Tag: Webb

Follow Friday: Family Search

Posted on by Kathleen

I am in love with this website. I love this website so much, I’m pretty sure I’d take the drastic step of marrying it if I could. I’m not experienced or smart enough to get lost in the technical jargon about the website, so you’ll have to go elsewhere for that.

I have been using the FamilySearch “Pilot” site for many years now. Mostly in past years for their wonderful collection of Ohio Death Certificates. Recently they’ve made a drastic change. That change is adding so many names to the database I’ll probably never come out on the other side.

I’ve always been hampered in my research in the fact that I have practically no means of travel. If it isn’t in my own town, most likely I can’t get there. Washington D.C. is a day trip that doesn’t happen often, maybe more now, but we’ll see. With these new website updates though, I may not have to stress too bad about that any longer.

A lot of the records they’ve recently put online are just indexes. So they aren’t the most helpful (mostly because of transcription interpreting I think). That doesn’t even hint on the way that they source the indexes and how valid the actual index information is.

This is my favorite part though. I found this marriage record for Mary J Webb. I don’t know who Mary J Webb is quite honestly. I know who her parents are though. Enoch Webb and Jane Lindsey. I’m actually pretty sure of Webb research, so it did surprise me to find a daughter for these two. She was born around 1884 and didn’t marry until 1915. So by all intents and purposes she should be living at home with her parents in 1900 and 1910. That isn’t so though. In fact, it wasn’t until I found this record that I remembered something that always stumped me before. Enoch had an older brother Amos. In 1900 and 1910 Amos had a niece living with him named Minnie/Mammie. I was always stumped by who this girl could belong to. She popped up in 1900 out of nowhere. If I had the 1890 census, things would have been clearer. Once I found this record though, I got excited. I’d finally identified her! The birthday fits and everything.

Is this a 100% identification? Maybe not, but it’s the closest I might ever get! What can I do to verify this information? Well I’m going to have to see where Family Search got their information.

So I took the Film Number and plugged it into the Family History Library Catalog Search.

This is the microfilm that gives me the above information. Straight from the Brown County Courthouse! That’s without a 10+ hour trip to Ohio with people who aren’t exactly into going through old records and cemeteries.

What exactly do I plan to do with this?

I plan to see it for myself, in person if at all possible.

The Genealogy Gods are smiling down on me today folks. They do have a Family History Center in my town! This is great news, and I plan to get a to do list together and head in there in the very near future!

FamilySearch Record Search

Follow Friday is a daily blogging theme I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Follow Friday, simply create a post in which you recommend another genealogy blogger, a specific blog post, a genealogy website or a genealogy resource. Tell us why they are important to the genealogy community and why we should follow.

GEA: Kentucky Cemeteries

Posted on by Kathleen

The first Google Earth Adventure was so much fun, I’m back to do it again! This time it will be taking you on one of my first Genealogy trips. It took place around 2003 or 2004? I’m not exactly sure. It was this trip when I got the majority of my Tombstone pictures. We were in Ohio for a reunion and I convinced Grandma to take us to Kentucky to visit the cemetery. Actually, it might have been her idea. Like I said, who can remember. This was when I was just getting into putting all my gathered information together. It was right before Grandma insisted on putting herself in the nursing home and the dementia set in. I even recorded her telling me a story from her childhood. I might have to attach that to the end of this post!

So here’s where we began our adventure. Let me be up front with you. This was our first time visiting Kentucky. Grandma grew up in this area, but it had been awhile since she last visited. This was before GPS navigators also. So we were taking all our directions from Grandma…. That was foreshadowing if you didn’t recognize it. So to the left is where Grandma said her old “homestead” was located, and to the right was the cemetery we were planning to visit. So we headed left first.

This is what we saw for the majority of the trip to left. It was a long windy road that eventually lead back to the river, and when I say river I mean the Ohio River. The big one.

To once again practice full disclosure, I can’t quite remember where the old homestead was located. It’s possible it’s no longer there. The Google Earth photos aren’t really great. Then again, it’s a very tree lined road, so I doubt that better pictures would help anyway.

As you can see the road goes through that heavily forested area. So somewhere in those trees is where my Grandma lived as a girl.

So now we backtrack and cross the road. This side had many more houses and not as many trees. It’s known as Johnsville, KY.

Just under a mile down the road we ran across this small cemetery. This is where Grandma told us “the babies are buried.” Her Grandmother, Mollie Jane Webb-Taylor had three sets of twins, many of which never made it past infancy. This little cemetery is where they were buried, most likely in unmarked graves.

Here is the family listing in my family file. The “babies” aren’t the only ones buried in this cemetery. One of my ancestors buried his first wife here, and I even feel a little guilty that the first wife is resting here, while he rests over in the big cemetery with his second wife. It doesn’t seem fair to the wife who died so young. If I had a time machine, I’d really love to look back at some of the hidden stories in my family’s history.

Here is the two cemeteries in relation to each other on the map. Unfortunately the big cemetery doesn’t have street view. So I can’t show you how big that cemetery really is. Trust me it’s bigger than it looks.

I have many relatives in this cemetery. Many of those relatives I’ve yet to identify. Sometimes I wonder if bigger cemeteries can actually be “family” cemeteries. I mean if you think about it in these rural areas, most everyone ended up related anyway right? So it almost gives it a family feel.

It is after we left Johnsville Cemetery that day that things got… dicey. There was a cousin of my Mom’s that lives right past the cemetery, so we tried to stop by and see him. He’s got a bunch of Webb family photos that I’m dying to see! Unfortunately, he wasn’t at home that day. He got called into work. After we left the cemetery, I imagine we spent the next hour or so driving around aimlessly. Somehow we got turned around. Or maybe we went right instead of going left, the way we’d come. We’ll never know now. Needless to say, we were lost. Lost in Kentucky without a GPS unit to tell us it was “recalculating” to get us the heck home!

We were all getting quite cranky. We were tired, hungry, and just plain ready to be done. We’d been gone most of the day and it was still a long drive back to Dillsboro, IN where Grandma lived. Just when I was about to throw myself on the ground and start kicking my feet around, we drove up to this.

In the interest of once again practicing full disclosure; When we pulled up to this cemetery, we pulled up from the road on the right you see now. I couldn’t show you that though, because it doesn’t have street view. We were really excited to see the yellow lines on the road when we pulled up too. Nothing like good old yellow lines to show that you’re actually on a road that goes somewhere!

This cemetery took us by complete surprise. We weren’t looking for it, we just found it. In fact it would be many years until I could find it again on a map.  There were two sections. The one by the church, and then this older section across the street. This section is my “family cemetery.” I can’t even list the amount of Taylors and Webbs I found in this cemetery. I was completely taken by surprise.

Once I found a certain Webb family, I knew where I was. I had no idea how to get back to Indiana, but I knew where we were. We had somehow found Lenoxburg Cemetery. The cemetery I most wanted to visit. In fact, it’s still on the top of my list. Now that I’m more aware of how many relatives are buried there, I’ve got to go back and document a lot more tombstones. Next time I’m taking my GPS with me though.

Download Google Earth

Credit: All credit for these images goes to Google Earth. I did not take any of these pictures. I only visited Kentucky from the comfort of my home, in my fluffy pajamas. Please do not sue me, I have nothing except for my fluffy pajamas and a GPS unit.

Reminiscing about the Beginning

Posted on by Kathleen

I was a little sentimental this weekend. I’ve been cleaning out my external hard drive and I’ve found files I haven’t looked at in years. Not to mention 2 weeks ago we cleaned out a shed we haven’t been in for 3 years at least! So I’m just a big ball of sentimentality here.

One of my treasures is the photocopies I made of my Grandmother’s family tree. She kept the original but we went to the drug store and we made photocopies of the whole shebang. I have such a vivid memory of the original binder. It’s probably sitting at my Aunt’s house right now. She’s got a whole box of stuff she says she’s keeping for me, I’m sure that’s in there.

This is what the first page of the tree looks like. It started with the little blurb at the top.

James F., Vincent, and George Washington Webb were three of five known children who were orphaned at an early age by the death of both parents. There may have been other children. Upon the death of their parents, they were taken in by various families and were reared to adulthood on that basis. There is no information the other two children. James lived in Brown County, Ohio and died at an early age from Civil War wounds. Vincent moved to Romney, Tippecanoe County, Indiana. George lived generally in Brown and Clermont Counties of Ohio. And Pendleton County, Kentucky court records reveal that he owned land in that county. By some Accounts and by an entry in the Congressional Record, George Washington Webb is credited with discovering white burley tobacco. The family legend of their having one fourth American Indian blood has not been confirmed.

Since I’ve been researching I’ve found out many things about this blurb alone.

  • There were in fact two other children. One girl Alice Webb who married James A Bell. The last child I am less clear on. It may or may not have been a boy named Nathaniel.
  • The children were not orphaned at an early age that I can tell, but it is mere speculation on my part. In 1850 there is a Reuben Webb living with James and his family. He may or may not be their father. However, it’s always possible that it could be their uncle or even a cousin of some sort. Without birth and death records I can’t be sure. However, 1850 wasn’t exactly the record keeping age if you get my drift.

  • George did in fact “discover” White Burley Tobacco. A quick google search will turn up the same.

White burley, in 1865, George Webb of Brown County, Ohio planted red burley seeds he had purchased, and found that a few of the seedlings had a whitish, sickly look. The air-cured leaf was found to be more mild than other types of tobacco.[1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_tobacco#White_Burley]

  • I have absolutely no idea where the Indian blood rumor comes from yet.

What a wonderful little starting point for starting to research though! It gives you just enough information to be curious but nothing that has actually been proven.

As you can see this tree was put together in 1980. Obviously there have been changes between then and when I got the tree. It’s nice to see this was done before computers though. So obviously a lot of the research must have been done by word of mouth and on site research. I’m such a computer nut I can’t even imagine!

Back to the tree though. For every page of names, there is a ‘B’ page that lists the spouse of each person. In some cases it gives the spouse’s parents.

I can’t tell you how many memories I have researching these names. I feel like I know these people even though I don’t.  I’ve tried to show people how this system of the tree worked, but people just got confused. So I guess it’s not so great for a long term solution. How on earth do you even go about having a hard copy of your family tree? I mean just the thought of trying to figure it out makes me break out in hives.

There I am! Good ol’ number 6-54. This is how I know there have changes since 1980. 🙂 I was born in 1983 and there I am. Not to mention that my generation wasn’t listed in birth order. So I imagine it was updated in bulk in the early 90’s. There’s a rumor that the tree I got was done by a distant cousin for a high school project. I don’t know if that refers to the original by WEDavis or if it refers to the updated version. It doesn’t matter, because I’ve been trying to verify it myself anyway. There are a great deal of errors.

I eventually made a new copy in Excel. I tried to update it and fix what I could. I printed it, put it in a new pretty folder.  Then I realized my family tree is forever changing and it’s a never-ending battle.

Still there’s nothing like having an old fashioned hard copy right?

Thank you WEDavis for all the years of joy I’ve found in researching and learning about my family.