The Way It Goes

I love to research genealogy.  I'm also easily frustrated, so when I get blocked on a line, I like to work on others.  I'm one of those people on Ancestry who has more than 12 trees, only 2 of which are related directly to me.  It's fun!  It makes me feel smart, and I'm relatively good at it.  But a couple of months ago I got to feeling tree-bloated.  I went through all my trees and deleted more than half of them. 

So of course someone emailed me about someone in one of my trees, and Yay! I still had that tree!  But the tree with all the information on the family that had intermarried several times with that particular tree, well, that's one of the ones I deleted.  I deleted sources and records and pictures and death certificates.  Now I find that I really wish I had that tree back. 

Finding the Herr Women

Females present more of a challenge than males when researching genealogy.  This is true in my own family.  I'm looking for all the siblings of Charles William Frederick Herr, the father of my father's mother, Clara Herr.  Charles Herr, or "Charlie" as he was called, came from a HUGE family.  His father, Frank Herr, who was born in Alsace-Lorraine, France, married Hannah Christine Whilemina Nolty in Canada.  She was born in Germany.  Together they had 14 children.  Not all of the children lived.  The first to be born were a set of twins.  The couple had moved down to Fort Wayne, Indiana and the twins were born and died there.  Two daughters died in infancy in Michigan as well. 

So trying to find the daughters has been tough.  Family Search has helped by having the Michigan marriage records available, which enables me to see who they married.  That was a huge help.  So I've been able to trace and track all of Frank and Hannah's children except one daughter; Mary Herr.  I know who she married, I've found her in the census records, but she is the only child I have not been able to find a death record for.  Is it because she remarried and I don't know her husband's name?  Is it because she moved out of Michigan?  That's possible because one of her sisters, Minnie, married a Russian man and the entire family moved west, first to Nebraska and then to Washington state.  One of Mary's sons moved out to Washington state as well, living in the same county as Minnie's family.

But not being able to find when Mary died is eating at me.  She was born in Michigan in 1882, married a man named George Jamieson, and had 12 children herself.  Where did Mary Herr Jamieson die, and when?

The Indelicate Subject of Incest

Yesterday I blogged about the Joseph and Lucinda Cashall Meredith family and their oldest child, Maude Mae.  Today I was researching Amanda Caroline Meredith, the daughter of Sarah Ann Meredith, the sister of Joseph.  I found the three of them, Sarah, Joseph and Amanda, living in Forestville, Sanilac County, Michigan in 1870 along with their mother, Rebecca Smith Meredith.  Sarah is older than Joseph and Amanda is 3.  Sarah married Matthew Hawksworth in 1876.  Joseph married Lucinda in 1875.  Rebecca died in 1874.

So I had Amanda down as the child of Sarah, and it bothers me that I have Amanda's father as Matthew Hawksworth, which I know isn't right, so I start combing through Family Search.  I find Amanda's birth record with her mother recorded as Sarah Ann Meredith, but no father.  I click on a hint in Ancestry and find a tree that has these family members and the notation for Amanda that says her birth record plainly states Amanda is illegitimate, her father unknown.  But something tells me that Joseph is her father.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Amanda's death record on Family Search says her mother was Sarah Meredith and gives her father as Matthew Hawksworth. 

So life goes on and Maude Mae, Joseph's child, and Amanda, Sarah's child grow up and get married; Maude to Jacob Thompson and Amanda to William Putnam.  Maude and Jacob's first child is a daughter, Loverta Thompson.  Amanda and William's first child is a son, Claude Putnam. 

I'm in the process of trying to track down when Amanda Caroline Meredith Putnam and discover she died in Detroit, Michigan in 1931.  Interesting.  I have her and her husband consistently living in Rose, Michigan, located in a county I've never heard of,  Ogemaw.  (I guess in my head if I don't hear it in a weather report, the county doesn't exist?)  So Amanda died in Detroit.  Where did William die?  I do some checking and find he also died in Detroit in 1924.  What's in Detroit that would cause this couple to move and then die there?

Turns out it was their son, Claude.  Claude is in Detroit in the 1930 census living with his wife, Laverta Putnam.  Also living with them are children with the last name of Schultz, one a male named Lorn.  Um, what?  Loverta Thompson, daughter of Maude Meredith who was the daughter of Joseph Meredith, the brother of Sarah (the mother of Amanda, the mother of Claude) has married her 1st cousin (and perhaps her uncle?) Claude Putnam.  Her first husband was Lorn Schultz, who I found on Find A Grave buried by himself, no Loverta with him.  He died in 1923 and is buried in Alpena.  The record I found for his death on Family Search doesn't have his marital status.

Claude and Loverta's first child together was Violet, born in 1928.  Altogether they would have 5 daughters, including a set of twin girls, Jean and Joan. 

I've run across incest in families before, but not in mine.  This gave me pause.  And I think someone didn't want me to keep researching this subject because weird things started happening when I started the research last night.  Family Search refused to work when I first started the hunt for Amanda Caroline Meredith around 1 am this morning, so I just went to bed.  Then today when I found the first hint of incest, Ancestry kept giving me errors while trying to add the census information.  Then my own genealogy and personal websites went down.  I called my hosting company to ask about it and was told, "Gee, it's working fine now."  Sure enough, when I checked again, the sites were back up.  The technician at the hosting company said, "Huh, that's weird," when I told him the error message I was getting;  "Your database is not communicating with your server."  I'm half laughing at myself for even thinking these things, but half of me is wondering...really?  Is it that big of a deal, you guys?

I think it just happens in families.  

Denise

Jacob Lemon Thompson

I was researching Merediths yesterday.  My father's mother, Clara Herr Lemon, was the daughter of Rebecca Jane Meredith and Charles Herr.  Clara's grandpa, Cyrus Meredith, lived to be almost 100 years old and it was his birth family I was looking at.  This was a large family with many sons.  One of Cyrus' brothers was named Joseph Meredith.   The whole Meredith clan moved down from Canada in the mid 1800's to the thumb area of Michigan. 

Joseph Meredith, brother of Cyrus, son of Jesse Meredith and Rebecca Smith, married Lucinda Cashall.  There was some confusion about his wife's last name.  I found it listed as Cassore in another tree and on the marriage record of Maude Mae Meredith, Joseph and Lucinda's oldest child.  But while researching the family further, I found a copy of their son's death certificate online at the Library of Michigan and Joseph was the informant for the details of birth and he listed his wife's name as Cyndia Cashall, and he would know his own wife's maiden name, right?  Or at least that's what I figure, so Cashall it is.

Their oldest child, Maude, married a man named Jacob L Thompson in Forestville, Sanilac, Michigan on the 21st of December 1892.  I found this record on familysearch.org, which I love.  I try to use information which only has an image attached as that seems to me to be the most accurate.  I started there and then started learning everything I could about Jacob L Thompson.  He was born in Canada in 1871 to John and Ann Wearq Thompson.  When I put him in as the spouse of Maude on ancestry.com, I got "hints" that he was on Find A Grave, and that Jacob Lemon Thompson was born to John and Ann in Canada.  Since I only have the American subscription on Ancestry, I can't verify for sure that this is the Jacob Thompson I'm looking for, but my geni-senses are a-tingling. 

What a strange coincidence if Jacob Thompson is somehow related to my Lemon family other than through the marriage to my 1st cousin 3x removed!   Because Maude's cousin, Rebecca Meredith, the daughter of Cyrus who was the brother of Maude's father, was the mother of my grandmother who married Russell Tiffen Lemon! 

Relative Relations

My sister-in-law, Kennetta Dines Lemon, was here and spent the night on Saturday.  She's a genealogy buff like me, but much more detail oriented.  She created her own genealogy program on her computer using Excell.  She has notebooks filled with documents and sources and her trip up here was another fact finding mission.  She visited 3 or 4 cemeteries and then went to the Grand Rapids Public Library, which I didn't even know was open on Sundays.  She's one of those genealogists you love to hate.  She documents her sources to the "T", she contacts funeral homes and sextons and county registers of deeds.  She's the genealogist I aspire to be but probably never will attain.

We had great fun during her visit talking of dead and living relatives.  We also made plans to visit the Library of Michigan and Macomb County.  I see a trip to Salt Lake City in our future.  I wonder if she's aware of the Family History Libraries the Mormons run?  She lives with my brother in Indiana, near Fort Wayne, which has a library with an extensive genealogy library.  She says she hasn't been able to find much information there relevant to her searches. 

She did respark my own genealogy passion, which is always welcome.  I'm excited about tomorrow which is the start of the free 5 day access to Ancestry.com's international marriage records.  So many of my ancestors lived, married and died in Canada and I can't wait to see what information I can gather.

One of those years, I think...

Genealogy and blogging have taken a backseat to life lately.  I paid someone to finish updating my genealogy website and tweaked a thing or two here and there and then just abandoned it.  Typical me.  I hit a brick wall and get discouraged and drop everything for awhile until suddenly one day, seemingly out of the blue, my interest is rekindled and I'm back on the trail of people dead hundreds of years.

I have emails to answer on ancestry.com, leads to follow up on, cleaning up of my website to do and yet I do nothing.  I was supposed to make a trip to Lansing to the Library of Michigan to see if I can find the obituaries of John Lemon and his son Frank, and see if the library has copies of Acorns to Oaks, the genealogy newsletter for Oakland County, which has an article on the Isaac Lemon bible.  I seriously doubt it's my Isaac Lemon, there were a few of them in Oakland County in the same time period as mine.  I guess that can wait, or so is my attitude lately.

Had a phone conversation with a descendant of John Lemon.  Her father was Clayton Lemon Jr, her grandfather Clayton Lemon Sr., the son of John Lemon, my great grandfather's brother.  I sent her email invitations to my site and to my tree on ancestry.com, but I haven't heard back from her.  I was hoping she'd have a picture of her dad and grandfather.  She said that her dad and grandfather were truck drivers, which is typical for Lemons.  My father and his twin brother were truck drivers, their father was a teamster as was his father.  Interesting how things like that pass down through families.  Her father sounded a lot like my father.

So until my passion for genealogy is rekindled, I apologize for the sparse nature of my updates.

Note To Self: ARGGGGGGH!

I have been struggling with upgrading my genealogy site software.  I use TNG, The Next Generation of Genealogy Software, written by Darrin Lythgoe.  It is most excellent software and before I found it, I despaired of ever finding a cogent way of displaying all my genealogy information.  I really love this software, but it's simple in a complicated way. 

I haven't been able to get the site software updated because I've been trying to force Dreamweaver to submit to my will.  This will never happen.  *I* have to submit to *Dreamweaver*.  Steep, steep learning curve for me.  I love Dreamweaver, too.  I downloaded a trial version and am working with that and it's been only in the last few hours that I've been able to come close to achieving what I want for the design of the site.  Which is: to keep the same design. 

It sounds as if it should be simple, doesn't it?  Oh, I only wish it were, because it is NOT.

In other genealogy news, I received an email from a distant "cousin".  My 3rd great grandfather was Cyrus Meredith.  Let's see if I did that correctly: Cyrus to Rebecca to Clara to Russell (my father) to me.  Nope.  Only 2nd.  Anyway, the woman I've been corresponding with is a descendant of the brother of Cyrus.  She's been in touch with my late Grandma Lemon's cousin, Billee Longuskie Escott. Billee wrote a book, something that would have tickled my father no end, he being a frustrated writer himself.  My Grandma, Clara Herr, was the daughter of Rebecca Meredith Herr.  Rebecca was the sister of Ersell Meredith Longuskie.  How wonderful to find new relations!  I'm hoping for more copies of pictures because I LOVE pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I'm going to have to reconnect all the photos on my site, and add all the death certificates I've collected.  I have a lot of them. 

Welcome all visitors from Geneabloggers!  Not much to see here, but I do appreciate the visits.  :)

And now to bed.