In genealogy, there’s a lot of emphasis on the difference between KNOWing and knowing.
Take my 2nd-Great-Grandfather Patt O’Brien for example…
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Category: 20th Century
Mommy Dearest or Dearest Mom?
A story persists in the McDowell oral history about Lizzie Martin McDowell, my paternal great-grandmother. As the story goes, she was a wicked thing, mean and abusive to both her children and her husband John as well as being generally promiscuous, having an affinity for the local male population. [1]
Poor Lizzie. Will no one defend her honor?
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Black Gold
Texas tea [1]… Or, in this case, perhaps Louisiana chicory?
Yep, Oil. That same bubbly that enticed Jed Clampett to pack up everything and move also emitted a homing beacon to the McPhail clan.
One Hardin Malcolm McPhail answered the call… at the ripe ol’ age of fifty-four.
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Those Nosy News Reporters
I love them! Were it not for a nosy news reporter, I would know far less about my maternal 3rd-Great-Grandmother than I do.
Luckily for me, she knew Abraham Lincoln.
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When your ancestor’s name is John Smith…
Or, in my case, the Danish equivalent of John Smith: Jens Jensen, my paternal great-grandfather.
I know almost nothing about him: he came to the United States in 1900 with my great-grandmother, Thyra Amalia [1] Martinsen, and their son Oscar; by 1910 [2], he was farming in Platte, Nebraska and supporting a family of five–wife Amelia, and children Oscar (10), Johanna (7), Marie (6), and Florence (3); by 1920 he has disappeared–separated from my great-grandmother, perhaps divorced. There are stories of his drinking and squandering of money.
Read More »Happy Birthday Ruth
One hundred and three years ago today, my husband’s paternal grandmother was born. In wanting to write a tribute to her on her birthday, however, I realize that what I know about Ruth, in the genealogical sense, is very little.
Double Cousins
Remember that old commercial for Certs? Two. Two. Two mints in one. (You youngsters can watch it here.) Well, that’s sort of what happened to Dutch (Harold Seba Taylor, Sr) when it came to cousins. It went something like this…Read More »
Prisoner of War No. 44095
I was digging around the internet for ancestry records when I found these: prisoner of war records for Kevin’s maternal grandfather, John Frederick Flatau, a.k.a. Opa. You might notice they are all in French. Google Translate and I have become friends. Really good friends! And what Google couldn’t translate, I turned over to international friends […]
Lost Mother… Found
I found Granny’s mother!
To be clear, I’m certain that Granny never thought she was lost. But life in the Land of Ancestry Records can be a dangerous place.
“Granny” is Nettie Nobia McPhail (McPhaill, McFale—census records show it spelled all three ways), wife to Cyrus Guy McLemore andRead More »
