Wisteria

Lillie Sizemore Kumm & chums in the Willamette River When I first saw the theme for the July Carnival of Genealogy, this photograph immediately came to mind. After I hunted it up from my files, I realized they are not wearing swim suits, but I felt it still had the right feel to be considered for this edition of COG. This is one of several photographs that are part of a testament of family ties. I will start with identifying the family ties: My grandmother, Amy, was the daughter of William Lewis Hardy and his wife Alice Samantha Lovelace. William Lewis Hardy was one of nine children born of Joshua L. Hardy and his wife Martha Sizemore, although three siblings died in infancy and two sisters died in young adulthood. Two of his surviving sisters were Bettie (who married William C. Gross) and Mary (wife of James L. Sadler). Bettie Hardy Gross (born 19 June 1858 in Sinking Fork, Christian County, Kentucky) was my grandmother’s aunt who had the autograph book I mentioned in

Along with knowledge of the area being part of successful family history research (the topic of Monday’s post), knowledge of occupations in the family can be helpful as well. On our recent research trip, my mother-in-law Ruth took me to see the Our Lady ofVictory Basilica in Lackawanna, New York. It is an awesome Roman Catholic Church building. We explored the Father Baker museum in the basement first and then toured the sanctuary afterwards. She remembers taking first communion there. At the museum, I purchased Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America book on the history of Lackawanna. Reading this later also helped me to better understand Ruth’s family history and their connection to the area. Ruth had mentioned a couple of times that from what she understood, part of her Backus family lived in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania and found it coincidental that they also lived in a town called Lackawanna in New York. It turns out there was more than coincidence.  From the Lackaw

Gaining knowledge about an area and its history is invaluable to being successful in family research. Years ago when I lived out of state, I was trying to learn more about my husband’s family in Cattaraugus County, New York. I had gotten a death certificate that said one of his ancestors was born in Waverly, New York. On a current map, I found a town called Waverly in the county of Tioga nearer the center of the state and wasted several days trying to find Westfalls there related to my husband’s family. Later on a trip to visit other relatives in Cattaraugus County, these lifelong residents told me that the current town of Otto where the family resided was once called Waverly.   A recent experience also reinforced the idea that one should become familiar with the area in which our ancestors lived. I finally took my mother-in-law, Ruth, to Lackawanna for a family history research trip recently. I wrote about exploring her family history at this earlier post . This was an aweso

Yesterday, I posted a wedding photograph of Jan Molenkamp and Frouke Olthof for Wedding Wednesday. Today for Treasure Chest Thursday, I'd like to share other photographs from that same collection. I mentioned in my post about finding a family hero that I was contacted by a cousin, Hans, from the Netherlands recently. He graciously shared digital copies of many family photographs of our mutual kin via email. I then in turn put together a heritage scrapbook album of the different photographs. I purchased a scrapbook at my local craft shop which I think has a bit of a European feel to it: For the first page, I included a sketch that Hans' father originally sent me back in 1989 showing the family lines. There are several surnames involved and even I have to refer back to it to figure out who is who at times. Then I proceeded to put each photo on a separate page using some unifying creative elements to pull the whole album together. I mounted each photo on a black mat

Stedum, Groningen, Netherlands