It may seem tedious to go through all those entries for a relative in small-town newspaper. A weekly newspaper may regularly mention your relative or family members attending various functions. But sometimes all those references can help. A cousin of my grandmother’s was married several times. The difficulty was finding the actual first name of her last husband–who she married in the 1950s. He was listed only by his initials in her obituary and a marriage in the local area could not be located. So I started going through the social columns in the local weekly newspaper. After much looking, I found a mention of the cousin–with her husband’s first name–in a 1957 writeup of an anniversary celebration of an older family member. But it took a little […]
Genealogists often look for “free” genealogy sites–those with no membership fees and all sorts of data. There’s one place to get genealogy information at little or no charge that often doesn’t require membership and can give you information not available anywhere else: your relatives. Make certain you’ve asked them questions and gone back later when discoveries have you with more questions. Aside from travel, contacting relatives is low-cost and many times family stories are not located elsewhere.
We always want to see that record with our relative’s name and usually are not interested in other documents in the same series of records that contains the names of “other people.” We should be. Sometimes those documents on other people can help us to read, interpret, and understand the document we have on our ancestor. Recently I obtained copies of land evaluations of confiscated British property in Maryland during the American Revolution. Fortunately for me I needed copies of three separate records. The first one had some verbiage that was difficult to read and just as difficult to understand in the bottom left corner of the document. When I looked at the other two documents, it appeared that these documents were similar in form and structure. On […]
If your family had annual reunions, the local newspaper may have published more than just a list of who attended. Sometimes vital events within the family are also listed. A 1944 writeup of my Trautvetter’s annual reunion included names and dates of births, marriages, and deaths within the family. Given that World War II was still being waged, the reunion also noted which relatives were in the armed forces, their branch of service, and where they were stationed. It pays to search for every reunion announcement.
A relative’s 1944 death certificate indicated she was buried in Missouri. An obituary in her hometown newspaper–apparently written after her funeral–indicated she was buried in her hometown. The obituary is dated several days after the death certificate. I have not been to the cemetery to see if there is a stone and, as of this writing, funeral home records and cemetery records have not been accessed. FindAGrave has a memorial page for her in the hometown cemetery, but there’s no picture of her stone, no mention of a plot location. Because there’s no evidence or supporting documentation, I am not using the FindAGrave reference. Until further research is done, I will transcribe each document as written. If I’m unable to locate a stone or other records, I’m inclined […]
Never assume that once you’ve figured out one relationship between two individuals that there could not be another. A man named Rolf married the sister of my ancestor and that was the first relationship I learned about. Later I discovered that years before he married the ancestor’s sister, he had been married to that same ancestor’s aunt. So he was originally my ancestor’s uncle by marriage and then his brother-in-law. Sometimes there is more than one connection.
Any directory can contain errors or omissions. This 1918 directory of Hancock County, Illinois, farmers does not include my great-grandfather Charles Neill. His brothers are listed, but he is not. The illustration shows everyone with the last name of Neill in the directory. There are no “Neal” or other entries under the usual “incorrect” spellings. The directory includes farmers who owned their own farm and those farmers who were tenant farmers. I’m not certain why Charles was not included. What I need to do is read the preface to see if there is some other technicality that might have caused great-grandfather to not be listed. To the best of my knowledge, my great-grandfather had no occupation other than farming. While he did work as a hired man before […]
Until 1752 England and their colonies started the “new year” on 25 March. That can create confusion because during the time when the year started on 25 March, the year number would not “roll over” to the next year until 25 March. This article on the State of Massachusetts website goes into more detail. This post on our sister site shows a will dated 17 June 1743 and admitted to probate on 9 March 1743.
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