2016 – Page 2 – Moore-Mays Genealogy

Wedding Wednesday: Stanley and Emogene

Posted on 14-Dec-2016 by Kathleen

Let me give you a small bit of background

There is a bit of a story behind this marriage record. This record has always been a bit of a dirty secret to me. Not because of the contents, or the events surrounding it. It was because it was a record so close to the current generations and I didn’t have it! It was this big blank spot in my documentation. I’ve always known the marriage date of my maternal grandparents. Not only do I have Grandma’s copy of the family tree from the 1980s, but it’s always been a known day since Grandma’s birthday was May 6th and her first wedding anniversary was May 3rd. We’d call up Grandma and say, “Happy Birthday and Anniversary!” Mostly because my Mom said she could never remember which was the day for either event! Oops! haha.

p. 7-B, Taylor-Webb Family Tree, Nov 1980; privately held by Kathleen Moore, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Lexington Park, Maryland. 2001. This tree passed to me from Grandma Emogene Taylor.

Looking at the family tree, you can see that it says Grandma married Grandpa Stanley 3 May 1947 but it doesn’t give a location. For years, I’ve been on the lookout for the record of their marriage. I’d asked all my aunts and my uncle if they knew where their parents were married. By the end of those conversations I had numerous options: Brown County Ohio, Clermont County Ohio, and Kentucky. My Mom (the second youngest) and Aunt Vera (the eldest) said Newport, Kentucky. My Aunt Molly (middle child) who spent the most time with Grandma said Clermont County, Ohio. Those are my three top sources of family memories so I was sunk! Who did I believe? Where do I look?

Where did you look?

The short answer is trust none of them, search all of them. The long answer is that Campbell County, Kentucky marriage records were the first I found browsable at FamilySearch.org: Campbell County Courthouse Records, Alexandria, KY. After going through those records page by page and not finding it, I was starting to think that Ohio was the place.

Luckily for me Brown and Clermont Counties are also on FamilySearch. After finding dozens of my family members in those counties, I was disappointed to not find Grandma and Grandpa Stanley’s marriage record. I wasn’t sure where to look next until I realized that Mom and Aunt Vera had both told me that Grandma was married in Newport, KY and all those marriages I saw in Kentucky were from Alexandria, Kentucky.

That’s right, Campbell County has TWO courthouses, both with different records. This news made me excited because there was still somewhere reasonable to search! I even started wondering how I would bribe my Aunt Molly to find that record for me. Luckily for me and Aunt Molly, FamilySearch put the other courthouse records online too! So, over 15 years after starting my genealogy research, I was finally able to see my Grandma and Grandpa Stanley’s marriage record! Though, that 15 years would have probably been shortened had I gone to Kentucky to search. Someone there surely would have said, “Hey! Have you checked the Newport Courthouse records? These are for the Alexandria Courthouse!”

Stanley Mays - Emogene Taylor marriage — Campbell County, Kentucky, marriage certificate no. p. 244 (1947), Mays-Taylor; digital image, FamilySearch, “Marriage Book 194,” (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 30 Sep 2016)

Routines are What I Need

Posted on 13-Dec-2016 by Kathleen

Who are you? Where on earth have you been?

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated. I have no excuse except that I was thrown completely off my axis. The day after I left the hospital I received a jury summons notice for the month of October. Usually I wouldn’t have minded this disruption, but this was my third time being summoned in five years. Instead of acting outraged over that, I went with it and got excited about the process. In all actuality, I really enjoy jury duty. The people, the legal aspect, and taking part in the community. Before I knew it, the month was over and I hadn’t sat down to write anything.

At the beginning of November, I realized how long it had been since I did anything except my basic things. I hadn’t been reading, I hadn’t been writing and I’d been existing on a little sleep and a lot of Netflix. That’s okay for awhile, but eventually I knew I needed to do something that engaged my mind more. It didn’t take me long to realize that what I was missing was structure in my days. One thing out of sync and it was just throwing me all off.

Then just as I was sitting down to plan and write this blog, my neighbor passed away. We’ve lived next door to her and her daughter since I was in Kindergarten, so we’re all close and are friends. I’ve been spending a lot of time with her daughter and still trying to keep up with my own household. As a genealogist, I know that the people in our lives are so important, and I’ve been making sure that the people in mine know that. On a production level, that leaves me here, one month later exactly and still behind! Now I’m just wondering where to pick up the pieces and get things back on track. The great thing for me is that I had already started to get very organized, digitally at least!

Okay, so where do we start?

Finding out where to start is easy. If you’ve been following my Genealogy Do-Over, then you know I was already starting to get pretty organized.

That means that my research/Do-Over will be easy to pick back up. That’s for another entry though. This has nothing to do with my research and everything to do with my new way of keeping a plan together for the blog. The last time you saw my excel file, “Blog Tracker” was in June. That file has gotten a little bit of a makeover.

My Blog Tracker is now bigger and better

Before I just had one tab in the file that was a catalog of my previous blog posts. That now lies in the “Blog Archive” tab of the file. The “Regular Topics” section is what I hope will keep me inspired. I’ve added the daily blogging prompts from GeneaBloggers.com under each corresponding day and I’ve made a list of my regular blog topic series. Only time will tell if this helps me be more regular in my blog writing.

Blog Tracker - Post Ideas — Blog Tracker – Post Ideas

The Post Ideas section is where I am keeping a log of my post ideas with a target date, suggested category, and a brief description of the idea. The rest of the sections will be me logging what I’ve already posted in the regular categories. This will help me know what I’ve posted before. With a blog a few years old, I’d hate to repeat myself when I can just link to a previous entry and then add to the subject.

You can see from my Post Ideas tab that I’m going to try an alternating post schedule. It might take me a few weeks to get into the groove of it but we’ll see how that goes! I’m already one day “behind” because I meant to write this post and finish it on Monday, but I just didn’t make it in time.

Even the Blog has a few new things

I’m not sure if I’ll be doing another entry for this or not, but I’m also overhauling the organization of my blog. As I work on my blog archive, I’m creating indexes for my posts that turned into “series”.

The links to the indexes can be found by hovering over “Indexes” at the top of the screen or using the links in the sidebar.

In Conclusion

I’m feeling really good and organized about the future. Not just for my genealogy and blog, but overall. I’m hoping that by doing this my stress and anxiety levels will start to decline and my night in the hospital will be the last one I have for quite awhile!

I hope you all are doing well and I thank you for always sticking with me through these absences. I really appreciate it.

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Bibles Part 2

Posted on 29-Sep-2016 by Kathleen

Here we are again with a new week and a new “bible”. Okay, so technically this week isn’t a bible. It is very connected to it though, so it fits with my theme from last week. This book is called Four Thousand Questions & Answers.

The copyright is from 1898, so for a book over a hundred years old, it’s in great condition. As you can tell from the title page, this book was for Students and Sunday-School Teachers. This wasn’t a surprise to me, because Llewellyn and her family were very involved with the church. I believe Llewellyn even taught Sunday School herself if her Diary is any indication. Before taking the pictures for this blog post, I just assumed this book was my Grandfathers since I have so much documentation from his early years.

I thought that until I actually read through the whole inscription.

Presented to William Moore by his S.S. teacher for his punctual attendance 51 Sundays. Xmas 1913

Well, that is definitely not Grandpa’s book because he was born in 1930. This must be his father’s book! To have such an old memento from the Moore family is very rare. In the first place, there aren’t a lot of people around that can identify any Moores in pictures. Secondly, for a few generations the mothers died early on and the children were working from a young age, leaving little time for many mementos. That’s what makes this one so special.

Great-Grandpa would have just turned 12 when he got this book from his teacher. In just a few years he will have started working for numerous companies as a bookkeeper. His mother could already have passed away. I haven’t found her death certificate yet, but it happened between 1910 and 1915. Within 10 years the whole family dynamic will change. They’ll move from their decades long residence in Brooklyn and move to Caldwell, New Jersey to live with his grandfather and aunt. There he meets his future wife, probably at church. His father and grandfather will pass away in 1925 and 1928. In 1925 he’ll go to work for AT&T as a bookkeeper and he’ll stay there until he retires over 35 years later. In 1926 he’ll marry Llewellyn and they’ll have one son and 5 grandchildren.

I never met William L. Moore, my great-grandfather, but from the records and memories he’s left behind I can tell you a lot about his personality. He came from a family who experienced a lot of hardships and instability. Even though the family was struggling, he still made it to Sunday School for 51 Sundays. He still graduated from night school. He got the education to work as a bookkeeper. From Llewellyn’s diary when they were dating, he worked a lot of overtime but still made sure to meet her at the train everyday. Amidst all that chaos and change, he became one of the most dependable men I think I’ll ever know about. Even through all the hardships they went through the decades they were married, to this day everyone remembers William and Llewellyn as being rocks of the community. They were there when people needed them and everyone speaks so kindly of them. It’s enough to make me sad I was born too late to know them.

Man, who knew I’d get so emotional about a little book, right?

Genealogy Do-Over: Update to my Research Log

Posted on 27-Sep-2016 by Kathleen

genealogydoover

This series of posts is 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.

The last time you saw a glimpse of my Genealogy Research Log was in the post I made titled: More Prep Work. I’ve made some changes since that post. Once I was working through my immediate family members, I got a better feel for what works best for me.

Research Log - Log Tab — Research Log – Log Tab

It is the same basic things I had before, but it’s a little more compact. I went with less fields because I found myself not using the previous version. That defeated the purpose all together, so I sat down and made something that I knew I would use regularly. All the vital things are in there and with my current digital filing system, I’m hoping I won’t miss those extra fields.

Using the filters feature, I can quickly find anything I need by person or type of record. I still analyze the documents in the log and have a citation for each record. The screenshot above shows what I see when I look on my second screen with the file open. There is only one field not visible and that is the “Proven” field.

Genealogy Research Log - Order Tab — Genealogy Research Log – Order Tab

Moving the list of records to find to my research log was a great idea. Its much more efficient in this file. It is right in line with my workflow. I am able to add something in right when I’m already elbow deep in my research. I very easily move from tab to tab from beginning to end. I think the only thing I would change is the order of the tabs. Moving Search Attempts to the beginning would make a lot of sense.

Genealogy Research Log - Plan Tab — Genealogy Research Log – Plan Tab

I’ve obscured the names in my Plan Tab for privacy sake but this little gem is the reason I’m able to know exactly where I’m at in my research. This really helps because I took a break after my brief hospital stay and I’m only just now looking at it again. This tab was born from my previous file that was my Research Plan/Goals. This is streamlined for me, so I can see at a glance what key facts I still need to look for. As a basic guideline, this really helps me and I can easily add to it if I chose to. This will fill in pretty quickly for my immediate family members but once I move on to earlier generations, it’s going to help so much!

Previous Posts in this Series:

Genealogy Do-Over Index

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Bibles Part 1

Posted on 22-Sep-2016 by Kathleen

thebibles

Welcome back to another post where I brag about my Great-Grandmother Llewellyn Thorward-Moore. Ha! Sorry, but I had to do it. As you all know, I’ve been doing my Genealogy Do-Over for the last few months. In the process of that, I’ve been revisiting all the wonderful things that were in what I’m calling “Llewellyn’s Boxes.” In those boxes were a bunch of bibles. Not all of them were Llewellyn’s and they don’t all have names in them, but I thought it would be cool to highlight one a week here on the blog.

The first one we’ll look at is what I will now refer to as the Dora Plume bible. Dora was the sister of my 2nd Great-Grandfather, Lewis Thorward, and the only daughter of George Thorward and Josephine Doremus. The Bible itself was actually in a box with the publisher’s name on it. You can see in the top left photo that it is an Oxford Text Bible. The top right image is the bible itself taken out of the box. The bottom left photo is the bible sitting in the box. Finally the bottom right photo is the goodies that were UNDER the bible. That’s right I said goodies! Can you imagine if I hadn’t of opened the box? If I had thought, oh its just another bible.

goodies

The collage above shows what was found underneath the bible. It clearly shows a name card for the Order of the Eastern Star. I know that Llewellyn was also a member of that organization. Three obituaries were found, George Thorward (Dora’s Father), Josephine Thorward (Dora’s mother), and Lewis Thorward (Dora’s brother). All of them died in the 1940s. I can’t be sure about the images but I’m leaning to think that the woman in the tintype is Josephine Thorward. I have a picture of Josephine’s mother also and I don’t think that is her. I will have to pull out the other photos I believe to be Josephine and compare them.

As for the boys, I know for a fact that they are not Dora’s brothers Frank and Lewis. I can spot Lewis in a line up with my eyes closed! Dora didn’t have any sons, she just had one daughter. That leaves the possibility of it being her husband, Leslie Plume, and one of his brothers. He had four of them that I know about. They were all quite a bit older than him, the closest in age being 16 years older than him. Those boys do seem to have an age gap between them. Looks like I will have to research how to distinguish time periods! 🙂

todorafromles

Here’s the last picture for this bible, in case you were wondering how I surmised it was Dora’s bible. I didn’t just guess because of the name card and obituaries, I promise! Gosh, I’ve always felt attached to this couple in my family tree and it makes me smile seeing this little note. Despite that attachment, the dates of death and place of burial for them are still a mystery to me. I’m going to be working extra hard to figure out that this time around. Back to business! The bible is in almost perfect condition. One of the ribbons is even still marking a page. There is no damage that I can see and no markings either. This is definitely one of my favorite heirlooms!

I can’t wait to show you all the next bible!

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging prompt at GeneaBloggers.com