Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Pick an Ancestor: What Story Lines Do You Want to Explore?

It's Saturday, which means it's time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver.  I had a very busy week and didn't have time to write at all, so I'm making up by doing last week's challenge.

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

1.  Pick one of your ancestors whom you want to know more about.  Based on your knowledge of that person's life, what story lines do you want to explore?

2.  Tell us about your ancestor and the story lines of interest to you in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Partly prompted by my sister's comment on a recent post, this time I will focus on my great-grandmother Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland.

• Tell me about your parents, Joel Armstrong and Sarah Ann Deacon Lippincott.  How do you remember them?  What did they look like?

• How much formal schooling did you have?  Did you enjoy school?  What were your favorite and your least favorite subjects?  Did you generally get good grades?

• Did your parents divorce?  If so, when?  Did either one remarry?  If yes to the latter question, how well did you get to know the new spouse (and family, if there was one)?

• Did you know any of your grandparents or older generations?  Aunts and uncles?  I would love to hear about them.

• Did you know about your sister's first marriage, which apparently was annulled?  Why was it annulled?  Were your parents upset about the marriage?

• Was that your mother living with you in 1900 when you were enumerated in the census at your granduncle and grandaunt's house?  Tell me about your granduncle and grandaunt and what they were like.  Did your grandaunt really have three children who died between 1900 and 1910?

• Who got you pregnant with your first child?  How long had you known him?  Did you want to have his name on the birth certificate?  How did your son Bertram Lynn's birth certificate end up being listed as a girl named Gertrude L.?

• How did you meet Elmer Sellers?  How long had you known him before you married in November 1903?  Were you happy with him?

• It must have been difficult and sad to have so many of your children die so young.  Did you have funerals for any of them?  Did Elmer's mother help with their burial expenses?

• It also must have been very difficult for you when Elmer died so young.  Did Elmer's mother pay for his funeral?  Did she help you financially after that?  Did you have to go to work?  Did the older children work to help support the family?

• When did Elmer's mother die?  How well did the two of you get along?  Was she a good grandmother to your children?

• How did your children react when you had a daughter three years after Elmer had died?  Who was that child's father?  Why didn't you provide his name for Bertolet's birth certificate?

• How big of a wedding did Bertram and Elizabeth have?  Did you like Elizabeth?  How did you feel when your first grandchild was born?

• Your grandson died at the age of 2, and then your daughter Bertolet died at the age of 6.  How did the family handle these sad events?  Why didn't you include Bertolet's father's name on her death certificate?

• Your oldest son, Bertram, wrote in a list of everywhere he had lived that from 1927–1928 he was out west with no fixed location.  Do you remember that period?  Was that the truth?  Do you have any idea what he was doing during those years?

• Is it true that you married John Ireland only because someone said you needed a man's help?  And is it true that you dumped him when you figured out you really didn't need his help?  Did you stay married until he died?

• How did you manage to be not at home when the census taker came around in 1940?  Were you trying to avoid him?  Were you living by yourself at that time?

• What prompted you to get an amended birth certificate for Bertram, your oldest child, in 1940?  Did he need it for a security clearance at his job?

• Did you know that Catherine was flipping a bird in one of the photos that Anita took of you and your four adult children at Betty's house?

• When did you move to Florida to live with Bertram and his wife?

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Top Five Surprises

Anytime someone asks me to list my top number X of anything, I have to think about it for a while, as I did with this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

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

1.  Check out Top Five Surprises by D. M. Debacker on the Gathering Leaves blog.

2.  What are your top five surprises you have found in your genealogy research and family history work?

3.  Tell us about your surprises in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

My surprises come from more than 50 years of research.

1.  My paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was born out of wedlock and was not the biological son of the man my great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong married.  This revelation, which I later proved with Y-DNA, came to me when I suddenly began to wonder why, if my great-grandfather had loved his stepfather so much as to name a son after him, he would name his second son after him, while naming his first son after a "close family friend."
See "I'm Apparently a Sellers by Informal Adoption"

2.  I had been told that my maternal grandfather's brother Rubin Meckler had been born and had died very young in the Russian Empire, before my great-grandparents immigrated to the United States.  I was amazed to discover him in the 1915 New York Census and then find his birth and death dates in the New York City indices.
See "Surprising Discovery in the New York Census"

3.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan was six months pregnant when she married my great-grandfather Thomas Kirkland Gauntt in 1891.  She had immigrated here from England only a year before.
See "Two Truths and One Lie"

4.  My great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong had an out-of-wedlock child, Bertolet Grace Sellers, three years after her husband had died.  She declined to name the father on both Bertolet's birth certificate and death certificate (she died at 6 years old).
See "Could 'Bertram' and 'Bertolet' Be Named for the Same 'Bert'?"

5.  My grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was registered as a girl named Gertrude L. on his original birth certificate.  I still have no credible explanation as to why.
See "An Administrative Change of Sex"

Wordless Wednesday

Save All Those Photographs!

One of my father's photos which has been saved.
This is the engine from a 1980–1986 Ford Bronco or F Series Bullnose
(at least according to ChatGPT).
But I have no idea whose Ford it was!

I post a lot on my blog about photographs:  how you should identify as many as possible as soon as possible, distribute and share copies (whether digital or physical) to family members, preserve them, and generally just care about them (and not let them end up in some thrift store).  Not only are they tangible artifacts from the history of your family, but they can tell you many stories, even if sometimes it takes some effort to figure those stories out.

But did you know that there is a Save Your Photos Month?  Admittedly, it was started by an organization that has some vested interest in you buying into the concept, but it's still a great way to publicize that we should be saving those photos.

The organization in question is The Photo Managers, which promotes services for organizing photos and sharing stories.  But during Save Your Photos Month, they also offer free YouTube Live presentations related to the subject of saving your photos; they want to help you organize, digitize, and save those photos.  The first two presentations for this year's event have already taken place:  "Before It's Too Late:  A Step-by-step Guide to Preserving Your Printed Photos" (which is now available on YouTube) and "How to Digitize Your Photos:  A Step-by-step Guide for Safeguarding Your Memories" (which will probably appear on YouTube soon).

Coming later this month are:
• "Organizing Digital Photos for Disaster Preparedness", September 9
• "What Is the Family Photo REALLY Telling You?", September 11
• "How to Safeguard Printed Photos from Fire, Water & Disasters", September 12
• "How to Save Photos Damaged by Fire or Water", September 16
• "Rebuilding Your Photo Collection after a Disaster", September 19
• "Clearing the Clutter, Saving the Stories", September 23
• "Essential Tools for Photo Preservation", October 2 (a bonus after Save Your Photos Month)

And all of these are free to attend and free to watch later!

So visit the Save Your Photos Month page, sign up for the YouTube Live presentations, and save all those family photos!

Wordless Wednesday