My last post was about “Uncle Ed & Uncle Charlie Coppenbarger” and their vehicles: a Model T & a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Newspaper stories tell us a little more about these two uncles. Uncle Charlie in the News Photo of “Uncle Charlie,” his wife, Agnes (Seanor) Coppenbarger, and two of their children: “Little Clay” and Orville. Photo used with permission from Teri Head. In November of 1912, just a couple of years before this photo was taken, Charlie’s youngest son died at the young age of 2. His name was Clay, but his headstone remembers him as “Little Clay.” The...
Last week, my dad sent me this photo which was labeled “Cassie McCluskey and Linda Peters.” He said the original was “so light you could hardly make out the figures of the two ladies. [He] had to push the contrast and darkness really hard to get an image, hence the jet black areas in some places (around Linda’s eyes for instance).” Photo Labeled “Cassie McCluskey and Linda Peters” but likely Cassie (McCluskey) Long and Luda (Tibbetts) Peters Although we are related to Peters, we do not have a Linda Peters – as either a maiden or married name – in...
We have an amazing number of photos of our Peters family. This photo includes both my grandmother, Hazel Peters (1910-1975), who is third from the left, and my great grandmother, Myrtle Mae (Coppenbarger) Peters (1880-1970), who is to the right of her. The youngest girl, located on the far right, is my grandma Hazel’s sister, Beulah (1923-2009), who got me interested in genealogy in 1998. We are dating the photo by Beulah’s age guessing she is about 8 or 9 years old. Peters Family Photo Collection (Used with permission) Although my dad’s generation knew their Peters cousins, they do not...
I have only contacted a state archive for a document a few times. Each time, I have been pleasantly surprised. Well, except for the time when I was told the court house for that county burned during the Civil War! I am learning that we need to use state archives and there is plenty we can do from home when we cannot travel to visit them. Last week, I wrote about a newspaper article I’d seen mentioned in an old post. To find a copy of it, I used Chronicling America and then contacted a repository that held the correct...
A few months ago, I shared how I had some success finding wrongly transcribed names in census records by searching for neighbors instead of the people I was actually researching. I am also having success finding people by using “exact” searches without a last name. Here’s an example: The family of John M. and Matilda Boyers was located in Sumner County, Tennessee in 1830. In 1840 and 1850, they were found in Tishomingo County, Mississippi. The 1850 household included the parents, who were listed as ages 49 and 44, and eight of their younger children with ages ranging from 3...
Before heading to Clinton County, Pennsylvania for a quick research trip two weeks ago, some cousins and I hired a researcher to pull some court files regarding our Stewart family. Upon our arrival, we drove to her house, paid her for her work, and received over 200 pages of copies. How exciting! I doubt I will ever go “paperless” as I love being able to spread papers out and work on them side by side and rearrange them. However, I also need to have digital copies of these documents both for my own research and to share with my cousins....
The 1910 census lists Elizabeth C Merrill, wife of Norman B Merrill, as a mother of 6 with 4 still living. I’m sure we all have families like this on our trees. We’d love to tell the stories of these “missing” children who both were born and died between census years. But, how can we locate them? One solution? Newspapers. What a wonderful source! And, it was newspapers that helped me locate the two “missing” children of Elizabeth and Norman B Merrill. The first newspaper article I found was dated November 25, 1902. It simply stated: The infant child of...
I have used Google Books in the past, but after listening to a Genealogy Gems podcast by Lisa Louise Cooke on Friday, I decided to spend some time seeing what I could find. In just minutes, I found an article with four photos! And over the next two hours, I found dozens of “hits.” Me with Lisa Louise Cooke in Houston, March 2014 Tip: For unusual surnames (like Holthoefer), just search for the surname. For more common names, put the name in quotation marks & add a place name. Herman J Holthoefer (1863-1950), a druggist/pharmacist, was a nephew of my...
The transcription of names on sites like Ancestry.com has greatly reduced the time it takes to locate individuals and families on census records. However, incorrectly transcribed names continue to make some people difficult to locate. 1930 U.S. census, Wayne County, Michigan, population schedule, Detroit Ward 21, p. 258 (stamped), enumeration district 82-792, sheet 1-A, dwelling 13, Charles Kaechle; NARA microfilm publication T626, roll 1063. In 1930, Charles Kaechle lived with his wife, Amanda, and mother, Mary M. Sprenger, on Gladwin Avenue in Detroit. Although I believed Charles Kaechle was still living in Detroit in 1940, I could not find him. I...
My fourth great grandparents, Jacob Coppenbarger (1769-1841) and Catharine Ann Snavely (1780-1857) had a dozen known children: 7 sons & 5 daughters. Last week, I came across a newspaper article which was published by the Circuit Court and involved the estate of Jacob Coppenbarger. Jacob’s oldest four daughters are listed alongside their husband’s names. His fifth daughter, Emily, was only 15 years old when her father died. Though she wasn’t yet married, she would marry shortly after her 16th birthday. Circuit Court, May Term, Peter Coppenbarger, Illinois Weekly State Journal, Springfield, Illinoisi,11 Mar 1842, page 4, column 2, digital image...
