Family History - Collecting Stories

This holiday weekend is a good chance for people to get together with family members.  When the family is together as a group it is an excellent time to collect family history.  It's a great time to get people talking about their memories.  I know historians are concerned about the history of long dead ancestors, but there a family stories that aren't so old.  The stories of family members that are still living needs to be written down now while they can tell their own stories.  We all wish those that have died would have written down more for us, so we need to be getting things that have happened to the people that are living now for their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and beyond.

A great way to do that is to record their stories on video or audio and they can later be written up too.
My older siblings are getting up in age and I had a scare with my older sister a few months back and I realized there is still so much that I need to learn from her.  She is 15 years older than me and she remembers so many stories with my parents that I have never heard.  I have been trying to get my older siblings to start talking and telling me there memories.  When they get together in a group they start talking and one person remembers something and that jogs the memories of the others and before long they just start telling all kinds of stories.  If I don't record these stories while they are still here all those stories will be lost.

I have several older cousins and I really need to spend time recording their memories.  It is great how each family has different stories from their parents about special memories of our grandparents.

Holidays are a special family time so it makes for a great time to talk to people about their own special piece of your family history.  Someday you children and grandchildren will be saying Thank You.

Easter is Family Time

Happy Easter to all of you. I hope you are enjoying the holiday with you family. If you don't celebrate Easter than I hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

When I grew up with my parents we started Easter Sunday with a sunrise service. They wanted everyone to have time during the day with their families. Holidays were a fun time in a large family.
There was lots of food and many family members around. The Holidays bring back many thoughts of my parents.

Fearless Females - Hoover Family History Trading Card

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 29.

March 29 — Create a free Fold3 Memorial Page or a Genealogy Trading Card at Big Huge Labs for a female ancestor. Some of you may have created your own card back in September 2009 following Sheri Fenley’s post over at The Educated Genealogist. This time, the card is for your female ancestor. Tell us about who you've selected and why and then post a link to what you've created.

I decided to make a trading card of my Great Grandmother.  She was my grandfather's mother.  My mom grew up next door to her, so they were very clost.

Fearless Females - The Quaker Life

Lydia Melinda Eccles, my 2nd great grand aunt was born in North Carolina on November 9, 1818.  Her mother, Rachel Huddleston Eccles and her father, John P. Eccles were married in North Carolina.  When her mother married her father, her mother was dismissed from the Quaker church because she married out of union.  

That meant that she married someone who was not a member or the Quaker religion or that she had not received permission from the church to marry or some other unacceptable reason for the church to decline permission.  

When a Quaker man and woman wanted to marry, the parents were first consulted and, if they approved, the couples intentions were announced at the women's meeting and note regarding their proposal was sent to the men's meeting.  A committee was appointed to ascertain the couples "clearness" for marriage.  

I don't know what year Lydia's mother brought the children to Ohio.  Lydia's grandmother and aunts and uncles had already moved to Ohio, when Lydia's father left home.  Lydia's uncle Jonathan walked back to North Carolina to bring the family to Ohio.

Lydia was probably a teenager when she left North Carolina and went to Ohio with her family.  In, Ohio, she married John Hobson Stubbs in Preble County, Ohio.  Later, they moved to nearby Butler County, Ohio.

The Stubbs family were very strong Quakers.  Lydia's sister Mary Louisa also married a member of the Stubbs family. There was a large contingent of Quakers in the Preble and Butler Counties area.  Another large group were in the Richmond, Indiana area.  The two areas were not that far apart.  

John Stubbs had 10 children with his first wife before she died.  After he and Lydia married they had 12 children.  They lived in the West Elkton area and attended the West Elkton monthly meeting.  Their home in Ohio was the Friends parsonage.  The home was on the "Historical Walking Tour of West Elkton, Ohio."   The home harbored slaves moving north.

In 1876, Lydia and John married to Boone County, Indiana.  Lydia's mother moved with them.   In Boone County they attended the Sugar Creek monthly meeting.  

Lydia was a good Quaker during her entire adult life.  She died December 15, 1889.  She is buried beside her husband in the Sugar Creek Friends Cemetery.  Her mother is also buried there.

This is the 1850 Census from Preble County, Ohio.  My 2 Great Grandparents are listed, as well as, 2 of my 2nd Great Grandaunts, and my 3rd Great Grandmother.  

Wordless Wednesday - The Postcard

Postcard from Anna J Stubbs to her Aunt Jennie Eccles Irwin.

Fearless Females - A Family Resemblance!

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 24.  

March 24 — Do you share any physical resemblance or personality trait with one of your female ancestors? Who? What is it?

For a long time people told me I looked like my Mom.  I think I look more like my Dad.  I don't know if I have a mixture of the two.  

I am going to post some pictures of the females from my mom's family so you can see what you think.

Me

My Great Grandmother, My Grandfather's Mom

My Grandmother, My Mom's Mom                My Mom

My Sister, Who I believe looks like my Grandmother.

Do you think there is any family resemblance in there anywhere?

Fearless Females - A Supportive Mother

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 25.  

March 25 — Tell how a female ancestor interacted with her children. Was she loving or supportive? A disciplinarian? A bit of both?


My mother, Shirley Hoover Plummer, was not really the disciplinarian, she counted on dad for that.  There were times though when you crossed the line that she could really be tough on you.  

Normally, my mother was very supportive and understanding.  She was the mother that you could go to and talk about things.  

Mom was the one that everyone counted on when anything went wrong.  She made each of her children feel like they were the favorite.  It's funny now when we get together and talk about her everyone loved her very much, but they all have different memories that are important to them.  

I hope that I have been able to carry on the things I was taught about parenting with my children.  Most important is to love them and make them feel special.   It didn't matter what you did, she still loved you.  She would sometimes be disappointed, but that didn't affect how much she loved you.

My mother felt that raising her children in church was very important.  

Fearless Females - Create a Timeline

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 23.  I have gotten a little behind in the last week so I am trying to go back and catch up.


March 23 — Create a timeline for a female ancestor using your favorite software program or an online timeline generator such as OurTimelines.Post an image of it or link.

I created a Timeline Report for my 3rd Great Grandmother, Rachel Huddleston using Family Treemaker 2012.  It is the software that I use to keep my family tree.

Fearless Females - My Brick Wall -Will It Ever Come Down

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 20.  I have gotten a little behind in the last week so I am trying to go back and catch up.

March 20 — Is there a female ancestor who is your brick wall? Why? List possible sources for finding more information.

I have several brick walls, but since I have been researching for just about a year, that is to be expected.  I know there are people who have been researching most of their lives and still have brick walls.

My great-great grandmother was Milly Mathews Gibson.  Her mother is my brick wall.  I know she married Samuel Mathews.  On her daughter's marriage certificate she is listed as Polly.  On the censuses she is listed as Mary.  I don't know for sure if she is the same person.  I have seen that Polly was a nickname for Mary in those days.  I believe she is the same, but I not been able to find her maiden name on anything.

I really don't know where to go from here.  I am not sure if there are any records for her other daughter's marriages that might have a maiden name listed for her.  

If anyone has any suggestions on how to find a women born in Virginia in about 1815, I would love to hear them.  I haven't been able to go any further back on her husband either, even though I have his last name.

Fearless Females - Learning A Surprising Fact

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 19.  I have gotten a little behind in the last week so I am trying to go back and catch up.


March 19 — Have you discovered a surprising fact about one of your female ancestors? What was it and how did you learn it? How did you feel when you found out?

When I began my research I didn't know much at all about my family.  All but one of my grandparents died before I was born.  Only one grandfather was alive and I didn't get to know him.  He died when I was 12.  I had never really sat down and talked to him. I only remember seeing him one time.  My mother had told me about her parents and a little about her grandparents.  The great thing was she sat down with me and helped me fill out the family trees of both her family and my dad's with all the information she remembered.  And she actually remembered many things.  I wouldn't have gotten very far at all without her.  She did that over 20 years ago and last year I finally started using it.  I have always had the interest, just not the time.

One of the things she told me was that her great grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee Indian.  

When I started researching I was looking for Indian heritage.  I knew on my mom's dad side that they really knew nothing about his father.  He died when my grandfather was a toddler.  Since he was a Hoover in Richmond, Indiana, it is highly likely that he was a Quaker.  My grandfather's mother was a Quaker and her whole family line descended from Quakers.

On her mother's side mom knew both her grandparents but not her great-grandparents, so I assumed  the Indian must have come from this side.

In searching I found that the Manis's came from Scottish descent.  It was the Gibson side that surprised me.

As I researched my great grandmother Cora Gibson, I found some real surprises.

When Cora was one year old, she was listed as a Mulatto.  As I went back through the previous generations on both sides they were all listed as Mulatto as far back as I could track.  I started researching the term Mulatto.  My first thought was that there was an African America parent and a black parent.  I just couldn't figure out how it continued from one generation to another.

Doing this research I came across some interesting facts.  I guess anyone who was non-white could be listed as Mulatto.  If they had Indian blood they could be listed as Mulatto.  I also found a term for a group of people that I had never heard before, Melungeon.

Melungeons were a group of people who lived as a tribal type of people.  They were considered a tri-racial isolate group of people.  Supposedly, they were a mix of white, Indian, and African American.  There seems to be no real knowledge to the origins of these people.  

I previously wrote about this here.  There is a book that has my great-great grandfather's family listed in it.  It is about the Carmel Indians of Highland County, Ohio.  The were considered a Melungeon tribe.  They had started out in the Tennessee Virginia mountain area.  They were in Kentucky for a while and then moved to Highland County, Ohio.  My great-great grandfather then moved to Indiana with his family.   Once they moved to Indiana they were only listed as white.  I have talked to a distant cousin in West Virginia who has been researching these people for years.  She believes the family left the Tennessee Virginia area when they were rounded up to be herded west with the "Trail of Tears".  She has information that leads to the fact that they escaped and went to Kentucky to hide for a time.  Then they began splitting up and moving to different area.  A large contingent went to Highland County, Ohio.

As I found out these things I was at first a little shocked.  As I thought about it, I realized, I am the same person I have always been.  It doesn't matter what blood is mixed in my body, I am the person I have been because of that, or in spite of that, I don't know which.  I am proud of my heritage, whether is by a mixture of blood, or if it is truly descended from full-blooded Indian.

My daughter did a DNA test and she didn't find any African American or Indian.  Everything was pretty much European, but I know my family came from that group of mountain people on both sides of my great grandmother's family.

Creating Family History - How do you do record your family history?

I just thought about this today.  You know how excited we all get when we find a journal or a written piece of our ancestors history.  It is especially awe-inspiring when it is something that is written in their own words.

I wonder if a few years from now our family members will read our blogs with the same fascination.  Our blogs are talking about people from our past, but we are writing about all of these with our own words and thoughts.  I have put many stories of my younger days here and hope to write more.

Will our blogs become treasures to the future generations? Most people do not write letters or journals like they did in the past.  Life moves so quickly now.  You know, I believe that is probably what people were thinking a hundred years ago too.  Do our lives move more quickly.  We have lots of things to do, but our conveniences have made those much less time consuming, so really we are just doing different things.  Our writings consist of e-mails, texts, tweets, and other social media communications.

Of course, there are many more things about history amassed on the Internet and digital media, but where is the personal aspect of history going to come from.  It is always great to find records, but it is amazing to find actual day to day personal histories written by that individual.  We are all creating those on a regular basis with our blogs.  It isn't written in our own hand-writing, but it is written from our own experiences.  They may think we were a little obsessed with searching our family history, and in most cases they would be correct.

When my son was born we actually hand wrote journals about his day to day life and got comments from him to add to the pages.  When he was old enough we asked him to tell us the best and worst things that happened to him that day.  We wrote in journals off and on until early elementary.  I  wrote his journal entries for him when he wanted to put down his thoughts.  Life got busy along somewhere in early elementary and the journals fell to the wayside.  We already enjoy going back through those and reading them together and laughing about those days. I hope someday he can read them to his children and grandchildren and they will know what our lives were like.

I have always scrapbooked, too.  Many moms who scrapbook journal on their pages, which is also a great form of creating family history.  They create beautiful scrapbooks of their families and we have seen a few of those from our ancestors now being posted on blogs.  It is so important to record your family history for future generations.

My blog posts are an extension of this type of creating a history for future generations.

Wordless Wednesday - Connersville Kiwanis

Group at the Connersville Kiwanis Club

Circa 1950's 

Tombstone Tuesday - The Brockmans

My Uncle

Floyd Brockman

Oct  22, 1914 - Apr 1986

My Aunt

Pauline Hoover Brockman

Mar 19, 1917 - Jan 9, 2012

My Cousin

F. Richard Brockman

Oct 22, 1946 - Jun 1972

Billion Graves - Get a Team Together and Photograph a Cemetery!!

Have you ever considered getting a team of people together and taking your smart phones out and photographing an entire cemetery in one day.  With the BillionGraves app it is very easy to do.

• Get a group together, maybe a historical society, a church group, or just a group of friends.
• Download the app to your smartphones, the smartphone GPS's all the graves. 
• Check BillionGraves.com and make sure your cemetery is not already photographed.
• Go to the cemetery and decide who is taking which section.
• Start photographing the stones, make sure you photograph the front and back and link them together.
• When you have finished just upload the photos.

It's this easy to photograph a graveyard and get it recorded for people who live far away and recorded for history.  The photographs need to be taken with a smart phone, it is the only format they use,  It allows them to GPS each grave so others can easily find them.  After they are downloaded you can chose to go to the BillionGraves.com dashboard and transcribe them.  If you don't want to transcribe, there are many other people who just do transcribing.

If you form a team and work together, it's quick and easy to completely document an entire graveyard in a small amount of time.  If you each download your photos when you are leaving the graveyard, the photos could all be online by the time you get home.  How's that for fast and easy?  

My son and I took photographs in eleven graveyards last summer and uploaded them.  Some of them were small older graveyards, but we did a one larger one.

Please think about this!  You can help out other people and maybe someone will be putting in the graves you need.  I have had people from all over the country thank me for taking pictures of their family members stones.

BillionGraves.com also has a contest going where you can get a team together and gain points.  If you interested in this check out this page.

Fearless Females - Sunday Dinner with Mom

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 16.

March 16 — If you could have lunch with any female family member (living or dead) or any famous female who would it be and why? Where would you go? What would you eat?

I don't even have to give this any thought.  If I could have lunch with any female family member it would be my mother.  I miss her terribly.  She meant so much to me.  She died when I was 43 years old.  I would also have to invite my brothers and sisters.  My mother loved us all and I would have to share her with them.

Here is a picture with Mom and six of her children.  

My oldest brother was already dead. 

 My second oldest brother was living out of state at the time.

We would have our family Sunday dinner.   We had Sunday's dinner at Mom's all the time during my growing up years.  Most of the grown up kids came home every Sunday.  I came home on Sunday's for many years after I got married and had children.  When Mom went to the nursing home we didn't get to have the usual Sunday dinners anymore, but my sister would pick Mom up and take her to her house.    Wherever Mom was, the family seemed to gather.

Since we are having Sunday dinner at Mom's, we are going to be having Fried Chicken with all the fixings.  And for dessert, it will be Blackberry Cobbler.  Some of us would have gone out and picked fresh blackberries somewhere so she could make the cobbler.  

When we sat down for dinner, Mom would say grace, and ask Jesus to watch over all over her children, and thank him for all her blessings and the food which we were eating.

This dinner conversation is different than our usual Sunday dinners.  This time we are going to ask Mom to tell us about herself.  We want to know all about how she and Dad met.   We will ask her to talk about her mother, and tell us everything she can remember.  We would ask her to tell us all the family stories that she remembers.  

Do you think it is possible to find out everything you want to know over one meal?Oh, I certainly hope so.  We have such a short time to spend with our mother.

I know I would have to tell Mom how special she is and how much I love her.  

I believe Mom is around me all the time, she has never really left me.  Whether it be just my memories, or if her spirit surrounds me, I feel her with me every day.   

Fearless Females - Six Word Tribute

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 15.


March 15 — Write a six-word memoir tribute to one of your female ancestors.


My tribute is to my mother, Shirley Plummer Hoover.  I may have cheated a little on the number of words.

M - Miracle-Worker
O - Organized
T - True-Christian
H - Homemaker
E - Expressive
R - Respected

Wordless Wednesday - The South End Kids

The kids in the neighborhood when we lived in Connersville, Indiana.

Fearless Females - Day 11

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 11.

March 11 — Did you have any female ancestors who died young or from tragic or unexpected circumstances? Describe and how did this affect the family?

I am a little late posting this,  I was busy yesterday.  My son, a senior in high school, was honored at a dinner last night for being inducted into the Academic Hall of Fame for his high school.  He got to select a high school teacher and an elementary teacher who had made an impact on his education to received the honor with him.  It was very nice, and it was great to see some good teachers get recognition.  My son has worked hard his entire school career to get this honor.  I am proud of him.

I did have an ancestor who died young.  My grandmother, Ethel Manis Hoover, died at 38 years of age.  She was the mother to six children, four of them were still at home.  As far as anyone knew, she was in great health.   She died from a cerebral hemorrhage. 

Ethel had four daughters at home, Pauline, 18, Shirley, 15, who was my mother,  Betty, 12, and Milly, 6.  All the girls were devastated at the loss of their mother.  Her daughter, Ruth, 21,  had only been married a short time and had a young toddler at home.  Her son, Bob,  22, had recently married.  

Ethel had gone with her children and husband  to visit his sister.   As she was walking up the steps to enter the house, she fell over into the shrubs.  They went home and during the evening she told her older daughters that she was dying.  She died early the next morning, leaving a family behind.  Her funeral was held at the home of her daughter, Ruth.  

Ethel was the first of her siblings to die young.  Her sister, Delores Manis,  30, died in 1938,  leaving a young daughter.  Her brother, Fred Manis, 41, died 5 years later, leaving a teenage son.  Their mother out-lived all of her children.

Fearless Females - Day 12 Working Girl

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 12.

March 12 — Working girl: Did your mother or grandmother work outside the home? What did she do? Describe her occupation

I have written in the past about some of the work my mother, Shirley Hoover Plummer,  has done as I was telling some of her stories.  Today I will try to give you a history of all the work she did outside the home. 

I don't know much about what she did in her early years.  My older brother didn't remember her working until they were living in Missouri.  He remembers when he was young that the whole family went out to the cotton fields to work.  He was probably around six and he would work along side Mom while she picked cotton.  My youngest brother would have been around four, he doesn't remember if he picked cotton or not.  My mom was pregnant with me at the time.  They had six kids to raise and needed to make enough money to take care of them.

They moved back to Indiana a little while after I was born and not too long after Mom had my little sister.  She stayed at home and took in laundry while we were young, and did anything else to help support the family.

I remember Mom being at home most of the time I was growing up.  My dad became disabled when I was in middle school, so my mom took a job at the Ford Motor Company plant in Connersville and worked on the line at the factory for a few years.  I think she left there because of lay-offs.

She then went to work for the Purdue University Extension Office and taught people how to cook.  She worked there until their funding ran out.

Next, she worked at First Street Market, a little grocery store, that was owned by my husband's mother.  She worked there for a few years.

Her last job was driving the transportation bus for the Senior Citizens Center.

Women's History Month - Child Pattern

Women's History Month: Pattern of Children of My Female Ancestors

Lorine at Olive Tree Genealogy posted an interesting genealogical topic for Women's History Month, so I decided to share my mother's family.

Instructions:

Make a list of your female ancestors beginning with your mother. Go back as far as you can. Now figure out how many children each female ancestor had. Did the females in your direct maternal line tend to have the same numbers of children each generation? Did they have more? Less? Were they prolific or are there few children born to each woman? Is there a pattern emerging?

Mother - Shirley Hoover - 9 children - 4 boys, 5 girls

Grandmother - Ethel Manis  - 6 children -1 boy, 5 girls

GGrandmother - Cora Gibson - 3 children - 1 boy, 2 girls

GGGrandmother - Milly Mathews - 8 children - 6 boys, 2 girls

GGGGrandmother - Mary ?? - 5 children - 5 girls

There were 31 children born, 12 boys, 19 girls.  I can see no pattern other than most had more girls than boys, with the exception of my great great grandmother who had several more boys than girls.  I have  4 children, 3 boys and 1 girls so I have helped to even out the boys.  My daughter has two boys so she is now continuing my pattern of having more boys than girls.

There doesn't seem to be any real patterns, but it was interesting to look at.

Fearless Females - Day 6 Religion

In honor of National Women's History Month, I will be following the blogging prompts from The Accidental Genealogist blog. The prompts are interesting and I am truly enjoying this.  Here is day 10.

March 10 — What role did religion play in your family? How did your female ancestors practice their faith? If they did not, why didn’t they? Did you have any female ancestors who served their churches in some capacity?

Religion has always played a large role in my family history.  My mother's father's family was Quaker on both sides of the family.  My Quaker ancestors moved around the country with other Quakers to escape religious persecution   They probably left their homelands for the same reason.  

When they came to Indiana they moved here in a group to Richmond, Indiana area which was primarily settled by Quakers.  When my grandfather's dad died his mother married a second Quaker.

My grandfather was a minister and his half-brother was a Quaker minister.  

Religion continued to play a major role in my mother's life.  She was raised in the church.  As an adult she always attended church.  

During my years of growing up, my mother attended the Nazarene church when I was a young child.  Later, as I got to be an older child, she attended a church named The Thirteenth Street Tabernacle.  In the last years of her life she returned to the Nazarene Church.

I remember my mom being extremely active in the church.  She taught Sunday school, she made quilts with the women's group, she drove the church bus, she lead Bible studies, and she sang for the services.  My daughter remembers going to church with her grandma and thinking her grandma was famous, because everyone knew her.  She remembers everyone calling her grandma, "Sister Plummer".

Church meant so much to my mother.  It was important for her to keep her relationship with Christ.  She needed to be involved and help others find their way.  

When I was growing up she insisted on her children being in church.  She was determined to raise us in the way that she though we should go.

I believe my sister had Mom's name added to the Memorial Roll after Mom's death.

I have a brother who preaches, although he has to work another job to support himself.  He doesn't want to be paid to spread the word.  

My mother, a fearless female, lived the life that she felt drawn to live and left a legacy behind her.