Sunday, February 24, 2013

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Wee! Here was the mission:
1) What year was one of your great-grandfathers born?  Divide this number by 100 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."
2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel" - your software will create this - use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information?
3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."
4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.
5) NOTE:  If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then "spin" the wheel again - pick a great-grandmother, a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!

MY RESULTS:
No matter which great-grandfather I picked, I ended up with the same result, 19 so I'm settling on Ole E. Simpson, my mother's grandfather. He was born in in 1880 in North Branch, Jewell Co. Kansas and died Mar 21 1946 in Des Moines, Polk Co Iowa.  He was a Latherer by trade (installed lath, small strips of wood that made the walls back then).

The number 19 comes back to my cousin Carol Jae (Heggen) Patterson.

Carol is a couple years younger than me.  I always remember her as the straight woman for her older sister's jokes.  She has 5 beautiful children. Most of those have given her beautiful grandchildren.  Carol and her husband Joe follow in the time honored tradition of being farmers.  They work hard at both the farm and in their family showing their love for each other.  Carol is not on the computer much.  As far as I know, she doesn't use facebook, twitter or anything other than email. She uses email rarely. She is a rare breed.  2 of her 3 daughters are very active on facebook and if it wasn't for them, I would have no clue as to what was going on in this branch of the family. The boy's have their wives who do the posting. It is a fun branch having little ones in it.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Time Lines and Jobs.

Since I last posted, I have little time to do genealogy research.  I had to spend 2 long weeks in my home town working, and did not have internet at my mom's place.  One of the good things that came out of the trip was setting up my father-in-law with an Ancestry account. I had been using Ancestry at the public library with some success, but now at home, with my other research tools and my own computer, I have made great strides.  I finally began a spread sheet time line of all the census, city directory, and misc. information from the internet that I had been saving on my laptop.

When listed on a census or in a city directory, I have collected the type of job an ancestor had. Where a job name repeats, it is for a different person, except in the shoe department.  The progression from works in a shoe shop to being a propriter is for one person.  Dates on this range from 1842 to 1940 and covers 4 generatons.

Constable, Collector
Farmer
Town Clerk
farm Laborer
laborer
Works in shoe shop
Shoe Maker
Cooper
Soliciting Agt
Police
Road Supervisor
Plasterer
Latherer
Shoe Salesman
Clerk Hardware
Book Keeper
Roper dry goods
Supt
Custodian - City Gun Club
Policeman
Carpenter
Latherer
Manager Postal ?
Nurse
Traveling Salesman
Sales Lady Postal ?
Doctor
Sheet metal worker
Salesman Lumber comp.
Draftsman
Nurse
Fireman for electric co.
Propriter Shoe Repair
Delivery Man Dairy