Wisteria

General Register, Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, 1876 After finding out that one of my children’s ancestor’s was a patient in the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital , I wrote to request records from the Ontario Archives in my daughter's name.  After a few weeks, we received a reply with photocopies of pertinent records. The bulk of the information received from the Ontario Archives includes letters written by Eliud’s relatives in Thorold including his wife, brother and mother. I have worked to piece together information from these records to relate the story of this ancestor. In addition, I recently read Annie’s Ghost by Steve Luxenberg which also helped me understand how persons with mental illness were treated in the past. At age 39, Eliud Smith, a married farmer of Thorold, Ontario, Canada was charged with being insane and a warrant was ordered to commit him from the Gaol of the County of Welland to the Hamilton Asylum for the Insane, some 33 miles away. The certificate w...

Kornelis Bolhuis & probably Hilje Vos, his third wife I wrote in My Dutch Heritage , that according to kin related to the Timmer family in the Netherlands, Kornelis Bolhuis advised his children to leave Europe and emigrate to America. All but the oldest daughter did so.  Family here in America stated that after the marriage of my great-grandparents, Martha Bolhuis and John Timmer, in 1906, they emigrated to the United States for their honeymoon with Martha's brother and sisters.  John Timmer, 1906 original cdv photo owned by Dawn Westfall A check of the online Ellis Island records showed that John and Martha arrived in America on 5 June 1906 on the ship called Ryndam, from the town of Stedum in the Netherlands. Martha's brother Gerrit Bolhuis and sister Johanna Bolhuis were also listed on the ship's manifest. A record of Winnie's immigration was not readily located, either by her maiden name or married name. The 1930 Census for Georgetown Township in ...

When it comes to my father’s side of the family, I’ve always told people that no one went past the Mason-Dixon line. They were all Southern as Southern can be, mainly in Virginia and Kentucky, especially the Watts family. So it’s somewhat ironic to me that I ended up marrying a man from the North and eventually settling there to raise my family. The Watts family originated in Halifax County, Virginia and there was mention of the surname as far back as the formation of the county in 1752. And that’s basically where I’m stuck on that particular line. I traced all the Wattses in that county back to one progenitor, Samuel Watts, who first bought land there in 1775. I speculate from tax records that he was born about 1738. I descend from his eldest son Thomas M. Watts who was born about 1765. I know nothing of Samuel’s origins, other than he might be English. Of course that far back, he had to come from somewhere unless he was Native American, which does not appear to be the ...

BadIndians: a Tribal Memoir 2013 by Deborah A. Miranda Paperback, 6 x 9, 240 pagesISBN: 978-1-59714-201-4 Author Deborah Miranda writes in the introduction to this book: “Human beings have no other way of knowing that we exist, or what we have survived, except through the vehicle of story.” She also states, “My ancestors, collectively, are the story-bridge that allows me to be here. I am honored to be one of the bridges back to them, to their words and experiences.” I love how Deborah Miranda has taken all the pieces she has of her family history and woven them together in this story. Using old government documents, BIA forms, field notes, diaries of explorers and priests, photographs, family stories and genealogy work her mother had done, she created a beautiful tribute to her ancestors and allowed their voices to be heard along with her own voice in the form of poems and commentary that are insightful and moving. It’s not always pretty and some parts may be distu...

"...of all the nostalgias that haunt the human heart, the greatest of them all is an everlasting longing to bring what is youngest home to what is oldest."                                                               ---Laurens van der Post

I wrote so much about the encounter with a group of old photo albums in my last post that I didn’t have time to discuss the photo project I started working on. In light of how those old photo albums were treated, I took another look at more recent family photo artifacts. My children’s paternal great-grandmother passed away in 2001. Like with my grandparents, during visits I would often sit with Granny Westfall and go through her photo albums and quiz her about family history. After her death, one of her sons lent me her albums to go through. There’s about six or seven old “magnetic” photo albums that are filled with snapshots and other photographs mostly of her children and their children. She had ten children altogether and most of them went on to rear families so she had a lot of descendants. I was touched to see in one album where she carefully added the first photograph of my oldest child along with the birth announcement I sent to her. In a few places, some photos had a...

Are you a stranger without even a name, Enclosed and forgotten behind the glass frame, In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame? -- Eric Bogie Once when I was a child, I laid down my mother’s long wardrobe mirror on the floor and stared into it to find another world. The ceiling was the floor in this world and everything was a mirror image of reality. I so wanted to step into that world and explore the odd dimensions of it. To me, old photographs are also like staring into another world, they are a window to the past. I’ve written before about old photographs and my work with them. They played a prominent role early on in my family history quest. I would sit down with a box of old photographs and quiz my grandfather on each of the images. He was in his 90s at the time. I remember showing one photograph of a gentleman and his family to my grandfather and having him lean in close and whispered, “He was a bastard.”...

I have a dilemma. I don’t have time to keep this blog fresh. It’s dear to my heart, though, and I don’t want to abandon it forever. It’s just that life is so daily right now and I have to reserve time for the living. I anticipate that I won’t always be this busy, but for the foreseeable future, probably. My children are in their late teens/early adult years and well, that takes up a lot of my time. I can see myself working on getting them launched for the next 5+ years. Add to that a somewhat demanding day job and other outside obligations and here I am posting some five months after my last one. But sometimes I still have some great ideas for blog posts. And I’m always one binder away from delving into the pastime of family history. It’s just that my time for such things does not stretch for days on end as it once did. Instead I can only snatch minutes here and there, sometimes longer stretches, but the time in between when I can’t fit it in at all can turn into a span ...

Census, senses. I wrote a quick post after a quick look at a census a little while ago (see  Workday Wednesday: Doll house work in the 1880s? ).  But I jumped to the wrong conclusions. As reader Wendy pointed out in her comment, it doesn’t say “doll house work”, it says “does house work”.  I went back to do a little more research after the post and noted that there were about five women between the ages of 17 and 73 on that page and the next that appeared to have the same occupation but I still misunderstood what it said. There were other entries where women were noted to be “keeping house” so I assumed that these five women were doing something else. In these instances, though, the women that “did housework” as opposed to “keeping house” were not the primary women of the household nor were any of them the wife of the head of household.  I made a chart in OneNote showing this: House #257 Fanny Maxson, age 22, married but living with her fath...

I checked out the most recent daily blogging prompts from GeneaBloggers and found some new ones to work with. I was particularly excited about Sibling Saturday and noted the relevance of it for what’s going on in my life right now. I am visiting my sister in Michigan to help with family events going on right now. For one, my great-nephew (my sister’s grandson) just welcomed his new baby brother into the world on Tuesday. He is enamored with him and doesn’t want to go anywhere without "his baby." His parents are very happy that this five-year-old is so taken with his new sibling and shows no jealousy at all. (I say props to the parents for doing a nice job of being mindful in the raising of their children). Last year, my sister had my mother and my brother move in her to help care for them. My mother had a stroke some 20+ years ago. She successfully lived on her own for a number of years, but her strength no longer allows her to live without assistance. My brother ha...

1880 Census, Portville, Cattaraugus Co, NY I mentioned in a previous blog post about my other hobby of miniatures and dollhouses. I recently ran across an unusual occupation in the 1880 census while doing some work for a client (although genealogy is just a hobby/avocation, I sometimes take on client projects as time permits). As shown above (although I apologize as this is not the greatest image to share), Fanny Maxson’s occupation was listed as that of “Dollhouse work” in the 1880 U.S. Census. I have never run across an occupation such as this before. My first thought was that maybe she did not function intellectually at her stated age (and therefore did not do real housework, only played with dolls). On second thought, though, it appears that she was married since she has a different surname than that of her father with whom she was living. I am unsure at this point, more research is needed. Unfortunately, this was not the correct family I was looking for and will have to...

This photograph is labeled D-3 from my photograph collection. The complete case measures approximately 1 ½ x 1 ½ inches in size. The hook that keeps the case closed is missing. The left side of the case is lined with red velvet. The right side houses a small tintype. The inside mat has flowers with six long petals in each corner and the same vine all around. The outer mat has oval cameo shapes in each corner. The subject is a young man in Union military dress wearing a cap and a jacket. The Union uniform is different from the Confederate uniform shown here at this blog post . There are five or six large buttons down the front of the jacket and possible markings on the shoulder although it is hard to distinguish. There may also be a belt buckle showing just under the last button. His hands are not visible. There is a thumbprint on the left-hand side of the photograph. I assume it is from the photographer when it was developed. The subject is young and looks clean-shaven unless the...

In continuation of my photograph sorting project : I mentioned this photograph which I have labeled D-1 from my collection in this post .  As I said, the case in which this image is housed is identical to D-2. The one detail I did not mention was size: the case is approximately 3 inches x 3 inches in size. (Rinhart’s description of this same case gives a measurement of 3 5/8” x 3 1/8”.) The mat for this image is different from D-2. This metal matting is called a “nonpareil” mat with paisley shapes in the corners. The outside metal matting has stars in each corner and four in each mid-section. Ambrotype ca. 1865 To help you understand all the parts of cased images, it might be helpful to view this Youtube video by the Minnesota Historical Society in which actual cased images (daguerreotypes and tintypes in this example) are pulled apart and viewed in detail. This video, by photo curator Diane Adams-Graf, is just over three minutes in length.  See also my ...