Christmas Came Early In Genealogy-land

This past weekend has been an absolute whirlwind of activity and discovery for me.  I had to travel to Fort Worth, Texas for work Thursday and Friday and I took the opportunity to go see the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.  Dealey Plaza is where President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963.  The Sixth Floor Museum is the former Texas Book Depository building where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from.  It was a very interesting site.  I also did the walking tour of Dealey Plaza and the surrounding area.  I highly recommend both.

The former Texas Book Depository Building, now
known as the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Dealey Plaza as viewed from the Triple Underpass, the Texas
Book Depository Building is on the left behind the trees of
the infamous grassy knoll.

As I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back Friday night and checking my email to see if there was anything interesting going on, I saw an email from the Registrar of the Daughters of the American Revolution chapter I had applied to join.  She was letting me know that my application for the DAR had been approved by National and I would be receiving my paperwork soon!  How exciting!!!!!  It only took me a few months to gather my documentation and complete my paperwork, from May to December.  Luckily my patriot had already been proven through a different branch of the family so I only had to prove back to the son of my patriot, Guian McKee.  Guian McKee was a Private serving under Captain James Montgomery and Colonel McKay, Colonel Brodhead and Colonel Bayard.  He was from Pennsylvania and most likely somehow related to Colonel McKay.  It seems that the name McKay may have morphed into McKee somewhere between Ireland, Scotland and America.

As if that wasn't enough excitement, a few weeks earlier I had been contacted through my blog by a non-relative who had purchased a batch of my family's ephemera from a flea market.  I was floored and couldn't imagine how some family items could have ended up in a flea market in Oklahoma.  So I went to the only source I could think of that might have some knowledge of how this could have happened.  According to the maternal unit, a cousin who lived in Oklahoma had passed away and the children of this cousin had sold off all contents of the shed of the cousin's property without looking through it.  And so, the items had ended up with someone unrelated who began researching my family.

I haven't written about this part of my family much simply because I have been working on other parts of my genealogy.  Tombstone Tuesday afforded me the opportunity to touch on them briefly when I highlighted my grandparents, Edward Bell Conwell Jr. and Edith M. Brown Conwell.  My Tombstone Tuesday post on my grandfather, Edward Jr., is what caught the attention of the gentleman in Oklahoma.  What was it about the post that caught his attention?  It wasn't Grandpa Edward but his relation to Frank R. Conwell that caught this gentleman's attention.  Frank Russell Conwell was my great-uncle.  I remember meeting him when I was younger.  He was a widower who was living in a trailer in California when I met him.  To me, he was a distant relative whom my Grandpa Edward wanted to visit.  I was more interested in cool stuff we were seeing while we were traveling to visit Frank than I was in Frank himself.  And what a shame that was, since Frank had quite a few interesting experiences I didn't learn about until later.

Frank was born 1 August 1912 in Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri to Edward Bell Conwell, Sr. and Zella May McCabe, who I've been using as guinea pigs in my posts about what you can find on the U.S. census records (so far we've looked at the 1930, 1920, 1910 and 1900 census records.  I've also used Zella as a guinea pig for a post on death records and Edward Sr. and Zella as guinea pigs for a post on marriage records).  He married Maybelle Victoria "Mabel" Boileau 19 November 1940 in Norwich, New London, Connecticut.  They didn't have any children together and Mabel died 27 May 1988 in Jamul, San Diego, California.  Frank lived several more years and died 13 April 2001 in El Cahon, San Diego, California and is buried in Greenwood Memorial Park in San Diego, California.

So what makes Frank such an interesting individual that a non-relative would want to learn about him?  Frank was a Navy-man, as were his brothers, Edward and Milford.  He assisted in the salvage recovery of the U.S.S. Squalus, a submarine that sank off the coast of New Hampshire on May 23, 1939 and he was awarded the Navy Cross for his work on the salvage recovery.  And that is what made him such an interesting subject for research.  As a child I knew he'd been a Navy diver, but I was never aware that he'd helped salvage the wreckage of a submarine or that he had been honored with a medal.  I learned of it when I was older and of the fact that he saved a woman who had fallen overboard while watching the recovery of the Squalus.  My family never made a huge deal over these two instances that I can remember.  It was just a fact added to our genealogy and accepted as what needed to be done.  My family has always just done whatever was necessary to get things done without making a big deal out of it.

Which led me to this past weekend.  I made a trip with the most wonderful mother-in-law to pick up all the ephemera which the gentleman from Oklahoma so kindly sold to me. 

Family items picked up in Tulsa, Oklahoma
this past weekend

I'm so excited about these items.  Some of them are about my cousin, some about my great-aunt and some about my great-uncle.  I've just begun going through and sorting the items but this is one of my favorite.

Hand painted picture of
Zella May McCabe Conwell

This is a picture of my great-grandmother, Zella May McCabe (who was married to Edward Bell Conwell, Sr.)  It's a picture I've never seen before; I've only seen her as an elderly woman in black and white photographs.  She was very beautiful when she was younger and I feel very privileged to have been able to bring this picture back into the family.  With all these goodies I've got a lot of work ahead of me to scan, share and preserve them.  It feels like Christmas in Genealogy-land!!!!  Stay tuned to see some follow up posts on Grandpa Edward, Uncle Frank, Uncle Milford, Aunt Edna and some of the other cousins who are intertwined with these individuals :)

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: #2 - Shirley Bowlby

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Shirley Bowlby

We're getting some freezing rain in Kansas City this weekend so I decided to post another catch up for the 52 Ancestors challenge.  Today I'm hightlighting my husband's maternal grandmother.

Some basic facts:
Name: Shirley Bowlby
Born: 25 January 1924
Parents: Sherry Victor Bowlby and Gertrude Viola (Warren) Bowlby
Spouse: Earl Leslie Nickell
Marriage: Date Unknown
Died: April 1982

Shirley was born 25 January 1924.  She was born to Sherry Victor Bowlby and Gertrude Viola (Warren) Bowlby.  She married Earl Leslie Nickell sometime before 1943.  Earl and Shirley had children but in the interest of privacy I won't list their information.

I suspect Shirley lived most of her life in Kansas.  I believe she was born near Wichita, Sedgwick, Kansas because she's listed on the 1930 census with her parents at the age of eight in Wichita, Sedgwick, Kansas.

Bowlby family listing in the 1930 U.S. Census

And then again at the age of sixteen in Clark County, Kansas.

Bowlby family listing in the 1940 U.S. Census

Shirley died in April 1982.  She's buried next to her husband, Earl, in Resthaven Cemetery in Wichita, Sedgwick, Kansas.

Shirley A. Bowlby Tombstone
Resthaven Cemetery in Wichita, Sedgwick, Kansas

I don't have much more information than that on Shirley.  Here's my genealogy list for Shirley:

Have:

• 1930 U.S. Census
• 1940 U.S. Census
• Find-A-Grave Listing

Need:

• Birth Certificate
• Death Certificate
• Marriage Certificate
• Check for appearance in Kansas State Census'

Surprise!

With the time off from work I had around Christmas time I devoted some time to beginning work on D1's genealogy.  I had no idea what I would find or if it would be difficult to find information on his family but I was prepared for some quality time on different genealogy sites in search of information.  I was pleasantly surprised with my first foray onto Ancestry.com to discover there were others out there who had done quite a bit of research into different parts of his family.

Like a good genealogist I began entering the information to prove into my database.  I'm always hesitant to use GEDCOM files I find online.  I'm just a little overly cautious, so I choose to re-enter the information manually.  It's more time consuming but it also allows me to get to know each and every person I enter so I can usually remember one or two things about each person I add, plus I can verify the information I add.  In my opinion, those reasons alone balance out the time and effort it takes to enter the information manually.

I spent hours each day on my time off looking at different family trees on Ancestry, checking source documents and adding names to the family file.  D1 thought the amount of time I spent doing genealogy over Christmas break was pretty humorous and he began to joke about it with his family.  It's all good though, because I got the last laugh.  I made it back to his 10th great grandfather and began entering the information and was surprised to get the following error message from Family Tree Maker:

Whaaaaa?????  What was this??  This was an error message I'd never received before!  No, there was no way we shared an ancestor.  I was sure I'd made a mistake in my entry of individuals.  So I checked the list of children for each Caleb and Hannah Knapp...and they matched.  To the name, date and place of each event listed for each child.  So I checked the source documentation to make sure these were the correct connections.  And they were.  Unbelievably, my husband and I share a common relative from the mid-1600s!  My 8th great grandfather was his 10th great grandfather.  I couldn't help it, I started to laugh.  Poor D1 didn't really find as much humor in it as I did.  He just didn't get why it was so funny, but it was hilarious for me.  The maternal unit thought it was pretty funny and dear brother thought it was pretty funny, so maybe it's a genealogy humor thing.

I haven't done any research into the Knapp side of my family but after I told the maternal unit about my discovery and the possibilities of additional Daughters of the American Revolution patriots, she mentioned she had heard they were a pretty large and prominent family in early American history.  I'm having a very hard time focusing on just one genealogy project right now, LOL.  I want so badly to start working on supplemental patriots for DAR, even though I haven't even received notification of acceptance of my initial DAR paperwork.  On the other hand I really want to see what else I can find on D1's family.  His 2nd great grandfather died in France during World War I and is buried in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.  I definitely want to look into him a little more and see what I can find out from the National World War I Museum's research center.  Then there's the rumored Native American connection in D1's family, the woman who lived in the dugout that my mother-in-law remembers, and the part of the family my mother-in-law would like to know more about.  I feel so ADD right now, LOL.

So many projects, so little time for genealogy...what surprises have you found in your family?

Genealogy Basics: Death Certificates

Over the last couple of weeks we've talked about birth records and marriage records, which can be used in your genealogy.  Today I want to talk about death records.

Before getting started I want to rewind to last week's post about marriage records.  In that post I neglected to mention a valuable piece of information.  If you're searching for a marriage record by the bride's last name and you're unable to locate it, consider the possibility she may have been married before and didn't use her maiden name on her new marriage license application.  This happened to be the case with my grandparents' marriage record.  It was a good thing I was able to provide the names of both the bride and groom when I requested the record copy because my grandmother used her last name from her previous marriage (Woods), not her actual maiden name (Brown).

Edward B. Conwell, Jr. and Edith M. (Brown) Woods' marriage license

Now, back to the intended subject of this post: death certificates.  Now, keep in mind that prior to 1900, many states had incomplete vital records.  Most birth, marriage and death records were kept by churches prior to when standardization occurred in the U.S.  A good resource to refer to when trying to determine if you'll find birth or death records in the state you're looking at is the ProGenealogist website.  You can pretty much assume the East coast states are going to have earlier standardized records than the Midwest or West coast states, simply because of when the states and state governments were formed.

So what type of information can you find on a death certificate?

• Name of deceased
• Age of deceased
• Date of death of deceased
• Place of death of deceased
• Time of death
• Cause of death
• Place of burial
• Date of birth of deceased (if known)
• Place of birth of deceased (if known)
• Name of parents (if known)
• Birth locations of parents (if known)
• Spouse's name (if spouse is a wife it may include the maiden name)
• Current residence
• Occupation
• Marital status
• Name of physician or medical examiner
• Name of informant and relationship to the deceased

Let's take a look at an actual death certificate.  We'll be using my great-grandfather's death certificate as an example:

Death certificate for my great-grandfather, Edward Bell Conwell, Sr.

This death certificate is a veritable gold mine of information.  It shows most of the information on the bulleted list above.  The only thing I don't see on the certificate that is listed above is the place of birth of his parents.  In addition I can tell that he only resided in Kansas City, Missouri for 6 months and the time between the claimed onset of the cause of death and his actual death was 2 months.  This would lead me to believe he moved from his prior residence to the place of death for health reasons.  I happen to know the place of death was the house my grandparents owned at the time, so he died while living with his son.

Something that stuck out at me on this death certificate was the answer to his marital status at the time of his death.

The answer itself is not odd.  Great-grandma Zella died two years before in 1948.  What's interesting to me is that it looks like the number two is listed in that box with his widowed status.  I'm possibly reading too much into that because I've never heard of great-grandpa having been married before he was married to great-grandma Zella, but stranger things have happened.  I also double checked the family history book my grandparents made for me when I was a child and nothing is listed there for a second wife so I suspect it may have just been a notation of some sort but I've added it to my list of things to ask the parental unit in the future with the hope that she'll know for sure (just in case I'm wrong).

The other thing that was included with the scan of this death certificate was the statement by licensed embalmer.  However, as you can see it wasn't actually completely filled out.  I wonder if they chose to not embalm him or if the embalmer just didn't bother to fill out the appropriate blanks on the form?

Statement of licensed embalmer from Edward Bell Conwell, Sr.'s death certificate

Great-grandpa Edward Bell Conwell, Sr.

Typically death records are some of the first records genealogists will try and locate.  This is because it's usually the most recent record of the research subject and can contain a great deal of information.  But genealogists should always make an effort to verify the information provided on the death certificate before assuming it's correct because the information being provided isn't being provided by the subject of the record but by a person who knew the deceased and that person may not have all the information or completely accurate information.

It's also important to remember that information included on death certificates may vary by location so the information you would find on a Kansas death certificate may very well be different than the information you would find on a New York death certificate.

Genealogy Basics: Marriage Certificates

Today we're continuing to talk about vital records.  Last week we talked about birth certificates and some of the information you can find on them.  This week we're going to talk about marriage records.

If you've been married you know how obtaining a marriage license works.  You fill out an application, get the license, the ceremony is performed, license is signed and returned to the state office to be filed.  At some point in time, some genealogist, somewhere in the world realized how great of a resource these documents were.  Most of the information you'll find will be located on the actual application for the marriage license.  Let's take a look at what kind of information we might find on a marriage license:

• Full name of bride
• Full name of groom
• Date of marriage
• Location of marriage
• Name of officiant
• Names of witnesses
• Birth date of bride
• Age of bride
• Birth date of groom
• Age of groom
• Whether single, widowed or divorced for each party
• Number of previous marriages for each party

God bless the Jackson County Recorder of Deeds because they've digitized their records and have made them searchable.  I was able to locate a copy of the marriage record of my great-grandparents just by going to the Recorder's website.  Below is a copy of the application for their license.  As you can see it lists some, but not all, of the information from the list above.  Keep in mind, different states had different information requirements for their vital records but some of the information is standard across all states, so what information Missouri requests on their applications may be less information that what you might find on the application from, say, Illinois.

Application for marriage certificate for
Edward Conwell, Sr. and Zella McCabe

Another important point to remember: while the majority of licenses filed for were used by the couple, there were instances where the couple filed for the license but never held the ceremony and, therefore, were never legally married.  Marriage licenses expired if they weren't used within a certain time period.  Keep this in mind if you find the application but never find the filed certificate.  I was happy to discover that Edward Sr. and Zella's marriage license had been used and filed and was included with the application when it was digitzed.  Below is the copy of their marriage certificate:

Marriage certificate for Edward
Conwell, Sr. and Zella McCabe

So just from this record I was able to learn the names of the bride and groom, their ages, when they were married, who married them, and where they lived when they applied for the license.

Typically these records have not been digitized and have to be requested from the state or county where the marriage occurred.  There is usually a fee attached and the fee typically covers the search time and a copy of the record if it's found.  Marriage certificates may look different from state to state but the basic information is standard across the states.

Now for an interesting bit of information I discovered after I found this marriage certificate: I learned that my great-grandma Zella was living in Wyandotte County, Kansas when she married my great-grandpa.  I always thought they were both living in Jackson County, Missouri.  Yay for new and interesting finds!

Tune in next week for information on death certificates!

Tombstone Tuesday: Marie Louise Henrietta (Altman) Froemke

It's Tuesday and that means another edition of Tombstone Tuesday!  Today we're still wandering thru Anselm Lutheran Cemetery.  Among the many family members residing in Anselm Cemetery is my second great-grandmother, Marie Louise Henrietta (Froemke) Altman (a.k.a. Altmann).

Headstone of Marie Louise Henrietta (Froemke) Altman (a.k.a. Altmann)
Located in Anselm Lutheran Cemetery

Tombstone of Marie Louise Henrietta (Froemke) Altman (a.k.a. Altmann)
Located in Anselm Lutheran Cemetery

Marie Louise was the second of seventeen children of John Gottleb Froemke and Efa Rosina (Bair) Froemke.  She had six brothers (all younger), nine sisters (one older and eight younger) and one younger sibling of unknown gender.

Marie Louise was born 5 April 1846 in Buchwerder, Friedeberg, Brandenburg, Prussia, Germany (a.k.a. Welmin, Gmina Strzelce Krajenskie, Strzelce-Drezdenko, Lubusz, Poland).  She died 12 March 1904 in Casey Township, Ransom, North Dakota.  She immigrated to the United States with her family in 1856 and married my second great-grandfather, Julius Ferdinand Altman 5 April 1863 in Waumandee, Buffalo, Wisconsin.  Together they had 13 children.  The inscription on her headstone reads "Asleep In Jesus Blessed Sleep".  She is buried in Anselm Lutheran Cemetery in Anselm, Ransom, North Dakota.  The cemetery borders what used to be family farmland.

Marie Louise Henrietta (Froemke) Altman (a.k.a. Altmann)

You  may have noticed I have added an also known as name of Altmann.  The family story goes that the Altmann/Altman brothers came to the United States and subsequently had a falling out.  The brothers parted ways, with one changing his last name by dropping one of the N's from the end of the Altmann name.  I personally haven't verified that information but it makes for an interesting story.  Big Brother C has been working on the Altman side of the family and he has much more information than I do, but I'm working on updating my records as he shares his findings.

Thanks for stopping by!

My Brick Wall: Sarah Ann (Craig) McKee

A brick wall.  Every genealogist has one at one time or another.  My genealogy is no different.  With Constitution Day being this week (September 17 to be exact) my thoughts have been centering on my brick wall.  You see, the Daughters of the American Revolution work very hard to celebrate Constitution Week (for obvious reasons) and, as I mentioned previously, I've been working very hard on gathering up genealogical proof for my application to join the DAR.  Thus, in a roundabout way, we arrive at my brick wall.  So a few basic facts:

Name: Sarah Ann (Craig) McKee (my third great-grandmother)

DOB: 20 February 1830

Place: Tippecanoe, Marshall, Indiana
Parents: William Craig and Katie Helms (nothing further known about parents)

Married: Ephraim Adams McKee

Date: 7 December 1848

Place: Danville, Vermilion, Illinois

Death: 13 May 1906

Place: Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri
Children: 6 (5 boys and 1 girl): John William (#1), John William (#2), Sarah Ann, John William (#3), George Washington and Robert Marion.

Sarah Ann (Craig) McKee
Photographer: Unknown
Year taken: Unknown

Now that we have the basic facts that have been proven through census and vital records, let's talk about the "myths and rumors" that haven't been proven yet:

• Sarah Ann (Craig) McKee was married two other times, probably after marrying my 3rd great-grandfather, Ephraim Adams McKee.  Her other two husbands were William Coslet and Samuel Coslet (order of marriage unknown); a listing for a marriage between Samuel Coslet and Sarah A. Coslet has been located in the Illinois State Archives Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763-1900 (marriage date of 7 August 1878, five years after the death of Ephraim Adams McKee).
• According to my maternal grandfather, Sarah Ann was of Native American ancestry.  Though we're not certain of the tribe, Grandpa Edward always referenced "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too".  A little bit of research revealed that "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" was a campaign slogan for William Henry Harrison and his running mate John Tyler in the 1840 presidential election (information courtesy of "The Meaning of Tippecanoe and Tyler Too").  In short it references Harrison's victory over the Shawnee tribe chief Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811.
• Sarah Ann supposedly had enough Native American blood in her that she was granted some land in Mount Washington, Jackson, Missouri.  Research on the Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Records website under Jackson County, Missouri has proved fruitless for her name or Ephraim's name, the last name of Coslet or the last name of Craig but did bring up some other McKees.  Research on the area known as Mount Washington has turned up that it was the area that is now Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri, where several of my family members are buried, including Sarah Ann (Craig) McKee (in a currently unmarked grave) and her daughter Sarah Ann (McKee) McCabe (also currently in an unmarked grave).
• Further research has led me to believe that Sarah Ann could have been a member of either the Shawnee tribe or Potawattomie tribe due to dates and locations of Sarah Ann during her migration trail and the history of the removal of the Pottawatomie Indians from Indiana in 1838 via the Trail of Death (though the timeline is not the same, the migration trail is).  Again this could be completely off, as all I have are stories and not much in the way of solid evidence.

Let's look at a brief timeline of Sarah Ann's life.

• 20 February 1830: Sarah Ann is born in Tippecanoe, Marshall, Indiana
• 7 December 1848: Saran Ann marries Ephraim Adams McKee in Danville, Vermilion, Illinois
• 1860: Sarah Ann is listed in the federal census with husband, Ephraim in Clinton County, Illinois
• 1870: Sarah Ann is listed in the federal census with husband, Ephraim in Vance Township, Vermilion, Illinois
• 16 January 1873: Sarah Ann's husband, Ephraim Adams McKee dies
• 7 August 1878: Sarah Ann possibly marries Samuel Coslet in Douglas County, Illinois
• 1880: a possible listing in the 1880 federal census of a Samuel and Sarah Coslet located in Bowdre Township, Douglas, Illinois
• 1900: a possible listing in the 1900 federal census of a Sarah A. McKee, listed with one son named Edward, located in Allen, Noble, Indiana (I consider this a good possibility because the age is very close and the number of children living is exactly the same, it's questionable because I don't know of any son Edward but since she was married after Ephraim it could be a step-child)
• 13 May 1906: Sarah Ann dies in Kansas City, Missouri

My current project with Sarah Ann is checking all the federal census records.  I've been unable to locate her on the 1890 census at all.  I'm not sure where she disappeared at in the 1890 census but searches for McKee, Coslet and Craig return nothing at all through HeritageQuest.  I plan to verify that search with Ancestry the next time I go to the library.  I haven't had the chance to check the 1840 or 1850 censuses at all yet.

 

My goal with this post is primarily to put the information out on the WWW in hopes that someone might have some information about Sarah and/or her husband, Ephraim and their daughter Sarah and/or her husband, Chester.  Secondly, it's my hope that someone, somewhere might be able to give me suggestions on where to look next to either prove or disprove these myths.

Wow brick walls can be frustrating!

It's Useful to Periodically Review Your Genealogy Documents

So as I said previously, I've fallen off the genealogy bandwagon for a few years due to general life-stuff and have just recently gotten back into actively pursuing leads.  Since getting back into active mode I decided to start following some blogs and joining some FaceBook groups to help me with organization, motivation and brick walls.  Thanks to The Organized Genealogist FaceBook group I've been actively working on adding citations to my genealogy database (what a mess THAT is, but it'll be worth all the work when I'm done) and organizing my genealogy.

In the process of organizing my e-files I realized that, for the past few years, all I've been doing is collecting genealogy stuff and not categorizing or printing anything at all.  Whoa, not really the smartest move I've ever made.  So, I decided it was time to do some serious printing and organizing of e-files.  For the past few weeks I've been slowly organizing my e-files into family folders on my hard drive, which I will then back up so I have multiple copies.  As I've been doing the organization I've also been taking picture files and converting them to TIFF files (which don't have image loss the way JPG files do) and I've also been converting any picture files of census images and other documents to PDF format.  After all that is done I then print the document and will work on filing those according to the system I've chosen. (Eliminate Genealogy Clutter by Sherene Henrie Whiting is the system I've chosen in case you're interested...it's a fantastic system!)

Whew!  So I'm wading thru this slow process of converting and printing documents last Saturday while D1 was helping his brother and I ran across a rather surprising read.  It wasn't surprising so much that I had it (or that I didn't KNOW that I had it), what was surprising was the content I found within it.

What you see here is an obituary for my 2nd great grandmother (on my maternal side).  It's quite a nice obituary, it tells of her longevity in the community, where she lived and who she lived by, some of her thoughts and, of course, where her services and internment will be.  But within all of that information resides a couple of pieces that I had forgotten about and one piece that I'd never heard about before and I found very interesting.

After reading this obituary, I recalled that my mother had told me at one time that I had a family member in Topeka, Kansas who was an undertaker.  Well either I wasn't listening very well or I'd forgotten what she really told me because it seems that my 2nd great-uncle (Frank Conwell) wasn't just an undertaker, he owned a funeral parlor.  The funeral parlor where gg-grandma Margaret's services were held, of course.  The other piece of information I recalled after reading this was the fact that my mother had also told me my 2nd great-uncle Frank's second wife, Jennie Finch, was a member of an OES chapter in Topeka.  Not just that but also that a photo of my 2nd great-uncle Frank, resides on the wall of a Masonic Lodge in Topeka.  I'm going to have to make a trip up there specifically to see that picture I think.  And maybe see if I can find where the funeral home was located.

The piece of information in the obituary that I didn't know about was "Mrs. Conwell recalled that she often had trotted Charles Curtis, former vice president of the United States, and his little sister, Libbie Curtis (Mrs. Jerome Colvin) on her knee."  Wait.  Charles Curtis, former VP of the U.S.?  Something started tickling at my brain after I read that.  It tickled...and tickled...and tickled until...BAM!  I remembered!

A little back story needs to be inserted here: my son, J, is a proud band geek (yep, I raised him right!) and thru my involvement in Eastern Star I learned about the Kansas Masonic All-State High School Marching Band.  J participated in this band for five years (and loved every minute of it).  His last year participating in the band was 2012.  That year the Shrine Bowl, the football game the marching band performs at, was held in Emporia, Kansas.  Activities for the Shrine Bowl last all weekend for the families, it's crazy fun and so memorable.  So D1 and I are down in Emporia killing time driving around and we end up at a museum in Council Grove, Kansas.  The Kaw Mission State Historic Site was a wonderful place to pass the time between events that weekend.  While we were touring the Kaw Mission, I ran across the picture and caption below:

 

Charles Curtis display at the Kaw Mission State
Historic Site in Council Grove, Kansas

At the time I just thought it was pretty interesting that the U.S. had a Vice President that had Native American heritage.  Little did I know that later, I would find the obituary for Margaret that connected my family to the former Vice President and his family.  I really wish I had gone back thru my genealogy files prior to going to Council Grove.  I don't know if the Kaw Mission had any further information on Charles Curtis but it would have been interesting to learn a little more about him if they did.

Since the Curtis family isn't a known part of my family, this is a project I'll be putting on the back burner for now.  I have my hands full with working on my paperwork for the Daughters of the American Revolution.  My intention is to come back to learning about Charles Curtis after I complete my paperwork for the DAR.  I want to learn a little more about his life and see if there's any information about my family included with his family's information.

What this discovery has taught me is that, periodically, it's useful to go back and review your genealogy documents.  Take an inventory of what you have and make sure it's in good condition. Re-reading may provide some new and interesting information.  You don't catch everything the first or second time you look at something.

Tombstone Tuesday: Ida Marie Krueger

It's Tuesday again and  you know what that means...that's right, it's another edition of Tombstone Tuesday.  Continuing with the family buried in Anselm Lutheran Cemetery, today's tombstone belongs to my paternal great-grandmother, Ida Marie (Krueger) Altman.

Ludwig, Ida and Clarence Harvey's tombstone
located in Anselm Lutheran Cemetery

Ida Marie was the second of three children of Wilhelm F.G. Herman Krueger and Johanna L. Hinz.  Johanna died after the birth of her third child and Wilhelm remarried a few years later, having three more children with his second wife, Carolina Rosalina Charlotte Nohr.  So really, Ida Marie was the second of six children.  She had one older brother, one younger brother, two younger half-brothers and one younger half-sister.

Ida Marie was born 29 October 1883 in Morrison, Brown, Wisconsin and died 21 January 1971 in Sheldon, Ransom, North Dakota.  She is buried along with her husband, Ludwig Wilhelm Altman, and son, Clarence Harvey Altman, in Anselm Lutheran Cemetery in Anselm, Ransom, North Dakota.  The cemetery borders what used to be family farmland.

Ida Marie (Krueger) Altman

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Tombstone Tuesday - Edith M. Brown Conwell

Welcome to Tombstone Tuesday!

Today's tombstone is brought to you from Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, MO and belongs to my maternal grandmother, Edith Marie (Brown) Conwell.  Edith was the youngest child of Richard Selman Brown and Martha Lucinda (Vaughn) Brown.  She had five older sisters and four older brothers.

Edith was born 1 December 1912 in Campbell, Dunklin, Missouri and died 7 June 1997 in Kansas City, Wyandotte, Kansas.  She is buried next to her husband and my grandfather, Edward B. Conwell, Jr. in Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Jackson, Missouri.

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