Sometimes I just want to give the mailman a hug!

hehe, that's a funny title. Anyhoo, today is officially "Day of Records". First, I received the will and inventory of Elias Bromagen from Greene County, OH today, and it's a great one. Pretty close to the ideal record. The only thing better is if he would have just randomly decided to tell us about his birth and parents. Not only does he list his sons, and give them each large tracts of land which is all described for later land platting, he also lists his daughters. That is not something commonly seen. Even those daughters with whom he had already settled his affairs were mentioned. Then, to top it off, he named his son Simon as his eldest and then had to amend his will at a later date because he said that Simon, whom he had appointed his executor, had died. So that narrows down the death range for Simon too. The inventory was pretty interesting also, pretty common stuff but reading about his "beloved" cows and his flock of geese was fun to read.

Moving on to the McKeevers, Pennsylvania is one of those states that requires you to make a copy of your driver's license to confirm your current address when you order copies of death records. Here's another instance where being a military family, with a driver's license that almost never matches where you're currently living, is not conducive to long-distance genealogy. So, I had to have a relative order the records for me and I got the great news today. The death record for my Great Great Great Grandmother's brother had the name of their mother, her full name including her maiden name, which I did not previously have. A search of newspaper entries a while back had given her first name as Elizabeth but now we know her name as Elizabeth Saunders. The informant for the info on the death record was a McKeever cousin who would have known this so I find it to be pretty reliable information. So now I have a new name to start going after which is always fun.

So it was a great day for records! I love days like this, whenever records come it's always a good day. Now I need to update my own records!

Happy Hunting Friday to everyone!

Making some connections...and an important caution!

I had a pretty good weekend as far as making some cousin connections. I was contacted through ancestry.com by a new Bromagen cousin which is great news. That family line is really an interesting one, I have a feeling I'll be posting some specifics on that family group (with ties to VA, OH, and IN) in the near future. Then this morning I woke up to an email from someone related through my McKeever line. That one was pretty surprising because I haven't made any connections with that line up to this point. This person also found my posts through ancestry.com. I can't say enough good things about the boards on ancestry for this reason. I've found people who help when you're stuck and now found about 4 or 5 cousin connections as well. It really is a great resource, if you're careful that is. One of the dangers of ancestry.com is that there is a ton of unvalidated, undocumented information floating around there. It's great to connect with someone and exchange info but you have to remember to either get their source and assess its reliability or treat it as undocumented and seek out the proof yourself. Using a family or county history published in the 19th century is not necessarily proof positive that the info is correct. Do not assume that just because something is published that it is correct info unless there is a reliable source/sources cited. You all probably already know all this anyway, but it's something that is important to remember when using the forums at the popular sites like ancestry.

Photo time

So I figured what these pages needed right now was some personalization and some photos to lighten things up. One of the things I've gotten really interested in while working on family history research is comparing photos of family members. I've really gotten into looking at likenesses of ancestors and comparing them to likenesses of their descendants. So this may be something I continue on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. I'm going to start with this photo, probably taken around 1910, of my Great Grandfather, Charles LeRoy Stevens, and his father, Charles T. Stevens (b. 1858 Melrose, MA d. 1926 Chicago, IL). For those of you interested in Bromagen family history, Charles LeRoy is the son of Charles T Stevens and Lillie Bromagen, daughter of James Bromagen, granddaughter of Elias Bromagen and Cassandra McNulty of Ohio and possibly VA.

Pretty much from the time I first saw this photo, I never could find much resemblance between father and son. Later in life, Charles LeRoy did show more of a resemblance but I always figured he must have inherited his mother's look from his likeness in this early photo of him. Without a known image of Lillie Bromagen though, or either of her parents, I'll never be able to put the two together. In any case, Charles L and Charles T each seem to have their own look.

Now let's compare this photo of Charles T. Stevens to his sister Emma (nee Stevens) Biever and their mother, Caroline (nee Heal) Stevens Van Wormer.....