My Trails into the Past

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I have no wealthy ancestors. Most just made enough of a living to support their families. But one family might have felt great fortune at the start of homesteading in Dakoka Territory. The Gleeson family came to Dakota Territory in 1879 from Carleton County in Ontario, Canada. The family consisted of John Gleeson and his wife, Margaret Tierney, and ten children, ranging from the oldest at twenty to the youngest at two. Was it the lure of homestead land that brought them? In all, John, his sons, Martin and John J, and his daughter, Ann, all initiated the homestead process acquiring 160 acres each. They ended up purchasing their land in Sections 5, 9, and 10 before the five years was up. ...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignments today. Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1) What year was one of your 2nd great-grandparents born?  Divide this number by 70 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number." 2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel" - your software will create this - use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information? 3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number." 4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook post, or as a comment on this blog post. 5) NOTE...

Mary Martha Gleeson was born in Carleton County, Ontario, Canada on 8 July 1863 to John Gleeson and Margaret Tierney. [1] She was the second daughter and fourth child born to John and Margaret. She was baptized on 2 August 1863 at St. Phillip’s Catholic Church by Father O’Connell. James Douras and Susan Smith were the sponsors. [2] James Douras was John’s sister, Honora’s husband, or rather, Mary Martha’s uncle. At this time, I don’t know who Susan Smith was. Was she a relative of John or Margaret Gleeson, or was she an in-law like James Douras? [Note: Mary Martha’s brother, John, married a Susan Smith later in 1894, but this was not the same Susan.] She moved to Dakota  Territory with her parents around 1880 and married her husband, Warren Edmond Gilbert on 9 Sep 1886 in Mitchell, Davison Co, South Dakota. A newspaper article about the marriage: "Gilbert-Gleeson.  At the Catholic church in this city at 8:30 am Thursday, by Rev. Father Sheehan.  Mary Martha...

Five of my Gleeson and Sullivan ancestors applied for and received a patent on federal land in the Dakota Territory: John Gleeson, Martin Gleeson, John J. Gleeson, Ann Gleeson, and John Sullivan.  They all started as homestead applications. Homesteading involved three steps: filing the application, improving the land, and then filing the deed of title. [1] Here, John Gleeson of Davison County, Territory of Dakota, filed an application no. 14941 on 14 Dec 1880. [2] He also filled out a form swearing to the size of his family and that he had intentions of becoming a citizen of the United States. [3] In 1880, he claimed his family consisted of his wife and six children. He, in fact, had ten children. Three of them filed their own homestead applications: Martin, Ann, and John J. Gleeson. [4] The requirement of fulfilling the homesteading steps was to improve the property. They had to cultivate crops, build a dwelling 12 by 14 feet, and live continuousl...

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has a new assignment for us. 1) Who is your most recent immigrant ancestor?  I'm assuming that your ancestors moved from one country to another at some point in time. 2)  Tell us about that person - name, birth and death, emigration and immigration country and port, date or year of immigration, etc. My most recent immigrant was Anna Maria Gleeson, who arrived in the United States from Canada in 1879 or 1880. [1] There’s confusion as to the exact date she arrived. The year 1880 was stated in the 1900 census. [2]   Her father stated on his naturalization that he arrived April 1879, [3] but later stated 1880 on the 1900 census [4] and 1879 on the 1910 census. [5] Anna filed an intention to naturalized and stated on 7 Oct 1880, that she arrived at the port of Huron in the month of February 1879. [6] Davison Co, 2nd Judicial District, Declarations of Intention 1880-1886, p 24, Ann Gleeson. She was born 13 Feb 1860 i...