Jesse Anderson

Two days ago I wrote that I was beginning a thorough review of my newly expanded website ... here's the first puzzle I uncovered:

Rachel J. Anderson married James Aston - they are my 2nd great-grandparents.  According to their marriage record, Rachel's parents were Jesse and Angeline Anderson.

The antique photo album I received from my grandmother includes a photo that is labeled as Maggie Allen with Rachel Aston.  There are also two photos on facing pages that are identified as Maggie Allen and John Allen.  Sure enough, I found a marriage record for Margaret E. Anderson and John P. Allen.  But here's the rub ... Maggie's parents are shown as Jesse and Anna Anderson.

The album also includes a photo of Dave Anderson in military uniform- if he's in the album, there must be a connection ... don't you think?

I have no proof yet, but my initial guess is that Rachel, Maggie & Dave are siblings.  I currently have two Jesse Anderson's in my database (#176 father of Rachel and #233 father of Maggie), but I suspect they're actually the same man.  Similarly, I won't be surprised to find that Anna and Angeline are the same person.

Can you shed any light on these folks?

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Read more about James and Rachel.

Did you miss me?

One of the primary rules for a successful blog is to post frequently ... guess I missed the mark on that one!  Actually I do have a good excuse.  When I started my West Virginia Heritage website last September, my plan was to slowly add people as I worked my way through a huge clean-up process, one person at a time.  And then I changed my mind.

My new plan was to do some "relatively quick" clean-up for limited types of info (primary events like birth, marriage, death, and burial plus a few others).  Then I could expand the site to include all the people in my database that are deceased.  The only problem was that I actually believed that I could do a "relatively quick" clean-up.  Ha!

I still have a few things to find and fix, but I decided to pull the trigger earlier today.  The website now includes 1,274 people (although a few of those are "pseudo people" used to create pages for cemeteries, census records, etc.).

You may run across something that looks a little weird - maybe something out of place or not worded quite right - that's the kind of things I'm looking for so I can get them corrected.  Feel free to email me if you find something.  Think of this as a challenge like "Where's Waldo?" ... except this is "Where's the Errors?"

Happy Hunting!

Uriah Harris (1823 - 1906)

I recently found Boyd Lydick's memorials on findagrave.com for Uriah & Mary Ann (Lydick) Harris.  They are my gg-grandparents - I descend from their son Samuel Harris.  The memorial listed Uriah's middle name as Binnegar - interesting as that was the maiden name of his mother.  Being the sort who always hopes to find supporting documentation for this type of information, I contacted Boyd. 

Unfortunately, Boyd said he knows he would not have arbitrarily recorded Binnegar as Uriah's middle name, but he is unable to locate any place where he recorded the source at the time.  That's a problem that happens often to genealogists, especially when it's something from their early days of research.  And yes, it has happened to me too ... I sometimes run across something and wonder, "so where did I get that piece of info?" and then have to hope that I'll run across it again in the future.  Moral of the story:  always record your source for all of your research.

While Boyd and I were trading emails, he found a post on GenForum by Bobby Rawls who refers to his gg-grandparents as Sheridan Uriah Harris and Mary Ann Lydick.  Same Uriah (married to Mary Ann Lydick) -- so could this be Uriah’s full name instead?  Possibly …

Uriah & Mary Ann had a son whose name appears as Uriah Sheridan on his death certificate and as Uriah S. on the 1870 & 1900 censuses.  I believe the son was commonly known by his middle name, which I’ve seen spelled as Sheridan, Sherwood and Sherrard.  I’ve also seen the son’s name as Sheridan U. which had once led me to believe that Uriah may have been his middle name in honor of his father. 

If Bobby is correct that the father was Sheridan Uriah (commonly known by his middle name, Uriah) ... and if my thinking is correct that the son was Uriah Sheridan (commonly known by his middle name, Sheridan) ... then that ranks near the top of the list of most convoluted things I've ever seen!

So what is the real full name of this man known as Uriah Harris?  If you have any input, I'd love to hear from you!

Holidays and Genealogy

Wow ... I hadn't remembered that my last blog post was way back in October.  I knew it had been too long, but I was thinking I had posted in November ... see what getting older does to us?

First of all, I decided to revamp the way I'm doing my West Virginia Heritage website so that it includes a lot more people, but that's food for a separate post.  The work with that decision was taking longer than I anticipated.  Secondly, about that time other things took precedence over my genealogy research ... and when I don't look at my database I also don't have things popping into my brain that I want to add here.

What I probably need to do is go back and see what I had promised to write about and try to tie up some of those loose ends ... like a followup on the Glassworker series, or additional info about the Fork Ridge Christian Church that I've found, or additional info sent to me by cousins, etc.

Sounds like a plan ... now all I have to do is actually do it.  In the meantime, I hope everyone is having a great time getting ready for Christmas!