where2look4ancestors

  • Not on April Fool’s Day!

    My mother said her mother refused to have her baby on the first of April; there would be no April Fool’s baby for her! Mom’s April second birth certificate does not prove or disprove this story, but it does provide a couple other interesting tidbits. Like many other babies of…

  • World Back Up Day

    Ever lost an important computer file? Suffered a system failure? Celebrate World Back Up Day by backing up your computer files, saving those precious photographs, and storing additional copies of important documents in multiple safe places. Don’t live with regret – take a minute or two today to save something you’d…

  • And then there were none

    In the 1870 census, the Clark family of Funkstown Maryland looked like many families of their time. As the head of the household, Morgan was a shoemaker. His wife Susan stayed home to take care of their eight children: The next census tells a drastically different story: Morgan lived with…

  • Why Not Real Estate?

    Thanks to my wonderful cousin Sandy, I have a really neat picture of one of my collateral ancestors. And a new question. If real estate was the largest part of his business (an assumption based on it’s position on the window), why is insurance the only part of Otto V.…

  • Bateman Elementary School

    Among my late mother’s photographs were class pictures taken when she and her brother attended elementary school. Being a genealogist of course I Googled the name of the school. And there I stumbled upon a page where Chicago’s Newton Bateman Elementary School displayed some of their alumni. One quick email to…

  • World TB Day

    Would you be surprised to learn that “tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year*.”? I certainly was. Tuberculosis impacted my family tree, taking the lives of my maternal grandfather’s sister Myrtle (1917) and his father James Walton…

  • If I Knew Where the Gun Was

    Not all genealogical searches end with a happy dance. My 2nd great-grandfather died of pneumonia. The result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We’ll never know what was going through Herman Mangels’ mind when he shot himself. But the testimony given during his inquest hearing certainly suggests a history of mental illness. Found…

  • Just Past the Curtains

    My husband and I recently took a genealogical tour of the Chicago neighborhoods in which my ancestors had lived. The 1910 census showed that my Thompsons and Tolfs both resided on Newport Avenue. In person, the buildings seemed to be situated a bit differently. Rather than living down the street from…

  • The Mangels Marriage Mystery

    Is this “my” Frank Mangels? It is the only documentation I’ve uncovered that mentions the nickname Fred. And Catholic? Hmm. Frank’s stepfather, the man who raised Frank, was born in Germany and was very likely Lutheran. As genealogical luck would have it, six weeks before their wedding Frank and Lucy had considered…

  • Washington County Maryland 1877

    According to the 1870 census, my third great-grandparents 40 year old shoemaker Morgan Clark and his 34 year old wife Susan have eight children. The census taker also recorded the families living near the Clarks. It was interesting to read the list of names, but it was far more interesting to…