Wordless Wednesday - Jewell Florance Spurlock

Jewell Florance Spurlock

1915-1997

(my grandfather's half-sister)

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Wordless Wednesday - Gus Hobson Spurlock

Gus Hobson Spurlock

1899-1968

(my grandfather's half-brother)

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Spin the Ancestor Roulette Wheel!

Yesterday Randy Seaver of Geneamusings.com posted an “Ahnentafel Roulette” challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun; the mission this week:

1. What year was one of your great-grandmothers born?  Divide this number by 125 (use a calculator!) and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."
2. Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel" - your software will create this - use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information?
3. Tell us three to five facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."
4. Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.
5. NOTE:  If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then "spin" the wheel again - pick another great-grandmother, a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!

I love playing Ahnentafel Roulette, so even though I’m a day late, here’s my submission:

My paternal great-grandmother Sarah Belle Forshee was born in 1856. Her birth year divided by 125 is 14.848, rounded up to 15.

On my pedigree chart, #15 is my maternal great-grandmother Ruth Franklin.

• Ruth Franklin was born 12 March 1851 in Ohio, probably Union County, the eldest child of Joseph Franklin and Rhoda Cary, and died 28 August 1914, in Parsons, Labette County, Kansas. She married David A. Snider on 5 January 1871 in Union County, Ohio.
• Ruth had eleven children—nine sons and two daughters. Her eldest daughter, Myrtle Arminta Snider, was my grandmother.
• Ruth and David moved from Ohio to Kansas in 1880. They were enumerated in the census in Leesburg Township, Union County, Ohio, on 17 June 1880, but their fifth child Byron Lee was born in November 1880 in Kansas.
• Ruth was the great-granddaughter of Luther Cary, a soldier in the Revolutionary War; it is through this line that I joined the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
• Ruth (Franklin) Snider shared her mitochondrial DNA with her daughter Myrtle (Snider) Yawman (my grandmother), her granddaughter Beaulah (Yawman) Sherrell Spurlock (my mother), and me and my sisters, Deanna and Jennifer. I had only a son, but her mitochondrial DNA continues down to the daughters and granddaughters of Deanna and Jennifer.

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Wordless Wednesday - W. T. Spurlock and Lewis Butler

Digital image. Original photograph held by Cheryl Chaney Beaver, [ADDRESS
WITHHELD FOR PRIVACY], Lone Grove, Oklahoma, 2011.

From Mamie Olive (Martindale) Spurlock's Scrapbook,

her oldest son,

William Taft Spurlock (1908-1974)

with his stepson Lewis Butler (1937-2012)

c1942

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – A 100 Word Genealogy Challenge

Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings has come up with another great challenge:

1. This SNGF is based on the 100 Word Challenge (http://100wc.net/) that school children are participating in around the world.  They are given a word or phrase to write a story about in one hundred words.
2. Write a short 100 word story using the phrase ",,,the most interesting ancestor I have..." in 100 words.  [Hint:  If you write it in a word processor, you can use Tools > Word Count (or similar) to count words]
3. Share the story with all of us by writing your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Google Plus Stream or Facebook Status or Note.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

For this exercise, I am going to choose Rhoda (Cary) Franklin as my most interesting ancestor. One of my maternal 2nd great-grandmothers, she was the daughter of Ephraim and Matilda (Gandy) Cary. She was born probably 9 January 1833 in Union County, Ohio. At the age of 16, she married Joseph Franklin. Rhoda and Joseph had five children who lived to adulthood. Rhoda was institutionalized in 1870 for what was described as “melancholia from the death of a child.” She was released two years later. I have never been able to find a death date or burial location for her.

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Wordless Wednesday - Abie

Digital image. Original photograph held by Cheryl Chaney Beaver, [ADDRESS
WITHHELD FOR PRIVACY], Lone Grove, Oklahoma, 2011.

From Mamie Olive (Martindale) Spurlock's Scrapbook:

her middle son, my uncle,

Arthur Bryant Spurlock (1911-1951)

c1940

© 2013 Denise Spurlock

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Rivers of my Ohio Ancestors

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has presented a map-based challenge for this week's edition of Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. The mission this week is to: 

1)  I posted The"Rivers of America" Map yesterday, and demonstrated how to find the downstream course of a river in the United States, or the upstream watershed area of a river.  Please refer to that blog post. 2)  This week, your Saturday Night Genealogy Fun mission is to make a map using the National Atlas map (at http://nationalatlas.gov/streamer/Streamer/streamer.html) showing the downstream course of a river that one of your ancestors may have traveled on.  What does it tell you?  What did you learn?  Did they live at other places on that river, or downstream of that river?
 3)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own (please show us the map you created - use an image snipping tool or take a screen shot), or make a comment here on this post, or write a Facebook status or a Google+ stream post. 

Some of my maternal ancestors—the Gandy, Cary, Franklin, and Snider families—settled along Bokes Creek in Union County, Ohio. Here is the map of the downstream trace:

I was a little surprised to learn the outlet for Bokes Creek is the Gulf of Mexico.

The site allows you to generate a stream trace detail report with lots of interesting information about where the trace travels along its route. Here is some of that data for Bokes Creek:

The Snider family migrated from Ohio to Kansas in the late 1800s. It is possible that they traveled the Ohio River on their journey west.

© 2013 Denise Spurlock