All My Ancestors

28 February 2010

Restore My Name–Slave Records in the Family

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Spindle Family, Virginia — allmyanc @ 12:32 pm

written for:

Carnival of African-American Genealogy

Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research

Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research, will kick-off this African-American themed carnival intended to be a gathering place for the community to share and learn about African-American genealogy.

This first CoAAG theme will deal with how records of slave ownership are handled by the genealogy researcher. Contributors will be asked to write a blog post (at their own blogs) on one or more of the following aspects:

What responsibilities are involved on the part of the researcher when locating names of slaves in a record?

Does it matter if the record(s) are related to your ancestral lines or not?

As a descendant of slave owners, have you ever been pressured by family not to discuss or post about records containing slave names?

As a descendant of slaves, have you been able to work with or even meet other researchers who are descendants of slave owners?

Have you ever performed a Random Act of Genealogical Kindness involving slave ownership records? Or were you on the receiving end of such kindness?

One of the first documents I found when I started working on my husband’s line was a division of slaves when his great-great grandfather Mordecai L. Spindle died in Virginia in 1857.  I remember being stunned.  I was sitting in the Virginia Library and looking at microfilm and just couldn’t move for a while.  My own family had stories of slave-ownership but I’d never seen any corroborating evidence.  But here was name after name after name, including, ironically enough, two enslaved men with the names of my husband and his brother.  With values assigned out to the side of each name to be sure that each of the 6 heirs received an “equal share.”

This is the page that shows the portions for Thomas M. Spindle (at the top) and his sister Alice M. Spindle.  There were 4 other similar lots, one for each surviving child–James E., Margaret B., Sallie, and Mordecai L. Jr.

Later, as I collected more documents on this family, it became apparent that some of these people had been inherited from a previous generation.

So what was I to do with this information?  I chose what I thought were the right moments to share the info with family members and I encountered no push-back.  The news was received solemnly and with not a small degree of discomfort, and we soon changed the subject.  But I felt an ongoing sense that this information might help someone.

In reality, the descendants of the persons names as property in this division may already know about their heritage.  IF, as some evidence indicates, some of the persons assumed the surname of Spindle at emancipation, many of them stayed in the same area of Virginia.  As far as I can determine, very few descendants of this family left the original area of Virginia.  Spindle is not a name that is widely spread.  Looking at the surname distribution for this name at  World Names Profiler shows the concentration of the name is still in Virginia and Texas, where Thomas M. migrated (and had 13 children!) after the Civil War:

So I determined to try to make the information available where I could.  When I collected the wills of additional persons in this family, including the females, that contained the names of enslaved persons, I transcribed the documents and contributed them to the appropriate webpages at the Virginia USGenWeb sites.  (Remember when that was the main way we had to share records online?)  And later I typed up the names and contributed them to AfriGeneas, though I have been unable to find them posted there.

My mind kept going back to these documents when I was reading Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family. And the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  And Francois Furstenberg’s In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation–one of Washinton’s homes was right across the Rappahannock from where these people lived. Sharing the documents I have is what I know to do.  I’ve also educated myself about doing research on African American families–I took the first African American research course offered at Samford’s IGHR.  On a weekly basis, at my place of work, I assist persons of color looking for their families in the census records.  My finding those early records fit right into my curious nature and insured that I learned more.  And as a teacher and a librarian, I hope some of that learning helps persons looking for their ancestors.

3 January 2010

Irish Roots at Last. Probably.

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Mitchell Family, Tennessee — allmyanc @ 5:55 pm

This is my post for the 17th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture:

The upcoming 17th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture will be a Genealogy treasure “show and tell”.   Here are the details:  Genealogists are treasure hunters of a different kind. Instead of searching for riches, we dig for information. Instead of prizing gold, we value documents – the visual proof of the life stories of families that have passed before us.

Share with us the image of and the story behind a document (or documents) that have been valuable to you during your search for an Irish branch of your family. How and where did you find these documents? What are their significance to your research and/or why are they special to you? Here’s your chance to show off some of your genealogical “loot” at our online “show and tell”.

I joined the “Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture” on faith.   When I signed up, I didn’t know of any specific Irish ancestors–I suspect I have quite a bit of Scots-Irish heritage but I have not jumped the pond, as they say.

In September of 2007, I went to Ireland and, like thousands before me, fell in love with the country.  I wanted to have relatives from this beautiful, pastoral, verdant place.

Lately I’ve been on a Mitchell quest, and those who follow my blog who are not all that interested in the particulars of my ancestral research, may be tempted to stop reading now from Mitchell overload.

But supposedly, the Mitchells are from Ireland.

I don’t know this from any primary resource so I have no document to share.  yet.  However, I have seen it in enough other sources that it makes me want to believe it, and of course, to continue my search.

In her “Let the Drums Roll: Veterans and Patriots of the Revolutionary War who Settled in Maury County, Tennessee,” Marise Parrish Lightfoot indicates that

John Mitchell, born in Orange County, North Carolina in 1760, was a brother of James and Andrew Mitchell, discussed above.  They were the sons of Andrew and Mary McGowan Mitchell, who emigrated from Ireland in 1752 . . . .

So my document for this carnival is not a precious marriage record or even an online passenger list.  It is instead a mention in an apparently well-researched, documented book.  It provides the beginning for a search for documentation that my this line were indeed from Erin.

I don’t have a firm plan yet for how to affirm this hope.  I feel the need to first explore the immigration history from that time period–I have read some pertinent histories but need to re-read portions now with this date in mind.  A quick check of my well-thumbed copy of “Voyagers to the West” by Bernard Bailyn indicates I may have to search for a resource that covers an even earlier time.   Were there lots of Irish who came to America during this early time period?  The same source that says the Mitchells were from Ireland also say the first settled in the “Scotch-Irish Colony” in western Pennsylvania.  What was this colony?  Somewhere else I read that Penn’s agents were traveling through Ireland talking up the benefits of the new country, and that they were so successful, they had to eventually “shut the door,” they had so many takers .  I do remember going by one castle ruin while we were in Ireland that our guide told us was that of William Penn’s father or grandfather.  William Penn lived 1644-1718, so if my Mitchells were influenced by his messages, it was not first-hand.

So it’s not a primary document but it is a clue.  And I’m very happy to have a semi-firm connection with Ireland.

4 December 2009

Advent Calendar: Christmas Cards

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Holidays, Memes — allmyanc @ 1:00 am

December 4 – Christmas Cards
Did your family send cards? Did your family display the ones they received? Do you still send Christmas cards? Do you have any cards from your ancestors?

Written for the 2009 Advent Calendar of  Christmas Memories

As I recall, we did send Christmas cards.  The one that survives is one my mom sent out the year (1967)  we moved into the house they lived in until her death in 1998.  Always the efficient one, she used the opportunity to let her Christmas card list know about our new address.  I found this one in my grandmother’s picture box–her mother.

card1

card2

This is the only time I know of that my folks used cards printed with their name.  And evidently my South Dakota grandparents were coming south for Christmas.  About this time they started spending winters in Texas and Oklahoma with my folks and with my aunt and uncle who lived in Oklahoma.  Avoiding South Dakota winters only made good sense as they got a little older.  Or maybe we were traveling up to visit them–I loved having Christmas in South Dakota because we could almost always be assured of having a white Christmas.

At home, when we displayed cards, we usually just set them under the tree or on another flat surface.  I don’t remember taping them up or hanging them.  But I do remember going through them and enjoying reading what friends had written.

A few years ago, one the librarians I worked with had a collection of Christmas cards from one of her aunts.  She said she didn’t know anyone else who would appreciate them so she gave them to me.  What a treasure.  They are from the 1910s and 1920s–they are wonderful.  They remind me a little bit of New Yorker cartoons.  I’ve enjoyed looking at these through the years and have tried to think of ways to use them.  I wish I could find them for this post–but they aren’t in any of the 6 boxes of Christmas stuff that’s migrated in from the garage.

Through the years, I’ve sent cards, I”ve made and sent cards, I’ve sent Christmas newsletters, and I’ve not sent cards.  I’m always happier with myself when I make the effort but sometimes it just isn’t possible.  And, by the way, I vote FOR newsletters–I love them!

15 August 2009

Ponies of my Past

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Osborne Family, South Dakota, Texas — allmyanc @ 8:42 pm

COGpony
written for the 78th Carnival of Genealogy

Despite having grown up in a rural community, and in a family that had nothing but farmers, which inevitably included some livestock, I didn’t do lots of horseback riding. This is undoubtedly due at least in part to my own terror of most four-legged creatures–dogs, cattle, horses, you name it, with the exception of cats. I managed to negotiate the farm life without too much interaction with horses, except that the excitement and appeal of riding them sometimes overtook me and I had to try to ride. My aunt, only 4 years older than me, spent hours riding through the pastures. I wanted to be able to do that, but what if the horse saw a snake? or bucked me off? or saw a snake AND bucked me off? or was charged by a crazed bull? or stepped in a hole? or ran away with me, dragging me hanging from one stirrup and bumping me along the ground where I’d hit my head on a rock? or lightening struck me while I was out there all alone? The terrifying possibilities were endless.

My granddad religiously read the American Quarter Horse and could recite horse genealogies like I can recite my own family members. He talked of sires and dams and which horse was “out of” which–following these bloodlines and their accomplishments was his passion. Once when I was taking him to visit what was then the National Cowboy Hall of Fame here in Oklahoma City, a college friend asked me if he knew any of the cowboys enshrined there. I answered that he probably knew some of them, but he was more likely to know their horses. Sure ’nuff, he recited the names of their steeds, along with their “out of’s”.

This picture is undoubtedly from one of the traveling carnivals that came to town each year. That’s my brother in front of me, in the hat. He was considered “good” with horses. and cattle. and various other four-legged critters. Still is. Note my moccasins. I was never able to wrangle a pair of boots from anyone, but I did have several pair of moccasins.

DebHorseED

My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch in South Dakota. They had an old gray mare called Sedan, named for her original home in Sedan, New Mexico, as I recall. She was gentle when everyone else rode her but she knew my terror and managed to act up every time I was on her. When we were young teens, Granddad bought my brother and I a paint pony–he was brown and white and part shetland. My whole life I’d heard how onery and sometimes just plain mean shetland ponies were. Ours certainly lived up to that reputation, at least when I was aboard. My grandmother named him “Flip” because I was always getting flipped off, so to speak. He managed to trot hard enough to bounce me off when he saw the barn OR he would ride close enough to the fence to brush me off. He only behaved that way when I was riding him. Or at least my brother managed to get his bluff in on him so that he would behave when Thad was riding him.

ThadandFlip
Here’s Flip behaving beautifully with my brother aboard–my brother in his hat and boots, once again.

And here’s an older picture in my collection. I don’t know the name of the horse in this picture, but I do know the kids aboard. They are my uncle Pete and his cousin Winifred. This photo must have been taken about 1922, probably near Pampa, Gray County, Texas. It could have been at either of their homes or the home of their grandparents–at this time, they all lived northeast of Pampa, if I’m correctly remembering my dates.
peteandwinifred

So there were always horses around. But it was better for me to not be around horses. They just weren’t my friends despite my wanting to be a good rider. I can tell you how to do it, but I can’t actually do it.

Sort of like dieting.

30 June 2009

Uncle Sam Wants You

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Osborne Family — allmyanc @ 8:13 pm

COG75Justice and Independence

Written for the 75th Carnival of Genealogy

This 1951 photo is the only picture I know of that includes all my dad’s siblings plus their parents.

osborne group1951Four of his five brothers served in the military.  Kneeling down in front is my Uncle Ray, the only one of this group still living.  He served in the Korean Conflict.  The youngest at the left is my Uncle Landrum who was in the Army, as was Uncle Pete, the rather round (ahem) man standing at the right.  Uncle Jack, the man standing next to Uncle Landrum (in the hat) was in the Navy.  I believe Uncle Pete and Uncle Jack were part of World War II.  My guess is that each of these men were drafted, but I have not done enough research to know this for sure.

When I asked my dad why he didn’t serve, he told me I was his “out.”  He and my mom married in 1950, I was born in 1951 and my brother was born in 1952.  I’m grateful for the service my uncles provided and wish I’d asked them more questions when I had the chance.

I don’t remember celebrating July 4 as a family in any of the “typical” ways–it was too hot to cook out  and there was no body of water near enough for swimming or boating, even if those activities had been part of our family activities.  I’ve posted previously about the July the 4th rodeo we attended the years we were in South Dakota.  Whether at home in Texas or in South Dakota, my brothers and I always had firecrackers and various other fireworks–we made rockets out of tin cans and put firecrackers in the ends of the clothesline poles–just so they’d make more noise–no harm to the iron poles.  We managed to survive and some of my friends put themselves through college on the proceeds of their summer fireworks stand.  It was a different time.

1 June 2009

The Good Earth: Family Ties to the Land

Filed under: Ball Family, Carnival of Genealogy, Dad, Germans from Russia, Iowa, New York City, Osborne Family, South Dakota, Texas — allmyanc @ 3:52 pm

cog73

The Good Earth: Family Ties to the Land

Written for the 73rd Carnival of Genealogy

Writing about this topic could fill a book for me.

As far back as I’ve traced on both sides and all branches of my family, there have been land-owners and farmers.  I learned very early what was meant by a section or a quarter section of land, that there was nearly always a road on the section line, and I learned that land is organized by counties.  I used to take my dad to the county courthouses with me to read the deeds–he taught me to cut through the standard legal language to the “meat.”  He could read the land descriptions which looked like hieroglyphics to me–I still have to be very deliberate when I’m reading and mapping them.

No one was a land baron, though I suspect a couple of great-great grandfathers had such dreams.  For example, John Osborne ((1808 NC – 1865 TN) bought a large amount of land at the intersection of two railroads in what became Humboldt in Gibson County, Tennessee.  My understanding is that this was not an all above-board transaction, but there is even now a part of that town that is called the Osborne Plat.   His son came to Texas and had 9 children, born in about 5 different counties– his letters that survive all refer to his search for land.

My grandfathers kept moving south and west as the nation developed and  land became available.  Everyone farmed.  Even the one professional man, who was born in New York City, William Green Ball (1806 NY – 1881 IA), country doctor, was a founding member of the Warren County Iowa agricultural society.  My third great-grandparents (2 sets of them) who immigrated to McPherson and Harvey Counties in Kansas in 1874 from Russia brought turkey red wheat with them from the steppes of the Ukraine and southern Russia.  I grew up in a town in Texas nicknamed the “Wheatheart of the Nation.”

My dad farmed, his dad farmed, and so did my maternal grandfather.  In fact, my paternal grandfather and uncles often planted and harvested a crop in the Texas panhandle, and then they loaded up their equipment and traveled 640 miles north up Highway 83 to South Dakota to harvest their crop there.  My maternal grandparents left the Dust Bowl scarred Oklahoma panhandle about 1952 for the very cheap land available in South Dakota, and my paternal relatives farmed part time up there as well.

All of the men in my family farmed and all of the women had gardens.  Later, my dad planted a garden out in the field near the irrigation well, but I well remember my mom starting lettuce and some of the more tender plants in hot boxes dad built.  My younger brother was recently recalling his “first job,” at age 7 or 8, hoeing our great-Aunt Eva’s garden– for $.75 per hour and all the candy he could eat.  Aunt Eva managed to make the desert bloom like a rose–the desert of the high plains of the Texas panhandle–she grew peonies and roses and dahlias and foxglove and water lilies in her ponds.  In her garden she grew tomatoes and green beans and cucumbers and onions and peppers and dill for canning.  She also wielded a mean hoe if a snake of any sort dared invade her domain.  Further north, in the even more desolate Oklahoma panhandle, another great aunt grew a garden so lush and beautiful, you knew it had to be tended by a person with very exacting standards.  Aunt Edna always brought us gallon (!) jars of her delicious dill pickles and her pickled, stuffed green peppers, tied with white cotton string.  Yum.  I know now that she learned her gardening and pickling skills from her German Mennonite family.  I’ve given it a try and I can do it, but it sure is a lot of work.

My dad died about 6 years ago.  His brother, my Uncle Ray, is still farming at age 80–just one more year, you know. Uncle Ray is the only one of my dad’s 7 siblings still living.  I suspect my agricultural heritage ends with that generation.  My other brother wanted very badly to farm, but he couldn’t make it pay enough to support his family.  His current place on the lake, though, is tended by a smaller version of his favorite John Deere tractor and his garden is luscious.  And I do have a cousin with a PhD in agronomy–his email “handle” is “Dr. Dirt.”

Every quarter or so, I get a newsletter from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), because I still am part owner of the 1/4 section my dad owned when he died, and am a part of the partnership that still “farms” our grandfather’s land in Texas.  It gives me a sense of pride to get that flyer–I know it is counted as junk mail and unnecessary government intrusion by many of my family members, but when it arrives in my urban mailbox, I like it.

I have my herb garden growing, and I have a couple of vegetable plants in my flower bed.  I started some hollyhocks on the back porch and will transplant them soon.  Every time I do that, I think of my family and how many generations we have worked the land.

“We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand” is part of the Oklahoma state song.  I hope my 6 generations of Texas relatives will forgive me for using it as a way to sum up this posting.


11 April 2009

Uncle, Uncle!

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Osborne Family, Texas, Unruh Family — allmyanc @ 8:09 pm

Written for the 70th Carnival of Genealogy, “Uncle, Uncle!”  The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is: Uncle, Uncle! This edition is all about our uncles. Have you got a favorite or interesting uncle? Tell us about him!

I couldn’t pick just one.

My dad was one of 6 sons, and they were all a part of my early life.  Here’s a photo of him and his siblings taken about 1975–I believe this was taken at my grandmother’s, their mother’s, funeral.

osborne8

Osborne Siblings 1975

Back row:  Lowell Cooper “Scoops“, Clark Mobley “Pete“, Dorothy Evelyn, George Landrum

Front row: Donald Guice “Jack“, Gertrude Ruth, Thaddeus Morrison, Raymond Kenneth

All of my aunts and uncles from my dad’s family are gone except my Uncle Ray.  But here’s a little of what I have in my heart about my uncles.

Uncle Scoops was the oldest.  I never knew why he was called “Scoops,” but I never heard him called anything else.  “Cooper” was his mother’s maiden name–I don’t know of any other “Lowells” in the family.  I still have the silver dollar he gave me when I was born.  Uncle Scoops and Aunt Blanche lived in South Dakota for part of my life and it was always fun to go visit them when I was in South Dakota visiting my maternal grandparents.  I didn’t think about it at the time, but how nice it was, in retrospect, to have both sides of my family to know each other and be friends, even 640 miles away from “home” in the Texas panhandle.

Uncle Pete, who also never went by his “real” name, lived in the same town I grew up in.  He, too, had a family name.  His paternal grandmother’s brother was Clark Mills Mobley, so he was Clark Mobley Osborne.  (I have lots of questions about who picked out these names.)  He didn’t marry until he was about 55, so he was often around when we visited my grandparents.  Uncle Pete played the guitar and was often traveling around Texas playing in various western swing bands or accompanying an old fiddler’s contest.  We have an lp recording of his playing, but there’s a big scratch.  We’re seeing if we can have it restored.  Uncle Pete put up with a lot from us kids–here’s him letting me near his precious record collection and player, whether he wanted to or not.

peteanddeb

Uncle Pete often worked for my dad during harvest, and my city-slicker husband’s intro to tobacco-chewing came during one of these times.  Hubbo still turns a little green telling the story and I know Uncle Pete is grinning at the re-telling.  One of his fiddler buddies played “Faded Love” at his funeral and we all cried.

Uncle Landrum also lived in the town where I grew up.  He was named for his mother’s father and brother–both Georges–and her paternal great-grandmother, Elizabeth Landrum Cooper,  who had reared her father.  Us kids played with Uncle Landrum’s old basketball and football at our grandparents–in the house when we could get by with it and out in the gravel driveway when we couldn’t.  He was the youngest in the family– he died unexpectedly at the way too young age of 60.  Uncle Landrum was a pilot and managed the small county airport–he also had a crop spraying service–a vital business in that part of the country.  I was babysitter for my cousins from this part of the family– his daughter Brenda got to use our grandmother’s name, Rachel, for her daughter.  The child I planned to name Rachel turned out to be a David.  “Faded Love” was also part of Uncle Landrum’s funeral–and we all cried again.

Uncle Jack takes us to yet another brother who didn’t use his birth name.  At some point he had his name legally changed.  I remember asking him once if he knew for whom he was named, and he said he thought it was for one of the old boyfriends of his his maiden aunt.  (Aunt Fannie’s “old boyfriends” took the credit/blame for lots of things in our family–I never knew the real story for any of them.)  I don’t know the source of the “Donald” part of his name, but the Guice came from his paternal grandmother’s line–she was Gertrude Susanna Mobley Osborne, and her paternal grandmother was Barbara Guice, daughter of Jonathan Guice and Anna Stump.  (Names from this family show up in several Osborne families in the generation of my Grandad Osborne.)  Uncle Jack’s kids were the closest in age to me, and here we are at our Uncle Scoops and Aunt Blanche’s house in South Dakota.

jandebscott

My Uncle Ray is still living–I’ve blogged about him before, his telling me last year that he believed he’d farm another year (at age 80) because what else was he going to do?  I understand that kind of approach to life–farmers really don’t retire–they truly don’t know what to do with their time.  I always have to give an extra hug to Uncle Ray when I see him–he’s the closest in age to my dad and he and my dad looked alike.  Here’s Uncle Ray as best man at my folks’ wedding in 1950–he’s the one on the left.

momanddadweddingparty

And, in a survey of uncles, I can’t leave out my mom’s brother, my Uncle Larry.  He’s been the subject of many of my other blog entries–his hot ‘57 Chevy and his love for Hank Williams songs.  He was a character and I miss him.  I never knew when he was going to appear on my doorstep–he was here a lot when my mom, his sister, was struggling with cancer.  My sons loved his no-nonsense ways and his stories–not to mention his shorts, crew socks and flip-flops.  I’m glad they got to get acquainted with this great uncle, even if it did mean their smoking together out on the back porch.   I don’t hear a Hank Williams song without thinking of him–or vice versa.  “I Saw the Light” was played at his funeral–a perfect ending.  He’s at the far right in this photo of us after my dad’s funeral–he told me he was “sucking in his gut” so he’d look skinnier in the picture.  So Uncle Larry.

dadsfuneral

This post doesn’t cover all my uncles–I have at least a couple who married my aunts of whom I am very fond.  But I limited this post to the many uncles who were my parents’ siblings–all part of my growing up.

29 January 2009

The Happy Dance: Finding Females

Filed under: Ball Family, Carnival of Genealogy, Green Family, Indiana, New York City — allmyanc @ 1:11 am

Directions for the 65th Carnival of Genealogy read:

The Happy Dance. The Joy of Genealogy. Almost everyone has experienced it. Tell us about the first time, or the last time, or the best time. What event, what document, what special find has caused you to stand up and cheer, to go crazy with joy?

One of the downsides of blogging and having to come up with topics for yourself is that once you decide to participate in the various memes or carnivals, you’ve often already written a post about that particular topic.  But I’m going to assume no one has read previous posts, or at least does not remember them.  :-)

Searching for female ancestors names can be problematic.  Early in my searching I found a 3rd great-grandfather with his children in Anderson County, Texas in 1850.  He is listed as a widower.  Who was his wife, the mother of those children?  Some of the children were listed as born in Mississippi, so a search of the 1840 census showed William J. Duval living in Pontotoc County, Mississippi.  Of course this didn’t provide me with anyone’s name but William’s as the head of the household, so I started searching cemeteries and what records I could find for Pontotoc County.  I found lots of Duvals, who had apparently gone to Mississippi from Virginia via Tennessee, including William’s brother John A. I wondered if William’s wife’s name was Ann — the name of William’s only daughter.  I found the death of John A.’s wife Joanna Moon.  I ordered William J.’s will on the off-chance it might provide the name of his wife.  But I just didn’t have a clue about the name of my own great-grandmother, or at least a worthwhile clue.

I don’t remember what caused me to pick up the Inventory of the Church Archives of Virginia. It may have been that I was looking for information about my husband’s Virginia Baptist family–I just don’t remember.  (This is a WPA project–how many times I’ve been grateful for the work done by those folks!)  What I do remember is finding an obituary indexed from the Religious Herald, the Baptist newspaper of the day, and there was an entry for Duval, Catherine Bibb who died in 1847.  Wow.  Could this be her?  I remember doing a happy dance in the library those 20+ years ago.  That index led me not only to her obituary, it provided me with her maiden name.  In fact, it provided me with her entire name which I had not previously had.

Another happy dance involves another great-grandmother, this time a 5th great.  My finding Catherine Bibb Waddy/Woody Duval was before the Internet.  I had to write for that obituary from the Baptist Archives in Richmond.  And pay big bucks for it to be copied.  And wait. and wait.  But it was worth it when it finally arrived.

I’d looked for my Dr. William G. Ball’s mother’s name for over 20 years.  I was finally able to track down his siblings–a distant cousin helped me know he had brothers named Jacob Weaver and James Robinson Ball.  I finally discerned that their father William Ball died in New York City in 1818, and that the family left for Indiana and Ohio shortly thereafter.  (I still haven’t discovered the reason.)  My persistence paid off in providing the names of the daughters in this family–Isabella who married Joseph L. Webb before they left NYC and later Charles Pickett in Ohio, Adeline who married first James Linton (in Indiana) and then Chester B. Campbell (in Ohio), and Ann Pamela who married Milo D. Pettibone and then Charles A. Sweetser, both in Delaware County, Ohio.   But who was the mother of these children?  I chased Jacob Weaver for a while, thinking perhaps the first son had been named for a maternal grandfather.  I now believe Jacob Weaver was the shipbuilding partner of the father William Ball and William named his first son after his partner.  Who was James Robinson Ball named for?  (That question remains unanswered.)  If Green really was Dr. William G. Ball’s middle name, was this a maiden name for his mother?

I was handicapped by having this family be in New York City.  I’ve learned a lot about researching in these early NYC records, but early on, my experience was with rural Southerners.  Here was a family whose father was a shipbuilder and who were listed in the early city directories of New York City.  I felt a little like I was in the Pace commercial  “New York City?!”

Again, I don’t remember what I was looking for the day I found the name of the mother and wife in this family.  I do know I was testing out my new subscription to Genealogy Bank. Part of the family had gone to Clark County Indiana after William’s death.  I believe this is where William G. obtained his medical training–I know it where he married Elizabeth Charlton.  I wondered if Delaware County, Ohio, where the youngest daughter married and put down roots, was where Mrs. Ball died.  Ann Pamela was only about 14 when she married–would she have been in Ohio without her mother?  Searching for this family’s information in Indiana is complicated by Indiana being the home of the Ball family of Ball jar fame, Ball University, etc., etc.  Ball is a common enough name to search, but there are lots of them in Indiana.  I was reading through entry after entry with no connections to my family when I came to this:

There it was.

In a New York City newspaper.  A short notice of her death.

It had to be her–her daughter was Ann Pamela Ball, and Dr. William G. had a daughter named Ann Pamela as well.  William Ball had died in 1818, and this person is listed as his consort.

The common thread to these stories is that both of these problems were solved by publications back in the places of origin for these women.  I would have never found the one for Ann Pamela Green Ball had there not been an electronic means to do so, and even then, with the county named misspelled and a common name,  it was a lucky break.  I’d been through all sorts of indexes and considered the possibility that there might be mention of her in a newspaper, but I had not been successful in finding the “right” newspaper.  Finding the name of Catherine Bibb Waddy/Woody Duval would not have been possible without the indexing done by the WPA in the 1930s.  This source was also the tool enabling me to find females in some of my husband’s relatives–obituaries were not in the newspapers of the day, but they were in the church newspapers–particularly, it seems, for females.  These church newspapers are somewhat difficult to locate–again, it was expensive to obtain those obituaries but worth every penny for what they added to my family fabric.

Still dancing the happy dance for those two finds–one long ago and one more recent.  We love the hunt, don’t we?

14 August 2008

Family Language

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Dad — allmyanc @ 8:17 pm

Read all the postings on this topic at Donna Pountkouski’s What’s Past is Prologue.

This week I was reading an Okahoma small town newspaper from about 1915, and in the “News About Town” column, the 2 local grocers seemed to be in competition for access to the local eggs and butter.  One of them used the term “cackleberries” for eggs and I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud.  My dad used that word for eggs, much to my mother’s chagrin.  He wasn’t born until 1929, so the term must have lasted longer than 1915, and gone beyond small town Oklahoma to small town Texas.  My dad also referred to getting around by walking as going via “Shank’s pony,” and using “Armstrong power steering” on our early cars and his farm equipment.  My favorite language use from my dad that I remember was when he used to sing “mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy….”  That was magical to me for some reason.

My maternal granddad was probably the most colorful user of language in the family, much of which isn’t appropriate for a family blog.  :-)   But one of his phrases was “Ned in the first reader.”  This phrase was used to convey simplicity and not always in a good way.  If someone was putting you down, they were trying to make you feel like “Ned,” for example.  The only other person I heard use this phrase was as far from my granddad as he could possibly be–one of my grad school professors.  In fact, this man was cause for another student and I recording his phrases in the backs of our notebooks–wish I’d kept them.  They were colorful!  Despite his advanced education, I’m pretty sure he and Granddad would have gotten along just fine, based on their language alone.

Other phrases I remember from my maternal grandfather:  He referred to eating ice cream, which he loved, as “cooling his belly,” as if this were one of the requirements for a healthy life.   He frequently asked us grandkids if we needed any “walking around money.”  We learned that one quick!  And he called their outdoor toilet “Ike.” 

I never quite got around to getting the explanation for that one.  He also referred to “cutting di-does”–I assume this came from the lathe cutting dadoes, but he used it to refer to someone slipping or driving recklessly or some such near out-of-control action.  He also talked about “tuning up” someone, or “dusting” them off as a way of talking about some sort of physical “corrective” action.

Last September I went to Ireland and I loved listening to the Irish talk, including one of our tour guides.  One of my favorites was the phrase used by our guide when she was discussing a strike of the airline workers.  They were protesting there not being enough flights going out of northern Ireland, as I recall.  Patricia had no sympathy for their protests, believing the issue had been settled and pronouncing it  “done and dusted.”

And then there’s the learning curve that occurs when two families unite by marriage.  I could not understand what my husband meant when he talked about putting his clothes onto racks (we called them hangers) or chewed a block of gum (they were sticks to my family).  And we were even from the same state!

27 July 2008

Oklahoma World War I Vets

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Oklahoma — allmyanc @ 3:56 pm

I thought I’d take this “53rd Carnival of Genealogy, Carousel Edition” to invite interested folks to participate in this great project–

Do you have a World War I vet in your family who served from Oklahoma?  The Oklahoma Genealogical Society is working on an index to honor these persons.  Some records already exist, many of which were gathered for the Veteran’s Memorial at the state capital.  A list of those killed in action exists, but not a list of all those who served.

However, in my position as research coordinator at the OHS Research Library, I’ve received at least 3 requests for information about young men who served whose names I did not find in those files.  So I have 3 names I’ll be contributing.  Do you have any info to add?

If so, you can send it to: June Stone, 3601 NW 19th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73107-2815, by e-mail to JuneCStone@aol.com or fax 942-0546. 

OR you can send it to me and I’ll pass it along to June.  I see her each week.

Requested information includes full name of veteran, date and place of birth, date and place of death, date and place of marriage, name of spouse, names of parents, rank, branch of service, medals earned, obituary, pictures and anything that would contribute to the veteran’s file.  Like Dick Eastman, I’d also recommend that you include the place of burial if you know it. 

I’m excited about this project–I’ve been through those files many times and lamented the shape they were in and wanted to work on making them more accessible.  Now it’s being done! 

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