Genea-Musings

Thursday, May 30, 2019

We Are Off to the Genealogy Jamboree!!

We are off to the Southern California Genealogical Society's (SDGS) Genealogy Jamboree today - arriving in the afternoon at the Marriott in Burbank, California. I hope to see many friends and exhibitors this weekend. This is the only conference we are attending this year, so I plan to make the most of it.

We are driving to Jamboree this year so that we can go out to dinner, to avoid the exorbitant prices in the hotel and the limited choice that Linda has with her allergies, and so we can stop in Huntington Beach on Sunday to see our grandkids there.

If someone would like to go out to dinner with us, please email me or see me at the conference. We have limited choices due to Linda's allergies. We usually eat breakfast in the breakfast bar between the hotel lobby and the elevators (we used to call it the "Blogger Lounge" but nobody blogs there any more). We will probably eat lunch at the hamburger stand between the hotel and the conference center - that is fast and decent, and Linda can eat there. I do have the ProGen lunch on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. if I can remember to go.

If more than four or five genea-bloggers actually write something about the conference, I will do a blog compendium. I hope to write a blog post or two every day with selected photographs to expound on my highlights of the conference, including which presentations I attend. Typically, I go to speaker presentations in about half of the time slots. Otherwise, I spend time in the exhibit hall, talking with folks in the convention center and hotel areas, or even napping.

If you are attending Jamboree 2019, please stop me in the hallways or wherever to say hello.

===========================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/we-are-off-to-genealogy-jamboree.html

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Seavers in the News - Joseph H. Seaver Dies in 1915 in Philadelphia

It's time for another edition of "Seavers in the News" - a weekly feature from the historical newspapers about persons with the surname Seaver that are interesting, useful, mysterious, fun, macabre, or add information to my family tree database.

This week's entry is from the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger newspaper dated 12 April 1915:

The transcription of the article is:

JOSEPH H. SEAVER

Second Oldest Member of Stock Exchange and Veteran of Union League.

Joseph h. Seaver, the second oldest member of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange in point of membership and one of the first members of the Union League, died yesterday at his home on Wynnewood avenue, Overbrook, after a severe attack of pneumonia. He had been ill several weeks.

Mr. Seaver was born in Philadelphia 80 years ago in the famous "Portico Row" on Spruce street, which was built by his grandfather. Educated in Philadelphia, Mr. Seaver became a member of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange in 1862. He was at one time floor representative for R.M. Janney & Cop., and when that firm dissolved several years ago he virtually retired from active business.

Mr. Seaver is survived by a widow and three children, Mrs. w. Percy Simpson, of Overbrook; Mrs. George E. Dadman, of New York, and Mr. Howard E. Seaver, of Philadelphia. Mr. Seaver was a devout member of the Presbyterian Church. Funeral services will be held at the family residence in Overbrook at 3:15 tomorrow afternoon. The interment will be in West Laurel Hill Cemetery.

The source citation for the article is:

"Joseph H. Seaver," Philadelphia [Penn.] Evening Public Ledger newspaper, obituary, Monday, 12 April 1915, page 14, column 5, Joseph H. Seaver obituary; Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com : accessed 28 May 2019).

Joseph Henry Seaver was born 22 January 1835 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Whitney Seaver (1804-1883) and Phebe Shaw Elmes (1814-1899). He married Mary Elizabeth Gillespie(1839-1930) in about 1867 in Philadelphia. They had three children:

* Jessie Gillespie Seaver (1872-1940), married William Percy Simpson (1871-1938) in about 1893, one son.

* Archer Whiting Seaver (1875-1901), married Marion Catlett Skinner (1879-1943) in 1900, one son.

* Howard Eves Seaver (1878-1963), married Susan Trotter Price (1876-1960) in about 1914, no children.

Mrs. George E. Dadman is Mary Elizabeth Gillespie's daughter with James Boyles, named Emma M. Boyles (1866-1949). Emma Boyles married George E. Dadmun (1868-????) in 1901 in Philadelphia.

I am a 6th cousin 4 times removed to Joseph H. Seaver.

=============================================

Disclosure: I have a paid subscription to Newspapers.com and have used it extensively to find articles about my ancestral and one-name families.

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/seavers-in-news-joseph-h-seaver-dies-in.html

Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

"A Mother's Love ..... or Something Else" by Peter E. Small: Part I

Genea-Musings reader Peter E. Small solved a family genealogical mystery and wrote a report about it, and I offered to publish his work on my blog.

This will be a multi-part series posted over several weeks - probably on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Earlier parts were published in:

* Prologue: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by.html

================================================

A Mother’s Love…..or something else?

A True Genealogical Mystery Solved

PART I

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step – Lao Tzu

My father and his sister were orphaned when they were very young. Their Swedish born mother died in 1920. My father was three and his sister was nine. Then, in 1931 their polio stricken father died. The Great Depression had descended globally.

It was not due, entirely, to their age that neither my father nor my aunt knew much about their family’s origins. Although family history was not, I believe, foremost on their minds during the dark days of their adolescence.

In fact, their father had only minimal knowledge of his family’s history. He too had endured family tragedies as a boy and then again as a young married man. But, he did possess critically important personal information which he intentionally withheld from all but a limited number of people.

Never having known my paternal grandparents always confounded me as I was growing up and every so often I would “interrogate” my father to unearth information about his childhood. A childhood, I began to suspect, he would rather have forgotten.

My aunt, who died at the age of 95, had a phenomenal memory for names, dates and places right up until the time of her death.

During a conversation with her, in the summer of 1963/64, she remembered her father saying he was born in either Maine or Massachusetts and that we were related to President Pierce. She also related a memorable trip her new husband and father, had taken in 1929 or 30 to the Forest Hills section of Boston. The purpose of the trip was to visit her father’s daughter, Jessie, from a previous marriage. His first wife had died of tuberculosis in 1904. Knowing Jessie’s name proved invaluable many years later.

Likewise, the innocuous reference to President Pierce, although categorically not true, proved equally important.

A month or so passed after those revelations and one day I received an envelope from my aunt. The envelope contained a 5x7 picture of my grandfather and Swedish grandmother, circa 1913, in their Sunday finest clothes. My aunt, age 2 or 3, was standing between them. Also enclosed was her father’s original death certificate. My aunt, I was told later, had a foot locker full of items that had sentimental value.

As fishermen say, you have to “set” the hook before reeling in a fish. I am confident my aunt knew she was setting my genealogical hook.

The death certificate proved to be both “a blessing and a curse”, as the saying goes. I considered it a blessing, because at sixteen or seventeen I finally had the beginnings of a Family Tree.

My Tree extended back to my paternal great grandparents. I could not believe my good fortune.

It proved to be a curse because, as I discovered many years later, three of the given names were wrong.

Unfortunately, the death certificate did not include an informant’s name. So, to this day, I do not know who to blame for my misfortune and all those wasted years.

Death Certificate for Albert E Small aka Elvin Edgar Small. His father’s name is recorded as either Albert or Hebert. His real name was Alpheus Edgar Small. His mother’s name is recorded as Arinda Brewer. Only slightly wrong as her real name was Rinda Brewer.

Some lessons are learned the hard way and this proved to be one of them. Other equally hard lessons would follow in not so rapid succession. The term “Primary and Secondary” sources was a subject I was totally unfamiliar with at this point and it would take several more years to learn that a death certificate was considered both and why.

I sent to the National Archives for their free packet on how to research your family history and put my first pedigree chart together. Then armed with my newly acquired possessions, I set off on what proved to be a 40 year intermittent search for three people that did not exist. Genealogy can be hard.

I doubt most natural born citizens, living in the 21st Century United States, could go through life without their birth being documented. But in the 19th and early part of the 20th Century my great grandfather and two of his sons, who were not particularly prominent men, did just that. Proving their identities was not required of them apparently. So, they were who they said they were.

Currently, their dates and places of birth have not been proven conclusively. But, I am fairly certain my grandfather’s brother randomly selected his date of birth. I know this to be true for other members of my extended family.

But the subject of this expose was a very prominent man and may still be remembered, by some, to this day. He published his own autobiography in 1964 and recounted a truly phenomenal life filled with accomplishments, notoriety, fortune and fame. He called ex-president Hoover a friend and traveled widely with him. He was a successful Wall Street banker, a San Francisco newspaperman, a decorated WWII Marine Corps officer in the Pacific Theatre of operations and more. He accomplished all these things using a name he may or may not have chosen for himself and without a birth certificate to support his true identity.

It is certainly possible that he may have died on 15 June 1976 not knowing his real name, date of birth or biological father.

Or was his recounting of his family history and vital statistics an intentional misrepresentation concocted by him and/or his mother Carrie?

In his book he credits his mother for what little he knew of his birth and family, but also added “mother did not always consider consistency of detail a necessity when spinning her recollective yarns.” Surely a man with his resources and intelligence could have made inquiries if he was so inclined.

Reading his book, he gives one the impression that such things were unimportant to him. This may not be true. He was, in a sense, a manipulator of people his entire life and maintaining an untraceable persona would have made his life simpler. We may never know. But, his lack of specificity or regard for people who were documented as being a part of his life does conjure up more than a few questions. Conversely when discussing his relationships with total strangers he would go into great detail.

Anyone who has read his book might see some of his many youthful adventures and his life as a whole in a different light if the real truth was known.

It doesn’t seem possible, to an ardent Family Historian like me, that someone couldn’t care less about his own true identity. Then again, I look at my own family and there are some who are truly puzzled by what I do. In fairness, I must acknowledge that there is that fact to support his supposed indifference.

=============================================

Randy's NOTE: Stay tuned for the next installment of this multi-chapter report. I will add all of the chapters to this post, and the other chapter posts, as they are published. The chapters to date are:

* Prologue:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by.html
* Part I:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_30.html
* Part II:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by.html
* Part III: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_6.html
* Part IV:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_11.html
* Part V:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_13.html

* Part VI:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_18.html

My thanks to Peter for sharing this mystery and its' solution with me and the Genea-Musings readers.

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_30.html

Copyright (c) 2019, Peter E. Small

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Treasure Chest Thursday -- 1754 Death of Samuel Fitz Randolph (1668-1754) of Woodbridge, New Jersey

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - a chance to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the 1754 death record of Samuel Fitz Randolph in the Plainfield, N.J. Quaker Meeting House records:

The Samuel Fitz Randolph death entry is on the left hand page, the 6th entry down the page:

The extracted data on this record is:

* Name of the Deceased: Samuel Fitz Randolph

* Connections of the Deceased: [blank]

* Place and Time of Death: Woodbridge, 6 Mo. 25 1754

The source citation for this record is:

"U.S. Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1994, Rahway and Plainfield [N.J.] Monthly Meeting, Register of Marriages, Births, and Deaths, 1687-1871, , Deaths, page 190, Samuel Fitz Randolph death record; indexed database and digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 21 August 2014).

Samuel Fitz Randolph (1668-1754) was born in Barnstable County, Massachusetts to Nathaniel and Mary (Holloway) Fitz Randolph. He married Mary Jones (8 June 1693 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and they had 9 children in Woodbridge, New Jersey. According to this record, Samuel Fitz Randolph died the 6th month (June?) 25, 1754 in Woodbridge. In 1754, was the 6th month June or August? I don't know. Before 1752, it would certainly be August. Did the Quakers adopt the Gregorian calendar before 1754?

Samuel and Mary (Jones) Fitz Randolph are my 7th great-grandparents, through their son Jacob Fitz Randolph (1706-1779), who married (1) FNU LNU (about 1710-before 1764) before 1730, and (2) Mary (Fitz Randolph) (Thorne) (Fitz Randolph) (Horseman) Jackson in about 1764. I am descended through the spouse with no known name.

===========================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/treasure-chest-thursday-1754-death-of.html

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Dear Randy: Where Do The Older FamilySearch Collections Changes Come From?

Reader "Unknown" made this comment on my post "Added and Updated Record Collections at FamilySearch.org - Week of 12 to 18 May 2019" (dated 18 May 2019):

"For the last two or three FamilySearch updates, the results of your friend's crawl for the current week's changes seems to also include older changes from previous weeks. Is that intentional?"

Dear Unknown: Yes, it is intentional.

Marshall's program compares the current week list of FamilySearch record collections to the previous week's list. The program notes which collections have been ADDED (they were not there last week) or UPDATED (the update date has changed to the previous week), and compares the number of indexed records and number of images.

As you noted, his program also finds collections that are not listed as "Last Updated" for the previous week, but have had some changes made to them - these are the "Records Removed," "New Records," "Images Removed" or "New Images" lists. I think the labels are Marshall's creations. When his program lists these collections, it picks up the last "Updated" date on the collection even if it is not the current week. That's why these collections on the list have the older Updated date.

I have speculated to myself how these "minor" changes might occur. Is FamilySearch just "fixing" a duplicate or wrong record index item, or a wrong link to an image, or a duplicate or wrong image, or did they found an image or index item that wasn't included initially? Some of the entries on these "minor" changes are small - one or two records indexed or images, and some have no number changes at all.

However, looking at the list on the recent post, there are significant additions on many of the "New Records" and "New Images" collections. Those are important for readers to know, but they don't show up on the FamilySearch "Historical Record Collections" list (https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list).

The bottom line is I think I know how Marshall's program finds these, but I don't understand why they don't show up on FamilySearch's "Last Updated" collection list. I have not asked FamilySearch about it - maybe I should at Jamboree this weekend.

Thanks for the question.

=============================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/dear-randy-where-do-older-familysearch.html

Betty and Her Chickens -- Post 567 of (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

An Auble cousin gifted me with a photograph album of her family several years ago which included quite a few photos of my grandmother, Emily Kemp (Auble) Carringer and her parents, Charles and Georgianna (Kemp) Auble.

Included in the photo album, created by Bessie (Auble) Pentecost in about 1930, was this intriguing photo:

This is a photograph of my mother, Betty Virginia Carringer in about 1922 with several of the family chickens (I don't know their names). The setting is probably the back yard at 2130 Fern Street in San Diego where the Lyle L. Carringer family resided from 1920 to 1946. She looks very calm and composed in this photo, and the chickens look calm too. She must have been around the chickens for several years and was able to hug at least one of them. She may have had a chore of feeding the chickens every day.

Several years ago, while doing Auble research, a descendant of Will and Bessie (Auble) Pentecost contacted me and offered the album to me, telling me that it had many photographs of the family of my grandparents (Lyle and Emily (Auble) Carringer). I have kept the album intact in case she ever wants it back, but have digitized many of the photos of my Carringer and Auble families.

Unfortunately, there were no photographs of the parents of Charles Auble, David and Sarah (Knapp) Auble of Terre Haute, Indiana.

=============================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/betty-and-her-chickens-post-567-of-not.html

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Genealogy News Bytes - 28 May 2019

Some of the genealogy news items across my desktop the last three days include:

1) News Articles:

* How Your Privacy Will Be Protected in the 2020 Census

* How a Utah assault case upended the cutting-edge DNA website that caught the Golden State Killer

* American Ancestors Expands Its Online Family Tree American AncesTREES

* Free live streaming of this weekend’s Genealogy Jamboree!

2) New or Updated Record Collections:

* Added and Updated Ancestry.com Record Collections - Week of 19 to 25 May 2019

* Added and Updated Record Collections at FamilySearch.org - Week of 19 to 25 May 2019

3) Genealogy Education - Webinars:

* GeneaWebinars Calendar

* Upcoming Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 29 May, 11 a.m. PDT: Tools for Translating and Transcribing Genealogy Records, by Thomas MacEntee

* Illinois State Genealogical Society Webinar - Tuesday, 28 May, 6 p.m. PDT: An Introduction to Researching Your Mexican Ancestors, by Colleen Greene

4) Genealogy Education - Podcasts:

* Fisher’s Top Tips Podcast: #74: Showing Off Photos and Documents

* Extreme Genes Podcast/Radio Show: Episode 283 – Got A Union Soldier From West Virginia? His Medal May Be Waiting For You! / One Woman’s Family Tie To The 150th Golden Spike Anniversary

* Research Like a Pro Podcast: RLP 46 – Scandinavian Research with Jenny Hansen, AG

* The Genealogy Guys Podcast: #363

5) Genealogy Videos:

* Ancestry YouTube: Making Discoveries With the New and Improved AncestryDNA Match List | Ancestry

* Ancestry YouTube: What are Ancestry ThruLines | Ancestry

* GenealogyAdventures YouTube: Genealogy Adventures Special: The First Africans of Virginia with special guest Kathryn Knight

* Lisa Lisson YouTube: Tips For Deciphering Old Handwriting

* Lisa Lisson YouTube: Who Is In That Old Family Photograph?

* DNA Family Tree YouTube: Sourcing your family tree with Ancestry DNA

* James Tanner YouTube: Exploring Genealogy Series #11 Exploring MyHeritage com

6) Genealogy Bargains:

* Genealogy Bargains for Tuesday, May 28, 2019

7) DNA Success Stories

* DNA test brings brothers and sisters together after 77 years

* Family Mystery Solved Thanks to MyHeritage DNA

8) Did you miss the last Genealogy News Bytes - 24 May 2019?

==============================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/genealogy-news-bytes-28-may-2019.html

"A Mother's Love ..... or Something Else" by Peter E. Small: Prologue

Genea-Musings reader Peter E. Small solved a genealogical mystery and wrote a report about it, and I offered to publish his work on my blog. This will be a multi-part series posted over several weeks - probably on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

================================================

A Mother’s Love…..or something else?

A True Genealogical Mystery Solved

PROLOGUE

While researching my family history I came upon a person, Paul C. Small, who was recorded in the 1910 and 1920 Census of Oakland, California as being a son of my grandfather’s eldest brother Austin Manford Small. After exhaustive searches using every source and technique available to me I was not able to find hide nor hair of this purported son.

(1920 U.S. Census, Oakland, Alameda County, California)

There were two other sons, Lester A. ("Leslie" in 1920 census) and Frederick B. ("Brewer" in 1920 census), recorded as living with Austin and his self described “wife” Carrie in those same two censuses. I had researched and verified that they were indeed the sons of Austin Manford Small by two different wives. Austin’s first wife and mother to Lester had died in Seattle, Washington. Frederick was Austin and Carrie’s son. After researching Frederick, I learned Carrie’s maiden name was Mason.

Search technologies had improved and new records were becoming available almost daily by the time I learned Carrie’s maiden name.

A search for Carrie A. Mason with an approximate birth year produced an entry in a Washington State Birth Register. She had given birth to a son, Paul C. Dormitzer. Through the years I was able to verify the information Carrie had submitted for the register entries. She was born in Indiana, this was her fourth child and he was “legitimate”. Her husband’s information has also been verified with the exception of a documented marriage. This birth record explains why I could not find a Paul C. Small.

Documenting Paul C. Dormitzer’s life should have been an easy endeavor. But something strange happened. This Paul C. just like his nom de plume, Paul C. Small, vanished from the face of the earth.

And this is where the mystery begins. Solving this mystery required unraveling the assumed identity of a very prominent man.

Parts I, II and III of this tale should be considered something of a genealogical primer. They are only tangential to the main character of this mystery who became entwined with a member of my family. Tangential but also integral to understanding how one could assume a fraudulent identity. I would also like these Parts to serve as a lesson to aspiring Family Historians not to make the same Genealogy 101 mistakes I made.

Using my own Family History, as an example, proves how common and easy it was, during the first half of the twentieth century, to live your life using an assumed name of your choosing.

This expose is divided into eight parts. Each part deals with a specific person or subject and the facts or events surrounding them. For this reason the chronology of my research findings, etc. will seem out of “sync”. As an example, Part V deals with the life of one Carrie Mason. Her marriages, liaisons and children are discussed in detail. But, Part VII also deals with some of those same persons, but for a different reason.

I accept that a reader may think my revelations in Part VII should have been discovered in Part V and that is, of course, technically correct. But, the arrangement of each section serves a specific purpose which I hope the reader will appreciate.

The next part is published in Part I.

=============================================

Randy's NOTE: Stay tuned for the next installment of this multi-chapter report. I will add all of the chapters to this post, and the other chapter posts, as they are published.

* Prologue: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by.html
* Part I: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_30.html

* Part II: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by.html

* Part III: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_6.html
* Part IV: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_11.html

* Part V: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_13.html

* Part VI: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/06/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by_18.html

My thanks to Peter for sharing this mystery and its' solution with me and the Genea-Musings readers.

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/a-mothers-love-or-something-else-by.html

Copyright (c) 2019, Peter E. Small

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Treasure Chest Tuesday - 1879 Widow's Brief for War of 1812 Pension of Rosannah Lanfear

This week's Tuesday's Treasure is the 1879 Widow's Brief for a War of 1812 Widow's Service Pension filed by Rosannah Lanfear, widow of Isaac Lanfear:

The extracted information for this pension record is (handwritten portions in italics):

SERVICE PENSION, War of 1812
Widow's Brief

* Claim No. 11838
* Act of March 9 1878
* Cert. No. 27,857
* Reopened from Act of Feb. 14, 1871

* Rosannah ~~Lamfear~~ Lanfear, widow of
Isaac ~~Lamfear~~ Lanfear
* Rank: Private
* Captain: Gould and Wilcox
* Regiment: Militia
* State: New York

* Post Office: Lorraine , County of Jefferson, State of New York
* Attorney: Claimant
* P.O. As above

* Application filed: April 17, 18 76

* Alleged service: In Companies of Capt. Gould and Wilcox New York Mil. War 1812
from May 27, 1812 to November 14, 1814

* Record evidence of service: Third Auditor reports name of Isaac Lamfear not on Rolls of Captain
Gould & Wilcox N.Y. Mil.

* Parol evidence of service: Sterling Wilcox and Danl Calkins testify that soldier served with
Captain Gould from Sep. 9 to Sep. 28, 1812 and from 5 to 19 March 1813;
under Capt. Wilcox from May 30 to June 7, 1814 and from July 29 to Aug. 24, 1814. Service of witnesses verified by record -- Evidence in B.G. case with
this claim

* Length of service: 14 days or more - 71 days
Affidavit of David W. Geonmmer and Malinda Lanfear
who fully identify claimant

* Admitted: November 7, 18 79, to a pension of EIGHT DOLLARS per month
from March 9 ~~1879~~ 1878 the date of act

No pension previously applied for
???????, Pension Searcher
* Bounty Land claim: 114.282-160-55 issued
H.W. Hall, Bounty Land Searcher

* Approved: Nov. 10, 18 79
Redway, Reviewer

The source citation for this Widow's War of 1812 Pension Application file is:

"War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Files," digital image, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com : accessed 27 May 2019), W.O. Pension No. 11,838, Rosannah Lanfear, widow of Isaac Lanfear, page 11 of 201; citing NARA RG15-1812PB-Bx2071.

This pension file contains 201 pages. Isaac Lanfear died in 1851, and his widow Rosannah Lanfear applied under the Act of 1871 but it was denied. She reapplied in 1876, and received the pension in 1879. Some of the pages in the application are duplicates, so I'm picking the pages that are the most useful. Some of Isaac's records had the surname Lamfear or Lanifear or Landfear, so there was some confusion over the years during the application process. By the 1850 time, the family was using Lanfear.

Isaac Lanfear (1777-1851) and Rosina (Laun) Lanfear (1781-1881) are probably my 4th great-grandparents, through an unknown child who had Devier James Lanfear (1839-1894) in Jefferson county, New York, perhaps out of wedlock. Devier Lanfear was adopted by Ranslow and Mary (Bell) Smith of Henderson, Jefferson County, New York, and that family moved to Wisconsin in about 1843. Devier J. Lanfear went by Smith, and had a formal name change in 1866 by an act of the Wisconsin State Senate. He is named as "my adopted son, Devier J. Lamphear alias Smith" in Ranslow Smith's will dated 1865, probated in Andrew County, Missouri in 1873.

=============================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/treasure-chest-tuesday-1879-widows.html

Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Working With the "Exploring Family Trees" Visualization Program

I was reading Facebook's Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques group last night and saw a post by Lara Diamond about the "Exploring Family Trees" visualization program developed by Brad Lyon several years ago. Lara wrote a blog post about it yesterday - see Visualizing your Tree - With Expected Autosomal & X DNA Shared on the Lara's Jewnealogy blog. I don't recall ever seeing this program, but Brad has blog posts from 2015 on his blog, Family Tree Visualization.

1) The visualization program runs on the website Exploring Family Trees (https://learnforeverlearn.com/ancestors/). There are demonstration trees on the site to show users how it works. Any user can upload a GEDCOM file to the site and then see ancestors of a person or descendants of a person in a "tree" with nodes representing persons and lines connecting the persons to parents (red for connections to females, blue for connections to males).

The program works using data on your hard drive, so it doesn't overload their server. The results are dynamic (you can change the screen using your mouse), and I don't think the results can be saved. To run the program on another day, you have to load the GEDCOM file again.

2) I had a free hour last night, so I made three GEDCOM files using the RootsMagic family tree program for:

a) A GEDCOM file of my entire family tree (almost 54,000 profiles, with notes and sources, but not media links), in a 48 mb file.

b) A GEDCOM file of all of my ancestors back 40 generations, and no descendants, without notes, sources or media links. This was 2,614 profiles in a 1.5 mb file.

c) A GEDCOM file of all of my ancestors back 8 generations, with 8 generations of descendants for each ancestor, without notes, sources or media links. This was about 9,600 profiles in a 4.6 mb file.

3) When I tried to upload the big GEDCOM, I waited 30 minutes and canceled it.

4) I then uploaded the ancestor-only file, and that worked easily - it took only seconds to upload and show me the tree, but I had to change the Root Person to myself (which took more seconds). There's a button on the screen to do that. So I was able to see my entire ancestral family tree:

The image above shows years on the right and left axes. That's me down at the bottom of the image in blue, with my mother's ancestors off to the left and my father's off to the right. I have lines back to Alfred the Great (849-899) in my tree, and that is the long line on the left side of the image. I also have lines back to Charlemagne in my tree, and that's the long line above me near the center of the image.

The user can zoom in and out using the mouse scroller and can move the image up and down using the left-mouse to drag-and-drop. If you hover your mouse over one of the persons, a popup will appear that shows information about that person. Here is a popup for one of my ancestors:

This tells me that the name is Thomas J. Newton (born 1800), his birthplace, his DNA contribution to the root person (it's nominally 3.13%), his X-chromosome contribution to me (0%), his relationship to me (3rd great-grandfather), and that there are 16 expected and found 3rd great-grandfathers in the tree.

When the user runs his mouse over a year on the screen, names of ancestors born near that year pop up on the screen, and a list with a green background pops up with more information. I took this screenshot for about 1600:

There is an "Options" button on the left side of the top of the screen, and the user can select different options. I selected the "Show Lifespan Bars" and it added vertical bars for the last three generations of my ancestors:

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to save these images other than as screen captures or using the Windows snipping tool (or similar).

Lara Diamond's blog post shows ways that this program can be used for DNA research.

5) Using the GEDCOM c) I created with 8 generations of ancestors (back to 6th great-grandparents) and 8 generations of descendants from all of those ancestors, I selected my 4th great-grandfather Benjamin Seaver (1757-1816) as the Root Person and selected the Descendants chart, and saw this visualization of the descendants of Benjamin Seaver in my RootsMagic tree:

My line of descent is shown as a thicker line in the image above, and indicates that my nominal autosomal DNA is 1.56% from Benjamin, and it lists my age and life expectancy (according to actuarial tables - it says I have 11 years left! I wish!).

I have added quite a few descendants of Benjamin Seaver to my RootsMagic tree, but it's hard finding descendants of living persons without significant effort. As you can see, I have a few born in the 1940s, but most of them are from my grandfather's descendants that I know about. You can see from my blue dot, that there are two red lines to my daughters and red and blue lines to my grandchildren.

To do this for every set of 4th great-grandparents (about the limit for potential DNA matches), would require 32 different Root Persons and screen captures.

6) There are more "bells and whistles" on this tree - I have only scratched the surface in this blog post. For instance, the X-chromosome button shows your ancestors who may have contributed to your X-chromosome.

7) At this point in time, my view is that this program is interesting and fun but not overly useful. It did show me a chart of "All of my ancestors" on one screen, and I can see a count of the number of nth great-grandparents in each generation (a count for females and a count for males, with duplicates counted as separate ancestors). I can also select any of my ancestors in the 8 generation GEDCOM and see descendants, which may tell me which area of my tree that I need to work on to add more descendants who are potential DNA matches.

8) If this tree visualization interests you, by all means upload a GEDCOM file, and work with it. I enjoyed the challenge and trying to figure out how to make it work for me. Things like this are Genea-Fun for me.

9) My thanks to Brad Lyon for answering my questions on Facebook, and to Lara Diamond for providing an excellent example of how this program can be used. Please go visit their blog posts for more information.

=============================================

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/05/working-with-exploring-family-trees.html

Pages

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Monday, May 27, 2019