Wordless Wednesday: Documentation 2

Last week's picture documented the death of Porter Tirrill Dickie.
A death certificate is the document we most often discover first, say from a parent or grandparent.
Please note any differences of reported fact between death certificate and birth certificate. They can tell you a lot about the family.
The next generation normally fill out death certificates and frequently don't know necessary details about the decedent. In this case information was given by the subject's surviving son. But the birth certificate information was given by the father.
Note a small difference in the mother's name: Isabel/Isabella. Many women of this generation changed their given name later in life due to changes in American culture over those years. Isabella, born in the 1880s to parents born in the 1840s, decided she preferred Isabel when styles changed during the 1920s.

Wordless Wednesday: Documentation 1

Wordless Wednesday: Ancester Bling?

ca 1860 Elizabeth (?) Smyth

1908 Sarah (Smyth) McCully

1910 Isabella (McCully) Dickie

Nowhere Close To Wordless Wednesday

Newspaper Clipping, No Title
Lodge Members?



Frequently one finds a photograph from the past that, in its original context, made perfect sense. But looking at it several generations later, we have questions.

Obviously this group of gentlemen had something in common as witnessed by their badges. Without a title from the original newspaper, how are we to know?

This photo was generously sent to me by a local historical society member. She found it in The Bunker Hill, Illinois, Gazette, March 1948. It is identified there as "possibly the Woodsmen" and had been taken "70-75 years earlier" and "The picture is the property of Miss Viola McPherson of Gillespie..." I will have to go back to the original newspaper record to find the page, if that is possible. Until then, I include the entire 1948 identification and source.

Gentleman #3 top left, is identified as William Patrick Dickie, postmaster, my father's grandfather.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

From Alice and Elizabeth
To Alice Elizabeth

John McCully m Alice Stuart abt 1835

James Smyth m Elizabeth ?

Sarah Smyth m William McCully 1867

Isabella McCully m John Tirrill Dickie 1910

Alice Elizabeth Dickie
1918-1994

SoCal Genealogical Society Jamboree 2009

So who WASN'T there? Every blog I check regularly has something up about the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree held this weekend in Burbank at the Marriott Convention Center.

I think Gini at Ginisology put my feelings most accurately. (Actually, I'm tempted to say that she stole my words, but since I hadn't thought of them yet, she's definitely the one to see about what I think.)

Anyhoo, I'll say ditto to Gini's great blog and add that she and I were in the same meetings and the same get-togethers and the same dinner at the same time and we didn't recognize each other. Horrors! Of course, I don't know what she looks like and my pic here doesn't do justice to my overwhelming beauty.*

Did I mention that Gini was the very first person to leave a comment on my very first blog? I'm indebted to this lady, big time. And I didn't recognize her!

So who did I meet?

Well, Thomas MacEntee, the Pearl Mesta of the genea-blogging world, who got me into this fine mess through our friendship on facebook. Pat Richley (AKA DearMyrtle), someone I seek to emulate when I grow up. Schelly Talalay Dardashti, the maven of mavens in the Jewish genealogical world. Randy Seaver whose postings educate me in the genea-blogging world.
And I'll never forget Kiril Kundurazieff, The Mad Macedonian, who has focused firmly on that brick wall in Macedonia ever since it was part of Yugoslavia.

So did I do everything right at the Jamboree? Not a bit! I didn't sign up soon enough to get my name badge printed up with the special "FIRST JAMBOREE" tag. I left my camera home for two of the three days. I lost both of my two pens on the last day and had to, um, "borrow" one from the Society (and forgot to return it).

I had great conversations with lots of nice folk and yet didn't meet Gini. Grrr!!!

So, enough kvetching. Let's kvell a bit:

Thomas MacEntee and Denise (The Family Curator) created lovely survival bags that kept me alive on Saturday with a bottle of water, two yummy muffins and fruit galore! Thomas provided great neckwear to identify bloggers and organized a dinner on Saturday evening where bloggers could get together and get to know the faces behind the posts. I even sat next to DearMyrtle's affianced - yup, there's amour in genea-blogger-land!

After running back and forth and listening and taking notes and collecting neat stuff for three days, the last-but-not-least of the whole adventure was a session with Suzanne Russo Adams, AG who opened the door for me to study my husband's Russo line. To me, that made my weekend. Thanks, Suzanne.

Now if I can only find Gini :)

*Well, actually, thanks to Randy Seaver, I now have pics of all! Take a look on his blog Genea-Musings: Geneabloggers Dinner Photos - Post 1.

Group Photos: Wedding Belles

There's nothing more exciting/confusing than a group photo from another generation!

For example: I have a wedding photo of my paternal grandmother's first cousin. It's easy to figure out who the bride is. With a little thinking one can sort out the groom. Okay, so what about all those other folks?


McCully-Geist Wedding
St. Louis, MO
1911

Uncle Bill during his first year, up front. The happy couple second row right. My grandparents, parents of Uncle Bill, third row from left #5 and #6. My grandfather has his eyes closed.

Fortunately for me, I recognized my very young grandmother and grandfather. I later learned that the baby in front was their new first baby, my Uncle Bill.

Assuming that most of the others had the last name McCully, I rooted around in materials left to me by Uncle Bill's little sister. Praise folks who worked in offices! She not only had a list of attendees but of where in the picture these folks appear. Typed.

Typed information is a gift from heaven. My mother left me a nice album of tintypes with hand-written names. Now was that Foust or Forest?

Sometimes you find a group picture where you know who is there but not who is who. For example, I have a photo of two of that grandfather's maternal uncles standing in front of a pillar in Paris, but I don't know which is who!

The worst is having no idea who that person is in that perfect picture. One can only assume, and therein lies great goof-up potential. And then there's the mystery pic with no connection to anyone you know about. I have one of those, found stuck behind a picture of my father's paternal grandmother. Nobody else in that line knows who the guy is, either.