Counting the Generations

Top ten math facts from my family tree:

1. My children were born just before 2000 (GenY/Millennials).
2. My grandparents were born around 1900 (the Greatest Generation). 
3. My 3X great-grandparents were born around 1800 (Westward Migration).
4. My 6X great-grandparents were born around 1700 (the Colonial period).
5. My 10X great grandparents were born around 1600 (the 1st generation to America).
6. I have 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc., continue the math...
7. Only 3 of my great-grandparents were alive in my lifetime (all on paternal side).
8. Continuing the math... I have 4,096 10X great-grandparents! 
9. To date, I have discovered all 16 of my 3X great-grandparents, and only 34 (< 1%) of my 10X great-grandparents.
10. I have traced 5/16 of my 3X great-parents' ancestries back to at least 1600.

Generation Names:
My 2X great-grandparents fought in the Civil War.

My great-grandparents lived during the post-Civil War era and the Great Migration.

My grandparents experienced the Great Depression & WWII in adulthood.

My parents are the Silent Generation - they experienced WWII in childhood and the Civil Rights Movement as adults. They were patriotic traditionalists. They worked hard and kept quiet. Children should be seen and not heard. (study.com: The Silent Generation: Definition, Characteristics & Facts).

I am a Babyboomer/Hippie - the modern "counter-culture" generation. I experienced the end of the Cold War, space exploration, the rise of technology and mass media, and the beginning of the Information Age.

My children live in the age of  Digital Globalization and the War on Terror.  It is incredible how the world has changed so much in just a few generations.

Family Tree - maternal grandfather (5 generations)

I am so deeply immersed in the lives of our ancestors that they are almost as familiar to me as my immediate family. I have written stories about many of the individuals, but I realize that it may be difficult to keep track of the relationships if you don't visit Ancestry.com on a regular basis.  I thought it might be helpful to post a visual.

In the last post, I showed my family tree back to my 2X great grandparents.  Next I will post my four grandparents' trees back to my 4X great grandparents...starting right here with my maternal grandfather's tree:

Much of what I know about this branch of the family tree I learned from the writings of my great- grandmother Ada (Hall) Crofford.  I discovered that some of the details in her family history were not completely accurate, but she wrote stories that colorfully connected our family to historical events of the day.

Ada's mother's side of the family were prominent in the Dutch community in New York.

To remind you of a few other interesting details:  

John Dillingham told a story of being lost at sea as a young man with a few other men. They were finally rescued but not before they had discussed the possibility of which of them would be sacrificed for food.

The Dillingham family is still an important family in Liberty, Indiana - there are buildings, places, and streets named after them.  

Jacob Wandell, my 4th great grandfather, was Quartermaster at Valley Forge with Gen. George Washington. 

William Haight was mentioned in the journal of Deborah Sampson, the notorious Revolutionary War soldier (male imposter).

Andrew Hall from Michigan was trained as a Civil War soldier in Newport News.  He became a surgeon's assistant under General McClellan during the Seven Days Battle in Virginia.

Horace Calvin Crofford's discharge papers after the Civil War were signed by Ulysses S. Grant.

My Family Tree - 5 generations

Here are five generations of my family tree, as accurate as I have been able to prove thus far.  I printed this basic tree from Ancestry.com, but on the actual website, you can see all the documentation and photos that I have accumulated on each person.  Each one has a unique story to tell!  I am 100% sure of the identities of all but two of these folks.  Sadie Wright and Elizabeth Highland, both 2X great grandmothers, have precious little information available, either in family documents or online.  Their names are about all that could be found.

I hope this is readable - it was hard to get a scanned copy to fit this space.

I took an online course to be able to better understand the DNA test results. It made me realize that more of our family members should get tested in order to more fully prove my genealogy research!  I thought that siblings had nearly identical DNA, but that is not true at all.  My sister and I each got different pieces of our parents' DNA; therefore, she may have gotten pieces of DNA from an ancestor that I did not.  I also learned that cousins, up to 4th cousins, almost certainly share at least some DNA.  On the other hand, I could be cousins with someone who shares absolutely no DNA at all with me, but we could both be linked by DNA to a different cousin who shares our same ancestor.  This gets very complicated, as you can imagine.

Taking it to the next level

I've reached the point where I am ready to expand my research into new methods and sources.  There are still many options I have not explored online.  I aim to exhaust every source online before resorting to visiting actual places in person.   This is probably the beginning of my investment of financial resources into the project, and also where my research will become quite a bit more tedious.

Today I began watching a video series on Ancestry.com's youtube channel about Genealogical Proof Standards.  So much yet to learn!  I ordered a book published by the Board of Certification of Genealogists. I may look into getting certified as a genealogist myself.  I started a research log.  I looked into the Family Tree Maker software - not sure if I need that yet.  I submitted a post for review on the Ancestry Facebook page.  I had already submitted questions to Genealogy Roadshow and to ask@ancestry.com.  To date, my only expense has been the annual membership in Ancestry and the book I just ordered today.  It will cost more to join the International version of Ancestry, and even more to subscribe to valuable resources, such as Newspaper.com.  I feel like I need to confirm and validate every single name I have already added to my tree before I can add anybody else or spend any more money.

There are many reasons for genealogy research:  publishing, curiosity, legacy... my sole reason for doing this is for my children and their children.  Knowing one's family history is an important part of one's identity.

Research Gets Harder

At first this ancestry project took off like a rocket.  Though I was only able to work on it in my spare time, the pace of progress fueled my motivation.  Every day I would discover some new link to the past.  Progress got a tremendous boost when I was able to connect online with new-found cousins who were also researching our family history.

After months of research, the project moved forward only in fits and starts.  New discoveries happened just often enough to keep me motivated.  Sometimes a closer look proved my former findings to be questionable as I checked my facts more carefully.  Progress sometimes took a few steps backwards.

It is now well into Year Two of this ancestry project.  It is becoming tedious work.  A new bit of information is a rare treasure.   Every now and then, I choose an ancestor and do an exhaustive search online.  At least once a month, I look for inspiration for a blog entry.  My main focus now is to try to make sense of all the accumulated information.

The next steps are to add more of my family's "hard copy" information and do more research outside of the online environment.  I will look for family documents, analyze them, and scan them into the records.  I will interview the few remaining folks in the generation before me to flesh out the facts with stories.  I will study historical records and read accounts of the places and events that personally affected my ancestors' lives.  Now is where the real detective work begins.

The goal of this project is to provide as complete a genealogy as possible for my children.  I want them to have all of the family stories, pictures, and documents within my reach, to be able to put names and faces to our family's history.

Legacy

I have undertaken this ancestry research as my legacy to my children, my nephews and niece, and to all of their children.  I believe that our life on earth is fleeting and our physical being is not our eternal reality.  However, our sense of self on earth is partly derived from our place in history.  Seeing ourselves on a timeline of people who have come and gone gives us a more authentic perspective.

There is so much family history that died with my grandparents and with the scattering of family records among their descendants.  I am grateful for my youthful urgency in interviewing my great grandmother Zaun before she died.  I was not yet even a teenager, but sat down at the bedside of my Nanny and wrote down all of the names and dates that she could remember about her family.  There were tears in her eyes as she struggled to remember some of the details about her brothers and sisters.  From her memories, I painstakingly created a poster of our family tree (with fountain pen and ink cartridge) that I still have.  This poster was the starting point for my Ancestry research decades later.

I hope that it will be meaningful to my children someday.  I have put all of the photos and documents in my possession on each of the profiles so that it is easy to tell who was related to whom and how we all fit together as a family.  I love my family and especially my children so much - I am so proud to be connected with them in this interesting family!

Teresa Marie Allen, part 1

When I first began dabbling in ancestry research a year and half ago, progress happened so fast it was mind-blowing.  On Ancestry.com, it took no time at all to follow some family lines all the way back to medieval times in Europe (Europe has much better historical and genealogical records).  I happily paid the annual fee to join Ancestry.com so I could continue the excitement.  Then it began to be tedious as each branch of the family reached the end and the facts were more and more difficult to find.  Still, random discoveries have kept the fire burning.

Since I do not subscribe the International version of Ancestry, our tree mostly begins with the original immigrants to America.  But overall, it is an impressive assemblage of ancestors!   There are some famous and admirable folks in our family lineage, such as Roger Williams (founder of Providence RI) and Joost Van Den Vondel (the Shakespeare of the Netherlands).  Governors, religious leaders, pioneers, colonists, soldiers of the Revolution... I can't even begin to wrap my mind around it all.

I have learned to be discriminating about sources.  Sloppy research can become a contagion on Ancestry.com as researchers build on inaccurate facts from other family trees.  For instance, when double-checking the facts, I couldn't actually prove a Mayflower connection with reliable sources though there was some anecdotal evidence; therefore, I reluctantly disconnected that link from the tree.  Working on the research only occasionally and for short periods of time, I have spent most of the time over the last few months looking over my sources, fleshing out facts, and adding media.

Start with the biggest question
Last night, I decided to pick a random ancestor to investigate.  My maternal grandmother's lineage has been the most confounding mystery in our family tree, so I chose to look again at my long lost great-grandmother Eva L. Allen, who was born in Illinois.  I had previously been unable to find anything about her after 1900.  I was mainly concerned with finding proof that my grandmother "Teresa" was the same person as "Ethelyn" who was documented as the only child of Augustus and Eva Allen.  I did a search for "Eva L. Allen" on findagrave.com, and was surprised when a 2010 entry took me to Oklahoma.  It turns out that around 1998, an inmate at a low level security prison in Oklahoma had cleared out an old, overgrown cemetery at nearby Old Fort Supply and uncovered hundreds of grave markers no larger than bricks.

Cemetery at Old Fort Supply
http://yireng.blogspot.com/2013/06/another-old-cemetery.html

This photo was taken after 1908 in the early days of the mental hospital. It shows the north line of barracks used as wards. Some of the trees on either side of the road are still there. The tree-lined road or path led from the Superintendent's home, the former Commanding Officer Quarters to the hospital administration offices.
(Fort Supply Historic Site Facebook page).

The graves were of patients who had died at the mental hospital at Fort Supply.  One of them was Eva L. Allen, 1867-1911.  A mental hospital...!  Sure enough, Eva L. Allen is listed on the 1910 census as a patient at the hospital.  My heart raced as I checked facts against each other to be sure it was the right person.  I already knew that, according to the 1920 census, my grandmother had lived in a boarding house in Oklahoma City which is not far from where her mother had died. There were just too many coincidences to dismiss the information.  Sadly, Teresa never knew what became of her mother.  Raised by nuns at a Catholic boarding school in Texas, she remembered a visit from her father, Augustus, but she never knew what happened to him either.  Teresa attended a nursing school in Paris, Texas - I tried to identify the school and came up with St. Joseph Hospital, which was run by nuns.  No proof... yet.  Mom and I conjecture that she changed her name while she was at this school, from Ethelyn to Teresa Marie (perhaps named for a favorite nun?) UPDATE:  see later post with more information about Teresa! 

Update, January 2, 2015:
Further research has brought up more questions about Augustus D. Allen.  I have created a timeline of confirmed events.

Year - Source - Subject - related persons:
1860 Census, Warsaw, Ill.  Augustus, age 1.  (Robert, b. Va.; Elizabeth, b. Ohio)
1870 Census, Hancock, Ill.  Augustus, age 11. (Elizabeth, widowed)
         Census, Littleton, Ill.  (Schuyler County) Eva L. Bosworth, age 3. (OM, Eliza)
1880 Census, Littleton, Ill.  Eva L. Bosworth, age 13. (MO, b. Ohio; Eliza, b. Kentucky)
1883 Marriage record, Littleton, Ill.  Augustus m. Eva on Nov. 25. (Robert, Elizabeth, Orlando, Eliza)
1890 .... (Census destroyed by fire).
1900 Census, Wichita, Kansas.  Augustus, real estate agent (Eva, Eliza, Ethelyn, b. abt 1893)
1904 City Directory, Wichita.  Eva L. Allen, widow of A.D.
1910 Census, Woodward, Oklahoma.  Eva, widow, age 43.
1920 Census, Oklahoma City.  Teresa, age 26.  (fellow boarder, Maude Marshall)
1930 Census, Waukegan, Ill.  Horace, Teresa, H.C. Jr.

This is where it gets tricky... there is documentation of "Augustus D. Allen" residing in Sedgwick, Kansas after Eva was supposedly widowed.  Like my ancestor, this Augustus was also born in Hancock, Ill. and moved to Wichita in 1900.  He was also a real estate agent.  In 1905, the year after Eva was listed as a widow, this Augustus married "Miss Emma Schindler" and became a well known business tycoon in the Wichita area, opening his own Realty Co. on Douglas Avenue in Wichita. (Coincidentally my grandmother grew up thinking her father's middle name was Douglas).  A brief biography by O.H. Bentley does not mention either Eva or Ethelyn/Teresa.  His year of birth is given as 1865, six years later than my ancestor. Also my ancestor was not known to have a love of horses, and he was not orphaned at a very young age (though his father died when he was a small boy; his mother died in the 1890s). This Augustus must have died sometime between 1911 and 1925* because Emma is listed as a widow in the Wichita directory in 1925.  To complicate matters further, there is an Augustus D. Allen listed in Dallas, Tx, in 1915, spouse Emma S.; occupation, grocer. (Dallas is close to where my grandmother was living in an orphanage).

In 1905, Sedgwick County had a population of about 45,000.  What are the chances that there were two Augustus D. Allens, both real estate agents, born in Hancock, Ill., and moving to Wichita the same year?  Did my ancestor die before 1904, or did he live to 1917?  Did he die, or did he abandon his family to start a new life?  If he lived, why the discrepancy in birth year?   Did Eva claim to be a widow rather than bear the shame of divorce?  Was Eva mentally ill, or was she a victim of circumstance?  And the biggest question of all.... Are Ethelyn and Teresa the same person, or am I completely on the wrong track with her parentage?

Augustus D. with Eva
and seven year old Ethelyn