Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was Your Biggest Genealogy Wild Ancestor (Goose) Chase?

I'm sure everyone has had at least one wild goose chase that would qualify for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, right?

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  All genealogists are human, and most of us have made gone on wild ancestor (goose) chases in our genealogy research careers.  What was one of the wild ancestor chases in your research?  Explain the situation and how you (hopefully!) solved the puzzle.

2.  Tell us about your biggest genealogy wild ancestor (goose) chase in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

I've written previously about my biggest wild ancestor chase.

Way back when I was 13 and started researching my family, my father, my aunt, and my grandfather told me that my great-great-grandmother was Kate Moore and treated her name as though it were her maiden name.  So that's what I wrote down and then began to look for.

I searched for a Kate/Katherine/Catherine Moore marrying a Sellers and having a son named Cornelius Elmer Sellers for years and couldn't find her.  I searched lists of marriages and other records with no success.

I even bought a book about the Moore family of Burlington County, New Jersey, because that's where my family was from.  I found a Catherine Sellers who married George W. Moore, but that didn't fit what I was told, which was Kate Moore marrying a Sellers.  I kept the book, though.

Not long after I had read the book and decided it didn't have the person I was looking for, I spoke for the first time with my grandfather's last surviving sibling, Aunt Betty, the baby of the family.  After warming up to me, she was giving me information about the family when I said something about her paternal grandmother, Kate Moore.  She responded, "Well, you know that Moore was her second husband."

Well, no, I didn't know that.

Aunt Betty explained that her father's father had died young and that her grandmother had remarried, to George W. Moore, a few years after that.  That's when she became Kate Moore.  And George and Kate had a son, Howard Evans Moore.

Whoops!  Time to restart all my research!

That conversation was on a Sunday.  The next day at work, we were having our staff meeting and talking about what we done over the weekend.  I was telling them about my talk with Aunt Betty when I suddenly remembered the book about the Moore family, which was still sitting in my van a month after I had read it.  I jumped up, ran down to the van, got the book, and ran back into the office.

I excitedly found that entry about Catherine Sellers marrying George W. Moore and looked to see if they had had any children.  Well, whaddaya know?  They had a son named . . . Howard Evans Moore!

So I accidentally had found Kate Moore after all.  Her maiden name, by the way, was Catherine Fox Owen.

The second half of the wild goose chase, however, came when I learned through DNA testing that my grandfather — and by extension my entire family line descended from him — was a Sellers through informal adoption.  Elmer Sellers was not the biological father of my grandfather; he had married my great-grandmother when my grandfather was seven months old and had raised him as his own.  All the research I had done on the Sellers family, back to Hans Georg Söller, born in 1615 in Weinheim, Baden, had been on my adoptive line.  Still my family, just not in the way I had originally thought.

I'm still working on that part of the puzzle.

Wordless Wednesday

I Found Out Where We Had Our Vacation!

It's amazing what you can learn once you find the right people to ask.

Back on November 8, I posted a series of photographs from a vacation my family took, probably around April 1970, when most of the photos were dated.  Some photos were at picnic tables, some by a tent, some by a lake, and some of different family members standing in front of rock formations.

I still remember that we visited Lake Mead when I was young, so that was my guess for the lake in the photos.  But I had no idea where the rock formations could be.  I threw the question out to anyone looking at the blog post.

No one posted any comments on the blog, but I did get several comments on my Facebook page.  One in particular, from my cousin's wife, suggested that the rocks might be at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada.  So I looked it up online, found an e-mail address for questions, and sent a link to my blog post, asking if anyone there could tell me if the photos were taken at Red Rock.

The person who first received my message said he would forward it to people at Red Rock to look at.  It took a couple of weeks, but a very nice person from Red Rock responded and said the photos didn't look like Red Rock, but maybe they were at Valley of Fire State Park, also in Nevada.  He sent me the URL for Valley of Fire's site.

So I visited the Valley of Fire site, found an e-mail address there to send questions to, and went through the same routine.  This person thought the photos did look like Valley of Fire, and he said he would forward them to staff at the park to see if they could find the locations.

This time I waited much longer.  I realized after three months that I had never heard anything back, so I sent a follow-up message.  My contact said he would poke the staff at Valley of Fire.

Three days later, a message came from a new person, someone at Valley of Fire.  She said yes indeed, those photos sure did look like they were at her park, and she was going to ask some staff members to try to find the locations.

And two days after that, woo hoo!  Not only did they find all three locations, they took photos of them while holding up printouts of my photos from 1970!  Look what they sent me:

First we have the photo of the Toyota station wagon, and then just the rock formation.

Here's the photo of my father, and next the same rock formation without the photo.

Last but not least, the photo of the three of us kids being held up in front of the same rocks, and the rocks by themselves.

And now I know that all of these photos were taken in the Seven Sisters picnic area at Valley of Fire State Park.  Since there were photos of us sitting at a picnic table, I'm guessing that table was not far from the rock formations.  I hope that the picnic tables from 1970 have been replaced by now, although I'm amazed that the rocks look almost exactly the same as they did 55 years ago.  I know geologic time is slow, but I would have expected more erosion.

It's almost exactly 55 years ago, in fact.  I realized that we probably took this vacation during Easter break (yes, back then, before political correctness, it was Easter break, not spring break as it's now called), because my parents weren't really big on having us miss school unnecessarily.  Looking at the calendar for 1970, Easter fell on March 29 that year.  If I remember correctly (it has been a while, after all), Easter break was the week before Easter, so we would have been there during the week leading up to March 29.  And that was just last Saturday.  If Easter break came after Easter itself, then it's 55 years ago this week.

I'm so stoked that I was able to identify the locations for these photos, and also figured out when!  Next up, I think I'll see if the people at Lake Mead National Recreation Area can tell me where at the lake those photos were taken (the person who sent me the URL for Valley of Fire also sent me the one for Lake Mead).  I'm feeling lucky.

And I did receive permission to post these photos on my blog (because of course I asked; I didn't take the photos, so I don't own the copyright).  I'm still waiting on an answer from the park interpreter on whether she wants name credit for the photos.

Addendum, April 1, 2025:  The park interpreter has decided she wants to stay anonymous.  But I gave her a big thank you for helping me solve my mystery!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Occupations of My 2nd-great-grandfathers

I'm sure I have most of the information for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, but I don't know if I have it memorized.  I'm going to test myself.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Our ancestors had to work to support themselves and their families.  Do you know what occupations your 2nd great-grandfathers had?  Tell us about them.  If one intrigues or mystifies you, ask a free artificial intelligence tool to tell you more about the occupation in that place and time.

2.  Tell us about the occupations of your 2nd-great-grandfathers (and any AI created descriptions of those occupations) in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Okay, let's see how I do.

My eight 2nd-great-grandfathers and their occupations are:

Joel Armstrong (about 1849–?), laborer

James Gauntt (1831–1899), wheelwright

Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873), file grinder

Simcha Dovid Mekler (?–before 1904), possibly carpenter

Gershon Novitsky (originally Gershon Nowicki, about 1856–1948), wood turner, Hebrew teacher

Victor Gordon (originally Avigdor Gorodetsky, about 1863–1924), businessman, furrier

Morris Brainin (originally Mendel Hertz Brainin, about 1861–1930), shoemaker, peddler, rabbi

And that's only seven of them, because I still don't know who my biological great-grandfather was on the Sellers line, so I can't know who his father was.  If I include Sellers, my adoptive line:

Cornelius Godschalk Sellers (1845–1877), printer

I actually did very well from memory.  I did not remember the birth years of James Gauntt, Frederick Dunstan, and Cornelius Sellers or the earlier occupations of Gershon Novitsky and Morris Brainin.  Everything else I knew.

I still don't know when Joel Armstrong died.  I've seen it listed in a few family trees as 1921, but I have seen no documentation of his death (I don't think I've seen a complete date).  I keep looking.

Simcha Dovid Mekler never came to the United States.  I'm happy to know his name.  My guess for carpenter as his occupation is because his son, my great-grandfather Morris Mackler, was listed as a carpenter when he immigrated here, and many sons follow in their father's occupations.

And I just noticed that all eight men had different occupations!

I know that a carpenter and a wood turner are not the same thing, but I decided to search for the difference to clarify what they each do.  Google now automagically returns an AI synopsis at the top of the results page most of the time.  It said:

"a wood turner focuses on creating symmetrical, rotational objects using a lathe, while a carpenter focuses on structural and functional wood construction [such as] framing [and] trim, and installing fixtures."

So Randy can be happy that I did an AI search for my post.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Tuberculosis Is Still with Us

I was reading the Wikipedia page about World Tuberculosis Day, which falls today, March 24.  I had not realized that in the 1880's TB was the cause of death for one in seven people worldwide.  That's roughly 14%.  Current numbers that I found by searching online suggest that the world's current population is around 8.2 billion and that about 1.25 million people die annually from TB, for a percentage of about .0002.  Many more people, but a significantly smaller percentage of them overall.  So even though it is still with us, we seem to have improved a little in keeping people healthy.

March 24 was inaugurated as World Tuberculosis Day in 1982 because it was the 100th anniversary of when Dr. Robert Koch announced in 1882 that he had discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis:  Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  The purpose of World Tuberculosis Day is to draw attention to the fact that it still kills far too many people even now, in pretty much every country, including the United States.

Many well known people historically have suffered from tuberculosis.  There's even a page devoted to them on Wikipedia!  Just a few names I noted are Aubrey Beardsley, Sarah Bernhardt, Anne and Emily Bronte, Anton Chekhov, Frederic Chopin, Edward VI of England, W. C. Fields, Robert Heinlein, Vivien Leigh, Christy Mathewson, Amedeo Modigliani, Moliere, Edvard Munch, Florence Nightingale, George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Junipero Serra, Igor Stravinsky, and Henry David Thoreau.

I wrote about World Tuberculosis Day in 2016 and had only one relative at that time whom I knew had died of TB.  In searching through my family tree program, I now have found three more cousins who died of tuberculosis.  I as yet have not found an ancestor who died of TB, although I have a note that one of my Hananiah Gaunt grandfathers supposedly did.  I'm still looking for documentation of that.

Henry H. Gauntt, son of Hananiah Selah Gaunt and Margaret S. Scott, died October 16, 1916 in Lumberton, Burlington County, New Jersey.  He was 42 years old and is my 1st cousin 3x removed.

Robert Francis Gauntt, son of John Benjamin Gaunt and Sarah Virginia Woolston, died July 17, 1917 in Norristown, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.  He was only 28 years old and is my 1st cousin 2x removed.

Ridgway Eacritt Zelley, son of Joseph Ridgway Zelley and Sarah R. Eacritt, died September 10, 1928 in Amarillo, Potter County, Texas.  He was 50 years old and is my 3rd cousin 2x removed.

Although the primary affliction we hear about spreading through World War I boot camps is influenza, tuberculosis also was a problem.  What's interesting about Robert Francis Gauntt is that his draft registration, dated June 5, 1917 — only six weeks before he died — indicates that he was having lung problems then.  If he was already sick, he probably wouldn't have made it through induction, so he appears to have acquired tuberculosis without being drafted and going to boot camp.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Plans Do You Have to Pass On Your Genealogy Work?

I've been thinking about this for a while also, Randy, but it's good to prompt people with a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  What plans, or potential plans, do you have to pass your genealogy work to relatives and/or descendants, or posterity?

2.  Tell us about your plans to pass your work on in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

And just because I've been thinking about it doesn't mean I've figured out the answer yet.

Seriously, I have no idea.

So far no one in my family is interested in carrying on the work, that's for sure.  Whenever I stop, I'm pretty sure that'll be the end of adding information.

I've been sharing information with family members for literally decades now.  Every year for Christmas and Chanukah I used to mail updates to each family member I was in contact with for every family line that person descended from.  Some have become interested in specific people — for example, my cousin Yoni has developed a strong focus on our great-great-grandmother; my cousin Jeff was so struck by learning that his grandfather's family name had originally been Gorodetsky that he created that domain, but it doesn't appear that he has kept it — which is nice, but that's pretty much where it ends.  The information is out there, though, so it probably won't disappear entirely.

I suspect the best thing I can do for posterity is to create a "family report" style book that is well documented for each of my family lines and give copies of them to the FamilySearch Library.  That will help keep the information available to everyone, as I don't expect the LDS church to disappear.

The physical items that I have, particularly photographs, are likely doomed.  I don't think anyone else will want to maintain them, especially the ones that are still not identified.  "Why would we want to keep these?  We don't know who those people are."  My father's racing trophies?  They'll be gone.  Even my family ketubot will have trouble finding someone willing to keep them.

I better stop here.  I'm making myself depressed.

Celebrating the Flowers in My Father's Yard

There really is a "national" day for just about everything, isn't there?  Today, March 21, is National Flower Day, at least according to National Today (but it isn't listed with National Day Calendar, National Day Archives, or Days of the Year; I guess you have to pay each individually).  No background was provided on how the day was officially started (or who paid for it), although they do tie it to the vernal equinox and the beginning of spring.  Notwithstanding all of the suggestions they provide for ways to celebrate National Flower Day, I'm going to celebrate it by sharing a bunch of my father's photos of flowers.

I believe that all of these (or at least most of them) were flowers growing in Daddy's back yard in Mary Esther, Florida.  He loved photography and taking photos of just about anything, and he took lots and lots of photos of things in his back yard, including the flowers.  So to celebrate National Flower Day, here is a small selection of my father's flower photos.  My identifications are based on Google Image searches; if I have something wrong, please let me know.

Azalea

Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora

Closed African Lily, Agapanthus inapertus

Amaryllis, Amaryllis belladonna

Brazilian Orchid Tree, Bauhinia forficata

Crape Myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica

Jerusalem Thorn, Parkinsonia aculeata

The Second Tuesday of Next Week

The International
Date Line

While I was growing up, my mother was known for using interesting turns of phrase.  She would talk about the "oneth of the month" (the first day of the month).  She and my father both used Spoonerisms deliberately, so we saved Chublip Stamps instead of Blue Chip Stamps and ate chotato pips instead of everyday potato chips.  One of my favorites, though, was my mother threatening to knock us into the second Tuesday of next week when we were being, um, precocious.  But, of course, there is no second Tuesday of the week.

Until there was!

When my family moved to Australia in 1971, we flew on a Pan Am 747 and crossed over the International Date Line.  When we did that, the day we lost was a Tuesday.

When we returned to the United States in 1973, we took a Greek cruise ship, and of course we had to cross the International Date Line again.  On that trip across the date line, we happened to repeat a Tuesday.  So not only did we make up for the Tuesday we lost, we finally had the second Tuesday of next week!

And yes, we gave my mother a bunch of crap about all the times she had said that to us.  She had somehow finally succeeded in knocking us into the second Tuesday of next week.

Unfortunately, my parents have both passed away, and neither my brother nor I remember the specific Tuesday we repeated.  But we know we came back in March, and the Tuesdays in March 1973 were 6, 13, 20, and 27.  So I picked today to write about it.

And I am pretty sure my mother would love the fact that I still remember.