Category: Historical Events
Ancestors who were part of major historical events.
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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…
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Going four generations back to find another line This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first Frederick – Daisy Deane Frederick – Dec 1871 – 14 Jan 1964 Daisy was the daughter of Lafayette Frederick (1837–1918) and Jane Eliza “Jennie” Smith (1840–1916),…
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Teasing meaning from the absence of evidence (part 2) Last week, we were Still Finding James Callin – laying out records that may confirm that he was a Continental soldier in the Revolutionary War. We lack firm proof that the records show the same James Callin recorded in the Callin Family History in 1911, but…
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Teasing meaning from the absence of evidence (part 1) I owe a ton of thanks to two cousins for their part in getting my Callin Family History published: and John K. Callin. Joan is my 3rd cousin, 1x removed; John is my 2nd cousin, 1x removed. Our nearest common ancestors are William Callin and Elizabeth…
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originally posted on Friday, February 6, 2015 The U.S. Memorial Day holiday falls on Monday, so I thought it appropriate to re-post this look at one of the sadder stories from the Callin Family History. If you think of yourself as someone who “supports the troops,” I would ask you to channel some of that…
Mightier Acorns 