I have been thinking a lot about my mom's oldest sister lately, so I thought I would transfer the story I wrote in her memory for today's Mito-Monday. We shared our love of genealogy for many years. I miss her.
Here are some of those goals:
* Civil War Soldiers, direct lines and sometimes including as many sons, brothers, uncles and cousins as one can find.
* Revolutionary War - same
* Patriarchal Line
* Cousin Collectors
* Stretching Sideways as far as possible - cousin collecting on steroids - out to third and/or fourth cousins, and sometimes including the genealogy of Cousin Spouses. It is not unusual for these trees to top 10,000 people. Seriously!)
* Immigrant Ancestors
* Descendant Collectors: this is where somebody picks a particular ancestor and tries to find everybody who descends from this person. This is usually (but not always) an immigrant ancestor, sometimes coupled with it being the patriarchal line of the researcher.
My personal goals are twice-fold: I like to go up the tree and research to the point of immigration, and I have lately been writing as complete a biography as I can about each ancestor. This includes details about the kids because this sometimes is the only story I have about a mother.
Maxine openly shared pictures and she willingly shared the family bible (which does not always happen). She was a really good person to ask about her and my mom's life on the farm because she was the oldest girl and Mom was the youngest so they had different perspectives. I last visited her a couple months ago when I was in Ohio. At age 92 she had excellent long term memory but was having difficulty talking very loudly. This was kind of hard for me, but my brother, who is so much like Grandpa Fleece, talked and listened awesomely. (I really need to have him interview more relatives!)
When she downsized, she gave my mom a huge bag full of papers and a couple photo albums loosely based on our section of the family. There were a lot of pictures of Mom at various stages of her life and some of me because we had lived with Grandma and Grandpa when Dad was drafted into the military.
Mom wasn't interested in accumulating a bag of more things since she was trying to downsize a bit herself. It was a genealogist's dream. I shared with researchers on one of my facebook groups about what I found when I finally dug into the pile after five years of moving from place to place. It was so exciting because there were more than several copies of the "cousin binder." The albums included photos of me as a baby with Grandma, pictures of Grandpa and Grandpa dating (because he had a Brownie camera and liked using it), vacation trips with Mom when she was little, pictures of them when they wintered in Florida (this became a thing for farmers in our area in the 1960s), and more recent (!) pictures like their 50th wedding anniversary when I was in high school.
And the most awesome thing? Everything was labeled! Some were in Grandpa's hand and what he hadn't got around to, Maxine finished. What an awesome lady!
In the bottom of the bag was a cardboard box containing studio portraits of graduating cousins of Mom's and Maxine's and oodles of newspaper clippings and funeral cards. Some may think the clippings aren't a big deal since there are digitized newspapers all over the internet, but when one come from a small, rural area those newspapers will be at the bottom of the list when it comes to a digitization project.
Here is the link to Maxine's obituary. It is one of the best ones I've ever read.
http://www.edsfh.com/notices/Maxine-Dodds
Maxine Jewell Fleece Dodds
1925-2017
There are many avenues to take in genealogy and sometimes some of the facebook groups can get quite heated. Not everybody has the same goals and for me that's OK.Here are some of those goals:
* Civil War Soldiers, direct lines and sometimes including as many sons, brothers, uncles and cousins as one can find.
* Revolutionary War - same
* Patriarchal Line
* Cousin Collectors
* Stretching Sideways as far as possible - cousin collecting on steroids - out to third and/or fourth cousins, and sometimes including the genealogy of Cousin Spouses. It is not unusual for these trees to top 10,000 people. Seriously!)
* Immigrant Ancestors
* Descendant Collectors: this is where somebody picks a particular ancestor and tries to find everybody who descends from this person. This is usually (but not always) an immigrant ancestor, sometimes coupled with it being the patriarchal line of the researcher.
My personal goals are twice-fold: I like to go up the tree and research to the point of immigration, and I have lately been writing as complete a biography as I can about each ancestor. This includes details about the kids because this sometimes is the only story I have about a mother.
Fleece family photograph about 1942. L-R Bottom: Ira Trimble Fleece,
Shirley Mae Fleece Moore, Claribel Alverna McMillen Fleece.
L-R Back: Anna Marie Fleece Coulter, Charles William Fleece,
Maxine Jewel Fleece Dodds.
Aunt Maxine took a different path: she enjoyed coming down the tree. After her dad, Ira Fleece died, she started researching all of the descendants of the ancestor who migrated into Hardin County and Logan County, Ohio. To my knowledge, she concentrated on both her mom and dad's paternal lines. This was a huge undertaking because Grandpa came from a family of 10 kids and Grandma came from a family of 14 kids! And for the most part, it was their grandparents who migrated to that part of Ohio. It was also done pre-internet meaning a lot of hand-written letters.Maxine openly shared pictures and she willingly shared the family bible (which does not always happen). She was a really good person to ask about her and my mom's life on the farm because she was the oldest girl and Mom was the youngest so they had different perspectives. I last visited her a couple months ago when I was in Ohio. At age 92 she had excellent long term memory but was having difficulty talking very loudly. This was kind of hard for me, but my brother, who is so much like Grandpa Fleece, talked and listened awesomely. (I really need to have him interview more relatives!)
When she downsized, she gave my mom a huge bag full of papers and a couple photo albums loosely based on our section of the family. There were a lot of pictures of Mom at various stages of her life and some of me because we had lived with Grandma and Grandpa when Dad was drafted into the military.
Mom wasn't interested in accumulating a bag of more things since she was trying to downsize a bit herself. It was a genealogist's dream. I shared with researchers on one of my facebook groups about what I found when I finally dug into the pile after five years of moving from place to place. It was so exciting because there were more than several copies of the "cousin binder." The albums included photos of me as a baby with Grandma, pictures of Grandpa and Grandpa dating (because he had a Brownie camera and liked using it), vacation trips with Mom when she was little, pictures of them when they wintered in Florida (this became a thing for farmers in our area in the 1960s), and more recent (!) pictures like their 50th wedding anniversary when I was in high school.
And the most awesome thing? Everything was labeled! Some were in Grandpa's hand and what he hadn't got around to, Maxine finished. What an awesome lady!
In the bottom of the bag was a cardboard box containing studio portraits of graduating cousins of Mom's and Maxine's and oodles of newspaper clippings and funeral cards. Some may think the clippings aren't a big deal since there are digitized newspapers all over the internet, but when one come from a small, rural area those newspapers will be at the bottom of the list when it comes to a digitization project.
Here is the link to Maxine's obituary. It is one of the best ones I've ever read.
http://www.edsfh.com/notices/Maxine-Dodds
Thanks Maxine - I miss you!
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