Family Events ~ April 26 - May 2

Not a very busy week in my family's history...but here are the events.

April 28, 1803 - Marriage banns were published for David RITCHIE and Margaret LOUDEN, my 3rd great grandparents in Kemback, Fife, Scotland.

April 29, 1864 - My great-great grandmother, Nellie AUFLICK was born in Minersville, Ohio.

I have many, many great pictures of Nellie, but I scanned two new-to-me pictures today during Scanfest. [which I attended for the first time today and thoroughly enjoyed!!]

I knew that my great-great-grandparents liked to travel in their later years. Apparently after living for so long in Colorado, they enjoyed warmer destinations. Here are pictures from Florida taken in two consecutive years 1923 and 1924.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun ~ Date Calculator

Randy Seaver's "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" for this week asks that we find and utilize the date calculator function of our genealogy software. Our instructions are to (1) Find our date calculate, (2) Input the death date and age at death of an ancestor (3) Tell what software we are using and what we found using the date calculator.

(1) My date calculator was easily located directly from the "Tools" menu.

(2) William Saurer died near Apple Creek, Ohio on December 16, 1881. According to this grave stone, he was "3 ys, 6ds." Entering that data and pressing "calculate" located right next to the data gave me a potential birth date of 10 Dec 1878.

That's very interesting, but I have no other information to confirm that date. So, I thought I'd try another.

William Eickelberg died in Minersville, Ohio on 16 January, 1893. According to his gravestone, "Aged 63 Y. 4M. 5D." Inputing that information yielded a birthdate of 11 Sept, 1829. This agrees with all other information I have found for him including his gravestone.

(3) The software I use is The Master Genealogist and, as I mentioned above, the date calculator is a choice from the "Tools" menu.

The date calculator only does that - calculates dates and not ages - so I could not enter a birth and death date to calculate the age [as far as I could tell.]

I really don't need to however, as ages are calculated for every event associated with a person and when I am looking at a person I can see at a glance how old there were for all events I have entered. I don't have to calculate anything. For example, when looking at Emma ZAUGG I can see that she was 20 years old when her first child was born, 38 when her last child was born and 58 when she died. Here is a screen shot of what I see. I realize people probably can't see the actual ages, but they appear along the side of the events window and I've tried to show them with the red arrow.

So, that's all for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy fun! Hey - this is 2 weeks in a row I've managed to have fun - Genealogy fun - on a Saturday instead of waiting until Sunday!

Wordless Wednesday ~ 04/22/2009

Jacqulin Ann Quick, 3yrs old [my Mom]

Family Events ~ April 19 - 26

April 20, 1883 ~ My great-grandmother, Ella Rosa GRABER was born near Apple Creek, Ohio


April 21, 1844 ~ My great-great-grandaunt, Elspeth SWINTON was baptized in St. Andrews, Scotland.

April 22, 1819 ~ My 3x great-granduncle, Thomas GOURLAY was baptized in the parish of Ceres, Fife, Scotland having been born on April 16th (but I missed that last week!!)

April 24, 1995 ~ My Grandma, Olive Isabelle DUNCAN, know in later life as Belle, (my mother's step-mother), died in Hamilton, Ohio


April 25, 1875 ~ My great-granduncle, George BENZIE was born in Inverurie, Scotland.


April 25, 1902 ~ My granduncle, William Alexander RITCHE was born in Cleveland, Ohio on his Uncle George BENZIE's 27th birthday. William's mother was Mary BENZIE, George's younger sister.

The cool thing about putting all these events together is that I had not previously realized that Uncle Will was born on HIS uncle's birthday. Until I started doing this, I hadn't run a "list of events" type report. It's been fun to see what was happening in various branches of my family all together like this.

Saturday Night Fun ~ on Saturday For a Change!

I usually don't manage to participate in Randy Seaver's "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" until sometime on Sunday. Tonight, however, I am sitting at home watching "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and thinking of rhymes in my head. So, without further ado, here is my offering:

Some ancestors seem to fall in my lap ~

I find Ritchie’s in Scotland with ease!

I can look at their records from the 1700’s,

From home - anytime of the day that I please.

There are other who seem to be more elusive ~

Though they’re much closer in time to me.

There are Nissens and Quicks and Evans to find,

But it seems the more I look, the more they flee!

Wordless Wednesday ~

Davey (l) and Donnie (r) RITCHIE [my dad!] on a visit to their grandparents' farm, near Ravenna, Ohio about 1943/44.

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Anna and Heinrich NISSEN

ANNA E.

BELOVED WIFE OF
A. H. NISSEN
DIED
May 11, 1900
AGE 44 YEARS
1 MO. 15 DAYS
____________________
OUR
HEINRICH F.
DIED Oct 11, 1879
AGED 2 YEARS
1MO. 3 DS.

This stone is in Riverside Cemetery, Denver, CO and the picture was taken by a (wonderful!) volunteer at Find-A-Grave. I especially appreciated this as my photo request was for August Nissen. The person who took this photo verified that August was buried here when they did not find him on the marker at the spot I had indicated. [While he is buried there, the stone was apparently never "updated" to include his information.] So, this person went ahead and took a pictures of the stone even though August's name was not on it and then set up records on Find-A-Grave for Anna and Heinrich.

This was fantastic information for me as I was unaware of Heinrich and did not have a specific death date for Anna. I knew that her youngest daughter (my great-grandmother) was born in 1890 and that by the time of the 1900 census, August was listed as a widower. It was a nice bit of genealogical luck for me that Anna died in 1900 which is the first year that Colorado officially has death records (although some counties have records earlier.)

Just this one picture added a child to my family, gave me a death date for Anna AND allowed me to obtain a death certificate for Anna which in turn gave me her maiden name - PARKSON - and her parents names as John and Anna as well as her parents birthplaces - both Germany...all information unknown to me until someone I've never meet took the time to take a picture for me - and one that I hadn't specifically requested at that.

Wow - it never ceases to amaze me how much I owe to the kindness of strangers!

Family Events ~ April 12 - 18

I've been a little (OK, a LOT) lax with this lately and need to get started up again. I really like this idea as it puts me back in touch with ancestors I sometime forget ~ people not in my direct line.

April 12, 1840 ~ My great-great-grand Uncle William RITCHIE was born in Blebo Craig, Fife, Scotland. An exciting note about this relative is that I've just had a contact from someone still living in Scotland whose husband is a direct descendant of William. YEAH!!

April 15, 1879 ~ My nieces' & nephew's great-great Grandfather, the Reverend Enoch Melvin MOUSER was born in Magnolia, Arkansas.

April 16, 1919 ~ My great-great Grandmother, Hellen LUMSDEN died in Inverurie, Scotland. I posted her gravestone previously here.



April 18, 1823 ~ Anna SCHENK, who I believe to be my 5th great Grandmother, died in Langnau, Berne, Switzerland.

Saturday Night Fun ~ WOW

Once again it's Sunday before I manage to get around to the "Saturday Night Fun" that Randy Seaver, or his alter ego, Randy the Easter Bunny, posted here. [and by the way - nice ears Randy!!]

I have to admit that I saw it last night and thought, "Yeah, right, that won't work for me. I've been searching the internet for YEARS." So, I come here today to make a public confession that I was wrong and Randy was RIGHT!

I used [Nissen Colorado genealogy society] as my search criteria. This is would be my Mother's birth mother's mother's family. I have found a little bit about them including a picture of a grave stone that a wonderful person on Find-A-Grave posted for me. I don't really know much about the family though.

So, what did I find? Not a whole lot, but what I found is intriguing and has definitely put me on to some things to follow up. It also reminded me that I need to keep looking and that visiting all the area historical societies next time I am in Colorado would be a great idea. I guess the "WOW" is because I didn't expect to find anything and was surprised when the following appeared:

The link of interest is to the Foothills Genealogical Society and it's page titled "Jefferson County, Colorado Residents Index." On that page is a listing for Clara, Minnie and August NISSEN. August would be my great-great-grandfather. Clara and Minnie are older sisters of my great-grandmother, Anna Gertrude NISSEN. At one point [as listed in the 1920 census] Gertrude's son, Harold EVANS, was living with his Aunt Minnie. Gertrude's daughter, my grandmother Ruth EVANS' full name is Ruth Penrose Evans. Minnie's married name is Minnie PENROSE. So, this should be the right group of people.

The listing of NISSEN's in Jefferson County also has several listings for John and August had a brother John.

The information for Clara and Minnie is given as "Foothills Inquirer." This is a publication of the Foothills Genealogical Society and I will be following up with them today!

For August, besides a listing in the Foothills Inquirer there is note of a mention in History of Pioneer Wheat Ridge as well as mention in an agricultural index for the area. From what I read on the webpage it sounds like the information could be obtained at the Denver Library as well as the local Genealogical and Historical societies. I really need to plan another trip to Colorado soon - and this time I will remember that my ancestors didn't always live in Denver!!

Thanks again Randy ~