by Maureen Taylor
The other day my daughter finished reading Under the Blood Red Sun, by Graham Salisbury (Laurel Leaf, $6.50) about kids living on the island of Oahu around the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She liked the book enough to chat about it on a long car ride to see her grandparents. I thought this was the perfect time to bring up family history.
It was one of those moments when history, family and family history collide. You know what I mean. My dad, who is eighty-five, and my daughter, who is thirteen, don’t have a lot of things in common. He doesn’t use the Internet, watch Disney movies, or keep up with teenage fashion. He is, however, a walking, talking history book. Dad was in his early twenties when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and quickly joined the war effort. He was eventually stationed in Hawaii. When I mentioned this to my daughter she just turned and stared for a moment. “Really,” she said. Suddenly all their differences didn’t matter. They had something in common.
A few days ago I read an article in the...
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April 25, 2007
Tracking Other Families to Find Mine
by Juliana Smith
It was taunting me, mocking me even. It was that darned spreadsheet I posted in conjunction with last week's article. Every time I looked at all those blanks, I was frustrated. Finally one night after the dishes were done and my daughter was tucked in bed, I decided to answer the challenge.
James Kelly in particular was haunting me. We have a significant number of records for him, but prior to 1880 I've been unable to identify him in the census. I know of a daughter, Anna Maria Josepha, born about 1837 (through her burial and death record), and through her obituary I know that her mother's name was Margaret. There are family stories about a son who died in the Civil War but so far I have nothing to substantiate that. There is another James Kelly in the family plot who was either buried or moved to the plot in 1865, so it's possible that this is the Civil War veteran. (There were four family members who were interred in the plot on the same date, including one who died in 1852, so I am working on the assumption that at least some, if not all of them, were moved from another plot and didn't die at the same time from an epidemic or some kind of accident.)
The thing is, for as much time as I've spent going through censuses, I still don't have them. I decided to follow up on some of the close matches to either make a connection or rule them out. Here are some of the methods I employed in trying to find a match.
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It was taunting me, mocking me even. It was that darned spreadsheet I posted in conjunction with last week's article. Every time I looked at all those blanks, I was frustrated. Finally one night after the dishes were done and my daughter was tucked in bed, I decided to answer the challenge.
James Kelly in particular was haunting me. We have a significant number of records for him, but prior to 1880 I've been unable to identify him in the census. I know of a daughter, Anna Maria Josepha, born about 1837 (through her burial and death record), and through her obituary I know that her mother's name was Margaret. There are family stories about a son who died in the Civil War but so far I have nothing to substantiate that. There is another James Kelly in the family plot who was either buried or moved to the plot in 1865, so it's possible that this is the Civil War veteran. (There were four family members who were interred in the plot on the same date, including one who died in 1852, so I am working on the assumption that at least some, if not all of them, were moved from another plot and didn't die at the same time from an epidemic or some kind of accident.)
The thing is, for as much time as I've spent going through censuses, I still don't have them. I decided to follow up on some of the close matches to either make a connection or rule them out. Here are some of the methods I employed in trying to find a match.
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British Army WWI Pension Records 1914-1920
by Sherry Irvine, CG, FSA Scot
Twenty years ago I spent a number of afternoons in a library sitting on the floor working my way through a set of the "War Graves of the British Empire." I was looking for Corporal S.L. Nuttall, my maternal grandfather's brother. I was new to genealogy; if there was a quicker way to find Corporal Nuttall, I did not know about it.
How things have changed! Not only can I locate my great-uncle's grave, I can find the same information at the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission where I can read the details of the inscription, find his father's name, and look at a plan and a photograph of the cemetery.
Ancestry.co.uk is another website presenting records of the first World War. In cooperation with the National Archives of the United Kingdom, it has recently added British Army WWI Pension Records, 1914-1920. Documents for surnames beginning with A and B have been uploaded in the first phase and the remainder will follow over the next eighteen months.
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Twenty years ago I spent a number of afternoons in a library sitting on the floor working my way through a set of the "War Graves of the British Empire." I was looking for Corporal S.L. Nuttall, my maternal grandfather's brother. I was new to genealogy; if there was a quicker way to find Corporal Nuttall, I did not know about it.
How things have changed! Not only can I locate my great-uncle's grave, I can find the same information at the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission where I can read the details of the inscription, find his father's name, and look at a plan and a photograph of the cemetery.
Ancestry.co.uk is another website presenting records of the first World War. In cooperation with the National Archives of the United Kingdom, it has recently added British Army WWI Pension Records, 1914-1920. Documents for surnames beginning with A and B have been uploaded in the first phase and the remainder will follow over the next eighteen months.
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Locating Ancestral Origins
By Juliana Smith
It's a question I see frequently in my editor's mail: "How do I locate a town of origin in (England, Scotland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway) for my ancestors? To the non-genealogist, the town of origin might seem to be just another insignificant piece of trivia about our ancestors, but to those of us with a passion for learning all we can about our ancestry, it is one of the most exhilarating finds there is. To be able to reach back in time and actually take our history to a place that you can see on a map, and hopefully someday even visit, is a feeling that's hard to beat!
The trouble is, that information is not always where you might hope to find it, and it often takes a bit of digging. But there are clues in many records that could help point you in the right direction. Let's take a look.
Home SourcesThe first stop is always at home, and even if you thought you had exhausted all that you can find and interrogated every relative, it can still be worth a second look. For years we asked my grandmother if she knew what town her father had come from. She knew that it was northeast of Warsaw but couldn't remember the name. Years later she shared some photographs from the old country and there it was on the back of a photograph--Wyszkow. The city was later confirmed with my great-grandfather's alien registration...
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It's a question I see frequently in my editor's mail: "How do I locate a town of origin in (England, Scotland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway) for my ancestors? To the non-genealogist, the town of origin might seem to be just another insignificant piece of trivia about our ancestors, but to those of us with a passion for learning all we can about our ancestry, it is one of the most exhilarating finds there is. To be able to reach back in time and actually take our history to a place that you can see on a map, and hopefully someday even visit, is a feeling that's hard to beat!
The trouble is, that information is not always where you might hope to find it, and it often takes a bit of digging. But there are clues in many records that could help point you in the right direction. Let's take a look.
Home SourcesThe first stop is always at home, and even if you thought you had exhausted all that you can find and interrogated every relative, it can still be worth a second look. For years we asked my grandmother if she knew what town her father had come from. She knew that it was northeast of Warsaw but couldn't remember the name. Years later she shared some photographs from the old country and there it was on the back of a photograph--Wyszkow. The city was later confirmed with my great-grandfather's alien registration...
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