52 Ancestors in 52 weeks - week 4

This week's prompt is "invite to dinner".  Who have I found in my family tree that I would like to invite to dinner?  She didn't say if it was limited to one person so I might have a loophole!

I have a few people I am so curious about and have very little information on, so I am going to go with them.

First up!  We have my 3rd great grand father who was a carpenter and was found stabbed to death at the age of 42.  He left his 30 year old wife behind and 4 small children, including an infant.  I have called the county library where he died to find records and they have only what I already know. So I searched out the local newspapers and lo and behold, there was a fire and the records from that time period are lost.  I have tried searching through his siblings to see if there are any letters, any mentions of him and his children in wills, and all to no avail.  Yes, I would love to have dinner with him and see what really happened.

And remember the axe-murdering ancestors I mentioned earlier?  Maybe their mother would be a good one to have to dinner.

I have a great grandmother and a great grandfather from the same era, both of whom had their mothers die when they were infants and were raised by an aunt and a grandmother, respectively. Those 2 mamas who died after birthing their babes were really only babies themselves being 15 and 16 years of age when they married, gave birth and died.  Talk about someone who has no records to follow!  I would love to talk with them and hear their hopes, and dreams.  What a tragedy to die so very young and not really to have lived at all.  The only consolation I see in this is that they both fell in love and were able to leave a legacy with their babies.

It is my firm belief that every single person has a great story.  Someone just needs to ask them to tell it.  And dinner with these 4 seems like some fabulous conversation.

52 Ancestor in 52 Weeks - week 3

This week's prompt is longevity.  Like the longest-lived person on your tree or how long you have been doing genealogy, that sort of thing.

The only interesting thing I could come up with for this topic is that I have one branch I have followed and fleshed-out (disclaimer here:  all my work is to be considered a work in progress) that goes back to early 1500s England.  That's Henry VIII time, people. I had to let that sink in for a while.

This makes them my 14th great grand parents. Boggles the mind it does.  And here's the thing about ancestry; as much as this excites me to find these things it is no where NEAR as interesting as those that are 4 generations back that I can find absolutely nothing on.  That kind of mystery is really something that draws me in.  When someone appears in my tree with the marriage to someone I already have and then after 2 census records drops dead with NO HINTS as to previous life and where they came from, now that is why I do this.  To find the previously un-find-able.

But the longevity thing is nothing to be sneezed at.  I had a British friend here visiting last week and she said her DNA showed she shares DNA with 40% British while mine is 68% combining England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.  I know I have a lot of work to do to confirm everything I have on my tree.  Let's hope I live long enough to do it all!  (See what I did there?  I hope I have the longevity.)

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 2

This week's prompt is Favorite Photo.  Now I have a load of photos of ancestors but what I chose was something different.

Have a look.

This is a drawing of the original plat of the city of New Haven, CT.  My 10th great grandfather was William Tuttle, one of the founders of this city.  That he had his name on the plat as one of the founders and got a cool corner lot is rather cool, I think.  I like how the town was built around the square.  I have more information of the Tuttles than I will probably ever get to in my lifetime.  They were a prominent family in the area and not always known for good things. There seems to be a strain of insanity in their blood.  The axe-murdering kind of insanity.  Surely, after 10 dilutions to me most of that should be gone.  Let's just say they were not a boring bunch, those Tuttles.  Anyway, this area is now the commons of Yale University.

And here we have a drawing of a painting of the venerable William Tuttle.

Doesn't he look like the life of the party?  What a dour face.  He did have a herd of kids and a lot of responsibilities and was the first of his family to leave jolly old England.  So there's that.  Also, two of his kids would become axe murderers.

I would bet when you clicked to see this blog post you didn't think you were going to see this, did you?  I wasn't sure which photo I would use right up until I chose.

I hope you are enjoying doing some genealogy and ancestry research on your own tree.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 1

Hey there Internet!

Long time, no see.  Well, you are about to see a whole lot of me!  Yes, indeed.  I am participating in a few adventures this year and will use this here blog as my accountability place.  The place I come to see my progress.

First up is the Amy Johnson Crow "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge.  This week the prompt she gives us is Start.  Something that prods you to start your genealogy adventure, or someone.  I am choosing my 7th great grandfather Mr. Jeremiah Dial.  Born around 1730 in or around County Cork in Ireland.  He is the very first person I found on my family tree that got me to dive in and start researching.  What possessed Mr. Jeremiah Dial to pack up his family and come to the Carolinas in 1768?  It's all very fascinating to me.  And the hardest thing for me is researching Ireland.  They have for shit records.  Most things destroyed by the British, so just bare bones records in churches.  Also, I find out that when a lot of Irish immigrants boarded ships to come here the people who filled in the ship's manifests would often just put the ship's port of departure as the place all these people came from, whether or not that was true.  Not helpful.

Anyhoo, Mr. Jeremiah Dial brought his wife and 6 kids with him, most of the kids being fairly grown people.  They added to the family once they were here.  This group of Irish people were my very first to start researching and investigating.  They fought in the Revolutionary War and I have loads of documentation for the DAR.

If you have any helpful resources for finding Irish records I would love to hear about them.  My plan is to try and post something here on Sunday or Monday about this challenge.

Random thoughts

I have had so many different things swirling in my head that I thought I would get some of them down in black and white.  Here goes!

1. My son has a lovely girlfriend who has 2 little boys, so they are like my almost-grandchildren. I went and picked up the 5 year old and spent the weekend with him. He had finished kindergarten on Friday and had his very first graduation.  We played Legos, colored, drew pictures, read books, swam, counted fireflies, and made homemade ice cream. 

It was a pretty perfect weekend, actually.

2. This whole debate in social media about the child who climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and the gorilla was shot and killed is horrific.  Everyone is vilifying the mother of the child.  From the accounts I have read BOTH parents were there, why are we blaming just one?  I don't like the blaming and judging that goes on from women on other women and their parenting.  We are all guilty of it.  My first thought was  "why did the mom allow her child out of her sight?"  I took a step back and can see all sorts of judgment and blaming in my own mind.  It's a fucking tragedy with enough responsibility to be spread around.  Let's hope all the parents who know of this will now educate their children on how to act appropriately in a zoo setting, and that the zoo officials will find more ways to keep the animals safe from this happening again.

3. While thinking about this zoo/gorilla/parenting debacle I have been going over and over in my mind how would I have acted.  What would I have done differently so that my kids would not end up in that life threatening situation?  I don't know.  I do know that I was really strict and clear about what behaviors were appropriate in public venues.  I see friends and family who parent differently than I do/did and I try not to compare.  But we all want to justify and validate our own decisions so some comparisons are going to happen.  My hard and fast rule with little ones was always if I am not touching you or holding your hand we have to be able to see each other's faces.  If you can't see my face you are too far away.  I think for me this came from living in a city on the border where we were told on the news damn near weekly about children being abducted from under your nose and taken across the border before you could blink.  So a fair amount of paranoia and fear were at play here.  I hope like hell that my kids don't feel scarred and smothered by this.  They haven't ever said so and they are both pretty great and well-adjusted adult people now.  That's the thing with parenting, you really just have to go with your gut and good intentions and hope that the love and care come through.

4. Are any of you watching Outlander on Starz?  Season 2 has been confusing me mightily so I have started reading the books.  I am now on book 2 which seems to be different than the show.  Jamie is fantastic, both in the books and the show.  Why Claire would think twice about that dry, boring Frank especially knowing his psychopath great grand relative Black Jack is beyond me.  But Claire does bug, irk and annoy me.

5. And while on the Scotland topic I am doing more and more research on Ancestry.com. And Scotland and Ireland are both difficult countries to do deep research on.  I need to get more details on names, locations and dates so that I can plan a trip to see what all I can find. I am more than a little afraid that I will get to Scotland or Ireland and never want to return. It does call to me.

6. After getting my DNA done on Ancestry I came up with a vision of a tattoo I would love to get.  I keep picturing it in my head of what the components are and how to do it.  Then I get on Pinterest and what do I find?  A whole bunch of people have come up with similar visions!  WTH???  I was so thoughtful on what I imagined as a very original idea.  Good Lord. Now I am unsure about it.  I don't want it to be what everyone else has since I may be chicken and it could very well be my one and only tattoo.

7. It's been a month since my good and dear friend Jon died.  It seems like yesterday.  The pain and grief are still so very fresh and my feelings so raw.  I need to find a positive way to honor him and deal with my sadness.  Any ideas?

That's it for now.  This is my closing thought.

Genealogy and the family tree and the nuts who fall out

Since I have been a really bad and sporadic blogger you may or may not remember that I have become quite interested in family trees and doing the research.  It is tons of fun and very exciting to find things out.

I joined ancestry.com a few years ago when I was sick with the bronchitis or something that kept me glued to the house and have found a ton of ancestors.  Then I was offered the special deal of $99 from ancestry to do my DNA profile and connect to others who are also registered through them.  So I did that and my husband found it so interesting he did his as well.

My whole life I have always been told that I am mostly German on my mama's side and mostly all Irish on my dad's side.  Not true.  Those people on my mama's side may have lived in Germany but they don't test out as Germans.  And all those Irish people on my dad's side?  Mostly all English, a little German thrown in just for good measure.  Loads of the Irish ancestry comes from my mama's side according to the family tree.

Here's what it looks like:

America< 1%

• Trace Regions

  < 1%

Europe99%

• Great Britain51%
• Ireland17%
• Iberian Peninsula11%
• Italy/Greece7%
• Europe West6%
• Trace Regions

  7%
• Scandinavia4%
• Europe East3%

Show all regions

• 3%

 

Could I be any more European?  Europe West is where Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc. are.  See, not much German DNA there.  I have more Iberian and Italy/Greece than German and never once has THAT ever been mentioned!  But it's way more interesting I think.  Also, it's going to make it a lot more fun digging into the family lineage.

Speaking of digging into the family lineage, I was looking up someone today and found their Christening records.  The father's last name is Peters and this was the first time I had seen the mother's maiden name and I about burst out laughing when I saw her name was Pieper. Annie Pieper Peters.  God bless her!