I have a new calling

As of yesterday, I'm no longer a Gospel Principles teacher, I'm now our ward's Family History Committee Chairperson. Yep, I'm the bosslady in charge of family history. I think it's a good fit. We have a new ward goal (one name cleared per member - not too hard), and our new Elders Quorum president Jeff Mulcock is keen to work with me to get his lads properly involved in family history. We have some newly baptised members who need to get started and plenty of others who I plan to recruit, if for no other reason I'm curious to learn about their family background. The previous chairperson was my roommate Kelly, so it'll be an easy handover!!

The Pattersons

My Charles Patterson death certificate yielded some extremely useful clues. It gives his place of burial as Hancock, Wisconsin. There is only one cemetery in Hancock and a complete transcription is available on the internet. Charles is buried in plot B89 along with his wife Sarah Ann and two young children. I already had a date of death for the children from great-grandmother Lillian, but had no idea when Sarah Ann Davis had died. It's 1914, so I can request a death certificate from the state and hopefully find out who her people were. I was also able to match Charles to one of two possible 1850 census records I'd found some time ago. The return is from a county in Ohio, listed on the certificate as his birthplace, the age matches the certificate, and it lists the father's birthplace as Connecticut which also matches the certificate. You have copies of this census image - it's in the folder Brown-Patterson and it's called 1850 Census Charles Patterson possible, but I can't remember if it's 1 or 2. The cemetery record noted that Charles was veteran of the Civil War. There are only two Charles Pattersons who served in the Wisconsin regiments [go to this site and enter Patterson, Charles, Wisconsin in the search fields]and one of them is a Charles H. Patterson!!

Great expectations

Jonathan has declared his ambitions for the future. He wants to be a footballer and then a king, so he can "be in a pyramid". [The other night we watched a television programme about the building of Kufu's great pyramid tomb in Egypt.]

I am resolved

to do the following in this New Year:

- get meself proper educated
- stop discussing LDS dating: it is a tired and worn out subject to which I humbly admit I can contribute nothing that hasn't already been said
- decide once and for all whether or not to let my hair grow out, again
- do eastern Ohio
- spend less money at restaurants and more time reading

Pretend the date above is 25 December

We had a happy Bovee Christmas here in Luton! Jonathan didn't wake up til 8 o'clock (did Lucy drug him?). I got TWO stockings this year. Mum found a lovely bag in Past Times and just couldn't resist filling it up with goodies along with my usual angel stocking. We spent much of the day opening presents: we don't like to rush, else you miss seeing what everyone else has got. That's my favourite thing about Christmas is seeing what the rest of my family have come up with as gifts for each other. Often they're very clever, and with all of us travelling to different places there's usually some exotic and beautiful presents from distant lands. This year it was Germany, Lativa, Lapland, Hungary and Hawaii. Before presents we watched The Nativity, after all, a bit of religion at Christmas never hurt anyone. I am so happy to be able to spend a whole month with my family. We had a few squabbles the first few days, which is only natural, but by today (and even better by the real today!) we've adjusted to crowded quarters and remember why we've all come so far to be together. Oh, and on Boxing Day Jonathan and I used all his new Brio to build the greatest railway ever imagined.

Happy Christmas to you all!

Thirty years today

My Mum and Dad were married thirty years ago today, 20 December 1975. Here there are, the happy couple:

We had dinner together in Soho. They then went on to see The Producers at the Drury Lane Theatre.

I'm proud of my parents and I just hope I can be like them after thirty years. They're kind to each other and they look after one another. And they have created a wonderful family. Happy Anniversary!

Proof that Santa Claus is real

I have photographic evidence!!! Lucy and Jonathan went to Lapland on Friday to meet the most famous bearded man alive. (Sorry Lauren, he's spoken for!)

Here is Father Christmas' office...

And here is the man himself giving a present to Jonathan, which turned out to be a beautiful four winds hat.
Don't the reindeer look cheery! They know the big night is coming soon.

Back by popular demand

Sorry it's been a while since you last heard from me...

I had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. Kelly and I took a turkey and a dozen other bits and pieces along to our ward's dinner. There were 26 happy and well-fed people there. On the Saturday, Ian and I ventured up to Harlem for dinner at Sylvia's famous soul food mecca on Lennox Avenue. I had her special recipe ribs - more delicious than anything has any right to be - with potato salad and black-eyed peas. The atmosphere was terrific, music and families, and we even got to meet Sylvia!

I've been doing some Christmas shopping, trying not to freeze to death (Ian can attest that I came very close last night!) and just generally being very excited about Christmas and getting ready to go home. Oh and I was offered another job at EMI, but I turned it down again. I don't want to risk my resident status in England (for university tuition) by taking a permanent job abroad, but it was nice to know I was very much their first choice. My friend Joanne has moved out of our team to a different job within our department, so it should mean more responsibility for me from now on. I'm pleased about that.

The very defnition of good-lookin'

Lucy's Berlin pictures are finally on the web.

What Bovees look like

There is a family tree on Rootsweb that includes Cornelius Bovee and Hannah Pettis and their children, including great-grandfather George. There was a note to say that the creator of this entry, Richard Rhode of Minnesota, has a photograph of her. So I just emailed and asked if he'd mind sending me a copy. Turns out it's a family portrait with Cornelius, Hannah and their youngest son Truman.

I recall, Central Park in fall...

Thanks to Dad for suggesting a trip up to the observation deck of the GE Building in Rockefeller Plaza! Ian and I went during lunch yesterday, still in time to see the beautiful autumn colours in Central Park. It was a perfectly clear day, almost too bright. We also had a terrific view of the Empire State Building. We took loads of pictures, here at the best ones. There are also some pictures of Lauren, who was in New York this past weekend.

Why I don't just love my family, I really like them as well: Reason 1

My birthday was 1 October, and I just received a birthday card from Stephen. The front of the card reads: Birthday, Birthmonth, I was close. Enclosed with the card is a keyring with my initials GB in big gold, glossy letters. And the message in the card reads: One year older and yes... still an Ol' Git! I also saw this keychain and had to go back and pick it up. After all, who couldn't use a Del-Boyesque personlized key chain." Thank you, Stephen! I love it.

Stephen invariably reads my posts about three weeks after I've written them, so most of you probably miss the pithy comments he leaves. This one is my favourite, all the way at the bottom.

Guess what I have

Do you remember the faded picture of John and Ellen Ducie and baby Moina in some publication detailing his many achievements? Well, it turns out there was an original photograph, and Bob had it. And he gave it me!!!!! What a treasure. And it belongs to me. Dad, you can have it . . . but you'll have to prise it from my cold, dead hand.

Bob gave me one other picture to keep, of grandma Bobby and a little bubba named Bruce. She wrote on the back: Bruce & Mama 7/20/47. Look at all that hair! Seems to be a Bovee trait.

I also have about 15-20 pictures I borrowed to copy. There are some nice pictures of Phyllis and her children. Bob always seems to have a cheeky little grin on his face, it's really sweet. There are some of great-grandfather Alfred and Ann LeDuc. There are pictures of Evelyn as a baby and with Phyllis's family. And there are some pictures of grandma and her sisters as children; there is even a picture of a two-year-old Phyllis pushing her dolly pram around the back garden of their house in Montana. Here is one I scanned already. From left to right: Mary, Phyllis, a friend, grandma Bobby, and another little street urchin, probably in Jackson Heights. I love the grin on grandma's face. Aren't they lovely, all three of them! Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Boston: part 4

I spent the weekend in Boston staying with Bob. I left Friday morning and had the afternoon to spend at the archives. I researched some vital records and then headed up to the Charlestown branch of the Boston Public Library. I thought they might have a local history and genealogy section. I was wrong. They had few books of slides with old views of Charlestown and I got to see two or three pictures of Main Street as it would have been in Michael O’Brien’s time. It certainly wasn’t worth the schlep from the T Station. Oh well. I think the Main Public Library or the local historical society might be a better bet. (I’m trying to write this on the way back into New York. The highways in the Bronx are horrific; Basra to Baghdad is probably a smoother ride!)

Later I met up with Bob and after dinner I got him to fish out all his pictures and family papers. He had a biography piece on Alfred O’Brien from a book entitled “History of Montana.” We'll have to locate the book when we go to Montana. It's quite long, so I'll email the text of the article. The information on his parents is mostly fantasy. Bob and I have a theory about this. Phyllis had told Bob that she was brought up as a Protestant and that when she married his father, she had to convert to Catholicism. Odd, as both of Alfred’s parents were definitely Catholic. Perhaps when he went off to Lehigh University to study engineering, he realized that his social and carers prospects were better if he weren’t a Catholic. Then he went off to Montana where he married Moina Ducie in a Roman Catholic ceremony - well, her Irish parents would have seen to that - but the article clearly makes every attempt to expunge his Irish famine immigrant background. Perhaps this explains why neither Bobby or Phyllis new anything of their aunts and uncles… Alfred had become somewhat estranged from them. By 1928 he was in Connecticut and then New York, that’s not so far from his family in Massachusetts and yet there seems to have been little contact. The article also has some useful - and I assume relatively accurate -information about his siblings. One sister was married to an artists. Perhaps this is our Boston Public Library fellow!

Saturday, we drove to New Bedford. We stopped first at the public library where I spoke to the chap at the Genealogy Department. He told me that Frank Paul's original name could be Paulinho, rather than him having dropped it completely. He told me that he may have come to New Bedford without his family, as a cabin boy on a whaling ship, especially if he had an older brother who was also a crewman. I told him that Frank was from Pico and he said that there are only twelve parishes and that the Church has microfilmed all their baptismal records, so it wouldn't be impossible to find him. The Azorean records list the child's name, parents and godparents, and grandparents, so it would be a real find! They had copies of the Catholic St.Mary's Church records, so we looked up both of Frank Paul's marriages and the baptisms of some of his children. They give the child's middle name which often wasn't recorded on the civil records and the godparents for each child. I have a photocopy of my gt-gt-grandmother Mary Ann's baptismal record from 1859. We went to Frank Paul's address from the 1900 and 1910 census, 128 Achushnet Avenue, but while many of the old Victorian clapboard houses in the neighborhood have survived, Frank's house has been replaced. We also didn't have much luck at the cemeteries, but I now have the contact information so I will phone them on Monday.

We had dinner with some of Bob's friends that evening, which I really enjoyed. It was nice to spend some time getting to know Bob. I have so little extended family, so it's a real treat to talk to someone who knows us and our background. He loaned me a lot of pictures to scan, so I will let you know when you can look at them on my flickr account.

Some good news

Most of the female names I’ve researched in Boston and New Bedford have been extracted and the names and dates entered in Familysearch. None of the ordinances had been done yet, except for just one or two names where the baptism has been done. This was really frustrating as I had wanted to do the temple work for all these women. I was afraid that they would be irretrievable. So I made a list of them all and took it with me to the temple on Thursday to see what could be done. The temple recorder told me that if I bring all the names prepped as a Temple Ready file, he can print the ordinance cards there and I can do all the work. I was so happy I was literally jumping for joy right there in the office. (I realise that isn’t really the done thing in the temple, but perhaps I’ll be forgiven…) Most of these names are children of Michael O’Brien and his sisters. The one I’m most pleased about is my own great-great grandmother Ellen Mulherin. Her baptism was done in the London temple in 2003, but I will be able to do her endowment and seal her to her parents. And on the subject of Ellen, I have a real treat for you, and will post it as soon as I can get it scanned!

Boston: part 3

I went to Boston again last week. I found Michael O'Brien's will at the Probate Court - they just handed me the original. It's only one page. He left everything to be split equally between his seven children. There's a court document that lists the names and addresses of all seven, which gave me the married name of two of his daughters. His total estate was worth $6,360.24. I tried one of those online old money calculators and it comes out as anything between $75,000 and $250,000. It all depends on whether you compare the consumer price indices or the increase in per capita income, something, blah, blah, I don't know.

I couldn't find anything at the Boston Public Library on Maurice Flynn, so I went up to Holy Cross Cemetery and wandered around in the wind and rain, but managed to find the family grave just as the rain let up. I got some good pictures. And in the evening I went to the Boston temple to do the endowment for Eliza Roche there in her adopted home. I've been in touch with Bob and I'm going back again this weekend to stay with him.

Mary Costello Ducie Collier?

Grandma wrote to Wayne County, Ohio requesting a death record for Mary Ducie, but they responded saying no record was made. They said this was common, but I thought it rather odd, especially around 1900. So last night I was looking in Familysearch for any record of her, and I found an extracted marriage in 1879 in Wayne County, Ohio for William Collier and Mary Ducy. This is two years after her husband Patrick died in 1877. I then looked up this William Collier in the 1880 census to check the age of his bride. He is listed as 45, his wife Mary as 65 and born in Ireland. She's the right age and how many Mary Ducys could have been floating around Wayne County, Ohio. So I shall see if I can get ahold of the death record for Mary Collier to see if she was born Mary Costello. I had also thought it odd that both her daughters upped and moved to Montana and abandoned her in Ohio on her own. Perhaps they didn't.

Vertigo Tour 2005

Ian and I were so high up in the arena last night, right at the front of the balcony, that vertigo was very nearly was the word. The show was amazing. It was my first big arena show. I sang along with 20,000 people. The stage was reallly cool, it had an elliptical walkway. Keane played about six or seven songs, and Tom Chaplin's beautiful voice filled the huge space. U2 can play like nobody I've seen. And I know Bono is the big star and he wrotes thought-provoking poetry, but I think The Edge is the best thing in that band. OK, they're all amazing. A bit of politics from anybody else would be cloying, but from them it's OK. They put their time and their money where their mouths are and actually try and do something to improve the lives of the world's impoverished and forgotten peoples. We certainly got our money's worth. U2 played for well over 2 hours and we both heard our favourite songs. It's amazing the memories that come up with different songs, the Gulf War, boarding school, things going back half my life ago.

Jonathan gets to grips with history

As they're reading a bedtime story about dinosaurs, Jonathan says to his Granny:

I know what the Jurassic period is - that was a long, long time ago. I know a lot of things about a long, long time ago. And I was only born in 1999!!

You've never had it so good

Have you noticed my new links on the right hand side? There's some thrilling stuff. Do go exploring!