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…

More Mosleys but in Philly…

For the longest time, I’ve had George H. Mosley (b. 1799, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; d. 12 Feb 1872, Troy, Doniphan, Kansas), his wife Letitia Parsons (b. 28 Feb 1802, Philadelphia; d. 8 July 1850, Philadelphia) as the end of the Mosley line in my database.  I haven’t gone farther back yet (maybe there’ll be something once more of the 1812 pension files are online), but I found out a little bit more about them this week.

Who was Aaron A. Lowe?

I finally have some time this evening to do a little more looking around in my family history research.  Picking up from where I left off last time, which was looking at census records on my Horne line in Georgia, I found some new (to me) information in the Find-A-Grave database for Orange Hill Cemetery in Hawkinsville, Pulaski County, Georgia.

More information on the Rice line from 1870

Earlier this week I learned that my local public library allows access to Heritage Quest through my library’s website.  It originally wouldn’t let me log in and I had to visit my local library branch to learn that my card had been expired (probably since I haven’t had a chance to use it for some time).  A few minutes later I had a new card and could log in through the website again.

Surname Saturday update: Allen

After I wrote about my Allen connections last week, I decided to do a quick lookup on FamilySearch Pilot to see what I could find for Elva Allen.  I should have done this some time ago as one of the first records that was returned was a page from the 1870 U.S. census covering Sugar Creek Township, Montgomery County, Indiana.

Lot's of work and a new mystery

So it's been a while since my last post.  I'm a bit busy with preparations for the MATC Portfolio Show where I will be exhibiting my photography next month, but I have had a few minutes here and there to do some more research.

I had started on a couple of posts describing how I was working through the keying tools for both Family Search and Ancestry, adding to the indexes of new records that will soon be on both sites (and my frustration on going through one census page from Minnesota that was mostly German and Austrian immigrants).  I also started another post about receiving our own 2010 Census form in the mail recently and that we had saved a photocopy of the form for future generations of researchers in my own family.  Finally, I also started a post on my trials in evaluating Roots Magic and whether or not I will be switching databases any time soon.  But, mostly because I didn't have a chance to fully flesh out my blog ideas on these topics, none of these posts got published.

Now, I've got a bit of a mystery...

Counted twice in 1870

So I'm going through records on the Family Search Pilot website looking for documents to confirm data that I had already known from elsewhere (but didn't make note of the references when I added the information last time).  I'm finding some new information, like a few new siblings to family members that I already knew.  But in the 1870 U.S. census, I found records that show what looks like a double counting for at least one family.

SNGF (but on Sunday) - Ahnentafel Roulette

So the rules are that I'm supposed to take my father's age, divide it by four, and then find the person listed as that number on my ahnentafel report and write at least three facts that I know about him/her.  For me, this leads to a woman who I need to research further, my 2nd great grandmother Katie Lamb.