Confederate Pension Application - Mary Ann Hurley

Confederate Pension Application

Mary Ann Hurley, widow of Calvin Hurley. 

Mary Jane applied for the pension on 11 July 1901, in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina. At the time of the pension application, Mary Jane was living with her widowed son-in-law Hancel Beaman, and six grandchildren. Her daughter Amy Ann, died in 1897. 

Calvin and Mary Jane were from Montgomery County, North Carolina. He died 6 September 1862, in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia.

Courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

North Carolina Digital Collection

1901 Confederate Pension Applications

http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/home/collections/1901-confederate-pension-applications

North Carolina Digital Collections-1901 Confederate Pension Applications

Mary Jane Beaman, widow of John A Beaman of Montgomery County, North Carolina.

Widow's Pension Application

Application date 29 May 1835

Married John A. Beaman August 1889

John died 27 September 1914

Courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
North Carolina Digital Collection
1901 Confederate Pension Applications
http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/home/collections/1901-confederate-pension-applications

An Accidental Genealogist

I didn’t set out to be a genealogist. I didn’t say, “I’m going to be a genealogist one day.” There was a day, however, when I said “I am a genealogist.” But it was a long and tortuous journey. My previous blog post about my uncle explains how that journey began. Because I didn’t set out to be a genealogist, I made many, many mistakes as I began my research. Most of those mistakes are discussed in a blog post by Roberta Estes at DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy entitled “Eleven Things I Would Do Differently.”

Although it has been a slow process I, too, have learned a few things.  I always loved the family stories I heard. When I was young my grandfather, Poppy, told me about his travels across the country before he married. I especially remember him talking about the Dalton gang and an Indian princess. Of course, I wish I had asked more questions.  I wish I remembered more, but I wasn’t more than five or six when he told me about them. But I’ve always wondered.  Now I try to record the stories I hear. I started by writing notes about them, but I can’t tell you how many little scraps of paper I have with notes and no identifying information. Yes, even napkins!

Eventually, I started carrying a spiral notebook with me whenever I am with my family or on a research trip. We spend a lot of time driving;   I tried a voice recorder, but it picked up too much road noise. Then I discovered that if I turned on my video camera it recorded the conversation quite nicely. I just set it on the seat or between the seats-I don’t point it at anyone. If I’m not driving I’m also jotting notes in the current spiral notebook. They’re all so used to me doing this now no one pays attention.

If you were to look at all the papers in my office, you can see the evolution of my genealogy research. From scraps of paper with no dates, napkins with scrawled notes, to notebooks and documents with proper citations and photos of documents including title pages and microfilm boxes. I have come a long way. I always travel with a notebook and a camera. If I can, I often make scans or copies too. (I always have a laptop, but I transfer the information to it later.) I have a great digital camera that allows me to take photos, even at 70 miles per hour. I take pictures of road signs and landmarks as we travel. It’s a photo diary, of sorts. I can look at a series of pictures and know when and where they were taken.  Over the years, I developed a system that works for me. Everyone has to find their own.

With all the classes, books, seminars, webinars, and online resources available to beginning genealogists they have the opportunity to do things the right way from the beginning. But, with the excitement of the chase, I imagine that they will make their share of the same mistakes.

I have lost four family members this past year. Never again can I ask “when did that happen,” or “who is in that picture.” I put off the DNA tests too long, and now it’s too late. So don’t wait to read “Eleven Things I Would Do Differently,” and put those steps into practice.  Don’t wait until you are rummaging in a box of papers and find an unidentified note on a napkin that you wrote years ago that will, once and for all, answer the question you didn’t know needed answering when you wrote the note on the napkin.

By the way, Poppy was in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, at the same time as Emmett Dalton, after he was released from prison. I haven’t found the Indian princess.

Harold Eastham, The Original Eastham Family Genealogist

Harold Ray Eastham

Last month we said goodbye to another family member, my uncle, Harold Ray Eastham.

Harold was the original genealogist for our family.  He had an abiding love of family and our heritage and he has passed it along. He was certainly a big influence in my life. If it weren’t for him I might not be a genealogist.

He carried a black briefcase with him, full of old family photographs and copies of documents he had gathered from family members, or potential family members, far and wide. He did genealogy his own way: looking in phone books,  knocking on doors, and calling everyone with the Eastham surname. He was often invited to speak at other reunions about the Eastham family. He couldn’t tell you about proper citations, or how to number your genealogy, but he knew all things Eastham. So much so that when a distant relative died, he was given the portrait of his great-grandparents, George Nathaniel Eastham and Susan Margaret Chadwick; because she knew he was the one who would cherish it.

I remember the first time he took me to two old family cemeteries in Boyd County, Kentucky after a family reunion. I hadn’t spent much time in Kentucky, and I had no idea where we were. I vaguely knew of some of the occupants in the first cemetery, but not the second. After visiting the cemeteries, we went to see the remains of an old family home and I was hooked. Now I spend part of every summer roaming the hills looking for old cemeteries.

Writers' Blog Tour

I was delighted to be invited to participate in a Writers' Blog Tour by fellow blogger and ProGen friend, Liz Loveland. The purpose of the tour is to highlight writers and bring attention to their blogs. Each participant is to answer the following four questions and introduce two new writers. My post has taken some additional time to post; soon after Liz asked me to participate I had to load a moving truck and drive across the country from West Virginia to my home in Oregon. Two days later I was scheduled to speak at the Genealogical Council of Oregon Genealogy Fest in Eugene.

A Truck Full of Memories

An old plow in pieces.

A box of rocks.

Miscellaneous boards.

My son Jamie and his girlfriend Tammy didn't bat an eye at the curious assortment of items crammed into the rental truck I drove across the country recently. The only remarks were from Tammy, who was counting chairs as she discovered them in the truck. Nine, nine chairs, including my Grandmother’s dining room chairs. The truck was loaded with things from my Mother’s house. I would have driven a bigger one but I was worried about driving a wider, longer truck across the country by myself. There was a reason for every item in that truck, even the big box of rocks. From the family that shipped, or carried, an antique cast iron (heavy) rabbit across the country three times, a box of rocks in a truck is nothing. As a matter of fact, several of those rocks traveled to West Virginia from North Carolina first.

Also in the truck: starts from garden plants, most I had sent her; more than 40 packing boxes and about 20 large plastic bins; tubs of photos, of course; a collection of old strainers and colanders; coal miner’s lamps; and a lifetime of memories.

My Grandparents: Oscar Wakefield and Sallie Maud (Minton) Beaman

For a little girl full of energy, with two younger siblings, Mom and Pop's house was my haven. I could, and did, run clothes through the wringer washer, take blankets and sheets outside and make huge "Arabian" tents over the clotheslines, frequently cause volcanoes to erupt in the kitchen, and play with snakes in the yard. They put up with it all, with kindness and patience.

Their house had a wrap-around porch lined with pots of flowers and a swing. I liked nothing better than to set on the swing in the midst of a thunderstorm. Mom would be calling out the window, "Judi Ann, get in this house before you get struck by lightening," or some such. I still love thunderstorms.

A true "Labor Day"

You can visit just about any long-operating city in this country and find a local monument to the rich capitalist who built the mansion during year whatever. But you have to look far and wide to find memorials to the people whose labor created those riches, to those who died in the battles for such modern-day givens as the eight-hour work day and weekends off, and to the organizers who brought the workers together into the unions that helped create the nation’s now-disappearing middle class.

Scott Martelle

Los Angeles Times

“Opinion: The new battle over Blair Mountain -- with lawyers instead of guns.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-labor-day-sierra-club-blair-mountain-20140828-story.html

Clyde Eastham
The crutches are due to a mine injury.

"On a hot summer day in 1921 Clyde Herbert Eastham slung his shotgun over his shoulder, kissed his young wife and babies goodbye, and marched out the door of his cramped coal camp cabin to join thousands of other West Virginia miners in a strike that had the attention of the entire country."

That is the beginning of a story I wrote about my grandfather, Clyde Herbert Eastham, and his participation in the struggle to unionize the coal mines of West Virginia. This particular attempt culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain and ended in defeat. Thousands of miners marched in West Virginia tired of their working conditions, including the murder of many who tried to change the system.  They made a stand on Blair Mountain, against an army of “special deputies”, Baldwin-Felts thugs, state police, and eventually federal troops, accompanied by 14 armed bombers. My grandfather was blacklisted from the mines for years, but he continued the effort, even holding secret meetings at his home.

Road Trips

On the road again

Every year, sometime after our Eastham family reunion on the second Saturday in June, it has been our practice to take a road trip: my mother, my sister, and me.  Several of our trips covered bits of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We even stopped by Dollywood one summer and liked it way more than we expected. 

Always, as soon as we were on the highway, Mom would sing "On the road again . . ." She was always excited to take a trip. My sister says if you called and ask her to take a trip she would be standing at the curb with her bag packed before you hung up.

Mom was game for anything. Several years ago she rode the highest roller coaster in the world (at that time) at Cedar Point with my son Jamie and me. Recently Lynn and I took  her up Grandfather Mountain to stand on a metal bridge in a storm, just because we always wanted to do it, and this was our chance.

Mom, Lynn, Judi:  Mile high swinging bridge, Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina.

Summer Genealogy Fest with Tom Jones

Additional Classes Available:

 Naturalizations: All The Papers in Packet, by Jewell Dunn
 Cutting Through the Confusion: Research in Upstate New York, by Karen Mauer Green, CG, FGBS
 Fabulous and Free FamilySearch.org, by JoAnne Haugen, AG®
 Using the Flip-Pal Scanner with Photoshop Elements, by Jim Johnson
 Getting From Then To Now Locating People In The Last Century, by Leslie Lawson
 Ancestry.com—Tips and Tricks, by Susan LeBlanc, AG®
 Artifacts and Our Ancestor’s Lives, by Connie Lenzen, CG
 What’s A Deed?, by Kevin Mittge
 Start Writing—Your ancestor’s legacy depends upon it!, by Steven W. Morrison
 Placing Out: The Story of America’s Orphan Train Children, by Judith Beaman Scott
 Dating and Identifying Your Family Photographs, by Karen Wallace Steely
 Correlation for Beginners: How to use simple tables to see your evidence differently., by Eric Stroschein

John Chadwick: Revolutionary War Soldier

John Chadwick was born some time around 1760. He was living in North Carolina when the Revolutionary War broke out around him. His father's house was burned, and John joined the army.

5 September 1836. Declaration of John Chadwick, County Court, Greenup, Kentucky.

John Chadwick took part in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1871 a crucial battle of the Southern Campaign.[1]  Although Major General Nathaniel Green and his 4,500 militia and Continental troops were forced to withdraw by a smaller army led by Lord Cornwallis, it was at a huge cost to the English army. The battle broke the tide of the British in the Carolinas; Cornwallis withdrew to Virginia, where he surrendered at Yorktown that October.[2]

After the war John moved to Kentucky.  On 12 March 1796, in Paris, Bourbon County, he married Kerenhappuch Shortridge, the daughter of George Shortridge and Margaret Muir.[3] The couple raised a family of twelve children in Greenup County, Kentucky.[4]

After Kerenhappuch's death on 17 May 1840, John married the widow Lucinda Bartrum.[5] Both John and his widow Lucinda received a pension based on his service in the Revolutionary War. John died on 4 April 1850.[6] John was buried in a family cemetery on land along the Big Sandy River in Greenup County. The Ashland Oil Company purchased the land and numerous graves were moved from the original cemetery. The original tombstones were removed, but were not placed in the new location.

1. John Chadwick pension file; digital image, Fold3.com (www.fold3.com : downloaded 2 July 2014) 
images from Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, no roll number given.
2."Battle of Guilford Courthouse" http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/32guilford/32guilford.htm
3. Bourbon County Marriage Register, County Clerk, Paris.
4. "John Chadwick Family Bible 1797-1821, "Tree Shaker, Vol 3, # 1, winter 1979; transcription John Chadwick Family Bible by Doris C Miller.
5. John Chadwick pension file.
6. John Chadwick pension file.

Thelma Edith (Eastham) Corley, My Mother

Thelma Edith (Eastham) Corley, of Huntington, quietly passed away on Wednesday, January 29, 2014. Known since childhood as “Tinker”, she was a loving mother, grandmother, sister, and friend, and will be greatly missed. She was born February 3, 1928 in Logan County, West Virginia, to Clyde Herbert Eastham and Mary Dorcas Forbes, the fifth child in the family. Thelma was preceded in death by sisters Olive Garrett and Lucille Barker, and brothers Edward, Okey, and infant Carlton Eastham. She is survived by sisters Velma (William) McClung and Mildred (Pete) Trippett, and brothers Malcolm (Debbie), Clyde Robert, Harold (Paula), and Jerry Eastham.

Thelma lived for many years in southern California where she raised her family; they moved to Hood River, Oregon, when her husband, the late Egbert “Ted” Corley, retired.  She was a long time member and employee of the Hood River Assembly of God Church. Gardening was a favored activity and she enjoyed many summer afternoons sitting in her garden among her beautiful flowers. She loved her numerous “Road Trips” throughout her life with her family and friends, and always began every trip with prayer and a verse from On the Road Again.



"Tinker" on the right with baby brother Carlton.



Her three children with husband Gordon Wakefield Beaman (deceased) are: Judith Scott of Portland, Oregon; Lynn Walker (Bill) of Huntington, West Virginia; and Marc Beaman (Janet) of Hilton Head, South Carolina. She is a loving and proud “Gram” to her five grandchildren, Kim and Rick Searcy, Jamaal Scott, Lisa Muto (Marc), and Marcus Beaman (Holly) and four step-grandchildren, Joshu Becken, Michael (Jodi) and Mac (Rachel) Walker, and Sara (Odo) vonWulffen.

Her fourteen great-grandchildren, to whom she is “Gram” or “Great”, are:  Brynn and Ian Searcy; Lindsay, Wyatt, Charlie, and Ella Beaman; Riley and Ryan Muto; Kolbey and Jamison Walker; Kylie Seaton; and Max, Nikolaus and Juliana vonWulffen.

  A Memorial Service was held on Sunday, February 2, at  Beard Mortuary with her cousin Ronald Eastham officiating.  

NGS Announces Live Streaming of the 2014 Family History Conference

National Genealogical Society Announces Live Streaming Broadcast 2014 Family History Conference Richmond, Virginia 7–10 May 2014

Track One: Records and Research Techniques
Track Two:  Virginia Resources and Migration Patterns
http://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/attend/live-streaming-at-ngs2014gen/

Looking for Orphan Trains at the Cincinnati History Library & Archives



Cincinatti Union Station

CityImages: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/cincinnati/tags/sigma1020mm/

I managed to find a few hours to research at the Cincinnati History Library and Archives, located in the beautiful Union Station. What an amazing building, and so appropriate for museums and archives. The staff at the archives was delightful. I’m sorry I did not get the name of the person who helped me so much. Once she found out what I was researching she went out of her way to think of sources that might be helpful.

While I did not locate the exact “orphan train” I was looking for, I did find lots of useful information about orphanages in the area. Many of the staff did not realize that there were orphan trains from Ohio, believing  as many people do,  that they all originated in New York. I showed them some information that children were indeed sent out from Ohio orphanages. In a nine year period one of the “visitors” from one orphanage logged nearly 180,000 railroad miles placing and visiting children, according to an annual statistical report by the Cincinnati Children’s Home.

My interest in orphan train children began with one line in a family history of a family I was researching. It has become a major interest of mine, in part because it involves a huge number of children, and partly because I used to do social work with abused children and their families. Every time I do a presentation about orphan trains, I have people in the audience with orphan train children in their family who are looking for answers about their heritage.

I hope to follow up at the public library in Cincinnati, starting with local newspapers to find information about the particular trip I'm looking for in 1892.



Oregon Summer Genealogy Fest

                                           Summer Genealogy Fest

Pack your genealogy passport and plan to repack your genealogical toolbox!

2 August 2014

Lane Community College, Center for Meeting and Learning, 4000 East 30th Avenue, Eugene, Oregon 97405

Watch for the “Ask an Expert” session sign-ups at check-in!

“Treasure” Tables, Vendor tables and Book Vendor on-site!

If your society, group or genealogy minded business would like to reserve a table, please contact us at: dcarlile8@comcast.net

Co-Hosts: Genealogical Council of Oregon (GCO) & Oregon Association of Professional Genealogists (OR APG)

Watch for updates and follow us on:

http://www.facebook.com/orgco http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~orgco2/

    Thomas W. Jones

     Planning “Reasonably Exhaustive” Research

     Can a Complex Research Problem be Solved Solely Online?

     Debunking Misleading Records

     Will Your Family History Have Lasting Value?

 Additional Classes Available: 

 Naturalizations: All The Papers in Packet, by Jewell Dunn 

 Cutting Through the Confusion: Research in Upstate New York, by Karen Mauer Green, CG, FGBS

Fabulous and Free FamilySearch.org, by JoAnne Haugen, AG®

Using the Flip-Pal Scanner with Photoshop Elements, by Jim Johnson

Getting From Then To Now Locating People In The Last Century, by Leslie Lawson

Ancestry.com—Tips and Tricks, by Susan LeBlanc, AG®

Artifacts and Our Ancestor’s Lives, by Connie Lenzen, CG

What’s A Deed?, by Kevin Mittge

Start Writing—Your ancestor’s legacy depends upon it!, by Steven W. Morrison

Placing Out: The Story of America’s Orphan Train Children, by Judith Beaman Scott

Dating and Identifying Your Family Photographs, by Karen Wallace Steely

Correlation for Beginners: How to use simple tables to see your evidence differently., by Eric Stroschein

Family History Conference, Milwaukie, Oregon

To Register

Clark County Genealogical Society Fall Seminar

http://www.blm.gov/or/oregontrail/files/OregonTrailMap5a.pdf

Fall Seminar

Clark County Genealogical Society

http://www.ccgs-wa.org/fall_sem.html

Saturday, Nov. 23

The theme is Westward Migration and will feature three speakers.

•Judith Beaman Scott will start the day with a session on Colonial Migration Routes, Where When and Why. Knowing migration routes and some of the reasons they were traveled may help fill gaps in your ancestor’s story. This session will be of particular interest to those with ancestors in Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Judith is one of the editors of the Genealogical Forum of Oregon Quarterly Bulletin and is the co-leader of the Virginia Interest Group.

A Kentucky Cemetery Walk

On Friday I spent the afternoon with an uncle walking a cemetery in Boyd County, Kentucky. We walked about 85 % of a large cemetery before finally finding the group of graves we were looking for. It was well worth the trek, although I advise not to wear sandals when walking through unmowed grass on the hills of Kentucky. (I know of two people bitten by copperheads recently.) But the trip to the cemetery was an impromptu one, and sandals were what I was wearing. Fortunately the weather was 25° cooler than the 105° temperature the last cemetery walk I took.

Be Careful What You Ask For?

Tuesday night’s Who Do You Think You Are? with Christina Applegate was surely one of the saddest episodes I’ve seen. Her father had scant memories about his mother, and the ones he shared on the program were not happy ones. Now that he has some facts concerning his childhood perhaps he’ll remember more. We won’t know how the information he received and any resultant memories will affect him, but I think we, as genealogists and “history detectives”, should be aware of the results our actions may cause.

Of course there are always those people who don’t want to hear that one of their ancestors was imprisoned or spent time in a mental hospital.  Sometimes, however, our probing can trigger other, more troublesome, memories. There are times the questioning should stop; so the information can be digested, or perhaps halted altogether. Sometimes people need to deal with the memories before they can go on. We need to recognize this situation and respect those boundaries.

Mastering Genealogical Proof - Chapter II