Well Butter My Buns and Call Me a Biscuit !! Looky what I just found!!

Anyone who dabbles in genealogy already knows that trying to map out an ancestors life can be a whole lot of endless drudgery of looking at pages and pages of information that have nothing to do with said ancestor. 

Yes, sites like Ancestry.com can make life easier, but for those of us who really want to dig into an ancestors life, there is nothing else to do but roll up your sleeves and browse countless pages of documents until your eyes cross.

Why bother, you say?? Because when you have just about had enough up pops a gem, that's why.

Looky what I just found!



This is a photograph of the house where my great great grandfather lived with his second wife from sometime in 1925 until at least 1929. I believe he was living here when he died, but haven't been able to confirm that yet. 

Still, to find a photograph of the house right around the time they lived there is such a find!!

I found the photograph at Maine Memory Network which is a part of the Maine Historical Society.

Here is the direct link if anyone is interested

https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/53361

I 'm not done fleshing out this particular find yet, but have to get ready for work.

Just thought this was very cool and wanted to share!!

Charles is being elusive folks.................

For anyone who is following along you'll already know that I have proof that one of my 6th great grandfathers fought at Bunker Hill.  I also think that HIS father fought, but that's another story. 

I have bits and pieces but putting them together isn't proving to be easy.

Charles' account has him enlisting for 8 months, then re-enlisting in Dec 1775 for one year. He was then asked to extend his enlistment for a few months and was discharged from Peekskill, NY in March 1777.

Another source has him at the Lexington Alarm in April 1775, then in Cambridge also in 1775 . It then has him serving in NY from Dec 5, 1776 to March 15, 1777. It also places him in Rhode Island in 1778.

Couldn't find out much more about him specifically so I had to move on to his regiment, the 1st NH. There is quite a lot written about the 1st NH, including them being at Fort Ticonderoga and The Battle of Trenton. You know, the battle where Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas Eve and surprised a bunch of Hessians? 

So now I have to go and learn about these battles and the commanding officers of the 1st NH, John Stark and William Scott. There is much written about these two, but getting a definite timeline of their movements is turning into quite a task.

So nothing on Charles yet people. I have a lot of reading to do!

Ok, I fibbed. I do have a couple of tidbits. Here is a page from Charles' pension file, where he explains his service....

Yes, that's his signature...........

We also learn from this document that he was a cobbler.......pretty cool!!

Sometimes you hit pay dirt.......................

Sat down at the computer this morning determined to pay bills and take care of some other paperwork that keeps piling up and, of course, I get an email which leads me on a merry chase..................

So here I sit, about an hour later, still haven't paid the bills, but I'm SO glad that I decided to 'chase' the email I received cause I hit paydirt!

Bottom line, I found out some more information about my 4th great grandfather, John F. Bryant, and his Civil War experience.

It's not so much that I found out new information, but that I'm fairly sure I now have a copy of his signature.

I was led to the original Muster In Rolls for the State of Maine and after some searching and lots of squinting [the print is so small!] I was able to find that he joined the Bethel Rifle Guards.

Sorry, it's so small. If I make it bigger than I have to crop some of the words. Just take my word for it that it says 'Bethel Rifle Guards'

Here's the cool part though..............

Over in the right hand column is his signature!! 

and then on the back side of this document is the proof of his taking the oath..............

another cool/not so cool piece of info I found was more confirmation of his death as listed in the Muster Out Rolls.

So sorry that some of these pictures are so small. I'm hoping once I publish this you'll be able to click on them and make them bigger, but not sure. Still learning here folks!!

Hoping to do a post on one of my Rev War ancestors, Charles White, in honor of Independence Day, but no guarantees. Those bills are now screaming at me!!

Why I Love FindAGrave.com

I just love FindAGrave.com!!

I pretty much check my email first thing every morning. I have to. I'm like a dog with bone when researching so if I don't make myself check it first thing, before I know it days have gone by and I have 100's of emails to wade through, but I digress.

Before I go any further though,  I need to give a big shout out to Helen, the FindAGrave volunteer who took the photos, because without her, I never ever would have found out about this!!

I always get excited when I get an email from FindAGrave stating that one of my photo requests have been fulfilled, but I have a lot of photo requests out there so some are more exciting than others. I received one last week for a distant cousin. It was nice to have and I dutifully documented everything, but it wasn't a "my tail is wagging" kind of discovery. 

Today was different. 

Today I received an email stating that my photo request for Abigail Oulton Tingley (1778-1843) had been fulfilled. 

Today I found my 4th great grandmother.............

But that's not the most amazing thing. The most AMAZING thing is that she is buried in the Tingley Cemetery! Yes, the Tingley Cemetery! Not Ye Olde Burying Ground or Whatever Town I Live In Cemetery, but the TINGLEY Cemetery! How cool is that?!?! Our family has it's own cemetery!! Albeit, it is in the middle of nowhere, as the address is listed as

"Junction of 114 and 915. This cemetery is in a field....located behind a clump of bushes. NOTE: this must have been a family farm, because these are the only known graves."

 [see the yellow thumbtack?] 

Here is a closer one

With this one you can see that it is at the end of the Bay of Fundy.

[Sorry for the poor quality Google Earth pictures, I'm still learning!]

Now here is where it gets even better. The woman who took Abigail's photo also photographed the whole cemetery. 'The  whole cemetery?" you say? "didn't that take a long time?" you say? Not really, because there are only 7 graves in this cemetery. Yup, 7 graves.  And look where it is!

See the clump of bushes and brambles? I have no idea how this woman found it, but she's a trooper!

This is how she got in....

And this is what she had to deal with to get the photos....

Can you see the headstone buried among the brambles??

So, because of one little photo I now have knowledge of the following family members:

Abigail - my 4th great grandmother
Daniel - my 4th great grandfather
John Agreen - [I really need to find out where the name Agreen comes from. It was used often in the family!] - my 3rd great grand Uncle
Sarah J - John Agreen's wife
Joseph A - John Agreen and Sarah's son
Margaret - Agreen and Sarah's daughter
Jemima - my 3rd great grand Aunt

I am so stoked! I can't wait to see what else I can find as the Tingley family was quite a presence in the area. There might be more small cemeteries to discover!!

And, if this was a family cemetery then odds are it was on or near the family farm. 

ROAD TRIP!!!

Google Earth....UGH............

I promised myself that this year I was going to really learn how to use Google Maps and Google Earth.  I'm usually a dive right in kind of person and then if I get stuck I'll try and find instructions, but told myself that I wasn't going to do that this time as there is so much to learn, and so much I want to do with these two applications.

Yeah, that didn't last long....................

One major thing I want to accomplish is to pinpoint all of my Brooklyn/Long Island ancestors addresses onto one map so anyone can see where everyone lived in relation to one another.

Made a list of about 8 addresses and figured that was a good start.

Typed in 169 Troutman St., Brooklyn as that was where my great great grandfather, Casper Roth, was living when he passed away. He passed away at home so if I could find this building I would be looking at where he passed.

Cool!

Good news is I was able to find the building, bad news is it was difficult to manipulate the image to my liking, but I finally got one.

Took me 10 seconds to find the building and 30 minutes to get the image I wanted!

 It was hard for me to get an image of the whole building.

 I kinda had to do an onside thing. 

I thought this view was kinda cool though. 

According to Casper's death certificate this was a tenement building. Neat to still be able to see all of the old tenement buildings from this view.

Bottom line is I'm happy I was able to get images. I looked up two other addresses and the buildings don't exist anymore. Hoping I can still put a pinpoint on the place where the houses used to be and someone said that you can overlay old maps over the current ones, but I'm saving that lesson for another time!!

walking in your ancestors footsteps....well, sort of....more like driving over them..............

So here I sat this morning, at the computer, of course, going through my email, reading about someone who had decided it would be a good project for them to go through all of their known ancestors on the Find a Grave website to make sure that they had 'ownership' of the memorials listed there. Hmmmmmmmm........

Happened to look at a picture of my Dad and thought, "I wonder if I have ownership of his memorial" and off to Find A Grave I went. Made sure I had ownership of his memorial and then decided to check all of my known relatives buried in Forest City. As it happens, the only person I had listed for that cemetery was my Aunt Sharon! Bad Lisa!! 

Like with any project, job, hobby, etc there can be times when the pendulum swings to the tedious side, but the tedious jobs are usually the ones that save you grunches of time later on [and can lead to wonderful discoveries!]. So as much as I really didn't want to tackle this job this morning, I knew it was the right thing to do.......

I knew my cousin Ellie and her husband, Walter, were buried there so I added them to my list first. I also knew that my grandfather, John Tingley, and his parents, Watson and Annis Tingley, were buried there, and to make an easy list, I searched just the Tingley surname knowing they would come up in a nice neat list that would be easy to add to my master list..........wait a minute........



Who the heck is Mattie E. Hooper Tingley??? Never heard of her, didn't know she was buried in Forest City.  I clicked on her name so I could read her memorial and come to find out she was married to a Walter S. Tingley. Never heard of him either. Here is where the fun part begins............

I usually go to ancestry.com to do a 'first look-up' on a person, [pause here for a 2 mile walk !!], but for some reason today I just googled Walter S. Tingley and bunches of stuff appeared 'just like magic'! [For Harry Potter fans, yes, this is a reference to Gilderoy Lockhart!].

Clicked on one of the links and discovered that his father's name was Agreen. Well I have a great great grandfather named Agreen, let's go check. Yup, same Agreen, so Walter is my great grand uncle.

I then proceed to back out of all the the umpteen million links I have open and go to my ancestry.com account. Turns out I have Walter listed in my tree, I just haven't researched him yet. He's got 12, count 'em TWELVE, hints attached to him [those shakey leaves you hear about]. I get excited when I have 2 hints attached to a person, 12 makes my tail wag!

I'm only 3 hints into my research as I write this and I just learned that my sister, Michelle, used to drive over our relatives "footsteps" every work day, twice a day, as the spot where Walter Tingley and his family lived in 1910 was 195 Franklin Street, which is pretty much the middle of the road these days....

I hope these photos are clear. I ended up having to do a screen shot with my phone.

Anyway, I was also able to find a photo of the house at 195 Franklin Street. It is from 1924, but I doubt it had changed much from 1910. 





I know the photo is labeled Anderson Lane, but Anderson Lane ran along the right side of the house.

According to an article in the Portland Press Herald, dated April 26, 2009, this house, along with hundreds of others, were demolished in the 70's due to Urban Renewal. The powers that be considered all of these houses on the east end as slums and wouldn't it be nice to raze them and build a nice new arterial road to make it easier for cars to get to downtown. 

I'm sure my sister found the Franklin Street arterial a very convenient way to get to work, but I bet she would rather be able to drive to the house of some of her ancestors rather than drive over it!

On a happier note, Walter and family had moved to 53 Boyd St by 1920. Here is a photo of the place in 1924. It was considered at tenement. Interestingly enough, the owner of the house in 1924 was a Florence Hooper. Recognize that last name? Yup, same name as Mattie! Definitely need to check this out!!



And here is 53 Boyd Street today........



No sure if it's the same building or not, maybe my brother, Gar, could weigh in?? Or Warren??

Okay, off to find out what the other 9 hints have to offer!! And I need to see if somewhere along the way Walter married his landlady's daughter!!