ctgc genealogy

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I found a new ancestor. Yay! He owned slaves. Boo! This is the first slave owning ancestor I have found. I suppose it was inevitable being of European descent and with so many of my lines reaching back to colonial days, but I thought the poverty of most of my ancestors would prevent it. Thomas Moore was the father of Charlotte Moore, wife of Howard Ogle.

It being Labor Day, I thought I would write a post about the occupations of my direct ancestors. I quickly realized it would become very long, and so have broken it down into my four main lines which I will post during this week. First, the Conrads.

I have several Elon Carmans in my family tree:  Elon (1792-1866) ,  Elon Joseph (1840-1919) ,  Joseph Elon (1872-1956) ,  Joseph Elon (1901-1960)  in my line, and Joseph Elon (1891-1971) and  Joseph Elon (1914)  in a collateral line. There is also an Elon Carman who lived in and around Philadelphia that I knew must be related, but I couldn't find any definitive evidence of the relationship beyond DNA matches with some of his descendants. Yesterday, I found his baptismal record. He was baptized at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in North Wales, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania on 13 May 1833 and his birth date was listed as 14 Aug 1828. While the last name was spelled in the Ancestry index as Cormon, his parents were listed as Elon & Martha, so I am confident now that he is the brother of my great-great-great grandfather Charles R. Carman.   I've now identified four children of Elon Carman and Martha Johnson, although I only have Elizabeth's...

MyHeritage has a photo colorizer . It is free through 4/22 (tomorrow- hurry!), according to the FAQ. You do have to create an account on their site to use it. Normally non-subscribers can colorize up to 10 photos for free. I decided to try it out and below are the results.  A lot of the photos I tried were too small. I think they have to be at least 200x200, although it doesn't say in the FAQ.  Anna Funston (pre-1928),   original (left), colorized (right) John Garrison (1899), original (left), colorized (right) Carol Garrison Conrad & Charles Conrad "Yoked Together" (1959), original (top), colorized (bottom) Charles & Carol Conrad (couple on the right) honeymoon night out (1959), original (top), colorized (bottom)

It is not often that Ancestry adds information that is useful to me. I have moved beyond census records for the most part, and the smaller databases they have been adding have not been in areas I research. Well, not to be a  shill  for Ancestry, but they have added a boatload of Pennsylvania BMD & other data recently. Partnering with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, they have created the Pennsylvania Church and Town records database with more than 7 million records, including church (birth, baptism, marriage, death & more), cemetery and undertaker records. In a quick search, I found marriage information for distant ancestors and baptisms for my grandfather and great-grandfather. One marriage confirmed a maiden name that I had assumed, but for which I never had any proof. My great-grandfather's baptism was in German, which I thought was cool.  I will be posting more on these finds and others. It's always fun trying to find a particular database on Ancestry. Here...

A transcription of the death certificate of James B. Garrison.  State of New Jersey - Bureau of Vital Statistics Certificate and Record of Death Full Name of Deceased: James B. Garrison Age: 72 Years Color: white Occupation: Laborer Married Birthplace: N.J. Last Place of Residence: 163 Fayette St Bridgeton How long resident in this State: Always Place of Death: 163 Fayette St Bridgeton [Father and Mother's names & birthplaces left blank] I hereby certify that I attended the deceased during the last illness and that he died on the 11 day of April 1908... [Doctor's name indecipherable] Name of Undertaker: Harry Garrison Residence of Undertaker: Bridgeton Place of Burial: Broad St Cemetery

A transcription of the death certificate for Emma M. Irelan Garrison.  Department of Health of the State of New Jersey Bureau of Vital Statistics Certificate and Record of Death 1. Place of Death County: Cumberland City: Bridgeton 2. Full name: Emma M. Garrison (a) Residence: No. 163 Fayette St 3 Ward 3. Sex: female 4. Color or Race: white 5. widowed 5a. Husband: James B. Garrison 6. Date of Birth: Jan 21 1839 7. Age: 83 Years 7 Months 18 Days 8. Occupation: Housewife / home 9. Birthplace: N. Jersey 10. Name of Father: Anson Ireland 11. Birthplace of Father: N.J. 12. Maiden name of Mother: Elizabeth Ayars 13. Birthplace of Mother: N.J. 14. Informant: George Garrison, Bridgeton, NJ 15. Filed Sept 11, 1922 16. Date of Death: 9/8 1922 ... 19. Place of Burial: Broad St Cemetery, Sept 11 1922 20. Undertaker: Harry J. Garrison, Bridgeton

Civil War Pension File - James B. Garrison Partial transcription from photocopies received from the National Archives by Alexander Conrad, 2011 ---------------------------------------------------- DECLARATION OF ORIGINAL OR ADDITIONAL PENSION Act of June 27, 1890. As Amended By Act of May 9, 1900 State of New Jersey, County of Cumberland. On this 15 day of March A.D. one thousand nine hundred and one personally appeared before me, a Notary Public, within and for the County and State aforesaid, James B. Garrison aged 65 years, a resident of Bridgeton, County of Cumberland, State of N.J., who, being duly sworn according to law, declares that he is the identical James B. Garrison who was enrolled on the 31 day of Dec, 1863, in Co H 3rd NJ Vols in the service of the United States in the War of the Rebellion, and served at least ninety days and was honorably discharged at Washington D.C. on the 1st day of August, 1865. That he is totally unable to earn a support by manual labor b...

A transcription of the death certificate from Philadelphia, PA of Elon Carman (1792-1866)  name: Elan Carman death date: 22 Jun 1866 death place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania gender: Male race: White death age: 74 years birthplace: Philadelphia marital status: Married occupation: Labourer street address: Huber Street above Montg. place of residence: Philadelphia 20th Ward cemetery: American Mechanics Cemetery burial place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania burial date: 25 Jun 1866

Being the youngest in my family I am sensitive about telling family stories accurately. Growing up it always seemed that everything happened before I was born or was old enough to remember, so everyone else in the room remembered the story better than I did.  So, while I enjoy reporting facts and finds on this blog, I have for the most part avoided telling stories about my family history. I do not want to get it wrong. I've realized however that I do hold some things in my head that possibly no one else still alive knows.   Writing family history is in some ways an attempt at immortality for our ancestors. Even if what I remember is not entirely accurate, I can share my imperfect memories of my family and through that they might live on a little longer before fading into that obscurity to which we all will inevitably succumb. In that spirit, I am going to share what my grandmother told me about the picture below which happens to be my favorite photograph of her. She tol...

One of my more exciting discoveries with the addition of the Bridgeton Evening News to GenealogyBank.com, the obituary for my Great-Great-Great Grandfather, Ansel Irelan : Ansel Irelan, one of Bridgeton's oldest citizens, died at his home on Atlantic street early this morning, after an illness of several weeks with kidney affection. Mr. Irelan was born in this city 76 years ago last July and has lived here nearly ever since. He married Elizabeth, daughter of the late Addi Ayars, and six children were born to them, four of whom are living. His wife died several years ago and deceased has since lived in the old home, Atlantic just above Broad street. The children who survive him are Emma, wife of James Garrison; Mary Ann, wife of John Neukirk; Lizzie, wife of Joseph Westcott, and Ansel, Jr., the only son. Deceased was a ship carpenter by trade and when the gold fever broke out he was one of the original "forty-niners" who left this city to seek their fortune in the Golden S...

One of my weekend shows that I sometimes watch is "Life After People" on the History Channel. The premise is basically if humans disappeared today, how long would it take for human-made things to break down. Today I saw an episode that used my great grandmother's hometown as an example. In the 1960's a fire started underground and made its way into the abandoned coal mines in Centralia. In the 1980's most of the residents left in the town were relocated, and the fire still burns. According to Wikipedia, there were still 9 people living in Centralia in 2007. Here's a Google search if you'd like to read more. Life After People used Centralia as an example of how a town would look twenty-five years after people. I don't think it was the best example, since most of the building were torn down after the people relocated. But, it was interesting none the less. My great grandmother Sophia Levens left Centralia for Philadelphia before the turn of the cent...

This week I am going to highlight someone who is not really related to me, but I am fascinated by the name. Maria Sara Knieriemen was the wife of my first cousin five times removed. (My computer program, TMG, figured that out for me). I had never heard of this name before, so when her marriage to David Hornef on January 7, 1845 showed up in my genealogy this week, I thought I would look into it. Like many names, Knieriemen has many variant spellings. The Knierman DNA Surname project includes these variants in their project: Knearem, Knerien, Kniereman, Knieriemen, Knierim, Knierinm, Knierman, Knireman, Nearman, Niermann. In their description of the origin they state: "The German word Knerem is defined as a shoemakers' strap or stirrup, a cobbler, Knieriemen." A search on Knieriemen also brought up the Ancestry surname page . They didn't have a meaning for Knieriemen, but they did have some other statistics. In 1920, there weren't very many Knieriemen househol...

One of my New Year's resolutions this year is to post more to this poor neglected blog. So I've decided to start a weekly post, This Week in my Genealogy, highlighting some of the people in my Conrad-Todd-Garrison-Carman database. And to show how far behind I am in updating the web version of that database, I am going to start with two people who are not even on that site, along with their brother whose information is way out of date. Georg Peter & Johannes Hornef were born December 28, 1824 in Otterberg, Germany and are one of the few pairs of twins that I have in my database. They were born to Georg Peter Hornef & Katharina Cherdron. I found them through the FamilySearch Record Search pilot. Their older brother, Jacob Hornef , was my Great-great-great grandfather who emigrated to Philadelphia in the 1840's. He was born on January 2, 1819 in Otterberg. I've already posted about my Hornef discoveries through Record Search, which is also where I found Jacob...

I came across Katharina Horneff's obituary by accident. I wasn't expecting to find it. Horneff 1 is one of the few unique surnames I have and I search it on any new database I find. In this case it was in GenealogyBank which has the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1834-1922. In my results was an obituary for Katharina Hornef from 1911. It stated that the funeral would be at her grandson, Jacob Carman's house. Seems cut and dry, but I still had to check to make sure it was my Jacob Carman since there were two of the same age in Philadelphia at the time. It took me awhile to be convinced, too, despite the unique name and the grandson being named. The truth was I thought I would never find Katharina Hornef. Indeed, I didn't even know that was her name. My grandmother's grandmother was Catherine 2 Hornef Carman and she passed away in 1913. I had no luck in finding her on the Census records 3 before she married and only her father was listed on her death certificate. ...

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. ;-) What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard. The Northeast The Midland The Inland North The South Boston The West North Central What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

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...

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 .