Friday, March 22, 2024

Worship--Saint Aidan's Church, Hartlepool, England



    Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 14 (March 25-March 31) is Worship. 

The Hughes Kids
Hartlepool Wall
The Headland
August 3, 2003

     Back in 2003, when my two brothers and I crossed the pond we had Hartlepool, County Durham, England in our sights.  Our Hughes/Storey lineage traces back to West Hartlepool and Hartlepool in the 1800's and beyond.  The Hughes actually removed from the Wordsley, Birmingham, England area, and further back from Wales.  

     The municipal brough of West Hartlepool was created in 1887 and in 1967 the Brough of Hartlepool was created by combining West Hartlepool and Old Hartlepool.  

St. Aidan's Church
Hartlepool, England
August 3, 2003

     We had a laundry list of family and places to visit during our three day visit. One important building was Saint Aidan's Church, now known as Saint Aidan and Saint Columba Church.  The church opened in 1890

The Alter
St Aidan's Church 

My brother Jeff
St Aidan's Church
Hartlepool, England
August 3, 2003
     
     Our first day in Hartlepool was a Sunday and we had planned to attend church services at St Aidan's.  I was surprised at the small attendance.  As I walked into the sanctuary, I had goosebumps thinking how generations of our Hartlepool Hughes family had been baptized/baptised, married and buried from this very church.  
     
George Henry Hughes (Pop Pop)
Baptized at St Aidan's Church
West Hartlepool, England
Easter Sunday, April 10, 1898



Ken and I in front of the baptismal font

     The baptismal font in St Aidan's Church where my paternal grandfather, George Henry Hughes was baptized on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1898.  

George Henry Hughes
May 9, 1930
Obituary

Mary Ann Storey Hughes
March 16, 1935
Obituary


     My Paternal great grandparents obituaries, both services were held at St Aidan's Church.

     Even into the 2000's Hughes family members continue to have their services in St Aidan's Church.  One cousin we met in 2003, Alan Hughes, died in 2009 and his funeral service was held at St Aidan's.

     My morning attending a service at St Aidan's Church has become a cherished memory.  The thought that I was surrounded by sights and sounds of my Hughes ancestors gave me comfort and peace.

St Aidan's Church

Hartlepool Then and Now


I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.
© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser


Saturday, March 16, 2024

Technology--Linda's Awakening


     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 12 (March 18-March 24) is Technology. 

     Linda grabs hold of computer technology and doesn't let go.  I decided to do this blog about myself. 😀

     I am hard pressed to pin an exact date on when the computer entered our home.  It was in the early days, internet hookup was through the telephone line (dial-up), everything was very slow, no Google yet, we used Prodigy.  

     My husband seems to think we had the first home computer sometime in the early 1990's.   It was a big bulky Gateway.  Ted was adamant that we get the computer.  My response, "Go ahead and buy it.  I will probably never even use it."  

     He was so excited when he got home with all the boxes.  We set it up in the extra bedroom, plugged it in and pushed the on button.  Nothing.  Second try.  Plugged it in, pushed the on switch and NOTHING! Following a line of expletives, Ted boxed it all up and headed back to the store.  Our first attempt was one colossal FAIL.       

     An hour later, Ted returned with more boxes.  Apparently, the first computer was missing its hard drive.  Third time was the charm, plugged it in, pushed the on switch and slowly a picture appeared on the screen.  Now what?  Ted sat down and got all the information necessary into the computer.  We still did not have any internet service.  We practiced keyboarding, writing gobbledygook and printing it.  


     There was new language with this invention coming into the house.  Typing was called keyboarding.  We had to purchase floppy disks to store information.  Software, applications, mother board, monitors, processing system, search engines, Microsoft, viruses, worms, phishing, Windows, Mac and on and on.

     When the monster was working and we added internet connectivity, I began to, slowly, play around with it.  I was actively engaged in genealogy research and decided to use the search engine called Yahoo, to see what I could find. 

      Through surfing, I found US GenWeb and I was off and running.  I was able to locate and email with other folks interested in genealogy who were able to help me in the states and counties where I was tracing ancestors.  I could add information and folks contacted me.  More genealogical avenues online and to download became available.  

    Progressing into the late 1990's, I was the one who was spending the most time on the home computer.  More sophisticated models were purchased, the home computer was moved into an area in the basement with all my genealogy hard copy nearby.  The home computer became MINE.  

     Remember MySpace?  Finding and joining Ancestry, Find-A-Grave, Facebook, Family Tree Maker, my own genealogy home pages, my own blog, Flipside, begun on January 3, 2009, hundreds of on line search engines and probably the most important find for me was was GenaBlogger.

     Like most of us, with the advent of laptops, I was able to take my files with me, not just genealogy, all of my files.  And my laptop does travel.  In fact I am the techie in the family.  Always packed is the laptop, iPad, cell phone, all of the connection cords, external hard drive and a power strip.  

 

     Although my first response to a home computer was negative, the technology, once I became acquainted, became a daily adventure.  Not just genealogy.  Building my recipe file, shopping and buying on line, dinner reservations, vacation searches and reservations, gardening information, health, Zoom and Face Time--pretty much everything I do is online.  I guess I have become a mouse potato over the past couple of decades. 😁


 

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.
© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Achievement--Mildred Claudine Tate Smith


     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 11 (March 11-March 17) is Achievement

     Weeks ago I mentioned to Ted that I was stumped as to what to write concerning achievement.  I have covered this topic with numerous of my family and just couldn't think where to go with it.  

     Ted said his maternal grandmother, Mildred Claudine Tate Smith, widowed at age thirty-seven, with seven children in 1931 showed achievement through her courage in raising her children alone.  I never met  Grandma Smith, I have no personal insight and the stories I have heard may be somewhat acrophyll; however, .....here I go.

Mildred Claudine Tate
circa 1898
Courtesy of Jay Howard Smith

     Mildred was born on February 19, 1895 to Charles Henry Christian Tate and Ida Mae Hess, in Spencerville, Spencer Township, Allen County, Ohio.  There is a 1900 and 1910 Ohio census for the Tate Family in Spencerville.  

Circa 1905


1913 Tiffin City Directory

  
  

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio
1914

     By 1913, the Tate family removed to the city of Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio. The family lived at 24 Forest and Mildred is listed in the directory. Forest Street was renamed Oak Street. On the 1914 Sanford Fire Insurance map Oak and Forest run into each other. 


     At some time the city decided to just continue Oak Street up to West Davis and erase the name of Forest Street.  The house pictured above was built in 1913 and is located on the street in the same spot where the Tate house is located on the 1914 Sanborn Fire Insurance map.

     I would like to note that the Webster Manufacturing Company was located to the west of the red circled area where the Tate Family lived.  It is likely that Charles Tate and his and older sons where employed at the plant.



     This lovely candy box was given to Mildred by Grover Cleveland Smith when they were dating and the bittersweet he picked in the fall for her as a gift.  It was in the possession of her daughter, my mother-in-law, Helena Mae Smith Hiser.
 
Mildred Claudine Tate
Circa 1918

Grover Cleveland Smith


     On June 5, 1919, at age twenty-four, Mildred married thirty-four year old Grover Cleveland Smith, son of John Andrew Smith and Helena Frederika Oster, in Seneca County, Ohio.  The marriage was performed by Reverend Charles Allen Pearce of The Church of Christ.  

     The 1920 Ohio census, taken on January 7 lists Grover and Mildred living on a farm with Grover's father, John Andrew Smith and one brother, Otto Lafayette Smith.  The Smith's were farmers growing and selling fruit and vegetables.

     On March 17, 1920 the Smith's welcomed their first child, a son, Howard Lewis Smith.  Six more children followed, Helena Mae Smith born on March 12, 1922, Mary Irene Smith born on July 7, 1923, Betty Lou Smith born on February 1, 1925, Arthur William Smith born on September 17, 1926, Gilbert Tate Smith born on October 3, 1928 and Martha Ann Smith born on February 24, 1931.  

Rerick Brothers Atlas and Art Portfolio
Seneca County, Clinton Township, Ohio
1896

     The 1896 atlas shows the Smith properties side by side on South Greenfield Road/County Road 50.  Christina Smith is John Andrew Smith's mother and Grover Cleveland Smith' paternal grand mother.  There is a small square marking the school that my mother-in-law and her siblings attended before their move into the city in 1932.

     The 1930 Ohio census gives insight as to the location of the Smith home and farm on South Greenfield Road, Clinton Township, Seneca County, Ohio.  That area is just outside the city limits of Tiffin, Ohio.  Grover is the head of the family and his aged father is living in the house and is retired.  Grover is a truck farmer and is working the sizable family fruit farm.  

John Andrew Smith
Ohio Death Certificate

     One year later a double tragedy struck the family.  On March 2, 1931, John Andrew Smith, the family patriarch, died at the family farm from valvular heart disease at eighty years of age.  His burial was on March 5, 1931 in Greenlawn Cemetery, Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio.  The Find A Grave date of death is incorrect.

Grover Cleveland Smith
Ohio Death certificate

     On the day his father was to be buried, March 5, 1931, Grover Cleveland Smith died in his bed on the family farm, just fourteen days shy of his forty-sixth birthday. Cause of death was toxic goiter and myocarditis.  

     Mildred was in bed following the birth of a daughter, Martha Ann Smith, on February 24.  According to a family account of the day written by my mother-in-law, she was asked to carry the new born baby into her father's bedroom so he could see his new daughter.  She was told not to let her father know that his father had died.  Grover saw Helena come in with the baby and said, "Grandpa died, didn't he?" He died within a short time after.



     Grover Cleveland Smith was buried on March 7, 1931 in Greenlawn Cemetery, Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio.

*********************

     And now my stumbling block.  What came next?  Up until now I used research and family documents.  The nugget of my blog comes after Grover's death and how Mildred courageously picked up the pieces and moved on.  

     Distinguishing fact and acrophyll stories when doing family genealogy on my husband's side of the tree has been difficult.  The genealogist on the Smith side was Aunt Betty Smith Bowman.  She amassed a huge amount of documents, photos and knowledge over her ninety-seven years.  I married into the family fifty-five years ago and over the decades listened to the hardships of the Smith's early life, primarily from the my mother-in-law Helena Smith Hiser and Aunt Betty. 

      I had many "I think" ideas and memories of  the Smith stories rolling around in my head wanting to add some personality to this blog.  Then the light bulb went off --email Cousin Jay Howard Smith.  Jay's genealogical written pieces on the family are well researched.  He also has access to his father's, Howard Lewis Smith, family files.  Cousin Jay did not disappoint.  I now have the necessary information to complete the blog.  Surprisingly, two typed letters written by my mother-in-law that I had never seen, helped to provide a first person account.   

Life After the Death of Grover Cleveland Smith

     Mildred was still in bed following the birth of the baby and when her husband died.  There was a practical nurse coming to the farm to care for Grover, Mildred and the baby.  

     The time had come for Mildred to pick herself up by the proverbial bootstraps and forge ahead with a new life for herself and her seven children.  According to family stories the Smith farm was to pass to Grover and Mildred.  With the death of both John and Grover and no wills, the estate became intestate.  Over the years I had heard talk that family members swooped in, sold the land, took the money and left Mildred with nothing.

 

Mildred's hand written page of bills paid
following Grover's death
    
      According to the two newly found letters of my mother-in-law, the farm and land was sold and divided equally among the children of John Andrew and Helena Oster Smith.  Mildred did receive her deceased husband's share.  Also, Grover had some life insurance.  She was able to pay any debts and rent on the farm until she purchased a house in Tiffin.


     Mildred was paying the Estate of her father-in-law $10.00 monthly for rent to remain in the farm house.  The final one was dated January 1932; however, I have additional information that she continued to pay rent through March 1932.

131 Prospect Street
Tiffin, Ohio

     Mildred's financial dedication following Grover's death resulted in her ability to purchase a house at 131 Prospect Street in Tiffin.  Once again, my mother-in-law wrote a letter describing the move to the new house.  All of the children were excited to move into the city; however, once Helena saw the house she was extremely disappointed in the small size and shabbiness.  
     
     The car "stopped in front of a small grey house, old and in need of paint."

    "My heart sank.  No! No!  This could not be our new home. How can we be moving from the spacious, fairly new house in the country to this house so small and shabby in comparison."

     Mildred and the children had a large garden plot behind the house.  Vegetables were canned and Mildred baked bread weekly.  She was an excellent seamstress and was able to earn a living making clothes and doing alterations well into the 1950's.

1934 Tiffin City Directory

Mildred Claudine Tate Smith
Sitting beside her house
1935

     Through courage and determination Mildred was able to raise her children, see them through high school and marriages.  131 Prospect was painted, enlarged and housed Mildred until her death in 1964.  Family still owns and lives in the house.  Her life following her husband's death is the embodiment of personal achievement.

Personal Note        

     I attended and graduated from Heidelberg College, now Heidelberg University.  The campus buildings are  located on Greenfield Road Street within the Tiffin City limits.  Once crossing the city line the street becomes County Road 50.    I married into the Hiser/Smith family.  I knew all of the "Smith kids" listed above and heard the family stories from the women.  Smith Family farms and remaining houses were pointed out and there were numerous visits to Greenlawn Cemetery to pay respect to those ancestors past.  All of Grover and Mildred's children are buried in Greenlawn Cemetery except, Arthur William Smith.     
              
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.
© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Language--Olde Tyme


     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 9 (March 4-March 10) is Language. 

Lin, Ken and Grams and Pop Pop
Christmas 1954
       
     I find myself again blogging about my paternal grandmother, Sarah VanGilder Hughes aka Grams.  For years I have kept memories about her in a notebook regarding the many times we spent together, least over the years I would forget.  Too often when blogging about family members I do not have first hand knowledge to make the story more personal.  When it comes to my grand parents and my paternal great grandmother, I do.  I admit that this blogging challenge has opened the door to finally put some of the personal memories into Flipside.

     I probably spent more time with Grams and Pop Pop than my maternal grandmother, Teek, due to their ages and where they lived.  Teek was older having been born in 1880 where Grams and pop Pop were somewhat younger having been born in 1898.  Teek lived in a studio apartment and not far away, Grams and Pop Pop were renting a 3-4 bedroom apartment and later a 2 bedroom place.  

     As a very young child, I often spent weekends with Grams and Pop Pop.  When I was in sixth grade and into junior high school, it was not uncommon for me, in the summer, to jump on my bike and travel about four miles to visit Grams.  Later in the afternoon my Mom or Dad would drop of my suitcase and I was visiting for a few days.  My memories are drawn from these impromptu visits. 

       Back to the topic of language.  In this blog the language is not  speaking words from a foreign country instead it is words spoken from another time in the United States.  Words that were uncommon to me.   

     Grams had a huge, hulking dark wooden piece of furniture in the dining room that she referred to as a credenza.  I have looked up images of a credenza.  The closest I came was the one pictured above, although hers was not as ornate.  It had a lower section pictured above; however, there was an upper section that had a door and shelves inside for her dishes.  Many afternoons she and I spent some time playing cards.  "Lin, get the cards out of the credenza."  They were in the drawer on the right hand side. 😊

     Indulge me here.  The credenza pictured above is from the 1890's.  Grams had many pieces of older furniture, Eastlake style was one.  These may have come from VanGilder and Poole households in the Morgantown, West Virginia area as pieces from the family estates and moved up to the Pittsburgh area.  Or, perhaps some of her antique furniture came from Pop Pop's mother, who was living with them by 1950.  She had lived in Monaca, Pennsylvania before moving in with them around 1950 and she had furniture.  


     Next up was antimacassar.  Grams had them on chair arms.  Hers were white lace.  Again, were they family hand me downs?

https://www.facebook.com/GrandiloquentWords

     "Lin, it's raining outside, grab the bumbershoot."


     "Tonight you're going to sleep on the davenport, Lin."

     
https://www.facebook.com/GrandiloquentWords

Oh fiddlefaddle


     LOL.  I thought I was done with this blog, yet a couple of nights ago, while talking with a friend, another Grams word came out of my mouth--addlepated.  I wonder who my Grams was talking about when she used the word 😊

  My brother, Ken, was over last night and he added two more expressions he remembered from our Grams.  dose of salts and taint funny McGee.

     Dose of salts means very quickly and thoroughly.  Some used a dose of salts (water and Epsom salts)to clean out their intestinal system, Grams used it as a term for cleaning up a room or the apartment.  "I need to give that kitchen a dose of salts.  

      Taint funny McGee was a put down line from Molly to her husband, Fibber McGee in the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show.  Probably said to one of the three of us grandchildren while doing something we thought was funny, but wasn't, "Taint funny McGee!"

     This may be a blog I come back to as more words come back into my memory.  Stay tuned.

     Gadzooks!  Better than profanity.....😇


I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.
© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser


Friday, February 23, 2024

Changing Names



     Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join.  I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside.  AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024.  Sometimes I get lazy. 😁  Let's see how well I keep up.

     Week # 8 (February 26-March 3) is Changing Names. 

     The name changes in my family were not due to immigrants coming from non English speaking counties and their names being corrupted at Ellis Island.  Nope!  My family name changes came from within the families by family members.  Frankly, for a genealogist trying to track down family members who at some point in their life decide to change their name can present a stumbling bock.

     The most notorious name changing family member was my paternal grandmother aka Grams.  Her ability to change the spellings of first and last names is not unknown to readers of Flipside.  This was not due to Grams being illiterate.  Quite to the contrary, she had an eighth grade education typical of most women of her age and was an avid reader.


     Grams began with her own name.  Sarah became Sara.  I know Grams maternal aunt, Sarah Ann Poole Pinyerd also shortened her name to Sara and Grams was very close to that aunt.

     Next was the surname/maiden name change from Van Gilder to Van Guilder.  When I had a phone conversation with Cousin Kae (Catherine Wallace Billik my 1st cousin 1 time removed) decades ago, she told me that Grams oldest sister (Mary Louise "Bobs" VanGilder Wotherspoon) was the one in the family who decided to change the name.  I'm glad I reread my note because I had originally attributed it to my Grams.  😉

😀

     The first time I saw the spelling of Van Guilder was when I saw my father's birth announcement.  I had just begun my foray into genealogy and assumed that was the spelling of his middle name and Grams maiden name.  


     However when I checked Dad's actual birth certificate, his middle name is spelled Van Gilder.  I'm certain that the birth certificate was signed by Pop Pop and not Grams.  Grams name is listed as Sara in 1921.

     To further add to the confusion, my Dad's middle name was listed as Van Guilder on the college and medical degrees and his social security card.

     I found his middle name as Van Gilder in 1949 when he enrolled in the National Guard and his Army Honorable Discharge in 1955.  From about 1949 and on, Dad just used his middle initial "V".  Maybe he was confused too. 😇

     I never knew about the spelling change until I began corresponding with a cousin in my Pool(e)/Frum lines who was a noted historian and genealogist.  His Pool(e)/Frum line, like mine traced back to Van Gilder.  When I told him the spelling with a "U", he said he had never seen it written that way.  Now I was on the right track.

Baptism document

Used Aiden as his name in high school

     Grams named her second son, John Aiden Hughes.  I was never certain if the Aiden was a tip of the hat to Pop Pop's West Hartlepool roots.  However, in the UK it is spelled Aidan, after St. Aidan.  There is a laundry list of male Aidan's in the UK Hughes family.  Almost all UK Hughes family members were baptized, married and buried in St. Aidan's Church.  Whether Grams consciously made the change or not we will never know.  Certainly Pop Pop knew the UK spelling was Aidan.  

     I have seen that my Uncle John was referred to as Aiden Hughes throughout his school years growing up.  Great Grandma Hughes also called him Aiden.  At some point, John decided to be called John and I have seen on his college and medical school degrees he is John A. Hughes.  

     And now my take on the name.  I tend to show it as VanGilder, no space between.  So, here I am changing names.  LOL

Poole to Pool and Back to Poole


Sampson Frum Pool Family
Mt Union Cemetery
Morgantown, West Virginia

     My Morgantown, West Virginia Pool/Poole ancestry is also a changing name conundrum.  Maybe some family members decided in the late 1800's to modernize or revert back to a previous spelling of their surname from a hundred years in the past.  


Phillip Albert Poole, Sampson's son
Mt Union Cemetery
Morgantown, West Virginia

     My 6th great grandfather, Walter Poole 1745-1833, my 5th great grandfather William Pool 1765-1808, 4th great grandfather Rev. Asby Pool 1787-1867, 3rd great grandfather Rev William Lanham Pool 1817-1911, 2nd great grandfather, Sampson Frum Pool 1849-1909 and my paternal great grandmother Jessica B. Poole VanGilder 1870-1949.  All of Great Grandmother Jessie's siblings, that did not die at a young age, changed their surname from Pool to Poole.    

     With this family it requires two searches--Pool and Poole.  😁 


I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.
© 2024, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser