Tombstone Tuesday- Great Grandparents

After doing the Saturday Challenge that I posted yesterday, I got to wondering how many tombstones I have collected of various generations. I looked through my collection for my great grandparents. There would be eight people that fit that criteria. As one of my great grandmothers died young and her husband remarried, I actually have nine that I might possibly have tombstones for. In my collection I found seven of the nine.

John S Ward my paternal great grandfather

Maria C Titus Ward my paternal great grandmother

Alice M & Charles J Ingalls my paternal great grandfather and his second wife

Achsah Brown Ingalls my paternal great grandmother

Verner R and Edith M Duff Wooster my maternal great grandparents

All that is left to complete this is William Jennings and Sarah Damery Jennings, my other maternal great grandparents. If anyone is reading this and is in southwest Cork, Ireland, I have a favor to ask! They are located in White Church Cemetery near Skibbereen....
Okay, well, I thought I could always ask. Maybe someday...

Saturday Challenge- Three Degrees of Separation

GeneaMusings Saturday Challenge:

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

When I saw this challenge, I figured I wouldn’t get too far back in time. On my father’s side of the family, I never met my grandparents as they were both deceased before I was born. My maternal grandmother emigrated from Ireland and I don’t have the dates to be able to go very far back on her lines- only the names and not sure of them. So, I’m a bit surprised at  how far back I can actually go with the three degrees of separation.

These are my three longest lines:

From my Dad (1919-1998), he knew his paternal grandmother, Maria (Titus) Ward, (1858-1927) and she knew her parents, Samuel Titus (1825-1874) and Lodema (Tobias) Titus (1831-1926). She might have met her father’s mother, Maria (Lockwood) Titus who was born 1801 and died sometime before 1862. If so, that would put me back to 1801, but at least to 1825 with this line. Her maternal grandfather, John Tobias was born 1802, but we have no idea when he died, so he is still a possibility as well.

Starting again with Dad, I can go through his maternal line back to the early 1800s as well. His maternal grandfather, Charles Ingalls (1864-1939), knew his  paternal grandparents Samuel & Gertrude (Stahl) Ingalls (1802-1873 and 1800-1869). If Gertrude’s birth year is correct, I get one year farther back on this line and I am sure that each generation had met each other as with this line, the older ancestors lived very near each other during that time period.

Looking at my mother’s side of the family, I can start my reach farther in the past. I knew my grandfather, Marion Wooster (1896-1976). He knew his grandmother,  Elizabeth (Tifft) Wooster (1826-1906). I am quite sure she met on an occasion or two her grandmother, Bridget (Bailey) Tifft Coon 1768-1847). If she didn’t meet her in person, there would have been letters between the families. Elizabeth lived with her parents Reuben and Betsy in Richland and Orwell, Oswego County New York while her grandmother was living in Bradford County, Pennsylvania where she had moved after marrying her second husband.

Therefore, at least through letters between living members of the family, we can connect me through 3 degrees of separation to a woman that was born in 1768. A lot farther back than I had imagined I could get!

Upcoming DNA Meetings

For those in the area trying to keep up with DNA, the CNYGS Special Interest Group has announced their upcoming meetings. Don't forget also, the all day meeting tomorrow with Blaine Bettinger.

On February 9th, 2017 the DNA interest group will meet at the Manlius Library at 1 PM. Skip Duett will be lecturing

            Y-DNA - Tracking the Male Lines

                                What is Y-DNA

                                How does Y-DNA fit in/compare with other types of DNA

                                Haplogroups

                                STRs vs SNPs

                                Levels of Testing - number of markers

                                Looking at results on FTDNA - Matches, Migration Maps, STR Results

                                Looking more closely at matches

                                Participating in Projects - Surname, Location, Haplogroup

                                       Y-search.org

                                 Case study - Howards

On March 9th, 2017, the DNA interest group will meet at the Manlius Library at 1 PM. Janeen Bjork will be lecturing

On April 13th, 2017, the DNA interest group will meet at the Manlius Library at 1 PM. Janeen Bjork will be lecturing

Wordless Wednesday- Fleming Cemetery Randomness

IGHR Registration To Open Soon

My friend, Laura Carter, sent out the following announcement last night. If you're interested in attending IGHR this year, get ready, registration fills up fast. For some of the most popular courses, you need to be ready as soon as registration opens and be among the first few people to register or the class will be filled.







Whether you are an IGHR alum or an interested party who signed up for information at one of our IGHR/GGS booths at a conference, we are pleased to announce that registration for IGHR will begin on Friday, 03 February 2017, at 11:00 AM EST.

IGHR has moved to Athens, Georgia and the Georgia Genealogical Society is excited to welcome you with Southern hospitality. The course coordinators have planned eleven courses that will stimulate your curiosity and enhance your research skills over the week of July 23 – July 28. With hotel, classes, breaks and most meals under one roof, your visit should be as relaxing and informative as we can make it. In addition to being taught by the best faculty in the business, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to network with your peers and conduct your own research at the many repositories the University of Georgia has to offer.

The Registration for the eleven courses for 2017 will begin on a rolling schedule at 11:00 am on Friday, February 3, 2017.
11:00 AM

• Course One: Methods & Sources – Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL, FUGA
• Course Eleven: Genetics for Genealogists – Beginning DNA – Debbie Wayne Parker, CG, CGL

11:30 AM

• Course Two: Intermediate Genealogy & Historical Studies – Angela Packer McGhie, CG
• Course Nine: Genealogy as a Profession – Elissa Scalise Powell, CG, CGL

12:00 Noon

• Course Three: Advanced Methodology & Evidence Analysis – Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL

12:30 PM

• Course Four: Writing & Publishing for Genealogists – Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS, FUGA
• Course Eight: Understanding Land Records – Richard G. Sayre, CG, CGL, FUGA

1:00 PM

• Course Five: Intermediate German Genealogy – F. Warren Bittner
• Course Six: Research in the South, Part 2: Cessions & Territories – J. Mark Lowe, CG, FUGA

1:30 PM

• Course Seven: Scottish Genealogical Records – Paul Milner
• Course Ten: Virginia: Her Records & Her Laws – Victor S. Dunn, CG

Registration links will be on this webpage http://www.ighr.gagensociety.org .

Tuition includes two evening meals. A low country boil will be held on Sunday evening after orientation. This event is designed to make it easy and convenient to meet folks, visit with friends and colleagues and then, when ready, go up to your hotel room and get ready for Monday morning.  On Thursday evening, a barbecue will take place at the fabulous Russell Special Collections Library Building.  It will be a casual function, designed to facilitate networking, learning and fun. There will be plenty of opportunity to explore the galleries that display contents ranging from historical politics to early media (UGA is the home of the Peabody Awards) and rare documents, prints and books.

Groome Transportation http://athens.groometransportation.com/ has a shuttle from the Atlanta airport to Athens that makes 20 round trips a day to the door of the Georgia Center. Getting to and from the ATL airport is relatively painless. The UGA Hotel and Georgia Center for Continuing Education http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/uga-hotel are designed to make meetings fun and easy. Hotel registration information is on the IGHR website at http://www.ighr.gagensociety.org . Our group booking code is 86879.

The conference center is on the campus of the University of Georgia and once signed up for campus intranet, those IGHR attendees staying in the UGA Hotel will be able to access many of the fabulous resources of the UGA Libraries online from their hotel rooms. Those staying in other hotels will not have that advantage, so make your reservations quickly. You do need to be aware that the entire UGA campus is tobacco-free, no smoking, no chewing, no snuff, no vaping. There are no places to smoke or use any kind of tobacco on campus.

More detailed information will be added to the website www.ighr.gagensociety.org in the coming weeks concerning directions to Athens, meal options, research opportunities and more.  We look forward to welcoming you to IGHR’s new home.

Laura Carter
Director
Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research
Athens, Georgia

Traditions

Traditions. Sometimes we think we don’t have any. There’s nothing we do that our ancestors did. Our lives are quite different today and we go our own way.

However, there are things that become a tradition and we don’t even realize it. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I posted the pictures of me at the North Pole. It was just a place that my parents took me when I was a child. It is a tourist attraction in Jay, New York in the Adirondacks. They figured it would be a fun thing to take the kid to and keep her entertained one weekend when they were camping in the area. Or, that’s what I thought.

After posting the pictures, I heard about it from my older brother. He and our other brother were taken there when they were children, many years before I was born. His daughter remembered pictures from her childhood that were probably taken there. Another niece, a daughter of my other brother, remembered being there as a child. It has become a tradition in our family to take the kids to the North Pole when they are young to visit with Santa Claus. As it first opened in 1949,  the previous generation obviously didn’t go there as children. However, my parents started what has now become this tradition that probably none of us thought about as such until this last month.

What other things are traditions and we’ve never realized it? There are things that we do automatically and don’t think about it. If we are questioned, we might respond that we do this because that is the way it has always been done. There might be a reason behind the beginning of doing something, but then again there might not.

I have heard many times in recent years the story about a new bride that cuts the ends off the roast and putting them in the edge of the roaster beside the larger cut before she puts it in the oven. Her husband asks her why and she doesn’t know other than that’s the way her mother always did it. Her mother doesn’t know either, her mother had always done that. Upon asking the  grandmother about it, she replies: “Oh, I started doing that when I was newly married and the roast wouldn’t fit in the roasting pan I had. I guess I just got in the habit of doing it.” Whether this story is true or not, I really have no idea, however, it is often in this simple way of repeated events that traditions get started.

As you write about your family stories. You are writing them down right? Start thinking about these traditions. Not the obvious ones that are referred to as TRADITION in your family, but the little unnoticed things that are done over and over again. Where might they have originated? If there are older members of your family around, ask them what they remember about it. Perhaps there is some event that is written in the newspaper that might shed some light on how something got started. Whether you can find the origin or not, right these things down. People in the future will enjoy hearing the stories and might even discover from you a little history on their own traditions that they didn’t realize they had!

Mennonite Stores

A while ago I mentioned in a post about an old cookbook and cooking the way they did in the 50’s. But where do you find the ingredients? Grocery stores are now supermarkets. They have all kinds of exotic foods and many meals ready to just heat and eat. It’s wonderful for the person pressed for time or who doesn’t know how or want to cook. However, when you’re looking for basic ingredients, especially those that aren’t very popular anymore, where do you look? The supermarket might have them tucked away in some corner, then again maybe they don’t.

As you’re driving around the Finger Lakes area you might stumble upon a store that has just what you want. 

In areas with Mennonite settlements you’re likely to come across a little store run by one of these families that has many such basics on their shelves. Oh, they have many modern convenience foods and junk food as well, but their specialties are basic foods to feed their families. Many of these stores will be housed in small sheds near the house on an operating farm. Tiny and compact, the farm wife will run out from the house where she was working on something to help you when you stop at her store.  Many have food products, and others might have what used to be referred to as “dry goods.” Small items for the household, especially sewing  notions and material are for sale. Others are a combination of the two. You never know what they might hold until you stop in and have a look.

Probably the biggest—at least around the Finger Lakes area—is Sauder’s Market. It is located between Seneca Falls and Waterloo on the River Road. In fact, at first sight, you wouldn’t think it even was a Mennonite grocery. They have expanded until they are as big as a small supermarket with a parking lot to match.

Walking inside it seems un-Mennonite and more typical of an American supermarket with bright lights, wide spaces and even a small café along the side. However, a second glance will show that it is indeed Mennonite owned and run. The female staff is dressed in traditional dresses with caps on their heads. Many of the customers are similarly dressed as well. The male staff, of course, isn’t as obvious since their traditional dress more closely resembles modern dress for men.

Walking along the aisles you will find fresh produce, jams and preserves along with basic baking supplies and other grocery staples. The bakery has old-fashioned homemade bread, rolls, cinnamon buns and whoopee pies even. If you get there early enough, you’ll have a large choice of pies as well. In one aisle you will find supplies for canning along with apple corers, pastry sifters and other kitchen implements not often found in the modern kitchen equipped just for quick meals.

Here is where you readily find these old style basic ingredients. But what if you don’t have the recipes to use them? Over in the corner of the store is a book section. There are many inspirational and children’s books as well as ones on the Mennonite and Amish religions. But don’t overlook the aisle that is full of cookbooks. Books by Amish and Mennonite communities as well as ones about preserving food are available. All kinds of delicious goodies can be found within these cookbooks!

So, for a trip back in time or just to another culture, don’t overlook the little stores here and there among the rural areas of the Finger Lakes. Especially, don’t miss stopping by the bigger ones such as Sauder’s if you are near them. You are in for a real treat!

Wordless Wednesday- Wells In Winter

Findmypast Free Access Weekend

Findmypast is at it again. They're offering free access to certain records this holiday weekend. I wonder what treasures we can find this time?

Ann Pinfold & family from England

FINDMYPAST ANNOUNCE FOUR DAYS OF FREE ACCESS TO OVER 1.9 BILLION RECORDS

• Findmypast makes all birth, marriage, death & census records free to search and explore from Thursday 12th to  Sunday 15th January 2017
• Free access covers all records hinted against in Findmypast’s family tree builder
• This includes 583 million UK BMDs, the largest collection available online including over 80 million exclusive parish records you won’t find anywhere else, over 10 million Irish Catholic Parish registers and over 140 million United States Marriages
• Family historians will be supported with expert insights and how to guides

 London, UK. 12th January, 2017

Leading family history website, Findmypast, has just announced that their entire collection of birth, marriage, death and census records will be completely free to search from 08:00 GMT Thursday 12th to 07:59 GMT Sunday 15th January 2017.

By providing four days of free access to these essential records, Findmypast hopes to encourage fledgling genealogists to start building their family tree and discover at least one new ancestor through their records. Researchers will also be provided with daily getting started guides, expert insights and useful how-to blogs over the course of the free weekend.

The free access will cover all 1.9 billion records currently matched against Findmypast’s family trees, including;

• Over 583 million British BMDs
• Over 338 million US & Canadian BMDS
• Over 34 million Irish BMDS
•  Over 26 million Australian & New Zealand BMDS
• Over 257 million British Census records
• Over 703 million US & Canadian Census records
• Over 9 million Irish Census records
• Over 487,000 Australian & New Zealand Census records

Findmypast trees currently provide matches from birth, baptism, marriage, death, burial and census records across the UK, US, Ireland, and Australia. This includes Findmypast’s vast collections of more than 140 million United States marriages and over 10 million Irish Catholic baptisms, marriages and burials. Findmypast’s entire collection of 583 million UK BMDs - the largest available online - will also be free to explore, including over 80 million exclusive parish records you won’t find anywhere else. All UK and Irish parish records are hinted against.

Hinting allows you uncover records for multiple ancestors at once with virtually zero effort. The larger your tree, the more potential matches you’ll be presented with so it’s well worth your while to add as many ancestors as possible.

Visit our dedicated Free access landing page to find out more.

About Findmypast

Findmypast (previously DC Thomson Family History) is a British-owned world leader in online family history. It has an unrivalled record of online innovation in the field and 18 million registered users across its family of online brands, which includes Lives of the First World War, The British Newspaper Archive and Genes Reunited, amongst others.

Its lead brand, also called Findmypast, is a searchable online archive of over four billion family history records, ranging from parish records and Censuses to migration records, military collections, historical newspapers and lots more. For members around the world, the site is a crucial resource for building family trees and conducting detailed historical research.

In April 2003, Findmypast was the first online genealogy site to provide access to the complete birth, marriage, and death indexes for England & Wales, winning the Queen’s Award for Innovation. Since that time, the company has digitised records from across the globe, including the 1911 Census which they digitised in association with The National Archives.

Wordless Wednesday- Brockway

Saturday Challenge- New Year's Goals

Randy Seaver’sGeneaMusings gave us the following:

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

1) What goals do you have for your genealogy research, education and writing during 2017?  

First, before I start looking at goals for 2017, let’s see how I did last year. This is from the blog about a year ago:

“• Continue organizing my stuff. Kenneth helped me identify some pictures today that I hadn’t been sure of.

• Get copies of stuff digitized and organized to send out to the cousins

• Get at least one line solidified enough to write a booklet about them so that I can publish it and get it in various repositories

• Return to IGHR again this year and take the Law Libraries and Government Documents course

•Attend Syracuse’s New York State Family History Conference

• Attend Professional Management Conference at Fort Wayne, Indiana”

Okay then. How did I do?

Continue organizing my stuff- it’s a lot better then it was a year ago, but still needs some work. I think I’ll call it accomplished with the caveat that more needs to be done.

Stuff digitized. That’s also very much an ongoing project. Although I got a lot done, there’s a lot more to go. It didn’t help either of these goals that I got a lot of craft stuff from Mom. Patterns scattered all over the place and yes, in amongst them, there is family stuff. Pictures and newspaper clippings and such that are of a genealogical nature are interwoven amongst the patterns. It is all slowly coming together.

A booklet written. I didn’t accomplish much of anything on this one. I am basically where I was a year ago.

IGHR. Accomplished.

NYS Family History Conference. Accomplished.

Professional Management Conference. Accomplished.

So, three out of six goals accomplished and two others work in progress. I don’t think that was too bad an accomplishment for 2016. I will continue with the first 3 goals again this year. Additionally, I want to get to the New England Regional Conference in Springfield, Massachusetts and do more research in local repositories across the state.

The registration and reservations are in for Springfield and there’s a pile beside the scanner ready to go, so I guess I’m not off to a bad start for 2017 either!

Find My Past has many new records for their free Friday announcement this week. Were your Irish ancestors criminals? I don't think mine were, but I bet I can find at least a cousin or two if not some direct ancestors in the records. We all know that even the most law abiding citizens are going to run afoul of the law at some point and I'm sure that while my ancestors weren't criminals, they weren't the most upstanding citizens either. Like most, they would have fallen somewhere in the middle.

One of their teasers of upcoming records has me interested as well. There's a mention of the Midlands of England. I admit, my knowledge of geography in Europe isn't the greatest, and I wasn't sure where the Midlands are. However, I had a feeling that Northamptonshire might be a part of it, and a quick look-up told me I am correct. Buckinghamshire, the other county where the Ward family originated isn't, but one of the two counties means that when those records are available, I might be able to fill in some more information about that family before they immigrated to America.

Here's a copy of their announcement, which the original can be found here. 

New Irish Court Records, Quaker Congregations, and English Burials View online

Family tree Search

VIEW ALL NEW RECORDS »

Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers OVER 227,700 RECORDS   Find out if your Irish relatives had brushes with the law thanks to these new additions that reveal whether your ancestors were witnesses, complainants or defendants, their addresses, dates in court, details of verdicts and sentences.   SEARCH THESE RECORDS »

Dorset Memorial Inscriptions   New records: 40,235 Total records: 85,868 Covering: Inscriptions taken from gravestones, tombs, monuments and even stained glass windows from around the county Discover: Birth year, death year, burial date, burial place, names of relatives, memorial type and inscription   SEARCH THESE RECORDS »   Warwickshire Burials   New records: 21,263 Total records: 1,129,563 Covering: Witton Cemetery (Birmingham) 1987-2011 Discover: Birth year, death year, burial place, parents’ names, residence, inscription, grave and register number, and additional notes   SEARCH THESE RECORDS »   Northumberland & Durham Monumental Inscriptions   New records: 16,811 Total records: 23,021 Covering: 26 churches & burial grounds in Northumberland & Co. Durham Discover: Birth date, burial year, burial place, death date, denomination and inscription, and stone type   SEARCH THESE RECORDS »   Ireland, Society Of Friends (Quaker) Congregational Records   New records: 5,737 Total records: 1,208,254 Covering: Quaker meetings held throughout Ireland from 1600 onwards Discover: Details about the meetings your ancestor attended and the religious activities they engaged in   SEARCH THESE RECORDS »

Covering both civil and criminal cases, the Petty Sessions' brief was wide. Cases ranged from merchants who had not paid duty on their goods, to workers suing for unpaid wages. Farmers were fined for letting their cattle wander or for allowing their cart to be driven without their name painted on the side. Debts were collected and disputes settled. Public drunkenness was a common offence, as was assault and general rowdiness. Political feelings were often volatile and there are frequent cases all over the country of people charged with putting up seditious posters or leaflets.   FIND OUT MORE »

Did your ancestors hail from the Midlands region of England? A new collection of Parish records is soon to be released that will help you expand your UK family tree. Keep an eye out for further updates in the coming weeks!

Findmypast is home to wide variety of Quaker records covering both England & Ireland that date all the way back to the faith’s emergence.   FIND OUT MORE »

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