50th Anniversary for J. Lee Kelly and his lovely wife Helen Zeller Kelly

Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland), October 2, 1963.

So, my new absolutely favorite activity on Ancestry.com is to do a "search records" (you can find it right under the picture box on the person page, in the left, top) and then select Newspapers & Publications from the list. I recently posted about my good fortune in finding the fuller story of the house fire at the Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939) family home in 1906 and their quick rebuild in 1907. He was my great grandfather on my mother's mother's side and I heard about the fire from Grandma Williams and then from Mom. So I went looking for newspaper articles about other grandparent and great grandparents. What fun!!

Searching like this is a real treat because I'm not looking for a critical or missing bit of record to solve a problem or puzzle, but filling out what's recorded about the ancestors and building a richer page for each person. It helps me have a deeper understanding of the personalities involved. I'm having fun doing it and hope that it will give others who find what we've added to our Ancestry Member Tree, a better feel for these individuals.

I remembered that Dad's parents were married on September 30, 1913 because the hubby and I were also married on September 30th. When we got married I didn't know that the Kelly grandparents got married on that same date, but only found out later!

We even have some charming wedding portraits taken then. Here's the lovely couple, below. A framed copy of this photo hung in the Kelly home entryway, and I remember it well. Didn't know that it was their wedding portrait until recently when I added up the evidence!

Helen (Zeller) Kelly 1894-1985 and John Lee Kelly 1892 - 1969.
Photo taken in 1913.

 

They had six children and that was a big family to raise during the Great Depression. They endured through thick and thin, living in the house on Main Street in the little Western Maryland mountain town of Frostburg. Lee worked in the coal mines and later learned the barbering trade from his father-in-law, Gus Zeller who owned a booming barber shop in the main business district. There was a very small one chair barber shop out behind the house where Pop Kelly cut the miner's hair on Saturdays and it's still standing today.

We were living in Ohio in 1963 and I don't remember that we went to Frostburg for the anniversary party, but maybe we did. I was in high school and you know how that goes... all a blur now. I should go back and look at Mom's photo archive to see if there are any photos of the anniversary party.

The only new tid-bit that the article reveals are the names of the attendants or witnesses at the wedding: Mrs. Charles Newman and John Blake. Mrs. Charles Newman was Lee's sister Dora who was two years older than her brother. I checked Mom's Family Tree Maker file and it looks like Dora was still single when Lee and Helen married in 1913. She didn't wed Charles Newman until 1920. I have no idea who the mysterious Mr. Blake is. Guess I'll check the 1910 census for Eckhart, Allegany, Maryland to see if he pops up.

See what fun it is to sift through old newspaper articles?

About 1942.

With one of their grandchildren, my brother playing "got your nose", 1956.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/07/50th-anniversary-for-j-lee-kelly-and.html

What I found out about the Whetstones, and now I'm happy.

Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland)
February 6, 1907

Recently I posted about the Whetstone house fire of 1906 and how the whole story of my grandmother's family in the early years of her life was pretty sad. You can read about it here. The death of two small children, Peter and Viola, and then the house fire that destroyed their home and all of their possessions except the clothes they were wearing: it all happened in 1906. Yeah, I'll confess that it made me sad. But today has another story - or rather the rest of the story - and I learned a couple of things I'd like to share with you.

I was curious as to why they might have lost two small children in a year, so I checked to see about epidemics that might have taken Peter in March and the infant Viola in November. Sure, little baby Viola might have had any number of birth complications and Peter could have had a childhood accident, but ever since I learned to look for flu deaths in 1918 or so I can't help think of epidemics. Wikipedia has a dandy list of world epidemics and pandemics which you can find here, but I warn you, if you are anything like me the challenge is to stop yourself from getting lost in it. (Look at that, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco in 1900 to 1904!) And Mom's two sisters, Evelyn and Margaret were little ones lost to cholera, so I always look for that.

And back to Peter and Viola. I see a couple of diseases that might have taken them and the one that pops out is typhoid. Maybe some time I might look for their death certificate but the list of people I want death certs on is mighty long.

But I've wandered far afield here. What I want to share with you is that Joe, Joseph Hampton Whetstone, the devoted husband and loving father, rebuilt the family home on Bowery Street and he did it within the year. The house burnt down in August of 1906 and he had it all going again by February of the next year. He was, after all a stone mason and knew his way around building stuff. What joy he must have had in his heart when rebuilding his family home.

I remember reading sometime last year about how kids from families where ancestor stories are frequent and about the triumvirate theme of disaster - enduring - resilience are themselves more resilient when facing adversity. The stories they hear are family tales of suffering a hardship, sticking with it, and then overcoming to thrive again. It gives kids a sense of the family continuing, facing difficulties and then going on to recover. That's one of the best gifts we can give children and grandchildren.

When I read the story of the house fire I felt sad for this family but I didn't know the whole story. I should have kept researching. When I did go back and look again I found this small item in the Evening News (Cumberland, Maryland) that you see up top. They went on to build a new home.

Seriously, I have to keep looking when I find records like this. Have to keep turning the page to see if there are follow ups! I could easily have missed this little mention that brought joy to my heart!

 

Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858-1939) standing by

 the water pump in the yard of his new home.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-i-found-out-about-whetstones-and.html

Look what I found out about the Whetstones, but it makes me sad

Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland), August 9, 1906.

 

 

1906 was a bad year for the Joseph Hampton Whetstone family in the little mountain town of Frostburg Maryland. Little Peter, born in 1895, died in March of '06 and then a fire took the family home in August. My grandmother, Emma born in 1897 and just nine years old, remembered the fire clearly. It was a scary formative event in her life and from the article I can see why. The house was destroyed as well as the contents. Grandma remembered standing out in front of the house with her entire family watching it burn with nothing left but the nightclothes on their backs. That was the sum total of their worldly possessions.

 

I see from the article, and Mom didn't remember this, that the family was at breakfast when they discovered the house was on fire and the flames had already reached the roof. Kate Whetstone, grandma's mother, ran to the bedrooms to rescue the two youngest boys, Tuck and Joe. One of them, I know not which, had to jump to safety.

 

The article states that the value of the house was covered to just one-fourth by insurance. I'm glad of that. At least it was something. And glad too that the two youngest children were saved.

 

November saw another child gone and that was little Viola. She was born September 21 and had died by November 17. Poor Kate was pregnant with Viola when the house burned down. None of us living know if Viola was full term or if the trauma of the fire and running upstairs to rescue her small children somehow caused an early labor for Kate. Either way, Viola was gone before November ended.

 

Poor Joe and Kate. So much loss in such a short amount of time.

 



Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland), November 20, 1906.

Joseph H. Whetstone on the right in his Frostburg Fire Department uniform.

 

Kate and Joe sitting in front of their house about 1920, with some of their grandchildren.
Mom is the one with the big hair bow.

 

Kate and Joe in later life.

 

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/07/look-what-i-found-out-about-whetstones.html

A thought about AncestryDNA retiring products

Maybe you read the news on the blogs or news feeds? AncestryDNA is retiring both the Y-DNA and mtDNA products (along with a couple more products including one I particularly enjoyed, MyCanvas) and deleting all trace from their site, which will include content and matches. See what CeCe Moore posted to her excellent blog, Your Genetic Genealogist here. Below is part of what she wrote.

Q: Will the entire Y-DNA and mtDNA site interface be retired? Will you be able to view and contact your matches?
A: The entire interface will be retired, including the match lists and the ability to contact your matches.

My comments: If you have tested there, I strongly encourage you to contact your matches before September 5th (and so does Ancestry.com) because you will not have another opportunity to do so.  You can download your raw data (CSV file) until September 5th by going to www.DNA.Ancestry.com and upload to other services like Family Tree DNA.

This is scary stuff if you ask me. If you tested with these products your stuff is gone as of September 5th. Just gone. So of course, as CeCe suggests, you need to get on over there and download your stuff soon if you want it.

The reason I find it scary is that some folks paid for a service and aren't going to get it anymore and to me that's a big ol' black eye on Ancestry and calls into question their commitment to products. It's not about the money and paying for a service that one would assume is offered indefinitely, but about it calling into question Ancestry's commitment to those of us who chose to use it. How hard would it be to leave that part of the AncestryDNA web site up and running? What would that cost them? Peanuts, I'm thinking.

But my own take-away is that when we buy a DNA testing service we are depending on that company's commitment to a business model that is dedicated to DNA testing. Ancestry is a gigantic corporate entity with fingers in many pots. It's revenue stream has many sources and a very small part of that is likely the earnings from AncestryDNA's Y and mt testing. If they were making money on it they'd just continue on offering it, wouldn't they? How serious can their commitment be if a product isn't earning as hoped for? It must go... is that what they're thinking? Is their priority the revenue stream and not users? It would seem so, at least in this case. Makes me wonder what will eventually happen to all the Member Trees if revenues from the main site ever falter? Sure, genealogy is real popular now but what's going to happen in 50 years? Will that tree I've been working so hard on with all the photos and documents just up and disappear? For the first time I'm thinking, yeah, maybe.

I don't know about you but I am so far into this DNA matching thing that if either 23andMe, AncestryDNA for autosomal DNA testing, or GEDmatch went away, I'd be a hurting cowgirl! Sure I've downloaded everything you can, but now I depend on the interfaces and how they work, and that point has been driven home recently now that GEDmatch is down for service.

When we buy a DNA product we're buying into a corporate philosophy and commitment... or lack thereof. To us it's not a product so much as it is a tangible connection to our ancestors.

My great grandparents and Mom's grandparents on her mother's side. Gone now but their DNA lives on in Mom and me... and at 23andMe and AncestryDNA.

 



Catherine Elizabeth (House) Whetstone 1865 - 1947
and Joseph Hampton Whetstone 1858 - 1939.

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-thought-about-ancestrydna-retiring.html

The Thomas and Judah Farrell DNA Project: The Connections Tree

See previous posts to find out about this project.

One thing you need when chasing the DNA rabbit down a hole is a tree that contacts can look at to see if you two match. If they don't have a tree (or a clue) at least you can send them on to your tree to window shop for a connection. Surnames and a surname list with locations and years is a good tool as well, but for my money, you can't beat a good tree. Give me a tree over a surname list any day.

I've been reading a couple of blog posts from wise writers that make the case for not posting a tree online in special or unusual situations and it opened my eyes. I now understand about the need to protect the innocent from prying eyes looking for character flaws, crimes, and the unspoken terrors of family life gone very wrong. I'm with them and to be candid there is one person, living, not on our tree because, well, of the mess. One has a moral responsibility to protect those who might be harmed from such messes made public. Doing genealogy in circumstances such as this makes the going dicey. For those of us who have garden variety family issues peppering our tree, most have a good-hearted desire to share the fun with others. After all we weren't there and we don't really know all the facts.

Mom, who you might know is 95 and been doing genealogy since the early 1970s, was reluctant to share her tree online. She'd happily send family group sheets and then GEDCOMs to anyone researching our ancestors, but putting her tree on Ancestry? She had to warm up to that. "I'm not done with it'" she said about her tree on more than one occasion. But as time went by we both came to see that even though every tree run by a living person is a work in progress, putting Mom's tree online was the best way to share her substantial work with the most people.

But not all searchers feel that way. I get it. How frustrating to see your work copied and recopied without a mention of where the document, photo or rare index came from. Recently, I had the pleasure (?) of finding a rare photo of a 2nd great grandparent I'd uploaded a while back and now on another tree without attribution. Someone had downloaded the picture and then uploaded it again and attached their name as the original submitting person. Is there a hidden tag on it stating who originally had the photo (Mom) and who cleaned it up (moi) in a photo editing program? Take a guess! But never mind about that. Back to The Farrell Project and cousin Rich's great idea.

So, cousin Rich and I had been sifting through some GEDmatch results and emailing back and forth about this and that, looking for people who matched Mom and Uncle Sonny. (See previous post or this will make no sense whatsoever!) We were working informally then, and each on his or her own avenues of pursuit when Rich emailed and said, in a nutshell, hey do you want to work together on this? You in, he asked? I immediately replied, YES!

Rich and I are trying to link as many of the descendants of Thomas and Judah Farrell by specific DNA segment and pedigree as we can. We know of a couple of hundred direct descendants, both living and dead, but just a handful of those have taken a DNA for genealogy test and are known to us. After a couple of goes at locating descendant's places on trees, both theirs and ours, Rich suggested that we needed a tree of only direct descendants - blood descendants - that could be available for prospective DNA match candidates to peruse.

Just to underline the problems faced without the Farrell Connections tree, here's what happened before we built it. If I sent GEDmatch matches to Mom's tree, they would have to either follow my very tedious instructions on how to locate the Farrell family group or try searching, or just start wading through over 60,000 individuals on Mom's tree. Either way, it's enough to send someone fleeing from the room, and not return emails.

Rich's personal tree focuses on only his wife's family in Cumberland, Allegany, Maryland. For example, Rich's tree only lists one child of Samuel Albert House (1832-1919) and Mary Elizabeth Farrell (1835-1919) whereas Mom's tree lists all 16 kids as well as each of their descendants and their kids. Yeah, we needed a new tree, a tree in common. Good idea, Rich!

As of right now there are a tidy 252 individuals on the Thomas & Judah Farrell Connections tree, all well researched, all blood descendants or spouses of blood descendants. Nice and tidy. Some descendants are sure to be missing but it's a work in progress, as are all trees. It's a fine tool to use when helping DNA cousins try to locate their ancestors within the Farrell big picture. Yeah, and it's Private. It's a research tool for us, not a tree for public consumption.

Joseph H. Whetstone (1858-1939) and Katherine Elizabeth House (1865-1947).

Kate was just one of the 16 children of Mary Elizabeth Farrell (1835-1919) and Samuel Albert House (1832-1917). Mary Elizabeth was born in Ireland.

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-thomas-and-judah-farrell-dna_16.html 

Stories from Mom: Part 4, Mushrooms!

By Virginia Williams Kelly

Another memory that I will never forget is about mushrooms. I love mushrooms and will put them on almost everything. This goes back to the time when I was about 10 years of age and my Uncle Tuck took me mushroom hunting with him. It was after a good rain in the spring and wild mushrooms had all ‘sprung’ everywhere not very far from my grandfather’s house. We went off so that he could show me which were good mushrooms and which were bad and how to tell the difference, and also explaining to me that to pick the wrong one would, to say the least, make me extremely ill.
 

Joe, Grace, and Tuck (on right), three of the 12 Whetstone children.

The Whetstone Boys: Joe, Jimmy, Tuck (right front), and Tad.

I did very well over the years as far as mushroom picking was concerned but when I was sixteen I became a little careless. I was preparing to go to the Easter Sunrise Service on Dan’s Mountain and a beautiful place to see the sunrise on Easter Sunday morning. On Easter Saturday morning I awoke and saw that it had rained the night before and I just knew that all those beautiful mushrooms would be out and plentiful. So off I went.

My Uncle Tuck and his wife Alva.

(Leslie Laurence Whetstone 1905-1995)

I picked a good many lovely mushrooms and later that evening I cooked a large skillet-full, and since no one else wanted them, I ate them all. Now I have never had a weight problem and was always a very healthy person so when I woke up at 3 O’clock in the morning and was a very, very sick girl I figured that I had poisoned myself. Being young and healthy and after empting my stomach I made it to the Sunrise Service albeit a little weak and sleepy. One would think that a person would not look at a mushroom again but no such thing happened to me and I still love them.

My Mama with me sitting on the front porch of the Whetstone home. 1918.

My Grandfather Whetstone standing next to the water pump in the yard. 1900.

 

You can read previous post of Mom's stories here:

Part 1: Those were the days my friend, we though they'd never end

Part 2: Center Street

Part 3: Summertime on Center Street

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/11/stories-from-mom-part-4-mushrooms.html