Saturday Fun Challenge- 20 Questions Part 1

From Randy Seaver and GeneaMusings: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted 20 questions on her blog this week - see Even More Questions About Your Ancestors and Maybe A Few About You (posted 27 June).

2)  We will do these five at a time - Questions 1 to 5 tonight.


1.  Which ancestor had the most children? It can be a couple or a single person.

I’m not sure, but I know my great-grandparents William and Sarah (Damery) Jennings had a dozen children. This is after William’s first wife, Margaret (Wilson) Jennings died the same year as her sixth child, son, William was born, perhaps dying from childbirth. I would say that 18 total children would have to be close to the record.

Another possibility is that of Bridget (Bailey) Tifft Coon. This 4-great grandmother had four known children by first husband, Robert Tifft and four known children by her second husband, Nathan Coon. However, in many write-ups found about her youngest son, Adelbert “Amos” Coon, it states that he was the youngest and 21st child of his mother! I’m not sure I believe this, especially since I haven’t found any evidence of children beyond the eight, but it’s possible I haven’t found the rest yet.

2.  How many years have you been working on your genealogy/family history?

Many would say too many! I remember an assignment in high school that involved creating a family tree. That was 10th grade when I would have been 15. The following summer, my Mom took me to a couple bookstores looking for books about genealogy. My parents weren’t interested, but did share stories and help me find local cemeteries, thus adding to the genealogy while I was still in high school. Thus, I have been working on it for the last 38 years.

3.  Do you collaborate with other genealogists on your family history?

I try to when I can. Most of the family isn’t interested. I have worked with cousins over the years putting information together, but the others lose interest and drift away. I also work with others in a more general fashion to find information, such as repositories and new records to search. I’m always happy to help others and perhaps find a “partner in crime” for some of the family history!


4.  Have you hired a professional genealogist to work on your family history? Even if it was just a small branch of the family.

Many years ago, I paid a researcher in England to look for information on my Ward family. Unfortunately, it is a common name and I only had a general sense of locale, so that didn’t yield much information. In recent times, I haven’t, but have paid for others to retrieve distant records for me.

5.  If you have family heirlooms what’s your plan for their future?

I am still hoping to find that younger family member that is interested in the family heirlooms— or at least some of them. Failing that, I intend to donate them to a historical society that would be interested.

Welcome Noah Joseph Riester!

In the twists and turns of life we may never know the crazy connections. Last night a family I grew up camping and playing with became a grandma, great-aunt and great uncles to a little one at the same instant I became a great-great aunt. Welcome little Noah.

Wordless Wednesday: Beak & Skiff

Wordless Wednesday: Tobias Cemetery

Wordless Wednesday: A Pirate's Life

Saturday Fun Challenge- Youth Organizations

 From an older Saturday Fun Challenge on Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings:

Did you join a youth organization such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire, Job's Daughters, for example?

I belonged to the Happy-Go-Lucky Teens. It was a progression from an informal group of pre-teens that camped and played together. However, the start of the belonging to the group really began with my parents.

Back when I was about 3 or 4 years old we went camping one weekend. It was probably in the first year or so that my parents owned a travel trailer. We camped that weekend at River Forest Campground in Weedsport. Setting up the site, Mom kept glancing up the hill to another site about two away. She asked Dad if he thought she was right about the people there.

We sat down to eat our supper and about when we were finishing, the man from that campsite walked down the hill and peered at our campsite looking at my parents and also at the name plaque hung on the front of the camper.

Smiling, he hollered up the hill. “It is them! C’mon down Barb!”

Soon all four adults were talking a mile a minute. Mom had been right. She had recognized an old classmate of hers from Skaneateles and her husband who was a year ahead of them. That night Mom put me to bed, but her and Dad sat up talking around the campfire with Barb and Bill Harper. The conversations lasted until about two in the morning from what Mom told me years later, not only Friday night, but Saturday night as well. Amongst the topics was this club that Harpers’ belonged to and were Field Directors for- NCHA— National Campers and Hikers Association. Mom and Dad’s membership application went in the mail the following week.

Thus I was a child camping with NCHA and specifically, the area club, North Central District. I had many friends that I camped and played with and we all looked forward to turning 13 and joining the “big kids” in the Happy-Go-Luckys group.

What was the Happy-Go-Lucky teens? It was a group open to any teens in the district. We camped and played together as well as worked. At state campouts we would field a softball and volleyball team to compete against other districts. We had dances and went out for ice cream or pizza, especially after the winter meetings that were held upstairs from the adults’ district meeting. We also helped the adults with campouts and held some of our own. We did fund raisers and helped out with various charities. Some of the ones that stand out were making favors and distributing them to nursing homes at holidays and cleaning up a stream in the spring. The stream was a public waterway, but we camped on the private property of some adult club members and had a grand time. While the adults sat around a campfire Saturday night, the teens along with a few pre-teen siblings, played hide and seek in an almost pitch-dark field darting here and there.

Geneva Historical Society

Name: Geneva Historical Society
Address: 543 S Main St, Geneva, NY 14456
Phone: (315) 789-5151
Website: https://genevahistoricalsociety.com/

On Route 14 at the edge of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, you must find a place to park along the street in Geneva. Fortunately, spaces seem to be fairly open during the weekday afternoon that we visited. The houses along this street speak to being built and owned by Victorians of some means. The backyards of the houses on one side of the street overlook Seneca Lake and most properties probably extend to the shoreline.

The historical society is housed in a substantial brick house. The main floor and some of the basement has exhibits of the local area that are free to browse and the staff are very welcoming. Tucked into a corner of the basement is the brightly lit room with a simple sign over the entranceway “Archives.”

The research room is open Tuesday- Friday from 1:30- 4:30 pm. Photocopies are 25 cents each and there is a daily research fee of $5.00 for non-members.

The archives while having some material on Ontario County, is concentrated mostly on the city of Geneva. There are indexes that list the people mentioned in old newspapers and records of the cemeteries. Looking in one of these books, I was able to see where the unmarked graves of some distant relatives are located in the Washington Street Cemetery.

Among the records are some information about the old Geneva College that was once there as well as their most famous student. In a time when it was thought that the medical field was most unsuitable for women, Geneva College admitted a woman student and on January 11, 1849 she graduated at the top of her class. The woman? Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.

Wordless Wednesday: End of Summer Tradition