WWI Our Boys Join

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WWI Our Boys Join

The Hames brothers Winter's Baker, Thomas Lafayette, William Edward, John Freeman and Leo Bates all got their draft notice from Uncle Sam. Winters Baker, Thomas Lafayette and John Freeman all joined the Army and served overseas in France.  The other two brothers did not actively serve, but were involved on the home front. 

This war, grew to such a proportion, it caused world wide attention and loss.  So many countries got involved in small and large ways. Europe, which was already hurting, was even more decimated in the fighting.  When Germany tried to get Mexico involved in a pact, the United States of America got involved.  It was this call for service that drew the Hames family into the fray.

John Freeman, my grandfather, told story after story of his adventures.  I realize now that he tempered every story to be fit for little girls to hear.  He told stories of his service to his Colonel. He drove the motorcycle with the side car transporting the Colonel back and forth to the battlefields and temporary headquarters.  He did not tell us the details about the battles he saw, the lives lost and the men he knew who perished.  The only way we know of his loss was the sadness in his eyes when he told of those boys lost in battle.

Were they proud of their service?  Did they regret going? I never heard either Thomas [Uncle Tom to us] or John Freeman [Pop to us] say anything other than their pride in being able to serve their country.  Uncle Winters Baker died before I got to know him.  He did leave photos and memories of his service for his family to peruse.

We their descendants are proud of their sacrifices.  The willingness to put others first, to step up to the needs of a nation and be willing to give all. How can we be anything else but honored to have them in our family.

 

The England-to-America Harrison Mix-ups

We have one of those England to America Harrison families.  They seem to name their children the same also. You know those John, Thomas, Isaiah, Samuel kind of names.

My line immigrated to the Virginia colonies in 1636-1640 time frame.  We find him in the Ancestry U.S. and Canada Passenger and Immigration lists index.  His children were there and later my line migrated to North Carolina then Mississippi, Arkansas and Florida.

There is also another Harrison line who migrated at the same time. They came to New England and made an oath of allegiance in New Haven, Connecticut in 1644. The son that keeps getting mixed up with my line is a Thomas Harrison born in Chester, England about 1630 and died in Banford, Connecticut in 1704.  His line stayed there for several generations.
Ancestry  link to the "Five Generations to the Connecticut Harrisons".

My line is:

• Thomas Harrison born 1619 in Chester, Cheshire, England
• Migrated to America 1636-1640 to the Virginia colonies 
• He is a Reverend who was in Jamestown, Virginia about 1640. 
• He was a minister of Elizabeth River parish. 
• He served as chaplain of the early Jamestown Colony during the first part of Governor Berkeley's first term (1645-1652).
• He was at first anti Puritan Calvinist, then turned Pilgrim himself.
• He had some issues with the whole way of ministering, so in 1648, abandoned his ministry and the church and moved from Virginia to New England.
• He married first wife Dorothy Symonds 1648-49.
• In 1649 he and his family returned to England to pastor  a non-conformist church in London.
• He ended up in Ireland and ministered there.
• After his first wife died, he married 2nd, Katherine Bradshaw.
• He died there in 1682.
• Our line is from his son Isaiah Harrison born about 1666 in Chester, England.
• Isaiah migrated to America just before 1687, as he is recorded in the Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, book "B" ancient town book. 
• (Hood, Dellman, The Tunis Hood Family; pp 453-455)
• (Harrison, J. Houston, Settlers by the Long Grey Trail; Chapter VIII, p. 120)

The two Harrison families seem to get mixed up often on Ancestry due to the names.

It took a while to search out the true path of our line.  When I saw trees saying Rev. Thomas Harrison died in Ireland, I was sure that could not be so.  After reading the text mentioned above with the explanations, it made sense.  I had forgotten that genealogy is a tree with many twisted branches.

For my own documentation, I am satisfied for now with the explanations and the careful research both Dellman Hood and J. Houston Harrison have done. When more information is discovered, this may very well change.

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We're Related App Findings Part 1

John Thomas Hames (right) with two cousins, circa 1880

Ancestry's We're Related App 

Is it a game to draw new genealogy hunters, 

or can it really answer some of those blocked walls?

We're Related App

Ancestry.com

It works on your cell phone or tablet only.  You can download for any device.  It is free.

You do have to have a family tree of some type uploaded to Ancestry.com for it to work, but you can also upload a tree for free too.  If you don't have a genealogy database program on your computer, like Family Tree Maker, Legacy, Herodis or other type, you can still make a tree for free from Ancestry's online database.

I have an extensive tree with over 40,000 individuals so figured I would at least find one match!  I also have one of the biggest requirements for the most hits, deep roots in New England and Virginia.  Because so many of our founding fathers lived in those two areas in the 1600-1700's, a lot of them intermarried.  Three of my main lines were in New England and Virginia in the 1600's.  The other main line came in the late 1700's.  This is why I have had so many connections to so many of the "famous" people found in the app.

So far I am related to the following people:

George Herbert Walker Bush--1/2 9th cousins We are from the first husband, he the second. Barker Line

Kurt Cobain-8th cousin 2x removed-Turner Line

Benedict Cumberbach-9th cousin 1 removed-Kneeland Line

Dakota Fanning-8th cousin 2x removed-Webb Line

Walt Disney-1/2 2nd cousin 2x removed-Whitney Line

Thomas Edison-1/2 7th cousin 2x removed-Freeman Line

Benjamin Franklin-2nd cousin 9x removed-Gibbs Line

Bill Gates-8th cousin 1x removed-Billings Line

Helen Keller-7th cousin 1x removed-Faunce Line

John Kerry-9th cousin-Cushman Line

Demi Lovato-8th cousin 1x removed-Frizzell Line

Abraham Lincoln-3rd cousin 5x removed-Harrison Line

Willie Nelson-7th cousin 1x removed-Mosely Line

Sarah Palin-8th cousin 1x removed-Gilbert Line

Elvis Presley-6th cousin 1x removed-Harrison Line

Zachary Taylor-5th cousin 5x removed-Allerton Line and Brewster Line (Pilgrims)

Henry David Thoreau-6th cousin 5x removed-Warren Line

William Rockafeller-7th cousin 3x removed-Harrison Line

Lucy Ware Webb Hayes-4th cousin 5x removed-Sanford Line

As you can see, highlighted in red, three of these people come from the same line.  Isaiah Harrison, Virginia in the colonial times.

By really digging into all sorts of data, books, vital records and also checking out family trees, Wickipedia and other historical websites, I am satisfied with the data.  I did not just say, "How cool, I am related to...!"  I actually took the time to research the app's files against my own many years of work, and then started checking out other sources.  Though these may not all be totally correct, they are close enough to satisfy me for now.  I am revisiting some of the data as new information arises just like I would do for any type or research.

So, the question was, is it just a game or gambit to draw new people to the world of genealogy?  Only if you just take everything as truth without research it could look that way.  I have found it to be a new doorway to other sources, names and places I have never seen even though my own work started in the mid-1980's.  It has opened some real blocked family lines, allowed me to connect with three genealogy buddies as cousins (I did not include their names here) and has made me dig deeper for more clues to the puzzle of our ancestors.

Why do I have to cite my sources?

Where did I find that census record?
Who gave me that photo of Uncle John?
I think I've looked at this book before?
What film number was that image of the probate record?

Any of those questions sound familiar?   We spend hours researching our family history in libraries, at the courthouse and on-line.  Searching and finding wonderful treasures...yet if we don't document where and when we got those items, we may never be able to trace our steps back to that place.

Citing those sources helps not only us, but all those who will follow us after we are gone.  How many times have we wanted to revisit a source only to realize we did not cite where we got it.  And how many times have we perhaps copied a page from a book and not the title and copyright pages only to realize we need to look at a page before or after to get more information.   

The other part of that is to document the date we accessed it.  If you copy a page from a book, write on the top, bottom or back the date you copied it and the library or place you looked at the book.  I have gone back to a library to relook at a book, thinking I remembered where I had seen it only to find out-oops-it was another library not this one...

I have started also writing down the film number as well as the page number when accessing probate and other on-line sources that are "browse" only files.  It has saved me so much time and irritation to be able to go back and look again at the source.  I had found a guardian bond for an ancestor for a child.  When I realized there were three children, not one child, under 21 years old, I wanted to go back and look again for the other two.  I had not written down the film number, so had to "browse" again...yuk!  You can believe when I found the film again, I wrote it down!  

One last thing to think about.  We are in a way, being selfish when we don't document our findings.  We know how much work it took us, how many hours and dead ends we worked through.  Why would we want our family or any other researcher to have to do that work again, when all we have to do is cite our sources.  (Okay--getting off the soapbox now..)

[Here is how I do my "browse" documentations.
I copy the film number and page number, a note about the persons involved and then the Family Search citation, then add a copy of the film all in a Word document.  This way when I need to add this item to my Family Tree Maker, (or whatever kind you use), I have the whole thing together, ready to add to the person in my database.]

Film 73 page 72 William George Washington Going admin of estate of James D Going 1898

"South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-19432-26194-13?cc=1919417&wc=M6NW-B29:210903701,211118801 : accessed 13 April 2015), Union > Returns book, 1881-1926 > image 73 of 443; citing Department of Archives and History, Columbia.

The right family found and documented in my database!

Thanks to the Genealogy Do-over challenge, I found a real problem today while verifying older files.

We have several Civil War letters back and forth between brothers and in-laws.  The names that I was trying to re-verify were for Willis, John, Green and William Sanders.   I had my ah-ha moment and was so excited.  I thought I had finally gotten the last little bit.  

While looking on Fold3 the other day, I finally found that the one brother's name was Green not Granbury as it shows in the 1850 US Census.  I looked at the letters and one was signed, Green Sanders.  

I found a Green Sanders in the house of John Sanders, Prairie Arkansas.  There was a William and John also.  Great!  Finally got the right household...well...not really.  The William in that household was only 7 years old.  He could not have been the father of the children in the 1860's file.  I pulled out my old files and the names were different.  Sure enough there are two Sanders families in Prairie Arkansas in the 1850 and 1860 US Census.  Both have a John, William and Green as sons.  

The kicker that answered the question was the neighbor, James C. Stephenson.  His sister married my great-great grandfather William Sanders.  She was in one of the households but not the other.  When I stood back and examined every line, it dawned on my what the problem was. (I love research logs now, by the way).  One was in Prairie County, Arkansas and the other was in Arkansas County, Prairie Township!  Without that closer look, I would have really been confused.  I knew my grandmother's family was in Arkansas County, not Prairie County.  Problem solved.

Thanks to those who are reaching out to the community like Dear Myrtle, Cousin Russ, Thomas MacEntee, Christa Cowan and many others, we are challenged to rethink and redo those lax areas of our research and refine those source documentations.  I am getting better at the research and the results thanks to all of you.

Our Family's Past Is The Foundation For Our Future

Roads always have a connection to where we have been and where we are going.

No matter how splendid or mundane, loud or quiet our families are the foundation we are building our own lives upon.  The good, bad or indifferent---it matters not.  Those decisions made from their lives effect ours.  If they laid a solid, honorable foundation it makes it a lot easier for us to pursue the same.  If they were careless and selfish we are indeed in a battle to become honorable citizens in our world.

Some of us would like to separate ourselves from those of our past.  We try to ignore them, forget them and perhaps try not to hate them for their decisions.  Yet we cannot seem to be free of them.  Those of us who suffered abuse at their hands or neglect, or any other damage have choices to make of our own in order to go forward in life.  Do we choose to forgive them and go on with our lives or spend untold hours in hatred and resentment.

While researching our family history, we will surely find men and women who made unfortunate choices that have sent ripples throughout our family history.  Men and women who were not careful in how they raised their children, who harmed them and others in their families.  Those who abandoned children and spouses, those who might have ended up in prison.  Do we feel anger toward them?  Do we hate them for their actions?  

It can be easy to make judgements against them through the end of the telescope we are looking through.  Yet, we weren't there and can not possibly know why they did what they did, or why they made those decisions.  What circumstances forces a mother to sell her children?  What could cause a man to abandon his wife and children?  When I first saw a photo of a woman and her children during the great depression with a sign "children for sale"...I cried looking at the pain on her face.  She had no way to feed her children and had reached a place of hopelessness.

Perhaps if we can look at our family's past with a compassionate eye, the sad and bad can be easier to deal with.  It can also let us examine our own contribution to the future generations coming along.  What do we want them to think about us?  Are we leaving a legacy of kindness and generosity or one of selfishness and greed?  I realize this sounds kind of preachy, but these are the kinds of things we deal with when doing our family genealogy.

I have started looking at my ancestors with an eye on their whole life, the good and bad to learn just who they really were.  I am learning to love them just like they were and to enjoy the journey a whole lot more.