Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Other than Genealogy

As of late I have been spending allot of time working on the other blogs associated with this huge project, this seems to be the only page that I haven't been posting to regularly. I have been out of town for a week on buisness, while I did have my computer and most all my research with me on DVD and my database in Legacy 7.0 I had zero time to even look at it. So at this point I am playing abit of catch up with everything, I need to pick a Lake family to work on and start plugging away I have made the following posts at my collateral line blogs which can be found at the following links Family Tree of Jennie Sanders Lake and Orlo Sanders 1861 Wilna, New York .

New Post re: Jennie Sander Lake @ Sanders Family Genealogy Research Project

Family Tree of Jennie Sanders Lake

Saturday, July 19, 2008

New Post referencing Lake Family members

Samuel E. Clement & Emma M. Farnum

A small bit of Family History by Jennie Sanders Lake Jan 1 to Oct 2, 1918

This small appointment book consisting of some 24 pages, gives us snippets of the last 10 month of the life of my Great Grandmother Jennie Sanders Lake. She was one of the millions who died as a result of the 1918 world wide flu epidemic, or what we would call a "pandemic". That year nearly every members of her household became ill at one point or another, Jennie was the only one to have died from the illness. Her small diary notes daily life around their small upstate New York farm; the weather, important events, people who visited, the names of several people from the community who had passed away, their funerals and bit of information important to her. It is a small slice of the history of a community during an extremly dfficult time, in reading it you can see how, life kind of came and went moving along for these people even with everything that was happening around them, and to them. One of the stories that was noted in this small history then expanded on by later verbal family accounts was Jennie's son in law Ira Edwin Clement came in from working the fields very sick with the flu one afternoon infact he was so ill that he had to be carried in the house. When he came down with the illness his hair was a light brown color when he finally left his sick bed his hair had turned white, and remained that way the rest of his life, such was the dramatic effect this virus had on people. Jennie started this little book using an out dated 1916 appointment book, very frugal people "never waste anything you can use later" and as you can see by the example she made little notes everyday. On the first page Jennie identified the date she was started the diary, being January 1, 1918 on October 1st she noted, "Nice Day, Ernest come home sick, Walter Perriggo died" the next day was her final entry, 6 days later she died of the flu at the age of 54.

Jennie Sander was the daughter of Jared A.and Sarah Sanders, she was born in Lewisburg, Lewis Co., New York on 22 Apr 1864. She married Harvey Jessie Lake 14 Dec 1883 in Diana, Lewis Co, New York. Jennie's father was born in 1815, in Champion NY he live to extreme old agefor the time passing in 1914. Her grandparents are Joesph Sanders and Lucinda Fairman both born in the early 1780's in what is now southern Windham Co., Vermont or Northern Massachuetts, then migrated to Jefferson or Lewis Counties of New York State. This family line is somewhat a mystery as the lack of records as hampered the research todate. There are possible links to Sanders families in the Halifax, VT, from the 1780 period that are currently being explored.

Note: Jennie Sanders was the wife of Harvey Jessie Lake
Ernest Leon was their son and my grandfather
Ira Edwin Clement was the husband of Merle Florence Lake; daughter of Jennie Sanders and Harvey Jessie Lake

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Name Scrabble

The most interesting and probably the most mind bending part of genealogy research has been the propensity of the people of old to change their names seemingly at will. Several example of this can be found in the research, the most telling being in the Calder line, my 2X great grandmother is identified on her grave marker in Hillside Cemetery Natural Bridge NY as Christie Ann Lake. In the census of 1860, 1870 and 1880 she is known as Ann Lake, her death record in Black River, NY identifies her as Anna Lake. The most current information that research has provided, leads me to believe that her true name was Christianna Calder born in Scotland in 1840.

The same could be said for my mother’s grandmother, most of her life, some 104 year she went by the name of Emma, very few people even those inside the family knew that her true name was Martha Emily, she is buried in Halifax Center Cemetery in Halifax, VT under the name of Emma M. Clement.

Still another example is Edwin Ira Clement, my mother’s great uncle, He is identified as Edward Ira, Ira Edward, and then just Ed, his true name was Ira Edwin Clement, but preferred “Ed” he married another who subscribed to the game of "Name Scrabble". Her name was Florence Merle Lake, early on she changed it to Merle Florence and went by Merle for the rest of her life time.

So the challenge is to sort out, not only who is who, with records that are sometime faulty or damaged, but then you must contend with players who keep changing the rules on you during the match. Good luck :)

Joesph Lake and Christie Ann Calder

New post at http://caldergen.blogspot.com/ re: Beginning of Research into the Calder and Lake Family.

Welcome to the Lake Family Genealogy Research Project Blog

Welcome to the Lake Genealogy blog. I have created this place to open a discussion with other researchers working on Lake Family Genealogy who may have similar issues to mine or are part of the John Lake and Ann Spicer Lake family, which began in Gravesend NY, in the early 1600's. I do not intend this blog to be an all inclusive authority or reference to the Lake Family just a documentary of my journey through the maze that is our family history.

I have another blog that is complimentary to Lake Family Research, it is the Calder Family Project at http://caldergen.blogspot.com/ Titled "A Family from Scotland" cross links are provided.