Madness Monday - Hugh Lawson Baldwin

One frustrating man....

Born 6/14/1809, Amhearst County, Virginia.
Married Betsey Stockton June 15, 1832 in Rhea County, Tennessee.
Census 1840, Meigs County, Tennessee
Census 1860, Bradley County, Tennessee.
Died 6/15/1895, Lancaster, Texas.

His tombstone is in Edgewood Cemetery and I have spoken with two people but do not have a picture of it and not sure I have the entire inscription on the stone but it says husband of S.E.

From an email (7/29)

Byrum's has given me your letter requesting info on Hugh Lawson Baldwin.
I have an H. L. Baldwin 12/29/1809-6/14/1895 buried on lot 53.
m marker says his spouse is S. E. Baldwin. There are no other burials on
this lot - it is a large lot......

And another email (7/29)

The lot #53 that H. L. Baldwin is buried on - the owner is listed as Routh ?. Could a Routh have been a relative that purchased the lot? It is an 8 grave space with only this one marked grave. There could be other burials on it but unless they have a marker we wouldn't have records that far back.

Just a thought.

So this is what I have. I don't have any family by that Routh name so I am betting that is the second wife's maiden name so will do a little research to see if I can find a marriage something for them. I haven't gone back to Virginia to find his birth record yet and I do know who is parents are: William W Baldwin and Betsey Luttrell. (It is the Luttrell line that is my DAR application line.)

I am very stuck on his Texas years. I can not find him on any census, no death information other than that headstone and since I don't know what all is on it, I am not sure if there is another clue on it. His family knew he went to Texas and died there. I am guessing he went there after Betsey Stockton died but I can't find him on anything after the 1860 census.

This is one very elusive man.

Look what I found...

This was hiding on a comment that I had missed. I have been going through this blog today trying to make changes to it that make blogging on it easier for me. So in trying to figure out something, I happened to find this comment with this award.

This is from Tammy. A blog I follow as well in my bloglines feeder.

Thanks so much Tammy! I am sorry it took so long to thank you!

Saturday Night Fun - August 8, 2009

Here is my generation 5.. (16 ggg-grandparents)

17. Anna Landekic: married. Croatia

20. James Sheufelt: born Jul 1846 in , , Ontario, Canada; married 28 Dec 1867 in , Sanilac, Michigan, USA; died.

21. Frances Wilson: born Apr 1846 in , , Ontario, Canada; died.

22. William Oliver Hubel: born 25 Jun 1845 in Norwich Twp, Oxford, Ontario, Canada; married 1872 in Greenleaf, Sanilac, Michigan, USA; died 23 Mar 1913 in Berlin, St Clair, Michigan, USA.

23. Ella Alice Harris: born 1 Jul 1854 in Austin, Sanilac, Michigan, USA; died 2 Aug 1931 in , St Clair, Michigan, USA.

24. William Franklin Duncan: born 1 Sep 1842 in Sparta, Ashe Co NC; married 28 Sep 1865; died 25 Oct 1924 in Clevelend Tennessee Bradley County.

25. Martha Jane Hensley: born 1848; died 25 May 1870 in Bee Log NC, Yancy County plot at foot of Bald (Bold) Mtn..

26. Hugh Wilson Baldwin: born 23 Jul 1841 in Meigs County Tennessee - Rhea Springs; married 29 Aug 1869 in , Bradley, Tennessee, USA; died 14 Mar 1881 in Rhea County , Tenn.

27. Deborah Louise Cowden: born 18 Feb 1852 in Bradley County Tennessee; died 30 Apr 1939 in Clevelend Tennessee Bradley County.

28. George Fender: born 9 Jan 1852 in Dundee, Angus, Scotland; married 9 Jun 1871 in Dundee, Scotland; died.

29. Jane Watt Alexander: born 1852 in Dundee Scotland.

30. John Anderson: born 3 Jun 1855 in Monikie, Forfar, Scotland; married 27 Jun 1879 in Dundee Scotland; died 10 May 1935 in Dundee, Angus, Scotland.

31. Elizabeth Dewar Spalding: born 17 Oct 1855. Scotland.



I am a mix. The missing three will all be from Croatia as I have only figured out my great-grandfathers mother so far. Scotland is a big percentage for me. The Duncan's of Tennessee are from Scotland a few generations back and the Baldwins were English through Connecticut though that link is not made yet. There are only so many hours in a day.



This exercise did teach me how to drag and drop in RM4 so now I know how to fix up my insanely messed up saved files!

SNGF ~ Good Genealogy Luck

Tonight's Fun Assignment

1) When have you had a dose of good genealogy luck? What document or resource did you find just by happenstance or chance? By being in the right place at the right time? By finding a family history treasure in your family's attic or basement? By finding a helpful document or reference without even looking for it?

2) Tell us about it in Comments to this post, in Comments on Facebook, or in a blog post of your own.

My good luck was posted on this blog entry... an OMG! moment.

George W Duncan had been a hard man to track down and his wife was even worse since his son referred to her as "Miss Edwards" in his civil war applications. She turned out to be Jane Edwards. George was a man that I had spent 20 years off and on poking around trying to find him.

Tired of looking for him I thought I would see if there was any pension information out there for Jane and she lived and died in North Carolina. So I spent a night looking for all of the Duncan men on the North Carolina state archives website and finally thought to look for Jane Edwards. I was so excited when I found her civil war widows pension application so ordered a copy to be sent to me. That seemed all well and good, progress, another document to put to her life on my family tree. She had been difficult for years too and suddenly in a couple of weeks I had figured out who she was AND!! found that line of family history already documented by another family historian!

So mail day! In came the envelope and when I pulled out Jane's information, the WONDERFUL person at the North Carolina Archives thought to put a copy of the page from a book showing George W Duncan's death!! He died in Tennessee, I had been looking in North Carolina for years! It was not expected and it was an important find and solved the mystery of "just was that man the G. W. that went to Texas??" I was so glad that he wasn't!

Google Thyself - Saturday Night Fun on Tuesday

http://www.geneamusings.com/2009/07/saturday-day-night-genealogy-fun-google.html

I always want to do Saturday Night Fun but then I forget as the weekends just seem to disappear. I realize I spend more time surfing and reading than I do actual research anymore. I spend way too much time admiring all the research other people are doing and blogging about!! And, I seem to be constantly working on this great "organization" project. I am getting organized but just not getting organized enough to get to what I want to be doing that I needed to be organized for! Phew.. that was an exhausting thought!

So, instead of researching, haha... I did the Saturday night fun from Randy Seavers blog, Genea-Musings.

I wanted to do this because I am not sure I ever remember Googling myself so I was excited and disappointed but relieved in a sense too.

The searches:

"sharon lighthouse" "Rochester, New York"
"sharon stevens" "rochester, new york"

Sadly.. I have no life. Google life that is... but I am almost thinking that is a good thing since I am not famous or a mover or shaker in any of my life's projects. By not showing up it really cuts down on crazed fans and stalkers too! So all is good in my Google-less life.

I did a few variations of the above searches and came up with ONE hit that is actually me. I showed up as a Facebook friend for one person. And it seems that there is another Sharon Stevens (my maiden name) in Rochester that is not me. There are a lot of Sharon Drives and of course.. every lighthouse of the known world showed up in my search and the images tab was completely lighthouses!

However, with this blog post I imagine now I will have a Google life!

And then a day when family historian is not fun..

In searching for each document and clue, we all know there is the thrill of the chase, that "Yes!" moment and that "Ahhh!" moment that we hear so much about. But usually those are for generations gone names on our family tree.

I forget sometimes that family history is the today and the now. Sometimes I remember like when my daughter and I are doing cemetery work and we use the voice recorder. Some day, generations away, our next generations will hear our voices and think we were insane or laugh at how silly would could be.

This week family history has not been fun but it has two stories for the future generations to get an up close and personal view simply by what I write here. Someday a grand child, or great grandchild can read this blog entry and know what their Grandfather, Grandmother, Great Grandfather or Great Grandmother, and so on, went though this year on July 13, 2009.

Kevin Vincent Lighthouse
b. February 8, 1960, Rochester, Monroe County, New York.
d. July 13, 2009, Norwich CT.
Son of: Ken Franke and June Baker

This is the father of my daughter. This was a man that I loved very much and who over time became my dearest friend while we were married. We were married for 10 years. We has so much in common and in the course of our marriage we had become mini homesteaders. Kevin was a man that worked three jobs at a time and always had people asking him to work for him. He never ran out of opportunities just because he was honest and had a good work ethic. He was an avid gardener and loved to do woodwork. He enjoyed milling around antique shops and big barns full of "stuff".. he could spend an hour picking through a jar of bits and pieces that I would categorize as trash. He took the role of father to my 9 year old son who struggled with his own loneliness of an absentee father. Kevin taught my son that "Dad" is a good word. Kevin was involved with boy scouts with him and had been as a child. My son has become a fantastic father to his two children.

Kevin played Rugby and the team teased him calling him Peter Purebread because he was a decent guy. That was how I met him. The first week he was rather inebriated and I thought him silly, the next week he collected me up at the game and we were together from that point onward. We had a wonderful wedding. We were very active with friends and family and a couple years after we were married our daughter was born.

Two years ago Kevin was diagnosed with cancer. He fought hard but he had already had it quite a while before it was found. He was just 49 and it seems such a waste of a good person. There is so much more I could say about him and perhaps I will someday. It is all still sinking in that he is gone and even as his ex-wife it is a hard pill to swallow. We never hated each other, we had a rough year or two but our daughter was always the focal point which kept our perspective. Sure, we could have tried harder, perhaps we could have done things differently but things ended up as they did. I have missed our life on occasion and was happy he found his own happiness and remarried.

I was lucky enough to spend time with him before he died. Of the four days I was in Connecticut, the first two he was awake and alert. Sitting by his bed talking to him about our daughter he would pick up a blueberry from his bowl and eat it then offer me the bowl to take one. I said no thank you but he kept the bowl there looking at me until I took one and ate it. Three times he did this! The third time I said no thank you, he stared me down and I finally said "okay! okay..." I Plucked one and ate it with a look at him, he grinned then and I laughed but wanted to cry. I am very lucky to have so many good memories of him. In fact when I think of him and those blueberries I chuckle then I cry.

Kevin and Mackenzie Lighthouse (May 1993)

And this brings me to our daughter. For the last week I have watched an 18 year old girl say goodbye and stay by her fathers side until the very end. In the four days I was there, she was strong, dedicated, vulnerable and simply amazing. She took his care seriously. She had moments when she was scared yet stayed with him. She took shifts at night so he would not be alone. Shortly before he died he told her he loved her. She was offered an out when it was seen he was slipping away. She chose to stay with him until he passed. The morning of the day he died I could see in her eyes she was starting to unravel.. from somewhere she found the strength to continue her vigil. I was strong at her age but not that strong. I traveled to Germany at the age of 17 with a six month old child but I could not take a person to their end like she did. I marvel at what I have seen in her this past week. I hold a new respect for her and a pride so deep. I tell everyone, "She was amazing." And she was.

Slacker I am....

I have not been blogging of late. I do that, I tend to fade then come back.. fade, and so on. I am trying to be better with the family history. It is not to say there has not been some significant progress on my Grandmother's line but I have been angry for four days and it zaps all of my energy yet re-energizes a different side of me. I am just grumpy and have a lot of attitude right now and a lot of thinking to do. I am angry at myself and this kind of makes me realize that these are the things we will never know about our ancestors. In this day in age, by reading this blog, everyone will know I am in a mood. Two generations away can read this blog and see I was in a mood. What were the days like when my great-grandmother came here from Scotland. Was she ecstatic about leaving her family to come to America. Was she excited but then have to deal with the homesickness. Did it ever seem too much to her to uproot and rebuild? It is not like they suffered. They were working class and weathered the depression pretty well. Did she have... "moods". Did she have a 10 year mood like I seem to be having? I am a ten year increment person I have decided.

I feel like I am changing yet again, or maybe I am re-emerging. Ten years ago I felt like I needed a change and that prompted a divorce. It was what I wanted but at the same time I did not anticipate how I would respond to losing my home, my house. I was silently devastated I will say. Not a lot of screaming or crying, a move to a crappy apartment that would take our cat but a silent shut down of everything I loved to do. I am a spinner, weaver, knitter, felter and an all purpose fiber addict. I had a group of four friends and we had spinning days, dying days and so on. So when we moved into this small apartment I stopped doing all the things I loved. It all sat in boxes or stuffed in a storage cubby. My wheel just sat in a corner being ignored. My friends all left the area. I took up a hobby of roleplaying. It was a good place to lose myself and found I made a few friends and could write and just have fun but then a year would go by, then another and constantly I would say... "My wheel just sits there.... I should start spinning again.." but then there went another year. One of the friendships I made is 10 years old. I have never met him face to face, I have never spoken to him on the phone yet he knows about my life and I know about his. We share stories of our kids, our frustrations and our pride in them. His wife wishes me well on holidays and I do the same to her. I love him dearly. And... we fight. It was a stupid fight but it was hurtful. Maybe it helped me put things into perspective.. today anyway, who knows if I will see this the same in three days when the anger begins to fade. It made me see what a time sink that hobby is, it makes me wonder why people who say they have such a good life seem to spend so much time in a time sink... food for thought. Things are never ever as they seem and it opens my eyes enough to ask the following questions...

Where is the woman that was an awesome fiber artist.

Why did I put her away.

Where is the woman that chased life and made it happen.

Why do I ignore the peace that these activities brought to me in the past.

What do I want to be remembered for......

Did my Grandmother, Great-Grandmother and back beyond ever feel this way about life? Elizabeth Anderson, did she? She was a widow that had an illegitimate child in 1855... her hardships had to be quite more than my week of fussing.

So as you can see, there is a lot of thinking going on here though I think that had always been one of my bigger problems. I think.. wayyyyy to freaking much. I am analytical, I will lay awake all night picking apart a discussion/argument until I drive myself insane and it makes me mad. It is hell being a Virgo, let me tell you!

I distanced myself from my friend to lick my wounds, to assume he doesn't care and is over it already and I am in the process of making some decisions to change. When I am ready I will talk to him and see if the friendship will be salvaged. I love him but today I do not care if I speak to him again. ::lying like crazy::

Why is this all in this particular blog? No reason.. vent space. I am miserable yet feeling good too.

This morning I ordered my dream spinning wheel, for it I have given up my vacation to Pennsic this year. The energy I expend will be to what I like to do. Family History, Spinning and Knitting. The roleplaying hobby will take a lesser role in my life until it disappears for good. It is time. I have sulked long enough, I think ten years is plenty of time to waste feeling sorry for myself or whatever it is that I am doing.



I am going to walk more.

I owe emails to my sister and my cousin.

And in a completely different direction.. Genealogy...(yes, finally on topic)

Finding Grandpa. I can so relate to this blog. I find I want a happy ending for she and her mother.

A woman contacted me through Ancestry about my family tree. She said she found her Aunt Leona on my family tree and her Grandfather. Leona was my Aunt as well and we share the same Grandfather. She didn't tell me who she was the daughter of. My father had four sisters and in honesty, I would not be surprised to find he might have had more children at some point. I have not seen him since I was 13 and it will stay that way. Still, she is either my first cousin or could be a half sister. I have written a message to her and I hope that she replies sometime soon.

My Grandmother's family tree is coming right along. I have quite a few generations that I have researched in ScotlandsPeople.com. I have actually had quite fun being a sleuth as I had an illegitimate child show up. My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother (Margaret ANDERSON) was a widow and her third child (John ANDERSON) was written in as illegitimate on his birth record yet his marriage record had his father listed as William CAMERON. His death record and all the census I have found on him listed no father. So... what do I do in this case? I will keep searching for something that might mention a father but if I can't find anything I suppose I will have to consider this a brick wall. In the meantime the search is on!

The Ahnentafel for my Grandmother. ( I LOVVVVE! Roots Magic 4).. see that? 6 generations with progress. Not too shabby. I have been taking a class on GenClass with David W Webster. I have enjoyed it very much and David has such an enthusiasm that it keeps me plugging away.. until the last couple days anyway.. slacker mode hit (though the knitting I have gotten done!)

Generation 1

1. Elizabeth Spalding Dewar FENDER-1: born 21 Mar 1909 in District of St. Mary, Dundee, Scotland; died 3 Mar 1984 in Rochester, Monroe, New York.

Generation 2

2. Edward Cummings Alexander FENDER-2: born 19 Jul 1878 in District of St. Andrew, Dundee, Scotland; died 10 Apr 1952 in Akron Ohio.

3. Elizabeth ANDERSON-3: born 8 Mar 1880 in Carnoustie Scotland; died 31 Jan 1933 in Akron, Summit, Ohio.

Generation 3

4. George FENDER-5: born 9 Jan 1852 in Dundee, Angus, Scotland; married 9 Jun 1871 in Dundee, Scotland; died.

5. Jane Watt ALEXANDER-6: born 1852 in Dundee Scotland.

6. John ANDERSON-7: born 3 Jun 1855 in Monikie, Forfar, Scotland; married 27 Jun 1879 in Dundee Scotland; died 10 May 1935 in Dundee, Angus, Scotland.

7. Elizabeth Dewar SPALDING-8: born 17 Oct 1855.

Generation 4

8. George FENDER-9: born 4 Apr 1817 in Dundee, Angus, Scotland; married 26 Nov 1843 in Dundee Scotland.

9. Jane BEAT-10: born 18 Feb 1817 in Ferry Port on Craig; died 18 Mar 1898 in Dundee Scotland.

10. Alexander ALEXANDER-11: born 20 May 1820 in Dundee Scotland; married 24 Jan 1842 in Dundee Scotland.

11. Margaret WATT-12: born 1822.

13. Margaret ANDERSON-15: born 1826 in Brechin.

14. James SPALDING-13: married.

15. Elizabeth DEWAR-14: born.

Generation 5

16. George FENDER-40.

17. Elizabeth SMITH-41.

18. James BEAT-38: born 1 Oct 1789 in Ferry Port on Craig; married 22 May 1816 in Ferry Port on Craig.

19. Isabel MURRAY-39.

20. Thomas ALEXANDER-36.

21. Elizabeth MILNE-37.

22. A WATT-16.

Generation 6

36. William BEAT-42.

37. Jean GORIE-43.

I come from quite a few Ship Masters. Two George Fenders and James Beat were all Ship Masters. Alexander Alexander was a stonemason. I come from the working class, I would love to take a further peek into their lives.

So there.. a long winded blog to attempt to fill in the space of the long weeks of silence.

If you read all the way through this.. woah.. I am impressed. If not.. it is so understood.

:)