One Year Anniversary of "My Tangled Vine"

Thanks to Geneabloggers for reminding me that it has been one year since the first post of this blog and also to those of you who have visited and left your congratulations. It has been a pleasure to be a part of the Geneabloggers community. You all have inspired me to keep blogging even when time is a difficult thing to come by. Although I haven't been posting much this summer with my son home and needing my attention, I have continued to collect "new" old family photos to post and gather information for updates to some of my past blogs.

It has been amazing how many descendants of the people I have posted about have contacted me. Most are cousins of mine, while some are only related through marriage. Through these contacts I have received new and interesting information on the people in my family tree and, sometimes, even photos. I have often ended a post wishing for more information on my subject and, amazingly, I have often received it.

For those of you who have been wanting to start a family history blog to chronicle and share your genealogy research - JUST DO IT! It is well worth the time and effort. I love having a place where I can record all I know about a specific ancestor and use it as a reference later to either remind myself of easily forgotten details or to send to someone who is inquiring about a particular ancestral line for their research or DNA matching purposes. There is a certain satisfaction to weaving the hard-won facts, family stories and almost forgotten tidbits, personal theories and, best of all, photos into a "living" online profile of a long-gone family member that will be (God and Google willing) a permanent record of their lives. It is so much more meaningful than names and dates in a software program and isn't that what we all strive for in our family history research?

I have to say that my favorite part of writing "My Tangled Vine" this year is the connection that it encourages with my living family. It has brought long-lost cousins (and photos!) out of the woodwork, encouraged communication with closer family and even helped to inspire some to write their own stories. What could be even better than that? As a side effect of my blogging, my six year old son knows who his maternal eight great great grandparents are and is fascinated by them! He knows what they looked like, he can show you on the map where they were born and he refers to their names as if he knows them. Not only their DNA, but their memory, lives on through him.

My reason for writing and, sometimes, my reason for NOT writing

New Treasures From My Mother #3 - Arva A. Fargo

Arva A Fargo, c.1897, Chico, CA

Following the trend of images of allied family in the new packet from my mother, it contained this photo of Arva A. Fargo. Arva married my great grandfather's sister Sally Proctor in 1904, but before that he had another family in California. According to the 1900 Federal Census, Arva was born in Pennsylvania in March 1857. His early life has been difficult to trace, but I believe that I found him in Siskiyou, CA in 1860 and Ada, Idaho in 1880. He married Mary Campbell in the latter half of 1880, almost certainly in California, and had four surviving children - Amal (b.1881), Elmore Arva (b.1884), Edna (b.1887) and Lola (b.1894). They are shown living together as a family in the 1900 Federal Census in Pleasanton Town, Alameda, California. His wife must have died shortly after the 1900 Census since Arva ended up in Washington by October 24, 1904, when he married Sally at her parents house in Columbia City. Since she was already 42 years old when they married, they did not have any children together.

This photo is by Hiram Hamilton Frye who was born Sept 1, 1841 and died May 21, 1900. He operated a photography studio at 6 1/2 Mill St, Grass Valley, CA in the 1880s and on 2nd Street in Chico, CA in the 1890s until his death in 1900.  On another of his photos that I came across, it stated that his studio was "Established in 1879", but a Frye Family Tree on Ancestry.com states that he was working as a photographer as early as 1874. I found a strikingly similar photo to this one in the Small Family Album. He must have enjoyed photographing middle aged men with beards! From Arva's apparent age and the photographer's location and years active, I would guess this photo was taken between 1895-1900.

I have been diligently researching to find his descendants from his first wife with the goal of sharing this wonderful photo with them. Hopefully, in the future, someone will be happy to see their own ancestor in him.

New Treasures from My Mother #2 - Doc and Rose Campbell

This new packet from my mother seems to contain photos of allied family rather than my direct ancestors. Fortunately, I have done quite a lot of research on most of these people, so I still feel like I know them and happily welcome their photos into my collection. It is so nice to finally see their faces.


William and Rosanna (Norcross) Campbell, c. 1900, Gallatin, IL


When I saw the writing on the back of this photo - "Doc Campbell and his wife," I immediately knew who it was thanks to Aunt Cleo's letters. After reading that he was the doctor who cared for the Proctor boys and was related to my great great grandparents Ephraim and Mary (Hewitt) Proctor, I had previously done some extensive research to untangle this part of the family tree. It turned out that Dr. William Campbell (pictured above) was the half-brother of my great great grandmother Mary Hewitt Proctor. I found that Sarah "Sally" Gillett (my 3rd ggrandmother) had first married William F. Hewitt and then after his early death, she married the well-established William Charles Campbell. With her first husband she had two children - William Martin and Mary Hewitt and with her second husband she had (at least) two more children - William and Laura Campbell. Thankfully, Sally's second husband seemed to have had a positive effect on his stepchildren's lives.

According to Genealogy Trails, Dr. William Campbell (1842-1912) married Rosanna Norcross on April 9, 1867 in Gallatin County, Illinois. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much on her. According to the 1900 Federal Census, she was born in July 1848 in Indiana and her parents were born in Massachusetts and England. I may have found her in the 1850 Federal Census living in Vanderburgh, Indiana with her family, but I am not sure it is her because the name seems to read "Rocena Norcross". The places of birth for these parents do match the 1900 Federal Census (and the 1880 Federal Census). If it is indeed her, then her parents are Allen and Jane (Sangford) Norcross. Apparently, the family was broken up by 1860 since I found most of the children living in other family's households in the 1860 Federal Census. I could not find Rosanna/Rose/Rocena though. I would like to have more information on her, but have hit a dead-end for now.

William and Rosanna Campbell had children Nellie, Jennie, William and Mary. I haven't yet followed their family lines down into the present, but it sure would be fun if one of their descendants was to come across this photo and contact me...Anyone?

Now that I have seen his face, I am inspired to say "thank you" to the good Doc for taking such good care of the Proctors. I know that his sister must have really appreciated what William and his father did for her and her family since she named her first son Charles Campbell and her second son William Ephraim. After all, taking care of each other is what family (biological or adopted) is all about.

New Treasures from My Mother #1 - Zora and Ned Staples

Zori & Ned Staples c.1897, St Paul,MN

My mother brought me a baggie of really old photos and memorabilia today from my grandmother's boxes. I thought I had already discovered all of the family treasures that were in my immediate family's possession, but I was wrong. The one that jumped out immediately is this photo of Zora Edith "Zori" Hewitt Staples and her son. As I blogged in the past, I have always wanted to find a photo of Zori. (Aunt Cleo wrote about her here.)

I am in touch with her great granddaughter thanks to Ancestry.com. Tragically, they lost all of their family photos when their home burned down in the Sycamore Fire of 1977. I immediately emailed her to share this great news. She was ecstatic and happened to be planning on visiting her mother (Zori's granddaughter) on Thursday, so this will be a fantastic surprise!

The boy in the portrait is Zori's son Edwin Herrick "Ned" Staples who was born in 1895. I tried to narrow down the exact year of the photo by researching the photographer. Thanks to the Minnesota Historical Website's list of photographers, I was able to find quite a bit about this photographer. Alfred U. Palmquist, also known as A.U. Palmquist, was born in Finland on 21 June 1850 and died 23 March 1922.  He was well known for his images of Sitting Bull which can be found all over the Internet, including at the Library of Congress, Amazon and various auction sites. He worked in Minnesota from the 1870's to the 1900's and had a number of locations over the years. This photo has the address of 88 West Fourth Street, which, according to the listing from the Minnesota Historical Society below, was his location from 1891-1899. Since he was at this same location for quite awhile, I will have to hazard a guess that the photo is c.1897 when Ned would have been about two years old.

Locations:

     Studio: Palmquist & Lake

     Address: 32 West Seventh Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1873

     Address: 25 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1874

     Studio: Alfred Palmquist & Company

     Address: 28 East Seventh, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1876-1881

     Studio: Palmquist & Jurgens

     Address: Seventh and Robert, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1883-1885, 1888

     Address: 225 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1890

     Address: 88 West Fourth Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1891-1899

     Address: 10 West Sixth, Saint Paul, Minnesota

       Dates of operation: 1900s

It is wonderful to have finally discovered a photo of the young Zori and to be able to share it with her descendants. I hoped to one day see one, but I never would have expected it to come from my own collection!
[Update - Apparently, this is the only known photo in existence of Ned.]

A Father's Day Present for Someone Else's Dad

A couple of months ago, my son's kindergarten teacher asked me if I could do some work on his family tree. (Famous last words, "Sure!") Then he said that he would like to give my work to his dad on Father's Day. Since I don't do genealogy reports for clients, I didn't have any format with which to present my research to him. Luckily, at SCGS Jamboree last weekend, I came across this beautiful family tree chart. It is 22" x 28" and came with instructions to print and affix the ancestors' names on labels on the tree. It was a lot of work cutting the sticky printer paper just right and getting the labels straight on the tree, but when it was done I was pretty pleased with the final result.

James Family Tree

I concentrated on his paternal ancestors since his mother is from Brazil and I wouldn't even know where to begin with her genealogy. Luckily, his father is very "American" and most of his ancestors trace back to Colonial New England, so there were plenty of records from which to build his family tree. I was also very fortunate that he had some notable ancestors like John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. I purchased the story of his ninth great grandparents, "The Courtship of Miles Standish" by Longfellow and glued his descendancy from John and Priscilla on the inside of the cover. 
                                                                                        

 

Luckily, the Mayflower Society booth at SCGS Jamboree had a very nice printed copy of "The Mayflower Compact". Since, at least, four of my son's teacher's direct ancestors signed the compact and he is descended from, at least, eight Mayflower passengers, it was also a fitting gift. 

Some of his ancestral surnames are James, Gries, Downey, Harris, Bell, Coop, Myers, VanCleave and Swearingen. I found some interesting tidbits like that he shares the famous Vanderbilt family's immigrant ancestor, Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, and his VanCleave ancestors were with my Proctor ancestors fighting in the Kentucky wilderness with Daniel Boone.

Although I had a lot of fun working on this tree, especially when I discovered that he and I are ninth cousins twice removed through our shared Mayflower ancestors, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilly, I do have to admit, I sure was relieved when this project was finished!

Geneabloggers and DNA at Jamboree

I am just about to get on the road to the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree in Burbank. I am looking forward to meeting the many other Geneabloggers who will be there and hearing the DNA talks by Bennett Greenspan of FTDNA and Joanna Mountain of 23andMe. I have been asked to be on the discussion panel for the ISOGG meeting on Saturday at 5:00 pm along with Bennett, Katherine Borges, Alice Fairhurst and UCLA Professor John Richardson to talk a little about DNA testing and my blog "Your Genetic Genealogist". I will be at the ISOGG/SCGS Special Interest DNA booth much of the time when I am not attending lectures, so if you are at Jamboree too, be sure to come and see me!

This Is The Face Of Genealogy

Four Generations - My grandfather Fred Moore, my great great grandmother Jennie Cole, my great grandmother Blanche Purdy Moore, my dad's sister Yvonne Moore
 

The Sixth Generation

Thanks to Thomas at Geneabloggers for the idea to respond to LA Weekly in such a positive way.