Genie Road Trip

Since I briefly mentioned her… This is the family of my 2nd Great Aunt, Pearl Elizabeth Packer Jones, my Great-Grandmother Cora’s older sister. Pictured are Pearl, her  first husband Raymond E. Jones and their daughters Alexia, Doris (on Raymond’s lap) and Edith. The photo is likely taken in Grand Rapids, MI around 1915 (based on Doris’s age). Raymond died in 1937 and for a time Cora and her children moved in with them. Eventually, Pearl married Archie McComb and the couple removed to Quebec. Pearl returned to Grand Rapids late in life and died there in 1980.

I was able to take a day last week to do a daytrip to Kent County, Michigan to visit another one of my favorite collections—Grand Rapids Public Library’s History and Special Collections Department at the Main Library. It’s been years since I’ve been there to research and took me a little while to get oriented but I was able to answer some of the questions I’d hoped to. For example—and this is for Denise and Gran… Aunt Pearl (Packer) McComb was buried at Rest Lawn Memorial Park according to her Grand Rapids Press obituary—which for some reason I’d missed looking up before. I was also able to work with the Grand Rapids Directories and a few other resources.

I spent the afternoon at the Kent County Probate Court to look at family probate records. As I had used this courthouse before I had gotten a fair explanation of how things worked form their website. And I was pretty well prepared when I arrived. I didn’t know what they might have so I used their indexes to look up a few family names and picked one to work on for the afternoon.

I spent the remainder of my time looking at the very detailed and long probate packet for my 3^rd Great-Grandfather George E. Porter, who died without a will. What followed was a very detailed process in which George’s heirs nominated my 2^nd Great-Grandfather Charles E. Porter to act as agent in settling his father’s estate. There were pages of material—I couldn’t afford to print it all at $2 per page. But Idid get a great sampling with lists of surviving heirs, property information and value, and lists of debts—from a line by line of the costs of treatment for George’s illness to the burial. I worked with bits of probate packets before but this was my first experience seeing a large detailed packet without someone choosing bits to show me. It was fascinating!

Happy hunting,

Jess

From my postcard collection… I haven’t seen this shot very often. Most street scenes I’ve found of Rockford, Michigan are taken from Main and Courtland looking south on Main—so you see the Corner Bar or Hessler Opera House. In this case the shot is taken just west of Courtland looking east through the intersection with Main. You can still see Hessler’s and a beer ad on the side of the Corner, but you also get to see Bett’s House. It’s postmarked June 3, 1907.

I hope to visit soon!

Happy hunting!

Jess

It’s Jay’s turn, but I’ll share!

Happy Hunting,

Jess

The other line I spent time on while in Fort Wayne was the German ancestors of Amelia (Grove) Baker—the Dice/Theiss, Besore and Koppenhaver families. But since I don’t have a shot of Amelia, here are her daughters. Lena is in back and Clara and Katie Baker are in front. Lena is my 2^nd Great Grandmother and married William Amos Johnson. Clara married August Harnack and Daniel Anders. Katie married Frank Clifton Sears.

Picture copied from the collection on the Rockford Historical Muesum‘s Surname Files.

Happy Hunting,

Jess

I’m finding that one of my major uses of ACPL collection is tracking down published articles on my allied lines using the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) in HeritageQuest.

I have taken huge steps forward in my research starting with clues found in articles I never would have tracked down if not for working with the database. And it’s not because I have famous family the someone has written about—though I’ve been occasionally lucky to find articles featuring relatives—but PERSI has been great for tracking down transcribed records and articles relating to places important to my ancestors. My most notable find were records leading to my Irish Cop in Detroit.

But this trip, I was focusing on family names—doing general searchers on a number of surnames. I located articles on the Lapham family included a multi-issues article on the descendants on John Lapham, my Smith’s 4^th great grandfather. I located a number of articles on Rev. George Burroughs who may be an ancestor through our Holden line. Then in I tried a couple of different searches looking for clues to verify some researchers’ claims that his 2^nd great granddaughter, Elizabeth Parmenter, by way of his daughter, Hannah Burroughs Fox married into the Holden family.

I didn’t find anything relevant on the Parmenter line—though in hindsight I didn’t try a variety of spellings. I found citations for a number of interesting articles on the Lawrence family—not all of which I had time to track down—as well as a few on the Whitney/Shattuck line that connect to all of the allied Holden families from Martha’s Vineyard.  But what I thought would be the most useful search, turned out to be impossible.

I had hoped that the Fox line would be well-documented enough that I would be able to track down more solid sources for the suggested connection. Hannah Burroughs had married Jabez Fox the son of an early Harvard Grad and the 2^nd minister at Woburn, Massachusetts. And the family is intertwined in the histories of Cambridge, Groton, and Woburn in Massachusetts. So I first went to PERSI and typed in Fox in a Surname Search. I got the very annoying response, “No results were found that matched your request.” I couldn’t believe that no one had ever written about the family. So I tried again, same answer. And on a hunch I tried a couple of other 3-letter surnames, all with the same answer.

It would seem that you cannot do a PERSI surname search on 3-letter names—at least through HeritageQuest. I played with it for a while before approaching one of the ACPL librarians who came up with the same results. Now, on the plus side, she did come to me later to let me know that you can search PERSI through Ancestry fairly successfully. I was able to work with that for the remainder of my trip. But I have the ulterior motive of being a co-database trainer at my home library—and all library editions of Ancestry are not equal. PERSI isn’t available at all in my library’s version.

All that said HeritageQuest is a resource I use a great deal. What I couldn’t find in PERSI was almost made up for with what I found in the Books section of the website including genealogies on the Fox, Lawrence and Whitney families that give me a little more faith in the Burroughs claims. But the issue with 3-letter surnames seems to be a glaring error.

Happy hunting,

Jess

I finally managed to scrounge time and get down to the Allen County Public Library for a couple of days of research last week and I again loaded up my intrepid traveling companions—my mother and my Gran—and headed off for a couple of days in Fort Wayne, IN. This time the non-genie portion of our party had mixed results with their plans but I think we all came out successful.

This time we opted to try a B&B for the novelty value. We stayed at the LaSalle Bed & Breakfast on West Washington (all of a block and a half from the library). It is a lovely historic building now divided into rooms and suites, and run by Rose-Aimée and Clark Butler and their family. We stayed in the beautiful Africa Suite, slept very comfortably, and enjoyed a lovely, filling breakfast with Rose-Aimée. I’d highly recommend it and encourage people to look into their sister site the Sion Bass House Spa.

As for other interesting finds for Non-Genies or when you need down time from the library, this turned into a bit of a foodie trip for Mom and Gran. We had breakfast the first day at Cindy’s Diner on South Harrison Street a 15-seat 50’s diner with fabulous food and a fun family dynamic. They couldn’t pass up a return to trip to DeBrand Fine Chocolates so we had an assortment of fine chocolates. But they also bought a lovely assortment of goods from Pembroke Bakery & Café located on Main St. inside the Auer Center for Arts and Culture. Their baked goods are delicious and all vegan and they have a gluten free selection as well. I will personally vouch for their plain bagels and chocolate chip cookies. And as a group we had dinner at Mad Anthony Brewing Company.  We had a lovely meal and split a flight of beer—my favorite was easily their Amber Lager.

Unfortunately, the Peony Tea House and, more importantly to Mom and Gran, Pfeiffer House & Wayne Street Soda Shop, have both closed though they still show up in the Visitor’s Bureau’s Restaurant listings. It sound like it was a bit disappointing but again I think the trip was still successful for all.

For more information on things to do in Fort Wayne, Indiana check out VisitFortWayne.

Cheers,

Jess