in pursuit of a pedigree

This is my third time writing for the Carnival of Genealogy and when I first saw the topic “Cars” I couldn’t think what I could really write about except the sad parade of cars my siblings and I have used.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve been able to get into genealogy at the best time. Nine years ago, when my mother began this research, she wrote to a lot of people, she visited a few of the local historical societies, she talked to the living relatives and she managed to work out a decent pictures of her WINSTANLEY line, who began in Leeds, York, England and ended up in Collingswood, Camden County, New Jersey.

I was very fortunate when I began my family genealogy — my mother had done work on her own lines a few years ago for a project in college and had completed a lot of the ground work, particularly on her maternal line for her mother Beatrice TRAINER (1938-2006). She had already gathered a great deal of information about Beatrice’s father Harold TRAINER (1907-1967) and his parents, the first of that line to emigrate to the United States from their native England.

My Trenton trip was just about a success. I came home with about eighteen documents and found almost all of the records I went there to search for. A few marriage records still remain elusive and I’ve just about given up hope of finding some of them in the state archives. I’ll have to pay a visit to the Cumberland County repositories in the near future since a great deal of my ancestors on the Hudson side have come from there.

I do not publish birth information for any individual that is either still living or passed away within the last five years. I do not publish marriage information for any marriage that occured after 1960 since it is likely that one or both individuals are still alive. If you are interested in this information and are a member of this family, please reply to this post and we’ll see what we can do.

In 2008, I would like to accomplish the following:

1. Track down all available census records for all known individuals. Print out the records and file them accordingly.

2. Visit the city archives in Philadelphia to find out more about the relatives who were born and raised in Philadelphia.

3. Keep my information updated and organized to the best of my ability.

4. For the love of God, find out where my great-great grandmother was born, her actual birth date, her birth name and her biological father. I’ll post more about my angonizing search for Katherine Agnes Hartman Lydon Crompton Barnes (any of those names would be apt as she used them all at one point or another).

5. Read through William Smick’s (my great grandfather seven times over) Revolutionary War pension file to mine all available details.

6. Send for a copy of my great-great-great grandfather David Ware’s Civil War military service record and pension records.