My own DAR adventure begins

In 1987 Mom was totally engaged with genealogy and devoted to building out our family tree. OK, so truth be told, she got obsessed with it and spent just about every available waking hour on it! She loved entertaining me with various stories about our ancestors and painted a word picture for me whenever we had some time together and I just loved listening to her. (I think she was selling me something; a good sales pitch often begins with an engaging story.) I was super busy running my business, but she had me working with her on my DAR application which was approved the first time through.

Flash forward 20 years and it's 2007. Dad had passed, Mom was adjusting to living alone and working on genealogy more than ever. I was enjoying retirement. One thing hadn't changed: Mom was still telling me about the ancestors and I was finally becoming as obsessed as she was. In no time I was caught up in chasing down some family history too. But during this time, I have to confess, I didn't think too much about the good ol' DAR.

You ever have that experience when something appears on your personal radar screen once, twice, and then three times over? For me it takes three times before I really get the hint that this might be something I need to act on. Well that sort of happened with the DAR recently. The first appearance on my radar happened when I found my old DAR records and remembered how that came about. Once retired and into genealogy one of the first projects I undertook was continuing to research my DAR Patriot ancestor, Nehemiah Newan. (You can see some of that effort put into a timeline on one of the tabs above.) I loved researching him! Was shocked to find that he did not die at Yorktown as was commonly believed but instead never returned to his wife and son and ended up having a full life in upstate New York. What a story!!

The second appearance of the DAR on my radar screen happened a half-dozen weeks ago when I stumbled into a DAR Facebook group called Daughters of the American Revolution. The Facebook page fascinated me and I popped back in to see what was going on every once in a while and finally clicked the Join button. Right at the moment there are over 12,000 members and growing all the time. That's encouraging right there. The comments were kind and welcoming and I got a warm feeling about the online group. The ladies were happily helping others take first steps, offering helpful research pointers, and were glad to help them find the right area of the NSDAR (National) web site. My DAR train was picking up speed.

All of this lead me to think about other of my ancestors who might have been Patriots. I popped on over to the National web site which you can find here. You can search and see if your ancestor is already approved and recognized as a Revolutionary War Patriot here. I quickly found out that both  Peter Troutman and Isaac Workman were listed! How cool is that?! Plus I had it on my To-do list to work on them. This might be the perfect excuse to get my act together and finish my inquiry into both of them at the same time. So that was the third appearance of the DAR on my radar screen and I really liked what I was seeing. Now I had to do something about this DAR radar thing.

Maybe I'd like being a part of one of the local chapters here in San Diego? I had already met two members over in the genealogy library in town and they were equally as nice and helpful as the ladies on the Facebook DAR page. Yeah, I might like being part of a group that loves genealogy, is interested in civic pride and doing projects along those lines. It was only going to take as much time as I wanted to invest, what with the once a month meetings, except in summer months. I'd be more that willing to help others get started with genealogy if I could and knew enough to be useful. And who knew how else I might be helpful? And yes, I would like to meet more ladies who are friendly and helpful, and like to have fun.

I wasn't going to find out just sitting here, so I emailed the Regent, that's the lady at the top of the local chapter. Got a reply fast. I was on the way.

Next blog post is about the "meet & greet" at a local restaurant. I really like these ladies! And they just love researching ancestors!


Here are some handy NSDAR links:

Become a member or just inquire.
Chapter locator. Want to find the chapters near you? Just plug in your zip code. Alternately you can Google your town or city and "DAR".
Want to let them contact you? Just fill out the Membership Interest Form here.
Not familiar with the NSDAR research options? Then check out the GRS or Genealogical Research Services here.
And don't forget that ever-popular Ancestor Search. All you need is a surname. How easy is that?

There's my paternal grandfather, John Lee Kelly (1892-1969), top row middle, in this Kelly family portrait that was likely his wedding portrait. His parents are in the front middle. It's his mother, Christiana (Eckhart) Kelly (1861-1932) who is in my DAR ancestor's line and Nehemiah Newans was her great grandfather.

 

Nehemiah Newans was thought to have died at the battle of Yorktown, yet here he is selling some land in upstate New York in 1817! That was worth knowing.

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-own-dar-adventure-begins.html

It didn't phase me but it sure did dad

Now that GEDmatch is back up (mostly, although I do read about an occasional outage now and again on the GEDmatch Facebook page, but that could be to ISP issues, you never know) I'm checking out features and functions. I do love a good DNA utility! And the latest do-dad that caught my interest is phasing.

I'm still learning about what phasing is and how it works and you can see some links to good info on phasing from those more wise than I at the end of this post. Basically, as I've come to understand it, if you have the DNA raw file of one parent and one offspring and have uploaded it to GEDmatch, you can use both of them in the phasing utility to get an idea about the DNA of the untested parent. For example, both my brother and I tested and so did Mom. I ran the phasing utility in an effort to see who might match Dad. Cool, huh?

So let me step you though it and then let's see what we get, shall we? I took my kit number and Mom's kit number and ran them through the phasing utility and got a phased theoretical kit for Dad. Find the utility at the arrow above on the main page. Then I took Mom's kit and Brother's and ran that through the phasing utility and got another theoretical kit for Dad. Then I played around with both theoretical Dad's kits - one for Mom and Brother and the other for Mom and me - and ran them through two utilities: "One to Many", and "People who match both kits or 1 of 2 kits". First is the One to Many and you can see that below.

Theoretical Dad using Mom and Brother.

Click to view larger.

 

The next thing I did is run the same utility for the kit based on Mom and me. Here's that one, below.

 

Theoretical Dad using Mom and me.

 



Next, I'll want to go through both results to pick out the folks who match both of these reports and contact them to see if there's a connection to Dad's ancestors. That should be fun!

And here's the coolest report as far as I'm concerned. It's the People who match both kits utility. I plug in the theoretical Dad kit number based on Mom and Brother's phased results and then my kit number (based on just me, no Dad) and this is what I got back.

I have a lot of people to contact! But I'm happy to be able to do this second-best matching of Dad's DNA, even if it is theoretical.


Want to know more about Phasing? Here are some links.
DNA Genealogical Experiences and Tutorials
Kitty Cooper's Blog


The URL link to this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/it-didnt-phase-me-but-it-sure-did-dad.html

GEDmatch is coming back real strong!

GEDmatch.com is my all out favorite tool when getting down to the comparison of cousins DNA results to see where we match. Was recently in touch with one of Mom's strong matches on AncestryDNA and even though we both have good healthy sized trees to look at, neither of us - nor the Ancestry matching function - could see where we matched! 3rd to 4th cousin, and no match on our trees...? Huh? Obvious conclusion: a big fat mistake on one of our trees.

Cousin Michael was the match. He's great to work with, replies quickly and with as much info as he has. When I told him about GEDmatch he popped on over and had his raw file uploaded in a flash. And now that GEDmatch is going again (and looks to be better than ever) his data was finished with the first phase of processing, called tokenizing, by days end and that means that our kits were available for one-to-one comparison. The full processing which allows one-to-many analysis will take longer.

Because that one-to-one comparison was quickly available I could see that his kit and Mom's kit had really juicy matches on three chromosomes. Here's what that looked like.

Chr	Start Location	End Location	Centimorgans (cM)	SNPs
1	99733258	152971219	27.9	6363
6	1227564	9652130	21.3	2620
21	18580589	27602185	16.0	2435

Largest segment = 27.9 cM
Total of segments > 7 cM = 65.1 cM
Estimated number of generations to MRCA = 3.9

Then I took that information on over to my Farrell DNA Project spreadsheet and could see right away that he doesn't fit in there because there were no shared chromosome segments. My Farrell Project peeps do not match anywhere on chromosome 1 or 6, at all! And only one person even has even an inkling of anything happening on 21 and it's not on this particular segment.

So where does he fit? If not the Farrell line, which includes the surnames of House, Biggerstaff and Hartley too, then where on Mom's tree might he match. I went on over to Ancestry to check out Mom's Big Tree so that I could more easily visualize where the match could be and here's what I saw, with the candidate lines in the red box.

Click to enlarge.

The Williams, Price, and Whetstone lines are what we're after. Because Michael matches at about the 4th generation back, a list of the surnames and locations we're looking for is helpful.

Williams, Edwards, Price and another Williams are the surnames associated with Mom's paternal grandfather's line and they're all from Wales. None of Michael's ancestors are from Wales but that doesn't mean that there might not be a connection back before he can see, based on what's not on his tree. 

Mom's paternal grandmother's lines are from Wales - Thomas - but Mom's paternal grandfather's line - Price and Hill- are mostly form Virginia. Michael has a lot of folks from Virginia on his tree so this is a commonality that bears closer scrutiny.

Now we come to the Whetstones. They hail originally from Germany and then probably Switzerland and on to Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. I don't see anything hopeful there.

So it looks like we need to take a closer look at the Price and Hill lines from the earliest days of the Virginia Colony forward. And we especially need to look at any lines that aren't filled out to about the 5 generation mark.

Well that's the problem in a nutshell and how we'll proceed. Don't know how much luck we'll have but at least it's a way forward. What I need is some Williams DNA and I know where to find it. Cousin Andrew tested on 23andMe.com and so now I'm off to connect up again and ask if he'd be willing to upload to GEDmatch. It would be very helpful to have Whetstone DNA as well... but I have to figure out how to get that.

Hey, I just stumbled into another GEDmatch tool that helps me get an idea of Dad's DNA! Dad passed before all of this DNA for genealogy stuff got going. But now I see how to get it! I'll blog about that next time when I've had more time to explore this new-to-me GEDmatch tool.




The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/gedmatch-is-coming-back-real-strong.html

Mom has officially retired from active pursuit of genealogy! That's big news!

I guess I thought that she'd keep working at her big family tree until she "fell of the edge of the world", which is our euphemism for passing. But Mom's eyes are not as good as they once were and now limit her vision so she can't be on the computer or read too much, activities that she dearly loved. It wasn't too long ago that I'd call her and we'd both get on our computers to dig deep for some small tidbit that made us very happy to find. Heck, we even had fun when we didn't find a thing. I think it's been very difficult for her, getting used to not doing those things anymore. So finally she just up and retired from genealogy.

I hope that it eased the transition to know that I also cherish what we know about our ancestors. I've said it many times here before, any work I do in the arena of genealogy is done while standing tall on her shoulders... figuratively, of course because otherwise that would be elder abuse;) (Mom likes that joke.) There is, for all of her work, a built in succession plan, and she's trained this pip-squeak of a successor well, but I still have so much to learn from her.

Before I went to see her recently to celebrate her 96th birthday, she said quite a few times that she was retiring from genealogy. I guess I was reluctant to believe it, or maybe I didn't want to. But when I arrived I could see that she was serious. The binders were put away and the computer untouched. It made me sad. Yeah, I could see that she meant what she said about retiring.

But then I thought about it all and finally put it in perspective: Mom can rest, knowing she's made a real contribution. Cousin Rich had told me that Mom has built a tree that links together many, many families in the Morgan and Hampshire Counties of West Virginia, especially in the mid-1800s. It's landmark work, nothing as comprehensive out there, he indicated. I have seen for myself how important her work is and continues to be due to the numerous people who have contacted me because of her tree on Ancestry. You know her tree: Virginia Williams Kelly's Big Tree, the one with almost 70,000 people on it.

I asked Mom if I could "borrow" one of her books and she said, "Take what you want. I'm done with it." So I carefully went up to her room and started browsing to determine what I wanted. But I was melancholy doing it, I can tell you.

It marks the end of an era. I can easily remember the days when we were back and forth burning up the internet and the phone lines with what we'd found and comparing notes. By the time I got going on my own projects Mom was no longer making trips to court houses and libraries, so she'd slowed a bit already. For her to continue to slow was a natural progression.

Mom and I had a nice talk about it, in a round about sort of way. We both agreed that life events can sometimes limit our activities, and when that happens we need to get over ourselves as quickly as possible and start looking for a way to grow. Both she and I knew it was true from personal experience and chatted about ways in which events in our own lives had come to curtail certain activities. We concluded that it's our own individual responsibility to discover what's left that gives us joy and brings meaning. Life's never a static event, that's for sure!

As I got a bunch of her binders ready to take to the pack-and-ship place I saw it as the formal passing of the baton. I feel the responsibility to honor her work in the best ways that I can. It's a duty that I embrace, joyfully. I already have my inheritance and it's more valuable than a pot of gold!

I got sad, and now I'm glad. Thanks a million, Mom!

Mom.

 

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/mom-has-officially-retired-from-active.html

 



Looking for church records at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Hancock, Maryland. Oh my!

I have no lovely trip photos from my visit to St. Peter's Catholic Church to use here so I'll pop in something scenic at the end to spruce it up. Instead I have quick snaps of index cards and a register page. If you're crazy-wild about genealogy, and some of you are, you'd probably just rather see the dusty records:)

Cousin Joseph whom we met because of an AncestryDNA match was a deep well of information about our shared ancestors and friends who inhabited the area around Magnolia, West Virginia. He was the one who told me about St. Patrick's Catholic Church just across the wide Potomac River on the Maryland side in Little Orleans. He also explained that the oldest records for that church were not at the church because it was a mission church. That means that that services - and records - were supplied by a circuit priest who traveled to a couple of satellite churches. That's still the case even today and the priest from St. Peter's in Hancock MD visits St. Patrick's and does the ritual on Saturday evening then returns and celebrates at St. Peter's on Sunday. It really must be difficult, if not impossible, to keep that schedule in the deep heart of winter! And that arrangement has been going on for at east 150 years, as far as I can tell, back when he was making his way on horseback. Can you imagine?!

Before we knew for sure the story of St. Patrick's in Little Orleans across the Potomac River from Magnolia, Mom had always speculated that it must have been a circuit rider who performed baptisms and marriages for all the Catholics in the area. Cousin Rich emphasized in an email not too long ago that these ancestors of ours were Irish Catholics and would probably have made whatever journey needed to get children baptized and the young folks wed. It was probably only a matter of time before we acted on our hunch and found where our ancestors worshiped, but Cousin Joseph pointed us right at it.

I had talked to the parish administrative staff a couple of times before the visit. I could tell that they were very willing to help but also very busy. I noted the hours the office was open and then checked their location on maps so we knew where we were going. I also got crystal clear in my mind what I was after and ranked them in importance so that no time would be wasted.

Originally Cousin Rich said that he might meet us there but then that didn't work out for him. So I got a list of what he was looking for too. Now I thought I was set.

The one thing I overlooked was directions on where the church office was. Silly, really. After knocking on a ridiculous number of doors, I stood outside and called the office number I brought with me. Of course the correct door was the very inviting one that entered into the kitchen... and right in front of me.

Once inside I was directed to the index files. Some fastidious and caring volunteers had transcribed all of the old registers and typed up index cards with all the information provided in the original entries. In this case the index was very thorough and correct as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, I did not find our Farrells. But I did find some other O'Farrells that we know aren't our folks but are fun to follow as a side entertainment. I carefully pulled the cards for any records that might need further investigation and marked their location in the file to insure easy and correct return. Then they were carefully placed on the big dining room table that was part of the office and photographed  using both my camera and phone. The phone pic were immediately send to Cousin Rich for back up and his perusal.

I chatted up the assistant who was helping me and asked if I could just look at the old registers. Sure, she said, and out they came from the big safe where they were held. I was thrilled! Don't know what it is but I love looking at old books like this. They were in rather fragile condition and needed to be handled very gently or they might come apart any moment. She ended up bringing out four in all and we thumbed through sample pages. She showed me entries by a priest who did all his accounting in Latin. Too bad I couldn't read a thing. And there was another priest who mostly scrawled in a big lose hand. His were the most frustrating of all the entries. The entries I liked best were just short of calligraphy and tidily elegant.

One hears about these old parish registers and the priests who wrote in the big books. Some, it is said, drank to keep the cold away and make the job rest easy on the bones. I couldn't help guess if it might be the scrawler, the Latin scribe or the fastidious calligrapher who might have been fond of a little spirits to warm on a cold night?

 

Above, a register page.
Below, a sampling of index cards.

 

 

One of a hundred thousand fields in Maryland, this one just across
the Potomac River from Paw Paw West Virginia.

 

The URL for this post is:  http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/looking-for-church-records-at-st-peters.html

Honoring his service: James O'Farrell 1842-1914

 

 

The name of James O'Farrell inscribed on the War Memorial
across from the Morgan County (West Virginia) Court House.
Notice that it's spelled "O'Ferrall."

While working on the Thomas and Judah Farrell DNA project I wrote about their son James a couple of times which you can see here and here. Must admit that I was so impressed by his life and the way he survived the Civil War that I had to blog about it a couple of times, and probably spent a bit too much time on him. But there is a moment when it's past time to move on, and so I did. However on my recent trip to see Mom (who is an avid genealogist and just turned 96) we swung by Berkeley Springs and checked out the War Memorial to see if we could find his name inscribed on the Civil War side of it.

Guess I should mention that James' parents were Thomas and Judah Farrell who came to the United States from Ireland about 1840. Most likely fleeing unfortunate economic times in their native land, the couple left with their two oldest daughters, Mary Elizabeth (Farrell) House 1835 - 1919, and Catherine (Farrell) Boxwell 1838-1910. Once here, they had two sons and four more daughters and the line up for their children born here looks like this:

    James O'Farrell (1842-1914), who used the O' convention for the rest of his life
    Thomas Farrell (1843 - ?), who just disappears from the records
    Ann Farrell (1845 - ?), she also has disappeared as far as we can tell
    Ellen Farrell (1846 - ), she disappears as well
    Bridget Farrell (1849 - ?), and she disappears from view too,
    Sarah "Sallie" (Farrell) Wageley, who married John W.

Strangely, just before I set off on my trip, I heard from one of Mom's DNA matches who mentioned the War Memorial! I found out what I could and tried to google a good photo of it to see if it was worth the trip but the images weren't what I needed. Well, it was located right on the way after lunch, so Mom, Brother and sis-in-law all went in search of the memorial and hopefully to find Thomas' name.

We pulled up and all piled out when we saw it. It's an large imposing affair with a big bronze spread eagle atop. Mom waited in the car as it was on a small incline and surrounded by a couple of steps. "Not on this side. It's for WWII." "Not over here either. Wrong war." Then: I found it! Just happened to be on the right side for me. Everyone swarmed the good side and looked for names. James Snider and his brother William Hutchison Snider were found under those who returned and survived the war, which we found very curious as James died early on in the war.

So there's his name in the image up top. It was a thrill to see it there. He earned the right to be included on this war memorial roll over 150 years ago. And here we stood looking and paying respects.

Worth the trip? Oh, yes!

The War Memorial in front of the Court House in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

 

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/honoring-his-service-james-ofarrell.html

Over the River (the Potomac) and on to St. Patrick's Church



That's the Potomac River there on the left in the photo up top, and it's the stretch of river along which our Farrell, House, Hartley, and Bigerstaff ancestors lived. It's near the long ago town of Magnolia, West Virginia, now all but gone except in the memories of a small group of folks. See that ridge line on that left far mountain? And see where it dips down, presumably to meet the river behind the greener ridge that rests in front of it? Right along in there is where Magnolia sat. And a bit down river and across from Magnolia still stands an old mission church, St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Little Orleans, Maryland. It sits up the hill aways from the river and the C & O Canal that runs next to it, looking too beautiful and historic in the warm summer sun. It captured my imagination at first sight.

Actually, we began our day driving east from the Western Maryland town of Frostburg in Allegany County where Mom lives to Little Orleans. Brother drove because he knows the area all around Little Orleans where a friend had a hunting cabin. He's been there many a time with the guys, and even thought the cabin was back in the thick woods, at night they'd all drive to a gathering place in Little Orleans, a town that somehow bills itself as the Sturgis of the East because of a motorcycling event. This year it's taking place between August 6 to 10. The rest of the year it's as peaceful as can be.

But up on the hill a bit is our target: a quiet county church. Take a look at these photos below from Cousin Joseph. Beautiful!

Visit the page for St. Patrick's Catholic Church on Find A Grave here.

How I came to visit this place is a story unto itself and so let me share that first. (Isn't it funny in genealogy how one thing for sure leads to another?) It starts with a DNA match over on AncestryDNA. Mom matched cousin Joseph and he was a wealth of knowledge! He shared that our mutual ancestors living as they were along the river on the West Virginia (formerly Virginia) side were Irish Catholic immigrants who boated across the river to attend services at St. Patrick's on the Maryland side. He found some of his Irish ancestors buried there and so did Cousin Rich.

The oldest church records from about the 1830s were still available and could be seen at St. Peter's Church in Hancock, Maryland. WOW! I imagined going there and finding the Farrell's registering baptisms and confirmations. Maybe I'd find the burial records for Thomas and Judah Farrell, our ancestors. But more on that later.

So up the hill we drove and parked. Mom waited in the car while brother and I quickly walked the grounds searching for Farrells. I took as many photos of stones as I could with the intention of eventually checking Find a Grave to see if another photo is needed. The size of the cemetery surprised me. The last picture above is deceptive and didn't give me any idea of the depth of the grounds. I had also expected to find the oldest stones closest to the church, but I could see right away that old stones were everywhere, so my strategy of looking for old stones to save time was not going to work. So up and down we walked. We got nothing. Bummer.

Oh, well. Sometimes you look and find and sometimes you look and don't find. When I just started with genealogy I was like a genea-junkie and always expected that "found it" high every time out. But now I've learned that I better just relax and enjoy the looking too. And I did enjoy this visit to the old mission church here in Little Orleans just for being there. And besides, just because I didn't find them doesn't mean that they aren't buried there. Sometimes there are some things we just don't get to know with certainty.

The bed of the old C&O Canal. These days it sits next to a hiking trail and picnic park.

 

Old stone work next to the hiking trail. Lush green beauty all around.

Down at the edge of the Potomac River, looking east towards Magnolia.

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/08/over-river-potomac-and-on-to-st.html