Genealogy Jottings

Because my Dad is still living, I will not provide much detail about his life as I begin documenting my ancestors for this challenge. Suffice it to say that he provided much of the inspiration I needed to become a genealogist.

From the time I received a blank family tree chart when I was thirteen years old, Dad always showed an interest in helping me with our family history. He provided names of relatives I could contact during the early stages of my own research. Over the years he has offered a willing ear for listening to my latest discoveries. As a petroleum landman who spent hours researching land records for an oil company, he taught me a thing or two about using those records.

Dad’s family has lived in America since the earliest days. He descends from Puritan settlers, but he did not know that before I began documenting our family. He has ancestors who fought in all of America’s wars. His family played a part in settling the country over the centuries, and his grandparents came west as homesteaders.

His family story is the story of the United States in many ways. Over the next weeks, I will work backwards in time to tell it, one ancestor at a time.

I have a great-great grandmother missing from my family tree. This year I would love to fill in the box where her name belongs. Several years ago I attempted to do this with little success, but this year I will try again. With so much more information available online, I hope to identify her and learn something about her family.

A good genealogist knows that you begin to answer a research question by reviewing the evidence you already have. Then you develop a research plan. Last time I worked on the life of this woman, I gathered the following:

1. A letter written by my great-aunt Bertha Reed Evert sometime in the 1980s that mentions her mother and grandmother (the missing ancestor). She says, “[Mother] born at Indianapolis, Indiana. Only child of Thomas Sherman and Katherine Staninbaugh Sherman. [Mother’s] name Anna Petronellia Sherman Reed.”
2. A family group sheet prepared by Bertha Reed Evert stating that Anna Petronellia Sherman was born 1 April 1865 at Indianapolis, Indiana. She says her grandmother Katherine was German and came to America when she was 8 years old. She was buried in Indianapolis.
3. Anna Petronellia Reed’s 1961 death certificate stating her parents were Thomas Sherman and Catherin Stanabaugh. The informant was her son, and Bertha’s brother, Thomas Reed.

Not much to go on. The family story relates that Thomas Sherman married a German girl, Katherine Staninbaugh/Stanabaugh during the Civil War. They lived in Indianapolis and had one child, Anna Petronellia. Katherine died shortly thereafter. Thomas subsequently married Alice Farris and had five more children.

Last time I worked to find any information on Katherine or her family, I encountered several roadblocks:

1. Descendants of Thomas Sherman and Alice Farris claim that Alice was the one and only wife. They say the five children had no half-sister, and they deny any knowledge of or relation to Anna Petronellia. The problem with this notion is that our family has photographs of Thomas and Alice’s children. If we are not related to them, why would we have these pictures?
2. German researchers tell us to verify the veracity of German surnames by checking for them in the German telephone book. If they do not appear, they are probably not valid German surnames. Neither Stillenbaugh nor Stanabaugh appears in a German directory. If the mother truly was a German, what was her family name?
3. In researching Thomas’ life, I have found no mention of Anna Petronellia’s mother. I have not located their marriage record, and his obituary does not mention her. Even worse, it does not mention Anna Petronellia as a survivor.

So the question remains, who was this mysterious great-great grandmother of mine? Was she a German girl from the large German community in Indiana? I hope I can uncover some more clues to her life with my research this year.

Last year I followed several genealogy bloggers who met the challenge of writing about 52 of their ancestors during the 52 weeks of the year. This year I have decided to see if I, too, can meet this goal.

As I begin, I have realized that I do not know whether I have even identified 52 ancestors in my direct lines. For most people, finishing the challenge would require writing about 5 generations of ancestors. In my own case, the job will be more difficult because I have one unidentified great-grandfather. That means one of two things. Either I must identify him so I can include him, his parents, and his grandparents in the 52 ancestors, or else I must work back further than 5 generations on other lines. Quite a challenge indeed.

Next week I plan to begin with the first ancestor, my Dad. I will then work back from there. This should be fun.

As a gift for our December anniversary, my husband/tech advisor gave me a partially remodeled office. He knows I love offices and office supplies, and I am thrilled with the result. I cannot wait to begin another exciting year of research in my new surroundings.

He upgraded the space with following:

1. LED lighting that really brightens up the room,
2. New bookcases for the 400+ genealogy books I acquired from the estate of my father’s cousin last spring,
3. An perfectly-sized office work table we spotted in the IKEA scratch and dent department,
4. A newly-organized supply closet,
5. A Varidesk adjustable standing desk that I received for Christmas.

Everything would be perfect except for one thing. I promised myself that I would begin work in the new year in a clutter-free environment, but so far I have not achieved this goal. I have books and paper everywhere. Guess what I will spend much of today doing!

Over the past week I have seen a lot of chatter about the upcoming demise of Family Tree Maker genealogy software. As one of the more popular record-keeping software products, many genealogists rely on it for their work. Understandably, they are unhappy.

I faced the same situation some time ago when Wholly Genes discontinued my software product, The Master Genealogist (TMG). Do I see a trend developing?

The Geneablogger Thomas MacEntee seems to think so. He argues that desktop genealogy software is becoming a thing of the past. The industry is heading toward subscription-based cloud products. These offer the user several benefits including off-site storage and continuous updating.

So what should the frustrated genealogist do? For my own work, I have continued to use TMG with no problem. I like the trees and reports I can run from it. I do not want to follow the learning curve needed to effectively work in another product.

Yet I do not know how long I can continue with TMG as Windows evolves. I keep receiving prompts to upgrade to Windows 10. Will TMG play well in the new sandbox? If not, what should I do?

My long-term plan for preserving my research is to post it with Family Search. I have already submitted everything I know about my Norwegian and Finnish ancestors to them. Each time I complete a research question, I add my results to my online tree. Perhaps I can begin using their site for my work when TMG ceases to be a viable option.

The technology world continues to evolve faster than many of us would like. Family Tree Maker users, I feel your pain.

At last I have completed this year’s genealogical project, my story of Jane and Caleb Reed, and mailed it out to the relatives. Now I can celebrate Christmas, clean up the office, and prepare a research plan for next year.

Having finished research projects on all my known great-grandparents, I am now working through my sixteen great-great grandparents. Next up will be the blacksmith Thomas Sherman, 1841-1912. He lived in Illinois from about 1870 on.

This ancestor left some unanswered questions that I will work to resolve in 2016:

1. Where was he born?
2. Did he serve in the Civil War as he claimed?
3. How many times was he married, and who were his wives?

The last question poses the most interesting puzzle for me because his first wife would have been my ancestor. I know nothing about her except that according to family lore she was a German girl who came to America when she was about 8 years old. She was said to have died near Indianapolis after the birth of her only child, my great-grandmother Anna Petronellia Sherman, in 1865.

It has been several years since I last worked on Thomas’ life, and I am eager to get re-acquainted with him. What new resources will I find? Will I be taking a research trip for this project? I cannot wait to get started.

Many rural communities in Norway kept local histories called bygdebøker. These can prove quite helpful in our genealogical research. They contain a wealth of information about an area as well as chronological histories of each local farm.

My husband/tech advisor recently located a bygdebok online for a community where he suspected his great-grandmother had lived. The book provided good evidence that he had located the correct Margit Pedersdatter.

The keeper of the bygdebok had recorded information about Margit and her life on the farm in Norway. It noted that she had gone to America about the same time our Margit did.

But amazingly, the entries for Margit did not stop there. The bygdebok went on to name the husband she married in North Dakota, Syver Nelson, and their two children, Anna and Lars. Definitely our family!

Before finding this bygdebok, we had located several women in Norway as candidates for our Margit Pedersdatter. This wonderful Norwegian resource enabled us to narrow it down and make a successful leap across the pond.

As we approach Thanksgiving later this month, my thoughts turn to reasons for thankfulness. I need to practice this virtue more regularly because too often I get caught up in the frustrations of my daily life. Yet if I look at just the homesteading stories from my own family history, my frustrations look like nothing compared to what my ancestors endured. A few examples:

• Laura Riddle (1853-1933) raised a family including two disabled children while homesteading by herself in Nebraska,
• Anna Petronellia Sherman Reed (1865-1961), as an older woman in her 50’s, homestead alone in Wyoming,
• Sophie Marie Bentsen (1878-1966) spent the winter with three small children and very little food on their Montana homestead while her husband lay ill in town with typhoid.

I certainly face nothing like the life of a homesteader with complications such as children with special needs, an aging body, or a suddenly-absent spouse. Even without these challenges, homesteading was not easy.

My father’s second cousin Olive Griffith Rector provided us with tales of some of the hardships the homesteaders faced. Her family settled in Oklahoma in 1901.

In her words, they arrived at the most barren looking place one could ever imagine. Her father had put up a one-room board shack for lodging. They heated it with a little stove using cow chips. Their beds were boards placed on sawhorses. They had to carry water. That fall they began work on a dugout that was finished just in time for cold weather. It had a dirt floor they swept with a weed. They used old cement sacks on the floor if they could get them. Their mother worked in the fields for three years to save enough money for a sewing machine. Olive claimed that their father built better housing for his livestock than he did for his family. She thought they would have stayed in the dugout forever if “the roof hadn’t rotted off and it leaked like a sieve”.

Does not sound like much fun to me. These people made huge sacrifices in an effort to make a better life for themselves and their children. I can be grateful for all they did, because I have benefitted from their efforts. My parents and I did not have to live this way. My petty annoyances in the 21^st-century suburbs cannot begin to compare with the hardships of life on a homestead. These people took a long view of life and ignored everyday frustrations in their efforts to get ahead.

As is my custom, this holiday season I will add a chapter to my ongoing family history project. Each year I choose an ancestral couple, write their story, and compile relevant photos. My subjects this year are my great-great grandparents Jane and Caleb Reed of Ashmore, Illinois.

Through 2015 I have worked mostly to research Jane and her family because so much was already known about Caleb. I even had the opportunity to visit Jane’s birthplace in Wayne County, Kentucky.

Towards the end of the year I thought I had uncovered all the information I could about her. Then I decided to dig into a Boyd notebook left to me by a relative who passed away earlier this year. Jane had a sister who married a Boyd.

The notebook was not about those Boyds, but it did contain a remarkable document. In 1988, Jane’s great-grandchildren through another line had compiled a lengthy family history of their own, A Wright Interesting Story by Jean Greggs Wright and Mary Jane Wright Coartney. It contained a lot of their grandmother Martha Reed Wright’s memories of Jane, stories that had not come down through my own family.

Armed with this information, I can now prepare a much more personal account of the lives of my great-great grandparents. Before my discovery, I knew just the dates and places for Jane. Now I feel like I know her a little bit.

This discovery just goes to show the importance of searching for collateral relatives. Had I not sought to look for more information on Jane’s Boyd in-laws or recognized her daughter’s married name of Wright, I would not have found this information. My own family history will be the richer for it.

Earlier this spring I inherited the genealogy library of my father’s cousin, Alta Marie (Reed) Kaessinger. Over the summer I have cataloged most of her 400+ books, and now I have begun to look through her numerous file folders and notebooks.

I made a delightful find in a notebook this week as I pulled one labeled Boyd from the shelf. It caught my eye because I had recently discovered two Boyd cousins who reportedly perished in the Civil War. Unfortunately, this notebook mentioned nothing about them, but it did contain a family history of my great-great aunt Martha Ann Reed Wright (1849-1918), first cousin of the Boyd brothers through their mothers, Jane and Nancy Carter.

A Wright Interesting Story, prepared in 1988 by Jean Greggs Wright and Mary Jane Wright Coartney, relates much about Martha’s life. It lists her descendants, with many photos, as known when the document was written. Best of all, it provides a great deal of information on her mother (my great-great grandmother) Jane Carter Reed.

This fall, I plan to write a character sketch about an ancestral couple, as I usually do for the holidays. I had already chosen my subject for this year, Jane (Carter) and Caleb Reed. What a serendipitous find this family history makes! I now have a great deal more material for my writing project than I ever dreamed I would have. Alta collected an amazing amount of information, and it needs to be shared. Jane Carter Reed’s half of the story landed on my bookshelf just at the right time.