HAPPY DANCE WEDNESDAY ~ Church records for Thomas C. Hall, his wife Cora & their son Charles

 

What treasures can I share today?

 
How about church records recently received from a church in New York?
 
I called Bethesda Episcopal Church in Saratoga Springs, New York, last month.  I was interested to see if they still held any records from 1877-1900. 
 
I was specifically looking for records for my husband’s great grandfather and his wife, Thomas C. Hall, Cora E. Brown Hall and their son Charles S. Hall.

 
While we can find some records online, we all know, many are still not available.  Some are indexed, but even viewing an index or transcription is not the same as looking at the actual record.  There could be any number of errors on an index or transcription.
 
I did my happy dance this morning when I received an email from the church with 4 records attached!!!
 
Images of actual church record pages from church registers of Baptism, Marriage, Confirmation and Burial.
 
Here they are: Please click on any image to enlarge it.

MARRIAGE OF THOMAS C. HALL & CORA EMMA BROWN

on 5 Feb 1877

BAPTISM OF CHARLES SCHUYLER HALL 

16 Jun 1878

CONFIRMATION OF CHARLES SCHUYLER HALL 

28 Apr 1892

BURIAL OF THOMAS CORNELIUS HALL 

13 Jan 1897

I already had a marriage date & and the marriage certificate for Thomas & Cora.  You can read all about that find here:
CORA’S SCRAPBOOK–Her wedding cake & marriage to Thomas C. Hall–1877, New York
 
But, this image of the church record for their marriage was new to me and gives one more piece of evidence to this fact.
 
What I didn’t have was the other 3 documents – the Baptism and Confirmation for Charles S. Hall and the Burial record for Thomas. Those will now be added to my Legacy database and sourced and added to my Ancestry tree as well.
 
What records have you recently received that made you do a happy dance? I’d love to hear about them.
 
Have you considered calling or emailing a church, funeral home or cemetery to obtain records or information?  This is not my first time doing so and I have found it to be very rewarding.
 
TIP: Keep a record of any calls or emails.  Whether you use your genealogy program for this (I use Legacy), or a spreadsheet, notepad or some other method.  It’s important to keep the date and make note of what you said, who you spoke with, who you emailed etc.
 
When or if I receive information as I did in this case, I not only send an email of thanks, I write a thank you note and many times include a gift card.

 
If you are related to or connected to anyone in this blog post, please get in touch.  Let’s exchange information.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl
Copyright ©  2010-2022   Diane Gould Hall
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

A WONDERFUL WAY TO BEGIN 2022 ~ A morsel of new information on my brick wall, John C. Gould

 

All of us have them.  Brick walls.  Genealogical mysteries that we are unable to solve……yet.

In my case I’ve written blog posts about my brick walls and you can read those posts here Mystery Monday - Who's Your Daddy - My Brick Walls

The number ONE most frustrating genealogical brick wall for me, is not knowing my paternal 2nd great grandfather’s parents or siblings.  Who were they? Where did they live?

People don’t just drop out of the sky via the stork, so the answers are out there someplace.  But WHERE????? So, John C. Gould, who is your family?

New information to shed light on this mystery has not been easy to come by. In fact, based on my notes in Legacy, which I date, the last little tid bit was about John Gould being mentioned on a deed for Rose Hill Cemetery in Armada, Michigan.

Here is my note

2/27/16 - Located a website for Armada Township today http://www.armadatwp.org/CommunityInformation/Cemeteries.aspx
The site had cemetery information.  Rose Hill, Hadley and Willow Grove Cemeteries were listed.  I contacted the sexton for Rose Hill, Marv Wolak 586-784-5537 and left a message. He called me back and said that he found no actual burials in either Hadley or Rose Hill for John C. Gould or Sarah Gould.  However, he did find a John Gould mentioned on a deed along with Warren Tibbits (1798-1861) at Rose Hill Cemetery.  Warren Tibbits is buried there.  No record of a burial for John is indicated.

Fast forward to December 2021.  Met a nice woman in a Facebook group.  Her name happens to be Melinda Gould. We began communicating trying to figure out if we are related.  Of course, that meant I had to mention that I had no idea of my Gould line beyond my 2nd great grandfather, John C. Gould. She said she would love to help me figure out who his parents were AND that she knows a lot of great researchers in Michigan.

On New Year’s Eve she posted a request “calling all genealogy researchers, especially those with Michigan roots!”

Within a few hours one of the researchers, Deb, had posted a newspaper article about the burial of John Gould at Rose Hill Cemetery! 

WHAT?! Oh my gosh! I had searched newspapers many times and never found this. Did I miss it? Was the newspaper for the particular year and date recently updated?  I don’t know and don’t care. 

The article reads – ARMADA – The remains of John Gould, of Detroit, were brought to Armada for burial, Wednesday. He left many relatives in this community. Interment was in Rose Hill Cemetery. Rev. R. J. Chase officiated.

First question I asked – Which newspaper and what was the date of the article?

It was The Times Herald, Port Huron, Michigan and the date the article was published was 23 May 1919.  WOW! I have a death certificate that I’ve always believed to be John’s.  Date of death 19 May 1919.  Port Huron is just north of Armada and Detroit. AND, the article states that his remains were transported on Wednesday to Rose Hill Cemetery in Armada.  That Wednesday date would have made it 21 May 1919, two days after his death.

Conclusion – This is DEFINITELY my John Gould.

He, according to Rose Hill cemetery records, co owned a plot there. Many family members are buried there.  I’ve been to Rose Hill three times on visits back to Michigan.  I’ve looked at every headstone in this small cemetery.  There is no Gould headstone.  However, we know that may mean there wasn’t one, or that it has disappeared, or sunk into the earth.  I have many ancestors with no headstones. Next time I visit, I will try to find out which plot was on the deed and use a device that allows me to poke into the ground to locate sunken headstones.

In the meantime, I am seriously happy to have found a new piece of information in my ongoing search.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

Those Places Thursday – Armada

Those Placed Thursday - Towns or roads in Michigan using the name Gould

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2022   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

FRIDAY FINDS ~ The burial record for my maternal 2nd great grandaunt, Mary Ann Gillespie Addicott–1829-1898, England

Mary Ann Gillespie was the only daughter of Thomas Gillespie & Susannah Barrowcliff.  She had 10 brothers.  She was the 8th child.  What must that have been like?  Such a very busy and full household. Her oldest brother would have been about 12 when she was born and the youngest just 2 years old.  After her birth in 1829 her parents had 3 more sons.

Mary Ann’s parents are my maternal 2nd great grandparents and I descend from her younger brother Joseph Gillespie.  You can read more about Joseph & his family here Census Sunday - My 2nd great grandparents - Joseph & Susan Gillespie - 1900 Detroit, Michigan

It’s not been particularly easy finding information on all of the children in this family.  I’ve been fortunate on some and come up empty on others.

 

My first inkling that I’d located Mary Ann as an adult came when I found her mother, Susannah, living with her and her husband in the 1871 census.

 

TIP: I cannot tell you how many times I’ve located my female ancestors because they had a parent living with them.  Keep an eye out for all members in the household and be aware that family members may well be listed as “boarders.”

Today, though I want to talk about the burial record I located for Mary Ann.  I found the record on Ancestry.com Somerset, England, Church of England Burials, 1813-1914.

The record doesn’t give me a lot of information, but I do know that Mary Ann and her husband, William were living in Somerset when they were enumerated in 1871, 1881 and 1891. William was a Day Laborer.

Here’s what the record tells me:

• Page 70 – Burials in the Parish of Huish Champflower in the County of Somerset in the Year 1896-7-8-9.
• No. 559
• Name – Mary Ann Addicott
• Abode – Wiveliscombe Without
• When Buried – September 1st
• Age – 67
• By whom the ceremony was performed – Walter C. Haines (officiating minister)

Naturally, when I found this record I was obliged to find out a little more about Huish Champflower.  My search found the following information on Wikipedia

History
The name comes from the hiwisc, the Saxon for homestead, and it was recorded in the Domesday book as Hiwis,[2] with the suffix marking its ownership by the family of Thomas de Champflower, who was Lord of the Manor by 1166.[3]

Just outside the village, on the road to the Brendon Hills and Clatworthy Reservoir, is Huish Champflower round barrow.[4]

The parish of Huish Champflower was part of the Williton and Freemanners Hundred.[5]

A house called Washbottle, which stands on the River Tone as it flows through the village, represents the watermill which ground the corn for the village from 1086 until World War I.[3]

I used Google Earth to find the exact location of Huish.

 

Here’s a map showing an aerial view.  This certainly looks like a quaint little village and a place I’d like to visit.

Here is a map showing the placement of Huish in the United Kingdom.

This burial record does not list the name of the cemetery.  I have searched online at all the usual sites, FindAGrave, Billion Graves and Deceased Online for any further information on Mary Ann’s burial.

   

I do suspect that if I could locate Mary Ann’s burial, I might well locate other Addicott or Gillespie family members.  I’ll keep looking from time to time and hope eventually I can locate the burial site.

NOTE:  One thing I did do when looking at the aerial view of Huish, was to find the local church, St. Peter’s.  I thought I saw a cemetery on the church grounds.  I then went to Google and searched for the church and sure enough, there is a cemetery there.  Could this be where Mary Ann is buried?  Here’s a link to the pictures I found St. Peter's Church  And, I did then locate the church cemetery on FindAGrave, but with only 3 memorials added.  Wouldn’t this be a great project?    Walk the cemetery and document all those headstones.

If you are related to any of the families mentioned in this blog post, I’d love to hear from you.

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2020   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

CEMETERY CARDS ~ They can reveal a gold mine of genealogical information–Here’s what I’ve found…..

We all know that cemeteries can provide us with much needed information on our ancestors.  The amount I’ve learned, over the years, from these sources, is amazing.
 
Some cemeteries provide images of their burial cards online.  For others, you need to go to the cemetery itself and look at the cards, or the large burial books.  Be sure to check online for the cemeteries your ancestors are buried in.  I’ve found that when I’ve gone back to search, some years after my original search, new records are available.

Here are some examples of what I have learned from cemetery cards:

• Place & date of birth
• Last residence
• Date & place of death
• Cause of death
• Parent’s names
• Lot owner
• Specific burial location
• Cost of the lot
• Who ordered the burial

Holy cow!  That’s a gold mine for any genealogist.

This morning as I was researching my Fenner line, I ended up checking the website for a specific cemetery and found 17 listings.

In this case it was Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio.

Here’s what came up when I searched for “Fenner.”

This is just a screen shot of a portion of the listing.



I scrolled down to the specific person I was resarching, Nicholas Paul Fenner, Jr. who died in 1909.  Here’s what I got:



I don’t know about you, but this makes me do my happy dance.

Here’s another example of a cemetery card.  This one is from Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit, Wayne, Michigan.



TIP: If you locate something on any website, download it, print it, grab a copy of it however you can.  Why?  Because the web is a fluid thing.  The burial cards for Woodmere Cemetery were online several years ago. Then they were taken down and then I thought they’d been put back up.  However, today when I searched I could not locate them.  This is true of anything you locate on any website.

Have you had success with burial cards and cemetery information?  I’d love to hear about it.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

CEMETERY RECORDS ~ What Can They Tell You?  How Do You Use Them?
 
FIND A GRAVE.com ~ Submitting Records Using Their Spreadsheet

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

CEMETERY RECORDS–What can they tell you? How do you use them?

That's me visiting my 3rd great grandmother

One of the most informative records I have used over the years are cemetery records.

They can provide a wealth of information.  

If you’ve been doing genealogy for any length of time, then you are familiar with Find A Grave and more recently Billion Graves.  On those sites you put in a name and search for your ancestor.  Or, you enter your own memorials.  These sites are very valuable and can tell us where someone is buried, when & where they were born & died, or link that person to other family members. And sometimes, you’ll even find bio information that will give you all kinds of leads.  

However, sometimes all you find is a memorial with very little information.

HOW MANY OF YOU MAKE PHONE CALLS TO CEMETERIES?

This is something I have been doing for years and I’ve found it to be very valuable.  Let’s say I find the name of the cemetery on a death certificate, memorial on FindAGrave or somewhere else online.  

Why would I call the cemetery?

• To obtain the exact location of the grave – Lot, Section, Plot number etc.
• To ask if their records indicate the cause of death.  Many times this is indicated on a cemetery record (especially the older ones)
• To ask if their records indicate who purchased the plot or who currently owns it.
• To inquire if there are other family members buried in that cemetery.
• To ask if there is any correspondence attached to the record

Here are some records I have either received via email or obtained during a visit to various cemeteries.  The amount of information varies from place to place, but some of it is really a gold mine for a genealogist.

This card for John Doller gives us an address, date of death, age at death, cause of death, date of burial, location and the name of the funeral director

For Catherine Lindsay we get her residence, date & age at death, including months & days, cause of death, burial date, undertaker's name & grave location in the cemetery

This record was obtained from very large old cemetery books. This is my great grandmother, Bessie Lindsay

I had to photograph this large book in 3 sections.  But look at the great information in the record.  Name, funeral home, age, cause of death etc.

This page gives, the interment date & location, the name of the nearest relative and who it was that ordered the grave.  In this case it's my grandfather, H. W. Gould

  

So, what do you think?  Worth the effort to obtain cemetery information?  Absolutely!

TIPS & NOTES: 

• Cemeteries are sometimes very busy, state your name & purpose and ask if they have time to assist you.  I tend to stay away from the phrase “I’m a genealogist.”  Believe me, there are some cemetery employees who have had bad experiences with pushy researchers.  I just say that I’m trying to find burial locations for some family members.
• Often, I just get an email address & mail the my request to them.  I rarely have to wait longer than a day or two for a response.
• If someone does take the time to help you, and many will, be sure you get the name of that person.  Make a note of who you spoke to and when.
• Send a thank you card.  Yes, a real, handwritten note.  This was a tip given to me, by an experienced genealogist, when I first began researching.  I have had great results with this method.  You will often find out that other family members are in the same cemetery or one handled by the same office.  That employee will remember you if you’ve thanked them.  And guess what?  They will be more than willing to help you again.

Just sitting in front of your computer and finding records online can be very rewarding and yield great benefits.  But, at some point, we all have to begin looking elsewhere for information.  This is just one way that I have found to be very helpful over the years.

Here are a couple of related posts that you may find helpful.

Adding sibling links to FindAGrave memorials  http://www.michiganfamilytrails.com/2014/01/adding-sibling-links-to-findagrave.html

Michigan Death Records – Where to find them  http://www.michiganfamilytrails.com/2013/12/michigan-death-records-onlinewhere-can.html

Ancestry acquires FindAGrave  http://www.michiganfamilytrails.com/2013/09/ancestry.html

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2014   Diane Gould Hall