My Trails into the Past

FamilySearch has added an AI summary option at their every-word search of deeds and probate records. I heard about it from Mark Thompson and Steve Little’s podcast, “Episode 8.” I decided to try it out. My search of Lancaster deeds in Lewis County, Missouri, brought up a deed of John S. Lancaster as grantor transferring land to Ellis W. Lancaster as grantee. [1] FamilySearch has a full-text transcription, which is not perfect and often has errors due to handwritten words that may be hard to decipher. Their transcription is here: This Indenture made this 16th day of December 1842 by tween John S.  Lancaster  & Mary his wife of Shelby County Kentucky of the one part F Ellis W  Lancaster  of Lewis County Missouri of the other part Witnesseth that the said decd John...

I had worked on my Hork research first, finding great German Catholic church records in Westphalia that took me back several generations. I thought, cool, Catholic church records really are great. I learned full names, birth and baptism dates, and parents' and sponsors' names. Then it was time to move to my Irish families in County Cork and County Tipperary, and German families who lived in Posen, an area of Poland. They were Catholics, too, so I was looking forward to seeing the same kind of records with lots of information. Not! Irish Research Jeremiah Sullivan and Mary Sheehan brought their family to the United States sometime in the mid-sixties depending on who reported their arrival. [1] A ship list has not been found for them. It is possible that the family did not come together. They had nine known children, born between 1843 and 1869, the last child, Michael, was born in Michigan. Jeremiah was a miner and perhaps the family managed to live through the potato famine w...

I have completed two hundred and twenty-eight (228) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Our daughter and her boyfriend came from NYC and we ate indoors at four restaurants. I also went to the History Center and picked up my eyeglasses. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   I met up with Jacqueline on Monday and we discussed citations. I also met with Stewart and Jacqueline on Wednesday and we spent the time catching up. I attended the CCCGS SIG on Monday and told them about the research trips to Texas and Joliet. Lastly, our RootsMagic SIG was on Wednesday and we discussed adding events and printouts. Genealogy Writing/Research: For my 52 Ancestors post this week, I found the rosters of my uncle’s two ships he served on during WWII and created a spreadsheet to keep track of them. I could order the ship logs from the National Archives next. Blog Post Published: My Uncle Wally Waldron Served in the Navy in San Francisco Bay . For 52 Ancestors’ theme of “Boats” I wrote a...

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)  How many "Wills" for your grandparents' or great-grandparents' surnames are on the FamilySearch Full Text Search feature (see  https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text )?   2)  List the surnames and how many entries there are when you do an exact name search.  What does this tell you?  Have you found Wills for all of your ancestors with these names? 3)   Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, or on this post. NOTE:  FamilySearch has been adding more data to the Wills collections.  Here’s mine: I followed Randy’s example as shown here: *  On the Full-Text Search page ( https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text ), I put my "Seaver" surname in quotes (to make it exact). * ...

Wallace William Waldron, my dad’s sister, Lorene E. Hork’s future husband, served in the United States Navy during World War II. Wally was born in Vallejo in 1922 but grew up in San Francisco where he graduated from Lowell High School in 1939. In 1940, he worked as a messenger until he enlisted in the Navy on 11 October 1940. From the database on Ancestry of World War II muster rolls, I discovered he served on two ships. [1] USS Argus (PY-14) [2] The USS Argus was commissioned on 13 February 1941. It started as a yacht built by Krupp Germaniawerft (Kiel, Germany) for Max C. Fleischmann of Santa Barbara (the same Fleischman family of the yeast company in Cincinnati) in 1927 and named Haida . The Navy had the Craig Shipbuilding Company in Long Beach convert it for Naval Service. The Argus’ duties were to patrol the San Francisco Bay which she did for the 12 Naval District. In September of 1941, she was transferred to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and renamed Pioneer . T...

I have completed two hundred and twenty-eight (228) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. I went to the History Center (twice), hike (outdoors), Oakland FamilySearch Center, and phenology (outdoors). Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   I met with Jacqueline. We worked on flights from Eugene to Salt Lake City. We’re both going on the CGS research trip to the FamilySearch Library in September. On Wednesday, I got back from my weekly hike in time to see Deb Dean give her certification journey. We had met when I was in Joliet last month. Genealogy Writing/Research: I worked on my Polly line more at the FamilySearch Center getting links from locked films. I finally transcribed all the newspaper articles I have found at the Portal to Texas History. I wrote about my progress on the timeline in a blog post this week. Blog Post Published: Automobiles My Parents Owned . For 52 Ancestors’ theme of “Automobiles” I wrote about the variety of cars my parents owned. I had photos of ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's  Saturday Night  again -  Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings tonight is to:  1)  Do you collect maps of the places where you have ancestors or family?  I do!  I love maps.  And have so many places! 2) Tell us about a recent map find for your genealogy and family history (it could be any time), and where you found it.  Here’s mine: Funny how this subject came up today. I just wrote a post about my progress in researching my ancestor, NHO Polly. Part of what I need to do in analyzing the other Polly men in Lewis County, Kentucky where I first find NHO Polly, I need to study some maps. Some Polly men lived on the Cabin Creek watershed and NHO Polly lived on the Kinniconick Creek watershed. One question would be: how close where these two creeks? It hasn’t been easy locating contemporary maps. These men lived there in 1840. I can ...

Since before my research trip to Texas last May, I have been working on my mother’s family line involving N.H.O. Polly. He is her third great-grandfather. His daughter, Martha Jane, married George W. Lancaster. Part of the goal of the research trip was to locate more documents about him at local historical societies and archives.  Timeline Family trees online name NHO’s parents, but I am not yet convinced. So, what I am doing is writing up what I know into a report. I am also creating a timeline of the events in his life and the source citations to those documents. This timeline is mostly of deed transactions, tax lists, census enumerations, and court records. I have added some historical events to put the times into context, such as the start and end of the Civil War, the formation of new counties, and the births and marriages of his children. Adding the source citations has been tedious. Some of the documents were found years ago on microfilm at the Family History Library in Sa...