Invite to Dinner: Questions For My Grandmother ~ 52 Ancestors #4

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is Invite to Dinner.

Although inviting a long-ago ancestor to dinner to ask probing questions is always a wish of genealogists (who were your parents, Susan Rood Chapin?), thinking of questions that we want to ask of a grandparent who died almost 30 years ago happens all the time.

I am going through a stack of old negatives of different sizes from the 1910s through the 1950s (maybe 500 of them?) in order to determine which ones I will pay a local company to scan for me. Due to the large size of many of them (3.5" x 5"), as well as the curling that happens with these older negatives, it could be extremely expensive for me to have them all scanned. Hence, I am trying to narrow down what I truly want scanned.

However, I just figured out what setting needed to be adjusted in order for my flatbed scanner to scan many of them (as long as one side is shorter than 2.5") so I only have to pay for the larger ones to be professionally scanned.

I inherited these from my mother and her sister. Their mother was Helen Lysle Hunter (1907-1990), and although she was not a genealogist, she was a collector of family memorabilia and much of it has come to me as the family historian, including all these negatives, almost all of which are from her family, both as a girl and young woman, and of her daughters.

While going through these, I am thinking about the questions I would love to ask my grandmother over a long, leisurely dinner:

I recognize you in this photo (at right) and your sister Caroline in a few other photos, but who are all those people you are on the beach with? How old were you in this photo? is this in the mid-1920s? Tell me your stories about vacationing in North East, Pennsylvania. (I know that the Hunter family of Pittsburgh spent their vacations in North East, and I have photos of my mother and her sisters there in the late 1930s. That is Lake Erie in the background.)

How did you end up with the stack of negatives from Goldfield, Nevada? Did you get most of Uncle Jack's negatives at his death in 1984? (See 52Ancestors #3 about Uncle Jack.) Did he share more stories about his time in Goldfield?

Did your father, Percy, travel to Goldfield too? It appears that there are some additional, different-sized negatives of buildings in that town.

Is that Uncle Jack in the apron preparing dinner? And who are the women in the blurry photos? Is it true that he placed a $100 bill under everyone's plate at his 100th birthday party?

What can you tell me about your family's short time living in California in 1912? It appears that I have a few negatives from that period of time.

These are among the many, many questions I would love to ask my grandmother if I could invite her to dinner. Looking at photographs is a great way to trigger memories and get people to tell stories about those memories.

Great Uncle Jack Lived to 102 ~ 52 Ancestors #3

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is Longevity.

In the early 1990s, when I was just starting out in researching my family history, I learned that my mother's great uncle Jack Hunter died in 1984 at 102 years old. He was the sixth of ten children of James Hunter and Mary Freeland Hunter, both of whom died in 1902.

He was written up in the Pittsburgh Press for his 100th birthday.

Surname Saturday ~ Tuttle of England, Ipswich and New Haven Colony

Northamptonshire (in red);
image courtesy Wikipedia

Early Tuttles (also spelled Totehyll and Tootill) are found in Northamptonshire, England. Simon Tuttle (born about 1560 and buried 15 June 1630 in Ringstead, Northamptonshire, England) was the father of three Great Migration immigrants: Richard, William, and John. I descend from William and John. In fact, these lines show that my paternal grandparents were 8th cousins and both of them were 9th cousins to my maternal grandfather making my parents 10th cousins, as descended from Simon Tuttle (abt. 1560-1630).

I descend four ways from Simon Tuttle (which I only recently discovered). I consider both John and William as immigrant ancestors and therefore label them both as Generation 1.

Generation 1: John Tuttle (1596-1656) married Joan Antrobus (1592-after 1660) in about 1627 and had five known children. John and his family arrived in Boston on the Planter in 1635 and settled in Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts, where many of their descendants are found.

As a Great Migration immigrant, John Tuttle has an extensive entry in Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635 by Robert Charles Anderson, where it is noted that in February 1649/50, he entered into an unwise business deal which led to legal problems which seems to be why he moved to Carrickfergus, Ireland, in 1651, about five years before his death there on 30 December 1656.

I descend from their son Simon.

Ipswich within Essex County, Massachusetts;
image courtesy Wikipedia

Generation 2: Simon Tuttle (about 1630-1691/92) married Sarah Cogswell (about 1645-1731/32) in about 1663 and had twelve children. They lived in Ipswich. I descend from their sixth child (and fourth daughter) Abigail.

Generation 3: Abigail Tuttle (1673-1756) married Philemon Warner (1675-1741). They had nine children. I descend from their third youngest child, Nathaniel.

Generation 4: Nathaniel Warner (1707-1746) married Hannah Mountfort (1710-????) in Boston in 1732 (see below for her line). They had four children and I descend from their third child, Abigail.

Generation 5: Abigail Warner (1737-1821), who was a longtime brick wall for me, married Benjamin Page (1730-1812) in Boston in 1757. They had nine children and I descend from their middle child, Mary.

Generation 6: Mary Page (1771-1847) married Nathaniel Copeland (1765-1803)
Generation 7: Thomas Jefferson Copeland (1801-1877) married Julia Elvira Townsend
Generation 8: Henry Clay Copeland (1832-1912) married Sarah Lowell
Generation 9: Lowell Copeland (1862-1935) married Ethel May Greeley
Generation 10: Lowell Townsend Copeland (1900-1974) married Helen Lysle Hunter
Generation 11: My mother
Generation 12: Me

Favorite Photo of Percy and Marguerite ~ 52 Ancestors #2

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is Favorite Photo.

I have shared many favorite photos on this blog (the tag Wordless Wednesday brings up those posts). Today's photo is of my great-grandparents, Percy Earle Hunter and his wife Marguerite Lysle.

Ya gotta love that hat! I wonder how heavy it was.

This was taken while they were vacationing in Atlantic City. (They lived in Pittsburgh with five daughters who were born between 1899 and 1907.)

The photographer was Myers-Cope Co., 1635 & 1521 Boardwalk, Atlantic City. By exploring the Atlantic City directories at Ancestry.com, I can narrow down the dates that this photograph was taken to between 1909 and 1913. (In 1908 and in 1914, Myers-Cope Co. was at only 1635 Boardwalk.)

However, since I know that they were in California in 1912, when they were listed in the California Voter Registrations for that year, why they were in California, and also that they were back in Pittsburgh by the fall of 1913, I believe this photo was taken between 1909 and 1911.

Tuesday's Tip ~ Family Tree Maker Color-Coding

I'm late to the game in blogging about this feature of the new Family Tree Maker (which came out in the early summer for the Mac). I've been meaning to share the following find for several months.

As soon as I got my file opened in the new version of Family Tree Maker, I wanted to try out the new color coding feature, which I had read about from other bloggers.

At the Tree tab on the People workspace, select the person whose ancestors you want to highlight.

Click the color coding button above the editing panel. Click a single color (or a color group) for the type of individuals you want to apply color coding.

I selected each of my grandparents in order, and selected All Ancestors (1 color) and applied the one color that I have used for years for each of my grandparents' lines:
Pyle - blue
Adsit - pink
Copeland - green
Hunter - orange

When I scrolled through my index of names and got to the Tuttle surname, I was surprised to find the colors for three of my four grandparents appear. I already knew that my paternal grandparents, Charles Pyle and Elizabeth Adsit were related in several ways, including through the Tuttle surname. However, Abigail Tuttle, whose parents I hadn't found yet, had a green circle, indicating that she was an ancestor of my maternal grandfather. This 7th great-grandmother of mine was married to Philemon Warner, and I had only recently found her while researching the Warner line.

Following shows my direct-line Tuttle ancestors. (If I hadn't used the Filter feature to narrow down the indexed names to my direct ancestors, there would have been too many to capture in a screenshot.) I have since determined Abigail's parents and how she is related to the immigrant Tuttle ancestor.

Thomas Tuttle of Woodford, Northamptonshire, England, was the father of Richard Tuttle, who died in 1589. Richard was father of Simon Tuttle (1560-1630), ancestor to three of my grandparents, and whose sons, John (1596-1656) and William (1607-1673) emigrated to the colonies. They are both my 9th great-grandfathers. See the Surname Saturday post for the details of my ancestral lines.

How My Interest in Genealogy Got Started ~ 52 Ancestors #1

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. (I also participated in 2015.) Each week has an optional writing prompt and I may not necessarily write about a direct ancestor, as there are so many interesting people in my extended family tree!

This week's writing prompt is "Start," and as some readers may know, my interest in genealogy started with finding the copy of Orange Chapin's The Chapin Genealogy: Containing a Very Large Proportion of the Descendants of Dea. Samuel Chapin (Northampton, Massachusetts: Metcalf & Company, 1862) in my parents' library. My father was an only child and inherited lots of great family history material from his mother.

Now this is an 1862 genealogy - a secondary source (with many errors). However, there are several "Family Record" pages at the end and they include birth, marriage, and death dates for my grandmother's family.

This is one of those end pages:

The left-hand page includes births for the following:
James M. Adsit
Spencertown, Columbia Co.
New York, Feb. 5, 1809
  [my second great-grandfather]

Arville S. Chapin
Ludlow, Massachusetts,
June 9, 1820
  [my second great-grandmother]

Florence Wheeler 1878-1883
  [my grandmother's cousin]

Charles Chapin Adsit Jr.
Chicago July 3rd, 1892
  [my great-uncle]

Elizabeth Adsit
Chicago, June 18th, 1897
  [my grandmother]

Charles McAlpin Pyle Jr.
New York, June 16, 1924
  [my father in my grandmother's handwriting]

The right-hand page includes marriages for the following:
James M. Adsit
Arville S. Chapin
Chicago, Ill. Jan 21,
1841
  [my second great-grandparents]

Ezra I. Wheeler
Belle F. Adsit
Chicago Jan 7, 1868
  [she is a second great-aunt of mine]

Charles C. Adsit
Mary B. Ashby
Louisville. Married Oct 30, 1890
  [my great-grandparents]

Charles McAlpin Pyle
Elizabeth Adsit
Chicago, March 1, 1919
  [my paternal grandparents in my grandmother's handwriting]

I have written a Surname Saturday post showing my four lines of descent from Deacon Samuel Chapin.