Well, what do you expect? I haven’t done much on the genealogy research this month. Actually, I haven’t done much of anything this month. The first week of December I had to go to Boston for work. This is the week I would normally spend putting up lights outside around the house. So that didn’t get done, since I was not here!

Naturally, being around strangers all week, and spending 6 hours on an airplane full of people coughing and sneezing, I got sick for the second week of December. This is the week I would normally spend baking yummy Christmas treats. So that didn’t get done, since I knew nobody would want to eat cookies baked by a sick person, and besides I had no energy!

And then the third week of December I spent trying to catch up with all the stuff I didn’t get done earlier in the month. It was not a pretty sight.

This week I’m finally doing some baking. Oh well, Christmas treats still taste just as good after Christmas, right?

Maybe next year…..

Wow, who would have thought? In surfing around the web and on various genealogy sites, I stumbled across the fact that there are lots of old issues of the St. Charles daily newspaper at the site Find My Past. That is the website where all the old parish registers are, for the Chapman-Allen-Thompson lines, and, of course, the UK census records. I thought most of their records were UK records, and even though their site says they have world-wide records, I figured they would only have a few non-UK records.

So I’m finding lots of newspaper articles about Bruns, Ferber, and Washburn so far. There are articles on Dorothea Bruns and George Ferber eloping (so they said!), a mad dog, a dog that saved a family from a house fire, an arrest for home brewing beer during Prohibition, car crashes, county elections, and beauty queens! I love reading these old articles; many times they are really funny, albeit unintentionally.

But it is nice to have something to put in the database besides just names and dates. These articles will put real “life” into the family story. At least, in the St. Charles lines! I wish other newspapers would get online, especially ones where lots of family members resided for years and years (like Joliet, that would be a good one).

The only bad part is that these newspapers are so old, the quality is not great, and unfortunately the scans are quite small. To actually read the articles, I usually have to take my glasses off and squint at the screen. Some words are so bad that I can only figure out what they are based on the context of the sentence. So I’m taking the time to transcribe the articles as I go, since trying to decipher them takes awhile. Better to have one person do it once, rather than everyone having to do it also.

So that’s why the Bruns-Ferber history is taking so long, but it will be pretty cool when it’s done 🙂

That’s it, that’s as much fun as I can stand for now. I didn’t get back as far as I had hoped, but maybe some day I can get farther. Anyway, this is what Sarah Jane Allen’s ancestor chart looks like now:

Click on the thumbnail to see it bigger.

And now I think I’m going to pick up the Ferber/Bruns storyline that got interrupted to work on the new software, etc. I’d like to finish that so I can move on to new areas.

I removed from the database all the Allens that were ancestors of Charles Allen, that were the wrong ancestors. That was about 450 people (including children and siblings). Let’s see how many correct Allens I can add now. It won’t be a large number right now, because the sparse records back before 1800 means that it takes quite a long time to figure out the families and relationships.

So I will be adding in the ones I can easily find, and leave the more time-consuming searches for some other time.

Adam Allen was married twice, first to Ann Allison. They had one child, a boy who ended up living near his father in the Heighington/Washingborough area. A few years later Adam married Ann Grundy, and they had four children, including our Charles Allen. The other three children were girls. One died when she was only 7. The other two girls I haven’t found much information on, because they probably married and I haven’t found the marriage record yet. I also have not found a death or burial record for Ann Allison Allen; and Adam is listed as single, not widower, on his marriage record to his second wife, so I’m thinking Ann Alllison Allen did not die before Adam remarried. But if not, what happened to her?

Adam’s parents were Adam and Mary (I don’t know her maiden name yet). Ann Grundy’s parents were George and Ann (I don’t know her maiden name either). Adam was born in 1789, and Ann was born in 1799, so we are already back before 1800 with them. I hope I can find out something about the parents, but I may have reached the limit of what is easy right now.

Our Charles Allen, who married Mary Jane Thompson, has the wrong parents in our database. Cheryl had his parents as John Adam Allen and Ann Jessop. The name John Adam Allen is a bit odd in that very few people in that area and at that time had a first and middle name in the parish records. The names are all just first name and surname.

I did find the baptism record for Charles Allen, and his parents are Adam and Ann Allen. Not John Adam. So far, I have found half the baptism records for Charles Allen’s siblings, and they all say Adam and Ann Allen also. I have no idea where Cheryl got the “John Adam” from. But his name is just Adam.

Also, I found the marriage record for John Allen and Ann Jessop. The record says John Allen, not John Adam Allen, and that he is a resident of Boston. They were married in Gosberton, which is somewhat near Boston, but not near the Lincoln area. Heighington, where Charles was born, and Washingborough, where Charles was baptised, are near Lincoln, not Boston.

So when Cheryl picked up the wrong name for Charles Allen’s father, she got the wrong marriage too, naturally. Right now, it looks like Adam Allen married twice, both times to women named Ann. Adam is a somewhat unusual name for our family, so I’m hopeful that I can track him and find out the rest of the family members.

But yeah, go ahead and delete Charles Allen’s parents and subsequent ancestors. And I’m not sure about all Charles Allen’s siblings yet either.

Sigh. Our tree doesn’t go back nearly as far as we thought. At least not yet. This is about as far as I can get though, with the time I have now. Oh well.