Local Discoveries . . . . .

Tracking the Alabamans remains fruitless. Just can't find them anytime before 1880, but discovering relatives who lived in Sheridan in the early and mid-1900s has provided some exciting moments.

First, the Kelso family. William Bell Kelso, a Forest Ranger, came to Sheridan about 1933. He lived here just two years, but his son, Robert, and his family lived here into the 1960s. Robert worked for Conoco Oil and is buried in Sheridan Municipal Cemetery. The Wyoming Room at the Sheridan County Library had obituaries for Robert and his wife Mildred.

The Kelso's are first and second cousins descended from Charlotte Shuler and her second husband Robert Sylvester Kelso. Charlotte's first husband, George Mathews, is my third great grandfather. Currently, the Sheridan County phone book lists one Kelso. At this time, it is unknown if they are descended from these same Kelso's.

Second, the Daniels family. My third great uncle Richard Daniels moved his family to Sheridan, Wyoming from Missouri about 1905. Coal mining was an important part of the central Missouri economy, as it was in Sheridan County, Wyoming. Richard worked in the mines around Dietz coal camp before succumbing to pneumonia in 1908.

Richard's daughter Nettie made the Sheridan papers, but for all the wrong reasons. Richard's wife and other daughter's continued to live in the area before moving on to Washington. As with the Kelso family, I'm not sure if any of them remain in the area today.

The county library has a lot of information on area coal mining. I'll be checking sources over the next few months. Hopefully, there will be more to discover.

Snippets, Bullets, and Notes . . .

Chasing the Alabaman's has produced one roadblock after another. I remain undeterred, though. In the process of researching, I've made a few other discoveries.

• Photograph of Matilda "Minnie" Penzkofer. She's a relative by marriage to Great Grandfather Robert McKittrick.

  

  Minnie Penzkofer

Job Application for Robert McKittrick, 1913.

• Speaking of Robert McKittrick. I've located a job application for him for the Northern Pacific Railway. He applied for a switchman position in Billings, Montana in May 1913. He records his marital status as "Married". Interesting because his first wife, Minnie, died in 1911; yet, on the application he shows his wife as "Meltie" McKittrick residing in Alberta, Canada. In the same year, his second wife, Mamie, is still using the name Skidmore (her first husband) in the Denver City Directory. More to follow . . .
  
  

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.