Tag: history

Find-A-Grave Community Day 2014, Part 1: Fernwood Cemetery

October 20, 2014 / tim / 2 Comments

The Lansdowne Find-A-Grave Meetup, gathered at Fernwood Cemetery for Community Day.

The Lansdowne Find-A-Grave Meetup, gathered for Community Day. Photo by sid, annotated by sneakersox.

This past Saturday, October 18th, was Find-A-Grave Community Day. I made myself useful and joined the Lansdowne meetup at Fernwood Cemetery in Yeadon. This fine historic cemetery is located just outside of West Philadelphia. Despite the best efforts of its friendly and helpful staff, 384 unfulfilled requests have been left to accumulate there. Local Find-A-Graver Jenn O. decided to do something about that, and so she organized the Lansdowne meetup using Fernwood cemetery maps that she accumulated after years of research, and burial locations culled from Ancestry.com’s Pennsylviana Church and Town records.

Eleven of us met at the cemetery at 10:00 for introductions, assignments, e-mail exchange, and a group photo. Two additional gravers joined us shortly thereafter. We each went off to separate sections to fulfill our assignments, and occasionally met one another out in the field and shared our successes. Most of us continued photographing until about two o’clock.

Find-A-Graver CLC cameos in this photo of the Beath family monument.

We didn’t plan to reconvene after the event. For next time, I’m submitting a motion to meet up afterwards for pizza and stories. Despite not having reconvened at the cemetery after the event, we have since re-connected by e-mail, and we are looking forward to future Find-A-Grave meetup events.

Fernwood’s Find-A-Grave stats, as of Saturday morning were 10757 interments and 384 photo requests. It’s current stats, as of noontime, Monday, October 20, are: 11,136 interments and 298 photo requests, and that is despite 11 new requests having been entered since the start of the event. Needless to say, we put a rather large dent in Fernwood’s requests list, and substantially expanded its database. Many thanks to Jenn O. for organizing the meetup, and for my other fellow gravers for their great work!

I was quite pleased with the way many of my own photo contributions turned out. After finishing my assignments there, I rolled on over to my favorite adopted cemetery, Philadelphia National Cemetery, and many took more photos there. Those photos will be the subject of the sequel to this post, due out later this week. For now, enjoy my contributions to Find-A-Grave Community Day with the Lansdowne Meetup!: Continue reading

Command Line Genealogy: Filtering City Directories from Archive.org

October 4, 2014 / tim / 0 Comments

The 1848 Philadelphia City Directory, filtered on the Linux command line to show all entries that include the word 'Montgomery'.

The 1848 Philadelphia City Directory, filtered to show all entries that include the word ‘Montgomery’.

Fear not! It’s easier than you think!

☞ Background: I want a concise list of everyone who lived on Montgomery Avenue in Philadelphia in 1848.

I have a cemetery return for a baby girl named Mary Pickersgill, who died in 1848 and was buried in the now-defunct Mutual of Kensington Cemetery, in the then-newly consolidated city of Philadelphia. I suspect she is a lost sister of my great-great-great-grandfather, who was born William Harrison Pickersgill in February of 1846. The parents of these children, especially their father, is mysterious. Continue reading

52 Ancestors, No. 15: Bridget McShane, Irish Woman of Property

April 15, 2014 / tim / 0 Comments

This week I offer the third installment of my McShane series, as I am still compiling McShane family documents for my great aunt and uncle, in between other tasks. There may be another installment next week, depending on whether I can wrap up the project this week. Today’s subject is Bridget McShane, the matriarch of my branch of the McShane family in America. Among her children were my third great-grandfather, Patrick McShane, and Villanova University President Fr. Francis J. McShane, O. S. A. Continue reading

Moderate Restoration: Creases, Cracking, and Tape

November 26, 2013 / tim

This is a picture of the client’s mother and uncles in Virginia in 1942. The original was small, only about 3¾ inches tall. Don’t let that deceive you. It was more work as my previous moderate restoration because I had to clean a lot those little cracks out of intricate places, like the care and the baby’s white outfit.