Two books to read and no time to do it!

I am still processing, reading, and organizing all the information that I gathered in Indiana last month. It is going to be a while before I can do any posts with significant information in them about what I discovered.  However, there were a couple things I found and I wanted to highlight them, mostly because they are so awesome.

While in Vincennes at the McGrady Brockman House I found and replicated the typed notes of my 2^nd great aunt Eliza Jane Combs Emmons Kinman.  On the front cover was a very nice memorial to the woman who put it together.  Since she is still living, and it gives her lineage I do not feel comfortable placing it here on line.  The compiler, Jean, is of my father’s generation and is the granddaughter of Eliza’s next oldest brother George Washington Combs.

This book is the typed record of all her research notes and diaries.  Jean does not state how she came to possess this information or where the originals were located at the time of transcription.  I would give anything to see the originals as I am already finding transcription mistakes like reversing of numbers when typed or hitting the 9 and not the 8 in the years.  You know, people weren't born 100 years after they died type of things.

Spanning the years 1966 to 1980 these not only gave me the opportunity to read along with how and when she made discoveries but also what was going on in the community and her family.  It was a little shocking at times to run across names of members of my family, but I knew that was to be expected.  After all, she was my great grandfather’s baby sister.  To keep all the information organized and flowing I purchased a notebook that I placed inside the three ring binder the photocopies are in.  I write facts, addresses (there are tons of correspondence notes), draw trees, and make comments about what I want to do to prove if the statement was true or not.

On a separate trip to the Carnegie Public Library in Washington, Indiana I made the amazing discovery of a family book that took one of my female brick wall lines back another four generations.  My 2^nd great grandmother was Rose Ann Brothers.  From records I have found I knew her parents were Jerome Brothers and Elizabeth Minerva Cissell.  That is all I knew.  I didn’t even know very much about her parents, it was a big wall.

Sitting on the shelf in the complied family history section of the genealogy library I discovered a binder about Cornelius Brothers and his descendants. I am sure you can imagine my excitement, and my father’s amused grinning, as I squealed and clapped my hands together.  It was an amazing, well researched, footnoted, and cited collection of information on this family. Of course at this rate my colonial Maryland ancestors are quickly outnumbering all the other colonial ancestors I have.

I have only skimmed it and it is next on the list of things to read after Eliza’s notes.  Fingers crossed I get to it by next spring since until then I am swamped with the BU course.  However, I did glean the following things:

•  Jerome Brothers was the son of Samuel S. Brothers and Catherine Gates.  Samuel was born about 1797 in Kentucky and Catherine about 1793 in Maryland.  They had 8 children from 1816-1834 and died in Indiana. 
• Samuel was the son of Jeremiah Brothers and Elizabeth Henry (widow of Basil Booth). Jeremiah was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland in the 1770s.  They only had one child, Samuel Brothers.
• Jeremiah was the son of Cornelius Brothers and Elizabeth Thompson.  He is the earliest known ancestor for this line according to this report and was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland in the 1740s.  They had seven children and died in Washington County, Kentucky.

As you can see, these two tomes of knowledge will have me busy for a long while.  It is going to be so much fun!