Happy New Year!

I've had a blog since 2010, but obviously it has picked up since my mom joined last year!

I am pleased that "Tip: Don't Just Rely on the Search Function When Using Newspaper Databases" was my most visited post this year.  I hope it helped a lot of people get more out of their newspaper research.  I plan to do a few more tips about newspapers soon.

Here's to a happy New Year, packed with lots of new genealogical discoveries!





© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

2015: Looking Back

When I agreed to join my daughter's blog on October 1, 2014, I decided on two ground rules: we had to post every day and each post had to have a picture. (I'm a visual person.) Looking back over the past year I'm proud of what we've done here and in the process we've both learned a lot.

[Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Best wishes for a happy New Year." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1909. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-47d9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99]

Two of the most exciting names added to my paternal family tree in 2015 are Cheney Boyce (1591?-1643?), Ancient Planter of Jamestown, and John Whitney (1592-1673), member of the Company of Merchant Tailors of London before his departure for Massachusetts in 1635. Christine's recent discovery that Olive Baldwin (1778-1843) was the mother of my maternal third great grandmother Mary (Polly) Gates (1805-1883) has opened up new lines of research that will be covered next year.

Another fascinating discovery was that my paternal fifth great grandfather Abraham Heath (1740?-1807?) served with the Virginia line of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and was one of the cold and hungry soldiers at Valley Forge. In case you missed it, you can read about what the records said here: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six. (Parts Three through Five were posted on the 168th anniversary of the events described.)

My two most popular posts in 2015 were Sunday Drive: Train Travel in Victorian England which looked at the ubiquity of mid-19th century British train lines, and Fantastic Find: Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland which passed on the news that the National Library had just made their microfilm collection of parish records available online (and for free).

Another fantastic find, The McAdory House, was particularly useful in helping me understand the kind of dwelling my early Alabama ancestors probably lived in. (Spoiler alert: No white pillars or oak allies in sight.) And for those of you who also have ties to Alabama, let me recommend again Letters from Alabama, written by the Englishman Philip Henry Gosse about his experience there in 1838.

Christine and I have been having fun posting photos of Christmases we have known (or have pictures of) for the past ten days as a way of slacking off but still maintaining our goal of daily posts. With the new year we'll be getting back to genealogy.

Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve!

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas in the mid-1970's at Grandmother's House

Me and my dad at his mother's house (my grandmother), Margaret (Fister) Hartley, in the mid-1970's, La Jolla/Mt Soledad, San Diego, California.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1947 with the Curreys

Mother kept a baby book for me so I have things to share about my first Christmas in the Currey family in Encanto. Here are some cards, gift tags and even some 1947 wrapping paper.

[All from my personal collection]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1958 with the Curreys

After that cold wind drove us away from Joshua Tree in 1953, we continued to spend our Christmas vacation at Agua Caliente until 1958, when once again we tried a different location, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. It was a success! At least we weren't driven away by inclement weather.

But somehow our Christmas tree got left at home that year (not the presents though) so I made my own tiny tree using buttons from Mother's sewing kit) to decorate a small bare branch. Dad took a photo of it which is so badly out of focus* that I won't inflict it on you.

[Probably Twin Peaks Campground, from my personal collection]

[Our truck and trailer on the left side of the park]

*I don't think there's one decent photo of a Christmas tree in the whole Currey collection.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1981: In the Kitchen At Bob and Claudia's

My Grandmother, Aunt Claudia, and Great Aunt Fern getting things ready for the table.  Bob and Claudia always served delicious food.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1948 with the Curreys

Because we usually spent the holiday in the trailer, our tree was a small artificial one that got brought out every Christmas Eve after I had gone to sleep. You can catch a glimpse of it here.

But in 1948 that tradition hadn't started yet and we had a real tree. I was about a year and a half at the time--it's possible that I remember the tinsel (but nothing else).

[From my personal collection]

The tree was a small one, set on the built-in cabinet on west wall of the living/dining room of the Curreys' Encanto home. The south wall was mostly window--there were wood venetian blinds and you can tell from the shadow on the wall that half of them had been raised for the photo.*

* There's a 1933 photo of the exterior of the dining room here.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1997

This picture was taken at my Uncle Bob's house in 1997, likely by my great aunt Doris.  From left to right: Doris's husband Irv, my great aunt Fern Fister, my grandmother Margaret (Fister) Hartley, me, my dad, and my aunt Claudia and uncle Bob.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1926 with the Curreys

Mother and Dad's only son was born on February 23, 1923, so while this was his first Christmas tree it wasn't his first Christmas.

[From a Currey family photo album in my personal collection]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1971

My Aunt Margaret Ann (my father's sister), me at 3 months, and my mom who is holding me.  I'm not sure where this was, but it has to be Christmas 1971 judging by my age.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1953 with the Curreys

For a change, in 1953 the decision was made to spend our Christmas vacation in the high desert instead of Agua Caliente so that's how we ended up at Cottonwood Spring in Joshua Tree National Park in late December.

I was six that Christmas and have only vague memories of our stay there. From my attire in the photo below it must have been warm at least one day, but what I chiefly remember (besides all the really cool rock formations) was the cutting wind that started to blow. The days were bright but cold and our coats were inadequate.

So, after a day or two spent huddling in the trailer to keep warm, we left Joshua Tree and returned to our usual holiday destination at Agua Caliente.

[All photos from my personal collection]

Unfortunately the only photo I have of our Christmas tree isn't in focus, but you get the idea. (I still have one of the glass ornaments that was on that tree.)

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Mary's Store

Until the Curreys acquired their first Ocotillo lot in 1960 we always spent Christmas in our trailer at Agua Caliente, a county park completely surrounded by Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.* In fact, Mother and Dad always said that I took my first steps there. 

[Sign at the Park entrance, undated slide from my personal collection]

So last week when I finally began the monumental task of scanning the 35mm color slides, I wasn't surprised to find pictures taken at Agua Caliente, including the ones below of Mary's Store, both the old one and the new.**

[Mary's old store 1952, from my personal collection]

[Mary's new store 1953, from my personal collection]

Of course the Curreys would stop by to chat with Mary when were stayed at the park but they were too frugal to be customers at her store and I didn't realize that she was running county library branch there too until I was doing research for this post.

According to the San Diego Union, Mary Smith's concession at Agua Caliente dated from 1950.

[Date: Sunday, June 25, 1950   Paper: San Diego Union (San Diego, California)   Page: 21  

This entire product and/or portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004

Source: GenealogyBank.com]

And Desert Magazine's March 1951 issue had a feature story about Mary and her store.

[Internet Archive, Desert Magazine, March 1951]

I found a report of Mary's death in a letter printed in Desert Magazine's March 1960 issue:

A Desert Lady Passes . . . 

Desert:
I am a friend of Mary Smith, and I want to tell you of her recent passing. I'm sure many of your readers are acquainted with Mary Smith and her "smallest store" at Agua Caliente Hot Springs, Calif. She passed away Dec. 29 at Mallacoats Rest Home at Alpine. 

After Mary sold her store at the springs, she bought five acres in Mason Valley, later selling that, too, and coming to live with my husband and me at Campo. She was bedridden in my home for nearly two years. 

In December. 1958, my husband passed away, and so I had to put Mary in a rest home.
Mary was born in Utah on June 1, 1891. Her maiden name was Mary Elizabeth Lape. 

MRS. PAUL JOHNSON
Campo, Calif

[Desert Magazine online files]

You can read a current story about Agua Caliente here.

*Agua Caliente is about 110 miles south east of San Diego on County S2.
**I think her old store may have burned.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1981 with the Hartleys and Fisters

Deer in the headlights. My dad is the center front blurry figure, then clockwise: Pat (Slater) Hartley, Aunt Claudia and Uncle Bob Hartley, Aunt Margaret Ann, my grandmother Margaret (Fister) Hartley, my cousin Marvel Skeels, my great Aunt Fern Fister (Grandmother's sister), and me.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Family Friday: Slater

My birth mother Alta Mae (1917-1986) and her brother James Robert Slater (1919-1984) with their Christmas tree on the porch of their house in Niwot, Colorado, taken about 1925.

[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Free Ancestry Academy Video: "Expand and Support Your Genealogy Research with DNA Circles"

My mom's "New Ancestor Discoveries."

My dad only has one.

When the New Ancestor Discoveries part of Ancestry's DNA page first came out I got really excited.  Maybe these would contain clues that would help dismantle some of my brick walls!

I went through each one and didn't find any "aha" moments at all.  I looked at the names and places but no immediate leads.

They have a step-by-step approach (.pdf) on how to analyze the discoveries, but my eyes glaze over every time I have tried to use it.  Hopefully the video will help me.



I really wish that Ancestry would provide a chromosome browser!



© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: John Herrod (About 1805 - 1870), Herod & Birmingham's Stage Line

In 1860 my paternal fourth great uncle John Herrod* and his partner Norman Birmingham acquired the assets of D.W. Lamkin's Line and offered a daily connection between Yazoo City and the Mississippi Central station at Vaughan,**  a distance of about 24 miles.

[The Yazoo Democrat. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 1858-18, April 28, 1860

Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn98021556/1860-04-28/ed-1/seq-3/]

[Detail from Colton's Mississippi. Published By Johnson & Browning, 172 William St. New York. 1860.

Entered 1855 by J.H. Colton & Co ... New York. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

After the Civil War started a year later, Herod & Birmingham transported men and supplies for the Confederate States as these invoices show.**

[Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, documenting the period 1861 - 1865;

the National Archive. Source: fold3]

The company was presumably still in business early in 1866, owning 4 carriages each valued at $125.****

[Description : District 2; Annual, Monthly and Special Lists; Dec 1865-Dec 1866. Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA. Original data: Records of the Internal Revenue Service. Record Group 58.

The National Archives at Washington, DC.]

But John Herrod had died in January of that year and on November 10, 1866, his son (also named John), acting as administrator of his father's estate, filed suit against Mr. Birmingham and the case was settled in January of 1871 but it's not clear to me what the outcome was.

[From Catherine-Seabolt's public tree Terrell2011 on Ancestry.com]

*He was born in about 1805 in Tennessee and was the son of my paternal fourth great grandparents Polly (Williams) and Barnabeth Herrod.
**This link has pictures of Vaughan, Mississippi, taken in 2012. You can find a history of Yazoo County here.
***Although the second invoice is for several thousand dollars, remember that the company would have been paid in Confederate dollars which in January, 1864, would probably have been worth about 10 cents each.
****A John Herrod is listed as the owner of a single carriage worth $100 but it seems likely that he's the son.

["CSA-T64-$500-1864" by National Museum of American History - Image by Godot13. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg#/media/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

John Hill Messinger Was a Democrat in 1840

This were going to be disappointed soon enough.  Van Buren was about to lose.  "Franklin Township," Indiana Democrat (Indianapolis, Indiana), 4 Jul 1840, p. 3, col. 2; digital image, GenealogyBank (http://www.genealogybank.com: accessed 15 Dec 2015).

John Hill Messinger Was a Democrat in 1840.  Well, that is what I am assuming from a notice* in the Indiana Democrat on July 4, 1840, where John Hill Messinger is listed among the "Commitles[Committees?] of Vigilance" for the Franklin Township Van Buren Club. Franklin Township is in the southeastern part of the greater Indianapolis area. The notice was for a committee to draft a constitution for a "Democratic Association" in Franklin Township, Marion County, Indiana, to be call "The Franklin Township Van Buren Club."

Martin Van Buren, former New York governor and previous Secretary of State and Vice President to Andrew Jackson, was the incumbent President, and was about to be voted out by Whig William Henry Harrison.

A nice summary about that election comes from the Virginia Historical Society:

In a national convention, the Whig Party united to nominate William Henry Harrison, who had been its most popular candidate in the 1836 election. Despite a severe and prolonged economic depression that had plagued his first term in office, President Martin Van Buren continued to have the support of the Democratic Party. The antislavery Liberty Party nominated James Birney as its candidate. Harrison’s nickname, “Old Tippecanoe,” came from his victory over the Creek Indians at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. The result of the nomination of John Tyler for vice president was a rhyming campaign slogan: “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too."

The opposing Democratic Party made a huge tactical blunder when it attacked Harrison’s character. A Democratic newspaper article joked that he would be content to quit the race and retire to his log cabin for a pension and a barrel of hard cider. Even though the Harrison came from an aristocratic Virginia family and currently lived in a mansion in Ohio, the Whigs turned this comment into a campaign symbol and began to promote its candidate as a common “man of the people” who lived in a log cabin and was always ready to greet visitors who ventured by with a cup of refreshment. Harrison became the first candidate to give speeches on his own behalf, but he confined himself to talking about his military career. As opposed to its candidate’s rustic image, the Whigs mocked Van Buren as an effete dandy who drank from gold goblets in the White House while the people suffered from hard times. Because Van Buren was too well known, the Democrats could not project the same “common man” persona for their candidate and were unable to compete with this new type of campaign strategy.

More people voted in this election than in any previous one (80 percent of eligible voters). Harrison received 234 electoral votes to 60 for Van Buren. After only a month in office, however, Harrison caught pneumonia and died. There were no constitutional guidelines for succession after the death of a sitting president, so John Tyler merely assumed the full powers of the president, thus establishing the precedent that the vice president would actually serve as president rather than as acting temporary chief executive until the next election. Virginia cast its 23 electoral votes for Martin Van Buren.

John Hill Messinger and his friends probably wore ribbons similar to this during the election.
Image from the Virginia Historical Society.

Here's more on the 1840 US Presidential election.




* "Franklin Township," Indiana Democrat (Indianapolis, Indiana), 4 Jul 1840, p. 3, col. 2; digital image, GenealogyBank (http://www.genealogybank.com: accessed 15 Dec 2015).




© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Cousin Connections: Mary Lucia Lull (1915 - 2003)

Once again the internet has sent me in a direction I wasn't intending to go. But how could I resist when this photo of a 2nd cousin, twice removed,* showed up as an Ancestry.com hint?

[From the Ancestry.com tree of CabotLeeSweeney]

[Date: Sunday, January 1, 1939   Paper: Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, Nebraska)   Page: 2  

This entire product and/or portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004.

Source: GenealogyBank.com]

"Kiss the Boys Good-by" was a big hit on Broadway in 1939 and Helen Claire continued in the role while Cousin Lucia took the show on the road. Here's an interview with her soon after she was chosen.

[Man About Manhattan, Associated Press. Date: Thursday, January 5, 1939

Paper: Morning Star (Rockford, Illinois) Page: 4. This entire product and/or portions thereof are

copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004. Source: GenealogyBank.com]

From this clipping from the Columbus (Georgia) Daily Enquirer written a year and a half later, we learn some of the cities where Lucia's tour took her.

[Date: Sunday, July 27, 1941   Paper: Columbus Daily Enquirer (Columbus, Georgia)   Page: 16  

This entire product and/or portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004.

Source: GenealogyBank.com]

*We are both descendants of Timney P. Watts (1803-1863), who is Lucia's maternal great grandmother and my paternal third great grandmother. My direct link is through Jesse T. S. Warren, Timney's only child with her first husband Jesse Warren, Jr., while Littleberry Bostick Phillips, Timney's youngest son is Lucia's ancestor.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Currey

This picture of a young Harold Currey listening to the sound of the engine was taken in Encanto about sometime before his marriage in 1922, together with the comment he wrote in his photo album.

[From my personal collection]

As far as I can tell, the car is the same Chevrolet that has appeared in previous posts here, here, here, and on his wedding day here.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.