52 Ancestors Week 16: Step

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 16

The theme for Week 16 is "Step." When I wrote this theme, I thought about all of the "step" relationships in our family trees and how they are often overlooked. But there are numerous ways to interpret "step" -- steps in a house, long walks, steps in a process, etc. Feel free to be creative!

Coming soon to TGIF.

Comments

Here's one of the many step/half relationships in my tree: https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2024/04/52-ancestors-week-16-step.html

Answer 1

I climbed the 528 steps up to the top of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral in London England. This is the view from the top.

Comments

Nicely done, M.  My friend said it was so scary for her, she tried to turn around half way up and go back down.  There was a crowd coming up behind her and her husband said, no, Honey, you've got to go to the top.  So she did it, unhappily.   Like all other steps in life, for some it's a great memory, for others it's not so good.

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The steps are one way, one set up and another down, so unfortunately your friend had no choice.

Answer 2

This probably isn't what you wanted but what comes to mind when I think of steps is how I learned in U.S. Army Ranger School (back when I thought we were the good guys) to climb a mountain by taking one step at a time.  We were to focus on just that step while maintaining environmental (situational) awareness.  Above all, we were to avoid looking ahead for the crest of the hill, because mountain tops tend to round off so there are many false crests.  This sounds simple, but we went through h*ll to internalize it (the stories I could tell).  Those who didn't washed out.

Later in combat, I was leading my infantry company on a steep climb up a rocky ridgeline before nightfall and time was running out.  We had CA'd (combat assaulted by chopper) into a narrow valley to be a blocking position for another U.S. company that had been ambushed downstream, and the noise was reverberating up to us.  The problem was that we were operating at the extreme range of the choppers, had only enough birds for a platoon lift at a time, and thus had to wait an hour or more between lifts to get the company together, so we didn't start the climb until around 1600 (4 pm).  Anyway, climbing that 800m+ ridge was too much for some of the newer troops, so I had my Rangers going up and down the long column as we climbed imparting the message, "DO NOT LOOK AT THE CREST!"

In my experience, this applies to WikiTree, too.  Just when I start thinking that a family branch has been completed, errors are noted.  Maybe somebody crucial is missing, or some ancestors with the same given names and LNABs were mixed up, or....

The bottom line is that it isn't planting a flag on the crest that's most important in genealogy, it's the climb one step at a time while maintaining situational awareness.

Comments

" In my experience, this applies to WikiTree, too.  Just when I start thinking that a family branch has been completed, errors are noted.  Maybe somebody crucial is missing, or some ancestors with the same given names and LNABs were mixed up, or...."

Well said Ray!

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Excellent comparison, Ray.  I notice this often on Ancestry and familysearch, where the eagerness to find the person and move on outweighs common sense. No, the wife with the same name from the same place is not the mother of the child if she was only age three when the child was born.  Likely there are two different women with the same name. Yet there it is.  With records.  The name fits. The place fits.  Never mind the age problem.  It has to be her because I want to move on.

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Oh yes Pat, I ran into that exact situation yesterday on FS.  

2 men with the same name, must be the same person, with 2 different wives, at the same time, even though the sources attached clearly showed that they, the men were born many years apart, lived in different places, and had different parents.

Answer 3

I always knew my mom's mother had married three times.  I called her Grandma Greenleaf and my mom's maiden name is Brafford.  Mom had an older half-brother, my uncle Herb Fauls.  I didn't think about and mom never talked about step-siblings.  That is until my grandma's funeral.  Two older couples walked in and my mom said "Wow, I didn't think they would come"  I asked "Who are they?" and she said "My step-brother and step-sister."  I was floored.  

Grandma died in 1996 and my mom's step-father, Henry Greenleaf, had died around 1961. Also, all 3 of Mr. Greenleaf's children were grown and out of the house when grandma married him.  I thought it was pretty neat that they came to her funeral, even after so many years.

The crazy thing is, I spent half my time during the Connect-A-Thon adding "Steps".  I went back to my tree and added 2nd/3rd spouses and their other spouses (if they had them, and most did) and their other children. My CC7 went up 156.

Answer 4

This relates to FamilySearch's amazing experimental full-text search which my cousin tried out a month ago.

Step One. He located a probate from 1839 where the Executor of the will of Robert Mills of Fishkill, Dutchess County, New York was Reuben Miller.  Reuben was listing the heirs of the deceased and asking them to appear in the nearby town of Poughkeepsie to process the will. "To all to whom these presents shall come or may concern and especially to George Miller of Canada....more people....Abraham Miller of Fishkill...more people.."

My cousin and I descend from George Miller born in Poughkeepsie in 1809 who moved to Canada around 1830. My DNA matches descendants of Reuben Miller who lived in Poughkeepsie and Abraham Miller who lived in Fishkill, both men remaining in New York until their deaths in the 1880's.

Step Two.  I checked FamilySearch under Robert Mills and found an earlier will for his mother (Marcy Mills) who died 10 Dec 1831 in Fishkill, and the probate was processed by Robert Mills and said the following, sworn 7th May 1832 about her heirs: "James, Robert, Reuben, Catharine, Marcy, Abraham, Henry, John and George Miller, grandchildren of the deceased and children of Sarah Miller deceased."

Step Three.  Fill in the Mills children.  Mercy (Marcy) Mills, born Phillips was in WikiTree and her husband Robert Mills Sr. I added all their children including Sarah (Mills) Miller.

Step Four.  Research and more research.  Stumbling blocks. Who was Sarah (Mills) Miller's husband?  This shows that even established research can have issues. The Settlers of the Beekman Patent has a good account of the Mills Family then adds that perhaps Sarah Mills married James Cable in 1820 and died in 1823 at age 26 because of a newspaper notice.  So Sarah Mills, born in 1797, had nine children with some man named Miller, giving birth to Reuben at age 6, and all the rest before marrying James Cable in 1820 under her maiden name?   Obviously it's two different women named Sarah Mills. At least the resource said it's not confirmed.  Just a maybe.  

Step Five.  Research. More research. Before adding or connecting.  Or changing.  Wish me luck as this 40-year brick wall starts to crumble.

 

Answer 5

I found this in my parents' scrapbooks, this was a letter my mother sent to my father during WW2. She was in the WAVES (stationed in upstate NY) and he was a B-25 bomber pilot in the Army Air Corps flying the South Pacific. The letter was written in August 1944, they would get married in December 1946.

Answer 6

This photo is of my Step-Great-Grandmother.  She was the only one I knew, because she was quite a bit younger than her husband, and all the other GGs were dead before I was born.

The photo was taken by Yousuf Karsh, and was taken because she was the wife of a Member of Parliament.  The photo was passed down to me, as she was my Godmother.  Permission rec'd from Karsh estate to use photo on WT.

Answer 7

My great-grandfather Seth Marvin II married his stepdaughter, who was my great-grandmother Riza Ford. I think Seth must have been a good man. When he married Riza's mother Diantha Snow, my 2nd great grandmother, she was a widow--ten years older than Seth and had 4 children to raise. He and Diantha had 4 more children before she passed away at age 42.

Seth and Riza had 12 more children together, so Seth had 16 children and 4 stepchildren. This is a photo of Seth and Riza taken in 1868.

Answer 8

My 7X-great grandmother, Mary Skinner, was married four times.  At the time of her fourth marriage to Dr. James Weems, there were 14 children in the combined household.  Perhaps not surprisingly, this family situation led to several marriages among the step-siblings.  I wrote about them here:

https://annesgenealogyadventures.blogspot.com/2024/04/52-ancestors-2024-week-16-step-mary.html

Answer 9

I went into the surname "Stair". At the first two branches I wanted to connect the connection failed because I could not prove one relationship with sources. In the third branch I nearly had the problem again, but I was able to find the 1820 census for the father of "my" person, where my boy was counted in the correct column. So there we have a conclusion that he is in the census.

The starting point is Eliza (Stair) Myers. Her grandson is George Washington Erb. I was able to connect his wife with her greatgrandfather. The son/grandfather was the boy I could only source by conclusion.

Answer 10

I have a step-grandmother on my father's side. His father, remarried to Effie "Bessie" Storm/Winnings/French. My father had step-brothers and sisters by this wedding.  I am unsure if they had children of there own after their marriage. Something to research for sure.