Why I do what I do

I realized today that I haven't written in my blog in quite some time.  I apologize for being absent for so long; as I'm sure is the case for many of you, this time of year seems to fly by before you even realize it's over.  I haven't been keeping up with my genealogy research as much as I would like to lately.  Once October hits I am kind of in decorating mode.  First it's Halloween, which I must admit is my all time favorite holiday and I take a ton of pride in my decorations so I spent the whole darn month wrapped up in that, and before I knew it Halloween was over.  Then you move on to Thanksgiving and everything that goes with that. Now it's Christmas. I know it's only the 11th, but this month is packed.  First I have my parents annual Holiday Party this Friday, which I must say I look forward to every year.  Since I still live at home I try to help as  much as possible to make the prep load less for my parents.  So all that being said I'm going to write a brief blog entry to night about why I do genealogy research and hopefully as 2013 rolls around I will have more time for research and keep this thing better updated.  Bear with me, as it may get a little emotional.

Believe it or not I don't necessarily do all this genealogy research for me.  This all started long before I can even remember with my paternal grandfather, Robert Panfil.  My grandfather unfortunately passed away when I was 9.5 years old so I've never gotten to share all this with him.  I think though, that I do it for him.  He's the reason I got interested in my family history.  He was interested in it an had spent time writing to family members and compiling what he could into a family tree, and now I've taken up his hobby.  I think part of the reason I push so much with my research is because it gives me a connection to a man I didn't get to know as much as I would have liked.  Through my research I can see what his life might have been like when he was a child and learn things about his parents and grandparents that I don't have the ability to ask him.  As amazing as all of that it, it's so hard at the same time.  It brings up so many unanswered questions and so many things I'd love to be able to sit down and talk to my grandfather about.

Lately I've grown to realize what an amazing gift my grandfather has given me.  He's opened my eyes to a hobby and a passion I never knew I had and I only wish I could tell him how grateful I am.  Not only that but he has given me the opportunity to create a stronger bond with my maternal grandfather, Carl Meeks.  For whatever reason, as a child I felt much closer to my father's parents, especially my grandfather.  My grandpa Meeks and I never had the kind of relationship I had with my grandpa Panfil.  But now, thanks to genealogy research, we've gotten closer.  Being able to see the look in your grandfather's eyes when you can tell him names of people he never knew he was related to is so amazing.

So in short, that's why I do what I do.  Not just because I'm innately curious about where my ancestors have come from, but because it's given my a connection to both my grandfather's that I never had before.

Happy Holidays Genealogists!

My grandfather, Robert Panfil, and I.  Around 1989

cemetery visits with grandma

 So for almost a year now I've been trying to plan I day for my mother and I to take my grandma Meeks to the cemeteries where her families are buried.  Now unlike all my other trips to the cemeteries, this one was different.  This time it wasn't just for me to show Grandma who I'd found and where they were, but it was for the 3 of us to find them together.  The hard part was that the burial locations of these family members were a bit confusing.  We started our day out at Mount Olive where my grandmother's parents and 2 of her brothers are buried.  Her grandmother Emma is also buried there, but unfortunately for whatever reason she has no headstone so we just stopped by the general area to say hey.

Next stop was Graceland cemetery and that turned out to be an interesting visit.  My grandmother had already known that her grandfather was buried there with his brother, the brother's wife and their daughter.  What she didn't know was that I also found out her Great-Grandparents were also buried there with 2 of their sons and a daughter in law.  The weird thing about both these Graceland plots was that there are also some other people we don't know buried there as well.  For instance in Plot G; the plot with the great-grandparents, there are also a 46 year old man with the last name De Bellay and a 7 yr old boy named William Ratcliffe.  We have no idea who those people are and we don't really know how to find out why they're buried there.  In Plot D with her grandfather there are the 4 people we know are related to us, plus 6 other people! Again totally stumped on that one.  I'm hoping I'll be able to figure that out some time soon; any tips would be helpful!

Last stop was up in Evanston at Calvary Cemetery.  Now of course this cemetery has a similar dilemma to Graceland.  Here there is a 12 grave plot (11 filled) that is owned by a man named Patrick Kelly.  In this plot there are the following family members: Marion Larson (my grandmother's sister who died as an infant), Ellen Cochrane (wife of a Cochrane buried at Graceland, my grandma's grandma)  Ellen's parents Bridget & Henry Taylor as well as 2 siblings John & Mary Taylor, David Cochrane (grandma's uncle) & Susan Lafferty (grandma's aunt).  So I'm left with these 3 people: Mary Johnson (2 days old), Michael Cannon (2 yrs 9 mos) & John Kelly.  Obviously John Kelly is related to the owner Patrick some how, but the other 2 i'm totally lost on again.  Right now we're assuming the Kelly family is related to the Taylor family; both being Irish last names maybe it's some family member from the mother Bridget's side??

Graceland - Lot D

Graceland - Lot G

Calvary Cemetery

Needless to say every time I go to a cemetery I come back with great pictures and more questions than I had when I went to the cemetery to begin with.  Here's to hoping I can get them figured out soon?

Happy Hunting friends!!

1940 census update

Hey all!  Just a quick update for now to keep you all interested!  This week we're celebrating my grandmother's 90th birthday! I'll be sure to let you all know how that turns out after it's over but the prep for that has demanded much of my time to get things ready.  That being said I've had bits of time to work on my genealogy and am very happy to share that I am making great progress on locating my family members on the US 1940 census record.  I owe this largely in part to Ancestry.com as they have finished indexing all of the census records so I can now find those hard to located people by searching for their names.

On that note, for those of you who are newer to genealogy research don't get discouraged if when you first start looking for someone you can't find them.  I learned this that hard way after over-looking many documents because the name just didn't seem right.  Something as simple as the last name Huffman can be incorrectly indexed as Hofman or some other variation of that name.  Keep in mind that the people who are indexing many not always be able to read everything that was written.  Hand writing can be a very hard to thing to decipher so you should always take a second look at names that seem close to yours because they may have just been misread

I'm hoping the newly indexed 1940 census records will help me clear up some questions about family members and lead me closer to the things I want to find.  Hopefully I'll have more to update on next week after finding some more records and knocking some of these hints of my family tree.

Happy hunting genealogists!

Civil War military records & 1940s census progress

Hey fellow genealogists! Sorry for the long absence things have been kinda hectic around my house lately.  Unfortunately my uncle lost his 3.5 year battle with colon cancer so we've been dealing with that and everything that comes with a death in the family; but I digress.  So in my absence I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like working on my genealogical quests, but I have come up with a few small things.  Firstly I must say that attempting to hand search through hundreds of 1940 census records to find your family is exhausting.  I have still yet to find everyone, but I'm making some headway.  In my efforts to find all my living family members on the 1940 U.S. Census I have realized that I have a lot of those little hint leaves on my ancestry.com family tree (at last count about 340 total hints) and I must say it is driving me a bit bonkers. Hopefully when you hear from me next I will have been able to sort through some of those to eliminate them.

In other news, I have been attempting some more research on my 4th great-grandfather on my mother's side of the family.  For those of you who may not remember I've written about him a few times; Familial Connections in a Strange Place & Finding Your Ancestry Isn't Always Easy.  William R. Meek has been a bit of a mystery to my family as of yet and I'm really struggling to find out more about him with the records I have available to me.  Now I know that he was injured at a battle in Georgia and died later of wounds he received there, his wife Rebecca remarried and her parents took in their only son William D. Meek.  I've been searching for where the Meek(s) family came from and I'm still coming up blank and it is beyond frustrating.  I was hoping that by finding William R. Meek's military records it would help lead me to his parents.  Unfortunately, that was not the case but I did get some really interesting documentation to share with my family.

Through the National Archives I was able to order William R. Meek's Pension Records and Military Death Records.  When they arrived it was like Christmas morning; I was so excited to dig into those records and see what they could tell me.  The death records were fairly simple, mostly copies of casualty sheets and muster rolls all signed by commanding officers.  The Pension Record envelope was a whole different story.  While it didn't lead me to William R.'s parents; it did give me some insight into how things working in the 1960s after the Civil War.  Most of the documents were depositions as to when William R. & Rebecca got married, doctors attesting to William D. being their child and all that good stuff.  There were also papers in their about Rebecca's pension claim being denied because she had gotten remarried, and that William D. would get $8 a month until his was 16 years old.  All in all unfortunately nothing helpful in the genealogical sense, but none the less exciting to look at.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what steps to take next?  I'm stuck in Ohio in 1800 and I don't know who to get out!