Thankful Thursday: Fleshing Out Find-a-Grave Memorials

Find A Grave memorial for my great-grandma in Mt. Hebron, Queens, NY

Over the course of four years, I've sent 93 edits to Find A Grave, for memorials that others were kind enough to establish for people they don't know--my ancestors. Every one of these generous volunteers has made my edits, for which I am truly grateful. And I'm thankful for the many volunteers who have posted or taken photos, especially valuable for Jewish genealogy.

Now I'm continuing my resolution to keep family history alive by fleshing out the Find A Grave memorials. Descendants may someday go searching for these people's burials, so I want to include more detail for the benefit of these genealogists of tomorrow. The more they know, the more they can pass to the next generation and beyond.

This new year's resolution (expanded from my 2016 resolution) is to:

• Link my ancestors to each other, wherever possible, so their relationships are clear. Above, I finally linked 10 children of Lena Kunstler Farkas* and Moritz Farkas to each other. One of their children is missing from the list because I haven't yet located her final resting place. 
• I also linked spouses of these adult children to each other and in the next generation, I linked children to their parents. (I'm still working on this step for the main branches of hubby's family tree.)
• I'm going to be adding or completing birth/death dates and places, as well as correcting spellings.
• I'm already adding brief bios or excerpts from obits, omitting the names of living people for privacy reasons. Ancestors were more than just names and dates and relationships. If I can mention occupations or other snippets, these memorials become that much more meaningful, IMHO.

Thanks again to Find A Grave volunteers!

*Elizabeth Handler suggested I include the translations on F-A-G. A great idea. Lena's gravestone says she's the daughter of Shmuel Zanvil.

Tombstone Tuesday: Finding Great-Aunt Nellie's Gravestone

No tombstone photo for Tombstone Tuesday, but instead, a story about a favorite great-aunt in my hubby's family. I found her tombstone only today on Find a Grave, nowhere near where I expected to find her.

Rachel Ellen Wood (1864-1954) was one of 17 children in the Wood family of Toledo, Ohio. When she grew up, married, and moved away to Chicago, she remained an important part of the glue keeping the next generation in touch.

For every holiday, she would send her many nieces and nephews postcards with a loving message. She signed her cards from "Aunt Nellie," as she was affectionately known in the family.

Here's a Halloween greeting she sent to her middle nephew in Cleveland, asking whether he was still taking violin lessons (the answer was yes, at least at that point).

Until today, I hadn't been able to find Aunt Nellie's final resting place. But because I wanted to write about her, I did a bit more searching. I knew she died in Chicago. Turns out she wasn't buried anywhere near there.

I shouldn't have been surprised to discover, after trying a few different searches, that she was buried in the Wood family plot of Forest Cemetery in Toledo, Ohio, where so many of her siblings were laid to rest.

The Find a Grave listing shows her as "Nellie Wood" but the photo shows her name as "Nellie Wood Kirby" and includes the inscription "Sister." RIP, Nellie, a beloved sister, aunt, and great-aunt in the Wood family, and be assured I'll ask for the memorial to be edited on your behalf.  PS: Find a Grave is updated!

Sunday Statistics

Feeling good about my contributions to Find-A-Grave over the past nearly four years. I still have 25-30 more photos to add from my most recent cemetery visit.

Of course there are still dozens of my own ancestors to link together as parents/children or spouses on Find-A-Grave, so that future generations will see the relationships at a glance. I've started this process but won't be finished for some time.

Tombstone Tuesday: Two of the Four Markell Brothers

In the ongoing saga of locating members of the Markell family (who married into my Mahler family), I finally checked out the headstone of Philip Louis Markell (1880-1955) to learn who his father was.

Thanks to the friendly folks at Tracing the Tribe, I confirmed that Philip's father's name translates as Yochanan Avraham, as shown on his stone at left. 
 
Philip's older brother is Barney H. Markell (1874-1944) and his stone (in a cemetery hundreds of miles away) says the father's name is Elchonon or Alchanon Avraham. Barney was the father of Joseph Markell, who married my great-aunt Mary Mahler.

One younger brother is Samuel Markell (1885-1971), who died--I believe--in Massachusetts. He's not in Find A Grave or the Jewish Online Burial records, so I don't yet know his final resting place. 

The other younger brother is Julius Markell (1882-1966), who died in Brooklyn, NY. So far, I don't know where he's buried and can't yet compare his father's name with that of Philip, Barney, and Samuel. The saga continues!

Tombstone Tuesday - Operation: Picture Me Finds Capt. Slatter's Resting Place

Hubby's great uncle, Capt. John Daniel Slatter, died in Toronto in February, 1954. I have numerous obits of his illustrious life as the beloved bandmaster of Toronto's 48th Highlanders Regiment for 50 years.


But none of the tributes mentioned where the good Captain is buried. So as part of my Genealogy Do-Over/Go-Over, I reached out to my friendly contacts at the 48th Highlanders Museum in Toronto, which hubby and I visited in 2014.

Dave, the wonderful museum volunteer and prolific Find A Grave contributor behind Operation: Picture Me, dedicates himself to locating and posting photos of Canadian military personnel who died during wartime, as a way to honor their memory.

 Not only did Dave immediately search for a funeral notice for Capt. Slatter--stating that the burial would be in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto--he also posted it on Capt. Slatter's Find A Grave page.

Then Dave went to the cemetery and photographed the Slatter family's headstone, front and back.

 Thanks to Dave's kindness and dedication, the family now can see the final resting place of Capt. Slatter and his wife Sophie Marie Le Gallais Slatter, plus two daughters (Edith Sophie Slatter and Bessie Louise Slatter), along with son Albert Matthew Slatter and Albert's wife, Maude Mary Hutson.

To Dave and Operation: Picture Me--please know how much your efforts are appreciated!

Genealogy Resolutions for 2016 and Genealogy Connections from 2015

Sent to Wallis W. Wood from Aunt Rachel Ellen Wood Kirby, 1914

Thank you, dear cousins, for making 2015 another year of genealogy connections. I am grateful to so many cousins and family friends for their friendship and help in tracing our Birk/Burk, Chazan, Farkas, Kunstler, Jacobs, Larimer, Mahler, Mandel, Markell, McClure, McKibbin, Mitav, Roth, Schwartz, Slatter, Steiner, Waldman, Weiss, and Wood ancestry. Sharing memories, photos, and documents brings our families closer together and brings the past into focus for all of us!

As of 1/1/15, my activity on Find a Grave

My genealogy resolutions for 2016:

• Continue posting grave photos to Find A Grave. Whenever I visit a cemetery, I photograph as many graves as I can on my way to and from the sections I'm seeking, and around the graves I visit. So far, I've posted just over 800 grave photos. 
• Continue linking family members and posting brief bios on Find A Grave. Not only will this help cousins to understand the relationships, it will also provide hints to other researchers who are looking for members of these family trees. Admittedly, it's a bit of cousin bait that I hope will connect me to more cousins.
• "Tell the stories" and identify more ancestors so that future generations in my family and hubby's family will know the names and places they come from. Every St. Patrick's Day, hubby's family gets a card from me listing their Irish ancestral names. Every year, I remind them of their Mayflower roots--which were once known in the family, I'm sure, but forgotten over the generations. 
• In 2014-5, I created several brief "memory books" about my Schwartz, Burk, Wirtschafter, and Mahler families. Also, I created a photo book of my parents' wedding, so all descendants would know who's who in each photo and have the story of their courtship, which started with a matchmaker aunt from each side of the family. Next, I'm continuing to digitize family photos and organize them, along with names and dates or occasions, so these details will be available to future generations.
• I will memorialize great-aunt Etel Schwartz by adding her to Yad Vashem's list of Holocaust victims. I have her photo, I know a little about her, and I don't want her name and face to be forgotten. Ever. 

In the never-ending ancestor hunt, there are--as always--a number of specific genealogy mysteries I want to solve in 2016:

• For the umpteenth year, I'm looking for the origins of hubby's Steiner and Reinhart families. They came to Ohio in the early 1800s from Pennsylvania. Where was their ancestral home, Austria or Germany or Switzerland or another part of Europe?
• I'm still tracing the Roth family's connections to my Farkas family, and looking for the link to my Waldman and Weiss cousins. Getting closer!
• Still searching for the exact relationships in the Mitav and Birk families from Lithuania that led my grandpa Isaac and his siblings Abraham, Nellie, and Myer to  New York City. Getting closer!
• This year I'm focusing on hubby's Larimer/McKibbin connections because these will help me zero in on the part of Northern Ireland where they originated.
• Still looking for the ships that brought my Mahler great-grandparents (separately) to America in 1885-6.
• When and where did hubby's grandpa James Edgar Wood divorce his 2d wife Alice? And what happened to his 3d wife, Caroline?

Happy new year to all.

Participating in Find A Grave Meetup Day from Home

Tomorrow is the day Find A Grave has asked volunteers to photograph headstones at local cemeteries or fulfill photo requests from its site.

Since I can't be out in the field photographing, I'm going to be participating from home in my own way: By going through my family tree, person by person, and adding everyone to Find A Grave--as well as by linking family members according to relationships. I want to honor their memories and also make it easier for cousins and family researchers to figure out who's who.

Here, for example, is the memorial page I set up for my mother, showing relationship links to her parents on Find A Grave.

The more links, the more opportunities to be found by genealogists and cousins!

Tombstone Tuesday: Spotting Mr. & Mrs. Work's Tombstone in the Background

Hubby's Larimer ancestors are somehow related to the Work and Short families. I know a few of the connections (from newspaper stories about their reunions a century ago) but not how they originally came together (in Northern Ireland, most likely).
 
Months ago, when I was working on hubby's Larimer line, I went to the Findagrave page for his 3d great-grand uncle, Wright Larimer, son of Isaac Larimer and Elizabeth Woods Larimer.

In one of the two photos on that page, I happened to notice a tombstone for Samuel M. Work and his wife, Catherine Ray Work. (My red arrow shows what I saw in the photo.) I intended to do more work on the surname Work (pun intended).

In low-tech fashion, I e-mailed the link to myself and tagged the message with the color I use for genealogy. And moved on to other things.

Today I was clearing out old e-mails when I spotted that tag, clicked on the link, and investigated. Clicking to see all "Work" graves in Bethel Cemetery in Bremen, where Wright Larimer is buried, I found 23--including Samuel, who's shown in the background above. There are many names of people who I've listed in the family tree but haven't yet fleshed out or traced back to their birthplaces.

Thanks to this Findagrave photo volunteer (who I thanked), I have lots more leads to explore in Ohio and Pennsylvania as I search for the Larimer/Work/Short families' entry into colonial America and their original homes in Northern Ireland.

Top 10 Genealogy Lessons Learned in 2014 - Part 2

More lessons learned from my genealogical adventures in 2014. NOT in priority order:
 
5. Be prepared when visiting or calling cemeteries. With an alphabetical listing of surnames printed from my gen software, I made several cemetery visits this year to eyeball burial sites. Most cemeteries were kind enough to do lookups or give me detailed plot maps, which I compared with my alpha list to be sure I visited as many family graves as possible. Also, I photographed hundreds of stones near my family's graves for two reasons: In case I later learn that they're in-laws or other relatives, and to post on Findagrave for the benefit of others. Not being able to visit certain cemeteries, I've called and asked questions--and found out that, for instance, Rosa Markell (marker at left) was originally buried in one plot but was moved to another when her stone was erected. Lesson: Do my homework before making a cemetery visit, have names/dates in hand, have a camera handy, show appreciation to cemetery staff, and follow-up by posting and/or correcting on Findagrave.

4. Dig deep for resources at the local level. At the start of this year, I followed the URL on the Emmet County Genealogical Society's bookmark (which I received at a FGS conference) and unearthed a goldmine of info about hubby's McClure ancestors--details that don't show up in an ordinary Google or Bing search. A new link on that site leads to online newspaper archives at the Greenwood Cemetery in Petoskey, Michigan, a potential source of obits and other info about the McClures. I also made small donations to county gen societies in exchange for receiving photocopies of surname info in their written files, and will follow up other local resources such as land-office info. Lesson: List the counties or county seats where ancestors lived and search out those genealogical and historical societies.

3. Mine newspapers for every scrap of info. Accessing newspaper databases, I've obtained dozens of obits and marriage announcements this year. I look for each person's obits (or engagement/marriage) on multiple days (often there are two obits, on day of death and on day of burial) and I search multiple news sources (both town and county-seat newspapers, for instance). Some newspapers printed much more detailed obits or wedding announcements, including the full names of out-of-town guests who are relatives! Obits and wedding announcements are also valuable for noticing who is NOT listed. Lesson: Keep plugging in those names, analyze every name/location mentioned, and be flexible about spelling and dates.

2. Context counts. Because I created memory booklets about my maternal and paternal ancestors this year, I did a lot of research to understand why and how they did what they did (leaving the old country, traveling from or to a certain port, settling in a particular area, etc). World history and hyperlocal events definitely influence individuals: My grandparents fled pogroms and persecution in Eastern Europe, along with millions of other immigrants who sought a better life in America. Names, dates, places, and relationships are data points that must be linked by stories of why and how--and that's why context counts. Even the context of a century-old photo makes a difference in telling the story. Lesson: Time-lines and family trees must be analyzed in the context of what was happening at the time.

1. Never give up! This is a lesson reinforced every time a distant cousin finds me via my blog or Facebook or Ancestry or Findagrave and we exchange info. Luck plays an important role in genealogy. We just never know when a vital scrap of knowledge will pop up and solve a mystery that's stumped us for years. Lesson: Life in the "past lane" requires patience and perseverance. Plus good records so when that key item drops into my life, I can put my hands on the rest of the puzzle pieces and figure things out.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015!

Graves and Obits Online 2022 update

The Ancestor Hunt has links to obituaries and BMD records--for free! Plus downloadable (free) guides showing how to search. A highly recommended site for 2022 and beyond.

Of course Find A Grave is well-known for grave memorials. I found many of hubby's ancestors in Ohio cemeteries listed on Find a Grave, complete with photos of cemetery and plots. Also I've been linking my ancestors to their relatives with memorial pages, and requesting to be the manager of ancestral memorial pages.

Plus Family Search, Ancestry, and MyHeritage have links to obits and more. I'm using them all to search out info about my ancestors.