Many more to find....

So Newspapers.com is doing a free access weekend this week for Fathers' Day.  My gift year that I received for being an admin on Wikipedia expired in January, so I took advantage of the free access and did a few more searches.  I found some really good information on some of my cousin lines.  One that I want to highlight is the story of Eureka (McClure) Keyt.  In 1959, her family threw a large birthday party to celebrate her 99th birthday.

 
Eureka was my 2nd great grandaunt.  Out of all the party guests listed, I had only Grace Beach (my great grandmother and Eureka's niece) in my database already.  So now the task is to find how all the other 40 or so names mentioned relate to Eureka, and therefore how they relate to me.

In search of.... Rachel S. Hutchinson's parents

As noted in the last post, FamilySearch.org thinks that I'm a Mayflower descendant.  The suggested connection is through my 3rd great grandmother, Rachel S. Hutchinson.

Rachel has been one of my brick walls for a while now, so finding out that FamilySearch contributors had linked her not only to her own parents but had linked another eight generations further back to a Mayflower passenger was a special treat indeed.  As with most trees, the proof is in the records.  The problem is that I still can't find any records linking Rachel to her parents.

The records that I have found so far include:

Stephen Ford household in 1850 U.S. census
extract of marriage records transcription from Hamilton Square Baptist Church

As far as I can tell, Rachel probably died in the first half of 1860.  The 1860 census (taken on 16 June 1860) shows Stephen Ford (aged 34) in Hightstown with Laura A. Ford (aged 4), along with Sarah A. Hutchinson (aged 28) and Caroline Hutchinson (aged 19).  The 1870 census shows Laura A. Ford (aged 12) still living in the Stephen Ford (aged 42) household, but with his wife Isabella (aged 42) and two other children, Sarah E. (aged 7) and Robert (aged 6).  The 1880 census lists Stephen Ford with wife Isabella, and two children, Laura (aged 23) and Sarah (aged 17).

The tree on FamilySearch suggests that Rachel's middle name was Silvers, and that she was the daughter of John J. Hutchinson (1802-1856) and Mariah Silvers (1803-1856).  So that and the marriage record noted above would also suggest that Rachel should be listed in the 1840 census with John and Mariah.  There are a few John Hutchinsons in the 1840 census with at least one female in the household aged 10-15; Rachel would have been about 12 years old in 1840.  However, since the 1840 census lists only the name of the head-of-household, I don't know which one is this John, and I don't know the names of anyone else in the household at that time.

Also, Rachel is not yet listed in the Find-a-Grave memorials for John or Mariah.  So I'm still a little skeptical about the connection from Rachel to them.  I gained access to NewspaperArchive.com this week, so I tried a few searches there, but they don't appear to hold any archives of newspapers from New Jersey in the mid-19th century.  A similar search at the Library of Congress newspapers archive (Chronicling America) also turned up empty results.

Since the Famous Relatives page listed the relationship through Rachel to John Howland, I tried tracing John Howland's descendants down to Rachel.  I found a couple of books with digital copies online including Genealogical History of Mercer County, Vol. 2 (via Google Books) and John Howland of the Mayflower, Volume 4 (via Archive.org). These connect John Howland all the way down to John J. Hutchinson and Mariah Silvers, but do not make that last connection that I need.  One possible resource that I still need to check is the "Silver books" endorsed by the Mayflower Society.  The Wisconsin chapter notes that there's a copy in the Black Earth Library, which is the repository holding a copy closest to me right now (curiously, they don't list a copy in the Madison Library).

So Stephen Ford and Rachel S. Hutchinson are still, as far as my current database shows, unconfirmed links to the Mayflower passengers.  Stephen is himself also a current brick wall in my database as I have no information yet on his parents (other than FamilSearch trees listings which I need to verify).  I need to research about Mercer County, New Jersey, some more. 

Connecting to fame

So last month I got an email from FamilySearch.org that they were rolling out a new Famous Relatives page.  It shows famous historical figures that connect to my tree in some way, usually a distant cousin.  I finally had some time to check it out today and, wow, there are a lot of connections.  My maternal line connects back to quite a lot of people; I need to add more connections on my father's side to see how this list grows.  What they've connected for me so far includes:

... and one athlete: Gordie Howe (12th cousin, once removed).

I had known about Winston Churchill already, but the list there showed a different lineage than I knew, so there is definitely more research to be done there.  And, with a few family members who worked for Disney in the 1940s, it's cool to see that Walt was actually a cousin.  However, the most surprising to me is that, according to FamilySearch, I'm a Mayflower descendant!

I know where I'm gonna be looking next....

Resurrecting this project

So it's been a while since I last added anything here.  Last week I just upgraded to RootsMagic version 8, and I spent all of my free time going back through what I have and creating a new database with better citations to source documents.  I shared some of what I had with family at Thanksgiving, and decided to resurrect this blog to simplify distributing some of the more interesting tidbits that I find.

I have a couple stories that I found over the weekend that I haven't yet told here, so I'm putting those together now.  Hopefully they'll be up here sooner than later.

I'm open to collaborations, but the way things have gone since I was last active on this project, please be patient on receiving any replies from me.

Dead men don’t register for the draft … or …How searching for the FAN club confirms direct ancestor data

So in recent weeks, there have been a few comments on some of my Mosley research (most recently on a blog post showing marriage license index cards for a few families that I’m researching).  One of the comments suggested that I had the incorrect death date for Richard Washington Mosley (b. 22 Feb 1834 in Pennsylvania).  The comment noted that his obituary puts his death in February 1918, and suggests that the 1942 death date was actually for his grandson, who was also known as Richard Washington Mosley although he was born as Richard Washington Graham.  My curiosity was sparked, and it seemed an interesting little quest to find out more while I waited for my current work project to upload.  Richard wasn’t a direct ancestor that I was researching, but part of the FAN (Friends, Associates and Neighbors) club of a direct ancestor.  So here is a little bit of what I found this afternoon…

I wonder what happened?

I had a little extra time this week in between other tasks, so I decided to try some new searches on the recently upgraded FamilySearch website.  I found a few items that with scans of original documents that directly answered a few questions, but I also found one that had a bit of a surprise…

Transcription errors are fickle beasts

Ancestry.com has opened up marriage records for free access this week through Sunday.  I was able to carve out a little bit of time today to see what I could find in a quick search on a couple of the lines I’m researching, and found some interesting results…

Of the arts and self-employment…

Wow, has it really been that long?  I guess it has.  I’ve spent the majority of my time trying to get my photography business going and wasn’t able to devote much of any of my time to personal projects this year.  But through all of it, I haven’t forgotten about my research.

20 years ago today…

leaving-in-style

So there we go leaving the reception in style on our first car ride as a married couple on August 2, 1992.  The Continental was owned, restored and driven (in an appropriate chauffeur’s uniform) by a friend of Jennifer’s father.

New cousins, but no way to contact them

I’m trying to find out a little more about my Brown line this week.  I’ve traced back to my second great grandfather James M. Brown (b. circa 1853, Bloomington, Indiana).  I can’t quite get much farther back yet except that the 1880 U.S. census says his parents were both born in South Carolina.  I found a potential lead on more information in the Ancestral File database on FamilySearch, but I have no way to contact the contributors.  Aaaarrrrgggghhh!