Antwerpen ~ die_K??nigin_der_Schelde

Lives Intertwine ~ Small Town Doctors

Tracing ones lineage often uncovers forgotten facts and interrelated events in the lives of individuals and their families throughout the ages.

While transcribing thousands of death certificates for my ancestors and their extended family, the signature of one doctor, John Franklin Noyes, rose to a level prominence in my mind.

As one a couple of group of doctors in early small town Utah, Dr. John Franklin Noyes was usually present at significant events in the lives of my family.  He certified the deaths of scores of the family.  He was present at the time of many of their deaths and at many births in the family.

Dr. John Franklin Noyes	His surname was readily identifiable due to his clearly written signature.  The name of his son, Kenneth Noyes, was prominent in my memory too because he was the doctor that delivered me and later administered shots to my tiny quivering fanny.  Well, it wasn’t always tiny, but whenever I visited his office and he had me stand on a stool, drop may pants and would say, “I hope the bees don’t sting anyone here today”, it did quiver.
Dr. Kenneth Eugene Noyes	Dr. Kenneth Eugene Noyes, served as the family doctor during my life.  He sewed my fathers thumb back together after he ran it through a table saw.  He sewed my scalp back together after it caught a thrown hammer.  He patched, prodded and prescribed our bodies for many years.  The surname ‘Noyes’ was burned into my basal memory.
John Franklin & Siddie Chipman Noyes Tombstone – Am. Fork, UT	When taking volunteer photos for Find-a-grave, I encountered the tombstones of both of these doctors and their families.  When I later posted the days photos to the FAG site, I was surprised to find  that no one had posted photos to their memorials yet. These men were ‘institutions’ in town for three or four generations of families.
John Franklin Noyes marker	Later, while scanning photos for family histories, I came across the photos of each of these doctors that my mother had clipped from newspapers.  Looking at them brought back memories from my youth and spurred interest in the Noyes ancestry.
Kenneth and Leona Field Noyes tombstone  -American Fork, Utah	Surprisingly, I found that some of their ancestors lived in the same small area in Leeds, Ontario, Canada at the same time as my ancestors.  Both families joined the early LDS Church and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois just in time to be persecuted by mobs and driven out of their homes in the dead of winter.  Their ancestors survived that experience.  Several of mine did not.

The unusual death certificate.  Dr. Noyes certifying the death of his father, Dr. Noyes.

Both families eventually settled in the same small town in Utah.  Children from the families intermarried, but over the years and generations that history was forgotten.

These families had survived the same causality events, but their occupational paths diverted.  One became farmers the other doctors.

How many people do we encounter in our lives that have ties to us?  When filling in the ‘color’ of the stories in our family history, there are probably more than any of us realize.

Technorati Tags: Death Certificate,Findagrave,Causality,Genealogy,History

Irish Family Names, Spelling and Genealogy

Examining The Pedigree Charts

WWII USS Casablanca Liberty Relief Party

Returning to the ship was is always tough – especially during war time.

Alone At Last

Crew of the Typhoon McGoon II

The flight crew of the aircraft Typhoon McGoon II

Find-a-Grave Gold

Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of hours taking photos of tombstones for my genealogy research and to post on Find-a-grave.   At times, some of the tombstones have turned out to be those of relatives that I’d yet to discover.

The hours spent taking tombstone photos and later cropping and massaging them has been an effort but I’ve been well-paid as I learned a little about the people they memorialized and the communities of their time.   Life was different for them than we enjoy. Repeatedly seeing families with numerous infant deaths witnesses that fact, but the family groupings also witness family strengths as generation after generation are buried within a stones throw of each other.

Posting photos of the tombstones I’ve visited on Find-a-grave has been a great way to Pay-it-forward and thank others for their help in my ancestral quest.  They live in locations I can’t visit and have taken time to post similar photos on find-a-grave, work on indexing for FamilySearch, etc., and I’ve benefitted from their efforts.  Similar activities on my part just add to the reference pool that all of us can freely access.

These resources have become an integral part of my research routine.  Family linkages, photos, documents and data being posted on find-a-grave at an ever increasing rate has turn the site into a ‘must search’ in my research quests. 

Recently, I spent an evening looking through my records specifically searching for extended family members whose existence has been all but impossible to prove. 

Searching find-a-grave for them provided three positive hits in succession.  ‘Hits’ is a mild descriptive compared to the data about that branch of the family that had been posted on the site in recent months by someone paying-it-forward too.

Tombstone photos, person photos, vital record documents and text told the stories of the lives in this family.  Moves eastward rather than westward surfaced as did the shift in spelling of their surname.  No wonder we hadn’t been able to find them for so long.  They had indeed ‘faked’ us out with their jigs and jags.

If you haven’t already included find-a-grave in your research plan, add it.  Don’t hesitate to add information and images to the records of your own family members on the site.  If you didn’t create the memorial, ask the creator to add the data and make the links you send to them.   Sometimes, they will transfer the memorial to you if the record isn’t part of their own family.

Over time, we’ll undoubtedly see a lot of additional data added to the site.  Be sure to check back.  Users of the site almost universally feel a need to take the time to link family records together.  I’ve linked my own ancestors records and families together for many generations to help my cousins in their own ancestral quest even though I have their records on my own websites. 

You’ll find yourself doing the same thing when you work on your own family memorials on find-a-grave.  Bet you can’t link just one… 

 

Technorati Tags: find-a-grave,familysearch,genealogy

Wounded at Bunker Hill

My ancestor, William Bennett, served as a guard for George Washington in the Revolutionary War.  He was severely wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill and suffered from the wounds for the remainder of his life.

1905 Northern Automobile

The 7-horse power base model of the 1905 Northern Automobile sold for $650, but you could upgrade to the 18-horsepower model with a side entrance for only $1700.