August 9, On This Day in My Family Tree

164 years ago in 1849 my 4th great grandmother Ædel Bergitte Hansdatter Friis died of typhoid and cholera in Norway, Racine County, Wisconsin at the age of 66. Her husband followed her a mere six days later of the same diseases. They had only been in America for just over a year before their deaths, having emigrated from the parish of Herad in Vest-Agder County, Norway. It's sad to think that came to America for a better life but had they not, they might have lived longer. They are both buried in Norway Lutheran Church Cemetery.

Ædel's name is spelled with a letter called "ash" which was common in Old English and is still found in alphabets of certain languages today, including Norwegian.

Source:

• Findagrave.com. "Aedell Bergitte Friis (1781 - 1849) - Find A Grave Memorial." 1886. Web. 3 Aug 2013. <http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=36869971>.

National Women's History Month: Favorite Female Ancestor

March is Women's History Month in the US and over at The Accidental Genealogist, it's being celebrated with daily prompts, each one with specific ideas for bloggers on how to honor the women in your tree. I won't be able to keep up with all of them but I thought I'd pick out a few that inspired me.

Abelone Gundersdatter and her husband,
Gabriel Andreas Adams Friis

The first was "Do you have a favorite female ancestor?"

I have several but the one that always sticks out in my mind immediately when I think of strong, independent characters is my Norwegian 3rd great grandmother, Abelone Gundersdatter Fries. She was born in Lyngdal, Vest-Agder County, Norway in 1825 to Gunder Leegsen and Aase Olsdatter and grew up on the Fladen farm. When she was 23, she decided to pack up and leave the family home on her own. At this point, I'm not sure exactly where she went. When she left Lyngdal, she was recorded in the parish records as heading to what looks like 'Kobbervig' but I can't confirm where this is. In any case, within three years, she had immigrated to America and married Gabriel Andreas Adams Friis on September 15, 1851 in Chicago. They settled in a town called Norway in Racine County, Wisconsin where Abelone tended the farm while her husband sailed the Great Lakes. She gave birth to ten children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Even considering her hardy Scandinavian heritage, some of her behavior was quite masculine, she smoked a clay pipe and when visiting neighboring farms, would discuss the fields with the man of the house. Bizarrely, she loved the smell of manure and would actually dip a corner of her handkerchief in it and carry it around with her.

According to my great grandfather, her grandson, she had favorites among her grandchildren and when they were sick, her favorites were given sweets while the others received bad tasting medicine.

After the death of her husband when he was only 50 years old, she continued to tend the farm which remained in her name throughout her 60s until she died when she was 70 years old in 1896. She is buried in Norway Lutheran Church Cemetery in Racine County.

She was certainly a unique character and independent woman to immigrate to America on her own and tend the roles and tasks on her farm that were typically performed by men, and so (despite her favoritism among her grandchildren) I always think of her foremost when I think of strong female characters in my tree.

Family History Writing Challenge Day 5: Fallows

The Fallows family is one of my favorites to research and write about, I think because there is SO much information on them. They were fairly wealthy and so there's hundreds of mentions of them in their local newspaper and dozens of surviving photographs - even a scrapbook I think my great grandmother made! Plus, my grandmother collected some more personal and character information on them, I gather from her mother-in-law before she died. This adds a personal touch to it, which can be rare in some parts of genealogy - we collect facts but how much do we really know about the character of these individuals?

Originally, the Fallows were a poor family from the Oldham/Royton area of Lancashire, England during the industrial revolution until my 3rd great grandfather, Josiah Fallows, immigrated to America in the mid-19th century to make a better life for himself. And that he did! By the time he died, he owned a large estate in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and produced a brood of seven boys (what a household that must have been to grow up in!). The Fallows married into the Godshall family.

So here's the latest update of one of my longest family histories - 3,134 words, 23 sources, 14 photographs (I mean to add more photos, there are literally dozens more): Fallows.

Join the Family History Writing Challenge.

Cemeteries

Recently, I made a trip home to PA (I currently live in England), in Bucks County. I try to use the opportunity when I'm there to do some offline family history research and organization I can't do in England. Right now, it's mostly visiting cemeteries and helping my mom scan all the old photographs of our ancestors. This last trip, we found a bunch of photos of people we don't know. I think they were friends of our ancestors but there's no names on them so sadly, I may never figure out who they are.

As for the cemeteries, we visited several, most were successful but I had some unclear records that led me astray. One death record told me the individual was buried at "Chestnut Hill Cemetery" and I found some reference that suggested a place called Ivy Hill Cemetery (where several other of my ancestors are buried) was once called this. But the individual wasn't buried there. Her husband's death record just said "Methodist Church" so I thought maybe we'd have luck at the Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church. I wasn't even sure they had a cemetery. We pull into the parking lot in the back and sure enough, there is a very small cemetery of old looking headstones. My hopes weren't high - old headstones can be too eroded or damaged to read and what were the chances my ancestors were among this very small group of headstones? But sure enough, my mom spotted the family we were looking for.

As you can see, they are hard to read. And you may also note that there are four graves in the plot but only three close-up shots. The fourth is not a part of our family and yet, we were missing a family member too. There was a husband and wife and then the mother of the husband but where was the father? Many of the headstones were broken, fallen over, grow into the ground, etc, but no sign of one like that with the same style headstone in the plot. We went to the church office and there found a very friendly and helpful pastor who was enthusiastic about restoring the cemetery. He explained that sadly, there are no records of who was buried there so they are at the mercy of being able to read the stones. He also explained that originally, the individuals were buried in the front of the church but when the building was rebuilt, the headstones had been moved to the back (but not the bodies). I suspect that during the move, someone wrongly associated the unrelated individual because it had the same style headstone so they were all lumped together. I also suspect that my missing ancestor was buried there but at some point, whether before or after the move, his headstone was lost or grown over.

The church is certainly lucky to have a pastor there who is dedicating his time and efforts to restore what is left of the cemetery. He showed us some of the gravestones he'd already carefully restored and they looked very good. He even encouraged us to come back with some shovels to remove the first few inches of grass and dirt to see if we could find the missing headstone! Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that during this trip but maybe someday.

Also interesting was that I found another one of my ancestors buried at Zion Lutheran Church aka Union Cemetery of Whitemarsh (not to be confused with Whitemarsh Cemetery) but he had previously been married in the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Wikipedia tells me that some Presbyterian churches have "entered into unions with other churches such as Congregationalists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists." So perhaps it was not so strange for my ancestor to make this change of religion. He was, after all, born in England and a member of the Church of England before immigrating so it wasn't his first switch. It will make an interesting tidbit in my family history writings.

At another cemetery at the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, we found two of my ancestors buried there and behind them were four headstones with the names of (some of) their children but no date.

I'm kicking myself for not thinking about that more at the time and asking the office about it. Especially when I came home and looking at my tree, found I had records of some of them buried elsewhere. Did the parents buy the plot and headstones in preparation for their children but later the children decided to be buried elsewhere? Or were some of them just never paid to have the dates added? More investigation is needed on that. If anyone else has come across something like this, please let me know what you found!