Love

Things I’ve Learned

Posted on 01-Sep-2010 by Kathleen

I am halfway through a 7 day free trial with Footnote.com. I’m trying to make the most of the collections that aren’t free since I can’t afford right now to have a second subscription website. These are the things I’ve learned so far:

City Directories aka The reason I get up early every morning this week.

William Wallace Love was not still living in Newark at the time of his wife’s death in 1890. They had to have moved to Roseland at the time.
I have listings for William W Love, grocer, for 1875 through 1884.
Some years there is a listing for Love Bros grocery. There was never an ad, but that would have been interesting!
William H Moore was not listed in Brooklyn in 1865. His daughter is born in New York in 1865, so they must have lived in another borough before their move to Chicago.
William H Moore has always been very consistent with the use of his middle initial. This is made funnier because I know how insistent my Dad is on using his. They wouldn’t have to do that if they’d stop naming their boys William! 🙂
William H Moore lived at 56 Foster for the majority of his time in Chicago, which was from 1866 to 1870.
I couldn’t find a listing for him in 1871 Chicago. This could be why Cook County couldn’t find a birth record for Robert James Moore in 1871. Maybe they moved out of the city? I’m going to try lining up his location with the Chicago fire and see if he would have been effected, though now I see he might have already left Chicago.

learning-01 — William H Moore, 1869. Chicago.

Military Records

I was able to find out what happened to Marguerite Wambough’s husband, Lt. Frank A Greene. I found a newspaper article on him and talk about it in this post.
I was able to get a much clearer copy of Bartholomew Taylor’s Revolutionary War Pension Request, which I transcribed here.

learning-02 — 1st Lt Arnold Mullins account of Lt Frank A Greene being shot down

learning-03 — Batholomew Taylor Rev War Pension Request

Surname Saturday: Love

Posted on 24-Jul-2010 by Kathleen

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.

Andrew Love, born Feb 1832, Scotland; married Ellen Lessler
Thomas H Love, born 15 Feb 1838, Paisley Abbey, Renfrewshire, Scotland; married Christina
Jean Love, born 29 Jan 1841, Paisley Abbey, Renfrewshire, Scotland
Agnes Love, born about 1844, Scotland
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!

Found You Alfred!

Posted on 13-Jul-2010 by Kathleen

I love the Love family. When I first found that the Loves were such a big part of my tree, I always thought it would be easy to research these guys! Boy was I wrong. In my naive beginnings, I couldn’t think of a better name to research than Love. How unique a name that is! Then reality set in. Reality in the form of Lone. Lore. Long. Lane. Lare. Lave. Luff. You get the picture. There are a million different ways you can incorrectly transcribe Love. I don’t blame the transcribers though, because they’re trying to make sense of something a hundred years old. How are they to know the name is actually Love?

lovefamily-01 — Love-Menzies Family Outline

Alfred Love has always been a mystery to me. He was there in 1880 with his parents. Then he was gone. My Great-Grandmother Llewellyn put together a list of her mother’s siblings and parents (see above). This gives me Alfred’s birth and death date. So I know from that he didn’t die until 1913. So why can’t I find him in 1900 or 1910? I don’t know. With the big task of verifying my mother’s family tree, I sometimes get into the habit of taking a break from my Dad’s side which is all new territory, and I try and verify my Mom’s side. It breaks up the frustration level for me on his side and the monotony on hers. So I didn’t think about looking for Alfred to be honest. I knew I would get back to it.

I broke that habit recently. In cleaning up my family file, I’ve come quite tenacious at finding people in the Census records. It’s the main tool I have from my house, and until I am able to make trips to other states, the computer is my only tool. So I set about finding Alfred. The only problem was, I kept coming up blank. I tried all the variations of search I like. Just a first name in the county I’m searching. Just a last name soundex search, just the birth date, just the mother/father name. Heck, I even did a page by page of most of Essex County, New Jersey. That was quite an accomplishment and my eyes still hate me. No Alfred though.

For some reason I got the brilliant idea to check on Llewellyn’s old Diner Tree for inspiration. That’s when the brick wall came tumbling down… then my telephone rang and I had to walk away from it for an hour. Can you imagine how frustrated I got! I’m pretty used to stopping things and going on the fly. I’ve been known to pause a video or even leave up a program entry screen for hours at a time. I’m sure if I’m blessed with children someday this will be a very valuable skill to have.

As you can see from the Diner Tree above, Alfred has a couple of names listed under him. The way it reads is Alfred had a daughter Viola, and Viola had a daughter Marilyn. This is funny because Alfred’s brother also had a grand-daughter named Marilyn. There has to be some significance to that name for the family. Viola has to be another one now that I’m thinking about it. None of that matters right now though. What does matter is that I now have another search to plug into the 1910 census. So I plugged in only the name Viola in Essex County, New Jersey. Nothing. That’s when I went for broke and said to myself, “Why not just try all of New Jersey?” So that’s what I did.

Alfred Love and family, 1910

Goodbye brickwall, been nice knowing you. Turns out Alfred’s name got all kinds of bungled in the transcription process. Which wouldn’t have mattered, if I had done a wider search of New Jersey. Alfred was living in Ramsey, Bergen County, New Jersey with his wife, Mary, and daughter, Viola. Funny part about this is that Alfred’s sister is living a couple of streets over with her husband and children. Oh and did I mention Alfred is working with her husband on the Railroad. I’m telling you, sometimes it’s right there in front of your face. Next time I find a family in the census, I’m going page by page through the whole district and I’m taking notes on familiar names. It’ll save me time later. Consider that my lesson learned.

Tombstone Tuesday: Love

Posted on 13-Jul-2010 by Kathleen

If I can get enough time this week, I will be doing a Surname Saturday post on the Loves this weekend. This would be the tombstone of William Wallace Love and his son Percy Everett Love. Thanks to Great-Grandma Llewellyn’s Diner Tree, William is no longer my first known Love. I’ve got droves of them now. I’m working on adding more of them to the website today, then tonight, more design work on the new and improved design!

Tombstone Tuesday is a daily blogging theme of GeneaBloggers.

Part 2: I love this lady

Posted on 14-Jun-2010 by Kathleen

The more I research my Great Grandmother, the sadder I get that I didn’t get to meet her. Everyday her personality and character unlocks itself a bit more. This is Part 2 to yesterday’s find. If you haven’t seen that post, maybe you should take a peek at just the basics.

We’ll start off with where we started yesterday, except we’ll look at the dark colored book instead of the paper.

Turns out that my Great Grandparents were so perfect for each other because of their meticulous record keeping!

On first look, it’s impossible not to start calculating the names and relations. Mr & Mrs Joseph Schroeder would have been Llewellyn’s sister-in-law and her husband.

Mr & Mrs William Moore would be the Uncle of William (Llewellyn’s husband for the new readers). If you excuse me, I’ve just found out that William was living in Belleville, New Jersey and not Brooklyn. That would explain why I can’t find his family in the 1930 census. I’ve got to go check that out…

Oh boy, this page is a doozy! The Loves, Leonards, Wambaugh’s are all Llewellyn’s Aunts and Uncles through her mother, Jennie Love.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the best part of this find is the addresses listed for each person. Some of these people I couldn’t find for whatever reason. There are so many hidden family members in this book, I can already tell.

Oh look, it’s the extra Loves from yesterday! With these addresses, I’m going to research these guys backwards and see how they fit into the Love tree! So much progress in one Sunday afternoon, I could get used to this!