WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

LAUREL HILL STATE PARK CIRCA 1958

IN THE GENALOGICAL DOLDRUMS

 

At least I feel that I am,   I want to get things done or at least started but I seem to lack the initiative to start.

Perhaps I should make a list.   What I find holding me back is lack or time, or inability to find time to get started.    I think that it is the fact that I am working full time, but I read the others on my blog list that seem to get it done.   

I am hoping with the spring and warmer temperatures and lengthening  of daylight perhaps I will get motivated.

List:

1) Send for Pennsylvania birth certificates.  I think that I have about 20 I would like to have.  

2) Send for Church information from the DIOCESE OF PITTSBURGH

3) Talk to the genealogist at CALVARY CEMETERY to see if they have any information that I need.   The genealogist is only there on Thursday.

4) Join a few historical societies that may be of help to me.   Including one in Baltimore, Mifflin Township,  and Lebanon County, PA.

5) Make a trip to Harrisburg PA to search the archives and see if I can find information on Michael Coleman.  Who is an ancestor of my husband and daughter.

6) Search for information on Jacob Bauser/Bowser and his daughter Olive Bauser Stephens.  

7) Decide the best approach and where to send for information for record in Ireland and Germany.

I think I should not make the list too long or I will become  overwhelmed.

Technorati Tags: Do do List

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY

 

This is a picture of my Great Aunt Anna O’Rourke.   Anna was my grandmothers oldest sister.  My grandmother was born in 1892 so she was sixteen when Gertrude was born.

Anna married three times, first was to Charles Forgie.  He died in an accident, I have yet to delve into that incident.  She had one son, Charles.

Next she married Peter Zentner and they had five children.   I do remember my cousins, but they were all married at the time.    Pete died an early death also.

Then she married James Clougherty, the local priest introduced them.   I have the feeling from talking to my cousin that this was a marriage of necessity rather than love.  She needed someone to support her and he needed someone to take care of his children.

Anna is buried with her husband Peter and I have no clue where James Clougherty is buried.

The baby Richard Davis was her grandchild, son of Mary and Carl Davis.

SMALL MYSTERY

My mystery is my grandmothers family.    In my fathers notes he has listed my grandmother and her five siblings.  Then on his second paper he has listed three unknown, Dennis, Loretta and who is the other child?    On my grandmothers Delayed Birth Certificate it has written that there were three children who had died at the time of my grandmothers birth but a total of 10 children.

I found  the county death log for Loretta, she has died about the age of two with “brain fever.’ I know of Dennis because of my grandmothers talking about him and how he drowned in the river.  Dennis was not included in the 1880 census and I imagine he would have been in the 1890 census. So he would have been about the age of ten when he would have died, that is my theory.

My great grandfather, Patrick O’Rourke, had purchased his cemetery lots in August of 1891, this seems  to coincide with the possibility of the time that Dennis would have been swimming in the river.

Why the delayed Birth Certificate?   Gertrude and her brother William both applied at the same time,   my theory is they needed to get Social Security Cards.

It also listed Ellen MORTEL O’Rourke as being three years older than her husband Patrick.   On their tombstone they are listed as being born the same year.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

 

Daniel Bartels and Maria Korbach Bartels

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY

The tombstone in the back says:

Maria Bartels 

geb  Korbach

This is my great grandmother, she was alive during my life time because I remember my grandmother Anna Bartels Schridde going to Germany to see her.   My grandmother would send pictures of the grandchildren to her mother.   I guess somewhere in Germany people are looking at those and wondering who these children are…..

What I need to find out and can not do it is read the dates on the tombstone.

If anyone out there has any ideas on how to do that please leave me a comment.

The next thing after that will be do determine the location of the cemetery and find where her husband Daniel Matthias Bartels is buried.   Is he in the same place as Maria??  Maria was born in Jena, Germany.

Maria as a young woman.

 

SENTIMENTAL SUNDAY

 

This is another item that my father had squirreled away in his file cabinets.   This is the funeral card of his father and also my grandfather, Thomas Dowd.   The amazing thing to me is that this card is eighty nine years old.

The story is that he had fallen down a flight of steps and then went to bed, the next morning he had died.

Right now I am sure it must have been a SUBDURAL HEMATOMA     I feel somehow cheated that I had never met either of my grandfathers.    I also think it was very difficult for my father to grow up without him.

I have to send for his death certificate,  one of the many things that I continue to procrastinate about doing.