Tag: Reverend Charles Smith
The Art of Successful Letter Writing
A Letter from an Ancestor By Susan Phelps “In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.” ~ Anatole Broyard On May 9, 1887, the Reverend Charles Smith sat down in his home in Plover, Wisconsin, to write a ...
Storytelling: Painting a main character
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” ~ Sue Monk Kidd Storytelling is an important part of family history. Passing down stories about our lives and the lives of our ancestors makes history real. Characters make stories come to life. ...
Letter #7: December 27, 1889
The series continues A letter from Josiah INTO IRONWOOD My mother found letters authored 129 years ago by my great, great grandfather, letters, in fact, partly responsible for the start of this blog. The author's daughter is our malevolent matriarch. Alfred Josiah "Si" Smith was his name and his family lived in Ironwood, Michigan. As ...
A journey from 1891-Post 2
Installment number two Searching and surprises I'm a very lucky woman genealogically speaking, that is. My mother recently handed me this autograph book, a book once belonging to my three times great grandparents the Reverend Charles Smith and his wife Maria Polly Bixby Smith. To see the first post about the book, who signed first, ...
A journey from 1891
Discovering a treasure What are the chances? When one considers more than time, when we think about the journey--this book began in Stevens Pt., Wisconsin and now resides in Oregon--not simply the hands it passed through, the eyes that read its pages, or the thoughts that went into its making, but the risk of damage ...
Family history: Storytelling with a theme or topic
Choosing a subject or topic to tell a story Day-to-day aspects of life 100 years ago or more When trying to capture what life was like 100+ years ago, it is difficult to know a person's personality or character from a photo. While photos may not reveal an ancestor's personality, we can come away with ...
Family history: Understanding relationships
Telling a story through family relationships One example: When cousins marry cousins Not allowed in every state these days, in our not-so-distant-past it wasn't uncommon for a cousin to marry a cousin. A look at populations and geography and one can better understand the reasons. How does this effect our understanding of family when, through research, ...
Family history: What’s in a (nick)name?
The significance of names in family history Considerations when naming children Have you considered your first, middle, and last names? Were you "named after" someone in the family? Perhaps you were given great aunt Grace's first name, or uncle James's middle name? Maybe you use a nickname or a derivative of a longer, traditional name? ...
Family history: Stories and setting the scene
Preserving family history through storytelling Fleshing out the story, using time and place Samuel Smith "travelled thousands of miles on foot and went emphatically 'everywhere' preaching the gospel." I'm not sure what comes to mind when you read that sentence, but for me, it provides a visual I wouldn't otherwise have. I knew my 4X ...
Obits and what they offer
What there is to learn from an obit There may be surprises My great, great grandfather was Alfred Josiah Smith. Let's pick apart the obit for his sister, Alice May Smith Lytle, presented in the following article. Looking at the information regarding the pallbearers, Susan makes a good point that not all of Alice's siblings were ...
The Malevolent Matriarch 