Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Which Family Members Stayed in Contact with Your Family?

Randy Seaver has a very interesting topic for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

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

1.  Most genealogists try to stay in contact with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Who among them made the most effort to stay in contact your family?  Did they write, use the telephone, send cards or gifts?  Did they visit you, and/or did you visit them?

2.  Share your cousin experiences in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

There was a significant difference in the contact maintained by my mother's side of the family versus my father's.

My siblings and I grew up knowing many of my mother's relatives.  We saw her parents on a regular basis.  We lived in the Los Angeles area and they lived in Las Vegas, which made it easy for visits in either direction.  I don't know when my grandparents moved to Vegas, though, because now that I think about it, they still lived in Florida when I was born.  But not long after that they must have moved, because we saw them a lot while growing up.  When they came to California, they often took us to Disneyland.  My earliest memory is of a train trip to visit them in Vegas when I was about 2 1/2 years old.

My grandparents also visited us while we lived in Australia (this was made affordable by the fact that my uncle was working for National Airlines at the time, and they were able to fly for free).  After they retired, my grandparents moved back to Florida, and when my family returned to the United States we went to Florida, so then we were in the same state, but we were actually farther away from each other than when we lived on the West Coast (Los Angeles to Las Vegas is about 270 miles, but Fort Lauderdale to Niceville is 600 miles!).  But they came for everyone's graduations and may have visited a few other times also.

We regularly received cards for holidays and birthdays, and my grandmother and mother talked on the phone a lot.  After I finished 9th grade, I went to stay with my grandparents in Fort Lauderdale for about a month.  So there was lots of contact between us all the way around.

My mother had two younger brothers.  The older of the two married in 1967 in Coral Gables and their first son was born in Miami in 1971, so I don't think we saw them much, but they had moved to California by 1975, because my other cousin was born in San Jose that year.  But I remember my aunt visiting us in California before we moved to Australia, probably around 1970?  And I went to college in Los Angeles and visited them a lot after I moved back to California.  I know we received cards from them for holidays.  I don't know how much phone calling there was.  But I'd say overall we were in pretty good contact with them also.

The younger of my mother's brothers moved to Las Vegas with my grandparents and graduated high school there, so we must have seen him on visits to Vegas.  I remember him visiting us once while we lived in Pomona, before we moved to Australia.  I don't remember a lot of regular communication with him growing up, but after I moved to Berkeley, California, I saw him semiregularly, because by that time he was living in Reno, Nevada.  Not as close of a relationship as with my other uncle, but there was still regular contact.

My mother also stayed in touch with her uncles and their wives, and I grew up knowing their names, the names of my cousins, everyone's birthdays and wedding anniversaries, and lots of information about the family.  My mother took the three of us kids with her to Florida for her first cousin's wedding in 1969, which must have been an adventure.  I remember bits and pieces of the trip and things that happened during our visit, such as my sister and I getting our hair done for the wedding.  (I still have the widget that was used to make my hair stand up and be poufy.)  Another of my mother's first cousins helped take care of us kids while we were there.

For my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1989, there was a huge family gathering in Las Vegas (I think it was in October?).  I think the youngest person there was my nephew, who was born in August, so literally a babe in arms.  Probably around 100 or so people came.  We had aunts, uncles, grandaunts and granduncles, cousins of all types.  It was a great family event.

So it's clear that there was lots of contact with relatives on my mother's side of the family.

My father's side?  Not so much.  My father may have loved his relatives, but he wasn't close to them.  I knew about them, because my mother made sure we knew about them all, but for the most part knowing about them was the sum of it.

I remember my paternal grandfather came to visit us in California, I think in Pomona, once.  We might have visited him and his wife in Florida before we moved to Australia?  But I don't remember regular contact with him.  When we moved back to the States, we went to Niceville, Florida and lived near him.  At that point we saw him regularly, because he was in the same city and because he was our introduction to everyone.  But his wife didn't like having us around.

We also saw my aunt, his oldest child, and her family.  I remember one time they visited and had a camper in my grandfather's yard for a while, and we met our cousins.  I don't remember when my aunt moved to Niceville, but it may have been after I moved back to California.

I knew about my other aunt, between the older daughter and my father, but I don't remember meeting her for quite some time.  I don't even remember now when I met her.  It may have been after she moved to Niceville.

I also knew about my youngest aunt, younger than my father, but I didn't meet her until many years later, after I tracked her down so I could return family photos to her.  My father didn't like talking about her until 2005, when she reached out to him.

I did meet my paternal grandmother.  I think it was just once.  I vaguely remember a family visit to her in Florida, so it was probably after we moved back from Australia.  She was living in Jacksonville, I think.  That's about all I remember.  My father told me that she came out to California after I was born and helped my mother for a while, but I obviously don't remember that, and I don't think she was still in California when my brother was born.  (Hey!  Why didn't my father take any photos of us together?!)  But I did used to write to her after that, and I still have her letters from when I started asking about family history.

My father had a much older sister from my grandmother's marriage, prior to her living with my grandfather.  I never met the sister, but I did meet her daughter, my cousin.  I knew she lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so when I was going to a conference there, I arranged to meet her.  We stayed in touch for quite a while and I visited another couple of times.

My father's aunts and uncle on his father's side?  They were nothing but names.  I didn't even know my grandfather had a brother until the brother died and Grampa went out of town for the funeral.  I never met that uncle or the older of my grandfather's two younger sisters (Grampa was the oldest in the family).  I found out the younger of the sisters was still alive from a chance conversation with my aunt and reached out to her by phone.  The next time I was in Florida, I dragged my cousin across the state just so I could meet my grandaunt.

Because I am my mother's daughter when it comes to family.  When I used to travel regularly to conventions and conferences, I would always figure out which relatives were in the area and make efforts to visit.  I met my mother's favorite cousin on a trip that was actually to Milwaukee but had a side visit to Chicago.  I went to Atlanta for a convention and took a short trip to Toccoa (where DeForest Kelley lived at some point in his life!), just so I could meet my father's younger sister.

I stay in touch regularly with my brother, sister, and half-sister.  I even used to write and talk regularly with my half-sister's mother!  (There really should be a term for your parent's spouse from before the relationship that produced you.  Not a stepparent.  Maybe a preparent?)

I also have tried to stay in contact with all of the relatives I have met during my travels.  I used to send out big envelopes to everyone I knew every year for Christmas or Chanukah (depending on which side of the family) with all the updates I had made to the family trees.  Now I'm connected to many of those relatives, and even more I have found, on Facebook and by e-mail.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Any of Your Ancestors Suffer the Loss of a Parent at a Young Age?

I have a feeling it would be difficult to find someone who did not fall into the category of tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

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

1.  Do you have ancestors who suffered the loss of one or both parents early in their lives?  Did the surviving parent remarry soon after one parent died?  Was a guardian appointed for your ancestor to protect physical or legal interests?

2.  Tell us about one or two of your "orphaned" ancestors and how this affected their lives.

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

I can immediately think of a few ancestors who had a parent die when they were young.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan was just shy of 2 1/2 years old when her father died (she was the youngest child).  My great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky was about 16 when his mother died (he was the oldest child).  And my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was only 15 when his father died.

I think I'll focus on my grandfather, because some parts of that story are particularly interesting.

Let's start at the beginning.  My great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong gave birth to my grandfather on April 6, 1903 without the benefit of a husband.  Even if she had been inclined to name the father (and I suspect she wouldn't have), the registration form actually had instructions that if the birth was out of wedlock, that was what was supposed to be indicated on the line asking for the father's name.  So the socially disapproving "OW" is all that appears there.

Notwithstanding that she brought a 7-month-old son to the relationship, Laura was able to find a husband, and she and Cornelius Elmer Sellers were married on November 7, 1903.  I showed with Y-DNA testing that Elmer was not the biological father of my grandfather, but he was the only father Grampa ever knew.

On January 22, 1916, a little shy of being 13 years old, my grandfather and three other boys were playing in a dirt mound in town.  They had dug out a cave in the mound and, of course, had not reinforced it, because they didn't know better.  On that January day, the cave collapsed on them.  Two of the boys did not survive.  My grandfather did but severely broke his right ankle, which soon after necessitated the amputation of his leg at the knee.

The family had already had its share of sadness.  Elmer and Laura had nine children together, three of whom are confirmed to have died young.  Cornelius Howard Sellers was born about October 1904 and died September 3, 1906.  Harry J. Sellers was born January 9, 1913 and died June 6, 1913.  Birdsall Sellers was born April 16, 1916 and died May 26, 1916, right after my grandfather's accident.  For three more children — Amelia, born after 1904; Elmer F., born January 2, 1912; and Herman J., born June 2, 1915 — I have not found death dates, but I haven't yet found them living after 1915.

And on September 14, 1918, Elmer died of endocarditis.  The family had never had much money (in fact, Elmer's mother was the person who paid his funeral expenses), so this must have put a horrible financial strain on everyone.  There was no estate that needed to be guarded for the children's sakes.

In 1920, Laura and her four surviving children, which included my grandfather, were enumerated in the census as living with her granduncle and grandaunt, Amos and Rebecca Lippincott.  Neither Laura nor any of the children had an occupation listed, and Amos was working as a laborer.  They could not have been doing well financially.

Laura did not remarry at that time.  She did, however, give birth to another child.  Yes, less than three years after her husband had died, on March 6, 1921, my great-grandmother had a daughter, Bertolet Grace Sellers.  And did not state the name of the father for the birth certificate (thanks, Laura!).  We'll probably never know who Bertolet's father was, because she died January 11, 1927, and Laura did not provide the father's name for the death certificate either.

Laura eventually did remarry.  On August 31, 1929, she and John Stephen Ireland were married, and he is enumerated with her in the 1930 census.  The story I heard is that someone told Laura that she really should find a husband to support her, and that's why she married John.  The rest of the story was that soon after having married him she figured out that he wasn't worth the effort and got rid of him.  Apparently they didn't divorce, because when John died in 1949, she was listed as his widow in the obituary.  On the other hand, I don't know who write the obituary.

Before Laura's second marriage, however, my grandfather had moved out.  He married Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermier on December 18, 1923.  They had three children, but after the Great Depression began, Grampa had moved back in with his mother, and the four family members (the first child died as an infant) were enumerated in four different places in the 1930 census.

I don't know how his father dying so young affected my grandfather, as he never talked about it.  I learned a little about his life during the Depression because I interviewed him for a high school civics class, but he didn't volunteer other information.  I didn't learn details about Elmer until after my grandfather had died.

I do know that losing a leg at age 12 didn't slow Grampa down.  He fathered five children with three different women, only two of whom he was married to (he and my grandmother were never married), and he was married to his third wife before I was born.  He drove a stick shift and worked through the Civil Service for the Army and Air Force as a mechanical and civil engineer.  He worked hard his entire life.

My grandfather was certainly an interesting character.  I suspect he got that from his mother.

Nanny Ireland and her adult children
Back row:  George Moore (Dickie) Sellers, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr.
Front row:  Catherine Marie Sellers, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, Nellie Elizabeth (Betty) Sellers

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Known 4th-great-grandparents Do You Have?

Oh, this is not going to be pretty.  Randy Seaver has given a tough one (for me, at least) for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

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

1.  How many known ancestors (at least a name) do you have in your generation of 4th-great-grandparents?  What about your significant other's generation of 4th-great-grandparents?

2.  Tell us how you figured this out and highlight your most recent additions to your list.

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

Well.  Let's just spit it out.

I use Family Tree Maker 2019.  I highlighted myself and went to Publish.

Once there, Charts were automatically highlighted.  I clicked on Fan Chart and told FTM to create the chart.

Conveniently, the default was six generations, taking me back to 4th-great-grandparents.  Which I counted manually.

And I have a grand total of nine names for the 64 slots.  All of them on my father's side of the family.

I think the most recent additions were Stacy B. Lippincott and Alice Parker as the parents of Abel A. Lippincott.

I'm missing quite a few names because I have not yet identified my grandfather's biological father, so I don't even have a name for that great-grandfather.

If I include the information I have for Grampa's adoptive father's family (the Sellers line), that's six more 4th-great-grandparents, for a total of 15.

Absolutely nothing on my mother's side.  I do have several 3rd-great-grandparents named, but nothing for the generation previous to that.  But her family was Jewish in the Russian Empire, and several of my lines go to Grodno gubernia, where it seems to be a black hole for records for Jews.  So I'm not surprised I don't have any names for that generation.

As for my ex, it's even worse.  I don't have the names of any 3rd-great-grandparents, much less 4th-great-grandparents.  But his ancestry is Irish and Indian (as in India), both notoriously difficult to research.

I suddenly feel very inadequate.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Is on Your FamilySearch To-Do List?

FamilySearch seems to be on Randy Seaver's mind a lot lately, and tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge continues the trend.

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

1.  When was the last time you visited the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, or visited a local FamilySearch Center?

2.  What record collections are on your to-do list, whether at the FamilySearch Library, a FamilySearch Center, the Full-Text Search feature online, digital microfilm on Images, or catalog links on the FamilySearch.org site?

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

The last time I visited the FamilySearch Library (which at that time was still known as the Family History Library) was the same as Randy, in 2020 during RootsTech.  I unfortunately have not had a chance to go back since then.

The last time I visited a local FamilySearch Center was, let me think . . . oh, this past Tuesday!  That's because I volunteer at my local FamilySearch Center in Gresham, Oregon and have a regular weekly shift.

I unfortunately am not as organized as Randy in my list of collections on my to-do list, no matter how much I should be.  I bounce around between many different record sets on a given day, depending on what family I am researching.  But I spend a lot of time with New York City vital records on a regular basis.  I am still not having much luck with the Full-Text Search; I guess the databases it searches so far are not yet related to the research I am doing.  And I do have plans to start working on land deeds and probate for a lot of my family lines, so they're on my to-do list.

National Bowling Day

Even though I lived in California and my brother lived in Maryland, I used to be guaranteed I would see him at least once every three years, because he would travel to Reno, Nevada for the big amateur bowling tournament that took place in the National Bowling Stadium that was constructed for that very purpose.  I would reserve my timeshare in Reno so he would have a place to stay, and I got to see my brother.  Pretty good deal, if you ask me.

Now that he's married and has kids, I guess he doesn't have the same amount of time for bowling.  On the other hand, I don't live in California anymore, nor do I have the timeshare.  But I looked forward to seeing him and watching him bowl.

So to celebrate National Bowling Day, here's a photo of him bowling.  I don't know what year it's from, unfortunately (maybe he does).  He bowled left-handed, just like Earl Anthony.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (on Monday!): Create a Kinship List for an Ancestor

Well, I'm not quite sure what a kinship list is (as compared to a descendant list), but Randy Seaver asked us to create one for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, so I figured I would.

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

1.  Have you created a kinship list for any of your ancestors or relatives in your genealogy software program?  If so, select an ancestor — say, one of your great-grandparents — and create a kinship list of all of that person's descendants.  Or another ancestor further back in time.

2.  Show us your work — how you did it, and the kinship list generated (at least one page of it).

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

Okay, this is my effort.

I use Family Tree Maker 2019 as my primary genealogy software program.  I decided to create a kinship report for my 3rd-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky.  I had no idea what to expect.

1.  I navigated to my 3rd-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky.

2.  I clicked "Publish" on the top navbar.

3.  I clicked "Relationship Reports", where I found "Kinship Report" as one of the options.

4.  I clicked "Kinship Report."

5.  By default it showed "immediate family" for "individuals to include."  I clicked on "Selected Individuals" to see what my options were.

6.  On the list that popped up, I chose Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky and Descendants of Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky (I was disappointed to read that Roots Magic actually uses the nonsense term "direct descendants" and am proud to say that my program does not; after all, just what is an "indirect" descendant?) and then clicked "Apply."  It told me the list would be 397 individuals.

7.  The program generated a nine-page list of names, birthdates, and relationships to Gersh Wolf.  The names are in alphabetical order by last name, first name.

8.  I clicked the icon for "Print" and saved the filed as a PDF.

So my process appears to have three fewer steps than Randy's does but is otherwise comparable.  It does include birthdates, and Randy wished his included year ranges.  Mine includes only descendants, though, while Randy's also includes spouses.

I didn't see much reason to include screenshots of the entire process, but here's the first page of my report.

I'm still not entirely sure, but I guess the difference between a descendant chart and a kinship list is that the kinship list states what the relationships are?