Using Cemeteries to Track Moves

Laura Winterton was one of my great grandparents.  She was born in 1891 in Matawan, Monmouth County, New Jersey to William Winterton and Catherine Dunn.  Around 1905, her family moved to Newark in Essex County, New Jersey.  In 1910, Laura Winterton married Howard Lutter.  Three generations later, here I am.

Laura died in 1962 in Newark from complications of diabetes and multiple sclerosis.  She was buried in an unmarked grave in Hollywood Cemetery in Union (Union County, New Jersey).  

Recently, I visited family gravesites for the first time in Monmouth County, New Jersey.  Although I do not live far from these cemeteries, I had never visited, probably because these graves were among the few recorded and photographed when genealogy started on the internet.  Visit Interment.net and DistantCousin.com for user-submitted records.  I concentrated on visiting graves that nobody had photographed and posted online, of which there were plenty, and I uploaded my pictures and notes to FindAGrave.

Ancestors of my great grandmother
[Chart created in Excel and modified in Paint]

Green Grove Cemetery in Keyport

William Winterton (1862-1932) and Catherine Dunn (1865-1944), parents of Laura, died in Newark, but are buried in Keyport.

William's parents, John R Winterton (1831-1890) and Sophia T Walling (1835-1906), are buried in a plot shared with Cuttrells, located near the corner of Green Grove Avenue and Hurley Street.

Sophia's parents, William Walling (1803-1870) and Ellen Euphemia Imlay (1807-1895), are also at Green Grove in a family plot.

Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn

John Winterton's parents, Samuel Winterton (1800-1877) and Sally Johnson (1802-1882), relocated to Monmouth County from New York City in the 1850s.  Samuel died in Keyport and Sally in Raritan, but they are both buried at Greenwood Cemetery in New York.  Their burials are searchable at the cemetery's website.

Rose Hill Cemetery in Matawan

At Rose Hill are Laura Winterton's maternal grandparents, Ezra Dunn (1821-1898) and Hermoine Dunlop (1827-1900).  This is a small cemetery.  I was able to find the graves based on the pictures already online.

I marked the GPS location of the graves on FindAGrave.

FindAGrave.com

Google maps, connected by FindAGrave

I am still working on Ezra Dunn's parents.  According to his death certificate, Ezra's parents were Nathaniel Dunn and Sarah.

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Matawan

Hermoine Dunlop's father, Joseph Dunlop, was buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  This trip illustrates why you want to visit grave sites, rather than just look at pictures or transcriptions online.

In memory of Joseph W DUNLOP who died Apr 26, 1852,
aged 55 years, 2 months, and 4 days.

In the 1850 federal census in Raritan (Monmouth County, New Jersey), we have:

Joseph W. Dunlop, age 54, born in Pennsylvania;

Margaret Dunlop, age 53, born in New Jersey;

some of their children and boarders.

I located a marriage record in 1824 in Monmouth County for Joseph Dunlop and Margaret Little.  I need more evidence to decide if this is the marriage record for this couple.  A trip to the cemetery makes this marriage record more plausible for fitting into my tree.

FamilySearch.org
New Jersey, County Marriages, 1682-1956

I did not see a gravestone for Margaret; however, two Little graves and one Dunlop are next to Joseph Dunlop.  This placement could indicate a relationship.  You cannot see this positioning from online transcriptions or individual pictures of the stones.  (Well, now you can with my labeled picture.)

"The grave of William Johnston, son of Joseph W. and Margaret Dunlop,
died Nov 17, 1832, aged 3 years, 7 months, and 24 days."

"Frances, daughter of Robert and Margaret Little,
who departed this life April 30th, 1839,
aged 20 years, 6 months, and 8 days."

"Robert Little, a native of the Billis, near Virginia, County Cavan, Ireland,
who emmigrated to America A.D. 1807,
and departed this life October 29th, 1821,
in the 37 year of his age.  
For many years an active merchant in this place."

If this Little grave has a connection to Margaret, wife of Joseph Dunlop, then I will have a great link to the hometown in Ireland.  This would also be the first Irish ancestor found in my father's tree.

Personalized Maps

Inspired by a genealogical blog post, I crafted some ancestor maps of my own.  Using the ancestors of my father, I created two maps:  1- Place of Birth and 2- Place of Death.

2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great grandparents
16 great great grandparents
Total:  30 ancestors

The outlier in the birthplaces is my grandfather, Clifford Lutter.  He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1915.  All of his other events are in New Jersey.  A family story explains that Clifford was born in Philadelphia because his father was performing there at the time.

These maps show where to find the bulk of my recent family records.  The three unknown places of death are likely New Jersey and Germany.

Finding a German Hometown

SCHEIBE

This is the town of origin for Herman Lutter, one of my great great grandfathers.  Thank you TP for figuring this out!

The above image is from the 1888 certificate of marriage for Herman Lutter and Clara Uhl in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States.  All of Herman's other records that I have located do not provide a town; instead, his birthplace is given as Thuringia or Germany.

My other clue for locating family in Germany is from Herman's 1924 will, where he names a sister, Ottillia Michel "of Neuhaus, Thuringen, Germany."

During Herman's lifetime, Germany was unified and World War I was fought.  After he died, World War II was fought, Germany was divided, then unified again.  Place names, political control, and borders changed.

The next trick:  Where are Scheibe and Neuhaus today and what are they called?

Scheibe-Alsbach is municipality in the German State of Thuringia, Sonneberg District.  Neuhaus am Rennweg is nearby.  There are a few places in Germany using the name Neuhaus, though.

I found a map of Thuringia dated 1905.  Two towns named Scheibe and Neuhaus are next to each other.  This looks promising.

Neuhaus and Scheibe are in Rudolstadt.  Just south, in Sonneberg, is another town called Neuhaus.

The 1905 map of Thuringia has latitude and longitude grids.  When plugged into a modern-day map, the location of Neuhaus and Scheibe in Rudolstadt is now Neuhaus am Rennweg in the Sonneberg District of Thuringia.  This is where I need to look for records.  The area is in a forested mountain region, which impeded travel.  The Czech Republic is fifty miles to the east.  I hope to discover how this geography shaped the family history.

Archives for Thuringia has a website!  But in German, naturally.

Second Cousin Found at 23andMe

Another cousin has been located through 23andMe!

We will call him "PK."  He is from my maternal grandmother's branch.  He is a second cousin of my grandmother.  They share a pair of great grandparents:  Peter ODONNELL and Margaret GALLAGHER, say born around 1820, in Ireland.  They had four children (so far discovered):  Katherine, Rose, Patrick, and Cornelius, all born in Ireland, but came to the United States.  PK is a grandson of Rose ODonnell, while everyone else in these DNA comparisons are descendants of Patrick ODonnell.

At 23andMe, PK supplied the names of his four grandparents and their locations.  I knew which of his lines to pursue when I saw the surname ODonnell and the location of Bayonne, New Jersey, United States.

My grandmother is long gone, but her first cousins have kindly supplied their DNA to help our family history research.  They are sisters and second cousins of PK.

PK matches one of his second cousins 192 cM over 9 segments and the other 264 cM over 14 segments.  This is within the expected range for second cousins.

When 23andMe expanded the comparison function from 3 people to 5 people,
the corresponding chromosome chart also expanded and does not copy well.

To see how the DNA passed from one generation to the next, we can compare PK to the children of one of these second cousins.  Notice that one of these children shares a tiny segment on chromosome 5 that is not shared by his mother.  This can be because of a misread in the DNA or can indicate that this child is also related to his mother's cousin on his father's side.

PK has five people from my branch who are second cousins, once removed.  You can see the variation in the amount of shared DNA.  Different branches inherit different pieces of DNA in smaller amounts.  This is why third cousins and more distant will share little to no DNA.  That is the design.

Below is the comparison of PK to my mother and to my sister and me.  Genetically, a second cousin twice removed is the equivalent of a third cousin.  Note that my sister shares only a very tiny segment with PK.  This is very important, as a lot of people (myself included), might disregard such a small match as "too distant" to realistically identify in a family tree that only extends to the 1800s.  Yet uncovering PK's relation was not difficult at all.

Now that we have a cousin from the ODonnell/Gallagher branch in the genetic pool, we can compare him to our plentiful DNA cousins to narrow down where we must look for a common ancestor.

Shared Ancestor Hints for AncestryDNA

One of the alluring features of Ancestry's DNA testing is the Shared Ancestor Hints derived from family tree comparisons.  (The other feature is finding missing close relatives.)  My test produced over 15,000 matches.  (Can that be?  306 pages of 50 matches per page.)

With my test attached to my mother's tree, only one DNA cousin produced a shared ancestor hint.  This is my mother's second cousin in the Preston/Sheehey branch.  We had already made contact before the tests results were in.

Attaching my father's tree to my test profile produced five people with shared ancestor hints.  (When my father's results are ready, these five people should also match him.  If not, then the shared DNA likely is from my mother and these family tree hints are misleading.)  One of the DNA cousins has a private tree, so I could not review the hint.

Of the remaining four shared ancestor hints, two were for the same set of 5th great grandparents:  Jacob vander Hoof (1772-1847) and Ann Hopler (1772-1841) of Morris County, New Jersey.  These folks are buried in the deMouth Family Burial Ground in Boonton.  I have also met other descendants in my DNA travels.  Based on our family trees, one DNA match is a fourth cousin, twice removed and the other is a sixth cousin.

The other two matches are from the New York Hyser branch of my tree.

Common ancestors are Simon Rockefeller and Anna Bahr, based on our family trees.
We also share some identical DNA.  Is it from these shared ancestors?  We do not know.

Note that this Shared Ancestry Hint only reported Elizabeth Burke as the common ancestor.
In both of our trees, we have John as the husband.
Perhaps the alternate spelling of Lehman/Layman threw off the calculation.

Although on paper I am a cousin to these matches, the shared DNA could easily come from another ancestral line that is not documented in at least one of our family trees.  That is how I have over 15,000 matches but only 6 matching family trees.  Someone has not documented back far enough, or someone has a non-parental event.  I could have easily found any of these DNA matches by comparing trees- no DNA testing required.

When my father's results are available, I expect him to have far fewer matches.  I am trying to use the AncestryDNA Chrome Extension to reveal which segments of DNA are shared by the matches in order to triangulate.  AncestryDNA provides no chromosome browser function to do this directly, unlike 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA.  The high number of my matches is causing the Chrome Extension to freeze.

Photograph of a Great Great Grandfather

I have my first picture of a great great grandfather, Abraham Brewer Duryea.  Abraham was born in 1878 in Pound Ridge, Westchester County, New York to Stephen C Duryea and Mary Evenshirer.  He was named for his maternal grandmother's brother.  In 1898, Abraham married Nellie Cummings, the daughter of William Cummings [still a tail end in my tree] and Anna Hyser.

The negative and cover, with a hand-written note, was among pictures given to me by my aunt.  Love you Aunt Marion!  I learned quickly in my pursuit of old photographs that most photo developing places cannot develop the old negatives.  The place I usually use in Verona has closed down.  I finally located a local business that could develop the negative in Montclair, the Montclair Center Camera Exchange.

Standing, left to right:  Harold Duryea, Alvina Wrage (Harold's wife), Nellie Cummings, Abraham Duryea.
Children of Harold and Alvina.  Kneeling man:  a neighbor.

Off I went to my grandmother's Duryea cousin, who was most pleased to see this photograph.  This photograph was probably made around 1940 at Christmas.  We laughed when he identified the kneeling man as a neighbor- I was trying to fit him into the family tree.


I have a picture of Nellie in her later years, having tea.

The eBay photograph of Garrett S Duryea that I acquired a while back, if correctly marked, would be Abraham's father's brother.  See a similarity?

Photographs of Ancestors

Photographs were added to my decorative family tree on the wall.  Acquiring the photographs and identifying the subjects has taken years. 

Living or Dead, Preserved Images

I stumbled across some post-mortem, or momento mori, photographs online from the mid to late 1800s.  These were photographs made after the person had died, or when they were deathly ill, in order to have a preserved image of the person- perhaps the only photograph ever taken of the person.

So naturally I went through my photo collection with a new goal:  finding post-mortem photos.  At first, I thought that any of the pictures could have been of dead people because nobody smiled for pictures in the 1800s.  Most of the facial expressions are depressed at best.

In the Bishop album, I found a tintype of two boys that might be a post-mortem.  The bases of stands are visible behind both boys.  These stands held up dead people for the picture.  The boy on the right is not posing his hands.  His expression is vacant.  The hat is straight, but his head is crooked, as if he was propped up and then someone stuck the hat on his head.  Is the boy on the left also dead?  Maybe he alive and holding up the other boy, or he is dead and his hands are fastened.

Notice the bases of the stands behind the boys.

I have no idea who these people are.  What would be useful would be finding out who these boys are and when they died.  That information could tell us if this is indeed a post-mortem picture.

Anyone have any opinions?

My AncestryDNA Results

My results are in for the AncestryDNA test I took in May.  (My father's results are not in yet.)

Before the results were published, a cousin contacted me.  She is my mother's second cousin.  Our common ancestors were John D Preston (1859-1928) and Bridget Sheehey (1856-1916).  Her grandfather, George Preston, was a brother to my great grandmother, Anna Preston.  Previously, through DNA testing at 23andMe, I made contact with a descendant of another sibling, Hannah.

1900 federal census:  Independence, Warren County, New Jersey  USA
Household of John D Preston
I am descended from Anna Preston.  Last year, we met descendants of Hannah Preston.
In this post, we meet a descendant of George Preston.

My AncestryDNA closest matches are predicted to be 3rd to 4th cousins.

I don't know how the first person is related to me.  He has no genealogy information under his profile.  When my father's results are available, I will check if this cousin matches my father.  If not, the match is likely through my mother.

The second match is my Preston cousin.  We both attached family trees to our profiles.  Ancestry tagged her tree with a little leaf to let me know that Ancestry has a suggestion as to which ancestor in our trees may be the common ancestor.

John D Preston is indeed our common ancestor.  Bridget Sheehey, our other common ancestor, was left out of this suggestion.

This newly discovered cousin provided me with information on her branch of the Preston tree.  I followed them through the census and retrieved some of their vital records from the Archives in Trenton.  As a coincidence, in the 1920 census in Newark, New Jersey, we have George Preston and his wife, Margaret [Fallon], living a few houses away from my paternal great grandfather, Howard Lutter, and my great great grandmother, Clara Uhl.

1920 federal census:  Newark, Essex County, New Jersey  USA
South Ninth Street
The Prestons were living at 164 South Ninth Street.  The Lutters were at 158.

Finding George Preston's birth certificate provides me with a narrower time frame for when the family relocated from Dutchess County, New York to Warren County, New Jersey.  George's birth certificate for November 12, 1886 is the first found in New Jersey for the couple John Preston and Bridget Sheehey.  Strangely, the next two children, Hannah and Anna, had no certificates.  But Henry, born 1897, and Walter, born 1899, were issued birth certificates.  If the child count is correct, I am still missing some children.

The branches lost contact, but through the internet, we reconnected.  My grandmother's notes reveal that she continued receiving news about the family.  She wrote that George (her maternal uncle) had one son.

Now I have tested my autosomal DNA at the three major companies:  23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, and AncestryDNA.  I have close and distant relations at all three.  Unlike 23andMe and FamilyTree DNA, AncestryDNA does not reveal which pieces, or segments, of my DNA that I have in common with my matches.  This information is necessary to figure out the connection to more distant relations.

Y-DNA Results at FamilyTreeDNA

My father's Y-DNA results are in at FamilyTreeDNA.  No matches.

This is a 37 marker test.

Y-DNA testing is for men only, as only men have a Y chromosome.  A father passes his Y chromosome to his male children almost unchanged from the version he received from his father.  This genetic inheritance pattern is particularly useful for genealogy.

For my particular genealogy, my father's direct paternal line is the shortest discovered line.  It is also the most recent line that left Europe for the United States, about 1881 for Hermann Lutter, my great-great grandfather.

Hermann Lutter had a brother, Otto Luther, who had only female children, so the Y chromosome was not passed on to his descendants.  I found only one grandson of Otto, but no marriage or children for him, so Otto's line may have ended.

In his will, Hermann mentioned a sister, Ottilia Michel, and her three children in Neuhaus, Thueringen, Germany.  I have not located them or any of their descendants.  They would not carry the Lutter Y chromosome, but they would likely share autosomal DNA with my father.

Autosomal DNA testing captures DNA inherited from all ancestral lines.  The trick is figuring out which ancestor contributed particular pieces of your DNA.  In comparison, Y-DNA matching can be credited to only one line- the direct paternal path of inheritance.

I will continue with traditional research on this line, as well as exploration of the autosomal DNA matches of my father and his siblings.  A Y-DNA match can appear at any time.

(If you would like to view a spreadsheet of people who match on their Y chromosome, please see the Bunch Y-DNA Project.)

Subjective Marital Status

In the prior post, we saw the 1920 census entry for Clara Uhl, (ex)wife of Herman Lutter, listing her marital status as widowed.

This does not mean that her husband was dead!  If you do not have a death record for a "deceased" spouse, look for the person in the census anyway.  (Clara had three more years until Herman died.)

Marital Status:  Clara was divorced, not widowed.
Howard was married, but separated from his wife.
Lillian was single, but married John Kuhl two months later.

In this case, I knew that Clara Uhl and Herman Lutter divorced in the 1890s and Herman died in 1923.  In the 1920 census, Herman resided nearby with his next wife, Emma Neubauer.

Double enumeration in the census, part five: Newark, New Jersey 1920

Howard Lutter was listed twice in the 1920 federal census.  When this happens, we call it a Double Enumeration.  The cause of the double count for Howard was marital problems.  He was staying with his mother, Clara Uhl, but was also listed in the household of his wife, Laura Winterton, with his young children.  The hint to check for a second entry was that in his mother's household, Howard was listed as married- but no wife was with him.