SNGF: Where Were They 100 Years Ago

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!

Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun has led me to a missing record! Tonight’s mission:

1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 1 January 1913 – 100 years ago.

2)  List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist?

3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.

I was relatively certain that my dad and his family were living in Washington, D.C., but I was missing their 1910 census records. I knew they were living on Columbia Road in 1920. My grandparents were married in 1905 in Philadelphia and then my father was born in 1906 in Washington, D.C. I wasn’t certain where the family was living in 1910, but I was pretty sure they were in Washington.

I knew a good place to start would be to try and find their 1920 neighbors in the 1910 census. I’ve had success with this method before. I struck out with the first two families that I tried, but I hit paydirt on the third attempt.

My dad and his parents were living next door to a Mr. Story B. Ladd and his family in 1920. I found the Ladds again in 1910, still on Columbia Road. My ancestors were their neighbors then too, but their name was mistranscribed as Cortey, which is why they hadn’t turned up in previous census searches. I’ve since submitted a correction to Ancestry and saved the record to my father and grandparents. Yay!

Given that the census records show that the family was at the same address in 1910 and 1920, I can say that’s probably where they were on January 1, 1913.

I’m less certain when it comes to my great-grandfather on my mother’s side, William Edmond Hayes. His family was originally from Carter County, Tennessee. In 1910, however, Willie and his parents were in Umatilla County, Oregon, in what appears to have been a failed attempt to make a better living. In 1914, Willie is back in Tennessee, marrying my great-grandmother. And he wasn’t the only one to return — every single member of his family was back in Carter County again by 1920.

I’m still unclear as to the exact details about what the Hayeses were doing in Oregon, but I think they were trying to operate an orchard. I have found records that indicate that they went into debt regarding such a venture. The fact that the entire family returned to Tennessee leads me to believe that it didn’t work out, although I need to do more digging to find out the whole story.

Given the information I have so far, I can’t say for sure whether the Hayses were still in Oregon or back in Tennessee again by January 1. 2013.

Most of my other ancestors were where I expected them to be — elsewhere in Carter County, Tennessee, or in San Antonio, Texas. It’s dinner time now, otherwise I would go into more detail here.

Thanks, Randy, for prompting me to find that missing census record!

My Week in Search Terms

As a blogger, I’m obsessed with site metrics and as a researcher/librarian, I’m obsessed with search terms. WordPress satisfies both obsessions with its blog statistics, which let me know how people find my blog by searching the Internet.

I found several interesting search terms over the past week (for still more search-term hilarity, I suggest you visit my friend Amy’s We Tree blog for her “Fun with Search Terms” posts).

1943 guide to hiring women — perhaps this week’s “Binders Full of Women” meme made you think of this brochure that informed 1940s government managers about the ins and outs of hiring and employing women.

andrew jackson photos — unfortunately, Andrew Jackson died in 1845, pre-dating most photographic technology. My second great grand uncle Andrew Jackson Corley, on the other hand, lived in the late 1800s, and I was lucky to come across a photo of him.

how to flip my couch into a flatbed — I think the method you use will be determined by the type of couch you have (Hopefully you have a sleeper sofa. Otherwise, I’m not sure how successful you’ll be). You found my blog because of my post about my Flip-pal scanner — one of my best purchases of 2012. I highly recommend you get one too. You can use it while on your couch or while on your bed.

roots tech 2012, going to — RootsTech 2012 was back in February, but you’re in luck! The event will take place again in March 2013. Hope to see you there.

why are maganetic albums bad — Magnetic albums are bad. Really, really bad. I highly recommend using an acid-free album like these from Creative Memories (I am a CM consultant) to better protect your photos.

“alfred t. gourley” civil war — nice use of quotation marks to create a phrase out of the name. Unfortunately, even though you most likely also are a descendant of my third great-grandfather, you didn’t reach out (and I even have a special request at the top of this post asking for you to make contact). Next time, stop by and say hello! I don’t bite.

abbey mausoleum arlington wiki — It would be great if there were a wiki for this now-defunct mausoleum, which was looted over many years of neglect. I posted about my search for ancestors who used to be buried there. Hopefully you also found this FindaGrave page about Arlington Abbey, including old pictures of the facility.

SNGF: Longest Gravestone Line

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!

Tonight’s mission from Randy Seaver is perfect for October:

Determine what is your longest unbroken line of ancestral gravestones – how many generations can you go back in time?  Do you have photographs of them?

Unfortunately, I can’t go back too terribly far in terms of my own family’s gravestones. I do have a photo of my dad’s gravestone (though I won’t post it for privacy reasons) and I’ve posted about my search for his parents’ and grandparents’ stone.

The photo trail goes cold in terms of the next generation of Corleys — Benjamin William Franklin Corley and his wife Lois (Wakefield) Corley (though I know them to be buried in Tower Hill Cemetery in Shelby County, Illinois; I’ve requested photos of their graves). On my dad’s maternal side, I did have the luck of finding his grandparents at Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. The cemetery sent me a photo of a headstone listing my great-grandparents William B. Hill and his wife Martha (Simpson), but it is copyrighted.

HAYES Headstone

When my mom died, she wished for her ashes to be scattered in the garden of her church. There is no marker. If I were to skip to the next generation, I do have a photo of my maternal grandparents grave (again, not posting for privacy reasons). Just a couple of years ago, I finally got to visit the grave of my great-grandparents, Della Crow and William Hayes.

I haven’t found a photo of the grave of William’s father, Joseph (but this post spurred me to request one via FindaGrave). I haven’t found death information for his mother yet. Likewise, I haven’t had much luck finding stones for Della’s parents.

SNGF: Ancestor Name Roulette

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!

It’s been a while since I posted, period. And now, two in one day? But I finally have a chance to play along with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and so here we go for this week. The mission from Randy Seaver:

1) What year was one of your great-grandfathers born?  Divide this number by 50 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your “roulette number.”

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an “ahnentafel”). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the “roulette number.”

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) If you do not have a person’s name for your “roulette number” then spin the wheel again – pick a great-grandmother, a grandparent, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!

It took me a while to find an ancestor whose birth year, divided by 50, matched a number on my Ahnentafel chart that I had filled in.

So, I started with Richard Corley, my 7th great-grandfather. He was born in 1670, which led to a roulette number of 33 (most of the rest of the 30s on my Ahnentafel chart are not filled in, sadly).

33 is Delilah Basham, my 3rd great-grandmother. Here are three facts about her:

1) Her name is one of my favorites among my ancestors. Delilah was the downfall of Samson in the Bible. These days, she’s the subject of a hit song by the Plain White Ts. I’m fascinated that her parents chose that name for her. Her father’s name was Obediah, one of my other favorite names among my ancestors.

2) She was born in 1785 in Bedford, Va., according to the preponderance of secondary sources I’ve been able to find. This area of Virginia has very few surviving original records due to fires at county courthouses and other repositories (and not all were due to the Civil War either).

3) She married Jonathan Cheatham Corley and together they had 13 children, including my 2nd great-grandfather, Benjamin William Franklin Corley, and his twin brother, Henry William Washington Corley. Delilah and Jonathan are buried together in a Corley family cemetery in Shelby, Ill.

Valentine Corley

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 fifth great-grandfather, Valentine Corley, passed away this day in 1803 at the age of 82. Before writing this post, I didn’t have any direct sources of information about him. His death date came from the Family Data Collection on Ancestry, which also lists his wife as Sarah Walker. Valentine lived and died in Virginia.

In preparation for this post however, I did another search for records for Valentine and found another Ancestry member posted scans and a transcription of Valentine’s will. The will verifies that his wife’s name was Sarah and also reveals that they owned several slaves by the names of Betty, Ruth, David, Sarah, Lucy, Fanny, Pleasant, Wiat, Daniel and Rob. The names of Valentine’s children also appear: Aggathy, Ann, Mary,  Milly, Asa, Caniel (my 4th great-grandfather) and William.

Wordless Wednesday: Safari Dad

Dad about to embark on a safari in Africa, 1969. (Scan from slide -- Thanks, Crystal Corley!)

Happy Birthday, Andrew Jackson Corley

Andrew Jackson Corley (crop of photo from page 186 1/2, A Genealogy of Corleys by Dewitt C. Corley (1927)).

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 2nd great-grand uncle Andrew Jackson Corley was born this day in 1829. He was married twice and fathered no less than 20 children. His parents were Jonathan Cheatham Corley and Delilah Basham. I found his picture in the book A Genealogy of Corleys, which states:

“He was the next to the youngest son, a farmer, with but limited education, but was regarded as a man of honor and uprightness. He lived and died on his farm, three miles north of Herrick, Illinois, and is there buried, in what is known as the Corley Cemetery, with his wife and several children. He was reasonably thrifty. He was a member of the Masonic Fraternity, and served in the Federal Army during the Civil War. He was twice married. His first wife was Harriet Jones, to whom he married August 5, 1847.”

What a wealth of information! After looking up his Civil War records, I found the pension information for the applications filed by him and his second wife, so I need to try and find that the next time I’m at NARA. His second wife was Sarah Jane Wooters, whom he married shortly after Harriet’s death around 1872. He died 5 September 1893.

Grandfather of a Different Kind

Today saw the return of a family heirloom (well, part of it, anyhow) to this Corley household. After 17 years, I’ve been reunited with my family’s grandfather clock, which friends have stored for me in the interim. The face and movement are with a clock repair shop that will clean, fix and test them, hopefully reassembling everything early next week. In the meantime, the rest of the clock is now in my dining room!

My dad bought this clock in 1978 and it merrily chimed away for my fam until my mom and sister moved out of state in 1994. Me and the clock? We stayed in Maryland. I was soon off to college and moved in temporarily with neighbors. The clock moved with me.

When I went off to college, the clock had to stay at my friends’ house though — dorm rooms don’t have much space to accommodate such a piece (and its Big Ben chiming probably would have infuriated my roommate).

And so the clock stayed at my friends’ house while I was at school. And there it remained as I bounced from apartment to apartment to apartment in the ensuing years after graduation.

Moving a grandfather clock is not a trivial matter. The movement must be (carefully) removed and packed, the head separated from the body. It costs hundreds of dollars each time.

And so I waited to be reunited with my clock until I was a) in a place with tall enough ceilings; and b) relatively certain that I’d be there a while. It took 17 years.

Oh, I visited the clock (and the friends storing it) often. I know they’re going to miss it. The kids in the household grew up with the clock, much like I did. It eventually stopped ticking though and probably hasn’t chimed in more than 15 years.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the clock restored and the pendulum swinging again. I’m not sure I’ll have the chime turned on — my house is pretty small and I’m afraid it would keep me up at night. I’m sure I’ll ask the clock repairman to play the chime at least once though, for old time’s sake (no pun intended; well, not really).

Stay tuned for a future post when the clock is restored and in working order!

My 99 Genealogy Things

I found this list on Tonia Kendrick’s blog, Tonia’s Roots. I love lists (and memes!)!

Key:

Things you have already done or found – bold type

Things you would like to do or find – italics (NOTE: my blog renders itals as bold and red. Go fig.)

Things you have not done or found /don’t care to.

99 Genealogy Things

1. Belong to a genealogical society (Not counting the national ones, I belong to the Upper Shore (Md.) Genealogical Society and the Historical Society of Talbot County. Hoping to join more societies relevant to my own ancestry — in Texas and Virginia, for example.)
2. Joined a group on Genealogy Wise.
3. Transcribed records.
4. Uploaded headstone pictures to Find-A-Grave or a similar site
5. Documented ancestors for four generations (self, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents)
6. Joined Facebook.
7. Cleaned up a run-down cemetery.
8. Joined the Genea-Bloggers Group.
9. Attended a genealogy conference.
10. Lectured at a genealogy conference.
11. Spoke on a genealogy topic at a local genealogy society/local library’s family history group.  Would do this before attempting No. 10.
12. Joined the National Genealogical Society.
13. Contributed to a genealogy society publication.  Not yet, but I will.
14. Served on the board or as an officer of a genealogy society.
15. Got lost on the way to a cemetery.
16. Talked to dead ancestors.
17. Researched outside the state in which I live.
18. Knocked on the door of an ancestral home and visited with the current occupants. 
19. Cold called a distant relative. (Does cold-messaging on Facebook count?)
20. Posted messages on a surname message board.
21. Uploaded a gedcom file to the internet.
22. Googled my name (and those of ancestors)
23. Performed a random act of genealogical kindness.
24. Researched a non-related family, just for the fun of it. 
25. Have been paid to do genealogical research.
26. Earn a living (majority of income) from genealogical research. I’d love to be able to do this, but haven’t found the right formula!
27. Wrote a letter (or email) to a previously unknown relative.  Okay, I’m counting this as the same as No. 19.
28. Contributed to one of the genealogy carnivals.
29. Responded to messages on a message board.
30. Was injured while on a genealogy excursion.
31. Participated in a genealogy meme.
32. Created family history gift items.  But I have created house history gift items!
33. Performed a record lookup.
34. Took a genealogy seminar cruise.
35. Am convinced that a relative must have arrived here from outer space. – Ha-ha — yes, several.
36. Found a disturbing family secret.
37. Told others about a disturbing family secret (but not all of the secrets).
38. Combined genealogy with crafts (family picture quilt, scrapbooking).
39. Think genealogy is a passion and/or obsession not a hobby.
40. Assisted finding next of kin for a deceased person. I would love to do this, but need more time in the day.
41. Taught someone else how to find their roots. Would love to teach a course someday.
    
42. Lost valuable genealogy data due to a computer crash or hard drive failure. Thankfully, no.
43. Been overwhelmed by available genealogy technology.
44. Know a cousin of the 4th degree or higher.  Thanks to dabbling in DNA!
45. Disproved a family myth through research.
    
46. Got a family member to let you copy photos.
47. Used a digital camera to “copy” photos or records. Always
    
48. Translated a record from a foreign language. Will need help doing this someday with German records, I’m sure.
49. Found an immigrant ancestor’s passenger arrival record. Not the immigrants, yet, but several native ancestors have traveled abroad and I’ve found their records.
    
50. Looked at census records on microfilm, not on the computer. 
    
51. Used microfiche. Just did this today!
    
52. Visited the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
53. Used Google+ for genealogy.  I’m on there, but I’m not really using it…
54. Visited a church or place of worship of one of your ancestors.
55. Taught a class in genealogy.
56. Traced ancestors back to the 18th Century.
57. Traced ancestors back to the 17th Century. I have not, but others before me have (thank you!)
58. Traced ancestors back to the 16th Century. Ditto, No. 56.
59. Can name all of your great-great-grandparents. I wish. I’ll get there!
60. Know how to determine a soundex code without the help of a computer.
61. Have found many relevant and unexpected articles on internet to “put flesh on the bones”.
62. Own a copy of Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills.
63. Helped someone find an ancestor using records you had never used for your own research.  Since my research business is based in an area where I have no ancestors, this happens all the time!
64. Visited the main National Archives building in Washington, DC. I have home field advantage on this one.
65. Have an ancestor who came to America as an indentured servant.
66. Have an ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 or Civil War.
67. Taken a photograph of an ancestor’s tombstone.
68. Can “read” a church record in Latin.
69. Have an ancestor who changed his/her name, just enough to be confusing.
70. Joined a Rootsweb mailing list.
71. Created a family website.
72. Have a genealogy blog.
73. Was overwhelmed by the amount of family information received from someone.
74. Have broken through at least one brick wall.
75. Done genealogy research at a court house.
76. Borrowed microfilm from the Family History Library through a local Family History Center(s).
77. Found an ancestor in an online newspaper archive.
78. Have visited a NARA branch. Only the main one!
79. Have an ancestor who served in WWI or WWII.
80. Use maps in my genealogy research.
    
81. Have a blacksheep ancestor.
82. Found a bigamist amongst my ancestors.
83. Attended a genealogical institute.
84. Taken online genealogy (and local history) courses. ProGen counts, right?
    
85. Consistently (document) and cite my sources.  Lesson learned!
86. Visited a foreign country (i.e. one I don’t live in) in search of ancestors.
    
87. Can locate any document in my research files within a few minutes.
88. Have an ancestor who was married four times.
89. Made a rubbing of an ancestor’s gravestone.
90. Followed genealogists on Twitter. Follow me! @baysideresearch
91. Published a family history book.
92. Learned of a death of a fairly close family relative through research.
93. Offended a family member with my research.  Hope not!
94. Reunited someone with precious family photos or artifacts.
95. Have a paid subscription to a genealogy database.
96. Submitted articles for FamilySearch Wiki. Maybe someday…
97. Organized a family reunion. No, but I plan to attend the 85th CORLEY family reunion in Illinois in 2012!
98. Used Archives in countries where my ancestors originated.
99. Converted someone new to the love of all things genealogy.  I think I’ve passed the bug on to a few.

Benjamin William Franklin Corley

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!

Today, July 12, is the anniversary of the death of my second great-grandfather, Benjamin William Franklin Corley in 1891. So, I thought I would list what I know about him:

– While he was born in Kentucky, he spent most of his life in Shelby County, Illinois
– He had a twin brother, Henry William Washington Corley
– His parents were Jonathan Cheatham Corley and Delilah Basham (Delilah’s father, Obediah, is my ticket into the DAR, eventually)
– He was a farmer and a “local preacher” with the Methodist Episcopal Church, but transferred to the Free Methodist Church after a dispute with the local minister of the former church
– He married Lois Wakefield in 1842
– He passed away at his wife’s funeral — here is the story from A Genealogy of Corleys (page 150):

“While the service was being conducted, Mr. Corley leaned his head over on the shoulder of his son Joseph*, and expired. The further service was adjourned, and a joint service for both of them afterwards was conducted.”

*Joseph was my great-grandfather.

Thanks to A Genealogy of Corleys, I have a picture of Benjamin and Lois.

July 12 also is the anniversary of the death of my grandmother Ida Bole (Hill) Corley in 1943. I’ve written about the Hills extensively.