Category: Genealogy Hoarding

Treasure Chest Thursday: Marriage Records

Posted on by Kathleen

Marriage Certificate of Clifford and Jane Redford

In my eyes, marriage records are a beautiful thing. I could say it’s beautiful to know a couple started their life together. That’s very true. However, my favorite part of marriage records is that they have maiden names and parent names for the women. One of my oldest and most often gripes is trying to figure out where the girls in the family disappeared to, or where they came from. It’s a common one among all genealogists.

This particular marriage record really opened up doors in my research. The biggest one being Jane’s last name. We knew it was Parkins/Perkins something. This verified for me that it was in fact Parkin. The great thing about this is it even went a step further and gave me her parents names. I’m not always so lucky to get all these facts. In fact, I was hesitant about this record when I got it because my Aunt had told me she always understood that Jane led a hard life and was orphaned young. That is all true. So I was worried that the information on her parents wouldn’t be known at the time of her wedding. From this record, I was even able to find that Jane and her siblings may have been orphaned and they did bounce around a lot, but it was always to other family members. I can’t speak for what happened in those households, but at least the family names were kept in memory so that I could find them today.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers that I occasionally participate in.

Goodbye Brickwall, hopefully

Posted on by Kathleen
Marriage Record for Robert J Moore and Mary E Johnson

It came yesterday! Well technically it came on Saturday. We usually get Saturday’s mail when we’re out getting Sunday’s paper. It’s just the way we work it. I can’t believe this baby was in the mailbox all night and I didn’t know it! I ordered this record online on August 1st. I was prepared to wait 4 to 6 weeks like normal. I can’t believe it’s already here.

I have to move past that though and actually look at the record. It was two pages. In fact I was very familiar with the format of it because I’ve been transcribing some marriage records like this for FamilySearch indexing in my spare time. The first page was a bit harder to read but it does give me a few things. It gives me the marriage date of 23 Apr 1896. So now I know that Robert married just 6 months before his mother passed away. It also gives the witness to wedding, one Sarah T Adams. Since the person marrying Robert and Mary was named J S Adams, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say Sarah was his wife.

Now onto the page pictured on the left. The address of 1845 Broadway is actually new. I hadn’t seen that one. Looking it up on Google though, it’s not out of the circle that the Moores lived in during their time in Brooklyn and it’s almost right next to the cemetery where they would bury Robert’s mother in 6 months. Robert’s occupation as an Insurance Agent is nothing new to me. He definitely did that for awhile. Father was William H Moore. Still all good information. Oh wait, there it is. Mother’s Maiden Name. I won’t keep this from you. When it comes to finding out this woman’s maiden name I have the worst luck in the world. When I got the record out of the envelope, I was so scared to even look for this section. Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t blank! It’s always blank! Not this time though. Looks like her maiden name was Starret. I could be wrong but it’s definitely a starting point!

Now lets move onto Mary E Johnson. The only things I’d known about her was what was listed on censuses and William’s (her son) birth certificate. The residence of 196 Macon Street, Brooklyn definitely gives me a starting point for her. Imagine looking for Mary E Johnson in Brooklyn, with parents born in Ireland. Now we move down the record to her parents. Oh! Oh! I’m just going to cry now, both her parents are listed. Arthur Johnson as her father and Annie Moffot (?) as her mother! Of course, if anyone has better ideas for the mother’s name, just let me know. I’m open to discussion.

I did a quick search of Arthur Johnson with a wife Annie. Believe it or not, the best matches came to a family living in Babylon, New York in 1870 and 1880. I want to look in the New York State Censuses before I rush to judgement though. I especially want to look in the 1892 one. That would be 4 years before this marriage, so I would imagine that would be my best chance of  a good match!

Surname Saturday: Love

Posted on by Kathleen

LOVE

The LOVE family name originates in Scotland. They are a sept of the Clan MacKinnon. A sept is an English word for a division of a family, especially a division of a clan. [1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sept] There is a section of my Clans and Families of Scotland book dedicated to Clan MacKinnon. I will just hit a few points for you:

1. Clan Motto: Audentes fortuna juvat (Gaelic: Fortune favours the bold)
2. Clan Slogan: Cuimhnich bás Ailpein (Gaelic: Remember the death of Alpin)
3. The MacKinnons are a branch of Clan Alpin and claim descent from the great-grandson of Alpin, King of Scots.
4. The Clan fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

My Love Branch

Unfortunately, I haven’t found connections back to the actual clan yet. My first Love ancestor is Andrew Love (born: abt 1803). My first record of him is when he marries Agnes Hamilton in Kilmarnock, Scotland in 1828. I haven’t viewed this record myself yet. Their names do match up with the ‘Diner Tree’ I’ve been working on, so I’m just piecing things together until I can get the Microfilms ordered and start collecting the actual birth records. So on a scale of 0-3, 3 being very reliable; I would mark this as a 1. It could really go either way for this record.

My next records are the birth of their children Thomas and Jean Love. Their births are recorded at Paisley Abbey, Scotland. They however are the same reliability factor as the marriage record. So I documented these dates and am using them as a guideline. Andrew and Agnes had five children that I know about.

  1. Andrew Love, born Feb 1832, Scotland; married Ellen Lessler
  2. Thomas H Love, born 15 Feb 1838, Paisley Abbey, Renfrewshire, Scotland; married Christina
  3. Jean Love, born 29 Jan 1841, Paisley Abbey, Renfrewshire, Scotland
  4. Agnes Love, born about 1844, Scotland
  5. William Wallace Love, 16 Feb 1846, Scotland (my 3rd Great-Grandfather); married Jennie Menzies

The family first shows up in America on July 3, 1854 when their ship arrives at New York from Glasgow. Missing from the voyage is the oldest child, Andrew. He was already in New York at this time having immigrated one year prior. What struck me with this is Thomas’ occupation being listed as ‘Grocer’. The Love family will be in the Grocery business for many generations starting from here. After arriving in America, Andrew and his brood will live with his oldest son Andrew in New York City at least until the 1860 United States Census. After 1860 everyone in the family starts migrating to New Jersey.

Andrew and Agnes lived in the Plainfield area of Union County, New Jersey until their deaths. Agnes in 1885 and Andrew in 1889. [2. Records of Births, Marriages, and Deaths of New Jersey, 1848-1900] Their eldest son Andrew would marry Ellen Lessler and they’d have 5 chidren of their own. Their eldest Andrew R Love, was born in New York in 1860. Their next two, James and Margaret, were born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Their youngest two children, Robert and Jennie, were born in New Jersey where the family finally settled in North Plainfield, Somerset County, New Jersey.

Andrew and Agnes’ son Thomas lived in New York until at least 1874, where his fifth child is born. His family would then settle in Westfield, Union County, New Jersey.I have no information on Andrew and Agnes’ daughters after they arrived in America. Jean/Jane disappears before the 1860 census and Agnes after it. Most likely they got married, I just haven’t found a record of marriage for them yet.

Andrew and Agnes’ youngest child, William Wallace Love, is my 3rd Great Grandfather. He was born 16 Feb 1846 in Scotland. He married Jennie Menzies in 1867, and they would have 11 children. Jennie Menzies-Love would die 17 Sep 1890 under suspicious circumstances. The story and family legend goes that they were both drunk and arguing when it went too far. No one knows how but Jennie ended up at the bottom of the stairs, dead. I’ve been told by another descendant that there are a bunch of newspaper articles chronicling the subsequent trial and acquittal of William Wallace Love. I haven’t found any of these articles yet, but I’m probably just not looking in the right papers. If it’s out there I’ll find it. Until then, this remains a family legend. William’s branch settled in Essex County, New Jersey with a few of them going to other places.

Here’s a map of the area the Loves settled in. As you can see, even though Plainfield and North Plainfield are in separate counties, they aren’t exactly far away from each other.

Love Family Links

  • Love Family Tag on Misadventures of a Genealogist blog.
  • Love Family in my website database, 39 and counting! I’ll be making sure all my documents are uploaded today.

Things I Wonder About the Loves

  • Where did Jean and Agnes go? Did they also settle in New Jersey near their family?
  • Were Kilmarnock and Paisley Abbey the family’s origin or were they just stopping points along the way to America?

What are my next steps?

  • Of course my first step is obtaining birth records for William Wallace Love’s children.
  • My second step is to find the marriage record for William W Love and Jennie Menzies.
  • I really want to find the Newspaper Article chronicling the supposed trial. I think it happened in Essex County, NJ, but my contact says it made it to the major New York papers. We’ll see when I go to the library and search Newspaper Archive.
  • I want to verify that Andrew and Agnes are in fact William’s parents. Tenuous census records do not make a solid connection, so if I can find his death certificate to confirm his parents, that’d be ace.
  • I’d like to get back in contact with my Love relations. There were all descended from different children of William and Jennie and it’d be interesting to see what new stuff they’ve found!

Menzies Leaps and Bounds

Posted on by Kathleen

I’ve made some great advances in researching the Menzies line of my family! I’m very excited about what I’ve found. This adventure started when I decided to sign up for a 7 day free trial of World Vital Records. I thought maybe this would be a cheaper way of being able to access the UK records I’ve been holding off on. Well, after a few hours of trying to get some of the image viewers to work, I just went ahead and upgraded my Ancestry.com membership. Even if I only have the World Membership for one year it’ll be worth it to me! I’m still going to check out World Vital Records for the rest of my trial, but I’m just more comfortable with the Ancestry format. I’ll probably do an entry on navigating World Vital Records at the beginning of next week to test it out some more.

Once I upgraded my Ancestry, It was like being let loose! I went right to work. If you’ve been reading for awhile you’ve seen a small amount of progress being made on the Menzies front. You can read that progress by clicking the Menzies tag in the sidebar, or you can just take a quick peek at the more informative entry: Menzies Mysteries. That entry will show you that I’ve found where the Menzies immigrated to America in 1854. They briefly stayed with son (presumably), Alexander, who had already immigrated and set himself up as a ‘Druggist.’

My first find was in the 1851 England Census. With the Menzies immigrating in 1854, this census should be a great start for me to continue “across the pond.”

I found the family (you can click the image for a full size view if you’d like) in Liverpool, England. That is the exact city they sailed from in 1854. From this census, I learned an awful lot. First thing is that John was a Sawyer before leaving England. I don’t know if he picked the profession back up in America, because I haven’t found him beyond the 1860 American Census. What I like about this is that it confirms for me that Alexander is in fact John and Jane’s son. Here he is listed as 21 years of age and an Apprentice Chemist & Druggist. This information lines up perfectly with his 1860 New York information for both age and occupation. This census also confirms the “brother James” mentioned in a letter William wrote to his ‘Dear Sister Jean’. Having such great luck on this level, I decided to test my luck and go for the 1841 census. The family should still be living in Liverpool if the children’s birthplaces here are to be believed.

Once again, I got really lucky! Here are all my usual suspects, except I have a few extras. Margaret was present when the family sailed to America. However she wasn’t listed with the family in 1851. I’ll have to try and figure out if she was married before going to America. If she did that’ll make a possible 3 marriages for her! Helen, aged 10 is a great find for me. In the letter from William he talks quite about about Sister Ellen and her troubles, including her husband Charlie being away when their little son passed away. Charlotte, aged 4, is a mystery to me. This is the first I’ve heard of her. I’ll have to see if she married young, or unfortunately passed away young. Either way something happened to her. She wasn’t mentioned in William’s letter, so I’m assuming she passed away because she didn’t sail with the family to America.

Overall, I think finding these census records makes me fall in love with the letters passed down through the family. Being able to prove these people in the letters actually exist is a great triumph for me. I think I’ll be talking about it for a long time yet!

Treasure Chest Thursday: Wamboughs

Posted on by Kathleen

This is one of my treasures. This is a piece of music written by John and Tony Wambough. They are related to me through the Loves. John’s mother Agnes Love was sister to my Great-Great Grandmother Jennie Love-Thorward. Even though it’s not a direct relation, this is probably where my sister gets her musical talent. She played in band all through high school, and she could pick up any instrument you threw at her. I know she dabbled in writing her own music, so I can’t wait to show her that someone in the family actually did!

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers.