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.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
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.
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