Military Service on my tree
I use a program to display my online family tree called TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy Software).
It is a dynamic website that displays information and photos about people from a database (rather than the “old-fashioned” approach of static html files for every page).
I was reminded this weekend that there is a great report section, allowing easy creation of reports from the databases on a variety of topics.
I remembered that I have a report called “Military Service“, that lists all of the people in my database that have served in the military.
Unfortunately, I have done a poor job identifying and tracking those people who have served. (For example, my dad isn’t listed, and he retired from the Navy after more than 20 years of service).
First, I need to use a standard convention for tracking the “event” of military service (I have been using a mixture of about 7 different events).
Second, I need help finding out from my cousins and aunts who they can remember.
Third, I am going to use Fold3 and Ancestry.com to look up older relatives’ data.
If you know of anyone who served in our military (or in any government service), please let me know.
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Although we were a Navy family, and moved often when I was a kid, I consider Ledyard, Connecticut my home town.
In school, in Boy Scouts, and in my spare time I learned about the history of Connecticut, and its founding. It still fascinates.
My best friend Noel’s mom was a State Rep, and she often took us to Hartford with her while she worked.
On the way into Hartford along Rt 2, we traveled over “The Founders Bridge“, which always impressed me with its link to history and grand-sounding name.
The Founders Bridge, Rt 2, Hartford, CT (wikipedia)
It turns out that 7 of the 163 men and women considered to be The Founders of Hartford are my direct ancestors.
- John Purchas (Purkas)
- Giles Smith
- Henry Wakeley (Walkley)
- Rev. Thomas Hooker
- William Kelsey
- Thomas Scott
Founders Monument in the Old Burial Ground (flickriver.com)
The 163 people are considered the founders, as they are listed in the Book of Distribution of Land as those who settled in Hartford before February 1640.
There is an interest group called The Society of the Descendants of the Founders of Hartford, which I had a brief thought to join, but the $300 dollar fee is steep, and the requirement of “is of good moral character and good reputation” (although I believe I qualify) is off-putting.
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Tags: Connecticut, Hooker, Kelsey, Purchase, Scott, Smith, Wakeley
The Connecticut Historical Society Manuscript blog has a great collection of old manuscripts and photos.
Only a few of the volumes we have, like this one for the 7th Infantry, provide detail about the equipment issued to soldiers. This example includes socks, shoes, shirts, pants, and a rubber blanket. Ms 101722
A letter of support from Amos Laurence to Abby Smith for refusing to pay her taxes to the town of Glastonbury. Ms 38267
They have been adding new content since 2007, and there is a LOT of material in there.
The site highlights new additions to their physical archives, and does a great job explaining why each document is so important to our history.
I am combing through it now to find a couple of easy matches to my ancestors, but I think it is going to take months to get through just reading the backlog.
Great resource.
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Tags: Connecticut
This photo is a class photo from the Johnson Schoolhouse, School District No 4, Haynes Township, Alcona County, Michigan in 1910.
The photo is in an old family photo album owned by Milo Napier Johnson, of Haynes and Harrisville.
The photo was taken by Fred Card.
Class photo @ Johnson Schoolhouse in Haynes, Alcona County, Michigan, 1910
When I was back in Harrisville in 2003, we toured all of the old farms and homestead out in Haynes Township with Bob Merkel, and visited the schoolhouse.
Johnson Schoolhouse, 2003
It has a new job, but looking pretty good for its age.
Filed under: Photo | 1 Comment
Tags: Alcona County, Card, class photo, Fred Card, Haynes Township, Johnson, schoolhouse
I have been using Legacy Family Tree software by Millenia for the last 6 years. I was very happy with the software, and understood it very well.
2 years ago I switched both work and home computers to Macs, which presented a problem in that Legacy does not offer a Macintosh version.
I solved this for a while by using Wine Bottler to create a Mac app using Wine and Legacy, which fakes a Windows virtual server on a Mac. This worked, but crudely. The copy/paste keys were intermittent, and the output gedcom file was rife with bad entities (mainly /par strings instead of actual line breaks).
Cleaning these gedcom files before importing them into my web site admin took an hour or more each time, and the quality of the cleanup was never good.
I realized I needed to do something because I had not updated my family tree online in over 9 months. Totally due to the software issues.
Over Thanksgiving I tested out 5 new Mac-based software packages to help me manage my data. I decided to purchase Family Tree Maker by ancestry.com, as it had decent ui, good integration with online data sites, and acceptable source treatment. The $70 price tag made me think twice, but I decided it was necessary.
The initial import went great. I spent about a week entering new and corrected data (catching up on the months of helpful emails from relatives). And then it crashed.
And would not restart.
Family Tree Maker would start, place an icon in the dock, switch the menu to the app, and then die before any window appeared. Dead.
I went through all of the help files online, including Troubleshooting issues with Family Tree Maker for Mac. I sent in 2 tickets with their tech support (who did nothing but refer me to the online help files). And spent 10s of hours trying and retrying their steps. No luck. I finally sat down with google and OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual, and figured out how to completely delete the software and start over from scratch. The help files were incomplete, and required the removal of more cache and settings files in the OS to eradicate the software and restart clean.
Besides the plist files mentioned on the above article, I also removed all mentions of ancestry and family tree maker from the following folders:
- ~/Library/Saved Application State
- ~/Library/Preferences
- ~/Library/Application Support
- ~/Library/Caches
- /Library/Saved Application State
- /Library/Preferences
- /Library/Application Support
- /Library/Caches
And I was back in business.
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Tags: Software
Birch Evans Bayh III is a politician, lawyer and lobbyist. He was born December 26, 1955 in Shirkieville, Indiana.
Birch Evans Beyh
He was the junior senator from Indiana from 1999-2011. Before that he served as the governor of Indiana from 1988-1999, and Indiana Secretary of State from 1986-1988.
His father was also a senator.
Senator Birch Evans Bayh, III is my 11th cousin through our common ancestor Thomas Hull
Jerry Milo Johnson to Senator Birch Evans Bayh, III
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Tags: Beyh, Force, Governor, Hollingsworth, Hull, Johnson, Manning, Master, Pike, relationship chart, Roll, Senator, Ward
Richard Gere was born on August 31, 1949 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
For anyone not aware of his career, he is an acclaimed actor, and lately an outspoken political activist and humanitarian.
Richard Gere
My personal favorite Gere movie has to be An Officer and a Gentleman, followed closely by Pretty Woman.
He is my 10th cousin once removed through our shared ancestor George Hull.
Jerry Milo Johnson to Richard Tiffany Gere
Filed under: Famous Relatives, Masters | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alworth, Buell, Garnsey, Gaylord, Gere, Gillette, Griswold, Hull, Johnson, Masters, Pike, relationship chart
