What I know about Grace Estelle Curtiss

This year I am going to concentrate on an Ancestor a week. Something like the 52 Ancestor challenge but with a twist. I also want to learn more and get back into my digital scrapbooking so I will combine the two. First I will make a digital scrapbook page with my Artisan 5 program by Panstoria, which I love, and a template from Pixels2Pages (thanks!) then I will post it here and blog a little bit about it. I will focus mainly on the vital facts of the person, birth, marriage, death. Then if I know a little something extra I can put that in as well.

The first ancestor is Grace Estelle Curtiss. Yes, it is Curtiss with two "s". Not sure when that came about as some of her ancestors spelled it with only one "s". The information printed is from her death certificate and two marriage certificates. I wonder how she felt after her first husband died and she was only 24 with two small children. From the census it looks like her new family as well as her brother Charles, moved to Michigan. Her mother moved soon after and lived with Charles and his family. She died a few years before Grace.
 I wish I had photos of all my ancestors. It would make this project so much more fun!

The Curtis(s) Family

I have been busy this past month working on my lineage application to the Ohio Genealogy Society. I have an ancestor Harvey Andrew Curtis who fits all the requirements for the Settler and Builder Application. I must say I have been having a blast doing the research in locating documents to prove events. On our podcast Genealogy Happy Hour, Amy and I challenged each other to fill out an application after we did an episode on Lineage Societies. Off I went!

While doing the research I noticed that there are different spellings of the last name through the generations. Let's take his son Enos for example. Enos is listed on the death certificate as Enos Curtis with one "s" but the tombstone had Curtiss, two s's.  Who made that decision and why? Now from what I can see all of Enos children spell their name Curtiss. So somewhere it seems they added one.

I also learned how wonderful librarians in Ohio are and most of the county court clerks as well. I have found marriage records that no one has seen before in church registers. And let me just say thank heavens most of my ancestors on this line died in Michigan and Michigan has all the death certificates on http://seekingmichigan.org/. If you have ancestors up there in the north country you should check it out. After all this researching and meticulous documenting I am very ready to do another one. The hunt is on!

Two Mysteries Solved

I have been busy working on my lineage society application after my podcast partner Amy Lay challenged me, and I her, to fill one out before our Podcast on lineage societies and pioneer applications. Mine is coming along really well thanks to some fantastic online tools such as Seeking Michigan where I found many death certificates and Family Search where I found the documents to solve my mystery, with a bit of help from a very helpful librarian.

I was sending of requests to the Findlay-Hancock County Public Library in Findlay, Ohio for some obituaries I needed to help prove death dates and relationships. The line I was working on was the Burks who married into the Curtis(s) family.

                                                               Curtiss Family

My biggest brick wall is John J. Burke who married Ellen P. Hill. Still my biggest brick wall, no mystery solved there yet but I have hope. However, John and Ellen had three sons. Elroy who died under age one, Calvin, my 2nd Great Grandfather and William. Now John and Ellen both died young. Ellen in 1871 and John a year later in 1872 leaving two young boys, Calvin and William in the guardianship of the their uncle Edward Chapman Hill. I had found the guardianship papers online at Family Search but no mention of what happened to the boys as they are not with Uncle Edward in the 1880 census.

After requesting an obit from the library for Calvin I received an email from the librarian in the genealogy department telling me the obit was on its way and included a link to Family Search for the guardianship papers. Well I thought I already had that but clicked on it anyway and low and behold it was a different set of paper. This set was dated 1874 but found in the 1865-1869 records where I did not bother to look as the dates didn't match up. This record was Edward Hill signing Calvin over to William P. Shuck as a farm apprentice at the age of 8. We was bound there until 1887, thirteen years. I had previously found Calvin in the 1880 census as a farm laborer in this household but had no idea how or why he ended up there and not with his mothers family per the guardianship papers. So that was on mystery solved but what happened to William?

My next thought was that William being the younger brother was too young to apprentice but not to young for adoption. With a bit more sleuthing through the records I landed upon William Henry Burk's adoption to William and Caroline Ramsay. BINGO! From there I found him in the 1880 census but then he was gone. My next thought was a date my grandmother gave me for William's death. She had written down 1887, the same year Calvin was finished with his apprenticeship (and he got married that year too). But how would she know that if he was adopted so long ago and this was not even her family but her husbands. Why not check? Sure enough I found his grave on Find A Grave stating he died in 1887 at the age of 18. The headstone states he was born in 1870 but all the other papers I have have his birth date of 1869, not sure why that was different. But YAHOO! Nailed it! Found him! DONE with that mystery.
So I am ever hopeful I will eventually find out something about his fathers parents, the elusive Burks.

Tombstone Tuesday

My files are slowing but surely getting in the binder and being checked off on the individuals list. The organization continues.

Total so far?

 A big ol' FIVE! That's right, five. That's progress anyway. It is great to find some blogs on genealogy organization like Organize Your Family History to get some ideas and insights.

My number five is my second great grandfather Calvin Burke. What a childhood he and his younger brother must have endured with his parents both dying when he was young and his guardian not around by the time he was fourteen. Calvin was  born on August 23, 1866 to John and Ellen Burk (notice no "e" at the end) in Hancock, Co. Ohio. Finding that "e" will be another hunt altogether.

At the age of 4, he and his younger brother William are found with their parents in Bath, Ohio. It is here that a third brother, Elroy was born and soon after died. He and his family soon relocated back to Hancock County where his parents died a few months apart in 1871 and 1872. His mothers brother Edward Hill became their guardian in 1872 but by 1880 Calvin is found in a boarding home working on a farm in the area with no sign of his younger brother William.

Seven years later in 1887 Calvin married Grace Estelle Curtiss of Grafton, Ohio and they had two children, Hazel Edna Burke and Cecil Lynn Burke, my great grandfather. I am not sure how life was for this little family but in November of 1893 Calvin died of consumption ending his short life at age 27.

Welcome to my blog! I have to admit that this is a bit out of the box for me and has taken quite a while, not gonna say how long exactly, to get this going. Thanks for checking it out.

I hope to meet new relatives and share family information with other researching the same branches and limbs. Just to get started some of the family names I am researching are: Burke, Schwiebert, Herman, Freytag, Curtiss, Stimmell, Roesch, Freytag, Preston, Frettinger, Stevens/Stephens, Florentz, Chandler, Pierre, Adkins, Herald, Eitenne, Meisler, Griffith, Adkins and Bartram. I think that is plenty for now and goes back 5 generations. I am sure more names will enter the picture.

Most of these families are found in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, France, Germany and England. Do these names and places sound familiar? Maybe we are related.