It has been a busy winter.

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Pat Shaul

What can I say? I have been overwhelmed with researching my two big projects [“Who Was Warham Lee?” and “Hotchkiss, Lee, Munn, Tilden and Other Related Families”] and tracing my DNA matches to see how we really connect. Of the almost 200 matches that I have decided to research (out of 73,433 total “cousins”), I have proved 67, and classed 10 as being too distant to process at this time.

I have been spending a great deal of my energy reading old books (thank you HathiTrust!), census records, and my new favorite, obituaries. To paraphrase Dr. Deborah Abbott, when you are trying to find someone, hope they are dead because they leave more documents. I do ignore posted pedigrees for anything other than potential directions to research. So, each match research starts with what they might have posted or what Thru Lines might have guessed and then I start the hours of research to see if there are acceptible documentation to get from our most recent common ancestor to them. Many of the efforts requires going back to my 4th great grandparents and expanding their descendants and then then aunts, uncles, and cousins. Sometimes, I get to the point of being able to ascertain the match is the child of one of their grandparents’ children but there the line breaks. Time to send a message and hope they reply. I have a fairly normal rate of replies (that means whenever one comes in, I am surprised and ecstatic to see how it helps link us together).

It does not help that NEHGS keeps tempting me with new books. Early New England Families (vol 1 & 2) by Alicia Crane Williams is now on my bookshelf. AND The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England 1636-1638, Volume 1 was just released! Now to rearrange to bookshelves to add this next sequence (of course, first going through the index to see who in my line makes an appearance).

OK, and it does not help that Elizabeth Shown Mills has just released the Fourth Edition of Evidence Explained! I am reading Chapter 1 now to get an idea of the impact on my previous work.

It is really a good thing I do not have to go to a job. My days are quite full!

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Going back to review

Posted on December 8, 2023 by Pat Shaul

I was working on my Who Was Warham Lee? reseach, when I went back to the very beginning to review what I had as it reflected on what I now knew. Each item started a new revelation. The first map, the 1824 plat map of Farmington Twp, had the seller’s name on the plat for Warham Lee — looking up that on the Land Grant database, I found the original owner. But I also saw for the first time in the associated patents listing, that his neighbor was Solomon Walker. Solomon was the father of Warham’s future wife, Orasy. When Warham came to Farmington he was 32 years old and single. His neighbor, Soloman, had a much larger plot of land and a very large family. Four years after Warham arrived in Farmington, he and Orasy were married. I later found that Solomon was a Tavern owner on one of the main streets of the township. He was moving to a new location and abandoning his previous log building to the group of Methodists that had taken up meeting there.

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The details are in the details ….

Posted on December 2, 2023 by Pat Shaul

Evidence has been collected, logged, and flagged for the key pieces to zero back to cite. Now the real work begins, entering the information with the proper citation of where the information originated. Working on all four projects in rotation. I need to finish the Hotchkiss, Lee, … project next year for the 200th anniversary of the family coming to Oakland County, Michigan.

Well, maybe not all the evidence has been collected. As I get into the various sources, I find they have quoted other sources without full citation (i.e. volume, page number). So, I go back to hathitrust.org to see if the quoted source can be provided and download it if it is there. This has gotten deep in reference of reference levels when getting back to the Tilden Family for the Hotchkiss, Lee, … project.

I have recently purchased my own copy of The Great Migration Begins, Immigration to New England, 1620-1633, which I am finding more and more pages to bookmark. I was able to get a copy of the Genealogy of Some Descendants of Edward Fuller of the Mayflower on Hathi Trust, but the scanning was poorly done and many pages are unreadable. So, on to the “Zon”! I expect a copy of the book by the end of the day tomorrow — I am hopeful that Amazon has a better page source for the book. If not, Mr. Bezos will be getting a return.

Now that winter is coming (we have had two minor snowfalls); I hope to stay on task due to rotten weather.

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And now the WORK begins ….

Posted on September 10, 2023 by Pat Shaul

Having spent a great deal of time and effort on researching the Hotchkiss, Lee, Munn, Tilden and Other Related Families manuscript, it is time to begin the actual merging of information. It took almost 4 months of research and reading the details of the manuscript, which was not signed, to identify the author as Frank L. Lee, my first cousin, three times removed.

In reading through and transcribing the manuscript, I found numerous citations for various facts and event assertions. Each of these needed to be verified and the actual citation entered where a summarization by cousin Frank may have not quite told the whole story.

I happen to own a number of the volumes sitting on my bookshelves that were cited in the manuscript that was written in the 1930s. These were the easiest to look up, verify, and add to the original if applicable.

Then there were the other volumes that were available in the 1930s that I had not acquired. As I have reported in previous entries, Haithi Trust, Google Books, and Archives.org are my new best friends. After all, the works available in the early 1930s are pretty much no longer under copyright and can be found on one or more of those sites.

Then, there was the assertion that Israel Waters was the father of Ezekiah Waters with the statement following that Frank could find no real evidence to back up that theory. This led to a special project to find the father of Hezekiah – be it Israel or another Waters male. That endeavor, which took a number of months, provided a reason that Frank could not find evidence for Israel Waters being the father of Hezekiah; it was Jacob Waters. There were a number of Israel Waters males found in my research. In fact, one of them was Hezekiah’s half-brother.

Now add the other items I found while searching for the citations in the original manuscript. I now have 135 different sources to add to the story started by my cousin almost 90 years ago.

Frank’s story goes much farther than he was able to construct in the 1930s. I have traced one of his Waters lines back to the Mayflower, and another to the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States in 1876 (Samuel J. Tilden), Benjamin Hayes won.

At least most of the 135 sources are printed and not in Cousin Frank’s handwriting as the original manuscript.

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The learning continues …

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Pat Shaul

I was so gratified when I found the sources referenced in the transcription that I and currently immersed in completing either in my personal library or by searching haithitrust.org. Then I ran into a number of sources that I could not find no matter how I reworked the search on Haithi Trust. I attended an online webinar at Legacy Family Tree on sources for Canadian research and the recommendation for internetarchive.org as a source was listed. Oh, ya, I remember that site. I might just go and look,

Jackpot! The missing references were found. And then there were the references that were contained in the references. I have been able to find them as well. I would rather cite a source directly rather than the citation of information on one source that says it came from another. Need to lessen the times it could have been copied or interpreted.

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A new acquisition for my library

Posted on July 23, 2023 by Pat Shaul

Biographies of Original Members and Qualifying Officers – Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut, J. Michael Phelps, ed. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, 2023.

This is a three-volume set. The Society of the Cincinnati was formed by officers who fought in the American Revolutionary War and its membership. The table of contents (vol 1) is eight pages long, double columns, listing those persons for whom a biography has been completed. The first page number referenced is 1, the last is 2548. I plan to spend time just going through the table of contents looking for familiar surnames and then going back and reading each of the biographies to see if I can find any familial connection.

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You never know what you will find

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Pat Shaul

I was killing time after researching on HaithiTrust for a couple of projects when I just decided to just look what I could find on some of my wife’s family names. I looked for Beggs, her grandmother’s surname and found the usual Book O’Beggs and Pages from the Early History of the West and North-West by Rev. S. R. Beggs (my wife’s first cousin, 4 times removed). Then I saw The Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco, California, Model Study of Tower, September 13, 1933, by George E Beggs, my wife’s Grand-Uncle, who happened to be the head of the Structural Engineering Department at Princeton University. We knew he had done the study and it was the results of the study that gave to go-ahead on the project, but to find the actual report!

OK, we did buy the model of the actual test model that was used in the study (Margie standing next to the Test Model).

And, yes, Uncle George was at Princeton with that other famous guy, Albert Einstein.

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Where’s Baltzer Koontz?

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Pat Shaul

My grandmother defined the structure of her Koontz lineage from her father, C.P., to her grandfather, Ezra Peter, to her great-grandfather Peter who married Gertrude Derr.

Well, I have since found that GGGG Grandfather Peter Koontz may have been called Peter, but all of the documents, including the marriage records have his name as Baltzer Koontz. His son, Ezra Peter, has noted on his death certificate that his parents were Baltzer Koontz and Elizabeth Derr.

OK, so switch the search from Peter Koontz to Baltzer Koontz – it should have been easier with a name like Baltzer. Baltzar and Gertrude were married in Stark County, Ohio. So, how many Baltzar Koontz men could there be in Stark County, Ohio? So far, I have identified 3 more besides my ancestor with that name. Tracing through each of them has taken a lot of time. And they all are either too young, too old, or dead. So, Where are you Grandfather Baltzer (or Balthazar or Johann Balthazar or Peter Baltzer)?

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The devil is in the details

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Pat Shaul

I was busy working on the Hotchkiss, Lee, Munn, Tilden project today, copying the text information into my database and proofreading the earlier information that I had recorded. I got to a part of the text where the author listed the children of Reuben Lee and Lois Hall. At the end of the list, he added “(I think the above list more authentic coming by way of Aunt Mary Eggleston Lee). So I had to figure out who Aunt Mary was and what was the connection to the author. I found her death certificate and she was the daughter of Sarah Lee and Joseph Engliston. Mary would have been the author’s first cousin, twice removed, but probably called Aunt.

THEN, there was a signature after the comment – F Lee! Well, I had pegged Henry Waters Lee as the probable author of the manuscript and it now looks to be his brother Frank L. Lee (1860-1936). What a surprise and what a great discovery.

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Another great story found.

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Pat Shaul

While wandering back through my Munn line that I was updating from an 1914 text, I was looking at my 7 timed great-grandfather, Benjamin Munn (1683-1774) and found reference to his wife, my 7 times great-grandmother, Thankful Nims and her father Godfrey Nims. Well, how fast could I open another browser window and check HathiTrust for any mentions of Godfrey Nims (my 8 times great-grandfather)? As usual HathiTrust came through with a 1914 document titled “The Story of Godfrey Nims” as read to The Nims Family Association at Deerfield, Massachusetts on August 13, 1914. I downloaded the entire work and began to read all of the conjectures cover — stories by this member of the family; matching stories by another member of the family, conflicting facts presented all around.

So, I had no choice but to drop everything and research this bright shiny object. I was very lucky to find documented sources for filling out the essentials of Godfrey’s family beyond just his daughter, Thankful. I was able to pin down both of Godfrey’s wives and his first wife (my ancestor) and her 2 husbands, and their shared 5 children. I was able to add one generation to Mary Miller (his first wife, he was her second husband and 5 of her siblings.

Now, I will put the salt shaker next to me as I re-read The Story of Godfrey Nims and see what might be worth keeping.

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