Tag Archives: snavely

Yep. I’m Not Building Family Trees — I’m Building Family Graphs

A couple of days ago I published Family Tree or Family Graph and was delighted at the comments I received. Some of you knew exactly what I was talking about!  And Chris from NM and I had discovered our shared Snavely line!

So I started digging back into the Snavely line.  I’m presenting at the Family History Institute of Southwest Virginia on April 2nd and Chris got me to thinking about old unsolved problems.  And it’s always good to talk about local families at presentations.

I was trying to find the death date of Maxine Edna Wilmore Warden and came up empty.  But I did find her husband’s and his parents.  (Love those Virginia Vital records!) The name WALTERS looked very familiar.

more on family graphs01

So I dug through census, vitals, trees and some of my books. I built the Walters line back to William Walters and Mary M Powers and those names looked very familiar.

more on family graphs02

More clicking and I find William Walters and Mary M Powers, my 5th great grand parents; they are also the grandparents of Adam Boyd Snavely’s second wife and my 3rd great grandmother, Mollie E Repass.

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So what does this mean?  James Warden and his wife Maxine Edna Wilmore are both great great great grand children of William Walters and Mary M Powers.  (Below, Catherine and Michael Walters are the children of William and Mary M.)

more on family graphs04

Now there were no amazing ah ha moments.  No brick walls came tumbling down.  And I still don’t know when Effie Snavely Wilmore died.  But southern research is not about researching lines.  It’s about researching communities and how they connect.  It is part of our ancestors’ stories.

I think this has to change how I look at researching people.  I’m just not sure what methods I need to change or add to my process.  But I’m pretty sure I need to adjust my thought process.  I’m not looking for people.  I’m looking for people AND where they fit into their communities.  I suspect that this will break brick walls and add more to their stories.

Stay tuned.

Family Tree or Family Graph

Two weeks ago I presented 5 classes in the Swing through the South class of SLIG 2016. And I never attend a year of SLIG without new thoughts to mull and ponder!

Prepping 5 classes was challenging and enlightening.  And I kept noticing things that I either hadn’t noticed before or that I hadn’t actually formed into coherent thoughts.  Take the concept of family trees.  We all build them.  They show generation after generation of our ancestors and the parents of each ancestor.

And that is one of the primary goals of genealogy.  Kinship.  But kinship is not just parents.  Especially in southern families.  Here is the most basic family tree for Mary Jane Emma Snavely who lived a very short 11 years on this earth:

family graph01

And we can take both of her parents back a few generations:

family graph02

And because I suspect you are fairly observant, you noticed that Mary Jane Aker’s grandfather is her husband’s great grandfather.  Ah, those family ties. The tree actually can be better represented as:

family graph03

 

But the connectivity doesn’t end there.  Mary Jane’s father was Philip Aker, and Barbara was his second wife.  Guess who his first wife was?

family graph04

 

 

Philip Aker first married Christina Snavely and when died he married her sister Barbara.  And I’m leaving out all the other Aker children.  And more than a few of the Snavely family.  But another of John and Elizabeth Musser Snavely’s children was George Snavely.  And he and his brother Adam shared another connection.

family graph05

Adam and George who were the only two sons of John and Elizabeth Snavely, married sisters, daughters of Nicholas Wassum and Elizabeth DeLong.

To understand the short eleven year life of Mary Jane Emma Snavely don’t we need to examine all these people?  They  appear to be pretty interconnected when  we “graph” them out.  And no doubt the graph gets bigger and more complicated with everyone we continue to add.

Go search your trees.  See if you can find the interconnected families.  How do we represent these graphs that show these relationships in a way that will give us better understanding of who our ancestors were?

Starting with the classic family tree is a must.  You can’t understand the generations if you don’t have it.  But there are a lot of connections we don’t represent, or at least we don’t represent well.  How do we visually  do this so it adds to our understanding and help drive us to those delightful “ah-ha” moments?

 

Weaving in the Current Events of the Time into Your Ancestor’s Story: Tuesday’s Tip

We look at census records and changes in families as their story. But they lived in a time and place.  Their lives weave through history.   As I work on my Kinship Determination Project for my CG and the family  I’m trying to learn more about the county they lived in, Smyth County, Virginia to understand their lives in the 1800’s.

Yesterday I delved into History of Smyth County, Virginia, Volume Two, 1832-1870: Ante-bellum Years through The Civil War by Joan Tracy Armstrong.  As you can see Smyth County was in the southwest corner of the state and transportation was the biggest issue when it came to developing the county.  The politics of convincing a state legislature to fund the cost of building roads and railroads in remote areas of the state took quite some time.  But it did happen.

Marion, Va Train Station

Marion, Va Train Station by SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent), on Flickr

“By the end of 1855, tracks for the railroad were within two miles of Marion.  Four months later the train was making runs to Marion and track was being laid toward Abingdon.” 1

So the 10 years from 1850 to 1860, did not just show a change in the personal life of my ancestor Adam Boyd Snavely.  He was married,2 became a father,3 and a widower4 over those ten years. There was also a change in the ways in which the people of the county, and Marion, where he lived, conducted their lives.5

And I think that is the challenge of telling the story.  Our lives are against the backdrop of the world around us.  What happens in my city, my county, my state, my country has an effect on my life as I interact with the people in my communities, and the events of the world.

To be really good at what we do, telling the story, we need to bring in those details, not just the personal details we find in historical records.

Footnotes

1. Joan Tracy Armstrong, History of Smyth County, Virginia, Volume Two 1832-1870: Ante-bellum Years through The Civil War
(Marion, Virginia: Smyth County Historical and Museum Society, Inc., 1986), 56.
2. Smyth County, Virginia, “Marriage Registers,” registrations ordered chronologically by date, p. 158 (stamped), line 2, entry for Adam B Snavely and Mary J Aker; citing Marriage Records 1852-1935 [microform], Reel 47, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
3.Find A Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 2 Sep 2012), memorial page for Emma Snavely Find A Grave Memorial no. 47227744, citing Bear Cemetery, Atkins, Smyth County, Virginia.
4. Virginia, Deaths and Burials Index, 1853-1917, database online, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 8 Sep 2012), entry for Mary J Snavely, death date 17 May 1859; citing Virginia Deaths and Burials Index, 1853-1912, index, FamilySearch.
5. 1860 U.S. census, Smyth County, Virginia, population schedule, p. 145 (penned), dwelling 948, family 951, Nicholas Snavely household; database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 2 Jun 2010); digital images, citing NARA microfilm publication, M653, roll 1377.

Not all deeds are for land: Can I have a pony?

How many small children have wished for a pony? My nieces believe that they have husband wrapped around their little fingers and that he would buy them one if they just asked.  (Fortunately for sister and brother-in-law, my nieces have never asked. 🙂 )

Nicholas Snavely is my 4th great grandfather born abt 1811 and died abt 1893.  (I’ve been researching my Snavely line for my KDP project for my BCG certification.) As I was searching for deeds for Nicholas, I found this gem:

Know all men by these presents that I Nicholas Snavely of the County of smyth State ov Virginia have given and do here
by give to my grand son & grand daughter Adam Jones and Mary J Jones one black colt two years old colt of my sorrel mare many to have and to have the said colt &its increase to the said Adam Jones & Mary Jones & all heirs for ever free from the claims of the said Nicholas Snavely and well other persons whom ?? ?? witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and of fixed my seal this 1st February 1858.

Nicholas Snavely <seal> 1

Adam and Mary were the children of Elizabeth Snavely and John T Jones, and were 4 and 2 respectively when Nicholas made this gift. He had three other grandchildren at time; I have no evidence that he made a similar gift to them.

Elizabeth (Snavely) Jones died a few years later, sometime between 1863 and 1867, and while Adam was living with his father and stepmother,2 Mary was living with her grandparents Nicholas and Mary.3 We find various of the Jones’ children living with him over the years.

I have yet to discover why he made this gift, but it is evident by his relationship with his grandchildren after his daughter’s death that he and his wife were involved in their lives and upbringing.

And the gift of a pony, adds some light on who the man was and reveals his relationship with his grandchildren.

Footnotes

1. Smyth County, Virginia, “Deeds, 1832-1865; index to deeds, 1832-1929: Deeds, Vol. 7-8 1856-1865,” vol. 7, page 227-228, Nicholas Snavely deed gift to Adam Jones, record date; FHL microfilm 33983.
2. 1870 U.S. census, Smyth County, Virginia, population schedule, Marion Township, p. 28 (penned), dwelling 171, family 178, John Jones household; database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 Oct 2012; digital images, citing NARA microfilm publication, M593, roll 1679.
3. 1870 U.S. census, Smyth County, Virginia, population schedule, Marion Township, pp. 27, 28 (penned), dwelling 170, family 177, Nicholas and Mollie Snavely; database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 2 Jun 2010); digital images, citing NARA microfilm publication, M653, roll 1679.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Let’s Talk DNA

You get out of the habit, and it’s easy to stay out of the habit of not posting.  Let’s see if I can work on better habits. 🙂

I received my DNA results back from Ancestry.com (full disclosure, I am an employee).

I was expecting Scottish and German.  Here is what I have:

Every line I’ve been able to track, both paternal and maternal go back to the 1700’s and I’ve yet to find a document that gives me proof of jumping the Atlantic.  But given names and other genealogies I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure that there are a ton of Scottish or Ulster Scots in my tree.  So that 69% British Isle feels right.

And yes, I’ve got what many have referred to as the “Scandinavian Surprise.” But the Scandinavians many centuries ago spent a good deal of time wandering the British Isles and shall we say, left some of themselves behind.

I have a lot of of what I believe to be German names in my tree.  Feazell, Baxter, Snavely (which may be Swiss).  I suspect they are the Eastern European. I would have guessed more than 17%, but guessing and being are two different things.

Not a lot of “What the heck?” in there.

I’ve also been able to match through trees of mine and others possible connections to my Mary Gillespie branch. I believe that her father was Willis Gillespie but it is all indirect evidence and sort of weak at that.  If that connection is true, then I have Smith’s from Amherst in my line, and I found two trees where that is the only overlap.  Now I know that doesn’t prove anything.  But it is a clue.  And I’ll take a clue I didn’t have any day of the week.  It does make me want to hunt harder for that evidence or at least work harder to put it together.

But that is all in the background at the moment.  CG work calls.