Madness Monday - Abbott and Hines

I may have finally solved the Abbott mystery. Well, in reality, I may just be a little closer to the answer. This is not about ancestors suffering from madness, but the madness of trying to solve all the mysteries of this twig on my tree.

First of all I went to the Health Department where the original death records are to see if the "infant" Abbott listed in the WPA was my little guy. It was not. I was pretty sure it couldn't be before, now I am sure. Now I am doubting that his name was Percy at all. I am certain that he lived, just re-examining his death and his name.

First of all the story was that Cora Hines married an Abbott man who was a lot older than her. She had 2 children with him, Edna Catharine (Katy) which I have found, and a child who everyone thought was named Percy and died as a child. He had been a sickly child all his life and supposedly 'laid down on the floor and died' one day. But perhaps the story got turned around a little, and I know that deaths were not required to be registered until 1902, and what do I have left? Well, a child, perhaps a child just at the crawling age, still considered an infant, and a name, Percy Abbott. I also know that Cora divorced Mr. Abbott, date unknown, and the reason given was that he was abusive.

So I decided to be wild. :o) At FamilySearch I put in Percy Abbott, any spelling, date; 1850 - 1900 in Indiana. I got 2 entries. One was not even a close fit and the name was Pery, not Percy. The second was Percy Abbett, born Aug 1834, 66 years old, residing about 2 miles from my current residence, White, Male, DIVORCED (as per 1900 census, Seymour, Jackson County, Indiana). This entry made me stop. It could be the child was named for the father, Percy is not a common name. Or perhaps Percy was the fathers name in the first place and it just got lost in the retelling of the story.

I wish I could put this one behind me. It is driving me to madness. Though I do feel I am closer. If I can find some evidence of the marriage or divorce I will feel better.

Tombstone Tuesday - Dee and Lottie Jaynes

As you can see from the dates on Dee, he lived to be 101. Dee was a Miller and worked and lived in Indianapolis for a time, working as head miller at a Acme-Evans Mill there. They are buried in Riverview Cemetery in Seymour, Jackson County, Indiana.

The Life of Mr. William 'Bill' Hays Alexander

William Hays Alexander, aka."Bill", was born May 11, 1880 in Jackson County, Indiana. He was the youngest of 4 children. His parents were John and Margaret "Amanda" Atkins Alexander.

He married Olive "Ollie" Ellen Martin on Dec. 28, 1902 in Seymour, Jackson County, Indiana. Children; Della Mae, Gladys, Merrill Harris, Lucille D., Opal Louise, William H., Norma.

He was my great-grandfather through his eldest daughter, Della Mae.

In 1912 the City Directory he and his family living at 418 N. Pine Street in Seymour, Jackson County, Indiana.

In his 1918 according to his Military Registration Card, he was living in Crothersville in Jackson County working as a truck driver for Harlan W. White who had a grocery there. He was listed as tall and of slender build, his eyes and hair light brown. In 1920 he was working as a Mechanic at a local Seymour garage.

His father was a farmer but he apparently had no interest in farming.



He was a member of the Order of Redmen and Haymakers. They watched over and helped his family, even planned and paid his death expenses. You can see their 1909 rule book here on the Jackson County INGenWeb site: Chicakeith Improved Order of Redmen Tribe 405

It was a very active group in the city during his lifetime. He was very involved with the group all his life.

He died on October 10, 1928 of Bright's Disease. He was only 48 years old. Bright's disease was named Dr. Richard Bright who first described it. It is a progressive kidney disease that did not respond to any treatments of the day which included bloodletting. It was a terribly painful way to die. Today the disease can treated.

OBITUARY:
Seymour Tribune - October 10, 1928

William Alexander Dies Early Monday Had Been Ill for Past Six Months Suffering of Bright’s Disease Rites: 2 p. m. Wednesday.

William Alexander, age 48, of Glenlawn, died at 3 o’clock this morning at his home, 704 Euclid avenue, following an illness of six months. Death was caused by Bright’s disease.

Mr. Alexander was born in Jackson county May 11, 1880, and had lived in the county all his life. He was married in 1902 to Miss Ollie Martin, of near Brownstown. He was affiliated with the Seymour order of Redmen and Haymakers. The former will be in charge of the funeral services which will be held at the First Baptist church at 2 o’clock Wednesday afternoon, with the Rev. A.. Cohn officiating. Burial will be in Riverview cemetery.

The body is in state at the Tower funeral parlors where friends may call between 6 and 9 o’clock this evening. Besides the widow, Mr. Alexander is survived by seven children, Mrs. Della Jaynes, of Seymour; Mrs. Gladys Mails, of Indianapolis; Merill, Lucille, Opal, William Jr., and Norma, all living at home; and a sister, Mrs. Anna Fish, of Norman Station.

Abbott - The Great Mystery

My great-grandmother was married before she met my great-grandfather. Cora Hines was married to an Abbott. No one remembered his first name and I have not been able to find it. They could have married in Illinois, Ohio or possibly Switzerland, Jackson or Washington Counties in Indiana at an unknown date.

She was born March 8, 1870 in Cumberland County, Illinois. She married George Thomas "Old Tom" Jaynes September 11, 1896, at age 26. So sometime before that she married Mr. Abbott.
She had 2 children with Mr. Abbott. A daughter, Edna Catharine "Katy" Abbott was born May 9, 1892. She lived to be the ripe old age of 42, when she died of TB. I don't know whether their other child was born first or last. His name was Percy Abbott. He was said to be a sickly child, always weak and tired. The story was that he simply lay down on the floor one day and died. I have not found any evidence of the actual existance of this child. But he did exist.

A great-aunt said that both children were buried in Washington County, IN but Katy is buried beside her husband in Seymour, Jackson County, IN. So I have no idea where Percy was born, lived, died or buried. Very frustrating.

Cora and her parents lived for some time in Switzerland County, Indiana. They were George Washington and Agnes Joyce/Joice Hines. They both died in Neoga, Cumberland County, Illinois.

The only clue I have is a note I made many years ago. All it says is:

Seymour Weekly Democrat
Nov. 20, 1897
Percy Abbott

The library did not have that issue on microfilm. Is this about my Percy? I truly wish I had done a better job of sourcing my notes in those days. Let it be a lesson to all! You will not remember what it means and where you got it after 20 years has passed!!

At any rate the date would be about right. She was married to "Old Tom" when the child died.

Any Abbotts out there from the Illinois, Indiana, Ohio area?

• TwigTalk: My Janes/Jaynes Line
  


• TwigTalk: Meet Cora Hines Jaynes
  


• TwigTalk: Meet Agnes Joyce/Joice Hines
  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

July is Going to Be Remembered...

The first of this month my 14 year old niece ended up in the ER with a pain, which disappeared before they could do more than look at her. But on the safe side they did an x-ray. Something was watching over her. It was just an accidental finding. It didn't cause the pain. But it was cancer. Now, going into the last week of July with great relief, she is minus one kidney but recovering. Sounds like a simple thing, take it out and be done. But, of course, it isn't so simple. Nothing ever is. She is very brave. Very concerned about not upsetting her Mom and Dad. She is home now and on the mend.

Her life is forever changed. Probably the way she will look at life is changed. Her parents will never look at things the same either. I think such a crisis puts every thing into perspective for all that it touches. Suddenly the things you thought so important seem silly. The things you have put off seem so important. You look around you with refreshed vision, ready to see the small joys that come your way.

All in all it has been quite a month in just about every way. Not one I want to repeat, but that applies to all of my family. I will be glad to see it pass into history.

Direction?

I haven't had much time to blog lately. There are important things that require me to be completely present in the real world now and then. This has been a summer filled with such things, both good and bad. Life changing things.

But to get to a genealogical point, a crisis in research. Well, sort of. I had someone tell me that they had increased my file over 3000 people just by going to ancestry and collecting leaves. This was only a 2-line file. I worked for years to verify and find my people. My complete file is just over 3000. I was sitting and contemplating the damage done by such an act and thought, "I used to really do research". What a surprising thought out of nowhere. Being online has made me lazy about research. It's easy to become a 'name collector' in the online tree environment. The newbies coming up know only that environment. They are encouraged to just click here and the work is done for you. No matter that the data is wrong. Thomas MacEntee at his blog just recently posted "How Big Is It? Quality Over Quantity" hitting a nerve for me. The thought about my research and my goals for my work has been in the back of my mind now for a while. Every day it pops up to be ruminated over some more. I am not sure where it is leading me.

Also there is the mess with GenealogyWise, the Ning driven network site belonging to WorldVitalRecords (a $$ site). Not a wise start at all, it seems. I have gotten many invites, including one surprisingly from the site itself. But I am exhausted by keeping sites going and spending so much time trying to keep up. We all need community and I certainly enjoy it but how much is too much? I really like Facebook and a few others and would like to keep them. So perhaps a small, manageable network will fill the need. At any rate, I was trampled in the (what I believe was an engineered) early stampede to the site as it was not even open at the time. No one waited to see what it was before the great mass joining. So I decided to watch. Now there is a rather useless mess of groups of every imaginable kind that I, as yet, cannot see being helpful. Perhaps I am blind to the direction this is going. At any rate I am rather happy I sat it out. I am referring to Terry Thornton and the problems with posts being taken down when they don't go the way of the GW owner. On top of that I was unable to get Terrys blog to load today. It has been removed too. I hope Mr. Thornton shut it down himself, and not GW with Blogger. Though it is beyond my understanding why he would remove so much data. If he didn't, perhaps after this post my time is limited here as well. Whatever the answer to the disappearance of the blogs, there is a distinct odor in the air.

The whole mess just emphasizes to me the need for me to decide and weed out the things I do not find useful in my quest to find my family. A plan and focus on one line might be in order. All those old goals need to be brought out and dusted off.

Twitter isn't as helpful as I had hoped. And I am interested in more than just genealogy. I don't see how I can 'talk' to one interest without it going out to all. That is not good. Perhaps the AdobeAir programs such as TweetDeck and TWhirl do that, and I have them on my computer, but I don't want to expend the huge resources that I found they need to run. So I haven't learned to use them. Slows down the whole process. Firefox is such a memory hog it is hard to run anything as hungry as it (Firefox is an addiction). In Twitterfox you have no options. So I need to figure out how to work with it or settle on just reading them. Very interesting tweets though. I do enjoy reading.

I'm Late Again - Puckerbrush Award

I am late, as always. I was given this award some time ago. I won't say how long. But, I am only now finding enough time at one sitting to get it taken care of. Thank you Cheryl at HeritageHappens and Geni at Ginisology for giving me the award!

Now, I might not have been able to find the time to blog, but I was certainly thinking about what blogs have influenced over the years. I was reading blogs long before I gave it a try. Usually I try to find the newer blogs to give awards to in hopes of bringing them into the circle, but this time I will truly give this one to the blogs I go to most often. Some I consider learning experiences that everyone should have on the 'must visit often' list!

Randy Seaver of "Genea-Musings" was one of the first blogs I read. I have learned much from Mr. Seaver. He has an easy to follow writing style and a way of going step by step that is made for easy following. He is a must on any list. I only wish he lived near and I could attend his talks.

Next is Denise of "FamilyMatters". I have learned much about the nuts and bolts of the tools I use online today. I really miss that she hasn't blogged in a while, but her archives are there and searchable. I would recommend that everyone go and read through them. Very informative.

Of course there is "Dear Myrtle". She is an absolute must read. I have been using her Get Organized lists this year. I appreciate her blog and it's information very much. She keeps me up to date about everything!

Renee of "Renee's Genealogy Blog" is the first genealogy blog I think I ran across. She was at another place back then. Her blog was informative and still is. I keep up with the FamilySearch changes at Renee's.

"Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog" is a very long name for a blog. It is deserved. Harold keeps me up on genealogy in my area of the country. Anyone in the midwest should follow his blog!

Jasia over at "Creative Gene" is another that I go to regularly. She often posts her scrapbook pages, though I believe she is all digital. I am still old-fashioned. I am still hard-copy scrapbooking. One day I will switch to the 21st century!

FootnoteMaven and Shades of the Departed are must reads too! fM and I share a deep love of old photos. She is always a good read. I consider her a friend as well. Shades is what I consider a 'learning' blog. I've come to enjoy the columnists and even have favorites I hate to miss!

Becky over at Kinexxions is a fellow Hoosier and very informative as well. She has given me many good ideas. One that comes to mind immediately is using aluminium foil to 'read' an old and faded tombstone! Comes in handy to have someone sharing these wonderful and helpful ideas!

And then there's Jessica and her "Jessica's Genejournal". I enjoy reading this young woman's blog. She always has something interesting and informative to say. She should be very proud of herself. She is a good writer and a good researcher!

I know the list looks like only 9, but fM gets it twice! She's just double the fun!! I do, of course, read many more as time permits. But it would be a very long list and you would give up reading long before you got to the end of the list.

Since I am so late I will not inform each one of the award as one normally would. I will simply put this up and tweet. Probably all have already gotten this award at least once. I know I have seen it already on some of them. I don't want to make them do it all over again. But if you show up, and you are on my list, all I can say is thank you. You have become a part of my life, and I think of all of you often in my research.