My Trails into the Past

I have completed two hundred and thirty-seven (237) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside home activities involved my volunteering at the History Center, phenology, attending a Giants baseball game, and flying to Salt Lake City out of Oakland Airport. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings: At our weekly Zoom meeting, Jacqueline and I discussed her research with the McCurdy family in Arkansas. I attended a peer group about BCG renewals and the Monday Morning group on Zoom. Genealogy Writing/Research: The only writing and researching I accomplished this week was preparing to write the two blog posts. Blog Post Published: Homesteading in Minnesota – A Poor Illiterate Irish Miner Gets Land . For the 52 Ancestors’ theme of “Homestead,” I wrote about Jeremiah Sullivan’s homesteading in Todd County, Minnesota. It was highlighted on Friday’s Family History Finds and by Randy Seaver in his "Best of . . ." SNGF: An Ancestor Who Experienced or Did Something Unique or Memor...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings : 1)   Choose an ancestor who experienced or did something unique or memorable (such as an event, family life, trip, etc.).  2)  Share about your ancestor and his/her unique experience and how it may have affected their life in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.  [thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!] Here's mine : My great-grandaunt, Helena Mary Gleeson, was a school teacher, principal, and superintendent of schools in Anaconda, Montana. She was born on 31 October 1867 in Ontario, Canada, to John Gleeson and Margaret Tierney. [1] The family moved to Dakota Territory in 1879. By 1892, she lived in Anaconda, Deer Lodge County, Montana. She and her sister, Elizabeth, performed in Gilbert & Sull...

Jeremiah Sullivan, born in Ireland about 1811, brought his family to the United States sometime in the 1860s. [1] The first place Jeremiah, his wife, Mary, and four of their sons, including the youngest born in Michigan the year before, is found is in Franklin Township in Houghton County, Michigan in 1870. He was a miner who could not read or write. [2] Michigan produced most of the nation’s copper and the copper mining drew miners from all over the world. [3] In 1870, 57 percent of the residents in Houghton County were foreign-born and over two thousand in Franklin Township came from Ireland. [4] It is likely Jeremiah mined copper in both Ireland and Michigan. On 27 March 1873, he applied for a homestead in Todd County, Minnesota at the land office in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The total acreage was 80 acres. He signed his name with a mark, a small, dark, x. [5] What brought him to Minnesota, a distance of 375 miles from his home in Michigan? How did a man who could not read and w...

I have completed two hundred and thirty-six (236) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. Outside home activities involved my volunteering at the History Center, phenology, going to the lab to draw blood, and attending the memorial for my dear friend of over 50 years, Hugh Harvey. Genealogy Genealogy Meetings:   At our weekly Zoom meeting, Jacqueline and I talked about our upcoming research trip to Salt Lake City and possible publishing programs for the computer. I attended the OFSC monthly meeting on Zoom. Genealogy Writing/Research: This week I finished both the article on planning for a research trip for the CGS Nugget and the article on preserving photos, slides, film, and videos for SGGS Der Blumenbaum . Both should be published within a month or two. I worked on and submitted the pre-work for the upcoming SLIG course, Assemblage: Preparing, Writing, and Revising Case Studies, coordinated by Jan Joyce. This course begins Wednesday, October 9, and it means I’ll mi...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Our assignment tonight from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  Were your parents related to each other?  Do your paternal and maternal lines have any surnames in common? Are they related or is there no known connection?  Are there possible connections? Here’s mine: This is simple tonight. My mother’s line that I have researched is entirely in the U.S. southern states. My father’s line is immigrants from Ireland and Germany in the 19th century. They are not related to each other. I used the test at GedMatch many years ago and it also stated that my parents are not related to each other. My husband’s mother’s line came from Sweden. His father’s line is from England and Germany. I never uploaded my husband’s DNA to GedMatch Using the relationship calculator on RootsMagic, it shows his parents are not related. Of course, that is only as good as the information I ...

Last week I wrote about a research trip to Texas and the many cemeteries I visited in Comanche County. One such cemetery, Union Cemetery, has the tombstone of my great-grandmother, Nell L. (Hutson) Johnston. It is an unusual tombstone. It is shaped like a tree trunk and has these words around a symbol: In Memoriam Woodmen Circle.” Nell L. Johnston was born on 8 February 1888 to Sarah H Selman and Peter H Hutson. [1] She married Thomas N. Johnston on 6 June 1907 in Comanche County, Texas. [2] They had six known children. She died after a sudden illness on 14 July 1919. [3] She was only thirty-one years old and left two children under five and three children six to ten years old. My grandfather was only 6. Tom would not remarry until twelve years later. Her obituary says very little. She died on a Monday at home and was buried on Tuesday in Union Cemetery. “The many friends of the family will learn with keen regret of Mrs. Johnson’s untimely death, passing away as she did in the p...