Wisteria

Pictured above is little George Seibert when he was about three months old. Below that is one of his birth announcements and the envelope it came in addressed to a family member. George Marcellous Seibert was born 12 February 1916 to Herbert Seibert and his wife Mary Rowlee. Mary was the daughter of George Rowlee and Mary Carr. The family lived in various places including Ellicottville, NY, Washington, PA, Bridgeport, IL and Ft. Worth, TX. Notice the pink ribbon? Believe it or not, pink was the color for boys back in the day! Yep, start here for information on when girls started wearing pink in an article by Smithsonian . There's also a nice photo gallery at this website. Wikipedia's article on the color pink mentions that pink was "first established as a female gender identifier in the 1940s" and points to a publication from June 1918 stating "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls." Both articles make reference to aut...

אֶבֶן  הָעֶזֶר (The word Ebenezer in Hebrew characters) A while back, I was exchanging information with a fellow researcher on the Neamon family. This researcher related that John Henry Neamon immigrated to the United States from Germany in the year 1870 and settled in Ebenezer, New York. It was also said that he had a brother there. John Henry later moved to the town of Yorkshire in Cattaraugus County. I did an internet search for “Ebenezer, New York” to see what I could find out where it was. To my surprise, I found that it was in Erie County near the town of West Seneca. The word Ebenezer, by the way, is Hebrew for “stone of help.” According to http://www.westseneca.com/history.html over eight hundred Germans, known as the Community of True Inspiration (or Ebenezers), immigrated to America between April 1843 and October 1845. They purchased 5,000 acres of the Buffalo Creek Reservation (vacated by Indians) at $10.50 an acre. These immigrants established four ...

Back in September of last year, I had the opportunity to tour a cemetery. I even had to buy tickets for this. I was very excited, but realize that not everyone would jump at such a chance. I bought two tickets but wound up selling one to someone else the day of the tour because I couldn’t find any family or friends as eager as I was to take this trip. (I do know there are other genealogists and history buffs out there that would have been as enthusiastic about it as I was.) Forest Lawn Cemetery  is a fascinating historical place. The cemetery occupies over 250 acres (I walked about three miles total on the tour but didn’t see everything) and contains the remains of some historical and noteworthy individuals such as President Millard Fillmore, Dorothy Goetz the first wife of Irving Berlin , Rick James, and Barbara Franklin the mother of singer Aretha Franklin . I took a lot of photographs of various stones, monuments and mausoleums. I even got the chance to see some...

The topic for the next Carnival of Genealogy is  Business and Commerce and here is my contribution:  This is a sign outside my grandfather’s home in about the year 1957 advertising him as a contractor and builder in Michigan. Although not every family member over the generations did the same, nonetheless, the earliest known progenitor in the Timmer family, Luitje Jans Timmer was listed as a carpenter on the birth record of his son Jan Luitjes Timmer in 1814. Jan was born in Sint Annen (Ten Boer), Groningen, Netherlands. Jan’s son Hendrik was the father of John (Johannes) Timmer, my grandfather’s father. My grandmother told me that the name Timmer means “hammer” in Dutch, but I've seen the translation is actually carpenter. It was about the year 1811 when the Dutch were required to register a family surname (see my post here about Dutch naming customs ). Perhaps it was Luitje Jans who decided to use Timmer for a surname to signify his occupation. Some of my earliest...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/normanbleventhalmapcenter/3856492622/ Being from the United States with Dutch ancestry, I was delighted to find a blogger from the Netherlands ( Peter's Blog )  via Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings blog a while back. It reminded me of the time I had a project that went global in the early days of computer-assisted genealogy research. I had been working on my family line of Kiel and gotten back to Harm Hendrik Kiel (1808-1891) and his wife Hendericka J. Siegers. I did this the “old-fashioned” way by requesting copies of death certificates and researching cemetery records on-site. (See my post here about my cemetery research on the Kiel family). In 1997, I got in touch with a gentleman via an internet posting on rootsweb.com. I lived in Florida at the time and he lived in California, clear on the other side of the coast. We corresponded several times by email as he was also descended from a Kiel family of Grand Rapids, MI. Although I felt it...

Carla, of sassygenealogist , published a post on her four sets of great-grandparents which consist of her eight primary surnames she searches for, entitled "My Eight Great Surprises" . The surprise was that she found out she was not as  "Southern" as she thought. It prompted me to think of my eight surnames and where they came from. They would be: Watts, Spencer, Hardy, Lovelace, Timmer, Bolhuis, Katsma and Kiel. Half are firmly Dutch as my mother was the second or third generation from the Netherlands. Her grandparents on her father's side came over on their honeymoon. Her Kiel family was here a generation earlier. The Watts and Hardy lines are firmly entrenched in Virginia clear back to the 1700s and likely English before that. The Lovelace line (also of English origin) can be traced from Kentucky back to North Carolina and then up to Maryland, but still not past the Mason Dixon line. The Spencer line is my most elusive after twenty years. While I can...

From the Muskegon Chronicle photo files I am visiting my mother and sister in the Muskegon, MI area this week. My mother grew up in Grand Rapids, MI and told us stories about how as children, she and her brother would go with their parents on the Milwaukee Clipper from Muskegon to Milwaukee. She remembers most clearly running around playing on the deck of the ship. She said they went everywhere on the ship and it was great fun. My sister mentioned that the Milwaukee Clipper was open as a museum now in downtown Muskegon, so her and I rounded up my daughters and our mother and headed over there yesterday afternoon. My mother is in a wheelchair and wasn't able to run around on any of the decks this time. Instead she explored the museum store and watched the video which included actual footage from back in the day when the Clipper was still in commission. She was hoping to see someone she knew, but didn't recognize anyone. The girls and I took the actual tour up and down th...

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 La...

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 a...

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

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, ...

Originally published in the Ellicottville Post, May 1926

I wrote the following six years ago after a local Memorial Day celebration that my children and I participated in: In Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul, he writes that our goal should be "a richly elaborated life connected to society ... woven into the culture of family, nation and globe ... profoundly connected in the heart to ancestors and to living brothers and sisters in all the many communities that claim our hearts." The Memorial Day celebration this past Monday presented just such an opportunity to be connected. As a history lover, I often have viewed myself as a bridge between the past of my ancestors and the future of my children. In my role as bridge, I've nurtured the children in activities that allow them to participate in community events such as the local parade. And so there I was watching the future walk down Main Street. But before they got too far, we stopped at the town gazebo where the local American Legion Post Commander talked o...

Stedum, Groningen, Netherlands Hendrik Timmer born 27 August 1845, died 7 May 1899.  His wife Frouke Westerhof born 2 August 1840, died 19 November 1909.

I ran across a new book at my local library a few weeks ago. It’s an anthology entitled Women Writing On Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing . It’s edited by Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland and published by The Key Publishing House, Inc. of Toronto, Canada ( www.thekeypublish.com ). There are fifty-five chapters in eight parts including Personal and Legal Issues about Family Topics; Making the Most of Your Family Experience; Exploring Family in a Variety of Genres; and Publishing, Marketing & Promoting. In the introduction, the editors quote a Proust passage from The Remembrance of Things Past which says: “When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.” The editors remark that for many women, their memory essentially is thro...

"Index cards with names of people from the opposition" from the Netherlands Archives  I promised to write more about my Netherlands cousin who was a member of the Dutch Resistance Movement during WWII. Harm Molenkamp was the oldest child and only son of Jan Molenkamp and Frouke Olthof (Frouke’s mother was Jantje Timmer, my great-grandfather’s sister).  Harm had two sisters, Siep and Jantje. As mentioned in my previous post about the subject , I first heard about cousin Harm from another cousin who lived in the Netherlands about twenty years ago but we lost track of each other. I didn’t get much information to begin with. I’ve always been curious to learn more and have been fascinated to have such a close tie to the historical events that took place during that time. I included the photocopy of the photo I have of Harm when I did a photo history presentation for one of my daughter’s classes a few years ago. For the presentation, I started with a tintype photograph fro...

Back in 1989, I sent my aunt and uncle a letter to inquire about what they knew about our Timmer family, who had came to the U.S. from the Netherlands. The story (which was true) was that my great-grandparents, John and Martha (Bolhuis) Timmer came over in 1906 on their honeymoon and never went back. Aunt Jeannette was gracious enough to send me what they had and also provided me with the name of a family friend who lived in the Netherlands. Aunt Jeanette and Uncle Fred (John and Martha's youngest son) had taken a trip to the Netherlands around 1980 and shared with me some postcards from the province of Groningen where she said the Timmers came from among other tidbits of information and some photographs. I explored the world of international postage and return replies and wrote to this family friend. It turns out he was part of a family that one of my great-grandfather's aunts had married into. He, in turn, gave me the name and address of the daughter of my great-grandfather...

In keeping up with my O’Brien research I’ve been posting lately, the will of Delia Lyons certainly yielded a treasure trove of information on her family. I suspect that Daniel O'Brien's wife, Teresa, was Bridget’s sister, who apparently had died by the time Delia wrote her will in Humphrey, Cattaraugus County, New York on 29 January 1879. (If this is indeed the case, this narrows Teresa’s death to the year 1878.) This is based on the fact that Daniel O’Brien was not listed as an heir in Delia’s probate records but his son William O’Brien was listed as her nephew. The 1893 Cattaraugus county history indicates that Teresa’s maiden name was Devereux. Delia/Bridget gave her husband Peter her “farm of 45 acres” in the town of Humphrey. Other heirs named included her sister Jane Edwards (age 62) of the town of Moate, County Westmeath, Ireland and her sister Mary King (age 74) of Humphrey, New York. Also named as next of kin (no relationship stated unless otherwise noted) were Joh...