There Was An Opportunity

 ... to visit the Family History Library (except it's now the FamilySearch Library) in Salt Lake City today, so of course I milked it. 

After creating a list of my direct line ancestors, mostly to determine whom I had parents for and who needed more work, I observed that my most problematic "problem child" is Mr. Alexander Keethler of Brown County, Ohio. I'm sure he's lovely, except that he has proven to be quite elusive.

While Hubby decided to rove SLC and amuse himself with his camera, I went upstairs to the third floor and found the books, and had some luck with a book of "walked" cemeteries in Brown County. While Alex continued to elude me, I did find his son's wife's mother, Caroline, buried with her parents and sister there. (I know where Alexander died, but have no record of his burial yet.)

A fun time was had and I can't wait until I can go again. 

Now, where was I?

Oh yes - I was having an awesome genealogy time.

I heard from a Keithler cousin on Findagrave today (hooray, my faith is restored!).  Her great grandparents, Ignatius and Jennie (Dragoo) Keithler, are my great-great grandparents.  We are second cousins once removed.

Yay :)

CUTE

The Howard Keithlers, about 1927, Montana.

Hee. "Graves R Us."

It's funny.

But guess what? I LOVE IT!!! This is the kind of website I've been waiting for, a site with lists of people buried in cemeteries of Montana and northern Wyoming! It's like they had my Smiths and Keithlers and all their kin and my inability to locate all of them in mind!

And it has an awesome name, to boot.

It's been a sweet, sweet day. I decided to mess around with my PAF and see if there were any superfluous families I needed to prune out of my tree, such as the parents of aunts, uncles, or cousins who married into my family. Not that we don't love them or that they're not important, but we can only keep track of so many people.

I was just about to pare down my Vanderpauwert relatives - like, why? How many Vanderpauwerts does anyone ever have, and I'm about to get rid of them? - when I decided to keep Uncle John's first family, the one he had with his first wife before she died and he married my aunt Verne Keithler. I wasn't really going to get rid of them, I was just going to put them in his notes/sources.

But I don't know, they did something to me and I ended up searching their census records and their son Claude's World War I draft card (he died in the influenza epidemic before he ever left Fort Lewis - that was probably a blessing) and pretty soon I was adding his information, which I found at Graves R Us (hee), to Findagrave. And there I found that some nice man had added Aunt Verne and Uncle John to their cemetery, which was awesome, because I didn't even have a death date for Uncle John! Perfect.

So. Thanks, Graves R Us... and way to go with that name.

Hi there, Cousin Arthur...

So nice to unexpectedly run into you today... a little weird, but nice...

I woke up earlier today with the idea of working on a family timeline for my great-grandparents, Howard Mitchell Keithler and Adina Irene Clark. It was fun and I made some good progress. It'll be even MORE fun when the 1940 census shows up.

I got to work on more Keithler timelines - one for Howard's parents, Ignatius and Jennie, and then Ignatius' parents, Alexander and Caroline.

Alexander's family has been hard to figure out. He was born in 1828 in Ohio, and the earliest record I can find of him is in the 1850 census, when he was 22 and living with another family in another state, working as a farmhand. He married Caroline in 1851, they had three babies, and then she passed away - all before the 1860 census.

Which is a huge "sux donut" because I have no record of this sweet little family ever being together. My husband and babies and I have made it to two censuses so far and I hope it'll be many more.

Their oldest daughter, Martha, was mistakenly listed as having the last name "Mitchell" (Caroline's maiden name) in the 1860 census. She, her little brother Ignatius and her little sister Susan Caroline all went to live with Caroline's parents after Caroline died and Alexander remarried. I finally figured out and fixed that mistake today...

Then moved on to Martha's husband and children, another huge nest of huge mistakes. I've unraveled skeins of knotted yarn that were easier to repair. Yikes!

Martha's son Arthur was born in 1875, and as I found out today from his death certificate, died in 1932.

His death date leapt out at me like it was sitting on a spring.

On TODAY'S date, in 1932. September 27, 1932. What were the odds of that happening? I guess just one in 365, but still...

It was weird. Freaky. Goose-pimply awesome.

"That's a nice nose! Did you pick it?"

...one of my dad's old corny jokes I still enjoy throwing at my children.

My whole life, everyone has told me I look like my mom. I do look like her - our coloring is very similar, but as I grew older, I noticed our features aren't quite exactly the same... my nose and chin were different, my eyes crinkly-er, my eyebrows arch-ier or something. Our skin is different, too - she tans easily, while I burn and freckle like my father.

This observation led to much mirror-perusing. If I wasn't a carbon copy of my mother, the way everyone seemed to think, then who DID I look like?

And of course, being the genealogy geek that I am, I had to trace the features I saw on my face back to their original source - at least, as far back as the family photograph collection would allow.

I've split my face into four people. I know you were wondering.

From the nose up, I look like Ruby Fox; from the nose down, Jennie Dragoo; my dimples came from my grandfather, Carl Dysart; and my dark haired, dark-eyed coloring (and that of my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, great-great grandfather) came from Lorette Proctor.

And of course, being the genealogy geek that I am, I wonder endlessly about the three ladies and where THEIR features came from. Who does Lorette resemble with her brown eyes? When did this very distinct Dragoo nose and chin first make its appearance, and with whom? Was it a Zane or a Bathrick that Ruby inherited her eyebrows from?

And those pesky dimples! I have exactly one picture of Carl's parents, Carl Sr. and Ruth, smiling. I can't tell for sure but it looks like Carl Sr. is the dimpled grandparent. His son, my grandpa Carl, had them, my mom has them, I have them, and my middle son, who (out of our five children) looks the least like me and the most like his dad, was also somehow born with them.

Adam and Eve's first invention should have been a camera. And film that lasts millennia.

Photo of the Week: March 2, 2008

(Click on the image for a better view)

A couple of hotties get married in 1942 (you can read more about that here).

My Neenaw is one of the most beautiful brides I've ever seen. I am lucky to look anything like her. Gran's no slouch, either.

Photo of the Week - January 20, 2008

(Click on the picture to make it bigger - I love all the details.)

The Johnsons and the Keithlers, having a killer time.

From left to right: Cora Clark Johnson, Howard Keithler, Aaron Johnson, Adina Clark Keithler. Cora and Adina are sisters, and Adina and Howard are my great grandparents. Howard and Adina seem to be looking at something - was Lawrence Welk on TV yet?

I love seeing my ancestors in their "natural habitat."

DAR, Here I Come

Alice's application for membership in National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution arrived yesterday! That was so fast! It only took two or three weeks. I called my local chapter registrar this morning and she's all excited to fill out my application for me. I have to make copies of all my paperwork and send it to her, then when my application is finished, we'll meet and I'll sign my application and pay the fee. My family members who are thinking of joining it with me, can also use Alice's paperwork.

I notice there's also a Huguenot Society affiliated with DAR. The Dragoos were Huguenots, so I could probably join that too, if I wanted to take the time to prove my relationship to Pierre Dragaud. (Jennie Lee Dragoo is my great grandfather Howard Mitchell Keithler's mother.) It definitely wouldn't be as simple as proving my relationship to my great grandmother. A Mayflower Descendant group is also available to join, but I haven't decided if I'm one of those or not yet. I should probably not go nuts on joining groups I won't have time for or want to pay yearly dues for. But it's still fun.

Verna Browning, World Traveler

I'm having a lot of fun with Verna. I found her just today, a descendant of the Mitchell family - her father was William L. Browning, and her grandmother was Susan Franklin Mitchell Browning, the Brownings Kathy and I had discussed in our emails.

I didn't have any children for Susan and her husband, W.W. Browning, so I looked until I found some. They are:
Charles L., born about 1865 (all born in Kentucky)
William L., born April 1866
Julia, born about 1868
Annie, born March 1870

William married Etta (I also found her as Ettie), a Missouri native, and they had one daughter, Verna, born 16 August 1905 in Beaumont, Texas. Sometimes it's easier to find a family by one of the children's names, so I searched for Verna at Ancestry to see what I could see.

A few fun links revealed that Verna had taken several trips by ship to other countries - first to Europe with her mother Ettie, boarding the S.S. Lapland at Antwerp, Belgium and arriving home in New York in 1927; then alone, once coming home from Queenstown, Ireland, on the S.S. Adriatic in 1930, and then on the S.S. Uruguay, coming home from Rio de Janeiro in 1939.

It's fun to imagine Verna and her mother taking these trips, what they must have seen, their clothing and hair styles, and how they spent their time on these ships, but what I'm dying to know now is, what was Verna doing with all this traveling? Was it part of her job to travel, or was she simply taking advantage of the family finances (her father William was a bank president)? If it was part of her job, what did she do for a living?

I found a Verna Browning in a University of California, Berkeley, 1927 yearbook here. I wish there was some way to magnify it - it looks like each student's hometown is printed with their name, and I think I see "Alvin," which is where she was from.

It appears that Verna never married. In the Social Security Death Index, I found her under her maiden name. She died in February 1983, probably in Texas.

Note to Myself

Click here and buy the publication entitled Atchison County Missouri Deaths From Area Newspapers, 1878-1888.

This week I was contacted by a lady named Kathy, who found me while searching for Ignatius Mitchell, my 4th-great grandfather on Poppy's side. In her email, she included a snippet of his obituary, which came from the above book:

Mitchell, Ignatius S. --died Mar. 3, 1882 at the home of Mrs. Lawson Dragoo. He was her father and she lives in Rockport, Mo.. He had been living with another daughter, Mrs.W.W. BROWNING of Brownville, Nebraska....He was born in Mason County, KY. in Jan. of 1798. He married Nancy D. Twoke(?) in 1819. Burial in Mason Co., KY..(R.S.=Rockport Sun Newspaper)

Kathy is researching Brownings and asked me who the Mr. and Mrs. W.W. Browning were. They are my aunt and uncle, Susan Franklin Mitchell and her husband, Woodville W. Browning. Susan's sister Caroline married Alexander Keithler, and they are my 3rd-great grandparents.

I'm always amazed at the way seeing their obituaries makes my ancestors so much more real to me. They stop being names on a page I've seen since childhood and become human beings with lives, families, jobs, possessions... I start wondering what they looked like, what kind of clothes they wore, how they died, what their personalities were, etc.

I'm so grateful for the Internet. It's miraculous, how quickly information can be gathered and shared, and people can get in touch with each other. When I think of my ancestors (including Gran, who hated computers) trying to do all this research through letters, over the telephone, and by traveling, and the costs involved, all I can think is how blessed I am and how much I appreciate their efforts way back then, which were infinitely harder than mine are.

This work is so interesting, rewarding, and fun, I can't believe everyone doesn't do it.

Timeline: Ignatius Mitchell Keithler & Jennie Lee Dragoo

14 December 1886 - Ignatius and Jennie married in Rockport, Atchison, Missouri (Jennie at left)
17 September 1887 - First child Cecile "Verne" Keithler born in Musselshell, Musselshell, Montana
1888 - Second child William Clary Keithler born in Musselshell
19 February 1890 - Third child Gertrude Ellen Keithler born in Musselshell
1892 - William Clary Keithler died in Musselshell
5 November 1892 - Fourth child Howard Mitchell Keithler born in Musselshell
22 January 1895 - Fifth child Jennie Lee Keithler born in Musselshell
18 September 1898 - Sixth child Oswin Ignatius Keithler born in Musselshell
*1900 Census
About 1901 - Seventh child Glen Gerald Keithler born and died in Junction, Yellowstone, Montana
11 April 1905 - Jennie's father Lawson Dragoo died in Atchison county, Missouri
About 1907 - Gertrude and Clarence Emory Beaver married
3 March 1907 - Ignatius died in Yellowstone county, Montana; buried in Billings, Yellowstone, Montana
10 November 1908 - Grandson Everett Keith Beaver born in Montana (Gertrude & Clarence)
*1910 Census
21 May 1910 - Gertrude's husband Clarence Emory Beaver died in Miles City, Custer, Montana
26 August 1913 - Verne and John Vanderpauwert married in Miles City
11 January 1915 - Gertrude and Arthur D. Tennant married
May 1917 - Grandson Lawrence "Keith" Vanderpauwert born in Montana (Verne & John)
4 September 1917 - Daughter Jennie & Hugh Allen "Sandy" Smith married
7 December 1918 - Grandson Leo Vanderpauwert born in Montana (Verne & John)
April 1919 - Granddaughter Audrey Mae Smith born in Montana (Jennie & Sandy)
5 September 1919 - Howard & Adina Irene Clark married in Hysham, Treasure, Montana (Howard pictured at right)
*1920 Census
5 June 1920 - Grandson John Lawrence Keithler born in Hysham (Howard & Adina)
About 1921 - Grandson born (living)
8 November 1922 - Granddaughter born (living)
22 September 1928 - Grandson Howard Ernest "Haudy" Keithler born in Crow Agency, Big Horn, Montana (Howard & Adina)
*1930 Census
*1940 Census
22 July 1942 - Jennie died in Vancouver, Clark, Washington; buried in Park Hills Cemetery in Vancouver

Photographs of Jennie and Howard: courtesy of my grandmother

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

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.