August 2013 – Moore-Mays Genealogy

Mystery Monday: Finding Bell Brodie, Onwards and Upwards

Posted on 26-Aug-2013 by Kathleen

It’s that time again! I’m truly coming to enjoy spending my Sunday afternoons on the hunt for Bell. Then I can write about it for Monday!

I decided after last week, to just go ahead and search the Canada census in London, Ontario for a Bell Brodie to see what happened. I don’t have an Ancestry World Membership, so I’m making do with the FamilySearch indexes! No problem!

"Canada Census, 1871," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M47C-2BZ : accessed 25 Aug 2013), Isabella N Brodie, Ward 03, London, Ontario, Canada. — “Canada Census, 1871,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M47C-2BZ : accessed 25 Aug 2013), Isabella N Brodie, Ward 03, London, Ontario, Canada.

The birth year is estimated around 1835. If this is my Bell, that would put her as the right age to be a cousin of Jane Menzies-Love. Jane is the person who I originally believed to be the recipient of the letter.

I can’t get much more just from the indexes on FamilySearch until I transcribe who I believe to be in the household. I’m too pumped with what I’m doing to do that this second. I decided to keep going a little bit, just to see if it was worth the trouble. I went to Ancestry.com and just did a general search.

I just plugged in what I knew from the 1871 Canada census transcription. Isabella N Brodie and a birth year of 1835.

Results! I was very, very excited to see that the 1871 census came up along with the 1910 US Census. I was especially excited because it shows Isabella living in Detroit. I’ve got pictures in Llewellyn’s archives that have Detroit written on the back and I know family members traveled there also from her diary.

When I clicked on the 1910 census result to see what it said I was surprised and overjoyed with a few different things!

The first thing that I noticed was that it showed Isabella’s parents were both of Scottish origin. Which fits perfectly with both the Menzies and Love side of the family.
For some reason I can’t bring to mind immediately, the name Marjorie Peel is very familiar to me. I must have read it somewhere and not remembered where. {Note to self: You really should have taken better notes in the beginnning.}
In the sidebar under suggested records I tried not to get too excited when I saw the 1851 Canada Census. It shows the name Isabella Ferris. Ferris being the maiden name of Jane Menzies-Love‘s mother!

My plan in my free time this week is to go through what I’ve found and organize it in a research notebook (digital and paper). There’s a lot of information coming in fast and furious now, so I don’t want to get so swamped in the search that I forget to properly document and makes notes from what I’ve found so far, if this is even my Bell. Though I’ve found some very interesting things already, so I’m leaning towards yes!

Previous Finding Bell Brodie entries:

Mystery Monday: Finding Bell Brodie, Canada edition

Posted on 19-Aug-2013 by Kathleen

I had a pleasant surprise in my email on Sunday morning. It was from my long lost cousin, Grace. (I love calling her that for some reason :)) I have communicated with Grace over the past few years thanks to my blog bringing us together. We’ve shared a lot of information on our linked Menzies/Love connection over the years. Lucky for me, she had something to add to the mystery of Bell Brodie!

She sent me three different letter transcriptions. Then she suggested that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be looking in London, England for Bell, but London, Ontario, Canada! Before I even consulted anything else having to do with the mystery of where Bell Brodie belonged, I brought out the map.

Once I brought up the map, I let out a big old “oooooohhh!!” Not only did London fit what I was looking for, but in Bell’s letter she also mentions “Sister Hellen is going to be married next week she will live at Port Stanly”. SCORE! I see Port Stanley on the map.

As if I needed further coaxing, I decided to re-read the letter I thought might have also been written by Bell (I was wrong and that transcription is coming soon). That letter is from another cousin of Jennie who is writing from Glencoe. Which is also visible on the map if you look to the very far left.

So folks, it looks like this search is going to be taking place in Canada. Which I know exactly zero about. Looks like it’s time to learn a new area for me. Any tips on Canadian research that you think might help me find Bell Brodie?

Disclaimer: The map used is copyrighted to Google. They have awesome maps. I use them daily!

Website Changes

Posted on 17-Aug-2013 by Kathleen

Over the last month, I slowly started making some visual changes to the website. I got rid of all that brown and made the website brighter and more colorful. I was having a hard time getting up the gumption to even work on the site, so I went ahead and applied the TNG theme updates, fixed some bugs, and just went live on that side.

screen cap of new website design — New moore-mays.org site

The only downside is it’s just not complete yet. As you can tell in the screen capture, the sidebars are still incomplete and I haven’t quite decided what do with my open space on the main page. I want to live in the design awhile and see what is most efficient.

The other problem with the new theme was that I hadn’t worked out the blog theme yet. WordPress is a completely different kind of beast when it comes to coding. I have no doubt I can figure it out, but it’s definitely going to take some time. In the mean time, I needed the change! I was ready to get this new design going and I felt like forcing it was for the best. So for just a little while, both parts of the website are not going to match. When all is done though, it will be great and I’ll even have the new Diary of Llewellyn section up too.

So please pardon my dust and thanks for hanging in there with me during this strange year!

Mystery Monday: Finding Bell Brodie part 2

Posted on 05-Aug-2013 by Kathleen

For the last few weeks, I’ve been jumping around a lot. I’ve been working on a billion things and not anything. Do you do that too? Always busy but never seem to get any one thing done. This weekend, I finally took some time to sit down and re-visit my Bell Brodie mystery. I didn’t expect to take such a big break but it was never far from my mind!

I don’t want to spend too much time running around in circles. I think it’s important to re-evaluate the things I picked out of the transcribed letter and make a plan before preceding.

Bell Brodie is writing to her “Dear Cousin”.
The letter is dated for September 1866 and is addressed from London.
Bell calls the person she is writing to, “Dear Jennie” in the middle of the letter.

Using these three clues, I’m planning to do a few things.

I’m going to go through the Menzies/Love line of my family tree and match the year to a generation. This will help me decide if the Jennie mentioned is Jennie Love, Jane Menzies or Jean Farris. Lots of Jean/Jennie/Janes in the family!
I’m going to use the 1861 and 1871 census to see if I can find a Bell Brodie, maybe in London. The letter doesn’t hint at Bell’s age. I figure once I estimate whose cousin she is, I’ll can have an age range at least.

The next clues were:

Bell mentions that “Your mother and Alick” were staying with Bell. She even addresses the woman staying with her as Aunt several times in the letter.
Bell tells Jennie several things to tell Alick, making it seem like Alick is not present even though in the beginning she mentioned he’d been staying with her 10 days.

What this does for me:

The only thing I can think of is using the “Alick” to help me identify Jennie. I’m assuming Alick is Jennie’s brother. I shouldn’t assume that but it won’t hurt to see if there is someone in the household of Jennie who fits.

The final thing I’m going to research from the first set of clues is this.

Bell mentions the fun they had when she sailed up the Hudson in New York. Though she says next that she wished Jennie and Alick had been there at the time.

Bell mentions that she sailed up the Hudson River. Which means she traveled to New York. That also means that if I’m lucky, I can find her in a passenger list. I’ll search Castle Garden first and go from there!