Posts on my personal genealogy research
Sorry that I haven’t been updating this site. It’s been an extremely busy month and I haven’t had much time to do much else. I don’t think that I mentioned it yet, but I’ll be getting married on May 27th. So, everything these last few weeks has been about that. That also means that I’ll probably be adding another family tree to mine to make it easier for us to keep it in once place. There should be more updates once this is all complete.
Well, no luck on the headstones I was looking for. We first looked at the cemetery in the old Dheinsville, Wisconsin near Germantown. I have an ancestor that’s listed as in this cemetery. Unfortunately, all of stones from that time period are beyond readable, some don’t even exist anymore. So, I couldn’t see if there were any other family members buried also.
I then went to the Fredonia area to check some of the cemeteries around there for some of my Quinette family. Supposedly, they passed away and are more than likely buried in the area. Well, we checked four of the cemeteries that we could find with no luck. Again, a lot of stones are very worn. Though, there are other cemeteries I didn’t find, so I may go back. It was also brought up to me that they may have been buried in the DePere area, since a lot of the rest of the family is buried there. It is possible that they traveled up there before they died. We’ll have to wait and see.
Well, it’s springtime (though snow is on the ground as I type) and it looks like its time to get some of those headstone photos that are needed. I have noted a bunch of them in the local area that I can hunt down. There are some farther away, such as in the northern tip of Wisconsin, but those can wait a little bit. I may make a day out of it and try to hit them all in one day. I have a few in the Green Bay area, some just north of here, and some in Washington County to check out.
Sometimes you find very helpful information from headstones and cemeteries. Sometimes you run into unknown family members buried nearby, or dates that you didn’t know about. I find it a useful, yet under-utilized piece of information for genealogy. A now, with the Internet, you can usually find some very helpful people that will take photos/notes for you in the area that your ancestors are buried. Here are some helpful sites:
I’ve been doing a lot more research on the east coast states, mainly Virginia, Delaware (Hi, we’re in..Delaware), Maryland, etc and it’s not as easy as I had assumed it would be. I say this because I had assumed there were a lot more records since those states have been around the longest. I’ve been doing some more research for my fiancee’s tree (which will soon be merged with mine) and she has a lot of east coast ancestors. I have absolutely none, all of my ancestors either came straight to Wisconsin via foreign lands, or through Canada, eh? It’s very boring on this side, plus it’s not the easiet thing to find records for some of these other countries.
Does anyone have any tips on doing research (mainly online) for the east coast? I have yet to travel to our local Family History Center since it’s rarely open when I’m available. I do have nearly full-access to Ancestry.com.
I broke through another brick wall last night with some research. This one is probably more sure than the last one, I give this one an high 80%-90% chance of being correct. I decided to do some more research on a line that I had inserted into my tree in the beginning of my family tree stuff, though I’ve never really done much research on it. For one, the family name was THOMPSON, so it wasn’t easy to pinpoint them. Her name I had listed as FRANCES QUINETTE, but I could not find much info on that name.
Last night I did a search for it on the Ancestry/Rootsweb Message Boards and found a few things. I found the jackpot in the QUINET forum. It turns out that a bunch of other people are researching this line of QUINETs. And it also turns out that Frances’ parents lived and are buried in the town next to my hometown. All of this time and they were right there. Well, now I have some more info on the QUINET line and it’s great.
Also, if you read this, please comment on my postings. Comments will help me know what you’d like to know about and it will help me make better posts. A login is not required for posting a comment, but I do need to approve it first.
I’m not sure when it happened, sometime between college and now. Throughout school, from elementary through college, I really didn’t like history. I’d shuffle through it, learning enough to get by, but it really didn’t do anything for me. Even in college, when I needed to take US History or Western Civilization, or whatever it was called, I didn’t get into it. Now, I love history, well most of it anyway. If the history has something to do with my family history or to me, in general, than I love finding out about it. All I can say on that note is “Thank (insert your god here) for Wikipedia!”
I’m really more interested in local history, since I’ve lived in the area and I like finding out more about it. But, I also like to read up on places that my ancestors hailed from to see what it was like back then. Doc Brown, I’m calling your name here..
I guess this is why genealogy really interests me, it scratches all of my historical itches very nicely.
I setup a wiki-based area of my genealogy site that I can use to store all of the miscellaneous information from my tree. Tidbits, letters, information, etc. The first thing I posted is a letter that my great-great uncle, Edwin Corrigan, had wrote to some other family members. Sadly, Edwin died just last June at the age of 95. The letter includes a lot of insight into life in the early 1900s in northern Wisconsin. It’s a very interesting read for anyone who enjoys history. Here is a small excerpt, but you can read the whole thing on the wiki if you’d like, but it is pretty long. Plan on more than few minutes.
To begin with, the were two Corrigan families ““ the first four children were born in Orillia (Mara county, Ontario.) Pa’s first wife, Ellen Ferguson, was buried in Washburn, WI across the bay from Ashland. Don’t know just when they came to the area ““ nor how long they lived in Washburn. The youngest child, Thomas Francis, was born in Washburn, Sept. 15, 1886. Shortly after that they must have moved to Sanborn, where Pa built a saloon and boarding house (the building is still there, but has had an addition put on it.) Three of our family members were born while the folks lived in Sanborn, the rest born (at the Summit) in Ashland. Due to an early stroke, Pa had to get out of the business. He did some kind of a trade with property and got property on the outskirts of Ashland, which included a small five room house and building which house a saloon, dance hall and gambling rooms. Remember these were in the early logging days when Ashland housed many saloons, houses of ill-repute, etc. They lived a short time in the large building and then had the small house moved closer to the road ““ eventually he sold the building (the hall, etc) to the Town of Sanborn to be used as the Town Hall.
Read the whole thing – Edwin Corrigan Letter
There is an interesting story about my great-great-great grandfather that was told to me by my grandmother.
Charles Van Price was born in the mid 1800s. He came to the U.S. in 1874, and went to Dousman, Wisconsin. He worked for Mr. Dousman, later moved to Little Chute, Wisconsin, then to Phlox, Wisconsin in 1887. Tragedy struck however, because he, my great grandfather, decided to see Holland again. He sold his land earlier, and was now one of the wealthiest men in that part of the state. While staying with his daughter, Effie, in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1922, he went grocery shopping for her and was not seen again. His daughter found he had withdrawn all his savings (a very sizeable amount) and left for Europe. They traced him to Antwerp, Belgium — then all trace was gone. He was never heard from again. After investigating, it was assumed that he returned to Holland from Milwaukee.
I haven’t had too much luck finding any more info on Charles in Holland/Belgium myself. I plan on seeing what I can find.
Good news. Today I may have broken through one of my genealogy walls. I was doing a little searching on some of my loose ends to see if I could find any more information. Today, I was in my maternal line, specifically on the Peter & Ida Muhm family. I’ve not had much luck on this family, except for finding the names of Peter’s parents in the 1860 census. I had “Schwandie” as Ida’s maiden name, but that was direct from family. I’ve never had any luck finding info on it, not even one person with that last name.
So, I came across a WorldTree entry at Ancestry for the Muhm family. It had the Muhm line back 3 generations to a Johannes Muhm born about 1741 in Germany. Very nice. Also, it had Ida’s maiden name listed as Schwinte. Different, but it may come in handy since I have no luck with the other one. The only downside is that the contact info for the submission is listed as “Unknown.” Though, I put the info in my family tree file in case it’s correct. It’ll at least help me dig further.
