Tombstone Tuesday-David William O'Donnell

original photo owned by author

This is the veterans stone that was on my paternal grandfather's grave. I took this photo in 2002. I have been working on my family history for a few years but this was the first time I went to a cemetery and took photos. I had been to my grandfather's grave over the years with my dad, but when I took this photo and went home and uploaded the photo to my computer I really read it for the first time. The first thing that hit me was his birth date, "March 8, 1889" I had just gotten his death certificate and that date did not match anything I had known before. I had his birth year as 1898. I called my father and told him and he said that he had never noticed the date being wrong before. I had heard stories that he had lied about his age to get into the army for WWI so I called the VA. They told me that they would go by what was on the death certificate for the stone engraving.

image from Ancestry.com

Well in January of this year I found this document on Ancestry. It is the application for the headstone. With all the red on this it is hard to believe that anything was correct on the stone. But you can see they have his birth year as 1889 like on the stone. But if you notice along that side in red,"age at end 23 years 1 mo" I am guessing that means at end of service. On here it is 1919. But one of the first records I sent for when I started happened to be the service record for David William O'Donnell. It is very light on the information but they do differ on his service end date. It is shone as April 19,1921. this date would make him 23 years and a little over a month old using his real birth year. So talk about conflicting information all on one document!

This stone is no longer on his grave. A couple of years after I took the photo one of my cousins put a new one on with my grandmother's information on there and the correct information for my grandfather.

Photo from Otter's Cedar Hill Farm Boarding House

original photo in possession of author


This is one of those photos that I keep coming back to trying to figure it out. It comes from  my paternal grandmother's things. So it could be people from the O'Donnell's or her family, the VanBilliard's.

I enlarged the sign area to read it. I am sure it says: 

Otter's Cedar Hill Farm Boarding House

Auto Rest

Home Cooking

Cannot make out the last line of it. I have no idea who this woman and and little girl are. It is just annoying!

 

 

Tombstone Tuesday-Gallagher/Hanf

This is the third plot at Westminster Cemetery that I found when I last visited there. this plot was owned by Timothy Gallagher. He was the father-in-law of my great grand uncle Patrick McCarry. This plot has 4 graves and this stone is across the top of the two middle ones. Rose Gallagher Hanf was another Gallagher daughter and John was her husband.

The Ever Elusive George VanBilliard

This past weekend was going to be a busy one. On Saturday I was going to the Family History Event in Luzerne County Pennsylvania. It was a joint event by the Genealogical Society of PA and Northeast PA Genealogical Society. So I thought I would go up on Friday and get some research done. I mostly wanted to get a marriage record for my Great Grandparents, George VanBilliard and Susan Haas. I have a transcription of their newspaper announcement in the Bethlehem newspaper.

  "Bethlehem Daily Times: Name[Van Billiard, George Name[Haas, Susan Beckel_Index[George Van Billiard of South Bethlehem MARRIED Miss Susan Haas of Bethlehem, September 19, 1885 in Bethlehem by Reverend Isaac K. Loos"

 I called the Northampton County Orphan's Court in Easton last week to see if I needed to order the record ahead of time but was told that I could just look for the record when I got there. Problem was that when I got there on Friday, I was told that they were having computer problems and they were going to be shut down in 15 minutes for 2 hours so we had to hurry. So the person helping me went over to the index book to see if they had the record but they did not. When I told her about the newspaper announcement saying they were married in Bethlehem she said that maybe they went to Lehigh County since a part of Bethlehem is in Lehigh County. She gave me their number to call them. I told her that I wanted to see if they had my grandmother's birth record. She pulled out the book it should be in but did not find her in 1900. She did find her sister that was born in 1902. So she took the information to put that in the computer quickly so I could get a copy of that. While she was putting it in the computer I did a transcription of the record. She was able to get it in and get me a copy before the computers went down. The transcription is:

  "book 2 page 276, Register of Births of Northampton County. Date of Record: December 11, 1902, Name of Child: Margurette VanBilliard, Date of Birth: June 14, 1902, Female, White. Place of Birth: South Bethlehem, Father of Child: George VanBilliard, Mother of Child: Mrs. George VanBilliard"

Well it is good that I did the transcription because when I got the record home and looked at it real well, in her hurry she put the year of the recorded date as 1903 instead of 1902.

 So after the court house I stopped at the Signal Museum in Easton. The Northampton Genealogical Society is in the Museum. I wanted to see what information they might have on the VanBilliards. As it turned out I had lots more information then they have and it was decided that I should write up what I have and get it to them for their family files.

 I still have so much more I need to find out about all my VanBilliards and like George, they do not make finding things easy! So I will keep on hunting down the facts.

Tombstone Tuesday-Another Westminster Cemetery Grave

This is another of the graves I visited on my last trip to Westminster Cemetery a few weeks ago. I was unable to find it the first time I was there. This is a plot consisting of 8 graves. This is the only stone which is over the first two graves. It would seem that the John Carroll purchased this plot and then 6 of the graves were bought from different people and his family kept the first 2. Grave 8 was purchased by Bridget Niland and my 2nd great grandparents, John and Catherine Carr Welsh are buried there. John Welsh's mother was Catherine Niland but I do not know how Bridget and the other Nilands I have found are related to Catherine and John.  Gee what a surprise, another mystery!

Wedding Wednesday-The Honeymoon Album

In last week's post I had a photo of the family seeing the bride and groom off on their Pocono Honeymoon from my parents wedding album. This is their Honeymoon album, October 1950

Playing Around With Genealogy Software

Just a year ago I broke down and bought an IMAC. I have always had a PC but I had seen this beautiful 27" screen on the MAC at Best Buy and just kept thinking about it. All I had before I bought it was an HP mini, my larger lap top had bit the dust. So I bought the IMAC. Among other things to get used to was the fact that I had just a few months before started using Legacy for my data base. I had always used Family Tree Maker before that and I was really liking Legacy, but I could not use that on the MAC without loading Windows on it. the Apple guy at Best Buy told me I could try Crossover. So I did that, but was not happy with the way it ran Legacy. He had also told me that I could load windows through Boot Camp instead of putting Parallels on, because he said that would slow down my computer. So I decided to try this.

Well I am not the most computer savvy person, that was my husband Frank, but I had loaded software before. Well it was a disaster! I ended up having to take it the Apple store and I thought I had lost my operating system! But I didn't do as much damage as I thought, thank goodness!!!! But that has made me rethink this whole windows on my MAC thing... So I am thinking I will give in to having the MAC I wanted and not try turning it into a PC. I still have my HP mini to run windows stuff on after all. So last night I downloaded the demo version of Reunion to try it out. I am kinda liking it so far. But this is just the demo so I am not sure yet.

I guess I am wondering if anyone else has anything to say about Reunion software.