DEAR GENEA-SANTA 2016

Dear Genea-Santa,

Hi, it's me again! First, I'd like to thank you for those Worcester County Probate files over on the AmericanAncesters.org site.  And thanks for the hint from Elizabeth Pyle Handler that helped me fill in a whole lot of blanks on my Moore family ancestors.

I'm going to try to keep my wish-list short and sweet this year. Here I go:

-Please help get more Suffolk and Plymouth, Ma. County probate files online,

- I'd really appreciate it if you could do the same for the court records for Middlesex, Plymouth, Suffolk, and Worcester County court files, I just know there's probably some juicy family stories in them like the ones I found in the Essex County court files,

-Could you  get me a bit more ambition to get out next year and drive to the towns my ancestors lived in? 

-As usual, I need help in breaking down a few more brick walls, especially the one for the Elusive John Cutter West,

-Finally, I want an app that will help me find the gravestones I'm looking for when I visit one of the cemeteries where an ancestor is buried. Something that makes it easy, like maybe a hologram of a flashing neon arrow pointing down at the headstone as a trumper blares. Maybe you can get the  Ronco Company to manufacture a Ronco Easy Headstone Spotter?

That's it for this year Genea-Santa! Thanks again! 

And Merry Genea-Christmas!



   
((Inspired by a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun prompt from Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings.))

HOW MANY SURNAMES ON MY DATABASE?

A few weeks back Randy Seaver's topic for one of his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenges was
How Many Surnames  In Your Family Tree Base?

It's taken me a few weeks to get around to it but here's mine. I have 31,041 people on my RootsMagic
database at present. I ran the Surname Statistics List report and came up with 86 pages, with 39
surnames per page for a total of 3361 surnames.

Here's the top 15 surnames. You'll notice that three of them are some variation of Ellingwood, My great grandmother came from the branch that used Ellingwood, but the spelling in colonial times was either
Ellinwood or Ellenwood. Most of the Ellenwoods are from a branch that emigrated to Canada before the Revolution,

The list also reflects the fact that much of my research the past few years was based on two Ellingwood genealogy books and one one book on Barker genealogy. One of the benefits of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is that it is getting me to look further into other branches on my family tree.

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: MALE ANCESTORS' AGE AT DEATH

The latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver is entitled Male Ancestors Age at Death. Here's the challenge:

1) Review your Pedigree Chart (either on paper or in your genealogy management software program) and determine the age at death of your Male ancestors back at least five generations (and more if you want to).
2)  Tell us the lifespan years for each of these ancestors.  Which of your male ancestors in this group lived the longest?  Which lived the shortest? 
3)  Share your results in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.

Once again I have more information on my Dad's side of the family than from my Mom's side.
Her grandparents were all immigrants from Ireland and Germany and so far I've found very little
information about them before they came to America.

On my Barker side of the family two of my were brothers, both sons of Nathaniel Barker.

The two ancestors who died at the youngest ages died of  disease. On Mom's side, Charles Offinger died at 33 from consumption, and on Dad's side Frank Barker died from "pneumonia
after La Grippe"


 
The longest lived was my 2x great grandfather and Civil War veteran Asa F. Ellingwood who lived to be 93 years old.


Father
Floyd E West Jr. (1924-1984) 60 years

Grandfathers
Floyd E West Sr (1893-1970) 73 years
Edward F White Sr. (1899-1981) 82 years

Great Grandfathers
Philip J West (1868-1954) 86 years
Frank W Barker (1865-1905) 40 years
Edward J White (1873-1939) 66 years
John McFarland (1852-1924) 72 years

2x Great Grandfathers
Jonathan Phelps West (1834-1917) 83 years
Asa F Ellingwood (1828-1921)  93 years
Nathaniel S Barker (1830-1884) 54 years
Amos H Barker (1828-1907) 78 years
Patrick J White (1848-1902) 54 years
Charles J Offinger (1848-1881) 33 years
Michael McFarland (Dates Unknown)
Patrick Kelley (1829-1886)

3x great grandfathers
John Cutter West (1802-1862) 60 years
Philip Richardson (Death Date Unknown)
John Ellingwood (1798-1821) 33 years
James Thomas Dunham (1805-1888) 83 years
Nathaniel Barker (1794-1884) 90 years
Wesley Coburn (1802-1877) 75 years
Nathaniel Barker (1794-1884) 90 years
Cyrus Moore (Death Date Unknown)
Edward White (Dates Unknown)
Thomas Powers (Dates Unknown)
Jacob Offinger (Dates Unknown)
Christian Luick (Dates Unknown)
Unknown McFarland
Unknown
Rodger Kelley (1795-1860) 65 years
James Byrne (Dates Unknown)

WHERE WERE MY ANCESTORS 150 YEARS AGO?

Here's last week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:

1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 25 June 1866 - 150 years ago.
2)  List your ancestors, their family members, their birth and death years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist?
3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.

On my Mom's side of the family, most of my ancestors were still living in Ireland,
Scotland, or Germany, and I have no record of where they were or might have been
in 1866. I haven't found much yet on my 2x great grandparents who were in this country, Patrick J White (1848- 1902) & Mary (Powers) White (1848-?) and their parents.
Part of the problem is the commonality of the Irish family names in a period when Massachusetts was seeing a great influx of Irish immigrants.

Even on my Dad's side with all his family living in Maine and New Hampshire
there are a few missing a date of death, so I don't know if they were even alive
in 1866. In those cases I've left their names off this post.

Anyway, here's what information I was able to find on the paternal side of my
family:

My 2x great grandparents Asa F Ellingwood (1828-1921) and Florilla (Dunham) Ellingwood  (1832-1917)were living on a farm in Dummer, Coos, NH with their 8 children.. My 2x great grandmother Clara Ellingwood 1865-1901) was just 1 year old.

2x great grandfather Jonathan Phelps West (1834-1917) and his second wife Louisa A Richardson(1837-1925) were living on their farm in Upton, Me.

My 3x great grandmother Arvilla (Ames)West (1810-1907) was  a widow of 4 years, her husband John Cutter West having died in 1862. She was living on the farm in Upton, Me. with Jonathan and Louisa

My 2x great grandparents Nathaniel Barker(1794-1884) & Huldah (Hastings) Barker (1798-1884) were living  on a farm in Albany, Oxford, Me. My 3x great grandparents Nathaniel S. Barker(1830-1884) & Lucy (Coburn)Barker(1842-1904) were living with them. My great grandfather Frank W. Barker(1865-1905) was only 1 year old.

My 3x great grandparents Amos Hastings Barker (1828-1907) & Betsy J(Moore)Barker (1842-1924) were also living in Albany, Oxford, Me on another farm with their 6 children.

3x great grandmother Hannah (Upton)Moore Emery (1814-1896) was also living on a farm in Albany, Me with her second husband, Peter Emery.

3x great grandfather James Thomas Dunham(1805-1888) was in Greenwood, Me with his second wife, Polly Lowe.

3x great grandfather Wesley Coburn was a widower living in Albany, Maine.

That's all I know at present.

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN:MY 2X GREAT GRANDPARENTS' LIFESPANS

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has an interesting Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenge regarding the lifespans of my 2x great grandparents. Here's the Challenge:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:
1)  We each have 16 great-great grandparents.  How did their birth and death years vary?  How long were their lifespans? 

2)  For this week, please list your 16 great-great grandparents, their birth year, their death year, and their lifespan in years.  You can do it in plain text, in a table or spreadsheet, or in a graph of some sort.

3)  Share your information about your 16 great-great grandparents with us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook or Google+.  If you write your own blog post, please leave a link as a comment to this post.

Okay, I decided to compare the two sides of my family. What stood out to me immediately was that my 2x great grandparents on Dad's side lived much longer than Mom's,  with five living past
age 80 an one just missing it by a year.

Dad's Side
Jonathan Phelps West  (1834-1917) 83 years
Louisa Almata Richarson (1837-1925)  88 years
Asa Freeman Ellingwood (1828-1921)  93 years
Florilla Dunham (1832-1917) 85 years
Nathaniel S Barker (1830-1884) 54 years
Lucy E Coburn (1842-1904) 62 years
Amos Hasting Barker (1828-1907) 79 years
Betsey Jane Moore (1842-1924) 82 years

Mom's Side
Patrick J White (1848-1902) 54 years
Mary Powers ( 1848-?) ? years
Charles Offinger (1848-1881) 34 years
Johanna Luick (1844-1908) 64 years
Michael McFarland (?-?)  ? years
Dorothy  _____  (?-?)  ? years
Patrick Kelly (1829-1886) 57 years
Anne Byrne (1831-1900) 69 years

My Dad's farmer ancestors in Maine had longer lives than Mom's Irish and German immigrants in Boston. Of course, I'm missing information on some of the Irish relatives but I don't think that would
make a difference in the wide disparity of ages.

I hope I take after Dad's side of the family.   

DEAR GENEA-SANTA 2015

Dear Genea-Santa
You've been so good to me in 2015, what with all those free Essex and Middlesex County
Probate Records images and other things on AmericanAncestors.org. That's been keeping me
busy most of the year and I really appreciate eveything I discovered. So I'm going to keep my
requests for 2016 short. I don't expect you to give me all of this but any one would be nice:

-More help with finding probate records online would be nice, especially for Worcester County, Ma. I'm hoping FamilySearch will add more images soon to their "Massachusetts, Worcester County, Probate Files, 1731-1925 " collection.

-Court record files for more Massachusetts counties would be great too, especially for Middlesex,
Suffolk, and Worcester counties.  

-This one might be a bit more difficult: magic glasses. Magic glasses that will let me read the colonial documents with the worst handwriting. Hard to believe that there were people with worse handwriting than mine, but there were, and I need some sort of edge to decipher their while trying to decipher their scribbling.

-And finally, still waiting Santa for that hint that will let me break down that John Cutter West brick wall!

That's it for this year, Santa. If you can come through on any one of those I'll be very happy. Or surprise me, because the surprises you gave me this past year were great!
Merry Genea-Christmas!
Bill 
 
((Inspired by a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun prompt from Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings.))

"WORKING FOR A LIVING" PT3: MOM'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY

These are my male ancestors on my mother's side as far back as I've been able to
trace them so far. While Dad's ancestors in the 19th century lived in rural Maine, Mom's
came over from Germany and Ireland and settled in Massachusetts, living in Cambridge
and Boston.  My 2x great grandfathers were artisans, although Patrick G White didn't
work at being a gilder very long, turning to other occupations. My Irish McFarland
and White great grandfathers worked at more physical jobs. Finally, my grandfather
Edward F White Sr. worked at a variety of places but there is a big gap in my knowledge
of what he was doing in the time after his divorce from my grandmother while he
was avoiding the court orders to pay child support for my Mom and her brother.

Here's what I've found out so far about this side of the family:

2x great grandfathers
Patrick G White (1848-1902)
1870 Marriage Record Gilder
!880  Census  Retail Grocer
1902 death Record Clerk

Charles Offinger (1848-1881)
1870 Census Cabinetmaker
1870 Marriage Record Cabinetmaker
1880 Census Cabinetmaker
1881 Death Record  Cabinetmaker

Great grandfathers
John McFarland (1852-1924)
1900 Census Laborer
1910 Census Laborer Street Dept.
1920 Census Gardener City
1924 Death Record Retired

Edward J White (1873-1939)
1895 Marriage Record Teamster
1900 Census Teamster
1910 Census  Teamster Wholesale Flour
1920 Census Stage Builder Government
1930 Census Teamster City of Boston

Grandfather
Edward F White Sr (1899-1981)
1920 Census Steamfitter Railroad
1924 Marriage Record Steamfitter
1981 Death Certificate Retired Security Guard
1981 Obituary School Crossing Guard and Cab Driver  

"WORKING FOR A LIVING" PT2: A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT DAD'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY

Just a few quick thoughts about the occupations of my Dad's male ancestors:

-All Dad's family lived in Maine and New Hampshire from the late 18th and early 19th
centuries on. so the main occupation on the list is farming. But some of them alternated that
with working at things that they could do while still living on their farms: miller, "lumbering",
blacksmith, or wheelwright. In some cases their sons were working the farm they all lived on.

-I've blogged before about my 3x great grandfather being on the 1850 Census for both the
neighboring towns of Mason and Albany, Maine. I'm still not sure how that happened, unless
his property straddled the town line with the mill being in Mason which would explain the two different occupations as well.

-Two of my ancestors, Nathaniel Barker and John Laughton V, appeared to have turned their
farms over to their sons and moved into town where they were working as "laborers" in their 70's.

-Great grandfather Frank W. Barker was the only ancestor in these generations to not have
worked at farming as an adult. I wonder if it was just a matter of better pay or if he was
drawn in by the excitement of working for a railroad?

-It will take me a bit longer to list the occupations of earlier ancestors in Dad's family since
the censuses before 1850 don't list occupations. Other documents, such as Probate files and
Land Records will help me there, as well as the information in court case files and family
genealogies.

As for my Mother's side of the family, since I don't have much information about the
ancestors who lived in Germany and Ireland, the list of occupations will be shorter. I'll
deal with that in another post. 

"WORKING FOR A LIVING" PT1: DAD'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenge this past Saturday was something
I had been thinking of doing already but hadn't done as yet:

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:
1)  Geneablogger Diane Gould Hall posted WORKDAY WEDNESDAY – What kind of work did your ancestors do? on her Michigan Family Trails blog this past week, and I thought the topic could be used as an SNGF post.

2)  Please go back several generations (say parents or grandparents or great-grandparents) and list the occupations that they had in the records you've found for them.  You could do this, say, by ancestor table number.

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook or Google+.

It took me the past few days to work on this because of the amount of information I had to
look through, which is mostly on my Dad's side of the family. For that reason this post
will deal with my paternal line, and my Mom's family will be in a seperate post.

Here's what my Dad's ancestors worked at going back to some of my 4x great grandfathers
Grandfather
Floyd E West Sr (1893-1970)
1915 WW1 Army Enlistment Record- "Knowledge of any vocation: Farming"
1920 Census- Occupation-Farmer  Industry-Cropper
1923 Upton  Directory-Farmer  and saw mill
1925 Oxford County Business Directory-saw mill
1927 Upton Directory "frmr moved to Wentworth Location, NH"
1940 Census- Occupation "Operates tractor  Industry- lumbering"

Great Grandfathers
Philip J West (1868-1954)
1910 Census Farmer
1920 Census Occupation-Farmer  Industry-General Farming
1923 Upton  Directory-Farmer  and saw mill
1925 Oxford County Business Directory-saw mill
1927 Upton Directory frmer and saw mill
1930 Census Occupation-Millwright  Industry-Birch Mill
1940 Census-Occupation- Sawyer  Industry-Saw Mill

Frank W Barker (1865-1905)
1898 Marriage Record "Railroading"
1900 Cenus Railroad baggagemaster
1905 Death Record Baggagemaster G.T.R.  (Grand Trunk Railroad)

2x Great Grandfathers
Jonathan P West (1834-1917)
1860 Census Farmer
1870  Census Farmer
1880  Census Farmer
1900  Census Farmer

Asa Ellingwood (1828-1921)
1850 Census-Wheelwright
1860 Census-Mechanic
1870 Census-Farmer
1880 Census-Farmer
1921 Death Record-Farmer

Amos H Barker (1828-1907)
1860 Census Farmer
1870 Census Farmer
1880 Census Farmer  
1900 Census Farmer

Nathaniel S. Barker (1830-1884)
1860 Census Millman
1870 Census Farmer
1880 Census Farmer  

3x great grandfathers
John Cutter West (1802-1862)
1850 Census Blacksmith
1860 Census-Farmer & Blacksmith

Philip Richardson (1794-?)
1850  Census Farmer
1860  Census Farmer
1870  Census Farmer
1880 Census Farmer

James T Dunham (1805-1888)
1850 Census  Wheelwright
1860 Census Farmer
1870 Census Wheelwright

Nathaniel Barker (1794-1884)
1850  Census Farmer
1860  Census Farmer
1870  Census Laborer

Wesley Coburn (1802-1877)
1850 Census Wheelwright (29Aug 1850, Albany, Me)
1850 Census Miller (26Aug 1850, Mason, Me)

4x great grandfathers
James Dunham  (1775-1864)
1864  Death Record  Farmer

John Laughton (1790-?)
1850  Census Farmer
1860 Census Laborer

Before I discuss my Mom's lines, I'll have a brief post about some of the things in this post.

To be Continued...

THE "WHEN I WAS YOUNG" GENEA-MEME, PART 3

Finally I've caught up with the "When I was Young" meme from Randy Seaver's
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges on his Genea-Musings blog of a few
weeks back. Here's my answers to Part 3 from questions originally posed by Alona
Tester on her lonetester HQ blog.



16.What was entertainment when you were young?
Mostly tv,  listening to music on the radio, and reading.

17.Do you remember what it was it like when your family got a new fangled invention? 
(ie. telephone, TV, VCR, microwave, computer?)
Not too many newfangled inventions when I was really young. My Mom's stereo console,
and the portable phonograph that my sister and I had to play 45's on come to mind first.

18.Did your family have a TV? Was it b&w or colour? And how many channels did you get?
We had black & white tvs. I remember the Beechwood company tv that was a smallish
tv built into a cabinet of some tan wood. At first there were only two channels in Boston,
Channels 4 & 7, and then Channel 5 came along towards the end of the 1950's. I bought
my parents the first family color tv,  a Motorola portable with a lime green and creme
colored plastic casing that had both UHF and VHF channels. That portable was passed
down and around for nearly 20 years after my folks got a larger tv.   

19.Did your family move house when you were young? Do you remember it?
Four times: From 37 Beach St in Malden to the Dorchester section of Boston at 101
Capen St, Then a few years later we moved to 18 Evans St, a few blocks away. Finally
we left Boston and moved south to a house here in Abington on Bicknell Hill Rd.

20.Was your family involved in any natural disasters happening during your childhood (ie.fire, flood, cyclone, earthquake etc)
There were several hurricanes that happened when I was younger back in the 1950s while
we were living in Malden. I've blogged before about how Dad drove his car down the flooded
street to get home.

21.Is there any particular music that when you hear it, sparks a childhood memory?
Some of the older songs that were performed on the Mitch Miller albums makes me
remember the parties at 18 Evans St and Mom playing those albums. Also, anything
by Andy Williams or Johnny Mathis reminds me of Mom playing one of their albums while
she cleaned house and she sang along with them.

22.What is something that an older family member taught you to do?
My Granduncle Frank taught me to make tomato sandwiches, much to my Mom's dismay;
I used too much mayonnaise and cut the tomato slices too big. But I was 8 years old when
he taught me.

23.What are brands that you remember from when you were a kid?
Waleco Candy,  Andrews and Swett Carpet Cleaners, Robert Hall Clothing stores, T.V.
Time Popcorn, Cushman Bakery, S.S. Pierce.  

24.Did you used to collect anything? (ie. rocks, shells, stickers … etc.)
Baseball cards and comic books, and postage stamps. I still have my stamp album, but
the baseball cards and comic books are loooong gone.

25. Share your favourite childhood memory.
Hmm. Hard to narrow it down. I think maybe the hot summer nights before we had
air conditioning, when we'd get in the car and Dad would drive us down to the beach,
We had all the car windows open and we'd sit there where it was cooler until finally we
fell asleep. Then Dad would drive us home and wake us up when we got there. 

THE "WHEN I WAS YOUNG" GENEA-MEME, PART 2

I'm still struggling to catch up with Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun
challenges from his Genea-Musings blog. This is part 2 of the When I Was Young
challenge:

1)  Geneablogger Alona Tester has devised a new meme called the "When I Was Young" genea-meme on her blog, LoneTester HQ.

2)  Since the genea-meme is 25 questions, let's do the rest 10 at a time.  This week, answer questions 6 to 15.

3)  Share your answers on your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook post or a Google+ post.


6.When you were young, do you remember what it was that you wanted to grow up to be?
A cowboy. Hey, my last name IS West after all! And so was the last name of the Range
Rider's sidekick on tv!

7.Did you have a favourite teacher at school?
Miss Murphy, my second grade teacher at the Linden Elementary School in Malden. My
Mom told me when I was older that I had a big crush on Miss Murphy. 

8.How did you get to school?
I walked, up hill, two miles, in the snow. Ok, not that far, but I did walk. I never took
a school bus to school until we moved to Abington and I took it to high school. 

9.What games did playtime involve?
Hmm. In Malden, cowboys and indians, mostly. When we moved to Boston it was stick ball,
wiffle ball, "Three Flies Out" off the porch steps, and flipping baseball cards. But mostly I read a lot.

10.Did you have a cubby house?
Nope, no club house; in Boston, the front steps were your club house.

11.What was something you remember from an early family holiday?
Most of our family vacations were visits to Maine to visit my Dad's family. I remember on one
trip a bunch of us cousins sat in the back of Aunt Flossie's station wagon as we drove up
to visit our grandfather. We sang "99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall". And there was the fishing
trip where I only caught half a fish. Some animal had already eaten the bottom half.

12.What is a memory from one of your childhood birthday’s or Christmas?
The Christmas our folks got us a portable record player and we heard them playing the
Alvin & The Chipmunks "Christmas Song" several times when we were supposed to be asleep.  

13.What childhood injuries do you remember?
I never had any broken bones. I had corrective surgery several times and during one stay
they put me in a room with adult men, one of whom was a meat packer. I increased my
adult vocabulary and learned to play blackjack as a result.

14.What was your first pet?
Our first pet was a fox terrier named Saddles who was already there when I was born. He
was killed in a dogfight with a larger dog, a boxer, that lived across the street from us.

15.Did your grandparents, or older relatives tell you stories of “when I was young ..?”
Unfortunately, not that I can recall. My Dad's parents lived in Maine , and my Mom's mother
passed away when I was seven, so I can't recall if she told me any stories. I never met my
other grandfather.

THE "WHEN I WAS YOUNG" GENEA-MEME, PART 1

I wanted to do this Saturday Night Genea-Fun Challenge from Randy Seaver of
Genea-Musings but wanted to finish up my blogposts on Thomas Tuck first. So
here it is now. (Better late than never!) The rules for the Challenge were:

 
 1)  Geneablogger Alona Tester has devised a new meme called the "When I Was Young" genea-meme on her blog, LoneTester HQ.

2)  Since the genea-meme is 25 questions, let's do them five at a time.  This week, answer questions 1 to 5.

3)  Share your answers on your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook post or a Google+ post.


Here's my answers:

1.Do you (or your parents) have any memorabilia from when you were a baby? (ie. baby book, lock of hair, first shoes etc.)
I have knife from a silverware set my godmother Nancy gave me, I also have a sketch a
friend of my parents did of me,

and telegrams my Dad, grandmother, and Uncle Ed sent my Mom in the hospital after I was
born. I think they came with flowers:    

2. Do you know if you were named after anyone?
Nope, I was the first William that I know of in my Dad's family. 

3. And do you know of any other names your parents might have named you?
My parents were originally going to name me Michael after one of my Mom's uncles.
I don't know why they changed their minds.

4. What is your earliest memory?
 All my earliest memories involve my maternal grandmother Agnes (McFarland) White who
watched me while my folks were at work. One involves her cleaning the goldfish bowl and
accidentally losing the goldfish down the drain of the sink. The other one is of a roofer falling
off the roof of our house and Nana telling me not to look out the window.

5. Did your parent/s (or older siblings) read, sing or tell stories to you? Do you remember any of these?
 My grandmother and mother sang  "Pony Boy" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to me, and probably played "Patty Cake" with me. Mom liked to sing so there were probably other songs as well that I can't recall from that far back. And I remember someone reading "Doctor Dan the BandAid Man".
   
 

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: HAIR-RAISING FAMILY ADVENTURES!

It's been awhile since I did one of  Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy
Fun Challenges. I couldn't resist the hair-raisin one this week: 


1)  This week we're going to look for men's facial hair in our photograph collection.

2)  Find one or more photographs of men in your ancestral families that have facial hair - a mustache and/or a beard.  

3)  Show the photograph if you have it and tell us a bit about the person shown.   If you don't have a digital photograph, please describe the man and his facial hair the best you can.

4)  Write your own blog post, or a comment to this blog post, or a comment on Facebook or Google+.


It turns out I have quite a few ancestors with facial hair who posed proudly showing
it for posterity:

3x great grandfather Philip Richardson

2x great grandfather Asa F Ellingwood

2x great grandfather Jonathan Phelps West

2nd great grandfather Amos Hastings Barker

And most of Amos' sons and sons-in-law had mustaches:

I think for many years men grew beards because they kept their faces
warmer in Winter. Well, that's my theory, anyway. 

Grandfather Floyd E West & great grandfather Philip J West.

Our Dad occasionally grew a mustache but I don't think Mom liked it so
it didn't hang around very long when he did.

And as for me, well, I've been trying to grow a beard or mustache for over
fifty years now and all I have to show for it is some fuzz!

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: TWO DEGREES OF SEPARATION

I'm behind on Randy Seaver's  Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges on
his Genea-Musings Blog. This is the challenge from a week ago Saturday:


Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):
1)  Using your ancestral lines, how far back in time can you go with two degrees of separation?  That means "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor."  When was that second ancestor born?

2)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, in a status line on Facebook or a stream post on Google Plus.

I've done two earlier blogposts on this topic so I'm sort of running out of ancestors I knew who knew someone. For this one, I remembered this picture:

The dark haired little boy closest to the adults is my paternal grandfather Floyd
West. The adults are my 2x great grandparents Jonathan Phelps West and Louisa
(Richardson) West. Jonathan was born in 1834, Louisa in 1837. I knew my grandfather
so through him I have two degrees of separation from Jonathan and Louisa!

BACK TO BLOGGING!

My blogging has fallen off a bit the past few weeks, but I was busy with other
genealogical matters: There was the First World War and Civil War Challenge
summaries that needed to be finished. I was doing some research for a friend and
sending him what I found (and I'm still working on that). So I fell behind on the
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks meme, and was just about to start blogging to catch up
when fellow geneablogger Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings did a blog post that the  
Middlesex County, Massachusetts Probate Records, 1648-1871, were now up at the
NEHGS website. Well, I have Middlesex County ancestors, so I went over to check
and see what I could find and...

...I was lost. I always felt that most of my ancestors were from Essex and Plymouth
counties, but as I kept finding file after file I realized I have more Middlesex county
ancestors than those from Plymouth County.  I spent four days downloading wills
and probates, and I'm sharing what I've found with my aunt and cousin in Ohio who
got me started in genealogy. Next I will send copies to some of my distant cousins.
And there will be plenty of blogposts on what I've found, such as:

- Proof of the identity of the parents of my 5x great grandmother Lydia Phelps.

-The file that proves I have Nutts in my family tree.

- The setting aside of ancestor John Nutting's will by a judge due to what seems
like a bit of hanky-panky.

So thanks Randy for leading me to these goodies!  

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: YOUR FATHER'S MOTHER'S PATRILINEAL LINE

I'm finally getting around to the latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy
Seaver's Genea-Musings blog: 


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

1) What was your father's mother's name?

2) What is your father's mother's patrilineal line? That is, her father's father's father's ... back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

3) Can you identify male sibling(s) of your father's mother, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that  patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

4)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, or in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or Google Plus post.

Ok, here goes! 
1)My Dad's mother was Cora Berthella Barker, born 27 Oct 1899 at Bethel Me., died June 1987 at Errol, Coos, NH.

2) She was descended on both her patrilineal and matrilineal side from immigrant
ancestor Richard Barker who died at Andover Ma on 18Mar 1693. Here's the patrilineal
line of descent:

3)Cora had a half brother and three brothers:
    -Henry L Barker (1891-1969), the half brother, had a son Robert G Barker (1922-?)
    -Brother Frank W Barker  (1910-1979) had no children I can find record of as yet,
    -Brother Earl H Barker died in infancy in 1903.
    -Youngest brother Harry H. Barker (1905-1967) had one son, Percy Barker (1939-
      1985) for whom I've found no record of marriage or children.

Oh well, out of luck!

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: WHAT SOURCES HAVE I USED THE MOST?

It'a another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver over at the
Genea-Musings blog. This week has to do with sources and citations and these
are the rules:

 Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:

1)  Have you done a good job of citing your sources in your genealogy management program or online family tree?  How are you doing?  How many source citations do you have, and how many people are in your tree?  What is the sources to persons ratio?

2)  Which master source (e.g., 1900 U.S. census, Find A Grave, specific book, etc.) do you have the most citations for?  How many?  How did you figure this out?

3)  Tell us in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or on Facebook or Google+ in a post.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your post on this blog post.



So I hope I've done this right:

I post my research primarily on Ancestry.com and then download it to my RootsMagic6
database on my hard drive. My last download  was in November, 2013. On that  I have 30,582  people with 78516 citations from 509 sources. Like Randy, I used a Source List
Report. Mine ended up at 2242 pages and these are the sources with the highest number
of citations:

1930 Federal Census: 8344 citations.

1910 Federal Census: 7623 citations

1920 Federal Census: 7240 citations

1940 Federal Census: 5811 citations

1880 Federal Census: 4039 citations

Social Security Death Index: 3578 citations

The Ancestors & Descendants of Asa Freeman Ellingwood & Florilla (Dunham) Ellingwood: 3509 citations

The Ellinwood (Ellenwood/Ellingwood) Family 1635-1963: 2468 citations

1860 Federal Census: 1508 citations

1850 Federal Census:1261 citations.
  
Two of these are genealogy books about my Ellingwood ancestors. I spent the
last two years adding to my tree and double-checking the information from the
books. The rest are all from Ancestry.com. There's a lot of citations from
FamilySearch and Find a Grave but these are the ones with the highest number.

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: TOP FIVE SURNAMES

I'm a bit behind this week on my blog posts, among which is my response to the
latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings:

1)  Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to Count how many surnames you have in your family tree database.

2)  Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

3)  Tell us how many surnames are in your database and, if possible, which Surname has the most entries.  If this excites you, tell us which surnames are in the top 5!  Or 10!!  Or 20!!!

4)  Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a status or comment on Facebook, or in Google Plus Stream post.

Like Randy I used the Surname Statistics List report on RootsMagic 6. You'll notice that the
three names out of the first four are all variations of the Ellingwood name:

Ellingwood                     964  from 1658 to 2012
Ellinwood                       613  from 1692 to 2012
Dunham                          371   from 1588 to 2009
Ellenwood                      257  from  1748 to 2013
Abbott                             174  from 1587  to 2005 

The three variants of Ellingwood reflect my adding the information from two out of print
Ellingwood genealogy books to my family tree. I recently started concentrating on my
Dunham line which increased that name.

I have a total of 3081 surnames on a database of 30572 people. All these figures are from
the RootsMagic6 databas on my computer. They are probably higher on my Ancestry.com
tree, but I won't know until a do my semi-annual download from Ancestry to the RootsMagic database. 

Incidentally, my West surname only has 143 entries. Darn that John Cutter West brick wall! 

ANCESTRY.COM'S NEW MASS. VITAL RECORDS INDEXES: FINDING THE DEATH DATE OF MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER

Earlier today Randy Seaver posted "20th Century Massachusetts Vital Record Indexes New on Ancestry.com" on his Genea-Musings blog. After reading it, I went over to Ancestry to give them a try. I had never found a record of the death my maternal great grandmother Pauline (Offlinger)White, so decided to try a search for that.

I went to the search box for "Massachusetts, Death Index, 1901-1980" and entered
Pauline White's name. I know she'd been alive in the 1950's so for a year I entered
1960 and set a search parameter of + or - 20 years. I wasn't sure what town she had
died in, so I left it blank. I entered her maiden name, Offinger, as a keyword. This
is what the screen looked like before I hit the "Search" button:

What came up were these search results:

Only the first five were women named Pauline White.I started with the first name,
with a death date of 1957 in the city of Brockton. I clicked  "View Record" and this was
what I saw:

So, this told me that this Pauline White's death record was on page 473 in volume 34
in the Mass.Vital Records Books. But, was it MY Pauline White?. I clicked on the image
of the record in the upper right hand corner and saw this:

And there it was! Pauline White, with (Offinger) beside her name! It wasn't the first
name on the search results, but the second, who'd died in Boston in 1959. Her death
record can be found in volume 30, page 130. My great grandmother had survived my
great grandfather for twenty years after his death in 1939.

This will be a great help in filling in some blanks on that side of my family!

THE DATE MY FATHER WAS BORN

I wanted to do last night's "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" exercise from Randy
Seaver's Genea-Musings but I was tired, so I put it off until today. Here's the rules
for this one:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  What day of the week was your Father born? Tell us how you found out.

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

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

4)  Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

So here we go:

My Dad was born on July 17,1924, in Bethel, Oxford, Maine
.
1. The day of the week was Thursday, according to the What Day Of The Week
     site.   

All of the rest of my information, (with a few comments) comes from the "On This Day List"  report in RootsMagic 6:

2.Famous Events:
     1203 The Fall of Constantinope to the 4th Crusade. (The Crusaders were a tad way
               off from the Holy Land.)  

     1762 Catherine II becomes Tsarina of Russia. (She was known as Catherine the Great, 
                 (mostly because her predecessor was known as "Peter the Meh.")

     1918 The massacre of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his children is carried out by   Bolshviks during the Russian Revolution.

    1936 The Spanish Civil War begins.

    1955  The opening of Disneyland

3  Famous people born on the same date:
    1744 Elbridge Gerry, 5th Vice President of the USA and the Father of gerrymandering.

    1889 Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the "Perry Mason" mysteries.

    1899 James Cagney, movie star.

    1912 Art Linkletter, tv and radio host of "Kids Say The Darndest Things" & "House      Party"

    1952 David Hasslehoff, actor, star of "Knight Rider" and Cumberland Farms iced       coffee commercials.




  4) I posted here, and also posted the links on G+ and Facebook!  

 I think Dad would have gotten a kick out of sharing a birthday with the last three

Thanks, Randy for the fun!