Patriotic Ancestors

In that small log cabin in the woods of northwestern North Carolina, July 4th, 1776 dawned like any other day. There was no present knowledge of what was happening further north in the city of Philadelphia. Yet in time my ancestor would be caught up in the fight to gain independence from England. Little did they know at the time that their intentions would result in a strong nation known as the United States of America.

Along with his brother, he fought at King's Mountain and was instrumental in the capture of Tories who had been pillaging and killing people in northwest North Carolina. My 6th great grandfather survived the Revolutionary War and died an old man in 1835. Today I like to think about him and the changes it made in his life as well as the legacy he left me.

In particular, today is a day we should celebrate not only with fireworks, but with homage to the men and women who remained loyal to their belief that a new nation could and should be formed. There were no fireworks over my ancestor's log cabin and no patriotic songs being sung. Before and after the war, they went about their business.

Do you have Revolutionary War ancestors? Recently Ancestry.com released the Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900. Footnote.com is offering free searching of their Revolutionary War collection until July 7th. You don't have long to take advantage of this free offer. Keep in mind that Footnote.com's Revolutionary War pension files contain every document within the file and are fully indexed.

If you suspect or know about a Revolutionary War ancestor, be sure to check out what is available online at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). There is a lot of good material to read there as well. The following are some of the best web pages for the Revolutionary War on Internet. I am sure you'll find more. However, if you put "Revolutionary War" into a Google search, you will come up with over 35 million hits. So begin with my list!

American Revolutionary War Soldiers & Their Descendants

RevWar'75

Officers Who Took Oath of Allegiance at Valley Forge, 1778

Valley Forge Legacy

Online Revolutionary War Indexes & Records

American Revolution. org

1840 Census of Pensioners (Revolutionary or Military Service)

Keep in mind that not every man or woman took arms to serve in the war. Some provided comfort and sustenance for the troops and thus receive the designation of being patriots during the Revolutionary War. My 4th great grandmother supplied beef to the army in South Carolina and was awarded payment from the State of South Carolina. No matter what your ancestor did during that time period, he or she is worthy of at least one firecracker and one patriotic song today. For their strife ... God Bless America.

Maps at The Newberry Library

Genealogists love maps! An excellent web page to locate maps is at The Newberry Library's web page. This will take you directly to the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. The library is well known to genealogists and located in Chicago. You don't have to go to Chicago to have fun with the maps.

You can view historical state and county maps. They are interactive and by entering a date, the map will show the formation of counties within a state at that given time.

Click on Download Historical State and County Shapefiles to download maps for use with GIS programs. You can also opt to download KMZ files to use with Google Earth. These are large files and will take time to use.

While you are on their home page, be sure to look through their genealogy information in the pull down menu. Check out where your ancestor lived by checking out The Newberry Library.

Summer Genealogy Experiences

Having been home one week from a three week trip which included two weeks at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I am ready to go again.

It isn't too late to consider attending the Family History Expo in Loveland, CO on June 25th and June 26th. It will be held at the Embassy Suites Loveland Hotel & Conference Center. A full listing of speakers and classes can be found at the Colorado Family History Expo web page.

The theme for this year's Expos is Let Your Light Shine! Last year I attended the Family History Expo in Sheridan, WY and vowed to attend another one this year. I am a blogger of honor this year for my blog, You Go Genealogy Girls. I will also try to share information on this blog. Be sure to check both.

Iowa Civil War Project

All states who supplied men for the Civil War should have web pages such as the Iowa Civil War Project. It is a special project of the IAGenWeb and worth checking if you have an Iowa Civil War ancestor.

The web site contains the six volumes of Civil War Records for Iowa, the full citation being Iowa, Adjutant General Office. Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the War of the Rebellion, Together with Historical Sketches of Volunteer Organization 1861-1866 Des Moines: E.H. English, State Printer, E.D. Chassell, State Binder, 1908-1911.

There is a list of correspondence, dates, sources and notes. You can explore this further for information pertaining to your ancestor or his unit. The web page contains Letters to Headquarters, such as Rock Island Barracks May 1864.

If you know your ancestor's infantry, be sure to check out the Infantry, History and Rosters. There is a separate section for Iowa Cavalry, History and Rosters, as well as Artillery.

The entire web page seems rather complex and time consuming, but help is available at the click of the mouse. Toward the top and before Correspondence/Topic/Title you will see "If you want to search all of these records go to the main Civil War page and utilize the FreeFind search engine there."

Not only can you search the site at the main page, but you can also find instructions for joining the Iowa Civil War mailing list. There are links to gravestone photos, more about the regiments, Civil War prisons, photo album, county data and descendant/researcher lists.

Plan on spending time at this web page, particularly if you have more than one Iowa Civil War soldier in your lineage.

For All Mothers --- Happy Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Both my mother and mother-in-law are deceased, leaving me to be a warmly loved and celebrated person on the special day. I can remember Mother's Day past, such as one when I was about seven years old and bought my mother not one, but several cards. I couldn't make up my mind and having found some change (cards were cheap then) in the family business till, I decided to buy them all. Patiently she opened them one by one, reading the message and I was sure admiring my name scrawled across the bottom.

In 1969 by baby daughter was baptized on Mother's Day. It was a great celebration of three generations as my mother and I posed for pictures with her. She was dressed in a long, white dress and white lace bonnet. She was very petite and out of that bonnet looked dark, brown eyes causing Mom and Grandmother to beam with pride.

This all causes me to wonder how mothers of the past celebrated the day, or if they celebrate it. About 150 years ago Appalachian homemaker, Anna Jarvis, organized a day to raise awareness of the poor health conditions in her community. She called it "Mother's Work Day." Personally I think every day is a mother's work day!

About fifteen years after that Julia Ward Howe, the pacifist, poet and author of the lyrics to Battle Hymn of the Republic, organized a day whereby mothers could rally for peace. When Anna Jarvis died in 1905 her daughter, Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother. She lobbied prominent businessmen and politicians. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill proclaiming Mother's Day a national holiday. As Mother's Day became more popular with people sending cards, presents and flowers, Anna Jarvis became enraged. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop Mother's Day and before she died in 1948 confessed that she regretted having started the tradition.

Personally, I think Mother's Day is great and also a day to reflect on the lives of our ancestral mothers. My mother was born in 1914, the year Mother's Day was created a national holiday. Living in a log cabin in northeast Tennessee, I wonder if they had the money to spend on anything other than the typical meal that my grandmother prepared. I do know they were a loving family and the love carried down through the generations.

We should remember our prairie mothers and reflect on how they rode in covered wagons or walked alongside them, as their families moved from one location to another. Sometimes that location was a great distance, taking weeks and months.

When the wind blows to extremes here in Nebraska, I ponder on the pioneer women who lived in sod houses and dugouts. Sand and dirt blew in the cracks propelled by wind that never seemed to cease The howl of the wind had to drive them to near insanity. They had no close neighbors and probably existed only for the sake of their husband and children. The stamina of some was worn thin and they found their surroundings intolerable.

There were mothers who delivered babies along the trail as well as burying loved ones. Graves never found or marked and mothers no longer honored, fill my heart with sorrow and also joy. They made all of this possible.

All of the mothers in my lineage ... thank you!

Kansas Death Notices

A friend recently shared this with me. Death Notices of Members of Fraternal Orders can be found online at the Kansas State Historical Society web page. There is a lot more than this on their web page, so be sure to do some exploring. However, very seldom do we find such an interesting database showing the fraternal order, as well as names and date of death notice.

The organizations and years covered are:

AOUW - Ancient Order of United Workmen 1879-1908

KP - Knights of Pythias 1877-1918

IOOF - Independent Order of Odd Fellows 1873-1970

Rebekah - Rebekah Assembly of the IOOF 1891-1953

There are over 50,000 individuals listed who had a death notice posted in the proceedings of the fraternal order. Using this, you can seek out more information such as probate files, newspaper obituaries, land records, city directories and cemetery records.

If you have Kansas ancestry, check it out!

My Beginning Genealogy

Do you know when or how your interest in genealogy was sparked? I have had many people ask me how long I've been doing genealogical research and what caused my interest in it. While I'm admitting to being Medicare age, I am also admitting to starting an interest in genealogy at age nine.

A teacher assigned a class project of tracing family history, complete with names and dates, as far back as we could in a limited amount of time. The assignment brought tears to my eyes which increased in severity as I walked home after school. I had seen my grandparents at age three and could not remember what they looked like, let alone the family history. From an old chest of drawers my mother pulled some yellowed papers from the Lewis Family Reunion which was held annually for many years in northwest North Carolina. In my grandmother's handwriting were details of the family as told at the reunion in the 1920s. Those people knew people far back on my family tree.

Working on the project seemed easy and yet very interesting as I compared dates to what I was learning in history. Proudly I turned in my assignment and smiled when I learned that I had a good paper.

As I grew older, I kept working on various family lineages, asking questions and seeking answers. Those were the day when we relied on letters. People didn't have access to photocopy machines, let alone computers and scanners. It was a slow process, but worth every minute of it.

The family historian in my Lewis family was my Great Aunt, Bertha Lewis Mahala. She was a school teacher in her younger years, with her husband Ed lived in Ashe Co., North Carolina and had no children. Aunt Bertha showed me an old family tree covering huge pieces of paper. she showed me family heirlooms and told me stories about our family, as well as taking me with her to old graveyards. As I became a teenager, I delighted in old photographs, particularly the one here of Aunt Bertha. How I longed to have her long curls!

If anybody can be blamed for my continuing interest in genealogy, it's Aunt Bertha. There were other people along the way who were instrumental and helpful. One thing led to another, such as taking genealogy classes, reading and more reading, learning about historical documents, geography and putting ancestors into the puzzle of time.

I am sure you will also agree it is a never ending process. As more records become available, the more we have to check and hope for positive results. I think often of Aunt Bertha and wonder what she would have thought about computers, scanners, photocopy machines and cell phones. Maybe it is as well she lived in a slower world and I was also part of it.