This post was originally an email I sent to my family back in October. Still think it's neat so decided to turn it into a blog post.

First of all I want to compliment my brother Gar on his picture taking and careful notations when they went down for Aunt Dorothy’s interment.

I was looking at the photos again [reason will be explained in a minute] and he did a great job. The pictures are great and to be honest, I wish he would embellish his notes from that trip and turn it into more of a journal. I know journals can be hard, but might be easier if he just tells a ‘story’ about each of the pictures. If you have windows 10 I’m pretty sure it comes with voice recognition software. you wouldn’t even have to type anything. Really you should think about this.............this would be a great little nugget for future generations......even the boys, who were so young the probably don’t remember any of it.

Ok, off my soap box and the reason for this email. The German Genealogy Group that I belong to in Brooklyn was doing a cemetery crawl to St. John’s a few weeks ago. [Yes, Mom, what we do when we go on our trips is apparently called cemetery crawling!] Anyway, I knew that there wasn’t any way that I could go, but I emailed the organizer and asked if she would take a few pictures of the ‘Roth’ stone if it was convenient. She had no problem with this and she sent me the pics last night. After looking at them I realized that you had probably taken some pics on your trip so I went back and found them. Look at the difference?!?

2006 trip pics

Pics Joanne just took for me

Ok, so my question now is, did they clean up the area because you asked them to, or did they decide to clean it up because they had to for Dorothy’s interment, or did they clean it up because they now know that there is family who cares?

Just thought this was kinda cool – gotta hop in the shower!

PS - My mother told me that they paid to have the area cleaned up. Nice to know that the cemetery did what they said they would do!

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!!