July 2016 – Page 2 – Moore-Mays Genealogy

Mystery Monday: La Moss

Posted on 18-Jul-2016 by Kathleen

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve done a Mystery Monday. I wasn’t expecting to dive into one this soon into my Genealogy Do-Over but oh well! This mystery isn’t even new to the blog. I’ve written about La Moss before on Mystery Monday. I never did find out what her real name was. I’m so curious though because it seems like she was one of Llewellyn’s best friends.

I started thinking about La Moss again when I was over-analyzing Llewellyn’s wedding guest and gift lists. 5 years after my last La Moss thought, she popped into my head again. Surely since she is all over Llewellyn’s journal, she must have been at the wedding. There might be a few road blocks though:

She might not have signed the guest book.
She might not have given Llewellyn a gift.

If all of those things are true, man that’s not going to help. It’s not going to block me though. I am a better researcher now and surely I should be able to find her, even if it takes me awhile. I have a tentative game plan to find La Moss’ identity.

I will check all the unknown to me female guests from the wedding guest list.
I will check all the unknown to me people in the wedding gift list.
I will check the census surrounding Llewellyn in 1920 and 1930 to see if any of these people are possibilities.
I will send away to the New Jersey State Archives for a birth record search. La Moss should have been born before 1915, which means the record will cost only $10 instead of $25.
I will have so much fun finding new ways of looking, because this is my test on how creative I can get if I need to.

This is the original picture I used to make the Mystery Monday graphic. Is La Moss in this picture? I know Llewellyn is the second from the right. Everyone else is up in the air. It could be cousins, it could be coworkers, it could be church trip friends. The possibilities are endless. Will Llewellyn have a picture of La Moss in all these pictures and will I even be able to find her? I guess we will find out!

Treasure Chest Thursday: Our Wedding Book

Posted on 14-Jul-2016 by Kathleen

You might have thought to yourself that I was done with the family tree that I made last week. Well, as an over-analyzer, I am definitely not done. If you want to blame anyone, feel free to blame Great Grandma Llewellyn. She left me all these records and what kind of genealogist would I be if I didn’t pull out every scrap of information I could?

You see, I have more names to get through. First things first, we have to get the family members out of the way. Then, we will see what all is left and see who we have. This is the bridal party. All familiar names, any names that aren’t family are instantly recognized because of The Diary of Llewellyn. I need to remind myself to index that so that it is easier to follow. I guess that would be a good use of that Genealogy Task Tracker I have. 😉

First off, hats off to Mr. B. F. Oakley, Jr. who wanted to make it clear – still single. Ha! I see two aunts, an uncle and a Walker on this page. The Walker might be connected, I’ll have to check that.

Oh boy, more familiar names! I’m 80% positive that Armstrong was the surname of one of the priests at Llewellyn’s church. Then we have the Moores showing up in droves. Excuse my yell of excitement because now I also have the signature of the first known Moore in America, William H. Moore. (Note: I added the arrow for the blog, the image and original scan are pink arrow-less.) The only thing that would make me happier is if he signed it Wm. H. Moore – born in This Parish, in This County, of Ireland. That’s probably too much to ask though, so we’ll just go ahead and be happy for what we have. I also won’t mention that he had a son who was also named William H. Moore. The shakiness of the signature looks more like an 80-year-old than a 57-year-old. It could be either one though and the Junior’s wife and daughter are the very next signatures. I don’t want to think about that now though.

Last page and tons of family names and a few non-family names. I also just solved one of the questions from my post last week. There on the right hand side is the signature of Mr & Mrs Chas Haynes and right under them is Viola Love. Man, this list of names is really making me happy today. I’m not done yet though!

Now we have hearts added to the people who signed Llewellyn’s Guest Book. I added a few more details to show that some of her cousins signed the book themselves.

Now here is William’s side with his cousins added and it looks less lonely. I left both Williams with question marks since I’m trying to be a non-biased researcher (Ha!). All in all, I think other than making a list of the names that are not in the tree, I am done analyzing this wedding! I hope…

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging prompt used by GeneaBloggers.

Wordless Wednesday: Lewis Thorward and others

Posted on 13-Jul-2016 by Kathleen

Lewis Thorward, taken about 1900 (from back of the photo)

Wordless Wednesday is a Daily Blogging Prompt at GeneaBloggers.

Genealogy Do-Over: My Research Toolbox

Posted on 11-Jul-2016 by Kathleen

This series of posts are based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂 I just want to say there are parts of this workbook that I am not posting about, so if you would like the full set of tasks, then visit Thomas’ page or purchase the workbook.

This week, I have been taking a little bit of a break from my genealogy. It was partially to do with the holiday and partially because I just needed a little break from it. Throughout the past month or so, I have been working on one of the month five tasks of the Genealogy Do-Over. That is to build a Genealogy Toolbox. I know this toolbox will continue to evolve, so I know I am not looking to “finish” it anytime soon. It’s nice to have everything I might need in one place though. I will just go over the categories I am using right now.

Calculators: All genealogists need calculators. There always seems to be some kind of math needing to be done and I don’t like to hunt around looking for how to do some of those calculations. So I have a calculator folder. Right now, there are only a few links in it, but I don’t really know which calculators I will need until I am researching again.

DNA Websites: I’ve got all the DNA websites at the click of a mouse.

Education: I had a more extensive list of Genealogy Education links at one point but have lost them. Lucky for me I know that DearMYRTLE and her Cousin Russ did a hangout on this very topic, so I plan to re-watch that and rebuild this list!

Locality Resources: These are for the smaller, local websites that I like to use. Sometimes it is just a county or cemetery website. These links don’t fit into my other categories.

Reference Materials: My biggest section! In the main folder I have one link, the CDC page on Where to Write for Vital Records. Then I have subcategories for Analysis, Guides, Historic Terms and Link Websites. There are links to Cyndi’s List, the FamilySearch Wiki, WorldCat, Evidence Explained and many more in this section.

Search Websites: This the second biggest category. It’s for the actual search websites. This one might seem like the biggest at first because it has more subcategories. It’s not though, it probably has less links than my Reference Materials category. I don’t know though because I haven’t counted. I do know that I use the reference section a lot more than the search section right now. As you can see in my screen shot, there are categories for the big sites (Ancestry, FindMyPast, FamilySearch, etc), cemetery sites (Find a Grave, BillionGraves), Germany, less used sites, Maryland (mdlandrec.net), New Jersey (State Archives), Ohio. You get the picture, this is for the more “official” locality websites and then the big search websites.

Societies: This is where I am keeping a list of the societies in my local area, the areas where my ancestors lived, and other miscellaneous societies I thought I would need.

Conferences: I haven’t been to a genealogy conference yet, but I am actively researching them. Right now the only link here is Rootstech because I’d love to go to that one day.

Shopping: Right now there is only one link here and I moved my Archival Supplies category into this folder. I have been watching the webinar series given by Melissa Barker over at Legacy Family Tree Webinars. She gives lots of great information on how to archive your documents. She is an archivist so I’m definitely taking lots of notes. Including the websites she recommends to use for purchasing the right supplies.

You might be asking why I didn’t give a more detailed list, well that’s because I am putting the whole list up on this website! It can be found under the My Tools heading in the menu bar or by clicking this link. Feel free to bookmark it if you wish. Just remember that it will be constantly evolving. 🙂