Tag Archives: Family

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Elizabeth HART Crow

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On May 1, 1902, my third great-grandmother Elizabeth HART Crow passed away. At least according to her FindaGrave memorial. Alas, there is no photo of her gravestone (I’ve requested one), nor have I been able to find an obituary or other record confirming this information. Yet.

Elizabeth and her husband Isaac D. CROW had no less than 12 children together, including my second great-grandfather Daniel B. Crow. The family lived in Carter County, Tennessee, where I still have distant relatives to this day.

I need to spend more time on Elizabeth and her family. All I have on her so far are census records and the FindaGrave link.

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Happy Birthday, Herman Wild (Sr.)

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My great-grandfather Herman Wild’s birthday was only two days after his father’s. Herman Wild was born in San Antonio, Texas, 8 Mar 1877, to Fridolin Wild and Lena Hoyer. Like his father, Herman went into sales and worked at a department store named Wolff and Marx for almost 30 years.

Herman married Susan Campbell Bennett 15 Jan 1908.

There is no photo of his grave on FindaGrave (yet, I requested one), but there is text from his obituary, which provides a wealth of information. He apparently died of pneumonia on 20 Mar 1928.

Google Street View of 232 Lotus Ave. in San Antonio, Texas.

His obit and other records list his address as 232 East Lotus Ave in San Antonio, Texas. There is a neat old house at that address on Google Maps Street View (if Street View can be trusted–I find it to be often inaccurate).

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Happy Birthday, Fridolin Wild

Depiction of Aibling (Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Reader: Do you think you are related to the individuals listed in this post? Please drop me a note! I love hearing from cousins and others researching my family!

My great-great grandfather Fridolin Wild was born on 6 Mar 1844 in Aibling, Germany. He arrived in the United States in 1868, via Buenos Aires, and lived in San Antonio, Texas, until he died in 1919.

Fridolin held various positions in sales throughout his life. He was a traveling salesman and returned to Germany briefly in 1889 according to a passport application and ship passenger list. The 1910 census appears to show that he was a partner in the wholesale liquor business. I hope it wasn’t Prohibition that did him in.

Fridolin married Lina Hoyer in 21 Sep 1872. Her parents were from Germany as well.

His grave can be viewed on FindaGrave.

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Friendly Find

Last weekend, I dropped by a new antique store here in Easton and was drawn to a much loved old photo album. What was once apparently a velvety cover has worn down to bare fabric. I was ecstatic to see that it was filled to the gills with old photos of various types. The price was right too, for such a treasure, and I snapped it up.

The proprietor of the shop knew which family had possessed the album before it made it to the store. As you can see from the cover, however, it’s not a family album (at least not their family) — it’s supposedly filled with their friends.

One of the spreads in the photo album. Most of the photos are cabinet cards, but there is a smattering of other types of images.

After a preliminary examination of the photos, many have information written on the backs or margins. Most of the photos appear to be from one family from New York. I’m going to go through the photos and the information they contain to see if I can track down the descendants of that family.

People of all ages are pictured in the album.

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Sentimental Sunday: The Kitchen at Lillian Lane

From the time I was 9 until my senior year of high school, my family lived in a rambler in a wooded neighborhood called Sherwood Forest in Silver Spring, Maryland. We spent a ton of time in the kitchen, which had a huge bay window. We ate most of our meals at a large wooden table in front of that window, despite the fact we also had a formal dining room. We had a good view of our street since our house was at the top of a hill.

In high school, after dinner was over, I usually finished my homework at that table. Lots of humanities essays were composed there. My sister still has the table and chairs.

When we first moved into the house, the kitchen had an ancient turquoise refrigerator with a pedal-operated freezer on the bottom (this was from waaaay before bottom freezers were the in thing). We eventually had to replace it with the fridge you see pictured above.

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Surname Saturday: HAYES (TN, NC) — An Update

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In 2009, I posted about the discovery of notes on the back of a photograph, which identified my second-great grandparents, Joseph and Molly (Taylor) HAYES of Carter County, Tennessee. Census records showed that Joseph was born in North Carolina. Eventually, I tracked down his father, Robert, also born in N.C.

Well, I finally have located the family in North Carolina (Watauga County, to be specific), using the 1860 U.S. census. The surname was spelled Hays. That breakthrough allowed me to trace them back yet another generation. My 4th-great grandfather was Ransom Hayes. In the 1850 U.S. census, the enumerator spelled the surname ‘Hase.’ Tricky, but I found them anyhow! (Also found Ransom listed as Hayse in 1860!)

I noticed that another Ancestry member had a private photo of Ransom’s tombstone. I plan to contact them, but on a hunch I went to FindaGrave and sure enough, there are photos of his tombstone and that of his wife (and now I know her surname too)! And his tombstone has interesting information on it that points to possible land records for which to search. Oh and they’re buried in a HAYES cemetery in Watauga County, N.C. This just keeps getting better!

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Mystery Monday: Ida, I Don’t Know

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I am in possession of a number of old photos from my father’s side of the family. I put many of these into a scrapbook when I first got into genealogy several years ago. At the time, I didn’t know much about older types of photos and fashion through the years. Now that I do, I’m starting to second-guess some assumptions that I made way back when.

Case in point: my father’s mother Ida Corley. I always assumed that the wedding photo below was hers.

Ida was married to my grandfather in 1905. I do know that the undated photo below is her:

Compare:

The mouths are the same. The eyes and hair seem very similar. Even the noses, though the one on the left may be a bit narrower and longer…

There are two other photos to consider:

The top photo, I believe, is the same woman in the wedding dress. She is definitely not the stylish woman in the bottom photo, whom I know to be Ida in the 1920s.

I doubt that stylish Ida reverted to granny wear as she got older (with apologies to whomever is pictured on the left; I’m assuming it’s actually Ida’s mother, Martha Alcorn SIMPSON). The thing that clinches the fact that these are two different women for me is that one is wearing glasses and the other is not.

You can barely tell that the bride on the left is wearing glasses — you can see the pince-nez on the bridge of her nose though.

I think that if the person pictured in all four photos were the same woman, she would either not be wearing glasses in all of the photos or she would have them on in all four photos. If you’re self-conscious enough about wearing glasses to take them off for seated portraits, you’d especially take them off for your wedding picture. That’s assuming Ida ever wore glasses, and all evidence seems to point to the fact that she did not.

Given that there is such a strong resemblance between the women pictured though, I’m going to assume that the woman in the wedding dress is Ida’s mother. Now, I just need to find more information about her wedding and possibly other photos of her to prove it.

My next question is, might the earlier photo of Ida be her wedding portrait?

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Surname Saturday: GOURLEY (TN)

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From my Ahnentafel chart:

15. Della CROW
31. Mary L. GOURLEY
62. Alfred T. Gourley

The parents of my 3rd great-grandfather Alfred T. Gourley are a mystery to me. I know he was born in 1813 in Tennessee according to the census and military records. A military enlistment document* on Ancestry.com states he was 5′ 6 1/2″ and had blue eyes, dark hair and fair skin at the age of 21. He was a farmer from Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee, which is where my HAYES and CROW roots go way back as well.

Alfred and his wife Mary Ann BARRY had eight children — four boys and four girls, including my great-great grandmother Mary L. Gourley. The others:

William R. Gourley (b. 1845)
George W. Gourley (b. 1849)
Willard S. Gourley (b. 1851)
Thomas A. Gourley (b. 1855)
Ellen M. Gourley (b. 1858)
Martha J. Gourley (b. 1860)
Elizabeth A. Gourley (b. 1864)

There’s a possible pension file match that I need to investigate the next time I’m at the National Archives. That should help me fill in a lot of information (fingers crossed!).

Gourley is also spelled Gourly and Gorley in records I have come across.

* U.S. Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914, p. 75, Alfred T. Gourly, Ancestry.com (http://ancestry.com : accessed 28 December 2010); citing Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Register of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798-1914, National Archives Microfilm Publication M233.