Earlier this year, I wrote about my grandmother’s grandfather, Reuben H. Ward. According to my grandmother’s story, he was a Methodist circuit rider who had been murdered while going down the river. His body was then thrown overboard. I uncovered more details of the story through newspaper articles. Index from Ancestry’s Insolvent Estates, Perry County, Tennessee Ward, R. H., page 62; Notice there is one more Ward and 2 more Whitwells who are also likely my relatives. I haven’t looked at these yet. This week, while looking at Ancestry’s new “probate and wills” databases, I discovered more information about Reuben...
Over the past couple of days, I’ve spent some time looking for ancestors and other relatives on Ancestry’s new “Wills and Probate Records” series. I was having trouble finding any of my numerous Perry County, Tennessee relatives, so I decided to skip the index and look at the actual records. Here are the steps I used to get started: Went to Ancestry.com Clicked on “Search” then “Card Catalog” For Title, typed in “Probate” and the state’s name (in my case, “Tennessee”) Clicked on “Tennessee, Wills and Probate Records, 1779-2008” On the right hand side, chose the county (in my case,...
Do you have a pile of photographs waiting to be scanned? Do you have old photo albums which you want copies of but don’t want to risk damaging the photos by removing them? Or are you going to visit a relative or to a reunion where you might want to scan photos? A photo scanned this weekend at my mom’s of me, age 7, in our roses Using a flatbed scanner is a tedious, time-consuming process which is more difficult to use “on the go.” And, using a cell phone to capture images from a relative’s scrapbook, which I’ve done...
Cousin Bait. That’s one of the reasons I, and other genealogists, blog. In other words, we’re hoping relatives will find our blog posts, recognize their own family members, and get in touch with us. When they get in touch with us, we hope they’ll share information with us as we share with them, too. (image from Wikipedia) I started blogging about a year and a half ago, though I was fairly sporadic at first. I have now completed 140 posts. And, I recently got my first ‘nibble!’ Bob wrote me saying he’d read my post about George Correy of Chester...
The fifth person on this list is Edmund Kaechle. His age appears to be 24 years old and he died about 1885. If you look at the person above him, Charles, you will see he is 5 years old. The “y” for Charles’ 5 years looks nothing like the “4” on Edmund’s 24 years. That was my big mistake. Even though everyone in this cemetery plot are my family members, I didn’t study the list to see how the ages were recorded. If you look again, you’ll see the ages are as follows: 55y 2d 42y 5y 24 90y 70y...
The 1910 census has two wonderful columns labeled “mother of how many children” and “number of those children still living.” My 2nd great grandmother, Mary (Koerbach) Kaechle, was a 52-year-old widow in 1900. In the census, she’s listed as having 4 children with 3 still living in 1910. I only had names for 3 of her children: all sons. Yesterday, I came across the record that solved the identity of this missing child, another son. The record was a photo of Mary’s husband’s headstone, Reinhard Kaechle. There, on the bottom of the stone, it lists the name of another deceased....
My husband I do not share any direct ancestors. However, my father’s DNA test led to a surprising discovery of an 1873 marriage between the granddaughter of my 4x great grandparents and the son of my husband’s 4x great grandparents. Here’s how I made the discovery… Ancestry’s hint showing my dad’s potential DNA match with Hardin Davis Trammell DNA “MATCH” I was looking at my father’s DNA matches on Ancestry under “New Ancestor Discoveries.” Ancestry says these are “potential new ancestors or relatives who are not already in your family tree.” My dad’s DNA showed 5 of these “potential” matches. So, what...
While researching a divorce case believed to be the brother of my great, great grandmother, I came across a book on Google Books that tells of those acts of “extreme cruelty” which could make a divorce possible. The book is dated 1917 and the list was quite enlightening! It starts by stating “it is not essential that the misconduct charged as extreme cruelty should be of a criminal character, or such as the guilty party can be prosecuted for in the criminal courts, but it is sufficient if the acts are such as are calculated to destroy the plaintiff’s happiness,...
As I worked on my Koechle/Kaechle chapter for the Holthoefer family book, I was shocked to come across a piece of conflicting evidence which threatened to chop off a branch of my tree. For years I’d worked with the thought that Reinhard Koechle’s father was Thaddeus Koechle. But, upon discovering Reinhard’s death certificate at Seeking Michigan, I saw his father’s name listed as Mathias. For about 24 hours, I was desperately trying to determine who really was the father of Reinhard Koechle. Detail of Reinhard Kaechle’s death certificate (from Seeking Michigan site) showing father’s name as Mathias Reinhard’s death certificate...
How do you share your genealogy work? For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a family history book for one of my lines: the Holthoefer family. Although I contributed some of the research to the main part of the book, my ‘big’ contribution is a short chapter on a collateral line: the Kaechle/Koechle family. Even a ‘short’ chapter takes a lot of work! Headstone of Thaddeus Koechle (Photo by Shirley Lindenberger Hazelwood, posted at FindaGrave.com) Though it’s been a lot of hard work, I’ve learned a lot as I went through the process. And, no, it isn’t...
