My Genealogy Trails

Greetings!! This situation has me a bit befuddled.  I already knew my great grandfather George W Parker had married his third wife while still legally married to his second wife but now it appears he had married his second wife while still married to his first wife.  I'll get to that in a minute but let me preface this by saying multiple marriages were not illegal pre 1900 as long as both spouses knew about each other and consented.  There in lies the rub, I'm not sure any of them knew about the other.  Definitely the third wife did not know about the second as she filed for divorce on those grounds. OK, so here is the story.  First wife, Ruth, was my great grandmother.  She died 30 May 1893 of influenza which turned into pneumonia.  She died at her sister's house about 15 miles away from home.  I often wondered why she was at her sister's and not home with her husband or in a hospital.  But then thought perhaps she was at her sister's to be closer to a doctor.

Greetings!! One of my favorite things to search is old newspapers.  There are several available online in both paid subscriptions and free sites.  You never know what you will find and it is an incredible way to learn about history, especially history local to your ancestors. The following article was found at fultonhistory.com and dated in February of 1900.  The Mr. Parker who was a surveyor from Eldred mentioned was none other than my great great grandfather Benjamin Burlin Parker.  Benjamin had passed 11 years prior to this article being written.  It was a surprise to see that he was remember so well by Mr. John D. Rockefeller.  (If you do not know who Mr. Rockefeller was I have included a little blurb about him, found on wikipedia, below the article.)  Also mentioned in the article was George Layman, a friend of my great grandfather George W Parker and owner of the Spring House in Barryville, NY which is still standing today.  Dr. Austin is an ancestor of a friend of mine who w

Greetings!! Back way too many years ago, when I was a kid in school I absolutely hated history.  I just could not get interested in it to save my life.  I could not understand how it would affect me today.  If I knew then what I know now I think I might have tried a lot harder to learn everything I could about history. Genealogy is all about history.  First, family history, but also the history of the times that involved our ancestors.  Doing my family genealogy has lead me to a new found love of history.  I think basic genealogy should be a history course in school to get kids interested in American and even world history. Searching both sides of my family I found a long line of military men on both sides of the family all the way back to the Revolutionary War and beyond.  Just one example is my great grandfather George W. Parker.  I found he served in the Civil War.  That intrigued me so I studied the Civil War and the role Grandpa George played in it.  He served in the 143rd N