Intuition or Distraction?

Scholefield Family Tree I tried to run additional searches for Mary Virginia Scholefield McMillan. Knowing that she went by the name Jennie, or Ginny, I searched using the second spelling. Why you might ask? Well, because the ranked search on Ancestry.com will pull up Jennies automatically among the results. I ended up zeroing in on … Read more

Recording Clara's Siblings

Scholefield Family Tree

When writing a family history, one must decide how much research they wish to complete regarding the various sidelines of a family. Do you trace the main descendant line back and also trace down all of the siblings lines? If you do that, how many generations do you want to research? For my personal trees, I research as far as I can go. My reason for this is that by finding cousins, I have received some great finds. I’ve gotten photocopies of the German family pages from a descendant of the writer Zane Grey about our shared Wilhelm ancestors, a copy of pen and ink drawing of my 4th (or 5th) great-grandfather, and loads of information that helped point me in a direction for further research!

Other researchers only focus on their direct lines, sometimes discovering that they need to research siblings in order to discover information about parentage. And only doing research into the sidelines (or neighbors) as needed.

For the Scholefield history for this site, my goal is to trace the direct line as well as locating the vitals of the sibling’s spouses and the birth information for each of their children.

To reach that goal, this post will focus on checking on any possible birth and death records for Clara Moore Scholefield’s siblings and their spouses and children. I will be running quick name searches on the usual sites (FamilySearch, Ancestry, and AZ Genealogy).

Clara was the daughter of James Armour Moore and Matilda Jane Burnett.

Matilda Jane Burnett had married first John V. Crampton. Their children, and therefore Clara’s Half siblings, were: Mary E., Sarah J., and John F.

Based on the census, Mary E. was born about 1857 in California.1 She married Henry Fitzgerald in 1874. An article about her brother-in-law Charles Kenyon mentions that she was a widow who lived in San Francisco.2 She looks to have died before 1940 which is the date that Ancestry’s California Death Index begins. The indexes at VitalSearch don’t contain enough information to identify which of the many Mary Fitzgeralds might be the one we are looking for. I also checked several likely indexes. Nothing further about this family can be located through these sources at this time — census records are next.

Sarah Jane was born on 6 Dec 1857 in California and died 14 Dec 1957 in San Diego County, California.3 She married Charles Kenyon in 1872.2 He was born in 1840 in New York and died in Dec 1906.
Their children:
Maud B. was born in New York.
Arthur Moore Kenyon was born 20 Aug 1878 in Rome, New York.4
Myrtle M.

John Franklin Crampton was born on 1 Dec 1860 in San Bernardino, California, and died 21 Apr 1947 in Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona.5 He married Rovilla Snelling in 1882. She was born 12 May 1861 in Indiana and died 6 Feb 1940 in Globe, Arizona.6
Their children:
John William born 23 May 18837
Rovilla J. born 1885 in Globe, Arizona8 (this is likely the Rovilla who married John C. Crowley in 1906)
Evelyn May born 27 May 1892 in Globe, Gila, Arizona9

Clara’s full siblings were Susan A. and J. Arthur.

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The Family Comes Through

Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot Well gang we had some real success this week!! I received a response from the family that had posted the thread on Ancestry in the Community Section. Ya gotta love those message boards!!! Family member Ruth posted a message that explained her relationship to Samuel N. Whittle. Her husband’s … Read more

GOOGLING For Dead People!

Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot When you feel like you want to scream after a day of asking Ancestry to “Bring Out Your Dead!”– it’s time to go Google for Dead People! As I had already searched the newspaper subsciptions for further mention of Samuel’s fall, I thought it would be a good idea … Read more

Odds and Ends

Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot I have a few loose ends out there that I should tell you about. The hard part of writing this blog is keeping up with telling you about where my search goes. I may write about a census search on a certain day and the Footnote search on another … Read more

Western States Marriage Index

Scholefield Family Tree Continuing up through the generations in a vital records check, the data for George and Clara Moore Scholefield themselves is mostly complete. The only missing data is the exact date when the couple was married; therefore, a check of the Western States Marriage Record Index is next. This index holds records for … Read more

Dangling From A Tree Limb

Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot As I said earlier, Samuel Whittle has been an exercise in patience. The census records are usually our best bet for tracking someone through their life span, but Sam has been a tough nut to crack. To recap, we found Sam on the 1880 Federal Census by the “leaf” … Read more

A Footnote to History

Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot For those of you that have not used Footnote it is the online outlet for the National Archives. You can search for free, and there is quite a bit of free content, but most of it is premium content that requires a subscription. A subscription goes for about $75 … Read more