52 Ancestors, Week 8: I Can Identify

As I catch up on posting as part of Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks," the theme for Week 8 is "I can identify."

I only WISH I could identify...

• all the photos in a photo album that belonged to my paternal grandparents. Most of the photos have no names. Are they kin, or merely family friends? (Tip: BE SURE TO identify the people in your photos and videos.)
• the actual first name of my great-great-grandfather. Was he John Donley, John Donlon, John Patrick Donlon, or Patrick Donlon?
• the actual first name of John's wife. Was she Katherine Kelley or Margaret Kelley?
• the origin of another great-great grandfather, John Speed. He was from England, and DNA matches to his line seem to point toward an ancestry in Somerset. But John himself left no clues that I've found — yet.
• the origin of 3x great-grandfather Henry Herrick, a coach driver who lived in Washington, PA. He was from New York, and that's all I know. (By the way, Henry, it'd be nice to know when you died. I'm just saying.)
• whether Lydia Speed born in 1866 in Peoria County, Illinois, is the same Lydia who ran away from a girls' school in 1881, and whether they're both the same Lydia who married James Tucker in 1887 in Sangamon County, and who died in 1901 in Chicago.

That process — the investigation — is what I like about genealogy. Finding that little nugget, that "Aha!" moment, that discovery that leads to the genealogy happy dance when the pieces all slot into place. 

52 Ancestors, Week 7: Outcast

Week 7's theme for Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" is Outcast.

My great-grandmother Iowa Hale Speed had a brother, Landon, nicknamed Landy. Landy was named for Iowa's grandfather, Landon Ballinger. Censuses from 1870-1900 indicate that he could read and write, and was eligible to vote. All extant Iowa State Censuses that ask about education indicate the same. However, the answers for the 1910 census questions "Whether able to read" and "Whether able to write," are both "No." Landon was employed mostly as a teamster, and also hauled coal. He never married.

A cousin of my dad's told us that her father would visit Landon at the County Home, and staff had to take his shoes because otherwise he would run away. When Landon died in 1937, a secondary diagnosis was dementia praecox, today known as schizophrenia.

__________

My Polish maternal grandfather had a brother, Bronislaw, whose name was Americanized to Barney. Barney's World War II Draft Card shows him as age 38, unemployed. His penmanship is very poor as compared to his older siblings, so the penmanship does not appear to be related to the amount of education he received. He did not marry.

In a newspaper article from 1951, Barney appealed to the South Chicago Police to give him a bunk for the night. He testified that he had no home, and said "I have a few relatives, but they have their families to take care of." He stated that he used to stay at a mission on 92nd Street. Three years before, he was beaten up in a local park, and his kneecap was broken. He stated that since then, he's spent seven or eight months of every year at the County Hospital. 

Barney died in 1957 of a heart ailment. 

52 Ancestors, Week 6: Social Media

The theme of Week 6 of Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" is social media. I haven't found an ancestor on social media, but I did find a cousin. It was after posting to this blog (which I do VERY INFREQUENTLY) about my grandpa Herrick's first cousin Grant that several months later I was contacted by Grant's granddaughter, my third cousin Vicki. Vicki and I have met twice, and she showed me around my dad's birthplace — East Palestine, Ohio, which just a few weeks ago was the site of a major train derailment and toxic chemical leak.

The "52 Ancestors" theme can also encompass the social columns of our ancestor's newspapers. It was such a social tidbit that broke a brick wall on this line. The column mentioned that Mrs. C. P. Morgan went to East Palestine for a family funeral. Katherine Morgan (Vicki's great-grandmother) and Margaret Herrick McCabe (my great-grandmother) were sisters. While investigating whose funeral Kate attended, I found a surname of interest which then led to discovering Kate and Margaret's eldest brother, Robert Donlon — someone we'd not heard of before, although my father had told me about several of Margaret's other siblings.

So don't discount those social columns. By compiling and analyzing the social items pertaining to your  ancestor, you may be able to reconstruct a family unit that had been unknown to you.