Several months ago, my friend told me about the website Find a Grave. It is "a resource for finding the final resting place of family, friends and 'famous' individuals." (Thank you Find a Grave FAQs)! One of the things members of this site can do is upload photos of gravestones for others who are researching someone but who cannot travel to where the grave is located. You can also request a photo for someone for whom you are researching.
For some odd reason, yesterday I decided to visit the site and typed in my mother's maiden name. I was thrilled to see that someone has posted the marker for my grandfather's plot in the mausoleum at Palm Mortuary in Henderson, NV. Rumor has it he requested to be placed in the mausoleum because at the time of his death there was a bar across the street from the cemetery (don't know if it is still there; he died in 1975), and he did not want drunk people to pee on his grave. I also found a photo for my step-grandmother's mausoleum plot. These were very happy finds for me so I tried a couple of other names but came up empty.
So, I decided to search for the cemeteries in this area and saw that another member of the site has requested a photo of a gravestone in the cemetery I could walk to from my house if I wasn't so lazy. I decided to "claim" the request, meaning I have 14 days to take and upload the requested picture.
This is when I discovered I never actually signed up to become a member of the site (yet another widow brain moment). I know I meant to and thought I did. So, I signed up for the site and claimed the request.
I know it may seem like this is a weird thing for someone in my circumstance to do. But, of the 7 family members who passed away in the last 5 years, only 3 are buried in a cemetery-two in Florida and one in California. I can't exactly visit them at will. Dad is in my brother's closet. My father-in-law is somewhere. We let his girlfriend have the ashes. I am not sure who has James' aunt. I think his brother does. And James is downstairs on the mantle. Because of this, I am able to disassociate myself from my own grief and view cemeteries as a genealogy tool. And I am excited to have found a way to start giving back to the genealogy community (and practice my photography skills). Now I just need a day (or at least a few minutes) without rain in the next 13 days...
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
It's not Dorothy, but I'll take it!
A couple of weeks ago when I got back from my camping trip, I had a Facebook friend request from a woman with my last name. I believe I have mentioned before my last name is not very common, so it is always exciting to come across others who share it (and therefore can actually pronounce it correctly). I didn't respond to it right away. I have my account set up so notifications are e-mailed to me and I typically only log on if there is something I feel I need to respond to sooner rather than later. Although lately, I have found myself logging on to FB more and more often, but have still resisted all the games, for which I am very proud of myself. (Can't say the same about the quizzes. I wonder if I should tell my family I am going to die in 2 years and it is going to take 28 years to find my body? And I disagree that if I was a football team, I would be the Seattle Seachickens).
My friend is my inspiration to keep plugging away with my family search so I sent her an e-mail with the subject "A girl can dream, right?" and told her that this women had sent me a friend request and said wouldn't it be great if this woman was a distant cousin with reams and reams of family info to share with me? My friend responded that yes, that would be cool and put in a genealogical dream request of her own.
As I have mentioned before, I have an elusive maternal great-grandmother named Dorothy Wentz. So, in my response back to my friend I said that while I was at it, maybe I should dream that a Wentz descendant will magically appear and tell me that Dorothy was his/her favorite aunt and just so happen to have a copy of her birth certificate in one pocket and a check made out to me from Publisher's Clearinghouse in the other. (If I'm going to dream, I might as well get some money out of it. I want to go parasailing in Hawaii). I know she knows me well enough to have caught that was an extremely sarcastic sentence as she has tried to help me with Dorothy and has come to the same conclusion I have: the woman is a pain in the ass.
I didn't think anything more of it and actually forgot about the friend request that started it all until this past Friday. I have since added her as a friend and made contact with another friend of hers with our same last name who indicated possibly having distant cousins in Nevada, which is where I was born. I don't think my immediate family is who her grandparents were talking about however.
Friday, I was checking my e-mail and received the following message via Ancestry.com:
"Hi - Have discovered a connection through Alexander Emil G. - his older brother Johannes Carl Gottlieb G. was my husbands gtgrandfather. Alexander was one of 11 born to Prussian missionaries who went to India mid 19th c. Have lots of info. and would like to share. Lionel Walter Kirkpatrick G also had a brother named Karl Roger Kirkpatrick G. Look forward to hearing from you."
Oh yes, there was happy dancing. Emil is my paternal second great-grandfather and he did live in India in the 19th century. (Lionel Walter is my great-grandfather; I have him with 2 sisters but had not come across a brother. Kirkpatrick is their mother's maiden name). I have been stuck on Emil's parentage, as has my 4th cousin in England who has done some work on this line even though she is not a direct descendant to this line. Part of the reason is some records show him as Emil Alexander, others as Alexander Emil; the name switching is also the case for the man we have determined may or may not be his father. In all of the personal correspondence I have, it is Emil. This weekend was somewhat busy and I did not get a chance to respond.
Like I said, it's not Dorothy, but I'll take it! I wonder if I would get a lead on Dorothy if I asked nicely for a change?
My friend is my inspiration to keep plugging away with my family search so I sent her an e-mail with the subject "A girl can dream, right?" and told her that this women had sent me a friend request and said wouldn't it be great if this woman was a distant cousin with reams and reams of family info to share with me? My friend responded that yes, that would be cool and put in a genealogical dream request of her own.
As I have mentioned before, I have an elusive maternal great-grandmother named Dorothy Wentz. So, in my response back to my friend I said that while I was at it, maybe I should dream that a Wentz descendant will magically appear and tell me that Dorothy was his/her favorite aunt and just so happen to have a copy of her birth certificate in one pocket and a check made out to me from Publisher's Clearinghouse in the other. (If I'm going to dream, I might as well get some money out of it. I want to go parasailing in Hawaii). I know she knows me well enough to have caught that was an extremely sarcastic sentence as she has tried to help me with Dorothy and has come to the same conclusion I have: the woman is a pain in the ass.
I didn't think anything more of it and actually forgot about the friend request that started it all until this past Friday. I have since added her as a friend and made contact with another friend of hers with our same last name who indicated possibly having distant cousins in Nevada, which is where I was born. I don't think my immediate family is who her grandparents were talking about however.
Friday, I was checking my e-mail and received the following message via Ancestry.com:
"Hi - Have discovered a connection through Alexander Emil G. - his older brother Johannes Carl Gottlieb G. was my husbands gtgrandfather. Alexander was one of 11 born to Prussian missionaries who went to India mid 19th c. Have lots of info. and would like to share. Lionel Walter Kirkpatrick G also had a brother named Karl Roger Kirkpatrick G. Look forward to hearing from you."
Oh yes, there was happy dancing. Emil is my paternal second great-grandfather and he did live in India in the 19th century. (Lionel Walter is my great-grandfather; I have him with 2 sisters but had not come across a brother. Kirkpatrick is their mother's maiden name). I have been stuck on Emil's parentage, as has my 4th cousin in England who has done some work on this line even though she is not a direct descendant to this line. Part of the reason is some records show him as Emil Alexander, others as Alexander Emil; the name switching is also the case for the man we have determined may or may not be his father. In all of the personal correspondence I have, it is Emil. This weekend was somewhat busy and I did not get a chance to respond.
Like I said, it's not Dorothy, but I'll take it! I wonder if I would get a lead on Dorothy if I asked nicely for a change?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Another piece of the puzzle and another puzzling piece
Earlier today I remembered I never got around to checking the mail yesterday. I decided the mail would still be there tomorrow and then thought that maybe the genealogy records I was waiting for came and decided to go out and check. I don't know what made me think this. I ordered my grandmother's application for her social security number and my great-grandparent's marriage certificate on 5/21/09. Both were expected to be here in 6-8 weeks, which it clearly has not been.
The first thing I pulled out of the mailbox was an envelope from the Social Security Administration. Then came some junk mail followed by an envelope from the New York State Archivist. (After predicting the Brewer's manager was about to make a double switch in the bottom of the 6th, I should have run out and bought a lottery ticket since I was clearly on a roll!)
After sorting through and disposing of the junk mail, I decided to open the letter from the Social Security Administration first. Since I provided my grandma's social security number when I requested the application, I was confident a copy of her application would be in the envelope. I was not disappointed. This didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. I wanted the application to see what she listed as her place of birth. According to her social security application, her marriage license and her death certificate, she was born in New York City. I am hoping that having three legal documents stating her place of birth as New York City will finally be enough to convince my mother that Grandma was not born in Schenectady. I still need her birth certificate, but at this point I am pretty sure that no matter what documentation I produce, Mom is still going to believe her mother was born in Schenectady.
I was hesitant to open the envelope from the New York State Archivist. My luck with receiving vital records from New York has been hit and miss and the envelope was pretty thin. Much to my delight, my great-grandparent's marriage certificate was enclosed. This is exciting because I know virtually nothing about my great-grandmother, Teresa Codignotto Fromia. I now know that she married my great-grandfather, John (aka Giovanni) Fromia at the age of 22 and Codignotto is in fact her maiden name. They married in February 1912, so I can estimate her birth year as 1889 or 1890, given I don't know what month she was born in.
The biggest piece of my genealogical puzzle this solves is I now know her father was Antonio Codignotto. The new puzzling piece is that her mother's first name was Caterina but her mother's maiden name is illegible. Grr!!! It starts with a "C" and ends with "ssi" and is not a long name. I now suspect my great-aunt Catherine was named for Caterina, and my great-uncle Angelo (aka Andrew) was named for my great-grandfather's mother, Angela.
Not to be deterred, I decided to search a couple of genealogy sites. My favorite Italian Genealogy site, italiangen.org, was down so I tried familysearch.org. A search for Codignotto returned a marriage record for Francesco Codignotto and Maria Niedda in 1908. Francesco's parents are listed as Antonio Codignotto and Caterina Casso. I have found spelling errors with Family Search before, so it is possible this should be Caterina Cassi. According to my mother, Teresa had a brother named Frank (aka Franky Cody). Frank and John worked together which is how he met Teresa and the Codignotto family was against them getting married. The way she told me the story implied there was another Codignotto brother as well. Mom also said Teresa was raised in a convent in Italy "for some reason." Unfortunately, most of what Mom has told me I have proven to be false.
I know more than I did when I woke up this morning, which is always a good thing. Now I need to try to find death certificates for John and Teresa and a birth certificate for my grandmother. I also need to find a passenger list showing Teresa arriving in New York. After that, my search moves from New York to Italy, and I have no idea how to go about requesting records from Italy. My next vacation may just have to be in Sardinia, with a layover in Suffolk County, NY.
The first thing I pulled out of the mailbox was an envelope from the Social Security Administration. Then came some junk mail followed by an envelope from the New York State Archivist. (After predicting the Brewer's manager was about to make a double switch in the bottom of the 6th, I should have run out and bought a lottery ticket since I was clearly on a roll!)
After sorting through and disposing of the junk mail, I decided to open the letter from the Social Security Administration first. Since I provided my grandma's social security number when I requested the application, I was confident a copy of her application would be in the envelope. I was not disappointed. This didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. I wanted the application to see what she listed as her place of birth. According to her social security application, her marriage license and her death certificate, she was born in New York City. I am hoping that having three legal documents stating her place of birth as New York City will finally be enough to convince my mother that Grandma was not born in Schenectady. I still need her birth certificate, but at this point I am pretty sure that no matter what documentation I produce, Mom is still going to believe her mother was born in Schenectady.
I was hesitant to open the envelope from the New York State Archivist. My luck with receiving vital records from New York has been hit and miss and the envelope was pretty thin. Much to my delight, my great-grandparent's marriage certificate was enclosed. This is exciting because I know virtually nothing about my great-grandmother, Teresa Codignotto Fromia. I now know that she married my great-grandfather, John (aka Giovanni) Fromia at the age of 22 and Codignotto is in fact her maiden name. They married in February 1912, so I can estimate her birth year as 1889 or 1890, given I don't know what month she was born in.
The biggest piece of my genealogical puzzle this solves is I now know her father was Antonio Codignotto. The new puzzling piece is that her mother's first name was Caterina but her mother's maiden name is illegible. Grr!!! It starts with a "C" and ends with "ssi" and is not a long name. I now suspect my great-aunt Catherine was named for Caterina, and my great-uncle Angelo (aka Andrew) was named for my great-grandfather's mother, Angela.
Not to be deterred, I decided to search a couple of genealogy sites. My favorite Italian Genealogy site, italiangen.org, was down so I tried familysearch.org. A search for Codignotto returned a marriage record for Francesco Codignotto and Maria Niedda in 1908. Francesco's parents are listed as Antonio Codignotto and Caterina Casso. I have found spelling errors with Family Search before, so it is possible this should be Caterina Cassi. According to my mother, Teresa had a brother named Frank (aka Franky Cody). Frank and John worked together which is how he met Teresa and the Codignotto family was against them getting married. The way she told me the story implied there was another Codignotto brother as well. Mom also said Teresa was raised in a convent in Italy "for some reason." Unfortunately, most of what Mom has told me I have proven to be false.
I know more than I did when I woke up this morning, which is always a good thing. Now I need to try to find death certificates for John and Teresa and a birth certificate for my grandmother. I also need to find a passenger list showing Teresa arriving in New York. After that, my search moves from New York to Italy, and I have no idea how to go about requesting records from Italy. My next vacation may just have to be in Sardinia, with a layover in Suffolk County, NY.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Paging Dorothy Wentz
I have always been fascinated with history. I can never remember it correctly, but I love learning about it. In fact, I graduated college 3 classes short of a history minor. I sometimes regret not completing it and wonder where my life would be now if the accounting program had not changed allowing me to graduate a semester earlier than originally planned. Who knows-maybe I still would have ended up right where I am today, and besides, what does one do with a history minor anyway?
An aspect of history that I find especially intriguing is genealogy. After all, it is because of my ancestors that I am here today. I have always been curious about my family tree, but it wasn't until my friend really started digging into her family history that I decided to do the same. Right now, I like her family much better than mine as hers is much more cooperative when it comes to being found! (At least from where I am sitting-I know she would beg to differ on one of her more convoluted lines).
In 2002, I took a beginning genealogy class through the community enrichment program at our local community college. Armed with new found knowledge on things such as pedigree charts, family group sheets and a multitude of places to search for ancestors, I eagerly dug into my and James' families with no rhyme or reason as to which line I was researching. If I got stuck on one, I would just work on another. It is a very frustrating hobby, but one in which the littlest find keeps you going. But some ancestors are much more frustrating than others. In my case, that ancestor is Dorothy Josephine Wentz.
Dorothy is my great-grandmother on my mother's side. The first record I found of Dorothy was the 1900 Federal Census, which shows her living in Ohio as a nurse in the home of Marc and Helen Rowe. By 1910, Dorothy was Mrs. Marc Rowe and the mother of his sons Albert and Oliver. Both the 1920 and 1930 censuses have the Rowe family living in Babylon, NY. The 1940 census has not yet been released; I have yet to find her in the 1880 or 1890 censuses, however, most of the 1890 census was destroyed by a fire.
Dorothy died at the age of 81 on December 21, 1954. Her death certificate lists her parents as Charles Wentz and Mary Hunt, with Mary typed and Hunt handwritten. Her death certificate says she was born in Philadelphia; they say they don't have a record of her birth. And naturally, I can find information on several men named Charles Wentz, but none that are married to Mary Hunt or father to my Dorothy. If I could just verify her parents, I would do a very serious happy dance.
There has been a lot of research done on various branches of the Wentz family in the United States dating as far back as the late 1700's. My grandfather told my mother several times that she should join the Daughters of the American Revolution and we know if there is a link that would allow us to do so it is Dorothy. I have read some very fascinating stories on various Wentz family members. It sure would be nice to prove that I am one of them. Fingers crossed, one day I will get the breakthrough I have now been waiting for for 7 years. And then, I can move on to the next elusive ancestor, Dorothy's husband Marc.
An aspect of history that I find especially intriguing is genealogy. After all, it is because of my ancestors that I am here today. I have always been curious about my family tree, but it wasn't until my friend really started digging into her family history that I decided to do the same. Right now, I like her family much better than mine as hers is much more cooperative when it comes to being found! (At least from where I am sitting-I know she would beg to differ on one of her more convoluted lines).
In 2002, I took a beginning genealogy class through the community enrichment program at our local community college. Armed with new found knowledge on things such as pedigree charts, family group sheets and a multitude of places to search for ancestors, I eagerly dug into my and James' families with no rhyme or reason as to which line I was researching. If I got stuck on one, I would just work on another. It is a very frustrating hobby, but one in which the littlest find keeps you going. But some ancestors are much more frustrating than others. In my case, that ancestor is Dorothy Josephine Wentz.
Dorothy is my great-grandmother on my mother's side. The first record I found of Dorothy was the 1900 Federal Census, which shows her living in Ohio as a nurse in the home of Marc and Helen Rowe. By 1910, Dorothy was Mrs. Marc Rowe and the mother of his sons Albert and Oliver. Both the 1920 and 1930 censuses have the Rowe family living in Babylon, NY. The 1940 census has not yet been released; I have yet to find her in the 1880 or 1890 censuses, however, most of the 1890 census was destroyed by a fire.
Dorothy died at the age of 81 on December 21, 1954. Her death certificate lists her parents as Charles Wentz and Mary Hunt, with Mary typed and Hunt handwritten. Her death certificate says she was born in Philadelphia; they say they don't have a record of her birth. And naturally, I can find information on several men named Charles Wentz, but none that are married to Mary Hunt or father to my Dorothy. If I could just verify her parents, I would do a very serious happy dance.
There has been a lot of research done on various branches of the Wentz family in the United States dating as far back as the late 1700's. My grandfather told my mother several times that she should join the Daughters of the American Revolution and we know if there is a link that would allow us to do so it is Dorothy. I have read some very fascinating stories on various Wentz family members. It sure would be nice to prove that I am one of them. Fingers crossed, one day I will get the breakthrough I have now been waiting for for 7 years. And then, I can move on to the next elusive ancestor, Dorothy's husband Marc.
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