Hunting History - Finding Family

Holy wow, today's blog is super interesting!  The blog prompt is "At the Library" and this ancestor is perfect  for that.  You could go to any Library and search the Virginia Company, Jamestown, or the First American Colonies and I'd be willing to bet Cicely Jordan's name pops up somewhere.  Between being one of the first off the ships to her legal misadventures to her status usually only awarded to men, Cicely Jordan is famous in her own right. TECHNICALLY I'm not a direct ancestor, Cecily is the second wife of my 13th great grandfather, Captain Samuel Silas Jordan, of who I'm descended from his first wife Frances Anne Baker, who died in or shortly after childbirth in London in 1608.  I would have blogged on Captain Samuel, but there are SO MANY conflicting accounts and so few actual records I refuse to propagate misinformation.  Rather than spread rumor, I'll choose instead his much better known second wife Cecily, who was so interesting I just cou...

I chose William Henry Etter as this week's 52 in 52 challenge, "Unusual Name."  While I have much more unusual names in my tree (Docia Ann White, Margarete Gertraudt Althaus, Leonardas Barker...the list goes on) I ended up choosing William because Etter to me is an unusual last name, and has several meanings; the South German/Swiss is a topographical name, meaning someone who lived near the boundary fence of a village, from the German word "eter" meaning a 'woven boundary fence.'   In High German and Dutch speaking countries "eter" means 'cousin' or 'uncle.'  In 1724, Johannes Hans Etter and wife Anna Marie Siegrist emigrated from Bern, Switzerland to Lancaster county, Virginia, what was then Colonial America.  Three generations later his great grandson, and my 5th great grandfather, William Henry Etter, was born May 6th, 1800, the son of Daniel Etter and Mary Magdalena Reihm, in Evansham, Wythe, Virginia. William Henry was ...

For my third installment of 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks, we're looking at my second great grandmother, Christine Wilhelmine Aschebrok.  This week's prompt is "I'd like to meet."  I maybe should have saved Angela Nardin for this one, even without knowing the prompts ahead of time I knew eventually it would be coming, but I am almost equally enchanted with my Heigert/Brockman side, in fact I'm super proud of my German heritage.  Christine went through a lot (as you'll read) and I bet she was an amazing woman.  It takes a lot of strength to handle what she did in her lifetime and not be hardened by it.  Christine was born to Johann Heinrich Gerhard Aschebrok and Anna Christine Elizabeth Steingeweg Oct 12th, 1849 in Holne, Lengerich, Steinfurt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, just over 100 miles from Hanover.  She was Christened in the Evangelical Church Oct 26th, 1849. At 22 Christine had a son, Ernst Gerhard Bernhard Aschebrok with an unknown father.  ...

I knew this ancestor spotlight would come sooner rather than later, and I didn't have to think real hard for this weeks 52 in 52 submission, which the prompt is "Challenge."  Eventually, I will probably compile all my facts and write a book about great grandma Angela (Which will be a challenge in and of itself, I'm just a hobby novelist) but for now a spotlight blog will do.  Angela is perfect for the "Challenge" prompt, as you'll see when you read about her life, she was faced with one challenge after another, but she always rose above.  I can only image the strength this woman had. I never got to meet her, but I bet I would have loved her.  As the mother of one of my favorite people in the world (my Nona Mary) I expect them to be very much alike.  Nona always said she spoke "very broken English," as of course Italian would have been her first language.  Nona never said she herself  knew Italian, she certainly never spoke it and had no accen...

It's been a while! I know I don't post often enough, I certainly haven;t been researching enough!  To help remedy both of those things, I've joined an online challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  So, the goal is to highlight one ancestor per week until the end of the year (I have enough in my tree I could go for several years, ha!) My original Idea was to choose each week's ancestor at random, so my process was this: Go to my ancestry list of people. Choose a random letter (L) Choose a random page (3) But then I looked.  And in looking, I chose.  But not randomly. Joseph Ferreira Lomelino is my first week's ancestor, although at last for me the term ancestor isn't just loose, it's incorrect.  I not only plot my own family, but also my husbands within my own tree.  This is done for our children, so they can see the entire family as one.  In doing so, I have also researched his first wife's family, as she is not only my friend, but my stepchildr...