SNGF: Surprising Genealogy Discovery

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) question made me want to respond today. He posted:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to:

1) What genealogical discovery surprised you? [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!]

2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note.

A friend was just asking me the other day who my earliest immigrant ancestor to America was.

My genealogy journey has been sporadic and somewhat convoluted. I knew nothing of my father's ancestry until after he died. He didn't want us to know them.

My mother's ancestry had been researched by multiple family members, including my grandmother. We thought we knew a lot about them (some "facts" proved not to be true).

And I had spent many years researching my husband's Finnish/Swedish ancestry, mostly before any records were online.

Much to my surprise when I got into my father's ancestry I discovered that I had a direct ancestor from Sweden who arrived in America long before my husband's ancestor.

Olof Persson Stille, my 9th great grandfather, was born in Ruslagen, Sweden in 1610. As an impetuous youth he was caught stealing a piece of jewelry from the manor house where he worked, leading to his expulsion from Sweden in 1641. He arrived in New Sweden (Wilmington, Delaware) in November 1641 with his wife and two young children and became a wealthy and well-respected plantation owner as well as a magistrate. He died in Philadelphia in 1684.

I was totally blown away to learn that I had Swedish ancestry.

SNGF: Surname Counts

Today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) from Randy Seaver involves counting the surnames in your genealogy database.
Specifically, he asks us to:
1) Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to Count how many surnames you have in your family tree database.

2)  Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

3)  Tell us what the top 10 (or 20)  surnames are in your database and, if possible, how many entries.  How many different surnames are in your family tree?

4)  Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a status or comment on Facebook, or in Google Plus Stream post.

Unfortunately, I don't have all my research in a single file.
I have separate files in Family Tree Maker 2014 for my maternal (Swicegood), paternal (Sharp) and husband's (Sommarstrom) families.

So, for my SWICEGOOD file, containing 15,967 individuals, my most frequent names are:
     Name                Count      Males    Females     Earliest     Most Recent
BROOKSHIRE       822         460          357          1690            1974
UNKNOWN           415           32          382           1745            1998
SWICEGOOD        284         149          133           1754            1995
WOOLERY            177           97            79           1739            1919
QUIGG                   174           96            76           1784            1973
COFFEY                 170           99            69           1776            1962
CRABTREE           168          104           63           1683            1958
BARTSHE              146           67           76            1771            1966
PAXTON                135           80           54            1742            1956
CAMPBELL           133           66           66            1705            1948

For my SHARP file, containing 2266 individuals, the top 10 surnames are:
SHARP *                210          105         104           1746            1996
RYASON                70            33           36           1801             1896
RYERSON              68            37           31           1737             1909
UNKNOWN           52              8           44           1645             1828
SULTS                    46            20           26           1805             1981
THOMAS               39            20           19           1735             1896
McFARLAND        37           21            16           1760             1900
REYERSE              34           16            18           1664             1761
STILLEY               34            16           18            1709             1845
SONNEN               33            23           10            1799             1949

Prior to taking the SHARP surname, my direct ancestors were SCHARFENSTEINs. There are 28 of those in my database (17 males, 11 females) dating from 1655 to 1767.

And lastly, my SOMMARSTROM database contains 1880 individuals, with the top surnames being
SOMMARSTROM       161       82       78           1778            1988
ERSSON                         65       43       22           1705             1909
OLSSON                        58       36        22           1726             1950
ERIKSSON                    50       30        20           1704             1959
JOHNSON                     48       34        14           1846             1994
ANDERSSON               44        21       23            1693            1977
MILLER                        44        21       23            1840             1932
JANSSON                     38        20       18            1822             1947
NILSSON                      33        22       11            1783             1908
MATTSSON                 32        24         8            1701             1960

These surname counts for my husband's Swedish/Finnish lines are pretty meaningless, since most of his ancestors used patronymic names or were children of soldiers, whose surnames were defined by where they were serving at the time the child was born. For almost every "-son" name above, there's a comparable "-dotter" surname.

Unfortunately, I didn't find an easy way to determine how many distinct surnames were in each tree and I'm too lazy to count all the names manually. The frequency lists were easy to create as Surname Reports sorted by frequency in FTM.














           

SNGF: Ancestral Residences

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) challenge for this week tweaked my interest and there's football on the TV (which doesn't require any of my brain power).

His challenge for this week is to
1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 16 September 1917 - 100 years ago.
2)  List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist?
3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.

On September 16, 1917, my Mother was just over 6 months old; my father wasn't yet born (but would be in about 7 weeks).

My Mother's family--she, her older sister, Mother (Earl and Fay Swicegood)--were living in Otis, Washington County, Colorado.

This photo was taken sometime in 1919 in Otis, so I assume that's their house behind my Mother.

I visited Otis in about 2007, but couldn't figure out which house Mom's family might have lived in, if it was still standing. There are apparently no City Directories (or rural directories) for Otis while my family resided there.

My Mother's paternal grandparents, John H. and Martha Swicegood, may also have been living in Otis in September 1917, or they could have been in or near Weaubleau, Missouri. At the time of the 1920 Census, they lived in Otis; by December 1921 they were back in Weaubleau. Either place, I don't have a photo of their house. Their youngest daughter, Beulah, was still living at home in 1917.

My Mother's maternal grandparents, Charles and Nancy Brookshire, were definitely living in Weaubleau, Hickory County, Missouri, in September 1917. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly where in Weaubleau they were living, as they moved around quite a bit between about 1915 and 1935 (or so my uncle has said). Their two youngest children, Freda Mae and Henry Lee Brookshire, was still living at home in 1917. This photo is from Freda's photo album and is dated 1915, so this could be where the family was living in 1917 as well.

None of my Mother's paternal great-grandparents (my 2g-grandparents) were living in 1917), but both maternal great-grandfathers were. Henry Clay Brookshire was still working as a doctor at age 68 in September 1917 and living with his third wife in Weaubleau, Missouri. I believe this is the house he was living in. This is his granddaughter, Freda Mae Brookshire, standing in front of her grandfather's house in about 1915. And I believe the color photo is the same house in 2006.

My Mother's Mother's other maternal great-grandfather, Robert H. Collins, was also still living in 1917. I believe he was probably living in Idaho near Hailey. He wrote a letter to the local Hickory County newspaper in December 1917 from Hailey, so I assume he was there two months earlier. I have no idea exactly where he lived in Hailey. He could have been camping out in the mountains near the silver mine he owned with his uncle, Jacob Bartshe.

On my father's side, he was not born yet. His parents, Harold H. and Virginia Sharp, were probably living in Huntsville, Walker County, Texas with his older brother. 

His paternal grandfather, Alvah Clyde Sharp, was also still living. The 1918 Wichita, Kansas, city directory lists Clyde and his second wife, Rose, residing at 305 W. 8th St. The house that's at that address now, according to Google maps, is definitely not the house that would have been there 100 years ago. In September 1917, Clyde's two step-daughters, Ella and Norma, would have been living with them.

Dad's maternal grandmother, Matilda Elizabeth "Tillie" (Sonnen) Meldrum was also still living in September 1917. She was living at 414 Andrews St. in Houston, Texas. Her youngest son, Curtis B. Meldrum (b.1904), and daughter, Nancy Marie (b.1905) were living with her. I have no photos of this house.

SNGF: Family Numbers

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) challenge this week caught my attention.

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) Pick one of your sets of great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.
2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program. 3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.
4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.
5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note.

1) I've selected my mother's father's father and mother, John Hiram Richmon Sharpe SWICEGOOD and Marth Elizabeth COFFEY for this challenge. I've actually been working on this line, and John Hiram's siblings lines, recently.

2) I created an outline descendant chart in Family TreeMaker.

3) Children: John and Martha had four children. One died at birth. The other three are all dead.
    Grandchildren: 7; one (my uncle, age 91+, still living
    Great grandchildren: 17; all living except 2
    Great great grandchildren: at least 14; all living; probably more from a line I can't seem to trace
    3rd great grandchildren: at least 10; all living; probably more from a line I can't seem to trace
    4th great grandchildren; none that I know of

4) I am in contact with all of my first cousins, at least to some extent. As a child, I met both of my grandfather's sisters. They scared the heck out of me. My grandfather's older sister had no children. His younger sister had one son, who I apparently met as a young child. He died in Colorado in 1975 and I have not had much luck tracing his descendants. Total increase is at least 48.

I need to try harder to track down the descendants of my grandfather's younger sister. I'm pretty sure my living uncle is the only descendant of his grandparents on both sides still living.

100th Anniversary of Mother's Birth

Today, March 10, 2017 is the 100th anniversary of my mother's birth.
She died in 1996, so didn't make it to 80.
For the last several weeks, my mother keeps popping into my head.
And I keep thinking how different her life would have been if she'd been born in 2017 instead of 1917.
Mother, Nancy Leah Swicegood, was born in the small Ozark town of Weaubleau, Hickory County, Missouri.

Fairly soon after she was born, Mom's family moved to Otis, Washington County, Colorado. Her father, William Earl Swicegood had gotten a lead on work from his brother-in-law, Clio Vanderford (husband of his sister, Pearl). According to local newspapers, Earl got quite a few contracts with the county for concrete work. The family stayed in Otis until at least 1922, but mother Fay returned to Weaubleau several times. In August 1918, Fay somehow spilled a pot of boiling water over Leah, then a tiny toddler. Fay's mother and sister came out to Otis and they took Leah back to Weaubleau to nurse her burns. In 1919, Fay and daughters returned to Weaubleau for the birth of a third daughter, Nina Lee (born November 1st). At the time of the 1920 US Census, the family was still living in Otis and Earl was working as a contractor on a bridge project. Leah was listed as "Leo F." a male. From the photo at left, it's not surprising that the census taker might mistake her for a little boy!

The family of five returned to Weaubleau by fall 1922 so that the eldest daughters, Dee and Leah, could start school. It's not clear whether they both started school that fall or just Deloris. By all accounts, Mom excelled in school. One of her first cousins often told a story about how they were in the first grade together one day and the next day Mom was promoted to the second grade. Unfortunately, she would not talk about her childhood. I know she was a very good debater in high school and apparently the smartest person in her small graduating class.

But by the time she graduated from high school on May 10, 1934, she was deeply in love with a man a couple of years her senior, L. Jay Thomson. She apparently turned down an all-expenses-paid scholarship to the University of Missouri in favor of working as assistant Postmaster to her mother at Weaubleau. She and Jay were married on October 12th, 1935, but I'm not sure where or by whom. Their license was issued in Camdenton, Camden County, Missouri, but was not returned there. A daughter, Elsie Ann Thomson, was born on February 11th, 1936 and died five days later. She is buried in the Weaubleau Congregational Christian Church cemetery in Weaubleau. Jay was not present at the birth, as the couple was already estranged at that time. Mom filed for divorce on April 14th and the divorce was granted on Nov. 16th, 1936 on the grounds of "unreconcileable differences." Jay clearly did not want the child and insisted that she either abort it or give it up for adoption. Mom disagreed, but never once talked about this phase of her life or even admitted to this marriage and baby.

As far as I can tell, Mom left Weaubleau fairly soon after the death of her daughter and filing her application for divorce. She spent time with her grandparents in Jefferson City (Nov 1936-Jan 1937), attended comptometry school in Springfield (Feb-April 1937) and went to work for the Soil Conservation Service in Columbia, Missouri (April 1937-April 1942), and lived for a short time with her older sister in Jefferson City. At the time of the 1940 Census, she was rooming with a family and two other girls who all worked as comptometers. She did not admit to being divorced or having had a child. Her salary was $1169 per year. Curiously, the 1940 Columbia City Directory shows her renting an apartment at 109 Price ave. (same as census address) with her younger sister, Nina, a student.

On May 21, 1942 the Women's Army Air Corps was authorized by the U. S. Congress to recruit 25,000 women in 62 occupations. Comptometry was not one of them. Mom went to Los Angeles to enlist on Feb. 3, 1943. Her favorite aunt and uncle were living in the L.A. area at the time, so I assume that's why she went to L.A. to enlist. On May 1, 1943 the Army announced a new program where qualified women could enroll in the WAAC and receive Signal Corps training as radio operators and repairmen. Mom was in the first WAAC Signal Corps class, arriving in Hollidaysburg, PA on April 3, 1943 and graduating on August 6th. She was sent to Camp Crowder in Neosho, Missouri as a radio instructor for about three months, then reassigned to Vint Hill Farms Station near Warrenton, Virginia (1 Dec 1943).

My siblings and I have been told different stories about where Mom and Dad met. Dad was also in the Army, serving in the Signal Corps. Unfortunately, most of Mom's records and about half of Dad's cannot be found by the Army records service. We know they were both assigned to Vint Hill Farms and to Fort Monmouth, NJ, but don't have specific dates. They were married at Fort Monmouth, NJ on June 24, 1944 and Mom was mustered out of the Army on Sept. 21, 1944 at Vint Hill "for the convenience of the United States Army."

For the next twenty years Mom was an Army wife, following Dad to duty stations in California, Eritrea, Virginia, Japan, Massachusetts and probably locations I don't know about. She had four more children and was a "stay-at-home" Mom until 1962, when she went to work at Penn State to qualify for dependent tuition reductions (allowing us to pay $25 per quarter instead of $100).

To be continued...

SNGF: Age At Death for Female Ancestors

Since I haven't done one of Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) challenges for awhile, I thought I'd take a whack at this one. The challenge is:
1) Review your Pedigree Chart (either on paper or in your genealogy management software program) and determine the age at death of your female ancestors back at least five generations (and more if you want to).
2)  Tell us the lifespan years for each of these ancestors.  Which of your female ancestors in this group lived the longest?  Which lived the shortest?  

Here's mine:
Mother:
3. Nancy Leah Swicegood (1917-1996) age 79

Grandmothers:
5. Virginia Corine Meldrum (1896-1980) age 84
7. Mollie Fay Brookshire (1894-1966) age 71

Great-Grandmothers:
9. Nora Estella Ryason (1873-1898) age 24
11. Matilda Elizabeth Sonnen (1871-1921) age 50
13. Martha Elizabeth Coffey (1867-1947) age 80
15. Nancy Jane Collins (1873-1966) age 92

2nd Great-Grandmothers:
17. Mary Ellen McFarland (1836-1890) age 53
19. Susanna Sults (1837-1932) age 94
21. Nancy Maria Stark (abt 1845-abt 1913) age 67
23. Elizabeth Mohr (1838-1888) age 49
25. Sabray E. W. Owen (1819-1892) age 73
27. Drucilla A. Parker (1833-1901) age 67
29. Mildred Melvina Woolery (1850-1886) age 35
31. Rebecca Jane Campbell (1842-1882) age 40

3rd Great-Grandmothers:
33. Anna Mary Thomas (1795-1851) age 55
35. Nancy Stilley (abt. 1804-1876) age 72
37. Susanna Buscark (1811-1883) age 72
39. Sophia Howell (1812-1885) age 72
41. Emma Braithwaite (1815-1888) age 73
43. unknown
45. Anna Elisabetha Dierdorff (1800-1848) age 47
47. Margaretha Hahn [no dates]
49. Magdalena Harmon Nunley (1791-1818) age 27
51. Elizabeth Winchester (1780-
53. Rachel Boone (1794-abt 1885) age 80
55. Matilda Roberson [no dates]
57. Sarah A. Varnell (1803-1885) age 82
59. Emily Cordry (1830-1860) age 30
61. Susannah Bartshe (1829-1912) age 82
63. Sarah Anne Crabtree (1817-1856) age 39

So, in five generations (ignoring my 4 3rd great-grandmothers for whom I don't have information) my longest lived female ancestor was Susanna Sults at age 94 (on my father's side) and shortest lived was Nora Estella Ryason at 24 years (also on my father's side).

Averages and ranges by generation are:
Grandmothers   77.5  (71-84)
Great-grandmothers   61.5  (24-92)
2nd great-grandmothers   59.8  (35-94)
3rd great-grandmothers   60.9  (27-82 for 12 women)

I didn't realize what a huge range in ages at death there were in my ancestry.
Quite amazing!

Finding Family

This has been an amazing couple of weeks.

Not only have I been in contact with two first cousins on my father's side, now I've found someone who has provided me with a photo of my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. It's like Christmas and birthday rolled into one!

In the photo below (left to right) are my great-grandfather, Alvah Clyde Sharp, his step-daughter Norma, his father, Morris T. Sharp, another step-daughter, Ella, and his second wife (and mother of the girls), Rose Kathmann Andrews Sharp.

For years I have thought that Ella and Norma were Clyde's daughters. I finally found their marriage record last week and discovered that the girls pre-dated his marriage to Rose. As it turns out, her first husband died in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904 after being struck by a street car. Rose returned home to Quincy, Illinois, where she met and married Clyde. Ironically, Clyde worked as a street car conductor in Wichita, Kansas (hence the uniform).

This photo and a lot of information on the Andrews girls was provided to me by Ella's youngest son, who I tracked down last weekend. His mother was a school teacher for many years and wrote multiple stories about her life. They are absolutely fascinating. For someone who is no blood relation to me, Ella and her son sure have helped me understand my family.

Cousins!

I was shocked to look at this blog yesterday and see that I hadn't posted anything in over a year. How embarrassing is that? To be fair, I haven't really been doing much genealogy lately. Quilting has taken over my life.

But that changed this week.

My Sharp family tree on WikiTree, which I uploaded back in July 2013, has finally led me to two of my first cousins on my Dad's side of the family. I've never met any of his relatives. Ever. So I was totally astounded when I received an email a few days ago from the son of one of my Dad's brothers. His father had just died, the last of that generation and over 37 years after my own father died. Yesterday another son in this family emailed and he is actually interested in genealogy. Woo-hoo! I'm looking forward to much more contact with these two in the future, and hopefully seeing some photos of Dad's family.

I've also been corresponding with a semi-relative who contacted me through WikiTree. She descends from the second husband of my 3great-grandmother, from his marriage to his first wife. She noticed in my sources a reference to a pension file. When I was working I made several trips a year to Washington, DC and often added a day to research in the National Archives. I was happy to scan and share the 17 pages of this Civil War pension file that I had copied. She, in turn, likes to collect clippings from online newspapers and has sent me a pile of great articles. It's been a great win-win for both of us.

SNGF: Bright Shiny Genealogy Objects

Randy Seaver, author of the GeneaMusings blog, has come up with yet another interesting Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) challenge this week:

1) Do your research activities get sidetracked by Bright Shiny Genealogy Objects (BGSO?)  You know, an email, a record that pops up about an ancestor, something that you just have to look at?
2)  Provide an example of a recent BSGO and what you did with it.  How much time did you spend on it?  Was it worthwhile?
3)  How do you deal with them?  Do you always follow them, or do you pick and choose, or do you have the discipline to put it aside and finish what you planned to do?
4)  Share your responses in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook or Google+.

The short answer is "Yes, of course."
I get sidetracked in numerous ways.
An email from a potential DNA match for me or the 4 other people I have tested will send me off on a multi-hour (or day) research tangent.
A call or email from a tangential cousin will send me off searching for an answer.
A newspaper obituary for a name or person in a location will get me researching their family (and trying to tie it to mine).
Every trip to the Family History Library I've ever made (at least a dozen) reveals records not connected to my direct line that I just "have to" search.
Obviously, I am not a very focused researcher.
And I'm fine with that.

I get Legacy obituaries sent to me daily for several surnames and one location. On Tuesday I got one for a QUIGG who died in Michigan and ended up spending a good 5 hours trying to connect this gentleman to my indirect Quigg line. As it turned out, I was able to make the connection and sent the information off to a 4th cousin once removed (a direct Quigg descendant). She was thrilled to learn about another cousin and will be calling the man's window in a few weeks (although it's going to be hard for her to wait that long).

I almost always follow up on questions from cousins, curious obituaries, and new record sets.
I'm getting more disciplined in my responses to potential DNA matches. I send them information on my line, but don't research theirs for them any more. I rarely hear back from them.

Searching for James Braithwaite Meldrum in Texas

My husband and I are planning a road trip to Texas in the next couple of weeks. He'll be meeting a friend to go birding and I am looking forward to 3 or 4 days of research time in central Texas. Last Fall I spent a week at the Family History Library focusing on my father's lines, but couldn't figure out what happened to my great-great grandfather, James Braithwaite MELDRUM.

James was born in Leeds, England on 15 Nov 1840, the second of six children of David MELDRUM and Elizabeth BRAITHWAITE. His older brother, William, had died 4 months earlier, having lived just less than a year. I have a copy of his birth and christening records.

The family emigrated to the US between 1847 (reported in 1900) and May 1849 (when daughter Catherine was born in New Jersey). Ancestry.com shows a David Mildrum, b. ca. 1819, occupation = grower, as arriving in New York on 5 March 1849 (Source: Irish Immigrants: New York Port Arrival Records, 1846-1851). Unfortunately, it is just an index, so I can't tell for sure if this is the correct person/family.

In any event, the Meldrum family settled near Easton, Pennsylvania, and stayed there until the mid-1860s, when they moved to Pittsburgh. Father David worker primarily as a gardener and landscaper.

James B. Meldrum enlisted as a private in Co. D, 1st Infantry Regiment of Pennsylvania on 20 April 1861 for a period of three months. He then re-enlisted on 16 September 1861 in Co. A, 47th Infantry Regiment of Pennsylvania for three years. Records found at the National Archives suggest that he deserted on 24 January 1863 at Key West, Florida.

James apparently returned to the Easton area, as he married Nancy Maria STARK on 29 August 1866 in Easton. In 1867 he is listed in the Pittsburgh City Directory (as is his father) and he is enumerated in Ward 20 of Pittsburgh in 1870, along with his wife and two young sons. Another son and a daughter were born before the end of 1873 in Pittsburgh. James Meldrum, gardener, is listed in Pittsburgh city directories in 1870, 1876 and 1877. There is a Declaration of Intention filed 17 Feb 1873 and Petition for Citizenship dated 3 July 1876 in the District Court of the US for the Western District of Pennsylvania for a James Meldrum. (I am not positive this is the same James Meldrum, as there was another one in Pittsburgh at this time, but he was a tailor.) He then disappears from Pittsburgh records.

The 1880 US Census lists James' four children with their remarried mother in Williamson County, Texas. I found only one deed mentioning James in the microfilmed deed records of Williamson County. On 7 March 1878 James and Nancy sold a lot in Taylor to A. Bisang. I did not find any listing for when they purchased this property. 

What's curious is that the David Meldrum Bible lists James as dying on 15 March 1876.

But it also says James was age 37 when he died, which he could not have been in 1876. My suspicion is that he died 15 March 1878, barely a week after he sold the property in Taylor (originally called Taylorsville).

I hope to find records in Williamson County to confirm his 1878 death. There should be guardianship records for his 4 children, who were all minors in 1878. None have been microfilmed by the Family History Library. I also hope to find the deed record for when David purchased the lot that was sold in 1878.

I'd also like to know more about his widow's other two husbands. She married a man named A. T. Minor on 7 Jan. 1879 in Williamson County, but I haven't been able to find any records for A. T. (not even his full name). She then marries Frank J. Tomkins around 1885, probably in Houston, Texas (definitely not in Williamson County), but is living alone again in 1900. I don't know exactly when she died, but hope to learn that.





 

SNGF: My 2015 Genealogy Education Plans

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver of the GeneaMusings blog is to write about our 2015 plans for genealogy education. Quite frankly, this is the kind of SNGF challenge I usually ignore. But at the risk of offending my readers, I'm going to take this one on.

I have to say that I don't have any concrete plans for genealogy education this year. I used to attend virtually every talk given at the Seattle Genealogical Society (SGS), especially while I was president. But between snowbirding all winter in Arizona and health issues last summer, I've really gotten away from that. If there are topics I'm interested in, I'll probably attend talks once we get back to Seattle, but SGS doesn't have a regular schedule of presentations, so it's easy to miss them. I hope to attend the quarterly DNA Special Interest Group meetings when I'm home, but somehow I seem to have conflicts with almost all of them.

I will probably attend both the spring and fall all-day workshops that the Seattle Genealogical Society will sponsor this year. The spring seminar features C. Lynn Anderson, a genealogist I've never heard of, and will focus on the mid-South states, which is where my mother's side of the family were from. The fall seminar will feature Dr. Thomas W. Jones, who I've heard before and always enjoyed. I don't really expect to learn anything new from either of these people, but I hope I will.

I have not intention of going on a genealogy cruise or attending any more national genealogy conferences. I've been to NGS, FGS, and RootsTech and, other than my first NGS conference (in Kansas City), I felt like I got very little return for my dollars. It cost me almost $2000 to attend FGS in Little Rock, AR, and I got absolutely nothing useful out of it. As an incoming society president, I had high hopes of meeting other, more experienced genealogy society board members and learning from them. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nobody presenting with any experience with an urban society. The people who should have been able to help answer my questions were too busy schmoozing with each other to talk to me. And other than Elizabeth Shown Mills and Tom Jones, the presentations I attended were very simplistic and often poorly presented.

IMHO, RootsTech 2013 was a complete and utter failure. The meeting logistics were very poorly conceived. Any presentation designated as "intermediate" filled up as soon as the doors opened. Anyone coming from another talk was closed out. I attended 5 or 6 talks and two "workshops" (supposedly hands-on computer workshops, but only had 50 minutes, so barely got started when they had to end) and learned absolutely nothing new. The focus of storytelling bugged the heck out of me, since there were not specifics about "how to" tell our own family stories. Needless to say, it was a frustrating experience.

When I get back to civilization I will start listening to webinars again, but our internet service here is limited to 500 MB per day, which won't make it through an hour-long webinar. I will selectively listen/watch webinars sponsored by Legacy Family Tree, Southern California Genealogical Society, and Minnesota Genealogy Society (for whom I'll be presenting in May).

Maybe I'm just jaundiced from being overeducated and very, very experienced as both an academic researcher and a genealogist. I expect to learn new things and explore new ideas when I go to a conference, not just hear the same old recycled presentations from the same presenters. I really loathe presenters peddling their wares during their presentations and have run into that at every national conference I've attended. I'm clearly not a genealogy groupie, nor do I have any status whatsoever in the genealogy community, so I don't get the same treatment Randy (and others) do at conferences. If my husband is with me (often the case these days), I really can't participate fully in social functions. For my travel dollars, I'd rather be researching in the areas where my ancestors lived or in national/regional repositories.

SNGF: Updated Ancestor Score

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver is (essentially) to update our Ancestor Score from last year. You can see the details of his challenge here.
Last year's post on this same topic can be found here.

So, here is my updated table:

	Relationship	Possible People	People in MY Tree	Percent Identified
1	Me	1	1	100%
2	Parents	2	2	100%
3	Grandparents	4	4	100%
4	Great-grandparents	8	8	100%
5	2x Great-grandparents	16	16	100%
6	3x Great-grandparents	32	30	94%
7	4x Great-grandparents	64	33	52%
8	5x Great-grandparents	128	35	27%
9	6x Great-grandparents	256	24	9%
10	7x Great-grandparents	512	21	4%

This year I created Outline Ancestor Reports in my two (paternal and maternal) Family TreeMaker databases, with me as the starting person. These reports number each generation, so it was easy to just count how many of each generation number were in each report. Much easier than what I did last year!

My overall score this year is 17%, a whopping 1% increase over last year. The research I did on my father's SONNEN and MOHR lines in September at the Family History Library added 7 names to my direct line, 2 in the 6th generation and 5 in the 7th generation.

Unfortunately, I don't have any New England ancestry and by the 10th generation almost all of my lines are back in the "old country." I have a smattering of 11th and 12th generation ancestor names in my database, but none beyond that. Even my "Swedes on the Delaware" line (STILLE/STILLEY) ancestors were born in Sweden by the 11th generation (b. 1640).

SNGF: Best Find of 2014, Research Challenge for 2015

I'm surprised to see that I haven't done one of Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges in over 3 months. Shame on me!

This week's SNGF is to:
1. Tell us about your best research achievement of 2014; and
2. What research problem do you want to work on in 2015?

2014 Research Achievement
During my 6-day trip to the Family History Library in September I focused on my father's maternal lines. They are the shortest by far of any of my ancestral lines. His mother, Virginia Corine MELDRUM (1896-1980), was the daughter of David James MELDRUM Jr. (1867 to 1908) and Matilda Elizabeth "Tillie" SONNEN (1871-1921). Tillie's father, Herman SONNEN (1833-1919) has been the end of that line in my family tree for over 20 years. With the help of several people at the FHL who could read German, I was able to document Herman SONNEN's birth and parentage. Here is a copy of his birth certificate from FHL microfilm 938382, Benrath, Rheinland, Prussia.

I also gathered records documenting two more generations of the SONNEN family.

2015 Research Goal
Staying with my father's lines, I am hoping to sneak away from a planned birding trip to southwest Texas next month and track down what happened to his mother's father and grandfather. I know her grandparents, James Braithwaite MELDRUM (1840-1876) and Nancy Maria STARK (1845-abt. 1913) were living in Taylor, Williamson County, Texas at the time James died. I have not been able to find any direct record of his death. The only account I have is in a letter written by his mother to one of his sisters. However, in September I found deed records as late as 1878 purportedly involving both James and Nancy. I did not find any record of Nancy selling the properties and am wondering if the children inherited it at some point.

I would love to get to Houston to research my Dad's lines, but that's just too far from where my husband will be birding with a friend. At best, I'm hoping to get to Austin (and the University of Texas newspaper collection) and Taylor, along with Georgetown, the county seat of Williamson County.

SNGF: Photographs Through The Generations

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge posted by Randy Seaver on his Genea-Musings blog asks us to document and picture one of our ancestral lines.
 
Unfortunately, my family photos are not very well organized.
I think the longest line I can document photographically is my mother's Swicegood/Coffey line.
 
1. My great-great-grandparents were Squire COFFEY (1828-1912) and Drusilla PARKER (1833-1901), pictured here:

 

 

2-3. Their daughter, Martha Elizabeth COFFEY (1867-1947) married John Hiram Richmon Sharp SWICEGOOD (1858-1936), and had 4 children, one dying in infancy. The photo at right shows John and Mattie with their three surviving children circa late 1897. From left to right are Bonnie Pearl (aka "Pearl"), Beulah Bliss (baby on lap), John Hiram, Martha Elizabeth (aka "Mattie"), and my grandfather, William Earl (aka "Earl").

4. William Earl SWICEGOOD (1893-1979) married Mollie Fay BROOKSHIRE (1894-1966) and they had six children. My mother, Nancy Leah SWICEGOOD (1917-1996) (aka "Leah" to her family) was their second child. At left is a photo of my mother on leave from the Army ca. 1943. She was the first of her siblings to serve in World War II.

5-6. Me--Virginia Leah SHARP (1948-?)..... in 1951 and 2013 (with son and husband).

 

 

So, just 6 generations. Though now that I've done this, I realize that I have photos of my third great grandmother, Susannah BARTSHE COLLINS FREEMAN CARTER (1829-1912), so I really could go 7 generations.

 

Either way, it's embarrassing how few family photos I have on my computer from the last two generations.





SNGF: Exploring Your Grandfather's Birthdate

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge posted by Randy Seaver at the GeneaMusings blog is to:
1. Find the Day of the Week one of your Grandfathers was born;
2. List five events that occurred on the day and month of your Grandfather's birth;
3. List five famous people who were born on the same day as your Grandfather;
4. Give your answers in a blog post.

My paternal grandfather, Harold Herbert SHARP, was born in Oquawka, Henderson County, Illinois on 21 May 1893. I never met the man and didn't even know his name until a number of years after my father, his second son, had died.

21 May 1893 was a Sunday (according to http://www.infoplease.com/calendar ). I guess that means that Harold should have been "full of grace," but he died from alcoholism, so either the date or poem is wrong.

According to http://historyorb.com, the following events occurred on May 21st:

• 1602    Martha's Vineyard was first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold
• 1804    Lewis and Clark expedition began
• 1832    first Democratic National Convention was held in Baltimore
• 1846    first steamship arrived in Hawaii
• 1881    American Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton

Famous people who were born on 21 May include (according to historyorb.com):

• 1527    Phillip II, King of Spain (1556-98) & Portugal (1580-98)
• 1780    Elizabeth Fry, Quaker minister/prison reformer/nurse
• 1843    Charles-Albert Gobat, Tramelan, Switzerland, Swiss politician, recipient of the 1902 Nobel Peace Prize
• 1843    Louis Renault, French lawyer  [namesake of my first car???]
• 1917    Dennis Day, Irish tenor/comedian/Jack Benny Show guest

I have to admit that I recognized very few of the names of people born on May 21st. There were also several Civil War generals on both sides and many inventors and artists that I've never heard of.

Family History Library, Here I Come!

Actually, the title should probably be "Ready or not, here I come." 

I am heading to Salt Lake City early in the morning for 5 days of unencumbered research at the Family History Library.

I've been there many times before.
But this is the first time I've gone without a clear research plan and extensive preparation.
I just haven't had the time and don't have access to my file cabinet and boxes of materials on my primary families.
But since I desperately need a break from this summer's never-ending medical maladies, I'm going to SLC anyway.

In the early days--1980s and early 1990s--I would do flight "stopovers" in SLC on my way home from business trips. I'd use the nights of those business trips to prep for my 24 hours (or less) in SLC and be at the Family History Library every nanosecond they were open during my stay. In the olden days, that was 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM, I believe. I would not leave the building for anything, grabbing snacks from the vending machines and maybe two potty breaks in 15 hours. Ah, the good old days.

Lately I've been managing to get to SLC about once a year, though usually not for a full week. Often I have my husband in tow, which is not conducive to doing serious research. But I'm certainly not as obsessive-compulsive about spending every available waking moment in the library. I actually go out for lunch and dinner. Once I even went to a concert after dinner instead of returning to the library. What a shocking experience!

I'm hoping that the family histories are back on the shelves by now. They weren't there the last three times I checked. Very frustrating. Most aren't available on microfilm or in any other form. Why the "powers that be" felt they needed to sweep the shelves of half of the family histories and spirit them off to unknown locations for multiple years is beyond me. I was told they were being prepared for digitization, but they hadn't gotten permission to digitize them yet. So why remove them from the shelves? Very strange for a library that is usually very customer friendly.

Anyway, wish me luck with whichever family I end up researching. I'll let you know of any genealogical breakthroughs in a week or so.

SNGF: ImageChef Creations

Randy Seaver has come up with yet another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge on his Genea-Musings blog tonight. We are to explore the ImageChef website and create a few images.

I'm not feeling very creative tonight, but managed to come with three images to share:

I can see how playing with images on this site might get addictive!

Thanks for the challenge, Randy.

Thoughts on Grandparents' Day

Today is apparently Grandparents' Day.
It's not a day I've every celebrated.
I'm not a grandparent and never lived near my or my children's grandparents.
But as I read other people's accounts of their grandparent memories, I feel a huge hole in my heart.

I never met either of my paternal grandparents.
Never heard their names spoken.
Never knew anything about them.
My father left home to join the Army while still in his teens and never looked back. Apparently he never even wrote to his parents or siblings.

When I was in high school I had an assignment to create a family tree. I started asking my Dad questions about his family and carefully recorded his answers. Amazingly, my Mother saved that project and I found it after she died. The information my father had provided was incredibly inaccurate. Whether he really didn't know his mother's maiden name, where his parents were born, any of his grandparents' names I have no way of knowing. But he sure didn't share the correct information with me back in 1965!

My Dad died at age 60 in 1978, just two months after the birth of his first grandchild, my daughter, who he never met. Ironically, his mother died two years later. Since his mother died without a will, his siblings had an attorney track down my father. They found my mother and she signed away any interest in my grandmother's estate. One of my father's brothers made a trip from Texas to Florida to meet my mother and tell her about the family she never knew. She never told me about this visit or the scribbled family tree he left with her. I found it after she died in 1996. By that time three of my father's six siblings had died. I did manage to speak to my father's only sister, my aunt (after whom I might have been named), one time, but haven't been able to track her down since. I suspect she's in a nursing home somewhere in the Houston area. One brother is apparently also still alive (the one who visited my mother) in the greater Houston area, but he's no longer listed in any telephone directories I can find.

Will I ever meet any of my SHARP relatives? I have no idea. Someone in the family has posted a tree on Ancestry, but won't respond to my messages. Maybe someday I'll get to Houston and look up some of my cousins....if I can find them. But there's absolutely no chance I'll ever meet either of my Sharp grandparents, Harold Herbert SHARP and Virginia Corinne MELDRUM.

SNGF: How many Sarah LNUs?

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver is as follows:

• How many "Sarah" persons without a last name do you have in your genealogy database? How many of them are your ancestors?
• If you have a "Sarah LNU" who is your direct ancestor, have you looked recently to determine if there are more records online that might help you determine her surname?
• Tell us about your "Sarah LNU" ancestors with no surname.

In my SWICEGOOD database (my mother's lines), I have 19 Sara/Sarah first names with no last names. None of these are my direct ancestors.

My Sara/Sarah LNUs are as follows:

• Sara, wife of Adam BECK, mother of 5 children born between 1808 and 1818 in Davidson County, NC
• Sarah, wife of Alexander SHARPE, b. 1 May 1824; d. 20 Jun 1897 near Tyro, Davidson Co., NC
• Sarah, wife of Joseph W. WOOLERY, b. abt 1825 in Missouri
• Sarah, wife of Daniel GIBSON, b. abt 1848
• Sarah, wife of Thomas H. MALLORY, b. Nov 1850 in Missouri; d. 1930 in prob. Jasper Co., Missouri
• There's a Missouri death certificate for Thomas in 1916, but none for Sarah, so suspect she either remarried (in her 60s?) or moved to another state to live with one of her children.
• Sarah, wife of Thomas CRABTREE, mother of 7 children born between 1806 and 1836
• Sarah, wife of Christian HAUSSER, b. in Germany, no dates
• Sarah, wife of Charles BROOKSHIRE (b. 1796 NC; d. 1880 IN)
• Sarah, wife of William PITTS, mother of Addie PITTS (1907-1999)
• Sarah, wife of Conrad DAVIS, mother of Maurice DAVIS (1769-1830)
• Sarah E., wife of Joel BROOKSHIRE, b. abt 1833 in Tennessee; mother of 7 children born 1857-1876 in TN
• Sarah E., wife of Mathias JACOBS, mother of 2 children born 1857-1859 in Missouri
• Sarah E., wife of FNU QUIGG (b. 1886, Hickory Co., MO)
• My notes indicate that this wife might be an erroneous entry. I only have a birth record for her supposed husband and attached the wrong family to him.
• Sarah Ella, wife of William Brazil BROOKSHER, b. abt 1848 in Georgia; mother of 2 children born 1868 & 1875 in Missouri (?)
• FindAGrave lists a Sarah Ella BROOKSHER, 1848-1898, wife of W. B. BROOKSHER, buried in Cassville Cemetery, Bartow County, Georgia. No information on parents or children.
• Sarah J., wife of John Franklin QUIGG; b. abt. 1840 in Pennsylvania; mother of 9 children born 1858-1880 in PA, MO, and KS
• Sarah J., wife of Alfred CRABTREE, b. abt 1825 in Tennessee; mother of 4 children born 1842-1860 in Missouri
• No Missouri death certificate or Missouri burial found. Probably remarried, as husband died about the time last child was born.
• Sarah J., wife of John W. JACOBS, mother of 10 children born 1850-1878, some in Missouri
• No Missouri death certificate or Missouri burial found.
• Sarah M., wife of James Emery MEREDITH. b. 1867 in MO, d. 1923 in MO
• Her Missouri death certificate gives maiden name as OWEN, daughter of James B. OWEN and Lucy VICKIS?? [DICKERSON in FindAGrave memorial]; buried in Osceola cemetery. F'indAGrave indicates that James MEREDITH was her second husband and includes an obituary for her first husband, parents and sibling names.
• Sarah S., wife of Levi BRESHEARS, b. Jul 1859 in Missouri; mother of 7 children born 1881-1898 in Missouri
• I checked for a Death Certificate for Sarah, but did not find one. She is listed on her husband's death certificate "S. E. Breshears" in 1919, so apparently have her middle initial wrong. I checked FindAGrave for the cemetery where Levi is said to be buried on his death certificate, but neither Levi or Sarah is listed there.

To be perfectly honest, none of these "Sarah LNUs" are very close relatives, so I'm not inclined to spend much time searching for information on them. I did some quick-and-dirty lookups in two databases--Missouri Death Certificates, 1910-1963 and FindAGrave--but wasn't inclined to dive into Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.com.

SNGF: Two Degrees of Separation

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver's Genea-Musing blog is quite interesting:

Using your ancestral lines, how far back can you go with two degrees of separation? That means "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor." When was that second ancestor born?

My results:
1. On my paternal side, I've never met anyone but him. Dad was born in 1917, so could conceivably have met his maternal great-grandfather (mother's mother's father), Herman Sonnen, who was born in 1833 in Germany and died in 1919 in Houston. His paternal great-grandparents died long before he was born and lived in Kansas.

2. On my maternal side, my grandfather's parents both died before I was born, and his paternal grandparents died before he was born. His maternal grandparents lived until he was in his teens and lived across the street, so I'm sure he saw a lot of them! They were born in 1828 (Squire Coffey) and 1833 (Drusilla Parker).

3. On my maternal side, my grandmother's father died a year before I was born, but my great-grandmother lived until two months before I graduated from high school. She was my idol and I absolutely adored her. Mammo, Nancy Jane Collins, was born in 1873. Her great-grandfather, Jacob Bartshe, died in 1874 in the same county, probably within 10 miles of where she was born. Chances are pretty good that they met. Jacob was born in 1801 in Pennsylvania.

So I can't make it to before 1800, though I was born in 1948. The span is still over 200 years, but I'm disappointed at not getting into the 1700s.