Genealogy is Ruthless without Me

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Deerman Cemetery

Nothing happens by accident, we are the sum of the parts of the puzzle assembled, we weave our lives but at the end we have a beautiful and well balanced tapestry and all those other innuendos. Being a very busy mom, one of my biggest escapes were books. People thought it was funny that I would plant myself under a tree and read a book.

I would read wonderfully written family sagas by authors James A. Michener, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Nora Lofts, and Susan Howatch as fast as they were released in paper book or became available at the library. I seldom paid full price for the hard copy. I was always impressed with the families that had a family burial plot. Little did I know at the time that my own family story is a wonderful family saga waiting to be written.

And we have family cemetery plots!! More than one!! The GenWeb has set up a marvelous volunteer network that is documenting and identifying the cemeteries around the world. Small family plots are having websites dedicated to them. I have written about the Mooring cemetery in Lake County, Tennessee in another blog but this blog is about the Deerman Cemetary.

The cemetery back ends to a farm.

Click to close image, click and drag to move. Use arrow keys for next and previous.

Click to close image, click and drag to move. Use arrow keys for next and previous.

Overview of steps that once led to the chapel.

A woman by the id MargaretCheney has posted on the ancestry message boards about the deerman cemetery .The old Deerman's Chapel & Cemetery is located about 7 miles south of Steele, Al. on old Highway 11. It was founded by Mary Deerman, widow of Solomon Deerman, after she moved to the area (Monroe County, Mississippi Territory) in 1816. She died in 1823 and is buried there. I feel sure others were buried there earlier. Henry Deerman, her son, died Sept 16, 1857, and is buried there.During World War II a large military base, Camp Sibert, was built on land which included the chapel, which was torn down and a new church was built across the highway. A fence was erected around the cemetery. Probably there were no markers for most of the older graves. The family of Mary Deerman lived nearby for many years and knew personally who of the Deerman family were buried there without a marker and where they were located. In 1984 several of Mary's gggggrandchildren contributed money for the purchase of a marker. I'm not sure but they may have purchased markers for other Deerman graves also.After Daniel Davis Deerman's death (he left three children), Rebecca Jane Pickens Deerman married George Washington Davis, son of Wilay Davis and Polly Broyles. Wiley Davis was a brother of Margaret, wife of Richard Deerman, brother of Daniel Davis Deerman.If you can locate a copy of the book "Ancestors and Descendants of the Dearman/Deerman Families", it contains the above info and a list of graves with markers believed to be related to the Deermans. I don't believe there is a history of the church or an official list of the graves in a repository anywhere.You probably already know that Rebecca Pickens Deerman moved with the Pickens family to Texas after Wiley's death, and married G. W. Davis in 1854 in Cherokee Co Tx, where she died in 1885. She and G.W. had ten children. She was born in Athens, McMinnville, Tennessee.

and here is the data of the Dearmans buried here found on its own website called "Magnolias and Peaches"

Deerman Chapel Cemetery
Saint Clair County, Alabama

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Top Ten Genealogy Moments in 2009

Top Ten Genealogy Moments in 2009
Lisa Alzo, who writes The Accidental Genealogist blog, posted her Top 10 Genealogical Moments of 2009 and invited other genea-bloggers to write about theirs too.

Top 10 Genealogical Moments in 2009:

Chronilogically?? or by Importance??

ok 10 in no particular order.

1. A moment of genealogy community acceptance by being asked to be the Sunshine Person for the Chula Vista Genealogy Society. Does it sound like a made up position? Well it is ---Shirley Becker came up with the post and I was accepted annoumiously.

2. A moment of surprise when the LATimes called to interview me regarding my Grandma's Geni Camp that I conducted for a week with my grandchildren.

3. A moment of accepted family connection meeting "new" cousins Martha Jane Good Caswell, Preston Bell, Lonnie Potter, and David Reed.

4. A moment of accomplishment receiving Eliza Jane Mooring Hayley Works pension application regarding the great grandfather my father never knew, Captain John William Hayley.

5. A moment of feeling that somebody-out-there-understood-what-I-really-wanted-in-a -software-program ROOT MAGIC 4

6. A moment of collaboration with my Aunt Helen showing her that we had over 200 relatives that are ready to be presented for temple.

7. A sense of being a part of history: Connecting the Needhams and the Hayleys in Jamestown 1640 and realizing their off springs (my g-g-parents) marry in 1850.

8. The moment of devastation I felt when I realized what my family survived during and post Civil War.

9. A moment of validation connecting with so many genealogist verifing, and relating to my family history.

10. A moment of responsibility and purpose when I realized that I am the Family Historian and need to complete this work to the best of my ability.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

I Reunited Two Women to their Families this Week.

I felt a certain amount of satisfaction this week as I was able to reunite two girls to their families this week. As I network and meet other genealogist on line, I am coming aware of how my lineage is sometimes the missing link. Names, dates, locations that I am very aware of is being sought by others.

Elizabeth Jane White, my direct great grandmother, lost her mother at childbirth. Two of her brothers and a sister ventured out and became farm hands away from their home. These three siblings have a long and well documented family history in "private" genealogy studies. I "met" (via Internet) the granddaughter of the eldest of these siblings this week. She "gushed" as much as you can gush via emails when I was able to provide the documentation and life history of this lost baby girl. Martha Caswell indicated she had been looking for this baby for 20 years. Needless to say Martha and I have been burning up the keyboards communicating and updating our family histories.

It has been kind of fun catching her up with my great grandmother and my great grandmother's siblings whom I knew personally as a child. I have been filling in the blanks, explaining the nicknames, occupations, and whereabouts of these people. My "new cousin" would ask me questions such as "what kind of clerk was Floid?". To which I can direct her to a postcard of a Christian Publishing house in Anderson Indiana where young people went to live and work as part of their "Christian Duty".
Records can only tell so much of the story.......filling in the blanks with "what you know" can only be accomplished by networking.

Elizabeth Weston

B: 1518 Kenn, Devon, , England D: 1588 is another "lost sister" I was able to reunite with her family this week. Her brothers are well documented. But of course Elizabth's name changed and her history is documented in her husband's and children's last name. Her surname becomes kind of a footnote to the family history.
But this week I reunited Elizabeth to her family. The response from these families has been overwhelming.

Using our American/English surname system lineage is followed through the male's surname. Usually the male lineage is a little easier to follow and research. The male lineage many times gives you great leads to follow. Clues for records can be researched through same last name children, same last name brothers, etc. This is not so with the lineage of females in our naming culture.

I am starting to understand another "layer" to this genealogy work. The truly deeper meaning of family, the need to reunite siblings, the enormous patchwork that is our heritage, and the importance of each genealogist to continue "their" work.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Mattie Reed ---- granddaughter of Robert Reed (Sr.) of Donegal, northern Ireland, and Mary (Polly) (Pomeroy) Reed.

Robert's father was Robert Reed (Sr.) of Donegal, northern Ireland, born circa 1730; Robert's mother was Mary (Polly) (Pomeroy) Reed. By 1800, Robert (Sr.) was decease and his wife Mary, age 45 or over, was living in Fairfield Township with one female under 10 and one male age 16 and under 26. Both Robert (Sr.), and Polly are buried in the West Fairfield Cemetery, Fairfield Township, Westmoreland County.
Robert Reed (Sr.) along with Charles Clifford, James Clifford, Isaac Stimmel and James Flack came to the Ligonier area in circa 1759 and built a fort. For 16 years these families lived and prospered in this area. The Indians were kind and all was well. But when the War started, the British incited unrest with the Indians. The British convinced many Indians that the settlers were there to take their land and kill them. Also the British taught the Indians to "scalp" and sell the scalps to the British for money. It was after this the men of the fort had to work as someone stood guard.

It was in this season that Robert Jr's daughter Mattie Reed began to work along with her brothers to plant, harvest and in general, did hard manual work. Mattie grew to be extremely strong for a woman. One of the past times of the people was to have foot races or other competitions of physical strength. Mattie and one other boy (a couple of years older) were always the favorites to win in these foot races.

It was 1778, a very dangerous year with the British and the Indians, one day Mattie, a female companion, Mattie's brother George, and another young man walked two miles away to pick berries at another farm. Just as they met a Mr. Mc Dowell from Fort Ligonier, the group of five were attacked by Indians. The British had given the Indians guns to fight the settlers promising the Indians protection, and money. George was shot right away. A bullet hit Mr. Mc Dowell's rifle laying across his shoulder. The rifle blasted into numerous small particles of metal which they needed to pick out of his face and neck. And the girls began to run. Mattie ran so fast she left her companion in fear for her own life.

A young warrior was in pursuit of Mattie. He ran and ran and could not keep up with Mattie. So he started to his Indian hooping and hollering which usually intimated the settlers so much that they were weakened by fear. But Mattie explained with every holler, it just caused her to run faster. She did not want to be killed or even worse fate at that time, captured and imprisoned by the Indians. Finally others from the fort came to Mattie's rescue having heard the gun shots and the Indians' hollering. Mattie explained what had happened and the men went out to investigate. George was dead and the young lady, Becky Means, was dead and scalped. The other male companion was captured and taken to be a prisoner of the Indians. Mattie became a heroine, later married and had many children.

For three more years the British continued to incite the Indians. But after the war the Indians and Colonist resumed their peaceful ways. The before-mentioned prisoner of the Indians, was returned home. The story he told was interesting. The warrior whom had chased Mattie was humiliated the rest of his life. It seems this warrior was engaged to the Indian chief's daughter. But when he came back labeled as the "no-warrior out ran be a "pale-faced" squaw, the Indian princess was disgusted and refused to marry him. The returning white man having spent three years in captivity explained how the dishonored warrior spent the rest of his time in menial tasks and shunned by the rest of the tribe.

This story was taken from THE REED FAMILY A History of the DESCENDANTS of Robert Reed Sr. by J.P. Lytle of Home, PA printed at the INDEPENDENT OFFICE Marion Centers, PA; 1909 but was first published in THE LIGONIER ECHO Volume IX, no. 37

Friday, October 23, 2009

First 10 Lessons

What are the first 10 lessons a beginning family history researcher should start with (in order of importance)? #familyhistory #genealogy asked by fellow genealogist Holly Hansen Oct 23, 2009 via FACEBOOK.

1. Start Small---- Just you and your parents, siblings etc. Keep it simple ---Only the things you know. KISS. There are record keeping, documentation revision rules that many occupations use. Having a background in documentation does help.

2. Be prepared to be surprised, you will even find things about your immediate family you did not know. HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT.

3. BE DISCREET!!!!! Do not publish anything publicly ---- what seemed to be a fact may very well not survive the test of time. But by then you have mislead a huge group of people.

4. ORGANIZE and be prepared to abandon your special planned organization process to reorganize again as your database changes and takes on a life of it's own. Get organized. Spend time learning how others are organizing their materials (by lineage, by families, by location), records (census, military records, cross referencing?), time (cut out time to work on genealogy, when families favorite tv show on? after Saturday chores? early in the morning? what days will be library days??? and travels (Can you visit more than one library, cemetery, court office in the same area?, can you pre-order documents to be available?, can you check on days/hours open ahead of time?).

5. BE CURIOUS Ask questions DRIVE YOUR RELATIVES CRAZY!! THINK LIKE A CHILD ASKING WHY? WHEN? WHO? of your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Who were your siblings, where were they born? Start with family photos add names and relationships to photos, photos of family gatherings. Questions to ask: where was the picture taken, what was the occasion, who are the people?? family Bibles (take notes of any blanks with small notes not actually in the Bible.), archive the Bible, read obituaries found around the house, and ask who was this?, read old letters, or listen to old recordings. Sometimes people far away sent recordings in the 1940s or even earlier.
When the letter or recording mentions a name (such as Johnny) ask: Who is Johnny?

6.Be prepared to handle documents and books. Be prepared to use cotton gloves, acid free paper, and document archiving practices. Photo copy or take camera shots of documents when possible. This allows for zooming and enhancing lettering when required. Digitize everything.

7. Back up everything. Back up all data monthly on two or three programs at least. Keep a hard acid free paper copy, Back up software copies on 3 hard drives. One for general use, easy to retrieve, one in a bank safe and send one out of state to a safe place.

8. Network, network network Get involved with Genealogy Societies, workshops, Internet networking. Genealogy is such a fast paced, growing hobby right now, even last years greatest finds are obsolete. Learn what software updates there are? What libraries will be most helpful with your region, date span, studies?

9. TRUST NO ONE. Dear Cousin Molly in her letters may have left out a whole generation. Or called Uncle Obie (Uncle Pete) just because she wanted to... that can really confuse things, Realize there is at least 50% "proven bad" data out there! Consensus are wrong, birth records are wrong, death certificates are wrong, newspaper articles are wrong, ship manifests are wrong, cemetery tomb markers are wrong. And not just of the real old stuff---it still happens today!

10. And most of ALL Have fun! Remember it can be fun but if you hit an extremely hard brick wall, or get root bound. Just remember why you are involved with this endeavor and set yourself a "time" to look at it and then put the problem away for awhile. That person will not be going anywhere and when he/she is ready to be found -- then you can celebrate with a genealogy HAPPY DANCE!!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

6 am to 10 pm genealogy why???

October 20, 2009 was a wonderful productive genealogy day for me. Life had me stuck in a rut! My elusive ancestors had me stuck in a rut. My attempts at developing a genealogy web site had me stuck. I was feeling just stuck. I felt attempts to do "what was considered necessary but difficult" was going to waste time and become frustrating. So I turned my back (literally) to those issues and began to focus on other genealogy tasks.

I worked a good 2 hours on photoshop and established several thumb size "face only" shots to add to my tree. I see this used on many trees. I like the conformity and neatness of this way of introducing physical characteristics of my ancestors. Extracting and enhancing faces out of group pictures. I will also publish the group pictures else where. I was hoping to demonstrate what I wanted so while Bill is here he would help me with this photoshop project. But lo and behold I received a correspondence from a Messesmith link, and he said he enjoyed cleaning up old photos and asked me to share. He indicated if I would send my Messesmith photos (that I admitted to be of poor quality) he would fix them and return share photos with me!!! WOW, my Messesmith lineage grows leaps and bounds!!!

I then revisited my Dearman lineage and followed my grandmothers instructions to a "T". Seeing other Dearman genealogist lineage I discovered how and why they made some assumptions regarding Solomon, son of Thomas, and Anne, daughter of Jonathan. I then posted my grandmothers notes and indicated this as my resource. I also mentioned the chart matches the book ---the D'Armonds of America and several other sources.

I added reasons for death to the Dearmans and then proceded to back it all up. From Ancestory.com to My Heritage to RootsMagic 4 and Rootsmagic TO GO. Then I had fun in RootsMagic writing several reports. Trying out the bells and whistles of the program. Although I print problem reports as a finish to my work monthly, yesterday I printed a timeline chart. This helped me trouble shoot my data a lot more efficiently and effectively. I became so engrossed with the program that I am going to office supply store today so I can print these reports . My shopping list includes acid free paper, more printer ink, and an automatic 3 hole punch.

My brother suggested I write a book. But because there is soooooo much going soooo many places --- I explained writing a book adding everything kind of did not make sense to me. The book would be just boggled, confusing and a collection of unrelated data. Hee hee so my brother approached me later and said if one book was not sensible maybe a series of books was the solution.

So I stayed away from my frustrating "brickwalls" ignored my huge "BLACKHOLES" and had fun with genealogy yesterday for the first time in a while.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

LPC means "likely to become pauper.

My sister-in-laws ancestors came to America around the turn of the century 1880-1910 from Sicily. Unbelieveably the records have been accessible and has only taken a few weeks of research thus far. We did find one passanger held for inquiry for LPC. Another relative of my sister-in-law's mother wrote back what LPC meant on the manifestos.

Donna Cruzze wrote:
LPC means "likely to become pauper."

...but during the 1932 campaign he (Hoover) had taken credit for "rigidly restricted immigration." Thus, with the kind of creative reinterpretation of the law usually credited to his immediate successor, Hoover completely changed the meaning of the "l.p.c. clause." In 1882 the original phrase had been "paupers or persons likely to become a public charge" and the intent had been to exclude, not poor persons, but persons incapable of supporting themselves. But Hoover's claim of credit was misleading. The new administrative interpretation of the "l.p.c. clause" had actually begun at the tail end of the Coolidge administration. As early as September 1928 the State Department instructed American consular officials in Mexico to apply standards more stringently. Hoover's directive gave consular officials enormous latitude, which some used with murderous effect a few years later. The new interpretation of the old clause was eventually stretched so that many consuls were able to require immigrants either to have substantial assets in their possession or a sponsor in the US who would file an affidavit attesting a willingness to support the immigrant if necessary and an ability to do so.

Roger Daniels, Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emeritus of History
University of Cincinnati

I then replied to Donna about my special interest in genealogy:

I always meant to get a chance to "look LPC up". But very very interesting. One of the major reasons I am doing these studies is to fill the gap in our children's history of America. This is so important information when people complain about the immigration laws now. I hear complaints because the paperwork is not done fast as they think it should take, or they have to wait in line for 3-4 hours. Our ancestors went through a lot to make "our" America today. I want some of this history of the hardship people endured be taught to our grandchildren so they can become a little more appreciative.

To which Donna replied:::
Over the years I have done the following. While traveling across the desert, in the middle of nowhere, I stop the car and have them get out. I point to the horizon (and it is hot, hot, hot) and I say "how would you like to cross this desert in a covered wagon with no air conditioning and only make 3 miles a day until you covered the 400 mile trip we are making today. That is what our pioneer ancestors did.

To which I reply:
Just keeping it real for our KIDS