28 September 2011
20 September 2011
Tuesday’s Tip – Penny For Your Thoughts?
As often happens with genealogical research, I took a bit of
a hiatus from my blogging. It certainly wasn’t intentional, but life happens.
Heh. So, if you’re new here, or just need a quick ‘catch-up’, I’m a consulting
Archivist who’s been doing my own genealogical research for a little over 15
years. I was spurred into action by the death of my grandmother (she was 97!),
and my mom’s wish to find out if we were really eligible to be members of the
Daughters of the American Revolution and descendants of William Penn (yes and
no). By early 1997, I’d found a line (Burrows) that confirmed our eligibility
for the DAR and our paperwork was on its way. But I’d caught the bug. It’s not
so much a bug as a…a passion, for genealogy.
Of course, doing research in 1997 was very different from
today when we have so many wonderful on-line resources available to us. It’s
truly remarkable the amount of material that’s been digitized or indexed, and
how easy it is to locate. Websites such as Cyndi’s List and Heritage Quest make
getting accurate and reliable information easier still. And of course, there
are the ‘tried and true’s; places like the Newberry Library, LDS, local
historical repositories, etc. for locating evidence of our ancestors.
But what about non-traditional resources? I found one that
would have NEVER occurred to me. I blogged about the fact my family’s oral
history included a story that one (or more) of my ancestors emigrated from
Europe in the 1860s, but came to the United States via Brazil. When a
benevolent distant cousin sent me a letter, there was also mention of Brazil. I
was truly confounded by how, and more importantly why, anyone would have
purposely gone to Brazil in the early 1860s from Europe.
I hope you’ll humor me the quick history lesson, since I
found this fascinating, and pertinent, to my search. Brazil was ruled by
Emperor Dom Pedro II from 1831 to 1889. He was the son of Pedro I of Brazil,
also known as Pedro IV of Portugal and Maria Leopoldina of Austria. He was only
5 when his father abdicated and returned to Portugal. His rule was long and
beneficial for Brazil with the height of his reign falling in the late 1850s to
mid 1860s, right about the time my ancestors would have been there.
How could I find out whether or not they’d actually been
there? Again, keep in mind, this is 1997. There weren’t a lot of resources for
Brazilian information, and the little bit was in Portuguese…which I hadn’t
learned yet. (I know enough to be dangerous). I threw up my hands in
frustration, and moved on to verifying other lines in the family.
And then, one afternoon somewhere around 2006, while I was
visiting my parents, my mom asked me if I’d take her father’s coin collection
to have it appraised. Victor Wersel had
kept it as one of his prized possessions, and my mom held onto it dearly as a
remembrance of him. But times were tight, and she was hoping to be able to
possibly sell some of it. I took the collection, having no intention of parting
with this treasured family keepsake. Whenever mom asked about it, I always told
her that I hadn’t gotten around to locating someone to look at it; in a few
years time, with her memory failing her, she stopped asking.
Late last year, I was cleaning out my “research closet”, the
closet where I keep my Hollinger boxes filled with my research, when I saw the
leather binder of coins. It was a dreary day, and I decided to take it out,
scan the coins so I’d have a visual record of each one, and create a proper inventory
for insurance purposes. Guess what I found?
That’s right! This is a 40 reis coin from Brazil. There’s
also a 20 reis coin that’s worn too badly to be able to date. But, I am
confident, confident, that this coin did not find its way surreptitiously into
my grandfather’s collection. It is just one more piece in the puzzle, and a
wonderful, albeit untraditional, resource for my research. What resources have
you come upon that may not be ‘mainstream’?
06 September 2011
Tombstone Tuesday – The Tree That Will Last Forever
Those of us who love genealogy often have a
fascination for cemeteries. People who don’t get into genealogy think we’re
just crazy…I know. However, one of my dad’s relatives, Edna Beightler
McClelland shared with me once, as we talked about my childhood memories of
their home in Mahomet, IL and the Civil War era cemetery across the street from
their house, that she remembered riding in the wagon on Sundays to picnic in a
large cemetery with her family. And I know many non-Caucasian families that honor
their dead by decorating the graves of their loved ones, spending copious
amounts of time in the cemetery.
The odd part is that as I was growing up, we had no cemeteries
to visit. Neither of my parents had relatives that were buried in close enough
proximity for us to visit. My father’s father was buried in Montreal, Canada
and my mother’s father in Kalamazoo, Michigan. So, my love of cemeteries and all things ‘old’
predates any connection I had with history, genealogy or archival sciences. But
any chance I got to go into a cemetery, I would. There was, and still is, a
fascination I have for them that is almost physical…there are times I feel
truly drawn in.
Truth be told, I have several very happy memories that
involve cemeteries. The above mentioned childhood romps through the weeds
growing up and around the tombstones in the old cemetery in Mahomet is one. I
should point out, on more than one occasion I got yelled at by adults to watch
for snakes; this did not deter me at all.
The next is a more bittersweet memory. On a family trip to
Toronto for a wedding, my husband and I brought our two nieces, Krystine and
Nichole with us, and rather than going through Detroit, as we had in the past,
we went north and crossed the border from Lansing into Sarnia. I had wanted to
stop there, as I’d found a wonderful letter my gggrandmother had written to my
great-grandfather in the early 1880s, indicating that on his trip from Toronto
he should stop in Sarnia. This unlocked a large, full branch of our family
tree, many of whom were buried in a small, private cemetery in Sarnia. The four
of us stayed overnight in Sarnia, and after a short drive, located the
cemetery. It was a cold, lovely morning, and the two girls, young teenagers,
were none too pleased about stopping at the cemetery. But wise Auntie Laura
pulled out the big guns: I offered $5 to whoever found the first headstone I
was looking for! LOL. Amazing what motivates teenagers. It’s an awesome memory,
that opens many more…they’ll have to wait for another post. It’s bittersweet
because Krystine died in 2006 just after her 25th birthday; again, a
story for another day.
What about the tombstone, Laura? Well, these are not
tombstones from MY family, but rather tombstones I found in a local cemetery
that caught my interest, and my heart. There is a small town about 20 miles
from where I live named Elburn. I became familiar with Elburn because they have
a very large John Deere dealership, and my lawn tractor needed parts. We’d only
been in our house a year, and hadn’t had the opportunity or inclination to head
that direction. I had to have the parts, so we hopped in the car and off we
went. As we got to the main intersection just to the south of this small town,
I saw a very large, old cemetery, which is now the Blackberry Township Cemetery.
My husband’s first words, “No, we’re not stopping.” And we didn’t.
However, I went back. I was in college at the time, studying
Art History at the University of Illinois – Chicago, and I was in the midst of
a very challenging art class. We had to find an object that was inanimate that
resembled an animate object and I found my subject in the middle of the
cemetery! There it was, this beautiful monument, built in the shape of an old
tree. It really spoke to me, and so I spent many hours over the next few months
sitting in the cemetery, using different materials to draw the monument.
The coolest part? Five years later, I get the honor and joy
of processing the Elburn Historical Society’s material as an Archivist!! I’ve
since learned that the little boy buried under this monument was the first to
be buried in the cemetery in 1860. What’s more, the cemetery’s management moved
from a private group to Blackberry Township, and they have done an incredible
job of surveying, indexing and clarifying who is buried in the cemetery and
utilizing technology so that the information will one day be available online.
I have processed additional private burial records which are available upon
request to the Town & Countryside Library in Elburn.
I hope that you can appreciate now how my work as an Archivist
plays a role in my future as a Genealogist. More importantly, it’s one thing to
find the branches and leaves on your family tree, but what do you do with all
the material once you’ve found it? (As an aside, please don’t say the word ‘scrapbook’…it’s
like nails on a chalkboard to most Archivists) I hope that I will be able to
teach you the best practices for arranging, describing and making the material
available and organizing it in a way that it will be ready to pass down to the
next generation or on to a repository that will be willing to add it to their
collections. I’m so very lucky to love the work I do!!
04 September 2011
Motivation Monday – Dead People DO Talk
OK, so maybe they don’t TALK talk, but they sure can tell
you a LOT. I’d found out that my mom’s grandmother, Laura Louise Richards
Wersel, would be the conduit through which we’d find our American Patriot. I
was a researcher by trade, working in the financial industry as a portfolio
assistant, keeping track of and locating minute financial details about my
clients. But, as a novice at genealogical research, I was often amazed at where
the richest resources were found.
I started my genealogical research in 1996, and had spent
about six months pulling together bits and pieces of my mom’s side of our
family. I had been looking at several threads online through Cyndi’s List, and
had seen many people mention how great cemetery records were for getting
details on ancestors. I knew my great grandmother, Laura Louise RICHARDS, had
died in Cincinnati, Ohio, so one day I decided to research cemeteries in and
around Cincinnati.
The first one to come up was Spring Grove Cemetery and
Arboretum. The name itself caught my eye, so while I was on my lunch hour one
day, I looked up their website (http://www.springgrove.org/SG/sg_home.shtm).
Keep in mind, this was January 1997, so I expected to find basic information
about the cemetery and perhaps get a phone number so I could call. However,
this very technology forward cemetery had a search function that allowed me to
enter a surname to locate a grave. I entered ‘RICHARDS’, not thinking about the
fact that my great grandmother would’ve been buried under her married name,
WERSEL. This tiny error lead me to a genealogical treasure trove!
What I found, with a few more clicks of my mouse, were 38
graves, some with names I’d never heard before, all of whom were my ancestors!!
The site indicated that cemetery records
were available for genealogical research, so I excitedly picked up the phone
and called. The woman that I spoke with, after looking at the records, sounded
almost as excited as I was. She informed me that the entire Lot 93, in Section
54 of the cemetery were my ancestors, and that she would be happy to copy the
records and send them to me.
I won’t forget how excited I was when I got the large
envelope from the cemetery about a week later. In it was a letter and copies of
the burial records for all 38 graves. Wow, just wow. Each record that looked
like a large index card gave so much information! I had, of course, realized my
error in looking for Laura Louise RICHARDS, instead of WERSEL, and had
subsequently received my great grandmother’s death certificate, so I realized that
Laura Richards was my 2nd great-grandmother. As I laid the papers on the floor in a makeshift
family tree, the branches began to unfold, and as I added the information into
my database, I discovered I could trace these ancestors back to my 5th
great-grandfather, all with reliable genealogical information!
The real challenge came in finding so many new names. There
was GREENE, BURROWS, HARTSHORN(E), YEATMAN (misspelled as Geatman), WEST and
WOODRUFF. My enthusiasm got the better of me, and as I entered these names into
the few websites that were available, I started pulling all sorts of family
trees into my database. I can’t tell you how much time I spent chasing
windmills, but suffice it to say that I’ve since learned to keep my focus on only
a few individuals at a time to keep the branches strong and sturdy. Yes, the information
is out there. Yes, you’ll find the information you’re looking for…sometimes, it
just takes a really, really long time…
Sentimental Sunday – What’s a Spoon Worth to You?
As I’m taking this journey back in time to recount how I’ve
come to take up genealogy as a profession, I find myself remembering so many
wonderful experiences. I’m doing my best to weave them together into this
story, which at first I thought was going to be really difficult. But a story
that wants to be told will be, so today’s Sentimental Sunday was easy.
I was tracing my ancestors back to someone who was an
American Patriot, so that I could fulfill my mom’s wish of becoming a member of
the Daughters of the American Revolution. I didn’t know WHO it was, but family
oral history told us that there was someone. So, I started with my mom’s
parents, discovered it was her father’s family that had been in the U.S. for
several generations, learned her grandfather had been born, lived and died in
Cincinnati, but that his family came here after the Revolution. So, next option
was her grandmother, Laura Louise RICHARDS.
Uh, mom? Is this who I’m named after? Yup, that’s right! I
had NO idea that I had been named after my great grandmother! My parents had
always told me my name was inspired by the 1944 Gene Tierney movie ‘Laura’.
Again, TRUST NO ONE…LOL. Anyway, what a joy to find out that I had the name of
the woman my great grandfather wrote poetry about. Mom told me she hadn't known either of her grandparents, and to her knowledge they had died when she was a child, in the 1930s. I located an obituary for her, discovering a few details: she was born around 1864 and died in 1936, just three months after my great grandfather, Henry. Now, on to finding more evidence and information about her and her family.
I was beginning to get pretty good at figuring out where to
look for information. Keep in mind, in 1996, there was still very little on the
Internet that you could find, so most information was found either at libraries
and similar repositories or via U.S. mail requests. I took my first trip to the
Newberry Library, which is an incredible place for genealogical research. As a
history lover, and a nut about old books (thanks, great grandpa Henry!), I was
amazed when I actually got to touch and look through books that were 150 years
old. I also found out, in a big way, how important cemetery records can be
(more about that in another post). Of
course, a death certificate can provide incredible details about someone, so I
sent away for hers and waited.
Fast forward to 2005. My cousin, Kathy Hitchcock Burns,
daughter of my mom’s sister Jackie, was celebrating her 25th wedding
anniversary, and had come down from Wisconsin, where she lives, to visit my
aunt Jinny and our family. Kathy had always been particularly close with Jinny;
of the three Wersel girls combined 11 children, Kathy and I were the only girls
and she is eleven years older than me, so she spent a lot of time with my aunt
and was very close with her.
Kathy brought her daughter and granddaughter with her, and
we had a lovely time catching up. They’d been here for a while, and she pulled
me aside and told me she had something for me. She told me that though it was
HER anniversary, she wanted to give me a gift. Kathy and I were never very
close, so this caught me a bit off guard, however, her incredibly generous
nature is very well known, so I accepted the long narrow box she handed me.
When I opened the box, my heart skipped a beat. Inside was a
beautiful sterling silver serving spoon. So, why the big deal? Engraved on the handle
were the initials ‘L L R’. This amazing piece of flatware was owned and used by
my great grandmother. Kathy didn't know it's true origin, whether it was a trousseau piece or not, and there's also the possibility that it was my great-great-grandmothers, as they shared the same initials. Either way, this spoon is from ~1870-1880. It had been passed down to Kathy by her mom, and she was
giving it to me as a gift. There still really aren’t words that can accurately
describe my gratitude, but I hope THANK YOU works.
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