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Sunday’s Obituary: Jane Van Leer, Indiana, PA

March 4, 2012 Filed in Campbell,Sunday's ObituaryNo comments

This Sunday’s obituary is for my husband’s 3rd great-grandmother’s sister, Jane (Campbell) Van Leer.  It is from the Indiana Evening Gazette, Indiana, Pennsylvania, dated 9 Dec 1922.

Mrs. Jane Van Leer, 93, Dies in Sons’ Home Near Marion Center

Mrs. Jane Van Leer, widow of John Van Leer, died at the home of her son, Grant Van Leer of near Marion Center at 8:15 Friday morning at the age of 93 years. She was a great-great grandmother.

The deceased was born in Center County, this state, 93 years ago and came to the home of her son Grant about four years ago. She was a member of the Wesleyn Methodist church of Indiana, and one of the most highly respected and lovable characters in this section.

Among her survivors are one son, Grant Van Leer, at whose home she died and the following grand, great grand and great-great grandchildren: Mrs. James Thomas of Punxsutawney; Mrs. Vanora V. Rowe, of Pittsburgh; Mrs. Zene Hines, of Pine Flats; Miss Murtel Van Leer, nurse in the Dixmont hospital; Mrs. Mabel Van Leer of Jeannette; Mrs. William Van Leer of Indiana, Mrs. Anna Fritz and John Walker in California; David and Ernest Van Leer in the West; Bernard Van Leer, of North Mahoning township; Mrs. William Dunmire, of Juneau; Charles, Mona and Theodore Van Leer, of near Marion Center; Thomas Walker, Mrs. Helen Cook, Eearl and Anna Washington of Pittsburgh, and the great-great grandchildren are the son and daughters of Bert Moorhead of Indiana; of Mrs. Zene Hines and Mrs. Helen Cook, of Pittsburgh.

Funeral services will be held at the late home of the deceased beginning at 1 o’clock Monday afternoon and interment made in the Marion Center cemetery

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Old Newspaper Finds: 1924 Home Brewery Raided

March 3, 2012 Filed in Old Ads/NewspapersNo comments

This is just an article I came across when I was doing some research on my mom’s family.  These people are not at all related to me, but I found it so interesting to read about a home brewery being raided.  Especially since my dad enjoys brewing his own beer.   It’s from 1924.

It sounds like the operation was pretty well concealed, but obviously not well enough!!  I’m not much of a drinker myself, but I still think that prohibition would have been a hard time to live through!!:)

 

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Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds

March 2, 2012 Filed in Follow Friday1 comment

I can hardly believe that it’s MARCH already!  This is a big month for me.  A really busy month.  I have two kiddos with birthdays.  I’m walking a marathon – the Bataan Memorial Death March in just a few weeks.  I have a two-week long Spouse’s Leadership Development Course to take from 5-10 p.m. every night (so I can learn how to be a Sergeant Major’s wife!).  We have a week of spring break, which we will spend driving and hiking and sightseeing around Arizona and New Mexico.  I have a bunch of illegitimate Swedish ancestors to track down through the parish records. Oh, and I have to homeschool my 5 kids at some point in time.  Geesh!

I have big news too.  Well, news that big news is coming.  On Monday, we should find out where we’ll be moving to this June.  It’s exciting.  I am so incredibly anxious to find out, but I have to remind myself to not get too worked up about where we’re going, because until we’re physically there it could change.  I’m a seasoned Army wife, so I”m ready for the chaos when it comes.  I can’t help but hope that wherever we move, it’s either close to where some of my ancestors lived so that I can do some firsthand research or else close to one of the big conferences so I can attend one of them.

Well, on to this week’s favorite finds….

  • Did Some Dude on a Boat Decide Your Fate? over at Clue Wagon got me thinking.  I personally don’t live in the same place my ancestors lived, because we’re a nomadic Army family.  However, my mom does lived within two hours of where her Swedish grandparents immigrated to (Seattle) in the early 1900′s.  And we’ll be moving back there when my husband retires.  My husband’s family is in Douglas County, KS (and has been there since 1854).  They didn’t step off a boat, but moved from Virginia and have been in Kansas for over 150 years.  That’s a long time!
  • I love family heirlooms and thought that these glasses over at Nolichucky Roots were so special!
  • I’m really looking forward to the new Finding Your Roots show on PBS, which is premiering March 25th!!
  • This would be More Than I Could Stand also!  How hard to have been trying to plan a wedding and not have a mother there to help out.  I can’t wait to hear what happens next over at Family Archaeologist.

And a few pictures to share…

My daughter Katie, who just turned 10 a couple of weeks ago…

Ellie, who is 12 going on 20.The bag of dead animals my children dissected this week.  Homeschooling can be messy!!And some lovely chocolate-covered strawberries I had the pleasure of tasting at a baby shower last weekend.:)

 

 

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Susan Clark - March 2, 2012 - 12:03 pm

Thanks for the mention, Jen! Love your photos – especially those girls of yours. Enjoy the birthdays.

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Swedish Children Born Out of Wedlock

February 28, 2012 Filed in Swedish Genealogy7 comments

I am so surprised at how many of my Swedish ancestors were born out of wedlock during the 1800′s.  You would expect it to happen once in a while – and I had assumed that it must have been a shameful thing during that time period.  I am starting to think that it might not have been so bad though, because it wasn’t just my ancestors that were having babies without being married.  As I have been searching through the birth records, I’ve seen a surprising number of children whose parents weren’t married.

Here are some examples from various years of Swedish birth records of how the children born out of wedlock were marked on the birth registers:

The father often wasn’t named on the records, which is unfortunate.

Here is one instance from my own family tree, when the child was born out of wedlock, but then it was crossed out since the couple got married.:)  Pig. stood for an unmarried female.  The date given on the second line is when Carin married Per, one month after the baby was born.

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Greta Koehl - February 28, 2012 - 6:51 pm

This sounds like a phenomenon Warren Bittner found in doing research among German Protestant families (“The Bittner Bastards of Bavaria”). There were high illegitimacy rates, but they occurred among young adults in their 20s and even early 30s. They actually wanted to get married, but were prevented from doing so by town councils who had the power to refuse to issue approval for marriage. The phenomena leading up to this were usually something like the following: oldest son can follow father into a trade (for a fee), second son can also (for a much higher fee), third son and later are out of luck. Since they cannot pursue a trade, they end up being in a lower socioeconomic class, one that the town councils did not want to see perpetuated, so they would not approve the marriages. These people would continue to petition for approval, but meanwhile first, second, and even third children were being born…. A lot of these people ended up emigrating to America, for obvious reasons. At least one sibling of one of my husband’s ancestors came to this country with her (not yet) husband and their two oldest children.

shaz - February 28, 2012 - 8:23 pm

This happened a lot in Bavaria in the early 1800s. The man had to prove he had the ability to take care of a family or the town fathers would refuse permission. After two or three children they would relent thinking the couple had a real commitment to each other.

Jen - February 28, 2012 - 11:02 pm

How interesting!! You both have given me a lot to think about – and made me realize that I really need to read up on my Swedish history!!

Cynthia Shenette - February 29, 2012 - 7:35 pm

Hi Jen,

I don’t research Swedes, but I did read something a while ago that might be of interest to you. I think it was in a biography I read about Jacob Riis. The book mentioned that with many young couples the woman was pregnant before marriage. Riis was Danish, but maybe this was common in Scandinavian countries. The couples were committed, but not married. The key was they intended to marry. Apparently, it was socially acceptable and not something that society looked down on. I can’t remember the exact reason, but it may have had something to do with the young man’s need to establish himself in his chosen line of work before committing to marriage. If you are interested the book is, The Other Half : The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America by Tom Buk-Swienty, New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2008.

If you learn more about this I hope you do a post on it!

Cynthia

Jen - March 1, 2012 - 7:52 am

Thanks Cynthia!! I’ll have to read that!

Lisa Nap - March 8, 2012 - 6:13 am

Hello Jen,
Whilst doing some research for an article on my great grandmother, I came across a Swedish researcher by the name of Anne-Sofie
Kälvemark, she has published several reports on illegitimacy in Sweden. It reminded me of this article, might be worth wile to look into…

Jen - March 8, 2012 - 7:56 am

Thank you Lisa!!! I will look into that!!

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Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds

February 24, 2012 Filed in Follow Friday2 comments

Actually, this post is two weeks of my favorite finds.  I was MIA last week, sledding with my kids at White Sands National Monument.  So. Much. Fun.:)  I’ve been very busy with my genealogy these past couple of weeks – mostly working on my Swedish roots, but also delving a bit into my husband’s New York lines as well.

On to my favorite finds:

  • This evening’s edition of Geneabloggers Radio is all about African-American Resources.  I don’t have any African-American roots myself (at least not that I’ve found yet!) but it still sounds interesting to me.
  • Hitler, Hindenberg, & Homeland over at Collecting dead relatives…and live cousins! was a great read.  I love old letters.
  • I also enjoyed the post Generational Length at Irish Genealogy.  It’s amazing how different lines can have such drastically different generational lengths, putting your various sets of great-great-greats at such different time periods.
  • Fi.fa. Fo Fum!  was a very helpful post over at The Legal Genealogist.  Legal mumbo-jumbo is hard enough to understand without abbreviations.:)
  • Happy Birthday to Marian and her twin over at the other Climbing My Family Tree.  I just love the picture of them in the pram.
  • Cherie, why didn’t I get invited over to partake in the Fastnachts?  They look delicious!!:)  Head over to Have You Seen My Roots?  to get the recipe.
  • Here are a couple of blogs I started following this week: Picking Up Breadcrumbs and Throwaway map.
  • I’ve put my Flip Pal Scanner to good use, but have yet to try stitching anything together yet.  Karen over at Genealogy Frame of Mind shows an example of a document she put together.  The results are great!

And some pictures to share:

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Marian - February 26, 2012 - 7:33 am

Jen, thanks so much for the shout-out and bday greetings! Glad to see you’ve taken some time off for winter fun. Very little winter here in southern New England these days–and that’s a good thing :) Stay well!

Judy G. Russell, CG - February 26, 2012 - 8:49 pm

Thanks for the mention — and oh BOY do I love those pictures of your kids. The last one in particular is wonderful.

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