Saturday, December 31, 2011

Virtual Cemeteries

I've open an account on findagrave.com. Please visit my homepage. It started by creating memorials for my own family and then I volunteered to take photos for others. After taking some photos of grave stones for people in other states, I started my own collection of Revolutionary War graves, then War of 1812, then Civil War,Spanish American and World War I.

Papers from this area can be searched online starting after the civil war. It adds an occasional look at what the people were like and what they, and others, were up to in the early 1800's. If I find anything about a person I add it to their memorial. All of this information is kept in a chronological event document which I have posted to my website in the Family Events section.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Really starting to get into findagrave.com. I've branched out from Revolutionary war vets to those from 1812. The virtual cemetery for the first is around 300 and the latter around 100. Many of the Rev War Vets came from New England to claim bounty land or to buy land from the speculators. The town of Rutland, Jefferson, NY got it's name from so many people coming there from the Rutland, VT area. Very hard to get much information on them and their stones tend to be hard to read.

Their children fought in 1812 and many then moved west. Their stones are in much better shape. Information on their lives is much better. The newspapers started up around 1870 and an occasional obituary can be found. I've been very lucky to link several families families together across 2 generations.

Each cemetery is an island in the landscape. Each has different maintenance standards size, types of trees, roads or no roads, some of the smaller ones are dominated by one family and the dates tell you when they owned most of the farms in the area.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Mt Adnah

We went to Mt Adnah cemetery in Fulton, NY on Sunday. A very nice trip there and back and a very well maintained and marked cemetery. The best I've seen so far, very park like. Huge trees, many squirrels and harks hunting them under the trees.

Found all the stones we were looking for and several more. Amos and Thankful , John L and Elizabeth Calkins, Dorr B and Elizabeth and Anna Belle Calkins Symour. I've created memorials on findagrave.com and uploaded pictures of their stones. Feel free to use them.

Friday, October 14, 2011

FreeFind

Still working on the Revolutionary soldiers buried in Jefferson county. The list is up to 290+ now. Some of the memorials are maintained by family members, which is nice to see.

Started working on updates to my homepage again. Started by adding the search Free Find to the first page. A bit of a struggle to get it to fit but it's finally in place. Only thing is, I have to do it on every page, 50 or more. So I started looking around to see if there was anything else I wanted to add or change on each page as long as I was making the rounds anyway.

That got me thinking about the changes I wanted to make on the style sheet and that is what I'm working on now. It never stops but at least I'm learning something new, I hope.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

There are many revolutionary war veterans buried in Jefferson county. Most seem to have come from the east and settled here on land given to them for their service. Several lists exist of their names such as the one maintained by the DAR. I've been trying to find them and photograph the stones. Amazing how many still exist but many are in poor shape.

As a member of findagrave.com, I have created a virtual cemetery for the veterans. If you're interested, give it a look.

As a photo volunteer for Jefferson county, I have some contact with the people requesting photos.
Some are building family albums, others want photos to use as portraits in their family trees. I just met a group trying to amass all the Killed In Action graves. Personally, I enjoy being outside and the feeling of helping. Being in a cemetery doesn't bother me as I grew up across from one. Some are maintained like parks and are very peaceful. Others, not so much.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

I've just started to upload tomb stone pictures to findagrave.com. So far I've linked together some of the Coynes and Engles. Take a look and if you want, leave some virtual flowers. We go out to the cemeteries and take pictures, crop, size and post them. Finally have a use for the digital camera. It certainly makes it easy. Amazing how many biting insects are lurking in cemeteries. Some of the stones are hard to find, let alone read.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

I've taken some tomb stone photos and was looking for a place to post them. Finally settled on findagrave.com as it seems to offer the most options. It's free to join, covers the whole world and the images can be down loaded for free. It also offers bio, obits and memorials. You can even leave flowers.

So far I've entered some Engles in Rural cemetery, Oswego, Oswego, NY and Cohen/Coyne in St. Mary's, Clinton, Oneida, NY. If you search by name and cemetery, they should come up.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Added a Moda section. A Lebanese family living in the Clark Mills area. Connected to the Coynes via the Shepherds. This section has the second account of a son dying in WW 2. Anthony J Moda, a paratrooper, died fighting east of the Rhine.

Theodore R Flint was the first that I found. He was in the Navy, a Carpenters Mate, and died in an accident. I was in the Navy and never heard of a CM rating. Perhaps it was an old rating now discontinued or perhaps he was a Sea Bee.

Still working on John Lawrence Coyne's WW I history. Every thing seems to lead to a dead end.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Currently attempting to flesh out John Lawrence Coyne's WW 1 story.  Unlike his brother, my grandfather, Thomas, his military records do not seem to exist.  There is some general information about the battles he was in and the places he mentions but that is all we are apt to get.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Just added Morgan and Jenkins, Allwood pages to the Family Events section of my homepage.  I select families to research that are connected, somehow, to the Coyne family.  Vincent Coyne married Clarissa Kipers and her brother,  Klass Kiper,s married Florence Morgan in 1914. The Allwoods and Jenkins are connected through my grandmother Bertha Martha Minne Friberg Calkins cousin Olga Rhode Allwood.  Family Tree Maker tells me Olga is my second cousin 2x removed.  It amazes me that I can have 2800 people in my tree all related by marriage.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Ellis Island data on Anchestry.

Just realized I didn't have electronic images for the arrival of Cohen/Coyne in 1906, 1907 and 1920.  Searcher for them on ancestry and 1906 and 1920 were very easy to find. 1907 however, not so much. 

This was the year Ellen and family arrived.  I have a printed copy so I knew exactly what to enter in the search boxes but still, I was unable to find anything even close.  Mark Clarken and family came over with Ellen, just as Frank came over with harry in 1906, so I searched for her.

Bingo, found her right off.  When I checked the printed version at the bottom of the page, I found Cohen had become Coker.  An obvious error, once you find it.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Bethlehem

Added a Bethlehem section to the Family Events section of my website.  The Coyne and Bethlehem families were joined when John Bethlehem and Nora Coyne were marred on May 10, 1941.  Nora was the daughter of Frank Coyne and Lena Overend.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Dlugolecki Update

Spent some time in the Utica library looking up obituaries.  I had the dates of death from the social security death records but fultonhistory.com did not cover the dates.  Two great new viewing machines there but we had to wait our turn.  We played with the other machines but they are junk and should be thrown out.

However the obituaries for most of the children of  Wladyslaw and Maryanna Walkuski Dlugolecki were found and are now posted on my homepage.

On ancestry.com, I found a tree, "Family Tree for Mark", owned by KRBranch that gave all of Wladyslaw's (Walter's) siblings and parents.  A search at fultonhistory turned up some data that made me believe the tree was accurate so I have included it in my tree.  This is linked from my homepage.  KRBranch has not, to date, responded to my messages.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

First Sounds

You may have noticed that the Library of Congress just decided to preserve some sounds or recordings.  Here are some links to hear them.


The first sounds ever recorded.  They were not meant to be played back only to observe the tracings on blackened glass plates.  Now a way has been found to hear them.  Listen to them at First Sounds.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game by Ed Meeker.  Hear all the words in an mp3 file at Public Domain 2ten.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Egnaczyk

Just added an Egnaczyk page to Family events and updated the rootsweb tree.

Apparently John and Anthony came from Poland to Sublet, WY to mine coal.  You may have heard of Sublet in the news recently.  Apprantly they have the nations highest ozone levels because of the gas wells in the southern part of the town.

The 1910 census shows them as coal miners of Aust.-Polish descent.  They are renting a house together.  Two doors down was an apparent boarding house.  It shows 32 boarders before running off the bottom of the form, all of Japanese descent.

I'll bet it was a beautiful, wild town to raise a family, which they did before moving to Boonville, Oneida county, NY.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Updates and Firefox 4

Just updated the website.  Mostly changing the appearance of the Gallery and Family Events pages.  I'd been wanting to clean them up but was spurred into action by upgrading from Fire Fox 3.6 to 4.0.

I use the HTML Validator extension to check my code.  All pages had been fine before the upgrade to FF but after it gave warnings for <table> lacks summary .  Try as I would I couldn't get <table summery=photos"> to work until Cynthia Richardson pointed out that you spell summary with an a.  Thanks C.

Funny thing, when you use e,  it complains that summery is proprietary to IE. I spent a lot of time trying to work around that when I should have checked spell checked.  Live and learn.

Haven't found a theme I like on Fire Fox 4 yet.  Not sure but what 3.6 was better or maybe I was just used to it. I used the Oscar 1.9 theme on that and really liked it.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Family Crest


I recently ran across a gentleman named Mike Coyne, originally from Marcellus, who sent me a version of the origin of the Coyne name.  It apparently came from the name Cadhan, which sounds like the name for a Barnacle Goose and so sometimes  Cadhan became Barnacle instead of Coyne or Cohen. I have seen this as a variation of Coyne and couldn't imagine how it could be but I guess you should never underestimate the power of mistranslations.

I had assumed the bird on the shield was a rooster, to show our fighting spirit or that we like to get up early.

Perhaps it's supposed to be a Wild Goose.  It is just sort of standing there.  Usually it has it's feet and spurs up in a fighting pose.  The Cohen Crest really looks like a duck and the spear heads are rotated 90 Deg..  Assuming both haven't been created for the tourist trade.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Welcome

This blog is my first and an experiment to see if it can more efficiently update my genealogy efforts than my website and tree.  I will still maintain the latter but they are cumbersome to update and there is no way to let people know when they are. It could also give a chance to post the family video Allie, John and I produced. So for the present, please be patient while I learn how to operate a blog.


Thanks