80th Wedding Anniversary

The wedding photo. Maryan and Glenn, 1932

   Today, June 7, 2012, would have been my parents' 80th wedding anniversary.
   Glenn and Maryan (James) Gill managed to celebrate 66 years of marriage before my father passed away.
   I'm happy to say I still have my mother's wedding dress, but not that chic hat.

   As I mentioned in a previous post, the first person I was going to look for in the 1940 census was going to be me.
   Didn't take long, once I could actually get into the images. There I was with my parents and my mother's parents living at the Flat Iron Store, a country store near Perrysville, Indiana.
   My father had an advertising agency in Danville, Illinois, and my grandparents (John T and Lucinda (Carrigan) James) reported they were working 70 hours a week. I assume the store was open 7 days a week, 10 hours a day. In case you think I left the period off my grandfather's middle initial, I didn't. He didn't have a middle name. He made it up to differentiate himself from other John Jameses, a common name where he was born in England.

   My memories of the store and the six years we lived there are a little vague.
   I know we had some great summer picnics out in the yard and I have a painful memory of smashing my finger playing croquet at one of them. The remedy was soaking it in the ice water where the sodas were kept cold.
   Neighbors used to come into the store in the evenings and play euchre. I sat on my grandmother's lap as she played.

   A visual memory is sitting in the store in the dark with the only light from the dial of the radio as my grandfather listened to the Gillette Friday night fights. I assume it was during the war and always wondered if it was a war blackout or just saving money on electricity.
   There was a crank telephone on the wall that connected us to the party line. Our ring was three shorts and one long.
   The story my mother loved to tell was that my grandfather answered the phone when my dad called to announce my birth. She didn't really like saying the words grandpa shouted: "G** D***, it's a boy!"

Look on the back

   Since finishing reorganizing my research notes, I've tried to concentrate on scanning pictures from my mother's "Ancestor Albums."
   On a majority of the pages, particularly the first ones I worked with, the pictures were pasted down.
   But, the last few I've worked with my mother started using photo corners. With the pictures in corners, the options were to risk damaging the photos by taking them out or scan them in place.
   At first I opted to scan them in place but then I decided to try to get one out without damaging it.

   Holy Cow! Look what's on the back -- names and dates my mother had not written on the scrapbook pages next to the photo.
   This photo was the biggest treasure so far. When I got it out of the corners and turned it over I found it was a postcard which the woman in the picture, my great aunt Edith (Carrigan) Elliott had sent to her mother, my great grandmother, Rose Ann (Rogers) Carrigan.
   The stamp had been peeled off and the postmark date was unreadable, but my mother had identified the baby in the picture as Floyd Elliott, born 25 May 1911. It would seem from the age of the child that the picture was taken later in that year and probably mailed soon after -- perhaps November 4, 1911.

   The card was addressed to Mrs. Rose Carrigin, Georgetown, Illinois, RR.
   The message was "Hello - Ma what do you think of this picture why dont you cone up I have got a quilt in good By Edith"

Funeral Card Friday - William H. Bowen

    "A precious one from us has gone, . . . "   Gone but not forgotten was William Henry Bowen, my great granduncle, who was born 15 March 1860 in Vermilion Co., Illinois, and died 12 December 1908 in Oakwood Township, Vermilion Co.
   This funeral card printed in gold ink is among the pictures and memorabilia my mother pasted onto the pages of her "ancestor albums."

Josephine Bowen

   My connection to the Bowen family is through William Bowen's wife, Josephine Carrigan, who was born 28 June 1867 in Georgetown, Vermilion Co., Illinois, and died 28 May 1932 in Danville, Vermilion Co. She was the daughter of Henry and Lucretia (Savage) Carrigan. Josephine and William Bowen were married 1 Mar 1888 in Vermilion County.

   William and Josephine Bowen had three children -- Oscar, born 17 January 1889; Goldie L., born 2 October 1890; and Fred Leo, born 23 May 1895. All were born in Oakwood Township, in or near the community of Fithian.
   William and Josephine are buried in Stearns Cemetery in Oakwood Township.

Sorting Saturday - I've GOT to get organized - week 3

   This will probably be my last post on this topic . . . at least for a while.
   Work is progressing and I've taken to heart the suggestions about not throwing unsourced notes away but keeping them as clues. Since I'm making the effort to have all notes entered in my LSS (List of Sources Searched), that frees up the manila folders to house the clues.
   I suspect I'll have a lot of "clues" once I get into the notes I inherited from my mother. My mother spent a lot of time talking to her cousins and gathering pictures from them, but she was not as careful at recording the source of the information as I tried to be. (I try to scan a few of the pictures in her "ancestor albums" every day.)

   The Carrigan folders have had my attention the last couple of days. I have more notes on this family (my maternal grandmother's) than almost any other.
   In the process, I ran into newspaper clippings -- mostly obituaries. Some were loose in the file folders. Some were taped or stapled to letter-sized paper.
   I realized the first order of business would be to gently remove them from whatever they were attached to, scan them and make a printout of the scan to go in the notes folder. But then what?

   Throw the originals away? No, I didn't even consider that.
   What I finally decided to do, but I'm hoping to get suggestions from you on this, is to put them in a sheet protector, cut the protector down to letter size (cutting off the edge punched to go in a binder) and then stapling the protector holding the clipping to the printout. I don't think the clipping will fall out and the original will follow the printout from green folder to blue folder when the data is entered into my RootsMagic.
   If I had family binders as DearMyrtle recommends, I'd put them in there. But I don't.
   Suggestions?
  
  

Amanuensis Monday - Ninety Years Old

   "A birthday dinner was served at the home of William Carrigan at Morey chapel Thursday in honor of the ninetieth birthday anniversary of Mrs. Henry Carrigan. The latter was presented with a birthday cake from her granddaughter, Mrs. John James, upon it which was placed ninety candles and it was lighted by her great granddaughter Maryann James. She also received a beautiful bouquet of gladolias from Mrs. Elliott of Danville. Among those present were Mrs. Alfred Rayle of Los Angeles, Cal.; Mrs. Grace Crawford of Oakwood; Mrs. Lidge Carrigan of Catlin; Mr. and Mrs. John James and daughter of Grapecreek; Alfred Carrigan and Mrs. Ree Miethe and daughter of Georgetown."
   Unknown newspaper (perhaps Danville (Illinois) Commerical-News; handwritten date Aug. 16, 1923.


   Lucretia Savage was born 16 August 1833 in Brown County, Ohio, married Henry Carrigan 3 January 1850 in Brown County, and moved with her husband and first child to Vermilion County, Illinois, about 1854.

   In addition to the newspaper clipping which my mother preserved in one of her "ancestor albums," she also included a picture of the event. Standing, from left, are Mrs. John (Lucinda Carrigan) James, Lucretia's daughter, my grandmother; Lige (Elijah Fitch) Carrigan, a cousin; John T James, my grandfather; Luella (Carrigan) Rayle, Lucretia's daughter; Alfred Carrigan, Lucretia's grandson; John William Carrigan, Lucretia's son, and his wife, Rose Ann (Rogers) Carrigan. Lucretia is seated, holding her cake with the 90 candles and standing to her left is 11-year-old Maryan James (one 'n' on the first name, please), my mother.

Have you been surveyed?

   Myles Proudfoot is conducting a survey of genealogists/family historians. You can join the statistics by clicking here.
   It will take 15 to 20 minutes, depending on how much you ponder each question. Or how long you laugh.
   The question that gave me my morning guffaw was, "Do you believe in life after death?"


   As my dad used to say (I think it was him), "What has that got to do with the price of tea in China?"
   Does someone believe genealogists collect names of dead ancestors so they'll have an address book for when they cross the River Styx?
   My grandmother was a member of a spiritualist church. I'm not sure what the official title was. I used to sit and watch her make that pointer fly across the Ouija board, spelling out answers to our questions. I always hoped I might get a clue to help track down an elusive ancestor. Never happened, unfortunately.


   One of my jobs, many years before I retired, was as a travel writer and editor. I made some very interesting friends on some of the trips I took. At an evening dinner on one of the trips it was suggested that we each name three people living or dead with whom we would like to have dinner. Jesus usually topped the list followed, as I recall, by Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Henry VIII etc.
   My list was entirely different:


   First: William Gill -- My paternal line brick wall from New Brunswick. "Is that your real name," would be my first question. (I don't match any Gill DNA families.) "Where did you come from?" 


   Next: I would have similar questions for a multitude of other end-of-line brick walls like Mark Carrigan, William Hendrickson, Allen Rogers, John James, etc. endlessly!


   Could I have more than three to dinner?