Month: June 2010

Menzies Mysteries

Posted on by Kathleen

One of the many mysteries I’ve always had with my family tree is the Menzies family. Yes I’m pretty sure they came from Scotland, though some lived in England also. When I got my boxes of documents and photos, one of the many things in there were a whole bunch of miscellaneous articles about Menzies people. Nothing ever said how each person was linked. The closest I got was the Menu Tree.

Now that I’m getting better at researching, I think I may be starting to fill in some blanks, literally. The only clue I had to my Menzies connection to start with was Jennie Menzies’ mother, Jane Farris-Menzies, living with Jennie and her husband William W Love in 1880. That gave me a starting point. That’s what clued me in to how these random Menzies articles could be important. One was an Obituary for Alexander G Menzies. Another was an article about a ‘London Strangler’ who murdered a Lady Menzies and her daughter one night in February 1954. I still don’t know how those people are related but I am getting closer.

Yesterday I was searching for the Love family on Castle Garden. I was hoping to find William W Love in the time period that was indicated on the 1900 and 1910 census. Hopefully he would have been coming over with his mother and father so I could verify that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything that was definitely him. I then decided to take a walk on the wild side and plugged Menzies into the search, just for fun. I didn’t have an immigration date as my Jane/Jennie Menzies-Love died in 1890 (wait till I find the article chronicling that!). I did however know her mother’s name and estimated birth date. I found the above Menzies in my search. My next step was trying to locate this particular family to see if it met up with my Menzies family or if they were two separate families.

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Wordless Wedness: Moore Family Portrait

Posted on by Kathleen

Robert James Moore Sr | Marion S Moore | Robert James Moore Jr | William Lawrence Moore | Alice Moore

Wordless Wednesday is a daily blogging theme I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Wordless Wednesday simply create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some people also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Some have begun doing a “Not So Wordless Wednesday” with the main focus still being an image but there is a backstory to the image.

My Tools: Microsoft One Note

Posted on by Kathleen

Today I was supposed to go into town and visit the LDS Family History Center. It’s been there forever and I’ve never known it.

What kind of genealogist am I?! I know the answer to that, the hermit type. I will get my license by December of this year if I have to save my pennies and give up my Ancestry.com membership to do so. I’ll just have to sacrifice Ancestry for awhile, I can always get it back right? The Ancestry price alone is half of the fee for driving school. I’m not into self torture or I would have given up my website hosting fee too. That wouldn’t do at all. I’ve had this website (moore-mays.org) since May 2003 and we won’t even discuss all my little pet projects that give me joy. No that’s not an option.

Back onto the subject, I won’t be visiting the FHC today because the woman who volunteers there knew that we were coming and she left town in a fit of hysterics. Since she knew that our friend was planning on bringing us in and showing us around, she gave him a call this morning to say that she had an emergency and didn’t know if she’d be back to re-open the center at 6:30 tonight. So there go my big plans for the day! I don’t think my fractured family file could have taken it anyway. There was an incident this weekend.

Since I won’t be doing that, I decided to use today to get myself better prepared for next week when I try again. To be honest next week works better time-wise anyway. One of the things that I realized yesterday was that I have absolutely no note taking system. Zilch. Nada. Negatory. I realized this gradually over the last few weeks to be honest. I’ve been hitting a few genealogy blogs (We Tree, Tonia’s Roots), well more than a few but I have no notes to come back to. :p A huge topic in the genealogy blog sphere is note taking. Everyone is giving such great tips and tricks. I was reading JLog a few weeks back and decided labeling my media files (birth, death, marriage cert.) with the Person ID I’m using in my RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker files was a great idea! (Don’t get my brain started on the idea of using TNG as my main program for everything, thanks Tonia!)

Currently one of my favorite methods of note taking is the Sticky Note feature of Windows 7. I love it to pieces. I like to line up all my sticky notes on my second monitor and keep the clutter over there. It would look way more cluttered in the screen shot if I hadn’t done a little cleaning first. Yesterday I was in a scramble because I’d just found one of my Moyer/Meyer/Myers/Meyres/Meyers/BenAffleck guys in the 1850 census. I had to go page by page, the old fashioned way since his name was so often spelled in those various ways, minus Ben Affleck of course. What do you take me for? The township I was going through was littered with people with all the spellings I’ve ever come across. I didn’t want to just forget those people. So I ran to our office supply collection and grabbed a new notebook and started writing down everyone.

Then I started reading about Evernote and One Note from a few other blogs (I’d mention you but I didn’t take notes :/) I’m usually very smart, but for some reason it never occurred to me to actually check out the One Note program when I installed Office 2007 last year. Oh boy have I been missing out. I’ve only been using it this morning but I can definitely see how this is going to be a huge help.

Part 2: I love this lady

Posted on by Kathleen

The more I research my Great Grandmother, the sadder I get that I didn’t get to meet her. Everyday her personality and character unlocks itself a bit more. This is Part 2 to yesterday’s find. If you haven’t seen that post, maybe you should take a peek at just the basics.

We’ll start off with where we started yesterday, except we’ll look at the dark colored book instead of the paper.

Turns out that my Great Grandparents were so perfect for each other because of their meticulous record keeping!

On first look, it’s impossible not to start calculating the names and relations. Mr & Mrs Joseph Schroeder would have been Llewellyn’s sister-in-law and her husband.

Mr & Mrs William Moore would be the Uncle of William (Llewellyn’s husband for the new readers). If you excuse me, I’ve just found out that William was living in Belleville, New Jersey and not Brooklyn. That would explain why I can’t find his family in the 1930 census. I’ve got to go check that out…

Oh boy, this page is a doozy! The Loves, Leonards, Wambaugh’s are all Llewellyn’s Aunts and Uncles through her mother, Jennie Love.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the best part of this find is the addresses listed for each person. Some of these people I couldn’t find for whatever reason. There are so many hidden family members in this book, I can already tell.

Oh look, it’s the extra Loves from yesterday! With these addresses, I’m going to research these guys backwards and see how they fit into the Love tree! So much progress in one Sunday afternoon, I could get used to this!

Sentimental Sunday: Full Circle

Posted on by Kathleen

I was taking pictures of something I’m going to share tomorrow when I found this gem. Since today is Sentimental Sunday, I thought it would be nice to share it today. After this discovery, there is no doubt in my mind that my Great Grandmother must have been a genealogist herself.

Here in the midst of another gem, was an unexpected prize.

At first look, it’s an old menu. It’s so much more than that! It’s actually really great to find this on the back of a menu. It reminds me of me and my Aunt Lori sitting at Diane’s kitchen table in Avoca and discussing the family history. That’s what makes it so sentimental to me. Thinking about Llewellyn sitting in a diner and discussing this with her mother, or mother’s family is just amazing.

Agnes Hamilton is the woman I believed might be the mother of William Wallace Love (first known Love), but I never had any kind of proof. Is this proof? No, but this stacks up the circumstantial evidence further in her direction. You can even see underneath Agnes a W. Love/Jennie Menzies written. That would be my William Love and his wife. I’m suspecting underneath them would have been their children’s names. Starting with Jessie and Grace. Next to W. Love is a James Love! Is this a brother? I can’t wait to look for him!

At the end of the row is a list of … Walker with many people listed underneath. This is good news because that might explain the appearance of a young Walker woman in relation to Llewellyn. I’m pretty sure she’s listed in the birthdays in Llewellyn’s journal.

At the bottom of the list is a listing of not only the children of William Wallace Love and Jennie Menzies but their grandchildren also!

I can’t wait to put this document to use. I’m also going to research how to best preserve it. I have it in a acid-free page protector right now, but we’ll see if there’s anything better.

Sentimental Sunday is a daily blogging topic I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Sentimental Sunday, simply create a post in which you discuss a sentimental story or memory about an ancestor, or maybe even a family tradition that touches you.