My Trails into the Past

I am taking the virtual GRIP class “Marching Toward Change: Reformers, Crises, and Movements that Transformed 19th and 20th Century America,” coordinated by Katherine R. Willson. One session yesterday (Tuesday) was about women’s rights and suffrage taught by Gena Philibert-Ortega. I started thinking if I had checked out that database for my female family members. California gave the vote to women in 1911. My grandmother’s aunt, Mary Martha (Gleeson) Gilbert, was living in California at that time. She was the daughter of John Gleeson and Margaret Tierney, and my great-grandaunt. Warren, Mary, Anna (her sister), Lorene (Anna's daughter), Muriel, John Sullivan (Anna's father) c. 1923 Did she register to vote? Ancestry has a California Voter Registration collection, so let's check it out. I did not find her in 1912, but did in 1914. She and her husband, Warren E. Gilbert, were listed living at 2343 Scarff Street in Los Angeles. He registered as a Democrat and she registe...

We last left off with the John Gleeson family packing up and moving to Portland, Oregon, from Mitchell, South Dakota, in November 1900. The last news article said they would stop off in Montana to visit some of their children. The following records are from prior research, full-text search at FamilySearch , and newspaper search at Newspapers.com . Portland, Multnomah Co, Oregon Supposedly, some of John’s children already lived in Oregon prior to John and Margaret moving there, however, I did not locate any of the Gleeson children in 1890-1900 city directories. [1] A John Gleeson and Mrs. Gleeson from Oltane, were staying at The Imperial Hotel on 15 January 1901, but Oltane doesn’t seem to exist. [2] However, since they left in late November, it is possible in early January, that they may have stayed at a hotel until locating a place to live. The 1901 Portland city directories listed several Gleasons and one Gleeson, but none of the Gleasons were his family, and the one Gleeson, a...

We left off last time with John’s move to Ottawa, Carleton County, Ontario, Canada, where the youngest child, Francis, was born and baptized. No further records of the family in Canada have been found. They eventually emigrated to the United States. We’ll continue the timeline in the first record found for the family. I will be starting with the documents I already have from census records, deeds, federal land records, directories, and in fill will newspaper articles that I found recently, as the newspaper database at NewspaperArchive has grown since the last time I searched. Newspapers add a lot to their story. However, some articles found had the spelling of Gleason, and one cannot be sure if they refer to our Gleeson family. Below are those that have been found at NewspaperArchive specifically for John or Margaret Gleeson. There are many articles about some of their children, though I did not include them unless John or Margaret were named, too. Timeline in South Dakota When th...