Mary Jeanette Bowen Rasmussen

My mother, Mary Jeanette Bowen Rasmussen, passed away November 18, 2011. She was the last of the eleven siblings in her family. This past year she and I had spent enjoyable time scanning old family photos, and her telling me about the people in those pictures. Little did we know at the time that the woman who's doctor kept remarking about her very good health, would find out in October that a new pain in her side would be diagnosed as pancreatic cancer. She died four weeks later.

Her loss is certainly a sad event for our family. However, we are grateful for her 81 years of good health, and the memories we have. With her passing I have also lost a link to our past. Her date of death is now part of my database. No longer can I go to her for family information.

You never know when you might lose a parent. Spend some time with them while you can to document what they can share about family history.

Queen Anne Smith

Last Monday a cousin visited and shared a lot of information. Among this was a letter from a gentleman in Tennessee written to him in 1994. The man had included his phone number and had family connections to our Bowen family. Given that the letter is seventeen years old, I wondered if it might still be possible to contact this person. Then, I noticed he had pointed himself out on a genealogy chart he had included with the letter. he was one year younger than me. I thought it might be worth an attempt to contact him. I dialed the number and in a minute was talking to him!

It turns out that he has a lot of information on our family that is new to me, including pictures. After our phone call, we exchanged emails. He sent me a picture of five young ladies. One of these is Queen Anne Smith, my Bowen grandfather's mother, my great grandmother. This is the first picture of her I have ever seen.

I am so glad I made that call and have this new distant cousin to share information with.

The leaves that pop up

Occasionally I get an email from ancestry.com letting me know that their system has found some information that might be associated with someone in my family tree. Frequently it turns out to be someone similar, but not the actual person in my tree. But, often enough, they find a gem of data. This weekend I received such an email. This time it was concerning an 1880 census taken in Oregon County, Missouri. It was the census information for a family headed by an M. V. Smith, and included a daughter Anna Smith. I had never found this one on my own, and might have skipped over it if I did. Since it was brought to my attention I examined it closely.

It turns out this is the Martin VanBuren Smith family with their daughter Queen Anne Smith. Queen Anne Smith who was 12 at the time of this census in 1880 went on later to become the wife of my great grandfather William Rich Bowen.

Prior to this, I did not have any specific data to put them in Missouri. They had started out in Tennessee and later returned to Tennessee. Now I have another hole filled in. This is one of the things that makes genealogy so much fun to me, the surprises. Things like this make the subscription worthwhile.

Cousin's Treasure Chest

On Monday of this week, a cousin who has done many years of work on our family visited with my Mother. I was able to be there and took the opportunity to scan many documents he brought with him. Almost all were things I have not seen previously. One of these is the death certificate for my great grandfather, William Rich Bowen. This also gave me confirmation of William's parents. It was like opening a treasure chest to see all of this information at one time. I will be looking forward to visiting with my cousin in the future to scan more documents and photos.

Volunteers Help With Grave Matters

One of the wonderful things I like about genealogy work is all the new friends you make who exchange information. Most of these new friends, I will never meet in person. But, thanks to the internet, we find each other through common interests and exchange data, pictures, stories and hints. A truly amazing aspect of this is how many people will volunteer their time and resources to go to cemeteries in their area and take photos of grave markers for those too distant to do it themselves. Grave markers can be a very useful source of information. The efforts of those who do this is very much appreciated.

Correcting the Record

Frequently, while doing my research I find mistakes in the various databases of information that Ancestry.com is able to link me to. Most often, the mistake is due to a transcriber incorrectly reading the information on a scan of an old handwritten document. These can be pages in a census book, death certificates, marriages licenses, etc.

Ancestry.com provides the ability to submit comments and corrections. They review what you submit and if approved, it becomes available to all who view that item in the future, hopefully saving them the same frustration I encountered.

Today I received one of many emails I have received from Ancestry.com telling me that corrections I have submitted have been approved. Most of these were correcting names, dates of birth, names of spouses.

Long lost cousins

I really enjoy the emails I receive from folks who discover they have a family connection with me or my wife, Dee. In this morning's email was one from a woman who's paternal great grandfather was a brother of Dee's paternal great grandfather, but is from a line I had almost no information about. Now we will exchange information. It is a lot of fun.