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For the last few months my genealogy research has taken a back seat while I finished my final semester of law school and studied for and took the Bar exam (and hopefully passed it!). Now I am finally free of school obligations. I am not completely free as I now have to go from excessive studying to be a lawyer to excessive working as a lawyer. Still, I hope to squeeze in the time for a post a week on this blog.
I have a large backlog of information that I have collected over the last few months that I need to process and organize into posts. Some of my finds have been quite exciting and I really hope to get the time to post about them soon. I have contacted other researchers who gave me a wealth of information on my wife's family. I also have received a large set of obituaries for the Frank family that I hope to post soon. There have also been numerous updates to other related families in my tree. I will spotlight some of the more interesting people in these less well known parts of my tree through regular "Spotlight" posts.
It will take me a while to get a lot of this information digitized and organized enough for publication. Until then, here is a status update on the various families of interest in my research:
Frank (my father's family): I have obtained numerous obituaries for my earliest Frank ancestors. These included the obituary of my earliest known Frank ancestor, Jacob Frank. His obituary (actually, several obituaries in various local papers) confirm many of my theories about him, including his town of origin and his occupations.
Sullivan (my mother's family): My mother has provided me her family photo album which contains a wonderful collection of old family photographs of ancestors going back to the Civil War. I am currently scanning these photographs when I have free time. Unfortunately, most all of the photographs are unlabled. I am trying to identify as many photographs as I can. I am hopeful this will help me identify some current Sullivan relations.
Dickson (my paternal grandmother's family): I have begun writing the story of this family for a blog post. I have one major missing link in this family that I am trying to resolve first. I was hopeful to answer some questions about this family when I took a recent trip to Raleigh, North Carolina for a wedding. Raleigh is home to the State Archives, which have the old court records for all NC counties. Unfortunately, the office was closed for an extended Memorial Day holiday while I was there. I will either write to them or contact other researchers that might have the information before I post.
Roberts (my wife's father's family): I have been in contact with a few researchers who have extensive information on this family. I am also going to a Roberts Family Reunion in Owensboro Kentucky next weekend. After this I will try and post my findings.
Ebelhar (my wife's mother's family): As I have previously mentioned, I found out a great deal of information on this family. My wife's mother's families have especially interesting stories to them, including murder and other shocking deaths. I simply have too much information to sort out right now, and will need to get that done before I write some posts.
I also have updated information on several related families in Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky, including the following surnames: Beasley, Gruenewald, Hickey, Kelley, Riney, Runge, Shelton, Shields and Weber. If you are a researcher interested in any of these surnames in these areas, please contact me!
Showing posts with label Ebelhar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ebelhar. Show all posts
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
A genealogy weekend
This weekend I visited my wife's family in Owensboro, Kentucky. She was there for a cousin's wedding shower. While she was at the shower, I decided to use my free time to try and track down some of the dead ends I had run into in researching her family.
There were three main roadblocks I have encountered in researching her family. First is finding the maiden names of some of the women in her maternal grandfather's family. Her grandfather's family, the Ebelhars/Uebelhors, are German (Actually Alsacian French) Catholics who emigrated to southern Indiana. I know that Catholic churches in the area kept excellent records, and that I would have no problem locating this information if I was to go to the local churches and view the record books. That, however, is something I have yet to find time to do. Fortunately, I spoke with one of my mother-in-law's cousins who has already done much of that work. He offered to exchange information with me next time I am in town. He has a collection of record copies and old photographs that I hope to digitize. He also had quite a few interesting stories to share about his family, such as how his great grandfather was the owner of a rather rowdy saloon, and once shot a man in a barfight.
The second roadblock I addressed was my wife's maternal grandmother's family. Her great grandmother was a Mabel Kelley, born in 1895 in the Owensboro area. I had Mabel on the 1900 and 1910 censuses as a child, but was unable to determine the names of her parents. Mabel was raised by her aunt and uncle, Rose and William Tuck. Her parents either abandoned her to their relatives, or died before she was 5. I found the answer in old, handwritten notes my wife's grandmother's aunt, Sister Elizabeth Kelley. Sr. Elizabeth left 16 pages of meticulous handwritten notes on her family. She even made multiple handwritten copies to share with her family! These notes revealed the names of her parents and grandparents, opening up whole new branches of research for me to explore over the next few months. I took high resolution digital photos of Sr. Elizabeth's notes and will be sharing those along with my own research.
The final roadblock is the most challenging: My wife's paternal grandmother's father. My wife's grandmother was born in 1919 in Arkansas to William Daniel Taylor and Dona Westerfield. Her mother was 16 when she married William D. Taylor, who at the time was at least 50 years old, possibly as old as 55. Even in Arkansas in 1903, a 50 year old marrying a 16 year old girl was not common. Simply put, and without getting into details, William D. Taylor was not a good person. He was also very secretive, which led to much speculation and rumors in his family. We do not know if William D. Taylor is his real name, where he was from, or exactly when he was born.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find any significant information on William D. Taylor prior to his marriage in 1903. My trip only raised more questions about who this man might have been. What I do know about him remains limited. I know he was likely from Tennessee, though he wouldn't even give the census takers a square answer on this question. Other than that, I have only many, many rumors. He may have left Tennessee because he got a 15 year old girl pregnant and was run out of town. He may have served as a water boy for soldiers in the Civil War. He may have briefly been a member of the James-Younger Gang, and participated in a stagecoach heist near Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. He may have had a twin brother whose identity he assumed. He may even have had a second family living in Oklahoma and Tennessee.
That is quite a lot to explore. I could spend years researching to discover which of these stories is true. For now, I am going to focus on finding him on an earlier census and hopefully determining the names of his parents and where he was from.
I'll post more on these families after I get some time to review the information I received this weekend. Unfortunately, my genealogy work might be rather limited for the next few months, as I am headed towards finals, and after that I must begin preparing for the bar exam in July. But I will at least try and post stories on the families I have already researched in the next few months.
There were three main roadblocks I have encountered in researching her family. First is finding the maiden names of some of the women in her maternal grandfather's family. Her grandfather's family, the Ebelhars/Uebelhors, are German (Actually Alsacian French) Catholics who emigrated to southern Indiana. I know that Catholic churches in the area kept excellent records, and that I would have no problem locating this information if I was to go to the local churches and view the record books. That, however, is something I have yet to find time to do. Fortunately, I spoke with one of my mother-in-law's cousins who has already done much of that work. He offered to exchange information with me next time I am in town. He has a collection of record copies and old photographs that I hope to digitize. He also had quite a few interesting stories to share about his family, such as how his great grandfather was the owner of a rather rowdy saloon, and once shot a man in a barfight.
The second roadblock I addressed was my wife's maternal grandmother's family. Her great grandmother was a Mabel Kelley, born in 1895 in the Owensboro area. I had Mabel on the 1900 and 1910 censuses as a child, but was unable to determine the names of her parents. Mabel was raised by her aunt and uncle, Rose and William Tuck. Her parents either abandoned her to their relatives, or died before she was 5. I found the answer in old, handwritten notes my wife's grandmother's aunt, Sister Elizabeth Kelley. Sr. Elizabeth left 16 pages of meticulous handwritten notes on her family. She even made multiple handwritten copies to share with her family! These notes revealed the names of her parents and grandparents, opening up whole new branches of research for me to explore over the next few months. I took high resolution digital photos of Sr. Elizabeth's notes and will be sharing those along with my own research.
The final roadblock is the most challenging: My wife's paternal grandmother's father. My wife's grandmother was born in 1919 in Arkansas to William Daniel Taylor and Dona Westerfield. Her mother was 16 when she married William D. Taylor, who at the time was at least 50 years old, possibly as old as 55. Even in Arkansas in 1903, a 50 year old marrying a 16 year old girl was not common. Simply put, and without getting into details, William D. Taylor was not a good person. He was also very secretive, which led to much speculation and rumors in his family. We do not know if William D. Taylor is his real name, where he was from, or exactly when he was born.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find any significant information on William D. Taylor prior to his marriage in 1903. My trip only raised more questions about who this man might have been. What I do know about him remains limited. I know he was likely from Tennessee, though he wouldn't even give the census takers a square answer on this question. Other than that, I have only many, many rumors. He may have left Tennessee because he got a 15 year old girl pregnant and was run out of town. He may have served as a water boy for soldiers in the Civil War. He may have briefly been a member of the James-Younger Gang, and participated in a stagecoach heist near Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. He may have had a twin brother whose identity he assumed. He may even have had a second family living in Oklahoma and Tennessee.
That is quite a lot to explore. I could spend years researching to discover which of these stories is true. For now, I am going to focus on finding him on an earlier census and hopefully determining the names of his parents and where he was from.
I'll post more on these families after I get some time to review the information I received this weekend. Unfortunately, my genealogy work might be rather limited for the next few months, as I am headed towards finals, and after that I must begin preparing for the bar exam in July. But I will at least try and post stories on the families I have already researched in the next few months.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Digging for Roots
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today.
-- Inaugural Address of President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.
Hello and Welcome!
The above quote pretty much sums up why I am interested in genealogy. The stories of our ancestors make us who we are today. Their life stories, both famous and obscure, rich and poor, remind us of the significance each life has on the rest of the world.
I have created this blog in order to keep my family updated on the findings of my genealogy research. Most of the posts will be updates on research into particular family lines. I will post updates and interesting stories I find on the families I am researching. Along the way I will also post on other subjects related to genealogy. I am especially interested in efforts to digitize ancient records and make them accessible to the public. I will post on these efforts as well as tips on the resources available on the internet that I have found most helpful in my searches.
Here are the main family names I will am researching:
My father's family:
- Frank
- Dickson
- Beasley
- Backer
- Shelton
My mother's family:
- Sullivan
- Hickey
- Gruenewald
My wife's father's family:
- Roberts
- Westerfield
My wife's mother's family:
- Ebelhar
- Riney
You can keep up to date on my findings for all of these families by subscribing to this blog's rss feed. Thanks for visiting, and I wish you the best of luck in your own searches.
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