Aunt Jean's data box

Date: 3 Jul 2016 [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Cory McClave and his wife Mary Pearl (Finch) McClave were greatly interested in their family histories. They collected a lot of information and documents about their own branches of the McClaves and Finches. Sometimes they wrote letters to distant cousins for more information. They related much of what they found to their children, and their documents were passed on to their daughter Jean McClave. Jean put them in a large cardboard box and did her best to organize the ancestors in standard tree form on large sheets of paper. I, Richard Bishop, volunteered to be the family historian in the 1970s and corresponded with Jean about some of the material. I used that material to guide me in additional research. Jean passed the box on to me and I have transcribed many of the original handwritten documents. My older siblings and my mother (Jean's sister) also discussed what they recalled from our grandparents with me. The box is now stored in my attic.

The box includes

• more than 40 letters sent to Cory's father in the years 1857-1868, a few other letters from a little later between Cory's uncles and aunts, and correspondence about family history
• newspaper clippings of obituaries and narratives about ancestors
• invoices for material Cory bought to build their house, and records of mortgages
• two diaries written by Cory's father for years 1857 and 1863
• photos of family members, with dates starting from the 1960s

I have been able to verify most of the data with other sources and that data proves to be highly accurate. The link to this profile will be used as a source in personal profiles, but some of the data will be sourced separately.