Upcoming Symposium at the DAR Headquarters in Washington, DC

Join Us for an Exciting DAR Museum Symposium!

How does memory and collecting shape our understanding of the American Revolution? The upcoming DAR Museum symposium explores in more depth the museum's current exhibit, Remembering the American Revolution: 1776-1890, which examines how several generations of 19th century Americans preserved the memory of the American Revolution through war mementos they saved and consumer goods they purchased.
   

Evidence of Commemoration Symposium

Friday, March 11, 2016
8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

DAR National Headquarters
1776 D Street NW 
Washington, D.C. 20006

$80, pre-registration required
Registration deadline February 24, 2016

Register at: www.rardar.eventbrite.com  

Speakers:
Seth Bruggeman, Temple University - Looking in the Mirror: Learning to See Memory in the American Past

R. Scott Stephenson, Museum of the American Revolution - The Other Home of Washington: Recreating the General’s Revolutionary War Field Headquarters

Diane Shaw, Lafayette College Special Collections - On Tour with the 'Nation's Guest': Lafayette's Return to America, 1824-25

Don Hagist, Independent researcher and author - The Revolution’s Last Men

Tyler Rudd Putman, University of Delaware - Warship, Wreck, Relic: The Three Lives of HMS Augusta

www.dar.org/museum  

Giving Thanks at FTF

Signing of the Mayflower Compact
from the Library of Congress

My next post is up at Family Tree Firsts. All about….wait for it…. The Mayflower!  You know I couldn’t resist.  It is that time of the year after all.

I have written several times about learning from my grandmother that we were from “those Pilgrims.”  Several times I have even told you about my application process with the GSMD.  Well, this week is when those stories and dreams are realized.  I have the last pieces of documentation in my hand to prove her tales and hopefully by this time next week it will all be in the mail.  Then I can concentrate on my husband’s multiple lines.  I only have the one line since my family left Massachusetts by the 3^rd generation after settling here, my husband’s family on the other hand stuck around for a while.  300 years  in New England is a while right?  He has 4 potential lines if I can prove them beyond a doubt.

What makes me even more excited is that members of my family are excited too.  I even have cousins of my mother-in-law helping me with their family lines.  Collaboration at its best!  Without their help this would have been a longer process with more costs for me.  Since we are sharing documents, records, and sources with each other we all benefit from on another’s resources. 

Best of all, my oldest got on the bus this morning with his Mayflower ancestors extra credit report.  We had the best time putting it all together.  He looked up their names on the internet, wrote a ½ page about each of them, added some pictures from wikicommons, and by the end of it had a basic understanding of a pedigree chart.  He was so excited to take it to school and show everyone.  In particular to show it to the kids who didn’t believe him.

 

 

Yes, there was some teasing.  Kids are kids right?  My son is very sensitive to others and I was happy the teasing from unbelieving children made him more resolved to prove them wrong.  That would be the desire to become a historian showing through I think.  Now, it would be great if I could get him to have the same drive when it comes to studying math.

Having this last document also proves my first ancestor for the DAR.  I am up over a dozen patriots on both sides of my family.  My mom and dad are tied with patriot ancestors, and at times I wonder if there is a bit of competition between the two of them.  I sometimes wonder if when I call do they get all excited about another one being found to pull them in the lead for the ancestor count?

As I stated in the post at FTF I am submitting William Hayden as my first patriot.  I can also put in for his son Noah as he fought along with his father in the war.  In fact, 5 of William’s sons fought in the Revolution:  John, Stephen, Enoch, Noah, and Hosea.  Enoch and Noah were twins too, but I haven’t figured out if they were identical or not.  In an out of print Magazine called  The Hayden Family I found an interesting description of what William did during the Revolution in Volume 1, No. 3, page 102:

 

 

We also know he died after working on his farm one afternoon in July of 1823 thanks to a poem written after his death.  I have not found a pension record for him or his son Noah; I hope to uncover more about their family’s service in the Revolution.  Oh, and find out where the Fredericksburg Magazine was.  That would be a worthy field trip to take.  Maybe on my next run to the grocery store.

Genealogy via the USPS

I am sure you all remember a few weeks ago that I went to NARA’s 8^th annual Genealogy Faire.  If not, you can read the post here.  They had quite a few booths set-up with representatives of the local genealogy community.  One of them was from the Thomas Balch Library located in Leesburg, Virginia.  I stopped and chatted, then made an offhanded comment that I needed to get up to Leesburg to look around their archives for a document and maybe they could tell me where it is located.  Well, the response was phenomenal.

In a few short seconds I was handed a paper and pen, asked to write down what information I wanted, was informed they knew the Archivist there, and if I would be back in the morning they
would have answers for me.  Oh. My. Goodness.  True to their word when I went by their booth the next day I had a brochure from the archive, a business card for the man to contact, and was informed he was waiting for my email because those records were there.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.

I wrote to him told him again what I was looking for and had a prompt reply back.  The reply included a reminder that I could come and look at the records and to give him an email when I was coming so they could be ready for me.  Within 2 weeks of my mailing my check for copies I had my envelope of records. 

These documents are the court records of Loudon County, Virginia where my 5th great-grandfather Edward Darnell Arvin gave sworn testimony that he served in the Revolutionary War while living in Maryland.  A cousin of mine, from another son of my 4^th great-grandfather Henry Arvin, has a wonderful website with this document and tons of research on it.  However, there is nothing, NOTHING, like seeing it for yourself.  To me, being able to hold and analysis a document is so much more rewarding than only seeing it on a computer screen.

Best part, reading it and then having a light bulb go on.  There is a connection here between a 5^th great-grandfather on my mother’s side and a 5^th great-grandfather on my father’s side.  Have to do a little more digging, but this is going to be a great phone call to mom and dad.

The Elusive Sarah, Who Was She and How Did She Become a Freeman

Last night I had few minutes of free time and decided to randomly work on a line that was a dead-end.  Once again, you never know when the stars will align for you and the genealogy Gods will smile down.  This was one of those nights.

A few weeks ago I made some progress on a maternal line in my father’s family.  It had been giving me some trouble for a while.  I had traced the family line back to my 4^th great-grandmother Sarah.  The line is: me, my father, Paul Combs, Sylvia Freeman, John Freeman, Willis Freeman, and Sarah Unknown.  Having unknown’s really bother me, even though I know that they will happen and are inevitable given women changing their names with marriage. 

Looking at the information and census records I had for her I noticed (how did I miss this before) that there were three children under the age of 18 living with her and her family in the 1850 Census.  All with the last name of Quakenbush.  Now this name is not uncommon in the area of Indiana they were living, Martin County.  Could it be a clue to her past?  Were these cousins, nieces, nephews, or maybe a previous marriage?  I found in an index to Indiana Marriages an entry for the marriage of John Freeman and Sarah Quakenbush.  Right time frame, right places, right ages… good possibility there!  However, if these were her kids he was the second marriage and this was not her maiden name.  There was still the possibility that they were relatives working on their farm, but not for certain.

From the 1850 Census I know her youngest Freeman child was eight, and I had deduced that they had married in at least 1842. I was close with a marriage of 21 June 1839.***  Taking her estimated birth date, and the estimated date of birth for the oldest child, I went back into the marriage indexes.  The eldest Quakenbush child was 18 which meant an estimated birth year of 1832.  If these were her children, there could have been more.  However, her age listed in the census was 42 so I could guess she was born around 1808 +/- 5 years.  If she got married after she turned 18, then I am looking for a marriage between the years of about 1826 (+/- 5 years) up to 1832.  It took a while, but I found a record for a John Quakenbush marrying a Sally Foote 22 May 1822 in the county she was living in at the time, Lawrence County, Indiana.  I was still not confident, but it was a lead I could follow and see what panned out.

I then turned to the Ancesty.com public trees for hints as to where I should look next.  Really, as a place to get leads and possibilities, it is not such a bad place to look.  I was very surprised to see that with this new information on the possible two marriages there were hits for the first time.  Consistently I was getting information on her (with correct husbands and even children from the census) as well as the names of her parents.  Fantastic!

All the trees I found consistently had her parents listed as John Foote and Mary Smith.  They also listed an alternate name for her, Sally.  Some even had her as Sarah Sally Foote.  Now, being the skeptic that I can be, I took this with a grain of salt. It could just be a perpetuated mistake that has taken off over time.  In any case I decided to see if the Google-fu was with me last night and hunt for link bewteen the prospective parents and her.   

I did a simple search for “John Foote Indiana” and held my breath.  It is not a rare name, but I had to start looking somewhere.  Low and behold I got a hit.  That hit  was a descrption of a book about the Foote family and simply stated: “Others receiving mention in the book are: Thomas Foote of Adams County, Ohio; John Foote of Montgomery County, Indiana; Simeon Foote, of Lenox County, Penn., and Richard Foote of Virginia.”  Holy moly, that could be my John.  Even better, Google has this as a free eBook.  Score!

On page 296 of The Foote Family: or the Descendants of Nathaniel Foote, one of the First Settlers of Wetherfield, Conn., With Genealogical Notes of Pasco Foote, Who Settled in Salem Mass., and John Foote and Others of the Name, Who Settled More Recently in New York by Nathaniel Goodwin there is an entry about my potential ancestor.  It states:



Did you read to the bottom? Make sure you read child number 7, as that is my 4^th great-grandmother! Now, just so you know, we are NOT related to Nathaniel Foote (that I know of). My ancestor just happens to be in the book because the author made a compiled genealogy of all the Foote’s he could find at that time living in the United States.  I need to read more in the book to see if I can find out how this information was given to him.

Reading the description of this man left me scratching my head.  What a life.  What an adventure! At this point I still wasn’t sure I could trust information written in a book from 1849.  I was going to do some more research… specifically because I thought press gangs were only used in the British Navy.

I just love a good mystery, don’t you?  Yes, that means another post will be coming...


***I realized as I went back over this that I originaly used the oldest child from the marriage, not the youngest.  Jeesh... that would make a lot more sense huh?  The oldest child has an estimated birth year of 1840.  That makes the 1839 marriage year a lot more likely.


Main Image: shiny red type via photo pin cc
Census Record:  Year: 1850; Census Place: Columbia, Martin, Indiana; Roll: M432_160; Page: 70A; Image: 273.
Book Record: Goodwin, Nathaniel.  The Foote Family: or the Descendants of Nathaniel Foote, one of the First Settlers of Wetherfield, Conn., With Genealogical Notes of Pasco Foote, Who Settled in Salem Mass., and John Foote and Others of the Name, Who Settled More Recently in New York.  Hartford, Connecticut: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, 1849.

Genealogical Serendipity, Edward Harvin not Arvin was the name

My post at Family Tree Firsts has had me in a correspondence flurry with two new found “cousins” on my Arvin side.  I have been reading and researching since last night and have a feeling that my skimming is going to be replaced by a very thorough reading of the Arvin Biographical Website. 

First, a gentleman named Tim Arvin left me a comment on my post that led me to see that my suspected ancestor Edward Darnell ARVIN has a Revolutionary War Pension file under Edward HARVIN.  Sure thing, I found it on Fold3.  His file number is S18014 if you would like to go check it out for yourself.  The description of his four years as a soldier and the accounts of the battles he fought in were very impressive.  On the Loudoun County USGEN website the transcription is listed under Revolutionary War Pension Records.  You can view his here.   The Map at right is Loudoun County in the early 1860's.

After that I knew I had to find the gentleman who wrote these webpages.  His name and copyright information was listed at the bottom, but no email or contact information that I could find.  I was very lucky that the Google-Fu was with me last night and one search later I found him on a rootsweb forum and sent him an email.  Excited is not a descriptive enough word for how it felt!

Bob and I have corresponded today, and I hope to pick his brain some more in the future when I have stumbling blocks.  He even pointed out to me that there is a picture of my 3^rd great grandfather Augustine Arvin with his oldest son on the website, taken at Rutherford Township, Martin County, Indiana.  You can check it out here.  Plus, he gave me the tip that the original application for benefits he made is in the basement of the Loudoun County Courthouse. 

Looking over his pages again, I saw many images from my past.  The St. Martin Parish Church has seen many Arvin / Armstrong reunions in the past 2 decades.  My dad's younger brother even lives behind the church about 1 mile, my grandmother lived about 5 miles south on US 231.  Makes me want to go home for a visit.

Loudoun County is just under 2 hours from me… if I find a sitter I can make it up there and back between the time I drop my oldest off to school and have to pick him up again!

*Image:  Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Loudoun County, Virginia [186-?].