Kindred Folk.

Whoops.

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:28:32 -0700

So,

The thing is, is that I’m in grad school, which has been not so slowly eating my soul over the last few months. I’m still here and planning a multitude of famtastic (get it) posts in the nearish future.

Please keep checkin’ is all my saying.

Historical/Mythical family trees!

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:45:59 -0600

I’m not related to these people either, but it seemed like good things to pass on.

Roman Emperor Family Tree

Greek Gods’ Family Tree

Famous Peoples’ Family Trees

Laurens Duyts

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:28:23 -0600

Well, I’ve been slacking a bit on this blog, because life got a little crazy for a few weeks. Grad school is a little tougher than I had initially anticipated. Oh well, humility is valuable.

In the world of genealogy, several very exciting things have happened. To begin with, I am still uncovering mountains of information about both sides of my family, which is sometimes overwhelming. However, even more exciting, I was contacted by a Norwegian relative who is also related to Martin Laurits Paulsen! We’ve been corresponding, and it has been very exciting for me. Hyggelig å møte deg!

Also, I’m going to start German classes in a few months, which means even more secrets to unlock. Hurray!

On to today’s relative: Laurens Duyts

Relation: 11th great grandfather, maternal

Laurens Duyts was born in Frederickstadt, Noorstant, Holstin, Denmark in 1610, and died on January 14^th, 1668 in Bergen, New Jersey, United States.

This guy is fascinating. To begin with, he came to settle New Netherland, as a refugee from the 30 Years War in 1639 on the ship “de Brant van Trogen”. Other’s have found that:

among his fellow passengers were the Danes Captain Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, Jonas Bronck (?), and Pieter Andriesen (No. 3). Duyts and Andriesen were to work for Jonas Bronck: to clear a tract of five hundred acres, which Bronck had purchased from the Native Americans. Duyts thus became one of the pioneers of the present Borough of Bronx. He was commonly known as Laurens Grootschoe (Big Shoe). He was born in Holstein in 1610. He married Ytie Jansen. By her he had three children: a daughter, Margariet, who was baptized on December 23, 1639; a son, Jan, who was baptized on March 23, 1641; another son, Hans, who was baptized in 1644. Duyts appears to have been farming in different places. Laurens died at Bergen, New Jersey, about 1668. His son, Hans, lived at Harlem in 1667. Also the other son, Jan, lived there.

So, this man, known as Big Shoe, fled the Europe during a time of tremendous unrest and war, and sails to what is now New York as one of the first Europeans to live there.

However, his story is even crazier than that. He marries Ytie at the age of 28, but after that, all accounts go different directions. What is certain? They both committed adultery. What is debated? Well, Ytie claimed in court that Laurens sold her and then used the money for the dowery of his second wife. Laurens claimed in court that the man Ytie was living with instead seduced her, and she stole all his money when she left. It’s not clear who the court ruled in favor of, since her lover/second husband was flogged, banished, and fined, while Laurens was flogged, fined, and had his ear cut off. Scandalous! Or in Dutch, schandalig!

My favorite part of this whole deal? The fact that my great (^11^th) grandfather cleared all the trees in the Bronx. What up New York. My relatives made New York authentic and habitable four hundred years before you even knew it existed.

Martin Laurits Paulsen

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:12:00 -0600

Relative of the day: Martin Laurits Paulsen

Relationship: maternal 2^nd great grandfather

Martin Laurits Paulsen was born in Stavern, Vestfold, Norway in September of 1857. He left Norway when he was twenty-three, (hits home a bit), and he died in Chicago some time after his seventy-third birthday in 1930.

The Norwegians in my family have always been a source of some pride, because frankly, I get excited to be from quasi-exotic. As I continue to research my family’s history, I am struck again and again with stories of immigration. America is always described as a melting pot, and I’ve always wrestled with where my place and identity fell in that stew. Genealogy has given me a place, actually numerous places, to point to and say “there.” The simple fact of having a “there” makes me feel like I still have something to give, a story to tell. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a part of a country today, what it means to have a (misspelled and changed) name in a book on an island outside of New York, and genealogy keeps popping up in my head as a reason to care.

Anyway. Back to Paulsen. In 1857, Stavern had only officially been a town for nineteen years. However, since 1677, it had held Fredriksvern, which was an important naval base throughout Norway’s history. Today only 3000 people call Stavern their main residence, but during holidays, it may bump up to 40,000 people, (In the process of learning this I also learned this thing, also that the average temperature in Stavern is two degrees Celcius).

I also found this “Norway’s economy was hit hard during the “depression” from mid 1870s to the early 1890s. GDP stagnated, particular during the 1880s, and prices fell until 1896. This stagnation is mirrored in the large-scale emigration from Norway to North America in the 1880s. At its peak in 1882 as many as 28,804 persons, 1.5 percent of the population, left the country. All in all, 250,000 emigrated in the period 1879-1893, equal to 60 percent of the birth surplus. Only Ireland had higher emigration rates than Norway between 1836 and 1930, when 860,000 Norwegians left the country” (Economic History Association). Noway gained independence from Denmark in 1814, had several boom decades, and then was hit with a depression/stagnation. Many Norwegians based their livings around agriculture or fishing, and a shift to industry was tough. Not to mention the Napoleonic Wars, trouble with trade, and all sort of other unhappiness put Norway in a position that sounds far too familiar. Can you imagine if millions of Americans started leaving to seek better fortunes?

Well, I’m for one glad that twenty-three year old Martin looked around and thought, hm. The short version of the rest? He marries Anna, has seven children, and lives to be pretty old. Maybe he even invented the crooked mouth story, which I will have to save for another time.

This guy made this. Win. Not related to these people. Too bad.

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:23:00 -0600

This guy made this. Win. Not related to these people. Too bad.

Michael Glade

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:13:00 -0600

Relative of the day: Michael Glade

Relationship: 3^rd great grandfather, paternal

I have a handful of individuals on the tree that I know a little bit more about. I like to refer to them as “the big guns”. Well kids, get ready to receive two tickets to the gun show. Or I guess one ticket, since there’s just Michael for today…

Anywho, Michael Glade is exciting because he brought my last name to America. Now it turns out the Glady name has gone through some rough patches. We were originally Von Glöde (those two dots are called an umlaut, which means you say that vowel through the shape of a u, which is sometimes called a long vowel. Go here to hear people say it). However, upon arriving in Canada from Germany, their immigration agents made us change it to Glade. Then a y was added to keep the same sound. Then they moved to America, and Gladey was deemed too German, so those immigration folks changed again so that we would be, you know, more American. Tada!

I have a bunch of information about Michael, but I don’t even know where to start, so instead I’m just going to put up his story (written by his daughter Minnie). It’s kind of heartwarming. Also, check out the reference to the Grimm family. Fingers crossed it’s the famous ones.

(At this point I should acknowledge that the images I use in this blog are often found through sharing family tree information as well as other forms of research. These pictures are not mine, but I appreciate all the hard work others have done to publish them).

I think my favorite part in that letter is where he refers to Chicago as a “mud hole.”

Thankful Williams

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:33:00 -0600

(Second) Relative of the day: Thankful Williams

Relationship: 6^th great grandmother, paternal

Story:

Thankful Williams was born in Stonington, CT, lived in Stonington CT, and died in Stonington CT. However, I doubt her life was in anyway sedentary or slow-paced.

Thankful was born on February 8, 1717 to John and Desire Williams. She was baptized by Rev. Ebenezer Rosseter in the First Congregational Church. On January 31, 1734 she married Avery Denison, and in the next thirty years they had thirteen children, (two of my favorite names were Zerviah and Mary Molly). She died in 1767 at the age of 50.

When looking at the timeline of Stonington and Thankful’s life, it is amazing to see what she must have lived. Stonington, (although it had a series of names before, including “Pawcatuck”), received its royal charter in 1662, and in the late 1700’s becomes a prominent trading port. However, in Thankful’s era, the town is best remembered for defeating parts of the British navy twice. Most of the males in Thankful’s immediate family all fought in the American Revolution.

What else do we know? Well not long after her death, the first census was taken in 1790. At that point, 97% of the population in Connecticut was identified as rural. She was right across the river from my mom’s family on Long Island. Well, we know where she is buried, and some other relatives say they still have her china, which is pretty cool. Something to be Thankful for.

Mary Elizabeth Holman

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 02:02:00 -0600

Relative of the day: Mary Elizabeth Holman

Relationship: 2^nd great grandmother, maternal line all the way up

Story:

So what I am discovering is that there is gap of knowledge between those in living memory and relatives numerous generations back. For example, I can still easily access personal information about all my relatives back to about the first round of “greats”. My mom, dad, and great aunts remember their own parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Additionally, people I’m related to who lived like billion years ago now are in historical archives and other research data bases, so oddly enough, it’s fairly easy to find out information about the ancient kin.

However, it’s the Mary Elizabeth Holman back-in-the-day’ers that actually present the most trouble. So here is what I know. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Mary Elizabeth was born on March 5, 1864 in Pontiac, Illinois. Fast forward eighteen years to 1882 when she married Alfred Milas Gaines at age 17. Now, this part’s a tad confusing. The records then say she married John H. Holman in 1886 at the age of 22. I can’t tell what’s going on there, but I know the Gaines name stuck around AND thatSeñor Gaines lived until 1896. So many mysteries, so few records.

Mary Elizabeth Holman goes onto live in Nebraska, Iowa, and then has a confusing record of dying both in Willard, CO in 1930 at the age of 66, and in Douglas Nebraska (seems more likely to me), in 1937 at the age of 73.

A few neat things about Mrs. Holman’s life: for one, later generations return to Sioux City, Iowa, and for a second, the picture I found sort of resembles my grandmother. Maybe that’s what I’ll look like someday. Although, the picture’s not dated, so who knows, it could be Mary at 22, in which case I think I’m doing well in life.

Looking up.

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:38:00 -0600

I have always been a tree climber. When I was a little kid, I was certain that I would grow up to live in a tree house like this or this, but instead I just ended up in the same stupid apartments that everyone spends some portion of their twenties living in. However! There are other trees I have discovered I can climb. This is a perfect opportunity for all sorts of stupid puns about my actual day job/academic life with his-trees, li-tree-ture, and solving mys-trees, but I’ll spare you. Or not. Either way, I have been super interested in genealogy ever since a) I was a little girl and got the American Girl magazine every month where some other little girl got to be a paper doll, because she could recite nineteen generations back and had pictures of her great great second cousin’s dresses and log cabin. Jeaaaalllous. b) since I read the purdy darn good book Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, where a sick pastor pens his family’s story for his young son. I finished book and realized that I needed to know, like this second, the history of the people I come from before the time had passed where these things were still accessible with the living.

What to do! Well, I did the first thing any aspiring chronicler does, I forgot and got sidetracked. But then I remembered! So I sat my parents down and made them tell me everything they knew. And then I read a book. And then I got on the interwebs. Which leads us to this moment, right now. I now have compiled a respectable heap of information from my relatives, ancestry.com, and tons and tons of archives. Hopefully this will help me wrangle this obsession into a manageable hobby. Huzzah!