New Year! 2018!

A lot of genealogy went on last year even though I didn't post about it. So here's a wrap-up just so we're all caught up.

Met a new to me cousin. Actually, met a bunch! I just love it when someone emails and says that they think we're related. That happens a lot, at least once a month. Then it's off to the races, exchanging info back and forth. It never takes but a couple of messages before we have our connection nailed down. Mom's cousin on her Whetstone side turned out to live in the same town so we met and exchanged documents an old photos too. That was terrific. Kelly cousins popped up too and we remembered that we played together as children. How about that? Eckhart and House cousins appeared out of no where! The House cousins even had a House Family Reunion and after receiving my invite I made sure that they knew about their new cousin who was adopted. He went to the reunion! A woman who held him as a baby sat and chatted with him!

So maybe Delilah wasn't a Porter after all? After an extensive DNA project handled beautifully by a guy who matches me, presumably on the Porter line, Delilah's parentage is even more in doubt. He and I were confident that she was a Porter and that perhaps her father was Samuel Porter. But then once the spreadsheet was filled in, I don't seem to match anyone else in the Porter group. Still scratching my head because Delilah's son's death certificate states that his mother's name was Porter. And, her son was names John Samuel, John being his father's name and leaving Samuel as presumably Delilah's father's name.

 

They say quite commonly that DNA doesn't lie but getting it to tell the full truth can be difficult. There's a truth to the DNA the Porter descendant and I share but it might be a while before we get at it.

 

X DNA won't lead me to Delilah's parents. In this blog post, you can see how the X chromosome is inherited. The Porter cousin (whom I match when I don't match any other Porters) tried to prove Delilah's parents by using the X chromosome but if you take a look at the charts at the link you'll notice that the father's fathers ancestors don't hand off the X in such a way that the 3rd great grandmother on the fathers father's side would give that X to the main person. Yeah, too bad. I don't have Delilah's X. Now if this were on Mom's side, no problem! Lot's of X chromosomes there.

 

Our Book of Life. I set out at the beginning of last year, no make that 2016 because 2017 is gone, to write up what I know about each of the ancestral lines. For Christmas 2016 both my brother and sister got Dad's side in about 250 pages. And then this year another 250 pages on Mom's side. Honestly, I could have written more but realizing the reader can only handle so much, I trimmed. The next step, should there be one, will be to add what was left out. That should be fun, actually!

 

Frostburg Mining Journal Indexing Project. The geographic center of my genealogical work on my own family is the Western Maryland mountain town of Frostburg. It's a coal mining town where the big coal boom was during the years that the Journal was published, 1871 to 1913. It's available online at the Maryland State Archive. It's great that it's finally online but there's no search feature, and not even an index. About a year ago I got so frustrated that I got the idea that I should make up an index. Yeah, so that's what's going on. I've index quite a bit for FamilySearch so I have a good idea of how this should go. I've done 2 and a half years so far and love doing it. Oh, sure, it's taking me longer than it might take others because I read it too!

 

Dad's father -John Lee Kelly- is standing center top, and his mother is center front.

Her grandmother was Delilah Porter.

 

 

The search continues! Good luck to you this coming year breaking down all of the brick walls!

 

 



 

A Little Museum Packs A Big Wallop

Recently back east visiting Mom in the little Western Maryland town of Frostburg, and we thought we'd make time to go visit the Frostburg Museum. Glad we did! A visit to a local museum can really shed light on the lives of the ancestors, and possibly render even more direct information from the files.

Here's a link to the Frostburg Museum: http://frostmuseum.allconet.org/index.html
And here's a link to their genealogy page: http://frostmuseum.allconet.org/genealogy.html
Here's the text about the holdings that might be pertinent to family history researchers:

Without following the usual procedures of those tracing family roots, the Museum has a great deal of information about families who have lived in the Frostburg area. Voting registration prior to World War I; tax assessments from 1910; a tailor's measurements from the first part of the century... items not found on the Internet.
Card files, vertical files (mostly newspaper clippings), and correspondence with family members are cross-indexed, and City maps of various vintage help to locate the houses where people lived.

This lovely small town museum is housed in an old historic school building once the home of Hill Street School. Mom attended Hill Street School because it was the closest elementary school situated just at the other end of her block. Here's waht the museum's web site says about the building:

Built in 1899, the Hill Street School was the last school in the area of a design that was fairly common at that time. Originally six rooms, a two-room and auditorium addition dates from ca. 1914. Several areas of the basement were at one time used for cafeteria, kindergarten, and meeting rooms. When it was no longer needed as a school, the building reverted to the County Commissioners, who gave it to the City; the Museum Association now holds title to it.

Looking towards Mom's childhood home,
just beyond the house with the striped awning.

 

Hill Street School,
now the Frostburg Museum
(Photo courtesy Frostburg Museum)

I can attest to what the museum has, and if your ancestors come from the area, it's a must do on your itinerary. Inside you'll find shelves with numerous genealogies of local families including the Trimbles and Porters, and those are ours. A long time ago Mom gave them a copy of her Whetstone family file but we forgot to check and see if they still have it. The old city maps are invaluable. And you might even find ancestors in the sales books of a grocery store! On our next visit Mom and I want to go play in these records and see what we find!

Interpretive display of a coal mine.
So many of the area's residents worked in coal mines that
this display must be popular!

Besides direct information about the genealogy of ancestors, there are so many artifacts and objects that frame the time and place in which the ancestors lived! Room after room full of the memorabilia of daily lives in small town Western Maryland are found here as well as specific objects that give history to named families. 
 
Ralph, our docent, asked me if the family still had the big barber chair that was in my GGF's barber shop behind the old house at 89 West Main Street. No, sad to say we don't. It was sold off years ago by I don't know who. I remember that you could probably talk one of the cousins into giving you a good spin ride in it;) It would have been great if the old barber chair had been donated. Too bad.

Mom had fun in the classroom on the second floor and found her 1936 high school class photo, and Dad's too. Aunt Betty looked for hers and found it while I found Aunt Dot's and Uncle Harolds... they were in the same class! High school sweethearts:) It was shocking to see how very small the desks were then: did we ever fit into one? Guess so.

Mom and Brother, left, look for classmates in

her high school class photo, while our docent, Ralph looks on.

 

 

 

Aunt Betty in her class photo.

 

Small museums like the Frostburg Museum must dot the county! There's one we want to visit just west of here in Garret County. That's next on our list. Imagine all the history waiting to be discovered by family historians in these local gems.

Aunt Betty donated a trunk that came over with her GGM form Wales! It's quite the story and I think that I'll save it until next time. There's a beautiful crazy quilt that goes with it too... and I have photos.

Yeah, this post is going to come in parts:)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-little-museum-packs-big-wallop.html

Two Books, One Location

I have two new best friends: Samuel Doak Porter and H. Andrew Brown! Actually they are both deceased as are many of my new friends;) You know how it is... you "meet" ancestors or whatever online and the next thing you know you are dreaming about them, right Mom?

I ordered up two microfilms of books about ancestors through FamilySearch.com and the Family History Library. Had been trying to get a copy of each forever, trolling bookseller web sites, gazing longingly at WorldCat to see which libraries held them, and wondering how on earth I was going to travel to far-away locations. Then I noticed that one of the WorldCat listings was for the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Hmmm... could I get them on microfilm?! YES!

So I ordered them up to be sent to the local Family History Center here in San Diego. And I've seen them. Not only that but I scanned the relevant bits and made copies for Mom! I'm thrilled!

The first is about my Eckhart ancestors, "George Adam Eckhart and Philip Hansel of Allegany County, Maryland," by H. Andrew Brown. It's mostly about the Hansel family because Andrew Brown descended from that line, but never mind. There's enough meat in it about the George Adam Eckhart side to interest me.

My big "take-away" moment from the Brown book is the mention of an article in the 22 OCT 1860 New York Evening Post about the Eckhart heirs being "cheated out of land". That goes along with family oral tradition and to my knowledge this is the only thing ever written about that whole affair. (Scroll down to read more about the Eckharts and their land.) Andy Brown was not able to see that article from himself, and he was a super researcher, you can tell by reading his work. Interestingly, Mom has correspondences with him in her file about the Eckharts when he was writing the book. Now I'm wondering, how can I get to see that article?

The second book on microfilm is "A genealogy of the Porter family of Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan," by Samuel Doak Porter. I've been after it for a long time and here's why. George Adam Eckhart's grandson Jacob Eckhart (1801 - 1836) was married to Delilah Porter (1812 - 1881). Mom and I have tried repeatedly to figure out who her father was. There are tons of Porters in the area and the generations use the same handful of given names over and over which drives us to distraction! You ever run into that? Yikes!

I've only had the most basic peek at the Porter book - which I scanned at the Center yesterday afternoon - but I can tell already that this is going to be a real challenge to sort out. The author pretty much starts the book by saying that it was frustrating for him as well as many others trying to trace this line when sorting out all the various Moses, Samuel, and Josiah men!! But Mom is a really good detective and there are a couple of telling moments in the lineage where Delilah and her presumed brother Josiah could fit in. This mystery will be an educated guess at best with no solid proof available, I'm sorry to say.

The interesting thing for me right off the bat is how these families, the Eckharts, the Porters, the Frosts, the Workmans, the Combs and all the rest living just a few short miles from each other, one hill away, married and re-married in to each other's families again and again. Geography determining biology once more. Seems like church was the Match.com of the day;)

The photo of the day from my archive:

The Eckhart land, in part, Eckhart Maryland.

The Eckhart Cemetery, Eckhart Maryland
Looking toward the Porter property on Rose Hill... sort of.

The Porter Cemetery, Rose Hill.

See the yellow? All Josiah Porters! Yikes!!
(From the Samuel Doak Porter book.)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/05/two-book-one-location.html