So You Found a Whole New Line of Relatives

While looking at the 1900 U.S. federal census to validate one name I found on a gravestone marker, EDWARD H BURKE, I discovered what I think is an entire new line of relatives. Let me explain.

First, as you might recall from my previous posts, I have a lot of "John Burke" relatives, including my maternal grandfather, JOHN FRANCIS BURKE. In fact, I started looking at him when I started this climb up my own family tree years ago. In the process and in addition to John Francis, I found John Edward, and two John Richard's, a generation apart, though they are not shown as "Senior" and/or "Junior." There is also EDWARD HENRY BURKE, brother to my maternal grandfather, who is married to CATHERINE PALMER FAUSTINE. It is while looking into her records and her gravestone that I found what I think are new ancestors.

While looking at the Salem Ward 3, Massachusetts, 1900 Census, taken 06 June 1900,  I discovered a previously unknown family with the same last name as my known relatives,  but none of whom show up in my current tree. In the order they are listed on the Census, they are:

• JOHN F BURKE -- born Dec 1838 (Head)
• MARY A -- Jan 1866 (Wife)
• JOSEPH P -- May 1888 (son)
• WILLIAM H -- July 1889 (son)
• MARY M -- Aug 1882 (daughter)
• ELIZABETH E -- Oct 1893 (daughter)
• FRANCIS T -- Oct 1896 (son)
• CATHERINE -- May 1900 (newborn daughter; no middle initial shown)

My next project is to determine if these Burkes are my relations. The name, city, state, and timeframe match, but "Burke" is a very popular name in that time and area, so much care must be taken before adding them to the tree.

So far, there are possible entries in 1910 and 1930 Censuses, but Baby Catherine does not show up; perhaps she died in childhood or her name was misspelled - a KATHERINE T BURKE does show up in the Salem, Mass, birth records, but the original find does not include a middle initial. More validation is needed.

For beginners like me, finding familiar names is very exciting and possibly important. It is also critically important that these names be properly vetted and validated before assuming they are ancestors. For me, adding these names to my family tree on Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker allows their powerful search algorithms to work for me by going places I cannot go and searching records I cannot access personally. I am suspicious and cautious. Until this new family is validated, I am not prepared to say I have new relatives.

But this is the exciting part of genealogy, isn't it?

This Is What a Brick Wall Looks Like

In a Facebook post elsewhere, I mentioned that beginners to genealogy might not really understand what a so-called 'brick wall' is. It is a term often used but rarely defined, for good reason. These brick walls can come in many shapes and sizes, can be physical or missing records, or as in this case, one illegible part of an otherwise good record, most likely because of some damage and the passage of time.

My maternal grandfather is JOHN FRANCIS BURKE. His father, my great-grandfather, is JOHN RICHARD BURKE. *HIS* father, my 2nd great-grandfather, was always known to me as JOHN RICHARD BURKE, but honestly, I have had difficulty validating that beyond a reasonable doubt. I have no records of any of my grandparents' families, including names, so getting a good picture of them has been difficult.

I thought I was secure in my knowledge of my 2nd great-grandfather BURKE's name until I came onto this Massachusetts birth record. It is hand-done and quite old. Presumably, there has been some damage to the original document (probably water damage to the original ink), thus making his first name illegible.

Look at the last line of the record. He was born 16 Feb 1866 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. His mother is Bridget Head and his father is John Burke; both those names are validated. His, however...

Can you figure out what it might be? Was it erased? Is that water damage? I do not have access to the original document, so if you have a clue, leave a comment. It is a tough one to get over, this brick wall!

Going deep...while going long

Last month, I asked a question of you readers: Do I go "deep" into the individuals as I climb my family tree, or do I go "long" and add more names, dates, and events to their lives? The answers were, as I expected, thoughtfully provided. Many commenters explained that doing both is important and that by "going long," while validating and confirming information that would lead to other ancestors, I would, of course, also be "going deep."

The wisdom of this was confirmed earlier.

One day, I chose to spend some time looking into the background of my maternal grandfather, JOHN FRANCIS BURKE. To refresh your memory, I always thought he was an immigrant from Ireland; I learned that was not true and he was, in fact, born and raised in Wilton, New Hampshire. His father was born and raised in Wilton and it was his great grandfather, WALTER BURKE, my third great-grandfather, who was the first Irish immigrant on his side of my family. Learning a fact that conflicted with my earliest childhood beliefs was really what motivated me to begin working on my family tree in retirement.

While I was working on Grampy John's past, I somehow came across the name of a distant relative I had not heard or seen before:

CLARENCE HARDING RIVES

Finding that name turned out to be a shocking, exciting discovery.

I probably came to Clarence through an Ancestry.com "shaking leaf" hint, which is how I come to many new names. What was unique and very exciting to me was finding a distant relative from the Desert Southwest of the USA. Prior to this and for most of my life, I thought all my relatives were immigrants from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Canada. Finding a connection to Utah and Nevada opens up an entirely unexpected, very exciting new area to me. Learning that some, perhaps many, of my distant relatives were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), the Mormons, was exciting. I knew of my own connection to Christian religions including Catholics, Presbyterians, and the Church of England, but finding an LDS connection was new and unexpected. My former spouse was LDS and during our marriage, I learned a lot about that part of Christianity.

Because I knew nothing about my family connection to our West before, I allowed myself to spend some time learning about Clarence and my other distant ancestors. So far, I have learned they mostly lived in Utah and Nevada, in the late 20th Century timeframe. Most of them seem to have been born and raised, and were married in Salt Lake City, probably in one of the many LDS temples there. It is not uncommon for our modern population to relocate and the LDS community is no different. In Las Vegas, Nevada, my relative CLARENCE HARDING RIVES, was an LDS Church leader, a Boy Scout executive, and a retired Clark County deputy sheriff.

I spent some time working to find the original name that connected my grandfather, JOHN FRANCIS BURKE, to my family tree in the Desert Southwest. I wanted my excitement to lead me to "good" clues that I could validate, of course, and so far, I seem to have been successful. I still am curious about that connection to an area I never knew about until very recently. It is important to note that the branch of my family tree is pretty far from the trunk (to overuse the "tree" analogy.) According to Ancestry.com, Clarence Harding Rives is the brother-in-law of my 1st cousin 1x removed. As a neophyte to genealogy, I have no mental concept of how he relates to someone I know; clearly he does and understanding how well enough to be able to describe it to my own children is my current focus. (Recall that I have no first cousins - my Dad was an only child and my Mom had only one unmarried, childless sister - so finding the branches that connect me to him is important.)

This is post is part of my on-going project to decide whether to "go deep" or to "go long." As I wrote before, most commenters suggested that doing both at the same time is the way to go. One made the spot-on point that genealogy is a long-term project that can lead the researcher in unexpected ways to unexpected, exciting finds.

Finding Clarence is an example of going deep. Very deep. It is akin to making a deep-sea dive far beyond any one has ever done before. Down there, a diver would see things totally new and unexpected. That is what happened to me. Now I must determine through which known relative he relates to me and see how far out West my tree branches go. I do recall my only Aunt, CHARLEENE FRANCES BURKE, living and working as a teacher for the US Department of Defense in Alamogordo, New Mexico, but I do not know why she moved there or if she knew anyone when she was there. Perhaps she did and CHARLES HARDING RIVES is part of that connection.

That would be the "going long" part.

Go deep or go long?

I have been away for a couple of weeks while one of my daughters gave birth to a new granddaughter, another leaf on my family tree! There were some issues, though not medical, really. This was not her first child and normally, the 'due date' is fairly accurate, usually within a day or two or three. Obstetrical science has progressed, the technology is marvelous, and the science behind it amazing. Yet it remains a huge unknown; Mother Nature and a woman's body are the final determinants as to when birth will occur, not medical know-how.

In my daughter's case, that meant my leaving her house after a 10-day stay without having had the opportunity to hold my new granddaughter after birth.

It also meant I missed the birth by 24 hours! Twenty. Four. Hours.

Ah, if only...

But 'if only' does not count, so now I am back home and at this family search business, which I have worked on for a couple of years.

I have enjoyed my activities immensely. I have learned many things about my ancestors going back several generations. I have learned things about my immediate grandparents that completely shocked me and changed the preconceived memories I have always had about their pasts. I have learned things about where they came from in England - eventually, I hope to get to Ireland, too, but that will have to wait because validated facts about my Irish ancestry are in very short supply.

In short, I have learned some of the Who, Where, When about some of the people in my past I either did not know well (because I was brought up a Third Culture Kid overseas, the son of a US diplomat) or did not know at all (because of their deaths.) I have been contacted by and am in touch with the only cousin I know about, a second cousin who remembers me and my family from my childhood. I still can barely explain the excitement I feel just knowing her, even though I have no memory of us ever meeting.

Those factors, combined with my insatiable curiosity and drive to fill in the blanks - chasms, really -  in my past, have led me to wonder more about the What and Why parts of my ancestors' pasts. What made my ancestors do what they did? Why did they do what they did (beyond the 'improve life for us' immigration issue.) What did they do when they were there, wherever that was? What was going on in their neighborhood, town, state, country, at the time? What did they have to do with the adults of some children whose names I recall from my pre-Middle East life?

The pressing question now is:

Should I continue "going long," meaning going farther and farther back into my past? I will fill out my family tree with names, dates, and places. But that is pretty much all I will be doing...filling in those chasms. I would not know much about the individuals belonging to those names.

Or do I change tack slightly and start "going deep," meaning do I spend more time, energy, and probably money going deeper into the individuals that I already know?

To me, that is akin to putting more leaves on my family tree - as my daughter has just done with the birth of my granddaughter, Charlotte - instead of focusing on adding branches in faraway places like Ireland.

I need your help, dear readers, of all kinds. I do not want to become a semi-professional genealogist; I am still doing this for me, but I am also aware enough of my own personality to know that I will never be able to stop; I never have enough information.

I would like the input of friends, family, the genealogists, professional or not, who have been doing this much longer than me and really anyone reading who might have greater insight into the Who, What, Where, When, and Why, factors involved in climbing up ones family tree.

So let me know. Write a comment. Send me an email. Find a carrier pigeon. Use a smoke signal or semaphore, though, honestly, they probably will not work very well.

Let me hear from you!

Location, Location, Location

As in real estate, the specific details are important.

Many of my English relatives hail from "Manchester." I put it in parentheses for the reasons I explained last time - city size. If one is from London or Chicago or Beijing or Mexico City, having the city name, alone, might be good enough for most purposes.

But it definitely is not enough when trying to determine the location of an ancestor's past to validate that "this" Burke, for example, is the right one and "that" Burke is not.

As I have been working on that validation, I have come to realize that most of the 'hits' I have for my Manchester ancestors are in the east-to-northeast part of the greater Manchester area. Places with names like Huddersfield and Saddleworth and Ashton-under-Lyne and Mossley and Oldham. Some of them are a pretty good distance, considering the time of my investigation, the late 19th Century.

One of the characteristics of beginning a genealogical trip, I am learning, is that I will become much more aware of old geographical boundaries, old versus current place names, and, hopefully in this case, any possible reasons for population movement. So, as a retired investigator, I ask myself questions. Some will have answers, some might not.

• Why would my ancestors only come from one general direction of a greater metropolitan area in the late 1870's to the early 1900's? 
• Was there a disease or agricultural or manufacturing or other reason to move? 
• What information am I missing that I need to find?
• What do I not know that I need to know?

Perhaps all this seems like going overboard, like digging up too much information. And just to put a name on a list. I do not think so. As I have said, I have relatives with common names - like the 'Burke' example above - and I really want to make my tree as accurate as I can. My previous life as an investigator makes just picking any ol' name willy-nilly an unacceptable tactic.

Besides, so many online family trees are interconnected by the Big Four genealogy sites; having accurate information in those trees helps us all. Beginners like me should always be cautious and a bit suspicious, especially because, in my case, my hope is to give a product to my children and grandchildren that I never had -- information about their families.

So now, off to the history books to learn about population movements in northern England near the Scottish border beginning about 1870.

Challenge: How to Determine the "Right" Place

In past posts, I wrote about my challenges determining, for example, which "John Burke" is my grandfather and which is my 3rd great-grandfather and which is not a relative at all. Without having documentation like a family Bible or detailed photographs or even oral history, making sure I am satisfied that 'this one' is the right one and 'that one' is not has been the biggest challenge, along with the urge to pick 'this one' or 'that one.'

Another difficult and equally challenging task related to validating the correct person is location.

In the United States, we break down our geography into states, counties or parishes, and towns or cities. With very few exceptions, most of us live in a geographical location that can be determined by knowing these three locations. Take me as an example. How I would be located is as follows:

• State: Michigan
• County: Kent
• City: Caledonia or Dutton
• Street: Yes, there is one

I list two cities because the United States Postal Service has the authority and responsibility to determine the proper mailing address for every house or apartment. I live in a rural area outside the geographical boundaries of the Town of Caledonia, an incorporated city, or Dutton, an unincorporated cluster of buildings in Kent County. The Post Office authorized the use of either name for my home's mailing address.

Other countries have different geographical breakdown; England has been my focus for the past couple of years. (In the future, I will focus on Ireland and Scotland, the other two countries from which ancestors in different branches of my family tree hailed.) London, particularly, has been one of my focal points and I have learned that the breakdown is quite different. I will not go into details because, honestly, I do not have many - I am still learning - but there is a movie title that can give a clue to the complexity of my search.

Years ago, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant did a movie called "Notting Hill." Julia Roberts played a major American famous movie star; Hugh Grant played the owner of a small, not-very-profitable travel book store in the Notting Hill 'neighborhood' of London. The story is of the improbable and highly-unlikely love between them.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that one of my ancestors came from London, in the southeast part of England. Determining that s/he was from Notting Hill or not would be critical; just being from "London" would not be helpful in validating a name. It is a very large city with many neighborhoods with a high probability of finding like-named people all over England, especially during the late1800's and early 1900's, when a lot of international travel was taking place.

My ancestors hail from Manchester, another large English city and metropolitan borough, in the county of Lancashire, farther northwest, near Liverpool, with similar neighborhood or area names.

In situations like that, figuring out that 'this person' may be the right ancestor and 'that person' is not is critical. And challenging, sometimes seeming to be overwhelmingly difficult. I have learned much about how English cities are broken down and named and I have much, much more to learn. It is not easy keeping it straight, especially considering that changes have been made in the last 100 years.

But as I have said before, if genealogy was easy, there would be no field of study, no genealogical addicts...like me.

Basic Information: What Census Data Are Available?

From census.gov (even the cool tree):

"Although censuses are a source of genealogical information, the Census Bureau does not provide these data. The Census Bureau is not able to locate missing persons, or provide recent information on individuals.

By law, personally identifiable information collected for a decennial census is released to the public after 72 years. The National Archives released the 1940 census on April 2, 2012."

Though there are limitations, the site also contains other information on more recent census data. If you want to find out the most common surnames in the past few decennial censuses or what other genealogical-related information your government holds, check it out!

My Very First "Found" Relative!

As a reminder to any new readers, I was born to a father who was an only child and a mother who had only one never-married-and-childless sister. I grew up the son of a USAID diplomat in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey for most of my early and teenage years. I know more about my high school chums than my own family.

Consequently, I never developed strong ties to my extended USA family that many, if not most, families enjoy. I miss having those ties. As I age, connecting with my past has become more important; that is the primary reason I started my genealogical climb up my own family tree. Though all of my ancestors, my parents included, are dead, I want to do what I can to reconnect them and where they lived.

I remember hearing many names of people I have little or no memory of meeting, places I have heard about and only vaguely recall. I remember certain events that I even wonder if they ever happened anywhere but my mind. My ancestors left no written records, no verbal stories, and precious few photographs, many of which have nothing written on the back to indicate dates, names, or places. All told, with the exception of my own immediate family, four siblings and two parents, I have almost no past.

Until this week.

I have been a paid member of Ancestry.com for several years and have slowly and arduously working on my own tree in hopes of filling some of that empty past. This week, I got an email through the Ancestry site from a person who had a LOT of information about my past. Names, places, dates...it turns out she and I are cousins, the first one I have ever "met!" Her maiden name is the same as my paternal great-grandmother, Minnie Batty, to whom we are both related in different ways. She knew my father, FRED JAMES WILKINSON, who influenced her teaching/librarian career; they even went to the same Teachers College. She knows the name of a camp where he worked when I was just a toddler, of which I have only a vague memory, but a memory that includes a very strong image of me, a nap, a bed, a hornet's nest, and boys laughing. You probably can fill in some of the blanks pretty accurately.

My cousin has been working on her own family tree since 2008. She has siblings and many memories about our shared ancestors, starting with my Great Gramma Minnie. Already, many blanks have been filled in, many questions answered, and many points of confusion clarified.

And we have just started sharing information! She is a retire librarian and a much-more experienced genealogist than I am, so you can be assured I will pick her brain for those tidbits of information I need to fill out my tree.

After all, that is what it's all about. Well, and finding my cousins!

Oh, the Confusing Facts One Finds

Things can become confusing very quickly, if one does not pay close attention to the details and documentation as one goes along. Here is one example:

My great-grandmother, MINNIE BATTY, was born on 9 March 1898, in Manchester, Lancashire, England.

She appears for the first time in the 1901 England Census as a 3-year old living with her grandparents, my 3rd great-grandparents, WILLIAM and ELIZABETH RADCLIFF, and their children, ARTHUR, EMILY, FLORENCE, WILLIAM, and ELIZABETH, on Manchester Rd, Mossley, Lancashire.

But she does not live with her parents.

Her parents, my 2nd great-grandparents, SAMUEL and PAMELA BATTY, are also found in the 1901 England Census, but in an entirely different part of Manchester, the town of MINNIE's birth.

They live there with their other children (her siblings), ELIZABETH, HENRY, JAMES, ELSIE, ELY, and a couple of non-relative boarders at 17 Gibson St, South Manchester. The address is also confirmed with the baptism record for Elsie and Henry on 29 Aug 1900.

The clue is further muddied because MINNIE's grandparents' domicile on Manchester Rd, Mossley, has no house number listed on the Census, while the one in South Manchester does. I cannot determine if other people listed next on the Census list, but not related to the Head of the household, live there or next door.

One can only wonder why a parent would send a child to live in another part of Manchester with her grandparents, who already have a sizable family. One can guess, of course, that the reason is financial, but without serious digging, one might never know.

The 1901 England Census form does not include any indication if the houses are owned or rented, so this is one place an in-depth familiarity with the two locations at the time - or an in-person visit now - would be valuable. Without it, there are only guesses.

It will be interesting to track her living arrangements before her emigration to the United States in 1920. However, for a beginner, this is an important realization. Not all children live with their birth parents, even when both are living.

Entering Accurate Data Prevents Future Problems

One quickly learns that delving into ones past filled with immigrants who left no written records can lead to frustrating brick walls. As one who is new to genealogy, I regularly encounter brick walls relating to names of my ancestors and dates. I will cover both of those in this post.

Conflicting names

I watched a genealogy video this morning that gave me a hint of the possible reason for similar names. None of the records I found for my ancestors used the suffixes "Junior," "Senior," "II," "III," and so on, for their offspring (I am not even sure if these suffixes would appear in official documents) but I have lots of "John" and "Walter" Burkes with different middle names ... Edward, Francis, France, Henry, Michael and ... well, you get the picture. You probably have similar issues in your own tree.

Validating the names is critical to having an accurate tree. Making sense of them without specific validating documentation (things like property ownership, tax rolls, etc.) has proven to be challenging for me, making progress farther back into my history quite challenging. To recap:

• My maternal grandfather is John FRANCIS Burke; born 1891, died 1963
• His father, my great-grandfather, is John RICHARD Burke, born 1866, died 1941 (about age 25)
• His father, my 2nd great-grandfather, is also John RICHARD Burke, born 1846, died 1882 (about age 20)
• His father, my 3rd great-grandfather may be WALTER BURKE, born 1823 (about age 23); so far, I cannot validate any information about him, including his middle name.

Keeping the people and their names straight - to say nothing of accurate - requires special attention to my second focal area, dates.

Checking dates

Birth and death dates have to make some sense even to be considered, but they are often ignored as a beginner clicks and copies hints into ones tree. It is possible that a baby is born after the father died, but those facts should be rigorously validated. If an unvalidated name is put into a tree, the computer algorithms that generate possible hints will be skewed, inaccurate, or not found at all.

In looking closely at the one line of my family tree involving only one of my four direct grandfather ancestors listed above, I looked at the children born to ensure a true genealogical connection. What I found, instead, are seriously conflicting dates.

According to my tree, my 2nd great-grandfather, JOHN RICHARD BURKE (b. 1846, d. 1882) had these children. (The number in parentheses is his approximate age when the child was born.)

• John Richard, born 1866 (20)
• Michael Henry, born 1867 (21)
• Thomas F., born 1875 (29)
• Walter Edmund, born 1876 (30)
• Agnes Allusia, born 1877 (31)
• Catherine, born 1879 (33)
• Bridget, born 1882 (36)
• John, born 1883 (37)
• James, born 1885
• Bernard, born 1887
• Michael, born 1889
• Joseph, born 1892
• Martin, born 1895, and,
• Lizzie, born 1898

Checking the dates shows that all the names in italics are offspring that were born after their father's death in 1882.

While it is possible that Bridget and John were born after he died, in calendar years 1882 and 1883, whether that is true would depend on several factors falling neatly into place, including his June 1882 death and their birth months, which remain unvalidated. My investigator brain doubts the names after are related because I am pretty sure it is not possible for a child to be born of a parent three or more calendar years after his death, so I have more work to validate information and some "cleaning house" to be done.

Another suspicious entry is between MICHAEL HENRY, 1867, and THOMAS F, 1875. All other children are born a calendar year or two apart, but these are born eight years apart. It is possible there is a good reason for this, but for an Irish Catholic family, it would have to be related to the husband and wife being separated. It is possible, but this pair is also suspicious and needs additional validation to explain the difference in birth years.

I hope this gives a beginner a good picture into the dangers of adding names to a family tree and the importance of validating information before doing so. Be careful using those Ancestry.com (or any other) hints!