September 2010 – Moore-Mays Genealogy

Storm Center… Leeny?

Posted on 30-Sep-2010 by Kathleen

I don’t know how it happened, but it did. In my family when there is some kind of havoc, I’m in charge of what I call the “Command Center”. I’m usually the one who is home at the time of whatever havoc is occurring. There is a certain responsibility in this position. The main responsibility is to REMAIN CALM. This is the first time I’ve been mobilized and it certainly isn’t going to be the last.

Here is where I’ve been stationed most of the day. These are my survival supplies for when I’ve been mobilized.

Laptop Computer: This is essential. Since our satellite was cutting out, I was getting my live news broadcasts from the NBC Washington website. I also didn’t know if the power was going to go out, so I didn’t want my desktop computer to be at risk in case it went in and out. I also have a big, ugly water stain above my computer desk. Apparently we have a few leaks. So I’m erring on the side of caution and I moved the computer out of the area.
Diet Pepsi Max: Have you noticed they used to call it Diet but now they don’t. It must not really be diet. I don’t really care about that now though. I’m a bit addicted to it. It’s one of my two vices. I don’t drink coffee so I needed something!
Home phone: It never fails that when you leave the phone somewhere in the house it rings a million times. So I carry it with me to ensure it doesn’t ring. With the weather, I knew it’d be ringing off the hook.
Cell phone: I quickly realized our home phone was going in and out a lot. It does that in the rain. So my cell phone became the go to form of communication. I’m going to be hearing my ringtone in my sleep tonight.
Chewy Chips Ahoy: My second vice. I didn’t eat until my 3pm bowl of Chili, so the Chips Ahoy were my lunch. Not exactly a balanced meal I know but it’s the only thing I had time for in between all the other things going on today.
Netflix: I had a Netflix ready to watch on my laptop in case the TV went out and I got bored. Funny, I never touched it. ^.^

According to our 4pm news, we could get another 2-4 inches on top of the 9 we’ve already gotten. To think I was complaining about the drought this summer. I guess I’ll go back to my duties of relaying phone calls, messages, weather reports, and getting Mapquest up for traffic detours.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with NBC, Chips Ahoy, Dell, Netflix, or Pepsi. I just like those things. I was not compensated for admitting to my guilty pleasures.

Mystery Monday: Henry Mays

Posted on 27-Sep-2010 by Kathleen

The photo I was going to post today will have to wait. I was entering the Mays family into my family file yesterday. The Mays family is always a frustration for me because the sheer amount of them. They also loved to name their kids the same 10 names. It wasn’t uncommon to have 3 cousins, named William, and they were all born within a year of each other. That’s not what I’m writing about today though. My mystery is with Henry Mays.

He first shows up in 1900 with John and Celia Mays. He is listed as their son, with a birth date of 1885. This was always a little sketchy for my Mom because this puts him at 13 years younger then his nearest sibling. I did find another male child that was still born in 1875, so that pushes it to 10. Still, that is quite a leap. Mom always suspected that Henry might have been John and Celia’s grandson, born to their daughter Nancy. Nancy was 15 at the time of Henry’s birth. There is absolutely no evidence of this though so he’s John and Celia’s son in my mind.

maysmystery-01 — John Mays household, 1900. Devils Fork, Elliott County, Kentucky.

All is well with the family through the 1910 census. It’s in 1920 that things get complicated. John and Celia moved to Clermont County, Ohio between 1910 and 1914, when Celia dies there. Their son William Harmon Mays, also moves to Clermont County with his young daughter after the death of his first wife. His second wife will give birth to my grandfather there in 1923. Nancy was a mystery for a while. She didn’t move to Ohio with her family. I eventually found a death record for her under the name Nancy Ann Sparks. This led me to her household in 1920. She was married to Andy J Sparks and lived in Rowan County until her death. (I’m still missing her in 1930 though, she died in 1938.) Henry disappears. There are two Henry Mays’ in 1920 living in Rowan County, Kentucky.

maysmystery-02 — Henry Mays, 1920 Census search

Funny enough, both of these households have wives named Martha. They are definitely two different households. I checked to be sure. My next step was to check on FamilySearch to see if there was a marriage listing for Henry.

maysmystery-03 — FamilySearch Kentucky Marriage Records search

The only thing I don’t like about this record is that it doesn’t give Celia’s maiden name but otherwise everything fits. I’m more than a little disturbed by a 31 year old marrying a 13 year old but maybe the age is wrong.

maysmystery-04 — 1910 Census. Farmers, Rowan County, Kentucky.

Oh, maybe the age wasn’t wrong. My next step was to sort out where the family was in 1920. The problem is neither Henry Mays from above fits at all. So instead I looked for Cordie’s family to see if Henry and Cordie were living with them. It’s a logical move since most of Henry’s family moved to Ohio.

maysmystery-05 — Donohew household, 1920.

Now I’m confused. Cordie is still living at home, her age is still aged 13 (should be 16 by this time), and she’s listed as widowed? So now I have no idea what happened to Henry Mays. Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t been to find any death record for Henry anywhere. Even a check of Elliott County came up blank.

Sentimental Sunday: Ellis Island

Posted on 26-Sep-2010 by Kathleen

Every genealogy researcher eventually comes across Ellis Island. For me, my first experience was when my mother started to get me into genealogy. She was researching the Thorward Family. There was a ship manifest from Ellis Island that listed George Thorward. I’m sorry, he was listed as Georg Thorward. To be perfectly honest, there were two manifests. There you’ve dragged it all out of me. One manifest was from 1898 and the other from 1901. Funny enough, both trips were made aboard the ship Southwark. In both trips, his departure city is listed as Antwerp, Belgium. That’s a good clue to keep in handy when I finally start trying to track him in Germany.

He most likely was making trips back to his homeland for some reason or another. That or he was going there on business. I wasn’t even a twinkle in the universe yet, so I can’t tell you exactly. I can theorize though, which is one of my favorite things to do by the way. Ask me next week and I’ll spin you a yarn about his trip home for a cousin’s wedding, or maybe how he was going home for his granny’s funeral. It’s just how I get kicks. As long as I’m not passing these stories down to my currently non-existent grand kids, I figure it’s harmless fun. You should see what I do when there are traffic jams, boy can I spin some yarns with that!

So there’s some sentimental reasons I feel a kinship with Ellis Island. Technically, I haven’t found a single relative that actually immigrated through Ellis Island. All my relatives came before it opened in 1892. In fact, besides George’s trips I don’t think I’ve found more than two other relatives passing through on trips abroad.

ellisisland-01 — Ellis Island Recreation

You probably can imagine my surprise when I found the building you see above. My mother has a little bit of a Christmas Village obsession. Every now and again, Cecil’s Country Store will have a blowout sale. They sell all kinds of buildings for Christmas villages. It’s an awesome place to go and look through. It’s actually an old post office and store from 1906. While Mom was salivating over houses, castles, and other buildings for her village, I ran across one box that said Ellis Island. Then I looked closer and the price tag said $5! Well, I got in the spirit of the moment and just went for it! Sure it’s only a small part of the actual building. Could you imagine fitting a reproduction of the whole thing somewhere? Where would you even put that?

I know it’s not exactly the most meaningful purchase I’ll ever make but it was one of the more sentimental. In the few hours I’ve had it setup on my desk (what a great way to avoid clutter!), I’ve already looked at it and smiled more times than I can count.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Birth Order

Posted on 25-Sep-2010 by Kathleen

Randy Seaver puts up a fun genealogy mission every Saturday night at his blog, Genea-Musings. Here is this week’s challenge!

1) Pick one of your ancestral lines – any one – patrilineal, matrilineal, zigzag, from a famous ancestor, etc. Pick a long one if you can.

2) Tell us which position in the birth order that your ancestor was in each generation. For example “third child, first son.” Also list how many children were born to these parents.

3) Share your Birth Order work with us on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, etc.

I chose my Taylor line because it’s the one that goes back the farthest. These are coming straight from the tree my Grandma gave me in eighth grade so I haven’t gotten solid proof on the farther back generations yet.

1. Kathleen Moore (1983- ) third child, second daughter of William and Georgia (Mays) Moore (1 son, 2 daughters)
2. Georgia Mays (1959- ) sixth child, fourth daughter of Stanley and Emogene (Taylor) Mays (5 daughters, 2 sons)
3. Emogene Taylor (1929-2005) sixth child, second daughter of Marshall and Lula (Applegate) Taylor (5 sons, 3 daughters)
4. Marshall Taylor (1892-1958) second child, first son of George and Mollie (Webb) Taylor (4 daughters, 7 sons)
5. George Taylor (1862-1913) fourth child, second son of Marshall and Cecilia (Heaverin) Taylor (6 sons, 5 daughters)
6. Marshall Taylor (1823-1899) first child, first son of William and Nancy (Matthews) Taylor (3 sons, 2 daughters)
7. William Taylor (1797-1849) fourth child, fourth son of Bartholomew and Leah (Staton) Taylor (5 sons)
8. Bartholomew Taylor (1756-1847) first child, first son of Abraham and Mary (Walker) Taylor (4 sons, 5 daughters)
9. Abraham Taylor (1726-1792) second child, second son of William and Sarah (Cooper) Taylor (3 sons, 3 daughters)
10. William Taylor (?-1773?) (4 sons, 2 daughters)
11. John Taylor (?-1748?)

Bartholomew is really the farthest I’ve researched back. He’s the Revolutionary War veteran. What I’ve been trying to do is get the birth, marriage, and death records for these main ancestors before I move on. That hasn’t exactly happened the way I wanted. I had the best of intentions, really I did! William and John, numbers 10 and 11 respectively, didn’t get birth order numbers so I guess they don’t count. I found their siblings names in wills of the parents so I don’t have birthdates for the siblings, therefore I can’t determine where everyone is in the birth order yet.

Thanks Randy for yet another fun little challenge!

Open Thread Thursday on Friday?

Posted on 24-Sep-2010 by Kathleen

My internet took a vacation yesterday. I guess everyone needs a vacation every once and awhile even my internet. So because of my internet’s decision to take the day off, I didn’t get a chance to post my take on the Open Thread Thursday at GeneaBloggers yesterday. I was really interested in what people said about this since I’m neck deep into a website redesign! I took notes and tested a few things with the itty bitty internet connection that I had. So here’s my take on what’s necessary!

Judy Webster’s List:

About me: I love having one of these because I think it helps readers to relate to you a little bit more! I think of it as a little introduction just like at the beginning of the school year. You don’t need to tell me the name of your first pet, but I’d like to know a little bit!
Subscribe Option: This is definitely a must. With so many different blogs out there, I think it’d be too hard to really keep up without some kind of Subscribe option. My favorite way to subscribe is through Google Reader. I can check it at the end or beginning of my day and it tells me what is new. Then on the blogs that I want to read the comments on or if the article is only excerpted, I can always just click on the title and open it up in my browser.
Follow Option: I do have the Google Friend Connect, I don’t use it much myself, but I know it helps people who are using Blogger to do the same thing that Google Reader does. I think it’s a nice option to have for others to use. I didn’t really know what it was at first but when my readers started using it, I knew it was a good move!
Labels: I love categories and I love tags. I use categories to differentiate the topic of the post. Mostly they are used for the GeneaBloggers topics or my own overall category. I use Tags to highlight the Family I’m writing about. I find these especially essential so that readers can find exactly what they are looking for. I notice a lot of people reading just a category or a family tag through my webstats so these were also good decisions!
Blog Archive: Yes but these are really a personal preference. I’m thinking about only doing a pull down menu on the new site. I think at least some kind of Monthly Archive at the least is essential. Really if you’re using good categories and tags, then you could probably get by without an archive, though I think it can only be helpful.
Links to Other Blogs: I love links! My list isn’t quite as current, but I also want to make a separate page on the new website so I can give a description and reason why I chose the links. I think links are a personal decision though as they can clutter a website. So I say do them but try and keep them compact or in a separate page!
Links to Websites about related topics: I think since you could be bringing new people to the genealogy field, maybe some of your most helpful getting started links can be a good way of keeping them interested.

GeneaBloggers Questions:

What do you consider essential in terms of widgets, sidebar items, etc. for a genealogy blog?

A search function is essential but I think besides the basics of (Pages,Categories,Tags,Archives) it’s all optional. I like to see twitter feeds, but I find I no longer like the clunky plug and play twitter app. So in the new site I’m not going to use that.

I know people have problems with captcha codes. If you are using a blog hosted by a blogging company I don’t see the problem with not having them. I’m on my own server however and when I turned off captcha for just two hours, I was flooded with spam bot commenters and registrations. So I just can’t do that to my webhosting company’s servers. This may open them up to security risks that I’m not smart enough to think of. I do have Akismet also installed and I was still getting spam, so that’s my personal choice.

Have you taken steps to minimize or streamline your blog in consideration of dial-up and even mobile users?

I haven’t but I want to! I’m going to research this a bit more and see what my options are but I definitely want to have a mobile and printer friendly setup!

Where should the “bling” be placed – sidebar, header, footer, other location?

I like navigation to be up top in the middle. It just seems to be the place I prefer. I like to keep all the other stuff to the side. Though I can see why all that scrolling could become cumbersome. If you sidebar goes farther then your main blog page then maybe it’s too much in the sidebar. I never even thought about putting bling in the footer! I’m definitely going to test that out with the new design.

What about other blog template items such as font size, background color, etc.?

I love seeing all the different designs in blogs. I think it’s a great way to show off your personality. Through experience I know a lot about template donts. You definitely want text size to be at least 10 or 12 pixels. Unless you are putting fine print on the bottom of something. Then I like to go down to 9 pixels. Dark backrounds can be good, but they have to be done right. It’s very hard to read on dark backgrounds for a lot of reasons. I really like the idea of using whatever background image or color you want, but using divs/tables/boxes to keep your content visible and easy to read.

I feel bad for this wall of text, so here’s another preview of the new website. I had to go to three columns to prevent a massive sidebar. (This is why I loved this topic!) The next part is coding the blog and planning the sidebar. 🙂 Feel free to give me advice or to comment on my opinions above!