Hello,
My name is Karen, but my friends call me Mitzs and this blog is to help me and the family keep up with what I am doing in this crazy thing called genealogy. I hope you will enjoy the ride! In for a penny, in for a pound!
My Serious adventures into Genealogy begin with Joe’s family, The Stephens.
Of course, since I have been a geek before it was cool, the first thing I did was hit Google to see what I could pull up on the internet. Excitement was not the word when right off the bat I pulled up Joe’s Grandfather (Who will be known from here on as “Daddy-Paw”) information of the graveyard he rested in.
Oh yeah baby, I yell across the room. This is going to be EASY! Ha! How naive and wet behind the ears I was and still am. Daddy-Paw is the bain of my existence these days. Besides the graveyard, I have found 1, let me repeat ONE census, one KY death record. Not even a SS death record. No draft card for WW2, no property records as of yet. Nothing to connect him with his brothers that are mention in his obituary. At least his grandchildren do remember attending Manse’s funeral a year after Daddy-Paw’s.
I have found what I believe to be an Uncle named Zeb. However, no hard proof to connect them, yet. Just mouth of word passed though the family to the children from stories told to them by their mother. They were not even aware that Zeb had children. Yet a census proves that he did. Zeb while born in 1877 left more of a paper trail then his kin starting with a WW1 draft card. But where was Zeb and the rest of this family before that? Why does this family not show up anywhere until after 1900? Who was Daddy-Paw’s mother and where does she lie? Who was his father? Supposedly Daddy-Paw and Manse go by their mother’s last name. Is Zeb a brother to Rose, or could he actually be a brother-in-law and Rose a widow who kept her married name from her first marriage? Did Rose die when Leamon was born? Were they born in coal camp in KY where Zeb’s draft card places his place of living? Were the boys’ raised in the nearby Mountain Children homes where I can find no census records as of yet? Where were the children in the 1900, 1910 census? Is Stephens really their last name? I am actually starting to wonder….
Yikes! My dad had a much easier time of it. So then he decided he wanted to find all the branches of the in laws as well. It's a sickness! ;) good luck with the search.
ReplyDeleteI love it! Lots of questions to be answered, eh? That's the fun of it. Be prepared, though, answers always bring more questions. Um. And that's how ya' get addicted. Welcome, Karen! Great job!
ReplyDelete~Caroline
Welcome to the world of genealogy blogging!
ReplyDeletesounds like fun ;-P good luck!
ReplyDeleteThank you everyone for the kind welcome to genealogy. I do love a mystery.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the geneablog! I started mine to help keep track of information and share it with my family who all live at least 1,500 miles away. Have fun!
ReplyDeleteThank you Sara I appreciate it! It really does help that most of the people that do this are really helpful when you need a hand understanding something or there for just morally support when you keep running into false lead or no leads at all.
ReplyDelete