Random Notes

Domelle Surname in the 1940 US Federal Census - Updated

2020-12-04T19:12:00.002-05:00

I first took a look at the Domelle's in the 1940 census back in 2012, so it's due for an update based on new information I have.

It's not a common name and does have many spelling variations in the US, including:

Domelle
Domele
Dumelle

The rarity of the name has always led me to believe that any Domelle out there is likely sourced from the same line that originated in the Alsace-Lorraine region as "Tomule".

Today I looked in the 1940 US Federal census for any occurrence of a surname of Domelle, Domele or Dumelle, especially for those with a birthplace of Hungary, Indiana or Illinois since those are the main locations for the initial immigrant families.

Here is what I found:

1) There are 10 households of Domelles in the US in 1940 (6 Domelles, 3 Domeles and 1 Dumelle). There could be 1 or 2 more but they are currently spelled in such a way that I couldn't nail them down. I might figure them out later. :-)

2) 5 of them are in the northwest corner of Indiana (4 in Newton County, 1 in Lake County).

2a. William Domelle, his wife and adult son lived on a farm in Lincoln, Newton County, Indiana. William is brothers with 2b. William is the 2nd cousin 1x removed of 3c. William's sons are 2c and 4a, and his daughter is 3a.

2b. Nick Domelle (William's brother) and his wife lived on a farm in Lincoln, Newton County, Indiana. They are listed on the next lines of the census form under 2a, his brother. Nick is the 2nd cousin 1x removed of 3c.

2c. Pete Domelle (spelled incorrectly as Domella in the census record), his wife and baby daughter lived in Hammond, Lake County, Indiana. He is the son of 2a and brother to 3a and 4a.

2d. John Domele and his wife lived on a farm in Lake Township, Newton County, Indiana. John is 1st cousins with 2a and 2b.

2e. Tony Domele, his wife and 2 children lived on a farm in Lake Township, Newton County, Indiana and is listed just a few lines down on the census from his parents, 2d. His deceased brother's widow and child are 3d.

3) 4 of them are in Chicago, Illinois (not far from the northwest corner of Indiana - also 2 of those were young Domelle ladies on their own in the big city).

3a. Mary Domelle (spelled incorrectly as Donnelly in the census record) lived as a lodger at 510 North Lavergne Ave, Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of 2a and the sister of 4a.

3b. Betty Domelle lived as a lodger at 2940 W. 54th St, Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of 2b.

3c. Peter Dumelle, his wife and 6 children lived at 3442 N. Halsted St, Chicago, Illinois. Frank is the 2nd cousin of 2a and 2b.

3d. Clara Domele, widow of Martin Domele, and their son lived at 1616 Nelson St, Chicago, Illinois. Martin is the son of 2d and brother to 2e.

4) 1 of them, my direct ancestor, wandered over to Tompkins County, New York (thank goodness since that's where he met my grandmother!).

4a. William Domelle, son of 2a above, and brother to 3a, lived as a hired man on a farm at Kline Road, Lansing, Tompkins County, New York. He is the brother of 2c and 3a.

Below is a map showing the distribution. Just one big cluster except for the 1 outlier over in NY.

Originally all the Domelles/Domeles were in Chicago, but the 2 brothers and their cousin moved just south to Indiana to farm.

Where the Mix Children are Buried

2019-12-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

Yes, there are lots of Mix children in the world, but in this case I'm referring to the 10 children of William Homer MIX and Cornelia Elizabeth (AKINS) MIX of New York state.

I can't imagine 10 children running around, although there was enough of an age difference that the oldest, Floyd, was 22 years old when the youngest, Donald, was born. I would think that once there's more than 4 adding any additional kids doesn't make a difference to the chaos :-D :-D :-D

They were all pretty healthy and all lived into adulthood and beyond. The first one to die was the second eldest, Spencer, who died in 1971 at age 63. The last to die was my grandmother, Ann, who died in 2010 at the grand age of 90; she was number 8 out of the 10.

Here is burial information for each of the siblings, they are listed in order of their birth:

1. Floyd William MIX
b. 25 Oct 1905
d. 03 Feb 1989, aged 83
Buried at Fountain's Memorial Park, 5635 W. Green Acres St., Homosassa Springs, Citrus County, FL, 34446

Photo from Find a Grave

2. Spencer Tilford MIX
b. 12 May 1908
d. 08 Dec 1971, aged 63
Buried at ????. Death certificate does not list a place of burial or if cremation was done. Place of death was the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital (now known as Richmond University Medical Center-Bayley Seton Hospital, though it is no longer a working hospital), Staten Island, New York City, NY.

3. Laurance Wilbur MIX
b. 29 Dec 1910
d. 09 Mar 1989, aged 78
Buried at Willow Glen Cemetery, Dryden, Tompkins County, NY

4. Daisy Mabel (MIX) DEMARC
b. 01 May 1913
d. 06 Jun 1994, aged 81
Buried at Kingdom Farm Cemetery (a.k.a. Resurrection Park Cemetery), On Bower Rd. off of Rt. 34, Lansing, Tompkins County, NY

5. Mazie (MIX) PATRICK
b. 01 May 1913
d. 22 Apr 2009, aged 95
Cremated remains buried at Willow Glen Cemetery, Dryden, Tompkins County, NY

Photo from Find a Grave

6. William Erwin MIX
b. 07 Apr 1915
d. 14 Mar 1985, aged 69
Buried at Grove Cemetery, 8825 Falls Rd., Trumansburg, Tompkins County, NY, 14886

Photo from Find a Grave

7. Leslie Homer MIX
b. 10 Aug 1918
d. 12 May 1991, aged 72
Buried at Christian Cemetery, Enfield, Tompkins County, NY

8. Anna G. (MIX) DOMELLE
b. 06 Mar 1920
d. 12 Nov 2010, aged 90
Cremated and ashes scattered.

9. John Francis MIX

b. 20 Mar 1926
d. 07 Dec 1981, aged 55
Buried at Hector Union Cemetery, 4359 NY-79, Burdett, Schuyler County, NY

10. Donald Thomas MIX
b. 01 Aug 1927
d. 25 Jul 2009, aged 81
Buried at Willow Glen Cemetery, Dryden, Tompkins County, NY

Photo from Find a Grave

Collins Mix and the Tioga County Poor House - Part 3

2019-08-10T13:26:00.004-04:00

Welcome to Part 3, sorry for the broken up posts but the story ended up being longer when you type it all out! Plus you know summer is busy!! I tend to do more research in the winter!

So back in Part 1 and Part 2, we were learning about Collins Mix, who died in the Tioga County NY Poor House. My cousin and I found the actual Keeper's Book that named him, and in that book we found out some additional information about Collins - he wasn't put into the Poor House just the one time. Unfortunately, it was many times.

Here's the listings for Collins that my cousin and I found in the Keeper's Book:

The first listing of Collins in the book was 21 June 1845: Collins, age 67, brought in by a Joel Robinson (many people were), after a bit of looking on the magic internet, I found a Joel Robinson who was the "Superintendent of the Poor" for Candor, Tioga County in the book, "The New York State Register, for 1843". It's pretty likely it's the same guy then. There are typically 3 columns to check for each person: "Lunatic", "Idiot", and "Mute" and none of these columns were checked for Collins. Sometimes there would be a column for "Foreigner" and/or "Colored".

Next up, 12 November 1845:

Third, 12 November 1846: Collins, age 69

Fourth, 12 November 1847: Collins, age 70

Fifth, 12 November 1848: Collins, age 71

Sixth, 12 November 1849: Collins, age 72. This is the first time they have a column for "Intemperate" and there's no mark in it for him.

Seventh, 12 November 1850: Collins, age listed as 72 again. This is the only time they have a mark for the "Intemperate" column for Collins out of 3 opportunities.

Eight and final listing, 12 November 1851; Collins is listed as 73 and he's listed as dying in January 1852.

So the last 6.5 years of his life were spent there at the Poor House. It's sad, there's not much you can say looking this far back in the past; without any other types of records there's no way to know for sure the circumstances.

So it could be he was a lifelong alcoholic, or maybe it was some mental illness along with the alcohol or was something else entirely - chronic pain that he was medicating with alcohol but then he'd get mean - or maybe that one check for Intemperance was an error and it was some other reason he was there - we won't know for sure until time travel is invented. But either way, he didn't want to live with his family or his family didn't want him to live with them and so he ended up either voluntarily or involuntarily living in the Poor House.

But, on a good note for us today, it's one more piece of the puzzle in place! Hopefully it will lead to more! It was a fun investigation for me and my cousin, we had a good time!!!

Collins Mix and the Tioga County Poor House - Part 2

2019-07-28T15:48:00.000-04:00

Welcome back to the saga of Collins Mix! In the last post (Part 1), we ended with my trip to the Tioga County Historical Society in 2009.

So now, we fast forward to 2019. I know I know, how did 10 years go by? I don't know! As far as I know I'm still 15 and forgetting my locker combination in my dreams. Don't ask me what the hell is going on. :-D

AnyWAY, back to Collins and his family - we discovered him in the 1850 census in the Poor House in Owego, Tioga County, that he was listed as intemperate on the index card, and he died in 1852.

Sure would like to know how Leafe pronounced her name!! "Leaf?" "Leaf-ee?" "Leave?" Who knows?

He came up in conversation during a visit with my cousin Kimberly in New York. We both do genealogy for the Mix side of our family and we decided to have a visit where we could review and verify our overlaps, etc. During the visit we decided to take a trip over the the Tioga County Historical Society to see what might come up - maybe we'd find that Keeper's book and find out more about Collins!

The volunteer at the desk at the historical society was incredibly helpful and friendly, but was unable to locate the Tioga County Poorhouse Keeper's Book. We looked at some microfilms of old newspapers in case we might find Collins mentioned, but no luck. The volunteer (I'm sorry I don't have his name!!) even called another lady who wasn't there that day to ask if she knew anything about it. Can you believe, she popped in on her day off and was rummaging around back in their storage area, but no luck. Librarians and historians and volunteers are the BEST PEOPLE!

They suggested we head over to the local library just a few streets away because they had a mostly un-cataloged family history section filled with donations and maybe we would find something there. So off we went to the library, with a quick stop for refreshments on the way.

We'd just made it through the door when the librarian behind the desk yelled over to us (yes! the librarian YELLED to two complete strangers): "OH, the historical society called! They found your book! They said to come back!"

OMG, how'd she know it was us? Because she's a LIBRARIAN, THAT'S WHY!

Don't mess with librarians!

So we raced back to the historical society taking corners on 2 wheels and slid sideways into a spot and ran inside and........

TADAHHHHHH

Oddly enough it looks like 3 year old me already saw it and "wrote" on it...

Never was there a more beautiful sight than this little book on the table!

The volunteer historian was so nervous about letting us handle it but we swore on our ancestors we would gently hold it open by hand and just take photos.

You see - it survived a massive flood there a few years back - the whole basement of the Historical Society was under several feet of water and guess where all their records are stored? Yep, of course! Apparently they had a company come up from Texas I think it was, they do freeze-drying of records to try and make them usable again after floods. I can't imagine trying to pick up the pieces after that! But our book made it - so we quickly looked under the date I'd seen on the index card a decade ago and sure enough, there he is, Collins Mix, admitted 12 Nov. 1850. But no one is listed under having dropped him there, no info under "Discharged". POO!

"Colins Mix", male, born NY, 72 yrs old, Intemperate, resides Owego County

But finally after a decade, I've seen the source record, I know the index card was correct. Awesome feeling!

So my cousin and I bask in the awesomeness for a moment and then she's like, so, let's look and see if he's anywhere else in this book!

Coming soon! Part 3!!

Collins Mix and the Tioga County Poor House - Part 1

2019-07-06T10:49:00.000-04:00

So I've got this problematic 4th Great Grandfather, Collins Mix. He's problematic because when I first applied to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), my application had to be rejected as the father/son relationship between Collins Mix and his son Jonathan Collins Mix is assumed but not proven. The slightly unusual first name of "Collins" comes from his mother's maiden name.

I know that somewhere, there's got to be a small item in a local newspaper, or a bible page, but so far, no one has found them. So, when I can, I come back to him to see what I can find.

Collins was born on 20 January 1777 in Wallingford, CT, to Thomas Mix and Lois Collins. I know of one brother to Collins, an older brother named Joel.

By the time Collins was in his early 20s in the 1800 US Census, he was in Clarendon, Rutland County, VT, married to Leafe Ide.

By the 1810 Census, the family was south of there, in Northumberland, Saratoga County, NY. Finally, by the 1820 and 1830 censuses they stopped their wandering in Candor, Tioga County, NY. I have yet to locate him in the 1840 census.

From what I can tell so far, they had 4 living children, Olive, Jonathan Collins, Squire Ide, and Sevinah. Interesting names to be sure, and genealogists LOVE interesting and unusual names!!!! As a little girl I was frustrated with my own name, always having to pronounce it and spell it for people, but boy did my perspective change once I started researching genealogy! Thomas Mix, son of Thomas Mix, son of Thomas Mix, son of Thomas Mix, and every female named Elizabeth or Sarah, UGH!!!!! LOL, but I digress....

Now, on to the 1850 census, the first that really gives us some good details on our people. I found Collins Mix, but he was not only alone, he was listed as a "pauper" in the Tioga County Poorhouse.

There's lots of reasons a person might end up in a "Poorhouse" in the 1800s - you could of course, be poor, but you might also have a disability like blindness or deafness, some kind of congenital disease, you might be an alcoholic, or have mental illness. And despite the best intentions that might have gone into creating a poorhouse, it was a place best avoided if possible. So how is Collins there, alone? He had adult kids, he had a wife. Leafe shows up in the 1865 New York State census, living with her daughter Sevinah and her family so she was alive - unfortunately, despite her lovely unusual name, she remains elusive - I have not yet been able to find her whereabouts in 1850.

But now, Jonathan Collins Mix is findable in 1850 - I found him living in the same county as his dad Collins, in the Candor NY 1850 census. He's listed with his wife and 4 kids. So why isn't Collins living with his son if he's so close by?

So that's a clue that perhaps there was something going on with Collins where either he didn't want to be with family members or they weren't in a position to take him in. Could have been mental illness, alcoholism, but all I know for sure is he's listed as a "pauper" in the 1850 census. Could be he was just a jerk! Or maybe his family were the jerks! We'll never know for sure.

So armed with this information, back in 2009 I traveled up to the Tioga County Historical Society. It's on a serene tree-lined street right up on the river in Owego NY.

There I found an index card in their files during a search for Collins Mix. The index card said the following information was from the "Tioga County Keeper's Book":

Mix, Collins
D. 17 Jan. 1852 ae 73 at the Poor House
12 Nov. 1850 admitted ae 72, intemperate
Residence Tioga County

AHA! So there we go - "intemperate". In this case, the word intemperate was often used to denote alcoholism. So if that is truly what's going on, that would explain why his family, though nearby, didn't have Collins living with them. Of course, he could have had a terrible temper......

Perhaps he was prone to rits of fealous jage

Anyhoo, with that information, I was then able to locate, on microfilm at the Historical Society, the following, which proved the death information on the index card:

Mortality at the Poor House
Names of persons who have died at the Poor House during the year
ending on the 1st Day of Dec. 1852
(Furnished by Col. Daniel Bacon, Keeper).
...
Collins Mix, formerly of Candor, Jan 17th 1852, 73
...
Average number of inmates, about 75
Proportion of Deaths about as 1 to 5
Of the whole number received, the proportion is as 1 - 17

This was from "The Owego Gazette", Number 21, 15 January 1853, page 2.

While there at the historical society in 2009, I asked about that Tioga County Keeper's Book mentioned on the index card, but was told at the time that they did not have it, though if I reached out to other historians in the area I might be able to locate it.

And so there for many years, was the end of my information about my 4th Great Grandfather, Collins Mix.

Up next, Part 2!!!! No, I didn't prove the father-son relationship (I WISH!), but I did find out more cool stuff along with my cousin!

US Presidents in the Family - Part Deux

2019-02-23T09:42:00.000-05:00

All right, so as a follow up to my last post on connections to U.S. Presidents on my maternal side, here are U.S. Presidents specific to my Paternal side.

My paternal side has deep roots in the U.S. just like my maternal side, but instead of New England, it's British immigrants to what is now Virginia and Maryland.

9th US President - William Henry Harrison

Unfortunately, William, my 1st cousin 6x removed, died from pneumonia only 31 days into his term, this being the shortest any U.S. President served. Stories say he died from getting sick after giving a very long inauguration speech in poor weather, but that's just a tall tale. He was, however, the first President to die in office so that freaked everyone out and they then had to make sure there were rules in place if that happened again. William was the son of Benjamin Harrison V, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It's strange to think back to my childhood school visits to Independence Hall in Philadelphia meant I was walking literally in Benjamin's same steps. Maybe I would have paid more attention!!

23rd US President - Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin (yes SOOO many Benjamin Harrisons) is my 3rd cousin 4x removed. However, I am related to him twice, on both my maternal and paternal sides (on my maternal side, he's my 6th cousin 5x removed). I have a soft spot for finding out how I'm related to someone multiple times, I just love it LOLOL! Yeah, I pretty much am my own cousin. AnyHOO, on my paternal side, our common ancestors are his grandfather, Benjamin HARRISON IV (above) and his wife Anne CARTER. The Carter family is also among some of the first families to immigrate to Virginia.

39th US President - James Earl Carter Jr.

Jimmy Carter, who is the first president I was aware of existing as a child, is my 10th cousin 1x removed. Our common ancestors are John CARTER and Bridget BENION, Londeners who were parents to emigrants to Virginia in the 1600s.

Now, since doing this research, I've found that there's actually even more Presidents that I'm related to on both sides but I thought I'd focus on the closest relations.

As long as you can find that one ancestral line that hits a royal somewhere in Europe, you're pretty likely to find that you are related to all kinds of historically famous people. It's been a really fun indulgence the last few weeks going over all these lines and it does suddenly bring history to life when you realize some name you read is actually a relation, no matter how distant!

US Presidents in the Family

2019-01-30T18:27:00.000-05:00

So I treated myself just after Christmas to a great book published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society: Ancestors of American Presidents, by Gary Boyd Roberts.

I knew there were a few presidents who were cousins, but I wasn't sure of exactly how and I really wanted to look at trustworthy research that I could then of course verify myself!

I looked first on my mother's side because my Dad already knew on his side of the family that he was cousins with the two HARRISON presidents, William Henry and his grandson, Benjamin.

My maternal MIX ancestry has some very deep New England roots, even one Mayflower ancestor so I knew that's where I would look for any lines that lead to Presidents and sure enough, we've got a grand total of FOUR, which is really cool.

13th US President - Millard Fillmore

Yep, lucky number 13 is my 5th cousin 5x removed. Our common ancestors were Oliver PURCHASE and Thomasine HARRIS. Oliver and Thomasine lived in Dorset, England, and it was some of their children who decided to journey to America in the 1600s.

Millard Fillmore became president in 1850 because the sitting President Zachary Taylor died from cholera, and Millard was the Vice-President at the time.

18th US President - Ulysses S. Grant

Grant was my 6th cousin 5x removed. Our common ancestors were William ROCKWELL and Susan CAPEN. William and Susan emigrated from Dorset, England to Connecticut in the 1600s.

I learned an interesting thing while finding out exactly who Ulysses S. Grant was - his birth name was actually Hiram Ulysses Grant, but due to an error on his West Point admission form, he was kind of "re-christianed" Ulysses S. Grant and apparently he stuck with it :-D He was twice elected President.

23rd US President - Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin is my 6th cousin 5x removed and his grandfather is my 4th cousin 7x removed. We are related on my maternal side through Benjamin's grandmother, Anna Tuthill SYMMES. Through her our common ancestors are Francis CHICKERING and Anne FISKE of Suffolk, England. Francis and Anna emigrated in the 1600s to Massachusetts.

I was specific about Benjamin's grandmother because on my paternal side, we are related through Benjamin's Grandfather, who also just so happened to be a President (the 9th one), but more on him in my future paternal post!

30th US President - Calvin Coolidge, Jr

Calvin Coolidge is my 9th cousin 3x removed. Our common ancestors were Bernard CAPEN and Joan PURCHASE. Notice the last name of Capen, yes, Grant and Coolidge are related as well, they were 7th cousins, 2x removed. And notice the last name of Purchase, he was cousins with Millard Fillmore too, 7th cousins, 3x removed. Interestingly, he also became president because he was Vice-President and the President died! Warren G. Harding died from a heart attack. Calvin stepped up and was then also elected President after that.

And there you have it! It's interesting that all our connections go back to England and immigrants who came to New England in the 1600s. Next up will be a review of Presidents on my paternal side.

Family in World War I

2018-11-11T19:36:00.001-05:00

Today is Veteran's Day 2018 and that makes it 100 years since the end of World War I. I thought I'd bring attention to relatives of mine that were part of WWI.

I don't happen to have any direct ancestors who were in the Great War, due to ages, deaths of my ancestors, so below are all relatives of some sort, not direct ancestors. I've listed what branch of the armed forces they were in and any other notable information I might have.

I know there are more I haven't found yet, but this is who I have for now! I also think it's important to note that of the 8 men listed here for my paternal side, 3 of them died from Influenza. This was the Flu Pandemic of 1918 which unfortunately not many have a memory of as a warning for today.

Maternal Side

My maternal 1st Cousin 4x removed Edward John KIRBY was a Private in the US Army. He began service on 07 Jun 1917 at the age of 20, he was born in the Finger Lakes area of New York.

My maternal 2nd cousin 3x removed Hiram N. MADIGAN was a Private in the US Army. He grew up on a farm in Ontario County, New York. Here is is mentioned in the 17 Aug 1917 Democrat and Chronicle out of Rochester, NY:

My maternal 3rd cousin 2x removed Clarence Vernon MIX was a Private in the US Army. Born in Kansas, his family moved to Idaho to farm, and he is the older brother of Paul, below.

My maternal 3rd cousin 2x removed Paul Irven MIX was a Private in the US Army. Born in Kansas, his family moved to Idaho to farm, and he is the younger brother of Clarence, above.

Paternal Side

My paternal Great Grand Uncle Anton Roman POKORNOSKI was a Private in the US Army, from 20 Dec 1917 through 20 Nov 1918. He was a farmer by trade, born in Minnesota. He was 26 when he went to war.

My paternal Great Grand Uncle Michael N. PAWLAK was a Private in the US Army. He never saw action overseas though, he died in Chicago of Influenza on 07 Oct 1918. He was only 22 and had lived on a farm his whole live in Minnesota.

My paternal 1st cousin 2x removed Bernard C. HARRISON was in the US Army.

My paternal 1st cousin 3x removed Joseph LEWANDOSKI was a Private in the US Army. He died in France on 28 Sep 1918 of Influenza. He was only 24 and had lived on a farm in Minnesota his whole life.

My paternal 1st cousin 3x removed Thomas C. PAWLAK was a Fireman 3rd Class in the US Navy. Born in Minnesota, he was in the Navy from 15 Dec 1917 through 17 Dec 1918; he was a 22 year old farmer, born in Minnesota.

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed Ellis Reuben HARRISON was in the US Army. He died of Influenza at Camp Meade in Maryland on 16 Aug 1918, he was 24 years old and had always lived in Maryland. Here he is listed on a Death List within a long article about the current state of the Flu epidemic in the 15 Oct 1918 Baltimore Sun:

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed Freddie Eugene HARRISON was in the US Army.

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed John William BURDETTE was in the US Army.

DNA Cousins - Paternal Side

2018-05-05T10:52:00.001-04:00

So as a follow up to my last post on maternal DNA cousins, here are my Paternal DNA cousins. The purpose here was to look in my DNA matches within Ancestry to see how far back in my tree I can go with some cousin connections. Ancestry shows if others show the same people in a tree as me, and we are matching some DNA. That helps confirm that the tree may be correct (assuming there is documentation to back it up of course).

PATERNAL SIDE:

Robert CARTER, b. 1663 and Elizabeth LANDON, b. 1683

These two are my 7th great grandparents from Virginia. It's very interesting to me that my maternal and paternal trees have absolutely NO intersection whatsoever. My maternal side goes back to the Puritans who first came to New England and other immigrants who came in through New York and then moved to New York State and westwards. My paternal side started with the immigrants who settled Virginia and included later immigrants who came in through the port of Baltimore.

Benjamin HARRISON IV, b. 1695 and Anne CARTER, b. 1696

Okay, so the son of Benjamin and Anne that is my direct ancestor, William, is not yet a proven son of these two, though it's generally accepted that he is. But considering the VAST amount of Harrison cousins in my Ancestry account, he's definitely of that family line for sure, so it could really be true he is an undocumented son. Without him, my 7th great grandparents above would not be true, but I'm listing them anyway at this point. Hopefully it will be proven one day!

Nehemiah MOXLEY, b. 1738 and Elizabeth NORWOOD, b 1740

These two are my 6th great grandparents, they were in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The Moxley family spread far and wide in Maryland.

Thomas LUCAS, b. 1733 and Mary CHAMBERLAINE

These two are my 5th great grandparents, they were located in Maryland.

William SHIPLEY, b. 1729 and Rebecca SELLMAN

These two are my 5th great grandpaents, they were also located in Maryland (seeing a pattern here?). The Shipley family spread far and wide in Maryland just like the Moxley's, there are tons of them!

Anton POKORNOWSKI, b. 1813 and Marianna BUDZYNSKI, b. 1830

These two are my 3rd great grandparents, they both emigrated from Poland with their 7 children and settled in McLeod County, Minnesota. There they had 2 more children. Oh, and Anton had a first wife in Poland and he had 8 kids with her, some of whom stayed in Poland, some of whom emigrated as well. SO MANY CHILDREN! This probably explains why I have a lot of DNA cousins in Ancestry with this line!

I'm really interested in how DNA is going to affect verification of family lines, it's certainly different from the old days!

DNA Cousins - Maternal Side

2018-03-28T20:21:00.001-04:00

Although I am pretty careful with my privacy on websites and all (yes, even facebook!), apparently I could not care less where my DNA goes, so I've sent it off to multiple companies for analysis. Alas, no stunning reveals like on the TV shows, turns out my ancestry is "European" which matches exactly what my genealogy research has shown all these years.

My parents also sent their DNA in to one of the companies and amazingly the results came back knowing they were my parents without me having to tell them! I know it's science and all, but to me that was really really cool. Also it was nice to know my parents were really my parents because hey, you never know, I could have just been blending in after being switched at birth.

Guess which one is me

So anyway, lately I've been paging through all my cousin DNA matches in Ancestry taking a look at the common ancestors for those who list family trees, and taking wild guesses for those who did it for the DNA results only and didn't list a tree. Sometimes it's easy to figure out when you look at shared matches.

I was looking through them all because I wanted to see if DNA matches would help me with any "unproven" ancestor connections.

For instance, I have an ancestor was in the Revolutionary War and I wanted to submit the lineage to the Daughters of the American Revolution. However, there is one Father-Son connection where apparently everyone (including professional genealogists) have assumed paternity because there is no actual written proof anywhere. I was pretty bummed and then thought well what if they really aren't father and son and I've been researching the wrong ancestry all these DECADES!

DECADES! I'm OLD!

I finally decided that the father "Collins Mix" really was likely the father of son "Jonathan Collins Mix", because come on, "Collins!"

Then I just submitted for another ancestor who was better documented.

Thanks Kinsey Harrison and all his kids!!!

Anyway, back to DNA - so I thought, can I prove to my own satisfaction looking at cousins in Ancestry that the Collins and his son were really connected?

So here is how far back I was able to find cousin-connections for some of my lines - this is really cool in my opinion!

MATERNAL SIDE:

Thomas MIX, b.1678 and Deborah ROYCE, b.1683:

These two are my 7th great grandparents from Wallingford, Connecticut, and I had multiple cousins in my matches that had these 2 as our common ancestors. So that answers the question of whether Collins was the Dad of Jonathan. Though I don't think the DAR is ready to accept this kind of proof in their applications quite yet.

Richard BOWEN, b.1662 and Patience PECK, b.1669:

Same generation as Thomas and Deborah above (7th great grandparents), but they lived in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Again, I had multiple cousins with these 2 as our common ancestors in our trees on Ancestry.

Paul TOMULE, b.abt.1721 and Maria Anna KLEIN, b.abt.1738:

These 2 are my 6th great grandparents, as far from New England as can be, they were born in the Alsace-Lorraine region, then migrated south to Austria-Hungary to an area which later became Romania, though they are ethnic Germans. Did you get all that?

Joseph MARCHAL, b.1755 and Margaretha PIERRE, b.abt.1760:

These are my 5th great grandparents who were born in what is now the Lorraine region of France. Like Paul and Maria Anna above, they migrated south to Austria-Hungary to an area which later became Romania.

Johan REISER, b.1795 and Katharina SCHREIBER, b.1795:

These are my 4th great grandparents, their ancestors also migrated south to the Austria-Hungary region which later became Romania. All these people in Hungary and Romania but no actual Hungarians and Romanians in my ancestry, their ethnicity was mostly German, Luxembourgian and Lorrainian. I made the last one up. But it sounds cool. Lotharingen? Alsatian-Lorrainian?

William JONES, b.1793 and Sylvia BAIRD, b.abt.1797:

These are my 4th great grandparents who were born in Connecticut, but migrated down to New York state, first to Orange County, then westward to Tioga County and nearabouts. I made that last word up too, but I think it really works, I'm keeping it.

Thomas WEAVER and Almira FINNEY:

These are my 3rd great grandparents, both born in New York state, Thomas was born in Dutchess County and Almira was born in Otsego County. I wish I knew more about them, right now they are a brick wall!

Alonzo CHESLEY, b.1839 and Laura KIRBY, b.1849:

These are my 3rd great grandparents and this is a special case and is certainly something that DNA could help with. We have a family story that my 3rd Great Grandmother, Laura, had an affair with her brother-in-law, Alonzo and produced a daughter, my 2nd great grandmother. For the first time just a few days ago, I noticed a cousin in my Ancestry DNA who is a descendant of Alonzo and his wife Sarah Kirby (Laura's older sister). So this could be it - this could be the first chance at prove that the affair did happen. This will definitely bear watching to see how this turns out - am I related enough to end up being related to both Alonzo and Sarah, or is it just Sarah showing up, we'll have to see!!

My Dad's Classics Illustrated

2017-08-12T08:53:00.001-04:00

As a young child in the cold and dark times before the internet, I used to love reading my Dad's comic books that he had collected when he was a kid. He had funny one's like Mad Magazine, but I also loved reading his Classics Illustrated.

Classics Illustrated were exactly what they sound like, short illustrated versions of classic novels in comic book form, so they were very easy to understand for kids. I really like these and read certain of them over and over again.

I've read the "real" versions of most of them, but I can still see the comic book versions in my mind so easily! I did a quick search for covers and these immediately jumped out at me and took me back:

And speaking of Wuthering Heights, there have been a ton of film versions of course and I do enjoy watching them. When I was young I thought Heathcliff was so romantic, now of course I think he's a psychopath (but that's another blog post). When it comes to his death scene, I don't really see the film's death scene, what overplays the film is what's in my mind's eye, which is the panel from the Classics Illustrated version I grew up reading which is this:

Why look, it's dead Heathcliff.

Dead Heathcliff!

AHH DEAD HEATHCLIFF!!!!

OMG anonymous Classics Illustrated illustrator, did you have any idea what an impact you'd have on a small child seeing this? It's the stuff of nightmares!!!!

But soul-crushing dead psychopaths who kill themselves to be with their objects of obsession aside, my absolute favorite Classics Illustrated is one that isn't well known today - it's a Mark Twain story: Pudd'nhead Wilson!

Where has this story been all these years? It's got drama, murder, baby-switching, blackmail, Italian noblemen, early use of forensics, everything you could ask for! Much better than Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn lololol. I'd tell you about it, but I don't want to ruin it for you!

So anyway, thanks for sharing your Classics Illustrated with me Dad, I really really enjoyed them, and NEVER would have heard of Pudd'nhead Wilson without them!

Julius Ensign Rockwell, I wish I could hug you

2017-03-08T20:04:00.002-05:00

A long time ago, when the world was young and so was I, being a genealogist meant a lot more time in libraries making photo copies of books.

It's still something that should be done, but back then you didn't have as much of a choice. So I have quite a library of photocopied pages from books in my files - town histories, published genealogies, etc.

I don't even want to think about all those pages being a dime a piece to copy!!

So in a fit of thinking about things that are not the laundry or cleaning I should have been doing, I thought about all those pages recently and thought, hey, I bet I could find some of them as used books online and then could have the book as my own reference! I pulled a bunch out and went searching on various used book sites and found a few that seemed worth ordering and did.

One book that I ordered was "The Rockwell Family in America from 1630 to 1873" by Henry Ensign Rockwell, published in 1873.

I have one family line that goes back deep into New England history, and have some Rockwell ancestors, specifically the immigrants John Rockwell (1627-1673) and Sarah Ensign (abt 1630 - 1659).

The author of the book isn't a direct ancestor, but is in fact my 6th cousin 5x removed.

So I order the book and when it comes I'm surprised to open the box and have an envelope along with it - the envelope is full of old newspaper clippings and other handwritten notes on scraps of paper that apparently were all stored in the pages of the book - all on Rockwells! I look through the book and there are a bunch of pages with handwriting all over them - further notes on the people mentioned on the page, I can't believe what I'm seeing!!!

I look at the inside cover and it's signed "Julius Ensign Rockwell".

I look him up, and he's the son of the author! So I have the author's son's notations and newspaper clippings and I spent exactly $24.50 on this book. What a TREASURE!!

It's a genealogist's dream!!!

The separate envelope contained things like this:

What I really enjoyed seeing was how similar it all looked to my files with random scraps of paper and notes on things I saw somewhere to look up later. It's wonderful to have these kinds of reminders of the humanness of our ancestors. Also, it's really freaking cool to have this book and these notes!!!

Mix Ancestors Home Towns in England

2017-01-22T11:28:00.002-05:00

My Mix family research has been able to go back far enough to identify the towns from which people emigrated before coming to the US. This is my maternal grandfather's line and includes lots of very English names like:

Bishop
Bliss
Bosworth/Bozworth
Bourne
Bowen
Brotherton
Brown
Burnet
Capen
Chickering
Churchill
Clark
Collins
Cooper
Daggett/Doggett
Deming
Elson
Ensign
Fiske
Foote
Foys
George
Howland
Ide
Kent
Kingbury
Manross
Marshall
Mix
Palmer
Peck
Rockwell
Rowning
Royce
Rutherford
Sims
Smith
Sutton
Tilley
Trowbridge
Turner
Wheatlie

Of course there are a few notable exceptions in calling these English, like the two Welsh surnames (Bourne and Bowen) and the Burnet name which although Thomas Burnet himself came from Braintree in Essex, the Burnet family is actually Scottish and from the Borderlands area of southern Scotland.

As a visual to help me, I went to My Maps in Google and put pins in each town that my Mix line immigrant was born in. As you can see below, it really helps show the clustering of where this line of ancestors comes from (click to view larger):

So I can see with this that other than Wales and Scotland as mentioned earlier, the Mix ancestors are very clustered in the southern third of England, with a special concentration in East and Southwest England.

After emigrating, this is a very New England-centric line - they came to Massachusetts and Connecticut and those that moved, made their way to Rhode Island, or to Vermont, but then eventually to the Finger Lakes region of New York, which is where my Mix line ends up.

All in all though, a great visual!!

Veteran's in My Family

2016-11-11T07:19:00.000-05:00

In honor of Veteran's Day this year, I thought I would pull together in one spot all the veterans in my family that I'm currently aware of!

First off, here are Direct Ancestors that I am aware of being in the US Armed Forces:

1. My Dad! Richard Kleylein was a Boatswain's Mate in the Navy in 1968. His ship was the destroyer USS Eugene A. Greene.

2. My maternal 2nd Great-Grandfather John C. MIX was a veteran of the Civil War.

He enlisted in the Union Army in New York in 1864. He started in the 16th Regiment, New York Heavy Artillery (Unassigned Company), and was later transferred to Company I, 6th Regiment, New York Heavy Artillery.

3. My paternal 3rd Great-Grandfather Kinsey HARRISON, Sr was a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

He was a private in the Maryland line from 1776-1779.

4. My maternal 5th Great-Grandfather Thomas MIX was a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

He enlisted into the 4th Connecticut Regiment of the Continental Army. He wintered at Valley Forge, PA (the famous cold winter where Washington crossed the Delaware).

5. My maternal 5th Great-Grandfather Squire IDE was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He enlisted at Rehobeth, MA into the 22nd Regiment and completed several tours of duty.

6. My paternal 6th Great Grandfather Jeremiah J. LEWIS was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He was a private in 2nd Company of Maryland Militia.

After seeing these, I went and searched in my database for any other veterans and there are a LOT! Only one female was listed (to date that I know of) - and that was my Great Aunt Mary Domelle who was in the Women's Army Corp during World War II. I also have to give a special shout-out to my Great Uncle Peter Domelle, who attempted to enlist for World War II, but was told his work at the Calumet Steel Castings company was too important and they needed him there.

So, here are other relatives that I know of that were veterans as well:

Revolutionary War

My maternal 5th Great Grand Uncle Enos MIX.

My maternal 5th Great Grand Uncle Oliver COLLINS was in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

My maternal 1st cousin 7x removed Nehemiah MANROSS.

My maternal 3rd cousin 7x removed Timothy MIX.

My maternal 3rd cousin 7x removed Jonathan MIX.

My maternal 3rd cousin 8x removed Asa SMITH.

My maternal 3rd cousin 8x removed Ebenezer SMITH.

My paternal 4th Great Grand Uncle Charles SAFFELL.

My paternal 4th Great Grand Uncle James SAFFELL.

My paternal 4th Great Grand Uncle Joshua SAFFELL.

My paternal 4th Great Grand Uncle William SAFFELL.

My paternal 1st cousin 1x removed Benjamin Franklin BECRAFT Jr.

My paternal 1st cousin 7x removed Gassaway WATKINS.

My paternal 1st cousin 7x removed Nicholas WATKINS.

My paternal 1st cousin 7x removed Thomas WATKINS, Jr.

My paternal 2nd cousin 7x removed Leonard WATKINS.

War of 1812

My maternal 5th Great Grand Uncle Oliver COLLINS was in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

My paternal 5th Great Grand Uncle John W. WATKINS.

My paternal 1st cousin 5x removed Zephaniah HARRISON.

My paternal 2nd cousin 6x removed Gassaway WATKINS.

My paternal 2nd cousin 6x removed Nathan GAITHER was a surgeon in the Army.

My paternal 2nd cousin 6x removed Thomas Jones WATKINS.

My paternal 3rd cousin 5x removed Thomas WATKINS.

Civil War

My maternal 2nd Great Grand Uncle Henry MIX was in the Union Army. He died during the war in Tennessee in 1864.

My maternal 3rd Great Grand Uncle Benjamin S. JONES was in the Union Army.

My maternal 3rd Great Grand Uncle Gabriel JONES was in the Union Army.

My maternal 3rd Great Grand Uncle George JONES was in the Union Army.

My maternal 4th Great Grand Uncle Isaac JONES was in the Union Army.

My maternal 1st cousin 4x removed Alonzo F. MIX was in the Union Army.

My maternal 1st cousin 4x removed Eugene Philip MIX was in the Union Army.

My maternal 1st cousin 4x removed Franklin M. BURTON was in the Union Army.

My maternal 1st cousin 4x removed Jasper Eugene MIX was in the Union Army.

My maternal 1st cousin 4x removed Squire Collins MIX was in the Union Army.

My maternal 2nd cousin 5x removed Henry MIX was in the Union Army.

My maternal 3rd cousin 3x removed Orange Steadman PINE was in the Union Army.

My maternal 3rd cousin 4x removed Isaac SMITH was in the Union Army.

My maternal 3rd cousin 5x removed Amasa Hotchkiss MIX was in the Union Army.

My maternal 9th cousin 6x removed Calvert Stuart WEBSTER was in the Union Army.

My paternal 3rd cousin 5x removed Gassaway Watkins WARFIELD was in the Confederate Army. He died in a Union prison camp.

World War I

My maternal 1st Cousin 4x removed Edward John KIRBY was in the Army.

My maternal 2nd cousin 3x removed Hiram N. MADIGAN was in the Army.

My maternal 3rd cousin 2x removed Clarence Vernon MIX was in the Army.

My maternal 3rd cousin 2x removed Paul Irven MIX was in the Army.

My paternal Great Grand Uncle Anton Roman POKORNOSKI was in the Army.

My paternal Great Grand Uncle Michael N. PAWLAK was in the Army.

My paternal 1st cousin 2x removed Bernard C. HARRISON was in the Army.

My paternal 1st cousin 3x removed Joseph LEWANDOSKI was in the Army. He died in France of Influenza.

My paternal 1st cousin 3x removed Thomas C. PAWLAK was in the Navy.

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed Ellis Reuben HARRISON was in the Army.

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed Freddie Eugene HARRISON was in the Army.

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed John William BURDETTE was in the Army.

World War II

My maternal Great Aunt Mary DOMELLE was in the Women's Army Corps.

My maternal Great Uncle Leslie Homer MIX was in the Army. He received a Purple Heart.

My maternal Great Uncle William Erwin MIX was in the Army.

My maternal 1st cousin 2x removed Alvin Robert BOZUNG was in the Army.

My maternal 2nd cousin 2x removed Charles HOOSE was in the Army.

My maternal 3rd cousin 2x removed Harold Emerson MIX was in the Army.

My paternal 1st cousin 2x removed , Preston L. ATKINSON was in the Army.

Everyone Else:

My maternal Great Uncle John Francis MIX enlisted in the Army in 1945.

My maternal 1st cousin 1x removed Robert Theodore MIX was in the Army from 1962-1963.

My maternal 1st cousin 2x removed Eugene BOZUNG was in the Army 1958-1962 for the Korean War.

My maternal 2nd cousin 3x removed Richard Freeman KIRBY enlisted in the Army in 1940.

My maternal 3rd cousin 1x removed Charles Raymond DOMELE was in the Army from 1952-1954.

My maternal 3rd cousin 3x removed Charles Gillett SWIFT, born 1867, was in the Navy.

My paternal Uncle David Allen KLEYLEIN, Sr, was in the US Army Reserves.

My paternal 2nd cousin 1x removed John Felix SAKRY was in the Air Force in 1964, he was killed in a B47 takeoff.

My paternal 2nd cousin 1x removed John Frederick KLAVERKAMP, born in 1941, was in the Navy.

My paternal 2nd cousin 2x removed Sylvester Dominic POKORNOWSKI, born 1930, was in the Army.

My paternal 3rd cousin Jonathan T. WALDOCH, born in 1974, was in the Marines.

My paternal 3rd cousin Keith JOHNSON, born 1961, was in the Navy.

My paternal 4th cousin 3x removed Robert Malcolm WATKINS Jr, born in 1932, was in the Marines.

My paternal 5th cousin 3x removed Millard Fillmore WATKINS , born in 1856, was in the Navy for 8 years.

Those Family Stories Are Probably True

2016-04-10T20:07:00.001-04:00

When I first started doing genealogy back in the last century and started hearing the oral history of happenings, sometimes I didn't really take them seriously. I was trying to be objective and would record everything down, but thought to myself, well, sometimes things morph over time, or people put their own take onto things and it's just not what actually happened. After all, we all have played Whisper Down the Lane (which by the way, we just played at dinner this past Christmas and it was so funny!!! Probably the wine helped!).

So anyway back to the topic. The thing is, as the years have passed by and I've made discoveries, what they've done is back up the "stories" I heard. Turns out oral family history can be much more accurate than I was giving it credit for. Now I will admit, there are still a few I'm holding out on, they are just a little too fantastic, but here's the latest I think I can now believe in:

My maternal grandmother Ann Mix Domelle told me the story of the circumstances around her maternal grandmother's birth. Her grandmother was born Hattie Elizabeth Kirby. She was the daughter of unmarried Laura Kirby. That would be scandal enough back in mid-1800s rural New York, but the real scandal is that Laura had slept with her older sister's husband. Hattie was the result of that liaison.

A few months after Hattie's birth, Laura died. Laura was only 17 yrs old. Hattie was raised by Laura's parents, Samuel and Lucinda (Gibbs) Kirby. My grandmother told me that young Laura died from a broken heart.

The sister's name was Sarah Jane Kirby - she married Alonzo B. Chesley (the only time I've ever heard the name Alonzo was when watching Little House on the Prairie as a young girl, so that's how I picture him!). She didn't leave Alonzo after the affair, they had 12 children, 8 of which were born after Hattie was born.

Sarah was the eldest of her siblings, Laura was 9 years younger than her. Alonzo was 3 years older than Sarah - so he was 30 years old when his illegitimate daughter was born.

There must have been a lot of forgiveness in Sarah's heart, at least I imagine so, because Sarah and Alonzo's 6th daughter, born in 1868, was named Laura. Her sister Laura had only been dead 2 years.

So after hearing this story, I never really spent too much time researching the paternal line "Chesley" that came from my 3rd great grandmother Laura Kirby, because after all, how can it be proved that she really did sleep with Alonzo her brother-in-law?

Fast forward to today when all this DNA testing is all over the place and guess what? I have a 5th-8th cousin who came up as a DNA match in Ancestry.com and the line that leads to our common ancestor for me is Alonzo's line.

Certainly it's not enough to stand up in a court of law or anything, but it shows me that the oral history passed down to me about Sarah and Alonzo and Laura is more than likely true.

Scanning Those Negatives

2015-09-10T09:34:00.000-04:00

My project this summer was to scan all of my own photo negatives and photos that I’ve had stored away ever since I purchased my first digital camera. I was under this crazy assumption that I was organized in the storage of my photos, I even had a numbering system, but turns out I don’t know who I was fooling because it was a mess!

Here they all are, and yes, those boxes are full as well:

Ask me how many completely identical shots I have of Cinderella Castle Walt Disney World.

In the end, I scanned my personal photos and negatives from 1979 through to 2007. I like scanning photos better than negatives because you get microscopic pieces of dirt on negatives that are easily wiped off of a photo.

The top one below is the scanned negative, the bottom one is the scanned photo, both un-retouched. If your photo has kept it correct tones and colors, it's definitely easier to scan it rather than the negative:

Add caption

BUT - having the negatives shows me the order I took the photos which was extremely helpful because often the number order was not printed automatically on the back, and for some reason I put the photos out of order in the photo album. Why would I have done that? And then I mixed in other people's photos, ugh it was a mess! :-) But it's finished now, whew!!!!

So, everything of mine that was a negative or photo is now scanned, divided by sets of negatives. Future steps will be to figure out any specific dates I possibly can. I would always write on the envelope for the photos, but rarely included more than the general month! Sometimes it said “Spring 1988” or “Disney Photos”. I wish I had written days on there, oh well!

For now I just have some folders that are filed just by developed date, and yes, I had a terrible habit of waiting months, sometimes years before getting film developed. What was wrong with me? :-D

It was amazing to see how far we’ve come with photos – back in the day we mailed our negatives off and waited weeks to get the photos in the mail, only to find our fingers in front of the lens, or the photos were blurry, or you look like some sort of one-eyed over-exposed weirdo:

What a great shot! I should totally make this my profile pic!

Now my sister takes thousands of photos in a months’ time. But I think we value them less now for having so many. I remember sitting down and poring over my grandparents photo albums. But as a contrast, today nobody is going to sit and slog through the 12000+ photos we took just last year.

Moral of the story? Print out a photo now and then! Give it to your kids so they know how to hold a photo in their hands! And write the actual DAY it was taken on the back!

Good! Now get to work! Next up for me is to scan the box of negatives that belonged to my Grandparents! Soon, maybe not today though. :-)

I Dream of.....Architecture

2015-03-02T19:50:00.001-05:00

I'm horrible at meeting people, I get so flustered at having to actually interact with another human in person that I never remember their names and I forget their face and I'm also one of those people that cannot recognize people outside of where I expect them to be. If I work with you 8 hours a day every day at work and then run into you at the Home Depot on a Saturday, I WILL walk right past you with no inkling as to who you are.

I also have a brain cluttered with genealogy and historical facts that have over-written things like the name of a person I worked with 4 jobs ago. Or the name of a person I went to high school with.

I DO have a wonderfully dear friend I've known since high school who remembers every. single. person. she's ever met, their full and maiden names, birthdays, children's names, previous employers, vacation destinations, everything. I can't tell you how many times I've said to her "Do I know this <insert name here>" and she'll have all this info just spill out. Sometimes something she says sparks a dim candle, sometimes I just have to take her word for it. :-)

I'll tell you what my brain DOES store away though....Architectural details. Yeah, I know, but it is what it is. It can be both fun and annoying.

For instance, I'll recognize places used in movies all the time from one movie to another. I always look at architecture, in movies and real life - when I look at a house in real life, I'll immediately see the addition, I'll see the window that was replaced, I'll see the porch that doesn't make sense and then notice where one used to be. I'll relate it in age to the houses next to it, older, younger, unique, cookie-cutter, what decade and style it was built in.

One example of a place I always notice in movies/TV is this office building that turns up all the time, I notice it because it's a wonderful atrium in the center with beautiful railings and banisters that they just don't make anymore. I first noticed it in Wolf, but once it was registered in my brain, I then saw it all the time:

When I watch a TV show or movie that involves moving through some sort of building or house, my mind automatically starts mapping out a floor plan, sometimes its annoying because I realize the movie maker did not take that into consideration and it makes no sense at all.

And beyond all that, I actually dream buildings all the time. The boring events of my dreams take place in houses, mansions, hotels, cities that are unique to my dreams. Once I even was exploring a haunted abandoned lunatic asylum! Yeah, I've watched a LOT of horror movies in my life, lololol.

I find it hard to describe the places verbally to others, I can still see many of the dream places in my head, vividly, in technicolor, but when I try to describe it I say, "oh I was in a house looking for some item". I'm not sure why that is - maybe there is some connection in my brain that isn't clicking together right but it seems so inadequate to use words to describe my places when I should just be able to beam the picture in my head into your head so no description is necessary.

So that's the background for what happened to make me think about all this.

Lately I've been watching this AWESOME new TV channel (MeTV) that shows all kinds of old shows from the 60s and 70s and I've been watching all these wonderful shows showing the AWFUL way everyone dressed and the AWFUL interior decorating, geeeez what were all thinking!!!!

One of my favorite shows of all time that I watched reruns of as a young child was Night Gallery. Oh how I loved this show!! During the summer spending time at my Grandparents I would stay up late and watch the show on Channel 17, it came on at 11:30pm after Laugh-In. I would set myself up like 6 inches from the TV in the living room, lights off (everyone else was in bed), and patiently sit through Laugh-In, understanding about 5% of the jokes, and then Night Gallery came on. I hear that the shows were originally an hour, but I've only ever seen the half hour cut up version.

So MeTV has Night Gallery reruns on in the middle of the night and for the past year I just DVR them en masse and pop them on whenever I think of it. I see now how chopped up the shows are since they are cut down, but my nostalgia prevails and I still watch them. :-)

Another show I just discovered that I'd never seen before is Columbo. I know, I know, I knew what the show was, I knew who Peter Falk was, but I'd never seen the show before! I really like it, it's very charming and there's all these guest stars from the 70s who are just fabulous.

So there I was on a Sunday night not too long ago, all comfy cozy and watching Columbo annoy someone and I realize immediately that I recognize the set. It's from a Night Gallery episode and I know which one, it was the one with Leonard Nimoy, oh Leonard, Rest in Peace. The next day I went to the interwebs and voila, there's the Night Gallery episode on hulu (yay Hulu!!!):

And here's the same set from Colombo episode "Requiem for a Falling Star", different door to the outside, changed the pillow color on the wicker furniture (the SAME furniture even!!!!) and voila!:

Apparently, the 2 episodes were filmed a few months apart.

I know it's kind of weird, but I thought it was pretty cool that now in addition to real places I can start cataloging in my brain when sets are re-used between shows. :-)

I might not remember your face or your name, but if you show me a photo of your house or living room I bet I remember that. :-)

It does help when I'm scanning old family photos and trying to figure out whose living room or whose house it is so I guess I'll keep it as my strange little talent.

My Wilhelm Domelle in the Triebswetter Family Book

2014-12-05T20:37:00.000-05:00

So a while back, I found out a Familienbuch existed for the town that I traced my immigrant ancestor William Domelle to. That sentence was constructed horribly, but you get my meaning.

A Familienbuch is a list of births, marriages, deaths, that in this case was specific to the town I was looking at - Triebswetter which existed in what is now modern Romania, but when my ancestor emigrated from it, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was ethnic German living in a town full of Germans that had migrated to the area by invitation to work the land.

Back to the book - so I found out this book existed where someone had spent time transcribing all these records for Triebswetter into a book. I found the author in Germany and contacted him to see if any copies still existed. He didn't have any more but sent me an electronic version and we corresponded a bit back and forth. He found some other bits of info on Domelles and kindly sent to me, I filled him in on what happened to the one's I knew that emigrated. I told him to let me know if he ever printed more because I would love to own hard copies of the information.

And voila, he printed another set (with updates) just recently and you know I ordered a copy! I got them in the mail just last night, and tonight I sat down to look through it to see what kind of updates might exist for my ancestor families, but really I sat down to just hold the books while lisping out "My Precious Bookses, we waited for you and now you're here my preciouses....."

But I digress...I recently watched the new version of the Hobbit (part 1) and it kind of stuck with me...

Anyway, I found my William and then was shocked! My name was in there as providing the information of where William had immigrated to in the United States.

MY NAME!

IN THE BOOK!

I AM IMMORTAL!

My Grandmother's Recipes (no green jello allowed)

2014-09-04T17:13:00.000-04:00

So anyway, all thoughts of congealed gelatin surrounding bits of pears, peas and cream cheese in my last post aside, let's get back to what I was doing when that all happened.

I scanned a bunch of my maternal grandmothers recipes. I really enjoy looking at "old" recipes, and the vast majority of females in my family were and are big recipe collectors, so this was really fun.

I tried to spend time scanning only the recipes I thought my grandmother actually used, not just one's she had saved because they looked good. I actually managed to toss some that I knew she had never made and had just saved.

What really helped me was that she and her sister Mazie exchanged a LOT of recipes and I have many handwritten recipes from Great Aunt Mazie along with the recipes written in my grandmother Ann's handwriting. Also, there were recipes written down by my Aunt Becky (Anns' daughter) where she just wrote down what was in my grandmother's head, or re-copied from somewhere else and noted the source. That was another theme I noticed - my grandmother and great-aunt always noted the source of the recipe - who they got it from either in the name or as a notation at the top.

Now I know which recipes came from their Mom - Cornelia Simpson and I even have one that is noted as "Grandmas" and since Mazie wrote it, that means it's her grandma, my great-great-grandmother - Hattie Kirby Quick Allen. :-)

Most of the recipes were for baking. I think this must be because you can't fudge baking and just keep it in your head like a recipe for chicken or beef. You need those specific measurements. I remember loving my grandmother's homemade bread and she made wonderful pies from scratch as well.

And my family members who knew my great-grandma Cornelia rave about her baking as well so I think these recipes are a great family treasure trove!

Here are a few for your perusal:

This is in Great Aunt Mazie Mix Patrick's handwriting. She has her recipe for Cream Johnny Cake and then her Grandma's recipe (Hattie) for Johnny Cake.

I don't think I've ever had Johnny Cakes - I've had cornbread, but not this. I just might have to give it a try!

And this is for Never Fail Cake - again it's in Mazie's handwriting, noted as her Mom's recipe.

I like how Mazie put at the bottom the editorial comment: "This cake is always tender and light when Mom makes it."

:-)

And of course there's this one for Raisin Oatmeal Cookies, this is in my grandmother Ann's handwriting and you have to love a recipe that is stained and tattered because that means it was well used!

Not all the recipes are for baked goods - t his one for Fried Potatoes is in my Aunt Becky's handwriting, with her mom being Ann of course. You know it's good when there's bacon fat involved!!!

And last but not least, here's Mazie's recipe for Mock Oysters. She says "tastes and smelles just like oysters".

She had a lot of recipes for "mock" things - mock sour cream, mock milk, mock whipped cream. I guess that must come from living through the Depression and hard times - she seemed to come up with a lot of recipes on her own.

I'm glad I have these and was able to scan them so now I can share them all around the family! Maybe I'll even experiment with a few. None that contain jello of course. :-)

My Grandmother's Recipes and the Horror of Lime Jello Salad

2014-09-02T18:38:00.000-04:00

So I have in my possession lots of handwritten recipes that were originally in my maternal Grandmother's possesion. She and her sister Mazie exchanged recipes for probably their entire lives and many of the recipes I have are in Mazie's handwriting.

Every one who knew their mother, Cornelia, talks about the amazing food she put on the table, especially the baking, so I was interested to see what kind of old family recipes would turn up.

There are definitely a few, but then something else reared its ugly head.

Something horrible.

Something from the past.

Something....

Green.

go ahead, make it, I dare you: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/i-love-my-pear-salad/

You know what I'm talking about - those molded jello salads that came into fashion after the Atomic Age. Did people feel like they were in control of their molded, brightly colored food? I don't know but I do know it was an evil trend.

It all came flooding back when I found this:

That's my mother's handwriting. How could she? And no, they never put in the pecans.

Mommy how could you

Why is Lime Jello Salad so evil you ask?

Let me count the ways:

1. It's florescent green and food the color of one of my college highlight markers is just wrong.

2. It's lime flavored. Sorry, the only place where put lime flavoring is:

      a. in the air around the top of my gin and tonic and then placed gently
   into the garbage disposal to give it that citrus tang, or,

      b. in the coconut.

That's it! Sorry, lime is NOT a dessert flavor and my family, the WOMEN of my family tried to pass this sorry spectacle of congealed gelatin off as a dessert.

A dessert!

Lime jello by itself is enough of an affront, but then they added

Cream Cheese

and

Pears

So now, as a child, I was much more particular than I am now. Today I'll try mostly anything, unless its the entire animal on the plate, looking at me, or if I have to use metal tools to break open the outer exoskeleton, but that's another story....

Back then I enjoyed my flavors s e p a r a t e. My foods did not touch on my plate. I consumed one food at a time, in order of least liked to most liked. Sorry, those were the rules, can't deviate. I'm much better now. :-D (And this is what plays in my head when I say those words)

And here these women who were supposed to be nurturing me were mooshing up cream cheese and lime jello and jamming big chunks of pears of all things all together. And putting delicious fluffy Cool Whip on the plate where the pear juice would touch it and ruin it.

Then, just to be mean, they used the bundt pan as a mold to remind you that it wasn't cake, it was as far from cake as anything ever was.

Oh man, it was bad. And they'd make me eat it. Ugggggggh, I feel sick just thinking about it.

I still dislike any kind of citrus flavoring in my desserts, now I know why. I refused to eat cream cheese until I was 20, now I know why. And limes weren't part of my life until 2007, NOW I KNOW WHY! What hath you wrought Mommy!!! :-D

So anyway, I got over my disgust and kept on scanning.

And then, not only did I find that recipe written out again, but then a third time, both in my grandmothers handwriting. You know what that means. When you have a recipe multiple times, hand written, you used it a lot. I do that now with my print-outs.

Here's the kicker though - this one includes......PEAS!!!!!!!!!!!

Peas?

Cream cheese, lime, pears, and PEAS?

Did they make me eat this at every gathering? Is this why big swaths of my childhood are missing from my memory? How was this even legal?

Then I find this in the loose recipes:

Do you see how old this is?

This is PRE-ZIP CODES! That means 1963! I checked!

No really, my grandmother saved this for 50+ years, you need to look at this, just look at it:

*urp*

People ate this! Someone invented it in a test kitchen! What the heck is that thing in the bottom left? There's carrots in there and layers! And at the top, those are olives in there! It's called RING AROUND THE TUNA! Oh my god, I can't believe it. Ohhhhhh I'll never be able to eat my little cherry jello squares again!

Ooooooooh man. I really don't like lime jello. :-D

I Have Genealogy Ennui

2014-08-24T21:08:00.000-04:00

I feel like I should be reclining on my chaise wearing a turban when I use the word ennui, but hey, for all you know, that's where I am while typing this up anyway. :-D

So there's this cartoon I've always enjoyed whenever it pops up on someone's feed:

The original can be found here.

It's just like the family drives of my childhood :-)

Today this cartoon came to mind as I had a moment where I thought what if I don't do this any more?

I know, shocking, and we all know it won't last but here's where it came from:

I have this line, this line of "MIX" people. They are so prolific and all over the place and go way back. I have this one problem though. When I made an application to the DAR a few years back, the review process called to light that I don't have enough documented proof that shows that my great-great-great-grandfather really is the son of his father. Oh, and don't worry, I used a different line from Maryland and got my DAR membership with that one - Yay for the documented HARRISON line!! :-)

My MIX problem - it's pre-1850 census, pre- any process of birth/marriage/death certificates, NY state claims they can't find anything, I swear they are the worst state to deal with, they should learn from Illinois and PA, but I digress --- I haven't been able to find any wills or probate records, I went over everything I could find while at the Tioga County Historical Society in NY and I just have nothing.

As I was wandering around in the 1865 NY State Census on familysearch.org today I suddenly thought, what if there is no "proof"? What if I never find anything? There was a Mix historian who spent years and years and years documenting and in his records he just said it was assumed they were father and son. If he couldn't find anything, how could I think I ever will?

And then I look at another line that's really well documented - the CHESLEYs - but I can't use them because of a little messy technicality in that my ancestress kind of sort of slept with her brother-in-law, had a baby, my great-great-grandmother, and then passed away. So this was back in the mid-1800s and again there's no state law of birth certificates (people could lie anyway) so I don't have "proof" that brother-in-law Alonzo really was the father.

And finally I look at my other lines on my mom's side (my dad does his side) and the rest are all deadend brickwalls in the early 1800s.

I am absolutely NOT a professional genealogist and I'm not looking for documented proof to try and take over the monarchy in the UK so I'm not sure if I'm right to be so on the hook for what I think of as real "proof". I admit I overly document, I am librarian after all, and the saying "no photo? then it didn't happen" applies to my research "no source? then it's not true".

Maybe it's just time for a break, a step away, I certainly have several months/years worth of scanning to do in the boxes from my grandparents so I'm sure a little perspective will help.

I mean, if I never went any further back on my MIX line, I could certainly fill in the breadth of the tree as the descendants freaking numerous so I guess that could be my focus. But we all know what going back really far in your tree is super fun and awesome.

So this was a lot of words today and usually I try to intersperse photos in my words or I know I lose people. I do it in my work emails too, I assume my audience has a 3 bullet point attention span.

In closing then, I'll leave you with another of my favorite cartoons:

HAAAAAAAAAAA! Whenever I burp, I imagine my face looks like the 3rd panel.

By the way did you know there is an entire search engine devoted to Calvin and Hobbes? You should go there: http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/

:-)

The Twins!

2014-07-09T17:09:00.000-04:00

So I have some twins in my families, like most people do. However, not everyone has a photo like this of their twin Great-Aunts at school around 1919ish:

Their names were Mazie and Daisy, born on May 1, 1913. That's Daisy on the left and Mazie on the right.

Through no fault of theirs, the second I saw this photo for the first time, what do you think popped into my head?

Here's how it went in my brain:

Of course, Stanley Kubrik's The Shining: "Come and play with us Leah, forever, and ever, and ever."

Sorry Aunt Mazie and Daisy! I love your photo and lay all the blame on Stanley Kubrick.

In the meantime though, some additional data on twins in my family!

One interesting note, Mazie and Daisy were older sisters to my grandmother Ann. Her husband, William Domelle, also had older twin siblings, a boy and a girl, BORN IN THE SAME YEAR - 1913!!!!! WHOA! Right? Weird!

And some real data from my Maternal side of the family:

Sets of twins:

Jeremiah and Nathanial BOSWORTH, b. 1649

Isaac and Nathanial TURNER, b. 1669

Isaac and Stephen FOOTE, b. 1672

Hannah and John AUSTIN, b. 1677

Joseph and Samuel NORTON, b. 1681

Abigail and Ebenezer NORTON, b. 1683

Mary and Ruth ATWATER, b. 1686

Experience and Rachel IDE, b. 1696

Hepsibah and Martha DAGGETT, b. 1701

Katherine and Nathanial BLISS, b. 1702

Hepsibeth and Martha COOPER, b. 1729

Abel and Joanna ROYCE, b. 1730

Dareks and Dorcas MANN, b. 1731

Daniel and Lament COLLINS, b. 1745

Abigail and Allen BOSWORTH, b. 1758

Nathan and Olive IDE, b. 1759

David and Susannah BROWN, b. 1782

Janet and Susan INGRAHAM, b. 1822

Charles and Darius BOWEN, b. 1824

George and William INGRAHAM, b. 1829

Marilda and Matilda KIRBY, b. 1857

Flora and Frederick ORCUTT, b. 1867

Alice and Edward ELIOT, b. 1885

Lena and Leon SIMPSON, b. 1896

Mazie and Daisy MIX, b. 1913

Anthony and Anna DOMELLE, b. 1913

Total # of Twins: 52 total, 26 sets

Female vs. Male: 25 males, 27 females, 6 sets both male, 7 sets both female, 10 sets 1 each

Distribution:

8 sets in 1600s

9 sets in 1700s

7 sets in 1800s

2 sets in 1900s

0 sets in 2000s

Seems like our incidence of twins has petered out during the last century. But whether that is due to smaller family size or dilution of the genes is up to a scientist to figure out, not me! :-)

Scanning, Scanning, and then Scanning Some More

2014-05-06T20:02:00.002-04:00

I haven't written a blog post in a while because I've been busy scanning. And scanning. And scanning. Sometimes I make a drinking game out of it.

1. If the next photo has nothing written on the back, then take a drink!

2. If the next photo had something written on the back but someone trimmed the photo in such a way as to remove all words other than "A" and "the" and "and that's where I buried the gold", then take a drink!

3. If the next photo has writing on the back but turns out to have been added within the past 10 years and is actually incorrectly identifying the people in the photo, then take a drink!

That usually wraps up the scanning exercise early for the day.

I'm a glutton for punishment though, I was so happy to scan an album that belonged to my grandmother that I didn't know she had. I knew the album, but at some point in the past several years, she had replaced what was in it with very old photos that she must have inherited from her sister and brother after they died.

I freely admit, the album was a little daunting:

But I broke it into steps - First Step! Photograph each page to get a record of how my grandmother placed the photos. At first I thought they were random - just what would fit where, but shame on me, of course Grandma was grouping by people she thought were the same or from the same family group. Like all of her brother Les's kids were on one page.

So now that I had that record of how it looked - Step Two! I took the whole thing apart - took out every photograph.

Step Three! Start the Scanning! Here's where I scanned and scanned and scanned. Each photo - front and if anything was there, the back. Even if it was just the numbering from the developer I scanned it because you can match photos to a single roll if you find the same number on the back.

Step Four! Put the photos in a safe place! I have an archival box that I got from a great website of archival needs that is acid-free and safe and I put them all in there while I reviewed the digital images.

Step Five! Organize!

So this took me a bit - I created folders with each family members name, or whatever name was written and placed each photo I could identify FOR SURE into the appropriate folder. If a photo had more than one family member in it, I put a copy in each folder.

Step Six! Acquire a family online that will help you identify photos you are clueless about! I just so happen to be very fortunate - I am a member of 2 family groups in facebook where I've been able to post these images and get feedback. All those cousins of mine are fantastic and have helped so much. :-) Yay for Mix and Akins families!!!!

Step Seven!! Back it up! Everywhere. Redundancy is my middle name.

Step Eight! Share everything possible - you never know who is going to be able to help or who will be so happy and grateful to see a photo that you had no clue would be so important to someone else.

I love love love being able to share all these images I scan!

Final Step! Repeat this for the 22 photo albums sitting upstairs. :-)

But while I do that I so enjoy having photos like this of my great-great-grandmother Hattie E. Kirby Akins Quick Robson Allen (yes, she was a popular gal and YES, she out-lived each of them) :-D

Displaying Family Photos

2014-03-23T17:38:00.004-04:00

I don't know about you, but I have a LOT more family photos stored on various hard drives, cds and thumb drives then I do displayed.

But then the amount I have of scanned and scavenged photos is way too much to try and put in frames around the house as well.

So I decided to specifically look for photos that were pre-1980 and had a family member either laughing out loud or doing something silly. You know a lot of times you see old family photos with people looking sometimes a little stern, so I wanted the opposite of that. Pre-1980 was just an arbitrary date I pulled out of the air.

So I found some and sent them off to snapfish to be made into real photos - which of course is a whole other project!

Then for frames, I used T.J. Maxx and Marshalls and Home Goods types of stores to look for pretty frames that were cheap and those stores are always good for that kind of stuff.

Then I spent some time laying out the frames on the with the photos seeing what looked like a good match - some required trimming or were weird sizes but that's okay, it makes the collection look eclectic.

And yes, I wrote people's names on the backs of the photos! :-)

So here's my first set of laughing family photos:

I'm so pleased with how they've turned out so far! I have about a dozen more that are waiting for a frame that will match their size so I'll have more in the future but I think this is a great start.

47 Years of Letters and Cards

2014-03-08T08:54:00.002-05:00

What does one do with 47 years of letters, postcards and cards that one inherits from one's grandparents?

Scan them!!!!!

Well, mostly.

Naturally the archivist in me said scan them all. But then the realist in me said, hold up there, is it really necessary to scan an anniversary card from 1998 that just has the givers signature in it?

Noooo, I guess not.

So here's what I actually did:

1. Gather all the correspondence in one place from the various little boxes we put them in:

2. Then, because I have no self-control over my OCD tendencies, I put them in chronological order. The earliest letter was from 1959. There was a house fire in the family and unfortunately any correspondence earlier than 1954 that was saved would have burned. :-(

If you look at the photos closely, you will see that there is a handwritten date on every. single. envelope.

Why? My grandmother wrote the date received on every. single. envelope.

I don't think I've been that consistent with anything I've ever done in my entire life.

3. And here is the hard part: while putting them in chronological order, I purged.

Oh the humanity! It went against everything in me but I had to be ruthless. Store bought cards with nothing but an "I love you" or "We love you" and a signature had to go. Only items that actually contained written lines were kept. I did keep an eye out for return addresses though, in case I came across one I didn't already have a record of.

4. Start scanning!!! I scanned the envelope and each page contained in it. If the return address was on the back of the envelope, then I scanned the back. Postcards were scanned front and back.

I used 400 dpi for most everything since it was just text.

I used folders for each year, and in the filename I used YYYY-MM-DD-envelope-from-firstname-lastname. Then changed out "envelope" for "letter-page-1" and so on.

5. Keep scanning!

6. Geez, keep scanning.

7. Done! Oh wait, there's a pile over there I forgot.

8. Scan some more.

9. Start playing drinking games. For every time my Great Uncle Tony used a red pen, take a shot. For every time my Great Aunt Mazie included a recipe, take a shot.

10. Sleep it off.

11. Now we're actually finished!

Yep, that's right - 1 GB total.

Here are the one's that made it through the cull and got scanned:

12. Start burning them to media to give to all my relatives. Also a backup for myself. :-) I don't need to give a GB of files to each relative - for instance my Domelle relatives don't need letters from Aunt Mazie and vice versa.

So what did I get from this experience?

The most wonderful thing is I feel like I know my Great-Grandmother Cornelia Simpson, my Great Aunt Mazie Patrick and my Great Uncle Tony Domelle as real people now - they were people I barely or never met in person and they were the most prolific writers to my grandparents. It's wonderful to have a feel for their personalities now and I am so grateful that my Mom and Aunt told me to just take those boxes of letters and deal with them. :-)

I found family recipes - the bread recipe my Great-Grandmother used.

I found a lock of hair stuffed in a letter I sent to my grandparents - not my hair!

Lots of health info that is so valuable - Cousin So-and-so had this disease and Uncle So-and-so had this.

But really it's wonderful to have these handwritten little legacies. It won't be like this a generation from now - kids and grandkids will see our facebook posts and blogs, but they won't see our actual handwriting that gets worse from arthritis over the years, or see our actual signatures.

Yay for letters! Go write one today!