Off the Beaten Path – Part Two

In my last entry, I was using information found at Newspapers.com, discovering new facts about some relatives on my father’s maternal side. Newspapers.com is not one of my normal sites for research; I chose to move off the beaten path of sites I had researched over and over again to see if I could pick up new leads on my ancestors.

While it was rewarding to get some insight into the travels of the McCombs and Slaughter families, and somewhat heartbreaking to view the information regarding the deaths of two Slaughter children, I really wanted to see if I could find information about someone I was directly descended from.

I decided to try to find my way a bit farther back on the line of Georgianna, one of my great-grandmothers. I had a little bit of confusing and conflicting information on her from a few different sources.

First off, there is her name. I have seen it as both Georgianna and Georgia Anna. I tend to prefer Georgianna, and in either case, her name was probably the basis for naming my father’s sister, my aunt Georgia.

Secondly, there was some conflicting information in two records I had found. The first was the death certificate of my great-grandmother, where her parent’s names were given:

So, her father’s first name was not listed, but the last name was shown as Chrisman or Christman. Her mother’s name was listed as Eliza Gouchnour. I tried several times unsuccessfully to find a marriage record to get my great-great-grandfather’s first name, but had no success.

This however, did not match up with some information I found in the 1910 US Census:

So, here we have the mother-in-law of William, which would be Georgianna’s mother, listed as Luveza. The last name of Olaker didn’t phase me as much as it was possible she could have remarried. Luveza to me seemed to be a bit distant from Eliza; only the -za at the end of the name was similar. So, which record was right? Or, was it possible they were both wrong? These are secondary records, after all. It is possible that either the person reporting the information, or the person recording it, could have made a mistake

One more record gave me a bit of a hint about the name. This time, it was from the marriage record for William and Georgianna:

So, Eliza was actually William’s mother, not Georgianna’s. The person reporting the information on the death certificate probably got confused, and who could blame them? A death can be a stressful event, especially for those closest to the person passing.

I had a hard time deciphering the initial for Georgianna’s father, but the mother is listed as L. Chrisman. This tended to confirm Luveza was more likely the correct name for Georgianna’s mother.

However, I will admit that just like some maps, I had neglected to update a change in information, so there was an error on my family tree. I had left Eliza in as the first name for Georgianna’s mother, and so every search I did for quite some time resulted in a dead end. It took a look at a hint given at FamilySearch.org to get me to make the correction. It was this hint that gave me the idea that it might be time to venture off the beaten path once more.

The hint was for the names of both of Georgianna’s parents. They were listed as George W. Chrisman and Louisa E. Gochenour. Here was another deviation; they listed the name as Louisa, whereas the one record I had found so far listed the name as Luveza. I could at least see more similarity between Louisa/Luveza than I did with Luveza/Eliza.

I could also understand Georgianna’s name a bit more. She was named after her dad. I don’t see girls named after their dads as often, but it does happen. Though my mother went by her middle name, her first name was Billie, and she was named after her dad, Bill (William). I decided to click on George’s record on FamilySearch, to see if there was any other information I could see.

I actually found a piece of information that sparked my interest. They listed military service for George. The record indicated that he had served in 1862 in Company D of the 10th West Virginia Voluntary Infantry. I noticed the fact that only one year was listed. That made me wonder. Did something happen to George in the Civil War? Had he been badly injured, and discharged? Had he been killed in battle?

I decided my first course of action would be to try and find George and Luveza in both the 1860 and the 1870 US Census. This would tell me whether George and Luveza had been married prior to 1860, and whether George had survived the war years long enough to hit another census.

Sure enough, I found George and Luveza in 1860, living in Lewis County, West Virginia:

Of course, the spelling is slightly different, It’s hard to tell if this is Louisa or Luvisa in this case. A case could be made for either.

So, now on to Lewis County, West Virginia in 1870 (the image was light, so I inverted it because I felt it was easier to read):

Once again, the name is Luvisa, and daughter Georgianna is listed as Gorgia A.. Sadly, they are not living with George. Instead, it appears that they are living with a male family member (Luvisa’s father, perhaps?), along with several other male relatives. There also seems to be another married (or widowed) female relative with a daughter.

At this point, I started operating on the theory that George died in the Civil War. That meant that Luveza/Luvisa/Louisa was a war widow and entitled to a pension. To search for it, my off the beaten path search went to a resource specializing in military records, Fold3.com.

Again, Fold3 is not one of my usual places to search. It has been helpful though. I found information about a cousin of my father’s that was a Prisoner of War in World War II. I also found information about my husband’s great-grandfather, who fought in the Spanish-American War. Up to this point however, I had nothing confirming that any member of my family had served on either side during the Civl War. Family lore says my great-grandfather Taylor was a Confederate soldier, so this would be interesting to confirm that his father-in-law was on the opposing side, since the 10th West Virginia Voluntary Infantry fought for the Union.

In the past, I had tried looking under the name of the soldier, and then wading through piles and piles of documents. This time, I decided that, like my efforts with Newspapers.com, I would focus on a specific set of records first. In this case, it was the Widows’ Pension records. I decided to focus only on the last name of ‘Chrisman’ and the search showed 401 records. I saw that I could filter by state as well. I asked it to show me only results from West Virginia, and of the 11 results that popped up, the top one was for George W. Chrisman, Company D, 10th Regiment. I held my breath as I clicked to bring up the record. What would I find?

This was the first page that came up. It was from the middle of the over 100-page document that comprised the application, but this one paragraph spoke volumes:

“I, J. Woofter Clerk of the County Court of the County of Lewis in the State above named do hereby certify that Henry Oldaker who made the within declaration for pension, was on the 8th day of April, 1873, appointed guardian of Georgianna Chrisman Minor Child of George W. Chrisman deceased, as appears on the record of the said Court, and that he is Still the duly legal acting guardian of Said Ward.”

At first, I had wondered if Luviza had died also, since I did not understand why Georgianna would need a guardian if her mother were alive. However, other later searches confirmed that Henry became Luviza’s 2nd husband, which would also have made him Georgianna’s step-father. Remember in 1910 how Luviza was under the name Olaker? That was likely a misspelling of Oldaker, her new married name.

As to George’s military service, it was summed up in a single sentence:

The Adjt Gen’l reports that Geo. W. Chrifsman was mustered March 17, 1862, and died at Beverly, Va September 12, 1862 of Typhoid Fever.

So, less than 6 months after joining the Union Army, my great-great-grandfather died of Typhoid. I have yet to see anything that shows whether he saw any battle action.

I have yet to go through all of the pages of the widow’s pension, and I will have to see if Fold3 will have additional service records for George. I did see one thing in the record that I felt I should share, my great-great-grandmother’s signature (witnessed by two people on the records), which puts to rest how she spelled her name.

So, as you can see, it’s Luviza E. Oldaker.

When researching, you may find that branching off from your usual sources of gathering information may help you in fleshing out research you have already done. Perhaps you may even find new information that, like in this case, gets you farther back into your family tree.

From Roots to a Branch

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adventure, Air Force, Ancestry.com, Bunny, genealogy, investigation, journey, military, mystery, Taylor

I found you!  Kunta Kinte!  I found you!

— Alex Haley, Roots:  The Next Generations

I remember very well watching both Roots and Roots:  The Next Generations when I was in my teens.  I think in some ways, watching the story of Alex Haley’s ancestry unfold planted some of the first seeds for my own interest in family history.  I just watched the ending of the sequel to make sure I had the quote above correct, and got to again experience the elation expressed by James Earl Jones as Alex Haley when he discovered that he had indeed found the people from which his ancestor, Kunta Kinte had been taken from.  Even more touching though, was the scene where Haley was about to leave when a young man came running up.  It turned out that this man was a long-lost cousin of his, and the two men embraced as Haley broke down, sobbing with the overwhelming emotions he must have felt.

This past year, our only niece graduated from high school in Michigan.  Unfortunately, our budget didn’t allow the two of us to be at her graduation or open house.  However, we were able to afford a plane ticket so she could visit her aunt and uncle in California.  She came to visit us in August, about a month before she started college.

The first weekend she was here, Bill came back from the mailbox and handed me a large, thick, manila envelope.  I took one look at the return address, and I got excited.

The minute I saw this, I knew exactly what it contained. My uncle's military records!

I contained my excitement enough to open the envelope without ripping the contents.  Though I wanted to go through the documents in more detail at some point, my goal the first time through was to skim through to see if I could find any mention of my Aunt Bunny.

So, through the pages I went, as fast as I could go without missing any mention of a name.  Place names were popping up on every page.  Street names were familiar; Knickerbocker Avenue, Genesee Avenue, and Wheeler Drive were all places I knew the family had lived at one time or another.  Then came places that my Uncle was stationed like Korea, Casablanca, Texas, Michigan, and others.

It wasn’t until almost the very last pages in the packet that I found what I was looking for.  On the page, the typing was very faint, so it was hard to read.  “7 Jan 52:  Amn (Airman) married Miss Ethel….”

Ethel?  Was Aunt Bunny’s real name Ethel?  There was one way to find out.  I went in and changed the name on my records at Ancestry.com and I got a new leaf!

One of the things I was pointed to were some family trees, and a few of them had a picture attached to their record of Ethel.  It was a picture that I had never posted on Ancestry.com, but it excited me even more when I saw it.

That's right! It was the same picture of Bunny and her children that my Dad had given me!

I was certain that whoever had this picture was a member of the family somehow.  I just didn’t know who.  It could be one of my cousins, or it could be another relative of my Aunt.  I was hoping that whoever it was would be able to help me find Aunt Bunny and my cousins.

So, to the two people who I saw with the picture, I sent an email.  Basically I said that I had come across the name in my Uncle’s separation paperwork, that I had seen the picture and it matched one my father had given to me, and asked how they might be related and that I was trying to find out if my Aunt and cousins were still living, and if so, would there be a way to get in touch with them by email or phone.  I did not include any names in my email at the time.

The first person I sent the message to didn’t respond for a few days, and while they were helpful, they were not a relative of mine (it was a relative from Bunny’s side of the family though).  The second person I sent the message to was the first to respond.  The reply was brief, but thrilling:

Hi Pam,
Bunny was my mother. Who was your uncle?

I had my own little Alex Haley moment when I read that.  I found you!  Cousin!  I found you!  I immediately wrote back, this time filling in the details so that she knew exactly who I was talking about.  I eventually was given contact information for all my cousins.  I also found out that the two oldest actually were Bunny’s children from a previous marriage, so they are not actually blood relatives, though I still consider them to be my cousins.

Unfortunately, I found out my Aunt Bunny passed away a few years ago.  It was the one sad thing amid this joyous moment.

The greatest thing though was that while my niece was still with us, we were able to talk on the phone with one of my cousins.  He actually had been the one that, several years before had called around to find my Dad, and they both unfortunately lost touch with each other after that brief re-connection.  I was able to put them back in touch with each other, and my cousin visited Michigan last fall to spend time with my Dad.  My brother and his family also got to meet him.  I am hoping that I will get to meet him and my other cousins soon.

So, I had met the challenge my Dad had originally set for me; it took just over a year to do it.  By tracing our roots, I had just discovered a branch on our tree that had been hidden from view.  While that portion of the journey was over, my adventuring in ancestry was just getting started!

Photographs and Memories

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adventure, Bunny, Detroit Suburbs, genealogy, journey, Lubbock, McCombs, memories, Michigan, mystery, photographs, Taylor, Texas

When my father sent me several documents related to our family history, he sent me a few photographs too.  Two of these photographs made me think back, remembering times from my past.

This was my Dad’s cousin Harold, and his wife Grace.  I only had the opportunity to see him a couple of times, but I remember him being a kind man, and he had a bit of a sense of humor.  His wife was nice, and a wonderful hostess when we visited their home in Lubbock, Texas when I was in my teens.  I still remember having the best hamburger of my life down there.  It was really more of a steak burger, because they used ground sirloin.  Yummy!

Harold had served in the military, and had been a prisoner of war.  Every time I see “Bridge on the River Kwai” I think of Harold because I was told that he worked on it while in captivity.

The next picture was older; the memories that came to me with it were not of the young girls in the photo, but of some of the women I knew in it.

 The people in this picture were misidentified in this picture a couple of times by my Dad.  He originally told me that this was a picture of my great-grandmother and three of her four girls.  He later identified it correctly as the four sisters.  However, he had also identified the youngest (on the left) as my grandmother, but in reality, she was not the youngest; the girl on the left was actually her sister, Jessie Rae.  My grandmother would then be on the right.  The oldest girl would be Donna, who was Harold’s mother.  The girl seated would be Jeanette.

Sadly, I never knew two of the people in the photograph.  Aunt Donna had died long before we were able to visit Texas as a family, and my grandmother died when I was just a baby.  I do remember Aunt Rae a little better.  We had several occasions where we would attend family gatherings together.  My memories of her though are not very distinct; bits and pieces of a Thanksgiving dinner or some other holiday gathering, but most of them relate more to the food or to the other children than they do to Aunt Rae.

With Aunt Jeanette though, the memories are quite vivid.  I spent so many days with her.  While she always seemed old to me, when I was a child I can remember going so many places with her.  She would often take me with her when she would do to visit with Aunt Rae or other family members that were down in the Detroit suburbs.  I would often stay the night at her house, and I would be there on occasion when out-of-town visitors came by.  I believe the first time I met Harold was one of those times; I met his brother Glenn on another occasion when I was at Aunt Jeanette’s.

The final picture had no memories associated with it.  It was a picture of family members I had never met before:  My Aunt Bunny and her children.

I knew they were out there, somewhere.  I was hoping that I would soon get the next clue to help solve the mystery of where they were.  Little did I know that this picture would be a key clue to that solution.

Road Blocks and Detours

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adventure, Air Force, Ancestry.com, detour, genealogy, Hungary, immigration, information, investigation, journey, military, Missouri, National Archives, road block, Taylor, US Census, West Virginia

In my earliest post, I mentioned that part of my motivation to begin research on my family tree was a request by my Dad to track down his brother’s children, whom the family had lost track of after their parents divorced.  I had decided to try and use the past to help make the link to the present.

However, my uncle was a rather elusive character in the past.  Part of that was the lack of information I had on him.  Sure, I had his full name.  I had his military service number.  I knew some of the general places he had lived, and one specific place (the one place we had as a family visited several times when I was young).  From census data, I was able to get an approximation of when he was born.  But as far as specifics, I knew little.

While I had gotten from the US Census data on Ancestry.com a year and a month of birth, I did not have an exact date.  My uncle had been in the Air Force.  I did not know when he enlisted or when he left the service.  My searches on Ancestry.com were not revealing much of anything on the Air Force at all.  It seemed strange, so I started expanding my search. which led me to the National Archives.

As I was looking around, I happened to spot a link about a fire in 1973, and so I decided to follow it.  I was dismayed by what I read.  Fire had devastated several of the records for both Army and Air Force personnel; 75% of the records for those in the Air Force discharged between September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964 that were in alphabetical order after Hubbard, James E. were gone.  There had been no copies, and no indexes.  They were totally destroyed.

I felt I had reached my first major road block to any progress in finding the information I sought.  Military records might have listed information on my uncle’s dependents, so I might have gotten more information about them that way.  Without those records though, I might not ever be able to find the information about my aunt or my cousins.

However, this particular road block could possibly be cleared.  After all, what if my uncle was discharged after January 1, 1964?  What if his was one of the 25% that somehow survived the fire?  Without investigating further, I would not know whether the fate of my uncle’s military records was safe or in flames.

Since I knew that military records could be requested free by next of kin, I turned to the only living next of kin I knew of:  my Dad.  I made it as easy as I could for him.  I filled out the forms with all the data we had for my uncle, and then sent them on to him to sign and then mail.

While we waited for those records, I wasn’t going to stay idle.  I did take some detours on my journey at this time.  I decided to see how far back I could go on the Taylor side of the family tree.  I had found information on my great-grandfather, William H. Taylor, in Missouri in 1900, but not anywhere near where I expected him to be.  I knew based on the census data that he was born in West Virginia.  How had he gotten from West Virginia to Missouri, and from the upper part of Missouri down to the southeast corner?

My second detour would actually be a jump from the Taylor path completely.  I would begin researching my mother’s side of the family.

Finally, my third detour would not even be about my own family tree at all.  I would begin looking at my husband’s family tree.  My husband’s paternal grandparents had immigrated to the US from Hungary.  I wondered when and where they had arrived in the US, and from whence their journey had begun.

While I had hoped that at least part of this adventure would be a snap, it was proving to be a bit more arduous in the earlier stages.  Answers were not going to always come easily.  Genealogical records were not always going to be out in plain site, and not every person on my tree at Ancestry.com would have a hint leaf next to their name.  I would need to dig to uncover the information.  My ancestors were out there, waiting to be discovered, and I knew the best way to find them was to keep looking.  One path may be blocked, but others were open to travel and be discovered.