SNGF: Where I'm From

The little town of Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland:

Where I'm From.

 

 

Randy Seaver has fun every Saturday night and invites the rest of us to come along and paly with his ongoing series, "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun", or SNGF. This last Saturday night's challenge was a goodie and so I played. Had a hole in the week's line-up of blog posts so thought to plunk it down right here on Tursday.

The challenge is to write a poem entitled "Where I'm From" and you can find the link to the origins of this challenge here. We are, each of us who work to discover ancestors, discovering ourselves along the way, and this poem challenge sets it out in a lovely art form. It's easy and fun to do and you might want to try it:) So here's mine.

WHERE I'M FROM

I am from front porch swings and back porch swings from Ivory Snow and big Jell-o molds with fruit cocktail shimmering inside.

I am from jam in the pantry and a rocking chair in the corner and a pie cooling.

I am from the land of big rhododendron growing wild, lilacs so fragrant, orange day-lilies wild along narrow back roads that get you blessedly lost.

I am from whistlers, and gardeners, from Cutie and Chrissie and Ginny, GranMa and Pop-Pop.

I am from coal country and hills so soft and green it will make you cry and break your heart.

From war vets and war wives, from thse who served.

I am from Irish Catholic / German Lutheran, Democrats, pro-union all the way. And a living wage fairly earned (because so many who worked the coal mines didn't get one.)

I'm from Welsh, Irish, German, Dutch, and English, baking and candy-making, desert freaks.

From baseball on the radio (because Grandpop’s brother played pro ball in Texas), fruit trees in the yard, sitting on that front porch (that got a good sweeping every morning) waving to all who came by cause you knew ‘em real well.

I am from a treasury of old photos, that are loved and cherished.

I’m from a family that will drive you crazy, but in the best way possible.

 

Some of the ancestors from Frostburg:

The Williams family during the Great Depression.

The Kelly family during the Great Depression.

Two of the Kelly brothers served during WWII.

One of our coal miners.

The Kelly family, 1942.

 

The Kelly house with the front porch swing on Main Street. "Yoo-hoo neighbor!"

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/sngf-where-im-from.html

SNGF: How Popular Was Your Name?

Randy Seaver and his excellent blog, Genea-Musings puts out a challenge each week called Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, or SNGF. I do it whenever time allows and I have the ability to complete the task... which is not too often. This week's challenge is at : http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/11/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-baby-name.html

The challenge directs you to a web site where you can see how popular your own name has been over the years. Go here: http://www.babynamewizard.com/

On Randy's post he gives us his chart, but I can't figure out how to do that and copy it so that it appears in my post here. My screen shot key simply won't cooperate and copy and paste eludes me.

What the chart tells me about my own name is curious. Here are the rankings by year and popularity listed below. Curiously, the chart starts with 1910.

1910     205 on the popularity list
1920     453 Whoops, Diane isn't too popular!
1930     115
1940     22
1950     17
1960     36
1970     123 Looks like the party for naming babies Diane is over!

OK, so I was born in the 1940s. About 10 years before there was song "Diane" that enjoyed popularity. You can read about the songs of that title here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_(song)

Mom said that I was named after that song, which she thought was beautiful. She also liked Charmaine and you can read about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charmaine_(song) .
I'm glad she picked Diane over Charmaine. She admits that she did not name me after any Dianes on the family tree.

What we both have come to realize is that there are Diane's of many spellings going way back on her family line! My 2nd GGM is Diane Thomas (1832 - 1871). Diane, Diana, and even a Dianah litter Mom's side of the tree.

Diane's meaning - because Randy asked - goes back to Greek mythology and Diana the Huntress, a virginal figure of towering female strength. (No comment.)


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/11/sngf-how-popular-was-your-name_27.html

SNGF: Ancestor Roulette!

Randy Seaver's bolg post for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is called Ancestor Name Roulette. (find it at: http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-ancestor.html )  Now doesn't that sound cool?! Sign me up!

Here's part of Randy's SNGF post for Ancestor Name Roulette:
1) What year was one of your great-grandfathers born? Divide this number by 50 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."
2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel"). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information?
3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

OK, so here we go:) First step: pick a GGF. I picked my paternal GGF, Gustav Zeller born in Frostburg, Maryland in 1858. 1858 divided by 50 is 37, and that's my roulette number.

Second step: Using my Family Tree Maker software I ran an Ahnentafel report and checked out number 37. It's Delilah Porter! Delilah Porter was born 1812 in the general area of Eckhart, Maryland and died 1881 in that same place. She married Jacob Eckhart, born 1812 who died 1836, also in Eckhart.

Now, Delilah Porter has been a brick wall for Mom and I. Mom has investigated every nook and cranny containing records in Western Maryland, gone to every repository looking for her. Believe me, Mom knows this territory... and all the people at the front desk:) She came up empty for poor Delilah.

What we did know is pretty skimpy: birth and death year. Luckily she married a prominent resident of the area who left a pretty good paper trail and a dandy probate record. In it Josiah Porter was named the guardian of Jacob Eckhart and Delilah's children. This Josiah Porter was a thin thread linking Delilah to her family but it was just about all we had to go on.

So here are three facts about Delilah Porter of which we are sure:
1. Her husband was Jacob Eckhart (1812 - 1836, son of John Eckhart (1768 - 1835) and grandson of George Adam Eckhart (1729 - 1806).
2. Delilah Porter Eckhart and Jacob Eckhart had two children, a son John Eckhart (1831 - 1917) from which I'm descended, and a daughter Rachael Eckhart Anderson (1829 - 1895).
3. After Delilah's husband Jacob died she married for a second time to James Anderson (1818 - 1860). They had an additional 8 children.

For extra credit and to win the trivia prize (in my head), Delilah's presumed father Gabriel MacKenzie Porter (1776- 1842) married a second time to Sarah Anderson... and that's a whole bunch of Andersons right there, if you ask me!

Below you'll find a previous blog post about how Mom and I narrowed down possible family connections for Delilah using information contained in the book, "A genealogy of the Porter family of Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan," by Samuel Doak Porter. We each worked on our own and came to the exact same conclusion. Now as a relative newbie, I don't trust my results but I  sure trust Moms, not just because she's Mom but because she's been doing this since the early 1970s:)

http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/06/delilah-porters-parentage-good-luck.html

In a nutshell, we think that Josiah Porter named in the will was her brother. And if so that gives us a whole other window into the Porter clan and more family connections.

Thanks, Randy! That was fun:)

The Old Porter Cemetery.

A view from the Rose Hill, the Porter Property of old.
The site of old house (pictured below) sits to the right of this view.

 

"Independance (Squire Jack Porter)"
a painting by Frank Blackwell Mayer,

Now in the Smithsonian.
Squire Jack at home in Rose Hill.
Squire Jack was Gabriel's brother.
Gabriel is our most likely candidate for Delilah's father.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/08/sngf-ancestor-roulette.html