Stories My Grandmother Told Me

Though my writing and speech tends to be littered with superlatives – the greatest, the most, the best – the truth is, I’m much too wishy-washy to say definitively that I have a favorite of anything. So, when the glorious fM proposed “My Favorite Photograph” as the subject for this edition of “Smile for the Camera,” I admit to a slight, panic-stricken feeling at committing to a favorite photograph so publicly. I mean, won’t the other photographs be hurt? So after careful consideration, I came up with the winner. If it isn’t my favorite photograph, it is certainly one of my favorites.

 

In my family, old pictures are few and far between. The one I’ve chosen was taken in 1899 at a photography studio in Tiffin, Ohio. It is a picture of my grandmother, Katheryne Cecile Lynch and her twin sister, Elizabeth Lucille Lynch. Katheryne and Elizabeth, born October 4, 1898, were the youngest children of Laura Jane Feasel Lynch and John Perry Lynch. Laura Jane and JP appear not to have been sentimental when it came to naming most of their children. The other children – Flossie, Owen, Elbert, Hazel Grace, and Harry Victor, were not named after family members.

 

But perhaps because they had lost little Hazel Grace at age 3 or maybe it was the unexpected delight at the birth of twin daughters eight years later, Laura Jane and JP decided it was time to give their daughters family names. My grandmother, Katie was named for her paternal grandmother, Catherine Good Lynch while Elizabeth was named for her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Armstrong Feasel. Eighteen ninety-nine appears to be the year that they set out for Greer County, Oklahoma. JP’s parents had settled there more than a decade earlier when Greer County was still considered a part of Texas. According to my grandmother they traveled by covered wagon, and she swore as little as she was she had memories of crossing the Red River.

 

Somewhere, during this time, and it may have been here in Ohio (though I have found no record of it), little Elizabeth contracted measles and died on July 7, 1899. She was nine months old. My grandmother is the one sitting on the left hand side of the picture, with Elizabeth to her right. It is possibly the only picture taken of the two girls.

 

My grandmother passed away on March 25, 1990. She outlived her twin by more than ninety years.

  Information Sources: 

1. Digital Image of PJ Keller Photograph taken Tiffin, Ohio, 1899, supplied by Phyllis Sloan 

2 .Photographic Images of leaves of George Washington Lynch Family Bible supplied by Anna Belle Lynch Mauldin 

3. Information about Greer County supplied by Dee O’Hara AND 

4. Greer County, OK GenWeb, http://www.okgenweb.org/~okgreer/ 

5. Personal conversations with Katheryne Lynch Hoy Runion

© 27 June 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Oh Mojo Won’t You Please Come Home

I‘ve lost it, my blogging mojo. Worse, I’ve temporarily lost (at least I hope it’s temporary) my insatiable hunger for all things genealogical. I’m not sure how this happened. Maybe it’s something like the brain freeze you get when you woof down that first big bite of ice cream on a hot summer day. I’ve been woofing down all kinds of family history information and coming up with precious few leads. 

As a result, there are fresh new frustration dents on my desktop where head and desk have met. (Hey, maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I have self-induced brain damage. Nah!) I read where Jessica of Jessica’s Genejournal has a whopping 619 posts in only a year and a half online. Cripes, I’ve been blogging for eleven months and I haven’t even hit 200. Kudos to you Jessica – except you’re depressing the heck out of me. And now, I have absolutely nothing to say. Not one new unique Terry’s oddball brain inspired thing to tell you. Nada, Nothing, Zilch. (See, what I mean.)

So while I am out looking for my blogging mojo and my genealogical zest, here are two links to two carnivals that posted last weekend. Lisa of 100 Years in America hosted this edition of the COG. The subject was “Age.” And my prolific friend Jessica hosted the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy. The topic was research experiences and tips. Enjoy! 

Well, I’m off to find my mojo. Here mojo. Here zest. Hey, if you see them, just send them on home – PLEASE!

© 24 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

The Party's Over - Almost

If you don’t read blogs religiously like I do, then you may have missed the hoopla earlier today when Ancestry.com and FamilySearch announced their collaboration on US, English and Welsh Census records.

You can read the full press release with all the juicy details at, FamilySearch and Ancestry.com Team to Publish New Images and Enhanced Indexes to the U.S. Censuses. 

Let me quote in part from the release: 

The first census exchanged is the 1900 U.S. Census. FamilySearch completed a 1900 index in addition to Ancestry.com’s original. In the new index, FamilySearch added several new fields of searchable data, such as birth month and birth year, so individuals can search for ancestors more easily. The two indexes will be merged into an enhanced index, available on both sites. The new 1900 census images are now available on Ancestry.com. The enhanced 1900 index will be available for free for a limited time at Ancestry.com and ongoing at FamilySearch.org. 

Did you see – the INDEX will be available for free “ongoing” at FamilySearch.org, NOT the images. This was an index worked on by Family Search volunteers – you know, volunteers, as in I’m doing this for free out of the goodness of my heart volunteers. Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings has concerns about issues as well as some interesting observations in his blog post, Ancestry and FamilySearch to work together on Census Records.

Randy asks several good questions about the fate of other census indexes and images that FamilySearch has been working on. Randy also links to a post by Diane Haddad at the Genealogy Insider who says, 

The census indexes on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch will link to record images on Ancestry.com. If someone without an Ancestry.com subscription clicks the image link, he’ll be prompted to join. Subscriptions cost $155.40 per year or $19.95 for a month.

Well, the other shoe finally fell. My question is what will happen to the other images currently available for view at the Family Search website. Images like the Ohio Death Certificates, Texas Death Records, West Virginia Marriages – well you get the idea. Maybe I’m just a confirmed cynic, but I’ve always suspected having these free images available online was a temporary aberration. Of course, I could be wrong. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out. I think, however, if FamilySearch is planning on turning over all or part of their image and index collection to Ancestry, they should inform their volunteers, so they can decide if they want to continue with the indexing project. 

Hey, wonder what happened to Ancestry’s own volunteer indexing program? 

Until Next Time!

© 21 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teressa L. Snyder 

The Kindness of Stangers

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” What was true for Blanche Dubois is doubly true for me as a researcher of my German roots. For one thing, I don’t speak a word of German, (Verstehen?). For another, many of the records were lost during World War II. And finally, even if the first two issues could be overcome, there is a loss of collective identity for the place my family once called home. That home no longer exists and the inhabitants and their descendents have been scattered to the winds. (For a better idea of what I’m talking about you can read two previous posts – Pomerania - An Introduction and Part II: Pomerania - War and Consequences.) I was lucky to have started my research on this part of my family in the Age of the Internet. If I had attempted this twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to make much headway. I was also very fortunate that my great grandparents had kept documents and letters that pointed the way to begin my search.

 A website, called Kartenmeister, lets you search for the names of German villages. My great grandmother Emma, for example, was born in the village of Klein Gansen. Here’s what my search told me about the village:

 

From this, I learned the province and county where she was born. A website dedicated to preserving the history of the county, Stolp, was extremely helpful. They also had a mailing list, which of course is in German, and I joined. With the mailing list, I use Google to do a quick and dirty translation, and while I am occasionally lost during some discussions, the members of this mailing list have helped me find a couple of key pieces of information. They found the baptismal record for my great grandmother and the marriage date for one set of great great grandparents. I won’t tell you how long I labored writing my query in German, but the point is I can communicate with other German researchers, and they can communicate with me. As long I get over the fear of looking stupid in another language, I am all set. 

 Google also helped me find an American family historian who was researching one of my family names. Even in Germany, the last name of Quetschke is not that common, so when I found Shirley Pawlowski’s home page I was ecstatic. Shirley had actually come across my family and she was kind enough to share what she had found with me. We still haven’t figured out the exact connection between our two families but because they came from the same area of Stolp, we are certain they are connected in some manner. 

 One of my other great finds was a German researcher who was researching the surnames, Gliewe and Gleffe. Jörg and I communicated via the Google translator, which created some, um, interesting conversations. He translated into German a number of letters that were done in Plattdeutsch (Low German), so I could get a rough translation from Google. He also was able to find out what happened to some of Emma’s family, and sent me family trees on them. There are people living in Germany today, who descend from Emma’s siblings. All that survived, had lived in East Germany. Jörg interviewed their descendents, and sent me some of the information. I know for example that young Karl who had missed his little nephew, Willi, in a letter that I included in my post, Pomerania - An Introduction, had lost three sons in World War II. His wife, hearing that a third son had died, was so grief stricken that she ran from the house. They found her the next day dead and lying atop the grave of one of her sons. A database search on Volksbund der Deutschekriegsgraberfursorge, the website of the German War Graves Commison, confirmed this information and added more details. 

 Another website, Pommerdatenbank, run by Gunther Stubs, inputs data from local directories into a database so that you can locate family living in the area prior to 1945. This is ongoing project, but has already yielded results for me. Though the information on my German ancestors tends to trickle in drip by drip, it is a wonderful time to be involved in this type of research. With persistence, a good search engine, some translating tools and a lot of help from friends, I continue to make progress – a little at a time. 

 Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging!  

This was written for the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy

© 16 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

A Question of Age

This edition’s topic for the Carnival of Genealogy is age. I’ve been sitting here staring at my Family Tree Maker software, willing it to spit out the ancestor who wins in the longevity department. Sadly, I can no more bend the program to my will than I can use my mental powers to de-calorie Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. (And the world is a much sadder place for my failure.) 

So, I had settled on telling you about my great great grandfather John R. Hoy, who if he did not win the longevity award, came darn close, as he was 99 years, 8 months and 30 days old when he died. Other close but no cigar candidates for the award were my maternal grandmother, Katie Lynch Hoy, who lived to be 91 years, 5 months and 21 days old, and my paternal great grandfather, Leo Schrader who was 91 years and 9 days at the time of his death. The good news for me is that I have some lengthy-life genes swirling around in my genetic stew. 

However, as I was going through my tons of information, I came across the marriage certificate of my paternal grandparents, Walter Sloan and Anna Schrader, and it reminded me of another type of age issue which I already knew about but had forgotten. On June 20, 1930, my grandmother swore before the probate officer that as of January 16, 1930 she was 21 years of age and that her occupation was “seamstress.” My grandfather swore a similar oath – that he was 22 years of age on March 28, 1930 and that his occupation was “farming.” This was fine, except that BOTH of my grandparents had lied!

 

To be fair, in grandpa’s case, he probably didn’t know his actual birth date. Here, in the marriage license application, he gave it as March 28, 1908. On his death certificate, his birth date is listed as January 30, 1909. His actual date of birth was July 23, 1908. Why are there discrepancies? 

Grandpa’s mother died when he was not quite three. His father, Elmer, took Walter and his baby brother George to Lucas County, Ohio where Elmer’s brother Lawson lived. Three years later, Elmer himself was dead. There was nobody left to remember a little boy’s exact birthday. Six years later, at the age of 10, Grandpa shows up as the adopted son of William and Nettie Sloan in Clyde, Ohio. It’s sad to think that I know Grandpa’s exact birth date but he did not. 

Grandma’s lie, on the other hand, is down right puzzling. I had always assumed she did it so she would not need parental consent. But Anna was 19, and while not the 21 she claimed, it seems certain she would not have needed her parents to sign for her. As far as I can tell, she would have only needed this consent if she were below the age of 18. So why fib? If you knew my grandmother, you’d know she was always a sharp cookie, so there’s no doubt she knew how old she was. Did the clerk, misunderstand? Was she showing some kind of sympathetic support to my grandfather – since his correct date could not be recorded than neither would hers? The answer is I don’t know, but I would love to have been a little mouse sitting in the corner and listening to their answers that day.

Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging!

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

How to EmBADbarrass A Four Year Old!

We’ve coined a new word at our house, “emBADbarrased” Our four-year old grandson is the author. 

Last Friday, he twisted my arm and talked me into going to McDonald’s, that famous haute cuisine establishment for the preschool crowd. While sitting at our booth, he spilled the smallest drop of his orange juice on the tabletop, and proving that I am a smart aleck with all ages, I said something like, “Aaah …, I’m tellin.’” 

Instead of the usual freckled face grin that I was expecting, I was surprised to hear him say in an almost anguished tone, “Don’t, I will be emBADbarrased, and I will never come wiff you to McDonald’s again.”

Oh, break my heart. Never again to know the joy’s of Happy Meals. Don’t tempt me kid! Taking pity on his anguished tone, I let him know that I wouldn’t dream of emBADbarrassing him, at least not for such a meager reason as a drop of orange juice.

But the new word has stuck with me and I have been inserting into all kinds of conversations with my husband. 

It’s like the time, when the grandson was going through some serious potty training and the reward was some nifty Sponge Bob and Cars underwear. Excited by the prospect, and wanting me to know he was coming to my house the next day, the little fellow grabbed the phone away from his father one night and bellowed, “I BRING MY UNDERPANTS!” 

For months after that, I would randomly punctuate my conversations with, “I BRING MY UNDERPANTS!”

Now that I know the little guy has reached the stage of self-consciousness, I will have to take special pains to figure out what kinds of things I need to avoid. I truly love the kid, and I would never purposefully cause him a moment’s unhappiness. 

Walking back to my front steps as he and his mother were backing out of the driveway last Friday, I heard a shout, “Maw T-U!” 

I turned around to see him wildly blowing kisses at me out the passenger car window. Apparently, THAT didn’t embBADbarrass him. 

Until Next Time!

© 14 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

To The Aid of Fellow Procrastinators

Okay, let’s be honest. You’re reading this post because you’re putting off doing something you know you SHOULD be doing, but just don’t feel like settling into doing it quite yet. That’s cool. I’m always happy to oblige a fellow procrastinator. 

If you’re looking for some quality material to procrastinate over, might I suggest you go over to the blog, Shades of the Departed and check out the 3rd edition of “Smile for the Camera.” 

There are twenty contributors writing on the topic, A Celebration of Home. 

If the boss catches you reading them, just tell him you’re doing research. No, I’m not going to tell you how to correlate the Celebration of Home posts with your particular job. You’ll figure something out. You are, after all, a smart one aren’t you? I mean you are reading this post – case closed. 

Until Next Yadda Yadda Yadda ...

© 14 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder