Wordless Wednesday- Burnett Park Barnyard?

Saturday Challenge- The Day Your Grandfather was Born

Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings: Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  What day of the week was your Grandfather born (either one)? Tell us how you found out.

Grandpa Wooster (Marion James Wooster) was born June 14, 1896, a Sunday.

2) What has happened in recorded history on your Grandfather's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

·      It is Flag Day, which is the holiday commemorating the adoption of the US flag.

·      In 1834, Sandpaper patented by Isaac Fischer Jr,  of Springfield, Vermont.

·      In 1847 Robert von Bunsen invents the Bunsen burner.

·      In 1900, having been annexed to the USA on 12 August 1898, Hawaii is constituted as an organised territory

·      In 1917 Gen Pershing & his HQ staff arrived in Paris during WW I.

Grandpa served under Pershing during the Mexican Border Wars in the years just prior to this.

3)  What famous people have been born on your Grandfather's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

·      In 1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

·      In 1903 Alonzo Church, American Mathematician whose work provided foundation for computer science, born in Washington D.C.

·      In 1906 Margaret Bourke-White, photographer,1st female LIFE staff photographer, born in New York City.

·      In 1931 Marla Gibbs, actress (Florence-Jeffersons, Mary-227), born in Chicago,, Illinois.

·      In 1940  Jack Bannon, actor (Art in Lou Grant, Trauma Center), born in Los Angeles, California.

How did I find out these facts? Well, the way someone would find out anything they don’t know off the top of their heads- research. There is a phrase “Google is your friend.” Of course, in the old days, that is pre-Internet, I would have grabbed a copy of the World Almanac and looked up such things in there.

NYSCOGO Spring Meeting in Watertown

Here is another interesting genealogy meeting coming up, this one in Watertown. 

 NYSCOGO Meeting Schedule

NYSCOGO Spring 2017 Meeting in Watertown, NY 

Hosted by the Jefferson County NY Genealogical Society (JCNYGS)

Meeting Date:   Saturday April 8, 2017

 Registration: 8:30 - 9:00 A.M.; Business Meeting 9:00 – 12:00 Noon; No cost casual lunch provided (sandwiches, salad, drink, etc) by JCNYGS Noon - 1:00 P.M.

 

Where: We’ll meet at the Historic Paddock Mansion in downtown Watertown; also known as the Jefferson County Historical Society, 228 Washington Street, Watertown, New York 13601. There is limited curb-side parking available on Washington Street; however, ample parking is available in the Public Parking Lot directly behind the Museum.

Speaker: As part of the business portion, locally known speaker Don Whitney will share comments on the history of Jefferson County. Don served as a reading teacher and school administrator for over 40 years.  Presently he serves as the President and Trustee of the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation in Rochester. Don resides in Adams Center (Jefferson County) with his wife Linda.

Paddock Mansion Tour: Director of JCHS, Jordan Walker, will provide attendees a tour of the Paddock Mansion and Museum. There is also a “Marietta Holley and 100 Years” display tentatively scheduled to be shown at JCHS from March – June 2017

Research: At this time we very much expect there will be genealogical research opportunities across the street at the Flower Memorial Library. See Note.

Early attendees welcomed: If you wish to arrive a day prior (Friday, 7 April), there will be research opportunities at the Flower Memorial Library from 12 Noon to 4:00 PM (See Note). As a group, we will also plan a pay as you go evening meal at the Historic Crystal Restaurant on Public Square.

Note: There is a slight chance the library will close for major repairs. Contracts are out to bid and work should not start until late April or May. However, if closed, we will make arrangements to have research time at the Historical Association of South Jefferson. JCNYGS is monitoring closely.

Lodging/Local Information: Please visit the Watertown Chamber of Commerce site for lodging and/or our local events calendar: http://www.watertownny.com/

 

The registration sheet is below:  Same day registration is welcomed however early registration,

by 25 March 2017, is appreciated. This will help in planning purposes for NYSCOGO and JCNYGS leadership.

 

 

The POC at JCNYGS is Vice President Tom LaClair at tomlaclair624@yahoo.com. If you have questions about the visiting Jefferson County the weekend of the conference, please reply directly to him.

 

Cut the following and send with your registration:

********************************************************************************************

Meeting Registration:

Name:____________________________________________Tele:__________________

Address:________________________________________________________________

E-Mail Address:___________________________________________________________

Send: NYSCOGO meeting registration & check payable to NYSCOGO in amount of $10.00 to: NYSCOGO  P.O. Box 2593  Syracuse, New York 13220-2593

April's CNYGS Meeting

Next month's CNYGS meeting is an all day meeting. Mark you calendars! 

Wordless Wednesday- Summer Dreaming @ Fillmore Glen

Saturday Challenge- Life Decisions That Changed A Life

From Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):

1)  Did you or your ancestor make a critical life decision that really changed their life in terms of place, work, family, relationships, etc.?

Life decisions. How often do we make such decisions and not realize what they are? Going to a new place one day we meet somebody new that turns out to be very important in our lives. Taking a job that turns out to be the opportunity that we never dreamed was right around the corner. These simple little things can change our lives and we never realize when making the decision how important they might be.

Other times, we agonize over our decisions. Should I do this or do that? Which is better for me? They seem like big decisions and sometimes they are, but other times they might not matter at all.

For our ancestors, often a large decision that did have lasting effects and changed their lives drastically as well as that of their descendants was the decision about immigrating. For some in my family it was the decision to leave Europe and come to America and for others, it was to move on from a settlement in the eastern part of the United States and move farther west. There are countless examples of this.

My own grandmother, Alice Jennings made a decision of this type one day in 1912. Her older sister, Elizabeth, was home visiting the family. She encouraged her sister to come back to America with her.  Home, Keelinga Leap, County Cork, Ireland, was a place of little chance for advancement and a small community with many people inter-related. Elizabeth supposedly told Alice: “You can do a lot better than staying here and marrying your cousin.”

On October 8, 1912 Alice arrived in Boston, Massachusetts. There she worked as a waitress for a time and then enrolled in a school that was being offered for young women of little means. The school was on a small island in Boston Harbor, called Long Island, and offered her education for a career as a nurse. A professional or as it was beginning to be called, a registered nurse.

The outbreak of World War I and the US involvement offered her another life changing decision that built on the one of becoming a nurse. She now was a nurse in the Army Nurse’s Corp. and being sent to Fort Brown in Texas. Although the destination probably didn’t mean much to her at the time, it was a place for even more life changing events to happen. There she met many new people, nurses, and soldiers in the Calvary that was stationed there. In particular, one soldier caught her eye. A young man from Upstate New York by the name of Marion Wooster.

The course of her life changed and she never returned to Massachusetts to live. Instead, she married Marion and they lived in Washington, DC for a time after she left the service. Here, she would give birth to her oldest, Robert. Later they would settle in Skaneateles, New York, where her other three children would be born.

All these decisions, the larger ones, were made up of many smaller decisions that led to them and charted out a course of life that was surely very different from what she might have imagined as a young girl.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Jennings Family in Ireland

and a shamrock for luck.

American Ancestors Offers Free Irish Resources

How do we keep up with all of them? There seems to be a lot of free access to databases available lately. Here is one of the latest ones that started yesterday:

First Floor of NEHGS in Boston

===========================================

FREE Access to All Irish Resources on AmericanAncestors.org from March 15 to 22

Unique Databases, Boston Catholic Records, “How-to” Irish Research Guides, a Webinar, and More Resources Available with Free Guest Registration

AmericanAncestors.org/Irish

March 14, 2017—Boston, Massachusetts—Honor your Irish heritage this St. Patrick’s Day by researching your Irish ancestry on AmericanAncestors.org, the award-winning website of New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). Learn the essential concepts and techniques for Irish research, and find out which manuscripts, collections, and sources are used by genealogists at American Ancestors to crack the toughest research cases.

Irish resources will be free and open from Wednesday, March 15, through midnight (EDST) on Wednesday, March 22. Access requires a free, brief sign-up on AmericanAncestors.org.

The Only Online Source for Boston’s Catholic Records

Browse record images of baptisms, marriages, and more from Boston’s oldest parishes, including the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Holy Trinity. NEHGS is digitizing parish records from 1789 to 1900, a period of significant growth for both Boston’s Catholic Church and the Irish immigrant population.

Find Your Irish Ancestors in FREE Databases on AmericanAncestors.org

Search unique collections such as Irish Immigrant Advertisements, 1831-1920, and the NEHGS-exclusive database The Annals of Beara, The Session Book of Aghadowey, 1702-1725, plus many more.

Break Through Your Irish Brick Wall

With expert resources from NEHGS, found exclusively on AmericanAncestors.org, learn tips for navigating the sometimes challenging course of finding Irish ancestors. This Irish-themed promotion from American Ancestors includes an hour-long webinar on NEHGS Irish Resources, an online subject guide to locate key resources and records in Irish genealogy, and popular articles from our American Ancestors magazine with fascinating insights about Irish and Irish American genealogy. .

NEHGS offers FREE access to all of its Irish databases and resources via AmericanAncestors.org from March 15 through midnight (EDST) on March 22. Access requires registration as a FREE Guest User at AmericanAncestors.org/Irish.

Wordless Wednesday- Five Days Until Spring

Central NY Genealogical Society Spring Meetings

We are pleased to announce our upcoming two-part program meeting on Saturday, March 18, 2017 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The start times are approximate.

 

1:15 – 3:15 p.m.     “The Military Tract – Revolutionary War Bounty Land in Central New

  York” - Skip Duett

 

New York State awarded New York Revolutionary War soldiers bounty land in the Military Tract in Central New York. Comprising 1,680,000 acres, it covered all of the present day counties of Onondaga, Cortland, Cayuga, and Seneca, as well as parts of Oswego, Tompkins, Schuyler, and Wayne counties. This military bounty land opened up Central New York to white settlement and left an enduring system of land designation that survives today. Your New York Revolutionary War soldier may be identified in Military Tract documents. Understanding New York State bounty lands can help you make sense of land transactions in the region, regardless of when your ancestors lived there.

 

3:15 – 4:00 p.m.     A Brick Wall Roundtable Discussion

 

A brick wall roundtable discussion with Skip Duett, Janeen Bjork and CNYGS members will follow Mr. Duett’s presentation. “Breaking through Brick Walls, One Brick at a Time.” will be presented by Janeen Bjork. Janeen will give a quick lesson on OCR (optical character recognition), the technology that allows scanned newspapers to be indexed and searched online. You will learn how to get around the limitations of OCR to unearth hard-to-find items. Janeen will share the methods she used to break through the brick walls for her toughest genealogy commission - multiple generations of O'Briens, starting out in County Cork, Ireland and continuing to Monroe, Orleans and Onondaga counties.

 

Mark your calendars for our Full-Day Conference on April 22, 2017. Pamela Vittorio, APG, will present a variety of topics.

 

9:00 - 10:30 a.m. - Bust Walls or Break Ground: Tips & Techniques for Solving Genealogical Problems in the mid-1800s

 

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. - Early Irish Immigrants to Canada & the U.S.: The Peter Robinson Settlers (1823 & 1825)

 

12:00 - 1:15 p.m. - Lunch: bring your own, or visit a local restaurant.

 

1:15 - 2:45 p.m. - The U.S. Sanitary Records: Tracing Women's Roles During the Civil War

 

2:45 - 4:00 p.m. - Was Your (Great) Grandma a Suffragette? Records for the Women's Rights Movement: 1848-1920

 

 

For the latest news on our 2017 programs, including any venue and parking changes, please check our website:

 

http://www.cnygs.org

 

You can also find CNYGS updates on Facebook:

 

http://www.facebook.com/cnygs

 

Note: Members attend for free; guests pay $5 (half day) on March 18th; guests pay $15 (full day) on April 22nd; If interested the best option is to apply for annual membership

 

Saturday Challenge: Your Middle Name

From GeneaMusings: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):

Mission Impossible? This one is super easy!

1)  What is your middle name?  Do you know why your parents gave it to you?  

Alice

Why? Maybe because…: 

Mom- Alice Adelle (Wooster) Ward 1924-2016

Grandma- Alice Valentine (Jennings) Wooster 1893-1970

 Maybe there's a reason in there. Their middle names are slightly less obvious. Mom was given the name of her father's favorite aunt. Grandma didn't have a middle name, but as an adult assumed one as a tribute to her birthdate of February 14th.

2)  Do you have ancestors with your middle name as part of their name?

There are many assorted relatives with this name. It was a fairly common girls name with English speakers for many, many decades. Although there are no other close relatives with this name, I find them scattered throughout the family trees so it is definitely not an unusual name.

Find My Past free Offer!

The luck of the Irish! Find My Past has databases available for free this coming week. Here is the information in the announcement  I copied from their website: https://blog.findmypast.com/free-irish-records-2308952595.html

Find the Irish ancestors who make you, you

From March 13-17 2017, you can access the largest collection of Irish records online for FREE. Unique records from World War 1 and the Easter Rising, extensive travel and migration collections, as well as detailed Irish court and prison registers are all available to help you add colour to your discoveries. Sign up today, and start your search straightaway.

All of Findmypast's Irish records are FREE to access from 13-17 March 2017.

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and the fact that we are unrivalled when it comes to Irish family history resources, we're making all of our Irish records FREE from Monday 13 - Friday 17 March 2017.

Free access will begin at 9am (GMT) on 13 March and end at 11.59pm (GMT) on 17 March

During this time you can enjoy all 116 million of Findmypast's Irish records (the largest collection anywhere online) completely free.

What is Included in the FREE Access?

The easiest way to see what is included in this special free access is to visit our A-Z of records and make sure Ireland is selected from the countries listed under 'Showing records from'.

A-Z of Irish records on Findmypast From there you can browse through all of the record collections that are free and click into any you'd like to search. Highlights of our Irish collection include:

What is Not Included?

Our Irish Newspapers Collection is exempt from the free access. To explore the newspapers you'll need a suitable subscription. Find out more details on our payment page.

How Do I Access the FREE Records?

From 13-17 March, you can take advantage of our free access to Irish records in 3 simple steps.

1. Register or Sign-in

If you are not already registered with Findmypast, you'll need to do so in order to view the free records. Registering is free and only takes a few moments. Simply visit our registration page and complete your details to set up your Findmypast account. If you are already registered with Findmypast you can sign-in on that same page using your email address and password.

Complete your details and register for free

2. Search Irish Records

To start searching our free Irish records, click 'Search' on the blue menu at the top of the site and select 'Search all records' from the drop-down list.

Select 'Search all records' at the top of the drop-down menu This will bring you to the general search page. In order to search the free Irish records, your search location must be focused on Ireland only. Make sure the country on the drop down menu on the top or left hand side of the screen is set to Ireland.

The Ireland records search screen Fill in the search form with any details you know about your Irish ancestors and click the blue 'Search Ireland records' button.

3. View the Records

Once you've clicked search, you'll be taken to the search results page where records matching your criteria will be listed. You can edit your search or order the results from this screen. If you would like to view any of the free records click the small blue transcript or image icons beside it. The transcript is a typed version of the record, containing the most important information, while the image will show you exactly what the original record looked like and often contains extra details that the transcript doesn't.

Almost Wordless Wednesday- Burnet Park Zoo

We have

lions

and tigers and...

flamingos? Let's try again...

Lions

and tigers

and bears.

Well, they weren't the most cooperative, but it is their hibernation time!

Saturday Challenge- Fearless Females Lunch Meeting

This weeks challenge from GeneaMusings:
1)  This is March, the month for Fearless Females posts, started by Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog - see her Fearless Females blogging prompts for 2017 at   http://www.theaccidentalgenealogist.com/2017/02/fearless-females-blogging-prompts.html.

2)  Answer this question for March 16 (I've changed it a bit): If you could have lunch with any female family member (living or dead), or any famous female, who would it be and why? Where would you go? What would you talk about?

I can think of many different relatives I would like to have lunch with. So many of these women led fascinating lives, but we don’t hear much about them. Men were featured in the histories of our country, like those of most other places. Meanwhile, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters were hovering in the background. They were overhearing snippets of conversation at those political meetings. They were at the sidelines of battles, bandaging and caring for the wounded or preparing food for the battle weary relatives. Or perhaps, they were far away back home keeping “the home fires burning.” They were busy with their day-to-day household tasks and taking care of the animals and fields that the men away at war usually did.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps they were quietly doing their own thing and leading their own lives parallel, but separate from those of their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. That is part of the fascination of this topic and the difficulty in choosing one woman that you would like to have lunch with. We don’t know the details about many women’s lives and those details could be quite fascinating. What to them was the dull boring daily work, is something unique and special to us. Seeing how housework was done in “olden times” or different skills such as blacksmithing, carpentry, barrel making and on and on are the things that make up living history museums.

I tend to gravitate towards the “women’s work” type of displays there. Although, some of them are things we think of as such, were actually commonly done by men in certain time periods. Teachers, weavers and tailors were often men. However, those skills were the same or similar to those done by women in the home at that time as well. I enjoy seeing the kitchens in such villages and how they went about preparing meals as well.

However, today, I am choosing a woman closer to our own time period to sit down to a virtual lunch with. Today, I think I would like to sit down with my Grandmother Ward. Frances Ellen Ingalls Ward (1889-1962) led a life that probably wasn’t all that different from what we might lead today. I “know her” and know about her from stories that my parents, brothers, aunts and uncles have told me over the years. I never, though, got to meet her in person, not even as a toddler. I think it would be fascinating to chat with her and get to know her a little bit better in person.

I would like to hear about what it was like for her growing up. She must have some interesting stories to tell. A few facts from those years make me think there must be some. She lost her mother at a young age, her baby sister died, her father remarried, and then a few years later they moved from Jefferson to Cayuga counties in New York, what today is about a two hour drive and would have definitely been longer then. These would have been considered rather ordinary to her—she was certainly not alone in having these events occur during her childhood. However, to me, I would like to hear what happened in her words and how she felt. I can read facts and imagine what it would have been like, but to hear her talk about these things and other events that were important to her would be wonderful!

Where would we go? Wherever she wanted to. We might drive around Cayuga County and see places she knew in her lifetime as they are now or perhaps, visit Antwerp, the village near where she grew up. I’m sure Grandma might want to see the house where she lived in North Wilna, but the site is now part of a target range on Fort Drum and just cellar holes. For lunch, we would stop somewhere at a family type restaurant or diner that she would like or perhaps for some fast food. That would have been very much a novelty still for her in her late years so perhaps she would enjoy doing that.

Wordless Wednesday- Oswego in Winter