Showing posts with label Russell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russell. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Do you know these people?

The following people my be living descendants of Ray Nichols b abt 1925 son of Elva Russell and Ray Nichols (trying to locate):

Victoria, Zachary, Jessica, Crystal, Ashley, Garry, Larry (recently deceased), Mary (approx age 56-70), Annette and Kathy (recently deceased) Nichols all of Burton, MI

Henry and Anna Nichols of Orlando, FL

April Badour of Bay City

CJ Henning of Bay City

Anna, Isabella, Aubrey and James Kenney of Flushing

David, Little Rich, Samantha and Nicole Hackett of Lennon

Chelsea Holt of Bay City

Dorcas and Pat Boegner of Millington

Earlene Brown of Flint (approx age 74 - 95)

Garth and Sheri Brown of Millington

Joseph and Kathy Brown of Yelm, WA

These people may be descendants and Jenny or I would love to get in touch with them.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Delay in Death, Delay in Life

I apologize for the lack of posts on the Milo front. I relocated to Michigan from Portland, OR in September and am horrified to report that I have done not one ounce of research since then. Unless you count being on Main Street, and you could.

Off the top of my head we still have the following cases open:

Proof (other than DNA) that Frank RUSSELL is Milo FREEMAN

Thomas COOPER's death certificate and correct regiment information (both of these things are unavailable under mysterious conditions)

Bridget Rachel nee GILLESPIE, maybe nee BISHOP, ROGERS's place of origin

Whereabouts of Robert ROGERS b 1809, b 1840 and Rachel Bridget in 1860 (Roberts obit states he left New Brunswick at the age of 19 and even I can tell you that was 1859 and the first child of Rachel and Robert Jr was b in 1862)

Location of living BARGER (COOPER) descendants

and finally the ongoing saga of our David POSS almost for sure the son of NICHOLAS POSS for sure for sure the son of David POSS of Lewis and Jefferson, NY, Lapeer and Huron, MI, where they came from and who the heck is Betsy WALBOUGHT

That is all.

Frank Russell’s Playlist 1864 - 1869

The Russell Family History Blog Presents
Frank Russell’s Playlist 1864 - 1869

10. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
9. Run Baby Run
8. I Fought the Law
7. Never Going Back Again
6. You Know I’m No Good
5. We Never Change
4. It’s My Life
3. Take The Long Way Home
2. Interstate Love Song
1. You Only Live Once

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Milo Goes to Jail

After receiving Milo Freeman’s Pension records I ordered some intake
records form the prison that had had been assigned to. I was not sure
that he had actually made it to jail but the papers I received
yesterday confirm that he did complete his sentence there. Milo was
admitted to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus on 28 JUN 1865 and
was ordered released early by an order from the war department. The
order was received on 04 DEC 1865 and carried out on 11 DEC 1865.

The
assumption had always been that Milo changed his name to avoid this
sentence but now that we can see it was served there is no explanation
of him.

Some of the information submitted to me by the Ohio
Historical Society include his physical description and information
about his family. His intake form also included his age at the time of
arrival (19) and confirms his unit (9) and company (c) as well as his
place of arrest which we already know from military records was Little
Rock, Arkansas.

The Register of Convicts lists his nativity as
Michigan and his occupation as a laborer, height is 5 feet 11 inches
and hair is light, straight, soft and fine. He has grey eyes. It looks
like everyone on that page is either a laborer or farmer and they are
all quite young. Under general appearance it lists his Complexion as
Common (the only other ones on the page were Light and Dark).
"Freeman
has narrow low forehead. Flat face widest at eyes, eyes sunken, heavy
brows, close vertical ears horizontal scar in left temple, very large
scar on right arm."
Under Habits it says he is a moderate drinker, some of the other men are temperate, very moderate and free drinkers. HIs
education is Common School although others on the page are categorized
by weather they can read or write. They claim he has no property but
residence of relatives says; “Has father Alva Freeman, mother Betsy, 1
brother, 4 sisters near Keokuk, Iowa.”

Now, in case you have not
really been following this, Milo (for everything we know about his and
his family and generations of his family) does not have 4 sisters. This
begs the questions, whose daughters are these? I is possible that he
has none and he has made this up. But that seems odd now, after he has
told the truth about his age on the intake form (19) when he joined the
9th Cavalry he gave is age as 18 and that was three years ago. So he tells the truth about his age and lies about siblings?
There
is no real way to know how many children a woman had, even now, the
only real record you can consider is your own birth certificate, which
should list how many children have been born to your mother. In 1867
there was certainly no information like that and while birth, death and
marriage records had just been mandated they were records and not
certificates and frequently listed no information other than the
parents names and child's date of birth, if the child had a name that
was also listed. However, in 1900 census enumerators were told to ask
how many children had been born to each mother and how many were
living. I’ll give you three examples of how this works.

Eliza
(Powell) Cooper’s 1900 claim was 3 children born and 3 living and for
her we have, in fact, 4 children born and 3 living.Claud 1882, Cora and Cordy 1870 and only today Jennifer discovered that they had a boy in 1869 who by 1870 was no longer.

Lydia
(Powell) Wilson Russell’s claim was 2 born and 2 living, but we know
from records that she had at least seven (we have conclusive
information on records on the following children JerryRueben Wilson
1862, Robert Wilson 1868, Minerva Wilson date unknown, Frank Henry
1872, Louis 1873, May 1879 and Cordie 1881) and we know that at least
one (Minerva) was deceased, although we suspect May also did not
survive.

Betsy (Hicks) Freeman’s claim was 2 born and 1 living
but we do not have an actual record that states Betsy is the mother of
Milo, according to Betsy’s other son’s death certificate she s his
mother, but we have no such document for Milo. In Betsey’s letters to
the pension office she certainly claim’s she is Milo’s mother and she
does mention her husband Alva and other son William but never anything
about daughters.

So as you can see the claims of maternity vary
wildly and I’d have to say accuracy is about 50/50. In all of the above
mentioned cases we have the same claims on paternity as far as getting
proof from records except for Milo, again because we have no official
record, unless we consider Milo’s intake record an official document.

With
those inaccuracies in mind it is entirely possible that Alva, not
Betsey, had four daughters. Milo was born in 1847 or 1848 and William
was not born until 1852. We know that Alva spent a lot of time
traveling and we’re not sure how much of this he did with his family.
In 1845 Alva is listed as a tax payer inLodi, Washtenaw , in 1850 he,
Betsey and Milo are in Wayne County and in 1856 they are enumerated
twice in the Iowa state census once in Mitchell and once in Osage. In
1860 they are in Black Hawk county and of course two years after that
Milo enlists in Marion county, Iowa. Betsey says to the pension office
that her husband went to Davenport, Iowa in 1865 to meet Milo but Milo
never shows. In 1867 (I think it’s 67) Alva’s father dies and leaves
him some land (I have not substantiated this claim with any documents
but I have spoken to someone who gave me that information from memory)
but Alva does not go himself toWashtenaw and instead sends someone else. In 1870 Betsey, William and Alva are in Geneso, Illinois. In 1872 Alva dies while in Berrien county but his death information is placed in the Washtenaw county death returns, there is not information about his will at the Washtenaw Probate Court. In 1879 Betsey marries one George F Hughes in Washtenaw
but in 1880 Betsey, William and his new family are in Kalamazoo Aurora
and in 1890 Betsey applies for Milo’s pension from Aurora, Illinois.
There is never any mention of Betsey's second marriage and Mr. Hughes
is not dead, he continues to live on with, Ibelieve, his daughter and her family, but of course his only purpose in adding himself to our difficulties is to be enumerated
twice but at least in the same county, once listed as widowed and once
listed as married. In 1900 Betsey, William and family are still in in
Aurora. Betsey never gets the pension and stops applying after her 1898
denial, she passes away at age 85 in in 1904 in Aurora. In 1910 William
and family are living in Chicago but in 1916 William, while a resident
of Oak Park, IL (not too far from Chicago) dies in Cleveland, Ohio.

I cannot list all the conclusions I am able to draw from this. So you’ll have to work on your own for now.
I still have not received the Court Martial Records from the National Archives.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Ordering Records and Books

On May 27th the military records for Thomas Cooper were ordered from the National Archives. On May 29th I put myself on a waiting list for the book "Freeman Footnotes" and today I placed an order for the Military Records for Milo Freeman from NARA. Now we wait.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Bad Census Pages

I found this in my Ancestry Weekly Journal, it's quite helpful when dealing with Images. Most of my problems lie in the way Ancestry Indexes things. Like Cordie Russell being listed as Eva Russel in 1920.

Help for Hard-to-Read Images
by Juliana Smith
So you’ve found what you think might be your ancestor in the census. The problem is, when you view the image, what you find sends your heart plummeting. The image is a) too dark, b) too light, or c) looks like a chimpanzee with writer’s cramp wrote it. So what’s a twenty- first-century family historian to do? Let’s explore some options.
Image EditingMany of the records we use today were microfilmed when that technology was in its infancy. So it’s no wonder we run across faded images or dark, hard-to-read records. Photo-editing tools are great for optimizing record images that are in digital format. I use Photoshop Elements, but many of the photo-editing programs out there have the same or similar options. Here are a few ideas for sprucing up those difficult to decipher images:
Darken highlights. I had a really faint 1910 census entry for my great-great-grandmother. Using the “Darken Highlights” function that is available in the Quick Fix mode, I was able to make the image much more readable. (View before and after images on the blog. The “before” image is in the center so that you can compare it with both of the edited images I’ve posted.)
Invert. Another option for lighter images is to invert the colors (i.e., the background would change to black with white writing on it). (I’ve also posted an example of this using the same example--see the bottom sample.)
Lighten Shadows. Another census image, for my Dyer family, had the family enumerated on the bottom of the page. The corner was very dark and writing from the other side of the page bled through. I used the Lighten Shadows tool and it helped remove some of the darkness. You can also play around with exposure tools to help clear out a little more of the “clutter.” (The second grouping on the blog has an example of this.)
Crop. This won’t really enhance readability, but by cropping black edges off of digitized images, you can save a ton of ink when you print a copy for your files.
Save a Copy of the OriginalWhenever I’m editing a record image, I make a copy of it first. I always save a file with the original image and then save it with the same title, adding “_edit” at the end. Sometimes the edits will help one portion of the record, but make another portion harder to read so it’s good to have that original to refer to.
When It’s the HandwritingWhen we’re dealing with “chimpanzee writing,” there are low-tech options that can help us decipher letters and numbers. The easiest is to compare the character in question--whether it’s a number or a letter--to others on the page that are more readable.
At Ancestry on each of the main census search pages, you’ll find a box on the right with a link to a pop-up “Handwriting Help” box. It contains several handwriting samples for every letter in the alphabet and by leaving it up in the background, you can compare the samples to the records as you are searching.
Also look for marks that are carried down from the line above or up from the line below. If the bottom of a fancy J spills down and overlaps the name you are trying to interpret, you may be misled. So with hard to decipher names or words, look at the lines above and below too.
Another technique is to trace the letter. Sometimes retracing the path of the enumerator’s pen may give you that “Aha!” moment.
Some commonly misinterpreted letters include:
T and F
J, G, and Y
I and J
K and R
O and Q
P and R
U and W
(From The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, ed. Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking.)

Friday, May 9, 2008

How to get from Free Soil, Mason to Ypsilanti, Washtenaw




Using the Michigan Central Railroad was not much of an option because it appears as though the majority of the operating time they spent wandering to and from Detriot to Chicago. This link offers a look at current railway stops and routes, but be careful if you have dial-up, it's a PDF!


If you wanted to get there after 1879 you had this option but the dead people we are currently researching were in the area long before that. Isaac Elliot (who is running for the position of Frank Russell these days) was allegedly born in Michigan around 1851. In the 1860 census he is but a wee thing living in Little Sauble, Mason County (later on Eden, Free Soil and Indian Town). So he may have been born there. He lives in a home of some type with William Freeman, possibly age 24 and No Qua possibly age 26. There are no relationships listed on the 1860 census so there is no way to tell who those adults are to him. Page 7 of 8 of that census is rampant with surnames and unrelated Indians.




The Neighbor Study


Page 7 houses only Indians born in Michigan. There were three race options for a enumerator in 1860; White, Black and Mulatto. So all Indians are listed as Mulatto, except those who are listed as White, Black or in our case, Indians. :P


The enumerator for Little Sauble, Charles Roswell actually listed his Indians as "Ind." quite a new thing in those days. He may have even gotten a "talk-to" at work.


At the top of the page John Wakefield lives (age 20 born in Michigan) with belongings worth $50 and in his home a female, Ke Ge Qua age 15. I was curious about the relationship between these two people so I checked in with them in 1870. John Wakefield (of Indian Town, the new name of the same place) is now 50 and Ina Mee, a female in the house is 40.


In a similar situation in 1860 Freeman Sutton, age 24 living with Oe Na Swa Ba a male who is 40 and Charita a female who is 22. Also in there house are two children, William Griffin age 2 and Mary Judson who is 5. In 1870 they still live next to the Wakefields and they have aged at about the same rate. He is now 40 and his new wife, Mary Sutton is a 25 year old Indian woman and they have three children, John, Jane and William, ages 4, 1 and 6. Poor Charita must have succumbed to the consumption!



Whatever Freeman was doing in his personal life is, I suppose, his own business but he did purchase land in 1872 under the authority of the Indian Allotment and again in 1879 with the help of the Homestead Act in 1879 in Mason county in Township 18 N, otherwise known (at the time) as Indian Town. By 1880 the Sutton's of Mason are pretty much a new family.

Freeman is married to Jane (there is nothing to rule out the possibility that Jane, Charita and Mary are all the same woman) and there are two children, Johnson (6) and Andrew (15). They live quite near (next door in fact) John Wakefield, who is an old man, 70 in fact! What is interesting now is that Mr. Sutton Freeman has only aged 4 years since the last census and John Wakefield, in the last 20 years has aged 46 years.



Most of these people are unexplainable. I do know enumerators were not supposed to count Indian's who were not taxed. Can you imagine someone moving into your home and then charging you rent? Anyway, I don't know how this data was gathered. If the original data was transferred and transcribed that could explain all the errors in age and perhaps age. Did the enumerators make up names and identities for people they could not reach? Or people they did not want to reach? Did the Indian's think the Christian name's were a big joke?


"Hey, hey, Shah Uou! What's my name? Guess!"


"Ummm...is it Tom Bob?"


"No, it's THOMAS MITCHELL!"


"Ha ha ha, Oh that is sooo funny!" Ash E Wa laughs so hard he starts to cry.



I'm not sure what happened to all of these other people. They may have died or disappeared. If they could have left, perhaps William Griffin and Mary Judson went too. Did Issac go with them? Did he go to Macomb and marry 38 year old Ester Graham, widow of the county-wide-famous Benjamin Graham?

Friday, March 28, 2008

DNA

DYS19A=13
DYS19b=-
DYS385A=13
DYS385b=15
DYS388=12
DYS389I=14
DYS389II=30
DYS390=23
DYS391=9
DYS392=11
DYS393=13
DYS426=11
DYS438=10
DYS439=10
DYS441=15
DYS447=23
DYS448=20
DYS449=32
DYS454=12
DYS455=11
DYS458=17
DYS460=11
DYS461=13
DYS463=18
DYS464a=14
DYS464b=16
DYS464c=16
DYS464d=17
DYS464e=-
DYS464f=-
YCAIIa=19
YCAIIb=22
Y-GATA-h4.1=22 (7 for YSearch)
Haplogroup E3B