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.

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.