Elvis and DAR

So I'm chatting via email with bloggy sister Corrie, and she tells me about this nifty function Ancestry.com (formerly known as The Devil) provides. You upload your family tree, you click on a family member's name, and then click on "famous people" and it'll show all the people you MIGHT be related to through that person. So far, Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, Princess Grace, Helen Keller, James Dean, Marlon Brando, a Mayflower passenger, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and numerous U.S. Presidents and First Ladies have popped up as possible relatives.

Of course, the accuracy of these links is iffy - the information is only as correct as the genealogists who contributed to OneWorldTree have made it. So, you know, we can take most of it with a grain of salt (I've already seen one blaring mistake, where the child was born before the mother). But it's still fun, and has spurred me on to check these connections out. I'd love to have a Mayflower ancestor, and Elvis being my cousin is actually looking pretty possible.

As most of these family ties involve colonial families, I spent some quality time this evening messing around with my "older" names - the names I've had forever but haven't done much with. Shock of all shocks, I have grandparents, aunts and uncles with only a BIRTH DATE. Neglectful me! I tried remedying that situation a little tonight. My aunt Daphne Proctor now has a husband and children.

Daphne got me started on my long-forgotten quest to become a member of NSDAR (National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution). My great grandmother, Alice Muriel Johnson Keen, a.k.a. "Alice Brown Eyes" at my house, was a member. Grandma Dot, her daughter, was most anxious for me to become a member. I was 24 at the time and not all that excited to join up with a bunch of blue-hairs who, I figured, would take one look at my youthful visage and say to each other, "New blood - GET HER!" Plus - this creeped me out - they all had to sign their names "Mrs. William Edgar Jones" (or whatever their husbands' names were) and at formal functions, they actually wore sequinned evening gowns and WHITE GLOVES. The horror!

Now that I'm considerably older, I figure, who cares? It would still be cool to be a member. All I'd have to do is order a copy of Alice's paperwork and prove my relationship to her, and I'm in like Flynn. (Who is Flynn?) I messed around on the DAR website for a while and filled out an online form to get on their call list.

Which prompted me to look up my patriot ancestors in the DAR Patriot Index. You only need one to join, but genealogically overachieving me - I think it would be fun to prove my relationship to ALL of them. Maybe by the time I'm 85, it'll be possible. Here's the list so far:

ARNDT: Abraham (1751-1825); Jacob (1725-1805); Jacob (1758-1831); John (1748-1814)
BATHRICK: Tillabee (1751-1831)
BURRUS: Thomas (1724-1788)
DANIEL: John (1751-1802)
DIMMICK: Timothy (1745-1807) - my possible Mayflower connection
DRAGOO: William (1747-1824)
DYER: Charles (1753-1845)
DYSART: James (1727-1781); James (1744-1818); John (1749-1842)
FOX: Abraham (1748-1777); Elijah (1758-1838); Joel (1754-1837)
GORTON: William (1750-1826)
JOLLIFFE: John (1751-1777)
LOCKE: James (1728-1808)
MCDANIEL: George (1722-1821); John (1751-1839)
MILLS: Nathaniel (1750-1815)
MORRISON: John (1729-1799)
PATTON: Robert (1747-1813)
PETTIGREW: George (1746-1818); James (1713-1784)
PHILLIPS: Caleb (1761-1829); Spencer (1755-1840), Thomas Jr. (1747-1829)
PROCTOR: James (1720-1790); Moses (1747-1805); Nathaniel Sr. (1723-1806); Nathaniel Jr. (1762-1855); Oliver (1745-1815); Peter (1735-1822)
REED: Jacob Sr. (1730-1820); Jacob Jr. (1762-1846)
RUCKER: Ambrose (1735-1807); Reuben (1755-1782)
SAYE: Richard (1740-1779)
SHOEMAKER: Jacob (1744-1810)
STRAIGHT: Jacob (1741-1796)

The great thing about finding them in the Index is all the missing information I scored in the process - a birth or death date here, a new marriage there. I probably have more, but I was only looking for grandfathers and uncles. Can you have an uncle or aunt as a patriot ancestor, or does it have to be a grandparent?

At any rate, the FHC was very fun this time - a most fruitful evening.

What I've Been Up To Lately

... scanning mass quantities of pictures at Neenaw's.

< My great-great grandmother Elizabeth Ann Zane Fox

> My great grandmother, Adina Irene Clark Keithler

< My great grandfather, Howard Mitchell Keithler (Adina's husband), with granddaughter Sharon Ann Keithler

>My great-great grandmother, Howard's mother, Jennie Lee Dragoo Keithler - the lady who gave me my nose, mouth and chin

< Adina's parents, my great great grandparents, John Thomas Clark and Johanna Magdelena "Lena" Steinhilber, with their three oldest children, Cora, John and Bryan (later came Adina, Ernest, Rozilla and Lena). Mother Lena came with her mother and sisters from Germany to the U.S. on an LDS Church-chartered ship, came west to Utah where Lena's youngest sister was born, then moved to Nebraska. Lena died in the influenza epidemic in 1918, leaving John and their five children (John and Bryan both passed away before her death).

>Uncle Ernie and Aunt Laneta (Ernie is Adina's younger brother)

< Lena Helen Pauline Clark Wolf, Adina and Ernie's youngest sister

>Rozilla "Rose" Margaret Clark (sister of Adina, Ernie and Lena) and her first husband, George Craig

< Aunt Rose

>Zella Daily - a Clark cousin

What a Fun Idea!

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness

My Cousin Ernest, World War II Casualty

Click here and scroll down to "Casualties from U.S.S. Neosho."

Ernest Claude Johnson was the youngest son of my great grandaunt, Cora Clark Johnson, and her husband Aaron. He died after the Battle of Coral Sea (east of the coast of Australia in the South Pacific). After his ship, the U.S.S. Neosho, was attacked on May 7, 1942, he and 67 other men climbed aboard life rafts, lashed them together, and set themselves adrift, thinking the Neosho would sink. It didn't.

The men who clung to the remnant of the Neosho would be rescued four days later. The 68 men floating aimlessly on the raft would spend the next nine days suffering from lack of food and fresh water. Some were killed by sharks; others became delirious and drank sea water, and died quickly after.

Of those 68 men, only four survived to be rescued. They were taken back to the States in critical condition, and only two of those four would survive.

Aunt Jean

One day, I'll meet my great grandaunt Jean.

Eugenia Pearl Johnson - Jean - is my great Grandma Keen's older sister and she lived an interesting (sometimes unfortunate) life. She was married three times and had two daughters each with her first and second husbands, John J. Mullennax and Robey Harrison Tolliver. Tonight, I found missing information I'd been hoping to find for a long time about Robey and Jean's marriage.

As I've said before, for the most part I've given up trying to find really important, missing pieces of information. Now I just get to work and let it come. Tonight I took the extra step of praying before I started working on it. I plugged my PAF file into PAF Insight as usual, decided to work on the 3,000s, which happened to contain Aunt Jean's family, and thought, since it was slow and I was bored, "I should look up each person in Ancestry.com while PAF Insight is looking for them in the IGI and see if I find anything" and lo and behold, that's when I found them. I also had the Washington state digital archives page open and happened to type in the name "Tolliver," which led me right to Jean and her daughters.

Robey was one elusive man to find, but tonight I have information I found in his World War I and II draft registration cards. I found out he and Jean divorced and he moved to California, where he died. I found Jean's third husband and his first wife living in Salem, Oregon. I found out that Jean's daughter Florence Ellen "Frances" Mullennax had been married not once, but twice, and that her son is the product of her first marriage.

A good night. I definitely feel closer to Jean and her family.

Is It Tuesday Yet?

"It's either Tuesday or Not Tuesday." This is how I find myself thinking of the days of the week lately. If it's Tuesday, yay! If it's not, I'm counting the days till the next one.

Tuesday is the day I serve at my Family History Center. Every Tuesday evening, I show up, I plug in my jump drive, I turn on PAF Insight and I go to town.

PAF Insight is a program you can download for $20-ish, and I plan to have it on my own computer someday so I can use it at home too. But I love the usually uninterrupted time with my ancestors. I also love all the books, films and fiche at my disposal, with always more to find in the Family History Library Catalog.

Saturday today = three more days! I've never enjoyed a Church calling so much in my life.

Projects Of Late

First I started a timeline project, which at first was just for fun, but had an interesting side effect: I started researching people with incomplete information. If all I had was their death year, I looked for the day, month, and place. If I had their birth information and could see they were probably dead by now, I went looking for death information - and so on. Since I started this project I've been able to complete scads of records and add even more family members from census records, online family trees, state histories, etc.

Before too long I noticed that I was adding people to the timeline whose names I wasn't sure were "mine" yet. I knew I needed to either connect or weed out those who weren't connected, which started my latest project: the "all related" project. I have over 15,000 names now, and I've been gathering surnames in certain areas that I know must be my relatives - Dysarts in Missouri, Keens and Copasses in Tennessee, Keithlers and Dragoos everywhere - and had found many that I hadn't connected to my people yet.

What I do is do a PAF search, find my name, click on it, click on "advanced search" and under the search options, click on "All related." I started at ,A and look for anyone who isn't related. When I find a family that isn't connected, I try to find them at Ancestry.com and other databases, and if I find the connection, I'll fill in the information. If I can't, I export them to another file, my "not related yet" file. I've since worked my way down to ,Nancy.

Today while working on William Fenton Keithler, son of John W. and Mary A. (I haven't seen how they're related yet and am starting to think they aren't), I found a reference to my great grandaunt, Cecile Verne Keithler vander Pauwert. At Ancestry.com, a book called "History of Montana" is available for viewing and I found great information about her husband John Daniel vander Pauwert's family. I've searched and searched for her and her husband and sons, and that is one tough name. Not only could census takers not spell it or write it legibly in cursive, but the family went back and forth between calling themselves "Vanderpauwert" and just plain "Powert." Also, John being from Holland originally, I found that in Holland, "vander" or "vanden"-anything is like Smith in English-speaking countries.

At any rate, I found Aunt Verne's husband's and sons' birth information and one son's death information, stuff I'd been looking for forever, and was very happy. Gotta love those goofy little projects that every so often have me doing actual research.

Links! Links! Links Galore!

Project Idea: Get a map and put it on the wall, and trace the different family names (grandparents) to where they moved in the U.S. For example, start with yourself and put a pin in the place where you were born, then do the same for your parents, then your grandparents (use different colors of thread for each new surname), and so on. You can see exactly where you came from.

Articles
Branching Out on Your Family Tree by George D. Durrant, April 2007 Ensign - don't forget the aunts, uncles and cousins!
Planning a Family Reunion
Top 10 Genealogy Resolutions

Could We Be Cousins?
My Family Tree
My husband's Family Tree
Tillabee Bathrick's Headstone (My ancestor)
Descendants of Elijah Keen
Jason & Lucinda Newberry's Burial Place (My third-great grandparents)

Fellow Geeks
Cemefairy Genealogy
Renee Zamora's Darn Fine Genealogy Blog

Places To Look - All Free!
101 Ways To Trace Your Family History For Free... and free is the best price
1880 U.S. Federal Census
Arizona Birth and Death Records
Familysearch
Free Vital Records Online - Births, Marriages and Deaths
Missouri Birth and Death Records
Rootsweb
Social Security Death Index
U.S. Genweb - just click on a state for lots of resources!
Utah State Archives - Birth and Death Records
Washington State Digital Archives

(Hint: I found some of these state archives records by googling them. If you know where your ancestors came from, you can google "New York State Records," for example, and see what pops up. I've also had success by googling the names of my ancestors - the ones not named "John Smith.")

Research Helps
Find the county for that pesky county-less town in Nebraska (or any other state).
Get Nosy. 50 Questions to ask when interviewing relatives.
Indexmundi, for all your international place-finding needs.

Training
Free BYU Family History Training!! Now you have no excuses.

And Her Name Is Diana Brandon

Anyone who has any kind of genealogy inklings will be happy for me: last night I had one of those deeply-satisfying genealogy research experiences that reminded me of going out to dinner, eating a HUGE meal that tasted wonderful, and waking up in the morning still full and still thinking "YUM!!!!" Yes, it was that good.

I have an uncle, William Arthur Armstrong Keen, who was a Baptist minister in Tennessee. He had (I thought) four wives and numerous children, including a girl named Dicie Diana Keen who married her cousin, Vanzandt Keen. Dicie was lucky because she got to keep her initials all her life, which I'm sure was important to her.

After years of wondering, and finding out little bits of information about William and his family, I found that he had eight other children but no Dicie was included among them. It was pretty easy to figure out which children went with which wives, but Dicie was a mystery. She didn't show up in any censuses with her family. The wives I had dates for didn't fit with her being their child - some of the wives, all I had was their first and last name. I didn't even know what order they were in (Wife #1, Wife #2, etc.).

Fortunately Ancestry.com hosts a family tree site. This very lovely man who lives in Denver, Colorado, had also researched William and his family, and not only did his family tree give me awesome pieces of missing information last night - they were all documented. YES. They all had a source. You always hesitate with stuff that doesn't come directly out of a book or a microfilm, but all this stuff had a source. Did I mention all of it had a source?

Finally, after all these years of not knowing who Dicie's mother was - which one of the four, except it ended up being FIVE, wives of William Keen - her mother is Diana Brandon. I don't have actual proof of it yet, but it fits. It was very common for women to die in childbirth back then - William lost at least one of his wives this way - and Diana's death date and Dicie's birth date are almost the same.

What I think happened was, William and his first wife Hiley had four daughters, then Hiley died. William then married Diana (I have their marriage date from this nice man, and a source), and I think they had Dicie. All the censuses I've seen her in, Dicie lived with the Jesse Crouch family. I think, having already lost two wives and with four little girls to raise, William let his newborn girl be raised by this family until she was married.

The clincher was when I looked up Diana's family in earlier censuses and found her as a child with her parents. Guess what Diana's mom's name is... it's Dicey. Such a strange little name can only be a family name. So there we had it - Dicie Diana Keen. It seems so obvious to me now, but there's no way I would have known if I hadn't found this nice man's family tree last night.

Long story short: I woke up full this morning. Yay!!!!

Carl Bacon Dysart & Ruth Irene Ackley

Married 4 May 1911 in College Place, Walla Walla, Washington