Pretty Priorities

As I looked at my basket of genealogy (a literal basket) sitting on the floor next to the computer, I saw a mess. It was then that I realized that I wasn't making progress because I had lost sight of my priorities.

Now I must confess right away that I do love a well-crafted list! I thrive on lists. When I wake up every day a list is the organizing principle of my day. Oh, sure, there are days when I enjoy drifting, taking time here and there to float on the tide of what ever is going on at the moment. But there is hardly anything to rival the pure satisfaction of crossing out a task on my list:)

With five minutes of organization I had my priorities set! Gee, that feels good. Four projects have emerged from the basket, and let me relate them here as a personal exercise to draw sharper lines around them. They are listed below, posed as questions to be answered

1. Where did Daniel Williams' family - his mother, and sibs - go? They immigrated from Wales, presumably as coal miners, in the mid-1800s. We know they were in upstate New York, in Troy, because there is a family photo taken by a photographer there. Daniel moved to Western Maryland at some point, presumably for work. We know a lot about him because he's my GGF and Mom's grandfather. Plus Aunt Betty spent some formative years living with her grandparents. When he moved from New York, what happened to his mother and siblings? At present, they are lost to us. Gosh would Mom, Aunt Betty and I love to find a family historian in that branch of the family tree!

2. Who are Samuel Albert House and his natural father, Issac Biggerstaff's ancestors and how are the families intermingled? SA House is my 2nd GGF and Mom's GGF. I've written a lot about him here so I won't bore you with all that now. Just want to get it on the record that I need to investigate his ancestors for my own curiosity. It will be a challenge!

3. Come to understand Sarah Wooden Waggoner Yeast and Peter Yeast a bit better. Wrote about this most recently. (See below.) She's my 3rd GGM. Mom now has straightened out about the names but I want to get a better feeling of the time and place in which they lived. I love the history part:)

4. Check for other information about the Porter family and Delilah Porter in particular. I have a suspicion that I'm not done with that lot yet! Can't put my finger on it but I need to take another look at the info to see what I can see. Ever have that feeling... that you might have missed something?

Well, there you have it. That feels better:) Now let me grab a glass of iced tea and go sit in the garden with my Daniel Williams file folder. And make a new list! Priorities are pretty, don't you think?

Photo of the day from the Archive:

Daniel Williams and his family,
Daniel seated right with his mother Jane Price Williams seated left of him.

These are Daniel's sibs but we're only guessing at matching names and faces.

Picture was taken by TOWNE,
47 Third Street, Troy NY.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/07/pretty-priorities.html

Let's Explore Some Local History!

Am reading "Best Dressed Miners" by Katherine A. Harvey. It's a real treasure for me because, as I've said before, there's a lot of coal dust on my ancestors. It paints a detailed picture of the life and times of those mining coal in the Georges Creek area of Western Maryland, one of the richest mining fields anywhere, simply called The Big Vein. In 1892 it secured over 3 million long tons from the area mines, all mined by hand. Down from the previous year! I don't know much about coal mining but that sounds like a lot to me.

Before the Harvey book I read, "Allegany County - A History", by Stegmaier, Dean, Kershaw, and Wiseman, 1976. It's a wonder and treasure chest of information about the area compiled on the occasion of the county's Bicentennial. It traces the long history of the county and eventually gets around to mines, miners, and the economy of the area. AC - A History also underlines the importance of mining to the area and how the entire economy changed as the mines got mined out in the early decades of the 1900s.

Harvey gives an interesting picture of the miners and their work in her book, which is increasingly scarce as it was published in 1969. She contrasts the miners and their families of the George's Creek area with miners elsewhere. In reading it I've come to a better understanding of the area, the work, and my ancestor's relationship to it. And I've come to see yet again how important history is to a deeper understanding of genealogy!

One of the things I've often wondered about is why my ancestors all stayed so long - for generations - in this one small geographical area contained within about 15 square miles. Now I know: good work at a fair wage.

The earliest of ancestors arriving in the late 1780s were in search of farmable land and they found it in abundance. Then in the early to mid-1800s the ancestors came in dribs and drabs, often making their way from eastern parts of Maryland or Pennsylvania. The final wave came in the mid-1800s. They all stayed until work in Western Maryland became scarce after WWII. Then family members increasingly moved away. Today the cousins reside from coast to coast.

So here's a recap of salient points that shed light on my own ancestors. And I have both of those books, as well as Mom and Aunt Betty, to thank for it!

The miners of the 1800s were Welsh, German, and Irish. Some had their passage paid for by the mining companies who recruited them from mines fields in their native lands. While the various nationalities tended to live and worship with their former countrymen, they shopped and entertained together, thereby smoothing the assimilation process.

My Welsh miner ancestors lived near Welsh Hill in Frostburg and worshiped at the Congregational Church that was known early on as the Welsh Congregational Church.

Ladie's Aide Society of the

Welsh Congregational Church
Of Frostburg, Maryland
Their Picnic, about 1932.

My Irish ancestors were mostly railroad men. Interestingly, the RRs ran on Georges Creek coal. And of course they all worshiped at St. Michaels Catholic Church.

My grandfather wasn't lucky enough to be higher in the birth order so while his older brothers worked for the railroad, he had to go work in the mines. He eventually suffered from "black lung disease". Uncle Delbert remembers him coming home with 25 cents for  a day's work during the Great Depression. Good thing his father in law was the town's prosperous barber and had trained him how to cut hair in the little shop in back of the house. The income from haircuts given to miners on Saturday night carried them through the Depression.

My Grandfather,
John Lee Kelly, right,
and his brothers,

With their father the railroad man,

about 1912.

Employment in the mines was steady so miners often bought their own homes and put down roots, married and had large families. My GGF Daniel Williams was a mine supervisor and owned his own home... as well as two mines, which is another story I'll save for another day:)

This was not the case for the vast majority of mine fields. Workers tended to roam from mine to mine and sometimes state to state. They had no vested interest in the community and tended to be single and drinking men.

I keep reading and learning, soaking up as much as I can. It gives me a fuller picture of my ancestors.

If you'd like to peek into the daily lives of those living in the Georges Creek mine field in the late 1800s visit the Frostburg Mining Journal, some of which is now online through the gracious and wise auspices of the Maryland State Archive's state newspapers project. Find it at:
http://speccol.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol/catalog/newspapers/cfm/dsp_number.cfm?id=1024
Click here to find the microfilm now online: http://speccol.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol/catalog/cfm/dsp_film.cfm?speccol=5130&newsid=1024

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/07/lets-explore-some-local-history.html

A Funny Story About That Sign

When I was four years old we moved from Western Maryland to Ohio. Dad had a wonderful new executive position in a plastics plant... and if you remember the movie, "The Graduate", everyone was talking about "plastic".

We visited my Mom and Dad's families, both from Frostburg MD, regularly. It wasn't a long drive, so we'd pack up the car, later the station wagon, and make the trip. I always loved the ride, and mostly it was along the Ohio and then Pennsylvania Turnpikes. Early on the big road ended or hadn't begun yet, and that was OK with me as I loved the smaller roads that made their way through all manner of villages and towns.

Our family life in Ohio was suburban and the streets went on and on until they hit downtown Cleveland. By contrast, little Frostburg seemed a microcosm of life where stores were just across the way and everyone knew everyone... and probably was related somehow or other.

There were things that puzzled me about life in Frostburg. You could say to the man at the little store, "put it on my bill" and he would! You couldn't do that in suburban Cleveland.

In Maple Heights we lived at "fifteen one one one" Maple Heights Blvd. In Forstburg the house numbers of the people we saw were mostly single or double didgets. Three numbers indicated that your relative lived on a long street, like Bowery. Main Street was so long it had an east and west side.

There were signs that puzzled me and one said simply and profoundly: Beware of Sinks. We passed those signs in and around Ocean Mines MD for a while before I spoke up and asked outright what they meant, interrupting adult conversation. I saw no sinks anywhere on the landscape, of either the bathroom or kitchen variety!

To elaborate on the answer, here's what Aunt Betty wrote recently in answer to a question about my GGF Daniel Williams that reminded me of my puzzlement at the sink sign.

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived.

In the 1940's, I remember hearing the digging and conversations of the miners in our kitchen at Ocean. They must have been working near the surface.  As a matter of fact, in the late 50"s about 9:00 p.m. one evening, we heard cracking of the walls and I thought the house was on fire. 

I ran outside to look at the house and nearly fell in a 50 foot cave-in of the road. The ground under the house was pulled toward the cave-in and the house fell 9 feet. None of the doors and

windows would close or open properly. What an experience. At that point it was decided that we should move. 

Signs were placed along the road for several miles which read "Beware of Sinks". The house used to be even with the road in front of the house and today it is about 10 to 12 feet lower than the road.

Daniel was elected as a trustee of Ocean School, District #18 on June 22, 1907. He was a member of the George's Creek Valley Lodge of Masons at Lonaconing MD.

Picture of the day from my archive:

Mom and Dad at a function for one of his executive postions, ca. early 1960s 

Me, Easter in front of our house at 15111, 1950-something.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/funny-story-about-that-sign.html

Daniel Williams In The Newspaper: Chicago Fair of 1893

OK, so here's where I am so far tracking down my GGF, Daniel Williams (1852 -1920) and his trip to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from the Ocean Mines of the Consolidation Coal Company in Western Maryland where he worked as a foreman in mine number 16. It's just the kind of detail that tickles the fancy of the story teller in me, so I must know more!

It's the newspapers of the day that I want, so first stop is to find out what newspapers were published in the area in 1893. The Library of Congress's Chronicling America project was go-to location. There I searched on state, then town. Cumberland MD had 64 entries for local newspapers and it was interesting to see the frequency with which they came and went over the years!

The "finalists" on my list to track down for Cumberland are the Cumberland Evening Times (1892 - 1916) and the Cumberland Daily News (1890 - 1923). While talking to Mom this morning she shared that over the years one leans left the other right, politically.

Chronicling America's search for Frostburg MD produced one entry that had relevance and that's the good old Frostburg Mining Journal, the FMJ. It was published from 1871 to 1913.

None of the above are available online, much to my dismay. So now I have to figure out how to get this research done by remote control.

I was at a little workshop on US land records and happened to mention that I had paid $25 to get a copy of my 5th GGF's land sales in 1816 and 1817 and his will. One of the ladies in attendance "hrumphed" with great disdain at my not having gone to upstate New York to track them down myself. Of course it would have been exquisitely better to have gone there and dug through the archives my own self... no telling what I might have stumbled into. But it simply was not possible. Likewise, I need a work-around to browse and get a copy of the relevant articles in the FMJ and Cumberland newspapers.

Picture of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-in-newspaper-chicago.html

Daniel Williams and The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: Coming Up Empty

My search for more info about my GGF, Daniel Williams (1852 - 1920) and his trip to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (see post below) is coming up empty. There's tons of information about the event itself but Daniel William's role as envoy remains lost to me... at least for the moment.

Sometimes it's the search itself that brings me nearer to my ancestors and all those small details that I accumulate along the way add to my deeper understanding of their life and times. I really don't know what it was like to work in a coal mine but this search had brought me places I might never go.

Here's a for instance. Was searching one of my favorite sites for my target area, Western Maryland, at http://www.whilbr.org/CoalTalk/index.aspx. See there at the bottom of the page? Where it says "Coal Mining Resources"? Well if you click through you are taken to a very nice video on YouTube about mining from the Frostburg State University's Ort Library Special Collections at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glim9dO50L8

It's this tangential stuff that fills in a lot of the blanks in the lives of my ancestors:)

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-and-chicago-worlds-fair_25.html 

Daniel Williams and the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

Here's how my latest research project got launched. I was trying to find out more about the mystery photo (below) of my GGF, Daniel Williams. We know he worked for the mines but how did the clothing and gear fit into his work? Can we find out even more about him by following the tracks of this photo? Hopefully, yes.

So I put out some inquiries and Cousin Jo Ann C. wrote back that she thought they had on miner's hats with lamps. Good observation!

Then Aunt Betty wrote this and I'm off on another trail as well:

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman

at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived.

He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from Ocean Mines

to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

WOW! He took a large lump of coal to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893! Here's a link to the epic event on WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition

It was the Gilded Age and nothing was "too much", or too new for that matter. It was the first time that a wide area was bathed in electric light at night and by all accounts it was a magical sight! There's so much written about this event that you can (and I did) lose yourself for hours in the swim of information!

Of course general googling around leads me nowhere in finding the specifics of this effort of Daniel Williams. Now it's on to newspapers of the day, locally. In Chicago, it was just one of thousands of ventures to make the Exposition a success. But in the hills of Western Maryland it would have been newsworthy. Wish me luck!

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL of this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-and-chicago-worlds-fair.html

Mystery Photo: What Does It Mean?

I have a problem. Was browsing through Aunt Betty's Archive of Williams family photos when I came across this one. It's a puzzle to me and I can't figure it out. I can and will ask Aunt Betty and Mom both but meanwhile I can't resist playing history detective, looking hard and trying to figure out what's going on in it. That's my GGF Daniel Williams, second from the left and marked clearly in Aunt Betty's notation at the bottom of the image. I just love how she labeled everyone recognizable in each picture... none of these "hidden" notations in the file ID.

OK, so at first, in thumbnail version, I could see that it's a picture of a bunch of men in, perhaps, a kind of uniform with some round things and a piece of equipment on a tripod. The thought crossed my mind for a moment that this was a Civil War group, but that couldn't be correct. because the puzzle pieces don't fit.

I guessed that they are surveyors and that the equipment is for surveying. So off I went to check the 1910 US census for Frostburg Maryland. It shows Daniel Williams, at 53 years of age, living with his wife Jane with four sons, Thomas 20 YO, Joseph 14, Cambria 12 (my GF) and Charles 10 years old. The census also says that his occupation coal miner.

But why is he this get up with other men likewise attired? Why is a miner dressed up like what appears to be a surveyor? I'm stumped, utterly.

So now I'll go ask Mom and Aunt Betty and see what they know.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/mystery-photo-what-does-it-mean.html

One "Like" and One "Dislike"

Ya know, some days...! First, a Dislike about passwords. I try to change my various passwords regularly and rotate from my list of over a half-dozen of them in and out of connection that keep me going. There's a bit of a theme to them so that when memory fails (as it too often does) there's no need to look them up... just try another version. But here's a recent true tale about passwords.

I have three Hotmail accounts for various purposes. One of them is for my landscape painting collectors. In the most recent rotation of password changes I choose a password that I had used before... when my Hotmail account was hacked! Like, so D'uh!!! And they hacked it again! All my fault, really. And so my poor collector base kept getting emails from me inviting them to click through to a "work from home" scheme. For three days! Until I figured out what had just happened there. Grrr.

Next is a Like. I really like Google Reader. Was a slow adopter but now that I'm on board, was thinking this morning that I can't be without it. I can get cozy and read all the genealogy news that interests me at one sitting. No clicking through or surfing over to various sites. It's brilliant.

Picture of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/one-like-and-one-dislike.html

New Look for the Blog

Make-over time! Am trying this new template and let me know what you think. Mostly I think my blog layout should stay the same as long as possible, but I do like this new one because it's cleaner. I think the photos show well on the white background and the text might be easier to read too. And now you can more easily see the tabs at the top above the latest post.

There are of course some things that need to be tweeked, like the widgets at the right side. Some of those have stupid looking text breaks. One word on a line... really!

One thing about the old template with the birds flying was that so many gena-bloggers used it, it was hard to differentiate my blog form the others... even I got confused, and believe me I don't need any more confusion than what's already in the mix;)

Today's photo from my file, this one from Aunt Betty:

Oh and here's somthing I'll try to remember to add for those using smart phones and readers: the URL for this post. Don't yet understand how it helps but they tell me it does:
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-look-for-blog.html

What Ever Happened To...

Families scatter over time, don't they? Some branches of the family tree seem to stay put, but then times change and other branches wander off to seek new lives elsewhere.

I know of two points on our tree where this happened and ancestors moved on in hopes of work and a better life with the result being that we descendants are left scratching our heads and wondering what the heck happened there! In one case, we're working on it right now and we've had a little moderate success. In the other case, the rest of Daniel Williams' family in the Upstate New York area, we'll tackle it later when we have lots of energy because others have tried and failed. So here's a re-cap of the one where we've made some inroads.

William Price and "I wonder what ever happened to Aunt Mary Ann"

Our William Price was born in Bedfordshire, England about 1829 and died after 1872 in Aux Sable, Grundy County Illinois. He was a coal miner. His mother was Ann Price born about 1800 and someone once mentioned the name Whitehead but we don't know if it's connected to her or not. William married Diana Thomas in Mt. Savage, Allegheny County, Maryland on 13 August 1850. Her parents were both born in Wales and died in the Allegheny County, Maryland area.

Aunt Betty says that she remembers her female family members, especially her Grandmother, Jane Price pictured below, saying they wished they knew, "whatever happened to Aunt Mary Ann."

Thus our search started. We found William easily enough in the 1850 census in Maryland working as a miner, living with his wife (name transcribed badly as Dianah), and a Geo W Duckson, a laborer born in Maryland.

In the 1860 census he's working in the coal mines in Baldwin, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He and Diana (now spelled correctly) have five children. I googled around and found a lot of info about the coal fields of this area and its history. It sort of mirrors the coal history of Western Maryland. Interesting, at least to me... I like the history part:)

The 1870 census finds him in the township of Aux Sable, Grundy County Illinois. Of course he's still working as a minor at age 40. His wife is show there too but as Diama:) They have seven kids living at home ranging in ages from 18 to under a year old. Diana Thomas died on 20 July 1871 back in Mt. Savage, Maryland. She still had family there and Mom speculates that perhaps she had traveled back to deliver another baby.

His wife's passing left William with a whole bunch of children to raise back in Illinois. Mom made sense of that situation by noticing that William's mother, Ann, lived just two doors down in Aux Sable in that 1870 census. Good find, Mom!

The search began all over again for Ann Price to see what we could find. Easily enough we found an Ann Price, age 50, in the 1850 census, born about 1800 and wife of Thomas Price, age 46, living in Joliet, Will County Illinois, right next to Grundy County. Thomas is a farmer and father of six children ranging in ages from 20 years old to 8 years old. All were born in England. William was 22 years old in the 1850 census so that fits in with a nice family grouping picture. Was he the eldest? Perhaps. This census would also indicate they they likely immigrated after the youngest child was born in 1842.

It's easy enough to follow Ann and Thomas forward to the 1860 census and see that the only child left at home is the youngest, Thomas Junior now 17, who is listed as a farmer. Thomas Sr. is still farming at age 56 but they seem to have moved to Channahon, Will County Illinois.

And as said previously, in the 1870 census Ann is all alone and living two doors down from William.

What Mom found next was real exciting to us. In the 1880 census where is Ann Price, age 80, living? With Aunt Mary Ann!! And what of Aunt Mary Ann, age 37? The census says that she's married to Pierce Dile, age 52, and has seven children ages 18 down to 1 year. Mom has a hunch about this family group and that the two eldest might have been from a first wife. I trust Mom on this theory because she's seen literally thousands of family groups!

But I looked for this Mr. Pierce Dile because I was curious about him and all the little Diles. You know what I got? Nothing! Yup, nada! Something was very wrong. The census indicated that Mr. Dile was born in Ireland. Dile didn't sound Irish to me, but hey, you never know. So I googled around Pierce Dile Ireland in general and a lot of Pierce Doyles came up, especially in the Applotment Books. Hmmm. So off I went looking for Pierce Doyle and I found him... and Aunt Mary Ann in the death index.

Aunt Mary Ann's husband was a banksman in the coal mines of Grundy County. That was a most responsible and respected position. Here's what a banksman does, and this is from The North England Institute of Mining and Engineering, so they know what's what. Find them at: http://www.mininginstitute.org.uk/library/definitions/Bank.html

Bank is the top of the shaft, or the entrance to the mine. A Banksman is a man who works at the Bank, and typically that means he receives the coal and transfers it to screens or to some form of transport. In later years, the Banksman's primary role was to ensure that activity at the top of the sahft (e.g. getting men in and out of cages) was done safely; since the Windermen normally cannot see what is happening at the Bank, they are dependant on the Banksman for knowlegde as to when the cage should descend and so on. The Banksman also has to communicate with the pit bottom; the communication was normally done with signals transmitted by a bell and rope, later by electrical signals, and later still by telephone and other apparatus. The Banksman is therefore a crucial man of the pit and held a position of some responsibility.

Mining and coal. As I mentioned before, there's coal dust all over my ancestors.

Jane Price (1860 - 1939), daughter of William Price (1828 - 1872)
She stayed put in Western Maryland.