I’m celebrating today. Not only is my new site design almost finished, but I’m just about a quarter of the way through re-working my family file. I hit 200 people today and I’m finishing up the Love/Menzies line today. I’m excited to get the Surname Saturday: Love post written up, so I’ll start that as soon as I finish today. After I finish that, I’ll be done with my Grandpa Moore’s side of the family and it’ll be onto the Redford side of the family. That side isn’t very big yet, so really I’m almost half done. It won’t take me long to rework that section. Then it’s no turning back until I verify Grandma Taylor’s family tree once and for all!
I love the Love family. When I first found that the Loves were such a big part of my tree, I always thought it would be easy to research these guys! Boy was I wrong. In my naive beginnings, I couldn’t think of a better name to research than Love. How unique a name that is! Then reality set in. Reality in the form of Lone. Lore. Long. Lane. Lare. Lave. Luff. You get the picture. There are a million different ways you can incorrectly transcribe Love. I don’t blame the transcribers though, because they’re trying to make sense of something a hundred years old. How are they to know the name is actually Love?
Love-Menzies Family Outline
Alfred Love has always been a mystery to me. He was there in 1880 with his parents. Then he was gone. My Great-Grandmother Llewellyn put together a list of her mother’s siblings and parents (see above). This gives me Alfred’s birth and death date. So I know from that he didn’t die until 1913. So why can’t I find him in 1900 or 1910? I don’t know. With the big task of verifying my mother’s family tree, I sometimes get into the habit of taking a break from my Dad’s side which is all new territory, and I try and verify my Mom’s side. It breaks up the frustration level for me on his side and the monotony on hers. So I didn’t think about looking for Alfred to be honest. I knew I would get back to it.
I broke that habit recently. In cleaning up my family file, I’ve come quite tenacious at finding people in the Census records. It’s the main tool I have from my house, and until I am able to make trips to other states, the computer is my only tool. So I set about finding Alfred. The only problem was, I kept coming up blank. I tried all the variations of search I like. Just a first name in the county I’m searching. Just a last name soundex search, just the birth date, just the mother/father name. Heck, I even did a page by page of most of Essex County, New Jersey. That was quite an accomplishment and my eyes still hate me. No Alfred though.
For some reason I got the brilliant idea to check on Llewellyn’s old Diner Tree for inspiration. That’s when the brick wall came tumbling down… then my telephone rang and I had to walk away from it for an hour. Can you imagine how frustrated I got! I’m pretty used to stopping things and going on the fly. I’ve been known to pause a video or even leave up a program entry screen for hours at a time. I’m sure if I’m blessed with children someday this will be a very valuable skill to have.
Llewellyn's Diner Tree
As you can see from the Diner Tree above, Alfred has a couple of names listed under him. The way it reads is Alfred had a daughter Viola, and Viola had a daughter Marilyn. This is funny because Alfred’s brother also had a grand-daughter named Marilyn. There has to be some significance to that name for the family. Viola has to be another one now that I’m thinking about it. None of that matters right now though. What does matter is that I now have another search to plug into the 1910 census. So I plugged in only the name Viola in Essex County, New Jersey. Nothing. That’s when I went for broke and said to myself, “Why not just try all of New Jersey?” So that’s what I did.
Alfred Love and family, 1910
Goodbye brickwall, been nice knowing you. Turns out Alfred’s name got all kinds of bungled in the transcription process. Which wouldn’t have mattered, if I had done a wider search of New Jersey. Alfred was living in Ramsey, Bergen County, New Jersey with his wife, Mary, and daughter, Viola. Funny part about this is that Alfred’s sister is living a couple of streets over with her husband and children. Oh and did I mention Alfred is working with her husband on the Railroad. I’m telling you, sometimes it’s right there in front of your face. Next time I find a family in the census, I’m going page by page through the whole district and I’m taking notes on familiar names. It’ll save me time later. Consider that my lesson learned.
If I can get enough time this week, I will be doing a Surname Saturday post on the Loves this weekend. This would be the tombstone of William Wallace Love and his son Percy Everett Love. Thanks to Great-Grandma Llewellyn’s Diner Tree, William is no longer my first known Love. I’ve got droves of them now. I’m working on adding more of them to the website today, then tonight, more design work on the new and improved design!
Tombstone Tuesday is a daily blogging theme of GeneaBloggers.
Clifford Herbert Redford (my great-grandfather) is sitting in the front row on the left.
The back of this picture has Clifford’s name and William Herbert Moore
No one in the family believes that Moore is connected to our Moores. I beg to differ. There are no coincidences.
It would be Clifford’s daughter, a Redford, who would marry my grandfather, a Moore.
What I Want to Know:
Is this William Herbert Moore related to my Moores? Since I don’t believe in coincidences, I find it hard to believe the William H Moore coincidence. If I’m right and my William H Moore had brothers who moved to America with him, wouldn’t it make sense if there was another line of Moores living in Essex County? Maybe that’s the reason my William retired to Caldwell, New Jersey. Maybe he had family close.
Who are the others? Are these school buddies? Work buddies? It does certainly look like a bunch of guys having a bit of fun for the afternoon, dressing up.
The first Thorward I have on record is George Thorward (b. 1852 d.1940). He was born in 1852 in Obberstetten, Germany [1. George Thorward Obituary]. I have conflicting dates for his immigration. In the 1900 United States Federal Census, his year of immigration is listed as 1867. In the 1910 US Census, it is listed as 1860. I have searched for his point of entry into the country, but so far I haven’t found it. My first choice was New York, but now I’m unsure if it was. I’m going to try Philadelphia next. I think I found him in 1870 living next door to his future wife, Josephine Doremus. The only problem is he’s listed as George John. The name of Thorward wasn’t even mentioned. He is however a cigar maker’s apprentice, which fits in perfectly with my George, who was in the cigar business for 50 years. George married Josephine in 1872 and they had three children (Frank, Lewis, Dora).
The great thing about researching the Thorwards is that they pretty much stayed in Caldwell, New Jersey for the next few generations. George and Josephine’s oldest child, Frank Springsted Thorward, married Katherine Lindsley and they had two sons, Raymond and Robert. The youngest of George’s children was their only daughter, Dora Thorward. She married Leslie Jacob Plume and they had one daughter, Vivian, who married into the Westervelt family. The Westervelts and the Plumes had a long history in Essex County, New Jersey. Rumor has it that the Plumes are distantly related to Stephen Crane and Robert Treat Paine. [2. A Fagan Genealogy] I haven’t proved this yet as I’m still verifying my Grandmother’s version of her family tree.
My great-great Grandfather, and George and Josephine’s middle child, Lewis Thorward also stayed in Caldwell for most of his life. He briefly lived in Hudson County and worked on the railroad. When he came back to Caldwell, he became a partner in the Thorward and Van Duyne’s Market. Lewis married Jennie Viola Love in 1898 and had two children, Llewellyn Josephine Thorward (my great grandmother) and George William Thorward.
You can see what photos I have uploaded so far in the Thorward Family Album at the main website but here are a few of my favorites.
Things I Wonder About the Thorwards
Where is the rest of George’s family? He seems to have kept his family pretty close. He made a few visits back to Germany in the 1890’s, maybe to visit parents?
What are my next steps?
Like the Moores I want to collect the birth, marriage, and death records for the other children in the main families. New Jersey is a bit difficult to get records for, so I think those are an in-person thing to be less of a hassle.
I need to track down when and where George entered the country for the first time. I’m hoping this will give me a better idea of which part of Germany he is from.
This isn’t a Thorward step exactly, but I would like to delve deeper into the connected families. This seems to be a very big immigrant side of my family and I’m interested to see all the places they came from.
Surname Saturday is a daily blogging theme from GeneaBloggers.
