family-history

A Marriage Date Hidden Between the Children

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 11, 2026

Prompt: “Do you have an ancestor with no defined birth and death dates or places? This week, please tell us about that ancestor and what clues you used to estimate a birth and death dates and places.”

Introduction

I hope you don’t mind if I interpret this week’s prompt a little loosely and apply it to a marriage date rather than a birth or death date.

While tracking my ancestor Jason Smith, it became clear that he had two wives. I first suspected that because a relative posted a tree online saying she was descended from his first wife. That left me trying to figure out when Jason married my ancestor Mary Denny, who then became the elusive Mary Smith. Sigh.

My Response to the Prompt

Because the children were born in the 1830s and 1840s, there was not much documentation in their records to clearly identify their mothers.

So I started with the children and looked for patterns in the sequence, especially any gap that might suggest a death and remarriage. Here is the lineup I was working from:

Adelia Smith, b. ?
William Mulford Smith, b. 14 May 1835
Deborah Ann Smith, b. 31 Dec 1837
Jason A. Smith, b. 20 Mar 1839
Mary Catharine Smith, b. 30 Oct 1841
George Henry Smith, b. 1 Oct 1843
Charles Edward Smith, b. 12 Jul 1845
Oscar F. Smith, b. ca. 1846
Alice Matilda Smith, b. 16 Feb 1850
Sarah H. Smith, b. Jan 1852
Lewis N. Smith, b. Aug 1859

Looking at that list, I suspected the wife change happened somewhere in the middle, but I did not think it was as late as Alice’s birth in 1850.

Then, finally, a newspaper notice turned up online.

I found an item in the Baptist Advocate dated November 14, 1840, and that gave me a much firmer point on the timeline.

That newspaper notice, announcing the November 4, 1840 marriage of Mr. Jason M. Smith and Miss Mary Denny, helped clarify when Jason’s household changed. So, my working theory based on the children’s birth dates turned into something much stronger once I had contemporary evidence to support it.

This guy did not waste any time finding a mama for his littles.

It was a good reminder that when exact dates are missing, we often build a timeline first from the children, the census, and whatever indirect clues we can gather, and then wait for one good record to bring the picture into focus.

How do you estimate unknown dates?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Unexpected

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Unexpected

I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 15: Unexpected

Introduction

My Week 15 ancestor is Edith Makey West. When I thought about the theme “Unexpected,” I realized that her life was shaped by unexpected mothering in many forms: first when her aunt stepped in after her mother’s death, then when a stepmother took on that role, and later when Grandma herself helped raise my generation.

Discussion

We say, “It takes a village to raise a child,” but it really did in many ways. Grandma’s mother died when she and her siblings were young children, and her mother’s married, childless sister, Aunt Edith, stepped in to help raise the three of them. Grandma remained very fond of Aunt Edith and Uncle Peter for the rest of her life. Aunt Edith died relatively young, but my uncle remembered Uncle Peter, so clearly the families remained close.

Once Grandma’s father remarried, he and his new wife brought the children back and informed them, “This is your mother now.” Grandma did, in fact, treat the woman as a mother, including caring for her after Grandma’s dad passed away. When Grandma told me family stories, she would mention, “My mother” and I would clarify that she meant her stepmother. (Not to be mean, of course, but I wanted to attribute the family stories to the right person.)

Finally, after my mother left my father and took us with her, she went home to her parents. Grandma helped raise us while my mother secured her footing, returned to the workforce, gained financial stability, and generally settled into single parenting. I never, ever heard Grandma issue the slightest complaint about all this new responsibility for a retired couple.

Summary

Grandma once told me, while recounting the family history, that the men in her family had it tough. I told her I thought the women did too; they were simply expected to endure, adapt, and keep going.

What feels most unexpected to me is not a hidden record or a family story proven true, but the way mothering kept taking new forms in Grandma’s life. After losing her own mother, she was cared for by Aunt Edith. Later, a stepmother took on that role in the household. And when her own daughter needed help, Grandma stepped in to help raise the next generation. In the end, the unexpected discovery is that in our family, mothering was not always about who had the title, but about who showed up.

Walter, Harry, and Edith Makey

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Quiet Life

From Ohio to New York: A Family Turning Point

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From Ohio to New York: A Family Turning Point

I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 4, 2026

Prompt: “Family stories are often about “Turning Points” and “Major Decisions.” This week, please describe a “Turning Point” in the life of one of your parents (or for both of them, or for grandparents).  Describe the decision, and discuss the outcome of it.”

Introduction

My grandfather’s decision to move to New York City during the Great Depression is one of the most courageous choices I’ve seen in my family history. If he hadn’t made that leap, my grandparents might never have met.

Discussion

Gordon West was born and raised in Liberty Center, Henry County, Ohio, a very small town. He was a talented musician and played the organ in a movie theater until the arrival of “talkies” put him out of work.

During the Depression, Grandpa went to work for a friend who ran a printing press – he worked without pay to learn the trade. After trying unsuccessfully to find work in Detroit, about 100 miles away, he made an even bolder choice: he went to New York City. As far as I know, he had no friends or contacts there, yet he found work as a linotype operator at the Staten Island Advance. For housing, he rented a room at a woman’s boarding house, and she thought he might be a nice young man for her niece’s stepdaughter – my Grandma.

They married in 1935 and he worked for the Staten Island Advance until he retired in 1972 after 41 years’ service.

The Great Depression was a terrible thing, but it did bring my grandparents together.

Staten Island (N. Y.) Advance, August 23, 1972, page 25

Challenge

Small changes can make a big difference. What butterfly effect have you seen or experienced?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

A Brick Wall Shifted

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I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 14: A Brick Wall Revisited

Introduction

My assigned Week 14 ancestor is A. Gordon West.  About a year ago, I wrote a post about an unexpected DNA match.

This man was definitely related on my maternal grandfather’s (Ohio) line. Due to a rather unique surname and fairly recent immigration, his tree was easy enough to build out – and it didn’t intersect at all with mine, in terms of names. But it did in locations. I was left wondering if there was a MPE (misattributed parentage event) on either Grandpa’s line or this match’s line. Both men had somewhat suspiciously old mothers (age 40, with a gap to the next oldest children – certainly not impossible, but worth a second look) in their lineage.

Then vs. Now

Then: I didn’t chase that challenge down, having been disheartened by finding the death of the match. I suppose I didn’t want to find something offbeat in my own line. And I was uncertain how to be confident in any conclusion.

Now: I’m taking a DNA class in IGHR and this is the perfect time to look with a critical eye at these matches again. I’m learning and relearning the frameworks, and not just the basics but some good details on Y-DNA, mtDNA, atDNA, and X-DNA. Our exercises include analyzing our own matches and clustering shared matches to identify common ancestors.  We’ve also used The Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4 to make sure centiMorgans were within the appropriate range. I noticed that I have a lot more matches than I did the last time I looked, so clearly more people have tests posted on the testing sites.

It’s definitely worth revisiting, with new knowledge and new data, to see what linkages I can now make.

The Plan

I’m going to revisit each shared match between him and me and build out trees to the best of my ability. I’ll draw pedigree charts, determine expected amounts of DNA shared, and compare those to the actual amounts. Somewhere there I hope to find a discrepancy, and that will be the key to this mystery.

Was I really stuck?

I wasn’t stuck because there’s no answer. I was stuck because I did not yet have the knowledge and data to solve the problem. Now, maybe, I do. And that changes how I see this brick wall: not as a barrier, but as something that can shift over time.

Sometimes a brick wall isn’t solved – it’s outgrown.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: Unexpected

A Family Pattern: Tall Tales

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A Family Pattern: Tall Tales

I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 13: A Family Pattern

Introduction

My assigned Week 13 ancestor is Rose Carey Anderson—my grandmother—and the family pattern I associate most strongly with her is a little light-hearted: tall tales.

Discussion

As soon as I developed a love for family history, my grandmother Rose was eager to regale me with family story after family story.

The problem is, they were all tall tales.

The baby brother who died in a fall down the stairs? Actually polio.

The uncle who disappeared one day, never to be seen again? He had drowned—and his body was brought back to his mother’s house.

The other uncle, the firefighter who died in a fire in the firehouse? (Wow.) Was what the newspapers called a “hobo” and died in a fire in a barn he was crashing in.

Her grandfather who had to leave Ireland or be hung as a horse thief? Almost certainly not.

Grandma’s pattern eventually became clear to me and it became a challenge to disprove each story about the family’s past, and really, I did.

For years, I treated these stories like puzzles, something to investigate and, more often than not, disprove.

But I wasn’t smart enough to put two and two and realize that the tales she told me about the current family might not stand up to examination either.

“F__’s last two children weren’t his.” Maybe. Maybe not.

“C__’s dad wasn’t her dad.” I was not given enough info and will never know.

“M__ was having an affair when he died.” Another thing I’ll never know.

So, I am pretty confident Grandma is looking down on me laughing at the wild goose chases I’ve been on!

And honestly, she’d probably still tell the stories the same way.

Summary

When I was a girl, “Trust but verify” was a popular saying, and it’s something any genealogist worth their research notes would do well to remember.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Brick Wall Revisited

An Ancestor I Admire: Theresa Kilkenny Anderson

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: March 28, 2026

Prompt: “Write a story using the phrase “ancestor I really admire” in 200 words.”

Discussion

There are many ancestors I admire, but one stands out: Theresa Kilkenny Anderson (abt 1851–1911).

Theresa’s life reads like a series of losses. Born in Ireland during The Great Hunger, she disappears from her early family and reappears as a young newlywed in New York City. She and her husband, Michael, lost their first child, and though more children followed, hardship did not leave her. She was widowed while pregnant – and then lost that child as well.

And yet, she kept going.

Years later, I find her in the census, working as a laundress, supporting the three children still at home. What I love most is that she was living in the same house as her married daughter. Despite everything, she kept her family close. She was part of her grandchildren’s lives – children old enough to remember her.

When she died, two of her sons paid for her burial.

Theresa could have folded under the weight of her losses. Instead, she built a life defined not by what she lost, but by the family she held together.

She is an ancestor I really admire.

For more information, I wrote more about here in this blog post.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Not Every Memory Fits in a Shadowbox

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: March 21, 2026

Prompt: “March 21 is National Memory Day.  How can we celebrate, and participate, in the day?  I asked AI tool ChatGPT how, and it suggested “Capture a Memory Before Its Gone;” “Rescue and Identify Old Photos;” “Record a Oral History;” “Organize One Small Thing;”  “Share a Story With Family;” “Visit or Virtually Honor Ancestors.””

Introduction

This week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge, from Randy Seaver, marks March 21 as National Memory Day and invites us to consider how we might celebrate and participate. The suggestion was to come up with our own ideas, and as I thought about it, I realized I’ve already been doing this in different ways, even if I didn’t call it that at the time. You probably have as well.

Discussion

One of the most tangible examples sits right in my home: a shadowbox holding my great-grandmother, Alice Britton Makey’s, initialed fork. (Blog about it here.) It’s a small, everyday object, but preserving it, and the story behind it, felt important. It gave her a physical presence, something I could see and point to. But as meaningful as it is, I also know I can’t fill my house with shadowboxes. Not every memory can live that way.

Some memories are better experienced than displayed.

I was reminded of that by a relative (Helen Denny Woodman, author of The Descendants of Henry Denny, 1758-1839, also my ancestor) who, while caring for her husband as his memory declined, would sit with him and go through old family photo albums. Those albums weren’t just records – they were invitations. They allowed him to reconnect, to recognize, to feel something familiar even as other memories slipped away. That idea has stayed with me, and it’s inspired me to create albums of our own family trips – not just to document where we’ve been, but to make it easier to revisit those moments together.

And then there are the memories you can hear.

When I had an old cassette converted (blog here), I discovered a recording of my father reading a poem he had written. Hearing his voice again was something no object could replicate. It wasn’t just preservation; it was presence. For a few minutes, he wasn’t just someone I remembered. He was there.

Thinking about National Memory Day in this way, I’m struck by how many forms memory can take. Some are physical, like a fork in a shadowbox. Others are shared, like turning the pages of an album. Still others are almost intangible, like a voice carried forward through time.

Not every memory fits in a shadowbox – but that may be the point. Memory isn’t meant to live in just one form. It lives in the ways we choose to hold on, to revisit, and to share.

A cassette tape hand-labeled "New poem readings"

AI Disclosure

This post was developed with the assistance of AI tools to help organize ideas and refine wording, while preserving my original reflections and voice.

My Genealogy Day

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: March 14, 2026

Prompt: “How was your genealogy day?  Tell us about it – what genealogy-related activities did you do today, yesterday, or another day this past week? Researching, summarizing, transcribing, analyzing, writing, etc.”

Introduction

I’m going to be selective in choosing my “day.” I choose Saturday, March 14, 2026, the day this prompt was posted.

Discussion

It turned out to be a particularly full (and satisfying) day.

I started an IGHR course: Genetics for Genealogists: Fundamentals of DNA. I consider myself a lifelong learner and tend to take courses for the joy of learning, not always with a specific end goal in mind. That said, I do try to pursue at least one genealogy-focused educational experience each year. In the past, that’s included GRIP, NGS courses, the Boston University certificate program, and various study groups.

This year, I somehow ended up with two IGHR courses on my radar; both virtual and spread over several weeks. (Not my first IGHR courses… just my first this year!) The DNA course is clearly going to be challenging, which makes it all the more exciting. I developed a solid foundation in genetics through BU, but I know I still have gaps, especially when it comes to chromosome browsers and related tools.

In addition to coursework, I also worked on a blog post: Favorite RootsTech Session, after finally completing my RootsTech 2026 playlist.

And finally, I spent time working on the ancestors book I’m creating for my children. Saturday’s focus was disambiguating Matthew Kearney – a task that required careful sorting and attention to detail.

Summary

All in all, it was a very productive genealogy day. And honestly, those are some of the most fun days of all.

Challenge

Take a moment to tally up the different genealogy tasks you’ve worked on recently. You might be surprised (and impressed) by how much you’ve accomplished.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

An Address With a Story

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An Address With a Story

I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 12: An Address With a Story

Introduction

My assigned Week 12 ancestor is my paternal grandfather, Edward Anderson (1912–1985).

I’ve only ever known Grandpa to live at 60 Hillview Street, in Naugatuck, Connecticut. Of course, that wasn’t always the case – and it wasn’t even the plan.

Discussion

Grandpa was orphaned just days before his twelfth birthday. He and his two sisters were separated, each sent to different places. Grandma told me he lived with Uncle Jim and Aunt Lena for a time, but he seemed to spend much of his youth in “a home” – likely an orphanage, possibly St. Michael’s Home in Staten Island, New York.

By 1930, I found him as a young man rooming with two other young men, perhaps also without family support. He was working for a “rubber house,” where I believe he remained for the rest of his career.

By the next federal census, he had married, and he and his bride were living in Manhattan. They were still there in 1950.

Not long after, they moved to Staten Island, where I believe they purchased their first home.

At some point, Grandpa’s employer wanted to relocate him, but they chose not to go. The next time the company asked, Grandma told me, they felt they couldn’t refuse – they would be risking the household’s only income.

That decision brought them to Naugatuck, Connecticut, home of the United States Rubber Company. They bought what they considered a starter home: two bedrooms, one bath, and no expectation that it would be permanent.

Yet something about the house suited them. They made it their own. Grandpa lived the remaining 20 years of his life there, and Grandma stayed another 24 after that.

What they thought would be temporary became their forever home.

When my younger cousin once asked me for memories of Grandpa (she had been only a preschooler when he died) I told her about the walks he would take me on through that neighborhood. They knew their neighbors. Family settled nearby. It felt like a place where they had finally found peace.

I believe they were happy in that home.

Figure 1 Image from realtor.com

Challenge

What address has a special connection for you?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Family Pattern

Favorite RootsTech Session

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Favorite RootsTech Session

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: March 7, 2026

Prompt: “RootsTech 2026 just finished today.  Did you watch any classes online?  Which online class was your favorite, perhaps the most informative, most helpful, or most entertaining, for you?”

Introduction

Have I watched any classes online? 18, so far.

Which was my favorite? Wow, that’s almost as bad as asking which child is my favorite.

Discussion

There are so many which I would heartily recommend!

  • I watched every Artificial Intelligence one which was put online (sadly, not all of them were). (These links are for your convenience, but please note that only one day comes up; you need to tab over to the other days of the conference.)
  • I leaned heavily on the Methodology sessions.
  • I was astounded, as always, by the Gardiner Brothers in the Day 3 Keynote.

But once I watch my entire list, the first one I plan to rewatch will be:

FamilySearch Full-Text Search – Your Golden Path to Ancestral Discovery with David Ouimette.

He’s an engaging, experienced speaker, and genuinely enthused about his subject.  He explains the advances FamilySearch has made to Full-Text Search, with real, relatable examples of how to use it. He explains navigation and when we would want to choose the different options. He gives search examples for different scenarios.

One of the most exciting parts of the session is learning that Full-Text Search doesn’t rely solely on traditional indexes. Instead, FamilySearch is using AI to read and transcribe historical handwriting, allowing us to search every word in millions of documents. That means names, places, and details that never made it into indexes can suddenly become discoverable.

This opens up records that were previously searchable only by browsing images—court records, land records, and other manuscript collections where names appear deep inside the text.

As the lead of FamilySearch Content Strategy for Asia-Pacific, he has unique insight into what’s coming.

Ouimette’s enthusiasm is truly contagious in this session – I highly recommend everyone drop this blog right now and go watch it!

Challenge

Go watch just one session* – navigate to https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/schedule?tab=full_schedule&day=2026-03-07 and filter by a topic or speaker you’re interested in!

* OK that was a trick. You can’t stop at just one.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.