THE GENEALOGY CIRCLE GAME

And the seasons, they go go round and round.
The painted ponies go up and down.
We're captured on the carousel of time.
We can't return, we can only look
behind from where we came,
And go round and round in the circle game.
-Joni Mitchell

"Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell, specifically the version sung by Tom
Rush has been a favorite of mine since the first time I heard it(never
mind how many years ago that is now). I found myself thinking of it this
afternoon when I was doing some research and made an interesting
discovery. I was adding some Dunham collateral lines to my
Ancestry.com tree and looking for sources on FamilySearch Record 
Search, working my way through the descendants of Moses Dunham,
brother to my 4x great grandfather James Thomas Dunham. Moses'
daughter Abigail married Calvin Dunham Gurney in Hartford, Oxford,
Me. on 3Jul 1828. They had five children, four boys and one girl, one
of whom was James Gurney. Over on Record Search, I found this
image of James Gurney's death certificate from the Massachusetts 
Deaths 1841-1915 file:

According to this, James Gurney died in Whitman, Plymouth, Ma and is
buried in Rockland, Plymouth, Ma, and both of those towns border the
town of Abington, which just happens to be where I live. I did a litle
more digging and found the Federal Census images on Ancestry for
James. As early1860 he and his wife lived in East Abington, which was
the region that broke off to form Rockland. Whitman was originally
South Abington until it too seceded from Abington.

Now I know that my Dunham ancestors originally came from Plymouth
County Massachusetts and the Gurneys might have as well. Or perhaps
James' move back here was purely coincidence, caused by James
looking for and finding work in the local shoe factories. But finding this
reminded me once more of how my father who was born and raised in
Maine ended up back down here in Plymouth County where our ancestor
John Cutter West was born.Again I am wondering if we are in fact
related to one of the other West families here in Abington with whom I've
yet to discover any connection.

And once again I've found an example of how my family history is a
circle game.

GENEALOGY DAYTRIP3

This past Thursday's Genealogy Daytrip was a special one. My Aunt
Dorothy and her daughter, my Cousin Diana, were on their way up to
Bethel Maine to attend Dot's reunion at Gould Academy, and my sister
Cheryl and I were driving them up from Boston to Portland to pick up
their rental car. So I was busy for the last few nights before Thursday
trying to print up some family sheets from the new discoveries I'd
made researching the Barker and Ellingwood families and fighting with
drivers, printers and paper jams right up until Wednesday night.

Thursday morning Cheryl picked me up here at 6:45 and we set out for
Boston. Now it seems there's always a GPS story when Cheryl and I
take a roadtrip and this was no exception. Dorothy and Diana were
staying in a hotel on Mt Vernon Street in Boston and the GPS guided
us perfectly to Mt Vernon Street in Charlestown in the shadow of the
nearby Bunker Hill Monument. The only problem was, it was a dead
end street in a residential area with no sign of a hotel. A quick cellphone
call to Diana and another to the hotel revealed that there is another Mt
Vernon Street in Boston, this one in the Dorchester Bayside area.
Fifteen minutes later we pulled up in front of the hotel and picked up
the ladies.

The drive up to Portland was a good one. Dorothy and I talked genealogy
for a bit but there were other topics discussed besides. Once we got to
Portland and got the rental car, we looked for a place to eat and talk for
a bit, and ended up at a place called Marcey's Diner which had good food
and reasonable prices. While we waited for our orders, I gave Dorothy
and Diana the material I'd printed out, which included another interview
with Uncle Clarence from a Maine newspaper.(I'll go into that further
in a following post). We sat and talked for an hour, took a picture of each
other and said our goodbyes.

It was only about 1pm and Cheryl suggested we find out what attractions
there were in the area. She got some brochures and we decided we'd
take a boat tour of the Casco Bay lighthouses given by the Portland
Discovery Land and Sea Tours. We had a few hours to kill before the
cruise so we found a dockside restaurant right next to the boat slip and
had shrimp cocktail and drinks while we waited. The weather was sunny
and a little cool but it was nice to just sit and talk until it was time to
lineup for the boat.

Now I'll be honest about this: I was a bit worried about the cruise. It's
been a very long time since the last time I'd been out on deep water and
while I've never been seasick before I was a bit worried about whether 
meds I'm on would not sit well with the motion of the boat. I'm happy to
report there was no problem and we had a great time. Cheryl used my
digital camera out on the bow to take pictures while I shot mine from
my seat by the stern using my old Canon AE1 SLR. We were out
on the Bay for ninety minutes and the narrator told us the history of the
various lighthouses, forts, and residences on the islands. I recommend the
experience to anyone who is visiting the Portland area.

After we returned to land we went to a restaurant called Dewey's and
had souvlakis(sp?) for dinner before heading home. There was a beautiful
sunset just before the big harvest moon rose and we made very good time
home.

All in all, it was good to see Dorothy and Diana again and to spend time
with Cheryl. Thanks, sis, for a  great day!

"THE WANGAN CAMP" BY HOLMAN DAY

I've blogged before about American regional poetry and its value in
understanding the lifestyles and times of our ancestors. Every region
of the country had poets who wrote about local events and often in
the language peculiar to their region. One such poet was Holman
Day who was the author of many novels and poems set in Maine.

The following poem talks about a Maine lumber company's "company
store". Since many of my ancestors were lumbermen, I found the
poem an interesting look into their lives. 

By the way, the Second Annual "Great American Local Poetry
Genealogy Challenge" is coming. Start searching for poems that
have a connection and meaning to your family history and be
ready to share them with us on your own blog!




THE WANGAN CAMP *
* The wangan is the woods store that most of the Maine 
lumber camps maintain.
The wangan camp!
The wangan camp!
 Did ye ever go a-shoppin' in the wangan camp?
You can get some plug tobacker or a lovely corn-cob pipe,
Or a pair o' fuzzy trowsers that was picked before they's ripe.
They fit ye like your body had a dreadful lookin' twist;
There is shirts that's red and yaller and with
plaids as big's your fist;
There are larrigans and shoe-packs for all makes
and shapes of men,
As yaller as the standers of a Cochin China
hen,
The goods is rather shop-worn and purraps a
leetle damp,
 —But you take 'em or you leave 'em—either
suits the wangan camp.

The wangan camp!
The wangan camp!
There is never any mark-downs
at the wangan camp.

The folks that knit the stockin's that they sell
to us, why say—
They'd git as rich as Moses on a half of what
we pay.
I haven't seen the papers, but I jedge this
Bower war
Is a-raisin' Ned with prices—they are wust I
ever saw.
I was figg'rin' t'other ev'nin' what I'd bought,
—by Jim, I'll bet
That a few more pairs o'larrigans will fetch me
out in debt.
For I've knowed a stiddy worker to go out as
poor's a tramp
'Cause he traded som'at reg'lar at the
comp'ny's wangan camp.

The wangan camp!
The wangan camp!
They tuck it to you solid
at the wangan camp.

Day, Holman Pine Tree Ballads : Rhymed Stories of Unplaned Human Natur'
Up In Maine (Boston, Ma., Small , Maynard & Co 1902) pp112-114

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN: THE TIME MACHINE

It's Saturday night and time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night
Genealogy Fun. This week we get to use a time machine:

"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Determine which event in your ancestral history that you would
love to be a witness to via a Time Machine. Assume that you could 
observe the event, but not participate in it.

2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this 
blog post, or in a comment on Facebook."

I've thought about this for a couple of hours now and my first thought
was to use the Time Machine to break down my biggest brickwall.
It's tempting to say I'd go back to some point in the life of the Elusive
John Cutter West to learn about his parentage and place of birth. But
after thinking about it, I have another incident that I would like to 
witness instead, and far more recent.


A few years back at my nephew Paul's wedding my Aunt Emily told me 
how shortly after my birth and  her daughter Winnie's, Emily and my
Mom had found out where my grandfather(Mom's dad) Edward F.White
Sr was living and went there to let him know he had two grandchildren.
They found out that not only was he remarried, but he'd had another son
that was named Edward.I would have liked to see that for two reasons, 
the first and obvious one being it would fill in the big hole in my family
history that is my grandfather and his second family. The other reason
is that I have wondered if Mom and Emily actually spoke with him, and
if so, how did he react? What did he say? Or leave without talking once
they found out he'd given his new son the same name as Mom's brother
and Emily's husband?


I've asked myself those questions ever since I heard that story, and a 
Time Machine would help me get the answer.

ANOTHER PIECE OF THE GENEALOGICAL PUZZLE

 

One of my brickwall ancestors is my 3x great grandmother Lucy Stowe.
All I (and other West family researchers)know for sure is that she was
born around 1808 and that she married my 3x great grandfather Westley
(Wesley) Coburn in 1827, probably in Newry, Oxford, Me. I've had
no luck discovering the identity of her parents or her place of birth.

Last night I was working on sourcing my Ancestry.com tree and did a
search on Lucy and Westley over on FamilySearch Record Search. I
lucked out: I found an image of a death certificate for a Lovisa Brown
of Milford, Middlesex, Ma. with Westley Coburn and Lucy E. Stowe
listed as her parents. I knew that Westley an Lucy had had a daughter
named Louisa or Lovinda, so this could be a variation of the name.
What puzzled me was the place of birth for all three was given as
Cochichuate, Ma . Westley and his family had lived mostly in Newry,
Oxford, Me. but the Coburns had originally come from Middlesex
County, Massachusetts. I needed more proof.

Lovisa's husband was listed as Parker V. Brown on her death record
so next I looked for any record of the marriage and found it again on
Record Search, this time in New Hampshire Marriages 1720-1920.
According to this, Lovisa and Parker V Brown were married in the
town of Shelburne, Coos County, New Hampshire on 5Jun 1851.

Finally, the name of the person who supplied family information on the
death certificate is given as "Mrs. F Barker".  Lovisa's nephew was my
great grandfather Frank W. Barker who had died in 1905. Was his widow
Charlot visiting her Aunt Lovisa when the older woman died in 1913 or
even perhaps living there when it happened?

So what am I to make of all this? The names certainly match up and are
unique enough to satisfy me that they are my relatives. The Cochichuate
reference is the first time I've seen that town listed in connection with
the Coburns but perhaps this gives me a clue on where to look for more
information on Lucy Stowe.

(As a sidenote, the town's name is pronounced  "Co-chit-u-it")

A "SOCIAL" EXPERIMENT

I've written several blogposts over the years about my maternal
grandfather Edward F. White Sr and how little I know about that
side of the family due to the divorce between him and my grandmother
Agnes McFarland. I'd hoped that eventually some unknown White
family cousin would find my posts, contact me, and fill in some
blanks in the family history, but so far there hasn't been even a peep.
So now I'm going to try a little experiment. The genealogy community
is making wider and wider use of online social networks, and taking a
cue from that, I'm going to use Facebook.

I decided to start a "White Family" group and thought about how
I could name it so those possible cousins might find it. Alas, White
is one of the most common surnames in the world. So I pushed it
back one generation to Edward's parents and named the group
"Descendants of Edward White and Pauline Offinger". Who knows?
Maybe an Offinger cousin will find it too!

For a description I wrote the following:

"Devoted to the family of Edward White and Pauline Offinger of
Boston, Ma."

Then I posted this to the Wall:

"I'm creating this group in hopes of finding other descendants of 
Edward and Pauline. Due to the divorce of my grandparents 
Edward F White Sr and Agnes McFarland, I know very little 
about the family and I hope to establish contacts to any cousins 
who might be out there."

Finally I posted a "White Family" topic to the Forum and gave the
names and dates for Edward, Pauline, and their children. I plan to
add the blogposts I've already written to it as well.

So, we'll see if I have any better luck on Facebook than I've had
here. If I do, I'll be blogging about it here!

IS THIS YOU, GREAT GRANDPA JOHN MCFARLAND?

Ancestry.com recently announced they'd added 1.8 million new
immigrant naturalization records to their databases. It's been awhile
since I did a search on my mother's immigrant ancestors for those
records, so I decided to try them again. I didn't have any luck with
her German Luick and Offinger great grandparents. I'd started with
them because the names aren't as common as her Irish grandfather,
John McFarland. After all, this is Massachusetts, a prime destination
for Irish immigrants for the past 150 years, and I've found a multitudes
of John McFarlands in previous searches, none of whom matched the
information I already had.

However, this time was different. I got a hit on the U.S. Naturalization 
Record Indexes, 1791-1992 (Indexed in World Archives Project).
I'm not sure I can show the image here since Ancestry is a paid site
and I don't want to violate their copyright. What it shows is an index
card with "M 216" in ink on the upper left hand corner. The rest of 
the information on the card is entered by typewriter:

Family Name: McFarland  
Given Name or Names: John
Address: Boston
Certificate No.(or vol. and page): 128-113
Title and Location of Court: USCC BOSTON, MASS.

Country of birth or allegiance: Ireland
When born(or age): Nov.29, 1853
Date and port of arrival in U.S.:
Date of naturalization: Oct.4, 1880
Names and addresses of witnesses:

Two entries were left blank and the caps are as typed on the card.

The information I have on John gives his DOB as 28Nov 1852
but that came from a letter written by my cousin (also named John
McFarland) so it's possible that he was off by a year, or that the
information on the form is incorrect. It would have been nice if
there was an actual street address listed and the port of entry,
but this record is close enough to give me hope that it is indeed
my greatgrandfather John McFarland.

Now I need to go about the business of finding out how to get a
copy of the actual record.

By the way, Ancestry has made access to their immigration records
free until Sept 6th in celebration of our immigrant ancestors. 






 

National Archives and Records Administration

PASSING IT ALONG: HELPING OTHERS FIND THEIR ANCESTORS

I'm not a professional genealogist by any stretch of the imagination but
I've been climbing my family tree now for over five years and I'd guess
I'm at the intermediate level of experience. I've had folks help me along
the way and I like to return the favor by helping those who ask me to
help them get started in researching their own ancestors. Because I do
have a fulltime day job my research is online and I've established a
routine which has given me some success.

First of all, I ask the person what information they already have:
What do they know about their grandparents? Are they still alive? Do
they know anything about their great grandparents? I ask if they know
where they lived and especially if they know where in any of the
Federal Census years from the early twentieth century. If their
ancestors were immigrants, what country did they emigrate from and
what year did they come to this country? Did any of them serve in the
military?

Then with whatever information they gave me, I check several websites:

1. Ancestry.com for the Census records and images. I make note of
the street addresses for the results because there may be more than
one person with the same name living in the town where the ancestor
lived. Then I check the "Birth, Marriage and Death" and "Military"
records. If there are images I download a copy to my computer.Then
I check the Family Trees and check their information against what the
person has told me and against the records I might have found. I
look to see if there are source citations. 


2.Next I check the Family Search RecordSearch website. This is a
new addition to my list of websites to check which has records and
images not on Ancestory. Again, I dl any images .


3.The next stop is RootsWeb's Worldconnect Project. Using what
information I have found so far I run a search on the names to see if
anyone has posted a family tree there and check them against what
I've already found. Here too I check for sources.


4. Then I search next at the Family Search site, again double-checking
the trees there with what I have so far found. Again, are sources
cited?


5. Finally, I Google search the ancestors and then try Google Books
for family genealogies.


When I've found everything I could, I go over it with the person. Once
I'm satisfied that I've found their ancestors, I email them the images of
the records I've found and tell them where I found them. I suggest that
they use this information to follow up and do some research on their own .
If I've found a website or family tree that was well sourced, I tell the
person how to get in touch with the owners.

I've had varying degrees of success helping people. Two recent incidents
turned out very well, with one friend discovering quite a bit about one
side of her family which she hadn't known before. She has since made
several trips to where her ancestors lived and visited family graves.
And I was able to help a high school classmate find out that his family
traces back to 17th century Quebec.

What I get out of this is the fun of solving a puzzle and knowing that
I've helped someone else the way others helped me when I first started
the long climb up my own family tree!

Written for the 97th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy

JEREMIAH SWAIN'S QUARTERSTAFF

One of the great things about being a genealogy blogger is that by
posting stories about my ancestors and my research on them, I've been
contacted by folks who share my ancestry. Recently I made the
acquaintance of  Evelyn Swain Webb from Texas, who is a fellow
descendant of Jeremiah Swain. Last year I wrote a fourteen part
series of posts about Jeremiah and his part in the New England Indian
Wars which was how Evelyn found me.

Today Evelyn sent me some fascinating photographs along with the story
behind them. They show a quarterstaff that was owned by Jeremiah:

This is part of the information Evelyn also sent along:
"When Jeremiah came from England he brought with him this 
Walking Stick of Quarterstaff, some times known as a cudgel. The 
wood is yew, or orange, and the head is ivory.  It appears to be 
about 4 ft. in length. Possibly, for unknown generations preceding 
Jeremiah the Quarterstaff  was held by a male member of the family, 
usually descending from father to eldest son  Through the years this
cane came down through Colonel John Farrar Swain, a brother to
Dr. Marcus Swain.  At the death of Col. John, the cane passed to his 
son Elmer Perry Swain, who died in 1913. It passed to his eldest son,
Lloyd E. Swain and thence to his nephew, Robert F. Swain.  Robert 
Swain was in the service in WW2, and it seemed that the dangers
attendant with participation in the war might disturb the traditional
line of descension.  Therefore, in 1944, it was donated by Lloyd N. 
Swain to the Nebraska State Historical Society, 1500 R. St. Lincoln,
NE 68501

The pictures were obtained by Oliver D. Swain on 28 Nov., 1989, 
from the Nebraska Historical Society.  This article was also written
by Oliver D. Swain, copied by Dona Evelyn Swain Webb, 2/20/00."

Now Jeremiah Swain died in 1710. So for 300 years, and probably
even longer than that since before Jeremiah, the quarterstaff was handed
down from father to son! That's amazing!

Thank you Evelyn for sending this along to me, and for allowing me to
share it here on my blog. Perhaps another of Jeremiah's descendants   
will find it here someday!

SNGF-MAKE YOUR OWN POSTER

It's Saturday night and time for another Saturday Night
Genealogy challenge by Randy Seaver at his Genea-Musings
blog:

1) Go to the www.ImageChef.com website and explore
their FREE offerings. Click on the "Create" button,
or choose to make a slideshow or posters from their
main page (there are more than one screen of poster
backgrounds).


2) Make one or more posters or other creation -
perhaps they relate to genealogy or your own family
history. Save them to your computer (right click,
Save as Picture for Windows users).


3) Show your creations to us... in your own blog
post, on a Facebook post, etc. If you make a really
neat one and want to show it to the world but don't
have a way to do it, send it to me (rjseaver@cox.net)
and I'll show it off for you in a blog post.

I liked Randy's "wanted poster" so I did one of my own,
an old photo of my great grandfather Philip J. West with
my cousin Stanley and grandfather Floyd E. West Sr..

Here's the result:

This was fun! Thanks Randy!

GENEALOGY DAYTRIP2

I'm afraid my road trip this week was even less successful than
last week's inaugural trip. I returned to the Bridgewaters once
more, starting with a visit to the cemetery right next to my alma
mater, Bridgewater State College. The campus has certainly
grown since my graduation back in 1970 and it recently was
renamed Bridgewater State University. But the old graveyard
remains untouched and as I drove by I recalled sitting on the
stone wall there talking with my friends. 

Unfortunately, that was as close as I got to it today. I drove
around the campus twice looking for a parking space that
wasn't in a tow zone but couldn't find one. I thought I could
get a space in the town center and walk back down from there
but even those were taken at least on the side of the square
closest to the campus. Well, duh! It's late August and between
Summer classes and the arrival of students for the Fall semester,
of course there's a lot of cars around. I decided to come back
on a Sunday and headed out of Bridgewater west on Rte 28
towards West Bridgewater and the cemetery I could not find
last Thursday.

Along the way I passed the Par 3 golf course where I spent
some afternoons back in my college days. My friends Lee
Melanson, Ed Silvia, and Ed Hands and I used to play there on
days when we had several hours between classes and it
amazes me that the place is still there over forty years
later. I think I'm going to make a trip down there soon
just to play a round for old times' sake.

I continued on  in search of my target and here, dear
readers, I discovered I have not inherited my Dad's sense
of direction. He would look at a map, trace the route with
his finger, and then off we'd go, with an occasional stop
for another look at the map. 99% of the time we'd arrive
at the destination without any problems. And in most cases
when Dad drove someplace once he remembered the route
without looking at a map again.

As for me, I drove up and down South St without finding the
particular graveyard I was seeking. I did eventually hit Rte
104 and found the Scotland Cemetery but didn't stop there
this week because it was now after 4pm and I wanted to
get home and eat an early dinner before the Patriots-Rams
game on tv. I'm beginning to think that if I'm going to
do more of these genealogical day trips, I might have to
purchase one of those GPS thingy's with the snooty female
voices to tell me exactly where I should go.


So, no pictures this week. But it was a beautiful day, I
enjoyed the ride, and I got out of the apartment and away
from Leonard the Computer for a few hours.   

GETTING A HEAD COUNT

As I've been entering the Ellingwoods onto my Ancestry Family tree,
I began to wonder about just how many descendants my greatgreat
grandfather Asa Freeman Ellingwood had sired, and how would I
go about finding out the total number. When I voiced that thought
on Facebook a few weeks back, someone (I can't recall who now)
suggested I ask Bruce Buzbee, creator of RootsMagic 4 himself.
So I sent him a message with my question and got this answer
back: 

"Bill,

There isn't a tool that directly does that, but here's a way.

1. Do Reports > Lists > Statistics list
2. Choose to include selected people
3. Highlight the starting person in the list that appears,
then click "Mark group", and then choose "Descendants of the
highlighted person". You can choose whether to include spouses in 
that count.
4. Click OK and then generate the report.

It will give you a count of how many descendants, how many are 
male vs female, and other statistics about those descendants."


Now this was back on July 25th and I've been working on the tree
since then, but finally finished with the Asa Freeman Ellingwood
descendants on Ancestry. Tonight I created a gedcom of my tree
and downloaded it to my computer, then imported it to the RM4
as a new file. Adding it to my existing RM4 database would have
resulted in duplicate entries. I then followed Bruce's instructions,
choosing Asa Freeman Ellingwood for the starting person and
choosing not to count spouses of his descendants. This is how
the screen looked when it generated the report:

The count came to 204, not including living descendants who I had not
listed on the Ancestry tree.

I'm still working on the families of Asa's siblings but out of curiosity I ran
a list of the descendants of their father and mother, John  Ellingwood
and Rachel Barrows. Again, I chose to omit the spouses and this does
not include living descendants:

 
The count at this time is 323 individuals. Both totals will go up when I
add living descendants to the database.

Thanks for the help, Bruce!

Do other genealogy programs have a way to give you actual number of
a person's descendants?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US.

Today is my birthday and I was wondering which of my ancestors were
also born on August 20th. So I went into PAF and ran a daily calendar
report which gave me 8 names.Then I used the relationship calculator
to tell me our exact relationships. Among them is my 9x great
grandfather, the argumentative Capt. William Gerrish. You can read my
posts about him by clicking on my "Table of Contents" tab at the top of
the page, and then on "Gerrish William". 

So here's my list:

Diantha West, 20Aug 1859 Andover, Oxford, Me. My first cousin
3x removed.

Caroline Ames, 20Aug 1839, Canton, Oxford, Me. My 3x great
grandaunt.

Deborah Butterfield, 20Aug 1687, Chelmsford Middlesex, Ma. My 7x
great grandaunt.

John Spaulding, 20Aug 1682, Chelmsford, Middlesex, Ma. My 6x
great grandfather.

Joseph Buswell 20Aug 1674 Topsfield, Essex, Ma. My 7x great
grand uncle.

Lydia Colborne, 20Aug 1666, place unknown. My 7x great grandaunt.

Sarah Howard, 20Aug 1648, Bridgewater, Plymouth, Ma. My 7x
great grandmother.

William Gerrish, 20Aug 1617, Bristol, England.  My 9x great
grandfather.

 How about you? Do you know which ancestors share your birthday?

GENEALOGY DAYTRIP

Now that I'm in better shape and the same true for Ping the Wondercar,
I decided to try to get out of the apartment more on my days off and do
some genealogy legwork. Today's inaugural adventure was a trip down
to West Bridgewater to try to find some of my ancestors' final resting
places. I'd made a unsuccessful try at this last Thursday but had left the
Googlemaps I'd printed out at home but this week I brought them with
me and set out optimistically.

After a short stop at CVS in Whitman to get some prescriptions filled
I continued down Rte 18 to East Bridgewater and then cut across to Rte
106 in West Bridgewater. I turned left on Howard St, drove past the
West Bridgewater Historical Society building, and then turned right onto
River St. According to the directions, the parsonage of my ancestor
Reverend James Keith should have been a little ways down on the right
but I drove to the end of River St without spotting it. A quick turnaround
in a driveway and I went back down the way I'd come, and there now on
my left, was the building. 

 

I pulled over to the side of the road and took a picture with my digital
camera(which once more insists it's October). It was a beautiful, warm
afternoon. The parsonage seems to sit in the middle of farm property,
with a barn on the left and a field with cows seeking shade under some
trees to the right. Across the street, on the other side of my car, a flock
of Canadian geese were foraging along the banks of a small river. Except
for the occasional car passing by on the blacktop road, it could have been
a typical summer day from Rev. Keith's time in the 17th century.

The building was closed so I resolved to find out when it might be open
and come back to see the inside. Then I drove on down River St, crossed
the bridge by the Canoe Club and continued on until I came to the Alden
Cemetery on my left. I parked across the street on Cross St and walked
over to the graveyard.

I was dismayed by what I found. While most of the markers are upright
and intact, some of them are beginning to lean over or sink into the grass.
And with the exception of perhaps fifteen or twenty markers, most are
unreadable. Inscriptions have worn away from the weather or obscured
by fungus. The stonewall at the front is so close to the first row of
markers that it surely must run over the graves themselves.The grounds
were obviously cared for and the grass mowed, but I had to wonder how
long  it would be before all the gravemarkers were unreadable and Alden
Cemetery was no longer cared for.

I have no ancestors at Alden Cemetery(that I know of, anyway) and I'd
intended to try to find the graves of Reverend Keith and  Deacon Samuel
Edson but it was already late afternoon and I knew the traffic on Rte 18
would be getting heavy. So I decided to call it a day and return to find
them another day.

So ended my first genealogy daytrip of the year.

COMING UP FOR AIR

I'm still working on adding my Ellingwood cousins to my Ancestry
family tree, and I find myself happily spending hours entering
names and dates, looking for records on line and adding my
sources as I go along. It's easy to become lost in the hunt as I
find information that has me asking questions, such as why can I
find evidence of a person that was supposedly married only
twice was actually married three times? Or does the cause of
death "stricture of the esophagus" on a New Hampshire death
record refer to a medical cause or hanging? And where did some
of the unusual names come from that were given to the children?

As I said, it's easy to become lost. I tell myself I'll go to bed as
soon as I finish an entry, but then there's the children to enter, and
then their children, and there are images of records to download.
And this could go on for quite awhile, because the Ellingwoods
were a prolific bunch, and besides my New England kin there were
some who migrated to Michigan and California, and some who
emigrated to Canada before the Revolution. I then can move on
to other lines in my ancestry, the Barkers, Dunhams, Ames, and
all the others.

I think only other genealogists, along with historians and archaelogists,
would consider this as fun. But it's like putting together a giant jigsaw
puzzle, and it's fascinating. This has been what has filled my evenings
for the last month, and every once and awhile I come up for air.

And then I dive right back in again.

IN MEMORIAM: TERRY THORNTON

Everynight when I come home from work, I put dinner in the oven and
then read my email while I wait.Tonight's email brought the sad news
from Dorene Paul that our fellow geneablogger Terry Thornton has
passed away.

While I was saddened, I have to admit I had been expecting this ever
since Terry posted the video of the bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace"
next to Terry's gravestone. I don't know if he'd already been given a
terminal diagnosis or if Terry suspected he was "near his time". I do
know he'd been in pain and was using medication for it, even though
he didn't seem happy about it:

"I can now control the pain by making myself enter a drugged 
state.  And it is not a state of ecstasy."

I  would guess that Terry didn't care for having his mental processes
dulled along with his pain.

Terry was one of the geneabloggers who befriended me when I started
blogging. It was a smaller community back then and we exchanged
emails about a commemorative plate he'd found with a New England
connection. We shared an interest in poetry and we both ran memes
on our blogs that explored the connections between poetry and
genealogy. Terry also had a humorous side which he displayed
sometimes under the alias "Willy Puckerbrush" in posts on Janice
Brown's now defunct "Cow Hampshire" blog.

But when I think of Terry, the word that comes to mind is
"passionate" because that is what he was about the things he believed
in, whether it was free speech or genealogy. Back in January, he
wrote the following in his introduction to Robert Graves' poem "To
Bring the Dead to Life" on his Hill Country HOGS Blog and it serves
as an inspiration to me in writing about my family history:

"Those of us who spend part of our efforts writing about individual 
ancestors long ago dead know the difficulty of accurately telling 
their story. Much of recorded family history is just a listing of who 
begat whom, when and where, and where and when they all were 
buried ---but we all know on occasion some writers can bring the 
dead to life as those gifted writers produce accounts to show, 
indeed, that Graves is correct --- that to blow on a dead man's 
embers can ignite a live flame and from that ignition ancestral 
story becomes alive. Certainly those of us writing in this field 
should attempt to ignite those embers --- but that task is much 
more difficult than merely describing the process.


That is why I've selected Graves' poem, To Bring The Dead To Life, 
as the poem to start the new year. I think his words, especially those 
of the first five lines, should be a challenge and an ideal. As I 
continue my puny attempts to bring life to the family and local 
history I'm recording, I certainly will keep Graves' words in mind. 
And I invite you to accept this as a challenge in your family history 
writing for 2010 --- to bring the dead to life by using words to fan 
the embers of those long dead bones and let the resulting flame 
illuminate their life and times."

Rest in peace, Terry. You will be missed.

CHARLES O. ELLINGWOOD 1845-1864

While going through the process of entering Ellingwood family
information from Florence O'connor's book to my Ancestry.com
family tree, I have come across entries that have piqued my curiosity.
I always keep in mind that Florence did all her research the old
fashioned PC (pre-computer) way and didn't have the online resources
I use today available to her, so I try to find what I can and fill in the
blanks, so to speak.

One such entry concerns Charles O.Ellingwood, son of Isaac Harris
Ellingwood and Columbia Briggs and nephew of my ancestor Asa
Freeman Ellingwood. In the book, Florence says:

"Their oldest son, Charles born 1845/6 died at the age of 19yrs. in 
Kentucky during the Civil War." (p37)

I read that and wondered where and how he died. Was he killed in action
or did he die of illness? I decided to see what I could find out.

First I did a search for Charles on the FamilySearch Record Search site
but other than an entry for the !850 Federal Census when Charles was
five years old I found no information. Next I went to Footnote.com and
entered "Charles O. Ellingwood" and "New Hampshire". I found an
image on "The Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index" that
shows that his mother, (Columbia Briggs Ellingwood)received a payment
of $188.31on 1Oct 1866.It also lists Charles' military unit as Company
E in the 9th New Hampshire Infantry.

From there I went back to Ancestry.com and clicked on "Search historical
records". The second entry on the next screen was from "U.S. Civil War 
Soldier Records and Profiles" and from that I learned that Charles was
18 years old when he enlisted on 21 Dec 1863 with the rank of private
and that he was mustered out on 13Mar 1864 at Camp Burnside,
Kentucky.

"Mustered out"? Was that an euphemism for "died"?

There was a link to "American Civil War Regiments" for the 9th New
Hampshire Infantry which included a regimental history written by
"GEORCE L. WAKEFIELD, late Sergeant Company C, Ninth Regiment,
New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry." Apparently the regiment had been
depleted by illness during the final months of 1863 before Charles enlisted
and depending on travel conditions he probably didn't actually arrive until
sometime in January when the regiment had been issued the new
Springfield rifles and was once more on the move. On Feb 27 it was
ordered to Knoxville, Tennessee  to escort an artillery unit but I don't
think Charles was with them. I found his name on a list of the regiment's
soldiers and finally verified that "mustered out" meant he had died of
disease at Camp Burnside.

I went back to the "historical records" page and the third and fourth
entries for Charles were from "U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca.1775-2006".
Charles was buried on the same day he died and his remains now rest in
Section B Site 661 of the Mill Springs National Cemetery in Nancy,
Kentucky.

There's a photograph of Charles online, but out of respect of the owner's
copyright I won't post it here. It shows a young man like so many others
before and after him posing proudly in his uniform, ready to go off and
fight for his country. A few months later, he was gone.

Charles O. Ellingwood is my first cousin 3 times removed, and now, as
Paul Harvey used to say, I know the rest of his story.

THE BEST LAID PLANS, ETC.

I fully intended to complete a series about my Revolutionary War
ancestor Elisha Houghton but here it is August 1st going on August
2nd and I have a long way to go to before it is done. Part of the
reason is that I really want to research the battles he took part
in a bit more and I underestimated how long that might take.

The other part is what I've come to think of as my Ellingwood
Project, entering the information from Florence O'Connor's
book on my Ancestry.com tree. There are just so darn many
of them and I want to have sources posted for as much of it
as possible. I've also found information that wasn't in the
book, and I'll be sharing some of the stories I've pieced
together about my Ellingwood cousins with you here.

So, with that in mind, I now plan to finish the Elisha Houghton
series by the end of this month.

Honest.

Really!

THE COMING GENEALOGICAL DARK AGES? PT3

Besides his warnings about records access and threats to record
preservation, Curt B, Witcher spoke about how the electronic
age has changed genealogy records on a personal level, citing the
decline of old fashioned letter writing as an example. He also
pointed out emails are part of a family's living history that should
be preserved. He made the following suggestions:

"To counteract the trend, Witcher encouraged people to write. "Write as 

you never have written before." This writing can be about memories, 

describing a family photograph or center on themes such as a family's rituals.

After something is written, Witcher said to share it with others. Otherwise, 

he said "many of those precious pieces of living history go into landfills."

Witcher said to publish — locally to family or even on a website such as 

werelate.org. Just be careful with personal information of living individuals. 

The object is to create a record that will be there for descendants."

Now we geneabloggers have been doing this for sometime now.

But Mr Witcher's remarks have been food for thought for me as to
what else I can do. I can post more about my personal memories.
and about when and where a photograph was taken. I can keep a
paper copy of my posts (well maybe not the silly ones) along with
the copies on cds, For all we know, some new technology could
come along to replace computers, so a paper record of my posts
might actually outlast the cds .

I'm considering putting my posts into book form, using a program
such as Blurb. And I'd like to bwecome proficient enough to
perhaps write an article on my West ancestors good enough for
publication for the NEGHS magazines or for inclusion in their
library.

As I said in the first post about Mr Witcher's speech as reported
by Michael De Groote, it's generated a lot of discussion.Whether
you agree or not about an approaching genealogical Dark Ages,
it certainly has made me for one think seriously about the state
of genealogical and historical preservation today, and about
what I could and should be doing about it.

THE COMING GENEALOGICAL DARK AGES? PT2

So what can we do to help preserve genealogical and hustorical
records and information and hopefully drive back the "genealogical
dark ages: that Curt B. Witcher warns us about?

I think we need to start with educating ourselves. How much do
we know about where records are kept in our cities, towns,
counties and states? Do we know how well preserved they are and 
if they are well protected against possible water damage? Have they
already been digitized. If not, are there any plans to do so? What
sort of funding is allocated for their upkeep and is it sufficient to the
task? Is that funding in jeopardy and is it a ballot question in an
upcoming election? Who are the people responsible for their
upkeep and what is their outlook on the importance of record
preservation?

We also need to keep informed about threats to records,
cemeteries and historical sites, not just in our own area but in
others as well, and when we hear about those threats, we need
to speak out! An example of this is how fellow geneablogger
George Geder alerted the geneablogging community to how a
Florida town planned to build an industrial park at the site of
an African-American cemetery. Another example is how
genealogists have organized over the Michigan State Library
issue. On a local level, join in the debate when an issue comes
up on the ballot concerning funding or preservation of historical
sites and libraries. Don't be complacent and think that the funding
will pass because people must realize how important it is to save
the site or fund the libraries. People are more concerned about 
keeping their taxes from rising than funding repairs for the old
courthouse with the leaky roof over the records room. Write
letters to the editor and attend meetings to tell people why they
should spend their tax dollars on that courthouse!

We can't assume that everything is going to be digitized in time.
We can't hope that a band of LDS angels will swoop down on
our towns and preserve every last record forever online. And
by the way, computer files can be lost and destroyed as well.
so we still need to see that the original records are preserved
even after they are digitized.

Mr Witcher also addressed how the electronic age has affected
history on a personal level, and I'll address that in the final part
of this discussion.