Category: Family File Hijinks

Did I find Andrew Love’s birth record?

Posted on by Kathleen

Okay, I’m so behind this week, but I’m rolling with the punches. In my previous Love family posts, I talked about Martha’s birth record leading me to James. Then I talked about James’s birth record adding weight to a document I was hoping was Andrew Love’s birth record.

Above, you see the three children that I found birth records for in parish records. If you have your eagle eyes on, you’ll also notice that in all three records, they show “Andrew Love of Hoodsyard”. I took that and added in an estimated birth date from various records.

I had to scale the image town but this is the record I found for Andrew Love. There were two records in this parish for my time frame. Both Andrew Love, but one in 1805 and one in 1806. The one you see above is the one I think is the one I’m looking for. I’ll tell you the reasons why.

  1. Hoodsyard is mentioned as the birthplace.
  2. Robert and Jean are the parents. Andrew used both those names with his children.
  3. The other record used the names Hugh and Janet. I have none of those names throughout my Love family tree.
  4. The other record didn’t mention Hoodsyard.

So while, neither of the last two reasons are concrete reasons to dismiss the 1805 record, the first two outweigh the last two in my mind.

Looking at the Original Pays Off

Posted on by Kathleen

Have you ever made tons of progress in the indexed database from Ancestry.com or FamilySearch? I have! It always makes me feel so accomplished.

One of the things you have to remember about these indexes is this. It’s not the original. I’m no expert but I have learned this. Nothing is like seeing the original document. The best of circumstances would be in person but because of logistics, this is not always possible.

With the advances in technology, we’re definitely making progress though! I decided to go ahead and purchase some credits from Scotlands People the other day. I bought enough to really have some fun. I ended up getting the images for almost all of the children of Andrew Love and Agnes Hamilton, some of the Menzies family. I even ordered a copy of John Menzies and Jane Ferris‘ marriage record before I realized I could just use a credit and print out the record. Oh well!

In the index on FamilySearch, I would have been lucky to have had the parents names indexed. Then I would have been even luckier if both the birth and baptismal dates were recorded. If only one was recorded I would have been left wondering which date it was, baptismal or birth.

Love > Martha, Eldest Daughter and Third Child of Andrew Love, Hoodsyard and of Agnes Hamilton, his spouse. Born 29 July. Baptized 28th August. ((Beith Parish (Ayrshire, Scotland). Old Parish Registers, OPR 581/3, Martha Love birth (1831); New Register House, Edinburgh.))

I learned a lot just from that simple little blurb written in an old parish book. First of all… I thought Martha was Andrew and Agnes‘ second child. Oops. Luckily, I fixed that lickity split while I was already on Scotlands People. Second, there was another Love birth recorded a few records up the page. However, it wasn’t Andrew and Agnes‘ child. So now I can try and see if that was a family connection to Andrew.

There’s only one problem after all this wonderful progress. I used all my viewing credits in one day. Oops! That’s alright, that gives me time to analyze what I’ve recently learned!

How I found William Moore in 1875

Posted on by Kathleen

After looking over my timeline of William H Moore, I became determined to check Brooklyn in the 1875 New York State Census. For me, finding William in 1875 would be a big help. This way I would be able to tell whether he had made it back from Chicago yet. I didn’t like having that huge gap between 1871 and 1880.

The first thing I did was check the Brooklyn city directory for 1875. I figured if I could find William at one of his usual addresses, then my job would be that much easier!

Analysis:

  1. There are two William H Moores in the directory. One is a basketmaker and the other a carpenter. The carpenter makes me happy, but I don’t recognize the address, so it’s going down as my first possibility.
  2. There are 3 other carpenters that are just listed as William Moore. I’ve added them to the list under the other William H Moores. If I find the other two, and still haven’t found my William, then I’ll check them.

My next step was to plot the first William H Moore into Google Earth to see where exactly he was located in 1875. From there I can see how far he was from the later addresses I’ve documented for William’s family.

It might be a little hard to tell in the scaled down version, but Stockton Street is not far at all from William H Moore‘s 1880-1886 address.

My next step was to find out where to start. FamilySearch has the 1875 New York State Census, but not an index. There is a website that has a great list of the 1876 Election Districts of Brooklyn.

Now the hard part comes. I have a little clue in the fact that I have never found William H Moore in a Ward under 20. So I decided to start at the highest ward numbers and work my way backwards.

Ward 25, District 4, doesn’t exactly work. I used the polygon tool in Google Earth to see the area covered by each district. The red thumb tack is where the William H Moore in the city directory is located. With this, I know I can probably jump to another ward, and check to see if that’s a little closer to where I need to be.

So I looked around where I want to find William in the census, and tried to find a boundary street in the district listings that matched. I hit pay dirt in the 21st ward. All the districts in the 21st ward have boundary street combinations of Lafayette Avenue, Nostrand Ave, and Myrtle Avenue.

Jackpot! This is the 21st Ward, District 6. While it took a little while to plot the different districts. I was able to keep them plotted and turned off in Google Earth in case I needed to check them for the other William Moores.

As it turns out, I won’t need to because this is in fact my William on Stockton Street. So I’m now able to confirm another address for William between 1870 and 1880. I also know that his family made the trek between Chicago and Brooklyn sometime between 1871 and 1875. Despite what it says on the census, the three boys were all born in Illinois.

So this is how I found my William H Moore in 1875 without an index to search!

When do you stop?

Posted on by Kathleen

I have a situation that has recently come up. You see, when I was rebuilding my father’s side of the family tree, I didn’t have the problem I’m about to explain.

I’ve finally made my way past the Mays line of my family tree, and now I’m onto the Slusher line. Funny thing is that 3 Slusher siblings married into the Mays family, so technically I’m still researching Mays’. Of the 10 Slusher children you see above, I’ve already researched 3 of them. Well technically two, because I couldn’t find the paper trail for the third. I’ve probably spent the past month going on down the Quesinberry line of the Slusher family. Technically I’m not related to the Quesinberrys. Oliver Quesinberry married Mahala Slusher, but I’m not descended through Mahala. I am descended through her sister Celia.

For some all this work on the Quesinberrys could be a waste of valuable research time. However, in rural Kentucky, it’s actually not. A lot of the times families in rural Kentucky had 10-15+ children. However, this is rural territory. A lot of times you have siblings of your ancestors marrying the siblings of their in-laws. I hope that made sense. It’s why I have 3 Slushers marrying 3 Mays‘. For me, anytime I run across Slusher, Mays, Click, Adkins, Whitt, or Crisp, I just go ahead and document everything I can about the siblings. Sometimes, when you’re in the midst of all these people, it’s hard to resist just adding everyone.

In my original family file, which was a combination of my Grandma’s copy of the family tree and online trees, I made the mistake of getting TOO carried away when it came to documenting the in-laws of my family tree. I haven’t done that this time yet. So far, I document the parent names of the person marrying into the family and most times I will also go ahead and add their siblings into the tree, it depends on how I’m feeling. I however, do not research the siblings in that case. I’m only researching the siblings of my blood relations. This rule gets thrown out for me if I run across a lot of people with the same surname marrying in. Then that surname gets bumped up on my priority list.

Of course, sometimes this gets me into trouble. Like today. I’ll admit to getting a little bored with the Quesinberry family. Not because they weren’t interesting, just that there were so many of them! Lawson Quesinberry‘s first wife gave birth to 16 children! Oy!

However, searching through newspapers has been an eye opener. A lot of the Quesinberry’s were LDS Church members. So when they were in the paper, they were IN the paper with full histories. It was glorious! Today I ran across the above article about Alfred Quesinberry. At first I wasn’t sure if it was Alfred, but after putting a few different clues together, I’m pretty sure it is. Most especially the Hunnewell, Greenup County, Kentucky reference. Alfred’s brother, Farris, spent a lot of years in that area at the same time. Farris‘s first marriage didn’t work out as well either.

After trying to find out the outcome of the bigamy debacle, I decided to do something a little more productive for the moment. I looked up the young son that is mentioned in the article. I found him in the Kentucky Birth Index and then was able to find another interesting bit on him.

 Despite all the other wonderful information, I notice that it mention his parents Mr. and Mrs. Frank Newman. Yes, Pearl Griffith Quesinberry Sharp decided to give marriage another go, this time with Frank Newman. I found the couple in the 1930 census in Ashland, Kentucky. I even found another marriage record for Alfred Quesinberry in West Virginia.

What I did not find however, is Charles or Alfred in 1930! Where on earth are they? Do you see the wonderful mysteries and adventures you can find when you go on down the side branches of your family tree?

Working Hard, or Hardly Working?

Posted on by Kathleen
Screen shot of my double monitor multi-tasking

It’s rare when I’m only doing one thing while on the computer. It’s impossible for me to sit still and just do one thing. I’ve been a little tired of following some of my collateral lines on down the tree, so I decided to start working on getting my files synced again. I was supposed to do this as I went, but eventually it proved to be too much for me. So I just concentrated on my FTM file since that’s what I’m most comfortable with.

The good news is that I’m making progress while I watch the UK version of Who Do You Think You Are? from the beginning… again.

The bad news, I think I’m going to change the way I enter my census citations in FTM. It was a question of when and not if I’d change something in the new, improved file. As I looked through some printed source reports, I didn’t like how the census sources were showing up. So I’m going to change it up a bit as I “sync” my files. As I go through this, I sometimes wonder why I don’t just fix the Original family file I had instead of continuously changing the new one. However, I’m getting so close to being done with the new file, so I’m just forging ahead and not letting myself think that way. It’s hard to stay with it when the Mays/Slusher/Click/Whitt families had 10-15 children and then those children had 10-15 children. It ends up being a very long, tedious process. I keep telling myself it’ll be worth it in the end though!

It’ll be nice to have a file that is correct, and that I know where the information came from. Once that’s done it’ll be time to start planning research trips! If only I lived closer to where my ancestors lived it would be day trips and not hoping for time during the summer!