The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of
activity on the genealogy front around here.
My best day was last Monday when I received two items in the mail. One, a letter from a cousin helping me
research my Combs family line, and two, books from my parents. Boy, it was like my birthday at the mailbox
ripping open packages. The kids, once
again, thought mom had completely gone off her rocker.
In the letter there were two marriage certificates. These certificates are needed to complete the
DAR and the GSMD lineage society applications I am still working on.
She had to do battle with an unfriendly court clerk to get these, and I
am very thankful that she put up with lady to further our research. I am sure I am going to get to do that the
next time I get back to Indiana. Oh
course, there were a couple of surprising elements to the marriage
certificates.
First was the certificate for William Hall and Malira
Price. They are my 3rd
great-grandparents who were married in Greene County Indiana on 25 February
1854. It is a short form marriage register,
so no good genealogical information for previous generations, but at least I
have something for them. From the form I
see they received the license on the 23rd and had the marriage
recorded on March 1st. There
isn’t any other information, not even a pastor’s name, but like I said I won’t
be complaining.
Next was the certificate of their daughter Mary Margaret
Hall. She married Willis Franklin Combs
in Greene County on 5 September 1877. I stopped
cold in my tracks, because something wasn’t adding up with that date. I read, and re-read, and read a third
time. Then I went to look at my
information on their oldest son Ira in my database. Ira was born 29 October 1877. Huh, that is interesting. Now I wonder all sorts of things: did they just wait a long
time, was this "shot gun", was Ira his son? I could go on and on.
Oh a puzzle and a family mystery!
The books were equally exciting, and proof that my parents
spoil me. A few weeks back I received two
books through inter-library loan that have a significant amount of information on
early colonial generations of my family.
I talked excitedly over the phone to my dad about it and he found a
gently used copy online and bought them for me.
I jumped up and down with delight when I opened the package. Tuesday I spent several hours reading and
placing tabs in the book for each of the generations to make future look-ups
easy. It is going to take me a while to
read and digest all the information presented, but boy is t going to be fun. I particularly love that there are footnotes,
sources, and a bibliography. If you have
any of the following lines check out this 2 volume book set.
It is going to be interesting to read about my ancestors
who were from New Amsterdam. I had no
idea I had roots to Norway through one family.
Or that my family owned property in what is now Manhattan (60 acres…imagine
what that would be worth today!). Most
unusual, “a husband selling his wife into Adultery”, I can guess what that
meant. I foresee several more days of
night time reading in my future.
My most common recent ancestor with the author
of this book is William Hayden. William
was born in Braintree, Massachusetts 5 October 1727 and died in Fayette County,
Pennsylvania 18 July 1823. He married
Lydia Kierstede who was baptized 14 February 1725 in Staten Island, New York
and died 1794-1795 in Hampshire County, Virginia. This is the listing of their ancestor’s surnames
that are covered in the book, all of whom are on my father’s side.
Alden
Bass
Dey
photo credit: Bunches and Bits {Karina} via photopin cc |
Hayden
Holmes
Hyde
Jan
Jan
Jansen
Johnson
Laurenszen
Molenaar
Mullin
Neale
Pray
Pullen
Roelofs
Satyrs
Savil
Scott
Stillwell
Webb
Sounds like a wonderful genealogical treasure chest. Have fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I am learning a lot about the New Amsterdam Colony right now, something I never thought I would need to know about.
DeleteLoved your article. Your parents are great!
ReplyDeleteBetty
I think so quite often! It was a great surprise.
Delete