Adding local information to a family past

 

                       Some books about Northamptonshire including the Kettering Vestry Minutes

I love books so when I got into family history many years ago, besides the novels that I wanted to read, I also bought books about the places where my family had lived. The trouble is that they lived in a lot of places. I have a whole large section on London, for instance. But they lived in other places too. One of those was Kettering in Northamptonshire.

Kettering was where my 3 x great grandfather, John Strange, and his family lived. He had been born there in 1790. So when I found a copy of the Kettering Vestry Minutes: 1797-1853 for sale, I purchased it. My hope was that it would give me an idea about what kind of place Kettering was when he lived there. To me vestry minutes meant the minutes of the parish or established church. I highly doubted that my Strange family would be found in there.

John was the grandson of Reverend Thomas Strange, the first Congregational minister in Kilsby, Northamptonshire. It didn't seem likely that the Strange family would have converted to Anglicanism, not in Northamptonshire where nonconformity was rife.

I was happily surprised to find John Strange showing up when I browsed through the entries. In an entry made about September 22, 1831, it was recorded that Mr. John Strange was appointed but he got off by pleading illness. That didn't last long because he was recorded as being present for the Vestry on November 14 of the same year. A number of other entries recording his name were sprinkled throughout the book. 

To settle my confusion over the religious issue, I finally looked at the introduction to the book. There I read that the various officers of the parish came from among the ratepayers. So being part of the Vestry wasn't about religion. It was about the parish as a unit of government. John Strange had been called to perform his civic duty. It gave me an idea of his status in the community. 

Beyond that, the introduction made for good background reading. It gave an interesting insight into life in that time period as there were other passages that detailed the problems the people were up against in that era. It's amazing what can be found to add colour to the lives of the family on a family tree if you bother to read a source thoroughly. 

Sources:

Kettering Vestry Minutes: A.D. 1797-1853, printed for the Northamptonshire Record Society by the Northamptonshire Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., Kettering, 1933  

Looking at my family tree through a different lens

 

                                                            X-DNA chart with presently known details filled in

Sometimes it helps to look at your family tree in a new way. When looking at different aspects of DNA through a DNA Study Group session the other day, we were introduced to X-DNA inheritance. According to the information given, the X chromosome is handed down in a different way than the other chromosomes and this also varies depending on whether the recipient is male or female. There are different charts for male and female inheritance available on the internet.

I'm still working on a particular DNA match and haven't gotten much further but she is an X DNA match to me. That inheritance should narrow the field of potential common matches. So I printed off a blank female inheritance chart and started filling in the names from my family tree.

I knew that there was one female line I wouldn't get far back on. I still haven't found the parents of my 3 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment. Once I filled out the tree it was surprising how many of the lines didn't go far back. There were only a couple of lines that reached the outer row of the chart at the 6 x great grandparent level. I thought my tree was more extensive than that but then again, most of the names on the chart are female. Females are notoriously hard to research changing their names as they do in marriage.

Having filled out a lot of the boxes on the chart, I can see where I need to concentrate my efforts to extend some of the lines. This will help me with the particular DNA match problem I'm working on. It also shows the gaps where I should concentrate my efforts to learn more about the female members in my family tree and makes me wonder if I've been guilty of concentrating on those easier to find male lines for too long. 

Sources:

X-DNA inheritance chart - https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2008/12/21/unlocking-the-genealogical-secrets-of-the-x-chromosome/

Finding fault with history

 

                                            A view of the May Day display at the Port Coquitlam Community Centre

The City of Port Coquitlam still celebrates May Day. Instead of going by the wayside as acknowledging the day has done in so many municipalities, in the city of PoCo the celebration has grown so the festivities now take a week. The highlight this Saturday will be the May Day Parade.

It should be a big one this year, unless people drop out because of the unprecedented heat predicted. This year marks the 100th anniversary of May Day festivities in Port Coquitlam. To honour this fact, an exhibit was set up in the city's new community centre. One of the items on display was the throne for the May Queen.

While I was there taking in the display, a few other people stopped to look too. It's great to see some interest from sports minded members of a younger generation. Unfortunately, there have also been complaints to do with the non-inclusivity of celebrating a Queen, a role only open to female students. But that's history for you, often politically incorrect. Recently we've seen statues of once lauded men toppled due to what they represent about our past. I understand the sentiment but the past happened. We learn from that and improve how people are treated but it doesn't alter what was. If the person who complained had read more of the information on display, they could have seen that a male ambassador was included as part of the May Day Royal Party, and innovation introduced in 1993. As it is, a heritage society seeks to present stories about what happened, not what people of the future would have deemed acceptable. 

Once again at the FamilySearch Library

 

                                                               View of the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City

I can't pin down the date when I started going to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. It was decades ago. A group from my family history society, the BCGS, would book rooms in a cut rate hotel down the road from the library and spend most of our time in front of film readers there. We'd leave when they closed the doors for the night.

That was back in the day when facts were hard to track down and eyes would glaze over as we cranked the microfilmed frames slowly by. There on the screen, was it really the name I was looking for? Sometimes it was hard to tell. Much of the data I have gathered comes from those research trips. Well, those and the hours that I spent at local Family History Centers close to my home.

But there's always something more to find, at least that's the hope. So when a friend emailed me and let me know her usual roommate couldn't attend a week in Salt Lake City with the Ancestor Seekers, I told her I'd take her roommate's place. It was her second time with the research group, my first.

It was different to be with a well-organized group. We gathered for pep talks in the morning. There were also shared successes after the first day. Everyone clapped hoping they'd find the ancestors they were looking for too. Those successes had usually been helped along by the assistants that Ancestor Seekers had for our group on each research floor of the library. I could have done with assistance like that when I first started going to Salt Lake City to research.

As it was, I received help navigating FamilySearch's collaborative family tree. I'd never ventured into the massive connective tree before and I'm still a bit iffy about a family tree where everyone contributes and any contributor can change information. I was shown how that same tree could contain clues that might help in my own family history research. Another thing I got assistance with was how to use the new work stations with three screens. Imagine, you can sit there and look at three or more different databases at the same time!

We didn't spend all of our time in front of those screens. On the first two days we were able to attend classes at the beginning of our time in the library. One was about Irish research and another about DNA. We were in Salt Lake City for DNA day and the folks at FamilySearch had done a whole series of talks about DNA for the day. We were treated to an in-person rerun of one of the DNA talks given on the previous day. Recordings of all of the DNA talks from DNA day can be seen in the webinars available on the FamilySearch website by searching for webinars once you are on the research wiki.

All of our time with the Ancestor Seekers wasn't spent at the FamilySearch Library. There were also some optional group outings. The tour they'd arranged was my first view of the interesting artifacts and paintings in the Convention Center. One evening some of our group attended the rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It was nice to get some uplifting culture along with research assistance. 

Our time in Salt Lake City with the Ancestor Seekers went quickly. All too soon it was over and I was on my way home. One of the best things about being there was all that time to devote to my family history research. Now that I'm home I need to make a concerted effort to unpack all the new information I uncovered. I need to look at those notes, photos of book pages and bits of info saved to thumb drives and see where it all fits in my ongoing quest for family information. Now if I could just find the time!

Sources:

Ancestor Seekers https://ancestorseekers.com

FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org

Family trees with shaky branches

 

                                                         The wrong kind of weight can sometimes cause tree collapse

I thought it would be quick and easy. Just plug in Alexander Matheson's name and birthdate and check out Ancestry family trees to find out more about his family after he crossed the border into the US. Well, I found him in quite a few trees and attached to the right birth family too, for the most part, although those trees showed a few surprise siblings. Just where did that William Matheson come from? He wasn't listed in the family headed by Kenneth Matheson in any of the census returns which I had seen, not even after Alexander was no longer included. 

In the trees I'd looked at, the later information about Alexander himself was all over the map. I mean all over the map literally. Some trees showed him in Ontario which made some kind of sense as he'd been there with his family in 1851. Other profiles showed him dying back in Scotland. I wondered just where and when they'd tracked him back to the old country.

It looks like there won't be any short cuts in tracking down Alex and his family. I had hoped that it would be easier because, while I have his letters to give me clues they can be somewhat lacking in detail. Like the information he wrote to his sister, Margaret, catching her up with the 40 years of news she had missed out on. On one occasion in about 1890 he wrote: "Five years ago we buried our only daughter, a young married woman of 24. She died in childbirth. She left two little girls." Tantalizing clues but there are no names.

Perhaps it is just as well that I'll be building my history of this family piece by piece. At least then, I'll be sure of my facts and who knows what other clues the information I dig up will give me. Like the 1870 census that I stashed in my Ancestry shoebox. In any entry for Pleasant Valley, Grundy, Iowa was a record for Alexander Mathison with his wife Mary, daughter Anna aged 4 and son Frank aged 2. Anna must have been the daughter who died in childbirth 20 years later. Bonus though were the two other members of the household, Francis Gilpin 36 and William Gilpin 22, lending weight to the record of Alexander's marriage to a Mary Galpin being correct. Maybe doing things the slow way is an advantage after all. 

Sources:

Ancestry.ca search of Public Member Trees

Ancestry.ca 1870 United States Federal Census Pleasant Valley, Grundy, Iowa

Researching a wounded US Civil War soldier

 

                                                                        Surgeon's field kit from the Civil War era

While I haven't gotten very far adding collateral Dorset relatives to my Ancestry family tree, I decided to work on my Scots instead, adding Alexander, my 3 x great uncle, to my Matheson family. It was when I was adding life events to his profile that I came across an event that I knew about but, somehow, writing out the outline made me look at the information in a different way.  

Alexander Matheson enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. Various details of his service can be seen in muster rolls and pension records. He was wounded and taken prisoner in October of 1864. His right tibia was broken when he was shot. If he was going to be captured at any point, no doubt it was better timing that it was towards the end of the war.

I haven't yet traced the movements of G and B companies of the 14th and 15th Battalions of Illinois Infantry Volunteers to see which battles he was involved in. That will be a project for later. For now, the records show that he was at Big Shanty when he was wounded and was taken prisoner at Acworth, Georgia.

It would be interesting to plot out his movements on a map both before and after he was captured. Even after been wounded he moved around being transferred between hospitals. If that happened to him, it must have happened to many other soldiers too. It must have been hard being carted around from place to place in the horse and wagon age when too injured to walk under your own steam.

The treatment too, would have been fairly primitive, with amputation being common. When I visited Springfield, Illinois back in 2013, I remember seeing museum exhibitions about the practice of medicine in the Civil War. There were displays of the various implements used, scarily large some of them. But it was a time of medical progress as doctors and nurses learned from the sheer number of men being treated. It made me think about the difficulties of former soldiers once the war was over trying to get back to their lives which, in many cases, involved more physically activity than we are used to today. In Alexander's case, I believe that he kept his lower right leg but the impairment from his wound resulted in him receiving a pension.

Image:

By USG - The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (US Gov't Printing Office, 1870-88), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27857651

Sources:

Civil War Hospitals YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omq63mzHOfY

Civil War Medicine YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDYWP2fz4-E

Internet Archive – various books available about Civil War Medicine https://archive.org

PBS Learning Media https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ms17.socct.cw.disinf/civil-war-disease-and-wound-infection/

Genealogy and the fluidity of surnames

 

                                                             The building at 82 Wentworth Street as viewed in 2019

When searching for family links, researchers rely heavily on surnames. But are surnames as reliable as we think? I ran into something the other day that made me question that.

I signed up for Diahan Southard's Your DNA Guide Study Group and this week we had our first class. We did a more in-depth dive into Ancestry's ThruLines than I've ever done. Not that that's saying much. I hadn't done more that get my toes wet with that tool before.

ThruLines uses DNA plus family trees to bring up likely scenarios for how you connect to your DNA matches. That's a good argument for why I should expand my family tree. But when I clicked on my great-grandmother, Charlotte Arment, I noticed something. I'd only added the children of her second husband to my tree. I say husband but I've never found a marriage between Charlotte Arment and Henry Cavanagh. That's probably because they never wed as she was still married to her first husband, John James Petherick, who was still living. Divorce was not an easy option in those days.

The problem was that I hadn't entered Charlotte's marriage to John James Petherick or her child from that relationship, William James Petherick, on my family tree. Without the Petherick information, some interesting DNA matches came up in ThruLines. Without the first marriage entered, William James Petherick/Cavanagh was my possible match, Charlotte's first child with the addition of her second husband's surname.

A check of the 1881 census shows that the conflation of the two surnames was easily done. At 82 Wentworth Street in Whitechapel, Henry Cavanah was listed as head of household, Charlotte as his wife and William, at the age of 16, as son. Henry and Charlotte's other children, Charlotte, Ellen, Nat and Jane followed as did Henry's mother-in-law, Ellen Armond.

By 1891 the family at 82 Wentworth Street had expanded into different units in the building. The census showed Charlotte's sister, Mary A Wright, with her children in the first unit. In the next unit were Henry and Charlotte Cavanagh and their offspring. Next door there appeared to be an unrelated couple, William McArthur and his wife Mary R. Living in the unit next to that couple, was W. James Petherick (our William James, son of Charlotte who was now Henry's wife). W. James Petherick was a widower of 26, living with his daughter Alice, aged 7 and his sister, Jane, aged 11. Was his sister, Jane, looking after his daughter? It was interesting to see all of these relatives living close together, an illustration of close East End family ties.

I was left with a favourable impression of Henry Cavanagh's character especially with what I know about the later history of the family. William James probably thought of him as his father, in deed if not in fact. The problem was that ThruLines brings together genetics with family trees and some of my possible matches through William J Petherick carry the surname Cavanagh and have for generations. As any matches on William J's line would be half relationships to me the amount of centimorgans would be different than that of a full relationship which a researcher might look for given the common surname of Cavanagh. Not only that, the ease with which one surname changed to another makes me wonder if it happened anywhere else in my family tree, perhaps on the Cavanagh family line which showed a propensity to mess about with surnames. 

Sources:

Ancestry.ca DNA ThruLines

Find My Past 1881 census for London, St Mary Whitechapel

LDS film 6095389 1891 census for London, St Mary Whitechapel