How many cousins?
Saturday March 14 2020
I have been working on the Curtis family history narrative and, believe me, it is a ton of work! How many cousins can we have, anyway? Generations 1, 2 and 3 were not too bad but Generation 4? Sheesh!
This generation lists the Great-Grandchildren of Jesse & Nancy Curtis. What I do is this: check that I have a good source document for birth, death and marriage. Check the census records and other items (city directories, graves, etc) to make sure I've found all I can. Then I write a short narrative about each of these people and include photos and interesting documents. The plan is that I can then send out the generation to my family members for placement in their family book. Sounds easy, right?
No! Jesse and Nancy had 8 known children. Of those, one son is unknown and two had no children. So that leaves 5 families. These families had a total of 25 children (Jesse's Grandchildren). Then they had…107 children!
OK…so Jesses & Nancy have 107 Great-Grandchildren. Amazing! What's even better is when I find one of those "unknown" children. They were born and died young and no one bothered to mention them to anyone. I found a set of twins in our line - one died at childbirth and one a year later of croup - that no one in our family knew about.
So I had to start a different way of writing this and I wanted to be consistent throughout the book. But that isn't working because of finding a few more "unknowns" along the way. Hopefully my family continues to be patient with this generation!
But I am finding out cool things…like several of them were shoemakers. One was her high school valedictorian and I found a copy of her speech! A lot of them married brothers & sisters in other local families, creating quite a cross-over, and several of them married cousins on other lines. I wonder if they knew they were cousins? One cousin married an aunt on our grand-mother's side! Many are buried in the same cemetery as their siblings and parents. And some moved far, far away from their families.
I always find it interesting that some people have a lot of information and others have very little. And there are photos out there of some of the family and interesting stories as well. I have pretty much exhausted the Hackers' Creek Descendants Library for these generations as well.
The other thing I am trying to do is get the ancestors for the women's side of our family. I was able to complete that for our Great-Great-Grandmother Josinah Rinehart. There were really good records due to all the Germans coming into PA. But the next Generation, Lula Parrack Curtis, has presented lots and lots of difficulties. Not so many good records to trace and poor documentation. Still, I think I can get a pretty good lineage for her family.
Anyway, I am currently still working on the first son of Jesse' that had children and grandchildren. This has been going on for over a year. I may send out the first "batch" and give everyone something to read in the meantime!
This generation lists the Great-Grandchildren of Jesse & Nancy Curtis. What I do is this: check that I have a good source document for birth, death and marriage. Check the census records and other items (city directories, graves, etc) to make sure I've found all I can. Then I write a short narrative about each of these people and include photos and interesting documents. The plan is that I can then send out the generation to my family members for placement in their family book. Sounds easy, right?
No! Jesse and Nancy had 8 known children. Of those, one son is unknown and two had no children. So that leaves 5 families. These families had a total of 25 children (Jesse's Grandchildren). Then they had…107 children!
OK…so Jesses & Nancy have 107 Great-Grandchildren. Amazing! What's even better is when I find one of those "unknown" children. They were born and died young and no one bothered to mention them to anyone. I found a set of twins in our line - one died at childbirth and one a year later of croup - that no one in our family knew about.
So I had to start a different way of writing this and I wanted to be consistent throughout the book. But that isn't working because of finding a few more "unknowns" along the way. Hopefully my family continues to be patient with this generation!
But I am finding out cool things…like several of them were shoemakers. One was her high school valedictorian and I found a copy of her speech! A lot of them married brothers & sisters in other local families, creating quite a cross-over, and several of them married cousins on other lines. I wonder if they knew they were cousins? One cousin married an aunt on our grand-mother's side! Many are buried in the same cemetery as their siblings and parents. And some moved far, far away from their families.
I always find it interesting that some people have a lot of information and others have very little. And there are photos out there of some of the family and interesting stories as well. I have pretty much exhausted the Hackers' Creek Descendants Library for these generations as well.
The other thing I am trying to do is get the ancestors for the women's side of our family. I was able to complete that for our Great-Great-Grandmother Josinah Rinehart. There were really good records due to all the Germans coming into PA. But the next Generation, Lula Parrack Curtis, has presented lots and lots of difficulties. Not so many good records to trace and poor documentation. Still, I think I can get a pretty good lineage for her family.
Anyway, I am currently still working on the first son of Jesse' that had children and grandchildren. This has been going on for over a year. I may send out the first "batch" and give everyone something to read in the meantime!