Profile Accuracy Theme of the Week: Working

Question

This week's theme: Working.

To participate, simply:

1. Choose a profile that fits this week's theme.
2. Review and improve the accuracy of the profile.
3. Reply with an answer below to let us know which profile you chose.

Also see: Photo Sharing Theme of the Week: Home Sweet Home

Answer 1

I'm joining you for the first time, and I will work on Thad Mason Working-32, son of Thad Mason Working and Blanche Cook.

Comments

Great Karen! Have fun!

Answer 2

http://Wikitree.com/wiki/Taylor-53537.  Gain Bartlett Taylor worked during the 1800's in New Brunswick, Canada's mighty lumber industry.  It was the major industry of the province, causing the farming industry to suffer and speculation in timber prices to create and destroy fortunes.  I added a WORK photo and will improve Gain's  profile with a short history of the lumber industry in the province.  I also need to work on his parents.

Comments

Nice Pat!

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Your answers always have such an interesting sense of place. Just for fun, here's "The Log Driver's Waltz."

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Thanks, Mindy.  I'm still working on my rough draft on the lumber industry.

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Joyce, you are so funny.  But the cartoon aside, just watching the film footage of them balancing on the turning logs in the river was amazing. Thanks so much.

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This fascinated me as my 2Ggf, John Gray, a contemporary of Taylor, was also a lumberman in New Brunswick in the 1850s.  He and his family had moved to Whitehall NY by 1860, where he worked on the canal.  The story of have of him is that he had had a store outside of Three Rivers Quebec, at a time when more Francophones were moving into the area.  He lost the business and became a lumberman.  Gray-10996

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Thanks, Carolyn. From John Gray's profile it sounds like he was moving around quite a bit which makes it tougher to pin down records. But he lived to age 75.  He did well for the time period.

Answer 3

For this week, I picked out the father of my paternal great-grandmother, Christian Detlef Hinrich Clasen (1845-1912), to make his profile more accurate.
He owned half a cottage and thus also some land that he worked. Since he could not feed his family, he worked as a carpenter on the side.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Clasen-239

Comments

Have fun Dieter!

Answer 4

This week I have have adopted Frederick Weiland Working. He was an American Civil War veteran, and I will work on his profile to add his service. I will also work on his parents, since his mother's profile is unsourced.

Comments

Thanks for taking that on, Alexis

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Alexis, that's a great idea to add his service.  Frederick's middle name is Wieland and his mother's maiden name is Welland.  Could these be the same name or is it just a coincidence that they are similar?

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Pat you are great at finding things. I bet the middle names is misspelled—another thing to look for accuracy.

Answer 5

Most all of us have had to work, either in some industry or in the home. That leaves this week’s challenge wide open.  I have a photo of one of my grandaunts, Margie Smith (Smith-180694), working in an office in the 1921.  She married in 1924, but her husband had a heart attack and died in 1930.  As a result, Margie apparently supported herself as a stenographer all of her life.  I wonder if that is why my grandfather, her brother, felt that all his daughters needed to be prepared for work. 

Comments

Nice Wayne!

Answer 6

This week I chose a profile of my own family. My 3xgreatgranduncle Heinrich Karl Seher was a mason and he died at work in a town that is about 20km away from the town where my family lives. I deleted the middle name I had him created with and put the second name into the given names field and I corrected the locations.

Answer 7

I am going to work on the profile of my great grandmother Sarah Hall born in 1877, she and most of her family worked in the Lancashire cotton mills. She married in 1900 then had six children in seven years and died in 1907 aged 30. 

Comments

Well done profile but Gillian, this is the sort of story that breaks my heart.  There were so many women like Sarah bearing many children in a short time period and often dying as a result of childbirth or sheer exhaustion made them more vulnerable to disease.

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Thanks Pat, my grandfather was only 4 when she died so he had no memory of her. I will work on her census information now and add her siblings to complete her immediate family.

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Here is a vintage silent film from 1917 documenting a cotton mill in Adams, Massachusetts.

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I would like to see that video, Joyce, as I probably have relatives in it.  But it seems you have to pay to see it.  Not free like youtube.

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Carolyn, I saw it without paying. I just clicked the picture (the guy with the machine) and the film started. There aren't many people in film, just a lot of machines. But you can see why someone who worked there might not live a long and healthy life.

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Thanks for the link Joyce, it looks truly grim working in those conditions. I have just read Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell, set where my g grandmother lived, it seemed like somebody died of the working conditions or poverty in every chapter.

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Thanks Joyce, I got it to work on another device. Technology.  Oddly cheery music.  My family had a prejudice against the mills as employment.  My grandmother didn’t want her girls in the mills.  But during WW2 my grandmother herself worked in a mill in Bennington.  They made fuses for the war effort.

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Here's an interesting article about someone who worked in the Adams Cotton Mill.

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Thank you Joyce, a very interesting article and some amazing photos, those places were just huge!

Answer 8

I'll work a bit on the profile of my great grandfather, Frank L. Weinheimer.https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Weinhimer-3  He spent his life working on the Great Lakes, as a sailor, and finally as a captain on the lake steamers.

Comments

Very nice, Mark.  Great when you add the photos.

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Pat, here's, Frank and Anna Weinheimer's 50th anniversary party.

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https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Weinhimer-3-2

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It looks like a great time was had by all.

Answer 9

I have been working on connecting a distant formerly unknown relative, Harvey Alexander Adams, and sorting out three Caroline Adamses.  He and his father, both named Harvey had been combined, and the wives were and remain a bit mysterious, but I got Harvey Jr's wives identified.  He married one woman named Caroline in 1851.  She died just about 9 months later, (cf. tragedy, a few weeks ago), having given birth to a little girl named Caroline.  Just over a year later, Harvey Jr. remarried a different girl named Caroline, who was evidently a widow or divorced, but just about the same age as the first Caroline. Number 2 wife lived more than 60 years.

I wonder if baby Caroline knew which Caroline was her mother.  They sometimes didn't bother children with things like facts, and real parentage.  Things we find important.

Comments

Carolyn, good for you trying to untangle the Adams family history.  I'm familiar with the situation you're describing, having run across it myself in my own research.

Answer 10

Why did Italian immigrants work so hard? The answer shouldn't surprise you: https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2021/09/52-ancestors-week-36-working.html

Answer 11

I spent the past few days thinking about "Working" and intended to write about something else, but then I found this interesting article about someone who worked in the Adams Cotton Mill.

Comments

A wonderful story, Joyce.  Having been a mill rat, myself, it was very moving to me.

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Thanks for the comment, Mark. What's the fun of finding something interesting, if there is no one to share it?

Answer 12

Aaron Webber, 1785-1815 - Selected from my Anniversaries list on the anniversary of his birth.  Improved by strengthening relationship to his mother, adding and connecting his spouse, and indicating that there appear to be no children.  I can't seem to nail down specific date of death, and I am not sure whether he was a private or a captain in the War of 1812.  

Answer 13

My choice for last week's working theme (finished this week) is [[McDonald-23904|George M. McDonald]], probably the hardest working relative I have come across.

My grandmother used to speak fondly of him - he was her grandfather's brother - so I wanted to get to know him better.

His parents were pioneer farmers in Decatur County, Iowa. After his father died in the Civil War, George and his brothers had to work on the farm from a very young age. He moved west and was a pioneer in Washington territory where he worked in construction in Spokane (Spokane County) opened his own lumber yard and feed store in Almira (Lincoln County) and a second feed and implement store in Coulee City (Grant County). It was exhausting, just reading about it. He was also a cattle farmer and independent grain dealer.

Answer 14

My 3rd great-grandmother Ruth Dudley Landon (1808-1903) was descended from hard-working, upright Puritans in Litchfield, Connecticut. She married James Landon in 1840, and they had two sons and a daughter. They moved west to Ohio, homesteading in three different counties. Her husband was hard-working too, so he used his carpentry skills to make their home more livable, and his farming skills to grow crops that would support them as one of the earliest families in Hardin County. 

I improved her profile this week, with the only picture I have of her, taken in 1881 after James' death. I have to admit, it's not a flattering picture, but you can see she lived an upright and hard-working life. She might have been suffering from cataracts, to give her eyes that somewhat grim look. I added a quote from my great-uncle's book of family history, about how when her grandchildren visited her on a Sunday, it was a very quiet time, and no work was done other than feeding the farm animals, because Sunday was a holy day of rest.

Answer 15

For this theme: Working, I chose several orphaned Work profiles.  I had no idea, that Work as a surname was so common.  After updating a couple of profiles, I managed to find Edgar Byron Work, and started working on his profile.  Edgar served in the military twice in the late 1800's, first as a fireman in the infantry and then during the Spanish American war for 5 years.  He was married twice but had no children of his own.  Edgar and his first wife adopted a daughter, Margaret, but the trail grew cold after she was found in the 1920 census.  I added sources, a sticker for the Spanish-American war, and a biography.