Saturday, January 12, 2019

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where Were They 150 Years Ago?

This wee's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is an "encore" theme, but moved forward in time a few years.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

(1) Determine where your ancestral families were on 12 January 1869:  150 years ago.

(2) List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence locations (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence, and does the residence still exist?  How many do you have in each generation living in January 1869?

(3) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.


So Randy posed this question almost four years ago, on May 16, 2015, but since we're now looking at 1869 instead of 1865, one additional ancestor of mine might have been alive.  One thing that has changed since 2015 is that I learned that my grandfather was a Sellers through informal adoption, so this time I am not posting about all the Sellers family ancestors.

Catherine (Stackhouse) Armstrong (born 1796–1800), my 4th great-grandmother, may or may not have been alive.  I have narrowed down her death to 1860–1870 (and I have not narrowed it down further since 2015).  If she was alive, she was living somewhere in Burlington County, New Jersey.  I don't know who she might have been living with or if she lived alone.

Franklin Armstrong (1825–after 1870), my 3rd-great-grandfather, was living in Mansfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey with his son, Joel Armstrong (1849–~1921), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

Abel Amos Lippincott (1825–after 1885) and Rachel (Stackhouse) Lippincott (~1825–after 1885), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were living in Burlington County, New Jersey.  I don't know exactly where.

Sarah Ann Lippincott (1860–after 1904), my 2nd-great-grandmother, was almost definitely living somewhere in Burlington County, New Jersey.  In the 1860 census she was not yet born and in the 1870 census she was not with her parents, however.

James Gauntt (1831–1889) and Amelia (Gibson) Gauntt (1831–1908), my 2nd-great-grandparents, were almost definitely living in Burlington County, New Jersey.  I don't know exactly where.  They likely had three to five children living with them, but not my great-grandfather Thomas Kirkland Gauntt, because he was born in 1870.

Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) and Martha (Winn) Dunstan (1837–1884), my 2nd-great-grandparents, were living in one of the suburbs of Manchester, Lancashire, England.  I don't know exactly where.  They had four children living with them, but not my great-grandmother Jane Dunstan, who was born in 1871.

Zvi (died before 1903) and Esther Mekler, my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living in Kamenets Litovsk, Russia (now Kameniec, Belarus), with their son Simcha Dovid Mekler (died before 1903), my 2nd-great-grandfather, and his older brother Eliezer.

Bela (died before 1924) (I don't know her maiden name yet), my 2nd-great-grandmother, who would later marry Simcha Mekler, was probably somewhere in the area of Kamenets Litovsk, but that's just a guess.  She would have been young, maybe between 10–15 years old, and probably living with her parents, but I still don't know their names either.

Abraham Yaakov (died before 1896) and Sirke (died before 1893) Nowicki, my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living in Porozowo, Russia (now Porozovo, Belarus) with their son Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (~1858–1948), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

Ruven Yelsky (~1838–~1898) and Frieda (Bloom) Yelsky (~1838–~1898), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living in Porozowo, Russia with their daughter Dora Yelsky (~1858–1936), my 2nd-great-grandmother.

Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky and Etta (Cohen) Gorodetsky (died before 1891), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were almost definitely living in Podolia gubernia, Russia, probably near Kamenets Podolsky (now Kamyanets Podilskyy, Ukraine).  Their son Isaac/Avigdor Gorodetsky (died 1925), my 2nd-great-grandfather, should have been with them; I have approximated his birth year to 1864–1868, so by 1869 he had probably been born.

Joine (died before 1893) and Chane Etta (died before 1891) Schneiderman, my 3rd-great-grandparents, also were likely living in Podolia gubernia, Russia, probably in the area of Kamenets Podolsky.  My 2nd-great-grandmother Esther Leah Schneiderman (died 1908) may have been with them; I have approximated her birth year as between 1868 and 1874.

Solomon (died before 1909) and Yetta Brainin, my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living near Kreuzburg, Russia (now Krustpils, Latvia) with their son Mendel Hertz Brainin (~1862–1930), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

I still don't have photographs of any of the residences and don't know if any of them exist today.  I really do want to work on that, though.

Without the Sellers family lines, it appears that I had 29 (maybe only 28) ancestors who were alive on May 16, 1865.  The breakdown is:
• 1 4th-great-grandparent
• 15 3rd-great-grandparents
• 13 2nd-great-grandparents

And still none of my great-grandparents had been born yet, but we're getting closer!

2 comments:

  1. We all seem to be in a small range of living ancestors in that time period. I have 31.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe that's how these things average out. When I included the Sellerses and associated lines I actually had 36, which would have been 37 for 1869.

      Delete

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