James Lewis Hamilton - solved

Thanks to Debbi Lyon-Kirwan I have confirmed that "my" James Lewis Hamilton, born in South Crosby Twp, Leeds County, Ontario IS the James Lewis Hamilton who lived much of his life in Rugby, Pierce County, North Dakota.    THANKS Debbi!

I've updated the records for James and his children, and added some photos that Debbi also shared with me.

More Hamiltons (and Jordans and Freemans and others)

Over the past 3 weeks I have added 54 people and 73 documents to My Father's Families. The majority of these are for the Hamilton family, but there are lots of marriages between the Hamiltons and Jordans and Freemans, so there are records for these families too. 

All these new records of course revealed addtional data for many people too. The Recent Updates page lists the records that were changed.

Format change for documents

I have decided to separate census records from other documents in order to make it easier to find what you're looking for.  I also increased the size of the thumbnails in the galleries.   These changes have been completed for My Father's Families.  The other sites will be changed as I work on them.

James Lewis Hamilton

I have added some details, including a wife and five children, to James Lewis Hamilton, my gr-granduncle. However, it must be noted that all details after 1892, including James' marriage and children, are premised on his residence in Rubgy, North Dakota. I have been told that he lived there, but do not know the basis of this asssertion. Investigation is ongoing.

Now on to the next of Mary Anne Hamilton's siblings.

Hamilton additions and corrections

My ebook reader died on the plane yesterday, so what could I do but proof-read some Hamilton records (off-line of course!).   I'm appalled by some of the mistakes I found: duplicate people; wrong captions on exhibits; missing citations; etc.

I have started on the corrections, which of course leads to looking things up, which of course leads to new information to add.  Today I added 1900, 1910, & 1920 census records for John K Hamilton - those records provided the names of his children as well.   More to come!

Ernest Broder

Today John Broder sent me a lot of information about Harold and Mabel (Hallberg) Broder's adopted children Ernest and Eldine.  He also sent the names of all Ernest's children and grandchildren.

Citations

I added a page with examples of how to cite my site when data from it is used by others.  Hopefully, people will bother to read it and to actually provide the source information on their sites.   The page is linked from the home page and from the footer of every page in the site.

More Broders

I have traced at least the names of Ernest Broder's children and have made contact with one of them.  I'm hoping that I will get more on this family soon.   I've also found a fair amount of information on Ernest on the SDA archives.  The information that I have is online. 

I found draft registration cards for Orville and Harold Broder.

There's also a new census record for Doris (Parsons) Downs and Geraldine Mowre.

Most of the other changes are the result of "perfecting" some sentence structures and formatting.

More clippings

I've finished adding all the clippings that Elaine sent.  They all apply to the Manery branch of the Broder and Striker/Graves lines; but not all of them will show up on the site because some are for living people.  However, there are quite a few there.  The clippings also provided some additional information.

I also updated all my Birth Announcement and Wedding Invitation citations so that the names of those involved show up in the citations.

And last but not least, I've subscribed to NewspaperArchives.com so I can clip articles from the Lethbridge Herald.  Kay Manery's obituary was the first one.

Newspaper clippings for Manery

My second cousin, Elaine (King) Willson, has a scrapbook assembled by her mother, Helen (Manery) King.  She is scanning some of the newspaper clippings and sending them to me.  I've added some to Sam Manery, Mabel (Broder) Manery, Ronald Manery and Jean (Manery) Innes.  They're all on both the Broder and Striker/Graves lines.

Some format changes and repaired links

No new data, but I found some seriously broken links when people are included in more than one subsite. Some (maybe all) of those have been corrected. I have also started the process of converting the external pdf documents into html so they open faster and do not require Adobe Reader.   Biographies of Robert Broder and Roswell Graves were the test of this idea.  They are now online on the Broder and Striker/Graves sites.

More Graves updates

There seems to be no end!   I've added a few more details and changed some formatting to make the obituaries easier to read.  Check the Recent Updates page on the Striker site to see who has been updated.  Some of these changes will also appear on the Broder site

Still more obits and tombstones

There's such a wealth of data out there!  I spent today adding obituaries (and the data they contain) and tombstone photos to many of my Graves & Broder ancestors.  The vast majority of them can be found on the Recent Updates page of the Graves/Striker site.

John Harold Broder

I found additional information on Harold, his wife Mabel Hallberg, and their son Ernest Lloyd Broder.  The new details have been added to the Broder and Striker sections.

Joseph Driggs

Richard W Davis has published a proof that Joseph Driggs (c1686-1748) was actually Jose Rodrigues a native of Portugal, probably the Azores Islands.  His research is documented at http://genforum.com/driggs/messages/193.html  and http://genforum.com/driggs/messages/194.html.  I have added this information to the site.

New Photos

I found lovely photos of Rebecca Julia (Cuffe) Stimson's children and one of her husband JEH Stimson.

Photo Albums

I added a new section called Photo Albums to the Broder portion of the site.  Alice's Album is the first entry.  It's an album of snapshots created by Percy Broder and sent to Robert & Violet Broder as a Christmas gift in 1948.  The photos are mostly of Alice (Graves) Broder.

Broder / Graves tombstones and obits

Today I added a number of obituaries and tombstone photos to the Graves and Broder lines.

Manery obituaries

I found obituaries for Ron (Hubert Ronald) Manery and his son David Shewell Manery

Percy Broder

Working with Barbara Hill, we're finding lots of info about Percy. The big find is the record of his marriage to Hannah (Reichard) Baierle. Some of the new information went online tonight.  There's more to come.

Broder / Cuffe updates

I received a huge amount of information from Betty (Cuffe) Smith in Australia.  I've added 122 people to the Broder site and updated about 100 others.   I also added some census records and photos of several Co Sligo churches that I found when checking various events.

Lots of new stuff

Over the past week or so I merged the descendants of William & Catherine (Jones) Coleman into the My Loyalist Family section.  This data was originally received from Robert Coleman and included in the Coleman/Jones line.  The merge included finding, and attaching as exhibits, many of the source records that Bob had referenced in his data.

The result is that 234 people and almost 40 exhibits have been added.

A Partial List of the Descendants of James Jones & Hannah Goodale

I have scanned A Partial List of the Descendants of James Jones & Hannah Goodale by Walter Scott Jones and Harley Misener and posted it as a pdf at fayewest.ca/documents.  I may add other such manuscripts as time allows. 

More Bill Miner stories

I have scanned and posted a series of articles about Bill Miner's escape from the BC Penitentiary. The reports ar from The Daily Columbian, 09 Aug 1907 - 07 Sept 1907. You can see them here

Obituaries

I've added almost 3 dozen obituaries - exhibits and data - to Richard's families. They're all from The Lethbridge Herald and most are for Larson, Hall, and Price.

Jones Funeral Records

I received a number of indexes to funeral home records from the Hamilton Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society.  Death dates, some birth dates, and burial information has been added to a number of people in the Jones line.

Mary Noel Doyle Butterfield

Noel passed away on 15 May 2010.  I have added more information about her to the website.

Elizabeth Doyle & John Burnash

I added some information and source references for John & Elizabeth (Doyle) Burnash, including two daughters, Elizabeth & Beatrice.  John had a number of other children with his first two wives, but I did not (yet) add those details.  See the Doyle line.

More census images

This week I've been looking up BMD and census records on ancestry.ca   I have added data and images to about 70 people.  Most of the updates are HAMILTON records; a few are DUNN or JORDAN.  Names of all the people who have been changed are listed on the Recent Updates page of the Doyle site.

James Doyle - the one who went to Toledo, OH

I have found the following birthdates for James Doyle:

• 1861 census    age 26 - birth year 1835
• 1871 census    age 26 - birth year 1845
• 1871 marriage  age 34 - birth year 1837
• 1881 census    age 40 - birth year 1841
• 1885 Civil Service List - birth year 1839
• 1891 census    age 52 - birth year 1839
• 1900 census    age 63 - birth year 1837

Presumably, either 1837 or 1839 is the likely year of his birth.  I've chosen to go with 1837.

Cyndi's List

I have submitted both my website and this blog to Cyndi's List.  I'm hoping that will drive more traffic to the site and help me find more family members.

Good Grief!!

I just noticed that all the changes I've made to the Doyle line (and talked about on this blog) since December were never uploaded to the website.  They are there now.

BMDs and Tombstones

I spent a lot of time with my Troy Cemetery photos and the Hamilton Branch OGS transcription of Troy Cemetery today.  The result is a whole lot of additional birth and death dates and a number of new tombstone photos.  About 40 people have new information - that's too many names to list here.  You'll find them all in the Recent Updates list on the Loyalist line.

I also found that Hamilton Branch has funeral records for a number of people in the Loyalist line - those may provide new information when I get them.

A new addition

On 4 March 2010, Richard's thirteenth great-grandchild was born.  Brooklynn Gerst has been added to the West line.

New marriage records

I found another treasure on the Collections Canada website: Upper and Lower Canada Marriage Bonds 1803-1865.  I've added the bond for Andrew Jones and Mary Bawtenheimer to the Loyalist line.

The rest of the BMDs

I finally finished entering the data from the certificates I got in Victoria last week.  These include:

• Death certificates for Hugh & Ethel (Cooper) McLeod (see the Broder line)
• Death certificates for William & Almira (Camp) Isaac (see the Loyalist line)
• Marriage certificate for Charles Campbell & Lucy McGeer (see the Loyalist line)
• Marriage certificate for George Bolderson & Dora Williams, and death certificates for Dora (Williams) Bolderson Doyle Wilson and Doreen Bolderson (see the Doyle line)

Some of these certificates provided a lot of new information.

Marcellus & Hubert Colvig

I didn't get as much done as I'd expected today, but I did add some military and census records to the Colvig family. You'll find them in the Striker line.

New BMD certificates

I spent a few days in Victoria, BC this week and took the opportunity to visit the BC Archives where I located 20 marriage and death certificates for people in my database.  The surnames include: Colvig, Manery, Oldham, and Pappajohn.  These records have been added to the Broder and/or Striker lines. Check the Recent Updates menu to see the specific records that have been changed.

I have also included a number of Manery descendants on the Striker line.  They were previously (and still are) in the Broder line.

Updates to James Joseph Doyle

I finally noticed that the census images were not attached to any of Michael Doyle's or James Joseph Doyle's records.  Oops!  Now they are.

I also tidied up the narrative for James Joseph.

A busy day and a question

WOW - the information was pouring in today!  I guess that's what happens when I remind people that my website is out there. :)  So there were lots of changes today, none of them major but . . .

• added two children to James and Christianah (Folk) Jones and updated some dates on other children (the majority of the changes were in this family)
• added tombstone photos for Rufus, Mary and Ranslaer Dodge
• moved  Hortonia from Michigan to Wisconsin on some Cuffe records

Then there was the "case" of Byron Dodge.   I show him as the son of Rufus and Mary (Jones) Dodge; however, others say he was the son of Leonard and Mary (Coleman) Dodge. There is little evidence for either premise.  My assumption was based on the fact that he is buried beside their other children and his birth date fits nicely with those of their other children.  None of the online trees that place him with Leonard and Mary show any sources.   Does anyone out there have an answer to this?

More minor changes and a puzzle

Thanks to some messages in response to my email about this blog, I have added a few tidbits to James Jones and his daughter Mary Jones Hodgkinson.

I also had a discussion with Robert Coleman about whether Byron Dodge (1854-1857) is the son of Rufus and Mary Ann (Jones) Dodge or of Leonard and Mary (Coleman) Dodge.  Neither one of us has much to go on. I'm saying it's Rufus and Mary based on the location of Byron's tombstone next to those of their other children.   Anybody have any evidence?

Update to John Kitchen Jones

Today I came across a photo and a brief bio of John Kitchen Jones in a book published for the 1912 Rockton World's Fair.  I've added that info to his page.

Finding James Doyle ...

Why was I looking for James Doyle?  I already had at least 7 of them on my tree. Surely that was enough!  But I also had suspicions that there were at least 2 more.  Why?

• There was a James Doyle living with Michael & Elizabeth Doyle on the 1861 census of South Crosby Township  (Michael and Elizabeth are my gr-gr-grandparents)
• Gertrude Phelan, Michael & Elizabeth's granddaughter, has a postcard sent to Elizabeth by "Jim" which calls her "Aunt" and mentions Gertrude and Gerald. 
• She also has 2 postcards addressed to Elizabeth Doyle and signed by Gertrude (not the Gertrude who now has the postcards).  One is postmarked Portsmouth, Ontario 1920 and says that she is Jim Doyle's daughter and that she is visiting there. The other is postmarked Toledo, Ohio 1920 and says she has returned home safely.
• Gertrude had travelled alone from Toledo to Ontario, so she was probably born in the late 1890s or early 1900s.

With these clues, I searched the Toledo, Ohio censuses for 1910 and 1920 where I found a James Doyle with a wife, Margaret, and children including Gertrude (b. 1904) and Gerald (Joseph G). On the 1900 census I found them living with another James Doyle - James and Margaret are shown as his son and daughter-in-law.  Ah-ha!  Two James Doyles!  

The Ohio census reords indicated that James Doyle Sr and his family had immigrated from Canada in 1892. A search of the 1881 and 1891 census of Ontario found the family in Portsmouth, Frontenac County. On those censuses, the elder James is married to Margaret. The 1871 census of Portsmouth shows James Doyle, single, and working as a guard at the Kingston Penitentiary.

From there it was easy to find the marriage of James Doyle and Margaret Fitzgerald which confirmed that James is the son of James Doyle and Ellen (Helen) Burns.  The same parents as Michael!  My original theory was true - my gr-gr-grandfather Michael had a brother named James who also came to Canada from Ireland during the potato famine.

There are now 9 James Doyles on my tree (and at least 4 more with a middle name of James).  The two "newest" ones are here: James (1837-c.1901) and James (1872-1941)

A whole new line - Coleman/Jones

For the past couple of days I've been working on a file that was sent to me last summer by Robert Coleman. I had forgotten about it until a query from another distant cousin reminded me that I had it.  So, after some tweaking, and with Robert's approval, it's now available for the world to see.

This line documents the descendants of Catherine Jones ("my" James Jones' sister) and her husband William Coleman.  You can link to it off my main page, or get there directly: www.fayewest.ca/colemanjones

Someday I hope to get all my Jones families into a single site, but that's a LOT of work and I'd rather be researching.

Welcome

Welcome to my genealogy blog.  I'm hoping this will be a good way to keep family and other interested people informed about my website fayewest.ca   I spend a lot of time researching and updating that site. Sometimes the updates are trivial, like a new source for existing information; sometimes they are significant, like a whole new branch of a family; most often they are minor additions for a person, like a new photo or a new bit of information.   In any case, it is difficult to know which, if any, family members would be interested in a particular change, so although I try to notify the people I think would be interested, I could be "spamming" people who don't care and missing those who do care.  By following this blog (or catching up to it occasionally) you'll be able to quickly see whether there have been changes to the site that you might be interested in.

The other thing I will record here occasionally is information on how I solved a brick wall problem, or how I stumbled across new information, or why I have made an assumption about something or someone on my website.  Perhaps I'll describe a challenge that I'm working on, or stuck on, in hopes that one of you has a suggestion or solution.

Please feel free to add comments to any of the entries or to contact me directly if you have any information or ideas to share.

Enjoy!