Genealogy, History, Heritage, How To
It’s funny how things happen in genealogy. Recently I sat in on the webinar “Proving Identity: Not Matching Names” at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and then, found myself researching a similar situation. This research involved my great aunt, Margaret (Jackson) Fafri, and her bag full of husbands. Four husbands in 20 years–or so I thought. …
My Grandma Shellabarger told me that she had 4 siblings. They were Margaret, Julia, Viola, and a brother, John, who died as a baby shortly after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. I went many years thinking of the poor John dying so young. But, John didn’t really die in 1906. He was the boy…
I’ve been sorting through old letters that my Grandma Shellabarger wrote me. Many are not noteworthy. Hello, how are you? and nothing more. Others contain tidbits of her life. In one particular letter, she shared with me her mother’s recollection of the moment the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck. It was one moment that change…
Now that I know who my great grandfather really is, I’m curious how much the story he invented compares to his real life story. You may know that after 30 years of research I learned that my great grandfather was living in the United States under an alias. Harry Kenneth Jackson was a made up…
FamilySearch.org has the San Francisco County coroner’s records. These records are as insightful as they are disturbing. Rarely do we get an actual account of our ancestor’s death. It makes these records one of a kind. What’s In The Coroner’s Records? The Coroner’s Office detailed what they found at the scene of the death in…