Follow Friday - Week of May 24, 2013

Here are a few of my favorite finds for the past week:

• Follow Carolyn and Dan on Follow The Song as they take a musical trek through South America.
• Watch a mama falcon care for her four chicks on Ameren Falcon Cam.
• techshout lists the six best free genealogy software programs.
• Maryland Genealogy 101 has a great set of links for Maryland research.
• Cnet explains how to get your feeds and data out alive before Google Reader goes away.
• Randy posts a review on the "Tracing Your Colonial American Ancestors" special magazine and gives advice on how to research German ancestors on Genea-Musings.

Thrifty Thursday - Free Military Records for Memorial Day Weekend

Several sites are offering free access to their military records over the Memorial Day weekend.

From FindMyPast: With more than 34 million U.S. and International military records available at findmypast.com , we are offering free access to our military records and collection of veteran's gravesites to explore and learn about the heroic efforts in your family tree this Memorial Day weekend. Anyone can access the records by registering for free at findmypast.com.


From World Vital Records: In honor of Memorial Day we are providing free access to all our military records from now until May 28th. See what you can find today.

To commemorate the NARA-Ancestry.com agreement on the eve of Memorial Day, Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Military Collection -- the largest online collection of American military records -- available for free to the public. From May 20 through May 31, people can log on to http://www.ancestry.com/military to view more than 100 million names and 700 titles and databases of military records, the majority of which come from NARA, from all 50 U.S. states.

From MyHeritage: Memorial Day in the US  is May 27, and millions of Americans will remember the men and women who died while serving in the US Armed Forces. In honor of this special day, we are proud to provide free access - through May 28 -  to our most popular collections of US military records.

From Fold3: Today marks the 150th anniversary of the USCT, and the National Archives is pleased to announce the completion of the USCT Service Records Digitization Project. In partnership with Fold3, the project provides online access to all service records—more than 3.8 million images—of Union volunteers in USCT units. From May 22 to 31, the digital collection will be free on www.Fold3.com.

Do you know of any other sites offering free access?

Wednesday's Child - Ida Belle Creeden

Ida Belle Creeden

Ida Belle Creeden was the only daughter of Daniel Creeden and Lena Gleagall of Mercer County, Ohio. She was born on December 8, 1904 and died on August 11, 1916 at the age of only eleven years old. Daniel and Lena had lost their only son Ned the year before. One of Daniel's sisters was also named Ida Belle. Thanks to tut on FindAGrave for posting the picture of Ida Belle's grave. She is buried in the North Grove Cemetery in Celina, Ohio.

Mystery Monday - Which William is Which?

I've been trying to find information on each of the children for Patrick Creedan and Hannah Hoover of Clinton County, Ohio. I believe Patrick is my 3x great-grandfather and he had several children by his second wife, Hannah. Their son John Creedan was born in 1853 and died in 1923 in Mercer County, Ohio. John's brother Patrick William was born in 1864 and is more of a mystery.

John married Minerva McFarland in 1875 in Clinton County, Ohio and they had 3 children: Hiram H., Flora, and Estelle/Stella. John married a second time to Ida Phillips in Darke County, Ohio in 1896.

The following census record is from Darke County, Ohio and looks like a definite match for John. He is listed with his wife Ida and daughters Flora and Stella. Right next to him is William Creedan with his wife Mary and several children. William is the same age as my Patrick William and living next to my John Creedan, but is this the same person? It's possible that Patrick William used his middle name since his father's name was also Patrick. For both John and William, their father is listed as being born in Ireland, while their mother was born in Ohio. This would be correct for my family.

John Creedan and William Creedan in Darke County, Ohio - 1900

I looked through the family trees on Ancestry.com and found that several list William Creedan as the son of Timothy and Ellen Creeden. However, they reference the same 1900 census record shown above as one of their sources. None of the trees mention a John Creedan, but I decided to do a little investigating on Timothy and Ellen Creeden.  Here they are in the 1870 census for Hamilton County, Ohio:

Timothy and Eleanor Creden in Hamilton County, Ohio - 1870

Surprise, they also have a son John born around 1854! His brother William is 7, so these ages are close to the ones in Darke County in 1900. Below is the same family in the 1880 census for Hamilton County, Ohio. They also have a son named Laurence in this census.

Timothy and Eleanor Creeden in Hamilton County, Ohio - 1880

The Ancestry trees indicate that William and his family moved to Kansas where William died in 1909. Here is the family in Sedgwick, Kansas in the 1905 Kansas Census:

W.P. Creeden in Sedgwick, Kansas census in 1905

I also found an entry in the 1900 census for a William Creeden that looks suspiciously like the son of Timothy and Ellen from Hamilton County. Notice that he is the correct age and has a son named Laurence. Both of his parents are listed as being born in Ireland.

William Creeden in 1900 census in Hamilton County, Ohio

I found the above William's marriage record on FamilySearch. William and Margaret were married in 1883 in Hamilton County and by a stroke of luck William's father Timothy gave consent on the marriage form. So, this William is the son of a Timothy. I went back to the family trees on Ancestry and there are a number of them with this William as the son of the same Timothy and Ellen.

So, which trees have the correct William? My suspicions are that the William that stayed in Hamilton County is the son of Timothy and Ellen and the William that moved to Kansas is a different William. The information I've found so far seems to suggest that he may be my Patrick William, but more investigation is definitely needed.

Sunday's Obituary - Catherine Creedon O'Connor

FUNERAL SERVICES MONDAY

FOR MRS. JOHN O'CONNOR

   Funeral services will be held Monday at 9:30 a. in., at St. John's Catholic church, for Mrs. Catherine O'Connor, 52, wife of John M. O'Connor, who died Friday at 4:30 p.m. at her home, 124 W. Circular-st. Interment will be at Gethsemani.

   Mrs. O'Connor was born in Mallow, County of Cork, Ireland.    A brother, Patrick Creedon and a sister, Mrs. Daniel Corbett, still reside in Ireland.    Mrs. Richard Tobin, Greenlawn-ave and Mrs. Dennis O'Connor, S. Union-st, are surviving sisters.

   Of her immediate family, the husband and a daughter, Mrs. II. C. McElroy, 122 W, Circular-st, and two grand-children, Joanne and Harold McElroy, Jr., are left. Mrs. 'OConner had been a resident of Lima 34 years.

This obituary was published in the Lima News, Ohio on March 11, 1922.

Friday's Faces From the Past - Robert F. Creeden

This picture of my grandfather, Robert F. Creeden wasn't dated, but he was born in 1911 in Celina, Ohio. I'm not a great judge of ages, but would guess he's around 5 or 6 here.

Tombstone Tuesday - C. Maria E. Tebben Hagedorn

Birth: Sep. 11, 1786, Germany
Death: Oct. 1, 1877
Saint Rosa
Mercer County
Ohio, USA

C. Maria E. Tebben Hagedorn and her husband Hermann Hagedorn came to the US from Germany. I haven't found out what her first initial stood for, but I would guess she might be another Catherine in my tree. Hermann and Maria were my 4x great-grandparents and were the parents of Katharina Maria Hagedorn Gast. Thanks to Cousin Becky of FindAGrave for posting the photo.