Week 8: Heirlooms

A couple of weeks ago the prompt for the 52 weeks 52 Ancestors was: "Is there a special item that's been passed down in your family? I wanted to share the three special pieces I have. 

This is my maternal grandmother Minnie Elizabeth Chaplin cameo ring. It is very tight on my little finger,either she had small fingers or I have big ones. I have worn it on very special occasions but never for daily use. Being a nurse rings have to be practical, this is beautiful but not practical. This ring was given to my mother's older sister Beatrice but she had three boys and when I was born she gave it to my mother. The setting sits up almost 1/2". I have never seen this worn by any family member, not even in pictures. It was saved for me. My Aunt Bea was a lot of fun and made be feel like part of the family.


This Cameo pin belongs to my Mom's mother or grandma Mildred Corkish. (My second Mom) I do remember my Mom wearing this pin. Again since I was the only girl I was given this pin also. I think maybe I worn it once. Mostly it lives in the safe. I'm not a fancy dresser so I have no idea what I would wear it on. It sure is a beautiful cameo. I might just have to find something to wear this on!!



My Mom (second-mom) Annette Carolyna Corkish worked as a nurse. She was an army nurse during World War II and she was the nurse who took care of my mother Edith Inez Chaplin, when she died of breast cancer. I can remember her working at Booth Memorial Hospital in Flushing. This is a picture of the charm bracket her co-workers gave her in 3-6-1959 from the OBS staff. This is just before we moved to Florida. She obviously was well liked by her co-workers. And yes she is the reason I became a nurse. She never wanted me to be one, she said the work was hard. I never regretted my decision to be a nurse.

When I was looking for my treasures and after I saw them again I realized I had forgotten how many I really have. Finding all these things made me feel very blessed. Something I think I tend to forget. My family tried hard to make traditions to have and to pass down. I trying to survive after the lost of two mothers before age 17, I felt the pain and lost but forgot the good stuff. This has helped me to remember.

52 Ancestors: Week 7 Valentine

From Amy's email: Week 7: Valentine

Is there a love story in your family tree? Maybe a couple was married on Valentine's Day or you have a valentine that one ancestor gave to another. Maybe you have an ancestor named Valentine.

Since I don't know any love stories of my ancestors, heck I don't even know how my parents meet. I decided I needed to write about how my husband and I meet. So here you go.

Richard and I meet on Saturday July 20th of 1991 at a 

LDS Singles church dance. I knew right off the bat that he was younger than myself. He is 8 years young. We danced and talked and he even laughed at a story I told.  I thought well at least he has a sense of humor and I will have someone to speak with at the dances. I was impressed with the fact that he wasn’t crazy about his job as a bank teller but he was doing something to change that situation. He was going to school to learn a new trade. He walked me out to my car and said good night and that was that. 

Most of the guys I meet told me I wasn’t their type, I was too strong, too intelligent, too independent, too intimidating and too everything else. I am not sure what is wrong with being intelligent, independent, or strong. So, it was nice to have a down to earth guy to speak with.

A month later, August 17th, I went back to the same dance, I saw him standing by himself so I went over to say hi. He said, “I have looked for you at every Friday and Saturday night dance and every Sunday night Fireside.” Well I wasn’t accustomed to guys looking for me most of them went the other way when I came by. So, I stood there in shock and thought to myself, OK, just let it in Mary. We dance some more and talked. 

He invited me out to eat after the dance. We planned to meet at Denny’s on Southern and Country Club. I arrived first and I was waiting. About 15 minutes went by and no Richard. I thought if he isn’t here in 5 more minutes I will leave. He made it before his time was up. I was actually getting up to walk out. He had run out of gas across the street from a gas station. He had to push his car to the gas station to fill up his tank. 

Where we meet for breakfast

I had met my share of strange guys and I decided I was going to lay it all out. I told him over breakfast that, “There wasn’t a man who walks on the face of the earth worth taking crap from.” I can’t remember if I said it or just thought it, “And I define crap.” That did not scare him off. He made sure he had my last name and my phone number this time.  He was upset with himself for not asking for it when we meet in July. 

He called on Wednesday evening while on break from his classes. After the first couple of weeks we were dating every Friday and Saturday night after that. He was working, managing apartments and going to school to be an airplane mechanic. So, we didn’t see each other every day, which I think was a good thing and allowed us some down time from each other. I didn’t meet his children until October though he wanted me to meet them sooner. They were cute and liked me right off the bat. Of course, that changed a little after we had been married for a while and they came to live with us in my 950 Square foot 2 bedroom two bath town home. 

Our engagement picture

He proposed in January after we had attended a relationship workshop, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. We both learned a lot about relationships and the difference between men and women. After the workshop he has taken me home and said he had to go run an errand and he would be right back. He came back with fresh flowers and a red I love you balloon. He got all serious, nervous and asked me to marry him.  Since we knew it was the right thing to do we set the date for March 13th a Friday. He wanted to marry on the 17th so he could remember the date of our first date but that was a Tuesday and I didn’t want to get married on a Tuesday. 

Our wedding day

We were married in the Mesa Arizona Temple. It was warm that day and I was very hot in that dress taking pictures.

He tells people the Lord put me right in his lap. I had sat down by someone I knew and Richard was on my other side. When I finished speaking to my friend, I turned to Richard and said, “Hi, what’s your name?” It was his first singles dance after his divorce that was 2 years earlier. I was only going to one dance a month because they were boring and painful. There is only so much rejection a person can take. I tell him I had to move to Arizona for him to find me. 

Our Wedding day with our kids

This March, 2018 will be our 26th Wedding anniversary. It hasn’t always been easy with blended families and all, his parents dying and two sisters, taking in and raising our great nieces and all that life brings but it has been worth it. 

Last year on our 25th Anniversary trip.

Favorite Name Week 6

From Amy Johnson Crow's email this week. 

Favorite name could be a name of an ancestor that makes you smile. Perhaps it's an unusual name.

Minnie Elizabeth 

My Favorite name is Minnie Elizabeth from my ancestors. She is my maternal grandmother. The family lore is she didn't like her name Minnie. I don't know why she didn't like it. Maybe she didn't like it because there was an older sister who reportedly died at sea as the family came to America, who was also named Minnie. I have not been able to prove or disprove that story yet. I know a lot of countries used the same name over and over. I am glad we no longer do that. 

So because I learned she did not like Minnie I always refer to her as Minnie Elizabeth. I was named after both my grandmothers, so I am Mary Elizabeth. So our middle name is a common link. 

There are several posts about her on my side bar, just look for Minnie Elizabeth. She sounds like a bit of a dynamite person. She was a suffragette for the right of women to vote. She was a widow at a young age. 

She died too young. 

Irfanview How to Use

In the class I took it was recommended to download the IrfanView software from CNET. The reason given is this site is more secure then the official IrfanView website. I have no knowledge to confirm or deny that info. I just followed directions. 

Here is the link. Plus a screen shot of it.

Once on the page look for this Download button. 

Be aware there are many tempting buttons to click on, 

so use the right one.

However you find your downloads you will see is named iview450_setup. That is correct.

You can pin this flat cat to your task bar if you want. 

If you get a screen like this without cross hairs, 

so you are unable to take a screen shot or a capture.

Do the following steps.

Right Click on the Flat Cat

Right Click on IrfanView 4.50

Left Click on Properties

This dialogue box will open and in the highlighted blue line type in " /capture=4. You can see it in my line. Yes there is a space between the quote mark and the back slash.

Now how do I get my screen shots to make one picture. Be mindful that some things will be easier to line up and others not so easy. 

So in my example for some strange reason I want only the information on my Grandfather for an article and I don't want all the births of his 10 siblings. 

Here is part of the page with all the siblings.

I am going to capture the part I want and make sure I grab it from the same place each time and end it in the same place each time. The instructor went between letters in a word. That would drive me crazy to be missing the first letter on each line.  

But each to their own. 

I took this one right in front of the year and at the end of the box. You have to close the dialogue box after you save each image. And click on the flat cat to take a new image there may be another way to do that but I was only shown one way. 

Here are a couple more images I captured. 

and one more.

The instructor saves all his captures to the desktop and just gives them a number, just a number, like 1, 2, 3 etc. This is quick and easy but in reality you can save them to any folder you want. I like the number idea, so you can line them up in order when you go to make one image.

So you have your last capture, and the image is saved. Click on the word image to open a new menu.

When that opens on the drop down menu click on

Create Panorama image.

When the new box opens click on Add images. 

If you hold down the shift key you can bring in all 

your images at once. You will notice my images are not in order. Just highlight the one you want to move and you can move it up or down.

Once they are all in order click on Create Image. 

You want it in Vertical direction.

And with one more click you get.......

It isn't aligned up perfectly but close enough for this post. 

With a little practice I bet I will get better and 

this was a long string of events. 

I hope this helps. 

Leave a comment if you need more help. 

Happy Searching!

Week 5 Census

The Week 5 prompt is "In the Census." What intriguing find have you made in a census? What has a series of census records shown you? Do you have an ancestor who constantly ages only 7 years between censuses? (Those are fun!)

I was thinking of using my extra post that I did last week for this topic. Since I found so many interesting details about my mother on the 1940 Census. But that felt a little bit like cheating. You can read about it here if you want.

I also thought about sharing the first census I ever worked on, where I found my Grandfather as a son. It was an exciting moment for me. A first find after being away from Genealogy for a very long time. 

I have decided to go in a completely different direction.
On Tuesday I took a class at the Mesa Arizona 

Family Search Library. 

It was on Irfanview, the ultimate image viewer. 

This little free download is very slick. 

I can't wait to use it more. 

If you do decide to use it and download it, it was recommended to the class to download it from CNET. 

I did do that. One of the other students was confused because it comes in as iview.  That is the correct file name. 

So what is so great about this little software. 

Let me show you.

In the 1920 US Census my grandparents are on the bottom of one page and my mother is on the top if the next page. 

I am sure this happens to a lot of people. 

Above are my grandparents and Aunt and Uncle. 

Here is my mother.

And just to get a better idea, here is the top of the Census, with the column names. 

Now with a simple click of a couple of buttons I can make this. All three sections into one imagine. So much nicer for a digital scrapbook or even a paper family history scrapbook. Or even for your digital files or genealogy software.

This was new to me and I feel it is a handy tool and worth sharing. 

Happy Searching!

Interesting Details

While writing the post about inviting my mother to dinner. I decided to add all her sources to my genealogy program. 

I was also transcribing each document. 

Except the marriage license which was hard to read. 

Let me tell you transcribing each document makes you read things closer and you learn things you didn't notice before. I have had these documents for a while, I mean like more than 30 years, from way back when I first started genealogy. 

I have many years of not working on genealogy. 

So I started with her Birth Certificate. 

It might take you a moment or two to noticed that the address where she was born is the same as her father's and mother's address. I never noticed that before, She was born at home. I sure it was a common practice back in 1916 but not common to my generation. Just something to look for. 

She did age by 10 years on each of the three census records she was found on. 1920 age 3, 1930 age 13, 1940 age 23. 

The 1940 US Census presented two interesting facts. 

I picked up that Edith's highest level of education was 3 years of high school. The other more interesting fact was Edith was listed as married but listed under her maiden name.

My first reaction was no she wasn't. She had married someone at age 18 but I thought she was annulled from him by this time. 

So I went back to the marriage license and found that the annulment wasn't final until 1944. 

This is from her marriage license to my Dad, George Joseph Hartmann in 1945.

So back to check on what info I had on the first marriage. 

Here is what I have. It looks like I have to add two more events to her individual information in my genealogy program. A marriage and an annulment. 

All I know about this marriage is he was a bit older than Edith and he wasn't an honest man. I guess with a reason for the divorce as fraud that supports the family lore of not being an honest man,

 I search for Einer and found a couple of census records for him, 

he was from Denmark and in 1940 he was 33 so he was 

about 10 years older than Edith.

Now, I know that she was married to him for almost 9 years. 

I don't know how long they were separated. 

I don't know when she meet my Dad. 

My Dad and Edith married a year after the annulment.

I do know my Dad said his parents didn't like Edith because she was divorced. All my Dad would say was, 

"All you need to know is I loved both of your mothers and I would have stayed married to them." 

If I asked him any questions about his parents or grandparents 

he would say, "They are dead, leave them alone, 

you don't need to know them."

The other thing I noticed is that 1940 is the year Edith's mother died. So it makes you wonder if Minnie was showing signs of her illness yet. Minnie died in Oct of 1940, the enumeration date was in April. They both died of breast cancer 9 years apart. 

Well, some of this information wasn't new but I can see it in a new light with some more details to make her story more interesting. I will continue to transcribe my documents because it helps to reveal hidden nuggets of information even though they are in plane sight.

Even though it is labor intensive it is worth it. 

 She is still the first person I want to meet when I get to the other side and believe me I am in no hurry to get there.

Week 4 Invite to Dinner

From Amy Johnson Crow's email. This week is "Invite to Dinner." Which ancestor would you most want to invite to dinner? Do you have a story of a memorable dinner with an ancestor? Is there a special recipe that's been handed down? 

I wonder if you could guess who I would invite to dinner? 

I have questions for all my Ancestors but the one I want to meet the most and first is my Mother, Edith Inez Chaplin. 

Here is one of my favorite pictures of my mother.

Edith's Individual Information from my Genealogy Program.

As you can see she had a very short life. She died at age 32. You don't even have to scroll to see all her life events in my program.

I have written other posts on her, this one probably has the most information on her and pictures of her at different ages of her life.

What would we talk about over dinner? Everything!! 

About her life, are the stories I heard true, like giving a guy the police station phone number if she didn't want to hear from him. First I would have to find out what kind of food she wants to eat and likes to eat. I have no idea and my Dad never told me. I might not have asked since he wasn't a real talker. 

And would not talk about the past. 

I would have to ask what Dad was like as a young man.

 I would also ask about what her family taught her and what she would have wanted to teach me. 

Was she glad she became a Catholic? Did she miss her old religion? How did her Mom react to that? What did her Mom think of my Dad? Just realized that her Mom died in 1940 and my parents didn't marry until 1945. And I don't know when they meet. 

Her Dad was already gone, he died when she was 9.

I am sure I would think of a ton more questions while we talked.

I learned a lot of things about my Mother while reviewing and transcribing her documents. I will save that for another post. 

Blogiversary 8

Yes today is my Blogiversary! 

Yes I have been working on this blog for 8 years. 

Some years have been productive and others not so much. 

I will continue to plug away at my blog, 

because it is a place to share my family stories.

Thanks to all those who stop by and check my blog out. 

The GeneaBloggers Tribe posted this cute greeting on Facebook.

Happy Searching!!

Longevity week 3

Longevity is defined as the length or duration of life. 

As a person who mother died a week before her first birthday and having lost my Mom who raised a week before my 17th birthday. I know all to well how fragile life can be. Both my Moms die of cancer. Which probably influenced my decision to work as an Oncology nurse for almost 30 years of my 47 year nursing career. 

Note to self: Write a blog post about my nursing career. 

As a young person I thought my Mother gave up too soon, didn't want to live or didn't love me. Kids get crazy ideas. As I watched my Mom die, I know she fought and did all she could to stay alive. As a nurse I learned that in-spite of our best efforts the disease is bigger than the will to live and the treatments available. 

That knowledge does not make the loss any easier. 

A couple of years ago there was flood of colorful pedigrees. A fellow genealogist J Paul Hawthorne came up with a clever idea to show the place of birth of your ancestors. He used an Excel spreadsheet. I had extended the idea to also do a couple of other colorful pedigrees. You can see my original post here.  One of them was the Cause of Death and Age At Death Pedigree. 

I updated my Pedigree, because after all I did add a couple of years to my age. 

The colors are significant also. The dull red is for cardiac disease and the pink is for breast cancer. As you can see my gene pool sucks. So far so good, I have been blessed with good health. My Dad had his first heart attack in his 40s. I was ten so it was when he was 46. I remember he went to the hospital and was there for a few days but that is all I remember. 

I can remember the frustration my Dad felt when my Mom in 1964 was given the same chemotherapy that my Mother had in 1948.  Mom had Colon Cancer and my Mother had Breast Cancer. They both received 5FU or Fluoruracil. I even gave this medication and it is still used in the treatment of Breast and Colon Cancers in combination with other chemotherapy agents.

Today while working on my Cause of Death and Age Pedigree I also paid more attention to the ages on my chart. Here is my little chart I made. There are 17 people on my chart and I have four full generations and two people from the 5 generation. 

The youngest goes to my Mother, Edith Inez Chaplin born in 1916 and died in 1949. The oldest goes to my Maternal Great Grandmother Mary Ann Holmes Chaplin born in 1865 and died in 1950. Interesting that the oldest and youngest are on the same side of the family. 

My Dad's side with all the heart disease I noticed my Dad out lived his Dad by 19 years. I hope to out live by Dad by 20 years. I would love to live long enough to see my two little girls into their 30s.  They are currently 14 and 12. 

Even those four who died in their 40s were way too young. My Grandfather William Thomas Chaplin died when my Mother Edith was 9. She was too young to not have a Dad. She was 24 when her mother my Maternal Grandmother Minnie Elizabeth died.

And let's face it even dying in your 50s and 60s is young.  

I have lived longer than 13 people in my direct line. The next ages to beat are 71, 72 and 85. My plan is to beat you 85. 

My aunts and uncles have better longevity then my direct line, and I hope I follow their pattern. 

The button above I wear on my birthday. I had a magnet but can't find it, that said.

Aged to Perfection and Polished like a fine Gem.

So no matter what age you are enjoy it.

Here is the link to Paul's blog post and 

he has a link to the Excel spreadsheet in that post. 

If you want to do one of your own.

Favorite Photo

This weeks prompt from Amy Johnson Crow: The prompt is "Favorite Photo." Tell the story of the people, place, and event in a favorite photo. Where did the photo come from? Who has the original now? How did you get a copy of it?

This is my favorite photo of my maternal grandparents. To me the pose is one of a very comfortable couple, who love and care for each other. That line that looks like a pipe is really a pen mark. The corner ripped when I took the picture out of one of those disgusting magnet photo albums. 

The picture is in my possession and was given to me by either my father or my Mother's sister Aunt Bea. 

This is the same William Thomas I introduced on Sunday. Who was the first immigrant on this line.

I don't remember what year it was but it was about 1980, I copied the few family photos I had of my ancestors and sent them to my two Aunts, Bea my mother's sister and Emma my Dad's sister. They told me about the pictures and who was who. 

Here is the copy of the page with this picture. The black is my writing the blue is my Aunt Bea's. 

Here is a transcription of what was written,

Who Are These People:

Transcription My additional information is in Italics

Couple on Roof

Who: Grandpa & Grandma Chaplin: William Thomas Chaplin b1884, wife Minnie Elizabeth Spahn b1885.

Where: Borough Park, Brooklyn on the roof of Apt. building we lived.

Year: circa 1919 or 1920

Occasion: Visit by co-worker of Grandpas’ who took the picture.

Anything Else: The building in the background is the Convent of the Precious Blood. Building and grounds ran for a whole block across the street from our house, Believe Uncle Bill gave your Mother a prayer book? From there when she married your Father. My Mother converted to Catholicism when she married my Dad.

Here is a street view of the apartments and the now called Monastery of the Precious Blood.

Bird's Eye View of the apartment and Monastery.

Google Map. 

My Mother died a week before my first birthday so there are very few photos of her. My Dad saved a few, but I have none of her holding me as a baby. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 6 months old. The only stories of know of her and her family were from her brother and sister.