Of Mothers and Daughters and Dinner Parties — Part II

The 41st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy asks the question: If you could have dinner with four of your ancestors who would they be and why? 

When my great-grandmother, Emma Gleffe Schröder, first set sail for the United States in 1906, she knew that she would probably never see her father, brother and sister again. It's not known if Emma's mother, Pauline Gleffe, was alive at the time of Emma's departure, but in the German letters that were saved, Pauline is not mentioned. 

Emma arrived at Ellis Island with her husband, Leo, and their two sons, Wilhelm (Willy) and Max, on April 1, 1906. Speaking no English and being sponsored by Leo's brother-in-law, Karl Kollat, Emma and Leo settled on the outskirts of Clyde, Ohio. There they found other German-speaking families, and just as important to Emma, a Lutheran Church that she could walk to each week, to listen to the German service.

For my second dinner party, I would choose Emma and her mother, Pauline, as the last two ancestors to share a meal with me. Though I would love to see the land where Emma grew up and where Pauline lived her life, I know exactly when and where this dinner party would take place. There are very few things my grandmother told me about her mother, Emma. But the one thing she did say was that her mother was a good cook. My dad has also told me the same thing of the grandmother that he called, “his buddy.” 

So I am inviting myself to Sunday dinner at the Schröder house in Clyde, and Emma and her mother are doing the cooking. Once they get used to the idea of being together again, I can imagine the two of them clucking and speaking in German, with my great-grandmother translating for me. I would be madly scribbling down recipes and notes and helping with whatever menial chores the two women would assign me. 

 I WOULD ASK PAULINE (with Emma translating) 

What date were you born?

What are the names of your parents? 

What date were they born? 

What is your husband's full name and date of birth? 

What are the names of his parents?

When and where were you married? 

Do you remember your grandparents? 

What were there names? 

Tell me a story about your grandparents. 

Tell me a story about Emma when she was a little girl.

 I WOULD ASK EMMA 

Who were your paternal grandparents? 

What do you remember of them? 

What do you miss about your homeland? 

Who was Albert Tuschy and how are the Tuschys related to the Schröder family? 

Tell me about your in-laws, Wilhelm and Karoline Quetschke Schröder.

What was the trip to America like? 

What is a favorite memory you have of your mother? 

What is a favorite memory you have of your father? 

Tell me a story about your daughter Anna as a child. 

What is your recipe for your Christmas log roll? 

 I would give them some private time to talk, to cry and to laugh. Then later, sometime in the afternoon, Emma's daughter Anna would stop and drop off her 7-year-old son. For I have chosen to have my dinner party the exact summer that my father stayed with his grandparents during the week.

Pauline and I would fade into the shadows, as Emma, all smiles would go outside to greet her daughter and grandson. We would stand there, the two of us, peeking out the screen door, listening to the casual tones of conversation. Pauline would be watching intently the granddaughter and great-grandson she had never seen, and I would be watching just as intently a father and grandmother I have known so well. We would look up, she and I, our eyes meeting, and both smile in a way that would need no translation.

© 31 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Of Mothers and Daughters and Dinner Parties — Part I

The 41st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy asks the question: If you could have dinner with four of your ancestors who would they be and why?

I have been blessed in my life to be surrounded by wonderful people. I would like to tell you that it's because I am such a terrific human being that my karma attracts all these great individuals. But what is it they say? Better to be lucky than good. That pretty much sums it up. 

Part of my good luck happens to be that I sit in the generational middle ground of two extremely remarkable, gifted and capable women, my mother and my daughter. My mother I have known for 55 years and my daughter for almost 35. (Sorry kiddo, I hope that wasn't any kind of state secret.) Those are a lot of good years, a lot of shared joys, sorrow and laughter, and I am at least wise enough to realize what a rare blessing I have been bestowed. 

It is for this reason that my dinners would be with two sets of mother/daughter ancestors. I chose each set precisely because they were denied the blessing I have lived. Fanny Thacker Cope died at the age of 22 of consumption. Her eldest child, Elizabeth Cope Smathers, would die of the same disease when she was 30, leaving four children under the age of 7. Lizzie, as Elizabeth was called, must have been heartsick when the coughing, and the night sweats signaled to her that she would not be there to raise her children. If anyone would know how difficult the loss of a mother was, it was Lizzie. Lizzie was all of 5 when Fanny died. 

The years between her mother's death and 1900 are blank. And I wonder, after her mother's death did she live with her father or did she live with grandparents? Did they give the little girl the love and support that she lost with the death of her mother? When her father remarried, did she and her stepmother get along? Or did she feel like the extra cog in the hub of her father's new family? There would come a day when Lizzie's fear over leaving her children would seem too large a grief to bear and that is the day I would choose to whisk her away to my little dinner party.

Fanny, who was so young herself, must have also wondered what would happen to her children, Elizabeth and John. There would be a day when she felt that life had played a cruel joke on her, and that would be the day I would bring her to join Lizzie and me for dinner.

The first question I would ask would be what they would wish to eat. I'm confident whatever magic wand allowed me to arrange this meeting would also allow me to fill the dinner table with any foods that would delight the two of them. Being wives of coal miners, in the late 1880s and the early part of the 20th century, there would be novelty in being pampered guests of a dinner party.

 After they had accustomed themselves to the oddness of the meeting, and after Fanny and Lizzie had a few private moments to speak, I would ask them my questions.

 FOR FANNY: 

Can you tell me a story you remember about Lizzie as a little girl? 

Tell me about your mother, Clarinda.

What do you remember about your grandparents? 

Was your grandfather Nicholas Nimrod Thacker or Nimrod Nicholas Thacker?

What was your grandmother's name? 

Tell me a story about your grandparents.

Do you know the names of the parents of your grandmother and grandfather? 

Where did they come from in Louisa County, Virginia? 

FOR LIZZY: 

When and why did your branch of the family add an extra “e” to the name Cope?

Would you tell me how you met your husband, Elmer Smathers?

Would you tell me a story about your mother? 

Can you tell me what you remember about your mother's parents?

Can you tell me the names of your father's parents?

What do you remember about your paternal grandparents?

Can you tell me a story about your son, Walter? 

I would like to ask Fanny if she knows who her father is because I believe Fanny was born on the wrong side of the blanket. But as much as I would like to ask, I won't. It would seem rude and ungracious.

Then during dessert, I would sneak in another guest. I would bring in Lucille, Lizzie's eldest daughter. Lucille was not quite 7 when Lizzie died. She would later tell of being given a locket of her mother's red hair at the funeral. This would be the only memento she would have of her mother's. And many years later when she and her sister had finally been reunited, they would decide to look for their younger brother, Walter. 

Instead of finding their brother, they would find his eldest son. Lucille would recount the story of the locket of hair to her nephew and his wife. We would talk about what became of each of their children. I would offer pictures, and tell them they had not been forgotten. I would let the three women have their private moments, and then our time would be over.

Tomorrow, I will post about my second dinner party.

Until Next Time! - Happy Ancestral Digging! 

Note this post first published online, January 30, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 30 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

I'm Feeling Cranky!

I'm feeling cranky. Why you ask? Am I not getting enough bran in my morning cereal? No, that's not the problem. Has my panty hose finally become so tight that the circulation to my head has been substantially diminished, you query? Nope, but nice guess. Have they stopped producing Pepsi or Ballreich potato chips? No, thank goodness that's not it either. No, the crankiness started a few days ago when I first heard about the Presidential/Congressional rebate they want to send my way. 

Sure, at first, I was excited at the prospect of a bunch of Benjamin Franklin's making their way into my waiting palms. But then I got to thinking about the reason this wad of cash was coming my way. Both Washington and leading economists are worried about a recession (though the “experts” keep telling us that we have a fundamentally sound economy). The folks in Washington suddenly realized in an “I could have had a V-8 moment” that you and I were spending more on groceries, gas and utilities and were therefore no longer spending money on non-essential things. 

All this fiscal responsibility on our part has been affecting the fundamentally sound economy in a fundamentally unsound way. (Hey, aren't these the same people who keep telling us we need to save more for retirement? Gees, I wish they would make up their minds!)

And this led me to think about other items I am now spending more money on than I had in the past, like, for example, NARA reproductions. NARA imposed a 103% increase last October on reproductions of Civil War pension files, and a 131% increase on land entry files. All of which NARA said they needed in order to cover the cost of doing these reproductions. Except of course, initially they said they really, truly, absolutely needed a 238% increase on the Civil War pension files and I don't know, maybe it was just a case of somebody's calculator needing new batteries, because when all was said and done they only needed a 103% increase. (But that was only for the first 100 pages, anything after that they decided they needed an additional $.65 a page.)

So, the 26 pages that I received in great-great-grandpa's Civil War pension package, which cost $1.43 per page, would now cost me $2.88 a page. And the cost of GGGG grandpa Ezekial Anderson's compiled 1812 military record, which cost me $8.50 for each of the two pages it contained, and would now cost me $12.50 per page. The four pages in GGG grandpa Joseph Good's land entry file, which cost $4.44 per page, would now cost $10 a page. Well, you get the idea. (I did get a bargain of 160 pages for $37, which would now cost $ 114 — boy am I laughing myself silly over that one!) 

The joke is, of course, that you never know exactly what you are going to get when you order from NARA. Twenty-six pages or a hundred pages — it's all a mystery until you open up the nice little envelope. Of course, you are dealing with the government, so you can feel safe that they will charge you in an appropriate fair, what it cost them manner.

Anyway, the whole idea of the IRS, a governmental entity, sending me money so I could turn around and send the money back to NARA, another governmental entity, seemed kind of ironic — and irony very often makes me cranky. Maybe I SHOULD go check the bran content in my morning cereal. This is me ranting — Until Next Time! 

For a serious look at the valuable information to be gleaned from Civil War pension files, see a series of posts at “Genealogy — Diggin up Dirt” http://catrackgraphics.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?mkt=en-US&partner=Live.Spaces starting with the January 5th post “The Fat File” and running through the January 20th post “Clearing Up Facts.” 

Note this post first published online, January 28, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 28 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

An ‘Ah-ha!’ Moment

So, I learned a few days ago that my great-great-grandmother Fanny McCune, whom I had been unsuccessfully looking for the last seven years, actually was Fanny Marcum — which explains why I couldn't find her! 

Technically, her name was actually Francis Thacker. Her mother, Clarinda Thacker, had Fanny (or Francis) four years before her marriage to Enos Marcum. My family had discovered the McCune name from her daughter's death certificate. 

Having recently purchased “Evidence Explained,” I was being a dutiful family historian and adding my huge backlog of death certificate information to my software database. I had done about three of these, when I came to the death certificate of Lizzie Cope Smathers, Fanny's daughter. Hmm, I said to myself, looking at the record under 200% magnification, that McCune doesn't look very clear. So, I went to take a quick confirming look at the death certificate of Lizzie's brother — John Ceope. (No, that's not a typo; this family started adding an extra “e” to their name — no doubt just to confuse me.) 

John's daughter, Claudia, had been the informant and she had listed the name Fanny Marcum for the mother of John. Now, I'd like to say that this was the “AH-HA!” moment for me, but no, it wasn't. Because instead of thinking Ah Ha, I was thinking — Hmm, the granddaughter didn't realize that her grandmother's last name was McCune. So, I set aside Lizzie's death record, and went on to the next one.

 A little while later all that putting sources and citations into my database was getting a bit old, and I was itching for a reason to stop. So, on a whim, I went onto Ancestry.com and typed in “Francis Marcum,” and as I expected no viable candidates appeared in the search results. Not wanting to end my little break quite that quickly, I then typed in “Fanny Marcum” and once again, as expected, no match for my Fanny. Still not ready to face the large stack of death certificate input that lay ahead of me, I typed in “Francis Markum,” and there she was aged 16 in the 1880 census. 

Some simple searches on FamilySearch.org, a cross check to the Vinton County Web site and some more searching on Ancestry and things that hadn't made sense before now suddenly did. So about 45 minutes after I should have had my “AH HA!” moment, the light bulb finally went on. 

Funny to think that if I hadn't gotten “Evidence Explained,” hadn't been taking care of database housekeeping matters, hadn't had online access to Ohio Death Certificates, hadn't subscribed to Ancestry.com and hadn't been looking for an easy distraction, it might have taken another seven years for me to solve the riddle of Fanny McCune/Marcum. Sometimes, genealogy is just like that. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! Note this post first published online, January 25, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 25 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

News to Know — FamilySearch Labs Records Online

I'm not sure if everybody who reads this blog realizes all of the cool things going on at the FamilySearch Labs Web site. They have been indexing a whole slew of different types of records. Some are already available and ready for viewing online. So why should you care? Well, for those of us living here in Ohio, the ability to see the actual death certificates from the Ohio Historical Society's own Death Index is enough to make you do a genealogical happy dance. That's right you can SEE THEM, SAVE THEM, PRINT THEM. 

To view the records, you must first register. You can do that by going here http://search.labs.familysearch.org. Next, you have to be patient while you wait to get your confirmation e-mail telling you that you have completed the registration process, and can now go online. Not all the records available for viewing have been indexed, but the Ohio Death Certificates are not only searchable, but there are advanced options that allow you to search, for example, by a mother's maiden name.

Of course, the indexing is only as good as the information that was supplied on the actual death certificate, but the possibilities of finding lost siblings for great grandma or great grandpa are lovely to contemplate. Records (that's the ACTUAL IMAGES) available for viewing that have been indexed and are now searchable include: 

1. 1900 US Census 

2. 1895 Argentina Census 

3. Freedman Bank Records 1865-1874 

4. England, Cheshire, Register of Electors 1842-1940 

5. Maryland, Cecil County Probate Estate Files 1851 -1940 

6. Freedmen's Bureau Virginia Marriages ca 1815-1866 

7. Georgia Deaths 1914-1927

8. Utah Death Certificates 1904 -1956 

9. Ohio Death Certificates December 20, 1908-1956 

Other records are available for browsing (such as 1942 World War II Draft Registration cards, which are about 30% complete), along with indexes or abstracted information (such as Ontario Deaths 1869-1947 or Texas Death Index 1964-1998) which have been indexed and are searchable. I have to admit when I first heard about the agreement brokered between The Generations Network (parent of Ancestry.com) and the FamilySearch folks allowing free access to Ancestry.com at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, along with 13 of the largest regional family history centers,

I wondered if that meant that FamilySearch may have quietly agreed to stop putting records online that people could view for FREE. I'm suspicious that way. I guess only time will tell how this all plays out for the little guy living out here in corn country. 

If you would like to be a part of the indexing movement going on at FamilySearch Labs, you can read the details at http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/index.jsp. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! Note this post first published online, January 23, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 23 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Somebody Had A Good Last Week

For Jasia of Creative Gene (http://creativegene.blogspot.com/) last week turned out to be a fairly good week. She won Blaine Bittinger's free Genetic Genealogy Test (http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/2008/01/04/win-a-free-genetic-genealogy-test-from-the-genetic-genealogist/) on Saturday and earlier that week a second blog, Creative Genealogy (http://creativegenealogy.blogspot.com/) was listed in Kimberly Powell's post “10 Genealogy Blogs Worth Reading” at About.com:Genealogy (http://genealogy.about.com/od/blogs/tp/genealogy.htm). 

If you haven't visited Jasia's Creative Genealogy Blog, you might just want to check it out — scrapbooking, photo tips and more to help marry your creative spirit and genealogical endeavors. My heart still belongs to her Creative Gene Blog. Her writing is like the hot cup of chocolate she mentions in her intro for this edition of the Carnival of Genealogy — warm, satisfying and that lingering sweet taste on your palate. My proof — Jasia's entry, “It's a Small World After All,” that is included in the 40th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy (http://creativegene.blogspot.com/2008/01/carnival-of-genealogy-40th-edition.html). 

There are 21 other great reads from this month's edition. The theme focused on connections that each genealogist has made with living relatives. If you've been thinking about reaching out to “touch someone” in your own genealogical quests, these stories will be inspiring for you! Congratulations Jasia!

And congratulations go to each of the 10 talented bloggers who made Kimberly's list. Kimberly also has posted a list of over 40 of her favorite blogs at http://genealogy.about.com/od/blogs/ . Most are on my own gotta read list and since our Web site doesn't support blog rolls, I'm betting Kimberly won't mind if we use her wonderful list as a surrogate. She's been kind enough to give brief descriptions of each. 

So bring on Old Man Winter, and dry your eyes over the never-ending writers’ strike — here is some great reading to keep you entertained. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! 

Note this post first published online, January 22, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 22 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

In Honor of Martin Luther King Day

In honor of Martin Luther King's birthday, I am presenting two links in my post for today. 

The first is a link to a Web site that carries the text of Dr. King's speech given in August 1963 — almost 45 years ago. http://www.juntosociety.com/hist_speeches/mlkihad.html. Though we hear snippets of it every year, you might find a full text reading of the speech interesting. Dr. King's words are still beautiful and inspiring some four and a half decades later. 

What does Martin Luther King Day have to do with genealogy, you ask — maybe nothing or maybe everything. The U.K.'s “The Observer” posted an interesting article back in July, called “The Genes that Built America.” I find it curious that I discovered this piece written in a British publication rather than an American one. It's long and thought provoking. Maybe thought provoking enough for some to find it troubling — for me it has provided some moments of reflection and introspection. 

You can read it here: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2124456,00.html. Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! 

Note this post first published online, January 21 , 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 21 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder