My Trails into the Past

For the 52 Ancestors theme for week 42, we are to compare our life to an ancestor’s. I have worked all my life, first as a babysitter to neighborhood children, then in the library at Cal State University, Hayward (now East Bay), a year at Alameda Sporting Goods as a clerk/computer operator, and then at the Bay Area Rapid Transit District first as a train operator and then as a train operator instructor (official title was Employee Development Specialist). I retired in 2010 after 32 years. My mother did not work outside the home. She raised six children while my dad worked in various grocery stores as a produce clerk. However, both my grandmothers worked outside the home. My paternal grandmother, Nana, worked because she had to. She left her husband and raised her four children alone. She worked in restaurants, and then in education, first in Napa at a one-room schoolhouse, and later in Concord, California, at Williams School. Because her credential was earned in Montana from a norm...

The last post was about John H. Sullivan (1854-1932). His parents were Jerry and Mary Sullivan. I wrote about the proof for my BCG certification portfolio. His death certificate named his father as John Sullivan. However, through researching his brother, Michael J. Sullivan, I found documentation that helped prove Jerry was John’s father. H ere is what I know about Jerry. His birth date is a bit fuzzy, not uncommon for illiterate Irish immigrants. His tombstone gives the date of death of 6 November 1888, with his age of 77 years, which subtracts to 1811. [1] However, his age ranged all over the place in records he created or were created for him during his life in the United States. I’ll create a table showing the birth years at the end of this piece. 1870 Census in Michigan The first record of Jerry found was the 1870 census, where the family was living in Franklin Township in Houghton County, Michigan, along with his proposed wife and four children. He was a miner with personal prop...

This has been a hard post to write in that I could not think of anything specific to write about. I’m sure many of my ancestors had the courage to make the journeys they did to come to the United States and later make the moves further west each generation. It takes a lot of courage to leave the place you know to go to a place that is unknown. I do not know the reasons they moved. No record has been passed down either by journal or letter, so we can only guess at the reasons they may have made the journeys. Things were bad at home and another place looked better. Or the place at home was too crowded and the land further west offered new hope. Perhaps someone else moved first and wrote back saying, come! There is one person I know who must have had some courage. First to leave her husband, and then to move across the state to a new place to live. This was my paternal grandmother. She was probably thinking about her four children: three daughters and one son. Like a mother hen, she w...

Outside activities included phenology, train club meeting, dinner with daughter, and getting covid and flu shots. Genealogy Genealogy Volunteer/Work: This week, I volunteered at the History Center twice. John and I checked all the boxes from Betty’s donation for any photos we missed. On Tuesday, I answered some queries and entered more books into the library database. I volunteered at the FamilySearch Center in Oakland. I haven’t helped anyone in ages, as most who come in the evenings are regulars. I also got the press release out for this month’s BCG webinar. Genealogy Meetings:  Jacqueline and I met twice, Monday and Friday, and Friday will be our new day. We made plans for her trip down to SF in November to see Rachel Maddow speak. I attended the Labor SIG and the Renewal CDG group session where Carol shared her renewal journey. Genealogy Writing/Research : This week I worked on my great-grandfather, John H. Sullivan’s line. I also did some Hutson work at the Oakland ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1)  What geographic and community places matter to you?  2)  Pick one place (building, village, town, city, county, state/province) and describe your connection to it and why it matters. Here's mine: I could not think of an ancestral place that matters to me. My families were always on the move and didn’t stay in one spot more than a generation or two. However, I have a spot that matters to me. It’s the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. This structure with Corinthian columns, arches, sculptures, and the Greco-Roman rotunda, was created for the 1915 World’s Fair. California architect Bernard Maybeck designed it. It was supposed to be torn down after the fair like the other buildings but is the only structure from the fair that survives. Because it was meant to be temporary, it became in disrepair. In 1964 ...

John H. and Anna (Gleeson) Sullivan lived in South Dakota (previously Dakota Territory) from about 1880 to 1889-1890. They lived in Deer Lodge County, Montana, to the late 1920s. Not a lot came up in FamilySearch full-text search for "John H Sullivan" except for several images of trust deeds and mortgages for a piece of property in Anaconda known as lot 5 in block 18. The same lot in Anaconda was mortgaged multiple times. I did not locate the original deed from the grantor. Below is a map showing block 18 and lot 5. They lived on Commercial Avenue during the same time period as the deeds/mortgages. Map of the city of Anaconda, Deer Lodge County, Montana, created by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company engineers, 1944; Montana State Library ,  https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/87665.  Below are the results: 1895 Nov 15. Trust Deed. Between John H Sullivan and Anna Sullivan his wife of Anaconda, Deer Lodge Co, Montana, parties of the first part, and C. K. Palmer, Trustee, ...