This is the tombstone of my mom’s brother. He passed away when he was just 2 years old. He left a big impact in the family. Until her dying day, my grandmother was still mourning for the little boy she lost so early in life. I always found it kind of surreal that both of my parents lost brothers so young.
Tombstone Tuesday is a daily blogging topic from GeneaBloggers.
This is my first Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post! This is a prompt put forth by Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings. I thought this one would be particularly fun since a lot of my Mays relatives had a great many children.
I didn’t need to go far to find one of the most prolific fathers in my tree. There may be one with more children, but they aren’t confirmed by me yet.
The children count for William’s children may be subject to change. I haven’t finished researching them all yet.
born: About 1813, Kentucky
As I stated by Jane’s information this family confuses me too much on the census. The children’s information is always fluctuating. Rebecca has been known to jump around in age by 10 years. I really don’t like to base anything for the Mays’ on any census information if I don’t have to. As you can see they were VERY prolific. It wasn’t just William. His brother Nathan also had 16 or so children. I can’t be sure of Nathan’s though because he was taking care of grandchildren by time the 1880 census came along, so I got very confused about who were children and who were grandchildren. Eventually I’ll sort it all out. They really could have helped out by varying the names of their children but all the Mays’ rotated the same 20 names or so. With each one having children numbering in the teens, well you can see how it would get confusing!
William and Anna Mays household, 1860.
This is the 1880 census image I’ve been working on for quite a bit. Not that I don’t know who everyone is or where they go. I do indeed know all of them. It’s just that because I am re-verifying information, I sometimes come back to this page.
As many times as I’ve looked at this image, and seen all the Mays families next to each other, there is something I’ve always missed. Family number 115 there. Morgan Carter. He’s right there smack dab in the middle of a Mays family sandwich. That sandwich includes the Gillam family at the top by the way. It just so happens that family contains Random Relative #1189, Dorothy/Dorthula? Gillium. So that’s why I’m once again back to this image. However, now I’m distracted by Mr. Carter there.
What are the odds that he’s just a random neighbor sandwiched between all those Mays folks. Sure since Anna is the patriarch of the family and the others are offshoots of her family, it’s possible that when they moved off Anna’s farm, they bought land nearby or from her even. (Kentucky, I need a genealogy trip to you like a need an Eggo Blueberry Waffle). I checked the 1870 and 1860 censuses. He’s not next door to Anna in 1870 but he is in 1860. Weird that it would work out that way but I guess it just depends on which direction the enumerator was going.
I watched a free webinar on Ancestry that I’ll talk about in an upcoming entry. It was talking about cluster genealogy. It wasn’t until I watched that video that I realized I practice it all the time. I didn’t put it into practice because of a brick wall or unending mystery. I put it into practice because of families like this. In my Kentucky and Ohio families, it’s more often then not that I find whole pages of ancestors in the census instead of just one family in a town. It’s such a contrast to my Dad’s family where I look for one family in Brooklyn and I’m lucky if I find them.
So I imagine I’ll end up back here at Morgan Carter eventually. Carter is a surname in my tree in relation to this area. I just haven’t traced it this far back yet, or in some cases this far forward. It’s a surprise to me that I ever get anywhere in my research with how often I change directions!
I’m headed to Ohio for the weekend, a wedding, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to update Monday. I have tons to update though. Once I get on a roll I can’t seem to stop. ^.^
In this post, I showed you a quick peek at the start of my photo retouching project. It’s one of the only photos we have of my mother’s father. He died when my mother was pregnant with my older brother. So not many of his grandchildren ever really “met” him. A few were babies, I think. They might have all been in the womb still. I’d have to check my records, and I don’t have time for that right now. :p
L) Before | R) After
This is where my project stands right now. I don’t know if I’ll be able to save much more, but it’s certainly been worth the effort!
I’ve posted twice already (01, 02) about trying to figure out about William and Anna Mays’ children. I’d link you to the main site, but I cleared it out so I could sync the ID numbers with my “Random Relative Project“. The last I researched this family, I was trying to figure out where some of the children came from and where the others went. I’m pretty sure the last I looked Anna Z Mays was up in the air because I couldn’t figure out who she married, and then I found someone matching her age, but with her younger sister’s name (Ellen). So I was thoroughly confused.
Today, I was trying to log in one of my Random Relatives in the 1880 census and low and behold, I was back to Anna Mays’ household in 1880. They were living almost next door to my Random Relative. So I decided to let myself get distracted and I was finally going to track down those grandchildren living with Anna.
The first one, James, was fairly easy because I noticed that I had Rebecca listed as having a son. I have him listed as James H Mays, born Oct 1864. I have his death certificate so his birthdate and parents are correct. Well, as correct as they’ll ever get. So he fits. Easy as pie.
The next grandchild, Willis, aged 2 was a little bit trickier. My mistake was assuming that because because they are listed with the Mays surname that they were children of one of Anna’s sons. For some reason I forgot that the Mays girls had quite a few illegitimate children. My next step was going to the Kentucky Birth Records, 1852-1910. It was spacey record keeping and the records are even spacier, but it was worth a shot.
You may not be able to see it because of the size but that shows Willis Maise born 22 Aug 1878. Parents are Jacson Conn and Anna Z Maise. Maise/Maize is a very common spelling for the Mays family of Kentucky in the old records. If this was just an index I probably wouldn’t even have looked through this as I’m becoming very careful about my sources (My momma would be proud! I should tell her ^.^) This has images to back things up though, so I can confirm details instead of relying on a transcriber who sometimes gets things wrong. I know how tough that job is so you won’t see me complaining!
Wow, okay, that wasn’t so bad either. Though the Conn last name brought me up short because Anna’s little sister Ellen married Hansford Conn in 1878. That doesn’t surprise me though because the Mays clan married like that a lot. Several siblings ended up marrying siblings. If that makes sense.
My next step was trying to find a Jackson Conn in Elliott County in the 1870 and 1880 census. Just to see if there was one close. Another tip I had was that the father’s birthplace was given as Virginia.
There was exactly one Jackson Conn living anywhere in Elliott County in 1870… and he was married. Yikes. Let’s look at 1880.
Still married in 1880, but looks like a different wife. I’m starting to think there’s a scandal here. Of course it’s nothing I can prove and who says the name was written correctly. So we’ll have to see where that takes us, but I at least feel safe in listing Willis as the son of Anna Z Mays. Now I just have to figure out the other two grand children. I’m going to “assume” for now (because I’m not researching them today), that at least the 8 month baby girl’s mother is another of the girls who is living with their mother. We just have to figure out which one. I’ll have to see if that year’s birth pages made it online.
