Book Serendipity

8 November 2022 Another book serendipity moment. Somehow in my purchase of books for the writing of our family history I managed to buy only one I already had a copy of. I was thinking that it did not really have information about the families we are researching. It is, “A History of the Cutter Family of New England,” by Dr. Benjamin Cutter in 1871. There are four entries in the index for the Tidd family. This copy is a revision by William Richard Cutter. This is a copy of the original. The other copy I donated to a Family History Center. With my GFO life membership it cost only $6, so it was not a lot of money and now it is in a new home. The key for the serendipity moment was found as I entered the information about the newest purchase into the database of my 800+ collection of genealogy books. On the cover page it lists after the author’s name, “of Woburn, Mass.” The lightbulb went off in my head as I realized that these were associates of our ancestors from 1640 at settlement to the 1785 death of the last relative. There were a total of 42 births, 38 marriages, 38 deaths and 3 burials for the Tidd family during that time. The book has a great index, but there is so much more about the history of the place that it certainly warrants a good reading! I am very thankful to live in a time when we have so many resources available. The key is using them fully and recording them for future researchers.

GRATITUDE

November 2022 is here and fall is preparing us for the winter months. Life feels like we are slowing down. I am grateful for the seasons in our world and the seasons in our lives. There are still many challenges in our world. This may prove to be a difficult season for those who do not have secure employment. I have read several books on Christmas in preparing for the advent season. A couple of years ago I bought some books from an acquaintance and the last ten were still sitting on my shelf. I committed myself to finish them and then pass them on. Then came the last one, The St. Nicolas Anthology, with 541 pages. Thinking the book was about Christmas, I was surprised to find that it is a collection of stories from a children's magazine from 1873-1939; 1948-1950; 1983 edition. In 2016 a hand drawn copy of the cover picture of this article was auctioned for $2,340. For me the second article is of most value. "The Soldiering of Beniah Stidham" is a view of a young man's life in the Revolutionary War. According to genealogy information about him on ancestry.com and familysearch.org provide more information about the family and the place where they lived. It was a serendipity moment of gratitude for this book being sent my way! This is what I wanted to find in my research. It helps me to see my ancestors in ways history books seldom do. The anthology is available online. There is no index to guide me on, but it compels me to search for stories about my ancestors so I can know them better.

Serendipity in the Process of Writing

In the process of writing a family history book and it seems every time I pause in writing up pops something else that I need next. This week I found an online index of NEHGS and Essex County Vital Records for the town books up to 1850. This lead me to an easy resource for those records on Internet Archive. I should have made a list of these occurrences. Serendipity is one focus of my personal blog: gophergenealogy.blogspot.com

Post 400 - Organization a Lifetime Project

 Organization is a lifetime project requiring timely updates! The gophers have been very helpful. I have accomplished a lot in the past year.

In the lateral files are all of my personal family history notebooks. There are 15 totes in total. There are 5 boxes from my mother's estate. They are all sorted and labeled. The totes include 4 of my mother's, 2 of her mother's, 1 for the Tidd family, 1 for all of my other ancestors, 1 for the Watt's family, 1 for the Strong family books, 1 for clients, 1 for office decorations. There are 3 for miscellaneous things of mine. There are also six boxes of miscellaneous stuff from other ancestors. After working intently on the Tidd family book this past year I need to go through that tote and sort all of the materials for them, of which there are a few research notebooks as well as the main family notebook. Its a long and winding road. What Covid-19 has taught me is that being at home is a very good thing as long as I get out occasionally. Going down memory lane can be very therapeutic.

This is post 400. This year celebrating ten years of writing on gophergenealogy.blogspot.com

Susan Waters The gophers are the two stuffed animals sitting on my printer. They encourage me, motivate me, and like to travel when that is an option. Many genealogists have such able staff in their home offices.

Andy and Ian and the Watts Family, 14 September 2019

                                Andy and Ian and the Watts Family, 14 September 2019

                                                                                               

What an amazing experience. The last three days were a culmination of my experiences with the Watts House in Scappoose, Oregon. Two of the descendants, Andy and her son Ian spent three days here discovering a place where her ancestors once lived.

The first day we went out to dinner and then spent about four hours on our computers. We worked on the family, DNA matches and GLO records for maps of the Watts' family DLC lands.

After living here for four years I was able to establish the boundaries for a drive by tour, which we did first thing the next morning. It is amazing trying to view a place where their ancestors lived and imagine how it looked when they first arrived in 1852. We drove Dike Road, which is the flat lands out close to the river, where the family had timber lands. As we came to the highway Andy mentioned the cemetery, so we stopped there for a few minutes. It really is in a lovely place overlooking lower Scappoose.

Next we spent a couple of hours at the Watts House where they had a tour of all three floors. Then we had a wonderful desert and visit with four of the members. It is amazing all that is contained in the house and the stories that it holds. After that I returned home and they went to Sauvie Island for a hike. It was perfect weather for seeing the wildlife and surroundings. When they returned we ate the delicious dinner provided by my husband, David.

Then yesterday after they had been for a hike on the Scappoose/Vernonia trail, we met at the Columbia County Courthouse in St. Helens, Oregon and spent about three hours at the County Museum. Tricia Oberndorf, who instigated and supported my work at the Watts House, spent most of the time with us looking at the museum's collection on the Watts family. Then we proceeded to the Plymouth Pub and had a nice, relaxing dinner.

When I landed back at home I was exhausted, but thrilled to have accomplished so much. My sincere thank you to Andy for all she has shared with us in the research on the Watts family. She is an earnest researcher and a delight to work with. Ian was very patient and such a gentleman. This journey with the Watts family is so beyond anything I even remotely considered when I began the work three years ago.

An angel came to visit me yesterday

An angel came to visit me yesterday and stayed to clean our house She swept, vacuumed and mopped the floors, cleaned the bathrooms, removed the trash. She brought her charming, handsome young helper who entertained me as she worked. It was lovely getting to know them and amazing to watch as they went about their work. I will look forward to their coming again. There have been others, a darling daughter in the fall and a young one from church came in the summer. They are each truly appreciated and bring joy to my heart. Angels come in all types, but the ones who serve others are certainly heavenly sent to encourage us in our struggles. Now I rest more peacefully and feel such joy as I look around our house and see it clean and sparkling for all to enjoy.

DNA and Where it Can Lead You

About a year ago a friend called me to tell me of a strange event between her father and law enforcement officers who showed up at the care center where he was living and wanted to take a DNA sample from him. After the experience they left a calling card and a very confused patient. The family was amazed at how their DNA results found online lead the authorities to locate her father and request the test. Was this a knowledgeable consent or just an older man who agreeing to get these people out of his room? No one in the family was aware that it happened. Did the care center even know what happened? 

Over this year my friend and I spoke numerous times about the process and how the authorities asked for her help in resolving the case. They told her very little about the case other than it was a serious offender. This week she is relieved to have it all made public, but she notes that the story in the news is not all totally accurate. Surprise! For me this is more serious than using gedmatch to create a suspect list. This family now has a very interesting story to share, but they did endure many hours of stress not knowing what was going on. I am glad that my friend’s family could help. This was certainly a learning experience.

Good article in the Oregonian April 29, 2018 - Technique used to catch killer in spotlight by Avi Selk - Washington Post.

A Serendipity Day

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Went out to lunch with my brother and his daughter. We went to one of our mother's and grandmother's favorite restaurants, the Wishing Well, in St. John's, Oregon. Great Chinese food. I had not been there for 15 years. We celebrated my niece's birthday and had a great visit. Then we drove by my Aunt and Uncle's home who I have not spoken to in four years. They were at the beach, but I hope to make contact soon. Sometimes we get promptings to do something and it feels so good when we follow them. Family memories are precious. My niece shared with me that she had been given some of our mother's things. Her family now has the silverware our mother purchased before she got married to our father and a couple of her paintings. What a treasure just knowing she has them. A serendipity day.

Serendipity Found in a Newspaper Article

Susan,
"Well here goes, I must say, you are tenacious, based on your research you will get the info with or without me."

Thank you to a current client for this wonderful compliment. I do push to look in every nook and cranny I can think of when researching a family's history. The person had been most helpful in providing direct personal family information while I worked with the online resources. Her family was one of the last parts of a family and when I looked online I found information about her immediate family including six children. But I needed to connect to her birth family. In looking online at genealogybank.com I found an article about her sister's wedding listing all of the family members. I call that a serendipity moment. There were no other articles about the family with a rather uncommon surname that came up!

Celebrating Six Years of Blogging

Today marks six years since the beginning of writing on gophergenealogy.blogspot.com. For the most part writing is something I enjoy doing. This blog keeps me on track with my work and new discoveries from that work. Every day is something new and remarkable in doing family history research. New databases are released from the major online sites on a daily basis. Most of the time it feels as though I am lead to the information that is needed for the family involved.

In the past several months work was done on families to compile information and locate documents and indexed information to confirm what was found. While most of the principal work is done on ancestry.com, using the categories search and exploring all options, at times the information directs me to other websites. Those websites can be a gold mine for facts about a family. We all use findagrave.com and marvel at the items published on the pages for individuals. In looking further we search the cemetery for other known family members. Recently in being directed to the Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency a wonderful new resource was discovered.

Reflections of 2016

The New Year is fast approaching and we will be soon writing 2017. This has been a good year for me. Here are some highlights for 2016. This year there have been several clients whose families came from the south. It is fascinating putting together their family history from the point of online records. Those families with African American backgrounds demonstrate the tenacity with which they moved forward after the Civil War. They were ambitious and strongly focused on providing for the advancement of their families. While many were farmers of some form or another, others were teachers or held other professional positions. As the pedigree charts filled in it became obvious that research beyond the Civil War would provide more challenges.

Selling a House is like Having a Baby

Have you ever been involved in selling a house? We are currently selling our house and earlier this year we sold our mother's home. While this is something that has gone for ages, it always leads to surprise repercussions in the process. You may not have given birth, but there is some common ground in getting pregnant and preparing for a birth. Even with the six births of my children it seems like every time we survived the counting down of  months, days and finally the hours. The anticipation is amazing, but at the final few hours I often wanted just to forget about the birthing process. That is how it feels selling houses, you get almost to the point of exasperation and want to just stop the whole process.

Cleaning Up Your Genealogy Files

The ongoing process of cleaning up genealogy files will be never ending. No matter what you do today there will always be changes to the formats used and information requirements involved. Thomas MacEntee is currently embarking on a program called a Genealogy Do-Over. This is something I have done for several of my family lines from time to time. Creating clean files, especially within online genealogy family trees, is critical to our ongoing research. Using a systematic format of recording information is the basis of researching.

Today I discovered that someone has extended my Tidd family back several generations. The changes are recent and yet there are no sources or notes to indicate how the information was accumulated. In hopes of starting a dialogue about this family information an email was sent to the contributor. The chance of a response is about 50/50. Within five hours there was a response and it was very interesting. The responder noted that they are only related by marriage, but "simply put all the pieces of the puzzle together that were already there." The person is "an unofficial full time volunteer who tries to fix things when I can." They, "put much effort into this, and it is refreshing to receive thanks instead of hate mail for their efforts."

While some of the new information included birthdates in the 1500s, it is probable that the information either came from parish registers, probate records or other community records. Some of these records were microfilmed years ago, but recently were digitized and provided online to researchers. There were records from Norfolk, England for the family that were recently noticed on familysearch.org. These more recent ones are from Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, Hampshire, England also from familysearch.org. Now it is important to go back and compare the information from both locations.

Celebrating 45,000 Blog Views Research Review

 In celebrating reaching 45,000 blog views yesterday, in less than five years, I want to share my latest completed project results. This project started in mid-August of this year. See previous blog post, Caught Up in the Research.  In less than three months the extended family comprised 322 people and 99 marriages. While there are additional people and marriages, the project focused on the direct line families. This may seem like a small database of names, but there were 134 documents copied, many others indexed only information, and several online family trees accessed. The concluding thirty-four page report included ten pages of document information.

Caught Up In the Research

Do you ever get on a roll in doing family history research and you can hardly make yourself stop long enough to take a breath, or eat, or sleep? That has been me the past couple of weeks, but Sunday night was the most challenging yet. So here is a walkthrough of what happened in the research for a client project.

A Clean House and Many Serendipity Moments

In less than one week from the day we received the keys to our mother's home we have emptied it and it is up for sale. As her personal representative it is satisfying to know that we are fulfilling her desires to have the house sold and begin the process of closing out the probate requirements. All the years of training and education in genealogy research have proven invaluable in navigating a very challenging path.

Mother's Day Serendipity Find

This past weekend Mocavo offered free access to their records, and having never used the website, it was time to give it a try. My test subject was Daniel Tidd, my favorite ancestor for such work. There were 223 results and looking over them page by page many were repeats or various pages from the same works. Two in particular found in NEHGS publication XIV and a Lineage Book will be investigated more fully today.

Serendipity at the Cemetery

When first beginning my research in family history, my grandparents and great aunt and uncle took me to Lone Fir Cemetery to show me where the burial sites are for my great great grandmother and some of her children. What was odd at the time is we did not know where her husband was buried. Later in my journey of discovering the family story we returned to this cemetery and went to the office to see what other information they might be able to provide. At that time they were very liberal about sharing the information from the two files on this family.

A Serendipity Gift for Christmas

Our mother knew that she was going to die soon and she started giving items to people or sharing information about her collections that would guide us as we go through her belongings. Like the comments to both my sister and I that we would have to fight over the glass bowl in the cupboard above the refrigerator. We have not had ready access to her belongings, but through the process of creating a list of items of sentimental value to be removed at this time we received some of them.

German Ancestors and More Serendipity Moments

Over two years ago my first post on the Neppl family presented what was known about them. One great grandmother, Maria Schaffer Neppl, in particular was eluding me. About eighteen months ago my post shared how a distant cousin named Lee had encountered the first blog post about our common Neppl ancestors. At the time he offered to send me a funeral card for Maria's husband Franz Neppl. It is truly a family treasure.