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Making the Best of a Rainy, Saturday Afternoon

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Life, tagged Advise, Carol Chidlow, cemetery, Family, family history, family tree, Funeral, Funeral home, Genealogy, history, Petersburg Virginia, Philadelphia, Saturday, Virginia on August 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

I have to admit, I’m not a real good genealogist. So far I haven’t checked out any wills, deeds, property sales or anything like that. And I hop around a lot. When I get bored not finding anything on one ancestor I hop over to research another. All the books tell you not to do that. It’s a genealogy no-no. But I have a lot of fun with my family research. I mean, it’s all out there somewhere and as far as all that boring stuff is concerned, it’s not going anywhere. I am confident that it will still be there if I ever get around to going after it.

But talking to people, finding obscure jewels of gossip and factoids about the family makes me smile. It’s the detective spirit in me I guess. I love a good mystery. Here’s one thing I did early on in my journey that really paid off. At the time I didn’t have a lot of information. I knew where my grandparents were buried because I’d been to several family funerals there. My father is buried alongside them and his were the only dates I had. One Saturday afternoon I got out my paper with the names on it and called the Blandford Cemetery office in Petersburg, Virginia. A very nice lady named Jackie answered the phone and I asked her if by any chance I could get some information from their files. She said “sure”.

I gave her the surname I was looking for and boy, did she give it to me! Every person in that cemetery with the same last name was fair game. Apparently it was a rainy Saturday afternoon in Petersburg and Jackie was bored. She gave me the names of all of them, birth dates, death dates and more information then I could have hoped for. Before the 1950s the cemetery records contained the place of birth and the cause of death for the deceased. The German tradition of everyone being buried together meant that most of the children were buried in the family plot. That is how I found out that my grandmother and several of the older boys were born in Rockingham County, Virginia. Never knew that. I thought they came from Petersburg, Philadelphia or North Dakota. That’s the only places I ever heard of when I was growing up. She also gave me all their addresses when they died, funeral homes that took care of the arrangements, birth dates, etc. I ended that afternoon with a new best friend and tons of data to include in my family tree. I spent the rest of the day grinning like an idiot.

A few weeks later, trying to get my hands on my grandfather’s death certificate was proving to be a complicated chore. But because of my new friend Jackie, I knew the funeral home so I called them and asked if they had records that went back that far. Apparently they keep those records forever and the gentleman I talked to informed me that I wouldn’t find a death certificate in Virginia because my grandfather had died in Philadelphia and was shipped home to be buried in Petersburg. Well that little tidbit made all the difference in the world. With it I was able to find a death certificate. Never did find an obituary though.

So the next boring afternoon you’re sitting around wondering which direction to take your research, back up, regroup and do some thinking outside the box. The least normal idea just might pay off.

Grandmother Volz

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Put Some Flesh On Those Bones

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Life, Names, tagged American Civil War, Books-A-Million, Carol Chidlow, civil war, Civil War Times, Confederate States of America, family history, Genealogy, Grandparent, history, Military History, records, research on August 16, 2012| 4 Comments »

Facts and figures make up the bulk of information that genealogists collect, chart, and savor. We’ve got those dates memorized, got the family names etched in our memories and we’ve got city, states and street names documented solidly on our family trees.

You may know that grandpa was a miller. Or grandma could have been the first female doctor in her county. But unless you are blessed with diaries and family papers, you don’t know much about the day-to-day lives of all those people who make us who we are. And you may never know. But with a little detective work you can find out what was happening around them while they went through life.

As an example let’s look at my great-grandfather who was a private in the Confederacy. I did find his army records in the national archives and paid a handsome price to get a copy of them. What I learned was shocking. It appears that every so often during the whole war, he went AWOL, then came back. What? How could that be? My ancestor a deserter? No way.

Enter a great magazine named Civil War Times. My local library has this magazine and it’s full of Civil War history as well as what was happening in communities both north and south during the war. What I found out was that in the South they thought the war would be short-lived. They only signed up for one year so they had to have all kinds of incentives to keep the boys fighting. I discovered that my ancestor like a lot of farmers, went home every spring to put a crop in the field. So he wasn’t a deserter after all. He was just a farmer who needed to provide for his family.

Another ancestor of an extended family member migrated from Ireland along with so many of his relatives. What was happening in his life to encourage them all to immigrate at the same time? A short history lesson about the potato famine answered that question fast. So now I had insight into his life. He lived in a rural area, probably a farmer and couldn’t feed his family because of the potato famine. So many Irish immigrated to the United States and Canada for the very same reason. Second only to the Germans, the Irish immigration was one of the largest groups of new citizens to North America.

So many magazines like Civil War Times, Military History, Colonial Times, WWII or Wild West will give you a peek into the life styles of our ancestors. You’ll find occupations, hair styles, fashion, and lots of little details that you just don’t know from reading facts and figures. The larger bookstores like Books-A-Million and Barnes and Noble have huge magazine sections. You can sit there for hours, making notes and not spend a dime. But it is nice to buy at least one magazine so you don’t appear a total cheapskate.

Libraries also have many, many magazines of interest to the genealogist. And some libraries will get a subscription to one that you want to read if you ask them.

Civil War Wife

I know it’s not as great as finding diaries, family Bibles, journals and letters but magazines that tell the history of different periods when your ancestors were alive can help you put a little flesh on the bones of your research.

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I Am The Keeper Of The Pictures – Well, Some Of Them

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Life, tagged Charity shop, color, crafts, Image, Italy, Photograph, picture frames, Shopping, Supplies, Velcro, Visual Arts on August 12, 2012| 3 Comments »

I used to think that I didn’t really have many family photos. I had a few and my Aunt Agnes game me some but it really wasn’t very many and I had none of my parents when they were young. But when I connected with a few fourth cousins online, they shared their pictures with me. Then my father-in-law made me the keeper of all his family photos including all the ones he took during WW II when he was in Italy. Plus I harassed a cousin of mine until she sent me her pictures so I could copy them. Really, I harassed her. I gave my genealogy guru a phone card and she called my cousin every three or four months for three years. Finally got the photos and you bet I took my sweet time getting them back to her.

Then the question became what to do with them all. Oh I could get really organized and scan them all and post them in my family tree. Boring!! (I really do plan to still do that). But I wanted to do something different. A neighbor of mine has an ancestor wall just inside their front door. Of course she has very expensive frames, real wood panelling as a background and it’s really first class all the way. I wanted to do the same thing but on a more limited budget. Like, no budget.

Never one to make a firm committment to color I decided to make my background temporary. So my daughter and I got a large piece of dry wall, covered it with a beautiful piece of rusty tomato colored synthetic suede and my husband attached it to the wall. Wanting to keep some consistency and economy to the wall I haunted thrift shops, flea markets, yard sales and dollar stores and found all the frames I needed, painted them all black and framed pictures of both my husband’s and my families.

Then my daughter and I put a huge piece of craft paper on the floor and shuffled the frames around until we liked the composition. We drew outlines of all the frames, taped the craft paper to the material, put up the pictures and then tore off the craft paper.

I have to admit it looked really great and I’ve got so many complements on my wall. At a glance I could see where I came from. It seems to help me stay grounded to know where I’m going. Even my brother liked it when he came to visit.

Ancestor Wall

Since then, I have received more photos that I would like to put up. Plus I have become bored with the colors so I have started taking the frames down, and I plan to paint them all white, change the material to a light turquoise and put the frames back up in a different configuration. I’ve found some better quality frames at the thrift shops and antique malls so I will be changing out some of the old frames.

The main change I’m doing this time is hanging them with Command hangers. The newer ones that are kind of like Velcro work fantastic. I’ve hung stuff on them and they lay flush with the wall and they will hold a lot of weight. So I feel confident that they will hold my frames just great.

I’m confident you will find a unique way to showcase your favorite family photos. This is just the one I like.

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Obituaries Can Be Your Friends

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Life, tagged advice, Carol Chidlow, Death, family history, family stories, funeral services, Genealogy, history, Obituary on August 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Genealogists are a ghoulish bunch. We talk about dead people all the time, we spend hours in cemeteries where we rarely know anyone buried there and we get absolutely silly about obituaries. If you find a printed obituary about one of your ancestors you may have hit pay dirt for information. One thing to remember about obituaries is that the person who gives the information out usually knew the deceased well and the data is pretty accurate. Mostly.

Looking for inspiration to make a hit one boring day, I called the library in the town where most of my father’s family are buried. I found that the library had copies of all the old newspapers and the research librarian spent about two hours on the phone with me, finding all the obituaries she could based on death dates I gave her. I immediately sent off a check to cover copies, postage and a small donation for the library since they didn’t charge for genealogy help. In a few weeks I received a large envelope full of goodies. I spent the better part of a day reading all the obituaries. It was just like Christmas. You know that feeling. You know you do.

A good example of serendipity is the obit I received for my Aunt Agnes (my father’s older sister). My aunt Agnes was a character. She was one of the oldest of the eleven kids and my father being the youngest, she practically raised him. She drove an automobile before you had to have a license in this country, picked wild Muscadine grapes and made wine every year, held every office a woman could in the VFW auxiliary, USO and always won the best hat award at her Half Century Club meetings. Her and my Aunt Mabel went to funerals for people she didn’t even know, and when one of my uncles died, she would stay at the funeral home all night long so they wouldn’t be alone. And when the funeral was over, she would go back to the cemetery and spend hours just sitting and talking to her brother.

Even with all I thought I knew about her, the obituary gave up some great stuff. I learned that she was born in Baltimore, MD, and I always thought she was born in Petersburg, VA. I knew her grandfather was from Maryland but didn’t know the city. On a hunch I started searching Baltimore and made a few connections. I also learned that she belonged to many more groups than I had thought.

Obituaries can reveal real treasure for the family historian. Read them carefully, they’re solid gold.

Agnes Whitt

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Tombstone Tuesday – What Does It Really Mean?

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Life, Names, tagged Carol Chidlow, cemeteries, civil war, family history, Genealogy, grandparents, headstone, history, marriage, research, taphophilia, tombstones on August 6, 2012| 3 Comments »

Of all my ancestors I’d like to go back in time to meet it would be my paternal great grandmother Catherine (Hedrick) Sipe. She married my great grandfather Archibald Hewston Sipe shortly after he came back from fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. She gave birth to my grandmother in January of 1869 and died in March the same year. I wonder if she died from complication of child birth. Seems possible but without documentation I’ll never know.

Catherine F. Sipe

A few things about her tombstone leave me with more questions than answers. For one thing it says Consort of Archibald Sipe. Unusual to use the word consort instead of wife. I do have a copy of their marriage bans so I am pretty sure they were married. Or did she change her mind and not to marry the man? Soon after she died the baby was left with Catherine’s parents to raise. Archibald moved on, finally marrying his third wife and settling in North Dakota not very far from the homestead of Catherine and her husband, my grandfather. But that’s a story for another day.

Also she is buried over by the fence of the cemetery instead of with her mother and father which is the German custom. Burials along the fence of cemeteries sometimes indicate a suicide, witch, harlot, take your pick. Several years ago the DAR mapped the entire cemetery but made no note of Catherine. What’s that all about? I only found it because another relative went to the cemetery to look for it and sent me the information.

In the dark and wondering why, I will continue to try to find the answers.