Rules of Thumb for my Family Tree

FWIW: Here are some of the rules I follow when deciding whether or not to include someone in my family tree. This is just off the top of my head.  If I've missed someone or inadvertently implied that I don't consider someone family, please let me know so I can fix it.

1) Publicly post only deceased relatives.
2) When sharing with others, share deceased and any living up to first cousins.
3) Include biological, adopted, foster, etc. relatives and their immediate in-laws: parents, siblings, siblings' spouses. Some exceptions when assisting close cousins with their genealogy. Including generations of relatives for every in-law is just too many people to keep track of. [If I were requested to add a family tree, I probably would because I love my in-laws! 8-) ]

For recently deceased:
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4) Don't include all marriages.  Include those that yielded children, the last marriage, marriages mentioned in important sources, like obituaries, etc. This is not hard set.  I tend to ignore it more with ancient relatives, but with relatives recently deceased, I'd rather not advertise someone's difficulty staying married by listing seven spouses.
5) Don't publicly post information concerning mental health, including death by suicide.
]

6) Where many variations in spelling exist for old families (prior to about 1900?), adopt an American spelling and an immigrant spelling.  For instance Cussen (native Irish ancestors) and Cushing (descendants in the US), or Donley (native Irish ancestors) and Donnelly (descendants in the US).
7) Record a source for all information.
8) Publicly, post only basic information: birth, marriage, death. This is to encourage serious genealogists to contact me for additional information (sources, burial, places of residence, etc.) which I am happy to share (within privacy constraints) and to share information that they may have about the family in question that I do not have.
9) Include individuals ...
Tier 1: for whom primary sources exist (birth, marriage, death certificates, land records, wills, ...)

Tier 2: from living family members closely enough related to know from personal knowledge and family interviews; corroboration with primary sources preferred
Tier 3: some secondary sources, such as census records, obituaries, grave markers, biographies, town histories, etc.
Tier 4: Published, well-researched, well-scrutinized genealogies (such as Douglas, Pierce, Matthew Cushing, ), corroboration with primary sources preferred
Tier 5: Posted genealogies which cite any of the above sources

Don't include:
Posted genealogies/trees with no source citations, or that cite only other posted genealogies, including LDS IGI and AF information, Ancestry.com and Rootsweb and other like sites

But ...
Unsourced information can be used to start research that, once substantiated, can be added to my tree. Authors of posted information can be contacted for leads or sources that might lead to substantiated information added to the tree.

10) Respect living family wishes regarding public information, such as fathers of children born outside of a marriage, etc.
11) Don't stir up old family feuds!

Lydia LaBrune Schirmer 1882-1955

Lydia LaBrune is first seen in the family of Jean-Baptiste and Catherine Dooley LaBrune at the age of 13 in the 1895 state census.  In 1900, she is described as adopted. And that is all we knew. Very recently I was contacted by a couple of Lydia's great-grandchildren who had discovered through a living relative that Lydia was believed to have a sister by the name of Verda Moore, who lived in Cedar Rapids in the 1930s. A few hours of research uncovered a good deal of Lydia's origins.

Lydia and Verda and another sister, Bessie, were the children of Emma Gooding and Oscar Arnold.  Emma and Oscar married in about 1879 (they are together in 1880 in the census in East Cascade, Dubuque co.).  The girls were born in about 1880 (Verda), 1881 (Lydia), and 1883 (Bessie).  In 1885 the family is together in Cascade; "Lida" and "Virdia" are both there! According to divorce papers (as reported in the newspaper), Oscar was abusive and abandoned the family in 1885 in Cascade.  In 1887, Emma filed for and was granted a divorce and custody of the kids.  That's the last information I found for them. I couldn't find any more trace of Oscar, Emma, or Bessie. In 1895, Lydia was with the LaBrunes in Jefferson twp and Verda was living with Lewis and Liddie Board and family in Cascade (both in Dubuque co., Iowa). In 1902, Verda married William Gearhart in Dubuque. They had four kids, then William died in 1909. Verda then married Daniel Moore in 1911. I found a newspaper article saying she filed for divorce for cruel treatment in 1920, but apparently they resolved their differences, at least for a while, since they were together as a family in 1930. In 1962, Verda Gearhart was buried next to William Gearhart, so I'm not sure of the history of Verda's relationship with Daniel Moore.

Addendum:
Found more information, regarding Emma Arnold.  She was the daughter of Thomas Jefferson Goodwin and Eliza A. Summers.  She is with them in the 1870 census in Cascade. Her father died in about 1882 and is buried in Cascade.  In 1887 her divorce was filed in Sioux co., in the far western side of the state, far from Cascade. Her mother, Eliza Goodwin was there in 1900 and I suspect that Emma had gone to live with her mother who had relocated there. In about 1894 Emma married Lars Peterson and they had four or five children together.  They live next door to Emma's mother in 1900 in Hawarden, in Sioux co.  In the 1900 census, I also found a clue as to how Emma's daughter, Lydia, came to be adopted by Jean-Baptiste and Catherine LaBrune.  A few houses away from the Goodwins and Petersons in 1900 are Caspar and Adaline Luchsinger.  Caspar's first wife was Jean-Baptiste's niece. His second wife, Adaline, was also related to the LaBrune family.  So when Emma gave up or lost her children, Lydia may have found a new family through their Luchsinger neighbors. By 1910, both Emma Peterson's and her mother's families had moved out to California: Emma to East San Diego, Eliza to LA. I believe that Eliza Goodwin died between about 1910 and 1918.  Emma Goodwin Arnold Peterson passed away in 1940 in San Diego.

Irish Origins

If you're Math-phobic, skip this article.  It will explain and demonstrate a proposed method to assist in locating Irish ancestors.

A valuable resource used to trace families back to Ireland is Sir Robert Matheson's Surnames in Ireland (1909). One of my first posts showed how common (or rare) some of the Irish surnames in our family tree were in Ireland in the 1800s, when all of our known Irish ancestors came to the United States. The bulk of Matheson's report is a table showing the number of births registered for every surname (family name) in Ireland in 1890, and the distribution of these births by province (Leinster = eastern Ireland, Munster = southwestern Ireland, Ulster = northern Ireland, Connaught = mid-western Ireland).  Some of the important things to know about this index are: (1) related names are combined and reported as the most common name; (2) 1890 is after the Great Famine (aprox. 1845 to 1852) and deaths and the enormous exodus of emigrants from Ireland in the mid and late 1800s had decimated the population (Population was growing very rapidly before the Famine, peaking somewhere around 8 million people, but was down to about 3.5 million at the time of Matheson's data in 1891), so this data may not accurately portray the distribution of families in the early 1800s; and (3) rare family names, for which less than 5 births were registered throughout Ireland, are not included. In spite of the limitations, because of the sparsity of census-like information in Ireland, this is a valuable resource.

I have used this book from time to time to give me a general idea of where a branch of my Irish ancestors came from. Because comprehensive searching of data has not been easy (at least in the past), I have not actually found any of my ancestors using this data.  But I hope to.

It has occurred to me that this information can be used mathematically to narrow a search for an ancestor. The listings in Matheson's table are essentially the probability of finding a family with this surname in the various provinces.  Using Hogans as an example:

Surname    Births in:        Ireland              Leinster             Munster            Ulster            Connaught
Hogan                              193                    59                     115                   5                     14

can be recalculated as

Surname    Probability of birth in:  Ireland      Leinster         Munster            Ulster            Connaught
Hogan                                          100%          31%              60%                 3%                   7%

[Because of rounding, numbers don't add to 100.] So I would expect that my Hogan family was most likely from southwest Ireland, but may also have been from eastern Ireland. It is unlikely they came from northern or western Ireland.

I recently found a marriage record that Mrs. Hogan's maiden name was Rice. Matheson's data for Rice is:

Surname    Births in:      Ireland              Leinster             Munster            Ulster            Connaught
Rice                                 99                     33                     18                   48                     0

and can be recalculated as

Surname    Probability of birth in:   Ireland        Leinster       Munster         Ulster         Connaught
Rice                                               100%           33%            18%             49%               0%

Nearly half of the Rice families were in northern Ireland, where there weren't many Hogans, but there were many in eastern Ireland and several in southwestern Ireland. By combining this data, multiplying the probabilities that both families were present in the province, and normalizing:

Surnames    Probability of marriage in:   Ireland      Leinster     Munster     Ulster      Connaught
Hogan-Rice                                           100%         46%           49%         6%              0%

Note that this method assumes that the bride and groom were actually from the province in which they were married. In this case, a Hogan and Rice married in Ireland were likely from eastern or southwestern Ireland, only slightly different from the conclusion I would have drawn from considering Hogan alone.

Applying this to the other families in our family tree for which I know both surnames:

                   Probability                                                                                                        Start in
Surnames   of marriage in:   Ireland      Leinster      Munster       Ulster       Connaught      counties:
Hogan-Rice                        100%          46%           49%            6%              0%             Dublin

Donnelly-Larkin                  100%          38%            7%           50%              5%       Dublin, Armagh

Cushing-Casey                   100%            6%           87%            0%               8%       Cork, Limerick

Casey-Brady                      100%          60%           12%          20%               8%            Dublin

Shannon-McHugh              100%            5%            2%            56%             37%             ?
Waters-Murphy                  100%          24%          76%             0%              0%          Wexford
Murphy-Stafford                 100%         78%             9%           13%             0%       Wexford, Dublin

Unfortunately, I don't think the underlying data for this table still exists.  If it did, we could further analyze this data by county.  In Matheson's table, he also indicates in which counties the most births occured.  Using these (unquantified) indicators, I estimated the most likely counties in my table, above.  The only test I have on this method is that the Cushing-Casey family is known to come from Co. Limerick, near where it joins Cos. Tipperary and Cork. The table above tells me that the family was very likely from Munster province (correct), and the county notes would have sent me to Cork and Limerick counties.

Unfortunately, at this time, there are very few couples in my tree that were married in Ireland and for whom I know the wife's maiden name. In the table above, only three are direct ancestors, and for the one most strongly placed (Cushing-Casey) we already know where they're from.  The other four families are parents of in-laws in my tree to help others connect to our family, but not of enough interest to search their origins.

Cushings: Our Viking Origins

[posted 15 Sep '14; added to web site 23 Jan '15] Our known genealogy only goes back a few hundred years: to the early 1800s for most of our branches, to the early 1600s for some.  While searching for Cushings in Ireland, I've browsed several books that either claim to know or speculate about the origin of the name and how Cushings came to be in Ireland. The one thing they all agree on is that Cushing is not a native Irish name.  I've included some of the different origin theories on the Cushing page of my genealogy web site.  The one most interesting to me, though I have not found any research to support the specific link to the Cushing family, is that Cussen (and like names) is derived from "Cu's son", Cu having been a Viking land owner in the vicinity of Galbally.  On the other hand, the most widely accepted theory is that an English knight with a name like Cousins came to the Cork area during the Norman Invasion of Ireland in the late 12th century.  [While the primary invasions occured in 1169 (eastern Ireland) and 1171 (eastern and southern Ireland), the influx of people from Normandy continued through about 1190.  All of this is considered the Norman Invasion.]  Over the centuries, they were "hibernicized", losing their foreign identity and becoming "Irish".  They had estates in the Cork area, until these were taken away and given to the Bowen family (Bowens Court) in about 1662 as part of the policy begun by Cromwell to replace the Irish with English. This once prominent family is taken to be the source of the Cushen and related families in Munster province (southern Ireland).

Rendering of what a Viking Cushing may have looked like [ 8-) ]

Recently, I was reading through the introduction to a well know Cushing genealogy, The Genealogy of the Cushing Family, An Account of the Ancestors and Descendants of Matthew Cushing, Who Came to America in 1638, the 1905 updated edition by James S. Cushing. In it he presents research that says that a great Viking warrior, son of the Viking conqueror of Norway, was exiled from Norway in about 900 C.E. He and his large group of followers eventually landed in what is now France, taking and settling a territory that came to be known as Normandy. (Norsemen, from Norway, conquered Normandy, ...)  Skipping 150 years of genealogy, descendants of these Vikings included William the Conqueror and his nobles, who conquered England in 1066 CE and issued lands and titles to his kinsmen, including one who had adopted the surname Cusyn.  So skip ahead another 120 years or so to a Cusyn descendant that took land in southern Ireland and established the Cushens of Munster Province. (By the way, descendants in England became the Cousins and Cushings and related of England, one of whose families was the subject of this Cushing genealogy book and to whom most of the Cushings in North America can trace their roots.)

The irony, then, is that whether you accept Cu, the Viking who conquered land in southern Ireland in the 9th or 10th century CE, or a Cousin nobleman who arrived during the Norman Invasion, a descendant of Vikings who conquered Normandy in the early 10th century CE, the origin of our Cushings is likely, ultimately, Viking.

Ellen Cussen Welch

[posted 11 Sep '14; added to web site 22 Jan '15] Ellen was the youngest of Dennis Cussen and Katherine Casey's Irish-born children, born near Galbally, Limerick co., Ireland in 1841. She was living with her family in Fort Winnebago, Wisconsin in 1850 and 1860. In 1869 she married Michael Welch, a butcher from nearby Juneau co. They settled in Necedah where twins Katie and William were born in 1870.  Ellen's sister, Mary Cushing Lupient, also lived in Necedah in 1870. I believe that Necedah was part of land recently (ca. 1840s) purchased from Native Americans and was experiencing rapid settlement and growth. It is located on the Yellow River, which flows into the Wisconsin River near Portage, so perhaps there was a fair amount of river traffic to and from Portage, and that is how Michael and Ellen met.

In 1883, Katie died.  In 1886, the "M.W. Welch building" was destroyed in a major fire in Necedah. It looks like they sold their home and moved away shortly thereafter. I can't find any record of them until Ellen Walsh, a widow, dies in Chicago in 1913.  She is mentioned in her brother's death notice in Chicago in 1908, so was probably in Chicago at that time.

Current McClintock Hypothesis

Briefly, James and Mary McClintock are found in Wheeling, Virginia in the 1850 US census.  James is a ship's carpenter, born in Ohio.  Just two houses away are John and Hannah McClintock and family.  John is also a ship's carpenter, born in Ohio, and just a couple of years older than James. My guess would be that John and James are brothers. They are in Wheeling, where McClintock tradition says James was born; James is a ship's carpenter, as he was in the 1870 census where I first found our James McClintock.  The Wheeling James seems to be ours. When John died in Wood county several years later, his death certificate listed his parents as Noble and Ellen McClintock. It is reasonable to assume that John and James were both sons of Noble and Eleanor McClintock.

There are some inconsistencies, though:
1) Family tradition says James was married to Ann Wilkins.  There is no mention of a first marriage to a Mary, as in the 1850 census. (However, the ten year gap in ages between the first two children shown in the 1870 census is a good indication that the first child was born to a first marriage, and the others were born to a second marriage.)
2) From census records for Noble and Eleanor, and a daughter Elizabeth, and from the earliest known land record in 1825, I would conclude that Noble and family immigrated from Ireland to the United States in the mid-to-late 1820s.  This is inconsistent with James and John census records indicating they were born in Ohio, W. Virginia, and other places, prior to that year. (However, a death record for Elizabeth says she was born on the ocean in 1808, indicating a family immigration in 1808.)

To shore up the addition of Noble and Eleanor and family to our family tree, I am searching for any records supporting two marriages to James McClintock and supporting an earlier immigration of Noble and family to the US.  If you know of any such records, please contact me.

Understand Online Data!

I just spent a couple of hours trying to uncover some additional information from Ancestry.com . Yikes! I found lots of copies of my family tree (available for free at Rootsweb.com), but with non-sensical siblings and residences and naturalization records and added wives, etc. This is a problem with any family tree, but I am surprised to see such egregious errors among the ancestry.com trees since data sources are so readily available there.

This is not unique to ancestry.com . Recently, I found some data in an online database at familysearch.org that seemed too good to be true. When I read the description of the database, it turned out that some of the information in the index was user submitted through the IGI and ancestral file collections. In other words, there was no source of information given to back up the data. I admit that I don't investigate every piece of data found in online databases, but if it is an important new find, I look up the film number (on familysearch.org) associated with the specific record to see if it was user submitted or came from a county clerk or a transcription of original records in a courthouse. We've been lulled into thinking that if it's in a database, then it is accurate/true data.

Whatever your source of data, document it. At least someone can go back to check the source someday if there is some question about accuracy. I'm guessing that many others who research their family history treat sources like I do. I record every source. But I don't post them. My expectation was that serious (amateur) genealogists would want to contact me for my sources, thereby allowing me to make contact with them. After hundreds of hours uncovering this information, I did not want to simply give it away without at least meeting a cousin who may have information I don't. Apparently, most people prefer to anonomously copy what I've made available. But also note, serious genealogists want you to contact them.

Oh, well. Just be aware that simply because you find information in a database from a well know entity, like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org, does not mean that the information is accurate.

[I am not discouraging the use of these great services. I use FamilySearch often, as well as sites like FindAGrave.com and others. My point is that you should understand what the primary source of the information was and judge it's accuracy accordingly.]