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The following picture is in a photo album of images from my great grandparents travels.
 - Sister M. Genevieve Parker
I didn’t know how Sister Genevieve Parker fit into my family tree. None of my branches contained anyone by that name, but nuns sometimes adopt new names when they take their vows. Last fall, after I tracked down my third great uncle James Parker in California and some of his family, I suspected Genevieve belonged in that branch of the tree. But where?
I still don’t know exactly who she is, but I know where she fits. To kill some time while I was in California last week, I was doing some unfocused searching for a daughter of James Parker, Mary. I’d suspected she was the Mary Parker who married a Thomas Lyons. I found an index death record that could be her then a copy of the death certificate, and those indeed indicated she was a daughter of James Parker. And today I found a copy of her obituary:
 - Mary A Lyons obituary
Look in there! Her sister is the Very Reverend Mother Genevieve Parker! And a little bit of Google searching brings up an item on Genevieve Parker from the web site of the Immaculate Heart Community:
Mother Genevieve was elected the first Mother General of the newly established California Institute of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She guided the Community for nine years. Mother Genevieve was instrumental in securing the separation of the California IHMs from the Spanish Community. The negotiations for independence of the California group went on for several decades. With the help of Bishop John J. Cantwell the separation was completed in 1924. …
She guided the Community as an able administrator until her resignation in 1933. She died in July of that year.
Their web page has this image of Mother Genevieve Parker:
 - Mother Genevieve Parker
Pretty much the same person! And now I have a date of death and a pretty good starting point on digging up the rest of her life.
Interestingly, I still don’t know exactly who she is. In the 1870 U.S. Census, James Parker has 4 daughters: Catherine, Mary, Ella, and Frances. In 1880, his daughters are Kate, Ella, Fanny and Theresa. Mary is Mary Lyons. Ella is Ellen Parker Murphy. I suspect Theresa married a Frederick Donaldson, though I haven’t proven that. That leaves Catherine or Frances. At this point, I just don’t know which of the daughters she is.
Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, lyons, murphy, parker
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After 3 years of researching Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy, I have found when they died. The marker for Patrick Parker that I previously found in Saint Mary’s church cemetery, east of Ackley Iowa, is indeed my third great grandfather. His wife Mary died on 13 Aug 1887 and was buried in the church cemetery. Her name no longer appears on a marker in the cemetery. I suspect that it once was on the same headstone as Patrick’s, but the top portion was damaged and removed.
This morning I found her obituary by serendipity. I have been working my way through scans of the baptismal register for Saint Mary’s (a project I will write about soon) and came upon an entry for Stephen Patrick Parker, son of Thomas Parker and Ellen Clinton. It had a date for the baptism, but not for his birth. The baptism was in 1885, and there’s a possible match for this Stephen Parker who was said to have been born in 1888. I decided to do a quick search of the keyword Parker in the Ackley Enterprise on NewspaperArchive.com for the years 1885 to 1888, to see if I could find his birth. I have not found it yet, because I found something else.
That was a brief mention that Julia Parker Kenefick had attended the funeral of her mother. It was third in my results list and was published on 19 Aug 1887 on page 5 column 3.
 - Mr. and Mrs. M. Kenefick, of Belmond, attended the funeral of Mrs. Kenefick’s mother, Mrs. Parker, last Monday.
It did not come up in the search, but in column 6 on the same page appeared a notice of Mary Parker’s death.
 - Mrs. Mary Parker died last Saturday morning at the residence of her son Mr. Patrick Parker, in Washington township, Butler county. She was eighty-three years of age and has [for] the last three years been quite feeble. Mrs. Parker was the mother of ten children, nine of whom are living. She was one of the oldest settlers having located at Ackley in 1870. The funeral took place last Monday morning and was lagely attended, Rev. Father Burns officiating. The remains were laid peacefully to rest in the Catholic cemetery.
Mary Parker died 13 August 1887 at the home of her son in Washington township, Butler County, Iowa. She was buried in the church cemetery with Reverend Father Burns officiating. L.H. Burns was the parish priest of Saint Mary’s in Ackley, meaning Mary Parker was buried in their cemetery. And meaning that I have enough evidence that I will consider the Patrick Parker buried there to be my third great grandfather.
Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, murphy, parker
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Last month I requested a copy of the pension application for my second great grand uncle, Stephen Parker, from the National Archives. I got the first 100 pages on CD today. Much of it I already know. But there are some great pieces of evidence in the file that solidify and confirm important details about Stephen and his family. One item was very new information though, and stood out.
Below is the deposition of Mary Morkin née Parker. She was the daughter of Leonard Parker, who lived near my third great grandfather Patrick Parker in Blanshard township in western Ontario. Leonard and Patrick also have records that put them together in County Westmeath and in Lanark County of Ontario. Other family researchers had written that they were brothers, and I’d tended to go with that assumption as well. Mary Morkin gives the most direct evidence so far that they were in fact related. She testifies that Stephen Parker’s father (Patrick) and her father (Leonard) were first cousins.
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page 1
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page 2
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page 3
Eliminating the possibility they are brothers is going to make looking at any possible records a better process. For instance, I won’t reject families with a Patrick Parker as incorrect matches if there’s no sign of a Leonard in the family. Or if descendants of Leonard Parker take DNA tests, we’ll expect them to be much more distant genetically.
There are more things to glean from this file, but that’s the biggest in the first batch. Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, morkin, parker
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The aforementioned Stephen Parker married a Margaret Burk in 1873 in Webster County, Iowa, most likely at the Catholic Church. I’ve also previously noted that their daughters became teachers in the Seattle Public Schools. I’d really like to find out more about his family, so the last week or so I’ve spent looking for records on Maggie.
 - Margaret and Mary Parker in 1909 Seattle Directory
Ancestry has a good collection of Polks city directories for Seattle, so I looked for her and found her in most of them from 1910 to 1924. Where she was missing, Ancestry was missing pages. One of those was 1909, and Margaret wasn’t to be found in 1908. So I hopped on the bus and went to the Seattle Public Library to look at their collection of directories. Margaret was in 1909. So that puts her arrival in Seattle in 1908 or early 1909. Her daughter Agnes was listed as a teacher at the Ross School in the 1906 directory. As best I can tell, Margaret and Mary arrived together and then the three of them rented an apartment at 1321 E Union where they lived until Margaret’s death in 1924.
 - 1321 E Union Seattle in Sep 2011
The image above is the location in 2011. I haven’t researched the property properly, but the apartment in the background is 1319 E Union and there is no 1321. Either the apartment was renumbered, 1321 was located in the parking lot in the image, or I have the wrong location. The apartment building shown was built in 1909.
I also finally ordered the death certificate for Margaret, which arrived today. Most of it I knew because the folks from the Family History Library indexed a lot of the fields, including the names of her parents. The death certificate did give an exact date of birth for Margaret, if it can be believed. It also has a cause (pneumonia) and exact place (Columbus Sanitarium) of death, which are also new to me. The date of birth may be helpful in finding out who she is.
There are some additional queries I’ve sent, which I haven’t yet received returns for. I wrote to the Archives of the Archdiocese of Seattle seeking information on her funeral, if they have it. They replied via email that I’ll need to query Saint James Cathedral. I sent a letter to Calvary Cemetery, hoping they have some records on her that will reveal something about her. And finally I sent a letter to the Webster County Genealogical Association asking if they’ve got anything on Margaret or her marriage. The Family History Library says it has a book listing marriages compiled by the W.C.G.S., so I figured I would go straight to the source before getting a copy of the book. Hopefully they’ve got Margaret in an index somewhere with a connection to Webster County.
Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: burk, gallagher, genealogy, parker
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Since I last wrote about Stephen Parker, I’ve learned a bit more about how to do genealogy and have gained some confidence in pursuing leads.
I mentioned it only in passing on this post about my 2nd great grandmother Mary Parker, but that search turned up the baptismal record for her brother Stephen as well. Most of the records about Stephen Parker give only an approximate age for him, and it usually worked out to be around 1837. But the baptismal record for him puts his date of birth as 2 Jun 1835. I’d thought I wouldn’t ever find a real date of birth for him.
 - Stephen Parker baptismal record
At the Iowa Historical Society a couple of years ago, I couldn’t find any record of his death in the county microfilm holdings. The only things I found were obituaries in their newspaper holdings. The Historical Society also did not have any records from the Hospital for the Insane where Stephen had been committed.
Recently, I wrote to both the Independence Mental Health Institute (M.H.I.) (the successor agency to the Iowa Hospital for the Insane) and to the Buchanan County Genealogical Society looking for how I might find information on Stephen Parker. The fellow who answers email for the genealogical society went above and beyond what I’d hoped, which was contact information at the M.H.I. beyond what I could find on the web site. He looked in the society’s records and after finding nothing, made a trip to the courthouse on my behalf. Unfortunately, he found that no deaths had been recorded at the county from 1889 to 1897, or that those records had been lost. Then he also provided me with instructions on how to request information from M.H.I.
At the same time, I received a response from M.H.I. with the formal version of the same instructions. Having information from the genealogical society on how to navigate the complicated forms was very helpful. I sent those in. M.H.I. didn’t have much information on Stephen Parker, but they did provide the specific date he’d arrived and date and time of death, which turned out to be a day earlier than indicated in his obituaries.
I also requested Stephen Parker’s civil war record from the National Archives. That wasn’t too interesting, but it did provide a physical description for him that came with his oath when he enlisted. He’s described as 5 foot 10 inches, hazel eyes, brown hair and dark complexion on 18 May 1863 when he enlisted.
 - Stephen Parker – Enlistment Oath
He didn’t last long in the military, being discharged on 6 Aug 1862 at Fort Hamilton New York fir disability, not even three months later. The only information on that comes from the one line notation in the register of enlistments for him.
I’ve also looked for Stephen Parker in the census. He appears with his parents’ family in 1852 in Canada and in 1860 in Wisconsin. In 1870 and 1880, he’s recorded living in Clarion Iowa as a farmer. In 1870 on his own, and in 1880 with a wife and two young daughters. But he was already marked as insane by then, and in fact I believe was not even living with the family despite being recorded there. He’s also recorded on the supplemental schedules for the insane in the 1880 US Census. The records from M.H.I. indicate he’d entered the hospital on 14 Feb 1878. In 1878, there are several entries in the Wright County court docket on a guardianship being established for Stephen’s financial affairs, including this petition from May 1878 saying he’d been committed:
 - Petition for Appointment of a Guardian – Stephen Parker
The next census where Stephen Parker appears is in the 1895 Iowa census, where he’s still listed living in the hospital. Where I haven’t found him is in the 1885 Iowa census. He doesn’t show up in the indexes for that year, and there are 124 pages for Independence. I haven’t yet had the patience to read through those pages one by one to see if he shows up in some fashion. Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, parker
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In my last post, I wrote about the estimates that Ancestry.com made regarding my ethnicity based on my DNA results. That wasn’t why I took the test though. I wanted to see which family lines I matched. By that, I mean I wanted to find other people who have enough matching genetic markers to indicate that we are related.
Ancestry classified the matches into three categories for me.
- 3rd cousins, with 98% confidence
While there may be some statistical variation in our prediction, it’s likely to be a third cousin type of relationship—which are separated by seven degrees or seven people. However, the relationship could range from six to ten degrees of separation.
- 4th cousins, with 95% confidence
For relationships this distant from you, there is greater statistical variation in our prediction. It’s most likely to be a fourth cousin type of relationship (which are separated by ten degrees or ten people), but the relationship could range from six to twelve degrees of separation.
- distant cousins, with 50% confidence
As far as DNA goes, you do have a fair amount of shared DNA with this match, however the relationship is distant if it exists at all.
Ancestry found one third cousin match, eight fourth cousin matches, and 101 pages of distant cousin matches. I’ve looked through the online family trees for many of them to see if matching ancestors can be found.
The family tree for the predicted third cousin only goes back to their great grand-parents. To match at 3rd cousins, they’d need to go back to their 2nd great grandparents. However, I’ve done descendancy research on all my 2nd great grandparents, and none of the people in that research match people in her tree. There’s enough holes in my descendancy research from 3rd great grandparents that it’s possible she could fit in there, particularly in the Solle/Hein line, where I haven’t found my 3rd great grandparents yet. I think it’s also important to note that Ancestry gives the confidence at 98%, which means there’s a 2% chance their prediction is wrong.
Of the fourth cousin category, I was able to find common ancestors for four of the eight predicted matches. Three are third cousins, once removed. One is a sixth cousin, once removed.
Of the distant cousin matches, I was able to find three other people with common ancestors. One is a fourth cousin, once removed. One is a 5th cousin. And one is a third cousin, once removed. Third cousins, once removed, are popular in my results.
 - The Big Tree fan chart with DNA matches marked
The chart above (click to make large) shows the family lines where matching people were found. Three of the third cousins once removed matched Parker/Murphy, Ryan/Sheedy, and Voigt/Thuernich, which are all lines from my paternal grandfather and where I’ve focused a lot of my research energy. One third cousin once removed matched Samms/Cornell, and the remainder matched either at James Washington Annis or his grandfather Ezra Annis. All of these are my maternal grandfather’s family and I’ve barely scratched the research surface in that branch.
The short conclusion I take from that is my research on my paternal grandfather’s family has some genetic support for being correct. There’s still some room for error, but it’s pretty good evidence.
I should also mention there’s one predicted match where I don’t have a common ancestor at this point, but that person’s family tree comes heavily from the area of Piteå, Sweden. That’s where my maternal grandmother’s family is from, so I suspect a match will be found there as well.
And for the benefit of people searching for names on Google, here are the ancestors with matches.
- Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy
- John Ryan and Deborah Sheedy
- Johann Voigt and Mary Agnes Thuernich
- Edgar Marion Samms and Ella Orinda Cornell
- James Washington Annis and Elizabeth Davis (2 matches)
- Ezra Annis
Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy
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With the new job, I decided to splurge on a genetic test from Ancestry.com, hoping to see if it matched me up with anyone. As a bonus, they guess what your ethnic ancestry is from the results.
I don’t actually trust those ethic results much, but they still didn’t surprise me to any great degree:
| Region | | Approximate amount |
| North Africa | | < 1% |
| Scandinavia | | 39% |
| Europe West | | 24% |
| Ireland | | 21% |
| Europe East | | 4% |
| Great Britain | | 3% |
| Iberian Peninsula | | 2% |
| European Jewish | | 2% |
| Finland/Northwest Russia | | 2% |
| Italy/Greece | | < 1% |
| Caucasus | | < 1% |
In map form:
I’m not surprised at all that it predicts my ethnicity is from Scandinavia, Western Europe and Ireland. That’s pretty much what my genealogy says. However, it has a higher percentage of Irish and lower percentage of Western European than my genealogy indicates.
Now, either my genealogy work is wrong, their estimates are imprecise, or the genetic mix of a large portion of my Irish and Western European ancestors is too diverse to accurately classify. Barring an instance of the milkman being my ancestor instead of a documented parent or an unknown adoption, I’m reasonably certain of my tree out to my third great grandparents’ generation. There’s always a possibility of someone schtupping someone they weren’t married to though. I suspect the discrepancy is a combination of items 2 and 3. The 25% of my ancestry that is Swedish can be traced back hundreds of years, and it’s all Swedish. But the Irish, German, and Danish? Well, that could easily be pretty mixed ethnically.
But this analysis isn’t why I took the test. I’ll write about genetically matching people in my family tree in another post. That was far more useful. Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, genetic genealogy
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One of the questions I have about Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy is when they emigrated from Canada to the United States. Their family appears in the Canadian census in Blanshard township, Perth county, Canada West on 11 Jan 1852. The next recorded place I have for them is in Glen Haven township, Grant county, Wisconsin on 1 Jun 1860.
I can narrow the time of emigration by looking at his son James Parker. James requested his first papers in January 1859 in the Grant County District Court. James married Ellen Neagle in Jun 1857 in Middlesex county, Canada West, just across the county line from Blanshard township. James has two sons in the 1860 US Census, John Patrick and Napolean. John Patrick’s birth was likely in July 1858 in Wisconsin. If correct, James emigrated to the United States between Jun 1857 and Jul 1858. More likely than not, Patrick emigrated with his son.
One record series I thought might confirm that is the series at the Family History Library, Blanshard township property tax assessment rolls, 1851-1899, specifically the film covering 1851 to 1866. I ordered it back in December, but a new job and other life issues kept me from reviewing it until this past week. Luckily, I remembered to renew the rental before it expired in February.
This is what I found. In 1851, Patrick Parker appears paying taxes on lot 16 in concession 9. This is the same lot and concession where he was recorded in the 1848 Canadian Census.
 - Blanshard Tax Roll 1851 – Patrick Parker
The microfilm is missing the years 1852 through 1854, but luckily Patrick shows up in 1855, 1856, and 1857, all for the same lot and concession. (Images below don’t include the second page which shows the concession/lot.)
 - Blanshard Tax Roll 1855 – Patrick Parker
 - Blanshard Tax Roll 1856 – Patrick Parker
 - Blanshard Tax Roll 1857 – Patrick Parker
In 1858, Patrick Parker is not to be found on the tax roll. Instead, a James McDonald owns lot 16 on concession 9. And the roll for 1857 has the name J. McDonald to the right of Patrick Parker in a column headed, Owner . I believe this means the land had been sold to James McDonald prior to the time of the assessment, or possibly it was a notation put in after the fact when James McDonald did purchase it. This narrows the sale of the property to late 1856 or 1857. The tax rolls appear to be filed in the spring of each year.
 - Blanshard Tax Roll 1858 – James McDonald
The sale of his property matches the dates of emigration for his son James, making it even more likely he emigrated about the same time. The next place to look is to see if any records show him purchasing land in Grant county Wisconsin about that time.
Lastly, based on plat maps of Blanshard township, here’s the location of the farm today:
 - Location of Patrick Parker’s farm in Blanshard on satellite
Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, ontario, parker
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After a couple of years of little progress mostly due to focusing on other parts of my family tree, I’ve been making huge progress with the Parkers. You’ve probably noticed the multiple posts about them recently.
A few weeks ago, I noticed there was a Find-A-Grave memorial for a Leonard Parker at the church cemetery in Saint Mary, Ontario. Leonard Parker is reputed to be the brother of my ancestor, Patrick Parker. I wrote to the person who put up the memorial, asking if they were related. The answer was yes, and we exchanged some information about our respective family trees. One of the things she clued me in to was that the parish registers for some of the Roman Catholic churches have been scanned and are on FamilySearch. Not indexed, but available.
Which brings me to my great great grandmother, Mary Parker Ryan. She married William Dennis Ryan in 1864, had six children, and died of typhus in 1875, not quite eleven years into her marriage. She had a short and somewhat forgotten life. Every time I mentioned her to one of my relatives, I get blank looks. Apparently my great grandparents and grandparents generations talked so rarely about her that no one in the next generation had heard of her. That sort of reaction is part of why I’ve been drawn to genealogy, to remember the people who haven’t been.
The main source of information I had on Mary was her grave monument in a small cemetery on a hill about a mile east of Patch Grove, Wisconsin. I visited Saint Johns Cemetery in June 2011.
 - Grave marker for Mary Ryan
It’s quite a nice monument for the time. William Ryan cared enough to spend some dough on it. Here’s a close up of the inscription.
 - inscription on Mary Ryan’s monument
It reads:
Mary
Wife of Wm. D. Ryan.
Born Jan. 7, 1841. In
Ramsey, Township of Perth.
Canada West. Died
Feb. 20, 1875,
Aged 34 yrs. 1 mo. 13 ds.
The inscription has a number of problems with it. The Parkers lived for a time in Blanshard township in Perth County, Canada West. There is no Ramsey township in Perth County, and as far as I can tell, there never has been. The only Ramsey township I’ve been able to find is in Lanark County, Ontario. That sort of fits with another family legend, that Mary’s mother was one Mary Murphy who was part of the Peter Robinson settlement of Canada. One of those settlements was in Ramsey township. I have doubts as to whether Mary Murphy really was part of that endeavor, but there’s a geographical connection at least. Oh, and the nearest city to Ramsey township is Perth. My working hypothesis was that this particular Ramsey was the one indicated on her grave.
Additionally, her death certificate and other accounts put her date of death as 23 Feb 1875. Three days difference isn’t that big of a deal. Still…
A further problem is that there is a second marker for Mary in front of the monument:
 - Second marker for Mary Ryan
You’ll notice this one gives a year of birth as 1840, rather than 1841. Rather confusing.
And, as it turns out, both are likely wrong. Going back to the thing above about the Ontario parish registers being online… I looked at the register for Perth’s Saint John the Baptist parish. There was no entry for Mary Parker in 1841. Her brothers Stephen and Patrick were there in 1835 and 1837, but no Mary. On the first perusal, I missed it. But on the second look through, I saw an entry for a Mary Parker in 1839:
 - Mary Parker baptismal register entry
On the 28th day of February 1839 the undersigned Priest of this Parish
has Baptized Mary seven weeks old of the lawful marriage of Patrick
Parker & Mary Murphy of Ramsey.
Sponsors Nicholas Dison and Emilia Dison
That’s an entry in a contemporaneous journal of parish actions. Unless it’s for a different Mary Parker, it’s pretty convincing evidence she was actually born in January 1839. January 7th fits, so I’m guessing that’s her actual birthday.
However, by the time the monument was erected, people were guessing at her actual age. Maybe she’d shaved off a couple of years. Maybe she forgot or didn’t know. Maybe the monument was erected years after her death. I’ve no idea the reason.
As an added bonus for this post, among the effects found in my great aunt’s house last year when she died was this photograph:
 - Mary Parker
On the back is the inscription “Mary Park” and the paper is torn. Is it my ancestor or another Mary Parker or did whoever wrote the inscription just guess? I’ve no idea. Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, murphy, parker, ryan
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My genealogy white whale since shortly after I started has been finding Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy. I’ve written about them here multiple times. I’d found pretty solid evidence on what happened to 8 of their 10 children, the only two where I was missing basic information were the sons James and John. Last month I found good evidence for James. Two weeks ago I found John, though I haven’t pursued it much yet.
But as much information as I’ve found on all their children, the evidence I have for the pair themselves is aggravatingly small. I’ve located them together in the 1851 Canada Census, the 1860 US Census, and the 1870 US Census. I have a possible grave site for Patrick in Iowa. And Mary Murphy can be found in the 1885 Iowa Census. That’s the sum total of direct evidence I have for them.
I have indirect evidence for them. I know they arrived in Canada between 1832 and 1835, based on the listed countries of birth for their children. The death records for several children list their names. The grave marker for my great great grandmother Mary Parker Ryan gives a place of birth for her, which places Mary Murphy in that place at least.
Today I was looking through the online maps collection for the Wisconsin Historical Society, and I saw they had added a map for Grant County from 1868, and the description included “shows townships and sections, landownership, …” The earliest landownership map for Grant County that I’ve viewed came from 1878 and the Parkers were not to be found on it. So, I took a peek at the 1868 map:
 - 1868 map of Grant County, Wisconsin showing the Parker and Ryan farms highlighed
Lo and behold, there he is! The P. Parker farm is just southwest of North Andover (a town which is no longer a town). On the map, I also highlighted the location of the farm for Patrick Parker’s son in law, William Dennis Ryan. And with handy Google Maps, I can show you where the Parker farm is on today’s maps.
This is the first direct piece of evidence for their existence that I’ve found in nearly 2 years. You don’t know how thrilled I am about this. Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, parker, ryan
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 - A page from a compiled genealogy of the Parkers
I’ve previously written about Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy. One of the family legends passed on to me by other researchers was that they had a son names James who went off to California, never to be heard from again.
There is a James Parker who appears in the 1852 Census of Canada in the vicinity of Patrick Parker’s family. He’s born about 1832 in Ireland. However, that census does not list relationships so there’s no telling if he’s a son or some other relation to Patrick. In the 1860 US Census, there’s a James Parker living with Patrick Parker’s family in Glen Haven, Wisconsin. The age listed would put his year of birth about 1832, also in Ireland. Listed below him are Ellen, John and Napolean Parker. The 1860 US Census also does not list relationships, so it’s not certain how they relate to Patrick either. But the placement is typical of an adult son who has married but is still living in the same household as his parents. It’s not certain by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s the most likely possibility.
 - James, Ellen, John and Napolean Parker in Glen Haven
I’ve researched all the other children of Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy who showed up in the United States, and have had some luck with tracking many of their descendants who lived mostly in Iowa. But this James disappeared after 1860.
And last night I found something intriguing. There appears to be a very similar entry for another James Parker in San Joaquin Township, Sacramento County in California, also in 1860.
 - James, E., John, and N.J. Parker in San Joaquin
Listed with this James Parker are an E., a John, and an N.J. Parker. They have similar ages, though slightly different. They are listed as from Canada and Wisconsin rather than Ireland and Wisconsin. But remarkably similar overall. At this point, I don’t have anything to corroborate this record.
It was at this point that I started writing this post, thinking that I had a something interesting to follow up on for later.
However, as I am wont to do, I added this to my Ancestry.com tree for James Parker. I treat my Ancestry.com tree as a database of possibilities. I’ve even posted a note on it warning other people they should copy my tree at their peril. When I posted this census entry to the family of James Parker, Ancestry went to work and started matching new records. Now that they live in California, it starts ranking California based records higher in its sort. Nothing popped up for James Parker, but four new census entries showed up for John Parker, born in 1858 in Wisconsin and living in California.
The first of these is a John Parker living in Santa Barbara in 1900 with wife Margaret and children John Warren, Mary Ellen, James Galen, and Ruth M. Now, this is also no guarantee that this is the same John Parker. In fact, the link was tenuous enough that I did not add the record to my entry for John Parker even with the database of possibilities caveat. It would just be too hard to unwind if it turned out to be wrong. So I created a new, disconnected family for a new John Parker and recorded it. If the research was a dead end, I could just delete them all, I wouldn’t have to disconnect them from the known Parker tree, and everything would be good.
 - Family of John Parker in 1900
I also added the 1910 US Census entry for the family (image not included with this post). This one had the same children, except that Mary Ellen is listed as Inez in 1910. Other people on Ancestry had added these two census records to families headed by a John Parker and Margaret Miscall.
The next step in this bread crumb trail of discovery is an entry in Ancestry.com’s California Death Index. The California Death Index is just a list of death certificates that were filed with the state between 1940 and 1997. It’s not a dispositive record without seeing copies of the underlying certificates, but I’ve generally had good luck with the index being correct. I haven’t seen the errors for the database that I’ve seen with other transcriptions.
The entry that I found was this:
Name: Mary Elleninez Gerard
[Mary Elleninez Parker]
Social Security #: 563325739
Gender: Female
Birth Date: 1 Nov 1890
Birth Place: California
Death Date: 5 Jun 1981
Death Place: Orange
Mother's Maiden Name: Miscall
Father's Surname: Parker
Mary Elleninez Gerard (neé Parker)? That looks really promising, I thought to myself. Date of birth matches up, and the parents’ surnames match up with what other people had found for John and Margaret. None of those researchers had linked the record to Mary Ellen Parker however. Nevertheless, I added a husband to her with a last name of Gerard so that Ancestry’s search engine would look for her as part of a Gerard family. Nothing popped up immediately.
And nothing else popped up for any of the other family members at the time either. I haven’t been doing real research in this process. This is just following my nose and poking around. It’s late at night and I should go to bed. However…
Last year my great grand aunt Frances died at the age of 103. In June of this year, I picked up five boxes of photos and other personal effects that had been in her possession from a cousin. I’ve been paying my friend Kim to scan all these items so they’d be available for everyone in the family. One of the items is an album containing photos from what appears to be trips my great grandparents Joe and Frances Weiss took. They visited relatives in Colorado, Illinois and California. And toward the back of the album was a photo of a nun with an inscription that appeared to be Sr. M. Germaine Parker . It’s hard to read.
I’ve thought Sister Parker might be a connection to one of the two missing branches of the Parker family. In addition to James Parker, there’s also another John Parker who went missing in records after 1880. He probably exists somewhere, but John Parker is such an incredibly common name and records from the 1800s are often sketchy. I haven’t found anything that matches up with him.
So I pulled out the album and looked for the photo. Sister Parker looks to be in her 30s or 40s, though it’s quite hard to tell with her habit covering everything except her face. I flipped backward through the pages of the album looking for other photos of her. And then I saw this photo:
 - Jeanne Margaret and Mary Ellen Gerard – ’21
Gerard! Mary Ellen Inez Parker Gerard! Could these be her children? Must search harder for her! And bingo! In 1920, there’s this census record:
 - Henry Gerard – 1920 in Los Angeles
Henry and Inez Gerard, living on Gardner Street in Los Angeles with children Jeanne and Mary Ellen, aged 4 and 1¼ years old. Those are the two girls from the photo. And Inez matches up with the daughter of John Parker.
And the most likely reason my great grandparents would be visiting the Gerard family that matches up with this trail is because they are related.
This is just the beginning. I’ll have a lot of hard work to prove all of this. That record for James Parker may be incorrect. James may be a cousin of my great great grandmother Mary Parker and not her oldest brother. James himself may disappear from available records. But my great grandparents did not visit the Gerard family randomly.
This is why family genealogists should research the descendants of their ancestors. The descendants provided the link that may lead to valuable information about James Parker and ultimately my third great grandparents, Patrick and Mary Parker. had I not gone down the tree , James Parker may have remained among the disappeared. Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there. Tags: genealogy, gerard, parker
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I think I’ve found the correct passenger manifest which shows my great great grandfather Anton Weiss arriving in America.
Anton applied for a passport in 1886 stating that he emigrated from Bremen on 4 Mar 1852, however he forgot the ship’s name.
On 9 Apr 1852 the Agnes arrived in New York from Bremen with an Anton Weiss aboard. He’s 24 years old, from Prussia, and his occupation is mechanic. That’s doesn’t exactly match what I know about Anton Weiss, but it’s reasonably close. Anton was actually 25, from Bavaria, and worked as a tinsmith in the first references to his occupation in the U.S. Anton turned 25 on 27 Feb 1852. He could easily have been 24 when he first registered with the Bremen emigration bureau.
 - Anton Weiss on the Agnes passenger manifest
What clued me in to the manifest is an entry in the United States Germans to America Index, 1850-1897 for Anton Weiss. That lists a 24 year old Bavarian named Anton Weiss, occupation coppersmith, arriving in New York on the Agnes on 9 Apr 1852. I don’t know why this database lists him as Bavarian rather than Prussian or gives his occupation as coppersmith instead of mechanic. This entry matches what I know about Anton Weiss pretty closely.
Coppersmith, tinsmith, and mechanic would have been very similar occupations in the 1850s. That discrepancy doesn’t bother me.
The discrepancy that bothers me is the scanned microfilm image gives his origin as Prussian. Bavaria and Prussia were were not interchangeable countries in 1852. Indeed, several other passengers have their origin listed as Hesse, Hanover, and Germany. So where the Germans to America Index gets Bavaria, I don’t know. Stuff to research! Tags: genealogy
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I’ve been re-researching my primary ancestry for a few months. I hadn’t realized that Ancestry.com had the Swedish church books until this fall. The husförhör, or household examination, books are amazing treasure troves of information. Every year the clergy would record the residents of every household in their parish, their birthdates, their marriages, their deaths, and their catechism. It’s better than a census, because people were recorded every year.
I’ve known my Swedish family tree since I started. My starting documents were pages of pedigree charts documenting the family back to the 1400s and even the 1300s in some cases. But these aren’t primary documents, obviously, but they do provide a good outline that makes it easy to find people in the church books, which are primary documents. I’ve also had the use of an index to the church documents that was made by the Piteå genealogical society. It only covers the Piteå river valley, but it’s not like my forebears were moving a lot like their American descendants.
Today I was looking at my third great grandfather, Peter Anton Nordvall. He was born 5 Aug 1841 in Håkansön to Jonas Persson Nordvall and Christina Isaksdotter. I easily found him in the birth register, the death register, and the marriage register. And I’d previously found his brother Per Magnus Nordvall, born 7 years before him. Per only lived about 8 months.
But the husförhör showed something I didn’t know. Peter had an older half-brother named Johan Erik. He never showed up in my searches of the index because he didn’t have the Nordvall last name. I’d searched for children of Jonas Nordvall and Christina Isaksdotter using various spellings of their names. But since his father wasn’t Jonas, I never found him under any combination.
The husförhör has a Johan Erik in the household, and it gives his date of birth. From that, it was easy to find his birth record. He was born in 1830 to Christina Isacsdotter, three years before Christina married Jonas. He went by the name Johan Erik Eriksson in later records, which probably means his father was named Erik. The birth record doesn’t name the father though, which means I am going to have a much harder time figuring out who he is.
And now I have a whole new branch to research. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: genealogy, nordvall
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As I’ve been progressing with my genealogy work, I’ve been trying to improve my skills.
The Board for Certification of Genealogists pushes the Genealogical Proof Standard. As a hobbyist, I’m not beholden to this standard, thank god. I don’t particularly care if the distant parts of my tree are rigorously proved or not. At least not at this time. However, I would like to have pretty solid evidence, particularly for the activities of my direct ancestors.
One of the things a genealogist is supposed to do is write a research plan for investigating each claim. I’m experimenting with writing them for the less easy to document claims. I don’t think I’ll bother when researching items like my dad’s death. I have his obituary and his death certificate. But for something like my grandfather’s birth, I decided to write one. He was born on 5 February 1904 in Merrill, Wisconsin. But all the evidence I have for that is secondary and non-contemporaneous. What I do have is all consistent, so I would be highly surprised if original, primary, direct evidence contradicts the indirect and secondary evidence. I am unlikely to find original sources at this point, but there may be suitable derivative.
You can read my plan for investigating George Archibald Weiss’s birth.
The basic idea is to list the relevant known information, decide on a hypothesis, list possible sources of additional information, and create a strategy for investigating those sources. I don’t think there are birth certificates for 1904 from Lincoln County, but there are for sure better pieces of evidence than I’ve already collected. For instance, the counties returned lists of births to the state. That list is what’s indexed in the Wisconsin Genealogy Index mentioned in the plan. Print-outs of the microfilm from that return can be purchased. And I can look to see if the local papers mentioned a new Weiss kid in February or March of 1904. Read the plan to see.
I don’t know how well the plans I have written fit with what professionals do. The stuff I have seen on blogs here and there is pretty rudimentary. The one professional plan I’ve seen is an example by Elizabeth Shown Mills, who is the pedantic genealogist’s goddess. It’s involved, but was created for publication as well. She may not be quite as detailed and verbose for simpler research. Anyway, if I have really tricky items, or I want to publish, then perhaps I will make these more involved.
For now, the few claims I’ve tried for this (I’ve got a total of 6) have resulted in me at least thinking of additional places to research, and in building a better task list than I previously had.
Oh yeah, I’m experimenting with a new way of managing tasks too. I couldn’t find any decent tools for managing my genealogy tasks, so I’m doing a bit to roll my own. If anyone has an old copy of Microsoft Project or similar project management tool they’d be willing to sell me, I may use that for this tool. I tried OpenProj and ProjectLibre, which are clones of MS Project, and they are not up to the task. A future post will detail what I’m doing with regard to this. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: genealogy, weiss
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I think I now have a complete set of census records for my great great grandfather, Nels Hansen Sorenson. He’s part of my grandmother’s branch of the family; she was estranged from the family so everything I know I have to reconstruct from records.
Her grandfather Niels was born in Langelands Denmark to an unmarried couple, Johan Sørensen and Marthe Kirstine Nielsen. A couple years later Marthe had another child out of wedlock, though she eventually married that man.
Perhaps because he was illegitimate or perhaps because his parents were poor, but Nels was not raised by his parents. He is with his mother in the 1855 Denmark Census in Bøstrup when he is about 6 months old. But in 1860 he’s living with his grandmother in Skrøbelev, and 1870 he’s a servant/farmboy for another person in the same parish who at this point I do not know if is related.
 - Skrøbelev Kirke (CC Arne Alexander Fræer Eckmann)
In 1880, Nels is still in Langelands in Illebølle but he’s married to my great great grandmother. In 1883 they would emigrate to Madison Wisconsin, where he Americanized his name to Nels Sorenson. In the 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 United States Censuses, he’s living at 1118 E Gorham Street in Madison. I’ve also got the 1905 Wisconsin State Census for him as well. He died in 1931.
 - 1118 E Gorham St, Madison (Google Street View)
Assembling the Danish Census images was tough because it’s poorly indexed. I looked through them digital image by digital image. Luckily, the places he lived on Langelands are not particularly populated places. I think I only had to look through about 500 pages. Despite the use of patronymics, the name Niels Hansen Sorensen is pretty uncommon on Langelands. I’m not 100% certain the 1870 census I found is him though. The age, location, and birth place match with what he reported on other censuses, but I still don’t have a conclusive way to tie them together.
I am also missing the 1885 and 1895 Wisconsin Censuses for him. Those are theoretically well indexed, but he’s not in the indexes and Madison/Dane County are big places to search image by image. As those censuses include only the name of the head of household, I can’t search for other family members hoping that Nels himself was mis-transcribed. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: genealogy, nielsen, sorenson, sørensen
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I love it when I find something that other researchers on Ancestry haven’t.
Spent the last couple days tracing my maternal 2nd great grandmother, Elizabeth (Holler) Hathaway. From the Hathaways of America book, I knew her birth place and date, date of marriage, and date and place of death (Seattle). Plugged those into Ancestry and started digging.
Using Ancestry’s tools I was able to easily find her census records for 1860, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. For some reason, Ancestry doesn’t have her date of marriage, though it is in Wisconsin marriage registry that Ancestry has indexed. No matter though, I have other sources for that.
There are 8 other people who have her in their public trees on Ancestry. All of them have pretty much the same information I have above. But missing was the 1870 census. In the 1880 census she had a sister Nancy who was born in Illinois about 1865. There were also three nieces/nephews living with the family with last names of Curry.
I looked at older sister Susannah to see if I could find a marriage between her and anyone named Curry, but didn’t find anything promising. Then I looked at older sister Mary. There were some records of a Mary Ann Holler marrying an Isaac Newton Curry in 1869 in Shelby County, Illinois. So I jumped over to FamilySearch and looked at the 1865 Illinois census and found a George Holler living in Ash Grove Township in Shelby County. But that census is one of those where only the head of household is recorded, so I don’t know for certain if it’s the correct George Holler.
Jumped back to Ancestry and pulled up the 1870 Census for Ash Grove, and start paging through images, 38 in all. On sheet 30, I found a George Holler living with Mrs Holler, George Jr, John F., Mary A., Elizabeth, Matilda, and Nancy. The names match up with the Holler family in the 1860 and 1880 censuses. I suspect Ancestry couldn’t find it because the first name of George’s wife wasn’t recorded and the family name was speller Haller . Seems like the Soundex matching doesn’t match Haller and Holler. (This census record conflicts with Mary being the spouse of Isaac Curry, but it definitely is the right family.)
Now I have as complete of a census record as I’m going to get for my great great grandmother. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: curry, genealogy, hathaway, holler
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I’m making an effort to update all my citations to something more comprehensive than my previous notes. They’re sufficient for me to find items, but probably not enough for other people. My current dilemma is how to cite obituaries listed in America’s Obituaries that’s part of the GenealogyBank service available through the Seattle Public Library. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything directly on point in Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained .
When a service has scanned images of a newspaper, I’ve been citing the article at the newspaper, available at the service. For example, article X from the Capital Times, date D, page Y, accessed at NewspaperArchive.com at URL, blah blah blah. GenealogyBank offers a similar service.
But the America’s Obituaries database is transcriptions rather than images, with a citation to the newspaper and day of publication. It does not always include the page number. As best I can tell, I should be citing the America’s Obituaries database with a notation that they cite a source. That’s because in this case I don’t trust the service to provide a 100% accurate transcription. There are other obituary aggregation services that I’m even less sure of.
There are additional complications. The database is made available through the Seattle Public Library. The database name is sometimes different when offered through other providers. For instance, if I bought a subscription to GenealogyBank on my own, they call it simply Newspaper Obituaries . And possibly the content of the database is different when accessed through different portals. So do I cite GenealogyBank or the Seattle Public Library. I should probably have both there somewhere, but I can’t find anything in EE that addresses this. It talks about citing the publisher of the database, but not the portal.
The following is what I have for an obit that cites a specific page, but I haven’t quite figured out how shoehorn the Seattle Public Library in there, though it sorta shows up in the URL.
America’s Obituaries, online database, GenealogyBank (http://infoweb.newsbank.com.ezproxy.spl.org:2048/gbnl/obituaries/ : accessed 3 Aug 2012), “Edward bender”, obituary, 7 Apr 2000; citing The Bismarck Tribune (Bismarck, North Dakota), 7 Apr 2000, page 13A. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: genealogy
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My step-father grew up in Emmons county, North Dakota. His grandmother was Katherine Feist from Strasburg. I’ve vaguely known that Strasburg was also the home of Lawrence Welk, but I hadn’t really thought about it that much. Today I ran across a map from 1916 that shows where her farm was. It’s marked in red in the map. Each big square on the map is one mile on each side. The Feist farm is a half-mile square.
About a mile and a half to the west is one farm owned by Ludwig Welk, Lawrence Wel’s father. And about 3 miles to the north is another owned by the Welks. Both are marked in green. The Lawrence Welk birthplace is just north of Strasburg, which is not either of the two properties.
I couldn’t tell you which of them actually had the family homes, nor do I know the exact time frame for the map. It was published in 1916, when Lawrence Welk was 10, and Katie Feist had married and moved away 2 years before. But another page of the atlas has a different relative owning property that I’m told he lost in 1911 or 1912, so there was quite possibly a few years lag from when the people listed as owning the farms actually owned them. The 1900 census has the Feists in Strasburg, but by the 1910 census they are in a township called Marie, which is quite a way away. So it appears the maps are quite a bit out of date when published in 1916.
Anyhow, for a couple of years, they were fairly close.
 crossposted from King Rat. Tags: feist, genealogy, welk
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 - Joseph Weiss as a child
My great grandfather Joseph Peter Weiss was born on the 4th of July 1866 in Cassville, Wisconsin to Anton Weiss, a hardware dealer, and Anna Clara Voigt. Joseph moved to Merrill Wisconsin as a young man to operate a hardware business with his older brother Robert. In the mid-1890s Robert left Merrill and chased gold rushes across the west, leaving the business to Joe, who continued to operate it until 1908. In that year, he moved to Madison and became a hardware dealer in partnership with another older brother, Theodore, until he retired.
 - Joseph Weiss - early twenties
In November 1891, Joe returned to the Cassville area to marry Frankie Ryan in Patch Grove. The husband and wife returned to Merrill to start their family. They had six children: Florence Marie, Joseph William, Helen Catherine, Richard Glenn, George Archibald, and Laura Ann Frances. All were born in the Merrill area, though Frances’ birth came just months before the move to Madison.
In Madison, Joe purchased a house at 740 Jenifer Street, a mere 8 blocks from the Capitol building and 1 block from Lake Monona. He lived there 52 years. He died on the 7th of November 1960 aged 94 years, and was survived by his wife and 5 of his children. His remains buried in Resurrection Cemetery in Madison. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: genealogy, ryan, weiss
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I was looking for a genealogist the other day to do some in-person research I can’t do. The web site for one of the genealogist search places was down, so I looked at the site affiliated with Ancestry.com. They charge $1900 for 25 to 30 hours of research. Basic research. I joked on G+ that people should hire me because I’m much cheaper.
But really, people should should hire me. I’m pretty decent at this. And cheaper.
For example:
I was going up to Calvary Cemetery to get some photos of graves of relatives, so I decided to fill some of the photo requests for the cemetery. Today I traipsed around for 30+ minutes trying to find a request for a husband and wife. The plot is in the largest section in the cemetery, and not one I’m familiar with. Eventually found the plot but the graves are unmarked. Left a message for the woman asking if she wanted the photos I took of the unmarked plot. She responded a bit ago saying she did, and also if I came across an Amalie Stevens would I get a photo of her grave?
I leaped into action. The information I was given was that Amalie Bouchard Stevens was the wife of James Stevens, birth name Stefanski, and that she probably died between 1930 and 1942 in Seattle.
First I searched for her name in the Seattle Times archive. However, when an obituary was in the classified, the OCR is really bad and usually doesn’t find it. Next I looked up James Stevens, Amalia Stevens and James Stefanski on the Washington Digital Archives. I found the marriage certificate for James Stefanski and Emilia Bouchard. No information to go on unfortunately. Some marriage certificates have ages and places of birth.
Then decided to look at the online burial records for Calvary Cemetery. I didn’t look there first because I figured the requester had already looked. But there was an Amelia Stevens buried there, and her grave was located in a section I photographed last night. It gave her date of death in 1949. Went back to the Seattle Times archive and found a funeral notice in the classifieds. No next of kin was listed, so I wasn’t sure if it was the right one. And then I looked at my photos from the section, and realized she was buried right next to a Helen Bush who had a maiden name of Stevens. Also, the same person had requested a photo of her grave. So yep, that’s probably Amalie Bouchard Stevens.
 - Amelia Stevens 1891-1949
All figured out in the space of 15 minutes.
I’m not a pro-level genealogist, and some of this went smoothly because I took 700+ photos in two days for the fun of it, and some of it because the person happened to have records available online. But still, 15 minutes. crossposted from King Rat. Tags: genealogy
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