Wordless Wednesday - Arkansas in winter

Tombstone Tuesday - My own Find A Grave volunteer

I love Findagrave.com. I try to volunteer here locally when I can because I use the site so much for finding distant relatives. During a recent trip back home to visit family I had an opportunity to visit a cemetery and fill my own photo request. When I have a little extra time during visits home I open Findagrave.com and look for my photo requests. On this particular visit I saw that I had two requests for a cemetery near Millville, Missouri in Ray County. I had not been there before so decided to take my little ones on an adventure.

I had not looked to see the other ancestors buried here so it was nice to stumble across the headstone of my great-great grandparents: Minnie Dudgeon White and Hugh C. White. I already had a photo of their headstone, but it was nice to actually see it. I also taught my little dude the ritual of placing a pebble on the stone to let them know you had made a visit.

And here are the headstones I had traveled to find. We nearly left without finding them, but I made one last effort.

These are the headstones for Louvicy (yet another way to spell it) Pritchard Wall and Wade Wall, my fourth great-grandparents. I love cemetery adventures!



Military Monday - Philip Kuhn's Ohio Civil War records

It was my participation in the Family History Writing Challenge that led me to note that I did not have Philip Kuhn's civil war records. I had so much information on his time in the Civil War, because he was a prisoner of war, but I had never received his actual service record. I realized after a quick search that service records from the state of Ohio are not available on Fold3. (They have since posted an index of Ohio service records, a little late for my research, but helpful to someone else.) I decided to order the records for $25 from the NARA eServices webpage. I ordered the Compiled Military Service File (NATF 86).

I ordered it on January 30, 2012 and it arrived February 24, 2012. I already knew Philip Kuhn was in the 120th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and that he was a musician and later promoted to primary musician. I also knew that he was captured near the Red River in Louisiana and spent the last year of the war in the Camp Ford prisoner of war camp near Tyler, Texas. If I was hoping to learn more about Philip's service through his service records, I was going to be disappointed. There were only 22 pages of information and I learned that:

Philip was present and then he was absent. That was about the extent of the record keeping on poor Philip. He was made Chief Musician and was listed on the Field and Staff returns on March 1, 1863. Sadly, when he was captured he was reduced from Primary Musician to a private. I can understand that the slot needed to be filled, but reduction in rank also means reduction in pay. A fine tribute to a prisoner of war.

Remarks: "Transferred and reduced from Musician 120th OVI to private Co. G 114th OVI per SFO No. 27 19 AC Nov 27 '64."

Nevertheless, I am glad to have the records. Ordering records is always a gamble, as you'll never know how robust the file is. Now I'm a little leery to order his pension records...maybe I'll wait until those are available on Fold3!

"Mark all as read" - Cleaning out my Google Reader

I follow my fellow bloggers through Google Reader. I recently left town for a while and came back to find nearly 300 unread blog posts in my Reader. At first I thought, "Awesome, cool stuff to read!" Then I realized that I deleted a lot of posts without reading them. It was time to clean out my reader. The following is a list of how I cleaned out my inbox:

1. I unsubscribed to all the blogs that were constantly "plugging" something. It's nice that you have speaking engagements or that you'll be at this or that conference, but I don't care. I am interested in your family and your genealogy discoveries so if all you ever talk about is your next big gig, I'll have to delete you.

2. I unsubscribed to any blog that took forever to load or was slow to scroll. I'm not sure what design element is causing a "slow scroll" on your blog, but it drives me nuts. (Mental note, ensure my blog is not a slow roller.)

3. If I noticed that I deleted blog posts in my reader for months without actually reading one, I unsubscribed to that blog. I suppose our tastes are different from what they were when I first subscribed to you. We're different people now. Let's not make it any more difficult and just make a clean break.

I enjoy reading interestingly crafted posts written by people I don't know with relatives I have no connection to. I know this is because we share a common love of an uncommon hobby. They are not "my" people but I've learned researching tips and felt the joy of their successes and the frustration with their brick walls. This is my new high water mark for following blogs: talk about your people, give suggestions, share your stories and you'll have a pleasant place in my Reader.

So now my blog reading is lighter and I'm able to focus on the posts I enjoy, rather than all that annoying "mark all as read" work I was doing before.

Surname Saturday - Bodine III

The above image is of Eliza Bodine Cutler and James Cutler, my fourth great-grandparents. I received this gem through two fellow researchers, Mark and Robert, who found me through my blog (see, it does work!). Robert is related to Maude Scholfield, the woman that I have mentioned many times as the author of a history of our Bodine line. In reviewing the information they have shared I returned to this photo and the information written on the back.

Note, yet again, that Eliza's birth date is listed as January 14, 1816. But what caught my attention was the list of children written on the back of James' photo: Bertha, Robert E., Sarah Ann, Mary Eliza and Martin R. Five children? News to me. I have not seen any reference to Sarah Ann Cutler in my research, but this does explain the seven year gap in between the births of Robert (1846) and Mary Eliza (1853). I had assumed that there was another child and this proves it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to find any documentation on Sarah, but it is worth a shot.

In honor of love day

Young love...me and my beau in 2003.

Surname Saturday - Bodine II

I shall now share my progress on my 2012 genealogy goal of tracking down my Bodine line. My most recent step in Bodine research was to contact the Cayuga County Historian's Office in Auburn, New York. There are some documents that indicate my ancestor, Eliza Bodine, was born in this county and the Cayuga County Historian's Office website indicated they had a Bodine family file. I sent a research request, but unfortunately I received it back without information. It seems that their family file did not contain information on Eliza Bodine or her potential parents, Peter Bodine and Susan Ervin.

But it was not a fruitless cause. By a strange coincidence, the research aide was also a Bodine descendant. She directed me to a website put together by Dave Bodine which is quickly becoming THE Bodine research database with more than 25,000 Bodine family members and descendants in his database.

The information on this website for my line mirrors that, for the most part, in the Maude Cutler Scholfield book, Genealogy and history of the Branch of the Bodine Family Founded by John Bodine, A Soldier of the Revolutionary War and a Pioneer of the State of New Jersey. One big discrepancy is the difference in Eliza Bodine's birth date. Scholfield's book lists her birth as January 14, 1815 and the website lists her birth as June 10, 1816 (and states this information comes from the LDS and has not been proven). I decided to return to Eliza's headstone.

It lists her death date as October 24, 1855 and that she died aged 39 years, 9 months and 10 days. I sure hate math, but my best guess indicates her birth as January 14, 1816. That is the date I'm sticking to. And, in an addendum to Scholfield's book written by her son, Arthur L. Myers, he discusses the death date listed by his mother and lists the proper date of January 14, 1816. He also mentions that this is the birth date listed in an obituary for Eliza. (I am happy to announce that I completed the above math BEFORE I found the addendum in the book. Yea for math success!)

I have yet to find a piece of documentation conclusively linking Eliza Bodine to her potential parents: Peter Bodine and Susan Ervin. I am prepared to accept her relationship to the Ervin family as she did name her first son Robert Ervin Cutler. I searched the records on FamilySearch.org for the state of New York, but could not locate a birth record for Eliza. I believe my next step is to try to locate her obituary. I'm also wondering if The New England Historic Genealogy Society might have some research that would be helpful. Membership in the society is $79 per year, so I will have to ensure it will be worth the cost.

Bodine To-Do list:
1. Locate Eliza Bodine Cutler's obituary