The Slovak Yankee

How Do Articles Come About

I thought I would start re-analyzing for myself where some of my articles came from.  When I first got re-interested in genealogy post college, one my first tasks was to determine the ancestry of my great-great-grandmother Olive Ann (Hurd) Pinkham.  I saw advertised a genealogy on the Heard-Hurd family from Picton Press in 1988 but it cost $100.  Still expensive today, it was astronomical for me back then [according to Measuring Worth it would the same as $188 in 2009 dollars].  So I called and made them look to see if an Olive Hurd was in the book.  There was and I bought it.  Not her.

So over the years I did figure her and her ancestors out.  Olive's great-grandfather was in that genealogy, but misplaced in his parentage and with no children.  In any case, I did a bunch of research on the Heards who remained in Strafford County, N.H.  I was always toying around with doing an article, but didn't know how to approach it.  However, I discovered that my ancestor Reuben Heard was the owner of an extant family Bible that had been transcribed in more than one place.  It is a rare early 18th century Bible.  So this was perfect for me.  I didn't have to do "the Heards" as massive group, which would take a lifetime to do completely in all lines.  So I did an annotated version of the Bible records which weaved in all the research on the Heards I had done and straightened out my line:

Heard-Hayes Family Bible: An Annotated Guide, New Hampshire Genealogical Record 23 (2006):15-26.

Once this was done, I then tackled the wife of Reuben Heard.  It was very frustrating that this man owned this Bible and didn't do one crucial thing.  Enter his marriage date and his wife's full name.  I've often thought that he must have received more than one Bible at his marriage, because this Bible ended up in his mother's hands and she recorded all of her family in it and then passed it down to Reuben's half-brother, Benjamin Hayes (Jr.).  So that brought me to my next article which discusses her identity.  It is actually that article I'm concerned with now and will discuss that in my next posting.

The Dollivers and Aunt Ada

After I transcribed the obituary of Ada S. Keene (and I'll be doing a similar one for her husband next Monday), I looked at my notes in my database for her.  She is the sister of my great-great-grandmother and the woman to the far right in this picture.  She had two children, one of whom is mentioned in her obituary.  The other was Annie Bradley Keene, and under her I just had "Aunt Ada's mother."

Those are cryptic notes for anyone else, but I knew what they meant.  Back in the 1920s, for reasons I won't go into because it is not my story to tell, Ada came to live with my great-grandparents Archie and Lila.  Lila and Annie Bradley Keene were first cousins.  So my grandmother and Ada lived together for quite a few years growing up.  They were only a year apart, and naturally became like sisters.  Their friendship lasted their whole lives and my mother grew up calling her Aunt Ada (and then I did).  However, her real relationship with my mother was 2nd cousin, once removed.  Because I knew her and because she was well off to the side collaterally in my family, I had never bothered to do much "real research" on her.

A few years back when the NEHGS launched the Mass. Vital Records Database 1841-1910, I waited and then found Ada Smith's marriage record to Charles Arthur Keene in 1892.  However, after rediscovering the Keenes this time, it only took me only an hour to find everything else.  The NEHGS database now goes to 1915.  That found me the marriage record of Annie Bradley Keene and Amos Dolliver, as well as the birth records of their first two daughters including Aunt Ada.  The 1920 and 1930 censuses gave the names of the rest of the children.  The Social Security Death Index gave me the deaths of the two sons.  I already had Aunt Ada's death record and her obituary.  A simple Google search on the male names revealed the online obituary for one sister (with married name) and that mentioned the other sister with married name.  Both were found in the Social Security Death Index, and Aunt Ada's youngest sister just died in July 2010 here in Massachusetts at age 90.  I got her obituary online too. [Boo Hiss on Genealogybank.com which never seems to have any modern obituaries for me.]

So, I now have a fairly complete family picture of my second cousins, twice removed.  Interestingly, I could do this all from home with two paid databases: NEHGS's Americanancestors.org and Ancestry.com.  The two obituaries however were just on the Internet for free.  The five siblings died in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and two in Massachusetts.  So, there's no denying the convenience of this type of online research.  I do it so rarely, that I forget that it can be done this way.  

Tombstone Tuesday: Priscilla (Bearse??) Hall 1644-1712

Another Capecodgravestone.  She is the wife of John Hall (Jr.).  Although hard to read in the photo, it says she died on March 30th, 1712 at age 68.  That  ballparks her birth at 1643/44.  A Priscilla Bearse is often promoted to be this woman.  However, there is no proof of that assertion.  See Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, II:840-44.  When I get to the Bearse Family on my Surname Saturday posts, I'll explore this claim more thoroughly.

 

Amanuensis Monday: Obituary of Ada S. Keene

Beverly Evening Times (Mass.) [April 28, 1934]

MRS. ADA S. KEENE

Mrs. Ada S. Keene, wife of Charles A. Keene who made her home in  Beverly for many years and who had many friends here, passed away this morning in South Hamilton where she had been living for the past several months.

Mrs. Keene was a member of the Methodist Church of Beverly, the Friendship Rebekah lodge of which she was a Past Noble Grand and a Past Deputy, Diana Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, being a Past Worthy Matron a member of the Friendship club and of the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen.

Besides her husband, Charles A. Keene, she leaves a son John W. Keene of Philadelphia, five brothers and six grandchildren.

DIED

KEENE--In South Hamilton, April 28, Mrs. Ada S. Keene, wife of Charles A. Keene, age 59 yrs., 27 dys.  Funeral services will be held Monday April 30 at 2 p.m. from the Methodist church, Cor. Dane and Cabot streets, Beverly.  Relatives and friends are invited.

Luck

One unsettling reality I have had to come to terms with is that genealogical research is largely based on luck.  You can write all the blog posts of encouragement and persistence you want, but it really comes done to plain old luck.  Either your ancestors left records or they didn't.  There are myriad reasons why that happened or not.  

I am not a fan of luck, mostly because I seem to only receive the bad variety.  If you are a bridge player, as I am, then you know that although contract bridge is fun, it still is about the luck of the cards dealt to you.  However duplicate bridge takes the luck out of the equation and the game then solely rests on skill.  Too bad we can't take luck out of the equation in genealogy.  

And my ancestry is actually much luckier than most.  African-Americans get stopped by slavery.  Jewish-Americans, if they can back to Europe, find many documents were already destroyed during the Shoah.  To know that there were records that no longer exist is perhaps the most frustrating thing in genealogy.  Wouldn't we all like to see the 1841 and 1851 censuses for Ireland.  It's not yet even 100 years since they were destroyed (1916).  

During my hop through the town level vital records in Moultonborough, Ossipee, New Durham, Rochester, and Holderness, N.H. I was amazed that one year would have rich and recorded records and the next year would be blank.  It was completely and utterly arbitrary.  I was very lucky that I had ancestors die in New Durham in 1851 and 1855, but the ones who died in 1866 and 1868 got skunked (as did I).  

That being said, here's my short list of records which I wish I could bring back:

1. Barnstable County (Mass.) Deeds 1685-1775ish.  Originally part of Plymouth Colony (where some deeds prior to 1685 can be found), all the deeds were destroyed by fire in 1827.  The people alive then reproduced many deeds that happened within their life times and the collection does stretch back to the 1770s, but hardly completely.  

2. Cumberland Co. (Maine) Probate.  Same thing--destroyed by fire.  They only commence in 1908.  1760-1908 are gone.

3. Moultonborough Congregational Church Records.

4. Dover, N.H. Marriage records of 1717-1766.

5. The censuses for Ireland.

6. The U.S. census of 1890.

What are your wishes?

Surname Saturday: William Beamon of Hartford, Conn.

William Beamon (variantly spelled Beman, Beamond) was an early settler of Saybrook, Conn.  He came aboard the ship Elizabeth in 1635, with a John Beamon who is conjectured to be his brother.  Born ca. 1608 (age on the London Port Book was 27) and hailing from Bridgenorth, Shropshire, since that is where the magistrates were from who swore his allegiance.  That last bit was from research done, yet again, by Mary Walton Ferris, in her Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines [2:116-221]  Despite that clue, along with two men of the same name traveling together, the English origins of William Beamon is still not known.  

Sadly, Ferris says an extensive search was taken for the name Beamon in Bridgenorth, but nothing was found.  She then veers north and notes a "family story" that says the Beamons were from the north.  She recounts that there was a known relationship between Beamon and Richard Saltonstall, although two of her three examples she admits are untrue.  Saltonstall was a founder of Saybrook where Beamon eventually moved by 1643.  However, to presuppose a relationship is a stretch.  Beamon first goes to Salem as does the John Beamon, who remained there.

William married at Saybrook on 9 December 1643 (Saybrook VRs, p.3), Lydia Danforth, the daughter of Nicholas and Elizabeth (Barber) Danforth.  They had seven (possibly eight) children, including Elizabeth Beamon, wife of John Chapman. [All births of the children but one are in the Saybrook VRs]

Additonal sources:  Anderson, Sanborn & Sanborn, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England 1634-35, I:220-22.

Some more thoughts:  Gamaliel Beamon also came to New England in 1635 (on a different ship) and settled in Dorchester and then Lancaster, Mass.  He is of no known relationship to John and William, but how interesting that three men of the same name traveled in the same year to New England.  Does that point to Beamon being a more common name than we think?  Also, be aware that there is a Bemis family in New London, Conn. next door to Saybrook, but they are a totally separate family.  However, I've seen people mistake the two names when reading colonial records.

Leaving Things For the Next Generation

In defining the Genealogical Pursuit, Transylvanian Dutch said, "Many of us, I believe, would argue we're doing it so future (or current) generations will benefit from our work."  I had the title of this post on my little stickie of future blog postings for weeks, and that thought seemed apropos.  I've been thinking about why I do genealogy and how I should leave things for my nieces and nephews.  

I am scanning photographs and I hope to put together a blurb book with the photos and explanations of relationships for each of them.  I think photographs are cool and something that only the three generations before me could really pass down.  They are a relatively new technology (about 160 years old).  In any case, it took me several years to assemble those photographs (and yes, long before the Internet), so I would like to pass them down.  I think that's easily done and something anyone would appreciate.  It's just plain human curiosity to look into an ancient photograph and see your nose or your eyes on an ancestor's face.   But photographs are heirlooms.  I also have several items from ancestors that I will have to think about leaving to someone.  Which reminds me that I don't have a will anymore.

But the genealogy stuff, I'm not so sure about.  I've never researched either of my two brothers-in-law's genealogy because I thought that if my nieces and nephews were to be interested in genealogy, half of their ancestry would have been already done by me.  So, I wanted to leave half their ancestry as a mystery.  That contradicts Elizabeth Shown Mills in her YouTube which implies she's done everyone's genealogy that's connected to her including her mailman.  However, there is still all the stuff I've done and all the trees I've killed that sit downstairs in large filing cabinets.

Partly, I've written some articles, so that's one way to leave things for the next generation.  Whether anyone will ever read the articles or even find the articles in the future is anyone's guess.  But what should be done about my own research.  And why should I think future generations will even be interested in it?  Certainly my parents and my siblings aren't.  And they never have been.  The only thing more boring than bringing up genealogy to a non genealogical audience is showing family home movies.  You either get it or you don't.  I think it's extreme hubris on the part of genealogists to think our work will benefit anyone but ourselves.  I do this for me and no one else.  

This dawned on me when I was constructing the large notebooks of original documents and I needed to figure out where to place documents for women whose names changed several times over their lifetimes. Finally, I decided to put them exactly in alphabetical order by whatever the name was.  Whoever looks at it will need to figure out who is who.  And if they really are interested in genealogy, then it won't be very hard.

I've been trying to find a link or video to a woman who did a show on WGBH (the PBS affiliate of Boston) some time back.  It was a "stop feeling stressed and live" type show.  She had a great line about caring so much about your good china all your life, and then when you die, your kids sell the china and go to Maui on a vacation.  That pretty much sums up my take on genealogy.  We can all work and work, but after we're gone, it could all end up in the trash bin.  And since genealogy is unique (only my two sisters share my exact ancestry), it's not like it has a wide usefulness.  

So, what to do?  Write a book?  Too much work, too much money (there's a reason they call it a vanity press).  I was thinking of putting everything on a memory stick and giving it as a gift.  The tricky thing is the timing.  My nieces and nephews are ages 9 mos. to 13 years.  I hope I can wait 10-20 years, but who knows?  I'm already looking into various branches of Michael's family to pass along heirlooms to collateral branches that will have descendants.   For now I can procrastinate, but someday, I will have to downsize my living arrangement and genealogical items will be high on the "I don't need this anymore" list.  I have toyed with donating the whole thing to a genealogical society as a manuscript collection.  The only problem is, I don't see the usefulness in the collection.  It only makes sense with the computer files in tandem with the paper.

I'm not so sure genealogy will ever catch on, no matter how many TV shows they do.  Eventually most documents will be online.  However 99% of people will do a few searches and accept whatever they find as the truth.  A few hearty soles will do more, no different that we who didn't accept what was written in books.  Most people accept things on faith and don't think twice.  How many times do you click on the footnotes of a Wikipedia entry?  Does anyone look up the footnotes in a historical work, other than a historian?  So, why should we think that future generations will research further than the first Ancestry.com tree that they find?

Rotating Your Searches

I was intrigued to read Genealogy's Star's two part posting on Taming the Rise of Digitization.  Although not following his line of reasoning, it did spark a thought of my own.  As someone who's done a fair amount of research and who is waiting for more online resources to open up, how can I methodically touch base from time to time to see what's new?

I guess one could make a list of brick walls or surnames of particular interest and then from time to time, go to specific sites and re-search (that is to search once more), databases already searched.  I would venture that Google Books and Family History Pilot would be two good places to go back to in a set time pattern.  But what?  Every six months?  Once a year?

I may try compiling such a list and testing this out over the next few years.  I'm sure that someday something will pop up and surprise me.  But of course, isn't that the major symptom of the disease?  The never-ending hope that someday something will turn up to help us.  We never really ever declare a search dead and over.  Although I might just start that trend.  It's too bad you can't register certain searches to run over and over again like you can in Westlaw, Lexis, and Google in other genealogical databases.  I'd love an alert for several searches.  

I think some of us "old-timers" need to get a routine going, because at the present I only do off-the-cuff searches when the mood strikes.

Paying It Forward (or Trying to At Least)

It was coincidence that last week a fellow blogger vented some frustration at Findagrave.  It's nice to know I am not the only genealogical blogger who at times needs to vent.  It only feels like I'm the only one.  I'm relatively new to Findagrave.  I'm still in the double digits for memorials [but, of course, I only do my direct lines really].  However, everyone has been extremely kind to me there.  Those who have had memorials for my direct lines, were only too glad to turn them over to me.  In most cases, I declined if they just agreed to link the gravestones properly.  Also, I got my first photo request in the last two months, which saved me a trip to Pennsylvania.

I spent this past weekend in Vermont and on my way up I decided to stop and get some gravestone photos from two cemeteries in New Hampshire.  The first was in Newport and was for my Dudley family.  That part of the trip went well.  I found all the graves and got all the photos.  Two of the gravestones were sadly lichen-covered.  Someday I may go back to clean them up and take new photos, but first I need to learn the best way to clean the gravestone without unintentionally hurting it.  Those photos are already on Findagrave and will keep my Tombstone Tuesdays populated for a while.  I also found a sister of my g-g-g-g-grandmother I didn't know was there, with one of her children and one grandchild.  

The second cemetery was about 10 miles south of the first in Lempster.  Supposedly another Dudley was there.  However, before I left I downloaded the three photo requests for that cemetery (there were none for the first) and armed with four different names off I went.  Sadly, I couldn't find my Dudley or two of three requests.  But I got one and I posted that photo and got a very nice thank you.  So I have fulfilled one photo request (and not even in my neck of the woods).  

Tombstone Tuesday: John Hall (Jr.) 1638-1710

Also from Capecodgravestones.  He is the brother of Rev. Gershom Hall, both sons of John and Bethia (---) Hall.