By Susan Wallin Mosey — “Trees without roots fall over.”—anonymous My husband isn’t interested in genealogy. He tries hard—but if I go on about it for more than a minute or two, his eyes glaze over. It seems that people are either very interested in genealogy, or not at all. For those who are interested but …
By Susan Wallin Mosey I try to be a cheerful and upbeat genealogist—but once in a while, even a real peach of a human being like myself just has to let off some steam. Lately, four old and familiar issues in particular are really getting on my nerves, genealogically speaking… 1. The missing 1890 census. …
The Grumpy Genealogist: 4 Things That Really Bug Me About Family History Research Read More »
By Susan Wallin Mosey Is it weird that I have a graveyard kit? How else can you go grave hunting in an organized and well-equipped manner? Mine is stored in a pink bucket with a decal on it. (I’m a very girly grave hunter.) The bucket contains all the stuff I need for proper gravestone …
Do You Have a Graveyard Kit? Here are the 13 Things I Keep in Mine Read More »
By Susan Wallin Mosey This is part 3 of a 3 part series. Read part 2 here. Excerpts from the childhood of my mother-in-law, Donna Garver Mosey (one of fourteen children), in her own words: Mom did the milking, since Dad didn’t like working with the twelve cows. We sold the cream but not milk—we …
Michigan Farm Life in the Great Depression, Part Three Read More »
By Susan Wallin Mosey Excerpts from the childhood of my mother-in-law, Donna Garver Mosey, in her own words. This is part 2 of a 3 part series, read part 1 here. At school we had a recess at 10:30 and 2:30, and a one-hour lunch break at noon. Reading was my favorite subject. I remember what …
Michigan Farm Life in the Great Depression, Part Two Read More »
By Susan Wallin Mosey Excerpts from the childhood of my mother-in-law, Donna Garver Mosey, in her own words: I was the seventh born of fifteen children. (The fifteenth one, William, had a bad heart and lived only a few days.) I was born at home, as we all were. When a new baby was about …
Michigan Farm Life in the Great Depression, Part One Read More »
By Susan Wallin Mosey More died from flu than from bullets that year… That was the sad truth in America in 1918. World War I was raging, but so was an influenza epidemic like the world had never seen. Theodore Peterson—my great uncle Ted—was an engineering student at the University of Nebraska when duty called. …
Even a “man of the cloth” can be a black sheep… Consider the case of Rev. George Washington Hays. I used to be church historian at the church where I grew up. One summer I decided to read all the board minutes, starting at the beginning—1858. Not far into the project, my eyes were drawn …
My husband’s great-uncle Wayne Nedry Alwood (1893-1948) had a Model T automobile similar to this one, pictured. Those puppies could be hard to start, and sometimes a person had to get creative. But Wayne’s brother-in-law, Walter Garver, discovered a system that worked. Dale Garver, a cousin of my husband’s and a top-notch genealogy researcher, wrote …
Mosey, my married name, is an unusual American surname, with no obvious ethnic origin. But I have learned that it’s English in origin—Yorkshire, to be specific. My husband’s great-grandfather Robert Mosey was one of his “gateway ancestors”—an ancestor who came from elsewhere to settle in America. Robert Mosey (1821-1884) was born in Bishop Wilton, a …