52 Weeks – Week 31: Help

The greatest genealogical help I received began 26 years ago this summer. It started with a simple invitation I spotted on a message board. Someone was planning a visit to a Dutch archive later in the week and was offering to do a lookup for anyone who might be interested.

The National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague.

Two things immediately came to mind when I saw this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme, “Help”. First was the earworm that has resulted in the Beatles’ song bouncing around in my head all day. Second was my friend Nol, who over the years has provided me with an incredible amount of help in researching the Dutch side of my family.

Back in the early days of online research in the 1990s, there wasn’t the variety or depth of resources that we now enjoy today. One source I found said that as of 1996, there were only 10 million users of the internet world-wide. While many libraries, archives, and genealogical societies had begun to stake out a presence, they weren’t yet able to provide the scope of digital materials that are so easily accessible today. It was still often necessary to obtain documents the old-fashioned way, by using the mail. Bulletin boards and Usenet were still a common way of connecting with other genealogists.

Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932), the subject of my first query to Nol.

While I know it was sometime in early September 1996, I can’t remember where I first saw the original post I saw by Nol (short for “Arnoldus”), or whether it was a message board or something else. It was just a brief statement saying that he was going into a local archive the next day and asking whether he could look anything up for anyone while he was there. I contacted him and asked him if he’d be willing to look up one name for me, my great grandfather Johannis Albertus van der Fluit.

Nol emailed me the next day, telling me that the information I needed was held in the Noord Holland Archives in Haarlem (Noord-Hollands Archief). To my good fortune, Nol lives in Haarlem. He said he would be going into the archive sometime later in the week and he would get back to me.

My first email from Nol after we moved off the message boards. Later in our correspondence, I learned that the family line of Nol’s wife intersected with mine.

Nol followed up less than a week later. Not only had he looked up my great grandfather, but he looked up all four of my father’s paternal great grandparents (my great great grandparents). Furthermore, Nol took it further and looked up several of my great great great grandparents. The email he sent me set out a summary of the birth records for each of them, including the record numbers, dates and places of birth, each person’s parents’ names, the names of the witnesses, and the occupations of the persons named in the records.

While I had some prior knowledge, my early exchanges with Nol provided a significant introduction to the nomenclature with which I am now so familiar, including the types civil institutions and records sources (such as the “Burgerlijke Stand” – civil register), the municipal system of local governance (“gemeente”), population registers, and the Dutch words and phrases associated with genealogical research. So not only has Nol been a mentor in Dutch genealogy, I have often relied upon him as a language coach as I tried to teach myself Dutch. No Duolingo back then!

Over the next two years and over fifty emails, Nol provided me with countless records summaries: births, marriages, and deaths of ancestors and cousins from all over Noord Holland. I still have a copy of each and every one of them. I originally converted each email into a WordPerfect document. Over the years I have updated the format in which they’re saved and made sure that they remain accessible. I still go back to them often. One time several years ago I went through them again, one by one from the beginning, to ensure that I squeezed them for every drop of information I could gather.

The timing during which our paths crossed online resulted in a much longer and deeper relationship than what might have resulted had we met online nowadays. Dutch archives are amazing in how much they’ve scanned and made available online for free. Nowadays, over the course of a week I could probably find scanned online images of everything Nol found for me over that two-year period of in-person archival visits. In fact, over the last many years, I pretty much have found and downloaded digital images of all those records. So while we might still have become acquainted online, I would not have been as reliant on Nol as I might have been in the present.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to reciprocate Nol’s incredible kindness. He needs more Canadian relatives! Despite that, what makes me particularly happy is that our connection has evolved into much more of a friendship, particularly given that he and I connected in the early days of Facebook. Our connection has reached a point that I often forget the genealogical origins of our relationship.

My only regret is that in the 26 years I have known Nol, we have never met in person. Pre-COVID, he often visited the United States, but his travels mainly took him to the east coast. From where I am on the west coast of Canada, the eastern seaboard of the United States is about as far as Baghdad is from Amsterdam. Not exactly a trip down the street. It’s also why I don’t know your cousin in Toronto. 😂

This is why my Dutch relatives and I have such different points of view about long road trips.

I have only been to the Netherlands twice. The first time was before I met Nol. My last trip there occurred in 2017. I had hoped that I could meet Nol at that time, as I was literally going to be in Haarlem during part of my trip. Unfortunately, at the same time I was in the Netherlands, Nol was in the United States. Wat jammer, as you might say in Dutch.

I am still hoping that one day our paths might cross in real life. Nevertheless, I am grateful for all the help, mentoring, and friendship Nol has provided to me over the years. The depth of my gratitude is profound. Dank je wel, Nol!

52 Weeks – Week 30: Teams

Maybe it’s the fact it’s been a long hard couple of weeks, maybe it’s the heat, or maybe it’s the lack of a spark of an idea, but I just don’t have much left in the tank for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge. Which might be a good thing – nothing wrong with a short snapper of a post to add some variety to the long posts I usually write.

This week’s theme is “teams”. I decided not to go for the most literal take on it. Instead, I’ll go with the fact my great great grandfather, Horace Burgess, was listed in the 1880 census as a teamster.

1880 United States census, Utah Territory, Utah County, Goshen Precinct, Enumeration District 35, page 3.

By 1890, Horace was in Wyoming, where his occupation was “freighter”, a related occupation related to cattle work.

1890 United States census, Wyoming, Precinct Pacific, Enumeration District 30, Fremont County

See you next week!

52 Weeks – Week 29: Fun Fact

When I noticed that the theme for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge was “Fun Fact”, rather than assume what people might consider to be a fun fact, I asked each of my boys, “what’s a fun fact about our family tree?” The 11-year-old answered, “that we have ancestors from the Bailiwick of Jersey!” The 7-year-old said, “that we’re related to someone who has a school named after them!”

 Manoah Steeves Elementary School.
Manoah and my sons are first cousins six times removed.

Pity. Great ideas, but I’ve covered both those topics. It’s as if they both deliberately conspired to suggest my Week 5 post, in which I wrote about both those things.

I gave it a few days and asked again.

“What about having Mayflower ancestors?” Great idea, but that doesn’t actually really interest me or strike me as a fun fact. When I discovered a connection to a Mayflower passenger, I was actually rather disappointed because it’s such a genealogical trope.

“What about that we’re related to three U.S. Presidents?” Three for them, only one for me. Again, that’s as interesting to me as finding a Mayflower ancestor. To me, that’s another well-worn genealogical topic.

The death warrant for Rebecca Nurse

That said, there is one group I can trace my line to that is a popular genealogical goal, which for some reason I have found somewhat interesting. My Gx10 grandmother was Rebecca Nurse, who was one of the women of Salem Village executed on the false accusation of being a witch. I had avoided reading The Crucible until I made the discovery, because I had no previous interest in that historical event. However, this doesn’t strike my fancy as a “fun fact”.

“What about the fact that we were the missing branch of the family?” That’s a brilliant suggestion. Unfortunately, it’s another thing I’ve already written about!

Despite their enthusiastic responses that all fit the query, I had pretty much written about all the fun facts they suggested. Rather than dampen their excitement, I let them know that they had some brilliant and interesting ideas.

So what’s a fun fact I haven’t already written about?

After sleeping on it, I realized that while I stated on day one that my focus in this blog was on my side of the family, I also noted that from time to time I might delve into my wife’s side of the family “because there are some fairly interesting stories there.”

So, finally. Fun fact: my wife’s 4xG grandfather, William Norris Venning, was a silversmith in Saint John, New Brunswick.

William Norris Venning (1795-1877)
Attributed to  Joseph Brown Comingo
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

William was born sometime about December 1796, likely in Devonshire, England. I don’t know when he came to North America, or if he came on his own or with his parents. It was sometime before he was 19, the time by which he had begun his work in Saint John.

William’s silversmith mark.

William was active as a silversmith from 1815 to 1871, although one source has him also doing some watchmaking early in his career. Some of William’s work is in the National Gallery of Canada, while the Royal Ontario Museum has a teaspoon he created.

A silver teaspoon by William Norris Venning

52 Weeks – Week 28: Characters

This week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme is “Characters”. While that actually provides a wide scope, the inclination might be to write about an ancestor who had a big personality or was quite the extrovert. I’ve decided to write about an ancestor who most likely needed quite a bit of character to have endured what life sent her way.

One of my Gx3 grandmothers was Charlotte Elizabeth Liggett. Charlotte was born on October 2 or 6, 1837, to Conrad Liggett and Louisa Thomas. According to some sources, Charlotte was born born in Dover Township, Union County, Ohio, although most other accounts say it was Ostrander, Delaware, Ohio. While in different counties, these communities are about five kilometers apart.

Charlotte Elizabeth Liggett

Conrad and Louisa married on February 28, 1837. Unfortunately, Conrad died shortly after Charlotte was born. I have been unable to find definitive sources as to when and where he actually died, although it is likely that it occurred in April 1838. Several sources suggest he died at Nauvoo, Illinois sometime before 1839. However, the Latter Day Saints (Mormons), of which he was likely a member, did not really begin to settle in Nauvoo until after they were expelled from Missouri in late 1838. It may be that Conrad himself never left Ohio. According to Find a Grave, Conrad is buried in Ohio, although there is always the possibility that his remains were transported to Ohio after his death.

Louisa remarried in 1841, to Aaron Cook. This marriage may have occurred in Nauvoo. With the Mormons being driven out of Nauvoo starting in 1846, Louisa, Aaron, and Charlotte set out in the westward migration to what is now Utah. The migration, undertaken in haste and without time for proper preparations, was arduous. On the way to Winter Quarters in Nebraska, in November 1846, Louisa died. Charlotte had just turned nine.

After time spent at Winter Quarters, Aaron continued to Utah with Charlotte. According to one family history I’ve read, upon reaching Utah Aaron, he “married Charlotte off” to a Mormon elder. That was likely a reference to Charlotte’s first husband, my Gx3 grandfather, William Burgess. The marriage occurred on June 3, 1852, when William was 30 and Charlotte was only 14. Even worse, this was a polygamous marriage, as William was still married to his first wife of 12 years, Maria Pulsipher.

The marriage did not last long. Fortunately for me, it lasted long enough to produce one child, my Gx2 grandfather, Horace Burgess. Apparently Charlotte did not get along with Maria. Charlotte left William sometime in 1857, when she was 19. Many secondary sources suggest that William and Charlotte divorced. However, being a polygamous marriage, there may have been no formal civil registration of the marriage and, therefore, no formal divorce. While at the time of their marriage William and Charlotte had been “sealed” (a Mormon ritual meant to bind familial relationships for eternity), Charlotte had the sealing annulled in 1890.

Shortly after leaving her first husband, Charlotte entered into her second marriage, with William Whitehead Taylor, on September 7, 1857. This was also a polygamous marriage, and at age 28, William was almost 10 years older than Charlotte.

While Charlotte’s early life may have been difficult, it may have been much less onerous after she joined with William. It appears that they remained together for 50 years, until William passed away in 1907. Charlotte and William were never sealed during their lifetimes, as a bishop had told Charlotte that she could not be sealed again. Apparently they were sealed after Charlotte’s death, as it was her “dying wish”.

The Salt Lake Tribune, April 25, 1908, Page 11

Charlotte and William had four children. It appears their second child, Louisa, may have died in infancy or childhood. Their eldest, Sarah, died at age 49, when Charlotte was 70. There was a small amount of notoriety in the press when Sarah died. She was married twice. The first marriage was to Prime Evans. The second marriage was with a J. M. Tanner. However, this was not a legal marriage. According to newspaper reports at the time of Sarah’s death, this was a secret polygamous marriage, solemnized within the church after polygamy was outlawed. Tanner had been named executor of Sarah’s will and guardian of children Sarah had adopted (young relatives of hers). However, he ultimately declined to act in either role, likely because of the scandalous nature of his relationship with Sarah.

Charlotte died at home in Lehi, Utah on February 20, 1909 due to apoplexy, a term formerly describing a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke. Charlotte is interred at Lehi City Cemetery, with her second husband.

Charlotte’s Death Certificate