A Horse Thief or Worse

Do you remember back in the day when there was a television advertisement (I think it was from AT&T) that said something to the effect of, “Have you ever read a book in a library, from another country? Well, you will.” We were then just on the cusp of the exploding world of internet and it sounded crazy. I remember thinking as a genealogist, “Heck yeah, there are books I want to read in remote locations!”
I just recently found out one of my children’s ancestors lived in an asylum for nearly 40 years. Using Google ebooks, I got some great information from official record books about the institution where he was located. One book was digitized from the University of Michigan, which is a ways away from me. Another book was digitized from the University of California, even further. But thanks to technology, I incurred no travel expenses at all. Sweet!
I remember an elderly distant cousin wrote in reply to a request for family information saying, “I have never been too keen on family trees. If you go back far enough you usually find a horse thief or worse.” Now that I’ve finally found a genuine family secret, my kids’ reaction to it was: “Cool! Finally something interesting after all these years of hearing about genealogy.” I’m on a quest to find out more. Stay tuned!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COG: The Love of Reading

Life is funny sometimes, wouldn’t you agree? I sit here this evening checking out my blogger dashboard and find Jasia’s post about reading for the Carnival Of Genealogy . Ah, reading! One of my absolute favorite pastimes. And Jasia wants to know my family’s history of reading? How ironic that on the third anniversary of my father’s death, I am asked that question, for he was influential in the development of my love of reading. Furthermore, I was in a training at work today and we were asked to discuss characteristics about our fathers that we would like to keep, toss, or add in reference to their values, beliefs, etc. One of the items I listed in the “keep” column was his emphasis on the importance of reading and education. My mother tells the story that my father had heard that reading to your child was a good thing, so he instructed my mother to read to me every night. (Until I was about eight, he was often away because of his Navy service.) He purchased several books for me,
Read more

Bannerman Family Mystery

Image
Among the many old photographs originally in my grandfather's possession, there is one that has haunted me and has remained a mystery all these years. The photograph is of three children with their names and ages typeset at the bottom of the photograph. “William, 10 years, Robert 8, and Maggie Bennerman, 4 Years Old.” Who were they? My grandfather was not able to identify them, though his memory was remarkably sharp and accurate until his death at the age of 96. I first noticed this picture and the others that my grandfather had in 1989 when I embarked on the adventure of genealogy. Since then I have traced all of my father's ancestors at least back to the early 1800s (and a lot beyond). But I never ran into the Bennerman name, anywhere. Not as ancestors of mine, not even as neighbors. I am lucky enough to even have a name to match the faces in the photograph in the first place. Early in my research, I visited the Tampa stake of the LDS church and I mentioned the Bennerman na
Read more

Friday Faces from the Past: Moorefield

Image
I am perusing through old photographs from my paternal grandparents side these days. In essence, I have been visiting Kentucky although really only in my mind. Things like this come and go in spurts. I have not looked at the research I have done on these lines in a number of years but every now and them something draws me back. What pulled me this time was an email from a gentleman who saw a photograph on my blog that was taken by Randolph in Cadiz, Kentucky (see the photo here ). This gentleman informed me that he and another local historian were doing research on this photographer who did work in Cadiz from about 1893 to 1913. He wanted to know if I would share an electronic copy of the photograph and also asked if I had anymore photographs taken by Randolph. I hunted around and found one more. This is a photograph identified by my grandfather as "My daddy's first cousin [John Willis Watts], Otis Moorefield." Otis Moorefield (1875-1958) Until I put the two tog
Read more