Monday, August 3, 2009

5th generation combining continued...

Here is where I will track the 'duplicate combination' for the second half of the 5th generation up from James BF Davis (I've already done Emogene's side, now time for James Hutt Davis' side). I'll still be working from the female end of the line, upwards (or bottom to top.)

I've completed:
Catherine Clement
Francis Anselm Goring
Eleanor Durham (took forever, she has tons of downlines. Lots of verification work here.)

Back to the plan...Combining.

Getting this obit for Harry has certainly livened my genealogy drive. Doing original research is way more fun that double-checking for combined records. But I'm realizing that I'm getting way far off track. So, next thing on my list is to fix Harry, and then get back to combining the rest of the original GEDCOM I submitted, and then combing through the box that started this whole mess. In the future, I'll log tidbits to come back to, but in the year or so it will take me to upload all of the info in the box, it should only get easier to find stuff online that will help in the search, and by then, hopefully none of the key genealogists that I need to talk to will have died by then. In any case, I'm getting back to the original plan.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

More woes with Harry Crossman

Well, Harry wasn't the son of Asa Crosman. At least, not exactly. I went back through the will of Asa Crosman, and Asa definitely had a son names Harrison. But, the will notes at the bottom that at the time of the will's execution Dec 11 1876, Harrison was not living in Henry Co, OH where we'd expect him. Instead he was living in Forsythe, Macon Co, Ill. (which means I ought to have a look through the same Macon Co History in 1880 that gave me Rufus' (son of Asa) Bio, and see if there is one for Harrison.

So Harry isn't Harrison. I re-looked at Harry's Bio, and it clearly says: "Harry Crossman, the son of a family which came to Henry Co from New York, was born in Monroe Township on November 1 1853. He was reared on a farm, and remained a farmer for life."

The Crossman that was a son to Asa that lived in Henry Co, per the will, was Hirem. I checked the dates, and Hirem was born in 1826, which means he sure could have emigrated to Henry Co, and born Harrison (calling him Harry, to distinguish him from Hirem's brother, perhaps?) This also clarifies why Harry's bio names to brothers attending Harry's funeral: "the brothers, Charles and Albert..." I'll need to check the census and see if I can find Hirem and kids, to tie this all up neatly. Wouldn't that be great!

In the mean time, I still need to add all of the kids listed in Asa's will, and figure out who they all were (spouses, children, sourcing.), and glean Rufus' will for more details on Asa. Just now in checking it, I found that it shows Asa's birthplace, which I previously had not had. And it also mentions where Asa's parents were from, though not by name. This could give some leads.

Since I had Rufus Crossman on the brain, I spent some time looking for his death date, and couldn't find a thing. I did stumble onto a site for another Crossman researcher, and they have less death data than I, but more birth data; including Harry as the Son of Hirem, with the same brothers mentioned in the obit. [http://jllewis.tripod.com/geneology/375/index.htm] I'll make corrections in NFS. I'll probably spend some time mining data from this site to give a framework for further sourcing so I don't wasted time mixing things up like I did with Harry vs. Harrison again.