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.

52 Ancestors, Week 1: I'd Like to Meet...

For the past few years, my friend Amy Johnson Crow has featured a writing prompt called "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks." I've been bad about writing and blogging regularly (all you have to do is look at the dates of my previous posts, LOL!). This is the year I actually stick to it. I'm not getting off to a promising start, though - Amy's already posted prompts for Week 3, and here I am, blogging for Week 1. Oh well!

Week 1's prompt is "I'd like to meet..."  I’d like to have met my great-grandmother, Margaret Donley Herrick McCabe. Born in England, she and her family came to the US in the early 1880s.  She died in 1950, six years before I was born. So, I think I'll ask Maggie as if she were still here.

Margaret Donley
Herrick McCabe

• Did your family all immigrate to the U.S. together? Or did some of you arrive first, and the others followed? When and from where did you arrive in the U.S.?
• It appears that your family lived in Iowa in 1885. How did you wind up in PA in 1893? Where did the other family members go?
• How did you meet Harry Herrick? He had been in Texas, and returned to Washington, Pennsylvania sometime around the death of his grandmother Jane. Was it a love match? A one-night stand? 
• When and why did you and Harry split? Did you formally divorce? (I hope so, because you later married Robert McCabe, so...) When and where did you and Harry divorce? Did you ever have contact with him again? When did you divorce McCabe (or did you)?
• Was Julia Donley a sister of yours? If so, why do I not find any connection between her and her siblings?
• Most importantly, who were your parents — John Donley and Katherine Kelley? Or Patrick Donley and Margaret Kelley?

So many questions; so few answers. Maggie, why did you use Donley, but your eldest brother Robert used Donlon? Speaking of Robert, why did my dad hear from his dad — your son — about various family members, but not a peep did Dad mention a Robert? Heck, Maggie, Robert even lived in East Palestine, Ohio, the town in which Dad was born. 

I'd love to know the answers to the most mundane questions. Did you speak with a British accent? What were your favorite foods? What kind of mother were you: the soft, nurturing kind? A hard-as-nails badass? What made you decide to leave Iowa behind and come to Chicago? What (or who) was here for you?

DNA and genealogical research will help answer some questions, but there will be others that go unanswered forever, and that's a shame.

Well, it's obvious that I haven't been blogging! I refuse to feel guilty; after all, that's why this blog is named as it is. I've been helping with some local Civil War research, doing some Unclaimed Persons stuff, finishing an Indiana Genealogical Society newsletter, preparing blog posts for FGS 2013 as part of the local publicity committee; creating and teaching Library Education Unit classes for library staff, doing a few presentations, and other matters.

On the research front in the past year, I was surprised to find Dad's great-aunt Kate (Katherine/Kathryn? Donelly Morgan) buried in East Palestine, Ohio (thank you, Find A Grave!). Dad was born there; his parents moved there to find work at the behest of Kate's son, Grant Morgan, who was Grandpa Charlie Herrick's cousin and best friend, and who is also buried in EP. So I don't know why it should surprise me to find Kate and Grant there, but it did. I don't know if Dad's family kept track of Kate in later years. 

Finding that helped lead to other records showing that Kate seemed to be married to Thomas Morgan. Grant is listed in various records as Thomas G. and Grant T... after his father, apparently. I'm guessing Kate & Thomas divorced, since I think Thomas appears in later censuses, while Dad knew Kate's husb (friend? Significant Other?) Louis/Lewis Henderson as "Uncle Lou." (Um, okay, was Kate the one who ate her dessert first, or the one who drove all the way from Chicago to Ohio, but didn't know how to back up? Or maybe she was both of them. The stories are mixing in my head.)

I may have even found g-gm Maggie and Kate's other sister, whom Dad called "Aunt Mary Liz" Bishop. Seems as though Mary Donelly married an Edward Curtis in Rock Island Co., IL, and had at least 2 children (daughters). I don't know what happened to Edward, but Mary later marries Rankin Bishop and they reside in Iowa with the Curtis girls. All this, of course, needs documentation, etc. I found the online stuff but of course have not gotten around to the nitty-gritty of documenting, charting, etc. because my name is Linda and I am a procrastinator. Still, it's further ahead than I was at this time last year, for which I'm grateful.