Month: December 2010

Ancestor Approved!

Posted on by Kathleen

December is so very busy in my house. I hope everyone else is enjoying the holiday season as much as my family is!

I’m writing today because I was honored by Cheri Daniels of Journeys Past. She’s awarded me the Ancestor Approved award!

There are two rules of the award.

  1. List 10 things that you have learned about your ancestors that surprised, humbled, or enlightened you.
  2. Pass the award to 10 other genealogy bloggers!

I can’t wait to pass the award on but I don’t have a list ready. I’m going to probably award it one at a time and highlight each choice as a Follow Friday entry!

Taylor Family
  1. One of the things that’s surprised/humbled/enlightened me the most is just the sheer number of family members I have. Before I got started with this genealogy thing, I thought my immediate family was it. I knew of my scattered extended family in Ohio and New Jersey but they weren’t real to me because we just weren’t around them enough for me to realize that these people had a connection to me that just couldn’t be described.
  2. They were tough. I feel so blessed with the things and opportunities I have access to in my life. As I research the older, more rural roots of my family tree, I’m humbled by the amount of tragedy my family has witnessed. Everything from infant deaths to tragic river and railroad accidents.
  3. I’m actually really surprised by all the family legends that I hadn’t heard before. Whether it be that we might be related to Robert Redford or General Maxwell Taylor to the ancestor who allegedly pushed his wife down the stairs.
  4. Since I was sort of disconnected from family during my childhood, I didn’t have anything to build on. So it surprised me that so many things I’ve grown to love, has a connection to my family. I’ve always been fascinated by Brooklyn. I’d never visited or lived there, I just loved it for some reason (Newsies might have had something to do with it). Then I find out my ancestors lived there for over 30 years. I’ve always been in love with Ireland and Scotland. More so Ireland but Scotland was a close second. Now I know that my father’s family came from both places.
  5. Band of Brothers. This is sort of a continuation of #4 but oh well. One of my loves is the mini-series Band of Brothers. Ever since seeing the mini-series, I devour anything having to do with WWII. It wasn’t until I researching my 5th Great Grandfather Bartholomew Taylor, that I found the “coincidence” that confirms my fascination with this huge part of history. A Google Book search of Bartholomew Taylor, Maryland yielded a snippet from a biography written by a son, about his father. The father was General Maxwell D Taylor. The snippet says that “The Taylor line came to Missouri from England via Maryland and Kentucky. One ancestor, Bartholomew Taylor, had been a soldier in the Revolution.” Certainly not enough to link the General to my line. However, it’s enough for me to add the General to my list of people to research. If I research him backwards, maybe I’ll find where our lines cross, or maybe I’ll find nothing. It was a shock to see that snippet though. So take my advice, try the Google Book search!
  6. The Menzies Family. Anything having to do with the Menzies family surprises and humbles me. In the course of my research, I’ve had immediate connections to a lot of the people I’m researching. That’s not the case with the Menzies family. I started out knowing nothing about them. Over the passage of time, I’ve learned little nuggets of information and found clues in unusual places. All in all, this family that I didn’t have an inkling of grew to be one of my favorite families to research. They started in Scotland, went to Liverpool, England and from there they made the huge leap to America. Settling in New York couldn’t have been easy. I know from the letters of William (ha! Another William!) to his sister Jane and I know that this family did it’s best to stick together. I have no idea how the family got along on a day to day basis, but the root of the family was strong. It outlasted death, marriage, and wouldn’t be weakened by an ocean.
  7. Llewellyn’s Journal. I can only hope I finish my site redesign before the new year. That way my website will be equipped to handle the transcription project I’m going to start. This journal is a peek into the life of my Great Grandmother between 1923 and 1926. It’s probably my favorite piece of family history.
  8. They stayed put. In a generation where a lot of my family is scattered across the country, it was hard for me to realize that my ancestors didn’t like to move. They found a spot they liked and they stayed there. My mom’s family choosing rural Kentucky and my Dad’s family has a long history in New Jersey and New York City. I have to say I’ve sometimes imagined what it would be like if we all still lived in the same community still.
  9. I have to say again that I grew up with next to no family in the immediate area. So when I found the funeral visitation register for my Great Grandfather William L Moore, I was so humbled to see how many people came out to say goodbye. If the book wasn’t a big shocker, the actual condolence cards and notes would have bowled me over. There’s a small suitcase full of them. All comforting Llewellyn on the loss of her husband.
  10. William. This is the big kahuna of all my surprises. I am frankly ASTONISHED by the use of the name William in my family. There are 6 generations of William Moore’s on my Dad’s side and who knows how many William Mays and William Taylors on my Moms. It makes you want to never see the name again quite frankly, but then it makes you sad that the tradition would come to an end.

Treasure Chest Thursday: 44 Years of Kodak

Posted on by Kathleen

Note: I don’t mean to show a bias towards Kodak. It is strictly coincidence that I found this after my Tech Tuesday post. Except I don’t believe in coincidences, so it’s really one of those crazy freaky things that follows me around. Again, I am not being compensated by Kodak for this post.

I had photos on the brain yesterday. I was actually sorting through some of my scanned photos trying to decide if I was going to rescan the last batch at a higher DPI. That’s when I remembered this box in the spare room. It’s there with a suitcase full of sympathy cards that were sent to Llewellyn after William‘s death.

I remember opening this up before but I think I was too busy pouring over documents. I probably saw that these were negatives of some sort and decided to check later if they were negatives of pictures I already had. I should have been tipped off to the fact that these were kept separately.

So yesterday, I started going through the box. It was then I realized these were slides and not negatives. Or are they negatives that are mounted as slides? Is that the same thing. This shows you how much I know about these things. Obviously I need to do a bit more research.

On this box I noticed a name that I found on the back of a photo. Gladys Walker. I’m almost certain that Gladys Walker is a relation who lived in the Detroit area. This all feels more likely to me because I found Detroit written on the back of some photos and Ralph Leonard even spent a few years there. If there was family there, then Ralph’s brief time there is better explained.

It was when I stuck one of the slides into this that I realized I could possibly have more pictures than I thought.

I’ve got a lot of pictures. There is one big batch of a trip to Florida. So I’m thinking these slides could be from William and Llewellyn’s travels. My father says they traveled around a bit. Unfortunately, the light is broken in the viewer that I found in the box. I’m putting a new one on my Christmas wish list and I’m hoping that my slides will fit into a new one.

If that’s the case, I have a lot of slides to go through.

This box says Moore and 86 Park Avenue. So I’m now positive these slides are William and Llewellyn’s. The date of 1966 gives me a time frame that pretty much matches the photos I have of Llewellyn and William in Florida.

There’s a lot of Kodak in that box. I’ve used Kodak for 10 years myself. It was my first digital camera. It’s kind of comforting when I find these things in my family tree. I’ve grown up without a lot of family around me. So I never really felt a lot of connections to the past. Which is probably why I am a literal sponge when my grandma gave me that family tree. I remember distinctly being amazed that you could actually know your family back that far.

Now that I know my Dad’s side of the family, it’s amazing all the different things I find that link me to things. Just finding a box full of Kodak slides made me giddy. Like I had yet another connection to these people I’m learning were a lot like me. So that’s at least 44 years of Kodak history in our family, it’s kind of a nice feeling.