Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Ellen's Questions - Part I

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

 It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has a new assignment for us: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted 20 questions on her blog this week - see Even More Questions About Your Ancestors and Maybe A Few About You (posted 27 June).

2)  We will do these five at a time - Questions 1 to 5 tonight.

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.

Here are my answers:

1.  Which ancestor had the most children? It can be a couple or a single person.

I only checked my direct lines. The person with the most is highlighted in blue.

My paternal side:

• Vincent Siewert & Susanna Raduntz had eleven children
• Johan Anton Hork & Julia Ann Sievert had ten children
• His parents, Joseph Heinrich Horoch & Maria Catharina Trösster had ten children
• John Gleeson & Margaret Tierney had ten children
• Her parents, John Tierney & Ann Murray had eleven children

My maternal side:

• Rueben Mack Johnston & Olivia Jane Jones had thirteen children, and he had four more children with Catharine Skull, making a total of seventeen.
• Thomas Selman & Jemima Greenlee had eleven children
• His parents Benjamin L Selman & Ann Powell had ten children
• Nathaniel Lancaster & Hope Walker had twelve children
• James Madison Coor & Melissa Ann Welch had ten children
• Dempsey Welch & Elizabeth Rebecca Young had perhaps sixteen children, though I have no dates or documentation for eight of them.
• Ebenezer Loveless & Eliza A Rodgers had eleven children
• His parents, Jesse Loveless & Elizabeth Nixon had ten children
• Jesse’s parents, James Loveless & Linna Hughes had twelve children

2.  How many years have you been working on your genealogy/family history?

I cannot remember the date or year I started, but it was in the early 1990s, when I spent the day at Sutro Library in San Francisco looking at the 1920, 1910, and 1900 censuses for my Hork family in Montana. Previously I had filled out the family tree chart in my children’s baby books in 1988 and 1991, but I was just adding what I already knew.

3.  Do you collaborate with other genealogists on your family history?

I think more collaboration was done in the early days when email lists and query sites were set up. This was before digital images were available on Ancestry and FamilySearch. Websites like USGENWeb and Rootsweb had people uploading lots of databases. We helped each other by asking questions or answering them. I wished I had saved those emails better. I have lost track of how I obtained the information in those early days.

4.  Have you hired a professional genealogist to work on your family history? Even if it was just a small branch of the family.

I have only hired a professional researcher to do record pulls at libraries, archives, or record offices. At this time, I prefer to do my own research. However, I have been hired to work on other people’s family history. It’s the best way to learn about other localities besides where your family resided.

5.  If you have family heirlooms what’s your plan for their future?

I do have some heirlooms and am in the planning and execution stage of creating an archive. There will be a finding aid to go with it so other family members or possible archive will know about the item. It is just a few items so far, though my husband has a few pieces of furniture from his family. Though I have some of my grandmother’s kitchen items, will anyone really care to keep the old cast iron frying pans?

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.