I've moved!

Well I've finally done it......I've moved this blog to the backup site. I've thought about it for a long time even ask you, my loving readers, opinions and now I have decided to act on the thought.

With the new year comes a new blog address and a new blog look. If you want to check out the new digs and start following me over there, I welcome you. The new address is: https://debsresearch.wordpress.com/

I will still leave this site up, but I will not add any more content to it.

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please check out the new site ;)
 

Happy Birthday Minnie!

My paternal grandmother, Minnie Frances Shofner, was born on this date in 1915 in Allendale, Green County, Kentucky. SOOO thanks to my public school education I know she would have been 100 years old today.

Mystery Monday - Eliza and possible Eliza

Ok I know I've asked you my dear readers to give opinions on family pictures the last couple of blog postings, but I really do value your thoughts and ideas. So here's another chance for you all to give me your 2 cents. I have a wonderful picture of a young woman only recently found in family pictures. Of course there is no label or pencil marking(s) stating or hinting at her identity.

Here's what I DO know:

1. She's pretty
2. The picture is on metal probably tin
3. Her earrings, necklace and lace are painted on or enhanced
4. It was found with my maternal aunt's family pictures - that narrows down the possibilities

Ok here is where your 2 cents come in......

The picture on the left is the newly found picture. The one on the right is a known picture of my great-great grandmother, Eliza Ann (Scott) DeSpain. So I put them side by side so you can see any similarities or differences they may have:

The longer I look at them the more I think they look alike. I will refrain from stating my opinion of their similarities so see what you all come up with.

As always thank you all so much for taking the time to read and comment on this blog of mine.

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please come back again ;)

Veteran's Day - One mother's thoughts on having a son at war

Wishing everyone a happy Veteran's day. I found this clipping that my maternal grandmother, Gussie (DeSpain) Munday had posted in the newspaper. It is about how she (and probably the family) felt about her son, William L Munday, being in Germany and the war.

Mystery Monday - Possible Simon spotting

I have a mystery that needs solving and I hope you all can help with it. Are these two men the same person?

The two men on the right are the same person, he is my paternal great-grandfather, Simon P Tharp. The man on the left is found in a picture from a circa 1911 Road Construction I have recently come across. I will hold my thoughts until I get some feedback from some of you.

What do you all think? 

The two men on the right are my great-grandfather, Simon P Tharp.
The man on the left is the suspected Simon.

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please come back again ;)
   

Thankful Thursday - Look what I found!! New places to look for records

I don't think we understand how thankful we should be for being able to do genealogical research in such a great time as today! Just when you think you can’t find anything new in research, a new website comes out or you find a new search engine that searches just genealogy sites. 

Allow me to back up a little….You might have read in a previous post about how I recently found enough documentation to allow me to make a solid connection to a Banta family through my paternal grandmother’s line. If not go ahead and read it now.....it's ok, I'll wait..............oh you're back great....

Treasure Chest Thursday - Slemmons Album page 24 & 25 revisited

Back in 2010 I was posting from a photo album my aunt had in her possession of family pictures. One of the postings titled Treasure Chest Thursday – Slemmons Album page 24 & 25 showed a picture of the Dripping Springs School my maternal grandfather (Richard S Munday) and his siblings attended in about 1904. It was a good group picture but I had always noticed how light parts of it were and it didn't allow you to see all of the children's faces.

I played around with it a little today and wanted to share the new touched-up version.

While it is really just darkened, darkening it allows the children's faces on the right to be seen better.

As an aside I would be interested if anyone knows any of the other children in this picture. While my great-grandmother listed 11 children as you can see there are way more than that in the picture.


Please let me know if you are related to anyone of the children in the picture.

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please come back again ;)
   

Matrilineal Monday - How I messed up my GPS

Why am I writing about a Global Positioning System on my genealogy blog? And how did you mess it up, Deb?

OK first things first - I'm not talking about the Global Positioning Systems that some people have in their vehicles.

Mystery Monday - Beware of those bible pages!

As genealogists, we are often overjoyed to find a bible record, because now all of our questions will be answered on a particular family. SO overjoyed we read things that aren't there or worse take the information that is there at face value. Sometimes simple math should tell us something is a miss.

Who Tells the family? Follow-up

Two years ago I blogged the question, "Who tells the family?" where I asked the question of who tells the family "back home" when a distant family member dies. In that posting I asked, "Did they (the settlers of his estate, his local friends or someone else) put an inquiry into a Kentucky paper to locate the family of Garland Slemmons long ago resident? I don't know, but I would really like to find out."

Well guess what I found!

Why am I looking for descendants of Nellie George Collins Chesney?

I love pictures....there isn't a genealogist that I know who doesn't love pictures....However, there is a limit to how many pictures I can have in my house. Over the years I have become the keeper of the family pictures. Pictures from and of my: grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, kids, great-grandparents, etc, etc.

So I have decided to let technology come to my rescue.  My Plan?

Mystery Monday - Are these the Warders I'm looking for? part 2

Last Monday, I posted the beginning of a search for the Francis and Susan Warder who had written a letter to my 3 great-grandfather, George Munday, in 1815. If you would like to read that posting go ahead I'll wait - click here

OK are you all caught up? Boy you're a fast reader....anyway onward and upward.

Mystery Monday - Are these the Warders I'm looking for? part 1

In Saturday's post (found here) I covered an 1815 letter written to my 3rd great-grandfather, George Munday, of Prince William County, Virginia by Francis and Susan Warder.

First let me say that I have looked in the book about the Warder family titled, "A history and genealogy of the Warder family in Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois" on Ancestry and can not find this Francis and Susan Warder.

I dug around a little bit on the 'net for Francis and Susan Warder. But because no address, city or state was listed on the letter, I really didn't have an idea on where to start looking.

Sibling Saturday - 1815 Letter from Francis and Susan Warder

Years ago my aunt allowed me to copy a letter that had been handed down in the family. (A lot of my research starts with my aunt having something handed down in the family.)

Anyway, the 1815 letter is from a Francis and Susan Warder to my great-great-great grandfather, George Munday. It is addressed to George while he was living in Haymarket, Prince William County, Virginia. It is a xeroxed copy and in pretty decent shape. Here is how it looks:

"Brick wall" comes down and new line to research

How I feel when a "brick wall" comes down and a new line opens up to research!

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please come back again ;)
   

Where have I been?

Hello everyone,

Sorry for taking such a long time off from posting. It's not that I haven't thought about it or even had ideas for posts, it was just that.....I didn't feel like it. You know how it goes sometimes, if you ain't feelin' it - you ain't doin' it! So I didn't.

But I think I might be feelin' it again. I have had some major breakthroughs in a couple of my lines that should make for some pretty interesting posts and hope you enjoy them.

If you have stayed subscribed to my little ol' blog during my quiet spell - THANKS for hanging in there with me. It really does mean a lot to me.

I must be off now so that I can start crafting my coming blog posts.

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please come back again ;)
 

Sunday’s Obituary ~ Waller Munday's death 1909

Here are a couple of obituaries that were glued into the family bible for the same person. Waller Munday was my grandfather's brother who died when he was 20 years old. I took these photos before I had my flip-pal scanner, so - sorry for the blurriness!

Posting using my tablet

Several months ago I purchased a Google Nexus 7 for myself as a "being good purchase." I don't normally do that but, it was at a good price so I thought what the heck. Of course, it's been fun playing with all of the apps and games that are available, but my online presence with posting to this blog has suffered. :{

I'm not really sure why it took me so long, but today I realized that Blogger has an app that allows me to post from my tablet. So I downloaded and installed it to take it for a trial run.

This is the first post that I am posting with the app.

Creating this posting is not as fast as creating a post with my computer as I am not use to typing with the small keyboard that pops up at the bottom of the screen, but it does get the job done.

The app allows you to edit the post like in the full web edition that I normally use. It also allows you to attach or take pictures and add them to the post. The picture you see in this posting was taken with the app while creating this post.

Although I am not sure of how or if I am going to be able to position the picture as of yet. As I am typing this post it doesn't as appear as though the app gives me a choice of where I would like to position the picture. That's too bad.

I also noticed that it doesn't allow me to use my automatic signature line that I have in the full version but again it allows me to get my thoughts down while in the mood.

This posting was not supposed to be a review of the app, but just a letting you know that I'm still here and what I had found in the app world that might become useful. So we'll see how often I use the app in the future.

Please let me know if any of you use this app and if you do what do you think.....oh yeah also any tips and tricks that you might have learned while using it.

Until next time,

Deborah

Follow Friday - Artisan Ancestors

I don't think I have ever done a posting on Follow Friday so I thought I would today.

The other day I was listening to the Genies Down Under podcast on the ride into work when the hostess, Maria, started talking about other genealogy podcasts that she listens to. Two of the ones she talked about, The Genealogy Guys and Digging up your Roots, I am already subscribed to and listen to on a regular basis. However, the third one, Artisan Ancestors, was a new one for me.

So I thought I would try it out and see if I wanted to add it to my ever growing number of podcasts to which I listen.

Well, I am four episodes in and am very impressed.

Mystery Monday - Who tells the family?

This question was always there, it just had not shown itself to me until now. What is the question you ask?

Well, before I tell you, let me ask you a question.

A person moves away from their family to the other side of the country, settles down but doesn't get married or have children, and lives the rest of their life in this "new" area. When this person dies, who let's the family know that this person has died? You know, the family that they left behind to move out west, back east or just simply away.

So that question sparked the question that I finally asked myself...Who let my Kentucky ancestor know that his brother had died in Genoa, Nevada?

The answer to this question...I don't know. But someone sure as shooting did!

How do I know that my Kentucky ancestor knew about the death of his Nevada living brother? Well, it's right there in the family bible, written in my ancestor's handwriting and everything.

Sorry for the blurry picture. Garland Slemmons, in the left column, age 74 yr. Died Apr 25, 1898