News

 I think I'll occasionally use this News feature to make diary-like posts on what I'm working on.  This will be the first of this type of post.  So:

This morning, I posted a couple of photos to Dead Fred.  If you're not familiar with this site, it's a lot of fun browsing through the name index to see if there are any photos of people you know.  I added an unknown photo that I particular like and one of a couple I'm very familiar with.

This morning, I also looked through family tree @ Ancestry to see if anyone has posted photos related to Henry Flower, my great great grandfather and his immediate family:

Henry Flower, 1842-1923

married to

Martha Hayden, 1857-1919

children:

Nellie Flowers, 1874-1951, married to Albert Sager, 1873-?.

Mary Flower, 1876-?, married ?

Fanny May Flowers, 1881-1900, married George Odell, 1879-1918.

I found one obit for Henry Flower that I hadn't seen before.  

I left several messages for family tree owners to let them know about the Flower/Flowers One Name Study and the blog.  

The day before, I emailed the Town Clerk of Rockland, Sullivan County, NY, to let her know about the One Place Study of Rockland and the blog and to ask that she spread it around.  You can only ask.

Les Wormuth and I are planning a trek into Montgomery County to do some research at a couple of collections.  The "other" Wormuth family was there.  Our Peter may have been born there.  We'll see what we can find.  I have a lot of prep work to do before we go up there; it's quite a drive for me.

That's it for now.  Does anybody read this?  Please leave a comment.  Thank you.

New Feature/New Page

I'm adding a new feature and a new page/tab to this blog.  I will also, eventually add it to my other blogs.  You can see the link to the new page at the top of the page menu, next to last item.

I'm currently taking medication that is causing symptoms that makes it difficult to travel any distance or any length of time because access to a public bathroom is necessary.

So, not easily discouraged, I've decided to identify public bathrooms in my area of research.

My area of research is most of New York State, parts of eastern and northern Pennsylvania and very northwestern New Jersey.

The information about bathrooms I'm familiar with appear on a page with D for definite and P for potential after the name and address.  The Ps are those I assume would be available but I haven't verified that they are.  These will, hopefully, change as I verify their availability.

It may seem odd, weird or silly but age and other causes make access to public bathrooms a necessity for some of us to be able to travel.

A woman's concern

 For some time I've had the inkling that many of my female ancestors had been baby-makers whether coincidentally or of their own choice.  As a single mother of a single child, I have my opinions about childbearing and the status of women.  I also have strong opinions about population numbers. I knew that many of my ancestors had many children.  I also knew that at least one of my ancestors died very shortly after her last baby was born.  I knew that one of my grandmothers had her last baby quite late in her life.

We now know that childbearing include risks to the mother, if not the fetus, that increase as the age of the mother increases although women still have babies into their late 30s and early 40s.  I was curious about the age of my female ancestors when they had their last baby.  This is what I found:

This is, of course, not all my female ancestors but those I was able to collect these facts.

Thinking about the various aspects of these facts can be interesting:  the time period of the last births, the ages of the mothers, the number of children these women had, how the age of the mothers might have affected their children.

My grandmother, Ida Mattice O'Dell, told me that her doctors didn't think she could carry a pregnancy to term because she was small, 4' 11", yet she had 7 children and didn't seem to feel that giving birth was difficult.

Note that Mary Hendrickson Hulse died shortly after giving birth to her last child; generally thought to have died in childbirth.

Note that Anna Hendrickson was 54 when she had her last child.  I can't imagine.

Note also that Mary Hogancamp Vandermark gave birth to 16 children.  I can't imagine.

The lives of many of our ancestors was quite different from ours and not that long ago.

This was an interesting exercise.