Tag: Moore

Treasure Chest Thursday: Cemetery Deeds

Posted on by Kathleen

If you told me 10 years ago that I would come to look at pieces of paper as treasure, I would have thought you were crazy! Sure I was curious about all this family tree stuff then, but not to the extent I am now. Reflecting on the great experience I had a few years ago, I decided I was going to do another Find a Grave photo request. However, I didn’t want to send someone into a Brooklyn cemetery blind. I knew I had the deed somewhere, which will give the plot number. It’s the least I could do, right?

In my quest for the Brooklyn Cemetery Deed, I found the one for Prospect Hill Cemtery in Caldwell, New Jersey.

Right next to the Prospect Hill deed was a big, thick envelope for The Evergreens in Brooklyn. In it was this transferred deed from William H Moore to his daughter Mary J Moore. William H Moore being the first Moore I know of in America.

Along with the original deed. What comes next is the great part apart researching my Dad’s family. My Great-Grandparents were probably the best record keepers in the world.

There is a remembrance card for Robert J Moore, Jr; William L Moore’s brother.

There is numerous correspondence between William L Moore and Chester Schmaeling. They were discussing the care and payment for the cemetery in Brooklyn. Chester being the brother of Gertrude, who married William L Moore‘s brother Robert J Moore, Jr.

There is a newspaper clip for a pilot who went missing during WWII. At first it’s unclear on why this is thrown into the mix.

Then I read that it was actually Marguerite Wambaugh’s (she’s Llewellyn’s cousin) husband. I’m going to have to research this further, because I don’t know if he ever made it home or not!

There is a big packet of papers pertaining to the Brooklyn plots. Including a funeral card for Marion Moore-Schroeder.

When I say that my Great-Grandfather was a very good record keeper, I wasn’t exaggerating at all. He was an accountant for AT&T. This was just what he did.

Always the accountant, William couldn’t help but figure out how exactly his money was being spent.

This is what I love. In this letter William inquires who all is buried in the cemetery plot in Brooklyn.

This is scribbled in pencil on the back of the deed. I’m unsure if this was done before William had a response from the cemetery. Maybe he was trying to figure it out for himself, or maybe he went to the cemetery and transcribed the tombstones. I can’t be sure.

I definitely don’t blame him though, because I wanted to know too! I called the cemetery and they gave us a count of 9 people and 8 plots. One of the people being a baby with no other information. The cemetery office said they couldn’t tell us over the phone anything other than the names of the people. We understood that, but this is the plot I’m going to see if someone can fill my photo request. I’m very curious about this cemetery. One day I will get to Brooklyn to visit it myself, but until then I hope this can give me something.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily blogging topic I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Treasure Chest Thursday simply create a post with the main focus being a family treasure, an heirloom or even an every-day item important to your family.

Tombstone Tuesday: Kindess

Posted on by Kathleen

This Tombstone Tuesday I’m going to share a tombstone picture and a story of kindness.

As I often complain about, I live in Maryland while many of my roots are in other states. Due to limited means, I can’t really travel. So getting to cemeteries where my relatives actually are is very difficult. That’s why I love the Find a Grave website so much. They have Photo Volunteers on there. I am now one of them, but I haven’t been fast enough to fulfill a request yet! Anyway, I sent out a photo request for some tombstones that I had been to before in my Dad’s hometown, but didn’t have a camera at the time. What I got in return for one photo request was an amazing experience.

I didn’t know at the time how abundant our family was in that cemetery. I was just looking to get my Dad’s grandparents. I knew it would be awhile before I’d see New Jersey again. (I was right by the way. This was in December of 2007 and I still haven’t been there.) So I filled out the Request a Photo form, and I waited. It wasn’t very long before someone “claimed” my request. The hardest part of anything to me is the waiting. Whether it be for records by mail, photo requests, or in the line at Wal-Mart. I hate waiting. It was such a surprise when my request was filled so quickly. The request was filled by John. We actually emailed back and forth for a bit before he could get out to the cemetery. He had run by really quick to check the lay of the land but didn’t have his camera. He went to the office and got all the information from the stones for me to tide me over. It was such a kind gesture. He even saw that William L Moore was buried in a Thorward plot and when he caught sight of yet another Thorward plot, he noted down the names to check later. That’s when he found moore-mays.org and saw that they were all indeed my family.

Then the pictures started coming in…

William and Llewellyn Moore (My Great-Grandparents)

Jennie Love (Llewellyn’s mother)

Lewis Thorward (Llewellyn’s father)

He took pictures of everything in William’s plot.

Then when he’d done that he took pictures of all the other names he’d found on my website. I can’t even picture them all here. They include Thorward, Lindsley, and Bush family plots. To this day I still remember John and how nice he was to take these pictures for me. Even though we weren’t related he’d found a great sense of history through my family ties to Caldwell, New Jersey. Even getting excited to see the old building the Meat Market was housed in. In his own words, “I’ve driven past this building a hundred times. Never really noticed it until last week.” I don’t know if John still visits this site, but I hope he knows how much I appreciated all the help he gave me.

This is why I love genealogy and the people who make it possible.

Memorial Day

Posted on by Kathleen

I have indeed made it home from the quickest trip to Ohio in the world. I even managed to get some mountain driving practice in. I just wanted to take the time out to acknowledge our troops and all they’ve done for us. I was going to find a little flag graphic to post but then I remembered the plaque we got from Grandpa Moore when we took ownership of the van. So I figured why not. It’s a phone camera picture, so it isn’t great but it’s the subject that matters, not the quality. Also, feel free to ignore the mess of my desk. I am in coming home from a trip chaos.

I’m hoping next Memorial Day I can post a listing of a bunch of my ancestors who have served their country. There were definitely a lot of those.

Today I plan to do my usual Memorial Day routine, though because of the trip it might not be as productive. Memorial Day is usually my day to pop in my Band of Brothers DVDs and do genealogy all day long. I work best when I have things going on the TV that I don’t have to pay attention to because I’ve seen the good parts already. Usually I just keep everything off and enjoy the moment, but for Memorial Day/Veterans Day/D-Day, really just the military days, I like to add Band of Brothers into the mix.

Just for fun I’m going to throw in a picture of my father when he entered the United States Marine Corps.

So please enjoy the last day of the Holiday weekend and remember all our troops and their families have sacrificed. They are special people!

Backing away from the ledge…

Posted on by Kathleen

I am having an issue. As I jump into Genealogy blogging with both feet, I also need to remember my responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to correctly show and identify where my information comes from. So far, I haven’t posted anything that I would consider super factual or important. I take a very tongue in cheek, fluffy pajamas method of life. Trust me when I say that I do actually cite all my sources, and anything in my tree that isn’t cited, is not actual information to me. I do joke about things I haven’t “proven” yet, but I don’t actual dwell on those things.

I was reading some blogs today and it struck me that I might not actually come across as a serious person. I do take my family history very seriously, fluffy pajamas aside of course. My problem is that when I began to really delve into my research, I was 18 years old. So even though I have my sources cited, they aren’t cited correctly. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’m going through one person at a time, and I’m fixing my family tree. I do have the whole tree up on moore-mays.org and I’m fixing it as I go. If I were putting my tree up for the first time, I’d only put verified information in. The problem is when I was 18, I published it out there in the Ancestry.com world. It was a horrible thing to do but it is what it is. The reason I haven’t taken it down is that many people have emailed me over the years about that tree. Even if I were to delete it, it’s still in Ancestry.com’s database. I can’t get it deleted for the life of me. It was almost 8 years ago that I uploaded it there and they’ve changed formats so much that it’s a complicated process to remove it. This is the main reason I’m so hesitant to put another tree on Ancestry.com. I don’t like that people can just merge the trees and then that’s it. Your information is on someone else’s tree and they take it as 100% proven fact.

I’m hoping that when people cite my website address, it turns that accountability back to me. So this is the place people will always have to come to verify that information. I’m sure that won’t always happen. It makes me feel better to know that in case someone gets the information through another person, they can come to me and I can speak with them personally.

This is an example of something I cite as a source. My mother found this online and printed it out for me. However I have no idea where these people got their information. In fact, I don’t even list these in my family file because I don’t know if they are family.

Need I say anything? Sometimes it’s not good keeping these things around, but I do because of my previous bad experience. So now I have it in case a question ever comes up. It shouldn’t but just in case.

This however I will cite. I have an old cemetery deed for the Moore family plot in Brooklyn. We called the cemetery and verified who was buried there. So I will cite it, and then when I go to Brooklyn I will add the proper official citation. They could only verify who was there and not anything else, so I definitely need to get to Brooklyn!

This is murky ground. This along with my Webb-Taylor tree ARE cited in my tree. They are cited as Undocumented Family Records. These are the original “trees” my grandmother gave me. You can even see where she wrote in that Bartholomew Taylor was her great grandfather. These are the trees I’m currently going through and verifying with census and vital records. My problem is that now that I know more about citing sources, I see how badly I did it in the past. It makes me want to just delete all those horrible citations and start again! That’s why I need to back away from the ledge. Even if they are badly cited sources, they are still my only link to my sources. This is where my patience comes in. I don’t usually have patience, but for genealogy I have an unlimited supply. Who knew!

Favorite Things: Books, and more Books

Posted on by Kathleen

I’m sure you’re all familiar with what we genealogists go through to find our family history. I was putting together a blog about a Duggar-sized family in my family tree, then I realized that it was going to take me longer than this afternoon to finish. So maybe by Monday, I’ll have my facts and funny repertoire together enough to actually finish that post. Now I’m going to talk to you about another favorite thing of mine. It just happens to be books.

When I say books, I of course mean all books. I read just about anything you put in front of me and I’ll devour it in one sitting if my family would let me. It’s just one of those things I can’t live without. I happen to have a small collection of genealogy books that I’ve been meaning to sit down and go through one by one. Some I’ve looked at and read, but didn’t really utilize what I’d learned. That’s a crying shame too, because these books are pretty awesome.

This is one I’ve really got to finish reading. It was actually this book that inspired me to make the blog! The book tells you to sit down and decide what type of family history you are trying to write. Do you want a collection of pure facts? Were you suckered in by the fascinating, but not so well documented Roots? In the book there are 7 different types of family history genres they tell you to think about. When I thought about what type I would be interested in writing, I decided on number 5. It’s basically a Family History Memoir. Just the word memoir made me think how conceded I’d gotten, just by deciding to write a book! Who am I to have a memoir? Well, why shouldn’t I have a memoir! Thinking back to all the conversations I’ve ever had with relatives or even acquaintances I realized something big. More than the actual stories I was telling, I mostly enjoyed just sharing the experience. I also find that when I discuss the fun hi-jinks my research pushes me into, the people I am telling enjoy the story that much more. So that’s my goal for life. To write my Family History Memoir. I don’t know anything else about it, except I want to call it something that is a play on my last name. How can you have a last name like Moore and not use it for fun?

Oh how I wish I had the gusto and unlimited time to actually become an Accredited Genealogist. Someday I might even see about going back to school for History or even Family History. BYU offers that. I know because I looked. It’s just a thought. This book really outlines the process you should take if you are even thinking about becoming a professional genealogist. I know nothing about the professional side of things but I’m sure reading and following the advice in this book can’t hurt.

This book I have spent many an hour reading and pouring over the pages of pictures. If you know me, you know I have an unhealthy obsession with Ireland. If only my dream Irishman would come and sweep me off my feet already! In a close second to my Irish obsession is a love of all things Scottish. This is actually another one of the ‘coincidences’ that I don’t believe in. All my life I’ve been obsessed with Ireland, Scotland, and Brooklyn. Even before I knew where any of them (yes even Brooklyn) were on a map. When I started researching my Dad’s family, I found many ties to all the things I’d always loved and obsessed over. It’s scary sometimes with those ‘coincidences’!

This book feeds that love I have for all things Scotland. What I love about this book is it gives information about the clans in relation to Scottish historical events. I don’t know about you, but I certainly want to know when my ancestor’s clans were involved in history.

I won’t deny I got all kinds of excited to see Menzies in the book. Of course they were in the book as they are a clan, but for some reason I was worried I’d open it and they wouldn’t be there. I didn’t get a good picture of it, but it shows you all the different tartans of a lot of the clans. I was aware that there were different kinds of tartans for different reasons (Dress, War, Regular). What I wasn’t aware of was how different these tartans could look! It’s quite an experience to really delve deep into something you thought you understood.

Ahh, here are the MacKinnons! The Love family were a sept (basically another branch of the family) of the Clan MacKinnon. If you think I found that out, you’d be wrong. I did verify it later, but I actually learned that little nugget of information from my Aunt Lori. She was sitting on a bench in her hometown and a random stranger came up and gave her a family history lesson! That’s how we roll guys. Love it or hate it, we randomly collect relatives.

Yes please? I’d really love to break down my brick wall. William H. Moore left Ireland for America in the late 1850’s. He was a young man at the time, only a teenager if I have his age right. One day I will bridge that gap to Ireland, and then I will find an Irishman to sweep me off my feet. Sorry, it’s a sickness. It really is.

All joking aside, this book is going to be very helpful. This chart is great to show you how your Irish ancestors can be identified from Census information. Gosh do I love the Census. Thanks to the 1900 census I was able to find out William H Moore immigrated in 1857. Then in the 1910 census I discovered he was Naturalized in 1859. I really should start looking for that Naturalization record somewhere. I’ve been hoping to find his death record for a birth date though. It’s just the thought of finding William Moore, from Ireland, in Brooklyn… It doesn’t even need to be said, in fact I can’t even think about it right now. I was lucky to find him in all those census records so far!

This book is going to be so much fun to explore. In fact, if you don’t see me for 5 months it’s because I’ve devoured the book and my Irishman finally swept me off my feet.

Believe it or not this book was a gift. From my sister no less. I’m really proud that she would know that brick walls, burned courthouses, and those blasted same names (William Moore, William Mays, I’m looking at you), was something I would be in desperate need of. Maybe I’d actually have solved all those problems if I’d open this book! Why do I do that to my books?

Now this is just mean. All this time, I could have had organized research! The truth is, I read this book immediately and thoroughly. However when I thought about applying some of these methods, well it wasn’t pretty. They are quite helpful and I’m sure they’d work… If I had a complete office setup and a million dollars to devote to nothing but file cabinets and printer ink. The thought of printing out all the records I have saved on my computer makes me break out in hives. Eventually I’ll do it though. It’s going to be wonderful.