Friday, August 27, 2010

Genealogy Day

Well, it has been an interesting week, and an eventful day for me.

Started today by posting about an ancestor I knew little about, Gabriel Howells, over at Oh, Spusch. This is my mother's mother's mother's father, and all of the Welsh side is still more untidy than not. I've learned a few things in typing it up--mostly that it is very hard to resist the impulse to correct bad or boring writing. most of the paragraphs are two or three times longer than I would have otherwise done myself without major reason.

This part of the tree is all from Northern Wales, as far as I am aware. And the other two major things I learned about this branch are that apparently one of my Ancestors (Lewis or Lewys Edwart) was a Quaker, which I had not heard before, and that there are no women recorded in this family line before my great-great-great grandmother, Catherine Jones, Gabriel's mother.

So I set out today to try to remedy this in some way. And I may have succeeded. In looking for more information on Gabriel, I found information on his grandfather, Gabriel Hywel, and two possible children and a wife. The Family Search.org Beta site pulled up two separate records for two births to a Gabriel Howell and his wife Gwen, alternately Gwen, Gwen Howell, and Gwen Evan. All likely to be the same woman, and just variations of her name, as I have seen the same variation in things I have been sure of. The first was to an Evan Howel, and the second to a Howel Howel, who must be my g-g-g-g grandfather, because the date and location matches too well for it not to be. I need to look into it further, but I have no reason to believe the record wrong, given the date and location.

The other discovery this week is that I did more research on the paperwork I got from my dad's sister about their grandparents on their dad's side. This has always been the shortest part of my family tree because of the difficulty my grandfather had talking about his past, and the fact that none of the fathers in that line were particularly talkative about their pasts.

The paperwork is all in German (aside from the letters my grandfather wrote to get them), but they do include not only his own birth record, but also that of all his siblings, and their parents' marriage record, their birth dates and locations (I'm fairly certain of this now), and their parents (or at least three of them) names.

However, each time I glance through the papers, I can't resist, so when my friend was down on Wednesday, we decided to guess at what the name of the location was under my great-grandparents. We guessed at Galizien, which led me to this site about Galicia, an old Prussian state that covered some of the area to the East of Germany, south of Poland, and north of Austria. As I had heard through family lore that they were born in Prussia near or around where Poland is now, I'm pretty sure this is it. I'm still trying to figure out the names of the towns, though.
From what I can read on the sheets, the names look like Szdziszow or Rzdziszow; though the first letter doesn't look like the other capital Rs in the hand-written parts of the document; and Czuder or Czudei or something like that. I'm not sure that that one is a C, either, but It doesn't look like the G below it in Galizien.
So I'm one and a half steps closer to where they were born, at least. It's a big deal. Because it means I can actually possibly find them at JewishGen, because you have to have locations to look there.

No new follows for the day, but a few interesting links:
* An article on Surnames, focusing specifically on the development of English Surnames.
* Family Search.org has a site with area-specific genealogies in them called Community Trees, if you're focused on a specific area of research.
* And Genealogy's Star wrote a two part article on how proof gets incorporated into family trees which is a fascinating read, especially to someone who's trying to be more conscientious about those things these days. Part One - Part Two

And in my family tree this week:
8/23/1796 - Hans Heinrich Bordvick and Anna Magdallena Tiller were married in Norway
8/23/1919 - Margaret Hansen was born in Cleveland, Illinois
8/26/1818 - Christine Jensdatter died in Vejle, Denmark
8/27/1849 - Gabriel Howells was born in Towyn, Monmothshire, Wales (and I didn't even realize that when I typed it up, despite typing it up only yesterday, when the date should have meant something. ETA: Ah, apparently the manuscript had the wrong birth date on it, as the record I have from his death states his birth as 8/27, while the manuscript says 8/1.)

And I think I've rambled on enough, so I'll leave my recipe plans for another post.

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