Sunday, June 30, 2013

Who Do You Think You Are?? - Anderson, Indiana

Who Do You Think You Are?



The Herald Bulletin in Anderson, Indiana has just started a new series that will trace the genealogy of some of Madison County, Indiana's better known citizens.  

Beth Oljace, a librarian and genealogist, who works at the Indiana Room at the Anderson Public Library is the writer of the series and I believe the main researcher.

I have spent time at the library and Beth is always a major help with any research.

The series researches the family history of the Mayor of Anderson, Kevin Smith.

She has broken down the research to show his father's Smith line, and his mother's Althouse line.

On his father's family line they were traced back to Elijah Conn, a Civil War veteran, who served for seven months with the Ohio 194th Infantry.



On his mother's family line they were traced to several people with connections to the Revolutionary War.  There is a possibility that they were related to Ethan Allen.

If you need information in the Madison County/Anderson area, Beth is a great person to contact to help you with your research.

I think it is really exciting that shows like Who Do You Think Your Are have been generating more interest in searching for family history.  

I would love to have added the article from the newspaper, but I do not want to violate copyright laws.  Here is the link to the online version.

Friday, June 28, 2013

A Family History Research Trip!!

My son and I went to Richmond, Indiana, yesterday to search for information on my family history.  My mother's family spent a few generations in the Richmond area.  My mother moved away from the area with my father.  We visited the Morrison Reaves Public Library there.



The Morrison Reaves Library has a nice section on research materials for family history.  We spent time going through Newspaper Index books for the years 1872-1888.  

In going through the books I found some information.  My great grandmother, Lulu Pickett Hoover,  filed a lawsuit against a man for breach of contract.  Apparently he was promised to marry her and he went off and married another woman.  By the time the case went to court he also had a child with the woman.  My great grandmother, Lulu Pickett, had sued for $3,000.00.  When it came to trial she chose to take $150.00.

Lulu's brother, William H. Pickett, also sued a trespasser for $15.00 and he was granted the money;.

I didn't have time to go to the courthouse to check out these records and she if there was more information on the two cases.  

Is is normal to be able to find information on cases like this? 

I found where my great, great grandfather, Henderson Gibson, was informed that he had a letter waiting for him in General Delivery.  There was no other information.

My great grandfather, Frank Hoover, was married three times.  His first wife died from Typhoid shortly after they were married.  His second wife died within a couple of years of marriage, but not before giving birth to a child, Emma Hoover.  Emma died at 3 months of age.  I was able to find out about Emma for the first time yesterday, by going through the death indexes at the library.  I have been told that Frank had a son named, John.  I have not been able to find any information on John.  My older cousin remembers writing letters to him in California when she was younger.  She lost contact with him at one point and was never able to find him again.

Frank next married Lulu, who apparently had gotten over being jilted by then.  They had three children then Frank died when the children were very young. 

We left the library after a few hours and decided to make a stop at Earlham Cemetery.  My brother had taken pictures there in the past, but my son and I had never been there to find graves.  I did stop one day when I was going through Richmond and was able to go through the files of burial records and photographed all that I found.  Some of those had causes of death and other information.

This time we decided we didn't have time to look for all the graves so we chose to search for my great, great grandfather Lester (Pop) Mannis.  The directions the caretakers office gave were not the easiest to follow.  We went different directions and searched through the stones to find the graves we were looking for.  My son called me when he found the makers and told me where to find him.

We found Lester buried next to his second wife, Augusta, and on the other side of her is her son from a previous marriage.  

In previous photos that we had received we were not able to read the stone very well.  This time, we cleaned the grave off a little and we were able to read the entire stone.  It photographed pretty well, too.  We were able to find the squadron information that he had served in during World War 1.  This is new information and will give us something new to search for.  He was private in the S72 Aero Squadron.  If anyone has any information on how to get any records from the military service, I would love to know how to do more research.


We had spent the better part of a day driving to the area, visiting the library, and then stopping by the cemetery.  It was time to head home, and see what information we could dig up with what we found.  

I hope to make future trips to Richmond and have time to go through more records.




Saturday, June 22, 2013

Could My Blog Be Bringing Family Members Around?

I haven't had much time to do family history research or blogging lately.  I have been away for a while.  I have been very busy with life.  My son just graduated a couple of weeks ago.  I have been busy with baseball season, prom and graduation.  We have lots to do to get him off to college.



They great thing is I have still been having people reading my blog every day even though I haven't been posting for a while.  

I started my blog about 6 months ago. I haven't posted consistently for about 3 months.  I have lots of family information posted.  Over the first 3 months I had posted about 130 times.

As of today, I reached 10,000 page views.  I have been averaging around 800 page views a month even though I haven't posted anything new.  That means that every time someone views my blog I have the potential to meet someone with some family information that I haven't yet found.  

It is amazing to me that I have still been having a consistent viewing by so many people.  

If you are considering starting a blog to record your family stories, I would say it is well worth it.

I have my stories recorded, and I certainly intend to record more of them.  I have to do more research and I am hoping to have time to work on it his summer.  My stories will be recorded for my grandchildren and future descendants.  The potential for someone to discover a connection and me being able to work with them also keeps me excited about blogging.