GraveObsessions
Digging up my roots!
Category: Bursley
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In memory of James W. Christopherson
People in our lives have the ability to impact us in big ways we cannot anticipate. For me, James W. Christopherson was one of those people. im embraced technology. He was a giving genealogist, sharing his research freely. And in the early 1990s, he submitted a public post to the Family History Library seeking to…
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Seeing double: two lines to my Mayflower ancestors!
My grandmother was proud of her New England heritage. While she didn’t know much beyond the names of her maternal grandparents, Albert Stanwood and Lavina Bursley, she had been told growing up that our ancestors came on the Mayflower. Many years later, after connecting with a Bursley cousin and documenting my descent from John Howland…
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Making the case for the parentage of Lavina (Spencer) Bursley
Autosomal DNA, town records of Provicetown, Massachusetts, chain migration shed light on Lavina (Spencer) Bursley’s family. Lavina (Spencer) Bursley[1] was born about 1780 in Provincetown, Barnstable County, Massachusetts.[2] The town was so small that at the time of 1790 census only one page was used to enumerate the town’s 454 inhabitants. Included on the census was…
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Seek and ye shall find….the missing children of Benjamin and Cynthia (Day) Bursley
My great, great grandmother, Lavina (Bursley) Stanwood, was the sixth child born to Benajamin and Cynthia (Day) Bursley. Pictured with her above are her living siblings, beginning with John Morris Bursley (left), Susan (Bursley) Schelefoo Smallen, Lavina (Bursley) Stanwood, and Martha (Bursley) Orrock. Another brother, Aaron Day Bursley, lived to adulthood, but photos of him…
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Persistence pays off with original records!
Death certificates are great sources of info – but the one above was frustrating to me. I wanted to see the original death register from which the data had been taken. However, I was told that privacy laws prohibited me from viewing the nearly 150-year-old book containing the death of Cynthia (Day) Bursley, my 3rd…
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Find-A-Grave, more than just graves
Good stuff starts with Find-A-Grave. Okay, certainly not all good stuff, but lately it seems like LOTS of good stuff has made it’s way to me, complements of the wonderful people who post on Find-A-Grave. Take, for example, the photo shown above, which awaited me in my email upon arising this morning. Find-A-Grave volunteer…
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Proving the parentage of Cynthia (Day) Bursley
This past Saturday I was inducted into the Cooch’s Bridge Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It was overwhelmingly wonderful and quite surreal, and the culmination of nearly thirty years of research into my Bursley family. It would never have been possible without the collaboration with my third and…
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Pension file gem: Amos Day, 1856 letter to his father Nathaniel
I spent my Valentine’s Day happily buried in pension and land records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. On my agenda was the review and photographing of the pension and land records of the family of my 3rd great grandmother, Cynthia (Day) Bursley. Most interesting was the file for Amos Day, a Union solider…
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Tuesday’s Tip: HistoryGeo.com – You Can’t Live Without It!
Okay, it might not be as important as food, water, clothing or shelter, but if you are as into maps and land records as I am, then I’m sure you’ll agree – HistoryGeo.com is one of those “must have” subscriptions. Here’s why: HistoryGeo.com takes Arphax Publishing’s superb books, Family Maps series of Land Patent Books…
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Using DNA to answer: ARE YOU MY (great great great great grand-) MOTHER?
In 2010 I took my first autosomal DNA test through FTDNA. I quickly discovered the frustration of autosomal DNA testing. 1) Autosomal DNA provides no hints as to what part of your family tree your match comes from. Given that we each have 64 fourth great grandparents, 128 fifth great grandparents and so on, it…
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