2022 Week #4 Curious

One of the most frustrating things about genealogy is the fact that almost all of the people that we are looking into have passed away and when they go they take their stories with them. Sometimes you get lucky and you find photos, stories written in books, or have living relatives that can still remember those generations back and can fill in the gaps. But often times the names in our family trees are just that. Names, birth and death dates, and maybe a location of where they were born and died. 

But I am often so curious to know what were these people like. Were they kind or mean, were they talented at something, what were their beliefs, what was their favorite foods, did they have enough food, what were there hopes and dreams. Another thing that I think about sometimes is what would they think about me? Their blood runs through my veins and because of them I exist. I wonder if they ever thought about what their future great great great grandchildren were doing? I wish I could just sit and have a conversation with so many of them. 

To narrow it down here are some of the things that I think about or are puzzling related to certain relatives.

• The first is the parentage of my 4x great grandfather William Porter Severs. There are a few stories on ancestry that say that his real father was a man by the name of George Kincaid. One story says that his mother was married to a George Kincade and he died before William was born then she married a man name Severs and William took his last name. Another story said that Williams mother worked for George Kincade's family and he was married with children and a child resulted  while she worked for him. When he was a child they didn't have the detailed census records so you can't see who was living where and maybe piece it together. 
  
  

  

  William Porter Severs & his wife Elizabeth 

• Another person I think about a lot is another 4x great grandfather. I've done quite a bit of research on him and he lead an interesting life you can read about him in my post here. Since I've done so much research on him I feel a greater connection to him and always wondered what he looked like. A few years ago I came across photos of his sons and can't help but think he probably looks like them. Another puzzle relating to his wife my 4x great grandmother is where she was buried. He has a beautiful stone which I've seen but she passed 17 years before he did and there's no record of where she is buried. 
  
  

  

  Daniel Hutchison Jr. 

  

  James Hutchison 

Andrew Jackson Hutchison

• I'm lucky enough to have very deep roots on both sides of my family but a few closer generations migrated to the US and I often wondered what spurred them to come here. 
• My 2x great grandparents Andrew & Louisa Anderson. Looking online in 1887 (the year Andrew came to the US) 46,000 Swedish immigrants came to the US. In Sweden from 1750-1850 the population doubled and tillable land became very scarce. Since Andrew was a farmer I'm wondering if that's what pushed him to come to America. 
•  Another set of 2x great grandparents Ferdinand & Elizabeth Gaetz came from Russia to Canada in 1888 & 1900. At this time in Russia the country was very impoverished and Millions of Russians left for America and Canada. I wonder what trials my ancestors were facing that forced them across the world. 
• My 3x great grandparents Wilhelm & Beatrice Ertel came to the US around 1880. That was another heavy year for immigration out of Germany with around 1.5 million Germans leaving.  

These are just a few of the many curiosities I have with my genealogy research. But I think that that curiosity keeps us interested in genealogy and we enjoy the hunt. If it were all easy and handed to us on a silver platter I don't think many would be as interested. Often times the journey to discovery is sometimes the best part! 

2022 Week #3 Favorite Photo

I, like many genealogists, have hundreds of photos of our ancestors that are our favorites and it's challenging to find just 1 to focus on. A few years ago I shared a couple of photos of my relatives dressed in their Sunday best and a very dirty pig. You can read about that here!

This time I'm going to focus on a group of photos that actually aren't of my own blood relatives but have an amazing story of how social media and technology can work for good! 

Way back in August of 2020 late one night I get a message from one of my cousins on FB. She had a friend message her about someone selling a bag of old family photos on a Facebook Swap shop group. One of the names listed was my cousins maiden name and would have been my maternal grandmother's maiden name. Since my cousin knew I was into genealogy she messaged me with the names to see if I though they could be some of our people. There was another name on a photo that I knew was also another family name so I said yes do whatever you can to do to get those pictures!! I also messaged an aunt who lived in the town where the swap shop was from. So I had 2 people working on getting the pictures. My aunt ended up getting them and I went to her house a short time later to take a look at them.

In this stack of old photos dated the late 1800's very early 1900's we found a few of our family members but several that had names on them but not our direct relation. My 2x great grandmothers brother Bee, Caldwell Withrow, married a woman by the name of Lillie Riggle and these photos were of several Riggle people. 

I didn't quite know what to do with the ones that really weren't of our family. But, being a genealogist I couldn't throw them away. When my aunt and I were trying to figure out who some of these people were and how they could be related to us we used find a grave to piece some of it together. While on there I thought I should post some of these pictures there for those peoples descendants to find. I know I would be thrilled to find pictures of my relatives. So that's what I did. 

Fast forward 2 months to the end of November I get a message on find a grave regarding one of the photos I posted. Turns out one of the photos I posted was of this woman's 2x great grandfather (pictured below) and was a photo she hadn't seen before! So I emailed her immediately and told her the story of how I got the photos and emailed her copies of the ones I had. I then told her I would mail her the hard copies since they belonged to her family more than mine. 

The photos were of people from Iowa, found on FB swap shop in Missouri, and mailed to a very appreciative woman in California!! Quite a unique journey they had! It made me so happy to reconnect these photos with the right person and save them from the garbage. 

2022 Week #1 Foundation

Last summer I made a quick trip to Jefferson City and made sure I had some extra time on my way home to visit a couple cemeteries. One of which was located right along the Missouri River in Saline County, Missouri. It's a small cemetery located high up on a bluff and adequately named Bluff Cemetery. 

I was in search of this cemetery because buried there were my 5x great grandparents Abner and Jedidiah Mullins. I knew that they didn't have stones but still wanted to visit where they were buried. There were also uncles and cousins who were also buried there who's stones were still standing so I took pictures of them and just admired the beautiful scenery around the quaint little cemetery on a beautiful day. 

My 4th great uncle Williams Mullins

When I got home I was telling my parents about visiting this cemetery and was on Ancestry looking up how people were related and I found a document about the History of Bluff Cemetery. According to that document the land where the cemetery sat was donated by Williams Mullins, Abner's son. But before Williams owned the land it belonged to his father Abner.  It truly warmed my heart knowing that the land I stood on that day had belonged to my relatives. When doing genealogy there is nothing better than finding a photo of a distant relative, seeing their signature, finding their grave or standing where they once stood. It helps connect the generations. 

Another neat thing that I figured out in looking up this branch of my family was how deep their roots really were in Missouri. This is where I tie in the theme of this week "Foundation". This family line  parallels with the founding of the state of Missouri. Since last year was the 200th anniversary I was curious to see how far back some of my Missouri Ancestors have been in the state. This group I believe have been here the longest coming to the Missouri Territory in 1817. 

Below is an excerpt from "Linn's 1976 History of Mercer County, Missouri" where it talks about Abner and his families journey to Missouri from North Carolina.  

I have also found 2 land records on Ancestry for Abner one dated 1835 and one dated 1840. 
 

I have lived in Missouri my entire life and am proud to know that I have had ancestors who have been here since before the beginning. The foundation of who I am is deeply rooted in my ancestors who lived all across this state.