Thanks for the Award

I am the proud recipient of the Ancestor Approved Award bestowed on me by Michelle of The Turning of Generations. Normally, while I am glad to get the awards, I don't follow through with the "requirements." But this one actually touches my heart. If most of these are about one specific ancestor, it is because I am seeing a side of him that I never saw when he was alive. t to know my ancestors!

The Ancestor Approved Award asks that the recipient list ten things you have learned about any of your ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlighted you and pass the award along to ten other bloggers who you feel are doing their ancestors proud.

So here goes:

Surprised

My grandfather, John Stearns Percival was totally in love with my grandmother, Mary Bowman. I know this because I am currently transcribing his letters to her and he tells her so in every letter.

I discovered he entered the Army in September 1917 as a private and two years later managed to be discharged as a Corporal.

He never saw any combat.

His favorite TV show was "The Beverly Hillbillies" which he watched with my cousins in Holland, Michigan.

My grandmother, Mary Bowman, had a good sense of humor. I might even deem it to be slightly on the wild side for someone in the 1920s. I might make her an honorary Wild One. I think I may have inherited some of that.

One of my step-grandmothers was married more than the three times we knew about. Seems she married her second husband twice!

Humbled

My grandmother, Mary Bowman, was utterly devoted to my grandfather, John Percival. She must have seen something really special that he didn't show to anyone else?

The sacrifices my own parents made especially in regards to me. I was their "sickly" child. For the most part they did not try to keep me from doing normal kids things.

My mother-in-law's dealing with the various cancers that she suffered.

Enlightened

Not so much enlightened as empathetic to my grandfather's behavior and eventual deserting his children.

The ten I am passing it on to aren't necessarily genealogists, but they do make their ancestors proud.

1. Gathering Dust
2. Saradoxical
3. Unmitigated
4. The Genealogy Gals
5. Reflections from the Fence
6. Genealogy Frame of Mind
7. Speaking in Caps
8. Apple's Tree
9. My Family History Data
10. My Genealogy Research


Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

Relatively Speaking, Cemeteries & Death Certificates

Last year, friend/cousin Karen at Genealogy Frame of Mind did some cemetery work for me at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky while she and hubby Mark were there on business.

If you have never had the pleasure of using the Cave Hill database it can be found here. What is wonderful about this database is that if you find someone buried there, make note of the section and lot and then follow the links from The Cemetery > The Grounds > Map.  Clicking on the section letter/number on the left will bring up a map of the section that shows where the lots are located. That is just astounding. I wish more cemeteries would do this.

Getting back to Karen and Mark doing some Bowman headstone searching for me resulted in the following pictures:

Now, I had an inkling that these people were somehow related to the Bowman's in these lots, but didn't really pursue it. Then I found this record in the 1959 Missouri Death Certificates, a death certificate for Elizabeth Stone Bowman. The informant? Mrs. V. William Borntraeger.  Further research elicited the information that Nelle and Elizabeth were sisters. Not that I had any doubt, but it is nice to know for sure!

Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

Monday is Coming

Monday is Relatively Speaking day and it's my turn. Just a little blurb on cemeteries and death certificates and friends who are nice enough to take pictures in cemeteries!

Also - some of you may have gotten a note from me awarding you the Ancestor Approved Award, stop by on Tuesday to pick it up. 

Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes