Category: Historical Events
Ancestors who were part of major historical events.
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A woman who saw the changing rights of women in Ohio A story can seem straightforward once the facts are lined up and neatly documented. The life story of one of my 4th great-grandmothers, for example, could be summed up like this: Eleanor Waters was born on 3 August 1810 in Pennsylvania. Her family moved…
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Why we keep doing research after we think we found all the answers Last week, we revisited a story about my 6th-great grandfather, a Hessian soldier who was captured by General Washington’s troops and sent to work in Mount Hope, New Jersey, for John Jacob Faesch, who needed laborers to continue making ammunition for the…
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And a face to go with the name… As many folks may know, I have a deep affection for unusual names. The person at the center of today’s post possesses my all-time favorite unusual name – beating out the likes of “Gladimere Schreck” and “Thor Glyde Day” for the honor. But before we get to…
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The story behind the book You can get your copy here: Hardcover (only): $38.10 I don’t remember when I first learned about Grandpa John’s book of poems, but I feel like I remember the adults – Dad, Aunt Vicki, Grandma Nancy, and Grandpa Bob – were standing between me and Grandma’s swimming pool at the…
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The Box I got a call back from Wiley’s niece, Nancy. At first, she was understandably hesitant. A strange man calls out of the blue and tells you, “I am a family history researcher, and I think your estranged uncle (who you may or may not have ever met) just died.” What would you think?…
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Where did Wiley Cowan come from? After the Revolutionary War, we lost track of James Callin. We don’t know for certain where he lived or how many children he had, but we are reasonably sure that he had two sons, James and John, who settled on a farm together between 1810 and 1816 in what…
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Part 1: A note from San Francisco On 10 June 2022, I found a note in my Ancestry messages. It began: I had just published my Callin Family History that March, documenting as many descendants of James Callin as I could, and I remembered the Cowan family. I did the bulk of my work on…
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Going four generations back to find another line This surname can be found among my Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first May: Mary Frances May – 30 Oct 1858 – 19 Mar 1882 Mary (May) Reynolds was the maternal grandmother of my maternal grandfather, Russ Clark. Her parents…
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Originally Published on 2/26/2015 I found it difficult to compose a story about Grandma Nancy. She was probably the most present of my grandparents but I haven’t quite isolated a narrative thread for her, yet. This is the patchwork story I chose to tell a decade ago, in actual snapshots. (Lightly edited to update links…
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Teasing meaning from the absence of evidence (part 3) Previously, in Still Finding James Callin, we looked at the Revolutionary War muster rolls, examining whatever they could tell us about him, and we talked about how they loosely support the statements made in George W. Callin’s 1911 Callin Family History. James, last noted in the…
Mightier Acorns 