Tragedy 100 Years Ago–12/28/1914

Today, in 2014, the day started on a bad note. A newspaper article about an accident in Baltimore, Maryland caught my attention. I send a Facebook message to a friend who I thought would be interested in the article.

Then, one of my Genea-Friends shared a link to an article from the Monocacy National Battlegrouind about a tragedy that occurred 100 years ago. The article was about a telegram what was received by Judge Glenn Howard Worthington and his wife. Julia Hays Alvey.

Worthington Farm House at Monocacy

News was sent by telegraph from Winter Haven, Florida to Julia that her brother, Harry C Alvey was killed in a fire in his home there. That fire took the lives of Mr. Alvey, his wife, Bertha Keyser, and their 3 small children.

I have found, so far, 5 newspaper articles around the country talking about this incident. I guess that only someone who does family history research would try to find details about a facebook posting.

Two things that caught my eye in the articles, from 1914, was the Mrs. Alvey was known as a “Belle of Baltimore”,  know in Baltimore society. Mr. Alvey was the son of former Chief Justice Richard H Alvey of the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Now to find the connection between Judge Glenn Howard Worthington and the Alvey men also involved with the Maryland courts.

Husband, Wife and Three Children Die; Fire Burns Home
Date: Tuesday, December 29, 1914      Paper: Duluth News-Tribune (Duluth, MN)   Volume: 46   Issue: 242   Page: 8 

Date: Tuesday, December 29, 1914      Paper: Elkhart Daily Review (Elkhart, IN)   Page: 4

Off The Wires From Home And Abroad For And About Women License To Wed At 15 – Date: Tuesday, December 29, 1914      Paper: Trenton Evening Times (Trenton, NJ)   Page: 3 

Date: Tuesday, December 29, 1914      Paper: Tampa Tribune (Tampa, FL)   Page: 1 

Mortuary Notice  Date: Tuesday, December 29, 1914  Paper: Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, MT)  Volume: XXVI   Issue: 117  Page: 4 

Legacy Family Tree Webinar–2015 Schedule Announced

The 2015 Legacy Family Tree Webinar schedule has bee posted. What an awesome Schedule it is.

That is a link to the right of this blog post that will take you there.

Also, I gave a presentation on August 10, 2014, the recording is in the Archives on that website.

What an exciting schedule with lots of opportunities to learn.

Please join me in Registering for your favorite speaker or topic.

https://worthy2be.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/logo.png?w=133&h=52

War of 1812

With the way I have changed my research habits, I have found four (4) people in my family file who were involved with the War of 1812.

Name	Unit	Relationship to me
Daniel Runyon	3 REG’T (SEWARD’S) NEW JERSEY MILITIA	Father-in-law of 3rd cousin 4x removed
Nathan Holloway	45 REG’T (PEYTON’S) VIRGINIA MILITIA	3rd great uncle of wife of 1st great uncle
Russell Loomis	SHEPARD’S REG’T, CONNECTICUT STATE TROOPS	2nd great grandfather of wife of 1st great uncle
Isaac Darlington	2 REG’T l INF (BACHE’S) PENNSYLVANIA MIL	Uncle of husband of 2nd cousin 3x removed

Daniel Runyon and I connect, way back to Capt. John Worthington (1650-1701), paternal line. Daniel’s wife was a descendant of John Worthington Jr, the oldest son of Capt John and Sarah Howard Worthington.

Nathan Holloway and I connect with my great grandparents, paternal line, down from my Grandfather.

Russell Loomis and I connect, again, with my great grandparents. This time with my grandfather’s younger brother.

Isaac Darlington and I connect with my maternal line back 5 generations.

OK, we aren’t close, but now I should be looking for those War of 1812 Pension Files.

Please visit this website:

http://www.preservethepensions.org/

As I post this, there are 1,336,450 Images Preserved and 37.52% of the funding needed to complete this project.

 

 

Preparation for Veterans Day

For a little over a week now, I have focusing my research on Military Records, seeing which individuals have military records. My research is based on shaky leaf hints that appear in my Ancestry Member Tree and in Family Tree Maker program. I have blogged about this process on my Family Tree Maker Blog

I thought I would share some numbers so far, as the result of this research should provide me with blog material. Not that I need some material, just want to focus on those who served our county.

At the moment, I have 362 Shaky Leaf Hints to follow in 22 Record Groups on Ancestry.com. I have completed 105 Citations based on my work to date.

For example, I just finished looking at 11 Sons of the American Revolutionary War Application files (SAR). With those 11 Records, I recorded 577 Facts and have 25 media files (digital images of those applications). That is a lot of information and time consuming. I only have 297 more hints in that record group to go. (much later)

But I am focusing on 14 specific record groups with hints, about 83 hints. Those are the ones I hope to finish before Tuesday.

I have changed my research routine, go look at specific record hint. I have found that the work goes much quicker when I am working with one record group at a time. I know what to look for, what information I want to capture, how this information is to be Cited, and have added a Research Log for each person who I find in these record groups.

I don’t have to remember what to look for, how did I do that, so I can focus on the information that these records provide.

I have a couple of candidates that I will run though the Evidentia program to help resolve some conflicting information. Yes, I’ll do a blog post HERE when I do that.

Didn’t realize, how many people in my file have Military Records and some of them are very interesting.

DearMYRTLE’s DocuChallenge

DocuChallenge: Phillips, William D

We were presented with an image from Fold3.com to do the following:

NOW FOR THE CHALLENGE
Let’s answer these questions:

1. What is this document?
2. How would you describe the physical appearance of this document?
3. What does this document say about Ol’ Myrt’s ancestor?
4. What other people are mentioned in this document?
5. What information items do you find most reliable in this document?
6. What information items do you find less reliable in this document?
7. What value is this document without a citation indicating provenance?
8. Can you craft a citation for this document?
9. What would you do with this digital document?
10. What other record groups should Ol’ Myrt consider after analyzing this document?

This is a Civil War Pension card. We are looking at a digital image of that card.

I transcribed it:

Dead
Name of Soldier: Phillips, William H
Service: Last Rank P, Co K, 19 Reg, Ind Inf
Term of Service: Enlisted [ no date ] Discharged [ no date ]
Date of Filing 1880 June 7
Class: Invalid, Application number 376,996, Certificate No 243,464

Date of Filing 1921 Mar 12
Widow 1,171,114, 8-1-20, 907389

Additional Service A 17 V.R.C.
Died Fed 21 1921, Knoxville, Iowa

“Civil War Pensions; Organization Index to Pension Files of Veterans Who Served Between 1861 and 1900″, digital image, The National Archives (http://www.fold3.com : accessed 31 October 2014); entry for William H Phillips (Co K, 19 Reg, Ind Inf); citing: Civil War Pensions, Pension applications for service in the US Army between 1861 and 1900, grouped according to the units in which the veterans served; NARA T289. no roll number cited.

The first thing I noticed was William H vs William D. Wonder if +DearMYRTLE gave that to us as a hint.

The Soldier, William H Phillips had died:

What this told me was the soldier’s name was William H Phillips and that he was married and left a widow. He was a Private, in Company K, of the 19th Regiment, Indiana Infantry. He Died 1/21/1921 in Knoxville, Iowa, and his widow filed for the pension 3/12/1921.

So far, the information appears to be OK, but….

One thing that caught my eye was the Term of Service, there we no dates. So, I searched to see if there were any Civil War Service Records for William H Phillips that fit the information I had so far.

There was no indication in the Civil War Service Index – Union – Indiana for him, but there were 7 entries, none this William H. The question so far is, Did he serve and when did he serve? Not sure what the A 17 V.R.C. means, yet.

I have been looking at Civil War Records on Ancestry.com, and where I would normally go from what I have so far, would see IF I can find HER pension file. And I found her pension at: U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934 for William H Phillips. The numbers matched exactly, as I have seen before. It’s a different card, but should have the same numbers and certificate number. It did. The widow’s name is Louisa Phillips. She filed for the pension in Iowa, where he had died.

That A 17 V.R.C. is also on this pension record. Two documents with the same information.

My next stop was to see IF I could find any more information on the 19th Indiana Infantry Regiment, as I had a hint something was coming. So I went to Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Indiana_Infantry_Regiment

Having been on a brief Civil War research trip with our spouses, I took this picture at Gettysburg in May.

The Iron Brigade. I knew there had to be a connection. BUT, I took my next step to see what else I could find out about the 19th.

Before I take my next step in research, I need to mention that the Iron Brigade was involved, in Gettysburg, on Culp’s Hill on 3 July. I also had a Confederate soldier, Ridgely Howard, in that SAME battle and he was wounded in the thigh at Culps Hill. Not in the same part of the battle, DearMYRTLE’s soldier was at the other end of that battle, as there are monuments placed where the units were fighting. Pieces of David Ridgely Howard’s story is in a PBS film on Gettysburg.

This is the monument for the 1st Maryland.

Back to my research I found this website:

http://www.civilwararchive.com/Unreghst/unininf2.htm#19th

The kicker for this research, for this DocuChallenge is in the LAST Line on the 19th’s service information:

“Weldon R. R. August 18-21”

In William Henry Phillips Find-A-Grave memorial, Find A Greave Memorial #58768920, DearMYRTLE published the details of his pension files, that he served through 1864. So, Was HE, William Henry Phillips, at Weldron R.R. in that battle?

MY Ridgely Howard was wounded for the 2nd time at THAT battle. This time, “wounded in action – upper portion of right thigh, amputated.

David Ridgely Howard lived until 23 December 1927 and is buried in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.

My Heritage–SmartMatch–not so good

I have started to us the Online Tree at My Heritage. I have started to talk about it here.

My Heritage–Smart Matches

That was sort of a good experience, but has issues. Let’s try another one. What we see in the Merge Center are TREE MATCHES, RECORD MATCHES, and SMART MATCHES.

I’ll look at another Smart Match. The first one matched my current tree to a very old tree on Geni.com.

This is a Record Match, where Thomas Contee, from my  tree has a Smart Match for a Marriage Record.

What I liked about the information in the upper right,had the females name, with her birth name as “(born Fendall)” and that they had a daughter Jane.

BUT, isn’t there always a but. The high lighted name is in fact Thomas Contee, but look just to the right, it is his Complete Name. Thomas Contee Bowie.

No Match. What IS interesting is that the names used are in my file.

I then remembered that the upper right was from My file as seen below.

I have Bowie’s, Contee, and of course Fendall. Since I don’t have marriage information I did a quick search on Ancestry.com and only found a SAR Membership Application.

Bottom line here, look carefully at what is being returned as a Smart Match. The match was almost right, but that fact that the Surname was missing in the results, not so much.

My Heritage–Smart Matches

As you may know, I use this Blog for more of my research and not the use of the program that I use, Family Tree Maker.

I was re-introduced to My Heritage a couple of weeks ago and have started to “talk about it”. Here are two links to where I started:

FTM2014 – How to Export a GEDCOM file for My Heritage

FTM2014 – HOW TO: Import from My Heritage

First “confirmed” SmartMatch

My Heritage – another mess to clean up

So much for Family Tree Maker. Now I have a new problem. I had a tree on Geni.com when it first came out. Wanted to see how it worked and wanted those “cousin connections”. After looking a little deeper in what Geni.com was all about, I decided just to let that tree sit there. I get email messages, from time to time, about a birthday or an anniversary, so it’s not all bad.

Today I received this email, from Geni.com with One Match.

In the Geni.com tree, she is listed as my Mother-In-Law, which is true. But, who is this other tree.

Looking down the page I see:

More details in this “other” tree, so I wanted to View this Match.

It’s my other, or New Tree, that I created from FTM2014 as shown in the other blog posts. The additional information in the earlier image shows that I have done more research on Patti’s mother so all is good.

BUT

What to do next?

• Confirm that match?
• Delete the Geni.com Tree?
• Merge the two trees?

Just in case you didn’t know, My Heritage now owns Geni.com.

Will have to look  into this further. I have other concerns which I will post / share here in the next couple of days.

Anyone else have any experience with Geni.com and My Heritage?

Thank you.