Kate Harding (1843-1917)

I heard in a discussion recently that Michigan had put up some death certificates on their Seeking Michigan site. It was here that I discovered the death certificate for Kate Harding, my 2nd great grand aunt, who died in Detroit in 1917.

My interest in Kate is that she was a sister of Mary Ann (Revels) Delaney, my 2nd great grandmother, who died in Prescott, Ontario in 1906. I estimate that their parents, Michael Revels and Catherine Carthy, immigrated from Wexford, Ireland about 1830. Kate Harding was born Catherine Revels and is listed on both the 1851 and 1861 Canadian census living with her parents in Prescott, Ontario.

I came to identify Catherine Revels as Kate Harding of Detroit, Michigan from both her sister's, Mary Ann (Revels) Delaney's, 1906 obituary and her brother's, Charles Revels', record of his stay at the US National Home for Disabled Volunteers in Marion, Indiana. (Charles died in 1909.)

Catherine Revels married John Harding, a jeweler from England, some time between 1861and 1871. The 1871 Canadian census lists John (age 32, born in England) and Catherine (age 26, born in Ontario) living in Prescott, Ontario with their daughter, Alice C., born in December 1870.

The 1881 Canadian census for Prescott, Ontario, also lists John Harding (age 42, Church of England) and Catherine (age 32, Roman Catholic), along with 8 children. Five appear to be children of their marriage: Catherine (10, b. in Ontario, RC), James (6, b. Ontario, RC), Ellen (5, b. Ontario, RC), Thresia (4, b. Ontario, RC), Frances (2, b. Ontario, RC). Three, appear to be John's sons from a previous marriage: Charles (17, b. England, CE), John (15, b. England, CE), and William (13, b. England, CE).

There are two additional Michigan death certificates that appear to be sons of Kate and John Harding:

• James W. Harding, born 1874, died 28 June 1912 in Detroit, Michigan


• Albert Harding, born 1884, died 20 Februray 1912 in Detroit, Michigan

Daniel Murray (b. 1854)

County histories can be a wonderful source of information. And in the case of Daniel Murray, born in County Down, Ireland, the following Greene County, Missouri, biography from the 1883
History of Greene County, Missouri by R. I. Holcombe, Editing Historian, is rich in details.

Most of what I know about this Daniel Murray is from the brief biographical sketch that follows. I did find 15 year-old Daniel Murray living in the Potosi, MO household of my great-grandfather, Hugh Murray, a wagonmaker, to whom Daniel was likely apprenticed. (Note: It may be that Daniel was born in 1854 rather than 1864.)

Daniel is obviously related to Hugh, and as it happens, Hugh had a twin who remained in Ireland. I believe the twin was named Daniel Murray as well.

I don't know yet how the Daniel Murray, described below, who worked as a wagonmaker in Ash Grove, MO, in 1883 is related to my great-grandfather, Hugh Murray. Daniel is one more link in the chain that will hopefully, one day, lead to my Murray ancestors in Northern Ireland.

DANIEL MURRAY.
Mr. Murray was born in county Down, Ireland, October 12th, 1864, and was educated in the common schools of that country. He emigrated to America, landing at Castle Garden in January, 1870. He soon after came to St. Louis, but remained only a short time, and then went to Potosi, Washington county, Missouri, where he served an apprenticeship at wagon-making. In the fall of 1874, he went to Dade county and set up a shop at the Pemberton mines, which he ran a year and then came to Ash Grove and opened a shop, and does a good business. He is the patentee of the now adjustable vehicle wheel, for wagons and buggies, by which a wheel can be set to any grade or dish desired. It is a most useful invention and likely to come into general use everywhere. Mr. Murray's parents are yet in Ireland. He has one brother in Manchester, England, and one in Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Murray is a member of the Knights of Labor.
-- Chapter 20, Boone Township - Biographies

Standards and Ethics in Genealogy

"Genealogical Standards: Obsolete Model T or Space-Age Air Car?" by the remarkable Helen F. M. Leary was an entertaining and thought-provoking NGS discussion about the ethics and standards by which genealogical research should be conducted and documented. Ms. Leary provided frequent and entertaining examples from her own experiences to highlight the various aspects of performing research.

This was more than just a "document your sources" discussion though. The need for, and the value of, judgment and interpretation in the analysis of records was discussed at length, as was the importance of taking personal responsibility for the conclusions reached as a genealogist. Copying information (and references) from somebody elses family tree without verifying the information yourself is not ethical, and it opens you to the risk of being associated with shoddy work.

She emphasized the need to judge the value of information obtained from records based on several important factors. These include who recorded it, how soon after the event it was recorded (sooner is generally better than later) and the source of the recorders information. For example, a death certificate is a highly reliable source for information related to the death (where, when). However, in spite of the fact that a death record is frequently an official document we are at the mercy of the informants memory for information regarding the decedents birth.

The need to be creative and dogged in establishing the truth was humorously but effectively demonstrated by example. She discussed claims of slave descendants of Thomas Jefferson by discussing DNA testing and the use of a time-line showing that Thomas Jefferson was in the same physical location of the woman in question at the time of inception for all of her children.

Another theme presented that has been resonating with me in several of the sessions is the importance of understanding the background, surroundings and chronology of the documented event. Who were the neighbors or relatives? Where did the event occur? What was happening in the area at the time: a drought? a war? an epidemic? What societal or religious rules were in vogue at the time? All of these can (and do) color or filter our interpretation of records, either distorting them (because we are not aware of them) or enhancing our understanding because we do.

Looking Beyond the Facts

"German Church Registers: Where Only a Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing" presented by Dorothy A. Boyd-Bragg, PhD, was another worthwhile presentation at the NGS, although it was not what I expected. The focus was records for German churches in the United States (not Germany, which is what I was hoping to hear), but it provided a lot of very good information about German church records.

She also brought home the importance of understanding history and context for genealogists. For example, most German churches established in the US in the 1700's and 1800's brought with them attitudes and memories about the country and societies they left behind. The Lutheran and German reform church members apparently had not been persecuted and thus continued to record events much as they has back in Germany (in German... the switch to English would not occur until the early 1800's) while those of Amish or Mennonite backgrounds did not.

I also began to develop a deeper appreciation of the importance of looking beyond (maybe around is a better word) the event being documented to pick up subtle but important information. For example, sponsors may be an important link to other relatives since they were usually blood relatives (aunts, uncles and or grandparents). I also learned that Germans were clannish in that groups that migrated together tended to remain close, so that communion lists may yield clues about family relationships because church members sat, and hence were listed in many church records, together.

Potosi, MO: A Texas Connection

We just returned from our first meeting as new members of the Dallas Genealogical Society. I had a wonderful time! Lloyd Bockstruck presented an enjoyable, fact-filled lecture entitled The Call of the West: MO, AR, and TX.

It was nice to hear mention of Potosi, MO, the town to which my great-grandfather, Hugh Murray, emigrated in 1857. Potosi was built on land donated by Moses Austin in 1813.

By the time Hugh settled in Potosi, Moses Austin was dead and his descendents had moved to Texas. Moses Austin's son, Stephen F. Austin, is called the "Father of Texas". The plaque marking the Austin homestead site, Durham Hall, in Potosi refers to it as the "Cradle of Texas".

Unless he was out of town, I'm certain Hugh Murray would have experienced the great fire in 1871 that destroyed Durham Hall and much of downtown Potosi. The plaque below marks the site where Durham Hall stood in Potosi, MO.



Plaque Transcription

The silent stones in the front foundation wall are all that remain of Durham Hall, magnificent frontier mansion build here by Moses Austin in 1798-99.

Named for Durham, Connecticut, where Austin was born in 1761, the home was the political, social and economic center of Austin’s American colony and of much of Missouri, as well as the “Cradle of Texas.”

In 1797 Austin received a Spanish Land Grant here, adjoining the earlier French mining camp of Mine Au Breton, founded in 1763.

Austin and his family – his wife Maria Brown Austin and their children – Stephen F. Austin (Born 1793) and Emily Margaret (1795) – moved into Durham Hall in July, 1799. A third child, James Elijah Brown Austin, was born here in 1803.

Durham Hall and the first Washington County Courthouse (1814) were designed by Austin in Greek Revival style, dating from Austin’s association with Thomas Jefferson in the first Virginia Capitol. Both were the first of their architectural style in middle America.

From here Austin developed mining and smelting of lead into Missouri’s first major industry. From the lawn of this home, on May 12, 1802, Austin repulsed an attack by a band of Osage Indians. From here, in 1813, Austin gave the land to establish the town of Potosi as the county seat for the new County of Washington. And from here, in 1818, historian Henry Rose Schoolcraft began a famous exploration tour to the Southwest.

Here at Durham Hall, Emily Austin was married to James Bryan in 1813. Their first child, Stephen Austin Bryan, was born here in 1814.

In 1816, Moses Austin moved northward to Herculaneum, which he founded, and expanded his financial interests in St. Louis. Durham Hall was left in the care of Stephen F. Austin, who spent 1816-17 alone here while representing Washington County in the Territorial legislature of Missouri.

Here, as early as 1813, Moses Austin had dreamed of expansion to the Southwest. In 1820, Austin lost Durham Hall and his other properties in financial reverses. Seeking to regain his fortune, he traveled to San Antonio, where, in 1821, he received the first American grant for a colony in Texas.

Upon Moses Austin’s untimely death, on June 10, 1821, the Texas venture was willed to his son, Stephen F. Austin, who became “The Father of Texas.”

In 1831, the last of the Austin family left Potosi. Emily Austin, her second husband, James F. Perry, and their family moved to their Peach Point Plantation in Texas, after first reburying the bodies of their parents, Moses and Maria Austin, in the Potosi City Cemetery.

Durham Hall burned in 1871, in a fire which destroyed much of downtown Potosi.

Taking on the State of Texas

Moses Austin is still buried in Potosi, MO. His tomb bears the cracks made by an undertaker from Texas who was sent by a group of Texans in 1938 to move Moses' body to Texas. One story goes that the undertaker was caught in the act. The citizens drove the undertaker out of town and Potosians brag they are the only town that ever won a tangle with the state of Texas.

Where DO all those records on Ancestry.com come from?

I have never really stopped to think about how a document such as the US Census finds its way onto the Ancestry.com web site, but a presentation at the 2009 NGS conference titled “The Journey of an Ancestry Record: How an Image gets from the Archives to the World “ by Laryn Brown really made me appreciate all that goes into such a journey.

Just obtaining the rights to documents sometimes takes several years to negotiate: the length of time from start to finish for some paper documents can take up to 5 years!

Ancestry has several microfilm scanning operations running around the clock in several locations around the world. To index their documents they employ specially trained Chinese typists to do character-recognition typing of documents. They also employ a group of English speaking typists in Uganda to translate more complicated documents that require an understanding of context.

Ancestry makes a great effort to insure that their transcriptions are as accurate as possible. However, 20 to 30% of the images that they deal with now are literally "indeterminate". Even expert, full-time professionals see different things in repeated blind testing because the images are so faint or have been damaged. Ancestry depends on subscriber feedback to correct these problems, only possible when somebody knowledgeable about the context of the information views the image (i.e., you find your grandparents on a census and can identify an otherwise illegible entry as their son or daughters name).

It was interesting to note that Ancestry anticipates exhausting most of the available microfilm based information within the next 10 years or so.

"One Step" Closer to an Old Friend

I first encountered the work of Stephen P. Morse as a young engineer when I read his "8086 Primer", a down to earth (well, to an electrical engineer) introduction to the Intel 8086 micro processor. So when I discovered his One Step genealogical web site ( http://stevemorse.org/ ) many years later it was like meeting an old, trusted friend again. It was an even greater thrill to find him making several presentations at the 2009 National Genealogy Society conference.

If you are not familiar with his One Step site, you should be. He has teamed up with several equally bright and motivated individuals to provide a free, highly intelligent search front-end that interfaces with other free and/or commercially available databases (notably, the Ellis Island records and the US Census). His tools provide a superior way to search these records, often allowing searches and providing results in ways not possible on the original sites.

In the first session that I attended (titled “Playing Hide and Seek in the US Census”) he provided some background on how the US government organizes and categorizes the census results as well as a look forward to the availability of the 1940 census information (due for release in 2012). Of particular interest to the "I want it now" generation of genealogists was the revelation that these records will NOT be searchable by name at first, since it will take some time for Ancestry (and, presumably others) to key in the names and create the databases after the data is released.

Until that work has been completed, genealogists will have to rely on the work being done by Dr. Morse and his team of volunteers as they work to provide tools to allow searches by address and enumeration district (which, as I just learned, is an area that can be canvassed by a single Census taker).

The second session I attended was “What Color Ellis Island Search Form Should I use?” The useful content this presentation can be summarized in one sentence: when searching for information about immigrants passing through Ellis Island on his One Step web site, use the Gold search page. But there is so much more to this story....

Dr. Morse recounted his love/hate relationship with the Ellis Island foundation that began with the introduction of their web site in April, 2001. He was frustrated by the interface that was available at that time and created an innovative way to create his own way to submit queries to the Ellis Island search engine.

Word of his web page spread quickly, and thus began a 5 year (so far) technological and legal dance between Dr. Morse and the Ellis Island foundation. In that time he has developed a series of improved search pages with features that, usually, found their way into the Ellis Island search engine. This journey was briefly interrupted by a lawsuit that was soon resolved with the unintended consequence (to the Ellis Island Foundation) of making the database in its entirety available to Dr. Morse. As a result, his web page now has search capabilities not available on the Ellis Island site. His efforts have also made it possible to search and locate the various ships manifests directly.

His One Step web site also has links supporting enhanced searching for many other genealogical data sources, including ports of entry. I have been searching (unsuccessfully, for several years) for information about my Great Grandfathers trip from Norway (via England) to the United States. Having gained a deeper understanding and appreciation for how the One Step search engines works I used it to check again when I got home from the conference and found it!

Musings from the National Genealogical Society Conference

I guess it was only appropriate that I discovered that my professional skill-set was dead while attending a Genealogical convention. I have been developing web pages for my company for the past 10 years and am thoroughly knowledgeable about HTML, Perl and PHP. However, while attending a session titled "Blogs, Wikis & Flikr, Oh My! Sharing and collaborating on the Modern day Web" presented by Jordan Jones (Jordan@GenealogyMedia.com) I quickly realized how completely unaware I am of what has been happening in the real world. I am certain that I was the only person in the room who has never used Facebook, Flickr, a Blog, RSS or Footnote.

I can only remember a fraction of all of the information presented by Jordan, but I did walk away with a personal commitment to get with the times and begin using several of the tools he covered (the URL's are from Jordans handout):

Blogs - if you are reading these words then you know I have fulfilled my first commitment to begin blogging.

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) - this looks like a great tool for sharing genealogically significant images with my family. It allows you to upload images and "tag" them with Meta information that others can use to search for and locate them. The tools available seem to provide a great deal of flexibility when it comes to deciding who can access and view what you post. It even allows you to provide low resolution images, suitable for sharing on the web but not likely to be downloaded and pirated without your permission.

Footnote (http://www.footnote.com/) – Although this is not a free service, it appears to be a good companion to Flickr. Its focus is on scanned documents, and they apparently have images from the National Archives available.

Delicious.com (http://delicious.com/) - A web tool that allows you to organize and share your favorite web pages. It has links that can be incorporated into your personal web page. It is also a great web based tool that will have a record of all your links even if your PC (and all your favorites) crashes.

Print on Demand - This looks like a really exciting development. There are several companies specializing in printing small quantities of Adobe Acrobat formatted documents - perfect for things like family histories.

• CafePress – http://www.cafepress.com/
• Lulu – http://www.lulu.com/

Mapping - there are some really fascinating capabilities available with Google and Yahoo maps.

• Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/
• Google Maps – http://maps.google.com/
• Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/

Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.com/) - By this point in the presentation I was reduced to writing and underlining the names of sites that looked really interesting... this was one of them. When I got home I looked at the handout and found that this is a great source of information concerning issues of privacy that are important when sharing and collaborating with others on the web.

Old Newspapers Reveal Surprise

It shouldn't be a surprise any more, really. I mean, once I discovered that my great-grandfather, Daniel Hardie, had 3 wives, the second of whom had an illigitimate child prior to the marriage, I should be inured to surprises. I guess having ingested some silly childhood mental mantra-myth that goes "no one in our family (except poor, unfortunate Uncle Eddie) has ever been divorced" explains why I am surprised by today's findings reported in the 1924 Utica Observer-Dispatch and in The Ostego Farmer and The Ostego Republican.

Background
Mary Brown (1888-1976) married Pearly Hanlon in 1907. They had 2 children. Last March we visited her grave in Oneonta, NY. She was buried in a plot with her children, notably sans first husband Pearly. I was curious where he was buried -- and actually still am. I figured Pearly had died prior to Mary's second marriage. Au contraire!

News Articles

Pearly Hanlon of Oneonta, charged with desertion of his wife and children, threw himself upon the mercy of the court and sentence was suspended on the plea of his attorney Tennant. He assured the court that a position was awaiting him on the D. & H. and that arrangements had been made to have the company pay a stated sum to the wife.
-- The Ostego Farmer, March 7, 1924

Several cases appear reflecting matrimonial infelicity. Among these is one in which May (sic) Brown Hanlon seeks a divorce [OMG] from Pearley (sic) Victor Hanlon, and there is another in which Pearly Hanlon is seeking damages from William T. Norwood for alienation of affections.
-- The Ostego Farmer, March 1, 1935

Alienation of Affections

At common law, alienation of affections is a tort action brought by a deserted spouse against a third party alleged to be responsible for the failure of the marriage. The defendant in an alienation of affections suit is typically an adulterous spouse's lover . . .
-- Wikipedia

It may be readily obvious, but Mary Brown's second marriage was to one William T. Norwood. So much for my mental mantra-myth . . . How on earth do such myths get transmitted anyway?

An SS-5 Form Points the Way

I've been doing some family history research for a friend and sent off for her grandmother's 1937 Social Security application, her SS-5 Form. My friend did not know much about her grandmother's family so I was hoping for some leads from the SS application. I wasn't disappointed; the form listed the applicant's parents' names.

Armed with this information, I was able to discover a good deal about her family, who have farmed in Gibson County, Tennessee for many generations. I was struck by the fact that one ancestor, Samuel Hughes, was born in 1805 in North Carolina. I wonder when his parents arrived in America? Differently from my own ancestors, my friend's ancestors have deep, even pre-revolutionary war, roots in America.

One interesting discovery was that David (Davy) Crockett, himself a descendent of pre-revolutionary war ancestors, was an early settler of Gibson County, Tennessee. At first, when I saw "David Crocketts" on 19th century US census records in the same civil district as my friend's ancestors, I smiled, not yet knowing that these Crocketts were actually relatives of the famous man himself! Nice.

Patrick Brown 1841-1901

To the best of my knowledge, Patrick was born in Murraugh Parish, County Cork, Ireland in February of 1841. He immigrated to the United States about 1851, along with his parents, James Brown and Johannah Murphy, as well as his sister, Ellen, and his three brothers, John, Michael, and James. The 1860 US Federal Census indicates that Patrick, his parents, and his sister Ellen could neither read nor write.

Patrick was 43 when he married Mary Watson in 1884 at St. Mary's Cathedral in Ogdensburg, New York. Mary died at home from Typhoid fever in 1899 at age 44. Tragically, Patrick died two years later at age 60. While in the process of oiling a staging platform in the elevator of the Rutland Transit company, he fell 14 feet and fractured his skull. He died shortly afterwards. In September 2007 we found the grave site of Patrick Brown and Mary Watson in St. Mary's Cemetery in Ogdensburg, New York.

The story in the Ogdensburg Advance News reporting Patrick Brown's death states that he left "a family of five children, the oldest a girl of fifteen years of age". My grandfather, James Lawrence Brown, was eleven at the time of his father, Patrick's, death.

Beginning

After thinking about my own blog for the last few years, this evening I finally took the plunge into what appears to be the shallow end of blogspace. I was recently encouraged to do this by Tony's willingness to collaborate in the effort. We both thought it might be fun to have a place to share discoveries, travels, and adventures regarding our family history research. So, today we're up and off!

Fargo, North Dakota was a significant stop on the first family-history vacation we took. Tony had hooked up with the Red River Valley Genealogical Society in Fargo and we went there to see if they could help solve the question of where his great grandparents from Norway were buried. This was our first experience of sitting in a room with a bunch of records and books, splitting up the names we were interested in, and combing for facts.

At this stage, we now fall easily into this divide-search-conquer method of research in any library or archive or repository we visit. But Fargo was our first significant effort. Looking through cemetery records in that genealogy resource room in Fargo led us to Tony's great grandmother's final resting spot in Fargo. And an obituary in the Fargo newspaper led us to Tony's great granfather's grave in Fort Ransom, North Dakota.

That research trip to Fargo was the beginning of our genealogical travels. It was complete with searching funeral home records for ancestors, combing newspapers in the local library for obituaries, walking cemeteries in search of head stones, discovering previously known and unknown places where family members had lived, photographing everything that wasn't moving, and recording fresh findings on our computers each evening. The journey has yet to end.