Profile Accuracy Theme of the Week: Changes

Question

This week's theme: Changes.

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: Reunion

Answer 1

For this week's topic, I picked a maternal ancestor of my mother: Gotthilf August Römer (1837-1907). He was born in Dankerode in the Harz Mountains and first worked there as a miner, then he became a carter and went to Staßfurt west of the Harz Mountains, where he married and took up his third profession: he became a merchant.
So this man has changed not only his profession but also his location.

I will make his profile more accurate this week: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/R%C3%B6mer-475

Answer 2

This week I will work on the profile of my first cousin twice removed Merton Leonadis "Onnie" Jeffers. His biography needs accuracy work, and his wife and ten children need to be added. He, his mother, and his siblings had to live with his grandparents in Illinois after his father was murdered in Texas when Onnie was only two years old. In 1906, Onnie was homesteading in Nebraska, so he made several changes in his life.

Comments

Thank you Alexis for sharing this profile

10 children that is a lot

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Thank you Susan for your comment. Yesterday was very confusing when I found out that Merton and his wife Lena were second cousins. I really need to spend more time on this family—I think I may have a good photo of them in my grandmother’s Illinois album.

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That is amazing sweet Alexis to found out they where second cousins, that what makes genealogy excited.

I shall certainly look forward to se the photos, you know me I absolutely love old photos

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Impressive biography, as always, Alexis.  But how unfortunate for poor Merton to have his father murdered at the beginning of Merton's life and Merton's tragic end of life to be as a result of lightening.

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Thank you Susan, I put on a good photo Melton’s wife as a child with her siblings and parents, but I possibly have another photo of this family.

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Yes Pat, it is a sad story; Merton’s father was doing well and expanding his business when he was murdered.

Answer 3

The changes were great for http://wikitree.com/wiki/Horton-6335.  George Horton was my paternal grandfather's cousin.  He left rural Ontario where his father was a farmer to live in the new city of Winnipeg, Manitoba.  I need to improve George's profile and include his extensive obituary published in an Owen Sound, Ontario newspaper. He set out for the big city alone and was in Winnipeg by 1901.  I just added a photo of Winnipeg's Main Street at that time and upgraded his wife's sources and biography.

Comments

Pat you do such a great job of making your profiles interesting. I love the idea of having a city photo.

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Fantastic photo there are so much to look at

Special how it was at the time

Thank you for sharing this great photo Pat

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Thanks, Alexis.  When I don't have a photo of the person, it's a way to add a sense of time and or place to their profile.  There is a photo of George on Ancestry but I can't add someone's photo here.  However, since George changed his life by moving to Winnipeg, the city photo is valid as an extra photo, even if you have a person photo.

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Thanks, Susan. Yeah, I was surprised at how big Winnipeg was in 1900. I didn't know that until I saw the pictures. And the main street is not a regular paved street.  It's before the cars.

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You are right Pat it is a very big place during the time

It is amazing town to look at

Answer 4

I will improve the bio of my great-great-grandmother, Bridget (Tarpy) Gately.  She married William in Ireland and they had 3 children.  In 1865, when the children were 2, 4, and 6, William left Ireland and came to the U.S. to find a better life.  It was 10 years before he could afford to send for Bridget and the children.  They came to Illinois in 1875, then settled in Minnesota for many years before finishing their lives in North Dakota.

Comments

Lovely profile, Rhonda. What a hardship, 10 years without your spouse.

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Thanks.  It is often difficult to appreciate the sacrifices our ancestors made.   The times we live in aren’t big on sacrifice.

Answer 5

One thing I have discovered about my ancestors is that they were always dealing with change.  Sometimes the changes were made by their own choices, such as moving to a new farm, and sometimes changes were thrust upon them, such as the economic situation or the death of a loved one.  (Not so different than changes in our own lives.)  It is not always easy to determine what caused the change, or how exactly they chose to deal with the change.

 For this week, I will improve the profile of Amanda Carlson (Karlsdotter-692), my father’s aunt by marriage.  Amanda made a major change going to the United States from Sweden in 1903.  She crossed the country to settle in Washington State—why there?   In addition, she has been a brick wall for some time.  I don’t know if I will be able to answer all of my questions, but I will see what I can determine.

Answer 6

For this week's theme I have chosen to work on the profile of John Herbert Angus.  Born in 1859, he appears in the 1861 census with his sister Eliza Angus  as the nephew and niece of James and Eliza Cahill. (Eliza was born Angus). Some time before 1881 his name was changed to Herbert James Cahill but Eliza kept her birth surname. I have been unable to find any records of either of the parents registered on the birth certificates nor of the different man named as 'father' on Eliza's Parish Register entry for her marriage. There may well have been more than one name change here!

Answer 7

The change of location, whether through migration, illness, war, or old age is something we have to grapple with in genealogy.  My mother's family was from Pownal, a little town in southern Vermont, USA, where one of the main names was Barber.  Joseph Barber, a Sgt in the Revolution, put a mill on the pond that is now called Barber's Pond, had two wives, and umpteen children.  Many of them stayed in the area, increasing the number of people named Barber.  The part of the cemetery they are buried in is called Barber town. 

Our mystery for decades was what happened to the mothers of these children?  We still don't know what happened  to the first wife, who probably died as a young woman before the Revolution.  But the second one, the one who had most of the children, and who administered her husband's estate, what happened to her?  She was not buried in Pownal, with her husband and most of her children. Her probate is in Pownal, but she was not.

The answer came from Findagrave, when graves in towns all over Vermont were photographed and the photos uploaded by volunteers.  I excitedly found her name and took a drive to northern Vermont.  Since then I have tried to piece together why grandma Leah Grover Barber left her home in Pownal, to die in Cambridge VT, some 150 miles away.  It is three hours by car, so imagine what a journey that would be back in the early 1800s. 

My read of the local cemetery told me why. Some of her children were there.   She had boys to stay in Pownal and run the mill and the farm, but she went to where her daughters Mary and Tryphena and at least one son, Jeremiah, were living.  How do we know that? Because Leah is surrounded in the cemetery by her daughters, a son in law, a daughter in law, and grandchildren.  The stones tell us Leah died in 1811 in her 55th year.  We know she was a widow, and had had many children.  We do not know her cause of death.  Even more intriguing is her daughter Mary died just two years later, in her late 30s.  Daughter Tryphena continued to live in Cambridge, until her death in 1872, 61 years after her mother's death.  Son Jeremiah's wife is there, but he changed his locality after her death, moving to Westport NY, perhaps with another brother, Hezekiah, who is buried near him, and about whom we don't know much yet.  

This week I improved the profile of Leah https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Grover-1212, and will try to uncover who this Hezekiah Barber was.  

Comments

The answer about Hezekiah came quickly. He was a cousin, and not a terribly close cousin, to this family of Barbers.  But his wife came from Cambridge VT, so there is more a connection than we know.

Answer 8

When I saw the topic "change", I realized I could meet the challenge simply by changing any profile. But that was too easy. I thought about change. . . pocket change . . . coins. . . the Sacagawea dollar coin. . .

Sacagawea was recently featured on Connections, so I assumed her profile was accurate.  I looked anyhow. (Shoshone-1). There are various spellings of her first name, which was actually her only name. For Wikitree protocol, the name of her tribe was used as her last name, and the name of her husband was used as her married surname, although the wives of French Canadian men never took their husband's surname. So strictly speaking, her name is not accurate, but I can't change it anyhow.

Her profile also contains pictures assumed to be of her, even though no one knows what she actually looked like. The portrait on the Sacajawea coin is  that of Randy'L He-Dow Teton, who was a 22-year old student when she posed for sculptor Glenna Goodacre. Randy-L is still alive, so I can't create a profile for her, but here is a link.

Glenna Goodacre does have a profile (Maxey-1875). Right now the entire biography consists of an obituary notice. I'd like to improve that.  But there is so much information about her, that the challenge will be to choose the most significant details for her biography. There is a Wikipedia article about her. Her other important works are the Vietnam Women's Memorial and the Irish Memorial, but I could list almost every other piece she has created, and even explain the process by which she created them, as well as many of the honors she has won. Of course, she had a personal life too. Should I include the newspaper account of her wedding, which describes in great detail her wedding dress and bouquet? Should I mention that her daughter married Harry Connick, Jr.?

What is the difference between "accuracy" and "relevance"?

Comments

A terrific challenge. I look forward to seeing how you resolve the issues of relevance. Some things best left to Wikipedia perhaps

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Yes, Anne, that was a challenge. Even the Wikipedia article, while technically not inaccurate, was unbalanced, giving too much attention to her head injury. Note that the first source is "Glenna Goodacre's Night Out with Harry Connick, Jr." And though much is known about her family, I did not want to include information about living people. I also realized that I do not like bronze statues, so I had to be aware of my own bias while writing about someone who had created several hundred of them, including a 7-foot statue of Ronald Reagan as a cowboy.

Answer 9

How did people react to the wave of immigrants going to Haverhill and Newburyport? Well...

https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2021/10/52-ancestors-week-41-changes.html

Answer 10

Tennis players are people who constantly have to deal with changes. Changes of time zones, of places, of climate, of beds etc.pp. I looked for tennis players in the Sports Category, and found that Harry Hopman doesn't have a picture. Wikipedia has one in public domain, so I uploaded it here.

Answer 11

I can think of so many ways our lives change but immigrating to another country where you don't know the language or the culture has got to be a huge change.  I chose a Damgaard family Niels Damgaard, his wife Ane Marie Poulsen, and their daughter Clara Damgaard to improve.  Niels and his wife were probably both born in Denmark, although on several censuses, Niels gives his native language as Germany (and occasionally his birthplace as Germany).  They married in Iowa and had 2 daughters who survived to adulthood.  The family now has sources and biographies.