This was so right on, I had to share. Well, I guess I haven’t lost my South Jersey/Philly accent, even after being contaminated by the south and southwest. 🙂 And yes, people have told me I talk a little weird. 😉

People do genealogy for a lot of different reasons. They enjoy collecting family stories. They want to discover where they come from. They love the feeling of being connected to history.
I like filling in names. It’s a bit of an obsession for me. There’s nothing I hate worse than seeing ‘unknown’ in the name field. So I do what I can to find the names, especially the maiden names of the women. Yesterday, I received the SS-5 for my 2nd cousin, twice removed, Frank L. Craner. The reason I requested it was there in all its glory: his mother’s name was Mathilda Shepard Ogden. I rejoiced. But, then I began to wonder. Shepard and Ogden are names I’ve run across in my NJ research. Who are her parents? I looked at her dates. Oh no, she’d probably be in the 1880 census. But, maybe not with her parents. Maybe there’d be hope for me. No. Her parents were Isaac S. & Ann E. Ogden. Another unknown. What was Ann’s maiden name? The search continues.

West Virginia? Yes, most of my ancestors did not stray far from Philadelphia or South Jersey, but a Craner escaped to West Virginia. This wonderful state has a project to place scanned images of vital records on line. And, guess who I found? My escapee, Richard Craner.

This is exactly the sort of thing the internet should be used for. While some states are requiring photo id & proof of kinship to request vital records that are too old to be any use to identity thieves, others are making scanned images available. ( Arizona is another state doing this.)

Not to mention that New Jersey blocks out the cause of death, even on records over 100 years old. Now, why should it be a secret what my G-G-G-Grandfather Ansel Irelan died of in 1892?

Of course, New Jersey Vital Records does not exactly have the best track record when in comes to genealogy requests. How much easier it would be for them if they just scanned all those old records and put them on the internet. Then they wouldn’t have to deal with us pesky genealogists anymore!

I found a whole bunch of new information from the WWI Draft Cards on ancestry.com.

One of my favorite things I found was my Great Uncle Milt’s middle name. I’ve known for some time his middle initial was R, but wondered what it stood for. With a first name like Milford, and a brother named Orville Wilson, I was pretty sure the R did not stand for Robert or Richard. I now know it stands for Russell. And a Great-Great Uncle’s 2 middle initials stand for Jones Tilden. (Samuel J.T. Ware)

I plan also to add the transcriptions of the WWI Draft Cards to my sources pages. Now available here.

More cousins. I came across an obituary for Louise V. Funston who was the wife of Walter F. Funston. Walter was the son of John H. Funston who was the brother of my great-grandmother, Anna May Funston Carman.

Thankfully, it was not a Philadelphia obituary in which you are lucky if it lists a spouse. The obituary was from the Times-Leader in Wilkes-Barre and listed not only her spouse and children, but also her birth date and place and her parents names. So, I was able to find her in the 1900-1920 censuses with her parents and siblings.

See Walter, Louise & family in my database.