New Technology, New Data, and Elusive Alabamans . . . .

A long spring, summer, and fall chasing fish and cloven-hooved mammals ends, and a new chase begins for people who never knew they'd be pursued. I've spent the past week seeing what new data became available over the past eight months. There has been some painfully small, but happy, discoveries.

1880 Federal Census Excerpt

The wife gifted me a Kindle Fire recently. I avoided it, but eventually downloaded the Ancestry.com application. Among the first hints given was the 1880 Federal Census which documented my Great Great Gramma', Sarah J. Criss, living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama with her children and perhaps a brother-in-law. Way t'go Amazon! The document spells her last name "Christ", and records her sharing a residence with M.M. and Mariah Williams and children. Her relationship to the head of the household (M.M. Williams) is "Servant." Don't know if the two families are related or not. I doubt it. Unfortunately, the census does not show Sarah's husband, John, living among them.

Following this lead took me to the 1900 Federal census. At this time, Sarah and her family are in Colorado, but in Alabama the M.M. Williams family lives adjacent to a family with the name of "Crist." Don't know if these folks are related to Sarah and her family, but I'd like to believe it. So research will focus on this family and determining their relationship to Gramma' Sarah.

More searching on her family lead me to new information from the Social Security and Claim Index. Sarah's daughter, Amelia, filed this paperwork in 1940. In her application, she records her father's name as John W. Criss, her mother's as Sarah J. Criss. While I appreciate learning her father's previously unknown middle initial, I would have been most grateful had she written her mother's maiden, instead of her married, name. Close . . . . so painfully close.

Checking Out . . . .

Ice is off the lakes, grass is greening, time to chase fish. Made a couple of very good discoveries this winter. Hope to photograph a few headstones this summer and gather some information from the Denver Public Library. Be back in November . . . .

Retreating and Deleting . . . .

This week, I worked with the ancestry branch that led back to Ezekiel Gile, the subject of last week's post. I intended to find more data that would better document the people, places, and dates on that line. My hope was that I would have a well-documented line of descent from Ezekiel Gile to my generation that I could submit to Sons of the American Revolution or Daughters of the American Revolution. The trouble started when I reached Jacob Gile of Ohio.

My research indicated his birthplace as Ohio. But his parents (Rev. Samuel and Mary Gile), were lifetime New Englanders, living in New Hampshire and Massachusetts all of their lives. Problem. A Google search of Samuel Gile confirmed his parentage, but also indicated that his children died young and never had children of their own (American Quarterly Register, Volume 10, No. 3, pp.217-219). I'd followed the wrong Jacob Gile. I ended up deleting about 100 people, mostly descendants of our noble soldier Ezekiel Gile.

The correct Jacob Gile's ancestry is less than clear. There is good documentation placing him in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa, but his parentage is iffy. He may be the offspring of Johann Christoff and Nancy GEIL. Johann is from Germany, Nancy from Kentucky; but this information is poorly supported.

No Revolutionary War vet, no copious New England records . . . none of that applies to this tree right now. Learned a lot, though, found a lot of new sources for future reference, learned of the importance of data testing, and have yet another new direction.

6X Great-Grandfather Ezekiel Gile, Revolutionary War Veteran . . .

Earlier this winter, I discovered an ancestor who was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Meet Ezekiel Gile (1743-1827) of Rockingham, New Hampshire, my sixth generation great-grandfather. I've only just begun research, but thus far it looks as if he served from 1775 to 1778 and was promoted multiple times, finishing the war as a Captain.

Ezekiel Gile's Revolutionary War Record.

I've since learned that he was father to at least seven children with his first wife Gertrude (nee' Davis). She died in 1817, and he married Hannah Pecker sometime thereafter. Perhaps more importantly, I've learned the name of his parents, Daniel and Joanna Gile (nee' Heath).

Needless to say, this was an exciting discovery. For most of my life, I've known only my maternal ancestry, and most of them migrated to the US well after the Civil War. They are relatively new to the US. With this discovery, I can now confirm that at least one branch of my paternal line has been on US soil since 1697.

The data documenting this discovery is solid and came directly from the hint leaves of Ancestry.com. Using New Hampshire Birth Records, Massachussetts Town and Vital Records, and US Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications documented the ancestor line between Ezekiel and myself, and allowed me to add another 100 people to my tree, many of these are third and fourth cousins. Credit goes to the colonists of New Hampshire for their crack record keeping and preservation. Well done . . . .

Moving forward, I'll look to identify Ezekiel's siblings, further document his ancestry and descendants, and learn more about having the ancestry line between myself and him documented by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Initial research shows that numerous ancestors are documented through Ezekiel's children, Ruth, David, Rachel, Richard, Tamar, and True. None, however, are documented through his son Samuel, from whom I am descended. Plenty more to research and plenty more to learn.

Oral History and Unrecoverable Losses . . . .

While I was ignoring the blog these past 33 days, I thought about all of the stories I've been told about my ancestors. I'm sure there are hundreds passed just from my grandparents to my mom, to me. Less on my dad's side, but time will change that. The stories are there, but they've yet to be told. Then, I got to thinking about how many stories are lost with each succeeding generation, and how those losses are unrecoverable. They will never be discovered at an estate sale, in an attic, in an old trunk, or buried in the ground. How many stories have been lost as each generation died? Innumerable. I've begun a story log. It's a Word document with tales I've been told about my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Truth be damned. I'm recording them as told to me.

Sarah J. Criss

So in celebration, I'm sharing a story, as told by my grandmother to me, about one of my great grandmothers, Sarah J. Criss. It's a simple story told in exactly one sentence; brief, barely a story at all. Grandmother told me that she met Sarah, but she was bedridden by that time. So this was probably about 1935.

That's it, but it's important. It's the only story I know about her. It's the only story anyone knows about her.

Sarah is one of the mysteries on my tree. She is recorded in the census and in city directories in two states, Texas and Colorado, over the course of 92 years. There is plenty of information on her children, but nothing is known of her parents, or siblings. Similarly, Sarah's husband, Jon, has no documentable ancestry. I don't even know her maiden name.

And perhaps this is one of my specific reasons for creating a story log, or for my interest in genealogy and family history. All of the stories about her, save for one, are lost and unrecoverable; and only two people on this earth know that one story. 

Mysteries and Broken Limbs . . . .

Combing through online newspapers lead me to examine the too numerous mysteries and dead ends that occur in every family tree. With little effort I compiled a list of names or events that I've researched but have had little or no success either locating graves, documenting ancestry, or constructing the details of a life event. I've searched all the big online databases: Ancestry.com, Find-A-Grave, Familysearch.com, and the newspaper databases too.

1. George J. Mathews burial location and ancestry. My 3X great grandfather was the focus of my 2013 research. I made some spectacular discoveries about him, his sibling Mary, and in-laws, but could not find his parents nor his place of interrment. 
2. The Baldwin Brothers (Alleged) Murder of Rosana McKeown.
   
   Discovered a few weeks ago. I have these same Baldwin brothers as first cousins, four times removed in my family tree.
3. Sarah J. Criss's maiden name and ancestry. My 2X great grandmother, originally from Alabama. I have her death certificate and have photographed her grave. Cannot find anything on her parents or siblings. 
4. John Criss's death/burial and ancestry.
   
   My 2X great grandfather and husband of Sarah (see number 3). I've found nothing on his parents or siblings. I discovered him via an 1895 Galveston, Texas city directory of his widow, Sarah, which recorded his name in parenthesis.
5. The Murder of Sam Book. I have good documentation on his death and burial, but the circumstances of his death are unknown. Family oral history records him being shot by the husband of a woman with whom he was having an affair. That's murder, which usually gets space in the newspaper, but I've found nothing. C'mon Kansas City Star!
6. John McKittrick Death/Burial. My 2X great grandfather. I discovered his death date from the obituary of his wife Parlee McKittrick. I don't know his burial location, or any details of his life.
7. John Daniels Ancestry. My 3X great grandfather, born in Virginia 1808 and migrated to Missouri via Indiana (and perhaps Ohio). Don't know anything of his parents or siblings.
8. Carl and Elizabeth Schiebel. Children of Odelia Abts, my great grandmother, and her first husband Robert Schiebel. Family oral history claims that Carl drowned as a child. Elizabeth Schiebel died of scarlet fever in Nebraska. I cannot document either of these people, they exist only via oral history (Carl), and from a letter written by Frances Book to an unknown recipient that mentions Elizabeth and her circumstances.
9. William Abts. My 2X great grandfather died in Nebraska between 1880 and 1885. Can't find a grave, obituary, or any other documentation that would provide a specific date and location. 
10. Levi B. Thomas Ancestry. My 3X great grandfather. I've found documents and newspapers that refer to him as LB, Levi, and Louis. I've search all of these derivatives to no avail. No information on his siblings or parents either. 
11. Flora A. Mathews. Family oral history claims she was Miss Colorado (unknown year), and that she succumbed to the elements in a cabin near Conifer, Colorado (also unknown year). She's in the federal censuses, but I've found nothing to corroborate the oral history.
12. Robert Schiebel. The first husband of my great grandmother, Odelia Abts. Her obituary records his death as 1899, but I've not found an obituary or grave to confirm, nor have I found him in any of the censuses.

Plenty of fun to be had here. I strongly suspect that these are mysteries due to the limitation of the internet. Most of these might be solved by visiting the local museums, libraries, courthouses, churches, and cemeteries where each person lived.

Obituaries, Clippings, Snippets, and Broken Wireless Modems . . . .

Research was stalled for about a week due to a failed wireless modem. Back up and running strongly today.

This week I bring more discoveries from a different newspaper site. This one is free and comes to you from the Library of Congress (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov). Much like Newspapers.com, this database doesn't contain every edition of every newspaper, but serves as another great research tool to supplement all the others. As with previous research, my best hits came from searching for those ancestors living in Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska in the 1910s and 1920s. Colorado newspapers are, again, underrepresented, but I did discover this site (http://www.coloradohisstoricnewspapers. org) and it produced a few articles on my great grandfather, Harry A. Snow.  Be advised, this site does not work well with Mozilla Firefox. I used an old version of Explorer to get my results. Here is one example from the September 9, 1921 edition of the Littleton Independent.

Typical genealogy data such as birth dates, the census, and headstone photographs are nice, but they don't deliver the sort of information included in this article. Before this discovery, I'd been told that Harry owned a stable, a bowling alley, and dance hall in Boulder County, Colorado. This clipping adds a little more flavor to what I know about the man. Here's a few more examples.

This one comes from the Abts family, ancestors from my maternal line who lived in Nebraska. This snippet came from the January 23, 1916 edition of the Omaha Sunday Bee. A good wedding story that adds detail to the framework of birth, census, and death dates.

The third clipping concerns Robert McKittrick, one of my great grandfathers on my paternal side. It deals with an application to transfer guardianship of Robert, from Parlee McKittrick to Joe N. Ferguson. This article appeared in the April 12, 1918 edition of The Evening Times-Republican in Marshalltown, Iowa. Robert fell from a train and apparently became physically and mentally incapacitated.

Interesting that Parlee, Robert's mother, did not transfer guardianship to Robert's wife, Mamie. Gender roles being what they were in the early 20th century, perhaps it was expected for a male (in this case a male in-law) to assume guardianship as opposed to any female. I can only speculate.

From here, I'll supplement my tree on Ancestry.com with information teased from these articles. There are plenty of names and dates that will make nice additions, and might even help another with their own research. Sharing and collaborating . . . . .