I had a breakthrough on one of my lines over the weekend. I found a passport application for my paternal great-grandmother Ida Champ Ferris, which listed her birthplace as Brownsville, Penn. (Her name was mis-indexed, which is why I’d never come across it before.) I had always thought that she was from the Philly area because that’s where she went to college, but turns out that she was born closer to Pittsburgh. I don’t know much more about her parents except that they came from England shortly before she was born. Hopefully this new information will lead to more clues about them!
Tag Archives: great-grandmother
When Your 2nd Cousin Is Also Your Great Grand Uncle
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I spent yesterday staying out of the way of carpenters doing work in my house while I enjoyed a day off from work. I also took a break from my client projects for a personal genealogy day. I was excited to track down several more distant cousins on my Tennessee side of the family and discovered a branch with multiple connections.
My 3rd great-grandfather Alfred T. Gourley had a granddaughter, Ann Gourley. She married into the McKeehan clan and had a son, Walter, who was my 2nd cousin, 2x removed. He married Sina Hayes, my great grand aunt (her brother, Willam Edmond, was my great-grandfather). This then made Walter McKeehan not only a distant cousin, but my great grand uncle, by marriage!
Alfred Gourley’s daughter was Mary L. Gourley, who married Daniel B. Crow. Their daughter, Della, married William Edmond Hayes.
SNGF: Where Were They 100 Years Ago
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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!
Way-Back Advent Calendar: Mom’s 1st Xmas
My mom was the oldest of four and, true to form, my grandparents took TONS of photos of her at any opportunity to do so. Thus, we have a plethora of pics to peruse from her first Christmas:
Mom and Grandma Grace, Christmas 1949
You have to admit, my mom was a cute baby.
I love this photo of my mom transfixed by one of her toys.
Mom just can’t believe how she cleaned up this Christmas. Look at all those toys!
The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACCM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history 24 different ways during 24 days in December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.
SNGF: Longest Gravestone Line
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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
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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.
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ancestor Name Roulette
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Yay, I finally have a chance to play again! Here’s tonight’s challenge, as set forth by Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings:
1) What year was your paternal grandfather born? Divide this number by 100 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?
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 grandmother, or yourself, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!
My paternal grandfather was born in 1873 and so my roulette number is 19. That is my great-great grandmother, Sarah C. I think that the ‘C’ might stand for Champ — her daughter’s middle name was Champ.
Here are three facts about Sarah:
1) She was married to George Ferris.
2) She was born around 1821 in England. She and George eventually made their way to Iowa.
3) It appears that Sarah and George adopted a son — the 1880 census shows them with three children at home and one is denoted as “Adopt Son.” I’ve never seen such a notation before.
Image from Ancestry.com
Surname Saturday: Heimel
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One of my third great-grandmothers was Sophie Heimel who, according to her gravestone, was from Bavaria. I believe that she came to the U.S. in 1845 at the age of about 17.
I haven’t jumped the pond to investigate her forebears, so please let me know if you share this surname.
Sophie married Julius Hoyer, also from Germany, and they settled in San Antonio, Texas. Her FindaGrave memorial apparently includes text from her obituary. She died in 1883.
Lina Hoyer
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Today is the anniversary of the death of my 2nd great-grandmother, Lina Hoyer, who passed away in 1915. She was the daughter of Julius Hoyer and Sophia Heimel, both German immigrants who raised her in San Antonio, Texas. She married Fridolin Wild and together they raised seven children, including my great-grandfather Herman Wild Sr.
In prepping for this blog post, I was reminded that photos of her gravesite have been added to FindaGrave. The memorial there also includes text from her obituary in the San Antonio Light, which includes her last street address, 206 Lavaca Street. Here is a Google Street View image of that address (apparently taken on trash day):
206 Lavaca Street, San Antonio
Josephine Susan Campbell Bennett
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On this date in 1922, my second great-grandmother Josephine Susan (Campbell) Bennett passed away. She was born in 1859 in San Antonio, Texas, and was the granddaughter of the first mayor of San Antonio, William John Smith. Her father was not only a Campbell, but William Wallace Campbell, so I can only assume she had a wee bit of Scottish ancestry.
Josephine married Anson G. Bennett, who hailed from Missouri. Together, they had eight children, including my great grandfather Susan Campbell Bennett.
I haven’t found many more records besides census records of her life, but her daughter, also Josephine, was quite the social butterfly and was written up quite a bit in local papers.
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