What I know about Millard STEPHENS

The basic facts:

Millard Stephens was the youngest child born to Thomas J. Stephens and Mary Elizabeth "Polly" Adkins. He was probably born in 1871 according to the census records. It was hard to track him down as there were two Millard Stephens born that same year in West Virginia. Neither of which had a birth certificate. After some digging I located documents associated with his siblings that helped prove the correct Millard.

At age 27 he married Wealthy Susan Chandler, daughter of Joseph Leftwich Chandler and Sarah Catherine Herald. They married 15 Oct. 1898 in Boone Co. West Virginia. The couple had 10 children two of which were twins, Carly and Carter. 

The family moved to Kanawha County WV sometime in the early 1900's and lived in Alum Creek where he worked as a farmer. Some time between 1920 and 1930 they moved to Washington, WV where he took a job as a track foreman for a coal company. The  must have moved again as he died in his Forks of Coal home on 25 September 1939 at age 68

What I know about Mary Ann FRETTINGER

Just the facts, Mam, just the facts.

Mary Ann FRETTINGER is my 3rd great Grandmother. She was born in Ohio in 1842, married in 1860, had eight children and died in 1926.

I really don't know much else about her life except where she lived according to the census but I do know she was very loved and respected by her family and friends. Her obituary was very long and full of love with letters at the end.

She is seated in the photo with her daughter Mary Ann Stimmel HERMAN and granddaughter Ida Herman REED and baby Herald REED.

What I know about Marguerite PIERRE

It was not easy for Marguerite to move from her home town in Saint Marie Aux Mines, France to the small town of Colcord, West Virginia. She did not know the language nor did she have any friends there. She was thirty years of age in 1923 with four small children when she boarded the Reliance in Cherbourg, France.Two years after arriving she gave birth to her fifth child and the first one to be born in America. Another child arrived the next year. I am sure she missed her mother and other family members that were still in back in her home town.

Marguerite never returned to her homeland nor did her husband Paul. There were letters I am sure of family news and happenings. Reports of deaths and births and wishes of being together once again. Marguerite had to endure the death of her husband in 1942 leaving her alone in Sherman WV. She did not outlive her husband long and passed from this earth on 28 April 1951 and is buried next to him in the Mordue Cemetery in Whitesville, WV.

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.

Podcasting

I have been busy these last few months recording a podcast with my friend Amy Lay, a professional genealogist, to help out those new family historians just getting started. We have had a blast learning how to do a podcast and actually getting it out there. Episodes 4 and 5, our latest efforts, are the best ones yet. They cover census records and cemetery research. The first ones are full of great information on pedigree charts and research logs then birth, marriage and death records. Not as casual as the last but like good wine we get better with time.

Speaking of wine, we call our podcast the Genealogy Happy Hour  and include a bottle of wine each episode. The last one on cemeteries was a bottle of Cabernet, see how the red wine fits into the cemetery research, and it has a beautiful stone angel on the label that looks like it could be on a headstone. It is Montes Alpha Cabernet. I should also say we are no wine experts by any stretch of the imagination. We just like it and like the labels. We also do not approve of drinking and researching. Drink afterwards because you will probably need it.

Check us out at http://www.genealogyhappyhour.com/