The word “Curious” is an adjective meaning “Eager to learn something new and/or strange; unusual”. Not a single day goes by that I don’t get wrapped up in the curious pursuit of finding out something about one of my ancestors. On Monday and Tuesday, I am usually chasing after my weekly “ Tombstone Tuesday” ancestor. Often in the research phase of that pursuit I will find some unexpected fact that will spark my curiosity and off I’ll go on a tangent trying to verify my latest find. Genealogists are a curious group of people. You never would have started your research if you were not curious. The rest of the week is usually spent looking for clues that I may have stumbled on along the way.

I started my search rather casually. I bought my husband a Windows based software called “ Family Tree Maker “ in 1995 after he had been using a DOS based program to collect his data. His research was vary manual and long before Ancestry.com came along. I installed the software for him and decided I should open a Smith file for me and just put the people in that I know. I started out with about 100 people and it has grown to nearly 9000. That’s how my pursuit in genealogy curiosity got started.

My Smith ancestors have been my most elusive. They have all the common name of James, Joseph, William, John, Charles and Henry for the men and Margaret, Sara Elizabeth, Mary Ann , Martha and Susanna for the woman. Thankfully there was a Branson and a Kisiah thrown in there too! They were helpful. Every one of them has spawned a curiosity fueled research adventure deep into to the depths of databases full of dusty old records with chicken scratched handwriting. When the latest adventure ensues, I am often lost for hours in the depths of data. My husband often goes off to bed saying, “see you in a couple of hours!” and my reply is “no…I’ll just be a few minutes more!” The reality is several hours later I’ll crawl out of the database hopefully with a morsel of data that can accurately be placed in the family puzzle.

I had great hopes for DNA testing. (I still do) I tested myself and my brother in 2010 shortly after Ancestry offered DNA testing. It was an almost $600.00 investment to examine 48 YDNA marker and my maternal dna markers.! I had great hopes. I watched the database as it blossomed thru the years and to my shock and dismay there was not a single Smith match! How could this be? Of all the Smith’s in the US not a single one matched us? (No they just had not tested yet.) There were Musgroves, Stephensens, Adams….and many other surnames but not one Smith. All of this early data is no longer available due to Ancestry’s decision to standardize on autosomal DNA markers, two years after I did my tests in 2012. It was their determination that offering a single type of test would be a better fit for the majority of the public. The early test allowed you to pick between 12, 24, 48 and 64 marker test as well as YDNA tests which specifically trace male DNA which is passed down unchanged from one generation to the next or Maternal DNA which is a large stew of DNA from all the woman and men in your family. . With each test the accuracy of you data would increase when more markers were examined.

So after eight years of protesting Ancestry’s decisions and millions of DNA tests later , I redid our DNA test so that we were once again apart of the massive database that Ancestry.com has. Several third and fourth cousins from my Smith line who I had found thru general research have tested and show up as matches. As of today, I have hundreds of connections with relatives through this data for many branches of my family tree. BUT my Smith line is still very elusive. I have a few and I keep looking for new ones. I also have several hundred that I simply can not identify the line of my family that connects us. This presents just one more opportunity for me to regularly chase my curiosity.

Happy Hunting,

Jan

One Favorite Photo? How can I pick just one? I can’t. My Genealogy journey started with a dusty old box of photo’s that my Grandmother had. She was sorting thru their things after they had moved to a much smaller apartment in a retirement home. She was trying to get Grandpa Everett to help her and it just wasn’t working. There were many old picture in the box that were from the Smith side of the family that were not identified. She had no way of knowing who some of these people were and it was important to her that we knew who these people were when they were eventually no longer with us.

One summer day when they were visiting us at our house, Grandma brought the box of Photos. “It was one more thing to take to Harold and Leah’s for safe keeping”, she decided. Grandpa would have time on his hands and she was just going to make him do this. As I was attempting to head out the door to hangout with my friends, she nabbed me. I was 13 years old and the last thing I wanted to do was to go thru this box of photos with her but how do you tell your Grandma , “NO!”

For the next hour or two, I sat at the picnic table with Grandma Lillian and Grandpa Everett and we sorted through old photos. The Photo’s were of people from a long time ago. They were of Grandpa’s Dad and Mother, their parents, his Uncles, Aunts and assorted cousins. Grandma made it almost like a game. Grandma would show Grandpa the photo like a flash card and he would tell us who it was. It was my job to write the name on the back of the photo. So I wrote the names that I heard; McGoogan, Wert, Sparks, Meeks, Crites, Jackson, Smith and Denney. I wrote them on the back of the photos in my 13 year old hand writing. Some were misspelled but I was in a hurry, too busy to ask, “How do you spell that?” I had better things to do, you know! These photo’s were invaluable thirty years later when I started my Genealogy Journey! SO today I’m going to show you a few of my favorites…Some are Grandpa Everett’s photo’s and some are Grandma Lillian’s.

Look into her eyes. This little girl is my Grandmother, Lillian. The same one who made me help her with the pictures. At this time in her life, she had just lost her mother a year or so before. She is likely eleven. Now she lives with her Grandmother, Mary Florence Boyer, with two of her four siblings. Her Grandmother owns and operates a boarding house in Flint, Michigan. It is the very early days of the Automotive Industry. Auto workers are flooding to the plants that are springing up in Flint looking for jobs. Mary Florence’s boarding house was a busy enterprise. Lillian’s other two siblings, brothers, Lester and Wallace, live with their father and help on the farm when they are not in school. I wondered for years why she and her sister, Florence, were raised by Mary Florence after her mother died. I learned that fathers were not allowed to raise adolescent daughters unless they had remarried and the new wife lived in the home. Lillian looks like a sweet, sad young girl who is trying on a new fashion statement with her headbanded long hair, beaded necklace and the broach that is holding her shirt closed. I can not help but smile when I look at this sweet picture.

This is Nellie Best Losee (1860-1930). She was my Grandmother’s Grandmother! (My 2X Great Grandmother) She was married to Newton Losee in 1877. The Best Family came from Ontario, Canada and many of her siblings and their families came to Michigan too.

This is a small tin type photo of Newton Losee (1856-1913) as a very young man. He looks like a teenager. There is no date or any information about it. He was my Grandmother’s, Grandfather and my 2X Great Grandfather. The husband of Nellie Best. This is one of several tin type photo that Grandma had in her box.

I wish I could make this photo clearer. It is of Edwin Losee and Julie Ann Payne Losee. Newton Losee’s parents. This was also a tin type photo from the box of photos. They are my 3X Great Grandparents. They came to rural Genesee County, Michigan from Genesee County, New York. All the previous photos are from the Maternal side of my father’s family.

Next up are John Henry and Amanda McGoogan Crites. This couple spoke to me thru this photo. They have from the first time time I saw it. What a lovely old couple! It took me a long time to find where they were buried and eventually when I found their unmarked grave I put a tombstone on it. I have written quite a lot about them. They are my 2X Great Grandparents on the paternal side of my father’s family. She was a fabulous gardener and he was a hard working farmer. I found their home in Uniondale, Indiana in 2017. It was actually her home. She bought it after her parents died with the money they left her. It was a fairly unusual real estate transaction for the time period. Amanda and John had lived on John’s father’s farm and worked the farm for many years. She must have gotten tired of it and wanted to move to town. The latest owner of her house showed me her signature on the deed. They welcomed me into the house and shivers rattled through out my body as tears ran down my face. There is so much I could say here but there is not enough room in this blog.

This is the James W Smith Family. James W. and Oella Smith are the couple seated in the center of the photo. They are my 2X Great Grandparents. James W. served in the Civil War as did several of his brothers. This is the only picture that we have of him. We have several of Oella who outlived him by nearly twenty years. In all of her pictures, she has a stern look with no evidence of a smile at all. My Great Grandmother, Cora Crites Smith, is seated left of James holding her son, James Fredrick and my Grandfather, Everett is seated on the ground in front of her with the bow tie. Cora’s husband, Alvin O. Smith (my Great Grandfather) is standing behind her. It is believed that this was taken on the day that James Fredrick was baptized. We have estimated that this photo taken about 1909 based on who is in the photo and who is not and the ages the children.

Standing Left to Right; William Harvey Jackson, Alvin Oliver Smith, William Sparks, Della Smith Sparks, Oscar Jackson, William Homer Wert, William Frampton Smith, Francis Willard Smith, Arena May Straley Smith

2^nd Row Seated L to R: Ruth Jackson standing next to Dora Belle Smith Jackson, Cora Crites Smith, James W. Smith, Oella Denney Smith, Dessie Heckman Smith, holding Virgil Smith

1^st Row Seated L to R; James Frank Wert, Lulu Etta Wert, Alvin A Sparks, Everett A Smith, Virgil J. Sparks, Talmage Sparks, Nora Sparks, and the last girl in the photo is Arena’s sister Ethel Straley.

Look into her eyes. They implored me to find her! This is Etta Clair Smith. She was born in 1882 and with the loss of the 1890 Federal Census due to a fire in Washington DC, she became an nearly invisible daughter of James and Oella Smith. She married William Homer Wert in 1903 and died in 1905 while giving birth to her daughter, Lulu Etta Wert. (The little girl seated on the ground next to her brother on the far left of the first row in the James W Smith Family Photo) I had this picture identified as Etta Wert and a photo of her husband, Homer Wert, from the box of photos that Grandma had. But I had no idea how they were connected to our family. One day a fellow researcher posted a newspaper article on the internet. Both Etta Smith and Francis Smith are identified in the Splinter School photo. The light bulb came on and I went looking for Etta’s picture…Sure enough that is who she is!

So now you know why I can not say that I have one favorite photo. I have many and they have all played a very important role in my genealogy research. I am lucky that my Grandmother Lillian felt so passionate about the family photos! I have a handful of photo’s that are not identified. I keep them because I believe one day I’ll find that relative who can identify them.

Happy Hunting,

Jan

For me this is difficult because I have quite a number of “favorite finds”. I will start my very first favorite find in the early years of my research. When I was a child I asked my Grandfather, Everett Smith, where he grew up and he said “Roanoke, Indiana.” So logically when I started my research for my Smith Ancestors, I started looking in Roanoke. He had a picture of his High School and it was indeed in Roanoke.

I spent six months or more researching and they all came up as dead ends. It just did not make since. Little did I know that they were hiding all of 8.6 miles away in another county. They lived in Nine Mile, Indiana which is located in Allen County, Indiana. When you are researching “Smith’s” , 8.6 miles away in a different county is like being a world away! Roanoke was a good size community in Huntington County compared to Nine Mile which was a crossroad farm community with a couple of churches.

When I began my research I was living in Illinois. Every fall I would take a few days off from work and go visit my Grandchildren who were living in Michigan. On this day I decided to take a more rural route to Michigan by way of a side trip to the Fort Wayne area. I took a US Highway 30 through northern Indiana from the southeast suburbs of Chicago to Fort Wayne. The fall leaves were beautiful. The sun was shining and I traveled the whole distance with the window rolled down absorbing every second of the fall ride. My first stop was at the Methodist church at Nine Mile, Indiana. I had found records which indicated that my Smith Family had likely lived nearby and that the father, James and some of the children maybe buried in the cemetery at this church.

I found a section of the cemetery in the northwest corner which seemed to have the oldest stones. There was a pile of broken stone pieces stacked on a base. When I moved them, I was thrilled to discover that they were the Smith stones I was searching for.

I would learn later that all these pieces are actually one stone. The church burial records which I would later obtain from a cemetery trustee would show that James, Charles, Kisiah and a baby name Barberry are all buried in this plot and listed on this stone. Susannah is also on the stone but the church has no record of her being buried here.

The remaining Smiths’ buried in the Nine Mile Cemetery are in the plot to the south of the broken stone. I noticed the stone that day but I did not record it. I noticed it because the stone looks like it is growing out of a tree. I thought to myself, “what a shame” that a tree has grown in that woman’s grave. I took a picture of it and read the name on the stone but thought nothing of it. After returning home and obtaining burial records from the trustee of the cemetery, I realized that Mary Ann Kimble and her daughter Susanna, who are buried in this grave are the daughter and granddaughter of James and Susannah Smith.

I had been wandering this cemetery for nearly two hours now and I needed to get back on the road again to get to Michigan for my visit with my Grandchildren. I decided I would stop again on my way home and see if I could find out anything more.

When I returned from Michigan after my visit, I had the better part of an afternoon to see what I could find out about my these people who seemed to be related to me. After arriving at Nine Miles again, I knocked on the door of the the house directly across the street from the church. I hoped that it was the parsonage but now days you just can not be sure. I hoped that maybe I could talk to the minister about church records. It was a nice brick home much like the homes that my Grandparents had lived in while Grandpa Everett was a minister. The brick looked like the same as the bricks the church had been built with.

A lovely middle aged woman answered the door. She was dressed in a nice pair of dress slacks with a very pretty blouse. I explained who I was and what had brought me to Nine Mile Indiana. The reaction on her face showed a bit of surprise followed by a large warm smile. She offered her hand to me in a warm welcome. We chatted about the church a bit but she did not know much about its history. At this point in my search I could not be certain if this was my family or not. I had hoped the find out that the church had lots of old records and they would be able to answer all my questions! For a Family historian this is the equivalent of hitting the lottery!

She was a very nice lady and as it turned out she was the minister. It brought a smile to my face. Oh much had changed since the days that Grandpa Everett was a minister. In their day, Grandma Lillian would have been answering the door. She would have had a dress on with her apron wrapped around her waist careful to wipe her hands before opening the door and inviting you in. The parsonage door was always open to visitors.

My sensed that she was on her way out the door when she answered the doorbell and that turned out to be true. She was headed to the hospital to visit with a church member. She asked if I wanted to see the church. “I’ll unlock it for you and when I return in an hour or so I’ll close it up then.” I told her that would be wonderful. We walked across the street chatting about the church and the quaint cemetery which surrounds it. She unlocked the door and opened it for me. Inviting me in, she said “enjoy your visit and I hope you find what you are looking for.” “I’ll be back in an hour or so to lock up”, she said. I went into the church and she walked back to the parsonage getting in her car and driving away. I thought to myself that it is a shame that we must lock our church doors these days. In Grandpa’s day, the church was always open. You never knew when someone would need to have a few minutes with God.

The church looked very much like the churches of my childhood. In the vestibule there were stairs leading up to the sanctuary or down to what I imagines were Sunday school rooms and a nursery. As I walked into the sanctuary, my thoughts turn to Grandpa Everett, wondering if he had ever been here. Could this have been his church? As I sat in the back of the church in the pew, I took in the beauty of this sanctuary. It is arrange much like a Theater, the pews fanned out with the focal point being the alter. It was not large but very warm and inviting.

I sat there in the peace and stillness of this beautiful church, with God, Grandpa Everett and other family members who I had not met yet but was certain that I would meet them soon. I was disappointed to find out that there were no Church records to speak of. “Oh we have a dusty old box in the corner of the Office downstairs which might have a few things in it” the minister had stated, “but probably nothing that will help you much.”

I decided that a trip to the wash room downstairs would be necessary before I got back in the car and headed to Chicago. The basement was dark. They had a nice fellowship hall, a kitchen, a nursery and restrooms. When I came out of the rest room, I was thinking about the church as I walked toward the stair way to leave. To the right of the stairway hanging on the wall, was a quilt. I was at first startled but soon intrigued by it. It become the most exciting find for me in my family history search in my early years of research. It was my winning lottery ticket!

I snapped on the lights so I could see it better. This quilt was made by the Ladies Aid Society in 1906. It was a turn of the century Crazy Quilt block design. On each of the pieces of fabric, a family member embroidered a name of each family member who belonged to this church. In 1906, my Grandfather and his parents still lived in the area at that time. I was certain that there would be family members names on this quilt, if the man named James Smith who is buried in the cemetery was indeed my 3 times Great Grandfather.. So I quickly took a picture of the quilt as a whole and each of the blocks thinking that I could have family members on this quilt. There were so many names and I did not have time to write them all down. I had no idea when I would get back her again.

I returned home to Chicago and spent the next few weeks (after work) trying to transcribe the names correctly from the embroidered names on each block into a spreadsheet. Then I spent some time researching the names in an effort to verify them. There are 313 names of church members in the Nine Mile United Methodist Church in 1906 listed on this quilt. This is a Genealogist’s Winning Lottery Ticket. My Great Grandparents and my Grandfather were not among the families listed but several cousin were..

I have not looked at these names for a while. Now that there is so much more data available online and I am retired, I need to resurrect this project and work on it ! This was part of the reason that I started Blogging when I did. It has been a long time since I have looked at these families. This was the first of my many favorite finds! Oh I might add that my other hobby is quilting!

Happy Hunting,

Jan

When I saw the word “Foundations” as the prompt for the first week of January, it did not take me long to decide what to write about but the question was who? As Genealogist, we are always looking for our foundations. We are looking for those people who came before us to create this ever evolving family that we belong to.

This week I was casually looking at DNA matched on Ancestry when I came along a Silverthorn connection. In the Ancestry Thruline, I had a potential 5^th Great Grandparent, George Silverthorn. At the 5^th Great Grandparent level, you have a foundation of 128 Grandmothers and Grandfathers or 64 sets of Grandparents. So far in Ancestry, at this level in my tree, I have 83 of the 128 Grandparents identified and DNA matches associated with these grandparents. They are not all verified but Ancestry has found data to indicate that these people could be a part of my foundation!

This week with the Silverthorn couple I decided to work on verifying them. My first known Silverthorn was Dorothy Emeline Silverthorn who was born in Ontario in 1834. She married John Landon Best in 1851 in Ontario. They are my 3^rd Great Grandparents. Dorothy’s parents, my 4^th Great Grandparents are William Silverthorn (1793) and Anna White (1809). They were married in Bayham, Ontario. William’s parents are George Silverthorn (1760) and Anna Morgan (1763). They lived in New Jersey and married there but later left with George’s parents and other members of his family for Canada when it became obvious that the Revolutionary War was going to break out. They were Loyalist. George and Anna are my 5^th Grandparents. I have a lot of Canadian Loyalist in my foundation!

My 6^th Great Grandparents are Thomas Silverthorn (1717) and Johannah Newman (1718). Thomas was born in Amesbury, Wiltshire, England in 1717. They had ten children. That is a lot of Silverthorn families to look at this week. My 7^th Great Grandparents are Oliver Silverthorne (1686) and Mary Champion de Crespigny (1688). This couple had three sons, George, Thomas and William. Oliver and his three sons were the first Silverthorne Family to come to America in the early 1700’s. They came with 97 other Quaker families and settled in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. The family name seemed to change from Silverthorne to Silverthorn at about the time they emigrated.

My 8^th Great Grandparents are Oliver Silverthorne (1655) and Margaret Mist (1661). Oliver was born in Netheravon, Wiltshire, England in July of 1686. This family is documented in the United Kingdom for six more generations to my 14^th Great Grandparents, John William Silverthorne who was born in 1450 and his wife Aussie who was born in 1460. All generations of this British Silverthorne family were known to come from Ashton, Wilshire, England. There was a Silverthorne Family Association who has thoroughly documented this family in England and documented some of the Silverthorn Family in America. It has since disbanded but their website is still visible on the internet. The UK Findagrave site has very accurate and complete data on this family also. I have spent several days comparing it. Steeple Ashton is the Anglican parish where the Silverthorne family records can all be found. The cemetery is where generations the Silverthorne families are buried.

I would say that 14 generations is a pretty firm foundation for the Silverthorne / Silverthorn family!

Happy Hunting, Jan