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Category: Wyckoff combine with Wyckoff

  • Life Gets in the Way

    Life Gets in the Way

    The hardest part of telling the stories of dead people is that it requires a living person to do it.  But sometimes life gets in the way, and that is what is going on with me right now. In fact, I had a plan way back in November, and I was well on the way to have it in place and moving smoothly by 2018. Then life happened.

    I have a lot to tell you, and it won’t take much time to tell that part of my story, but I just can’t fit it into my schedule for a few days. Please bear with me until I can get everything compartmentalized and reorganized.

    notfoundWhile some of this might have to do with procrastination (i’m good at that), most of it has to do with unexpected communication from my readers and just life in general. I’ll tell all; don’t worry. But before I go today, I really want to give a shout out to my three groups of readers, plus two individuals, that are helping pave the way for new and exciting changes for the new year:

    • Descendants of William Dolby Skeen and his two wives: Carolyn Smart Smith and Mary Davis. Theirs is the story that started it all, and I have not forgotten them by any means.
    • Descendants of Johannes (John) Kwiatkowski from Olean New York. Without your support and encouragement, I would not be contemplating a big step. An extra special thanks goes to my new-found cousin, Chuck, who’s caught the passion for telling the story that deserves to be told.
    • Ruth Contreras and the people of Bucklige Welt. I haven’t forgotten you, and I have no intention of doing so. I consider it my responsibility to play a part in making sure that the Jews of Bucklige Welt are not forgotten. I am still looking for those lost family members, and will let you know every time I find another one. And Ruth, I haven’t forgotten that I still owe you an email response.
    •  Diedre McLean, who alerted me to the many family stories that could be told for our ancestors right here in the United States.
    • And Dad. His dedication and passion for genealogy have led directly to an extension of my Cousin Connection project that I never thought possible. I can’t wait to tell you about it!

    I have a post planned for Martin Luther King jr. Day, so that comes first. After that, I’m pretty sure I’ll be more than ready to get caught up. See you in a few days!

     

  • Cousin Connection #4: Evidence from the Grave

    Cousin Connection #4: Evidence from the Grave

    I had already published my first Cousin Connection when I met Diedre MacLean, I just didn’t know it yet. Diedre contacted me using Stories From the Past’s Tell Your Story form after she discovered several name matches from the same cemetery where  Kathy, wife of my cousin Chuck, had discovered a connection to me. It was Diedre’s WordPress message that inspired me to create my Cousin Connection. If I could connect with Diedre through an online cemetery photo, I figured the possibilities were endless. There may be an end somewhere, but as long as there are ancestors yet to be found, I can keep telling stories for many years to come.

    Diedre’s information came from word of mouth. Her grandmother shared her family’s history with her, as I am sure it was passed along from generation to generation. When Diedre shared the information with me, I could see that we did indeed have a solid match. I just needed to verify the information that matched our shared ancestor, so I started with Elenor Haskins, Diedre’s g-g-g-grandmother whom Diedre believed to be the daughter of our shared ancestors William Auckey Wyckoff and his wife Eleanor Van Mater. The first thing I found was her tombstone.

    As I probed into FamilySearch data, and did a records search, I found discrepancies from the tombstone of Elenor [Wykoff] Haskins, and the Eleanor Wykoff listed as daughter to our shared ancestor. The first and last names matched, but the dates did not match the tombstone. I assumed the dates on the tombstone were correct. (They are written in stone.) I knew we had the right ancestor. After all, it would have had to have been an elaborate hoax on Diedre’s part, and really, what’s in it for either of us? We are, after all, complete strangers. So what was missing?

    https://new.findagrave.com/memorial/108388262/Elenor-Haskins
    Insription: ELENOR, Wife of Charles Haskins, died Jan. 11, 1873 aged 40 yrs

    After further communication with Diedre, I was convinced that I did indeed have the right tombstone, but I was not convinced that I had found the right ancestor on FamilySearch. I began to rattle some bones. I surmised that Diedre was missing a generation in her family tree, so I began digging with the oldest male among William and Eleanor Wykoff’s thirteen children. He had a daughter named Elenor. Her husband’s name did not match. The next child was the daughter named Eleanor, so I skipped her. The third child and second son also had a daughter named Eleanor. but her husband, children, and death date did not match either. I was beginning to worry that I would have to search all thirteen of the Wykoff children before I found the right Eleanor. The third son was my g-g-g-grandfather Cyrenius. He didn’t have any Eleanors. Thank goodness. I found Diedre’s Eleanor with the fourth son Charles. I was right. Charles was the missing link and his wife’s name was

    -wait for it-

    -wait for it-

    Eleanor! Obviously his wife was not the Eleanor Haskins I was looking for, but their daughter was.

    So. William married Eleanor. They had a daughter named Eleanor. Their sons could not be named Eleanor so they named their daughters Eleanor. Charles, one of those sons, had a wife named Eleanor and they also named their daughter Eleanor. She married a Charles too, but they named their daughter Etta, who named her daughter Eleanor, and that Eleanor named her daughter Etta. That Etta was Diedre’s Grandmother. Confused? That’s why I make charts.

    The exciting part in all of this for me, is not the first name of Charles Wykoff’s wife, but her maiden name which is the same as my grandmother’s. Diedre and I may have more in common than we thought.

    Diedre 5th cousin once removedIn the end, Diedre and I are fifth cousins once removed. I am still a bit confused about the fact that Elenor Wykoff Haskins married a man named Charles and that her mother and father just happened to be named Eleanor and Charles as well. It’s not impossible that four individuals just happened to share given names with previously unrelated people, but I could not find corroborating evidence in the form of primary sources. The only thing proving FamilySearch’s information to be correct is that tombstone.

    I solved one mystery, but that leads to other mysteries. Welcome to genealogy.

    And welcome to my family, Diedre!

  • Are You My Cousin?

    Are You My Cousin?

    Stories From the Past is proud to present The Cousin Connection Project.

    I grew up without cousins. Well, I did have cousins. I knew I had cousins. I had even met three of them. But I didn’t know them well, and I didn’t even live in the same state as any of them. I was well into my 40s by the time I started getting to know the rest of my cousins, and I still haven’t met most of them in person.

    I met my midwestern cousins on my mother’s side when I moved to Chicago for graduate school. As I sat at Thanksgiving dinner with all those first cousins trying to figure out how my children were related to them and how our children were related to each other, my cousin Allen patiently explained the differences between first, second, third cousins, etc., and the numbers of removal. It was a bit confusing, but I retained enough of the information that I felt comfortable in exploring cousin relationships to others.

    in search of myself

    Thanks to Facebook, I have been able to connect with even more cousins I have never met in person. With their cooperation, I am getting to know them better one blog post at a time. When my newly discovered cousin Bernie posted a family recipe on Facebook, I decided the recipe would make a great blog post. I felt that I should also identify just how we were related, so with Bernie’s cooperation, and using Allen’s “formula” I created a chart showing my newly discovered relationship. Bernie was great, and the post was so personally rewarding that I offered to do it for all of my cousins on Facebook.

    Between Bernie’s post and my next cousin post, I was contacted by a complete stranger named Diedre in Michigan. Diedre gave me some information indicating that we have common ancestors from early colonial America and the Netherlands (AKA Holland at the time). Much of Diedre’s information pointed to a probable family connection by removals with an old family friend in Utah. I could see that I could easily make cousin connections throughout the United States on a regular basis by connecting through common ancestors. I’ll go more into detail about those common ancestors in another cousin connection post, but suffice it to say I can see that I have plenty to keep busy.

    Thanks to my U.S. immigrant ancestors, and the cousins I’ve already connected with, I can connect with my past in a completely new and exciting way. Next week I’m connecting with another New York cousin, our family genealogy expert, John Woodgie. After that, Diedre, and I still have plenty of ideas to keep me going well into the new year. This is very rewarding for me, so I am creating a database for these cousin connections, and I am calling it The Cousin Connection Project.

    The Cousin Connection Project uses a surname and location database of most ancestors I have been able to identify.  The database is organized alphabetically by surname, and should be pretty easy to identify links to common ancestors. If you come across a name, location, and date range that matches names, locations, and date ranges in your own family tree, you can contact me for a free consultation and a possible cousin connection post showing your relationship to me.

    I am also including separate databases for Mary Davis Skeen and any other family lines for other historical biographies I decide to tackle in the future. The separate databases will make it easier to identify your own personal relation to other bygone figures. I have already checked Mary Davis and her husband William Skeen (who was from Pennsylvania), against my own family tree, and I have no reason at all to believe that there is a connection to myself (so far).

    As the connections grow, I plan to include links to stories, recipes, and family traditions. This is exciting for me, a person who grew up without knowing most of my extended family, including three of my grandparents and most of my first cousins. Where before I felt that I had almost no extended family, suddenly the world is becoming my family. I know that we have often been told that the family of humankind is all related. Some of those estimates claim that we are related by as little as sixth cousins. Other, more scientific endeavors claim that everyone on the earth is related by at least fiftieth cousins. I don’t know how much truth there is to that claim, but I am pretty sure that I am related to enough amateur genealogists to keep my Cousin Connection Project alive for as long as I want to pursue it. Here’s to getting to know you!

  • Know Your Groups

    Know Your Groups

    If you’re lucky,  your family has never immigrated.  It happens. But since the discovery of the Americas, people have been migrating with increasing frequency. No matter where you live, if you are anything other than indigenous, you can be sure you will find immigrants in your past. People marry outside their traditional cultural and social sets all the time, bringing more groups into the mixture.

    While this is usually a good thing, it often makes it difficult to do genealogy. But as my family has found, focusing on one family group at a time helps to organize and focus on the task at hand.

    Take a look at my family: (more…)

  • Death-It runs in the family

    Death-It runs in the family

    A curious thing about my ancestors–they’re all dead.  It’s the one thing they have in common. When they die, they get buried.  At least back in the day, that’s what they did.  Today, cremation is a definite possibility, and it’s getting more common.  Especially in Europe where they are running out of room for all of the bodies. But where did the bodies of our Euro-American ancestors go?  I have some guesses, and going by family names, religions, places of settlement, and places of origin, I’d bet some good money that I’ve got late relatives buried in  each one of the cemeteries I found.

    Of course, I promised that I’d do some looking into the Polhemus family cemetery where my 5th great-grandfather was buried.  You would think that would be an easy thing considering that the cemetery is smack in the middle of American Revolutionary history. Not so.  None of the links to Colts Neck New Jersey Cemeteries seem to be working correctly.  However, I was able to get some interesting photos with definite possibilities.

    I did some sleuth work, based on things I know about the Wyckoff family.  First, I know that they are Dutch; we have traced their records back to the Netherlands.  Second, I know that  they originally settled in the area of Monmouth County in New Jersey.  Third, I have some evidence from Find-a-Grave that indicates that Aukey Wyckoff was buried in the Polhemus family cemetery in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey. And, of course, I know their last name would have been Wikoff, Wykoff, or Wyckoff.  Knowing these things, I have come up with the following photos:

    The Polhemus family cemetery, where Auke Wykoff is said to be buried, is located in the Colts Neck Reformed Church Cemetery. This makes sense, since most Dutch immigrants belonged to the Dutch Reformend Church. This is the only photo I could find of the “church” or cemetery.
    Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church and graveyard
    The Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church in Monmouth county. I would not be surprised at all to find ancestors buried here, even if they are not Wyckoffs.
    Wyckoff family cemetery NJ
    This is actually a screenshot of a street-view looking at the Wyckoff Reformed Church Cemetery in New Jersey. 
    The Wyckoff Reformed Church

      There are so many possibilities in New Jersey.  I would love to take a trip there sometime and do some cemetery hopping.  It would be a lot of fun to see how many of my Dutch ancestors I can find while I am there.

  • Colonel Wyckoff’s Lost Tombstone

    Colonel Wyckoff’s Lost Tombstone

    My mom is a first generation American.  This means that she and her siblings are the first in the family to be born in the United States. My Grandfather on my dad’s side is also first generation American.  Mom is half German and half Austro-Hungarian Jew, and Grandpa on Dad’s side is 100% Polish. Grandpa on Dad’s side married an American. This is where the lost tombstone comes in. DAR FT

    Dad says he’s half Polish and half mutt. On the mutt side of my family (the American side), I have a 5th great-grandfather who was a colonel in the American Revolution, so I qualify as a Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR); even though I am part mutt. (more…)