Occupations are one of the most coveted gems of genealogy research — they give us a glimpse in to the daily lives of our ancestors in a way that few other raw details can. But if you’ve spent some time digging through old records you’ve probably come across jobs that you have never heard of, most likely because …
10 Common 19th Century Occupations That You’re Not Likely to See Today Read More »
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 …
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 …
My husband has a great-grandfather who fought in the Civil War and lived to tell about it (although barely). His name was Lewis Alpheus Mosey (1843-1925). A few years ago I found Lewis’ Civil War Pension Index Card and 1890 Special Veteran’s Census Schedule on ancestry.com. The census said that he had a “rifle wound …
We have created a new tool on Family History Daily, the Family History Search Engine. It’s a simple custom search box that allows you to look for your ancestors on a wide variety of different genealogy websites. We have added mostly free genealogy resources to our search–including large research websites and smaller regional archives and government records. To make the …
Search Multiple Genealogy Sites at One Time With Our New Tool Read More »
A few years ago I did an ancestry binder for an in-law branch of the family which shall remain nameless. I discovered the story of a genuine black sheep—George Washington Coomes, who was shot to death on September 5, 1896. George was born in McLean County, Kentucky, on January 16, 1861. He married Cordelia Martin …
Everyone thinks they want me to find a few—but perhaps that’s one of those things that sounds better in theory than it turns out to be in practice.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe. I love a good skeleton in the closet as much as the next genealogist—or a black sheep or two in the family—but this stretches the bounds of credibility. My maternal grandmother, Clara Anderson Erickson (1892-1967), had four brothers—George, Charles, Howard, and Lester. Grandma Erickson was a farmer’s wife—but …
Mystery Monday: The Anderson Boys – Reputations in Need of Rescue Read More »
At some point or other in their research, every family historian will likely discover the sad fate of the 1890 census. A critical time of population growth and change in America’s history, the 11th census of the United States should have contained the detailed records of more than 60 million individuals. But instead, we have but …
Ever wondered why so many of those calculated years of birth from censuses are so consistently wrong by a year or so? For example, you know your great-grandfather, George, was born in May 1895 but Ancestry, FamilySearch and the others say it was 1896 because he was age 44 in the 1940 US census. The …
A Little More Accuracy? Estimating the Year of Birth Read More »