Update on Ancestry

I've more or less decided to use Ancestry as a working place. I take some kinds of absurd data and link it -- when it comes from other Ancestry trees. I can clean it up later.

Today I started with Lucy Miller, then her father Elizur, his father Abijah who Aunt Esther thought was named Abner. I found parents for Abijah -- John Miller and Prudence Hollister. Both have hints. There are also a number of children. The "absurd data" usually is duplicate entries for the same child, with slightly different names.

John Miller has parents William Miller and Mary Bushnell. Both have hints. There are also a number of children.

William Miller has parents William Miller and Patience Bacon. Both have hints. There are also children.

This William Miller is an immigrant. There are multiple spouses and children. His parents are William Miller and Margaret Dennis. Both have hints.

This William Miller has children and parents John Miller and Agnes Kellet. Both have hints.
John Miller has children and parents William Miller and Eilzabeth Cutler. Both have hints.
This William Miller has parents John Miller and Alice Lawe. They have hints.
This John Miller has parents Johannes Miller and Margaret Carter. They have hints.
Johannes Miller has children and parents William Miller and Johanna Rolph. They have hints.
This William Miller has children and parents Hans Miller and Magdalena Welser. They have hints.
Hans Miller is the end of the line
Magdalena Welser has another spouse and children and parents Lukas Welser and Ursula Launger. They have hints.
Lukas Welser has children and parents Bartolomaus Welser and Catharina Ridler. They have hints.
Bartholomaus Welser has children, other spouse(s) and parents Bartholomaus Welser and Radegunda Suelmann. They have hints.

This Bartolomaus Welser has children and parents Hans Welser and Elisabeth Rehlinger. They have hints.
Hans Welser has another spuse and parents Bartholomaus Welser and Catharina Parth. They have hints.
This Bartholomaus Welser has children and parents Conrad Welser and Elisabeth Langenmantel. They have hints.
Conrad Welser has an alternative wife, child, and parents Bartholomaus Welser and Margaretha Wildberger. They have hints.
This Batholomaus Welser has alternative wife, and father Seifreid Welser. He has a hint.
Seifreid Welser has children and parents Heinrich Welser and Elisabetha Eggenberger. They have hints.
Heinrich Welser has parents Conrad Welser and Catharina Ilsung. She has a hint.
Catharina Ilsung has parents Friedrich Ilsung and Anna DeStein. They have hints.
Friedrich Ilsung has another child and is end of line.
Anna DeStein is also end of line.
Suddenly Conrad Welser has a hint so he has parents Bartholomaus Welser and Anna Stolzhirsch. They have hints.
This Bartholomaus Welser has parents Lucas Welser and Elisabetha VonWartensee. They have hints.
Lucas Welser ... well you get the idea. I'll just keep going.
I find I need this ist to go back down the tree. There are:
Paulus Welser and Anne Eggenberger
Octavianus Welser and Sibylla VonWildeck
Julius Welser
Anton Welser here I stopped in the 10th century. This all seems very fanciful to me.
But I continue back down the tree.
Sibylla VonWildeck is end of line.
Anne Eggenberger is end of line. I left her hints there as a way of indentifying the trees from which the hints come.
Elisabetha VonWartensee is end of line. Hints left.
Anna Stolzhirsch has father Sebald Stolzhirsch who is end of line.
Elisabetha Eggenberger is end of line. I'll stop saying hints left.
Anna Speet is end of line
Margaretha Wildberger is end of line.
Elisabeth Langenmantel vom Sparren has parents Heinrich Langenmantel vom Sparren and Elisabeth, then
Marquard Langenmantel vom Sparren and Elsbeth -- there's nore but I stop. This is the 13th century.
Catharina Parth is end of line.
Elisabeth Rehlinger has parents in some tress, but I am just leaving the hints because this all very uncertain.
Radegunda Suelmann also has parents. This is still the 14th century; I'm skipping them.
William Miller (1470) is first Miller shown in England. His wife is Johanna Rolph. She has hints in 16 trees. Many copy each other (as I have been doing) and give her mother as Mrs. John Rolph. If I select all, Ancestry chooses Mrs. John Rolph. I'm leaving this one too.

In fact, I'm leaving the whole thing for now. See next post.

The Wright Family

My mother remembered two grandmothers in the house -- there was Grandma Goodrich and Grandma Hawley. Grandma Hawley was Grandma Goodrich's mother-in-law. She took back her maiden name after her husband, Manzer Goodrich, deserted her and moved to Iowa.

Grandma Hawley was Jennie Permelia Hawley, daughter of Joseph William and Sally (Wright) Hawley. She was called Permelia, and there is some doubt as to whether Jennie was her first or middle name. I have her date and place of birth as 11 August 1846 in Brooklyn, PA and her date and place of death as 24 November 1927 in Port Dickinson, NY. These data come from The Tingley Family Revised and were supplied to the comiler by my great-aunt Esther.

Permelia's mother, Sally Wright, was the daughter of Anthony Wright and Sally Swetland. They lived on Martin's Creek (also called Marten Creek.) This is where I will begin. [In what follows, I am indebted to Weston's History of Brooklyn and to Two Centuries of Memories -- Lathrop and Hop Bottom and to research in other sources.]

In 1799, Joseph Sprague lived in a cabin on the Marten Creek meadows. He was referred to as a hermit, which I surmise means that he did not have a family. In 1802, Joseph's nephew, Ira Swetland, came to live with him. Ira was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, 20 November 1780, his parents were Zilpha Sprague and Theophilus Swetland.

Ira Swetland married, in Connecticut, Ruth Wright, a daughter of Capt Samuel Wright and Ruth Kibbe. Two of Ira's sisters married two of Ruth's brothers. Almira Swetland married Samuel Wright and Sally Swetland married Anthony Wright. All three couples settled along Martin's Creek.

to be updated

Where I stand at Ancestry.

Ahnentafel:

FIRST GENERATION

1 me

SECOND GENERATION

2 father
3 mother

THIRD GENERATION

4 pat gf
5 pat gm
6 mat gf
7 mat gm

FOURTH GENERATION

8 William S Mellen
9 unknown
10 James Green
11 Viola Joiner
12 Charles Girard B
13 Mary Louise Gallt
14 Earl A Goodrich
15 Grace A Dayton

FIFTH GENERATION

16 Peter W Mellen
17 Mary Elizabeth Allen
18
19
20 Ira Green
21 Pamela
22 David Joiner
23 Mary E Conklin
24 add
25 add
26 William Gallt
27 Martha
28 Manzer J Goodrich
29 Jennie P Hawley
30 Edwin Chesebro Dayton
31 Mary Albertina Morgan

SIXTH GENERATON

Root person - my father (2)

32 unknown
33 unknown
34 Joseph Seymour Allen
35 unknown
36
37
38
39
40 unknown
41 unknown
42
43
44 unknown
45 unkown
46 James E Conklin
47 Catherine E Brown

Root person -- my mother (3)

48 add
49 add
50
51
52
53
54
55
56 Eli Butler Goodrich
57 Cynthia Tiffany
58 Joseph W Hawley
59 Sally Wright
60 Charles Edwin Dayton
61 Prudence Mary Chesebrough
62 Newell V Morgan
63 Lucy Hopkins

Ancestry links

Here another year has gone by.
Today I signed onto Ancestry and was greeted by the following messages:
Recent Member Activity: 16 Sep 2009
1860 census saved to Eli Butler Goodrich by ksdirk
3 records saved to Alfred Tiffany by ksdirk
Death information edited for Alfred Tiffany by ksdirk
Death information edited for Lucy Miller by ksdirk
7 new family members added for Anthony Wright by ksdirk

I don't know who ksdirk or why she has these people in her family tree (called Snyder Family Tree - NE Pennsylvania.) So I begin to do a little mongoosing in the Snyder Family Tree:

First, I look up Eli Butler Goodrich and find birth, death, and marriage information (to Cynthia Tiffany) For Cynthis Tiffany, the place of birth is given as Salem, Susquehanna, PA. There is no Salem in Susquehanna County -- so that's an error. It's in the "Family Data Collection" and in "One World Tree" on Ancestry.
There are pedigrees given for both Eli and Cynthia that seem to be more or less accurate -- I didn't check in detail.
The pedigrees include Cynthia's parents, Alfred Tiffany and Lucy Miller, so that leaves Anthony Wright.

The Snyder tree has parents for Samuel Wright (Anthony's father) which I don't have. They are given as Charles Wright, born 5 January 1719 in Northampton, Massachusetts and died 23 December 1793 in Pownal, Vermont and Ruth Boltwood, born 25 April 1722 in Amherst Massachusets and died 15 April 1806 in Pownal Vermont. Their marriage is given as 19 Oct 1742 in Amherst.
Anthony's mother is given as Azuba Gibbs, (Samuel's second wife.) This is a mistake I have seen before.
At least some of Anthony's children are given, including Sally. Her marriage to Joseph Hawley is shown as are at least some of their children, including "Pamelia," but not her marriage.

Oops, back to Samuel Wright -- this is the wrong guy. His dates are given as 1745 - 1815 whereas the correct Samuel Wright weas born in 1751 and died in 1829.

So that was a brief flash thinking I had a lead, but I don't.

Goodrich

I haven't kept up on this blog now, have I? Anyhoo, it's now mid-October and we're on the verge of closing the cottage.

I'm also on the verge of taking back with me some of the genealogy related books I brought up here -- thinking I would leave them here permanently. In particular, I am taking back The Tingley Family Revised and maybe some of the local histories that mention my ancestors.

As the closing up process was winding own, I began using the Tingley books to record my sources on the Goodrich family. This led me to tentatively research one of Manzer Goodrich's siblings on Ancestry. and I was led to One World Tree which shows a pedigree for Manzer's grandmother, Lucy Miller, in particular a Miller ancestry. (Included is a pedigree for Lucy's mother, Dorcas Goodrich.)

I am noting this here to help me remember to follow up on this matter later.

Progress -- part one

One of the reasons I started this blog was to record my progress in genealogical research. That includes recording something about both the process and the findings.

Taking a step back, I was bitten by the genealogical bug about 25 years ago -- when Liz and I first began using this cottage we found it contained a wealth of family history kept by my great aunt Esther Mead. Some of it she got from her mother, my great grandmother Grace Goodrich, who was a member of the DAR.

I also had the model of Liz's mother Margery, who had published two books on her own ancestry -- one on her father's family and one on her mother's. Margery's books tell the stories both of her research and of the families she was tracing. Her results are presented in her own way and do not follow a usual genealogical pattern. In fact, they are more readable than many genealogical books.

As a result of the find in this cottage, most of my work has been on the family of my maternal grandmother, born Ruth Goodrich. I also have some material on the ancestry of my maternal grandfather, Victor Brink -- most of that is second hand.

My father's family presented more problems. Here is what I knew in the early 1980's when I started trying to record genealogy information.
I was always told that my grandfather, Sidney Allen Mellen, was a descendant of Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boy. My grandmother certainly belived that, and that is why my father was named Ethan Allen Mellen. I am named after my father.
I knew that my grandfather was raised by his grandmother because his mother had died. I also think I knew then that there had been some kind of a rift between my grandfather and his father. I did not know his father's name, and I thought his mother had been an Allen.
My grandmother, born Jessie Mae Green, had been married very young and had a son, Glenn, from her first marriage, who later took the name Mellen. I knew that my father had been born in Wisconsin, and that he had two younger sisters, Edith and Joyce. I knew one of my grandmother's brothers, my fathers Uncle Oscar Green. I also knew that before the family moved to Binghamton when my father was twelve, he had lived in both Sullivan, Indiana and Dayton, Ohio.

My grandmother lived the last years of her life in my parents' house, but also spent time with my Aunt Edith in Maryland and in Florida both with my Aunt Joyce and visiting her brothers' families. (At that time, I wasn't clear about how many brothers she had.) Her papers and pictures were in my parents' house when she died in 1975, but I didn't get to see them until much later -- some not until Liz and I cleaned out the house last summer.
Sometime not long after my father died in the summer of 1981, I found a note in my handwriting that says:

Gt Gt GM Mary Elizabeth Allen
b Milford Connecticut
m Peter Mellen
b Isle of Man
lived in St. Louis.

I have no recollection of writing this, and I don't know when I wrote it or where the information comes from. However, it was a starting point for my Mellen research.

For my grandmother's family, I was fortunate to find a locket sized picture of her father:
Wrapped around the picture is this note, in my grandmother's handwriting:

This is James Green (son of Ira & Pamela Green,) my father. He died in May 1898 at age about 35 years in Columbus, Ohio. -- Jessie Mae Green Mellen. His brother Will, and wife, Amanda, raised me. He had three other brothers, John and Lew and Leonard. Our family ran to boys - I had no sisters - just four brothers Ira, born the day Papa was buried, Jim, Oscar & Charles who died in infancy - Ira was renamed Charles in his memory.

I found a few other genealogically significant things early on, but the picture remained sketchy until recently. The online resources, particularly the census, at Ancestry.com have been invaluable to me as I try to make sense of some of the notes I have.

So let's begin with the note wrapped around my great grandfather James Green's picture. The not does not give the name of my great grandmother, but among my grandmother Jessie's papers is a copy of a the record of her marriage in 1913 to Alpheus Bowman. She gave her mother's maiden name as Viola Joyner. So I looked up Viola Green, in Columbus,Ohio, in the 1900 census.

Sure enough, there she is, living at 80 1/2 West Capital Street in Columbus, with four children. She was 24 years old, born April 1875 in Iowa. Her father was born in Scotland and her mother in Ohio. She was a laundress. The four children were all born in Ohio , as were their father and, strangely, their mother. There children are James, age 9, born February 1890, Oscar, age 8, born December 1892, Jessie, age 4, born March 1896, and Ira, age 2, born May, 1898.

So far so good -- there are a couple of anomalies. Ancestry's index shows James as 19, rather than 9, and the image appears to show that the 9 was written over an earlier 10. If he was born in February 1890, then he truly was 10 and not 9. It's odd that Viola' birthplace is reposrted as Iowa, but that of her children's mother as Ohio. There's more looking to be done.

Andt what about Uncle Will Green and Aunt Amanda raising Jessie? Well, there is a report card from 1908-1909 for Jessie signed by W R Green. The school is in Columbus.

Stay tuned.

Focus

When I was in New York earlier this week, I almost finished my preliminary analysis of my data. My goal was to updated the "Related by" flags for both me and Jane. I've got the main values correct -- the flags for potential connections are still a little off. There are also some disconnected people to deal with.

But I have put that off for the moment.

My principal focus right now is on my father's family -- the weakest part of my genealogy and the one that ties in to our upcoming trip to St. Louis.

I am using Ancestry for research right now. I began an online tree with myself, then added my parents. Ancestry does a really good job of initiating searches and finding potential matches based on the data I've entered.

One thing it sometimes misses, though, is matches to misspelled names in the census. In the 1930 census my grandfather's name was misspelled -- I found the entry myself a while back by scanning the entire census for the locality in which they lived -- so now I know that I need to enter possible variant spellings by hand.

As with many of my activities, I have to work hard to stay focused. One of my goals is to organize the pieces of paper I have accumulated in doing a bit of research in fits and starts over the years -- so it is really important not to accumulate too much more as I go along.

I'll see how it goes.

Bugs

Well, like it or not, I found at least two bugs in the program, so I guess I'll have to become somewhat active as a tester. One I'm not sure how to replicate.

TMG is so robust that the bugs I found are only nuisances, but still ....

Now back to genealogy.

Relaunch

This a relaunch of what was previously a TMG blog. I still use TMG (The Master Genealogist) as my genealogy program and, in fact, I am turning to active work on my genealogy data after a hiatus of at least four years.

For several years I was an active beta tester for TMG, but I haven't done any significant testing since at least 2003. Now that I am going back to really using the program, I may find myself moved to begin testing again when the next beta release comes out. As of right now, I am using TMG 7.03, which was released within the past two weeks. If a beta comes out, you won't read it here!

My TMG project is named "Real Data for Research" -- the odd name is because I used to have a copy of the real data for beta testing. I have one data set, named "current."
I have 15,649 people in my data -- most of them very poorly researched. 1,849 are putativly my ancestors -- the rest are mostly aunts and uncles, cousins, and in-laws of varying degrees.

Since I have not looked at this data in depth for several years, the first thing I am going to do is analyze it.

More to come

Well, this was an idea that didn't fly.
Now TMG 6 is released, and while I can't wait to try it, I haven't an idea as when I'll actually find the time.
Hang in there.

Allen