Baby steps

OK, I don't have to do everything at once...or at all.
I'm determined to get to feeling better.  So I'm just starting today.
This depressed feeling, grief over loss, sadness, not being motivated to do a thing.

Today is a start to do one little thing.
There, just that one thing is done.
Now I'm resting.

Another one little thing.
Acknowledging that I can accomplish something.

I love the earth-rise picture from the moon...I've lived through such interesting times.  Men walked on the moon.

I had children, and now they've had children too.  I survived my own childhood.  Yay, haven't we all, somehow or another.

So today everyone is looking at their latest gifts.

But today I'm finally wrapping my gifts to my children and grandchildren.  Five of whom won't even be home till the end of the month.  So their package will not be mailed too soon.

Anyway, I am sending New Year's gifts this year.

And 4 of them just got wrapped! I may not wrap the ceramic pieces, since they'll be in bubble wrap anyway.

Unfortunately 3 sons will get just a promise of their gifts, because I haven't finished them yet.  They are to get a genealogy showing our lineage back to Edward I Plantagenet of England.  I will work on it again each night until I can print it for them...and get some copies made to go in the binders...and make an updatable copy on thumb-drives.  This is a determined mom that keeps on doing a bit here and there on these documents...I can give them something of myself this way.

Now, more baby steps. There is not the pressure of getting gifts to them by Christmas, when they would have been buried under trees with thousands of others.  No kidding, I've been at their houses for Christmas before.  Well, my youngest doesn't "do christmas" so I guess he doesn't have gifts under a tree at all.  He also doesn't give gifts.  I love him anyway. And I always give him and his lovely lady gifts too...it's a mothering thing.

On correct spelling

This article on reading penmanship is long overdue, and I was happy to see it on my newsletter from the Old Buncombe County Genealogical Society.

 

Deciphering Old Documents

by Dee Gibson-Roles

One of the most difficult tasks for a genealogist is that of reading and deciphering handwriting in old documents. Besides the fact that some handwriting is almost impossible to read, there were letters and letter forms used in “the olden days” that are no longer commonly used, if used at all.

Coupled with that problem is the lack of standardized spelling until close to the 20th century. We will address all of these problems here and provide some tips on deciphering old documents.

One letter or term that is often seen in old handwriting and continues today is the word or term “ye” as in “Ye Olde Tavern.” Quite often today this “ye” is used when an ambiance of colonial times is desired. Most pronounce the word as “yee.”

But this pronunciation is totally in error. It seems hard to fathom that the correct pronunciation is simple “the” — just as the word “the” is pronounced. Of course the first question is, “How on earth did they get ‘the’ out of ‘ye’?!?” Perhaps a bit of the history of the term will explain.

The letter form that became the “Y” was called a “thorn” and was probably derived from a rune, part of a runic alphabet used by Northern European or Germanic peoples until about the 1200s. It represented what is now our “th.” But when the printing press came into use, there was no sign or letter for the thorn, which resembles a lower-case “p” with the loop moved down to the middle of the vertical line.

The letter closest in appearance to the thorn was the “y,” which was often substituted for the thorn in printed material. Thus the “y” when used in this context was pronounced “th,” and when the letter e was added to it, the word became “the” in pronunciation.

Few people today even realize that the word is actually pronounced “the.”

Another letter form that can be confusing to a researcher, especially a new one, it that of the double “s.” Almost anywhere in a document that a word with a double “s” (as in Tennessee) occurred, the two letters were replaced with a symbol or letter that was very similar in appearance to a lower case “f” or “p.” It is very important to remember this when reading or transcribing any old handwriting.

Obviously some indexers are not aware of this, as we sometimes see the word “Tennepee” or “Tennefee” in transcriptions of old handwriting used in place of what is obviously supposed to be “Tennessee.”

Capitals and Spelling Confusion

Sometimes it is very hard to distinguish between two or more letters at the start of a word. Good examples of this are the letters “I” and “L” or “J” and “I.” Also, it can be difficult to distinguish an upper case “S” from an upper case “L,” especially in given names or even surnames.

By comparing the unknown letter to a known word in which the letter is definitely the same as the one in question, one can usually ascertain which letter is correct.

A good example of this is confusion between the names Samuel and Lemuel. Often it is hard to determine which one is the correct, one as many writers formed the capital “S” and “L” nearly alike. The best way to resolve the question is to search for another known word in the document that begins with the same letter and compare the known first letter to the one in question.

For many researchers, the first attempts at reading on old document result in much frustration. There are several reasons for the difficulty. Two of the most obvious are the spelling of words and the embellishment of many letters with flourishes and so on.

First and foremost, there was no standard spelling until the late 19th century or early 20th century. We often hear the statement that a certain word or name was misspelled in a document. However, we cannot say that the spelling of any word or name was incorrect at that time because of the lack of standardization.

In fact, it has been said that the more ways a person could find (or invent) to spell his name or another word was an indication of his educational level and/or his intelligence. Doubtless this is an exaggeration, but it does bear a grain of truth.

Another spelling problem is that many words were spelled phonetically, as the writer heard them, and not necessarily the way we would expect to see them. For example, in one letter written by a Confederate soldier to his family, he stated that a friend had died of “new money” fever. He was referring to pneumonia or “pneumonie fever” as it was called.

Punctuation and capitalization of words is another problem. Punctuation was, at best, a “sometime thing” and again, there was no standardization where capitalization of the first letter of a word was concerned. One can expect to see several words within a sentence with the first letter capitalized even in formal documents. (Common nouns especially were often capitalized, as they still are in modern German.)

As far as the lack of punctuation is concerned, it is best to read a whole paragraph and determine where the punctuation should be placed to make the sentences “make sense.”

Transcribing Errors

We would be remiss if we did not mention transcription at this point. In transcribing any document, the contents must be recorded exactly as they are in the original documents, spelling problems and lack of punctuation included. In fact, the word “transcription” as applied to older documents indicates that it has been recorded word for word exactly as written in the original document.

If necessary, one can add footnotes or endnotes to the transcription explaining or clarifying any part that is still difficult to understand.

On a lighter note, one researcher was recently transcribing County Court minutes from the 1790s, recording the transcription as a Word document. Repeatedly, the program kept trying to correct the spelling and repeatedly, the transcriber reversed the correction to be exactly what was in the minutes. Finally the program gave up and notified the transcriber that it was turning off the spell-check function!

When attempting to read an old document in which words or passages are difficult to decipher, it is a good idea to record the entire document on paper, or least the paragraph that contains the difficult part or parts, leaving a blank space for any word that is illegible. After reading and recording the entire passage, one can often determine the mystery word by seeing its place in the context of the entire document.

Another “trick” is to try to locate the “mystery” letter or letters in another word or words that are legible and known. By comparing the two, it is often easier to determine what the mystery word actually is.

Reading old documents can be challenging, frustrating and discouraging to a beginner. Rest assured that it will be easier as time passes and more documents are read. And remember, help is available from local genealogical and historical societies in most areas.


Also check out what Ronni Bennett said last Wed over HERE at Time Goes By Blog.

Taking a detour

I decided to use the resources of Ancestry DOT com to see what might now be available on some other relations' trees.

I spent an enjoyable couple of hours learning about some folks in the mountains of Western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley area, and there were lots of grave markers, and grave signs, and their lives all delineated with all kinds of children.

But they weren't the correct relations.  In 1910 a census report gave a man named Harry as a child of either J.F. and Josie, or H.J. and Sarah...and if he was the son of H.J. he would have been named Ellon H., not Harry D.  They were born within a year of each other.  And on a census report, a child who has already had their birthday will appear as 9 years old, whereas one who was born later in the year will still be counted as 8 years old.  Fortunately there were two listings in the 1910 census and one looks like the correct one for my relatives.

I'm not giving their last names, because there are probably a lot of people in that area who still have that name.

They lived in different communities, close, but not the same.  And they probably have a common ancestor.

But all those pretty markers belonged to a family which wasn't related to my own relatives.

Oh well.  I've not removed all the family, just the problem folks who were being shoved into my family inadvertently.  How did I find out?  Well, there was a Census taken which showed Harry living in another state at the same time that Ellon H. was still living in Virginia...and I knew the link came through the other state.

So I took a detour into someone else's family tree.  It was kind of fun, though of course a waste of time if I were on the clock.  But being interested in genealogy, I've found time is measured entirely differently than it is in industry.

A Swasey name

I found this post on a face book page, strangely enough in the name of HRH Prince Rob Justice.
I have corrected simple spelling mistakes, but none in any names of people or places.  And I've avoided trying to straighten out the weird punctuation that was used.  I did add a bunch of paragraph breaks so it's not one long unbroken tract.  I wonder if this is as good as it sounds!

THE ORIGIN OF THE SWASEY FAMILY IN ENGLAND 1700--late 1800's , England 

One of my most interesting pieces of research has been on the origin of the very unusual name of Swezey or Swasey, to give just 2 of the various spellings.; I shall use the form Swasey as the general form, since it most nearly follows the pronunciation of the name of the John who came over 1629-30. I shall also designate the generations by numbers from the immigrant, i.e; call the first John, John 1, his son John 2, & John's son; Joseph#3; In the Swasey Genealogy by Benjamin F. Swasey there is an item stating that "de Suavesey"; is mentioned in the Dooms Day Book; also the Priory of Swavesey as being given to the Abbey of St. Sergius St. Boeschius. 

Starting with this, I first located the modern village of Swavesey about 10 miles from Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, and in the Victorian History of Cambridgeshire, I found my village with the story that it had been given by William the Conqueror to a Count Allen who had given the church to the Abbey of St. Sergius & St. Bacchus at Angers in France.; An exciting find was in an article on Tokens; in Vol. l of the publications of the Cambridgeshire Antiquarian Society when, in the 15th century, the Village was called Swasey.

 It seems that for over a hundred years in the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth centuries the village name was Swasey.& In fact, when I was there in 1959, the rector of the old church showed me the large communion cup which was engraved Swasey. Next, I began to search early English records for items on the village its inhabitants: I found a great variety of spellings, in 940 Swaefesheale, 1066 Swauesham, 1080 Swausey ; Swausheda, Swaueseia in 1155, Swaveshide in 1203, Swaveseye in 1265 etc, At this point, I realized that I needed to consult a philologist to explain all these different names of the Village. 

I was fortunate in being referred to a Mr. Mathews, an Englishman teaching a year at U.C.L.A.; He took my list in a few moments explained that the names all meant the same thing. Ham meant farm; hede, hidi, hith etc. all referred to a landing place, as in a Marsh of fen, which this area was at the time. All the endings were Anglo-Saxon ; the original form was Swaefes landing, meaning the place where the Swaefes or Swabians landed, Undoubtedly, the Anglo-Saxon form was normanized to Swaveseye, as it appears in the time of William the Conqueror. I have had considerable Correspondence with Mr. P.H. Reaney who is the authority on British names, he tells me that Swavesey is the only parish in England where our name could have originated.; 

 Having settled this, the next problem was to trace the name of the John Swasie, who came to New England 1629/30. I found no Swaseys in Cambrideshire as late as the 16th century.; There were a few references to the name in neighboring counties earlier, but none as late as 1629/30. A search of the records in practically all of the counties of England finally led to a real find in Bridport, Dorsetshire, St. Mary's Parish Registers mentioned the Swasey name with various spellings 24 times between 1605 1638; The Country Archivist at Dorchester furnished 7 more items from 1576 to 1744, Also, in a Parliamentary Return of 1786, there was listed as part of a charity granted earlier to the Netherby Parish (near Bridgeport), an Estate called Swayses.; By 1790, apparently there were no Swaseys left in Bridport, as none are recorded in the Land Tax list of that year.

 A check of London records produced eleven Swasey items from 1677 to 1839, all of these later than the date our John left England. The London telephone directory in 1959 listed 3 Swaseys. I called one of them; the others were a sister and a son.; He was interested, but had no information on the family, except that he believed that they came from Swavesey. Going through old directories, I found a William Sweasey, Stationer, in Postsmouth, Hampshire.  I wrote to him & received an answer from his grandson, saying his grandfather was not living, that they were very much interested in the line, and believed that Swavesey was the place where the family began. More of these Portsmouth Sweaseys later. 

My conclusion as to where John Swasi & his 2 sons, Joseph & John, lived is that it was Bridport. A Christopher Swasi was there in 1576, for 2 hundred years, there were Swaseys in Bridport. Some of them were Quakers, as was our immigrant ancestor. The Rev. John White of Holy Trinity Church in Dorchester was a leader in supporting the movement to the New World & was responsible for sending several ship loads of Puritans from Dorsetshire & neighboring counties. The King Family, whose, daughter Katherine married John 2, sailed from Weymouth, Dorsetshire. That the baptism records of Joseph & John do not appear in the St. Mary's Register might well be explained by the fact that this was a Quaker Family.; 

We still need to connect the Bridport Swaseys with Swavesey. This brings us to the question of when did the name become established as a surname.; For instance in early records John de Swaveseye would mean a man named John, ;who lived in Swaveseye. Mr. Reaney told me that many surnames became fixed in the 13th century, but until you found 2 or 3 generations with the name, you could not be sure you had a surname. In records concerning the Manor of Brokdyschall in Norfolk from 1474 to 1494, I found John Swansey (Swausey) & Richard Swausey, evidently a father & son. This Richard was living in Hertfordshire in 1489 & 1490. Hertfordshire is just north of London & County Norfolk adjoins Cambridgeshire on the northeast. So, by 1494, we have the surname established & on its way to London & to Dorsetshire, where we find Christopher in 1576. 

This leaves a gap of less than a hundred years between Richard in 1494 & Christopher in 1576. We may never find the connecting names, but we have established the place where the name originated & the place from which our immigrant ancestors came. Let us hope that more research will bridge this gap someday. 

Now going back to the Portsmouth Sweaseys. The family was a wholesale stationary business, now in the hands of Charles Sweasey, who is the 3rd generation. Daughter Madeline son James both work in the business. I spent a delightful weekend in their home last summer & loved them all, the mother Stella, and a dear old gentleman, the grandfather, Arthur Sweasey, nearly 90. Madeline is doing some careful work on on their ancestors & has carried the line back to an ancestor married in London in 1746. She will continue with this work, and has already tied in the London Sweaseys as well as a few other cousins. I am hoping she will some day be able to connect the London & Bridport Sweaseys. 

She went with me to see Mr. Reaney in Kent, where we talked over some of the name problems of the early Swaveseys, & she is competent to carry on this research too. I must tell you an interesting bit, Jim wrote me recently of a Warner, Swasey & Asquith firm in Hull, England, a subsidiary of our Cleveland firm, Warner & Swasey. Enough for the Swasey line. 

A Report on the Ancestry of the Swasey,& Swezey Wives:; The Swasey Genealogy gives us Katherine King, wife of John 2 and we have the list of her family from a ship record. I have succeeded in locating them in Somersetshire, a county adjoining Dorsetshire. We have the wife of Joseph 3, Mary Betts, with the names of her parents, Richard & Joanna. The Genealogy says they are from Hemel, Hempstead in Hertfordshire. Another record I have seen gives Richard as coming from Suffolk County. Here is another job for the genealogist. Then comes the wife of Stephen #4, Elizabeth Young. She was the daughter of Benjamin, granddaughter of the Rev. Christopher Young, minister of St. Edmunds in Southwold, Suffolk, England. John was the minister at St. Margarets in nearby Reyden. Both of these churches were of great antiquity & belonged to the same living. In 1956, I visited them both. I believe the family was originally from Suffolk, I noted on the family sheet that Joanna was a family name.

Christopher's grave is just outside the church wall at St. Edmunds & inside is a tablet that tells that John went to America. This was in 1637-1640, he founded the Church at Southhold on Long Island. The Southold church has always considered itself an offspring of the Southold church & there has been an interesting relationship between the 2 churches. There is a Younge family history by Selah Younge, who gives the family an interesting Welsh desscent, which he carries back to the time of William the Conqueror, I have not checked the sources, so cannot vouch for the line. Then comes Christopher Swezey#5 whose wife is not given in the Genealogy, however, I have found the marriage record of Christopher & Juleana Davis, but have not been able to locate her parents.

Now we come to Daniel Swezey #6, (ancestor of all of us here). His wife, Sarah Beal is given in the Genealogy as the daughter of a celebrated music teacher from the state of Connecticut. I have found her Beal line, Mathew #3, her father George 2 & George l. This George came ca. 1726, probably from Kent, England. In the state library at Hartford, Conn., I found the will of George 1, & many records that placed all his descendants. Then in Stiles History of Ancient Windsor, I found several church items, one in 1727 about the rule of singing taught by Mr. Beall, another where a church voted to hire Mr. Beal or Mr. Wilson to teach us to sing, an item in 1767, where George Beal & his son Mathew are teaching the congregation to sing, another item in 1771 to introduce singing by rule, from these items & others, it is apparent that Mathew, the father of our Sarah Beal, and his Father George both taught congregational singing in several Connecticut churches. I have not been able to find names of their wives, George l came with grown sons & probably George 2 was married in England. 

There is a 1742 record of a second marriage for George l. More research is needed to find Mathew's wife, the mother of our Sarah, also a search in Kent, England, where there are many Beals, may some day locate George 1 & his sons. My discovery of the ancestral lines of Susannah Staples, first wife of the Rev. Samuel 7 Swezey, fourth son of Daniel, was perhaps the most exciting breakthrough I ever had. I won't take your time to tell you of this except to say that I have been able to trace all her lines back to colonial times. At present I am working on the ancestry of Rachel Cook, wife of my grandfather Lewis Swezey, who went to Illinois in 1839. Her fathers name was John Cook & my problem there is to trace the right John Cook. When you are tracing ancestors you can be thankful for an unusual name like Swezey.

Minnie Swezey Elmendorf---July 1966

 posted on FB in 2012 at Hrh Prince Rob Justice page.

Dead Ends on the tree...not

These are branches that don't go back any further.  They obviously are not dead ends literally.

I just don't know parents of these people, so this is where this line stops, for now.

My mother's family goes back a few generations for each of the member, except her grandfather Charles Herman Mueller (1868-1946) from Germany.  I've never found his parents.

My mother's father's father's parents are another stopping place.  Samuel James Webb  b. 28 January 1827 in Vienna, Dorchester, Maryland, d. 15 AUG 1877 in Clinton, Dewitt, Texas, and Ellen Ann Delamater Webb, b. 25 Jan 1842 in New York, d. 15 Jul 1876 in Clinton, Dewitt, Texas.

 
And my mother's father's mother's mother, Dorcas White Williams has no parents listed so far.  Her life was from 13 Dec 1825 in Kentucky, to 21 NOV 1900 in Weesatche, Goliad, Texas.  Doras' husband William T. Williams has several generations on both sides going back to Frederick Williams, b. 13 Feb 1764 in Orangeburg, Orangeburg, South Carolina, d. 18 Nov 1831 in McMinn, Tennessee.

And now I must diverge off this path I set for myself.  Of the hundred or so ancestors who have shorter branches, this gentleman has a lot of data which I haven't downloaded yet to my tree.  War of 1812 and so on.  So I'll leave you here as I go delving into a life that has lots of records attached to it.

If the people who lived without a lot of paper only knew.  I honor them that they lived on this earth, loved with passions unknown to me, and left me some of their DNA to carry forward to other generations in the future. 

 

Let's go Dutch

I've been doing lots of fun things in genealogy lately.  Yesterday I proved my great grandmother's maiden name started with a "Z" rather than a "T" which opened up a whole new world.  Now I want to figure out where people named Zylstra might have originated.

She married a Swasey, lived in Charleston, SC, and her mother came from England.  Perhaps her mother had originated somewhere else and gave that as her origin to the census taker.  There aren't any birth records for Mrs. Charlotta Zylstra nor any note (yet) of who her husband was.

Holland seems to be the first choice on Ancestry, with a few people immigrating to the US from Germany of that name.

And the meaning for Zylstra that Ancestry DOT com gives is...Frisian: topographic name for someone who lived by a sluice, from an agent noun based on zijl ‘sluice’, ‘pump’. Compare Van Zyl.

Another source speaks about Dutch surnames...

From about 1812 through 1826, the Dutch were first required to choose surnames. This event is called the "naamsaanneming". It was ordered by Napoleon who occupied the country at that time and was trying to take a census. These surnames would later come in handy for legal purposes such as inheritance. Prior to the introduction of surnames, the Dutch used a system of patronymics - the surname of the child reflected the first name of the father - similar to the system used in the Scandinavian countries. Jan's son Willem would be known as Willem Jans/Jansz/Janszoon or something similar. Jan's daughter Grietje would use the surname Jans or Jansdr.

Unfortunately some Dutch citizens did not take this name choosing seriously, thinking it was just a passing fancy, and selected names such as De Keyser (The Emperor), Lanckpoop (long poop) and Zondervan (without a surname). To this day these names are still in use.

Other Dutch naming customs took a physical attribute of the person or surroundings, a trade, a title or even an animal as the surname. Examples are de Jong (the young), van Dyke (of or living near a dyke), Meijer/Meyer, meaning bailiff or steward and Vos, meaning fox. Towns and physical features were also source of names. The words "van der", "aan het" and "de" that are part of many Dutch names are called tussenvoegsels. Although they are officially part of the name they are not included in searches. If the surname is van den Berg, then Berg is the important part of the surname that should be entered in the search criteria on Dutch websites. In the United States, the same name might be entered as one, two or three separate words. It should also be noted that the letter combination "ij" is changed to "y" in many Dutch names. One other useful tidbit about the Dutch is that the women retain their maiden names on most records. This makes it much easier to find their families as well.

Except for the colonial period of exploration and trade that lasted from the early 1600s through 1664 when New Netherland (New York) was sold to England, Dutch families did not appear to move around very much until the mid -1800s. That first early migration during the 1600s resulted in a large Dutch population living on the east coast of the United States, especially along the Hudson River, New York City, northern New Jersey and Lewes, Delaware. Dutch immigration to the United States prior to 1845 averaged about 200 people per year. After 1845 that number increased rapidly due to a potato famine, high unemployment and division in the Reformed Church. The major destinations for the Dutch were the New York/New Jersey area; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Holland, Michigan; and Pella, Iowa.  A large number of these immigrants came from the rural provinces and were farmers.  (Source: http://www.archives.com/genealogy/family-heritage-dutch.html)

And more information is here...

This surname of ZYLSTRA was a Dutch topographic name for someone who lived by a patch of stagnant water, i.e. a lake or canal. The name is also spelt ZIJLSTRA, VAN DER ZYL, VAN ZIJL and ZYLMAN. Habitation names were originally acquired by the original bearer of the name, who, having lived by, at or near a place, would then take that name as a form of identification for himself and his family. When people lived close to the soil as they did in the Middle Ages, they were acutely conscious of every local variation in landscape and countryside. Every field or plot of land was identified in normal conversation by a descriptive term. If a man lived on or near a hill or mountain, or by a river or stream, forests and trees, he might receive the word as a family name. Almost every town, city or village in early times, has served to name many families. The Dutch language is most closely related to Low German, and its surnames have been influenced both by German and French naming practices. The preposition 'van' is found especially with habitation names, and the 'de' mainly with nicknames. Compared to other countries, Dutch heraldry is notably simpler, some of the shields bearing only a single charge. Generally speaking one helmet, one shield and one crest has been used, quartering is uncommon and mottoes are rare.

Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their surname as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God. However much the individual may have liked or disliked the surname, they were stuck with it, and people rarely changed them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error. Among the humbler classes of European society, and especially among illiterate people, individuals were willing to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks and priests as officially bestowing a new version of their surname, just as they had meekly accepted the surname they had been born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Ellis Island in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization.   (Source: http://www.4crests.com/zylstra-coat-of-arms.html)

Welcome to my entry to Sepia Saturday this week. 

I know I don't have any shots of men with pipes, nor shaking hands, nor wearing funny hats, nor boys sitting on walls overlooking the whole shebang.

We have 3 children born of Charlotta Zylstra, in Charleston, SC.  She and 2 of her grown children had moved to St. Augustine, FL by 1850.  Actually her son, Peter was appointed the Postmaster there in 1840. 

1850 St. Augustine FL Census

Her daughter had married Captain Alexander Swasey, who also called Charleston his home.  He did have residency in St. Augustine, Florida territory, in the 1840 census however. 

For now I'm settling into knowing a part of my ancestry is probably Dutch, and still to be explored, if possible.  And Captain Swasey married the daughter of an immigrant who was listed when she was around 65 as being from England.  

Faces

For Sepia Saturday this week, I'd like to share an ancient photo of an ancestor...and it's naturally sepia too!  Come over to check out the rest of the Sepia portraits!

 OK, I may have to go searching through my family tree to figure out who he really was.  I love that my grandmother wrote right on the picture, she was Ada S Rogers. At least she said she was asking.  And the answer seems to be No, his great uncle...then there's a signature that might be Zulie...but it's really a stretch.  It is Ada S. Rogers' handwriting at the top however. saying Zulie G. Swasey uncle.

Let's see.  Ada. Swasey Rogers was daughter of Zulieka Granger Phillips Swasey, whose mother was Mary Hull Granger Phillips, who had a brother George W. Granger, and their father was George Tyler Granger.  I found the picture on Ancestry.com for George W. Granger, who would have been Zuleika G.P. Swasey's uncle.  However the notations take it back further, to being a brother of George Tyler's...in order to be her great uncle.   However, I haven't found out any more about George Tyler Granger's family tree yet.

So I'll leave this delightfully sober photograph attached to the person where I found it, though the notations sure sound like it should go back another generation.  But one thing I've sure learned in doing research is that researchers make mistakes, even my grandmother and perhaps her mother Zulieka might have made unclear notations.  It's only when I get to read the hand-written census reports, or pictures from family Bibles that I can verify things...and many times whoever transcribed them originally has made errors.

I am loving doing this kind of research though!

I was wrong

...and ignorant.  Mainly I published here (this is public, therefore, printing something here is publishing)...something about my ancestors which I have since learned was a mistake.

Probably nobody really cares, who is alive today.  But the reason I'm putting these dates and names into digital realism is that those who come after me may sometime wonder about these elders who have gone before.

Otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Tree of Life

What I found out yesterday was that my grandfather's mother lived into her 60's.  I had posted that he and his sister were raised by their guardians when their father died when my grandfather was 2.  Not so apparently. 

The census of _______ shows that their mother, the widow, had a household with both children living in it.

I will now check the census of the guardians through the years and see when (and if) the children lived there.

I did find that the mother in question lived with her married daughter, until her death in 1924.

I also found out that my father was no longer living with his parents prior to his marriage to my mother.  At least according to the census.

Lots of information.  The most fun is all the mispellings.  But when the birth dates and places are considered, if it sounds like Ada, but was spelled Eda, it's still the same person. One census report spells Rogers as Regus.  But that reporter had awful handwriting.  You really couldn't tell where he/she wrote Texas if it was anything like that word.

It is great that the Federal Census Bureau actually has made available up till 1940, the actual sheets of the census from everywhere (at least everywhere I looked).  Genealogist heaven.  Now I can see who moved where, and most important, who lived with them, within a decade at least.  Of course this only covers a few hundred years that the US has had Census reports.  But those are a few thousand of my relatives!  No kidding, by the time I go back 5 generations and my "kin" had 11 children who mostly all married and had maybe not so many children, there's a possible hundred cousins of some level of remove.

And then there are their children, wives with their parents and siblings, and their children, husbands, etc.  You didn't know you were a relative of mine, did you!  I am related to Gibbs, Wilson, Booth, Webb, Cannon, Phillips, Swasey, Ross, Bass, Pulsifer, Granger, Whitty, McElhaney, Powell...and so on.