Fantastic Find! Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury

The fire that destroyed the Public Records Office in Dublin in June of 1922 with the resulting loss of centuries of Irish records has made researching our Irish ancestors difficult.

[Source: Trinity College, Dublin]

But now, five institutions* have joined together to search out duplicates of the original records in other collections to"recreate virtually as much of the archive as possible in a digital format that can be accessible to everybody" in time for the centenary of the fire.**

The project is called Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury and its director Peter Crooks*** explains:

“We are committed to producing 50 million words of searchable material by 2022 and that is possible with the artificial intelligence we are using,” he said. 

“Tens of thousands of papers will be digitised, but they will also be searchable, which is a change. We will be able to mine this information for individual names.”

I strongly suggest you visit Trinity College Dublin's website about the project, especially the Gallery which has a number of images and videos, including a 1922 newsreel that shows the Public Records Office on fire.

I learned about Beyond 2022 through a link to the this article in the Irish Times.

*They are: the National Archives, the UK national archives, the public records office in Northern Ireland, the Irish Manuscripts Collection and the library at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
**Which happened on June 30, 1922, two days after the start of the Irish Civil War.
**You can watch a video with Peter Crooks here.

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Thanksgiving Day

The Metropolitan Museum used this stunning image from 1895 in their Thanksgiving message. I wasn't familiar with Will H. Bradley (1868-1962), the artist who created it so I did a bit of research and it turns out that there's a local connection.

[William Henry Bradley (American, 1868–1962). The Chap Book: Thanksgiving Number, 1895. Lithograph.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

After a long and illustrious career*, Will retired to South Pasadena around 1948 and began working on his autobiography. In 1957 he and his widowed daughter Fern came to live in La Jolla. Three years later, declining health caused him to move to a convalescent hospital in La Mesa where he died on January 25, 1962.


*This splash page to the WillBradley.com website gives an overview of all this creative genius accomplished in his long life.

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Richard M Grenfell (1849 - About 1911)

Berenice Grenfell Currey* was raised by her widowed paternal grandmother but probably never met her grandfather because the couple left the farm to retire in San Diego before she was born. She heard stories about him from her grandmother which she shared with me. One of them was about his wanderlust--he traveled all over the world and was in South Africa when the Kimberley diamond fields were opened.

Last week I was contacted by his great great grandson Jim** and when I mentioned that story he told me he would send me a portrait of Richard M. Grenfell taken at that time. And here it is:

[Courtesy of Jim Grenfell]

Richard Grenfell brought his wife and seven children to the United State in 1881 with the original plan of settling in the Bluegrass Country of Kentucky but when they landed in New York a lot of attention was still being given to the gold found in South Dakota so they were there instead. Their first dwelling was in Crook City, a boom town with no sanitation, and that's where the Grenfells buried six of their children--one girl fell into a storm-swollen creek and drowned, and the others died of typhoid fever. Since Richard didn't become a citizen until 1886 he couldn't homestead and so they bought an existing farm.

Here's his application for citizenship:

[From my personal collection]

Until this photo arrived, the only picture I had of Richard Grenfell was this one of he and Grace standing in front of their bungalow on Point Loma around 1910. He died before Mother's arrival in 1912 and I believe he's buried in Alpine. Unfortunately I haven't found a death record in the usual databases.

[From my personal collection]

Jim  wondered if Mother had been the inheritor of a Revolutionary Era silver tea set*** that had belonged to ancestors of her mother Mary Grant Grenfell.

Now, I never heard of any ancestral silver although that wouldn't have arrived at the Grenfell farm house until Mary Grant's marriage to William Grenfell in 1900 so Grandma Stanton**** wouldn't necessarily have known about it. At her father's death it was learned that William Grenfell left his entire estate to his youngest son Richard with no mention of his only daughter or the child of his oldest son. The only things Mother got from the house were a marble-topped table and a punch bowl set of pressed glass. Mother's relationship with Mary Grant Grenfell was almost non-existent--she received one letter from the woman between 1912, when her father took her to live with his mother, and Mary's death in 1948. So even if it existed I can't imagine Mary Grant Grenfell giving it to her daughter.

Even though I can't solve the mystery of that silver tea service for him, I'm glad that Jim reached out to me because I have some family photos and records that belong with him and I'll be sending them off to him later this week.

*The mother who raised me Bernice Evangeline Grenfell (1902-1980). You can read more about her early life here, and here.
**He's the grandson of Gilbert Grenfell, mother's older brother, who was killed in 1928 when his tractor overturned.
**Alleged to have been used to serve tea to General George Washington. (of course!).
****Grace Thomas Grenfell married Joseph Stanton in 1921 and Mother always referred to her by her second husband's surname.
*****


© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hashtags in Legacy 9: George Hartley, Jr. (1907-1977)

The list of hashtags I've attached to my grandfather George Hartley, Jr.

I've taken over a year break from regular posting after a tough recovery from a heart attack and ongoing dialysis, but I haven't been idle!  I've been working on standardizing locations and attaching hashtags to the people on my (admittedly ridiculously huge extended) family tree on Legacy 9.

My next overarching project is going to be figuring out ways to display reports on these folks (using said locations and hashtags) that is informative and readable.




© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

From The North Adams Evening Transcript, January 10, 1914: Clergyman Gives History of Stafford Hill Settlement

Any history of the Baptists in Western Massachusetts would have to include my 6X great grandfather Peter Werden (Worden) and after a general description of the area, Rev. Pease discussed the important position my ancestor had in his community.*

[10 Jan 1914, Page 8 - The North Adams Transcript at Newspapers.com]

 *There's even a mention of my 4x great grandfather Richmond.


© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

June 4, 1919: Nineteenth Amendment Passes

 “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment by Congress in joint session.*

[This pen in @amhistorymuseum was used to sign the amendment's joint resolution. #BecauseOfHerStory #19thAt100. Smithsonian Institution] 

However, before it could become the law of the land three-fourths of the states had to ratify it so the battle wasn't over yet.** There was still a lot of opposition, including from President Woodrow Wilson.

[Photograph of six suffragists at the 1920 Republican National Convention in Chicago, gathered in front of a building with suffrage banners. Mrs. James Rector, Mary Dubrow, and Alice Paul (left to right) hold center banner that reads: "No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex. Susan B. Anthony, 1872." National Photo Co., Washington, D.C. Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois. Chicago Illinois United States, 1920. [June 8-12] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000260/.]

By March of the following year 35 states had voted in favor and Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia had already rejected the amendment. It fell to Tennessee, the 36th state, who ratified it on August 18, 1920 (by a 49-47 vote).




*The House of Representatives had voted 304-89 and the Senate 56-25 in favor of the amendment.
**And of course, this didn't guarantee the voting rights of African Americans and other people of color who had to wait until the 1965 Civil Rights Act.




© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

From the Probate Files: Peter Worden - Berkshire County, Massachusetts - 1808

Note: This afternoon Christine asked me if I was ready to resume blogging and my answer was a firm "NO." However...

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) through its American Ancestors website has been a useful source for a large part of my early American family tree. An email from their blog today reminded me to check if I could find any more information about my 6X great grandfather Elder Peter Worden (or Werden as he spelled it) who died in western Massachusetts in 1808.

The results are too good not to share:

Berkshire County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1761-1917.Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2017. (From records supplied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives. Digitized mages provided by FamilySearch.org)

https://www.americanancestors.org/DB2725/i/48367/2541-co2/68553665

The file's 20 pages include his original 1804 will and the March 9, 1808 inventory. I'll share more findings at a later date but here's the sum total of his worldly estate:

You can read more about Peter Worden here and here.







© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

New Ethnicity Breakdowns at 23andMe: Some New Leads for My Dad

Varmland, Sweden, and County Wexford, Ireland.  Possible leads for Gustav Andersson and Hester Patterson?

Two of my dad's recent ancestors (Dad's great grandfather Gustav Andersson, c. 1850 - ?, and also Dad's 2nd great grandmother Hester Patterson, abt 1800 - 1856) have been brickwalls for me for a long time.

Gustav Andersson (as Andersson Bergstrom) and Hester Patterson in situ on my father's tree.

Gustav Andersson Bergstrom

According to Dad's grandmother Mette Karine "Mary's" birth record, her father was railworker/roadworker Gustav Andersson Bergstrom (Andersson Bergstrom in the image above) from Lidkoping, Sweden.

Counties to focus on for Dad's great grandfather Gustav Andersson Bergstrom.  I have already been following some promising leads in Varmland and Vastra Gotaland counties in DNA matches.

Hester (Patterson) Rittgers

As for Hester Patterson, I've only been able to determine that she had a few Patterson siblings who had descedants that Dad matches to on Ancestry.  There was a Samuel Patterson in 1820 in the Fairfield County, Ohio area where Hester married and was living in 1830, and her first son with Jake Rittgers was Samuel Rittgers (oldest brother of Esther Loretta Rittgers, who was my grandfather George Hartley's grandmother).  Maybe Samuel Patterson was her father??

Hester Patterson's children who lived to the 1880 US Census and beyond put the following as mother's place of birth (note that her husband Jake Rittgers (the "father" in the following list) was definitely born in Virginia):


Daughter Esther Loretta:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--Virginia


Son Samuel G. S. Rittgers:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--England
1900: Father--VA, Mother--Ireland


Son John A. Rittgers:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--Ohio


Son Israel Patterson Rittgers:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--Ohio


Daughter Margaret Rittgers:

1880: Both parents from Ohio
1900: Father--Ohio, Mother--Ireland
1910: Both parents from Ohio


Son Jacob R. Rittgers:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--VA
1910: Both parents from Germany
1920: Father--PA, Mother from Ireland


Son Eli D. Rittgers:

1880: Both parents from VA
1900: Father--PA, Mother from England


Son Perry C. Rittgers:

1880: Both parents from Pennsylvania
1900: Father--PA, Mother--Scotland


Daughter Sarah Rittgers:

1880: Father--VA, Mother--PA
1900: Father--Ohio, Mother--PA
1910: Both parents from Virginia


Son Peter M. Rittgers:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--??
1900: Father--PA, Mother--Ireland
1910: Father--PA, Mother--Ireland
1920: Father--PA, Mother--Ireland


Son Henry Charles Rittgers:

1880: Father--PA, Mother--Ohio
1900: Father--VA, Mother--Ohio
1905: Father--Germany, Mother--Ireland
1920: Father--Germany, Mother--Ireland
1930: Both parents from VA


On the 1850 Census Hester (Patterson) Rittgers was listed as born in Maryland lol

From all this I gather that Hester was likely at least somewhat Irish, and may have been born in the East (Maryland or Pennsylvania) or was born in Ireland (or possibly England).

23andMe estimated that Dad has ancestry in the past 200 years from only one county in Ireland (County Wexford).  Dad has only one known suspected Irish ancestor in the past 200 years, Hester Patterson.  Could this be a big clue for Hester's origin??  I hope so.

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Always Look At the Image, Not Just the Indexing

"Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-64GS-47L?cc=1320976&wc=9FRT-SP8%3A1073227701 : accessed 3 March 2019), Film Number (Digital Folder Number) 004009605,  image 1172 of 1771; Philadelphia City Archives and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Oh, for Pete's sake.

After years of periodically looking through FamilySearch's "Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915" I finally found Solomon Hartley's death record in Philadelphia:

This is to Certify Solomon Hartley was accidentally Drowned. -- John Dennis Coroner
August 9th 1814
                                 Aged about 40 Years.

What has thrown me off all this time was how this record was indexed ("Solomon McCarkley" instead of "Solomon Hartley").  I should know better by now that indexing is not an exact science, and yet that appears to be the only reason I didn't find this record earlier.

The record basically reveals what I already knew, that he died about 40 years old about 1815 after drowning.  I didn't know the date, and further inspection of the record indicates that he was buried in the same cemetery as his brother George Hartley.

"Solomon Mccarkley"

Solomon's brother George Hartley.

I'm not sure if August 9 is the date Solomon died, or when he was examined by the coroner.

I had no idea that he was Baptist.



© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

I Finally Found Matilda Biddle Porter's Obituary!

A couple years ago I posted some plans to research my 3rd great grandmother Matilda Biddle's obituary.  Thankfully Newspapers.com beat me to the punch and I found two variations of her obituary last week.  I may eventually see if I can find Newport, Oregon newspapers mentioning her death, but for now at least I have something!

Unfortunately, most of the information given in the obituary is about her father and her ex-husband, not her.

Corvallis Gazette-Times (accessed from Newspaper.com)
(Corvallis, Oregon)
27 Aug 1927, Sat  • Page 6

Mrs. Porter Dead
Member of Pioneer Benton Family Dies at Home at Newport
Mrs. Matilda Biddle Porter, wife of Orville T. Porter, one of Benton county's early residents, died late yesterday afternoon at the family home at Newport.  The body was brought to Corvallis and prepared for burial and the funeral will be held Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock at the grave in the I. O. O. F. cemetery.  Rev. E. J. Harper of the Madison street Methodist church will officiate. 

Mrs. Porter was born February 22, 1846, in Springfield, Ill., but apparently came west during her childhood.  She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Biddle, pioneers of Benton county.  From meagre information that could be obtained, it is believed Mrs. Porter's father was Dr. R. B. Biddle, a prominent dentist in Corvallis in the early '70s, who after retiring to Pleasant Valley, 1 1/2 miles south of Philomath, established a short course in dentistry which was probably the first dental college in Oregon.  George Biddle, a brother, is said to have become a leading dentist in Eugene. 

Mrs. Porter was aged 81 years.  She is survived by a daughter who resides in Albany and a son in Seattle.  No definite information regarding the family could be obtained.

Corvallis Gazette-Times (accessed from Newspapers.com)
(Corvallis, Oregon)
30 Aug 1927, Tue  • Page 3

Was of Pioneer Family - The remains of the late Mrs. Matilda Biddle Porter, widow of Orville Porter, were interred Sunday in the I. O. O. F. cemeteryq [sic] where a brief service was conducted by Rev. E. J. Harper.  Mrs. Porter died Friday at the family home at Newport where she had resided in late years.  She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Biddle who crossed the plains to Oregon in 1850, and rode in a wagon with W. B. Carter, and early editor of the Gazette, as driver.  The Porters lived in Corvallis a number of years and Mr. Porter was a teacher here.  He organized bands, was editor of a Republican paper in Albany for a time and later was a member of the Indian commission in Alaska.  He died 15 years ago.  Dr. Biddle, father of Mrs. Porter, was a prominent dentist of the 70's.  There is a brother, Dr. E. W. Biddle of Hillsborough, Cal. A daughter residing in Albany and a son in Seattle survive.

Related posts for Matilda:

Monday Is for Mothers: Matilda Biddle (1846 - 1927)
Hat Tip to Those Relatives Who Wrote Their Stories Down, Part 2
Monday Is for Mothers: Maria Evans (1814 - 1899) Part 1
Working on Wednesday: Orville Tracy Porter (1838 - 1916) North to Alaska
52 Ancestors in 54 Weeks: Week 5: Tracy Darrow Porter
Orville Tracy Porter: Divorce and Marriage
Monday Is for Mothers: Sarah Emma Biddle Spencer (1842 - 1868)

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.