My Trails into the Past

It's  Saturday Night  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1) What is your favorite genealogy research resource?  Not a website, but a type of record, like census, cemetery, tax, etc. Why is it your favorite?  [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!] 2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note. Here's mine: I first want to say, as a dedicated genealogist who tries to adhere to the Genealogy Proof Standard (GPS), all record types are my favorite research resource. We answered a similar question back on March 19 and I wrote about directories. My second favorite source is newspapers. Researching in newspapers has helped me add flesh to the bones of my ancestors, add historic and cultural context to their lives, and solve some genealogical research problems. Sometimes, newspapers have...

Marguerite M. Gleeson, a daughter of Martin Gleeson and Hanna Kane, died from an automobile accident on 8 October 1962. [1] Because she had worked for the Bend Bulletin , there was broad coverage of her accident and funeral services. Obituaries often list organizations that the deceased was a member of. Marguerite’s obituary was no different. One article gave this account: “For the past 10 years she worked for the Salem Capital Journal.  At her death, she was the Capital Journal's librarian.  A graduate of Oregon State College, she was a former news editor of the Oregon Statesman in Salem, and later worked for the Bend Bulletin and the Corvallis Gazette-Times.  She was active in numerous groups, including Oregon Press Women and the Legion of Mary, a Catholic organization.  She was a member of the national Federation of Press Women." [2] Another article added that she was a volunteer librarian for patients at the Oregon State Hospital, and had memberships in Am...

After many years of looking, I have found the marriage date for my grandmother’s sister, Ethel Elizabeth Quigley’s marriage to John Vir Quigley. I wasn’t looking at the time for her marriage, but instead was working on World War I draft cards. I made a spreadsheet with the names of all of the men in my database who were found in these draft cards. I double-checked these names against the images on my computer and sometimes I needed to return to Ancestry to see the actual images. When looking at John Vir Quigley’s card, one of the hints that Ancestry showed was to the “Newspapers.com Marriage Index, 1800s-1999” database.  His name was right so I clicked on it. It was a link to The Butte Miner newspaper in Montana about the marriage of Ethel Elizabeth Sullivan to John Vir Quigley in Burlingame, California, on 20 October 1925! [1] According to the article, Ethel, a former Anaconda girl and daughter of John H. Sullivan, was married to John V. Quigley of San Francisco at St. Cath...

This is my third year working on this year-long 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. Many of my ancestors’ siblings were either unmarried or had no children. I don’t want their lives to be forgotten when they had no descendants. Raymond Joseph Hork, my grandfather, William Cyril Hork’s brother, is one such person. Raymond Joseph Hork, the eighth child of Johan Anton Hork and Julia Ann Sievert, was born 11 November 1889 in Stuart, Guthrie County, Iowa. [1] His father was a tailor and moved every two years or so until they finally settled in Hamilton, Montana. [2] Raymond at a young age of twenty-eight years old, died on 1 December 1917 at the Montana State Hospital. Cause of death was exhaustion of dementia and precox. [3] According to Wikipedia , “this is a chronic, deteriorating psyc...