And some other things:
I discovered yesterday that you can do a free search of the index of deaths in Minnesota from the last century and order the certificates (only $8) right there online from the Minnesota Historical Society. I requested certificates for uncle Alton Bovee and Herman Narr. And they come in less than two weeks.

I also found in the California death index one Agnes Chadwick Parramore (daughter of Elizabeth Ducie Chadwick who went to San Fransisco). Mum will remember an ill-fated attempt to find her birth certificate in England. The online index shows her mother's maiden name as Ducie.

It's been a good weekend for genealogy!!

Wisconsin trip

Madison is an attractive and relaxed little city. I had enough time to stroll around the downtown and tour the beautiful Capitol Building. I sat by the lake on the university campus and tried not to be my usual frenzied self for just a little while. The weather was perfect, with blue skies and light breezes.

As for research, the trip was definitely worthwhile. Here are the main things I uncovered:
-Death certificate - Sarah Ann Baldwin Patterson
-Obituary - Sarah Ann Baldwin Patterson (Davis is a red herring, her maiden name was Baldwin, I now have her place of birth in Ashtabula, OH and discovered that Charles Patterson's family lived in WI - if you look at daughter Samantha's wedding certificate a Samuel Patterson was a witness)
-Obituary - Samantha Luellen Patterson Brown
-Birth Annoucement - Lillian Adelia Narr
-Muster Roll - Charles H. Patterson and brother Lysander A. Patterson
-Compiled Service Record - Charles and Lysander Patterson
-Land Platt Book records, Jackson County - Cornelius and other related Bovees
-Birth certificate - Helen Grace Bovee
-Birth certificate - Fred Lawrence Brown (Lillian's youngest brother)
-Marriage certificate - Silas R. Brown and Hannah Dolph (his third wife)
-Fairchild, Eau Claire Co. cemetery transcription Details of graves LeonardBovee (brother of George Bovee) wife Jeanette Bovee and 3 children, also Edward Bovee nephew of Cornelius and cousin of George

I also have transcribed birth records for more of Lillian Brown's siblings and loads births/deaths/marriages for Bovees, mostly siblings, nephews and cousins of George and Cornelius Bovee. I now have a long list of follow up tasks, including writing to a number of cemeteries and institutions. So not only have I come away with various bits of new information, but this trip has also opened up several new avenues of investigation.

Part of a river is named after our family. The Bovees settled Hixton and surrounding areas of Jackson County, Wisconin.

I'm still in Madison, but I have some time on my hands so I'll tell you all about something I found today. Compiled Civil War Service record for Charles H. Patterson (my great, great, great grandfather) shows he joined up in August 1862 along with his brother Lysander (didn't know he existed!). There's a description: Charles was rather tall at 6'1, with brown hair and blue eyes and a fair complexion. He lasted just over a year and a half in the infantry and in late 1863 he and his brother deserted. Guess he got fed up and decided to leg it! The brother got clean away, but Charles was later arrested and spent the next year under lock and key at the attractively titled Fort Swelling in Minnesota until he was dishonorably discharged. I did giggle. Anyway, he may not have been much of a soldier, but at least he was good looking.

Today was my first real sick day. I've never spent a whole day away from work because of illness. I've gone home sick, and I've started the morning with a migraine and then later in day (why? I'm not sure) still gone into work. But today was an exception. I was taken ill last night and decided to be kind to myself and spend the entire day at home resting. I spent nearly the whole day sleeping or drinking gatorade. It's now 11 at night and having slept most of the day, I'm quite alert. It will be a little while before I go to bed, but I think be able to sleep the night through alright. I ate baby food this evening, thinly sliced banana and cream of rice, but dined vicariously by watching a show on PBS called Daisy Cooks. She roasted yellow peppers on her stove burners, slow cooked potatoes in a tomato sauce in a frying pan and poached clams, scallops and shrimp in white wine, garlic and parsley sauce. Ah, I intend to eat well when I get my stomach back!

The Snuggly is nice, but this is how you cart a baby around when you've got crap to get done.

J's Holidays

J, ever the pint-sized techno pioneer, has a blog, J's Holidays. I don't think many of the other little six-year-olds at St. Matthews Infants School can boast such an accomplishment. It's actually Mummy writing the copy, but J has full editorial control. So now we can all read reports on his exciting holidays at Bruce and Kathryn's house and view progress on the ever expanding earthworks that once passed for our back garden.

I pyewed you

I played X-box for the first time last night. The gameboy thing keeps me out of trouble on a Sunday night, but I thought I'd see what all the fuss is about with these big fancy toys. I was mildly rubbish at Crazy Taxi, but I'm sure I wasn't the first New York cab to drive on the pavement. I was at 33 Gold st visiting John Tarbet, so I had to play Halo 2. I used to look down my nose at shooting games, but once I got the hang of it (well, not really, I still spent a lot of time looking at the ground or spinning around) it was wicked fun. I even finished with more kills than little NYC Bro on the second game!

Uh-oh, now when I come home this summer I'll be begging to go to Demetri's as well.

New toy

Commercial radio is unmitigated crap. They torture me with it at work (although it's not been so bad of late). Seriously though, if I worked at the post office, they'd all be dead by now. So I've been listening to internet radio for a while. BBC 6 is pretty good, but I really like radio stations you can play with. Pandora let's you set up different radio stations based on an artist or music style and then plays songs it thinks have similar "genetic" characteristics. You can skip through a lot of songs, and if they play a song you don't like, you can tell it to banish the song forever. Today I had to kill a Death from Above 1979 cover of Bloc Party's "Little Thoughts". It was just getting on my nerves.

Irish origins

O'Brien: "This family derives its name and descent from Brian Boru, King of Ireland, who was slain at Clontarf, in the year 1014. By his victories over the Danish invaders and their Irish allies, Brian raised his clan, the Ui Tordealbhaigh [probably pronounced "Davis" or perhaps "Johnson"], to a position of pre-eminence among the Dalcassians, and laid the foundation of the greatness of his posterity, who became not only the ruling family in Thomond, but one of the most powerful in Ireland. Some of them were kings of Munster, and some of all Ireland. Their possessions included the whole of Co. Clare and large portions of the counties Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford. They divided into several branches, the principle of which were: the O'Briens of Ara, in the north of Co. Tipperary, whose chief was known as Mac i Bhriain Ara; of Coonagh in the east of Co. Limerick; of Podelbrien, now the barony of that name in Co. Limerick, whose chief stronghold was Carrigogonnell, on the Shannon; and of Cumaragh, in Co. Waterford, who had extensive possessions along the Cummeragh mountains comprising the valley between Dungarvan and the Suir. O'Brien is now one of the most common surnames in Ireland. "
from Woulfe, Patrick. Irish Names and Surnames. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1923, p442-3.

Mulherin: "des. of Maolciarian (servant of St. Ciarin), the name of an ecclestiastical family who were erenachs of Eaglais beg, at Clonmacnoise, and of Ardcarne, in Co. Roscommon. A branch of family seems to have settled in Donegal sometime before the end of the 16th century. The name at that period was most frequent in Westmeath, Roscommon and Donegal". p 597-8.
I guess some of them then wandered into Co. Mayo.

Roche: "in Irish Roiste, Norman 'de la Roche', Latin 'de Rupe', i.e. of the rock, from residence beside some proiminent rock; an old Norman surname. Families of this name settled in different parts of Ireland, but the best known were those of Cork, Limerick and Wexford. In the first named county, the Roches obtained by marriage the district about Fermoy known as [something in Irish I couldn't transliterate], or Roche's Country; the head of this family was Viscount Fermoy. The Roches of Limerick were a wealthy and respectable merchant family."
p 274-5.

Costello: there are too many appearances of Costello in the book to pinpoint the origin, but there is a Barony of Costello in Co. Mayo, which is where I'm hoping to place Mary Costello.

Tales from the olden days

Jonathan enjoys stories from the past, or the "olden days" as he calls it. He and Lucy recently discussed one of the most famous episodes from English history.

J: Mummy, did Henry the Eighth have four mummys?
L: No, he had six wives.
J: What happened to them?
L: I think he divorced two, one died having a baby, one survived. The other two died.
J: How did they die?
L: Are you sure you want to know? It’s not very nice. Well, he had their heads chopped off.
J: Ewww, gross. That’s not very nice, is it? Hmm. And what about Ann? Did they break up?

He's in the book

I found some directories for the city of New Bedford on Ancestry.com and I found over fifteen entries for Frank Paul and various family members. I knew great-great-great grandfather Frank had owned a grocery business, which I'd hoped to locate, and I knew he lived for several years at 128 Acushnet Avenue, near the waterfront, but I've found some exciting new information in these directories. This is the first one, from 1869. Frank owned two shops and it gives the addresses.

In 1873, Frank had focused his business interests and had just the one shop. And he'd moved. Look at the bottom, Joseph Paul, a confectioner was occupying the other shop and lived with Frank. I don't know who this is, perhaps a brother.

In later years, the directory also includes Frank's children Charles, Emma and Florence. Florence started out as a proofreader and by 1908 had worked her way up to editorial assistant for the Standard (the local rag I assume). I guess proofreading is in the blood!

And the final entry for Frank, in 1917.

As I said, I have about fifteen of these. They're like a little travelogue of Frank's life, showing all the places he lived and worked.

Dad talked me out of Ohio

I wasn't actually there yet, he talked me out of going in the first place. So I might go to Madison, Wisconsin instead. I have to figure out if it's worth the cost of the trip.

Costello ain't no Italian name

For those who know little of the thrills of family history research (ye poor, wretched beings), I am sure you will be delighted to learn that although certain branches of a family can yield little or no information at a given time, often they appear to be a complete deadend, sometimes they suddenly explode and you start to uncover one thing after another.

The Costello clan (John Ducie's mother's family) are like that. We didn't know for the longest time what Mary Costello's nationality was for sure, and once I knew she was born in Ireland, I figured that was probably all I would ever know about her and her family. Not true. The Costellos are suddenly all crawling out of the woodwork. I tried again yesterday to find the main Ducie family's passage to the US from England in 1862. And again, I couldn't find anything. John's eldest sister Mary, however, hadn't come with them, she had gone to Ohio in 1857. So I looked just for her, and her I found, on a ship called the Jacob A Westervelt which sailed from Liverpool arriving in New York on 19 Oct 1857. That's the year she listed as her date of immigration on the 1900 census. The age matches as well, and the name on the passenger list above her is Patrick Costello. I know it's her, because three years later on the 1860 census for Chippewa, Ohio, Mary and her new husband John Schoenberger (of the Mary Ducie obituary) have a lodger named none other than Patrick Costello. Why did they pick Wayne County, Ohio? Two families above Mary, John and Patrick is the William Costello family. It looks like Patrick and Mary Ducie followed her family to Ohio.

And there's something more. I was looking at the 1861 census in England to see if any of Mary's Costello relatives had been living near them in Staffordshire in England. I found a Winifred Costello aged 70 living as a lodger in Rowley Regis, in the village of Bakersfold. I thought hang on, that's familiar, and so when I went to the page before, it was the Ducies. They had a lodger with the rather florid name of Malachy Gilleroy living with them, the last name on that page, and so I hadn't thought to look for more family over on the next page. Is that Mary's mother? Possibly. The point is, I now have all these Costellos to look into and if one of them had the foresight to record exactly where in Ireland they came from, then I have the place where the Ducies originated as well.

It snowed...

here.

The 'lympics

On the telephone this morning...

Auntie Genevieve: "Jonathan, do you know what's happening today?"
Jonathan: "err... it's the winter 'lympics starting today" (in that tone that says why are you asking, i can't believe you don't know, oh good grief)
Auntie Genevieve: "So are you going to be watching skiing all day tomorrow?"
Jonathan: "My head will be next to the tv all day and all night and all day! I'll turn into a zombie." (hmm, where did he hear thatI wonder?!)
Auntie Genevieve: "well, it's only 1 hour and 5 minutes till it starts"

And then after spinning the phone on the table, "are you feeling dizzy and sick?", he ran off to get the kitchen timer so Lucy could set it for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Apparently that's his new thing, setting the timer for absolutely everything. Lucy says it's become obsessional. Oh good, my little boy is a crazy man!

Got time on your hands?

If you're looking to warm up your brains and your funny bones, here are some links to my favourite radio programmes on the Beeb.

The Now Show This is a weekly news/satirical show in the vein of Bremner, Bird and Fortune. The stand-up spots are hilarious, but the songs by Mitch Benn are the best bit. You might have trouble following some of it if you're not up on British news, but you can always catch up here.

In Our Time The history of ideas. There are at least a hundred programmes in their archive. I've learned about everything from the Babylonian alphabet to artificial intelligence.

Excess Baggage Indulge your wanderlust. You can listen to all fifty tales of adventure and exploration in the archive listed on the right side of the page. My favourites are Lost Languages and Michael Palin.

Mark Kermode My film review fellow. Sometimes he gets really worked up about things and goes off on one. I love it.

Eco Istvan

Aspersions have been cast - you know who you are - on my veracity, or perhaps sanity. A figment of the imagination never mucked up our laptop - you know who you are - or left such a huge indentation in the sofa. So here's the proof, this is he, my enormous little brother.

Jonathan discovers google earth

So after Joanne and I had hours and hours of fun playing with Google Earth (strictly on our lunch break of course), I installed it on the laptop in Luton so we could play with it there. Last Thursday, Lucy and Jonathan discovered it. They looked up Luton, my address in New York and Granny and Grandpa's house in Saudi Arabia, and more importanly, the Surf House and the water slip and slide thingy on the RT beach. Jonathan went mad for it, and when they'd done with familiar places he announces "now, let's look up Australia". He knows about Australia?! So they checked our Sydney, Melbourne, and all points intriguing on the Antipodean isle.

I suggested their next "trip" should be to Rome, they have beautiful, clear pictures of all the best sites - you can see the hole in the Pantheon and the columns in St. Peter's Square. Any recommendations for other closely-photographed destinations?

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!!