I'm going to be working on updating my Olerud and Thoresen pages over the next week or so, with all the new information I've been finding. I hope to see everyone when I come to Chicago in May - I'll bring genealogy!
0 Comments
I know it's well past my bedtime, but I'm just too excited to sleep. Besides, I took a nap today and I usually don't nap.
Well let's start at the beginning. About six weeks ago, I received a message from a DNA match. 23andMe said we were 3rd cousins, but actually we are 2nd cousins. He didn't need to tell me much, and I knew exactly how we were related. Our grandmothers were sisters. I sent him some information I had collected on my grandmother's family (I may have overwhelmed him). To be honest, these lines overwhelm me too! They are my Olerud and Thoresen lines. The reason I say they overwhelm me is they are my Norwegian lines and every generation back in Norway, and even the first generation or two in the US, they would change their surnames (well in the US sort of) if your father's name was Hans, your surname would be Hansen (son of Hans). In the US they had to use a regular surname, but sometimes they'd forget especially in church records and a few other records. Well because of this DNA match, I have been diligently working on these lines. I'm finding it isn't quite as hard as I thought it was. I just always need to keep it in the back of my mind if I can't find a record, could it be under the father's name with the -sen at the end. I don't think I'll get brave enough (yet) to explore too much of the Norway records. But we'll see. I grew up being told my great-grandmother Thora Maria Thoresen was born in North Dakota. But then others said no she was born in Minnesota. As I was researching, I found the source of the confusion - 1/2 of the documents showed her being born in Minnesota and half being born in North Dakota. I even tried a general search of church records in North Dakota thinking if she had been born in North Dakota, that would be where she was baptized. The search turned up empty. Tonight I came across the baptismal record from her brother who was slightly older than her and the only one of her sibling who was also born in North Dakota and there it was.....Bluflat Lutheran Church, in Portland Traill County, North Dakota!!! Pay dirt!!! I did a search in Ancestry Card Catalog for Birth, Baptism, & Christening Records, then by church, town, and I put in her birth year of 1885 and as I scroll down the names, there she was! She was most definitely born in North Dakota and I have the proof! I really am trying to organize my genealogy. To do so, I am going family line, by family line, person by person on my Ancestry tree and copying each document to add to my personal tree. So far, I have finished my Blickhahn and Seidelmann lines and let me tell you they took me FOREVER! Now I have moved on to a sub line of the Seidelmanns, the Laplanch line. This was the saddest bit of genealogy I have come across. Hubert and Gertrude Laplanch had five children. Only one child, my ancestor, Anna lived beyond the age of 10.
Going back line by line, has really shed some perspective on just how difficult life was for these early immigrant families. This family lived in Aurora, Illinois, which was a little over 40 miles from Chicago. As this was back in the 1880s, the only transportation was probably horse and wagon and probably train. There seemed to be many doctors in Chicago (in one family on my Blickhahn line, every male child became and doctor or dentist for a couple generations), but medical care in the rural areas may have been sparse. I can't imagine being Hubert and Gertrude, and losing four of five of my children. Two of the children died during the same year. I haven't looked beyond Find a Grave at the children to know if the two died around the same time (maybe an epidemic?) or if it was from some other cause. It is weekends like the one I just had that makes genealogy so much fun! Especially when you throw in some DNA! The first great thing that happened is I connected with a new cousin and then, reconnected with another cousin I hadn't talked to for nearly 4 years. We both just got busy with our lives. It is those rekindling of relationships that revitalizes me in my genealogy. My Stanley line has really taken root over the past couple of years, from uncovering some secrets and learning some interesting facts. The first was my great-grandmother not only had been married before marrying my grandfather, this marriage took place when she was only 15 years old (not a legal marriage in the state of Illinois. Her and her beau eloped to Michigan to marry, as they couldn't marry legally in Illinois (but I guess there are ways around that as I will soon explain). As things developed, the young couple hadn't known each other for only weeks, but months as Marietta was several months pregnant. Once back in Illinois, because of the pregnancy, the mothers of the two, marched them into the Catholic Church to have them properly married. In order for this to happen, her mother attested to her age of 16 (but the truth was she wouldn't be 16 for a few months. A few weeks after the marriage, Marietta gave birth to a stillborn baby. The baby, as it was not baptized, could not be buried in the Ray's family's cemetery plot in the cemetery's potter's field. After the death of the baby, it appeared that the two young people went on with their separate lives.
I had the original marriage certificate for Marietta and Fred. While working on my DAR (Daughter's of the American Revolution), the registrar noted that the marriage certificate appeared to have been altered, (someone had changed the certificate from 1918, to 1908, by making a 0 out of the one). I totally missed that. Pulling the register for the marriage showed the couple did in fact marry in 1918. It wasn't until Fred and Marietta had a son, and two more daughters, did the couple actually marry. Because of this delay in the marriage, the DAR believed Ray Hayes to be the father of Marideth, as they never divorced, and Marideth's birth certificate was a delayed birth certificate. Although Fred was listed as the father of Marideth, it was not issued until 1942. It took a little research to untangle this web of confusion. Through my continued research of Marietta, Ray, and Fred, I found that in 1910, Marietta was living alone in a boarding house in Chicago and Fred with his mother in Michigan. After some painstakingly tough research, I was able to find Ray living in Kansas, working as a painter. Sometime during 1910, Marietta met Fred Stanley. By April 10, 1911, the two had their first child, my grandmother, Marideth. To further solidify my stance that Fred Stanley was the biological father of Marideth. We continued the search for Ray. Sometime between 1910 when Ray was a house painter in Kansas, he met and married Gertie Sherwood, which also showed that Ray had moved on with his life. In August of 1913, Ray was listed as an inmate at the Kankakee State Hospital and died in July, 1918, one month after Marietta and Fred officially married. I've had always loved history, and genealogy allows me to combine that love of history with learning more about my family. Tomorrow is another day, and I'll share some interesting findings. Genealogy is WAY COOL!!!! Daughters of the American RevolutionOnce I knew some of my ancestors arrived in America during the 1600s, I just knew, I had to have a patriot ancestor, on who served in the American Revolution. I had two lines arriving during the mid-to- late 1600s. the Stanleys and the Roots. Later, I found even more lines, including my Oakley line. the one I qualified under was Miles Oakley, but I believe I also could qualify under his wife's father - Daniel Bennette. Since I already have done the work through Hawley Oakley (Miles son), it shouldn't be to hard to get Daniel added on.
Well, my Stanleys may have fought during the American Revolution, but I'm not sure it was as a patriot. it was either on the British side or not at all. I do have a patriot on my Root line. Joshua Root, but I have to sort out some dates that have been floating out on the internet for birth/marriage/death dates that just won't work. That will be for another day. It has been a struggle to get back to my genealogy. This past year health wise with lupus has been a struggle. There are good days and then there are bad days. Unfortunately, last year there seemed to be more bad days than good where I just couldn't get my head into my genealogy. So far, March is looking pretty good. I need to stay healthy and keep focused on my genealogy. Why???
One of my dad's cousins got in touch with him after connecting with him with a DNA match and that got the ball rolling. In about a week's time, my Uncle and this cousin arranged to get a family reunion planned in Las Vegas the end of May. I'm really excited. Now I need to get all of my Blickhahn line in really good shape, so I can get so copies made, haven't decided if I'm going to make print copies or electronic copies but it should be great!!!!! I'm not sure if I'm up to it but I have about 50 pages of parish records from the Catholic Church in Epperthausen, Germany. The problem? They are in German. I could probably handle the German, but the old script and the poor copies, that will be the challenge. After some medical setbacks, it has taken me awhile to get back into my genealogy, but I've made some real progress over the past several weeks. One of the things I've had on my bucket list is to complete my application to qualify for the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). Well, last week, I was able to cross that my bucket list. I traced my lineage back with all of the necessary documentation to my Revolutionary War Patriot, Miles Oakley. My application went in Wednesday, March 22, and my understanding is that it will take about 3-4 months to hear back. As Miles was already listed as a DAR patriot, I only had to link back to the person who became a member using Miles. The chapter I applied under was a lot more particular than the chapter I had started to work with in Fresno. This chapter wanted everything better documented all the way back to Miles. It was good though, as I learned some good organizational techniques and more about early colonial records.
So far, so good on my New Year's resolution, and now I'm knee deep into putting together a research binder for my Stanley line. I think the research binder is what has been missing from my research. No matter what though, I need to focus on one family line at a time. I've been looking at a number of research forms, and the same information has to be entered on each of the different forms. Then I got the idea to create a form that combines the information I need most . This is what I finally came up with the worksheet below. To see the whole sheet, click on the image below to access the PDF version.
Last night I found a copy of a book on the History of St. Peter's Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. From my prior research, I knew that my Blickhahn/Keller ancestors were members of St. Peter's. I stumbled across this book while looking for a picture of the church. Unfortunately, there were no pictures in this copy of the book, so I was trying to copy and clean it up, when I noticed a link at the top of the document, indicating there were other formats of the document. I clicked on the PDF version. As I scrolled down the pages, there it was a beautiful drawing of the church, a picture of the alter and a picture of the congregation during a church service. My ancestors could have been one of the people sitting in the congregation. I down loaded the document as looking at it online was slow going between pages. I can't wait to see what other gems are waiting for me. Check out the PDF by clicking here.
The best laid plans for me never work out as something always gets in the way of my genealogy, but this time it was for good reasons...I didn't get to see my kids for Christmas, but our daughter came down the week after Christmas, and our son came out the week after that, and left on Sunday. In between all of that, I've been helping a friend from church's husband with proofreading his dissertation. His dissertation has been challenging for me, as his subject matter is very foreign to me (medical field), so at times, I'm not quite sure what he is trying to convey.
I did succeed in finding time to watch one of the webinars at Legacy Family Tree. Current webinars are free and also free for a few days after each webinar. Last Wednesday it was Lisa Louise Cooke. She is always very motivating. Legacy offers a new webinar each Wednesday and occasionally on a Friday. This week there is a webinar on Wednesday (Using technology to differentiate between two people with the same name) and Friday (Using the Snagit software for genealogy). My goal is to watch at least three webinars a week. (I have an annual membership so can watch them anytime). Legacy now has 293 top notch webinars in their archives). My old laptop started giving me a lot of trouble, so with the great prices on computers before Christmas, I bought a new laptop. Because I was looking for a computer running Windows 7, it was really cheap (but with the specs I was looking for). In between visiting with my kids and working on the dissertation, I've been working with on putting pictures into digital folders on my new computer. Since I have a new laptop, instead of just copying all of my data over to my new computer, figured this was definitely the time to do Thomas MacEntee's "Genealogy Do-Over." This means I put the genealogy data aside and literally start over. I'm feeling like a newbie, trying to figure out how I did something or found something before. I think it will be good to start from scratch, as before, my research was not done on a consistent basis. Sometimes it would be several months before I could find time to work on my genealogy and I'm sure I missed things because of that. I'll be blogging about my progress. |
Click the link below for one of the best values in Genealogy Education!
Author - Dr. Kathryn M. WattsI live in Orange, California with my husband Bill, and my service dog Timber. Genealogy is one of my favorite past times. Archives
May 2019
Categories |