 |
 |
 |
One of the really interesting side effects of publishing your genealogy is providing a mechanism for adopted children to try and find their birth parents in later life. I had it explained to me many years ago why they were so driven. They want to see someone that has their features. They usually have parents that will remain their parents for the rest of their life; however, they also want to know the people that created them and gave them away. I have had two hits now. The first hit was several years ago and was on my Wayment side. When she found my page, her mother and her grandmother had already died. Grandpa didn't know anything about it. She could look at the obituary and think that person is probably my mother. With enough money around, you could check the DNA. Grandpa probably still has something of his wife's around. When Dad died, we found that he had never emptied mom's side of the dresser. The mitachrondial DNA follows the women and can establish a connection via the women. You may not know who your father is but you sure know if you are connected to a woman from the past.
The second hit occured just recently. The adoptee's daughter had done a web-search on her grandmother and found her on one of my computer generated, cross indexed genealogy pages. Her mother had serious problems sleeping that night and called me early the next morning. I had been a sleep for about two hours and couldn't find the telephone before my voice mail grabbed it. I finally woke up and was coherent around 10:30 am. I listened to her voice mail but couldn't do anything. I had to reinstall PAF-5 because three days earlier I had completely redone my Windows 2000 Server and hadn't gotten around to reinstalling it yet. That is where all of my data is stored. I finally got everything installed and found the birth mother. So, then I called the adoptee. It was 11 am my time but it was 12:am her time and she was out to lunch. I left a voice mail. She finally called back a little after 1 pm in the afternoon and she explained more about what she knew. I said that I would quietly snoop around and would see what I could find. I knew who her mother had married and found him via a chance lookup on Switchboard.com. By the time everything was finished, I had invested almost 2 hours of long distance telephone charges. If you get help from someone's web pages like this, keep them informed on your progress. If you don't, you may just be responsible for them not getting involved the next time some one comes across a birth family on their web site.
It turned out that she had her birth records in her possession for 30 years but was never able to connect to her birth-mother. By the time she obtained the copies, her mother had remarried and wasn't to be found. I had received a gedcom with her birth mother included as a collateral line in 1998. She had been dead for five years at that point. The adoptee had started out really quiet and not trying to make waves. I accidentally talked to one of her half-sister's son in laws and part way through the conversation I asked if his wife's grandma so_and_so was still alive. I was told she had been dead for some time. The rules changed instantly at that point and I asked him how his wife would feel about finding out about a new aunt. He said he would ask her when we got through talking. I hung up the phone and called the adoptee back up. She had already found out that her mother was dead. She wasn't getting anywhere trying to find out information from her mother's second husband. Shortly after that, I went out to eat dinner and found that I had messages on all of my online messaging applications when I got back. Things were complicated because everyone had an unlisted telephone number. A couple of phone calls later, I was talking to his father in-law. He wanted to know how she found out about her mother. When I told him that she had her birth records for 30 years but never connected, they decided that it was time to talk to their new member of the family. It was kind of late and they apparently decided to wait until morning to call her. It has to be an early but really cool Christmas present.
I started this web site as a means of tracking down who Archibald Stewart's father was. I haven't found anyone who fits every aspect of the family stories. Everything else just sort of happened. I figure someone out there will have an Archibald Stewart that matches our stories. They just haven't encountered this site yet and sent me an email :).
I was asked by Gary Welker to try his program to see what I thought. Well, I like the output and everyone who has commented on it also liked it. I have started to register it several times. An HTML version of my genealogy is available as individual files at my genealogy , or as a GedHTree (Welker's Program) list. Proceed from page to page by following the hyperlinks. I have an internal webserver and that allows me to update and test my Surname List files. The Ged2Html list was eliminated. Welker's program was also registered.
So far, I have met Wayment/Waymont cousins in Wales, Canberra, Australia, and the USA. The majority of Wayment contacts have been associated with a group located in southern Idaho.
I have a number of old Wayment photographs. They date back to when my great great grandfather William Wayment was a young man. He was born in 1822 and these photographs look like he was around 35, which would have been in 1857. There have been genealogy data sheets published about his line and I think I have most of the original photographs. I have been using a 6cm x 6cm camera to copy these old photographs. They had been copied before but a lot of time was not spent to make sure some of the copies were as good or better than the originals. I seem to have cousins pop up in bunches and the past group were related to my Stewart's and the new ones are related to my Wayment's. I also have found a number of old photographs of my closer family. It has been fun seeing how everyone looked when they were younger. It is the first time I ever saw my mother and father when they were courting.
I have added simple web pages for all of Williams children. I have been thinking of trying to have an e-mail contact for each line. That way, if you are a cousin, you have a much closer contact to your line. There is more information under the heading of Genealogy Publishing.
I have been adding more data for my Thomas ancestors. You can follow my Thomas' starting with Daniel Thomas Sr. This takes my history back to 1739 when Daniel was born in Queen Anne County area of Maryland. We have photocopies of his mustering out receipt for the time he spent in the Revolutionary War. I have also included a document called "The History of Daniel Thomas". This was produced by my Aunt Norma in the years before she died. It hasn't been published because neither she nor I can figure out which reference she obtained the information from and you can't print it with out proper referencing.
This covers diverse subjects such as the Archibald Stewart Web Page or finishing my late Aunt Norma's story about "The History of Daniel Thomas". I have a web page for his son Daniel Thomas Jr. and another for his wife, Nancy Ann Morehead . They had five children but only four of them lived to being adults. The fourth child was Daniel Claiborne Thomas . He married Jane Gaither and they had three children. William Lyle Stewart , my great grandfather, was married to DC and Jane's daughter Sarah Jane Thomas . Sarah was my first pioneer ancestor that was born and raised in Utah. Her parents had the harsh pioneer look that only survivor's demonstrate. In the early days, Sarah Jane also had this look. The problems with the Indians left its mark in her mind. Any discussion of the early days brought out stories about her fears of the Indian's. This fear continued until around 1920. They had a loaded pistol that people working in the field took with them until it was lost around 1920. The story would have been forgotten but my father dug the rusted hulk out of his garden in the 1980's. The fear left its impact on the pioneers but then, there are times that you can see what William Lyle must have seen when he first met her. That appearance is captured in the image on her web page. William Lyle Stewart was a prolific record keeper and in 1981 they were published by the William Lyle Stewart Family Organization as a set of two manually typed books. I have finished scanning and converting the first into a WordPerfect document. There were numerous errors that were corrected. It has been converted to an Adobe Acrobat document and may be made available to interested parties in the future.
It has been more than a year since I added my Wayment ancestors starting with William Wayment and Martha Brown . Wayment was spelled many ways in England such as Whayment, Waymont, Wayman, and etc. In one of the stories they talk about an ancestor singing the song about the High Wayman, the robber from old England, and I kind of wonder if that is how the name developed.
I have finally separated some of the photographs that I inherited from Norma, Reed, and Gwen. I have been copying them so that we have good negatives for historical purposes. Some of them are over 100 years old and make beautiful copies. I started out using a 35mm camera but that didn't produce equivalent results. I had an old 2 1/4" square camera and the current efforts are using the much larger negative. Making a print using the medium format camera is much better because of the sharpness that you see from using a larger negative. Kodak has a film called "Professional Copy - 4125", which is only available in the 4x5 inch or larger format that may have to be used on some prints. It has a special characteristic that keeps it from blocking the highlights, which lets it faithfully reproduce the original print. You have these people in nice very dark clothes and white shirts. I could reproduce the highlights or the shades of black but not on the same print.
I have been using the darkroom for the first time since 1973. I had used it a little bit in 1983 but I did more in the first day than I did that year. You can't imagine the places that dust has crept into. I also had an oil furnace that heated the house and it would belch some oily soot each time it was turned on by the thermostat. Cleaning the oily stuff off was a serious offense to my nose. What has been really interesting is seeing all of the old photographs. Some of the prints died a long time ago but the negatives are still as good as they were when first processed. There are some really ancient photographs that I have of my great great grandparents. They must have been really good when they were first printed. There is some deteriation but I have been able to make copies. I don't have any idea how old there are but they claim to be William Wayment and Martha Brown "when young". William was born in 1822 and died in 1883. The dust makes it difficult to get a clean print but thanks to my new 1" Staticmaster Brush much of the problem can be eliminated.
I have more capability for copying the ancient photographs. I have my father's 4x5 camera ready and a setup for developing and printing what ever I shoot. I am in the process of evaluating using Kodak's Professional Copy 4125 film. The characteristic curve of 4125 keeps it from blocking highlights and developing for the shadows. It isn't a hi-res film at 80 lines/mm. Kodak's Technical Pan is good for 300+ l/mm. It doesn't have the curve to deal with copying difficult prints.