Tag: Philadelphia

Vindicating an Ancestor: My Recent Visit to the National Archives of Philadelphia

August 23, 2015 / tim / 0 Comments

Liar, liar. Pants on fire.

The newspapers at FultonHistory.com have a way of busting my bubble. Just when I get to thinking about how clean all of my perfect ancestors’ hands were, along comes a FultonHistory.com article to sully them. I call it “The Bad News Report”. So far, the bad news has been that an ancestor of mine hit somebody with a car. To date, I believe the investigations have found no fault, but it’s still unfortunate to read.

My most recent Fulton discovery turned up something a little more criminally culpable. “William P. Harrison,” an article from the first day of March, 1898, stated, “pleaded guilty to a fraud in a pension matter,” and was sentenced to one year in prison by “Judge Butler”.

My grandmother’s great-grandfather was named William P. Harrison, who served honorably in the Civil War before marrying his wife, Harriet, and fathering five children with her. He worked as a car inspector for the Pennsylvania Rail Road for most of his adult life. To the best of my knowledge, William was a model American citizen. Continue reading

Find-A-Grave Community Day 2014, Part 2: Philadelphia National Cemetery

October 30, 2014 / tim / 0 Comments

Aron Mackiey’s landscape photo turned out rather well. His marker is at left.

I wrote last week about the fine time I had with the Lansdowne meetup for Find-A-Grave Community Day at Fernwood Cemetery. We have kept quite good contact since then, and now have a keen mailing list were we keep our discussion topics in order. One of these topics, if I’m not prematurely announcing it, is a return to Fernwood Cemetery as a group in late November to continue whittling away at the rather large photo request list that still remains.

I also wrote of an expected sequel to that post, and I’d like to deliver on that prognostication. Continue reading

52 Ancestors, No. 18: Minnie Anflick, A Mother Worth Fighting For

May 7, 2014 / tim / 0 Comments

I’m enjoying a nice little vacation this week, but taking a vacation from my vacation to publish this blog on Ancestor No. 18, my maternal grandfather’s mother. She was born Minnie Snyder in what was once the Russian Empire, sometime in the early 1890s. Telling exactly when she was born is difficult. I suspect that several of the young ladies on this branch of the family falsified their ages on official documents, such as marriage records. Suffice to say, the birth dates on the documents vary widely. Immigration documents place her residence at the time of emigration in a place called Mogilev. There are a few places with that name, the most well known of which, I believe, is in Belarus. There is another place, in what is now the Ukraine, called Mogilev-Podolskiy. I suspect Minnie was from the latter because of its proximity to the birthplace of her future husband’s family, and also because of its strong Jewish heritage, but I’m not completely sure in which of the towns she lived. 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

52 Ancestors, No. 3: John P. Boland

January 20, 2014 / tim / 0 Comments

Maybe I’m front-loading my list with family superstars whom I truly admire. I think you’ll begin to see, however, that no story is too small, as Amy Johnson Crow will remind us. To the contrary, I think the heroism of my everyday ancestors will reveal itself once it is properly showcased beside the legends. All stories are big, in a way.