Deeper and Deeper the Rabbit Hole Goes

I figure since I'm recording my findings on Martha Barker, I should probably post a photo of her. Well, here she is with some grandchildren.

Doing genealogy is truly like seeing how far the rabbit hole will take you. Two weeks ago I set out on an endeavor to find birth records on Martha T Barker, because her family line stops with her. I had her approximate birth year and thought I might be able to find her by looking for the 1841 England Census. Well, it turned out that many people named their daughter Martha around the time [my] Martha was born, and had to abandon that strategy. I then figured I could find more information about her with a death certificate. That search resulted with nothing. I was left with the task of finding out how many children she had and if she stayed with them in her old age, and that churned out some very interesting results.

Due to the amount of information I found about each of her children, I'm only going to lightly touch on everyone.

According to an immigration paper Martha gave birth to 11 children and by the year 1910 only four were still living. So far I have only found information on nine of them. Their names are: Fanny (died within the first year), Edward Barker (B: 1849), Alice Ann (B:1851), Charles John (B:1853), Mary Ellen (B:1856), William G (B:1858), Margret Isabel (B:1860), Fannie C (B:1862), Susan Martha (B: 1862).

Alice Ann (center) drowned in a shipwreck while coming back from England.

Another unfortunate fact is that sometime after 1881 Edward and Martha went their separate ways. Edward lived with his son Charles up until 1901. He then left to live with his daughter Margret almost until the time he died. I'm sure the last year or so he moved to a care center that was more suited to care for him in his last days.

Martha lived with Susan and her family until after 1910. The family immigrated Fayette, Pa. A death certificate does not confirm her death, but it can be assumed she died sometime during that decade. A death date and location with a Martha Thornhill was found in 1914 in England was found, but no immigration papers of her leaving the US has been found.

In summary, I was not able to find an exact birth date/location, or death date/location, of Martha. The very thing that started my investigation and this blog. However, I have uncovered her children and their places of residence. I have also found better ways to find information. One trick I have found is that parents tend to give their children names of their parent's maiden, middle, or surnames. The names of children help to find the names of their grandparents. This really helps in scenarios where records are hard to come buy. Sometimes you have to guess who is related to whom. I think that at year's end I'll sum up all of the strategies I have come up with while doing my genealogy.

Martha T Barker (prt 2)

To say that doing genealogy is easy would really be great, if it were true. We can send a human safely around the moon and back, but locating our ancestry further than 100 years ago can be quite a challenge. I feel like locating the whereabouts of Martha Barker's death date and place such a challenge. Things that I have found out since the last post:

 

• She separated from her husband (Edward Thornhill) between 1881 and 1891.
• 1900 and 1910, she is found to be with her daughter Susan Woodwal (Woodall, Woodhul)and their family.
• The family moved to the US after the turn of the century.

 

I'm thinking she died between 1910 and 1920, which would place her in her 90's. I have pretty much exhausted all efforts to find her name on any census records, immigration pages, or death certificates. Once again she has fallen off of the radar screen. Her daughter, Susan, also has disappeared between 1900 and 1910. This might have caused her to live with other children or extended family. I did find a possible death date and location in Liverpool, England, but I have been unable to find any passenger records of her sailing from the US to England.

 

Another step I decided to take was to simplify the information I had on Martha. Initially I thought saving all possible census records of her before marriage might help me locate her before she married Edward. This only complicated things and I removed those records.

 

As of right now I'm going to concentrate on locating the whereabouts of all of her children from 1880 to 1920. This will give me the chance to find out if she lived with anyone else. I also would like to know if she still had ties to England. Her daughter and granddaughter were drowned in a shipwreck while returning from England. Why were they going to England? I might find a big piece to this puzzle if I can answer that question.

I have been doing family research on and off for the past ten, or so, years and have to say that using a notepad specifically for genealogy is a great help. I can actually see my progression, although slow, unfold.

Martha T Barker

The person I have been working these past couple of months has been a Martha T Barker or Martha Thornhill. I was able to find Canadian Census records of her whearabouts between 1851 and 1891. I had an approximation birth year of 1821 and a possible marriage year of 1843, but that was about it. I wanted to know exactly when and where she was bor so I could also find her parents, and continue the line further back. After 1891 Martha seems to have dissapeared. There were no census recods or death records that showed any further places of residence. Thus began the hunt for Martha T Barker.
My initial attack was to find all of the Martha Barkers in the 1841 Census and try and narrow down the number of hits to just a few. I then tried to find a match using the marriage location I had and tried to see if any correlated. To my disappointment, none did. Since I am not familiar with Brittish culture, I couldn't piece together any possible scenarios to find a match either. Using a notepad really comes in handy. I wrote down the information what I already had on her. I wrote:
Status:
I have census records up until 1891
Husband Edward died in 1906
Daughter sailed from England and drwond in a shipwreck (1899)
Action:
Locate husband during 1891 census
Figure why daughter (Alice) was going to England
Might have to find childrens whereabouts.

Inception

Among all the entertainment hype and reality shows, I'd have to admit that the sound of doing genealogy doesn't sound that exciting. My father was the one who got me interested in finding out who I have descended from while completing a boy scout merit badge.

The technology fifteen to twenty years ago made the hobby quite daunting. These days genealogy improvement has made leaps and bounds from information stored on paper in filing cabinets, to computer programs, and eventually internet based programs like ancestry.com. Ancestry.com is a very informative website, however you must pay a monthly or annual fee in order to get the full use. There are many genealogy search sites that offer free service, but I mostly am using ancestry.com and the free pilot search from familysearch.org. I just found a website geni.com that allows you to build a family tree, but I haven't used it enough to know if it's worth the time investment.

Genealogy is not easy, but can be very rewarding. Some people are easy to find while others may seem near impossible. I hope by recording my experiences in finding lost relatives long I can give the reader ideas on how to find their ancestors as well as receive advice. Some days you can make a lot of hits, and sometimes it takes months before you find something.