Tombstone Tuesday – Robert Warden
Robert Warden
Nov 1820
Mar 1893
Gone But Not Forgotten
Robert Warden is my Third Great Grandfather. He was married to Nancy Warden, a cousin. Nancy died in 1886. Robert and Nancy had 7 children. I descend through their son David J’s daughter Nettie Ann. Nettie married William Hunter Richmond Sr.
Robert is buried in the Robert Warden family cemetery west of Stanaford Rd. in Beckley, WV area. The cemetery was on the side of a mountain and thick with brush. It was hard to walk through the cemetery and find anyone specifically. Thankfully, I had a distant cousin, Bob, give me a guided tour. He also descends through the Warden line. Bob knew exactly where each stone was and found each one for me. This trip was in Oct 2009.
The Big Genealogy Blog Book
Last week, fellow genealogist and friend, Amy Coffin (of the The We Tree Genealogy Blog) released her new book, The Big Genealogy Blog Book, on a few sites. As of now, it is available to be downloaded in a PDF file, or for your Kindle. When asked, Amy advised it would be on the Nook soon.
I downloaded a copy from Amazon right away because Amy has spent a lot of her time giving the genealogy community numerous topics to keep their blog fresh. For $2.99, she does not let you do down. Her book is great for a novice blogger or those of us who have been around for a bit and still need help keeping our blog content fresh.
Chapter 7 gives you 52 ideas, 52 weeks
Chapter 8 gives you 52 Weeks to better genealogy
Chapter 9 is 52 Weeks of personal genealogy and history
and the bonus is Chapter 10 – 25 great topics for genealogy society blogs.
Now, I do not write a blog for any society. To be honest, I have enough trouble writing here most of the time. But, this chapter has many great ideas that can be used as a monthly post for a society.
If you have not had a chance to download or read Amy’s book, I highly recommend you do that now. You can download it here.
Taking my DNA Test
Yesterday, I was happy to pull the mail out of my mailbox. It was a genealogy day! I received my new issue of Family Tree Magazine – yeah new reading material and my DNA test from Ancestry. I wasted no time opening and taking the test.
The directions were simple. Only take if you have not eaten in the last half hour. Perfect, I had not one bite to eat at this point. There were 3 swabs, you were to take 1 swab and rub the inside of your right cheek for 30 seconds. Take the second swab and repeat on the left side. Then, take the third swab and rub under upper or lower lip.
After gathering all the DNA I could, I inserted all 3 swabs into the pre-marked envelope. It said to wait 30 minutes to allow the swabs to dry before sealing. Then, insert into pre-addressed envelope and mail back.
Of course, it clearly stated not to expect results until 2012. It also said to go online and activate your kit online, that took all of a minute. They asked for very basic information, name, date of birth and is this your DNA. Done.
Now to wait!
Tombstone Tuesday – Surrounding Jonas Graves
The cylinder stones belong to a family with the Jonas surname. At this point, I have not confirmed they are related. Though, I highly suspect that they are. This single stone is about a foot away from William and Marie Jonas, which was last Tombstone Tuesday’s post. With them being buried so close together, it would just make sense.
Father
John Jonas 1849-1927
Mother
Hanan Jonas (I believe it should be Hannah)
1852-1923
Willie Jonas
Born 28 April 1893
Died 23 Feb. 1916
*I actually thought Willie was my great-great uncle until I compared his month of death with my William. But I will blog about that another day.
Jonas
Ida 1886 – 1960
John 1888 – 1949
All of these gravesites are at St Mathews Lutheran Cemetery in Niles, Cook, Illinois.
Checking in on my 2011 Resolutions
The beginning of the year I wrote a post on what I would like to accomplish in genealogy this year. Since there are only 2 months left in the year, I thought it would be a good time to get those out and see how I am doing. The answer is so-so.
Here is what I wrote last year and my progress will be in blue.
1. Attend a conference, it has been great networking with others in the field, but I would like to actually meet some of you. Since IL is hosting FGS this year, I am hoping to be able to attend. Springfield is not too far that I cannot make this happen.
I attended Jamboree in Burbank, CA this year and had such a great time that I went to FGS just to hang out for a night. I could not afford admission into the conference this year, but at least I got to spend time with some genea blogging friends.
2. Continue research on my O’Connell line. Find out more about Denis O’Connell and his parents.
- Check for marriage records
- baptismal records
- death records
- obituaries
- ship records
- naturalization records
At this point, I have no further information on Denis O’Connell. I have sent an email to another ancestor that I have been in contact with through ancestry.com and did not receive a reply. I will try to spend some time on FamilySearch to see if I can find anything there.
3. Start researching Teahan line. Specifically Helen Teahan.
- Check for marriage records
- baptismal records
- death records
- obituaries
I have no further information on Helen Teahan either. I did start attending genealogy meetings at the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago, IL to try and learn more about tracing my Irish ancestry. They have many great ideas, but right now my budget has me at a stand still for ordering any records from Ireland.
4. Spend time giving back to the genealogy community by transcribing records. I plan to start this with Restore the Ancestors Project. I am not going to give myself an actual goal of how many records I would like to do, but I will keep you up to date as I move forward with this.
I started the year strong on this and let it fizzle. Though I never did the transcriptions for Restore the Ancestors Project, I had issues with Fold3 which was actually Footnote back then. Will try to do a bit more before the year ends with FamilySearch.
5. Education – I have 1 class to finish for my first set of classes that I am taking through NIGS. I hope to finish this one and move on to the next group.
I got an extension on this class, it intimidates the crap out of me for some reason and I am taking my time with it. Have a friend that starts it today and we plan to work through it together. How’s that for motivation?
6. Blogging – I spent an evening looking back at 2010, it seems that I am not consistent in my posting. I want to commit more time and post more consistently. I have recently found that if I actually write with pen and paper I seem to get more done. I have committed a notebook specifically to the blog and hope this will help me. I also hope to move the blog to a self hosted site in the near future.
Again, I started the year strong on this goal as well. The notebook and hand writing each post worked. I lost my original notebook and that’s where I lost my momentum in blogging. Hope to make up for it this month with National Blog Posting Month, the goal is to post something everyday. I missed Saturday and Sunday this past weekend and have made those two posts up today. With this being my third, I am completely caught up. I hope to now get a few together and have them set to post automatically. (I actually have a few Halloween ideas for next year that I might writethat up now and have them set to publish in Oct 2013. How’s that for thinking ahead?)
I will say that things have changed at home which is why my genealogy research and blogging has suffered this year. We opened our own business and I work from home. Sometimes, I just do not want to be around my computer. You can read more about my new business here.
Well, it seems like I still have some work to do in the next two months, which is exactly why I like to take a look back and see what else needs to be done.
Mysterious Marie Becomes Less Mysterious
Awhile back, I wrote a Tombstone Tuesday post for Mysterious Marie, my great great grandfather’s second wife. At that point, I had not done truly any research on Marie. I really did not have much information to work with. Besides her former name was Goyette. That was all I really had, plus I was not too interested in her. There was no offspring to this marriage, Marie and John married later in life.
In the back on my head there has always been a little reminder that I needed to find more information on here. Thanks to FamilySearch, I was able to find the marriage register for John and Marie and it gives me a few more clues to look into.
Here is what I learned from this record. John and Marie were married 9 Apr 1915 in Hudson Falls, NY. Marie was 55 at this time and a widow. She was born in Canada to Joseph Denis (I think, it is hard to read) and Harriet Labounty. At the time of marriage, Marie lived in South Glens Falls, NY. Goyette was marries married name, I have no information on her first husband. Now that I have some clues, I will be following up on them in the future.
Chicago Genealogy Society and Thomas MacEntee
On Saturday, 11 Nov 2011, I attended a meeting of the Chicago Genealogy Society at the Newberry Library. This was the first time I have attended one of their meetings. And, to be perfectly honest, I attended because I wanted to turn in my membership paperwork. Yes, I finally joined. I had planned on joining since September when I met a few of the members at the FGS conference in Springfield, IL.
This month, Thomas MacEntee (of GeneaBlogger’s fame) presented They’re Alive! Searching for the Living. I truly figured I would not learn anything new at this lecture because I have successfully located living family members. Cousins of my maternal grandfather to be exact, cousins he never met.
Once again, Thomas proved me wrong. He has a list of many websites that I have not heard of and I will be going through them soon. Since this is a lecture that Thomas give’s I do not want to give out his information. I do recommend that if you have not heard Thomas present that you put it on your list of things to do. He takes any topic, adds a bit of humor and a ton of great resources. Well worth the time and as I said earlier, you should attend even if it is something you feel you already have all the information you need. He always has another outlook and much more information. I have seen Thomas present twice in the past month and feel as if I am becoming a groupie.
Finding Our Ancestors 