52 Ancestors Week 34: Newest Discovery

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 34

The theme for Week 34 is "Newest Discovery." What is the newest discovery you've made in your family history? Mine was discovering that an ancestor's brother served in the Civil War.

Let's hear it. What have you all discovered lately? 

Comments

When might be a good time to scruntinize a potential ancestor or two? https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2023/08/52-ancestors-week-34-newest-discovery.html 

Answer 1

Finally discovering my maternal grandfather as no one knew his family nor parents names. Thanks to the help of war records, other family trees and limited knowledge of sibling names from my grandmother I was able to track him down and discover a whole wealth of knowledge and some really interesting information! I was able to find army photographs of his father etc and show them to my family which they thoroughly enjoyed and made the whole effort worth it.

Comments

Harriet, so glad you were able to find your grandfather, and finding photos is wonderful!

Answer 2

Just discovered that King Charles of England is my 15th cousin. We share 14th great grandparents through his father's family.

Answer 3

James O Hinde married two of my 2nd great Aunts. Unlike my cousins, who were sisters, that married Joseph Smith, Hinde married the oldest sister first and the younger after the death of his first wife. Jamse's grandfather was Dr Thomas Hinde who was Patrick Henry's personal physician.

My newest discovery will be hard to verify by sources. While piecing familial lines connecting some of Wm C Quantrill's men together, I came across a name on a roster of James Hine or Hines. Given the literacy proficiency of the day, I can see where Hinde could be easily misinterpreted or misspelled as Hine or Hines. Circumstantial evidence includes his brother-in-law was a confederate Dr. and a niece who was married to James Kinyoun who was also married to Mary Belle Akers, daughter of Sylvester "Ves" Akers a known guerilla fighter.

If my newest discovery includes last night's discovery about 10:30, it would be I am related to one of my old BBQ teammates. He was very disappointed when his then 18 yo son got his family crest tattooed on his back. He was disappointed because they descend from Royalty, and he thought a tattoo was beneath him. The son thought that was something to display proudly. Me, I didn't even know I descended from Royalty. When I was his son's age, I wanted to get a tattoo from an old guy that worked at The Illustrated Man in Kansas City, because he tattooed several gangsters from the '30. Either way, if I make it across the pond, I guess I'll take in Lowther England to see where our 24th Grandpa Lowther roamed.

Answer 4

The most interesting discovery I made in the last few weeks was an amazing family story: The great-grandmother of an elderly gentleman from Holland had married in Geldern in 1867 and came from Germany. As the gentleman had the certificate but could not read it, he sent it to me together with his question, which was really lucky - I would never have found a Maria Theresia Wielig born in Düsseldorf in 1837. But in the document it was (in very fine print) noted that this Maria had converted to the Catholic faith in 1851 and had also been allowed to change her name. In fact, what had puzzled me at first because of the differing family names, her parents were Jacob Abraham and Eva Levy, and I was able to find their marriage and death certificates as well. By that it also turned out that Jacob Levy had been born in Amsterdam as the son of a merchant in 1799. The gentleman from Holland and his family had totally unexpectedly come across Jewish ancestors and were completely fascinated and happy that a whole new genealogical and family world had opened up for them.

Comments

What a wonderful discovery! Glad to read about your interesting puzzle you were able to solve for their family history.

Answer 5

My "Newest Discovery" is not my discovery.  My Ontario cousin and I have been trying to find the ancestry of our brick-wall couple George Miller and Margaret Farriage.  Farriage is an unusual name.  She's Farriage-1 on WikiTree. The place you find the name is Northumberland, England, near the Scottish border.  It's spelled Farrage, Ferrage, Farridge and Farriage.  So how did Margaret end up in the Toronto area in 1832 to marry George Miller?  This was always an issue for us. 

Recently my cousin sent me a record he found in a Quebec newspaper of a Captain James Farrage commanding a ship from Newcastle upon Tyne in Northumberland, England in July 1834 to Quebec with cargo and room for passengers.  Now this ship was too late.  Margaret was already in Ontario but if you had a relative that was a ship Captain and you wanted to travel to Canada, what an easy way to get there.  Captain Farrage started sailing in the 1820s out of Newcastle.

I put in his profile.  I'm doing a lot of work on the Farrage name on WikiTree. http://wikitree.com/wiki/Farrage-22

Comments

Pat, I`m glad you`re able to make some progress on the Farrage family, when I looked for some history for them it was `difficult`.

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Thank you, M.  Are you related or just curious?  Cousin Dave and I have not been able to locate Margaret's baptism record yet but...there's hope.  There's a missing daughter for Robert Farrage and Catherine Shepherd, who would be about the right age, who didn't die as a child and Catherine's mother's name was Margaret.

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No, I`m not related, you have previous questions and or answers about the Farrages, in Peel County, one of which I did some research on, and found 1 reference to them, which I put in my answer at the time.

I don`t know how long ago that particular post was, probably in the last 12 months,  I believe my answer didn`t provide any particularly useful information.

I do a lot of research in Peel and found the family more than a little elusive.

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Pat, you are so smart at figuring out things like the name spellings.

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I'm sorry, M. I now remember I had mentioned Margaret Farriage before and you responded but I can't recall when this occurred.  Could you please repeat the one reference you found for Peel County, in case knowing what I know now about the Farrage family it might have some relevance.

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Thank you, Alexis. Funniest one was my mother's great grandmother recorded in Canadian records as Fizeyemer Henvebe, causing me to search in vain for the German Henvebe family.  When I learned the truth it was actually Ziesemer (Fizeyemer) Henriette (Henvebe), just like I'm a Miller, Pat.

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Pat, I looked for the post, my answer to you was a comment. I think the the thread might have been about brick walls or difficult people to research.

So it would be included in 'your answer' history, not mine.

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Thank you, M. I'll look for it.

Answer 6

I just learned that Lady Godiva was an ancestor of mine.

Answer 7

On a visit to see a friend with health issues, he told me that he had a cousin Antoinette that he had wondered about what happened to her. He told me that she was a very sweet girl, and they had really enjoyed the time they were together at his grandparents. He said he didn’t even know how they were related, but he often thought about her and hoped she had a good life. Well you all know that is all we need to start researching. He was so happy to learn about her, even though he learned that she passed away in 2007.

I wanted to share this new find with WikiTree friends, because we very often do not know what our research and profiles can mean to others. This is not a very clear photo, but he had saved it for over 60 years. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Moore-83697

Comments

It's wonderful that you did this, Alexis and your profile is excellent.  I love your line about not realizing how helpful our research can be to others.  Someone just contacted me, thrilled to see the profile of his real ancestor.  He had been searching for the wrong person.  Death records originally relied on a family's idea of name, age and birthplace which were not always correct.

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Pat, thank you for your lovely comment. I did profiles on a sister and brother that left money to my church. I was thinking that no one would ever look for them, and then a couple of years ago a man wrote me that his mother was so thrilled to find out about her second cousins. We never know what happiness our work on WikiTree could possibly bring to someone. 

Answer 8

My newest discovery is that an unconnected branch can have profiles from the Azores (Portugal), Prince Edward Island (Canada), Scotland and Massachusetts all in only 8 profiles. I was able to connect that branch to the Tree using the Massachusetts profiles.

Answer 9

Not personally discovered, but…….

My maternal grandfather always claimed Dutch ancestry but never specified if it was from his maternal or paternal side. His last name was Stone so that would have to have changed somewhere along the way. Plus, a member of the family researched the family and published a book, that my mother had a copy of, that traces the family back to England.

His mother’s maiden name was Bazemore which, when I did some digging, could be a corruption of Bessemer which is German. That made me wonder if someone got the words Dutch and Deutsch mixed up.

Just last week I was talking with one of RAWKees about his Netherlands ancestors and the records there and I mentioned my predicament.

Lo and behold, he went off and did some wizardry with a WT app and found MY Dutch ancestors already in WT and they line up perfectly with my maternal great grandmother Bazemore. Hopefully, after all this month’s challenges I signed up for are over I can go back and do some research on those ancestors.

I’m beyond thrilled at this revelation and so wish my mother was still around so I could share this with her. She’d be completely tickled to know.

Answer 10

This is a 2x1 discovery:

1. In a museum's website I found an (unknown) collection of photos of the funeral of my 2nd great-grandparent Manuel Blanco O'Carrol.

2. In the photos there're military honors, a military band and an old soldier in uniform carrying the coffin... Turns out, Manuel was a veteran from the War of the Pacific, one of the most important triumphs of Chile's Army (1789, Peru-Bolivia) and we had no idea!

Answer 11

Thanks to the research of Robert Battle and John Brandon, I discovered that my 6X grandmother Storer wasn't a Storer after all.  She was a Clarke!

https://annesgenealogyadventures.blogspot.com/2023/04/52-ancestors-2023-week-34-newest.html

Battle, Robert and John C. Brandon. Identity of Anne, First Wife of Robert Woodmansey, Schoolmaster of Boston, Massachusetts, and of Her Niece, Anne (Not Storer), Wife of James Truman and Robert Skinner of Maryland. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 177 (Winter 2023):67-84. (Requires Membership) Accessed 30 March 2023