Success Stories
ANCESTORS WANT TO BE FOUND
by Annette Roebuck aroebuck@hotmail.com
Not having been raised by my family but in foster care, at 42 I began my quest of finding family. My grandparents all were dead by the time I was six years old. I learned I was living within 50 miles of relatives I never knew and that my grandmother GINN's maiden name was BUTTS.I was researching in a small genealogical library in Lenoir County, North Carolina. As I walked down an aisle, I noticed a small paperback book that was almost pulled out on the bottom shelf. I reached down to push it in, but a silent, warm force pulled it out instead. Its title was THE BUTTS CEMETERY RECORD. Not only was my grandmother BUTTS mentioned, but also listed were her parents and all their children. I learned that the baby of that family had died just a year before. I know that my grandmother took hold of my hand and helped me pull the book out instead of push it in.
I called the funeral home and asked for a sibling of my great aunt, gave him my phone number, and asked if she would call me. Within two weeks I found another branch of the family and got a picture of great great grandmother VAUGHN and her husband and my great great grandfather BUTTS. Doing research on my husband's family, I found VAUGHN in that line and learned that my husband's brother's wife and I are third cousins. If you really, really want to find them, they will help you. It may take time, but they want to be found.
Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links, Vol. 5, No. 28, 12 July 2000. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/
BEGIN AT HOME AND ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
by Bradley Marchant: Dean5779@aol.com
I have used RootsWeb since I began my genealogical research a few years ago and through it I have found many links. However, I hadn't had much luck at Ancestry until one day a few months ago.
I inherited a family-data disk from my grandfather, which I uploaded into my PAF file, and enjoyed showing my mom as it contains some information about her father's ancestry.
Grandfather never spoke very much of his ancestry or family -- they had all long since passed away. Except for my mother's cousins, Barry and Phillip ROGERSON, sons of Phillip and Dorothy (JACOBS) ROGERSON, we were the last of his family on both sides.
I was on Ancestry, which I had linked to through RootsWeb, and searched for some miscellaneous names, finding a few little things. I had an impulse to look for my great-great-grandmother, Hattie Emma GREER. I searched for the name and found what looked like a match -- Hattie Emma GREER born in Wareham, Massachusetts to Charles K. and Hattie Amelia (MORSE) GREER. But the dates and places were not the same as those I had. I had her as being born in Connecticut and dying in New York. Also, this Hattie Emma GREER did not have a husband listed or a death date. There was only a birth date, which did not match that of my great-great-grandmother. "Back to square one," I thought.
I began interviewing my mother and aunt, who are the last JACOBS left in my family. I often say that we're having a JACOBS family reunion when my aunt comes to visit. From her I began to learn about some of our ancestral stories. There wasn't much to go on, but I wrote everything down that they said.
Hattie Emma GREER ("Toot") married Wyman Dean JACOBS Sr., a medical doctor, about the turn of the 20th century in Massachusetts. They had two children, only one of whom reached adulthood. Under mysterious circumstances, Wyman Dean JACOBS Sr. left Hattie and moved to New York. My aunt said, ". . . Toot never went to New York because she hated any place other than
Massachusetts." She went on further to say, "Toot was born in Massachusetts and died in Massachusetts . . . didn't even like to leave there for long periods of time." This did not strike a chord with me, and I told my aunt that Toot was born in Connecticut and died in New York. My aunt then said, "Oh, maybe I'm confusing Toot with someone else . . ."
After I told her what her sister had said, my mother asked me, "Have you checked in the genealogy box?" I just looked at her, thinking she had gone crazy. She brought me a cardboard box in which she had kept things from her childhood and things her father had given her, such as handwritten family group sheets.
One, of JACOBS ancestry, gave different birth and death dates for Hattie Emma GREER. Rechecking my disk, I found that my grandfather must have dittoed the dates for both Wyman Dean JACOBS and Hattie Emma GREER! I couldn't believe I had not seen it earlier, but they had exactly the same birth and death dates on the disk from my grandfather.
So, I went back to Ancestry and looked up the Hattie Emma GREER I had found earlier. This one matched the handwritten sheet from my mother's genealogy box! I about did a back flip because in this file there also was a huge database of MORSE, extending some lines back six or seven generations. Because Hattie Emma GREER's mother was MORSE, she was included in the enormous
database.
I am glad that Toot was looking down that day to make sure I found her name at Ancestry. If I hadn't begun interviewing my two remaining JACOBS relatives, if I hadn't looked up the name on Ancestry, and if my forgetful mother hadn't mentioned her genealogy box, I would be stuck with a whole missing branch of my tree and incorrect information to go on.
Another day, my mother also asked, "Did you ever check the family Bible?" It turns out, my aunt owned a 120 year old family Bible, which would have solved the whole situation.
* * * * *
Previously published by RootsWeb.com, Inc., RootsWeb
Review: RootsWeb's Genealogy News, Vol. 4, No. 2, 10 January 2001. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/
COUNTY HISTORY PROVIDES THE KEY
MARGARET DEMICK's (HPTZ25B@prodigy.com) tale of another successful SMITH search.
Searching for the SMITH name can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. With this in mind I put off searching for my SMITH ancestors until I had reached a standstill with my other lines. However, because my great-grandmother had lived to be 97 I knew her father's name was William R. Smith. I also had a picture labeled "grandpa" that was of her grandfather, but I had no idea which.It seems my paternal grandmother's family had in their wanderings all spent time in Tama County, Iowa. While searching for the HARDENs and PHILLIPS in Tama County in the 1880 census I had also found William R. Smith as their neighbor. And that is where I left my Smith research.
I had read that old county histories could be an important source of information but I had really never followed up on it. One day while at the FHC I noticed they had a microfilmed copy of the 1883 Tama County History. Always curious to learn more of the life and times of my ancestors, I decided to browse the film and maybe if I was lucky even find them listed.
Rolling to the end of the film to check the index I found an entry or two for my HARDENs and PHILLIPS, but no William R. Smith. I wrote down the dozen or so entries for SMITH hoping one would turn out to be a sibling or parent, but of course none were. I eventually came to a chapter called "Some personal recollections of early pioneers." Since none of my ancestors had been there that early I decided to call it a day. But something called me back. It was a rainy dreary day and I really had nothing more pressing to do for the next hour and maybe the stories would make interesting reading.
The first story was by a Rachel VANDORIAN who related that she and her husband William and her brother Isaac SMITH had been the first white settlers in Tama County. I made note of the Smith name and kept reading as she told of how they had come to Tama and settled and of how they had survived a flood that first year.
At the end of the story she mentioned that Isaac had married the next year and gone to California in 1852. Bells started ringing, I knew William R. Smith had been born in California in 1855. I went back and double-checked the index and realized it was incomplete as neither Rachel nor Isaac were listed.
I then went back to the chapter on the founding of Tama County, Iowa. Sure enough I found another entry about how Isaac Smith and his sister and brother-in-law and come to Tama County This entry also went on to say that Isaac had gone to California but returned a few years later. It also said he had served in the Civil War and had been discharged for disability and died a short time later, and that he had a son now residing in Oneida Township. Oneida Township was where I had found William R. Smith in the 1880 census, only three years before.
By now I was almost positive I had found my great-great-great-grandfather and had a first-person account of the family's early experiences in Tama.
Armed with this information I sent off to Wyoming for the death certificate of William R. Smith. Two weeks later I received a copy of the death certificate in the mail. Sure enough, his father was listed as Isaac Smith and his mother as Matilda Fowler. Looking back at the microfilm I found the FOWLER family were also early settlers in Tama and Matilda's mother's and brother's names.
I knew I had a name to go with the Civil War photo. I checked our library's copies of the Roster of Iowa Soldiers and found an Isaac who sounded like the right person. I sent for the Civil war records. Two months later I had them and new leads to follow on my Smith family.
None of this would have happened if I hadn't followed a whim to read some personal accounts of some people I never heard of in a history book written over 100 years ago.
Previously published in MISSING LINKS: A Weekly Newsletter for Genealogists Vol. 2, No. 19, 9 May 1997 Copyright (c) by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley
A FAMILY HISTORY CENTER CHRISTMAS
Disclainer: I don't know if I should call this a ficticious story, though names have not been changed to protect the innocent, it's possible that the facts have been slightly embellished. vt.
Setup: At the Stockton FHC staff Christmas party in December, 2000, we gathered in a circle, each with a white elephant gift in hand. As the story was read, we were to pass our gift either to the left or right whenever the words 'left' or 'right' were spoken. If the reader, Alexia, hadn't slowed down... who knows what would have happened! Well, you'll just have to try it.
A reading by Alexia Muir of:
A Christmas Miracle
By Alexia Muir
It was 2 weeks before Christmas and left and right in the Family History Library all the patrons were hurrying to get film they had left to read before the library closed for the holidays. Ed had just asked for his film on Azores, so Brother Leafty reached for what he thought was the right film. Ed told him that his was the film on the right with the heart sticker. So Virgil got the right film and then turned left to the next patron. It was Carmie who wanted a film that she thought had her Wright family on it. Then Brother Leafty noticed it was 6:00 PM and time to leave.
Julie raised her right hand, waved, and said "Merry Christmas". As she turned to her right to ask the next patron if she needed help she noticed a man in the hall through the door to the left talking to another patron. She went out in the hall and noticed the man had a film in his left hand still in the box. She asked if he needed her help and he told her, he did, as he and his sister did not know the right way to put the film on the machine. She directed the couple through the door on their left and seated them at a film reader on the right. "Put the film on the spool on the left side of the machine thread it under and over the spool on the right side of the machine," she directed them. You turn the handle on the right side of the machine to move the film.
Thank you very much the lady replied, we are looking for my Grandfather who left home and disappeared when I was a child.
Julie wished them good luck and hurried back to the desk where she found another patron looking downright confused. This time it was the computer that failed. The one in the back on the left. She punched the button on the right at the top to reboot the machine so all problems were solved. Then just before 9 p.m., brother Bird walked in the door on the right and asked her if she was having a good night. She just looked left and right, then at him, and sighed and said "We have more patrons here then I've seen in a long time."
Dee turned left to the books and said he was looking for a city that he'd looked left and right for but just couldn't find on a map. Julie suggested the Township Atlas. Just then another patron entered the library found a book on the shelf and turned left towards the copy machine and asked for help. Julie looked over the desk to her left and decided it would be
easier to show the patron how the machine worked.
The lady told Julie she was looking for a Grandfather who didn't seem to be anywhere. His name was
Nicholas Kringle and had just disappeared. Lifting the cover up to the right she placed the book on the copier. "Just copy the right hand page and enlarge it please I can't make out the names they are printed so small!" the patron requested. The paper popped out of the lower right hand side of the machine and Julie turned around to her right and gave the patron the copy. Julie
turned to her left and then from the right hand door Carmie came in and declared, "I just found that Wright family I can't believe it! All at once everyone came rushing up to the desk from the right and the left.
Dee was on the left and said, "Look! This is the town right on this left hand page! Santa Claus, USA!"
The patron with the book copy said "Here he is! My Grandfather Nicholas Kringel, right on this page and he lived in Santa Claus, USA!"
Ed had come in from the film reading room. "Well, I almost left early but just right now I found the grandmother I was looking for."
The Man and his sister from the film room came in right after Ed and said "Oh my gosh our grandfather was also Nicholas Kringle and we found him! This was the right film we were reading!"
Dolores rushed in from the left and she also had found a grandfather!
The patron who was using the computer came up to the desk looked left and then right at the other people there and said, "You are not going to believe this! I am your Grandfather Nicholas Kringle and I have been looking for my family for years!"
Julie looked up to her left and saw that the clock and just clicked over to 9pm. It seems that on the last evening left to do research, in the last few minutes, all of the patrons in the Family History
Center had found exactly the right information they left home to find, and three of those patrons found long lost family! What a miracle! With nothing left to do everyone just hugged the people to their left and right and cried "Merry Christmas!"
THE END
At the end of the reading, after giving a gift to the person on their right, each of the FHC staff members opened the gift that was left in their lap.
FILMING TO FIND GRANDMA RITA
by Sister Mary Sevilla, Ph.D.
MaryS1256@aol.com
[This article first appeared in the October, 2000 issue of SOMOS PRIMOS http://www.somosprimos.com , an online Hispanic genealogy/history newsletter.]
A friend once told me that when our ancestors are
ready to be revealed, they will find a way. Neither
she nor I could ever have thought of this fantastic
and adventuresome happening.
I had long and painstakingly looked for information
on the birth of my paternal grandmother, Rita SEVILLA,
but kept running into dead ends. When Grandma died she
left six children ages one and one-half to 13 years.
Since they had been so young, no one knew when she was
born and that bothered me. I was named after her and
wanted to solve that mystery and give her a recognized
place in history and in our family.
The adventure started when I received an e-mail from
a man named Mike in Massachusetts, a documentary film
producer working on a new exhibit for the American
Family Immigration History Center, a new wing of the
Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York. He was
looking specifically for people of Latino/Hispanic
heritage who have made some good progress in their own
family history. He had read online a short
genealogical article that I had written for SOMOS
PRIMOS. He asked if he could call me about being the
subject of a short documentary film about researching
my family history.
That phone call set in motion a three-month series
of e-mails and phone calls with Mike and with the film
producer, Kate. I had to demonstrate that I actually
had documents and the step-by-step procedure for
obtaining them. They also wanted to know if any
critical documents were still missing. Yes to both.
Mike and Kate consulted me about possible dates,
places to film both here in California and in Mexico
City. Even when the decision had been made that we
really were going to make a film, I still had trouble
believing it.
My film debut began at the Family History Center in
Los Alamitos, California on Friday, 21 July 2000. The
filming continued on Saturday at my apartment where I
was interviewed extensively and shots were made of
important family documents. The afternoon filming
included a conversation about Grandma Rita with my
cousins who had also been named after her.
Sunday, the film crew and I flew to Mexico City to
continue filming. The first episode consisted of
meeting a group of SEVILLA cousins in the patio of San
Juan Bautista Church in Coyoacan. The filming with
these cousins was especially rewarding for me because
I had only met some of them since beginning my
research four years ago. Three more of them were new
to me that evening.
Monday was spent filming at Santa Veracruz Church
where Grandma was thought to have been baptized. It
takes hours for the film crew to set up and get the
lighting just right. Then each scene has to be filmed
five to seven times. I was flabbergasted to see the
wall-to-ceiling books of sacramental records dating
back to the 1600s. The excitement built up as the
secretary pulled down each of the baptismal books of
the years that Grandma Rita was thought to have been
born. She painstakingly looked at page after page. I
had the urge to grab the books and look for myself.
Yes, her elusive record was found and I truly rejoiced
and wiped the tears from my eyes so we could go on
filming.
The third day in Mexico City, we filmed at the
Registro Civil en Distrito Federal and found a record
I had been seeking of one of Grandma Rita's children
who had died as a toddler. That, too, was a very
moving experience because now baby Gloria had her
place in history and in our family.
It was an incredibly enriching experience on so many
levels that I had trouble even absorbing everything. The
categories seemed to be:
1. Exciting document discoveries;
2. My cousins, Aguilar friends, and people I met -- producer,
film crews, drivers, couriers, etc.;
3. Film/light materials/gadgets/communication devices;
4. The Hotel de Cortes, San Juan Bautista, Coyoacan, Santa
Veracruz Church sacramental books. I truly feel enriched
and blessed to have had these experiences.
On the flight home, I was marveling at all the
events and activities of the last several days. It is
truly remarkable to think that our brief family film
will be one of only six to be placed in the Ellis
Island Museum in New York. Yes, Grandma Rita Emilia
Galvez Tresarrieu Sanchez Daniel Sevilla had a unique
way of adding more pieces to the puzzle of her life.
Who ever would have thought of a documentary film?
If you have ancestors who are evasive, keep at it.
You never know how or where they will present
themselves.
* * * * *
Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra
Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links, Vol. 6, No. 2,
10 January 2001. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/
FINDING A GRAVESITE
by Vern Taylor
Before we left on vacation, we tried the Internet and USGenWeb in particular to see if we could find the grave site for Shawn Shoup, born Oct 1972- Apr 1973 in Eloy, Pinal, AZ. He only lived six months, but my wife Renda (half sister to Shawn) remembers him well. She really wanted to visit his grave site during this trip.
That Internet search didn't turn up anything so we called the FHC in Mesa and then went in person the day after we arrived at my parents house. Not finding anything there, we went by referral to the Mesa public library. They looked and then recommended us to Judy in reference at the Arizona state library in Phoenix. We called her and left her our information. We returned home and called her back after lunch and found she had not located anything in the obituaries or
elsewhere. We also called the Mesa city cemetery and had them check their records to no avail.
We planed a trip south 45 miles to Eloy, the next day. We found Eloy to be a small city stretched out over about 10 miles of territory. We had to ask for directions three times to find the center of the city and locate the city court house. We talked to Mary Ridgell at the records office and she searched her card file for death records without finding anything either. I asked for her card, and then we returned home greatly dispirited.
Shawn was the second son of George E. Shoup and JoAnn Findling. A son born a year earlier, was named Brian. Her previous marriage with Floyd Dill resulted in 5 children: Jesse, Billy, Vicky, Terry, and Renda Dill. Why should it be so hard to find a child's grave, who is remembered by five half-siblings? We also wondered just what else we could do to find him.
Back at home (parent's house in Mesa) I tried Mary at the state library again. She called back just before 5:00 p.m. with three phone numbers. I called and left a message with a lady who researches cemeteries in the area, and then I called the Eloy funeral home.
At 5 minutes til 5:00 p.m. I talked with Elmer Fredley and he agreed to call me back if he found anything in his records. I figured 5:00 p.m. would be closing time and since the next day was Thanksgiving day holiday, that I wouldn't hear back from him until Friday.
At 5:40 pm. (still on Wednesday), Fred calls back and says he has found the record. As I take down the information he has over the phone, my wife, Renda, who was listening, is shouting "He's buried as a what?"
The information we received pointed up the fact that death records are the least accurate of any of the vital records. Shawn Shoup was buried as Shawn Dill. His mother was listed as JoAnn Dill instead of maiden name Findling. And his father's surname was misspelled as Shove even though he signed it Shoup.
We enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday with our family and on Friday we took another trip to Eloy. Since the funeral home did not have the grave site location, we stopped at the city records office only to find it closed. From Fred's directions we found the Eloy cemetery and Renda remembered the approximate location for Shawn's grave, but it was unmarked.
We stopped at the funeral home and Fred gave us a copy of the death certificate. We also met the funeral director from 27 years ago who just happened to be there, the one who had performed Shawn's service. Some serendipity there. We stopped for a minute to see Renda's childhood home on the way out of town.
Upon our return home from vacation, we emailed Mary at the Eloy court house with our new information and she was also able to find the record under the Dill surname. She also gave us the section, row and lot numbers to locate the exact grave site.
Thanks to the many people who had helped us we now had the information we'd set out to find.
HEADSTONE EMBEDDED IN BOULDER
Brian Aikens
Ojai 2nd Ward, Ventura California Stake: brianfa@aol.com
My wife grew up in the small town of Ojai, California. In our years of dating and now marriage (25 this month Nov 2000). We had often driven past the small, local Nordhoff Cemetery. She had said for all these years that she thought she had a family member buried there, but didn't know who. So one day, in the FHC in our ward, I noticed a large binder listing those graves within this small cemetery. There I found her paternal great grandfather. I rushed over, found the grave and then brought her back to see it. Turns out he died elsewhere, but wanted to be buried close to his daughter. I thought that was the end of the story, until:A couple of months later, I was reading a letter from the same grandmother to my wife's sister. Gram mentioned that she couldn't believe how badly the cemetery was around Uncle Dud's and Little Frances' graves. I checked my genealogy and found an Uncle Dud's, Gram's Uncle, from Texas, but no Little Frances. I then went back to the FHC and low and behold, there was a Dudley Thomas and Frances Thomas, one died in his thirties and the other at age six and both buried in the same plot. Again, I ran over to the cemetery and located their graves buried under a big sandstone boulder with the headstone embedded in the rock.
So who was Frances, how were they buried together in the same year, and what happened to each of them?
I emailed my wife's uncle and he pointed me in the right direction.
Checking microfilms at the local Ojai Community Library, I discovered that in 1931, Little Frances, daughter of Dudley Thomas, had been playing with her brother and friends baking potatoes in a cave. To heat up the fire, they got some gasoline, which exploded over Frances' legs. Evidently, the burns became infected and she died a few days later, unexpectedly.
Well she was the apple of her father's eye. Only a few weeks later, her distraught father was headed to work, when he accidentally (?) turned his car into a fast moving train. He died a few hours later in the same hospital where his daughter had died less than a month before.
All of this started with an out-of-the-way black binder found on the bottom shelf of the Family History Center.
Someday I hope to solve the mystery of the boulder.
JUNK BOX REVEALS FAMILY SECRET
by Sue Webb Bodishbaugh: derbygal@juno.com
My mother-in-law cleaned house to move from a large home to a retirement home and gave me three boxes of what she called "family junk." Each box was a treasure in itself: one was wood, handmade and beautifully carved by my husband's grandfather and namesake, when he was in shop class in grade school. One black and red tin box (grandpa's money box in his 1923 grocery store)later was found to have come from Germany in the 1800s and inside were the treasures including more than 100 letters, birth certificates, German smallpox inoculations dated in the 1840s (giving the city/township where great-grandpa was born and his age, as he was "9 months of age at this time"), Civil War letters written to and from the battlefields. I digested and gloried in this new information for a month but, as usual, so many answers produced so many questions. Then three of the oddest things happened.First, I went to our Family History Center and asked for help obtaining copies of microfilms from Edenkoben, Germany. "Edenkoben?" the nice lady asked. "Yes," said I. "Well, why don't you just ask Charlie Doll. He's over there. His family is from Edenkoben." As DOLL was one of the names mentioned in the letters, and Edenkoben was a tiny dot on the German map, I was floored. Not only did Mr. Doll have the microfilms on hand, but also he gave me the address of his cousin who authored the history book 1600 YEARS OF EDENKOBEN, so we could correspond, and he helped me with my beginning German language reading. Like any good teacher, he didn't do it for me; he just showed me the way and picked me up every now and then when I faltered. I am still amazed when I remember that night. "This genealogy stuff is a piece of cake," I thought. Ha! It was a classic case of beginner's luck.
Second, after stumbling over the tiny writing in faded purple and blue inks written forward, sideways, and between the lines in a foreign language, I passed a few copies through my law firm's International Department. The paralegals, all of whom knew German, assured me these were not written in German. A month later, I lunched with three letters spread before me, pondering my next step, when my boss passed behind me and laughingly said, "That person writes just like my mother!" Both daughter and mother are from Baden-Baden but it just so happened that mother was a teacher in a private girls' school in a certain short time period in Germany during which three forms of the German language were required to be "proper."
One was Sutterlin/ Zutterlain, the language of these letters. So, in her mid-80s, with one good eye and a very large magnifying glass, dear mother translated my letters to her daughter who typed them on her laptop and brought them to me on a disk. Mother would only accept a very small fee for the letters brought many delightful memories of Germany. She not only translated but, ever true to her teaching background, gave me historical information I otherwise never would have known: "When she says, 'I knew you since you first got your three little scars . . .' she is saying she knew him when he was nine months old, as that is the age at which children were vaccinated for smallpox, and in Germany, they made three little cuts or incisions, one above the other, not like they do here with the round poking," and, "When he says he is looking for a place in St. Louis, he means he is looking for a job. That's how we said it." What a blessing.
Third, family stories were told but I could not find to verify great-grandfather and great-grandmother's marriage record or their son's birth record. Late one sleepless night, propped up in bed with my reading light on, I poured over the letters in the three boxes on my lap. I was noting the dates and franking on the envelopes, trying to put them into some sort of order and silently cursing my husband's uncle, as he had just told me, "Those old letters? Mom kept them in the attic and on rainy days we used them to play school and made paper planes out of them, sailing them out of the attic windows into the mud. There were a bunch of them at one time." Ugh! I removed them from the box one by one. The bedside light struck the bottom of the box from a side angle and all of a sudden I noted a line of stitching - black box outside and in, black bottom, black stitching?
All envelopes immediately came out and in the bottom I found, form-fitted and hand made so perfectly as to fit the box bottom so tightly that it took a letter-opener and tweezers to get beside and gently lift out a black leather pouch that held. It contained the marriage certificate and birth certificate. They showed that grandpa was well on the way when the couple used great-grandpa's railroad passes and eloped to a town where no one knew them. How they explained this 10-pound child's premature birth is unknown. The beautifully decorated, elegantly written marriage certificate could not be displayed on the wall, for folks were known to count months on their fingers and they might talk.
For grandpa's entry into World War II to train American pilots, and with his "German sounding last name," great-grandma had to do a lot of things, one of which was to file a delayed birth certificate. I found it right away and it, of course, contained "the" family history, doctored to fit the need.
My mother-in-law got the biggest kick out of this, as her mother-in-law was so prim, proper, and always such a perfect lady. She'd died in the early 1950s and for 50 years the family had passed the boxes around from Arkansas to Florida to Maryland and back to Florida, stored in great-grandma's dresser, without finding that "hidden treasure."
After all these years, we finally unraveled the threads of the ERION/KAYSER/BODISHBAUGH family story. (Had to do it -- pun intended!)
Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links, Vol. 5, No. 44, 1 November 2000. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/
NO LEAD IS TOO SMALL
by Elizabeth Bernard
dunnontn@computer.net or bernarde@wcmc.com
About three years ago, I finally decided to attempt to figure out if I was related to Benedict ARNOLD, as my father told me while growing up. I went to a local Family History Center (FHC) but with the limited information I had I was unable to make a connection.My father and his brother's widow were able to tell me that my great-grandparents, Norman and Mattie (HEATON) ARNOLD, were buried in Venice Cemetery in Cayuga County, New York, outside of Syracuse. A volunteer at the FHC told me that Venice was only about a half hour's drive from her daughter's home, where she would be visiting the following weekend. If I could tell her the exact name and location, she would drive there and look around for me.
The information operator found no such listing, however she came up with Venice Enterprises and I took the number, thinking I would call to see what it was and whether anyone knew of the cemetery. It turned out to be a trucking company and while they had not heard of the cemetery, they gave me the number of the town clerk at her day job, which gave me a chuckle because where I am from being town clerk is a full-time job.
Feeling quite foolish I contacted the town clerk and explained what I was looking for and why. She replied that there were a couple of cemeteries with ARNOLDs in them, a woman named Elizabeth ARNOLD lived next to them and did some genealogy work, and suggested that maybe we were related.
Thinking this was just too outrageous, I contacted Elizabeth ARNOLD and told her my story. She asked me which Norman ARNOLD I was looking for and I answered that I was looking for Norman G. ARNOLD. She exclaimed, "He's here, and we're related!" Then she invited me up to review her research and to show me the cemeteries and where my ancestors settled upon moving from Stephentown. Two weeks and a four-hour one-way drive later, I had the pleasure of meeting this most pleasant and gracious woman, who gave me more than 12 generations of information. I made the four-hour trip home that same day, arriving exhausted but elated, and knowing that no lead is too small.
Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links, Vol. 5, No. 28, 12 July 2000. RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/
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