User Submitted Family Stories

Family Stories Collection: This special collection contains a selection of family history stories submitted by our readers. Originally published April 04, 2014. Thank you to Susan D. Harris for this guest post. Image above: “My grandmother (Martha) as a little …

A Favorite Song Foretells the Discovery of a Long Forgotten Homeland .

Family Stories Collection: This special collection contains a selection of family history stories submitted by our readers. Originally published April 2, 2014. “La Corriveau”…   Her real name was Marie-Josephte Corriveau, and she was one of the most infamous murderers in …

“La Corriveau” – Second Cousin and Infamous Murderer .

Eva Grimm was born around 1886 in Aurora, Illinois, and married her husband Alfred Wyatt in 1908.  The marriage was not a match made in heaven.  Eva eventually ended up having an affair with a man she knew who lived in Chicago whose name was Herbert Conkright, and she even moved in with him for a few months one spring.  But eventually she returned to her husband Alfred, although her contact with her lover continued—but not always by her choice.  When she ignored him, Herbert sometimes posed as a detective when attempting to get information about her from her family and friends.  One time, it was reported in the papers, he threatened to push her off a bridge to her death if she didn’t return to him.

“I was born at home (all four of us were), at the farm at Barbers Corner on August 18, 1922, at six in the morning.  A nurse and a doctor came—Dr. Ludwig—but I was born before he got there!  My mother got a “hired girl” to help her take care of us for a few weeks.

Walter Garver and Hazel Alwood were married in Clare County, Michigan in 1914.  Over the next 25 years, they had fifteen children—in order, they were Doris, Charles, Wayne, Forest, Lester, Fern, Donna, Walter, Virginia, Max, Robert, Rex, Betty, Marlyn, and William.  All survived to adulthood except the last, William, who died from congenital heart disease at only five days old.

Growing up I had always heard about Ethel Murphy, mother to my great grandmother Frances May Catherine Murphy Fazenbaker Knepp. When I started doing genealogy about twenty five years ago I asked my mother Virginia Catherine Miller Johnson about her family. She told me that her grandmother’s mother disappeared and that family “lore” had it that (and I am always skeptical about family lore) that she was killed in some sort of accident around November of 1908 or 1909. I thought, OK, I can start looking to see what I could possibly find. Of course, this was all before the internet.

Thomas Garver (1850-1902) was farmer in Defiance County, Ohio.  According to notes taken by his great-granddaughter Ruth Marie Burkhart in 1943 for a school project, he had a sideline as well.  She wrote, “He was a preacher of the United Brethren Church located at Ridgeville, a small town a few miles from Napoleon [Ohio].  He lived on a small farm near the church.  He farmed and did odd jobs through the week and then on Sunday he gave his sermon.”

Family Stories Collection: This special collection contains a selection of family history stories submitted by our readers. Originally published Feb 03, 2013. Last year I spent some time researching the family history of my sister-in-law Susie.  Along we way we …

Double Wedding Ring: The Story of Rhoda Wyatt .