Another week, another post, blog, and resource to share.  Without further ado…

POST:

I have been loving Donna’s (What’s Past Is Prologue) five-part blog series “Cousins, Countries, and War: The Bavarian Military Rosters.”  Donna’s Bavarian ancestor Josef Bergmeister had always been a bit of a mystery to her until Ancestry.com recently unveiled its new collection of Bavarian World War I military personnel rosters.  It’s been thrilling to read along as Donna uncovers the life and death of her “personal unknown soldier,” Josef.  I have looked forward eagerly to each new installment!

BLOG:

Stephen Mills (Stephen’s History and Genealogy blog) is the blogger behind the tremendously interesting A Land of Deepest Shade, a blog dedicated to “American funeralia, post-mortem photography, mourning customs, and cemeteries.”  His article on memorial cabinet cards is particularly fascinating.  Thanks to this blog, we genealogists and family historians are now able to gain greater insight into the diverse mourning customs of our relatives and ancestors.  A great read!

INTERNET RESOURCE:

As readers may know, I have ancestors on both the American and Canadian side of the Niagara River–that is, in both the city of Niagara Falls, New York, and the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario.  The Niagara Falls Public Library in ONTARIO has a wonderful website that is chock full of great information and resources for anyone who has family in either city!  Check out their list of local history resources (though be warned:  the main menu of the site has been tending to do strange things with one’s cursor).  Also of great interest is their gigunda digital images archive, full of photos and fully searchable.  Another resource I discovered on the site last night is their digital newspaper index collection.  Would you believe with one search I located an obit I had been looking for since the summer?

Happy link-hopping!

This photograph was one of those rediscovered this past December in the long-missing Sibley’s box that belonged to my Gram.

This charming girl is Kate Irene Miller, who was born in Niagara Falls, NY, on September 25, 1887.  Kate was the youngest child of George and Elizabeth (Hislop) Miller, who emigrated from Scotland to Canada between 1873-1874.  She was the youngest sister of my great-grandfather, William H. Miller.

And Kate was my Gram’s favorite aunt.

I can still remember how Gram said Kate’s name, pronouncing “aunt” like “ant,” on account of her soft Western New York accent.  Kate was quite a beauty in her day, and independent to boot.  In the early decades of the 20th century, at a time when few women worked outside the home, Kate held a good job as a switchboard operator for Bell Telephone in Niagara Falls.  Gram revealed to my mother in hushed tones that Kate had even been married once, but that the union had ended quickly when Kate discovered her new husband already had a wife!

Kate, plucky and proud, kept the diamond.

Kate was a tiny wisp of a woman, not even five feet tall, and entirely proper and poised–that is, until someone told a joke.  And then oh, Gram said, oh how Katie could laugh!  That’s one of the reasons why I love this picture of Aunt Kate so much:  you can see laughter in her lovely dark eyes and just a hint of mischief in her Mona Lisa smile.

My father was lucky enough to grow up seeing Aunt Kate often.  She loved baseball and Dad remembers Kate attending one of his Little League games when he was 8 years old or so.  My father recalls that during the ballgame Kate had smoked her way through her pack of Camels (without inhaling–too much of a lady for that), and by the time the game was over she was brazenly bumming Chesterfields off my grandfather.

Aunt Kate passed away in February of 1974, two years before I was born.  Although I will always regret that I never knew her, I am so thankful that my father and mother remember her so well and delight in sharing Katie’s stories with me.

I have been making myself crazy for a good six months now, trying to find my 3X great grandparents, Owen and Helen (Kelly) McCabe, in the 1851 Scotland census.

Helen (baptized “Lina” and known variously as “Helena,” “Lena,” and “Ellen”) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1827 to Hugh and Helen (also “Eleanor”) (Henderson) Kelly.  The Kellys were Catholic and I am trying to ascertain if Hugh and Helen emigrated from Ireland to Scotland.

Owen was born in 1827 in Co. Sligo (quite possibly the parish of Riverstown), and like many other Irish came to Scotland in search of work (and, in the late 1840s, to escape the horrors of the Famine).

Their firstborn, a daughter, and my great-great grandmother, yet another Helen, was born in Scotland in 1851.  Thanks to Scotland’s People, I was able to download a scan of her baptismal record (click on record to enlarge):

So we have Helen baptized on 4 June, 1851.

The census of Scotland in 1851 was taken in March of that year.  Helen (Kelly) McCabe would have been about 6 months pregnant with her daughter at the time.  So where were Owen and Helen (Kelly) McCabe in the census?

I tried every spelling of McCabe I could think of, every one I had seen:  McAbe, McCab, McCabbe, McKibb, Mc Cabe, as well as every spelling of Owen’s name I had seen:  Orsen, John, Eugene.  Nothing.  No Owen and Helen McCabe.  A couple of single Owens, recorded as lodgers–that was it.

Yesterday I was stuck at my parents’ house on an extended holiday on account of a snowstorm.  In between looking after my mother, who is currently ill with the flu and helping my father shovel, I logged on to Scotland’s People and reread all of the documents I had downloaded from the site.

I reread Helen’s 1851 baptismal record, wondering if I had missed some clue in the record that could lead me to her parents in the 1851 census.  And indeed, I saw what I had missed.

A blank space.

As it turns out, a biiiiiiiiiiig blank space.

There is a space directly to the right of my great-grandmother’s name in the baptismal record.  In the space the priest was to record whether a child was “lawful,” that is born to married parents.  Note that the child above Helen in the record has “lawful” penned into the right-hand space after his name.  Helen has no such note.

Could it be that her parents weren’t actually married at the time of her birth?  The record seems to suggest so.

In which case, perhaps I must go back to the 1851 census and focus my search not on a married couple, Owen and Helen McCabe, but on a single Owen McCabe and a single Helen KELLY.  Maybe that will bring me the results I seek.

And so another genealogical caveat from experience:  do remember to read between the lines, even if all you encounter is a blank space.

It’s truly amazing what you can learn from four lines of type.

Take this want ad from the Niagara Falls Gazette, August 30, 1912.  I found it while killing time on the internet this afternoon.

“Mrs. Gavin” was my great-great grandfather Michael Gavin’s second wife.  Michael had been deceased for seven years when his widow, Annie, placed this advert.  The address, 352 Third Street, Niagara Falls, NY, was one door up from Michael’s younger sister, Mary Gavin Callinan.

The item that is of particular interest to me is the directional instruction that refers to Annie Gavin’s living quarters:  “over Hannel’s.”  I am assuming that “Hannel’s” is some manner of fairly well-known business establishment in the area–certainly well-known enough to be used as a point of orientation for the average person.

This opens up the exciting possibility that there might be a photograph of “Hannel’s” somewhere out there, which would provide me a handy peek at the building in which the Gavins made their home.  Exciting!  Time to write another email to the Local History Department at the Niagara Falls Public Library…

And to think:  a brand new lead from four lines of type!

Falls Street, Niagara Falls, NY. Street on which Patrick Gavin (c. 1845-22 July 1893) owned several properties. His family would fight over the ownership of these properites for decades.

Warning: this post contains very little actual genealogical content.

So, I broke down and bought a new laptop.  I’m giving my trusty HP Pavillion ze4800 to my mother.  It’s just too slow for what I’m doing, and seeing the Blue Screen of Death three times in one year while doing something as innocuous as using two applications and the internet simultaneously was enough to scare me into shelling out for a new machine.

So now I am the proud owner of a blazingly fast and awesome HP Pavillion Dv5 1234us…or something like that.  It’s about 9 months old, which I know makes it practically geriatric for some of my friends, but it was wicked on sale ($450!) and it has all the bells and whistles I want.  Very smexy machine, methinks.  Also, Windows 7 is pretty fun.  Kinda Mac-ish, with all its easy-read icons and stuff, but fun just the same.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last couple days…transferring files, bookmarks, GEDcoms, my iTunes library (still in process)…messing around with the RootsMagic 4.0 upgrade I treated myself to, and generally trying to find my way around the new ‘puter (whose name is Jack, for those of you who understand the importance of naming your stuff…for the record, my car’s name is Dante).

So far the biggest bugbear has been deciding how to view my blog feeds from Firefox.  I feel like it was so much easier to handle with IE.  I settled on using Google Reader, and that’s been satisfactory so far.  Far from ideal, but it’s the best solution yet.

Off again to mess around with some more GEDcoms.

“And then there were the twins, Florence and Charles,” I can remember my grandmother telling me, reciting the litany of her maternal grandfather, Michael Gavin Jr.’s seven children, all of whom grew up in Niagara Falls, New York. 

Of all the Gavin brood, I know the least about Charles.  Directly, anyway.  Indirectly, I know he was 5 years old when he faced the death of his mother (almost certainly due to complications from the birth of her last child Alice).  I know he was around 8 when his father remarried.  In 1894, when Charles was 14, his stepbrother George was born.  One year later, in 1895 Charles watched both baby George and Charles’ younger sister Jennie die, Jennie most poignantly at the tender age of 12, of “brain trouble.”  In the same year, Charles’ father Michael was arrested for what we would know today as domestic abuse of both his wife and children.  Hard times.

By the age of 17, Charles was working.  All the Gavin children worked.  He was first an elevator operator, then a worker at the Carborundum factory.  At the turn of the century, Charles had followed the lead of his older sister Nellie (my great-grandmother) and his twin sister Florence, who were telephone switchboard operators, and found a job at Bell Telephone, working as a “telephone setter.” 

Then Charles drops off the map.  He is missing from the 1910 census.

When I discovered the Gavin family plot last February, I learned why Charles had not been in the 1910 census:

But it was only when I gained access to the Niagara Falls Gazette for 1910 that I learned the full extent of the misery of Charles’ final weeks.

From the Gazette on April 22, 1910:

“FOR 60 DAYS

Charles Gavin was down and out due to an overload of intoxicants last night in the alley back of the Temperance house.  This morning Gavin pleaded guilty to a charge of public intoxication and was sent to the Niagara County Jail for sixty days.“

Poor Charles.  Looking back on the many losses he suffered in his life, it wasn’t surprising to me that he turned to the bottle…and/or whatever else the term “intoxicants” implied.  But the next and final mention of him in the papers threw me for a loop.

It is from the Buffalo Morning Express, dated May 15, 1910:

“DIES IN JAIL.

Electrical Shock Supposed to have caused Charles Gavin’s Death.

Special to The Buffalo Express

Lockport, May 14–Charles Gavin, 30 years old, who was serving a 60-day sentence at the county jail for intoxication at Niagara Falls, died this morning in the hospital ward of cerebral hemorrages.  He became ill yesterday and became unconscious, remaining so until death.

Gavin had served three weeks of his sentence.  He was burned three weeks prior to his confinement by an electrical shock at a Niagara Falls plant.  The burn was on the leg, and it is believed by Dr. Bickford to have been the direct cause of death.”

You led a difficult life, and died a strange and tragic death…I sincerely hope you rest in peace, great-grand uncle Charles, and that the next world is miles better to you than this one was.

A bit belated, as this is Sunday, but how could I resist this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun prompt at Genea-Musings?  Especially since I then read Amanda Acquard’s SNGF post that featured an image of her superhero alter ego created at a cool graphics site, called The Hero Factory!  What a hoot!

Here’s Randy’s prompt:

Do you have a genealogical “superpower”? (i.e., a unique research ability or technique that helps you track down records or assemble conclusions that others can’t?) If so, what is it?

I have two genealogical superpowers–lucky me!  Pay close attention as The Mighty Spectacled Splinter (who brandishes a branch of her family tree to beat down any evil genealogical brick walls that stand in her way) flagrantly toots her own horn…

First, I have a preternatural ability to remember names I have seen in print.  This is an offshoot of my odd capacity to recall text I have read as if it was a photograph and “reread” it within my mind’s eye.  I wouldn’t say I have a true photographic memory, as eventually I am no longer able to recall the image, but good heavens is it ever helpful in the short run, especially for genealogical purposes.  As an aside, my dad readily recalls the scores and plays of every baseball game he’s ever attended, so clearly I get this handy-dandy trait from him.  Thanks, Dad!

Second, I have a knack for deciphering handwriting and recognizing a specific individual’s hand.  In my former job as a retail manager, I could go through hundreds of return slips and pick out the ones with the same handwriting in order to figure out who was making fraudulent returns under a number of different names.  Because of this ability, old census records are a snap for me, even despite poor-quality microfilm.  Crappy photocopies of handwritten wills?  Not a bother!  Hastily-recorded WWI draft cards?  Pshaw!  This is one genealogical superpower I am deeply, DEEPLY grateful to have.

Hark!  What is that sound?  Is it the faint cry of a source that hasn’t been fully analyzed or a defenseless photograph waiting to be scanned?  Fear not, for the Mighty Spectacled Splinter cometh!  Up, up, and ahnentafel!

This afternoon I was convinced I had busted through a brick wall genealogy problem with all the enthusiasm of the Kool-Aid Man…”Ohhhhhhh yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!” 

Tonight I am feeling a bit more reserved about my findings because:

1)  I am, by nature, a pessimistic optimist.  Or is that an optimistic pessimist?  Let’s just say Murphy’s Law tends to apply doubly to me, and so I proceed with caution in all things.

2)  I was partially drawn towards my shaky conclusions with help from Ancestry.com’s OneWorld Tree, which is, as Ancestry admits, a place to root about for hints regarding one’s genealogy but certainly NOT a spot to secure hard and fast facts. 

3)  My conjectures depend on transcriptions of documents, available through the (reputable, as far as I understand) Irish Family History Foundation.  And until I find someone willing to give me plane fare to get to Ireland, chances are I will have to rely on these transcriptions for a little longer still.

But, as we all know, so much of genealogy depends on serendipity, so here goes nothing…or perhaps something…or maybe even everything:

New names and places that have popped onto my radar screen today:

BREHENY/BRAHANY, or its English equivalent, JUDGE–used seemingly interchangably during the early part of the 19th century in Co. Sligo, Ireland.

CANDON/CONDON, also from Co. Sligo

BEIRN, again from Sligo

The connection: I have reason to believe my 4X great grandfather, Thomas MCCABE’s (c. 1805-1880) parents were called James MCCABE and Winnifred CANDON.  Thomas may have been born in the parish of Riverstown, Co. Sligo. 

Thomas’ wife, my 4X great grandmother “Ellen,” (c. 1807-1884) may have had the given name of Eleanora (though it might just be the Latin form on the baptismal record–I have no way of knowing right now), and the maiden surname BREHENY or JUDGE (both names appear in the records for the same woman…BREHENY is apparently Irish for JUDGE, according some quick side research).  Ellen/Eleanora’s parents may have been Maurice BREHENY/JUDGE and Winnifred or Jennifer (again transcription problems I can’t solve yet) BEIRN.

All of these families were found in the Riverstown parish of Co. Sligo in the first three decades of the 19th century.  Now, I would be over the moon to narrow the McCabes and their associated surnames down to a single parish in Sligo, but I cannot let my excitement allow me to make mistakes.  Thus, at the moment, I am just sending out feelers. 

And so I humbly impose on your good will and expertise, o fellow geneabloggers, to ask:  If these surnames or locale are familiar to you in your genealogical research, would you drop me a comment?  I’d be most obliged…and who knows?  I might even be on the right track “home.”

For this, my first Follow Friday, I offer a post, a blog, and a site for the delight and education of my fellow geneabloggers.

POST OF NOTE:

For Memory Monday, Greta Koehl of Greta’s Genealogy Bog, with her usual lovely and compelling prose, tells a charming tale of an interloping black walnut shoot growing in the basement of her house, whose sheer determination to survive compelled her family to care for it and adopt it as the unofficial mascot of their basement.  An all-around delightful read.

BLOG OF NOTE:

Katrina McQuarrie, a self-described “Gen-Y genealogist” and the blogger behind Kick-Ass Genealogy, has a mission: to help YOU make YOUR family history and genealogical projects as kick-ass as possible, one info-packed how-to post at a time.  Katrina’s got a knack for taking old topics and making them brandy-new and exciting again.  Check out her suggestions for “batching” genealogy tasks for greater productivity.  Also, she’s working her way through a degree in medieval studies (as yours truly did), and that makes her automatically awesome.

SITE OF NOTE:

Scotland’s People has been a favorite site of mine for several years.  Using a ”pay per view” fee schedule, genealogists can download a vast amount of Scottish statutory and old parish registers as well as census records and some wills.  This site was instrumental in helping me sort out my Miller/Hislop lines.  However, several of my Irish lines (McCabe, Kelly) also spent years working, marrying and raising their families in Scotland.  As they were Catholic, I couldn’t find them in the old Scottish parish registers.  I had come to accept this.  Imagine my surprise when I logged on to the site in October of this past year and discovered they had added birth and baptism records from the Catholic parish registers of Scotland!  According to the site, this is the first of several installments the site will add over the next few years, encompassing many thousands more Catholic parish records.  The Catholic births and baptisms have already helped me to break through a brick wall I thought would stand until the end of time.  Well done, Scotland’s People.  Thank you!