Saved by sounds-like spelling

So as with other branches of the family, I’m going back through record sets on FamilySearch to find more documentation on the people I already know about.  Today I worked my way back to the family of John Schenbeck (M; b. 29 Oct 1798, Hesse Darmstadt, Germany; m. Katherine Oesch; d. 24 March 1865) and further reinforced one of the reasons I like to search from FamilySearch…

Surname Saturday: Cook

Okay, another week, another surname.  Today's surname is a fairly common name in North America, in fact Wikipedia cites this surname at 60th place in the list of most common surnames in the United States, belonging to just under 295,000 people in the U.S. (according to 2000 U.S. census figures).  I know about five generations of Cooks in my wife's ancestry, and all of them were born in the United States with the first that I know of born way back in 1781 in Pennsylvania.  So, let's find out more about the Cook line...

Surname Saturday: Benjamin

This week we move back to my wife's lines and look at the surname history of her 2nd great grandmother, Clara Benjamin.  This is another line in America during the 19th century where we should be able to find out more.  So far, I've only got two generations in my notes, but I was able to confirm a couple of details using Beta FamilySearch, and I also found a possible residence through the search there that I still need to verify.

Surname Saturday: Beach

Okay, time to alternate back to one of the lines on my side of the family.  This week, we will look at one of the most heavily researched lines in my family.  It connects back to some of the earliest settlers of Massachusetts Colony and continues all the way to close family members who are still living today.  There are quite a few researchers looking into this line from the early-1800s back to the 1600s, possibly due to the line's connection to Sir Winston Churchill (yes, that Winston Churchill), so this will be a fairly long post with nine generations listed, but there seems to be one universal stumbling block when we go back far enough.

The haunted house

We've all heard the phrase "skeletons in the closet" referring to some scandalous fact that a family doesn't necessarily want shared with the rest of the world.  Well, a few generations back in my family, there was a real skeleton in the attic.