Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Wisdom Wednesday: Writing Queries for Surname Message Boards


Hidden family


My six top tips for effective queries:


Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Tuesday Time Travel: 1812, When Benjamin McClure Was Born

Benjamin McClure, born in April, 1812 in Ohio, was among the early settlers of Wabash, Indiana (where he died in 1896). According to Wabash County Early Settlers, he and his wife Sarah and their son, Theodore W. McClure, came to Wabash in September, 1844. Benjamin is hubby's great-great-grandpa.

In this latest entry of my "time travel" series, I try to imagine a little of what life was like for Benjamin and family in the Ohio of 1812.

T-shirt keeps Benji alive for next generation!
The 1812 War was the big news in Benjamin's birth year, but it was also the year Louisiana became a U.S. state (as Google News Timeline reminded me).
  • Did war touch the McClure family? I don't know for certain. Benjamin was born a few months before America declared war on Britain in 1812. According to Ohio History Central, some former British soldiers were settled in Ohio and gave firearms to native Americans to resist the westward expansion of colonists. Once US forces won the war and the British gave up their claims, this practice ended. But war was in the air around the world: Napoleon was trying to expand France's claims in Europe and in Russia (!). The US was still a young nation and I imagine that the McClure family was uncertain about the country's ability to survive, let alone thrive.
  • Ohio was a fast-growing farm state. Admitted to the Union in 1803, Ohio had 230,000 residents at the time of the 1810 Census (and more than double that amount by the 1820 Census). Most were farmers, but during Benjamin McClure's lifetime, Ohio's industry developed rapidly because of ore deposits and other natural resources. Having access to water and good roads helped build the business base (steamboats were just being introduced in Ohio when Benjamin was born). Some settlers may have been attracted by the fact that Ohio tolerated diverse religions. I'm certain that Benjamin's parents were farmers, not refugees in search of a haven from persecution. Home was probably a simple cabin on the farm property, with no frills, at least in the early days. Later, with prosperity and more land, the family's home was more elaborate.
  • Financial ups and downs. Just a few years after Benjamin was born, the Panic of 1819 prompted bankruptcies and financial turmoil in Ohio and many other states. Farmers were certainly not exempt from the problems, although I imagine that Benjamin's family was fairly self-sufficient because of the farm. That said, weather extremes must have caused the McClures hardships and worries. They also needed to get through the winters financially and weather hot/dry summers that threatened crops. How did they manage their money? The family was large, as most were in that time, and yet Benjamin had enough money to acquire 80 acres in Wabash by at least 1875. Very impressive.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Wordless Wednesday: Wendell Washer Makes Me Smile

Have you seen Wendell Washer's GeneToons genealogy cartoons? Just take a peek at the one above and you'll see why he makes me smile. Thanks for the laughs, Wendell. Enough said.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Tuesday Time Travel: 1878, when Brice L. McClure Was Born

This is another in my ongoing series of Time Travel posts, looking at what was happening at important points in my ancestors' lives.

Today's ancestor is Brice Larimer McClure, my husband's maternal grandfather, born on December 25, 1878, in Little Traverse, Michigan. Little Traverse is part of Petoskey nowadays, located in Emmet County, not too far (as the crow flies) from famous Mackinac Island. The county was named after Robert Emmet, an Irish nationalist born in Dublin.

And thanks to Mary Elizabeth's "ME and My Ancestors," which mentioned that Google Timelines had been featured on Genealogy Gems, I now know about the wonderful tool Google News Timeline to look up events of the era, as well.

So what was life like for newborn Brice, his 1-yr-old sister Lola, and his parents, William Madison McClure and Margaret Jane Larimer McClure? I have a few clues.
  • Railroad fever and lumber demand fueled growth. A lot of railroads were active in Michigan at this time, as the US economy expanded. The first-ever Statistical Abstract of the US shows that the US treasury held a record $215 million in 1878! (The public debt was just over $2 billion, a direct result of the Civil War.) Petoskey was about to be incorporated, in fact, and lumber was a major industry, here and throughout Michigan. Water access increased the value of this area for industry. Rapid economic development meant work for Brice's father. Did he get his start on the railroad here? By the 1880 Census, Brice's father was listed as "worker on railway" and his home was in Millersburg, Elkhart County, Indiana.
  • Cool summers, clean air = resort community. The area in and around Petoskey, a scenic stop on the railroads from Grand Rapids and beyond, grew into a haven for city-dwellers seeking to escape the heat in summer resort communities. Yellow fever was a problem in Southern states, and crowded cities were already viewed as unhealthy for those with fragile constitutions or chronic conditions. Of course, Brice was born on Christmas, when the weather was REALLY cool, and the family lived no more than 18 months beyond his birth in this resort community, so he never experienced the "resort" atmosphere. But he did live nearly 92 years...perhaps his healthy beginnings helped?!
  • What about culture and education? Brice and family were probably busy trying to survive, so I doubt they were buying books or attending concerts at this point (LOL). Just a few years before Brice was born, however, a landmark court case in Kalamazoo affirmed the concept of tax support for public high schools in Michigan towns. Out in the wider world, Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer had been published in 1876, and Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore debuted, bringing "I'm Called Little Buttercup" and other classics to lips across Europe and into America. Brice's descendants became Mark Twain fans, he might have been pleased to know.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

52 Weeks of Genealogy: Clothes--Double Trouble!

My mother, Daisy Schwartz Burk, was a twin (see the toddlers in the older photo below, in which Mom is probably the smiling girl on the right side, next to her older sister, Dorothy Schwartz). She was often dressed exactly like her fraternal twin, not just for photos. Not surprisingly, Mom wasn't a big fan of matching outfits, because they seemed like a gimmick to show off "twin-ness."

That's why Mom rarely dressed me and my fraternal twin alike. The exception was on special occasions such as when we were going to be photographed by a pro (see the pony-tailed youngsters at right, below). The 99% of our wardrobe that we wore to school and for play did NOT consist of matching outfits--which meant we could share clothing and mix and match from a much larger selection. 

As children, my twin and I would (once in a while) dress like the other and try to fool people, just for the fun of it. Usually we got away with it for an hour or two. Growing up, we valued our separate identities and made separate friends. We remember our mother and aunt talking on the phone every night, so it's no wonder that my twin and I call each other just about every day.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Surname Saturday and Tips for Surname Message Boards





Here are my tips for using surname message boards:

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Wedding Wednesday: Toledo Nuptials for Wood and Slatter

Hubby's grandfather, James Edgar Wood, married hubby's grandmother, Mary Slatter, on September 21, 1898 in Toledo, Ohio (see cert at left).

James Edgar Wood, born in Toledo, was a builder whose carpentry talents I showed off in photos on a Talented Tuesday.

Mary Slatter's family history is a mystery. According to the 1900 Census, she came to the US in 1895. How, where, and when did she meet her future husband?

According to her death cert, Mary was born in London to John Slatter and Mary Sheehan. Her 1925 obit says she had three brothers (Harry, John, and Albert Slatter) and a sister (Mrs. James F. Baker). Her family appears to have come through Canada. Obviously my next step is to check out potential relatives in Canada!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Tuesday Time Travel: 1906, When Isaac and Henrietta Wed

In my continuing series of time-travel posts, today I'm looking at the year in which my paternal grandfather, Isaac Burk, married my maternal grandma, Henrietta Mahler. Their wedding date was June 10, 1906, so their anniversary is just a few days from now.

These photos show them in the mid-1930s, when their four children were grown and gone.

What was life like for them in 1906, when they were married in Henrietta's apartment in New York City? Despite their hopes and dreams, all around them were larger forces causing major challenges for immigrants from Eastern Europe:
  • War and peace and pogroms. Teddy Roosevelt was President, and this was the year he won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering an end to the Russo-Japanese war. But pogroms continued in parts of Eastern Europe controlled by Russia. Isaac and Henrietta's friends and family there would have been affected by these terrible events (which would also have reinforced their decision to make a life in North America).
  • Money troubles. New York was a city of super-rich socialites and struggling immigrants like my grandparents. The financial panic of 1907 was just around the corner, which may have been one reason why Isaac was "commuting" back and forth between Montreal and New York in search of work. One of Isaac and Henrietta's four children was born in Montreal (my uncle Sidney Burk). Cousin Lois told me that her grandma Ida and my grandma Henrietta would help each other out with money during the Depression years in New York, which suggests money was an ongoing problem for my grandparents.
  • Fear of immigrant labor. Waves of immigration swept over the city and country, and with it, increasing fear that immigrants were stealing jobs from Americans (sound familiar?). Perhaps Isaac felt the effects of this fear when he tried to find work in NYC. Immigration laws were changing . . . and the naturalization rules were tightened in 1906 to require English language knowledge. What was it like to arrive in New York after a week or more at sea? Two years ago, Dick Eastman posted a link to footage of Ellis Island immigrants in 1906, and the three-minute snippet is quite poignant.
  • Earthquakes and exposes. San Francisco was devastated by the huge earthquake and fire in April, 1906, news that would have made it to New York before the wedding. Later that same summer, Chile suffered a massive earthquake and fire that killed 20,000. Other news headlines related to exposes such as The Jungle, which prompted new federal regulations that made my grandparents' daily lives safer, such as the Pure Food and Drug Act. When they could afford to buy a newspaper, most likely Isaac and Henrietta read the Jewish Daily Forward published in Yiddish.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

52 Weeks of Genealogy: Books (of Parents and Children)

So many books, so little time! This is a shared posting with my hubby, Wally. First up, the books of my childhood and my memories of what was on my parents' bookshelves.

As a preteen, the first two novels I remember plucking off library shelves were: Sands of Mars, by the legendary sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke; and Landfall the Unknown, a young adult novel by Evelyn Cheesman, an entomologist and prolific writer.

Why these book titles have stuck with me all these years (when so many really important details have disappeared from my brain), I don't know. Both books deal with exploration and survival, one on Mars and the other on an uninhabited Pacific island. Interesting theme for a genealogy buff searching for ancestors who came to America from far-away homelands!

My father preferred newspapers (reading 2-4 a day on his one-hour commute to and from Manhattan) but my mother was an avid reader of books. When I was young, she'd fly through paperback mysteries of Erle Stanley Gardner, among others. After we girls were grown and gone, and she was on her own, she acquired a very eclectic collection of books to read and re-read, including The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and various natural history books. Sometimes she'd dabble in a best-seller to see what the hub-bub was about.

Guest post by my hubby, Wally:

Starting around age 12, I got hooked on the Hardy Boys (see earlier post). In addition, Earth Abides by George R. Stewart impressed me when I read it as a 16-year-old. Earth is being swept by a disease (something like the 1918-9 flu pandemic), which kills 98% of the population. The story is the reestablishment of civilization, seen through the eyes of a man who survived and returns to the now-deserted city of San Francisco. What impressed me was how he and others managed to live among the remains of a society where the people had vanished but many man-made parts of the world still continued (food sits on store shelves, books are in the library, etc).

Rereading this 1949 best-seller as an adult, I was struck by Stewart's basically positive view of human nature. Although most post-apocalyptic novels portray a world where life is nasty, brutish, and short, Earth Abides portrays a world in which humans establish a new, positive civilization and culture on the ruins of the old.

My father didn't read books (just newspapers and magazines). But once a week in the summer, my mother and I (and probably my siblings) would walk to the nearest branch of the public library in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where we'd all borrow a stack of books. The only book I remember my mother buying was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I also read it as a teenager when it first came out, and was dazzled by the hero. Rereading it as an adult, however, I found it preposterous and problematic.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Wisdom Wednesday: Ancestor Hunting on Gen Blogs



Happy ancestor hunting!