Got back last week from another research trip. I probably won't get another chance to do any out-of-town searching until later next year, so I tried to make the most of this one.
There is one cemetery that I visit every chance I get because a number of the relations back in the line seem to be buried there. I have a numbered plot map of the entire cemetery (no names though), so once I know where they are buried, I can find the sites relatively easy. Or so I thought.
I got to the approximate location and found a few markers that confirmed that I was in the right area, but I just couldn't find any headstones for the two I knew should be buried in that plot. I did see one fairly large headstone that had a familiar name on it but it was on a stone with a family name I did not recognize. After about a half hour search, we gave up, and I went to the cemetery office to ask if I did indeed have the correct plot number. They confirmed it, and even made a copy of the burials from the plot book. (This is somewhat significant because I have always had to pay for that information when I write to them.) Anyway, I noticed that several of the burials have that unrecognized family name that I had seen previously. Turns out that a daughter of the couple I was seeking had married into that name - and she was buried there. So I went back out to the lot to take pictures and make a note of the headstone transcription.
I don't know what made me walk around the headstone, but there in full view were the names of the couple I was originally looking for. And I can't believe that I hadn't done that in the first place. I can only attribute it to not wanting to walk up the hill anymore than I had and thinking that I had already looked in the correct area for their names. The one familiar name I had initially noted was another daughter, but I just didn't put it together with the other daughter's married surname.
So that will be a lesson for me not to give up too soon.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Saturday, October 06, 2007
They're Here
My grandmother's paternal line is from England. They came over from England when her father was just a boy. As far as I knew, no one else from that family ever made it to the US.
Some time ago, I ran across some notes I jotted down while talking to my aunt a number of years ago. She had said that some of the mother's relatives had also come to the US and gave me some first names. I had also written down 'Whitaker' beside those names and had thought that that was their last name. When I again found this note, I realized that she had been talking about a section of where they lived. I used the family name to find these people, and there they were - living in Whitaker.
So now the task is to find out more about them.
Along the way, I found that one more from that family made it across the Atlantic. They eventually settled near Richmond VA, an area that I have never researched. For a while, I looked up online resources, checked books in my local state genealogy library, and kept tabs on the Rootsweb message boards. I was finally able to find a funeral home reference for one of them, and I was off. It gave me her cemetery, which led to me asking around about this cemetery, which led to someone in the area actually looking up everyone who was buried in the same plot with her.
And you know, the really neat part about it all is that someone else is getting so much more out of this than me. When I first found that this family (George and Flora) had come to the US, I searched Rootsweb archives postings to see if anyone else was looking for the same family. I found one, halfway across the world - George is in my family line and Flora was in hers. Thing is, when her ancestor left England, he never returned and was never able to find any trace of the family in later years. He died not knowing that his father and siblings had left England shortly after he did.
And hopefully, sometime in the next few months, I'll be able to visit the cemetery and take pictures, and she'll finally have some closure on that missing section of her family.
Some time ago, I ran across some notes I jotted down while talking to my aunt a number of years ago. She had said that some of the mother's relatives had also come to the US and gave me some first names. I had also written down 'Whitaker' beside those names and had thought that that was their last name. When I again found this note, I realized that she had been talking about a section of where they lived. I used the family name to find these people, and there they were - living in Whitaker.
So now the task is to find out more about them.
Along the way, I found that one more from that family made it across the Atlantic. They eventually settled near Richmond VA, an area that I have never researched. For a while, I looked up online resources, checked books in my local state genealogy library, and kept tabs on the Rootsweb message boards. I was finally able to find a funeral home reference for one of them, and I was off. It gave me her cemetery, which led to me asking around about this cemetery, which led to someone in the area actually looking up everyone who was buried in the same plot with her.
And you know, the really neat part about it all is that someone else is getting so much more out of this than me. When I first found that this family (George and Flora) had come to the US, I searched Rootsweb archives postings to see if anyone else was looking for the same family. I found one, halfway across the world - George is in my family line and Flora was in hers. Thing is, when her ancestor left England, he never returned and was never able to find any trace of the family in later years. He died not knowing that his father and siblings had left England shortly after he did.
And hopefully, sometime in the next few months, I'll be able to visit the cemetery and take pictures, and she'll finally have some closure on that missing section of her family.
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