetery, Hull, Pike County, Illinois, USA.
  3. Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 9 February 2019), memorial page for Susan L. Greenawalt (Nov 1859–7 Jan 1860), Find A Grave Memorial no. 46273260, citing Akers Chapel Cemetery, Hull, Pike County, Illinois, USA.
  4. "United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXC7-5ND : 13 December 2017), Abram Greenwalt in entry for Henry Wedington, 1860.
  5. "Illinois Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QL91-D4WS : 16 March 2018), Susanah Grendott, death Jan 1860, Illinois, United States; citing Pub. T1133 Nonpopulation Census Schedules for Illinois, 1850-1880., Film 59, NARA microfilm publications T1133 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).; FamilySearch digital folder 007283673.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Murder Once Removed

It's not enough that I think about my family history all the live long day. I am equally enamored of books with genealogical themes. For years I have been a fan of the wonderful Torie O'Shea mystery series by Rett MacPherson. After eleven installments, however, the cozy mystery series went into hiatus in 2008. Fortunately, MacPherson brought plucky historian Torie back last year in a new ebook. Hopefully, there will be more adventures to come.

Beyond that good news, this is a fabulous time for cozy mysteries. There is a series available for every interest imaginable ranging from sudoku puzzles to yoga. What is a cozy mystery exactly, you ask? Cozy mysteries, or cozies for short, "are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community."Oh, and cats, dogs and ghosts also figure prominently!

Hillary Kelly describes just how popular this form of the mystery genre has become in her article Crime-Solving Cats And Cozy Mysteries Are A Publishing Juggernaut. For years, however, no genealogy-themed cozy series has been able to match the staying power the Torie O'Shea mysteries enjoyed a decade ago. I have missed this entertaining form of shaking the ancestral leaves. That's why I was delighted to discover a new series by S.C. Perkins will launch next month beginning with Murder Once Removed. Featuring amateur detective/genealogist Lucy Lancaster, the first installment of the Ancestry Detective series will introduce readers to her love of tacos and life in Austin, Texas, when it is released on March 19, 2019. I, for one, can't wait!

Interested in more family history-related reads? Check out my Pinterest boards: Family History Memoirs and Genealogy Can Be Murder!



References
  1. Wikipedia contributors, "Cozy mystery," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cozy_mystery&oldid=880224164 (accessed February 3, 2019).


Friday, February 1, 2019

#52Ancestors: At the library




“On February 9, 1849, I sailed on the ship Robert Bound bound for California, Captain Cameron, master. The ship was gotten up by Dr. Townsend, the Sarsaparilla man. We landed in San Francisco on August 28, 1849.”







I am a librarian so "at the library" is an everyday occurrence for me! That still doesn't stop me from making rookie mistakes on occasion. My great-great-great grandfather, John Daniel Brower, was a native of Paterson, New Jersey. In early 1849, the lure of California's gold fields led Daniel on an odyssey halfway around the world. We have a short account of his life which includes a few scant details of his trip to California. I was interested in learning more about what the voyage would have entailed and decided to check out a book in my library about the Argonauts, as those who embarked on this journey were called. I was disappointed, however, the book I was specifically in search of was not on the shelf when I went looking for it.

Frustrated the book I wanted wasn't there, I spent a few moments grumbling under my breath and then told myself to "Think!"

Books are arranged by subject in libraries, so it stands to reason that books with a similar call number would also be about the experiences of the '49ers. As they say... duh! So, having put on my thinking cap, I took another look at the shelf and the first book I happened to grab had the unassuming title California gold rush voyages, 1848-1849: three original narratives.1 Okay, it's a start, I remember thinking. Little did I know!

As I glanced at the table of contents, the words "Robert Bowne" jumped off the page; specifically "Brief notes of John N. Stone of the voyage of the ship Robert Bowne." This sounded awfully similar to the "Robert Bound" of John Brower's recollections. This warranted further investigation!

I quickly turned to the pages where the diary of John N. Stone began, to discover a day-by-day account of Stone's trip beginning in February of 1849 in New York's harbor, south along the Atlantic coast around the horn of South America to San Francisco. At the end of his nearly daily notes about the voyage Stone included a list of all the passengers on board including one "Brower, J.D., carpenter." This was it! The exact voyage my ancestor sailed on. I could hardly believe it! I danced around in the stacks, hugging the book reveling in this wonderful discovery!

As a librarian the old adage "don't judge a book by its cover" is a common refrain to remind us to look beyond the surface. I'd almost made the same mistake. I had set out to find one particular book, based on the title alone, and nearly left in defeat when it wasn't on the shelf. Serendipity is a powerful thing, but we have to be receptive enough to allow our ancestors to guide us to these unexpected gifts giving us insight into their lives.

"You don't reach Serendip by plotting a course for it. 
You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and
lose your bearings ... serendipitously." 
2

Because I was able to heed the whisper of serendipity, much in the same way my ancestor was captivated by the siren call of gold, I was able to virtually experience his epic voyage, far exceeding what I had even dared to imagine when I stepped into the stacks that day.



References
  1. Pomfret, John E., editor. California gold rush voyages, 1848-1849: three original narratives. San Marino, Calif., Huntington Library, 1954.
  2. Barth, John. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. New York, Little, Brown, 1990.