My Genealogical Threes

I haven't been keeping up, have I? But I try to check out Randy Seaver's "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" each week to see if he comes up with something that inspires me. This week he's asking us to:

1) Tell us your three responses to the questions:

* Three genealogical libraries I frequent
* Three places I've visited on genealogy trips
* Three genealogy societies I belong to (or want to)
* Three websites that help my research
* Three ancestral graves that I've visited
* Three ancestral places I want to visit
* Three brickwall ancestors I want to research more

2) Post your responses as comments to this blog post, in your own blog, or in a Facebook comment.

Check him out at: Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- My Genealogical Threes

Here are my answers:

* Three genealogical libraries I frequent:

I haven't been out much lately, but my favorites are

1. Family History Library, Salt Lake City (where I used to be able to visit for a week every year until this one when they canceled the computer conference that my husband would attend at the same time)
2. Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne IN (which I used to live close enough to visit when I first got started in genealogy back in 1997. I'd love to get a chance to visit again!)
3. North Carolina State Archives (where I need to go sometime soon to work on some genealogy I promised my sister!)

* Three places I've visited on genealogy trips

1. Pax & Scarbro, WV
2. Carroll County, VA
3. Washington, Greene & Allegheny Counties, PA

* Three genealogy societies I belong to (or want to)

I'm really bad about this, I've never actually joined any. These are some I SHOULD join:

1. Genealogical Society of Southwestern Pennsylvania
2. Carroll County Genealogy Club
3. Durham-Orange Genealogical Society of North Carolina

* Three websites that help my research

1. WAGS & Ohio County WV Genweb
2. Washington Co., Pennsylvania Genealogy & History
3. Historic Pittsburgh

* Three ancestral graves that I've visited

This one is hard to limit to 3. Here is a list of my ancestors on Find a Grave & I've visited all but a couple myself: Cherie's Ancestors. And here are three specific ones that were particularly difficult to find:

1. William S. Tolbert
2. Nancy J. (Chase) Wolfe
3. Michael S. McDaid

* Three ancestral places I want to visit

1. Founders Brook Park, Portsmouth, RI
2. Glen Cemetery, Paxton, IL (where my 3rd g-grandfather is buried)
3. Summers County, WV (but first I have to track down a location for the "Talbert Cemetery" where my g-grandmother, Rhoda (Webb) Tolbert Wilson is buried according to her death certificate.)

* Three brickwall ancestors I want to research more

Sometimes I think the only way I'm going to find out more about any of these people is if someone has an old Bible or other records hidden away in an attic or basement somewhere.

1. James P. Skiles
2. Allen Tolbert
3. George Shrewsbury

71st Carnival of Genealogy: Local History

I've certainly been neglecting this blog and I hope to do better in the future!

Now for my entry for the 71st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy:

The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is: Local History! As genealogists, we are used to tracing our ancestors and the history of the places they lived. But not all of us live where our ancestors did - do we take the time to see the history all around us? Use some of your investigative skills to research the house, street, or town/city where YOU live. Write about an interesting person, place, or event of local history. The deadline for submissions is May 1st. This edition of the COG will be hosted by Donna at What's Past is Prologue.

Back in March, I was out at Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh to fulfill three Find a Grave photo requests. The family name was Bagley, and when I found the graves, I realized that this family was important to the history of this state. In the family plot was the grave of Jonathan Worth, a governor of North Carolina during Reconstruction, and the Bagleys were the family of his daughter, Adelaide Worth Bagley. You can see the grouping to the right showing Gov. Worth's grave behind those of his grandson on the left and his daughter and son-in-law's on the right. This piece of obscure local history concerns the grandson whose name was Worth Bagley.



This photo shows the back of Worth Bagley's gravestone which tells of his service in the Spanish-American War. He was the first officer killed, and the only line officer of the Navy to die in that war. He was 24 years old. I snapped some photos and didn't think much about the family for a while.

However, fate seemed to want me to know more about Worth Bagley. During the first week of April, my husband and I were walking on the grounds of the NC State Capitol looking at the memorials and other historical markers there when I came across the statue in the photograph to the right. You guessed it, that's Worth Bagley, probably as he looked when his family last saw him. The inscription on the base reads:

Worth Bagley
ENSIGN USN
FIRST FALLEN
1898

I imagine that the heartbreak they must have felt in losing such a promising young man and their pride that he gave his life for his country led them to do whatever it took to make sure that he would always be remembered!

Click on their names to see the memorials for Ensign Bagley and Governor Worth on Find a Grave.

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

This is my husband John with his mother, photographed in Iola Kansas in June of 1976 wen John became an Eagle Scout! John was 15 years old!

Tombstone Tuesday: Frederick Wachter

I haven't been keeping up with Tombstone Tuesday or Wordless Wednesday very well. Between dealing with a new job and with John doing upgrades to his server (where I store many of my pictures) I ended up taking a week off.

What you're seeing here are a couple shots of the grave marker for John's 2nd great-grandfather, Frederick Wachter. You may be able to tell because of the rust that this is made from iron that was painted white. It's in bad shape here, badly corroded and the cross lying on the ground used to be a part of the marker.

The inscription reads:

Frederick Wachter
Born Aug 4, 1828
Died May 13, 1917
Age 89 years, 10 months

(The age is wrong, obviously someone calculated it wrong)

He and his wife, Mary Ellen Trentmann (also known as Angelina) were both born in Germany. They lived for several years in Delphos, Ohio, where their three children were born, and later moved to Nodaway County, Missouri. Angelina died there in 1891, and Frederick spent the last years of his life living with his daughter, Margaret and her family in Woodson County, Kansas. He is buried outside Piqua, KS, at the Old Catholic Cemetery there.

You can see more info about him HERE or visit his Find a Grave memorial.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Randy has been coming up with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun projects, and THIS is his latest:

Provide a list of your paternal grandmother's patrilineal line. Answer these questions:

• What was your father's mother's maiden name?
• What was your father's mother's father's name?
• What is your father's mother's father's patrilineal line? That is, his father's father's father's ... back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?
• Can you identify male sibling(s) of your father's mother, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.
  
  

1. Grandma's maiden name was Rowene Mae Fife, born in Canonsburg, Washington Co. PA
   
   
2. Her father was Charles Edgar Fife who was born in Upper St. Clair Twp, Allegheny County, PA
   
   
3. These are his patrilineal ancestors (from earliest known to Charles E. Fife):
   William Fife 1720 - 1799 (born in Scotland, died in Pennsylvania)
   William Fife 1757 - 1838
   William Fife 1789 - 1868
   John Fife 1816 - 1892
   John Calvin Fife 1846 - 1879
   Charles Edgar Fife 1874 - 1941
   
   
4. My grandma had two bothers. Selwyn Fife who had no children, and Raymond Fife whose male descendants are my dad's first cousin Chuck and Chuck's son Paul who are both living in or around Canonsburg, PA.

That was fun! I'll have to participate again next week and maybe I'll even remember to do it on Saturday night!

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

A picture of my dad, sometime during his grade-school years!.Wasn't he a cutie? He just celebrated his 75th birthday last Sunday!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Tombstone Tuesday: Mary Fife

This is the gravestone of my great-great grandmother, Mary Frances (McConnell) Fife. She is buried with her husband at Bethel Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Her husband's family were early members of the church from the 1770s, and I believe her mother's Morrow family may have been also, although I haven't found a connection, YET, between Mary's grandfather, John Morrow and the many Morrows buried at Bethel Cemetery. Mary's father, Charles, was an immigrant from County Donegal Ireland, making him my most recent immigrant ancestor. You can see my entry about his tombstone here.

This stone reads:

Mary F.
Wife of
John Calvin Fife
Born Nov 6, 1851
Died Feb 24, 1917

Mary's husband, John Calvin Fife, died young, and you can read about him HERE. As I mentioned in the post I wrote about Calvin Fife, Mary was left alone with 3 very young children and a fourth on the way, daughter Calvin (called Callie) who was born about 3 months after her father had died. The day his obituary appeared in the newspaper, there was also the following classified ad at the bottom of the same page:

PUBLIC SALE.
The undersigned will sell at the late residence of Calvin Fife, at the corner of Green and College Streets, Canonsburg.
Saturday, November 22d, 1879

Two good work Horses, 1 spring Colt, 1 two-horse Wagon, set work Harness, Collars, Bridles, set of double Buggy Harness, Plow, Harrow, double Shovel Plow, 1 single Shovel Plow, 1 barrel of Vinegar, 1 barrel of Salt, 1 riding Saddle, Double Tree, Coal Shovel, Kitchen Furniture and numerous other articles not mentioned.

Sale to commence at 1 o'clock, p. m. A credit of 6 months will be given.
Mrs. Mary F. Fife.

I've always thought it was admirable, although very sad, too, that g-g-grandma would be thinking about the practical realities of life so soon after her husband died. She never remarried, so she must have found a way to support herself. In her later years, the census listed her as a nurse.

A legacy passed down from Mary and her family was her religion. When I first started researching, I found that my dad's side of the family were almost all members of the Presbyterian Church, so I wondered how my grandparents came to be members of the First United Methodist Church in Canonsburg, PA. When I discovered that Mary's parents were buried at Fawcett Methodist Church Cemetery, I found my answer. While Mary was buried with her husband with his family in the Presbyterian cemetery, she, along with her children and grandchildren, attended a church of the same denomination as her parents. My grandfather, raised in the Presbyterian Church, joined the Methodist Church when he and Grandma got married. He served as a church administrator in his later years, as did grandma's brother, Raymond Fife, who grew up going to the Methodist Church. Much later, my brother and I were baptized in that church.

68th Carnival of Genealogy: A Tribute to Women

From Destination: Austin Family comes these instructions for the 68th Carnival of Genealogy:

And now it's time for a Call for Submissions! In keeping with the month of March being National Women's History Month, and March 8th being International Women's Day, the topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will once again be: A Tribute to Women. Write a tribute to a woman on your family tree, a friend, a neighbor, or a historical female figure who has done something to impact your life. Or instead of writing, consider sharing a photo biography of one woman's life. Or create a scrapbook page dedicated to a woman you'd like to honor. The next edition will be hosted at Creative Gene. The deadline for submissions is March 15th.

My entry is not a tribute, but rather a call for information that is inspired by the hope that someday I will be able to understand the decisions of a mystery woman.

For this subject, I have decided to write about a woman in my family who is almost completely unknown to me, my maternal grandmother, Mattie (Tobert) Shrewsbury. My mother's earliest memories are of living with her grandfather William Tolbert and his second wife. Her grandfather died when she was 6, and she continued to live with her "Grandma Anna" until Anna died, and after that, she lived with Anna's brother so Mom had no contact with her birth family until 2001 when she was finally able to reunite with her two sisters who remembered her as a baby.

My mother's only memory of her "real" mother happened not long after William Tolbert died. Mattie came to visit her, perhaps to see about getting her daughter back. She came with a man who was never introduced to my mom. He scared Mom by telling her that Mattie was her real mom, causing my mom to run to Anna and say "This is my mommy!" Mattie and the man left after that and she was never heard from again...at least by anyone we've been in contact with since. My mom has often remarked that the experience must have been very hurtful for Mattie if what she wanted was a relationship with her daughter.

Grandma was born Mattie Tolbert in August of 1897 in Carroll County, Virginia. She is mentioned in her parents divorce (filed in 1898 in Carroll County and granted in 1903) as Mattie Haner Tolbert. I've often wondered if the name "Haner" might have been a phonetic misspelling of the name "Hannah". In the 1900 census, Mattie was living with her mother, Rhoda, and Rhoda's mother, Sarah Webb. The other three living children of William and Rhoda lived in William's home. Despite the fact that William and Rhoda had divorced in 1903, they reconciled sometime before 1910. In the census for Trap Hill District of Raleigh County, West Virginia, the couple was living together and had another son, Claud, aged 3 and born in WV. That's the last written record of Mattie that I have found. She seems to be completely absent from the census in 1920 & 1930, I have found no record of her marriage to the father of her children, George Shrewsbury, and none of her 4 (known) children had birth certificates. Sometime after my mother was born, she left George and took my mother to William and Anna. Her other children were farmed out to other relatives. George remarried to a woman with sons, one of whom shot George to death in 1950, claiming that George was abusive and the 17 year old step-son had feared for his life.

The circumstances of George Shrewsbury's death gives some credence to a story I was told at the reunion of my mother and her sisters in 2001 by one of my new-found cousins. She told me that some people in the family had always believed that George, thinking that Mattie had been unfaithful and that my mother was not his child, had murdered Mattie and her baby and that he had hidden their bodies so that they had never been found. Obviously, I am extremely grateful that it didn't happen that way, but it also seems that an anecdote so horrible wouldn't have been passed down if there wasn't something about George Shrewsbury that made it credible.

My mom still has a lot of anger towards Mattie for abandoning her, and can't understand how Mattie could have left her other children, either. The rumor that George had killed Mattie gives me some compassion for a woman who might have left in fear for her life.

I would love to someday find someone who could tell me where Mattie went after my mom last saw her. That encounter had to have occurred after 1939, which was when William Tolbert died. My hope is that she was able to move on and have a peaceful and productive life after she disappeared from her family.

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

This is a photo of my husband's mother Lillian and his sister Julie holding babies. Lillian is holding her granddaughter, Donna, and Julie is holding her brother, Patrick. These two children were born on the same day in March of 1964!

Tombstone Tuesday: Jacob Eckroate

Here are two views of the gravestone of my mother-in-law's great grandfather, Jacob Eckroate. I believe these pictures were taken about 10 years apart. The first was taken by my husband's sister when she made a trip to Nebraska to look for family graves with her mother who is in the photo. The second shot is my husband and his mom with the same gravestone in 1998, not long after I started my own family research.

Jacob was born in Ohio, enlisted in the Army during the Civil War in Illinois, and spent most of the rest of his life in Nebraska.













Another of his descendants recently shared the following obit with me:

The Fremont Weekly Herald - Fremont, Nebraska 18 Dec 1890

AN OLD SETTLER GONE

Jacob Eckroate for many years, a resident of Pleasant Valley township, died at St. Mary's Hospital, Columbus, Tuesday night. Deceased was well-known as one of the old settlers of the County, but for some years has been living in different localities in the hope of benefiting his health. He has been at the hospital for some time, under treatment for a complication of diseases, which finally resulted in his death at the age of 63.

He is buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery, in Pleasant Valley township, Dodge County, Nebraska, beside his wife, Barbara and a son Daniel.

His memorial on Find a Grave is here.