RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine 11 January 2006, Vol. 9, No. 2 (c) 1998-2006 RootsWeb.com, Inc. http://www.rootsweb.com/ * * * Editor: Myra Vanderpool Gormley, Certified Genealogist Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com Certification: http://www.bcgcertification.org/certification/ ROOTSWEB HELPDESK: Check here for announcements: http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/ * * * For best results, when contacting the RootsWeb HelpDesk, provide information about your computer (PC or Macintosh), its operating system (Windows 2000, XP, Mac OSX, etc.) and your Web browser and its version. If the question pertains to something you have found on a RootsWeb site, please include the URL [that's the Web address; starts with http://]. http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/form1.html * * * ============================================================ IN THIS ISSUE: 1. NEWS, NOTES, AND/OR SITES WORTH SEEING 1a. Editor's Desk: "Stranger Than Fiction"; The Shame of It All" Sites Worth Seeing: "Immigrants to Canada"; "German Town Name Meanings"; and "American Quilting History" 1b. Tips from Readers: "Convincing the Living About the Dead" 1c. Using RootsWeb: "Blasting Through Roadblocks" 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb: "Village Girl Found Behind Bars" "Finding a Family for My Friend" 3. New User-contributed Databases 4. New/Updated FreePages and HomePages 5. New at RootsWeb 6. RootsWeb Review's Bottomless Mailbag: "Leafing Through the Spellings" "Presenting a Visual Family Tree" "Transposing Given Names" "Hiding Under Husbands' Names" "German Naming Customs" "Spit It Out, Old Chap" "Original Name a Mystery" "Outmaneuvering the Army" 7. Humor/Humour: "Long-lived Ladies" 8. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints =========================================================== IN THIS ISSUE: 1. NEWS, NOTES, AND SOME SITES WORTH SEEING 1a. EDITOR'S DESK: STRANGER THAN FICTION. Jerry Ferrin, the Comanche County, Kansas webmaster (http://www.rootsweb.com/~kscomanc/), writes, "Imagine how skeptical a family researcher would be upon seeing a family group sheet giving the same day of different years as the birth dates for all three sons in a family!" The 27 June 1947 news item was contributed by researcher Shirley Brier to the website and can be read here: "A Strange Coincidence in the Purkey Family" -- http://www.rootsweb.com/~kscomanc/news_notices.html * * * THE SHAME OF IT ALL. Some of your editor's rotten roots are exposed in the January/February issue of Ancestry magazine in "Hot on Trail of the Family Outlaw." Subscribers can get all the dirt. Others must wait. http://shops.ancestry.com/product.asp?productid=1561&shopid=0 * * * SOME SITES WORTH SEEING. Immigrants to Canada: http://www.dcs.uwaterloo.ca/%7Emarj/genealogy/thevoyage.html German Town Name Meanings: http://www.genealogyandhow.com/lib/germany/german-town-name-meanings.htm American Quilting History: http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/colonial.htm 1b. TIPS FROM READERS Convincing the Living About the Dead By Jim Ver Heule Has anyone found an ancestor using a name other than the one giving at birth? I did some 10 years ago. My wife's mother wanted me to find the descendants and ancestors of Frank B. GARNER. He was in fact my wife's great-grandfather -- born Benjamin Franklin GARNER. For some unknown reason, he became Frank B. at an early age. He is listed as Benjamin in the 1870 and 1880 census in Jefferson County, New York aged 2 and 12 respectively. After that he is off the radar because he has assumed the name Frank B. Now, I can profess to understand why parents would name a child one name and call him another. I can understand a name change after the child is say 15. His name may be the same as an adult and hence he changes to his middle name for a unique identity. Finding him wasn't the problem. Convincing my wife's mother that this was in fact the case was the problem. My only saving grace was the fact that the names HIRAM and BENJAMIN were alternated through the generations. After pinpointing Frank B. and convincing my mother-in-law, I had no problem with the rest of the ancestors and the descendants. Just letting you know that the hardest match comes from the living, who have fixed ideas, rather than the dead, who have fixed dates. * * * 1c. USING ROOTSWEB: Blasting Through Roadblocks Bill BLOCK started doing family history research many years ago--long before the days of computer genealogy programs and before the availability of Internet resources for his research. Over the years, Bill amassed a rather lengthy family tree going back 10 to 15 generations with well-documented sources for many of his lines. However, one stumbling block has always bothered Bill. His own surname of BLOCK proved to be just that--a roadblock! Of all the research he has done it is somewhat ironic that the BLOCK surname is the one obstacle he hasn't been able to smash through. In fact, Bill had put the BLOCKs on the back burner about 10 years ago and never picked them up again except for a brief attempt in the early days of the Internet to find other people looking for his ancestral line. Nothing -- no contacts and no search results. Bill decides as one of his New Year's resolutions to revisit the BLOCK research and try to examine what he already knows vs. what he wants to learn with a fresh new outlook. He begins by searching resources he hasn't checked in some time: -- RootsWeb/Ancestry message boards (http://boards.rootsweb.com/) --RootsWeb's mailing list archives (http://archiver.rootsweb.com/) and the WorldConnect databases (http://wc.rootsweb.com/). Bill realizes that it is quite possible that there are new researchers out there today who didn't have access to computers or simply hadn't begun their searches yet at the time he last checked the lists, boards, and GEDCOMs. He next checks other online resources, such as the USGenWeb archives (http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/), for new databases that might have been added since he last looked. After Bill is certain that he has checked out all "new" resources he then turns to the data he gathered over the years and looks carefully at some of the conflicting information in his files. He knows that Samuel BLOCK married Mary WILSON, but the only evidence he has to prove she is Mary "WILSON" is an undated paper tucked into the family Bible. Bill decides to check census records again and finds Mary WILSON on the 1860 census, a few years after Samuel BLOCK died. Fortunately two of the BLOCK children were still living with Mary in 1860 which enabled Bill to prove he had found the right Mary. She is listed as a widow. However, this would seem to conflict with WILSON being her maiden name. But might it indicate that he'd overlooked the possibility that Mary had remarried after Samuel's death and the surname WILSON was, in fact, the name of her deceased second husband and not her maiden name after all? Bill digs into some online marriage records and cemetery databases and finds that Mary BLOCK, widow, did indeed remarry after Samuel's death to Joseph WILSON who died in 1859 -- just a year before Mary appeared with the surname WILSON on the 1860 census. This new discovery leads Bill to search again for Samuel's marriage record to a Mary (but not necessarily to a Mary WILSON as he had assumed in the past). Voilą! He finds it. Samuel BLOCK married Mary BRYANT the year before their first child was born. Bill contemplates what possible new information this discovery of Mary's maiden name might lead to. He resolves to examine every piece of conflicting information or information that might not be what it seems on the surface in his reopening of the brick wall search for his BLOCKs. So he goes over information in his files on Samuel BLOCK's siblings and takes notice of who the siblings married. How interesting! Not only had he just established that Samuel's wife's maiden name was BRYANT and not WILSON -- he now notices that Samuel's brothers, George and Christopher, also married women with the surname BRYANT. Is it possible that three BLOCK brothers had married three BRYANT sisters? Bill doesn't know for sure but he vows to follow up on that new avenue of research and investigate the collateral BRYANT line. Unlike his dead-end BLOCK line he easily locates extensive BRYANT research online and finds pedigrees for the BRYANT ladies (and, yes, they are sisters) in WorldConnect databases. Bill anxiously dashes off e-mail queries to the submitters of the GEDCOMs on the BRYANT family. A more thorough examination of the BRYANT GEDCOMs on WorldConnect shows that the BRYANT family had migrated from one location to another almost in lock-step with the BLOCKs and belonged to the same churches along the way. The BLOCK and BRYANT men also practiced the same occupation--they were all tanners for several generations. More research on these BRYANTs indicates that they seem to have been closely allied through intermarriages to families with the names: CUTTER, CROSS, and DEMOSS. In a light-bulb moment it dawns on Bill that these are also names that appear as witnesses to deeds, co-executors of wills, and sponsors at baptisms for his BLOCK family. Bill had photocopied various census pages from microfilms years ago and scrolling through them again with his new-found information, he realizes that these are also names appearing as neighbors to his BLOCKs. He's very pleased with his new leads. Bill delights in the fact that one new discovery made by re-examining his old files has opened a whole raft of possibilities that may finally enable him to get past the roadblocks in his BLOCK family research. 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb: Village Girl Found Behind Bars By Janet Turnbull My great-grandmother, Sarah WALTON, was born in 1869 in Yelvertoft, a small village in Northamptonshire (England). There was a family story that she worked as a cook at "the Big House" -- presumably the local manor. I searched the censuses but I could never find any trace of her place of work and in 1891 she was not at home on the night of the census. I went to the village to see if I could work out where she might have lived and worked. I found the manor, which surely was the "Big House," and I took loads of pictures. Back home I tried again, this time I just put Sarah's name into Ancestry's search box and left out the location. Bingo! She wasn't working at the Big House at all. She was a domestic cook at the Dun Cow Hotel in Dunchurch, a village some 15 miles away near Rugby, Warwickshire. This Christmas I went to Rugby to visit relatives and catch up on those I hardly knew. It was a photo and family history hunt that turned out to be really fruitful and to get home I had to drive through Dunchurch. On a whim -- and because I was hungry -- I decided to call in at the Dun Cow. I found the manager and told him about my great-grandmother. He was a very young man, too young to understand the attraction of family history, I thought, but he took time to show me some old photographs that they kept at the pub. There was one screwed to the wall near the bar -- it showed Mr. and Mrs. WESTON and their family and staff who took over the pub in 1887. And yes -- there on the back row was my Sarah. * * * Finding a Family for My Friend By Patty M. In November of this year, I was trying to help a friend who had been orphaned as a child of six years. Her biological mother died in childbirth and the child was passed around from aunts to uncles and thus was never allowed to finish a full year at the same school. Her biological father had divorced her mother who was pregnant at the time with this child. The story was that the father was not aware of the unborn child. The father was in the U.S. military during World War II and had married the mother of this child near a base where he was stationed. All this person knew of her father was his name and that he was from Massachusetts or Maine. What a challenge. I searched the marriages on RootsWeb in the likely state and bingo! There was the marriage in 1945. At the same time, the surname of the mother did not match, but her first and middle names did. Upon e-mailing this person, I learned that the mother had been married previously and used that surname when she married the person's father (she could have told me that!). So, I continued on -- the only census I could find the father in, of course, was the 1930 (age 6), but couldn't be sure it was he as no one knew his father's name. So, I searched first in Maine. There were tons of people with the same name. Social Security Death Index provided a close match, so I again e-mailed this person to say, regretfully, that I thought her father had died. However, something kept pushing me, so back I went to the marriage state and county, and found a person there did lookups. She was prompt in replying and I thus learned that this guy had stated that he was born in Massachusetts, but his home was in Kennebunk, Maine at the time of the marriage application. So, back to Maine again and I searched for him with and without the middle initial. Ancestry.com offers phone and address listings (for a fee) and I found someone who might be the right one, still living. I then hit Google.com and up popped a contribution that he had made to a military memorial site, and it listed his hometown. Back to Ancestry.com's address listings where I found him -- with the middle initial. I was hesitant to call. What does one say to a person whose past is catching up with him? And, perhaps he isn't agreeable to same. This man had remarried, and had children of the marriage. Well, I took courage in one hand, phone in the other and dialed. A man answered and I explained who I was and that I was doing some genealogy for a friend, and stated the few facts that I knew about this person -- that he married and was divorced during the war years, and that there was a child of the marriage whom he was unaware of, that he had served in the Pacific, etc. There was this pause on the other end of the phone and the voice said "You are right so far." I began to get chills up my neck. Then he said, "I am the son of the man you are speaking of, and I think he was aware of the pregnancy when he divorced her." He is in the hospital right now, which is why I answered the phone; when he gets stronger, I will tell him all this when I think he can comprehend." I asked if he had an e-mail address I could give my friend, he said, "No, but I will give you my cell phone number for her -- that way dad's phone won't ring here and I can accept calls wherever I am." I said, "Thank you so much, I do not wish to intrude in any way and you will never hear from me again, but am sure you will hear from my friend." That ended the call and I sat there a few minutes, almost shaking because of the enormity of what I had accomplished for someone. I dialed my friend's number in California. She answered and I said, "Are you sitting down?" She replied, "Yes, what is it?" I said, "I just spoke with your half brother in Maine and your father is alive, age 82. He is in the hospital, but the son will tell him about all this when he is better, and you are to call this number; he in turn will exchange e-mail addresses with you so that you may correspond." She got very quiet, then I said, "Are you all right?" She just sounded dazed. I heard from her later that day via e-mail. She had called and talked with her half brother as well as his mother and they were very excited and wanted to meet her right away. They even sent pictures. Later on, when the son told the father of the reunion via phone and e-mails, he exclaimed, "I have to go out there to see her!" I know this sounds like something one would watch on the Oprah television show, but it is true and in retrospect, I still do not know quite how I did all of it in such a short time. Something or someone was pushing me to not give up. I just kept coming back to the computer to "try one more thing" that I would think of. My friend came to our place from California and she calls me her "Angel." She believes that everyone has many angels who appear in different forms. We wept together. So, again, RootsWeb, you have helped reunite a long-separated family and given my friend a brand-new lease on life! * * * Tell us how you made an online connection. Have you found a special cousin? A photograph of your great-grandparents? Solved a missing link that enabled you to take your roots back to Charlemagne? Did you leap over some brick walls or cleverly figure out where your grandmother was hiding in a census? Do tell! Dazzle us with your brilliant sleuthing or uncanny luck. We're all ears. Send your tales of genealogical adventure to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com ========================== Advertisement ============================ GET HELP WITH YOUR BRITISH GENEALOGY British Ancestors, a British company with researchers throughout England and Scotland has helped more than 4,500 satisfied clients worldwide since 1999. Researchers will search the records of your English and Scottish ancestors stored in archives throughout England and Scotland, most of which are unavailable on the Internet. Friendly service, affordable prices and free research assessments. For a FREE! no-obligation research assessment visit http://www.britishancestors.com/consultrw/ ====================== End Advertisement ============================== 3. New User-Contributed Databases at RootsWeb http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/ ---------------------------------------------- SHARING OPPORTUNITY. Does your alma mater, old military unit, church, parish, province, county or state have material available that you think would be of interest to genealogists and historians? Do you have any compiled lists of names or databases (other than your personal genealogy) that you would like to share and that you think would be of value and interest to others? In most cases, RootsWeb would be proud to host such material. http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/ The following databases have come online recently. They are searchable, but not browseable. Search: To look for specific data or occurrence of text in a file. Browse: To view the entire contents of a file or a group of files. VIRGINIA. Richmond (independent city) Boy Scouts, 1916; 48 records; Paula Lucy Delosh http://userdb.rootsweb.com/groups/ Appomattox County. Appomattox. Graduates for the Appomattox Agricultural School, 1916; 18 records; Brunswick County. Lawrenceville. Alumni List for Lawrenceville High School, 1916; 19 records; Fluvanna County. Palmyra Normal High School Graduates, 1916; 13 records; Henrico County. John Marshall High School, 1916; 16 records; Retreat for the Sick, 1916; 8 records; Union Theological Seminary, 1916; 32 records; Paula Lucy Delosh http://userdb.rootsweb.com/alumni/ 4. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages -------------------------------------- Can your cousins find your website at RootsWeb? Has it ever been mentioned here or do you have a new, updated, or substantially revised website at RootsWeb (it will have "freepages" or "homepages" in the URL)? Send the URL (its Web address), along with a brief description, including the major pertinent surnames and what is available on your site, to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com McVEY AND PARSONS FAMILY ROOTS. Surnames include McVEY, PARSONS, FORRESTER, MICHAEL, HAIGLER, PORCH, REID, and STURGILL with emphasis on Caldwell County, North Carolina and Johnson County, Tennessee. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~bmcv/home.html NICK'S GENEALOGY PAGE. Contains information on STODDARD, BARRUS, LEE, WALTERS, CHIDESTER, BUTLER, HAMMOND, and LATHAM families; covering many areas of Utah, Idaho, and Arizona, and several other states. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ndstoddard/ SASSYTAZZY'S ONLINE GENEALOGY RESEARCH LIBRARY. The most recent addition to this website is more than 1,900 extracts from the 1929 John Marshall High School (Richmond, Virginia) yearbook, "The Marshallite." The USA- focused site now contains more than 3,000 pages of genealogy transcriptions, extracts, images, and a database. Has many Virginia localities and includes Bible records, birth, death and marriage certificates and records, deeds and land records, wills and probate records, manuscripts and documents, research notes, letters and correspondence, obituaries and other types of printed material, census and tax records, headstone inscriptions and cemetery records, Revolutionary War and Civil war records, and old photographs. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~sassytazzy/ 5. New at RootsWeb To Request a Free Web Account: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------- Some of these webpages might not yet be accessible. They are created by volunteers, so if one that interests you isn't up yet, please check again in a few days or next week. http://www.rootsweb.com/~[accountname] U.S.A. ksrawlin -- Rawlins County (Kansas) kswilson -- Wilson County (Kansas) mossar -- Missouri Society of Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) ncfrsnnc -- Family Research Society of Northeastern North Carolina nycbelle -- Belleville City (New York) nyeccdar -- Enoch Crosby (New York) Chapter DAR nyqcdar -- Quassaick (New York) Chapter DAR ohrcgs -- Ross County Genealogical Society (Ohio) DAR--Daughters of the American Revolution SAR--Sons of the American Revolution * * * New Mailing Lists at RootsWeb Request a New Mailing List: http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Brand-new mailing lists can be found under OTHER/MISCELLANEOUS until moved to their proper categories. For information and an index to the more than 29,500 RootsWeb-hosted genealogy Mailing Lists and for easy subscribing (joining) options go to: http://lists.rootsweb.com/ NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS COWING FALEY FEALY FLEEMAN GILFILLAN HANEL PENHOLLOW PROKOPOVITSCH WIENS NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS ENG-GLS-CIRENCESTER--Cirencester, Gloucestershire (England) and surrounding parishes ITA-SICILY-TRAPANI--Research of ancestry and history for the Trapani area of Sicily (Italy). 6. FROM ROOTSWEB REVIEW'S BOTTOMLESS MAILBAG [Editor's note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editor or of RootsWeb.com]. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Leafing Through the Spellings By Tom Bushell in Australia My mother's grandfather came to Australia in the mid-1800s and when I started to do some research on her family I hit the hated brick wall. I was unable to find any mention or verification of my great-grandfather's arrival or marriage. I was at a standstill until I contacted a cousin with the original family name LATUS. Frank (now deceased) told me to look under LETTICE. William LATUS had arrived from Lancashire and probably gave his name to an immigration official who entered it as LETTICE. It remained LETTICE for about 20 years and then, in official records, reverted to LATUS -- probably because his children had learnt to spell in the interim period. * * * Presenting a Visual Family Tree By Paul Delahunty in Ireland (delahuntypaul@hotmail.com) I'm hoping that the RootsWeb Review readers can help me out. Next month will see my uncle celebrate his 70th birthday, and we are having a surprise family get-together for him. I thought it would be nice to present him with our family tree. However, I'm not sure how to present it. I'm currently writing a short history of the family, which will tell the story so far, in words, but I'm looking for a way to present the main family lines visually. Would anyone out there be able to help me out? * * * Transposing Given Names By Israel Pickholtz (http://www.pikholz.org/) We have a Josef PIKHOLZ (ca 1784-1862) in east Galicia (then under Austrian control, now Ukraine) who we learned was actually Isak-Josef. Generally the grandchildren who were named for him (after he died) were named Isak-Josef and often called just Josef. The great-grandchildren named for him -- often geographically far removed -- were called just Josef, because their parents probably didn't know about the real first name. * * * Hiding Under Husbands' Names By Amy in Central Virginia Does anyone remember when ladies only went by their husbands' names instead of their own given first name? Circa the 1950s, I would have been Mrs. John Doe, never Jane Doe. Or was that strictly a Southern (American) custom? * * * German Naming Customs By Jill Mount My dad was always known by his middle name. Some of his aunts and uncles were known by their middle names or the family used a diminutive of their given name (Kate for Katharine). When I first started studying and learning about genealogy I read an article that was about the German naming custom. Your first given name was the name that you were known in the church and you were baptized with that name, but many people were known in their family by their middle name. I wish I could recall where I read that information, but it answered a lot of questions for me, so I've been flexible when looking for a person. I look for their given name and also for their middle name. [Editor's note: See "18th-century Pennsylvania German Naming Customs," by Charles F. Kerchner at: http://www.kerchner.com/germname.htm] * * * Spit It Out, Old Chap By Charles Dobie, Just read the article "I Don't Know What You Said, But I Know What I Heard" in RootsWeb Review E-zine and it brought to mind a Lanark County researcher who was looking for his RICHARDSON ancestors, but could find no trace of them in the census listings. They were finally located listed as RITSON. He speculated that the person who gave the information to the census taker may have had no teeth and a mouth full of chewing tobacco. * * * Original Name a Mystery By Jake Jacobs I am a member of the Oconto County Genealogical Society in Wisconsin. I sincerely enjoy your RootsWeb Review and thought I would share one of our finds. We have recently completed transcribing all the cemeteries in our county and needless to say, we have encountered several "unusual" findings. In the Evergreen Cemetery is listed JOE DONTGOHOME. That piqued my interest, so I looked up his death certificate. However, it only states he was born in Bohemia in 1849 and died 24 November 1918 in the hospital following an appendectomy at the age of 69. * * * Outmaneuvering the Army By Ted Duke Thought this might shed some additional light on the often confusing middle-name problem. My father was James Paul DUKE, but was always called Paul. When he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I, it said he would be James. He had them change his name on enlistment papers to Paul James DUKE. My oldest brother Paul (James Paul DUKE, Jr.) didn't change his when he went in the Army in World War II -- he was known in the Army as Jim. 7. Humor/Humour: Long-lived Ladies ------------------------------ Thanks to: Marcus Muth in Kentucky, USA My wife's DAR chapter invited a local official to speak a while back. He opened his remarks by telling them that his little boy was curious about his preparations for the talk. His son asked him what he was doing. "I'm writing some notes for a speech I am to give to the Daughters of the American Revolution," he replied. "Gosh," the boy said. "I thought they were all dead!" * * * Found a humorous sign or entry in census, parish, church, etc. records? Send to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com 8. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints ----------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIPTIONS. To manage your e-mail communications (i.e. to subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, or to sign up for others), visit our newsletter management center any time at: http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/ If you use a spam-filtering program, in order to receive the RootsWeb Review please make sure that you're allowing e-mail from: newsletter@reply.myfamilyinc.com The RootsWeb Review is a free publication of MyFamily.com, Inc., 360 West 4800 North, Provo, UT, 84604 * * * The RootsWeb Review does not publish or answer genealogical queries, and the editor regrets that she is unable to provide any personal research assistance or advice. RootsWeb Review welcomes short (500 words or less) articles, humor, stories, or letters, and reserves the right to edit all submissions. The announcement of books and products is provided as a community service and is not an endorsement in any way. All mail sent to the RootsWeb Review editor is considered to be for publication ? send in plain text (please, no attachments) to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW ADVERTISING CONTACTS. Ad Sales Worldwide: Shana Davis, creative@myfamilyinc.com * * * REPRINTS. Permission to reprint articles from RootsWeb Review is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, provided: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 11 January 2006, Vol. 9, No. 2. * * * *