Geni.com

Today was my first experience loading a Gedcom into Geni.com, I have been a little skeptical of putting all my genealogy information out in the public domain especially since some of it involves living people who might not agree to being a part of the web 2.0 world.   

However I've been researching and playing with the program without upload for 2 months now and it convinced me to give it a try.  It is a very interesting program, I put about 3400 names into it today, greatly anticipating what this thing could do with live data instead of the test stuff I was using before.  At this point, as most of you that have used Geni can attest,  you can’t add a Gedcom to your existing account you have to start from scratch. Expecting this I opened a new account clicked all the right buttons, I thought,  attached the Gedcom and let it start. You’ll never guess what happened next, the upload failed, to their credit Geni was on it before I knew there was a problem, and notified me right away, they had it fixed within an hour.

 I was off, ready to tear up the works, exploring, adding new thing, doing the tweaking that something new like this always generates then found that the account that I just started was telling me that I was my daughter.  I must have hit the wrong button on setup, however with a little playing around I figuring out how to fix it and was back doing my best to break something else. 

I managed to rematerialize as myself and am exploring to beat the band, still got abit to go in figuring this thing out but it seems very user friendly and the people at Geni seem ready to help, sometimes before you know you have a problem.

Working with all this new stuff, Facebook, Footnote, the website, Blogging and Geni,  I’m wondering when I’ll get back to good old fashion genealogy.

Orlo Sanders 1861 to ?

One of our families many mysteries is my great grandmothers brother Orlo Sanders he was born in 1861 in Wilna Jefferson Co., New York, I have posted a web page for him on the Lakegen.com website; the link http://www.lakegen.com/sanderfam/index.htm, his is listed under his fathers Jared Sanders sublink.

Very little is known about him, according to family oral history he died after being struck by a falling tree, no one seems to have any idea when or where that happened. The article on the web post tells the story in more detail and I intend to place Orlo on footnote's new site and geni.com to see if anything is generated from that, as far as anyone is aware he did not have children. Orlo was married twice and did travel to Washington State at least once, for what no one that we could find ever new. So these two outlets may bring on unexpected results.

Thomas Lake b. 1734 New Jersey d. 1813 Wolford Grenville Ontario Canada

Thomas Lake, my 5X Great Grandfather. He was born in Middlesex NJ son of Nicholas Lake and Mary Janzen.  He married Mayke or Michal Williamson 16 Aug 1757 and started his family among the children born to them while they live in NJ was my 4thX Great Grandfather James or as the dutch called him "Kobus" Lake.  By 1761 Thomas and his family along with at-least 2 brothers had relocated to White Creek New York, in what is now Washington County. They began farming a plot of land, a small farm of about 5000 acres on what was known as the Arent Van Corlear grant, he and the Lake families split this land grant to create these farms.

When the American Revolutionary War began most of the Lake family were loyalist and took up the cause of King and Country.  Thomas participated in the Battle of Bennington which was primarily fought on his farm land, he joined a unit known as the Queens Loyal Rangers under the command of a former Green Mountain boy by the name of Peters who had received a commission as a LT Colonel in the British Army and was order to form a Loyalist fighting unit. 

This unit, a small force of British regulars, along with a group of German Soldiers known as Brunswickers was detailed to capture the Colonial Militia supplies stored at Bennington in what is now Vermont.  About 5 miles from Bennington the British Force engaged what they thought was going to be a small Colonial Militia Unit, not understanding what was happening they ran into a very large force that had been mustered to prevent there taking Bennington.  The result of this battle was the British, German and Loyalist force was stopped and forced to surrender, the German Commander was killed and many casualties were sustained.

Thomas Lake survived the Battle and was taken prisoner, he and the rest of his comrades were held at Cambridge NY until after the Battle of Saratoga NY they were ultimately released.  The loyalists were forced to leave the colonies many fled to Canada some the West Indies, everything they owned had been confiscated so they had to start again. 

Thomas took his family to Wolford, Grenville Co., Ontario where he remained until his death in 1813 at the age of 70 years old.  His son James was the first to return to the US when he refused to sign a loyalty oath in Canada around 1814.  James lost his property in Canada and was also forced to start from scratch.  James settled with his son Jesse Lake in Gouverneur St. Lawrence NY and is buried in Wayside Cemetery with several members of the family.

Much of the solid information about Thomas still must be proven and sourced there has been some research but there are credibility issues with it. So more work is necessary to complete the picture but I am finding solid information on a regular basis.

 

                                                                        The Search Continues >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bringing together Blogs

Ever since beginning this documenting project I had it in my head that I would create a blog for each family group then post stories and research notes etc for those groups. Then I began looking around at other blogs that people have been working on and found just how much they put into just one. It also became apperent very quickly when I started building a seperate website just how much extra work I was bringing on myself.  So in an effort to keep posting to this blog current and work the website and research and, and, and!!!!    I have move all of the blogs with the exception of one to this place and made several posting of older information in this one spot and taken the others down hopefully this works better.

Emma M. Farnum Clement b 1873 d.1977

Emma M. Farnum was born in Halifax, Vermont the daughter of Cyrus Farnum and Miranda Gates. She had 4 sibblings John, Lucy, Henry and May. Of the five Emma was the only one to marry and raise her own family. In 1905 she married Samuel Clement of Croghan New York, the settled in the Halifax, Vermont area and had 4 children of there own, Elmer, John, Doris and Alfred. She lived such a long and full life that our family was fortunate to have been able to know her, she personnelly had met all of her 15 Grandchildren 37+ Greatgrand children and 2 or 3 great great grandchildren, before her passing. To her final days she alway had cookies or fresh donuts waiting for the kids who came on the weekends to visit. Her stamina was unparalelled, and she could remember most facts like they happened yesterday with a clarity that baffled people who witnessed the event and long ago forgot the details. At one point in time someone asked her if she was concerned about nuclear power, as the Rowe Yankee Nuclear Power Plant was just down the Road from her home. Her response was typical of her simple philosophy, "They never bothered me none".

to be continued.......................

Samuel E. Clement & Emma M. Farnum

Samuel E. Clement was born 8 Sep 1881 in Croghan, Lewis Co., New York he was the son of a US Civil Union Soldier from New York and farmer Daniel L. Clement and Mary Jane Palmer. In 1894 Daniel Clement died suddenly of Heart and Bright’s disease, with an enlarged liver. This left Sam as the oldest surviving son at age 13; having two brothers Charles F. and George H. that died in 1872 and 1884 respectively. The family consisted of Mattie Clement Herzig the eldest sister who had left home to start her own family, Anna P. Clement, Ira Edwin the youngest; Mary Jane Clement his their mother and Sam.

The eldest daughter Mattie left New York State with her family and settled in the Colrain, Massachusetts area. At some point just before 1900 Mary Jane Clement who by this point was going by the name Jennie Clement, left New York State and moved to Colrain, Ma with her two son’s Sam and Ira Edwin. Jennie’s daughter Annie had married Lorenzo Ashcraft in 1895 she had one daughter and died in 1898. Interestingly enough Lorenzo Ashcraft was born in Brattleboro, Vermont about 45 miles from where Mattie and later Sam would settle to live out their lives.

Jennie did not like living in Massachusetts and wanted to return home to New York, however Sam did not he stayed behind and Ira Edwin return with their mother to the farm in New York.

While in Colrain, he met Emma M. Farnum who was a loom weaver in a textile mill, they married on 6 Aug 1905, and raised their family in the Halifax, VT, Whitingham, VT and ultimately settling permanently on a small farm on Cyrus Stage Road in Rowe, Franklin Co., Massachusetts.

Emma Martha Farnum was actually born Martha Emily Farnum 19 Jun 1873 to Cyrus Farnum and Miranda Gates, she was the second generation of women in her line to live an extremely long life. Her mother was 90 Year old when she passed and Emma was 104 when she died in 1977. Emma was the second of 5 children, and the only one to marry and start a family of her own. Her family's ancestry extended back to before the Revolutionary War and involved some of the founding member of the towns of Halifax and Whitingham, Vermont. The Whitney’s, Crosier’s, and Gates’ were part of her direct family line, many of the descendants of these families still live in both towns to this day.

Sam and Emma had 4 children, Elmer Farnum 1907-1977; Doris Emma 1909-1996; John Edwin 1913-2003; and Alfred Burton 1920-1990. They farmed or worked on farms in and around the towns we have already discussed until 27 July 1952 when Sam had a heart attack and died suddenly at the age of 70. Emma lived the remainder of her considerably long life on the farm in Rowe, Massachusetts with her eldest son Elmer, who after returning from World War II, Italy never really went much further than the area around home, for the remainder of his life. Elmer never married spending most of his time taking care or the few farm animals that were around the Rowe farm.

Jennie Clement made a final trip to Colrain around 1912, she had sold the farm in New York and travelled to Colrain, MA with her son Ira Edwin and his wife Merle Florence Lake. She initially had intended to stay, Ira and Merle return to New York, it is unclear whether Jennie had decided she wanted to go home or she became ill and wanted to return. Whichever the case money was raised to send her back to New York, when she suddenly died on June 13, 1912, she is buried alone in Christian Hill Cemetery in Colrain, MA, her grave sets just inside the gate marked with a field stone marker rough carved, "J. Clement" to this day no other family member has been buried in that Cemetery.

Sam, Emma and now all of their children are gone; John Edwin Clement Sr. was the last of his family to pass on at 89 years of age, my grandfather, left a rich family legacy to preserve, a history that is still incomplete but a history that he helped research, write and more importantly preserve.

New Web Browser from Google "Chrome"

Yesterday Google released their new web browser identified as "Chrome" very interesting working with it. I've only used it for a short time and it appears that it is still officially in Beta test, however it's not bad for a first effort in web browsers.  It has a couple of little glitches and there should be some more control for the end user but we will just have to wait and see what the upgrades look like. Like other Google products it's free and worth checking out 

2008 Civil War Expo Chester VT

The Twelfth Annual Civil War Expo will begin Saturday September 27, 2008, in Chester, VT a website that offers all the details of the event is located at http://www.18thvt.com/