A cool tree you can find at: http://www.bespokecustomgifts.com/personalized-gifts/Type-of-Gift/Artwork/diy-peacock-family-tree-personalized.

A lot has changed in the 15 years I have been pursuing our family’s history. Many resources are easier to find and access, digitization of records has improved greatly, and more people than ever have jumped on the genealogy bandwagon.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that all these folks want to research their family’s history, and I want to encourage anyone who is interested to dip their toe in the water. But the problem is the majority of these newbies seem to think all they have to do is copy the data from one person’s tree to their own and violà they are done. Sorry, but true genealogy is actually hard work. But work that us true genealogist really enjoy.

The only reason I bring this up is, first I find it extremely annoying to see more and more of these trees online and second, this is lazy genealogy for which I have no patience or respect.

Case in point. I am trying to prove that Thomas R. Stackpole, my 3x great grandfather on my Shepard side, is indeed the son of Richard and Margaret Stackpole. To do this I have been researching land records for Harrison and Marion Counties in Virginia/West Virginia where Richard and Margaret were living during a certain time period. I was hoping to find land records related to Richard and Thomas that might connect them. Well I didn’t, but I did find a land record from 1852 showing Richard and Margaret selling their property which was located on the Teverbaugh River in Marion County, but they were living in Tyler County at the time the deed was created. The 1850 census shows them living in Marion County. (This census also has a son Thomas living with them, but the age doesn’t quite match, so I have never been sure that this was my Thomas.) So sometime between 1850 and 1852 the Richard Stackpole family picked up and moved to Tyler County.

Thomas Stackpole married Lydia Lemasters in Tyler County in 1851, a daughter, Dorcas, who had been listed in the 1850 census record, also married in 1851, to a Christopher Sees.

In 1854 in Marion County, John Stackpole is selling land he inherited to a Richard Stackpole, jr. Neither of these two persons are as of yet connected to Richard, sr., but the fact that one of them is a junior and the property being sold is on Teverbaugh River in Marion County, and John lived in Tyler County, makes a strong argument that Richard, sr. is indeed their father and he had died by 1854. The 1860 census appears to meld these different bit of data together even closer. Margaret is living with Dorcas and Richard is no where to be found. A few pages away in this same census we find John Stackpole, Dallas LeMasters(my 2x great gramps), whose daughter Lydia married Thomas, Thomas Stackpole and other Lemasters families, all related. Putting all these bits together is making for a very strong argument. But, there is still more work to do, only now all in Tyler County.

What has all this got to do with lazy genealogy? Well, I am working hard on the research to try to make the connection and will continue to do so until I am satisfied with the results whatever they may be. All of the trees that I keep finding online for Richard and Margaret have merely copied someone else’s tree, and all have the same exact incorrect information, which includes his death, with no apparent effort to actually do the research themselves. Lazy. Not only lazy, but these trees make for a useless resource for helping others with their research.

This is just one example. I don’t have the time or the energy to list all the others.

I was going through my video files recently and thought to myself, “Jen, why are you keeping all these videos and not doing anything with them?” So Self and I decided to post them all on my flickr account, for everyone to enjoy or not. After all they are homemade videos the curse of family gatherings where everyone groans “Not again!!”

Emil Hamm, youngest son of George and Amelia Hamm

On the 14th of January, 1910, Emil G. Hamm plead guilty to the crime of abusing a female child under the age of sixteen. On January 26th he was brought before the Grand Jury in Duluth and convicted by Judge Hughes. He was sentenced to the St. Cloud Reformatory for 1-7 years.

Emil’s case file indicates he left home at the age of 19 to better himself. According to his own account he went to Harvard, North Dakota for about 4 weeks and then came back home. Next he taught at the school in Whittlesey, Wisconsin for about a year and by the late spring of 1907 he had moved to Duluth, Minnesota. Other accounts in the record indicate he was actually employed at at least one other town in Minnesota before he appears in Duluth.

He was living at 213 1/2 Third Ave. in a boarding house run by Mary E. Chisholm. Also living in the boarding house was a young girl by the name of Martha Tohantele, she had been fostered by Mrs. Chisholm.

It was in December of 1909 that Martha was found to be pregnant, at the age of 14. Emil was the father.

He was arrested and thrown into the hoosegow. At the hearing his lawyer put forth the following argument:

“Your Honor, this appears to me to be a very unfortunate case for this man, and he has expressed to me a desire to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the Court. He has stated that he had no opportunity to communicate with the girl and the complaining witness in this case; that he desire to do the manly thing if it is possible to do so. He has stated to me that he was willing to take care of this child and to marry the girl if possible, and, if possible, before he would serve any sentence that might be passed upon him. It seems to me this man’s record is dry clear; that it is a case where it wold be very proper for the Court to exercise mercy and give the man a chance to redeem the wrong which he has done. I believe he would like to state his intentions to the Court in the matter in his own words. I have nothing more to say at this time.”

The prosecuting attorney’s statement:

“ As counsel has said, this is a very unfortunate case; it is unfortunate both for the defendant and for his victim. He is a rather prepossessing young man and evidently must have some good qualities about him or he would not be engaged in a mercantile establishment like Marshall-Wells.
    He was rooming up here at a place where this young girl stops. The people there had sort of taken her, adopted her or taken her in. I don’t know as they had ever legally adopted her but they had taken her into their home, Mrs. Chisholm, a widow lady, who lives there with her son.
    This girl is only 14 years and 6 months old and is not of the highest order of intelligence. This young man roomed there and I understand that for about four months he has been having illicit intercourse with her, which resulted in pregnancy, and unless something happens to her, she will, in the due course of time, give birth to a child. I think that is her condition. I think it was her condition that first enabled the people to discover the situation.
    He is 22 years old age; old enough to have known better, and under those circumstances it does not appeal very strongly to me for the court to apply any great degree of leniency to this man. I think the girl and the woman ought to be respected and if people do not know enough and have not got control enough over their passions to keep them within proper and reasonable limits, that the law out to set them an example so that those things will note recurr too frequently.
    As to his marrying her and making such degree of reparations as is within his power, that is something, with which, of course, I have nothing to do. I do not know what is best but I do not think that the Court ought to allow any desire or inclination upon the part of the defendant to interfere with swift and remedial justice.”

Emil’s attorney asked for probation as he had no previous record. The judge asked Emil if he had anything to say before sentence:

“I wish to say that if I had a chance I would marry the girl and save her from disgrace and save the child from disgrace and give it a name. If not now, I wish to say that I will do the same thing after I serve my sentence; I will marry the child in any case; whether before or after. I would like to have a chance to do it before so as to save the girl and save the child.”

The pleas of Emil and his attorney didn’t sway the Judge:

“Under the statute for the offense to which you have entered a plea of guilty you could be punished by prisonment into the penitentiary for the period of seven years. There is not very much in this case to warrant the court in exercising leniency with you. You see[m] to be a young man that has had opportunities; you have had a high school course and was graduated there from; you have taught school and held positions on the fire department and have been with the Marshall-Wells Hardware Company. You cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for your offense. You had such an upbringing that you ought to and undoubtedly did know better.
    The court possibly ought to give you a penitentiary sentence. it appears, however, that this is your first offense so I will not do so. You understand, of course, that after you serve the sentence imposed upon you, that if you again transfers that there is nothing for you but the penitentiary. Possibly you should have that now.
    Your offer to make amends comes a little too late. If you wanted to marry the girl you had an opportunity of waiting until she arrived at that legal age where you could. This is one of the crimes that merits punishment and the one who commits it should be punished.”

St. Cloud Reformatory, Minnesota

During Emil’s stay at St. Cloud, the Superintendant was writing to various acquaintances and previous employers of Emil’s to gather evidence for his parole hearing. In these papers was a letter to the Catholic School in Graceville, Minnesota, a town Emil was working in before he settled in Duluth. Apparently he had been found to be in correspondence with a young lady of 17 by the name of Alice Keefie, he was promising to marry her, telling her he loved her, she was writing back the same. It was recommended that the correspondence be stopped, and it appears that it was, as there are no more letters related to the matter. Which begs the question of just how ‘innocent’ was he?

The majority of replies to his character appeared to be positive, although his last place of employment wasn’t satisfied with his work and was going to be firing him before he was incarcerated. Otherwise he was an all around good guy. Except for his unfortunate affinity for young girls.

Letter from George Hamm to the Superintendant regarding  his son’s character:

Mrs. Chisholm also had her chance to vent her feelings on the matter, (this letter is typed exactly as seen):

“Duluth MN April 9, 1910

Dear Sir in reply to yours of the 4 all i can say is he cirtenely ronged my little girl she will be 15 year the 2 of July she was a little girl i tuck out of the home to be a mother to her but he runed her he was a snake in the grass to think he lived rite in my house and ceped this up for i dont no how long i tuck him for a gentel man but he is a very bad man or he never would have runed that child now poor little girl tha tuck her a way from me and now i cant hear from her to no if ? or good to the poor child if she had a father he would shote him you think what you would do if it was youre daughter he never would tell truth i don’t think and he was very good at ?? to have other yong men drink with him and his associates i can’t tell you nothing but only he had 4 or 5 girls and told them all he loved them and wanted to marri them”

As to Martha, a group of women in the area raised about $100 dollars to send her to an orphanage, which then sent her to the Maternity Hospital in Winnipeg, Canada. A facility run by nuns. I have been unable, as yet, to find out what happened to Martha and the child, which was due in June of 1910.

While in prison he was evaluated by a doctor several times over the course of his stay. The overall consensus was he was mild mannered, general character good, although his morals had declined in the last year or two, his only vices being he smoked tobacco and he had an unfortunate penchant for brothels. His mother would have been proud.

He was released on parole December 17 of the same year and by July 6, 1911 he was discharge or released from his sentence. Part of his parole agreement was he had to go live with his mother. I am not sure if he actually did that, as his monthly report to his parole office showed him working at the Merchant Hotel in St. Paul checking meals in the kitchen and then working as a night watchman.

He was sending $5.00 a month for support to Martha. He indicated in the records that he wished to find Martha and marry her and take care of the child. At this time do not no if any of that occurred. I can find no evidence that Martha ever existed in any official records, most likely because of her age.

The Maternity Hospital where she was sent is still in operation, under a different mandate and name, but I am hoping that they will still have records of her.

By 1913 or 1914 Emil was married to Rebecca Perusse and living in Duluth. He had three children with her.

Duluth News Tribune, 4/15/1920, vol. 51, issue 335, page 1.

I don’t know what would have been worse, the illness or the trip to the hospital. This just makes me very thankful for our modern conveniences.

I had a humorous and slightly embarrassing email from Freiderike this week – as she informed me she wasn’t a guy! I knew I should have been a better student of German, I would have realized the ‘e’ at the end of her name was significant.

But all is better now and the confusion is cleared up. The ‘lady’ who has been so kind as to assist me in my Isserstedt research sent me records for 4 of Fred’s brothers and sisters, which may be all he had.

They were:

1. Johann Heinrich Isserstedt, 1812?
2. Carl Friedrich Gottlieb Isserstedt, 1812? (died 3 June 1897) 
3. Marie Sophia Isserstedt, 1816
4. Johanna Maria Christiana Isserstedt, 1824?

Here are the images. Can you figure out which one is which?

As today is Memorial Day, I thought it only appropriate to share this. It is a wonderful little find from last week.

In preparation for my trip to SLC this coming Saturday – yes, it is coming up fast – I was going over my game plan to make sure I was properly prepared. One of the surnames I will be researching this time is SMITH, this SMITH line will be Susanna Smith Shepard’s. I know her parents names and most of her siblings. One of her brothers was a gentleman named Kinzey Smith. Because of the more unique nature of the name I was checking to see if I could find anything online about him.

One of the hits in my search was FindAGrave, an excellent resource. There was a Kinsman “Kinzey” Smith listed, whose date of birth matched what I had in my records. So when I clicked on the link, up popped his entry, which included a picture of two men.

Here’s the kicker.

One of the men in the picture, looked exactly like one of the Shepard pictures I had scanned a few years ago and uploaded to Flickr. Not similar, exactly. So a read of the caption told me that this was a picture of brothers Charles and Kinzey Smith, both veterans of the Civil War. Charles had fought for the Union side, Kinzey joined the Confederates.

One can only image the family conversations on that subject. I haven’t done any research on either man yet. But in honor of their service I present them to you.

Charles is on the left and Kinzey is on the right. You will notice Kinzey has a hand missing, the result of a Fourth of July celebration gone wrong. You know what they say about playing with fire-crackers.

Here is the image that our family has had passed down to us:

I had thought that maybe this was Hartley Shepard, but now I know different.

And now I have pictures of three of the Smith family. Here’s Susanna my ggg grandmother:

This was pulled off the Deem Family website. It is an extremely bad copy, but the best I can do.

Have an excellent Memorial Day. We plan on ribs and great weather.

Last month FamilyTreeDNA had a huge sale on their testing kits. Not being rich, it took me a short while to decide on which upgrade I was going to invest. I decided on the familyfinder test for my husband. This is the test that shows ones ethnic breakdown.

Well, the results came in today. It appears he is 100% European – Orcadian. Orkney is part of Scotland. Imagine my surprise, after all he is half German and half Polish, what the heck?

Ahh, but Scotland was invaded by Vikings and apparently tests of the genetic make-up of the males currently living in Orkney indicates a strong Scandinavian influence.

So while his genetic make-up is Orcadian, the reason is most likely because of Vikings.

I am including a link to an interesting website that talks about Orkney’s genetic heritage. http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/vikingorkney/genetics.htm

I have been through the microfilm of the Norwegian Holden Lutheran Church 2 1/2 times looking for entries for the John Stianson and Kari Gunlechsdatter’s family. John and Kari did not attend, or become members of this church. But 5 of their children or their families did.

In fact, I have been able to glean from the research in to this church’s records that the only children of John and Kari’s who do not appear to have emigrated to America are Stian, the eldest son, and the youngest daughter Sigri, (although the jury is still out on her). Three of the eldest daughter, Marriken’s, children were confirmed in the church, but I can find no evidence of her or her husband living in Goodhue County. But then again with a name like John Olson, it can be a daunting search.

So it appears that pretty much the whole family came to America, leaving the eldest son to farm in Norway.

The first appearance of the family in Minnesota, was actually Ingeborg and her husband Halvor Einerson. They came over in 1852, about 20 years earlier than the rest of the family. However, they lived in Dane County, Wisconsin for a few years, before heading over to Goodhue County, Minnesota. They are found in the Blue Mound, Dane County, 1855 census for Wisconsin, and their child Peter was born there. Shortly after that is when they moved a little bit more west.

Anne Karine and her husband Knud Stianson moved to South Dakota in the 1880s, Knud died in1887 of what is believed to be yellow fever. Anne never married again, but stayed in SD. Gunlech her brother headed out to South Dakota for a few years where some of his children moved, but he moved back to Minnesota and lived out his life there. The rest of the family also stayed in Minnesota. Ingeborg died in 1904, Anne Marie died between 1895 and 1900, Jorgina died in 1907, Gunlech in 1927 and we believe Ann Karine died in 1928 in an insane asylum. Her daughter Carrie also died in the same asylum, they were there at the same time, although Carrie died 10 years later.

John Stianson and Kari Gunlechdatter’s children:1. Marriken m. John Olson
2. Ingeborg m. Halvor Einerson
3. Anne Marie m. Tolv Nelson
4. Kari Jorgina m. Amund Amundson
5. Stian
6. Gunlech m. Anne Thorbjorbsdatter
7. Anne Karine m. Knud Stianson
8. Sigri

They actually had three other children who all died at the age of 2 or less. Unfortunately neither Jorgina nor Amund, my ancestors, bothered to become members of this church either. But I do know they were married in Leon, so that is my next stop for church records.

My old man is not the slightest bit interested in his family history. That’s okay, it just makes less work for me. (Like he would do any of that research.) But for those folks on the Bumann side who do read my blog, just to be nice, I decided to post this little tidbit that I thought would be of interest to them.

Below is the ship passenger list of the Bumann ancestor that arrived in the US in 1865, along with his family and children. They eventually ended up in Marathon County, Wisconsin.

Passenger list from the SS Hermann January 4th, 1865. The Bumanns are lines 263-266 the list includes Alois, Ursula, Eduard and Emma. The line of descent for your Bumanns is Alois and Ursula to Eduard, all from Rust, Baden, Germany.

John Carrington, a 33 year old carpenter, arrived in New England in 1635 and settled in Wethersfield, Connecticut with his wife and several children. Sometime in 1649-1650 he and his wife were accused by their fellow citizens of witchcraft. The circumstances of the accusations are unknown as there is no testimonial record of the trial.

The indictment and conviction of the Carringtons: A Particular Court in Hartford upon the trial of John Carrington and his wife 20th February 1650.

Magistrates at the trial included Mr. [John] Webster, who later became Governor of Connecticut and was our ancestor, as was one of the probable jurors, Edward Griswold, as he served on several similar witch trials in the same time period he probably also served on this one.