Showing posts with label Bradford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bradford. Show all posts

Monday, May 31, 2021

Memorial Day 2021: Hubby's Ancestors Who Served


Sadly, a few members of my husband's family tree died during their wartime military service. I've been memorialized them on my trees and on other genealogy sites. Now, for Memorial Day, let me pay honor to those who died by listing them individually:

  • Isaac Larimer Work (hubby's 1c4r) - died in U.S. Civil War, served in 74th Indiana Volunteer Infantry 
  • John Wright Work (hubby's 1c3r) - died in U.S. Civil War, served in74th Indiana Volunteer Infantry 
  • Arthur Henry Slatter (hubby's 1c2r) - died in WWI, served in Middlesex Regiment and Labour Corps 
  • Arthur Albert Slatter (hubby's 1c1r) - died in WWI, served in Royal Fusiliers, 20th Battalion 

I also want to remember the service of hubby's ancestors who were in the military and then returned to civilian life, with respect and appreciation:

War of 1812, American side

  • Daniel Denning (hubby's 3d great-uncle) - Mounted Infantry, Ohio Militia
  • Isaac M. Larimer (hubby's 4th g-grandfather) - Capt. George Saunderson's Company
  • John Larimer (hubby's 3d great-grandfather) - 90 days service, No. Ohio
  • Robert Larimer (hubby's 4th great-uncle) - Hull's Division
  • Elihu Wood Jr. (hubby's 3d great-uncle) - Sgt. F. Pope's Guard, Mass. Volunteer Militia
Union side, U.S. Civil War

Confederate side, U.S. Civil War
World War I
World War II

It is a privilege to honor these ancestors on Memorial Day weekend, 2021.

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This week's #52Ancestors prompt is "military." 

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Sepia Saturday and Saturday Night Genea-Fun

James Edgar Wood in his 1917 Ford, Summer of 1917
This week's Sepia Saturday ties in well with my response to Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge! So I combined the two.

Sepia Saturday: Posing with the Car

Above, a photo taken of my husband's grandfather, James Edgar Wood (1871-1939) by hubby's father, Edgar James Wood, (1903-1986). Ed was only 14 when he took this photo of his father during a road trip from their home in Cleveland, OH to downtown Chicago, visiting Wood family members along the way. Ed had gotten a camera for his birthday and began a lifelong hobby of chronicling family activities.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Top 20 Surnames in Family Tree

Using RootsMagic7, and following Randy's instructions, I went to Reports, then Lists, scrolled down to "Surname Statistics List," and selected "Frequency of Surnames" from the list.

With 3,128 people in my husband's Wood family tree, I could have printed 17 pages for the "Frequency of Surnames" report. Instead, I printed only the first two pages. After that, the frequency of surnames dropped off sharply.

And the winner is . . . WOOD, which appears a total of 204 times (125 males, 78 females). The oldest date of a Wood ancestor record is 1551, the most recent date is 2019.

The top 20 are: Wood, Larimer, McClure, Work, Steiner, Slatter, McKibbin, Hilborn, Denning, Smith, Cushman, Brown, Taber, Nelson, Johnson, Bradford, Short, Caldwell, Rinehart, and Miller

By the time I got to Miller, there were only 17 appearances in the Wood family tree (11 males, 6 females), with the oldest date of 1803 and the most recent date of 2006. A Miller married a Work (the granddaughter of a Work-Larimer marriage) and that's how the Miller surname connects to my husband's Wood family tree.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Sentimental Sunday: Cousin Atta Elizabeth Larimer Marries Miles Powell Bradford, 1902


I've been having success using newspaper archives to learn about ancestors' lives--but I was also reminded today that searching for full names can turn up valuable articles from free news sources.

Atta Elizabeth Larimer was 26 when she married 29-year-old Miles Powell Bradford on Thursday, May 8, 1902 in Chicago. Atta was my hubby's 1st cousin 2x removed, the older daughter of William Tyler Bentley Larimer and Elizabeth J. Stauffer.

Both bride and groom lived in Goshen, Indiana, so why marry in Chicago? That question had bothered me since I found out about the marriage via an Ancestry hint, before I accessed paid newspaper archives for Goshen.

From the above excerpt (Goshen Daily Democrat, May 8, 1902), it appears one reason to travel to Chicago was to be married by the Reverend B.B. Royer who had previously been a clergyman in Goshen. Because the announcement appeared the same day as the marriage, it was evidently not an elopement--in fact, another newspaper article within a day or two reports on Atta and Miles returning home from their wedding trip to Chicago.

By 1930, Atta and Miles were the parents of three (Lucy Elizabeth, William Abraham, and Joseph Miles Bradford). Miles told the census he was the proprietor of a retail grocery store. After his wife Atta died in 1936, Miles was kept company at the grocery store and at home by his younger son, Joseph Miles Bradford--a conclusion reached after reading the 1940 census and seeing them living together and working together.

Joseph Miles Bradford was in the Army for WWII from April 9, 1942, to February 1, 1946. Did he get a chance to come home for his father's funeral in 1944?

I don't know about the funeral, but I do know that a search for his full name, in quotes, turned up the newspaper obit (for free) of his widow, Lois Evelyn Scott, and a lot of info about his life after the war. Joseph and Lois ran Bradford's Grocery in Goshen for decades, picking up with Joseph's father Miles left off.

Most important, I learned that Joseph and Lois met and married in Hattisburg, Mississippi, while he was in the Army Corps of Engineers during the war. They had three children, whose names I now know, courtesy of that free obit.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Genealogy by the States: The Bentley California Land Rush!

William Tyler Bentley, hubby's 3rd great-grandpa, seemed to be drawn west throughout his life. Born in New York in 1795, he moved his family to what became Elkhart county, Indiana, in 1835. Though they were early settlers, most of the family didn't put down permanent roots in Indiana.

Tulare County, CA
During the 1850s, William and his grown children* (except two of his married daughters, Lucy E. Bentley Larimer and Lucinda H. Bentley Shank) moved to California in search of fertile farm and ranching land. Remember that California only became a state in 1850, and Visalia was the county seat of Tulare in the early days. By 1858, Visalia was being served by the overland stage coach from St. Louis to San Francisco. The Bentleys were part of this exciting time in California history!

The 1867 voters' records of Visalia (Tulare county) list William Tyler Bentley as a farmer. His son Elisha Morgan Bentley (married to Charlotte Raymond) was raising livestock on 320 acres in Visalia (according to the 1870 non-population Census).

William's daughter Elizabeth E. Bentley Light and her husband Emanuel were farmers in Tulare county. Another daughter, Abbie Eliza Bentley Curtis and her blacksmith husband, Leonard Curtis, lived in Santa Cruz, CA.

William's obit from the Visalia Times Delta of April 3, 1873 reads: "Died on South Tule River, March 29, 1873, Wm. T. Bentley, aged 77 yrs, 7 months, father of E.M. Bentley, of this place."

To learn more about the Bentleys' lives in California, I'm sending for the obits of Elisha Morgan Bentley and his wife, Charlotte (see below, right). *According to Lucinda H. Bentley Shank's obit, Wm Tyler Bentley left for California in 1848 and five of his seven children followed to California in 1851.

Special note to "Cousin Elizabeth"--please get in touch again re William A. Bradford.

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Genealogy by the States was started by Jim Sanders of Hidden Genealogy Nuggets.