FamHist

Sweet Sixteen (Generations)

2009-12-23T21:21:00.003-07:00

After researching my ancestry for the majority of my life, I started to think that I was doing a great job. Then I decided to print a sixteen generation pedigree chart using OnePage Genealogy at BYU.

I’d better live a LONG time yet if I’m going to populate the entire chart. There is a LOT of missing ancestral information in my records.

My mother spent the second half of her life researching her ancestry and also made great headway on my fathers lineage. I helped her in the quest as a young man and knew how thick her old genealogy books were. It seemed like she had found it all. The charts in the books never seemed to end.

New resources emerged after I started the quest in earnest that helped me add significantly more information to the family tree than Mom had found in the limited resources available to her.

Ten years ago, I was feeling pretty good about my work and created a twelve generation circle chart. The darned thing looked like it was a blank chart! I had over 250,000 family records in my direct line database. Why didn’t all those names completely populate the chart, so I could take pride in my work?

Well, just like most of you, the relatively few brick walls in my ancestral quest occur relatively close to us in time and that precipitates much of the white space on the chart.

Each generation doubles the number of ancestors in your tree. Block your knowledge of their names early on and the white space wedge on your chart rapidly widens with each succeeding generation.

Flash forward one decade. My research has been rewarded with substantial finds. The new printing of the circle chart had a lot less white space, but truth is, I’m still just starting in my personal ancestral quest. The majority of my father’s paternal lines tie to royal lines in the late 1500’s, so most of them are known and fairly well documented back in time. His maternal lines don’t fare as well as you can see in green in the image.

Unfortunately, all of the research by my mother and myself on her lineage has been less rewarding. Rather than descending from royalty like my father did, her ancestors were all common folks: farmers, sheepmen, butchers and tailors. (red and yellow in the image) Their lineage is hard to trace once I cross the 1650 C.E. year boundary.

One of my maternal lines ties to famous Dutch painters and to the Dukes of Pomerania, so they have been easier to trace, but the other lines have hit that magic ‘edge of paper’ (records) boundary and I probably won’t find much if any more of their lineage. I won’t give up, but don’t expect to have a lot of success.

I like the charts from OnePage Genealogy and opted to print the largest chart size available. It stretches six feet in length and three and a half feet in width. The Mary Hill coloring system is used to delineate the main lineal branches on the chart. Unfortunately, the bright colors used for maternal lineages in the system are not well represented on my chart. White space is still white space. You don’t print colored empty boxes just for balance.

I’ll continue to look for my lineage and as success comes will print another large chart. If nothing else, the gaping inadequacy associated with my maternal lineages will goad me to never stop looking for them. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,OnePage Genealogy,Pedigree Chart

Saw Dust and Dark Holes

2009-12-19T02:43:00.003-07:00

When our side-by-side refrigerator failed a while ago, we were inconvenienced to the point we had to hurriedly eat as much ice cream as we could stomach and hurriedly cook the meat and other frozen goods in the freezer lest it all go to waste.

During our marriage, other refrigerators have also failed to function, immediately throwing us into action to find a repairman or to purchase a replacement unit.

We’re a bunch of softies. Probably about as tough as marshmallows.

Of course, here at the manor, we have addressed that issue with other means of surviving without a functioning ice box, but they are so inconvenient. They don’t even provide ice and cold water on tap.

Looking at the locations where my ancestors lived using Google Earth, I can still make out the outlines of the pond on the old homesteaded farm. The water in the pond was used by my great grandfather to water his stock, as a flood control tool and to supplement his income in the hot summer months.

No, folks in the 1800’s didn’t pay him to swim in the pond, but they did pay him for the water. -- Frozen water in July.

Every fall, he and his sons would clean the pond of any debris and fill it to the top of the banks. Within a few weeks, the pond became an ice skating rink for the enjoyment of his family, at least for a little while.

When the ice was sufficiently thick, he and the boys would venture onto the pond, drill or break a hole and proceed to saw the ice into blocks.

The ice was stored in what was in essence, a tunnel (a generous description of the hole) carved into the several hundred foot tall hill to the east. Grandpa and his brother dug it not long after they homesteaded the 400 acres of prime mountain land.

The earthen ‘refrigerator’ was well supplied with saw dust that had been collected from cutting wood to burn in the stoves and in clearing the oak brush from the land.

In the ice harvest, a layer of ice was laid on the floor, fitted together much like a rock wall. The different sized blocks were meshed together on a deep bed of sawdust. They were covered with another layer of saw dust and the process was repeated, layer after layer, harvest after harvest.

By spring, the cache was full of ice and since the entry door was well shaded by cottonwood trees along the creek and the natural ground temperature of the tunnel hovered around 60 F, the added cooling of the slowly melting ice was sufficient to prolong its frozen life into warm weather.

When late May and June rolled around, the stores in town had a need for a cooling resource that now commanded a premium price. By July 4th, the price topped out and the last of the dwindling resource was sold off as the last frozen ‘cash crop’ asset to meet hard currency income needs until the fruit, produce and hay was ready for market.

Fort Canyon ice was always in high demand because of the purity of the water. While growing up below the old farm, a drink from the tap in the kitchen sink still seemed like you were drinking liquid ice well in to July. But ‘cool’ wasn’t the cold required to keep the meat lockers in the store or ice boxes in the homes cold enough to extend the life of last years beef, pork and chicken harvest.

My uncles used to stop by our house at O’Dark Thirty on Saturday mornings, just to taste that cold Alpine water. Back in the day, to enjoy the same soothing draught, they’d have to drink directly from the mountain runoff stream above town to get their cold ‘fix’. Back then, if you wanted a clean, clear block of ice, you’d talk to great grandpa . Cash or barter would change hands and soon a wagon loaded with lumpy dripping sawdust would arrive at your door with your order.

The ice crop cycle continued for several generations on the farm but it seemed like ice produced more heat than cooling.

You got hot in the summer sun while burning energy cutting wood. Hot gathering the saw dust and putting it in the hillside refrigerator. Hot cutting ice with long saws. Hot hauling it to the cave, and finally, hot while delivering it. Fortunately, this time, you at least had a side benefit from your labors, because you had something cool to lay on for a minute and something cool to drip down the front of your overalls as a welcome relief from all of the heat you’d generated.

I don’t work that hard to enjoy a little cool today. Not for our whole house air conditioning, our ice cream, cold milk or even for a cold soda in the summer months. The hard won energy temporarily captured in ice isn’t as difficult to capture and enjoy today as it was back in the day.

Soft like a marshmallow. I guess that the failure of our side-by-side wasn’t that big of a thing, was it?

Technorati Tags: Histories,Family Stories

The Santa of Gold Hill – A Find-a-grave HERO

2009-12-05T13:13:00.002-07:00

Recently, a television program showing current day scenes of the famous towns and locations from the “Old West” caught my eye. A couple of scenes featuring the cemetery in Gold Hill, Nevada reminded me of my visit there. We were in a hurry to reach our destination in California, so my desire to stop and patrol the cemetery was shelved.

I love stopping at cemeteries that I spot when driving and reading the tombstone inscriptions. They frequently educate me far more completely than reading a history of the area.

Of course, I always take photos of tombstones in these locations. How can you miss an opportunity like that?

Gold Hill Cemetery. Has someone stopped and taken photos of the tombstones already and posted them on Find-a-grave? Yes, indeed and in this case, the Santa’s name is Herbert Rickards. I call him ‘Santa’ because of the masterful work he has done in capturing not only photos of the tombstones, but his superhuman efforts in finding their respective 100+ year-old portrait photos.

Descendants of anyone buried in Gold Hill will certainly call Herbert “Santa” as well when they find his postings. Check them out for yourself.

Singing praises of Herbert is easy when you see his work …. but wait … there’s more!

Look at his postings and you’ll also see that he has also researched the life history of each person and posted it on their memorial.

Above and beyond? Way beyond!

There needs to be a “Find-a-grave Hero” award created for folks like Herbert. I don’t have artistic skills, so my contribution to his award can only be in words. Perhaps some of you can add your talents and create a graphic award for folks like Herbert. If so, let the folks at Find-a-grave know. Who knows? Maybe they’ll think it is a feature worthy of adding to their site.

Technorati Tags: Find-a-grave,Headstones,Tombstone,Grave

Didn’t Have To Travel Far

2009-12-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

While spending a day taking tombstone photos recently, I stopped to take photos of the general setting while standing beside the grave my great grandparents. Pondering the scene, I realized that I could see the tombstones of three sets of 2nd great grandparents, one set of great grandparents and one set of my grandparents with just a slight movement of my eyes. Other ancestors are buried close by. In a ten minute drive, I could visit the graves four generations of my ancestors except for one set in California and one in Massachusetts.

Over the years, I’ve encouraged members of my family history classes to visit the burial locations of their ancestors and associated family. They’ve reported back on the sometimes lengthy trips they’ve made to visit the associated cemeteries. We’ve enjoyed talking about the discoveries they’ve made in the towns and locations where their ancestors lived.

Frequently, while standing at the headstones of their ancestors, they’ve experienced a shift in their personal affection for them. The ties that bind them to their ancestors are strengthened, even inextricably enhanced.

My ancestors gathered to the same general area to live their lives because of religious beliefs and economic opportunity. Many generations of their descendants still live and have been buried within a thirty mile radius of the original settlements. Naturally, they have also been buried in the cemeteries in those towns, hence my good fortune in being able to see so many of their graves from one vantage point.

Other ancestral lines were similarly buried in close proximity to each other. My ancestral families in Plymouth, Massachusetts lived there for over three hundred years. My ancestral families from Bornholm, Denmark lived, died and buried in close proximity to each other for dozens of generations.

My ancestors that moved for economic necessity or due to their adventurous spirit have left long trails dotted with wayside stops where they briefly lived, gave birth, married, died and buried some family members. Vacations over the years have taken us to most of their burial sites, but there are still some graves that haven’t been visited.

What is so important about visiting the grave of an ancestor? In many cases, their headstone is the only physical item that exists from their day. I can see their names on birth, marriage and death records as well as in census, wills and property records, but they are usually digital images, not a tangible object.

Touching their headstone creates a tie between us. The tactile memory from my fingertips hasn’t dimmed with time. The feeling of being part of a great discovery was sweet at the time and is still satisfying in the years and decades since the first encounters.

How about you? Do you have similar groupings of ancestral burials in close proximity of each other or do you have to make a determined effort to find and visit their graves?

Either way, the effort to visit their graves is worth your time and expense. Remember to take photos of their tombstones and of the setting.

If you have handheld GPS, record the exact location of their graves in your notes and transfer the information to your genealogy database. Add the digitized images to their records to enhance their life stories.

Remember to take a photo of yourself standing beside their graves to help you remember the trip and your tie to them and as time goes by, to give your descendants something tangible to view as they look back at their own ancestors.

Technorati Tags: Cemetery,Cemeteries,Cemetery Locations,Headstones,Tombstone

Genealogy Research Live in Palm of Your Hand

2009-11-16T15:51:00.001-07:00

I know that a number of you have iPhones. You probably aren't aware that you can purchase an application to let you access new FamilySearch on your phone! Check out the mobileTree application.

I keep much of my genealogy and research on my website (some public, some password protected). Combine online data with mobileTree and the available GPS application and you have a Killer tool for doing genealogy research!

Imagine..... The billions of records of nFS, your own data, photos, and ability to interface with all of them using a device that fits in the palm of your hand. Visit a cemetery, get the GPS coordinates of ancestors graves, take a photo of their headstones and post it all to your site and blog(s) on the spot. No wasted motion or memory loss! Wow!

If you have an iPhone, I'll bet Santa would be happy to give you this application if you ask for it.

Continuing on this theme .....

You may not know that you can post your cemetery, research and other photos directly to your blogs via email. Both Posterous and blogger.com allow postings this way. All of the posts to my posterous blog are made that way.

Suppose you are working with family and friends on genealogy and you are on a research trip. You can share your finds with them in real-time using this method. I usually have to find a WiFi hot spot or do a little juggling on a public computer at a library or at the FHL to make on-the-spot posts.

When you have a active research team but haven't worked together in real-time, you can't imagine how the synergy in the groups builds momentum and success in your research. They help guide your on-the-site search with information they have in their far-flung locations.

I've frequently experienced this synergy in real-time and guarantee it happens. Add Skype to the mix for live video, voice and peer-to-peer file transfers and you too can make it 'Happen' -- Real Time!

Wow #2! I may have lived long enough to see some of my dreams become reality!

The tools are here. Make it happen.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Family History,GPS,New FamilySearch,Skype,Posterous,Lat-Long,Headstones,Research Tips,Family History Library,LDS

Grandpa – You Are So Funny

2009-11-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

Talking to your grandchildren is often a shock to your reality. I tell them stories and they often reply, “Grandpa, you are so funny!”

I tilt my head to the side and thoughtfully consider what I have said that could elicit such a response. I quickly realize that my verbal language is full of symbolic phrases that often express full paragraphs and concepts to others of my generation, yet are often meaningless to the Disney Channel generation.

Conversely, some of their phases are equally meaningless to me.

I don’t think I’ll ever abandon the phrases that have been part of my life since my youth. Most spanned more than my generation. My parents used them. As often as not, my grandparents used them.

Today, technology and the rapidly expanding world knowledgebase has lit the afterburners on language mutation. Most of the current phrases are based on technological concepts that will be obsolete in ever decreasing cycle lengths.

So, for me, I’ll continue to hang on to the phrases that I’ve known and that have exhibited the most longevity in the last two hundred years. I suppose that means that I’ll continue to be ‘funny’.

In May 1996, a third cousin sent his favorite phrases and their meanings as a punctuation mark to make his point in our discussion. In honor of his memory, they are listed below:

THE CLINK.

The name of a prison which was on Clink Street in the Southwark area of London.

PATENT LEATHER.

After the Patten shoe which the young women wore in the buttery. When the cream spilled on their shoes, the fat would tend to make the leather shiny.

DONE TO A TURN.

Meat was roasted until cooked on an upright spit which had to be turned by hand.

CUT THROUGH THE RED TAPE.

Solicitors kept their clients papers in a file folder tied with red ribbon to prevent the papers from falling out. Of course, when they wanted to get at the papers, they would have to cut through the red tape.

MINDING YOUR P’s & Q’s.

Ps & Qs Ale was served at local taverns out of a "tankard" ... you were charged by the angle of your elbow ... half-way up... you drank a pint, all the way up... you drank a quart. Since the Quart cost so much more than the Pint, you were warned to "Mind your Ps & Qs"

GETTING TANKED.

When you drank too much out of the above "tankard" you were said to be "tanked" ... if you got so "tanked" that you passed out, there was a chance that somebody might think you had actually died. Since back then they didn't have experience with taking pulses, they often buried people alive who were actually in a drunken stupor or otherwise comatose.

PITCHER.

A leather jug treated with tar pitch to help it hold its shape.

GETTING BOMBED.

A bombard is a leather jug which holds 8 pints or 4 quarts. A full bombard of ale would make you drunk.

TUMBLER & TIPSY.

Glasses were hand blown, thus flat bottomed glasses were difficult to produce. Those with curved bottoms would tend to tumble over when placed on the table, and too many tumblers of whiskey would make you a little bit tipsy.

SAVED BY THE BELL.

When our ancestors realized that they were burying a great deal of people before their time had actually come, they came up with a solution. They tied a string onto the "dead" person's hand, buried them, and tied the other end of the string to a bell and then tied it to nearby tree branch. If the person revived enough to ring the bell, their survivors would rush out and dig them up. Hence... "saved by the bell"

THRESHOLD.

The raised door entrance held back the straw (called thresh) on the floor.

CHEW THE FAT.

A host would offer his guests a piece of bacon, which was stored above the fireplace in the parlor, so they could chew the fat during their visit.

GETTING THE SHORT END OF THE STICK.

Candles were expensive to make, so often reeds were dipped in tallow and burned instead. When visitors came, it was the custom for guests to make their exit by the time the lights went out. Therefore, if your host didn't want you to stay very long, he would give you a "short stick."

BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS.

If they REALLY didn't want you to stay very long, they would light "both ends" at the same time!

GETTING THE BUM'S RUSH.

A short rush, which would burn for a short time, would be used when company came over rather late; when it burnt out, you would want to see the hind end of your guests out the door.

GIVING SOMEONE THE COLD SHOULDER.

When a guests would over stay their welcome as house guests, the hosts would (instead of feeding them good, warm meals) give their too-long staying guests the worst part of the animal, not warmed, but the COLD SHOULDER.

GETTING A SQUARE MEAL.

Your dinner plate was a square piece of wood with a "bowl" carved out to hold your serving of the perpetual stew that was always cooking over the fire. The kettle was never actually emptied and cleaned out. New ingredients were simply added to the muck. You always took your "square" with you when you went traveling.

UPPER CRUST.

Visitors to the Anne Hathaway's cottage (near Stratford upon Avon) are given this explanation while looking at the bread oven beside the fireplace in the kitchen: "The bread was put, as a raw lump of dough, straight into the bread oven. No bread tin, it just sits on the floor of the oven. The oven is heated by the fire and is very hot at the bottom. When the bed is done baking and taken out to cool, the base of the loaf is overcooked black and also dirty. The top of the loaf is done just right, and still clean. The bottom of the loaf is for the servants to eat, while the upper crust is for the master of the house.

CLEAN YOUR PLATE BEFORE YOU HAVE DESSERT.

The square plate (above) was never washed either. After your daily dose of stew, you wiped your plate clean with a piece of bread. Then you flipped it over which provided a flat surface for your dessert portion (if there was any, that is)

ROOM & BOARD.

An apprentice would journey to another village to learn more about his craft (journeyman). There he would pay someone for his room, and food for his board.

RULE OF THUMB.

An old English law declared that a man could not beat his wife with a stick any larger than the diameter of his thumb.

GETTING YOUR GOAT.

This apparently refers to an old English (Welsh?) belief that keeping a goat in the barn would have a calming effect on the cows, hence producing more milk. When one wanted to antagonize/terrorize one's enemy, you would abscond with their goat rendering their milk cows less- to non-productive.

STONE COLD.

Slate floors were often cold enough during the winter months that any bare skin coming in contact with them would "stick". The slate floors were covered with a layer of hay to provide some warmth. The kitchen was the only room kept heated during the winter. All of the family spent the day cooped up in this one room (often 10 kids or more)... also the family cats and dogs who served important functions of "mousing," "garbage disposal," and etc.

BABY'S HIGH CHAIR.

High chair with holes in the seat (a.k.a. "drainage chair"). During the winter months, young babies were strapped into their chairs and were never allowed to crawl around in the hay on the stone-cold floor. They didn't wear any diapers of any sort. They sat in that chair all day... and you know why there were holes in their chair!

SPRING CLEANING.

The layer of hay in the kitchen, was finally hauled out of the house when the weather turned warm in the Spring.

BON(e)FIRE.

The discarded "bones" from winter meals were piled outside and a bonefire would be set to get rid of them.

SLEEP TIGHT.

The bed frames were strung with ropes on which straw mattresses were placed. After some time the ropes would loosen and one of the young men would pull them tight.

TIE THE KNOT.

Tying the knot of the ropes in the marriage bed.

REASON FOR CANOPY BEDS.

Most English homes of old had "thatched" roofs. Canopies were placed over the beds to keep bugs, mice, dirt, rain, etc. from disturbing your sleep! Of course, I think I would want to stay awake because I'd be so afraid of having to be "saved by the bell"!

Technorati Tags: History,Phrases,Terminology,Genealogy

"Please Pardon Momma from Jail"

2009-11-09T17:53:00.002-07:00

Genealogical research often takes you down many paths, sometimes just because they are so interesting. After several hours of reading interesting documents, this series of documents remained in my memory.

Dear Sir, Would You Please Pardon Momma?

18 Mar 1895 | Logan, Utah

Thirteen year old Polly Beardall found herself raising her siblings due to unfortunate events in the lives of her parents.

Apparently, her father John Gell Beardall left home in 1891 or 1892 saying the was going to Oregon to look for work and was never heard from again. He left his wife, Eliza Richards Beardall and four living children to fend for themselves in Logan, Utah.

Polly was the only daughter in the family. On 18 March 1895, she wrote a letter to the legal authorities asking them to release her mother from jail because Polly had been raising her siblings for over seven months and was worn out.

Her mother, Eliza Richards Beardall had been incarcerated for involuntary manslaughter in the county jail in Logan, Utah. The details of the case aren't revealed in the pardon documents.

Read Polly's poignant plead in this letter asking for her mothers release from jail so she could come home and care for her family.

I Scarcely Know What To Say

27 Mar 1895 | Logan, Utah

U. S. Attorney, J. W. Judd was asked by Judge W. C. Maginnis for his opinion in Polly's pardon request.

Judge Maginnis was at a loss of words as he started penning his letter to Judd. The impact of young Polly's letter on both of them was obvious in their letters.

Maginnis stated that he didn't think it was good for the children to be put in the care of their mother.

On the surface, this would seem to say that she was an unfit mother, but there is little doubt he meant that due to the indigent circumstances of the family, Eliza would struggle to support, feed and clothe her children.

Governor Vest .... The Decision Is Up To You

29 Mar 1895 | Logan, Utah

U. S. Attorney, J. W. Judd was asked by Judge W. C. Maginnis for his opinion in Polly's pardon request.

Judge Maginnis was at a loss of words as he started penning his letter to Judd. The impact of young Polly's letter on both of them was obvious in their letters.

Maginnis stated that he didn't think it was good for the children to be put in the care of their mother.

Governor Vest .... The Decision Is Still Up To You

29 Mar 1895 | Logan, Utah

U. S. Attorney J. W. Judd, wrote a letter to Utah Governor, Caleb W. Vest stating that he couldn't provide a recommendation for pardon, placing the decision on Governor Vest.

Release and Marriage

May 1895 | Logan, Utah

The pardon was granted on 1 Apr 1895 by Governor Vest and Eliza was released to go home and care for her family.. On 18 May 1895, Eliza married Azial Litchfield Riggs of Logan, Utah.

Two children, Fred and Maud, were produced from this union. Azial died when the children were in their teen years and Eliza again faced the difficult task of working a farm to provide for her family as a single mother.

Eliza died on 21 Oct 1936 in Wellsville, Utah.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Research,Pardon

History of the Dutch Oven

2009-11-02T23:16:00.002-07:00

I've always enjoyed eating superior food cooked in a Dutch Oven. My father used it as his only cooking pot whenever he was outdoors and frequently at home. I used to almost pray that mom would be gone for an evening so he could cook ‘trail fare’ for dinner.

Don’t get me wrong. Mom was an excellent cook and loved preparing meals for the family, but Dad – well, Dad cooked ‘Man’ food in the Dutch oven or cast iron pans. Even today, the whiff of cooking onions or garlic immediately restores a scene in my mind of a six-year-old young man, salivating at the smells and staring into the steaming contents of a Dutch oven.

Just writing about it caused the flashback memory and like any good Pavlonian dog, my mouth is watering yet again.

Today, when my family and I cook using our Dutch ovens, we frequently hear the same refrain:

“Delicious!” “Devine!” “Oh My Gosh!”

How did my ancestors stay so thin with food this good? Tracing the cooking preferences of my male ancestors for four generations, I’ve found that they were all Dutch oven masters. My early pioneer ancestors designated the Dutch oven as their only cooking pot when crossing the American plains. They never lost their love of them.

When I visited Grandpa as a youngster, he would roast potatoes in a fire when time was of the essence, but when we wanted to enjoy a good meal, his Dutch ovens were the tool used to create the feast.

Of course our family has continued the tradition. It wasn’t hard to convince our wives that cooking with the ovens was ‘Man Territory’.

The Dutch Oven: Utah's Official State Cooking Pot

The IDOS (International Dutch Oven Society) wrote about the history of the Dutch oven in Utah years ago:

“In 1997, the Utah State Legislature approved House Bill HB203, designating the Dutch Oven as the State Cooking Pot. The following information was generously sent to the Utah State Library by the International Dutch Oven Society located in Logan, Utah. Utah is not only the headquarters of the Society but the site of World Championship Dutch Oven Cookoff which is a major event of the Festival of the American West. (Held on 2 August in Logan, Utah this year.)

When the early pioneers came to Utah they used a number of things such as lumbering prairie schooners, teams of massive oxen, mossy wooden water barrels, and heavy dresses which almost dragged on the ground. For most of us, such common pioneer artifacts are difficult to relate to or use in our lives today. However, there is one very popular pioneer indispensable which thousands of Utah families are using in their everyday activities. It not only looks the same but is still made basically the same way--the tried and true Dutch oven.

Explorers like Jim Bridger and Peter Skene Ogden used the kettle versions on the trail but appreciated the standard three-legged, flat top with a rim version together with its "lite" breads, tasty fruit cobblers and delicious stews when they wintered in. Mount ain men who rendezvoused in Cache Valley in the 1820's used them and Osborne Russell in his Journal of a Trapper writes about how much they appreciated having some greasy, grizzly bear meat to cook because the cast-iron pots needed re-seasoning after boiling roots for meals the previous eleven days.

Pioneer trains gearing up near Independence, Missouri were given a list of essentials with the Dutch oven at the top of the list, the people-powered handcart companies chose to include the heavy pots for their long pull to Utah and the miners digging in the canyons around Bingham, Price and Cedar City counted the black pots almost as essential as their picks.

It's been asked why Dutch ovens are used by more Utah families than other states and perhaps it's because for Utahans, families have a special significance and particularly their pioneer forbearers. It's a unique and generational bonding experience for families to gather around a campfire after a meal from the same kind of Dutch ovens and tell the stories about and history of their pioneer ancestors.”

If you, no, when you decide to acquire your own ovens, buy the best. Stick with Lodge ovens and ONLY use Kingsford charcoal. Be sure to avoid any charcoal that his any fuel infused in the briquettes.

The formula to create a 350 F oven temperature is simple. If you have a 12” oven, put the number of briquettes equal to the size of the oven minus two under it and plus two on the top. So, for a 12” oven, 10 briquettes would be under and 14 on top for most meals. If you are cooking bread and cookies, you’ll want to move one or two of the briquettes to the top from the bottom.

Never clean your Dutch oven with soap. Heat them in hot water and wipe them clean. Eventually, a highly prized black patina will develop that is better than Teflon and won’t cause any chemical health problems. Remember that the pores of the metal open up a little when the oven is hot and washing it with soap will not only ruin the black patina but the soap will be trapped in the pores as the metal cools and contracts. Your next meal will taste a lot better without the flavor of Dawn detergent.

Be sure to wipe your oven very dry after every use. You may want to coat the surfaces with a light spray of Pam after it is cleaned. Our family lives in a low humidity environment and we don’t have to worry about rust on our ovens when we store them properly. Consider the humidity factor in your own storage plan.

We’ve found that with a little thought, anything we can cook in our home ovens can be cooked in our Dutch Ovens. And the taste? Well, there aren’t many leftovers to put in the refrigerator.

Here are a few basic ‘good eatin’ recipes that we enjoy. Sorry, the top award winners aren’t in this group. They are guarded by lock and key and my poor memory of where the key is kept.

DUTCH OVEN POTATOES

6 large potatoes

5 carrots

2 medium-sized onions

1 lb. mild cheddar cheese

1 can cream of mushroom soup

salt and pepper

Peel and slice potatoes and carrots, 1/4 in. thick. Slice onion rings 1/4 inch thick, cut into fourths. Place potatoes, carrots and onions into 12-inch Dutch oven with 1/8 inch oil on bottom. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook 40 minutes, stirring frequently. Add soup and stir thoroughly. Cook for 10 minutes. Add grated cheese over top of potatoes. Cover to melt cheese. Serve.

BARBECUED SPARE RIBS

4-6 slabs spare ribs

Brown ribs in Dutch oven. Mix sauce ingredients together. Warm to dissolve brown sugar and spices. Cover ribs with sauce. Cook for 90 minutes.

Sauce:

1 medium onion

3/4 cup ketchup

1/4 cup water

1 tsp. salt

1/4 cup vinegar

2 tsp. mustard (wet)

1 tsp. paprika

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. chili powder

1/4 - 1/2 tsp. red cayenne pepper

CHICKEN STIR FRY

4 chicken breasts cut into bite-size pieces

broccoli, carrots, celery, mushrooms, green onions, pea pods

1 can water chestnuts (drained)

Cook vegetables in a little oil until tender. Add water chestnuts.

Add 2 cups chicken broth. Bring to boil and cook 3-5 minutes.

Thicken with 1/4 cup soy sauce mixed with 3 tbls. corn starch.

SWEET AND SOUR PORK OR CHICKEN

1 lb. chicken breasts or lean pork

1 egg yolk

1 tbls. corn starch

1 tbls. water

flour

Cut meat into bite-sized pieces. Mix together egg, salt, cornstarch and water. Add meat and let stand 10 minutes. Remove meat pieces, dip into flour, deep fry several minutes in hot oil until lightly browned. Remove from oil and drain on paper towels. Continue cooking meat pieces until all are browned. Wipe out Dutch oven.

Vegetables:

1 large carrot, sliced

1 green pepper, cut into chunks

1/2 onion, cut into large pieces

1-8 oz. can pineapple chunks (drain, save juice)

Sauce:

pineapple juice plus water to equal 1 cup

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

3 tbls. corn starch

Mix together and set aside.

Into clean Dutch oven, heat 1 tbls. oil. Add onion, carrots and peppers. Stir fry until vegetables are tender. Push vegetables firm center, add sauce. When mixture boils, add meat. Mix all together. Cook 3-5 minutes. If too thick, add a little water. If not thick enough, mix a little cornstarch with water making a thickening. Add until desired thickness is achieved.

Technorati Tags: Dutch Oven,Pioneer,Cooking,Ancestors

Good Morning! Who Died?

2009-10-21T11:44:00.000-06:00

I may be unique, but I doubt it. Every morning I arise, mumble “goo morgan” to my wife and then stumble off to glance at the front page of the newspaper. My real goal is to read the obituary page however. Did any of my extended cousins or their spouses die?

Unfortunately, too many of them seem to be doing it now. Also unfortunately, I’ve read the obituaries of too many younger folks and acquaintances in the last few months. Frequently, the names on the obituary page are familiar but I can’t remember exactly how I know their name. I dutifully read dozens of obituaries every month of people that I don’t know. Sometimes though, the listing is about a cousin that I’ve only met through my genealogy database.

Genealogy. That of course is the real reason I read so many obituaries every month. I would read them to hear about friends and extended family anyway but not with such refined searches except for the possibility of finding genealogy ‘gold’ hidden in the listings.

Obituaries are invaluable resources to genealogists. The facts in them are often wrong or “off” a little because of the stress on the family at the time but the names and places are generally accurate.

Some obituaries are only sparsely populated while others are rich with details about the person and their life.

Obituaries from the turn of the century are often lengthy stories about the deceased individual.

The obituary for one of my great grandmothers is almost a half page long, complete with her photo and comments by friends and religious leaders. When I found it, I didn’t even try to obey the ‘Silence’ signs in the library. “Hah!” “Look at that!” My exclamations gained the attention of everyone on that floor. I could only manage a grin and a finger point at the page before finally telling them that “I found my great grandmother”. Shaking their heads at the eccentric behavior of one of those ‘genealogists’, the other patrons went back to their studies and research.

The smile on my face stayed in place all day. I greeted everyone a little more cheerfully during the visit and had extreme patience with the young desk attendant who tried to restock the paper in the copy machine.

Frequently, I find obituaries or death articles in digital newspapers online. Sometimes, I can’t imagine why they are in a newspaper from a distant town, but am grateful because the local newspaper of the time was destroyed by uncaring corporations who purchased the name and subscriber list of the local publication, but had no interest in the years of published content.

Absent the indexing and hosting of online digital images of newspapers, I wouldn’t have found the majority of the obituaries now safely stored in my sources folder.

Are you enjoying similar success with similar finds in your own research? If you haven’t, don your Sherlock cap and enter into the fray. Today is a good day to put a smile on your face too.

When you have thoroughly mined the Internet and need to physically visit a library, take the stairs and not the elevator. Unfortunately, they probably won’t be quite like those in this video though.

Technorati Tags: Genealogy,Obituaries,Famhist,Lineagekeeper

Find-a-grave Comes of Age

2009-10-15T23:37:00.001-06:00

When I started posting tombstone photos and histories on the Find-a-grave website over nine years ago, the site content was still fairly small. On rare occasion, I’d find a photo of the marker of an extended family member, but that was enough to encourage me to continue posting.

Eventually, I posted a request for the photo of my 4th great grandfathers tombstone in Massachusetts and a wonderful volunteer quickly responded and posted it on the Find-a-grave site. I couldn’t travel there and felt the same way as the people who had thanked me for posting tombstone photos from my part of the world.

Four or five hours on a Saturday morning photo shoot usually produces 300 – 400 photos to post on the site. It takes me far longer to rotate, tweak, resize and crop the images than taking the photos, but that is ok because I usually find that at least some of the photos are of the markers of my own extended family. If I could post the photos quickly, I probably wouldn’t read the names so closely or allow them to ‘ring the bell’ in my memory that causes me to search my databases for a possible family tie.

Sometimes, a search of the site turned up a marker for a family member that I’d had a difficult time finding. Even though the tombstone information usually included only their name, birth and death years, the information still provided a death date and location that I could use to help in my ancestral quest.

I often commented that I wished there was a way to link the memorials together as families because not only could my links help other people searching for families members memorials that I’d created but links created by others would certainly be of equal value in my own ancestral quest.

Then one day earlier this year, my wish was granted by the kind folks at find-a-grave. Users had seen the site slow down over the years and at times it was neigh unto impossible to keep a working connection long enough to post a string of new records. We received a note asking us to be patient because the system was being ‘worked on’.

Worked on it was, because late one night the site failed while I was posting. When I tried it again an hour later, it was up and running and the search speed was terrific. The migration to new servers was completed. Not long thereafter users noted some new changes on each memorial. We could LINK Records!

Since then, I’ve seen a substantial increase of messages regarding records I’ve posted on the site. The notes asking me to link records that I’ve created to the records of their parents, siblings, children. With them, I spend time creating the links for families that are posted.

We are also posting a lot of individual photos, histories, family photos and other information that are turning the site into a wonderful genealogical resource. Several weeks ago, I found the full descendancy of one of my ‘lost’ great granduncles that a distant cousin had posted. They did a masterful job by including numerous death certificates, documented histories and comments that allowed me to track and verify the information independently.

I’ve since found that it wasn’t a one-off experience. Other difficult-to-find lines are starting to surface. Click, click, click and I’m climbing the tree back to our common ancestors. Nice!

Mentioning my photo forays and postings to cousins in England, I soon received emails from them with photos of the tombstones that they passed everyday on their morning walks. Their notes asked if I’d post them so the families of the deceased might have the images available to find in their own quests. Nice twice. I couldn’t visit England to take the photos and truth is … even if I did visit, I’d be too busy finding my own ancestral records and homes to take time out to take photos of tombstones in locations I had no reason to visit.

If you haven’t visited Find-a-grave for a while, visit today. Check to see if some of your own ‘lost’ relatives have been found and linked by a kind unknown cousin.

If you don’t already have an account, sign up and join in the fun. It’s free! Pay-it-forward by taking tombstone photos in your area and posting them on the site. Payment will return to you. Possibly in unlikely ways but always with a lot of interest.

Technorati Tags: Find-a-grave,Genealogy,FamHist,Lineagekeeper

Watching Over My Shoulder

2009-10-04T14:07:00.000-06:00

Like many of you, I spend considerable time doing genealogical research on my family lines. My forays into the past often overtake my perception of where and when I am. My mind and efforts constrict to a fine focus on the quest to find records, proofs, information and details about my ancestors lives. I put headphones on, start the music or video library playing in a small window on my left screen for background ‘noise’ and leave the world to fend for itself.

Frequently, I don’t remember eating, drinking or involvement in any other activity until I notice that the sun has arisen again and that I’m so stiff it is hard to stand up. My sweet wife has apparently brought sustenance to me and checked on me from time to time to confirm that I’m in a ‘genatonic’ state and not a catatonic state, although I was on my own during the wee hours of the night.

Sunday afternoon has magically transformed into Monday morning. If music was playing at the beginning of my session, it is still playing. My library is large enough to play new songs continuously for days. I’ve been unconsciously entertained the whole time. If a movie was playing when I moved into my ‘genamension’ (genealogical dimension), it is still playing. I have no recollection of restarting it over and over nor do I remember viewing any of its scenes. The permanent ringing in my ears was offset by the soundtrack, which helped keep the world at bay so I could concentrate.

Glancing down, I realize that I’m holding a document in my hands from my quest. On rare occasion it is the original that I’ve retrieved from my files, but usually, it is a copy that I’ve found while I’ve been traversing the halls of time. Often, there are stacks of printed documents to the side of my keyboard, waiting to be filed in sleeves in my storage binders.

Checking the records in my database, I note that I’ve dutifully transcribed them as sources in the records for the associated people. Their respective document images have been cleaned up, straightened, resized, linked to my database sources and saved in the various source folders on the multiple storage drives that I use to store my records. I marvel at all of the records that are now online and on pilot.familysearch.org.

Reading the image of the last found death record on my right screen brings a image of the person to my mind. I know them on some deeper level than just the dates and places that I’ve discovered in my genamensional journey. Often, I know what they sounded like, what they wore and how their houses and farms were organized.

I am inseparably bonded to them from that point in time on.

Where did that knowledge come from?

Someone has been watching over my shoulder.

They have been whispering to me all night long, guiding my quest, cheering me on and celebrating when they are finally ‘found’. They are mine now. I am theirs. The bond and ties have and will be made permanent in the coming days.

If you are intently involved in a similar quest for your own ancestors, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If anyone were to ask you about a member of your ancestry that you’ve worked diligently to find, then they need to be prepared to sit down and listen to you describe them and their story. They have become part of the fabric of your being. Indeed, you are inseparably bonded to them.

On the web, the story of Sara Beth’s quest to find her 5th great grandmother, Sylvia Lewis Tyler, in her blog postings resonates with us, because we understand exactly how she feels. We know why she is so excited to have touched Sylvia’s journal and to have found her grave. We celebrate her discovery with her.

I’m looking forward to celebrating the discoveries of others who are seeking to know their own lineage and family history. BYU Broadcasting has created a new program called, “The Generations Project” that will start airing in January, 2010. It is already on my calendar with a reminder that will start flashing on January 1 to find the exact time of its broadcast.

The sneak preview on the site shows a young lady who has slipped into her own genamension as she progresses from painting concentric circles to start her new painting to their unknown ancestral relevance in the process of her ancestral quest. The full show should be fascinating.

What are your genamensional stories? Post them on your blog and send me a note. I’ll link them here.

Technorati Tags: Genamension,Family History,Genealogy,Lineagekeeper

Just Try Another Window

2009-09-20T16:49:00.001-06:00

While trying to help one of my wife’s cousins find a remarkably hard to find Utah Death Certificate online today, I noted a new feature that has been added to the Utah Death Certificate Index.

We know that census records often contain spellings that are a best effort by the census taker, either because they couldn't spell, didn't hear the name clearly or wrote exactly what was said in the brogue of the speaker.

Unfortunately, that same rule also applies to some degree with early death certificates.

In this case, my wife’s 4th great grandfathers name is Lars Mouritsen. I finally found his death certificate under Mountsen.

Growling about the number of spelling combination's I'd tried to that point, another thought came to mind.....

Checking my database, I noted that we didn't have a copy of the death certificate for his wife, Maren Sorensdatter Mouritsen. I couldn't imagine why I'd forgotten to get it long ago but as soon as I started to search for it, I discovered the reason. The culprit was another spelling 'opportunity'.

After twenty minutes of fruitless searching, I finally manually went to the Utah Death Certificate Index page looking for a 'hints' link. (yes, ladies, men will eventually abase themselves to the point that they read instructions).

Fortunately, I was able to forgo that fate. A new set of search fields has been added to the index page that allows searches by death day, month and year as well as by county.

As you can see from the screen cap of the way Maren's name was written on her death certificate, there was little chance that I would find it .... who knows how the indexer read it, let alone the fact that she was apparently called by a nickname, “Maria”.

The new search fields, allowed me to simply enter Maren's death date and Cache county in the fields and bingo.... we now have a copy of her remarkably incomplete death certificate....

So, if you have problems finding the death certificate for your family member in the Utah Death Certificate Index, don't bother reading the instructions. Just scroll down the page a little and use the dates and or county fields to resolve your quest.

Men .... you are welcome.... the tragedy of having to read instructions is avoided yet again...

Technorati Tags: Death Certificate,Utah Death Certificate Index,Genealogy,Lineagekeeper

I Wear A Seat Belt When Doing Genealogy

2009-08-17T13:52:00.001-06:00

I always wear a seat belt. It makes it harder for aliens to suck me out of the window of my car.

Like most genealogy fans, I’m addicted to researching my lineage and associated families. The addiction started over a half century ago and if anything has intensified every year since then.

Many other researchers from around the world with my surname have contacted me over the years hoping to find common ancestry and to share research efforts. Surprisingly, very few of the folks are related to me prior to the early 1400’s. We wish we could find a closer tie, but alas, it hasn’t happened so far.

One of my ‘cousins’ has been in contact with me on and off for many years. He hit a brick wall early in his research and hasn’t been able to topple it even with his most intense efforts. Finally hoping to find a keyhole that peers into the lineage I’ve traced, I was asked if I’d take a DNA test hoping we’d find enough of a match to at least provide some encouragement in his quest.

Unfortunately, he asked for the DNA test results of an alien.

We waited for weeks before the first set of results arrived. Opening them, I was relieved to see that the lab agreed that I was alive but was sad that there weren’t many other facts to explore. About a month later, the rest of the results arrived. My ‘cousin’ and I may be related, but if so, it is only because we both have two legs.

Intrigued with the concept of genealogical ‘research’ through DNA, I started reading about how to correctly interpret the results of DNA tests.

That may have been a bad choice on my part. Thus far, I’ve found that I have almost no DNA ties to any other human on record.

I think I’m an alien.

I was born 14 years after my next closest sibling and due to size, coloring and interests have often wondered if I was left on the back step of my parents home and they never got around to telling me.

My oldest brother took my mother to the hospital when I was born because my father wasn’t home at the moment. He and my mother told me the story many times. My mother even elaborated on the story noting that the doctor said, “It’s a Boy! He has Red Hair!”, to which my mother replied, “That’s not Red, that’s Rust!”

I’ve always enjoyed that story but now that I’ve spent so much time trying to find DNA ties to other humans, I’m more disposed to believing that I was dropped off at my parents home by aliens. I’m probably part of a major alien conspiracy that hasn’t been exposed yet.

How are you doing with the results of your DNA tests? Are you part of the alien conspiracy too or have you been able to use them to prove ties to the humans?

To the other aliens out there, I say, “Aliens Unite!” We may create a whole new area of research in the fascinating genealogical quest that humans enjoy.

I’m sure they’ll still accept us. Source documentation may be harder for us, but think of the family stories we’ll have to tell!

See you in the Family History Library or on the Mother Ship.

Technorati Tags: DNA,FamHist,Genealogy,Family Stories,Family History,Lineage Keeper

The Indefatigable Thomas Ashton

2009-08-15T01:10:00.001-06:00

Born in Parr, Prescot, Lincolnshire in 1813, Thomas Ashton was the only son of Joseph and Catherine Cawley Ashton. Joseph was a silver smith by trade and Thomas picked up the thrill of working with his hands and mind at a young age.

He married Mary Howard in 1836 and the couple quickly had two children. In 1840, Thomas and Mary heard the message of Mormon missionaries and were baptized into that faith in 1840. On the 8th of November 1841, the couple boarded a ship at Liverpool and migrated to America to join up with other members of the church.

Three more children were born to the couple in Iowa. Unfortunately, the family was driven from location to location by murderous mobs along the other church members. They eventually moved to Nauvoo, Illinois where they established a comfortable home for their family. Once again, the mobs began to attack. They were forced to leave Missouri after Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued his infamous Missouri Executive Order 44, or the ‘extermination order’ of all members of the Mormon faith.

After years of enduring privations and stress from their attacks, Mary to become so ill that she died in August 1849. Thomas was left alone to raise five children while trying to yet again build a home, make a living and provide service to his church.

Calling on his metal and woodworking skills, he helped craft the famous old ‘blunderbuss’ cannon out of an old steamboat funnel during these years. It made a great noise but wasn’t used to kill the mobsters.

Once again, the Mormons were forced out of their homes by mobs, fleeing across the frozen Mississippi River during the winter of 1846-47. They settled in Winter Quarters, Nebraska in tents, wagons and sod homes.

The strain on the people and Thomas’ family was terrible. Fortunately, he met and married the twenty-one-year old Sarah Elenor Mills there in September 1849. His children again had a mother. On August 1850, Sarah delivered a son to the Ashton family, but once again the privations of their situation was felt. Three days later, Sarah passed away, leaving Thomas alone with six children, one of which was a three-day-old baby.

The family struggled to stay alive that fall and winter, enduring conditions that can hardly be imagined today in most areas of the world. Fortunately, they met Araminta Lawrence, a twenty-year-old lady who was born in Canada. On 17 February 1851, the couple married and Araminta became the ‘instant’ mother to five children. Thomas hadn’t been able to raise the baby in the months after the death of Sarah and he had been given to another family to raise.

In early 1851, the family left Winter Quarters with the Morris Phelps company using handcarts to carry their meager possessions. When possible, the children rode on the cart and on occasion Araminta was able to get a brief respite from walking, but Thomas walked the entire distance from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake Valley.

Thomas eventually made a home for his family in Lehi, Utah after working in Salt Lake and Weber valleys for several years. Another eleven children were born into the family by 1875.

Araminta was a tremendous woman and admiration for her love, tenacity and homemaking skills are still celebrated by her descendants.

Thomas served on the Lehi City Council twice, first from 1854 though 1866 and later from 1877 through 1878. He was the water master in the city from 1861 though 1871. Along with running a farm, he was also a carpenter, building engineer and stone mason.

Utilizing his skills to work stone, he helped build both the Nauvoo and Salt Lake Temples.

Araminta passed away on 10 Jun 1891, worn out after 59 years of life as a heroic frontier wife and mother. Thomas’ life was filled with family, service and enjoyment when he passed away at age 89 on 22 January 1903. He and Araminta are buried in the Lehi City cemetery.

Technorati Tags: Ancestors,FamHist,Genealogy

The Family History Expo Comes To Town

2009-08-14T19:59:00.000-06:00

For folks who live in or around Utah, good news is on the immediate horizon. The Salt Lake Family History Expo will be held in the South Towne Expo Center on August 28th and 29th.

Holly Hansen notes that FamilySearch is offering training for LDS Ward and Stake Family History Consultants at the Expo. All should have been notified via email, but if not, they can update their email address or register at: http://consultant.familysearch.org

Busy folks have an option to fit in a couple of classes and a visit to the exhibitors hall this year too with the addition of single class registrations for $12.00 each.

Professionals associated with family history can grow their businesses by doing onsite consultations and distributing their business cards at the tables set up for them in the Exhibitors Hall. They should contact Holly if they want to participate.

Ancestry.com is giving a FREE copy of Family Tree Maker 2010 to every banquet attendee. There will also be 10 drawings for gifts that are valued at $400 each.

All of the details about the Expo can be found by clicking here.

See you at the Expo!

Technorati Tags: Family History Expo,Genealogy,Salt Lake City

The Tale of the Tail

2009-07-31T16:32:00.001-06:00

I continue to receive requests for more ‘Elwood Drew’ stories. Apparently, tales from his life are as funny to others as they have always been to me.

Born prematurely in the early 1900’s, the midwife didn’t think he would live, so she put him in a shoebox wrapped in a blanket and stuck him on the open oven door of the wood stove in the kitchen. After caring for his mother, she was surprised to find him still alive when she went back into the kitchen.

When a horse stepped on his foot as a youngster, the horse shoe perfectly cut off his little toe. He picked it up and took it to his mother who proceeded to clean both the toe and his foot and then sewed the toe back on with her needle and black thread. I know this happened because he used to show the scars to me when I’d complain about getting immunization shots at school.

I remember watching him use his pocket knife to carve out several teeth that were bothering him when we didn’t have the money to go to the dentist. Home remedies and home doctor’n were not strangers in our family.

The older generations were tougher than us I suppose.

Prior to World War II, my parents lived in Park City, Utah, where my father worked in the mines. One of my mothers brothers lived with them while he too worked as a miner.

For various reasons, boils and carbuncles were more common place back then. If you’ve ever had one or more of them, you understand how painful they are.

Late one evening, Dad and my uncle decided to use some ‘medicinal’ whiskey to try and fix a couple of extremely painful boils that were on the posterior of my uncles anatomy.

After testing the whiskey for poisons, they found that they’d used all of the contents. Dad turned and put the empty bottle on the coal stove in the kitchen to warm it up with the intent of using it to draw out the core of the boils as it cooled down.

Dropping his drawers, Earl presented the awful swellings to my father for remediation.

Dad put the mouth of the hot whiskey bottle over the worst offender and then they waited for it to cool and create the intended suction to pull the core free.

When telling me the story, he said that everything didn’t go quite as planned. The boil wasn’t quite ‘ripe’ and the core wouldn’t come out. The rapidly cooling bottle began to suck Earl’s posterior inside the narrow neck of the bottle.

Dad said that when a little over an inch of boil and surrounding flesh had been drawn into the bottle, Earl’s aplomb vanished and he began to dance around the kitchen exclaiming all kinds of things.

Apparently, his thought process increased significantly, because he rallied long enough to run to the side of the cast iron stove where he could literally, “twist and shout” and strike the bottle against the metal.

There must be a certain skill set required to break a whiskey bottle attached to your tush by swinging it against a stove, because it took a number of swings to do the trick. After each swing, Earl’s exclamations became louder and the suction seemed to consume even more of his tender flesh. Finally, the bottle broke and released its embrace on his rear assets.

Of course, by that time, all of the family had been awakened and had run downstairs to see who was being killed in the kitchen.

There was less psychological damage to the minds of my older siblings who witnessed the naked tush of our uncle than you might suppose. None of them ever exhibited any lasting effects from the vision, but from time to time, I have witnessed tears run from their eyes when they’ve been together and revisited the ‘Tale of the tail’.

Family stories are a treasure. I hope you are recording your own stories.

Technorati Tags: Grandpa,Diaries,Family Stories,Family History

Cosmo, Cuthbert and Cudbear

2009-07-24T23:38:00.002-06:00

My 5th great granduncle, Cosmo Gordon was born in 1748 in Clashdow, Morayshire, Scotland. A descendant of the Gordon, Stewart, Grant, MacWilliam and O’Laggan families / clans in northern Scotland, Cosmo was the oldest son in the family. As such, much was expected of him.

Living in the Gordon Castle and surrounding properties presented opportunities for education that weren’t enjoyed by all of the residents in the area. Eventually, his education and desire to succeed in life were rewarded with wealth and notoriety.

Cosmo met beautiful young lass named Magdalen Gordon and fell in love. I haven’t been able to trace Magdalen’s lineage beyond her father yet, but have little doubt that they were related to some extent.

Two of Magdalen’s brothers were entrepreneurs by nature, a trait that matched Cosmo’s own inclination.

George Gordon was a coppersmith from Banffshire and his brother Dr. Cuthbert Gordon was a dye merchant from Leith.

One day, while mending a copper boiler in a dye house in London, George noticed the orchil (reds) dye being used was similar to the dye used in his native highland home.

The sight sparked an idea in George’s mind. Talking it over with his brother, Cuthbert, who had training as a doctor and chemist, the pair knew the red and purple dyes used at home were made from lichen that grew on rocks and old wood ruins.

After some experimentation, the pair discovered a secret formula to extract a permanent, non-fading dye from the lichen.

Telling their brother-in-law, Cosmo, about their discovery, the trio decided to go into business with Cosmo providing the financial expertise and many of the contacts in the marketing world.

The dye became famous because unlike other dyes on the market, it didn’t fade in the light. The trio patented their process in 1758 under British patent no. 727 and named it “Cudbear”. The name was unique because it was named after Cuthbert.

An entry on Wikipedia details the extraction process:

“The lichen is first boiled in a solution of ammonium carbonate. The mixture is then cooled and ammonia is added and the mixture is kept damp for 3-4 weeks. Then the lichen is dried and ground to powder. The manufacture details were carefully protected, with a ten-feet high wall being built around the manufacturing facility, and staff consisting of Highlanders sworn to secrecy. The lichen consumption soon reached 250 tons per year and import from Norway and Sweden had to be arranged.”

Eventually, Cosmo became a Deputy King's Waiter of the Customs of the Port of London. In that position, he found huge errors in accounting and theft in the tobacco warehouses. Presenting his evidence and recommendations to Prime Minister, William Pitt, on January 6, 1786. He was subsequently appointed Comptrolling Surveyor of the Warehouse in London.

Cosmo’s recommendations were introduced into a new law to stop this type of theft and accounting manipulation resulting in huge increases in tax revenues to the governments coffers.

Passage of the new law was not easy because so many well connected people had benefited from the graft. Mr. Pitt instructed Cosmo to be in attendance to all discussions of the law in the House of Lords to explain the proposal, illuminate the graft and address the opposing statements and efforts by the Lords who opposed the law. After a long and arduous period of time, Mr. Pitt was satisfied that Cosmo had represented the proposal so well that he pushed for approval. The law was subsequently passed in the Act of the 29th George III cap. 69.

Cosmo was promoted to Principal Surveyor of the Tobacco Warehouse, at the desire of the Commissioners of the Customs. He traveled throughout England and Scotland arranging import agreements, procedures and documentation for several years thereafter. As he had expected, graft and mismanagement was rampant throughout the the import activities in every port.

The Commissioners of Customs moved on his recommendations and much of the corruption was stopped. Of course, not everyone in government, or even among the Commissioners were happy with these actions. They had benefitted from them and thus, Cosmo accrued numerous well-placed enemies in government.

Eventually, the acrimony in their hearts moved them to action. Cosmo was forced out of his prestigious position in London to a lesser assignment in Liverpool where he lived the rest of his life.

Magdalen Gordon died on 24 Oct 1796 in London.

Cosmo eventually remarried. On 12 Jan 1808, he and Mrs. Sarah Butler were joined as husband and wife.

Cosmo and Magdalen had two children:

Thomas Gordon of whom it was said that he "seemed to possess rather more than common abilities, and never was sent to any school except to learn French, having acquired all the knowledge he had under his father. Indeed he was almost self-taught, for he used to say that what one had heard and seen and could not teach himself to do it was not worth being taught it. He prided himself in his penmanship and accuracy in accounts, and at the time of his death he kept as elegant a set of mercantile books as any in London." He died October 1798, in his 19th year.

Robert Henry Butler Gordon, who was third mate in the Albion East Indiaman and died the preceding year at Bencoolan, on his voyage to China, in the 24th year of his age.

With his death, his branch of the Gordon family surname ended although the Gordon name was carried in the names of many generations of the descendants of his only sister, Elizabeth Gordon, who married Major James Logie.

Technorati Tags: Scotland,Gordon,Genealogy Customs Commission

My Mother Was a Quilter

2009-07-16T23:34:00.003-06:00

A cascade of vintage quilting fabric brought back memories of growing up with a mother who was a quilter. As the caboose in the family, I frequented the quilting bees she attended because there was no one at home to tend me.

My parents raised my older siblings during the depression and were grateful to have the cloth from flour sacks to make pajama’s, aprons and probably play blouses to wear under my sister’s jumpers.

Even though I was born two decades later than them, I also heard the constant refrain; “Wear it out. Use it up or do without”. The extreme lessons learned in the depression never left my parents minds.

Hence, the pattern of the vintage fabric produced a flashback of laying my bored, tired young body under a quilt frame with a quilt stretched across it. Surrounding me were the legs of a dozen women wearing similarly patterned dresses, thick hose and ‘sturdy’ shoes. I can still hear their constant chatter, laughter and the occasional ‘Ouch!’ from an errant stitch. Once the “chickens in the coop” started to cluck, my eyes rarely stayed open for more than two minutes. Maybe someone should sell that sound as a sleep aid for children and men.

Of course I married a quilter. Not necessarily by conscious thought, but certainly to my delight. The craft has passed on to our daughters and daughters-in-law. When I sit in my chair in the living room and they all gather to discuss their latest projects, designs and favorite fabric patterns, the two minute rule is still in effect. Cackle, cackle, ….. snore….

Unfortunately, all of the guys in our family think there is a downside to our wives hobby. Sometimes we are dragged by them, (usually screaming), to a fabric store.

Reading the Pickles comic strip makes me think its creator has a copy of the security tapes from my visits to these stores. I’m obviously the inspiration for the strips covering this subject.

Mom’s quilting legacy lives on in the current generations. They don’t make many quilts out of old Levi’s and worn out shirts like Mom did, but they do help several quilting stores remain viable in our area.

I’m glad the legacy is being passed on to our granddaughters. They are full of creative ideas and are bonding with the older quilters in the family in ways that make me smile.

I wonder how far back the quilting talent can be traced in their lineage. It was probably less ‘fun’ for the earlier generations. Our grandmothers were sewing clothing to wear and quilts to warm their beds rather than the current creations that are produced under less pressure and thus with probably a little more enjoyment of the work.

Looking at some of the designs in my grandmothers old quilts makes me think that there was more than a little whimsy stitched into their designs though. The patterns are obvious, but when you explore the stitches closely, you often discover the quilters initials and other signature stitch designs. If you spend just a few minutes more, you can see the elongated, crooked and loose stitches that were made by the young folks in the family who were being taught the craft as they sat in on a quilting bee.

All the quilts our ladies have made are Treasure. Pure Treasure.

That’s family history you can touch!

Technorati Tags: Quilting,Grandmothers,Crafts,Great Depression,Family Legacies

The Twig That Knocked Down A Brick Wall

2009-07-15T01:26:00.004-06:00

None of the descendants of Hiram Anderson had been able to find his ancestry. A single scant clue to his lineage was in the note stating that he was born ‘on the north branch of the Potomac River.

Single individuals and cousin groups had searched for the meaning of this phrase for years. Finally, two cousins who live many states away contacted me via the web and our ancestral musings rekindled the quest.

I lived closest to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, so the task to spend whatever time required to break this brick wall in our ancestry fell to me. There were only two days available in my schedule for months ahead, so I spent them at the library from door opening to door closing. If a book or film had any reference to any Anderson in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia, I copied the page, listed the source reference on it and tucked it into my briefcase to review later during late night hours at home. My time in the library was too valuable to spend any of it analyzing the pages.

There were a lot of promising clues but none detailed any facts that could tie our Hiram Anderson to the Anderson families in that area.

Night after night, I extracted the facts on the photocopied pages into a new database that I’d created for this quest. All the handwritten notes, drawings and poor copies were scanned and enlarged to be studied on my computer monitors.

This activity continued for weeks with no success and then one night I noticed some tiny writing on the branches of a hand-drawn image of a family tree. Hiram’s uncle had long ago drawn the tree for his extended family and a copy of it survived to be published in a family history. When I enlarged the area of interest by 500%, Christmas arrived early.

There, detailed in small print, was the name of Hiram Anderson with the correct names of his siblings. He was the son of William Anderson and Nancy Ann Forshee. The puzzle pieces all fell into place. Because his parents names were in the database that I’d created from the research copies, I was able to construct both sides of Hiram’s ancestry for several generations.

Hiram's parents move their family from Anderson's Bottom in Hampshire County, Virginia west to Fairfield, Ohio in April 1806. In February, 1807, Hiram's mother died leaving William with six children. The youngest, Rachel, was only two years old at that time. The family struggled to survive on the frontier, building a log home, clearing the land for farming and growing enough food to eat.

As with most early settlers in frontier settings, births, marriages and deaths were usually only recorded in a family bible, if they were recorded at all. This was true for the Anderson family.

William Anderson's father, Thomas Anderson, served as a captain in the Revolutionary War and was involved in the surrender of Cornwallis that effectively ended the war. He had also served as a captain in the local militia protecting the settlements in western Virginia from attacks by the Indians and British. Both he and his father, William, knew George Washington personally. As a young man, General Washington worked as a surveyor and frequently stayed with the Anderson family. Service to their country and fellow men was deeply instilled into the hearts and minds of the men of the Anderson family.

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, William Anderson and three of his brothers joined the militia in defense of the fledgling United States against the British and their Indian warriors. Three of the brothers didn't survive to returned home. Among them was Hiram's father, William Anderson, who had died at Fort Malden, Ontario, Canada. Hiram was left to support and raise his younger siblings alone.

No wonder birth, death and other records were difficult to find. A move to the frontier where record keeping was scarce. A mother dying soon thereafter leaving a husband and six children scrambling to survive and carve out a home and farm from the raw land. A war that took the father from the home to never return.

I'd love to shake the hand of my great grand uncle who drew the family tree so there was a record of Hiram's lineage that was created by someone who knew him personally.

Fortunately, several primary and many secondary sources were in the stack of copied records about the Anderson Family. Because I had time at home to carefully sift through the pages, details emerged that helped fill blank lines in my database. They also pointed me to other areas to search including specific documents and sources that were in the Library in Salt Lake and some that required written requests and associated fees.

The twig on the tree expanded to bring down our brick wall. To date, we have only found circumstantial evidence of Hiram’s ancestry in other records. The hand-drawn tree by his uncle is the only record that lists Hiram with his parents.

Sometimes the smallest clues bring great rewards. Moral: Never give up. Check, double check and even triple check all of the data from your research. The smallest element may be the seed that expands to break down your brick wall.

Technorati Tags: Brick Walls,Family History Library,Documents,Data Mining

1,000th Cousin Contact

2009-07-10T14:39:00.001-06:00

1,000 extended cousins have now contacted me after finding my websites. Years ago, I wondered if the effort to create the sites was worth the investment of time. I wish all of my investments had such fantastic returns.

The contacts have been mutually beneficial for all of us. I share information that I've found about our joint family during my lifetime of research and they share information that they have inherited or have found in their own ancestral quest.

All of us have unique perspectives and advantages of local resources and family knowledge. The combination of our efforts in continued research always produces more than the sum of our two data repositories. Perhaps it is generated by the spark of renewed interest resulting from our contact, but it is probably due to many factors especially the complimentary engagement of our skills and perspectives.

If you are reading this you are probably already using the Internet and social tools focused in genealogy in your own quest. If you aren't enjoying a lot of contacts yet, don't give up. Keep posting your successes, your brick wall lineages and the surnames and locations you are researching.

Help others if you can. You'll always receive substantial interest from this investment of your time, talents and resources.

Technorati Tags: Cousin Contacts,Brick Wall Genealogy. Genealogy Social Networks

Grandpa Liked To Sing

2009-06-27T12:17:00.000-06:00

While working to put additional information on the fact frames associated with my ancestors, I turned the music to random play. A male baritone voice cycled into play as I added information to my grandfathers record. I was immediately reminded of the stories I’d heard of his life long enjoyment of singing.

Looking through the words I’d added to his history over the years, the only mention of his singular public expression were the words, “Grandpa liked to sing”.

The stitching of the word quilt that covered his life in my genealogical records didn’t contain one of the most important design elements. This very private man had one sustainable public facet during his life. Grandpa liked to sing.

My mother often described her two bedroom childhood home that housed ten or more family members. They were crowded into every space, especially at night. Even the screened back porch had cots where grandpa and some of the boys slept year round. Privacy was just a word.

Grandma cooked from sun up to well after sun down, day after day, year after year, regardless of the temperature in the kitchen. The old coal stove probably didn’t cool off completely for thirty years. When it wasn’t heating or baking food, it was warming water for baths and with that many family members, even semi-daily baths taxed its ability to heat enough water.

The large family required a lot of food and the family raised and grew almost everything they consumed. Grandpa augmented the meager earnings from their “cash crops” with his skilled blacksmith hands.

I only remember really talking to him a few times, even though he lived until after I was married. He was a shy kind of a fellow unless you were working with him or in his presence regularly.

Mom said that he would arise at 4:30 a.m. every morning and start the fire in the kitchen stove while the rest of the family slept. The daily ritual always included numerous selections in his strong baritone voice.

While the stove warmed, he would prepare a pot of coffee, gather enough wood to feed the stove until his boys got up to do their chores before school and then he’d stare out of the window above the sink trying to read the sky for the weather of the day. And he would sing.

In the winter months, he stayed in the kitchen to drink his morning cup of Joe, but when the temperature was twenty degrees or warmer, he sat on one of the two steps on the front porch and serenaded the neighborhood.

I’ve been told by several of those who were kids in the area during the years, that they loved waking to his songs. He sang old-timey songs, love songs, songs of the season and songs that he made up.

He didn’t take requests. In fact, if anyone approached him or even glanced at him with too much interest while walking down the street, he’d immediately stop singing and go inside. He was a shy kinda guy.

When I was five, he took me out to his blacksmith shop one afternoon while he worked to repair the rakes on a hay rake. Even though I was a small town kid, I wasn’t a farm kid and was basically useless pumping the bellows. At least, I was until he taught me the rhythm of the pump. Singing a song with emphasis on the final word in each stanza, he showed me how to keep the heat in the hearth just right so he could work the metal with his hammer on the anvil for a few minutes before returning it for more heat.

It was an unusual day in my experience with him, because while my reedy five-year-old voice called out the bellows-pumping ditty, he sang harmony and circled my tune with layers and layers of beautiful music. In fact, it was so beautiful that he had to remind me to start pumping again several times when I stood in silent amazement at music coming out of this quiet man.

He sang to his dog, to his sheep and to a cow that day too. They liked it. I could tell. Their heads all popped up and they all moved to the point of their pens and pastures closest to him when he turned to face them over the bellows. It wasn’t a new experience for them, but like me, they all stood still in rapt attention to the generator of such beautiful sounds.

Grandpa sang at funerals in town with three other fellows during most of his life. I suppose he knew that the attendees weren’t going to ask him to sing a song just for them at those times and as one of four, most of the limelight spread away from him even though his voice was the pillar that supported the less dynamic notes sang by the others.

Some say that if he ever had a little liquor, his shyness retreated a little but even then it was contained among his circle of friends who each had a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon in their paws.

I wish I’d heard his morning concerts, but never did. I asked him to sing a few songs once when I was sixteen, but he declined.

Grandpa was a shy kind of a man.

Technorati Tags: Grandpa,Histories,Singing

GPS and Lost Graves

2009-06-17T12:34:00.001-06:00

I’ve visited the grave of my great grandfather a number of times over the years. It was usually covered with Memorial Day flowers as were most of the graves in the cemetery. It is a memory of a sea of color and fragrant smells – folks greeting each other, pointing to headstones and markers – a reunion of sorts.

In the last decade, mylar windmills, balloons and plastic blossoms have almost overwhelmed the iris, peonies, babies breath and snowball floral tributes left by us older folks. There seem to be fewer of us visiting the burial locations of our families now. There are too many big boy toys, outing distractions and to some degree, lack of respect for our lineage that has become associated with Memorial Day in recent years.

I try to show our grandchildren where their ancestors are buried with pilgrimages to the cemetery every year or so hoping they will retain the ancestral memories after I’m gone or can’t remember them myself in some future day.

Apparently that future day is arriving even as I write this note. I couldn’t find my great grandfather’s grave this year. I couldn’t find my aunt’s grave.

There are only 20,000+ burials in the cemetery where their bodies reside and the old parts really haven’t changed that much but apparently someone moved their graves during the past couple of years.

At first I chuckled. Then I frowned and visually searched for the familiar landmarks that I’ve known since my youth. Finding some of them, I tried to triangulate and ‘walk to the graves’ like I’d done as a young man. That didn’t work. Someone really had moved the graves!

Apparently, the only thing that had moved were a few synaptic links in my brain because after an hour of walking up and down row after row of markers, I finally found the headstones. I enjoyed reading the markers during my walk but had other graves to visit, clean and photograph that day.

I’ve visited the graves of my ancestors in Plymouth, Massachusetts several times, but during the last visit, I couldn’t walk right to the ones that “I was sure of”. When have you fly across country to visit a cemetery, ‘wasting’ time to find a grave that you knew you can ‘walk to in my sleep’ but can’t find any longer is an expensive and frustrating exercise.

Could it be that I’ve now been to so many cemeteries in so many locations that they are starting to merge in to a blended picture in my memory? Probably so. Have I lost synaptic connections? Probably so. Hence, I purchased a GPS specifically for my traveling genealogy kit.

Now when I visit a cemetery, any cemetery, I record the lat / long coordinates of the headstones of my ancestors. That data is entered in my database directly tied to their burial data. Yes, I know that my commercial GPS handheld is only accurate to 14 feet or so of the real spot I’m standing on, even if it has acquired eight or more satellites, but, that means that I should only have to walk a maximum of 28 feet in any direction to find the grave in the future if I can’t ‘walk to it in my sleep’ that day. I can do that in short order.

I record the information on Find-a-grave, Names In Stone, Picasa, Panoramio, my own genealogy sites and other websites when I post headstone photos on them as well. Maybe the information will help someone else in the future. Additionally, I can use my web enabled cell phone to look at those sites and remind me where the graves are located in future visits.

One thing is certain. I will continue to visit more and more cemeteries in the future. The blended memory picture of them in my mind will continue to meld into an even more generic image as time goes on. I’ll probably forget how to exactly walk to even more of the graves too.

I won’t be alone. You’re all walking down the same path with me. Some of you are ahead of me. Some of you are behind but if you love to visit cemeteries like I do, you are right on track to arrive at the same destination eventually. If you haven’t purchased a GPS handheld or have the software in your iPhone or other device, you might as well put one on your ‘stuff I want list’ so your family and friends will know what to get you for Christmas, birthday or graduation.

Once you start documenting the exact location of graves, you’ll find that it adds to the fun of cemetery visits and you too will be able to find your great grandfathers grave in the future.

Technorati Tags: Cemetery,Lat-Long,GPS,Photos,Headstones

Grave Dowsing ~ More Stories

2009-06-09T18:18:00.000-06:00

In a recent post, I briefly covered an article about dowsing for graves that I’d stumbled upon. The article was the first that I'd every heard of anyone using dowsing for that purpose.

The response to my post was surprising. Apparently, there are a lot of folks who engage in this activity to locate lost graves.

The University of Iowa has a good treatise on the subject found here. The document will download as a .pdf file.

In 2005, Dick Eastman posted about a grave dowsing experience by Tom Corey on the Oregon Trail. As usual, his readers have posted some interesting comments in response to his post.

Linda Bell wrote about dowsing methods used to find county graves for the North Forty News. Dowsing plays a key role in finding graves on the Roberts Ranch in Livermore, California.

The Archer Cousins Genealogy website has an article that covers their experience in dowsing to find the graves of family members that includes photos of their efforts.

The Hughes and Related Families site has a detailed article that covers the theory, tools and methods used to dowse for graves.

Jay McAfee posted an article written by Thomas A. Markham about dowsing to find old graves in a GenForum post in 2004.

Glenn Adams wrote an article on his blog about his use of dowsing rods in the search for the bodies of a murdered couple.

Wendell Culberson of the Mississippi GenWeb site wrote a great article on his experiences in finding lost graves in Shelby County, Illinois.

Chris Dunham of The Genealogue blog quoted an article about grave dowsing that was published in the Wichita, Kansas Eagle newspaper.

Brenda Marble wrote a detailed article for the cemeteries.missouri.org site about grave dowsing and the tools and methods used in this activity.

The list of articles about Grave Dowsing is surprising long. A Google search for “dowsing for graves” produced over 1,200 hits. Needless to say, I was surprised by the number of results given the fact that I’d never heard of the subject before finding the “Old Ways Help Women Find Old Graves” article two weeks ago.

Are you familiar with these efforts to find lost graves? Personally, I don’t have interest in the occult or entities that use dowsing to tell fortunes, the sex of unborn children, etc. As I noted in my first post on the subject, I’ve used dowsing rods to find water and power lines as simple convenience. I’d witnessed dowsing to find water lines as a youth and as a young man working for a electric utility. Simple tools. Simple needs. Quick and accurate results were produced followed by putting the hastily constructed wire wire rods in the trash or bent back to their normal shape for use in construction.

Reflecting on it, I suppose I always thought the metal dowsing rods simply reacted to gravitational disturbances created by buried metal pipes full of water or energized power lines. Tenuous reasoning I know, but who cared. The job they were used for got done faster with them than without. I gave the dowsing rods no more thought than I would a tooth pick at a restaurant.

But dowsing for buried bodies? What is that all about? How does it work? Is the power of the human mind greater than we’ve been able to measure thus far?

Apparently so, or at least it is so for some folks.

You’ll note that the people writing or quoting the articles above have had success using dowsing to find graves. It’s just an example of folks having a small need that can be difficult to impossible to resolve via normal means, yet by exhibiting a little faith in oneself followed by the use of simple tools focused on a specific subject seems to bring results.

Whether you decide to dowse for graves or not, research of the subject provides interesting reading. I probably won’t use my bent up old galvanized tie wire rods for this activity, but who knows, maybe the need will arise for some unforeseeable reason in a future day. If so, I wonder if it will work for me? I guess I’d shouldn’t think about it too much and cobble up the works.

Technorati Tags: Dowsing,Graves,Tales

The Problem With Primary Source Documents

2009-06-07T16:34:00.002-06:00

We know that primary source documents always are desired to assist in proving our lineage. Can we count on their accuracy?

The answer is NO. They frequently contain errors. Dates are wrong. Locations are frequently wrong. Names are wrong or misspelled. Why does this happen?

Looking at my great grandmother’s death certificate, I immediately noticed that her name was different than the one written in various publications and family records.

Great Grandma’s birth name was “Helen Marr Farrar”, yet the name listed on the certificate is “Helen Mary Drew”. Did the recorder hear the information wrong or accidentally write a name frequently used in his family?

That is one possibility. I make the same error at times. However, her certificate offers a greater clue to the problem. The informant listed on the certificate is "Lula H. Johnson”. For some reason, great grandma’s death information was given to authorities by her niece rather than by any of her six children that lived in the area.

Can you provide the full birth name, birth date and parents names for your aunts and uncles from memory? Not many of us can. Lula, was probably helping the family take care of ‘foot work’ while the children arranged the funeral, burial and mourned the loss of their mother.

We know that the birth information listed on a death certificate is suspect. It came from someone’s memory. The only facts that should be correct on the certificate are the name, death date and place and burial date and place and yet, even they are ‘suspect’.

The birth information and even the parents names on death certificates are secondary sources at best.

One of the key indicators that grandma’s name was Helen Marr was a letter from her “family historian” granddaughter that states that great grandma was named after her mothers sister, Helen Marr Tirrill.

Wondering if “Marr” was a rare name in that day, I searched for others that may have had the name and was surprised how frequently it was used. A misspelling was undoubtedly less of a factor than I initially suspected.

Errors abound in the birth and death certificates that I’ve found for my family. In fact, they are more common than not.

My aunt died as a young child in the now non-existent town of Knightsville, Utah. My grandparents lived in the area when grandpa had a wagon and horse team hauling supplies and anything else needed between Salt Lake City and the remote mining towns in Juab county.

The informant listed on Gladys’ certificate was my grandfather but unfortunately, the registrar, Mr. E. J. Howell incorrectly recorded her burial location. It states that aunt Gladys was buried in the American Fork, Utah cemetery, yet she and her baby sister are actually buried side-by-side in the family plot in the Alpine cemetery.

Was she initially buried in American Fork and later moved to Alpine? No. Her uncle Charles and aunt Ada were buried on the plot in 1901 and 1904 respectively. Two other aunts and an uncle died as babies and were buried on the family farm in the late 1880’s – early 1890’s, so the family didn’t own the cemetery plot then, but by the time their eldest son was buried in 1901, they owned or had purchased the lot.

Gladys was buried in Alpine not in American Fork. The “primary source” information on her death certificate is wrong.

I wonder how many errors exist in the thousands of certificate that that I’ve collected over the years yet don’t have enough other information to cause me to suspect errors in them. There are probably quite a few, but since I know that even “Primary” source documents frequently contain errors, I still list them in my databases with the highest level of confidence. What else can be considered a “Primary Source Document”?

You have the same problem in your own source documents. Don’t let it throw you. Don’t obstinately argue over minor factual differences with other researchers. Establish a rule in your negotiations with others declaring that the primary source documents are the base used for accuracy but that codicil statements can be added to that knowledge to argue or exhibit additional information to consider in the decision of the ‘true facts’ associated with the record of your family member.

Technorati Tags: Primary Source Documents,Death Certificate,Marriage Certificate,Birth Certificate

Dowsing For Graves And Other Wives Tales

2009-06-05T01:14:00.002-06:00

If you are like me, there are graves of your extended family that have either lost their grave markers or were never marked for a variety of reasons.

In my family, three of my great aunts and uncles died as youngsters and were buried on the family farm in Fort Canyon, above Alpine, Utah. I made a post about them called “Little Ones Lost” earlier this year.

Today, I found an article titled, “Old ways help women find old graves” that describes the efforts of Cate Culver, who is using dowsing rods to find old unmarked graves around the Pioneer Cemetery in San Andreas, California.

As expected, scientists say that dowsing doesn’t work and that her efforts are a waste of time. Unfortunately, the soil in that area is less ‘soil’ than rock and has a fairly high copper and other mineral content. The article notes that ground penetrating radar won’t work in the area due to the terrain and of course, officials aren’t going to grant permission to open the suspected locations for ‘no’ reason other than to prove that the dowser can find old graves.

Long ago, I was surprised when I was first told that dowsing didn’t work and that it couldn’t be proven. I’d grown up watching people dowse for water, power and other buried lines with great success. In fact, when I was told that dowsing was bunk, I had actually dowsed for a long lost water line that was leaking the weekend before. Running water could be heard in a pipe that entered the basement of our home but wasn’t attached to anything inside.

Curiosity got the better of me one Friday evening, so I pulled out the dowsing rods, marked the location of the pipe on the lawn and started digging with a shovel. The location was about 100 feet away from the city water line feeding our home.

While dowsing, I had flagged a couple of 90 degree turns in the route of the line.

A few hours later, my wife was less than happy to find about forty feet of five foot deep trench winding its way through our north lawn.

Yes, the water line was exactly where I’d marked it and at the depth the rods had indicated. No surprises. The trench was so long because I had to follow the line to find the leak and then to clear enough length of pipe so that it could be lifted, cut, spliced and tested for new leaks.

As it turned out, the water originated three hundred feet south in the basement of the neighbors home. They had owned our home before building their new home. The water lines to the chicken coops that used to be on the back properties had originally fed from our home. When they built the new house, they simply capped the water line in the basement of the old house and fed it from the new house. Finally, decades later, the old water line deteriorated and began to leak.

Being on the end of the shovel doing the digging, I’d long ago decided that the dowsing rods had better work or you were only involved in a less than satisfying way to exercise.

We often used dowsing rods to find buried power lines when I worked for the power company. The younger generation had to use the expensive tools that semi-find electrical fields, but the old hands just grabbed a pair of iron tie wires, bent one end of each long enough to use as a handle and marked the line. No big deal. Fast, accurate and easy. And because the fellows were doing the digging by hand, the marks had to be accurate due to the seemingly never ending layers of river rock or they’d never use their dowsing sticks a second time. Inevitably, the dowsing marks were always more accurate than those created the using multi-thousand dollar buried line identification equipment.

I’ve continued to use dowsing rods to find the dozen or so telephone drop lines that cross our orchard when I’ve installed fence posts, sprinkling systems and other buried features in our landscaping. Thus far, they’ve always provided 100% accuracy. I guess that I need to read the scientific reasons why the rods don’t work but really don’t want to. If I do, I may believe the scientific reasons and then the rods won’t work any longer. After all, scientists are rarely wrong. Right?

Over the years, I’ve chatted with folks from all over the world who have dowsed to find water and other buried features for all of their lives with great success. They grew up using them and apparently, none of them had been taught that dowsing doesn’t work either.

My ancestors dowsed. Their ancestors dowsed. Maybe you have to have a naive faith that dowsing works for it to work for you. Maybe it is tied to string theory or quantum mechanics. Maybe you have to acknowledge that the laws of the universe are a lot stranger and more elastic than all of us whiz kids realize.

Maybe the old healing and ‘wives tales’ medical remedies that my mother, grandmothers and great grandmother taught and practiced don’t work either. I guess you’d have to convince the almost invisible scars on my body that the old remedies didn’t work though. While in that discussion, maybe you could tell the adjacent scars from wounds that were ‘healed’ by doctors that they shouldn’t be so big and ugly because they were treated by highly educated men who convinced me that my ancestors old remedies didn’t work. But that topic is a whole other discussion.

I wonder how many of the old remedies and ‘ways’ have been relegated to the pit by us as we’ve become more ‘educated’ over the generations?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m absolutely delighted to be living when so many medical, technological and other advances have been made to make our lives so much physically better than those of our ancestors, but I wonder what we’ve lost in the process of worshiping our scientific ‘Gods’.

What commonly practiced old ‘Ways’ and ‘Remedies’ in your ancestral history have been lost? Post a note and let us know.

Don’t necessarily expect us to believe them though. Maybe you can ascribe our unbelief to our being taught that they don’t work and hence our faith in them being literal is missing.

Remember, my dowsing rods ’don’t work’ either and most readers will probably assign me to the group of ‘characters’ of a past age. That’s ok. We’re relatively happy in our ignorance….. and, before you ask, no, I don’t dowse for water or power or telephone lines for anyone else. Who’d believe that it worked in today’s world anyway?

Technorati Tags: graves,dowsing,remedies,ancestors,wives tales