Thank you RootsTech and FamilySearch!

 FamilySearch's annual RoosTech conference was this week, and it was awesome! There were some fantastic classes, great sales on genealogy programs and products, but my favorite thing was the new features and toosl released or announced by the big genealogy companies. One of the biggest was FamilySearch Labs, where they will be premiering beta versions of new features for the FamilySearch site. The most popular update they announced was full-text searching, where the entire text of documents in the FamilySearch library can be searched, not just the names or places that were pulled out in indexing. The databases they premiered this with is a batch of deeds and wills from across the US, and some records from Mexico. I found some really interesting looking deeds for several ancestral lines in Montana, Minnesota, and other places. But I also found a will for an ancestor that I never knew left one! That ancestor is my fourth-great-grandmother Joanna Maria Dorothea Elizabeth (Hildebrand) (Wilken) Kruger (also the winner of the longest name in my family tree award), also known as Hannah Kruger. 

I didn't find the will by searching for Hannah, I was actually searching for her daughter, Matilda (Kruger) Hammer, wife of my occasionally wayward ancestor Philip Wilhelm Hammer. Fortunately, Hannah let Matilda a portion of her belongings, which is how the full-text search picked her up. She was the mother of somewhere around 11 children between two husbands. Curiously, her will only mentions a few of them. She said she was 69 when she made out her will, which makes me wonder if she knew she was running out of time. The will is dated 17 June 1888, and was probated on 12 June 1889, almost exactly a year later. Her second husband, Henry Kruger, predeceased her seven years earlier, so he's not mentioned. Her whole estate was distributed in just one paragraph: 

"To my daughter Anna Kruger all my Personal Property, also house, furniture and all money except $15.00 Dollars to my daughter Matilda Hammer, and $15.00 Dollers to my daughter Emma Huve. Likewise I make, constitute and appoint my son William Wilken to be executor of this my last will and testament hereby revoking all former wills by me made."

And that was it. It makes me wonder why her other surviving children didn't get anything, including the son that was executor for her estate. Maybe they were already paid out of the estate, as I've seen that before. Or maybe she just had favorites. :) Either way, it blows my mind that I now have a document whose text was authored by an ancestor who was born over 200 years ago. She couldn't have written it, as it was signed with her mark rather than her signature, indicating she couldn't read and write. But still! 

I'm really excited for this new feature at FamilySearch, and can't wait to see what other discoveries this will help me find. 

Black Sheep Sunday - The Lies of Philip Hammer

Now that things have calmed down a bit, I can finally begin to talk about Philip Hammer's second, and much more serious, episode of...misrepresentation of the facts, shall we say. In my beginning stages of research on Philip, I found he was born in Norway in 1848, and immigrated to the US sometime in the 1860s as he married his first wife Christine Steenson in Wisconsin in 1869. I couldn't find him in any 1860 or 1865 censuses, but I did find him in various federal and state censuses in 1870, 1875, 1880, and 1885, and various other documents I came across for him along the way. Through the help of distant cousins I connected with over the years, I received copies of a record Philip's son Peter Hammer made in 1940 as part of a historical data project on early North Dakota pioneers. The information from this record was apparently all provided by Peter, with no original documents (at least there were none in the copy I received), just a typescript of Peter's answers to various questions about when the family entered North Dakota, what they brought with them, where they lived, and so on. As part of the record, there was a typewritten document written by Guy M. Chance, the field worker who documented Peter's father's story, that told the story of Philip's life. Interestingly, the first full paragraph of the story is all about Philip serving in Civil War - that he was a member of Capt. H. M. Stocking's unit in Co. G, 48th Wisconsin Regulars, and that he even marched with General William T. Sherman on his march through Georgia to the sea. My first reaction was "wow, my ancestor was right there in Sherman's famous march!"

When I asked my cousin about it, she said that Philip probably never actually served in the Civil War. I asked how she knew that, and she said she had a copy of the pension file created for Philip's second wife Mathilda Kruger, and that his service was disputed in the file. At the time, I didn't go any further, and sort of let it sit there for a couple years. I attribute the wait to my genealogy ADD, where I get sidetracked on another line, and revisit things years later when they randomly pop in my head again. That happened with Philip earlier this year - I got hit with the "whatever happened to him?" bug and started digging.

I noticed on the 1885 Minnesota census, Philip was marked positive for the column "Served as a soldier in Federal army during rebellion." So he apparently said himself that he'd served in the Civil War. That was interesting, and led me to wonder whether Philip would appear in the 1890 Veteran's schedule. I went looking, and found him. By that time, he was living in New Rockford, North Dakota. He told the census taker that he did serve in the Civil War as a private in Company C, 15th Regiment of Wisconsin Infantry from 27 November 1861 to 2 July 1865. Pretty detailed information, right?



Philip Hammer in the 1890 Veteran's Schedule

So I went looking for information on the 15th Wisconsin Infantry, to see if there was any record Philip having served with them. It turns out, this regiment was known as the Scandinavian regiment, as almost all the soldiers in it were Norwegian, with some Swedes and Danes thrown in. Company C, where Philip allegedly served, was mostly from Racine County, at the southeastern corner of the state. Philip was living in Pierce County, in the far west of the state, in 1870, though he could easily have moved over the years since the war's end if he did serve. So if Philip was going to serve, that would be the perfect unit for him. Luckily, the FamilySearch Wiki has a link to the roster of Company C, so I went looking, and guess what?

 

No Philip Hammer. No Hammers at all. Not even a single Philip.

 

So I asked my cousin if she could send me the pension file she mentioned. It turned out to be about 100 pages of various documents - depositions, statements, inquires, letters, all kinds of stuff. Some of it was hard to read, and it wasn't in chronological order. So I started going through and transcribing it, and putting my transcriptions in chronological order, to make easier sense of all the documents. What I found surprised me.

 

Apparently Philip told Mathilda that he served in the Civil War, but never told her any details about the company he supposedly served in. Mathilda also recalled that he had a military discharge that was framed, but had been lost in all their moves. She also recalled visits from a man named "Big" Peterson and a man named Christianson, who she said were war buddies of Philip's. With that information, I went back to the roster of Company C, and was blown away. There was indeed an Ole Peterson, Sr., as well as an Ole Peterson, Jr., who both served in Company C. The senior Peterson could easily have been "Big" Peterson. What's more, there was a Christian Peterson as well. Could Philip have indeed served in the war, and the roster somehow missed him?

 

Since I couldn't find Philip in any Civil War rosters from this Company or Regiment (I searched various databases, as well as the entire 15th Regiment manually - no Philip Hammer), I figured the only way to answer this definitively was to look for him in Norwegian records. If I could prove he was still in Norway during the Civil War, that would put this to bed once and for all.

 

I went back to the files I had on Philip, and found that one record that I had labeled as a birth record for Philip wasn't that at all. I don't know if someone told me it was his birth record and I just noted it as such, or if I just guessed because the first couple columns are information about his birth. But upon closer inspection, it not only noted his birth date and place, it also noted the place and date of his confirmation in the Lutheran church - Domkirken parish, Bergen County, Norway, 4 October 1863.

 

Military lottery book for Bergen, 1850-1875

Here was proof that Philip not only did not enlist in Company C in 1861 (as he told the census taker in 1890), it was physically impossible for him to have done so, as he was still in Norway.

 

I later found out that this was a record of entries in the military lottery for Bergen, 1850-1875. Men were noted in this book, and (if I'm remembering correctly) were randomly selected for military service, kind of like a random draft. Kind of ironic that the first confirmation that Philip did not serve in the Civil War was a military record from Norway.

 

So then I wondered, did Philip come to the US before the Civil War ended at all? I went looking in the 1865 Bergen census to see if Philip was listed in it. It tallied all the people living in Norway as of 31 December 1865, 8 months after the end of the Civil War. A few mouse clicks, and I had my answer.

 

Philip Hammer in the 1865 Bergen census

 

I found Philip living in the household of Nils Bessesen, working as an uhrmagerlærling, or watchmaker's apprentice (along with Nils' apparent son Johannes). As an aside, the name Nils Bessesen was very interesting, because on the death certificate for Philip's first wife Christine, her father's name is listed as Nels A. Bassens, not Steenson as was given on the marriage record for Philip and Christine. Makes me wonder if he lived with his future father-in-law before emigrating to America, where he married his former landlord's daughter. But there we go with my genealogy ADD again.

 

So Philip was indeed in Norway throughout the Civil War, and immigrated sometime between the beginning of January 1866 and May 1869, when he married Christine in Wisconsin. He definitely did NOT serve in the Civil War in any capacity, because he was an ocean away when it happened. So how do you explain his listing of Company C, 15th Regiment of Wisconsin, the fact that the 15th Regiment was the Scandinavian Regiment, listing specific dates of service, and receiving visits from veterans of Company C? What about the framed discharge?

 

My guess is while living in Wisconsin, he met "Big" Peterson, Christian Peterson, and other war vets. He learned from them the units that they served in, and the dates that regiment was put together and mustered out. Then he, for whatever reason, at some point began telling others that he was a veteran of that war. The earliest mention I have of him putting himself forth as a veteran is in 1885, 9 years after the death of his first wife, who may have known him back in Norway, due to his probably living with her father, and would thus have known that he did not serve in the war. Philip's second wife Mathilda maintained that Philip told her he was a Civil War veteran, though she did not know the details of his service, and I wonder if Philip ever told her he was from Company C like he did that census taker. If he did, she didn't remember as she stated repeatedly in her depositions in her pension file that she did not know where and when he served, only that she believed that he did serve. As for the pension, I don't have any other record or mention of a framed document being kept or lost by the family, so I can only guess that it wasn't a discharge (since he never served) but some other document, perhaps from Norway, so Mathilda wouldn't have been able to read it.

 

After Philip's death, Mathilda, in good faith, applied for a pension. Since she didn't know the details of her husband's service, she was initially rejected, and told to come back with more information. A friend and neighbor of hers, James Patch, did some research for her, and found mention of a Philip Hammer who had served from Wisconsin, but from Company G of the 48th Regiment of infantry. Believing this to be his neighbor, Patch passed on the info to Mathilda, who updated her application and resubmitted it. Imagine her surprise then, when she was told Philip Hammer of the 48th already had a widow drawing pension on his service!

 

Upon learning this, the pension department launched an investigation as to why there would be two widows claiming service from the same soldier. They sent out special examiners who interviewed Ricke Hammer, the widow already receiving the pension, as well as people who knew her, and then did the same for Mathilda and her neighbors. They compiled detailed records of the ages, birth dates, and birth places of the children included in the two pension applications, and contacted the midwives and doctors who helped deliver those children. It was a pretty big deal, and a lot of effort was put into the investigation.

 

The end result was this - the Philip Hammer who did serve from Wisconsin had died back in the 1880s, and his widow had filed for a pension soon after. Mathilda's husband had died in 1899 in California, after being struck by a train. There was ample evidence that though they shared similar names, they were not the same person (so no bigamy here, thankfully!). But the inquiry was launched primarily to determine whether Mathilda had intentionally sought to draw pension on someone she had never been married to, and determined that she did not do so. Mathilda mentioned how Patch had gotten her the information, and that's why she used the service info she did, as she had no other details to go on. Patch likewise stated Philip had told him he had been in the war, but did not get any details of service from Philip.

 

My heart goes out to poor Mathilda in all of this. She trusted her husband's word, and applied for a pension in good faith, believing that she was indeed the widow of a veteran. She stated several times in her depositions that she was not well off at all, only getting a little income from some property she owned. So the pension wasn't meant to fatten her wallet - it was meant to help her survive. Sadly, she did not get it. I can only guess and hope that her children stepped up and helped her get by until she passed away in 1932.

 

Philip Hammer, his wife Mathilda, and two sons in 1884

 

I try not to judge my ancestors too harshly, but I really am left shaking my head at Philip on this one. He repeatedly misrepresented himself, to his friends, to his poor wife and kids, and to the federal government. I can't help but wonder why on earth he took this story to such great lengths. Did he have something to gain? Something to hide? Was he just jealous of those who were veterans? He never applied for a pension himself. Mathilda is quoted as saying "My husband never applied for pension. Blanks were sent him but he said he was able to make a living." So if it wasn't for financial gain, then why? Maybe one day I'll find the answer. But for now, it's at least an object lesson on the consequences of not telling the truth, one that I can pass on to my kids, and encourage them to be honest. You never know what the end result of your actions will be, and how long the aftershocks will continue to ripple.

Black Sheep Sunday - When Ancestors Go Bad

A couple months ago, I was digging through some online newspapers at Newspapers.com, and came across a few articles about my 3rd-great-grandfather, Philip Wilhelm Hammer. A couple of them mentioned his watch and jewelry shop, which I found fascinating - not many of my direct ancestors were entrepreneurs. Many were farmers, or worked in the mines, or for retail establishments or canneries or other occupations. But the idea of this one ancestor being a watchmaker and jewelry salesman has always stood out in my mind. But I digress - back to the articles.

What caught my eye that day was the content of two articles from late 1880, when Philip and his family were living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These articles made it plain that Philip had gotten himself into some trouble. 

The first article laid out the charges - he was accused of "designedly, by false pretenses and with intent to defraud, obtaining the goods of another." That's a pretty serious accusation, though it didn't tell me who was defrauded, for how much, or any other information about the crime. The second article wasn't super informative either, but at least gave me some details about the outcome. 

Despite pleading not guilty, the jury convicted him, and turned him over to the "leniency of the court." I'm still not sure what that means, as it sounds like it could be either saying "yes he's guilty but go easy on him," or "he's guilty as sin, throw him to the dogs." Either way, he did not get out of what he was accused of. 

These articles let me wondering - were there court records made of this case? It was a district court, so it seemed likely there would be. That led to the next question - could I get a copy of them? I asked around some genealogy groups on Facebook, and one recommended I try the Minnesota Historical Society, as they were known to have some court records. A cousin of mine, also descended from Philip, chipped in and we sent off a research request for the records. After a few emails back and forth explaining what exactly I was looking for, I was told they didn't have the records for the time frame I needed, but that they knew who did and they were refunding my fee Wow!! 

So I contacted the Hennepin County court house and after once again explaining what I was after, I was told they did indeed have the records I was looking for! I was told they were in poor condition and hard to read, but I could still have them if I wanted. I asked if there was a way to see a sample page, and the lady scanned and emailed one to me. The handwriting was a bit difficult, but the image was clear. I figured if all the pages were like this, I'd be fine. I paid the fee and submitted my request and waited. For those of you who know me, you know I hate waiting. But this time I was plenty busy with a rush research project for a client, so before I knew it, the records arrived! 

I was originally told there were 9 pages, but it turns out there were 14. A couple of the pages turned out to be rewrites of each other, but there was quite a bit of interesting detail in there. Here's what I gather happened: 

On Saturday, November 6, 1880 Philip Hammer and another, unnamed person (one witness says it was his brother, but I have no record of any of his siblings ever living near him) approached a guy named John Mayer and offered him a satchel (or sachel as they keep spelling it in the court records) of jewelry. There was quite an assortment of items - 30 pairs of gold-plated earrings, 12 silver-plated sugar spoons, 6 4-bladed Jack knives, 24 gold-plated cuff links, and 3 gold collar buttons. They dickered about the price, and settled on $15 for the whole set (about $300 in today's terms). Philip and his buddy went outside for a minute, supposedly to talk it over, but went into a saloon across the street and removed most of the goods from the satchel, and then returned to John and accepted the offered price. John paid them and they left and went back to the saloon. John gave the satchel to his wife Mary, who dumped it out on her bed to check out the goods, and saw what had happened. She went over to the saloon and publicly accused Philip of fraud, which he denied. So John took the matter to court, swore out an affidavit against Philip (whose name he didn't know) and Philip was arrested the following Monday. 

The testimonies in the court records are pretty clear. The saloon owner saw Philip take the goods out of the satchel, John and Mary's testimonies were consistent, Other people testified that they saw Mary accuse Philip. Interestingly, there is no testimony from Philip himself in the file. I wonder if it's because he plead not guilty, so they just compiled evidence against him?

One other thing caught my attention. At the top of the arrest warrant, it says "Arrest on Sunday or at Night time." Why would it say that? What would be the benefit of arresting him on Sunday or at night vs during the day on a weekday or Saturday? Was it that they didn't want to cause a public scene? Very intriguing.

The records also state that he signed a bond that stated he would have to pay $200 if he didn't appear in court when appointed. Given the articles mentioned above, it looks like he stuck to it and appeared in court when he was supposed to.

The whole episode is a mystery to me for several reasons. Why did he do it? Did he think he could get away with it? Who was the co-conspirator, and why wasn't he charged? Or was he? Maybe I can find some more answers back in the newspapers, even though an index search didn't turn up anything further. So many questions, some probably unanswerable.

Given another major event of apparent dishonesty in Philip's family life (which I hope to blog about soon) I'm left to wonder if he was fundamentally honest or not. I try not to judge my ancestors too harshly, as I don't and can't have their life stories, just a few moments of time here and there captured in a few documents. But when two of the major events they are involved in both occurred because of that ancestor's dishonesty, it makes me wonder what drove him to do such things. Then again, I've made some poor choices, and if by chance the only record of my life were accounts of two of those poor choices, future generations would probably get the wrong impression about me (at least I hope it'd be wrong). So I think I'll give old Philip the benefit of the doubt here, and hope that the rest of his days were filled with better choices. 

Tuesday's Tip - Why I bother going after original records

About 10 years ago, I somehow came across a printout from the Norwegian digital archives website, that showed information extracted from the 1865 Norwegian census. It listed the names of all Hammers living in Bergen county, Norway, among whom was my 3rd-great-grandfather, Philip Wilhelm Hammer. I took the information from the extract, noted it in my files, and moved on.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was revisiting the info I'd collected on Philip, as well as going through some new documents provided by my awesome cousin Jackie. She's done a lot of digging on the Hammers, and had uncovered about 100 pages of data on Philip and the runaround his poor wife was given while applying for a Civil War pension (that is a whole nother story, to be discussed in a future post). But while going through my files on Philip, I saw that same printout from the 1865 census and realized I've never seen the original article. Really good genealogists will always tell you to go after the original document because there is often information that didn't make it to the transcription for whatever reason - it was in the sidenotes, or hard to read, or the transcriber didn't think it important enough to extract, or any number of reasons. So I figured I'd go after the original census and see what I could find.

After finding the census (which was super easy, thanks to the awesome website the Norwegian digital archives has) I didn't see anything new right away. The names were there, the information was all there, same as in the extract. So I flipped a few pages back and forth, and it turns out every farm had its own kind of title page, with instructions on how the document was to be filled out, and when it was due by (no later than 8 January 1866). It also gave the address of the farm, the name of the principal owner, and the name of the area the farm was in. Then down at the bottom of the page, it gives a place for the person completing the farm census to sign his or her name. I knew from the census data that Philip was living on Nils Bassesen's farm in Bergen county in 1865, who was probably connected to the trade he was learning (watchmaking and jewelry making). Imagine my surprise, then, to see this signature for Nils' farm census:

 

So far in my research, this is the only time I have ever seen his actual signature. And had I not gone after the original document and poked around, I never would have found it. This is a great example of exactly why it's so important to go after the original documents. You really never know what you will find there.

Church record bonanza - Lutheran church records in US Midwest

Earlier this month I received a text message alert from Twitter, notifying me of a new tweet from FamilySearch. The tweet mentioned several record sets that had been posted or updated by Ancestry.com, one of which was the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940. I was really intrigued by this, because my Norwegian ancestors were staunchly Lutheran, and lived in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota after immigrating to the US. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to find more information about them, and maybe even fill in a few gaps.

Little did I know how right I was. Just searching for the surname Bergstad generated 219 hits! Many of these turned out to be for people not connected to me (not that I know of, at least). But I did find 70 records of my family - baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and a few burials. Most of the records were in Norwegian, right up until around the early 1900s-1910s, though the books used Norwegian titles and column headings up into the 1920s and beyond. I knew there were areas in the US where German immigrants clung onto their identity and language for many years after coming to the US (my Waechter and Beilstein ancestors were prime examples of this), but I had no idea that Norwegians had clung just as tenaciously to theirs. It was fascinating to see generation after generation of my family documented in these books, with the entries continuing in Norwegian decades after they came to this country.

Of all the records I found, three records really stood out:

Baptism records of the four oldest Bergstad children

 



First is the baptism record of four of my grandfather Tom Bergstad's siblings. Virgil and Clayton were children of John Knute Bergstad and his first wife, Mamie Wells, while Katherine and Lorraine were children of his second wife, Katherine Hammer. These were all of the children living at the time, and they were all baptized on the same day in 1928. Maybe they had lapsed in church attendance, or maybe something about Lorraine's birth (sixth months before the baptisms) spurred them to get everyone baptized. Whatever the case, I was really interested to see that they had all four of their children baptized on the same day.

Baptism record of Roland John Thomas Bergstad

Next up is the baptism record of my grandfather, Tom Bergstad. I wasn't expecting to find a record for someone so closely related to me, so this was a pleasant surprise. For some reason I'd always thought that he was named Roland John Bergstad, and that Thomas was a nickname or added into his name later. This pretty well proves that Thomas was part of his name from the beginning. It's interesting that, after four older siblings were all baptized together, that Tom's baptism didn't happen until he was over a year old. His older sister Helen, born in 1929, was baptized at seven months, so it just seems odd that they'd wait until Tom was twice that age almost. But then, I'm not Lutheran and I don't know their customs that well, so maybe this wasn't unusual.

The record that impacted me the most, though, was this one. This is the baptism record of Frances Alvira Brennan, a first cousin twice removed (our common ancestors were Knute Bergstad and Betsy Olson, my second-great-grandparents). Before finding her baptism record, I had no previous records of her existence. I tried searching Google, Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Newspaper Archive, and Findagrave.com, and can find no other records of her anywhere. So far as I can find online, this is the only record of her out there, which makes it all the more important. What gets me about this record isn't that it's a baptism; it's the little note at the far right. Next to the names of the witnesses (Mr. and Mrs. Knute Bergstad, Frances' maternal grandparents) is a note that says "Burned in fire that destroyed home in Bad Lands, died next day." It doesn't give a death date, and I don't know where the home in "Bad Lands" was. But that's a horrible way to die at any age. Her baptism occurred a little after her 3rd birthday, so I know she lived to be that old at least. I don't see her in the 1930 census, so I'm inclined to say her death occurred between Nov 1928 (the baptism) and April 1930 (the census). If that's true, she would have died at 4 1/2 at the oldest. What a tragedy for that family.

In short, I am once again blown away by the wealth of information contained in church records. I now have exact birth dates for several dozen more relatives, and a greater sense of the role religion played in the Bergstad side of my family. The records also led me to the short story of one little cousin, and even if I'd found nothing else, I'd be glad she can now be remembered.

Railroad records finally located

Me and my sister on a train 30 years ago

Trains have a unique place in my family history. My older two kids were obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine for years when they were little, and spent a lot of time building tracks and running the trains on them. I remember taking train rides as a kid, and while I can't remember where we were going or why, I do remember how fun they were. While living in Montana, my folks would take train rides out to Washington to visit my uncle Randy, and to go to Seahawks games. Going a bit further back, one of my 3rd-great-grandfathers, Philip Hammer, died after being struck by a train in California in 1899. Another 3rd-great-grandfather, Adoniram Shute, reportedly died of a heart attack while on a train in Montana in 1909. But on a happier note, several generations of my paternal ancestry worked on trains, or in jobs relating to trains. My grandpa, Fred Gibson, worked for years in the railroad industry. His father and uncles both worked for the railroad, and his maternal grandfather Samuel Joseph did as well.



Fred Gibson in a train, 1970s

 

Knowing that several relatives of mine worked for the railroad, when I got started in genealogy I became interested in knowing more about their time with the railroad, and what the railroad records could tell me about them. Before too long, I found an index to Northern Pacific Railway personnel records. I saw that there were indeed personnel files for my grandpa, his dad, uncles David and Thomas, and what looks like his maternal grandfather, Samuel Joseph. 

 

Index record for Fred J. Gibson, my great-grandfather

Index record for Thomas Lewis Gibson, my grandfather's uncle

 

Unfortunately, at the time I could not figure out how to find the records these indexes were pointing to. One thing led to another, and I never really got back to finding out how to find these records. I made token searches now and again, but never found them.

 

Until this week.

 

I got a text message saying Ancestry had released images and indexes for a record group called "U.S., Northern Pacific Railway Company Personnel Files, 1890-1963". My mind immediately went back to those railroad record indexes from so long ago, and I went to searching. Three minutes later, I hit the jackpot!

 

 

 

Well, part of the jackpot. It turns out they had records for two of the five people I had index numbers for, Frederick John Gibson (my great-grandfather) and Thomas Lewis Gibson (his brother). David H. Gibson, Frederick and Thomas' younger brother, somehow got skipped (they have the records before and after his number, but not his), and the collection on Ancestry stops before Sam Joseph and my grandpa's records. Hopefully future updates will add these records.

 

But I was so happy to finally know what these records look like. I do wish my great-grandfather's file was longer, as it's only eight pages, two of which are scans of the manila folder containing the actual records. But Thomas' file is 117 pages! I've only had time to go through a little of it so far, but what I have seen is fascinating. Over and over again, auditor reports of the various stations mentioned that Thomas was considered competent for a more responsible position. On the other hand, the file also contains a letter stating Thomas was suspended for five days due to leaving his telegraph station to get a drink of water - the last line of the letter states "Your excuse that there was no water in the house and you wanted a drink at that particular time is no excuse whatever."

 

I love living and researching in this digital age, when we have so much information available, and more coming online all the time. I can't wait to see what else I find in these files!

Why my genealogy is so awesomely hard to trace - part 2

Picking up where I left off, here's a summary of where I'm at with my maternal ancestral lines, and what I want to do from here.

1. Bergstad - Thanks to a Bergstad cousin and the awesome online archives of the Norwegian government, I've got original records taking my Bergstad line back to the 1700s. I could try to push back further, but what I'd really like to do is get copies of the records about the farms they lived on, because that seems to be how things were organized in Norway back then. There are books in the FHL, I know which ones I need, I just need someone to get the copies for me.

2. Fadness - I've got some of the records for my Fadness lines that I have for my Bergstads, but not as many or as complete. I intended to go get them, just got sidetracked and never got back to them. I need to flesh out my record collection from the Norwegian archives for the Fadnesses I know about before going any further back on them. Plus I need to do a little more study on how the Norwegian naming system actually worked. I don't know enough about how the farm name worked, if it was considered part of the person's name or not. In both the Bergstad and Fadness families, they eventually adopted the farm name as their surnames, and there has to be a reason for that.

3. Olson - Another Norwegian line, in about the same situation as the Fadnesses - need to flesh out the documentation, but both in the US and Norway. This is one case where the surname came from a direct ancestor, not a farm.

4. Hammer - My last Norwegian line, slightly better documented in Norway than the Olsons and Fadnesses, but not by much. I do have some really cool homestead documents for the immigrant on this line, Philip Wilhelm Oleson Hammer for his settlement in North Dakota. I think this is another family that took the farm name as the surname. I want to document them better in Norway, and see what I can pull up on the farm records.

5. Krüger - One of my German lines in my mom's ancestry, and one where I have a lot of names and dates and places but no supporting documentation. I really want to research these guys and trace them back to the old country, but haven't because I've thought it would be too tough. Maybe I should test this and see what I can find out?

6. McDonald - My one and only Scottish line. Well, sorta - one line of McDonalds was apparently English, while the other was probably Scottish. The problem is, I'm stuck in Ontario in the mid 1800s, where there were approximately 50,000 George McDonalds/MacDonalds. It's like looking for a single strand (blade? string?) of hay in a field of haystacks. If I could track down a modern descendant and get them to take a DNA test, I might stand a chance of tracing them back to Scotland.

7. Harris - I've got some pretty good documentation on them going back to the late 1700s in America, and then it stops. Although I've always thought I need more solid info on my 4th-great-grandfather, Lewis Harris, tying him to his parents Nathaniel Harris and Mary Howard. That and colonial Virginia research is way beyond me at this point, so I'd really have to bone up before trying to tackle this line.

8. Berry - Lewis Harris married Lucinda Berry, so the time and location for the Berry's is pretty close to that of the Harrises. I've got some good info on Lucinda and her folks, but not much beyond those two generations. Again, this is colonial Virginia and perhaps Maryland, so I haven't really tried to push beyond what I already know about them.

9. Scribner - This is another early American family, where the data I have goes back to England, but I haven't verified it yet. I'm sure there's a lot of good info out there to corroborate it, I just haven't taken time to learn about how to winnow it out of the records yet.

10. Craddock - This is a probable English connection, but I only feel comfortable with my documentation on them going back to about 1830 (and even that's pushing it a bit). It's southern research, so you're dealing with missing/destroyed records much moreso than any other of my lines. I'd like to shore up what I have going back to 1850, and see where I can go from there.

11. Beilstein - I've written pretty extensively about Philena "Lena" Beilstein, probably more than any other single ancestor in my whole tree. Her story is just so fascinating and so tragic. I was recently able to find a little more info about her parents, and the man who married them. I have a lot more info on her ancestry, but not a lot of documentation to support it. I'd like to confirm it if I can and explore the Hessian connection.

Well, that about sums it up. Any recommendations on which line I should research first?