Monday, December 22, 2008

Looking for Leonards






This is a known picture of Margaret Jane Leonard Buchanan( daughter of Thomas H. Leonard & Jane McHugh)




I believe this is Margaret from the picture shown below.

This picture is most likely that of the Thomas H. Leonard family. The notes shown on the pic were made by me with info from their census entries. Click on the picture for a larger version. I am trying to locate a descendant of Mary Leonard Bassett who posted to the Rootsweb message boards in 1999 but have yet to get a current email addy on her. (her name is Tammy Meyer of the Dearborn Heights MI area.


Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Brickwall Monday


Days like yesterday(Monday) make me realize how lucky I am. Not that anything bad happened..far from that. I awoke at 5a.m. Monday morning and started through my usual routine. Make coffee, check email, do a little genealogy before it's time to get my daughter up and ready for school. Jim and I will be married two years in mid Feb. I've been researching his family history for about a year now. While we have lots of pictures of the older generations we don't have an inkling who most of the older ones are. I'd been thinking about that and feeling like the only way I could find out who those people were was to get back a generation or two on his Sutherland & Irving lines. These are the lines of his great grandparents: James Sutherland and Anna Gertrude Irving. We have pictures of Anna in her wedding dress and several others taken around the same time which have photographers markings or identification from Ontario Canada. Most of them are from the Woodstock area so I had a fairly good idea of where the family was from but given the popularity of the surname and nothing to go on to help identify that I had the correct family it seemed a bit hopeless. I typed the search terms Sutherland, Irving, Woodstock and Oxford into Google Search.

The result was pretty amazing. The 2nd listing was the link to
The Ontario Vital Statistics Project
and the marriage info of James & Anna. I'd known from their 1910
census entry that they were married in 1903. So not only did I get the exact date, but also the names of James parents and Annie's as well. From there I've found census entries for both families and will be working my way back. I posted a few queries yesterday to another researcher who seems to be looking at the same lines earlier on but since their post is from abt. 10 yrs ago I don't hold much hope in hearing anything back from them.



http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~maryc/oxford03p2.htm


014784-03 ( Oxford Co) James SUTHERLAND , 26 , machinist , Woodstock , Hamilton , s/o William SUTHERLAND & Elspeth MILNE , married Annie G. IRVING , 24 , Drumbo , Woodstock ,d/o Pierce IRVING & Anna KEELER , witn: W.J. SUTHERLAND of Woodstock & Margaret McKAY of Hamilton , 30 Mar 1903 at Woodstock.


1881 Blenheim, Oxford North, Ontario Canada Dist 166 Sub-dist G Div 2 Pg 80 HH # 380
NA Film Number C-13268
Piercie IRVING M Male Scottish 40 Scotland Farmer C. Presbyterian
Annie IRVING M Female Scottish 36 O. C. Presbyterian
Robert IRVING Male Scottish 12 O. C. Presbyterian
Arthur IRVING Male Scottish 7 O. C. Presbyterian
John IRVING Male Scottish 4 O. C. Presbyterian
Annie IRVING Female Scottish 2 O. C. Presbyterian
George KEELER Male Scottish 21 O. Farmer C. Presbyterian

1901 Woodstock, Oxford North, Ontario Canada (#101) F-9 Page 10
37 104 Irving Piercie M Head M Aug 2 1839 61
38 104 Irving Anna F Wife M Jul 13 1839 61
39 104 Irving Arthur W. M Son S Apr 29 1876 24
40 104 Irving John B. M Son S Nov 15 1878 22
41 104 Irving Anna F Dau S Oct 10 1880 20

Friday, December 05, 2008

Time is flying....but my research seems to be standing still.

I have been so busy with the holidays, school projects(mine & Brittany's) and with finals coming up haven't had much time at all for Genealogy. I'm hoping that during the time between semesters I can write up some reports on some of my brickwalls so that I have a mission plan. Writing a synopsis of what I have and where I'm at in research on a specific line has helped me several times to think through things and come up with new ideas on where to search. Two things that have helped me most are researching a direct ancestors siblings and looking at the neighbors from their census entries. Hopefully I will be kicking some idea around over the holidays.