long time-no-find

Wow....I can't believe there is a year in between...Where in the world have I been?
Update.....I found someone?
I had the good fortune to go to Kentucky with my sheep in November.
I have also the good fortune that some distant cousin was interested enough in old family papers to save and donate a few old letters to the Kentucky Historical Society.
Leaving my sheep in Louisville for a day or two, I went to a lovely museum in Maysville Kentucky. I expected to find the letters there, and had called ahead to make sure I would be able to see them. I found much more. The museum had a lovely reading room, with stacks of history books...files of microfilms....and helpful staff. Yes, I yelled questions across the library. I copied everything I could get my hands on....and I even found my ancestors had lived in a small town within an hours drive. I found court records, wills, inventories, and new friends.
Lucky me, I took a couple of hours and drove to the town. Trying to find a cemetery. Why are cemeteries so important? I know distant cousins who yell at gravesites...."Stand up and tell me who you are." My mother was very into cemeteries. We had a round of family cemeteries. One in Wisconsin was a full days travel.....we went every year while she could walk. This old cemetery was abandoned decades ago. Some graves had been moved. Some were never marked. We liked to go there the week before memorial day. Sometimes we met someone carefully cutting the grass for the big day. One year we met a distant cousin who came driving in....just on a whim...and met her cousins. What a surprise.
I didn't find the right cemetery on my day in Kentucky this year. I met some lovely folks...even older than I am....who remembered some of my family. I saw an old church. I did feel an incredible sense of sadness. As if the spirits left in kentucky sensed my relation to one long gone. My gr-gr-gr grandfather wrote home. With every letter he promised to come back soon, he died young....never seeing his home and family again. There was a feeling of belonging. It is still wild land, similar perhaps to the ozarks where I live now. I hope I will have the good fortune to go back. In the meantime, I search for more information on the generations of Perkins who I was lucky to connect to my own family.
What can we learn from my bonanza? Keep looking. Unless we try, the information we need will stay hidden. There is much to be learned from a trip to the area...to the courthouse...to the historical society or the geneological society.
This was one line out of several families I have been trying to find for 25 years. At least we now know more about this line of ancestors.
Good luck hunting.

brick walls

Everyone has a family line that just stops. That's a "brick wall".
Sometimes the reason is we are chasing a name that has been mis-spelled or changed. Sometimes the informant on the death certificate didn't know any of the family names involved...or they remembered them wrong. Sometimes the family involved had secrets.
My Grandfather had secrets. His mother lived with him for a while...so everyone knew his mother and her name....but there was never a mention of his father.
My grandfather wasn't catholic...but his mother was. I often asked a distant older cousin...a member of the family who should have know the secret...but didn't want to say it.
She would hesitate every time I asked her point blank.....then make a statement that was different...each time.
What I do know about my Grandfather's life is that he and his mother lived with distant cousins for almost the first ten years of his life. So what was that all about?
The most typical scenario would be an illegitimate birth. An out of family event as it is politely said in DNA circles. Yes, my mom heard Grandpa say something about being the "black-sheep" of the family. But his mother had a married name. In one of the city directories she was named widow of John....why would she bother....if she wasn't married? So when I check other references...like her job in a catholic institution (Catholics never throw papers out, it seems.)....she was the cook....she is listed as the widow of....On her death certificate, informant, my grandfather....she is separated...So, I am guessing my great grandmother was indeed married. But, we really don't know if her husband was the father of my grandfather.
Enter DNA testing. There is a way to check back on the surname my grandfather used. There are many DNA service companies. The price is reasonable...and they are starting "projects" for families of those surnames to see if the families are related to each other. By knowing the DNA haplogroup of the male surname line....we can check to see if it is likely that there was indeed an out of family event. There may even be a chance of finding the geographical area the birth father came from. Ireland, Germany, Africa, America, These are distant connections...but enlightening.
There is the lottery win, of finding another person who matches exactly, and finding a historical link to the out of family event. But we have to accept that there could never be an answer.
When asked about his father, my dear grandfather left the room...his faithful wife also left the room. Evidently, he didn't want to pass this knowledge on to anyone.
There is no hiding a secret with DNA. The y-DNA tests the father's father's father's....on through the time of the use of surnames. This can be very uesful in finding a common ancestor. These tests can get within two generations right now. That's pretty good.
The other most common type of DNA testing is the maternal or mt-DNA. This follows the mother's mother's mother's dna back in great sections of time. Common ancestors are numbered in multiples of generations...and hundreds of years. But it is a start...and there are some new tests which will add information. Maternal, mt-DNA is passed to both the sons and the daughters from the mother. So males can do both types of common DNA tests. But the males cannot pass their mother's DNA down to their children...of either sex, they only pass their own y-DNA, and that is only to their sons. Women only receive their mother's mt-DNA.
Confused? go to www.familytreedna.com and read some more.
And lest I sound like a commercial. Google....Google every family name, towns and family names, counties and family names. Military events and family names, fur trade, government, anything you know your own ancestors were involved in, could be out there.
Go to www.rootsweb.com a free site, and look at their message boards, their family trees, it's all free. Maybe you can find a distant cousin...and they might know more than you do.
Way to go...good luck finding that lottery win.

lack of information

I admit it....I hate not learning something new all the time.
Oh, I can put my folders of family papers away for weeks, and concentrate on other things....like lambs.
But, when I have the time....I want to score information.
I was lucky before christmas this year. I found some references to a book covering a new-found branch of my family. "the Sanders Family of Grass Hills"...I found several references to the book on Rootsweb, and finally decided to get it. Of course it was out of print, and I had to pay real money....but I found it OK. Some times there is some sliver of information that will open a door in the brick wall. The brick wall is the term used for a family line that just stops. We always want to find a way around the brick wall.
My own research concerns a daughter in the Sanders family. We know she wasn't married when her father's will was filed....about 1780. And we know she remarried after having at least three Perkin's children, a second marriage in 1803. OK....I'm not working from notes, but my old head holds some information for a while. My problem with this brick wall....is that I can't seem to find the original husband, Constant Perkins. Rosie....that's one of my greats, was supposed to have traveled to Kentucky and joined up with others who made the trip through the Cumberland Gap with the Traveling Church...led by the Craigs. Now there is an interesting story. Traveling mostly on foot through a trail blazed by Boone...during the revolution....with hostile forces attacking the forts.
So far, I don't know if she married in Virginia, before leaving....or married in Kentucky...where she was living in the 1800's. There are plenty of Perkins. Many Virginia Perkins were named Constant or Constantine. Of course there are also Perkins who are Redbones, Indian Braves, Copper Indians, and Melungeon. Perkins, Purkins....seems to be a popular name in the frontier.
I'm guessing we will find a connection some day to the Virginia Perkins....I could hasten the connection along by finding a cousin to do a male DNA test. The Virginia Perkins are all showing DNA relationships.
This is a totally different way to find a way over your brick wall. YDna testing tests one male line. Mt DNA testing follows one female line. The Male DNA testing allows for a relationship that is closer in time. So, I may look for a male cousin to do a test for me to find if we are definitely related to the highly documented Virginia Perkins. In the meantime....I keep shaking the tree.

starting to look

I admit, I started my search for family at a strange place. We did go back, after the first flush of finding family names, and look for public records.
Most older birth, marriage, and death certificates are in one central place. Start with what you know. Look for death certificates....if someone knows where your ancestor died. Sometimes the death certificates will give you some more information. Looking up my great grandmother, I found her informant....(usually a spouse or one of the children) knew her mother's maiden name and her father's name.
Of course, many times those names are misspelled.
My great grandmother's certificate has come back three times with different spellings....even when I could tell the clerk how it was spelled. Record as many different spellings as you can. When I googled for an ancestor with a mis-spelling of his name....I found out a lot of new information.
Many of our ancestors couldn't write, and last names go through many forms.
Birth certificates are more difficult. Many midwest areas didn't record births until close to 1900. You may need to look for church records, or find obituaries to find children listed.
Yes, it is good policy to follow children in the family....even if you are not descended from them. One of them may record new information for you.
As you go back in time to the 1800's and earlier, you will find some families listed in county histories. Especially if they did something news worthy. Start a store, own a ferry, work on a road, steal horses, anything exciting will be recorded....even if you don't want to know.
Contact cousins. Especially the older ones....many families passed around photos, and there may be a story that gives you a lead. Besides that, you will find cousins that are just like family...really!
At one point in time, I opened my grandfather's address book, and called information. I found a person living in the area, with the same name....and I asked if there was someone in the family who took care of family history. Most families these days, have someone knee-deep in geneology. Surprise....my side of the family was the missing part....everyone else and all the ancestors were right there waiting for me to ask.
If you don't ask....you won't get lucky.

family questing

You may think that bopeep just thinks and talks about sheep. But, I have plenty of lost sheep in my family. I have been looking for my ancestors since one day in 1980.
An important day for the rest of my life.
I was wandering in the quartro stacks at the university. Killing time.
Quartro stacks are where the big books go. Tall books, fat books...obscure books...however that is spelled.
I have always liked fat books. They are the ones that you can't read in one day. Important, if you only get to a library once a week.
I digress. Wandering down the stacks, I passed a title about a Wisconsin county....about 8 feet farther, I remembered my mother grew up in that county. Surprising thing was that I actually went back and looked in the index for family names. Second surprise was that I found two.
Of course, we didn't discuss old family things in our household. Not a clue, whether one of these families was mine. So, I picked up the thick book, and lugged it home.
My mother lived with us for many years. She could still remember family....but didn't think these families were part of her's. Finally, three generations down the page, she mentioned her grandfather was named Freeman, too.
Wow, was I hooked! In my hands was a story about family I had never heard about....my mom had never heard about them. How amazing. I was descended from a well-digger, who found artifacts at great depths in the ground. Joy!
OK, you have to understand, I was studying Anthropology. Archaeology is in my blood.
Now, I had never heard about looking for family. I didn't know I had to look for birth certificates and death notices. I knew where you found out about things.
In the library. So, I began to kill a lot of time in the university library. Looking for family. Pulling books on Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York....and it paid off.
I found my family again. Yes, they were right there in the history books. Except this time....they weren't well-diggers, or traveling in covered wagons, or fighting in the civil war....this time they were Indians. Go knock me over with a file card....well, this time mom was not so excited. She had been brought up at a time when Amerinds were not admired. Mom didn't even like farming ....so this was really hard to deal with. Especially when I became obsessed with finding out more about my own family.
Stop looking....she would say, you want to go back to adam and eve....tsk tsk tsk.
Almost....now we have dna testing to help in that respect....I may not go all the way back....but I am haplogroup A...and my brother is haplogroup R1a....so I know a little about our descent from adam and eve.
Why did I start this blog?
I'm not sure. I love discovering new places to look for my own family. Perhaps there are others out there in la la land who like that too. Maybe I will post about some of my family names and places...maybe just about how to find your family....we will have to see.