Friday, November 25, 2011

A new article is published!

I was excited  to have the current issue (Winter 2011) of the Ypsilanti Gleanings arrive by mail today with my latest article, "The Second Wife" published in it. This publication is the newsletter for the Ypsilanti Historical Society in, of course, Ypsilanti, Michigan. I wrote the article on my great-great-grandfather, Brooks Bowman Hazelton, and his second marriage to Katherine J. "Kate" Schaff. It mostly deals with the will he left upon his death and the consequences of that will. I think it is very interesting. I hope you enjoy it. http://www.ypsilantihistoricalsociety.org/publications/gleanings.html
If that issue isn't on their website yet, check back later.

I also hope everyone had a wonderful turkey day yesterday - we were lucky to have both children here, plus my daughter's boyfriend. We had a great day - food, football, dogs (we are now dogsitting for 3 weeks), fun and more food!  What more can you ask for? Everyone is gone now (except the dogs, Scooter and Bella) and it is quiet again. Now to start getting ready for Christmas.

I have my genealogy study group next Wednesday and need to prepare for that. At the first meeting, we set individual goals and at our second meeting, we had an update from everyone.  All did very well and accomplished pretty much what they set out to accomplish. We also talked about getting organized and/or organizing the information we have already gathered. Everyone is at a different place with their research so we covered a few different topics and had good suggestions for us all to follow. We started planning a field trip for our February meeting to the Mesa Family History Library in Mesa, Arizona. It is either the second or third largest genealogy library after Salt Lake City, and we are fortunate to have it only about 45 minutes from here. Some of the group have never been. We started talking about what we need to do to prepare - each of us personally - for the trip. I suggested everyone pick a research topic/person to focus on during their time in the library. We had a demonstration on how to check on  microfilms and books connected to their topic. We will start with a tour, organized by one of our members, to familize ourselves with what the library has to offer.

I am excited about the group and we seem to have some determined members and everyone is excited to learn and fun to work with.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Sunday morning meanderings

After my days-long research to put the story of Mickey together, I took a break. I now want to write about a few miscellaneous things:

From the seminar I attended a week ago, here are websites one doesn't normally check out. I have had very little time to try many of them myself.  Of course, coming into the holidays doesn't make it easy for anyone. First, don't forget to consider researching other topics rather than just surnames: geographic location, ethnicity, religious belief and occupation. Visit the website of the local city or county public library of the area you are researching. Visit the state library of the state you are researching (city directories, if available, can be a huge resource). Then head to the state archives in that state. Check out the many state, county, and city/town historical societies in your area of interest.Then, visit the USGenWeb site (including the archives area) for the county and possibly the city/town (www.USGENWeb.org)

Try the following: worldcat.org; NUCMC (loc.gov/coll/nucmc); linkpendium.com; NARA (archives.gov); and even the National Park Service (NPS) for history and culture (nps.gov/history/history/). Here is the link to the Library of Contress and other Federal Government Documents: 
www.lcweb.loc.gov/rr/news/extgovd.html

There were many more mentioned, but this will get you started, and if you are like me - they will lead you to other sites.

Next, in tracking down another story in the family, I was trying to find out the names of the families that lived around my Beckington grandparents in rural Saline, Michigan. Unfortunately, they didn't move there until after 1930. As we all know, the 1940 census will be out next April, so I have to wait for that. The next logical step would be city directories. Unfortunately, these are not always available for smaller towns. I checked with the Saline Library and the local Family History Center in Saline. I am interested in 1935-45. The Ann Arbor Library has city directories and the librarian I talked to was gracious enough to check a 1941 directory and found it did contain Saline residents. I need to get someone to visit the Ann Arbor Library to see if the directories they do have include Saline, and if the information I need is there. If they don't have it, I will next call the Michigan State Archives in Lansing. I will keep you posted.

There always seems to be a "mystery" to solve!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Who was Mickey? - Part II

Back to our Mickey story:  (Part I ran last Friday)

 We have been able to establish Mickey's name/birth and death dates, place of burial and certainly know who his mother was. Who was his father? We will probably never know. His mother was 16 1/2 years old when Mickey was conceived. Family rumors abound. Garth married Dorothy when she had a child, he cared for Mickey very much, and he wanted more children. Dorothy did not. Was it the trauma from the conception, or the birth of Mickey that was the impetus for those feelings? After talking with an older cousin, the best we can assume is that Garth and Dorothy might have met “out on the town” in Ann Arbor. Dorothy and Mickey were living with her mother and step-father when they met. When they married on June 6, 1942, Garth was 32 and Dorothy was 23. His family thought that Garth would be a bachelor the rest of his life. Garth served in WWII. I am not sure of his dates of service and whether he was on furlough when they met or married.

 Dorothy's parents were divorced before she was 10. On the 1930 census for Ann Arbor, Michigan, her mother Alice is married and living with her second husband, William A. Gross; Dorothy and Iris are listed as his step-daughters. I can find no living children for William, from his earlier marriage to Alberta Lein, in 1911. I did find a death certificate from their child, Evelyn Gross. She died at three months of age from pneumonia. She was born eight months after they married. Alberta was 18 and William was 19. They were still together, with no children listed, on the 1920 census for Berrien County, Michigan.

Also living with the Gross family on the 1930 census is a brother of Alice's; Henry, age 24. In searching further for Alice's parents, Theodore and Mary (or Marie) Sovey Marenger, I found they too were divorced when their children were young. I don’t know what happened to Theodore, but Mary remarried three more times: first to Albert King, a man 14 years her senior; then to Michael Shea who was also about 15 years her senior. The Sheas had either two or three boys. After Michael died in 1923, she married a fourth time to a Joseph Yesavich. Joseph died in 1960 and Mary in 1966 in Escanaba. Alice and her siblings, Henry, Marie and Regina spent most of their childhood in Escanaba, Michigan. I did find Marie married Pierce Sweig in 1918 and it appears they had a son, Leonard, in 1921 and a daughter, Carmen, in 1920. I couldn’t find anything further on Henry or Regina. I couldn’t find anything on Carmen after 1920. Leonard (if I found the correct one), died in Florida in 1984. I tried following some of the other family members, but didn’t have a great deal of success.

My conclusions: I am pleased that I found more information on Mickey. I can’t really put a face to him or a personality, because so far no one remembers much about him. One cousin said that Dorothy dressed him like a “little man” (note the picture next to this blog) and that he was very well behaved. I do not know who his father was. Was it a case of rape? Incest? Or was it a stranger? Was it just “getting caught” with a young boyfriend? Did she have a choice of keeping the baby or giving him up for adoption? I hope she kept him because she wanted and loved him. I hope both Dorothy and Garth enjoyed their years with him. I hope he was a happy little boy.

This is Michael R. Bruner, born on September 24, 1936, and who died on August 28, 1946, of that terrible disease, Polio. I did learn from a cousin that they had placed him in an “iron lung” during his last day. Rest in Peace, Mickey.

Seminar


I know, for most of you, rain is not unusual. But, in Phoenix; it is. And it feels good to see it raining and it smells wonderful this morning. Of course, that was originally written on Sunday morning. It has been sunny and 70 ever since. Not complaining.

I attended a wonderful seminar on Saturday. Mr. Witcher (see Thursday's blog for details) is indeed motivating. He is an excellent speaker. He told us about federal/state/county records which are not normally included in an initial genealogical search. They aren't in MY normal searches, or haven't been until now. I am anxious to spend some time online checking out what I can find. We need to learn to include WorldCat.org and loc.gov/coll/nucmc (Nucmc) and the Library of Congress - loc.gov/index/html, in our routine searches, just to name a few. Another theme he emphasized was to make sure we look at not only surnames when doing a search, but place, ethnicity, religion and occupation. The number of federal papers and state, county and city level papers that are not normally considered by genealogists is enormous. And information in them, including possibly about our ancestors, might be just what we are looking for.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Who was Mickey?

I have spent many hours thinking about exactly what I want from this blog. Or what I want others to gain from it. I have stated previously that I think we all should be writing our family stories. I am doing that. One of the things I have decided to do on this blog, is not necessarily write or publish the story here, but to record some of the steps I took to find facts for the story and discuss what other steps need to be taken in order to find as much information as I can to write the story. Maybe I will even get comments from others about areas I haven't investigated and need to think about.

So, "Who was Mickey?"  He was a child born to Dorothy Marie Bruner, before her marriage to my Uncle Garth Beckington (see Garth's story as one of Garth and Edna Beckington's children in a previous post). Mickey was born out-of-wedlock. No one knows much about him and, certainly, no one knows for sure who his father was. His name was Michael Bruner. In talking with a few cousins and my sister, to get what information I could, the name was always Mickey.  No one knew that Michael was his actual name and there was no middle name. They did not know his birth or death dates or where he was buried. The initial facts were: his name was Mickey, he had died of polio, he was about 11 years old and died somewhere between 1946-49.

First, I researched his mother and her family, Dorothy Marie Bruner. Dorothy was the daughter of Roy H. Bruner and his wife, Alice Marenger. Roy and Alice married on August 14, 1915 in Escanaba, Michigan, in Delta County. This is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  In other words, they were "uppers" (pronounced Yuppers - for you non-Michiganders out there - just had to get that in (grin)).  Anyway, Roy and Alice, first had a son, Renold, in 1916, who died on March 18, 1917. Then Iris was born in 1917. I do not know much about Iris. I don't know if she ever married. I have a query out for additional information about her. I will write about it later, if I find anything interesting. She is on the 1920 and 1930 censuses with her parents and sister. I did find an Iris Coultes in the Benton Township, Cheboygan, Michigan area, who died in 1994. Could this be Dorothy's sister? Dorothy was living in that area when she died on July 29, 1996. She and my uncle had been separated for years, but I am not sure they were legally divorced. Roy and Alice eventually divorced. Roy died in l962 and Alice died in 1985.

One cousin had several obituaries that her mother had saved over the years, and included was one for Mickey. She was kind enough to scan and send me a copy. There was no date on the newspaper. Obituaries can be very informative. This one was. It gave his birth date as September 24, 1936. A piece of information I did not know! The headline of the obituary reads: "County's First Polio Fatality in '46 Reported."  He had "bulbar polio, a virulent form attacking the spinal cord." They did not know where he got it as no other cases had shown up in the area. He died at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor. Because of the nature of his illness, friends were requested not to attend his lying in at the funeral home. He was buried at St. Thomas Cemetery in Ann Arbor. Dorothy may have been Catholic, the Beckingtons are not. I was able to take this information and call the office for the cemetery in Ann Arbor. A kind gentleman called me back with further information I did not have. Michael was buried as "Son, Michael R. Bruner" and in addition to the birth date, his death date was given as August 28, 1946. A single grave site was purchased, so he is not buried with any other family members. Also, according to the obit, Mickey was a student at the Bach School in Ann Arbor and was in a Cub Scout troop. His parents had moved from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti about six months previous. He probably hadn't started school in Ypsilanti since moving. They lived at 413 W. Forest Avenue in Ypsilanti at the time of his death. He had been ill for three days when he died.

Poor little guy: no one knew his name, no one knows his father, no one knew exactly how old he was when he died, and he is buried all by himself. More on this boy later.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Genealogy withdrawal

I spent the last week working on another hobby. Sewing. I don't do it very often, but decided with Christmas coming that I would make some small gifts. So, for the last week I have been cutting, measuring, sewing and ironing.

I now have a case of 'genealogy withdrawal.' I have ignored my blog because I haven't had time. I had a couple of emails asking questions and have dealt with those, and I have a great seminar to attend this Saturday in Phoenix. Curt B. Witcher, Manager of the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, is giving a seminar. This will not only be great fun, especially talking and meeting with other genealogists, but Mr. Witcher is very knowledgeable and I am certain to learn new things and get remotivated to start digging again.

I wrote to a Connecticut genealogist a few weeks ago about getting some help with research on my LANE family in his area. The miserable weather and no power slowed his response back, but he is very busy and can't take on a longterm project right now. I am not sure I really want someone else to do a longterm project for me at this point in time anyway. I just need to visit CT in the summer! The State Library in Hartford, according to this man, has many records that are not filmed or scanned. I need to spend a week (at least) sitting in the library and going through papers/books and files. I read someplace that only about 2% of the records available are filmed or online. We tend to think that if it isn't online or filmed - it must not be there. Not the case at all!

I also need to get back to reading my grandmother, Edna's, letters and continue to work on the book I am writing about their courtship, including memories of them and a bit of family history. I am hoping to share this information with cousins and other relatives, and future generations of BECKINGTONs.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Fun in genealogy

First, I am going to wait to write about Garth and Edna's last child as she is still alive and well, hopefully, for many more years.

I am going to take a break from family dates, names and places. On to another topic - well, the same, but different!

The Art of Genealogy - those of us who are involved in genealogy know it is addicting. What is it about genealogy that IS addicting? I am sure there are as many answers as there are genealogists. ME - I love the "hunt." I am pretty good at searching for people from the past, finding all I can, online at first and then branching out. I have great success with phone calls and letter inquiries to the New England area and Michigan, both are places where most of my ancestors lived. English, Scottish and a little German is about it for ethnicity. I do have a great-grandfather who was adopted and is probably from Ireland.

I start with the usual places when beginning a fresh search: Ancestry.com for censuses and birth/death/marriage records, findagrave.com, USGenWeb, familysearch.org, local historical societies, etc. It is amazing what is now available online, and it grows daily. One needs to keep checking back to any website periodically to see what is new. I love the "detective" work, when one clue leads to another. At least that is the way it is supposed to work. I enjoy that kind of detail work. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I find a key piece of new evidence that helps to link one generation to another, or find another document needed to secure an ancestor in a particular location, time, and with his or her extended family. There is always the moment when one finds something new and previously undiscovered - a "genealogy happy dance" is always acceptable at this point. I will share some of those stories here in the future.

I was taught, by my genealogy mentor and dear friend, Diane Dozier Scannell, of San Antonio, Texas, that the basics are VERY important. Start with yourself and work backwards, one generation at a time, adding the appropriate documentation and sourcing as you go. My failure in this process is the - to me - dreaded sourcing. MY failure, not Diane's, that is for sure. I am getting better, writing it down and documenting it as I go. I am not always successful, as I want to do the actual research! I like paper too. I have friends who scan everything and keep it on the computer. I want it in my hands. Another suggestion from Diane is to make copies of all original documents. Put the originals in a safe place and only carry the copies out of the house with you on research trips. I try, really I do. I use FamilyTreeMaker 2011 as my database. I am comfortable with it and it works for me. It makes good, usable charts. I do not connect to the internet through it. I just don't.

Another fast rule that we have all heard is: not everything on the internet is true. Especially trees and websites by individuals. There are lots of mistakes and you have to be wary. Do they look like they have done a great deal of sourcing and documentation themselves? Or did they just copy from someone else's tree? Can you get in touch of them and ask questions? Do they know the answers to those questions? If you have information different from theirs, can you talk to them about it? We all know that some of the information is just copied from one person's tree to another. We also know that there are people who think if they can "see" it, it is true. Some genealogists are just name/place and date collectors. Some are "purists" and want to verify everything. Some want to put "meat on the bones." I consider myself to be a bit of all those. I want to have the full names, correct dates, etc. I want to have as much evidence to verify these things as I can. And, recently, thanks especially to a new friend here in Phoenix, Susan Krueger, I enjoy writing the stories of my ancestors for posterity. I think it is very important for us to know these people better, and to make sure that future generations know them also. And some of the stories are certainly worth telling and remembering. I have had two of my stories published.

Another thing I wish I had done early on in my research is to have two separate trees on my database. One with JUST documented and sourced people and one with everyone on it, whether verified or not. I have certainly added people that I have not verified myself. I try and note that on my database. These people will most likely be collateral lines and, only if really needed, will the information be confirmed and researched more thoroughly later.

More on this topic next time.  Janet