December 2011
29 posts
8 tags
Happy Holidays from Ancestry.com
With the holidays in full swing, and Christmas only a day away, I’m sure everyone is preparing their home for a festive holiday, or possibly traveling to spend time with friends and family afar. Either way, the holidays are a time when we think of family, how important they are in our to us, and cherish the time we get to spend with everyone.
At Ancestry.com, we want to wish you and your...
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Elopement
I had searched the UK records, without success, for the marriage of my great grandfather Samuel Drew to Jane Harris. My father, uncle, aunt could throw no light on the matter. Great grandfather’s stepmother had written in the family “register” that “Samuel Drew left for a ferran land 7th April 1867”. The ship leaving that day for America was the North American,...
Ned Kelly and the 'mssing' James Babington
I thought you might like to know of my ‘discovery’ of a ‘missing’ brother (James Babington) of my Irish great grandfather George Babington (1826-1901) thanks to this James Babington’s dealings with the Victoria, Australia bush-ranger Ned Kelly. The story in my Babington family is that my great grandfather George and a brother named James had planned to go to Australia...
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From Belgium to the US and back
I’ve being searching for my ancestors now for 31 years, and with the help of Ancestry. the past 4-5 years. A cousin in Moline IL found me searching the family in the US and Can. She never knew what she was in for. Here in Belgium most people get back in history to Napoleon years, then it stops. Well I did got a little bit further. My root father and here mothers line of the family,was...
My great grandfather's mystery solved
Someone posted my great grandfather’s death certificate on ancestry.com a couple of months ago. I have been to Arkansas and Baton Rouge trying to find information on him after he divorced my great grandmother in 1904. Still not sure if he had other descendents but this is great info!
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Grandparents marriage
I never knew exactly when my paternal grandparents were married. All I had ever seen was 1906 in San Francisco, CA. I knew that my dad had been born 7/15/1907 in San Francisco, CA, but never had a birth certificate for him.
Last year my sons got my husband and I round trip tickets and a weeks accomodations in San Francisco for my 65th birthday. We went this past April and I started searching...
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Ask Ancestry Anne: Just Because It Looks Wrong,...
I was doing a bit of research for a friend on an ancestor named Amos Owens. He was born in Rutherford, North Carolina, about 1821, and he died there in 1906. All of his census records are in Rutherford, but I couldn’t find one for him there in 1880.
One result did pop up for him, but the residence, was Albany, New York. It just didn’t seem right. But a negative fine is just as...
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Ask Ancestry Anne: What is a relict?
Question: One of my ancestor’s obituaries lists her as a “relict” possibly of my gggrandfather. What does this mean? Thanks
Answer: A relict is a widow who has not remarried.
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Fearlessness and Forged Signatures
My late grandmother Eleanor Agnes Fazzone Stanton, she of the bird legs and long nose I inherited, was born on December 7, 1914. A day that would eventually live in infamy. Today marks the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt exhorted Americans that they had nothing to fear but fear itself.
Nana encouraged a similar fearlessness in me, particularly in the...
My Dad, Whit Criswell Bryan, was proud of his service in the Navy. A Chief Petty Officer (HMC), he was a veteran of three wars and a Pearl Harbor survivor. Dad was a pharmacist mate stationed at Mobile Naval Hospital #2 about 800 feet above Pearl Harbor on Aiea Heights. He arrived at the Mobile Naval Hospital #2 on December 1, 1941 where all of the medical staff was charged with building the...
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My Dad, Jack
Jackson Parker Centers, my dad, was born in 1918, and joined the US Navy in 1937. He was first assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, and was still aboard when the ship was tied at Pearl. Dad didn’t speak much about the attack because he lost many friends aboard, but what he did say, enhanced by news articles and military records speak much about the man who was my father.
He had just...
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Carroll Joseph Oliver, USN, Retired
My son joined the Navy in 1989. In 1991, the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I asked my uncle — who had been there — to write a memoir of the event for my son. This is what my uncle had to say about December 7, 1941.
written by Carroll Joseph Oliver, USN, Retired (The Oliver family lived in Haddonfield, New Jersey; “Uncle Ollie” was born October 10, 1919.)
I enlised...
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Close Call
My Uncle James Gunter and his two best friends, brothers Charles and Melvin Murdock were from Grove Oak a little town in northern, Alabama. They were wet behind the ears teenagers who were filled with excitement at he prospect of seeing the world. They enlisted at the same time and ironically were all stationed on the USS Arizona. In late November 1941 my uncle found out that he was being...
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Late Arrival to Pearl Harbor
My father, Jack Pearce Jones, was living in Hemphill, TX on Dec.6, 1941. He was a lineman for the telephone company which his father owned and my mother was the operator. They were married on December 7, 1940. At some point on Dec. 7, 1942 my mother and father went home to eat and my grandparents were both home. My grandfather was the recruiting officer for three counties. He told my parents...
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Ask Ancestry Anne: What does CC mean in the 1810...
Questions: I am (along with a lot of others) struggling to prove the parents of my 4ggrandfather Henry Pitts. There are 3 Henry Pitts living in Newberry Co, SC but I know my Henry died in 1817.
The 1810 census lists Henry Pitts and just below him John Pitts (presumably his son John) and after each name is CC or EC or maybe GC. This is not shown on the 1790 census, do you know what it...
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Pearl Harbor Stories: A Day in the Life of a 13...
She always got up early to have breakfast with her Dad. That Sunday was no different. Blanche and her Dad, Louis, were having a quiet breakfast in the kitchen while the rest of the family slept. Then, oddly, there were planes flying down the gulch behind the house outside the window. Her Dad said that they were Japanese Zeros and jumped up and ran to the phone in the living room. He called...
We heard the news
I was 7 years old and my mother, sister and I were visiting relatives. I was sitting on the floor in front of the big radio as we were listening to a Sunday broadcast. It was interupted by President Roosevelt making the annoucement that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed by the Japanese. To this day I can still see that scene with the radio and all my family.
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Ask Ancestry Anne: Who Are Ethel's Parents?
Question: For years I was under the assumption that my grandmother, Ethel Hall Burtchell, was the child of Wealthy Hall Burtchell and Walter D. Burtchell. Ethel was born on October 13, 1895, presumably in Brooklyn, but I have not had any luck in finding a birth certificate for her with either the name Hall or Burtchell. What makes this more complicated is that I found a newspaper announcement of...
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Irvin's Story: Standing by the Oklahoma
I got temporary duty to the mine school. It was for two months, and then I was to report back to the Oklahoma. That was my key toward getting over to the Asiatic Fleet. This was November 1941. I stayed at the mine school barracks right by the submarine base. To me, those were beautiful barracks with neat rows of bunk beds. The barracks were right above the mess hall. There must have been fifty...
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Ask Ancestry Anne: How do I find records on Native...
One of the most common questions that I get in my Ancestry Anne mailbox is:
How do I find records on Native Americans? How do I prove so and so was a Native American?
Well, I’m going to cheat. :-)
Check out Crista Cowan’s discussion on this very subject at:
Native American Ancestry on Ancestry.com
Happy Searching!
Ancestry Anne
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Arriving on December 7
My mother and her three year old daughter arrived in Pearl Harbour on the SS Dickenson just as the first bombs fell in the harbour. She had been evacuated from Fanning Island in the Line Islands due to the risk of Germany attacking the island as they did in WW1.
The crew and passengers on the Dickenson were watching the events, wondering if the U.S. Air Force was being too enthusiastic
in their...
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Hey, I was there!
In 1941 my family lived in the town of Kalehe in Honolulu, Hawaii. My dad was a Chief Petty Officer stationed at Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941 about 7 a.m., my sister Ima Jean and I were playing outside on the roof of a neighborhood taxi stand waiting for our dad to come home and join us for breakfast. He was port duty officer and had to stay on board to hand out liberty passes on Sunday...
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How Pearl Harbor Changed My Family
My father, Adrian Gerard Sira, moved to Hawaii from New Jersey in 1934 during the height of the Depression in search of a job. He was a widower with an infant daughter named Elaine whom he left with his first wife’s parents on Long Island to raise because he could not cope with being jobless. His intention was to bring Elaine out to Hawaii with his second wife, my mother, as soon as he got...
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Watching from a Kitchen Window
I was 23 days short of my 5th birthday on December 7, 1941. My father, Oren S. Blennerhassett, was stationed at Wheeler Field.
My mother first saw the hangars down the street burning. We then saw the Japanese planes flying overhead from our kitchen window. Being so small I could see the pilots in their leather helmets from where I was in the adjoining room. We had a very large picture window...
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Pearl Harbor Clinched It
My father was a medical officer on a ship patrolling the west coast of South America when Pearl Harbor was bombed. His ship was harbored in Callao, Peru.
He had been dating a woman who he hoped to marry. Pearl Harbor clinched it. He called her at her family’s home in Manhattan and proposed.
Dad’s ship was headed for Vallejo later in December. My mother did not want to miss Christmas with...
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Grandpa Enlisted ... and the Japanese Quickly...
My grandfather, Marion Berness Brady (left, with brothers Elwood and Keith), never talked about his war experiences … with one exception. This was a story he took great delight in retelling and always in the third person: “On the 6th of December, 1941, Berness and Elwood Brady joined the United States Marine Corps. The next day, the Japanese retaliated.”
I always doubted that Grandpa and his...
