Wordless Wednesday - Boy in a Birdbath

Tim Creeden and his step-mother Hilda in the 1930s

Church Record Sunday - Councills in St. Peter's Church, Queenstown, Maryland Records

St. Peter's photo from Wikipedia

The following records were transcribed from The origins and history of St. Peter's Church, Queenstown, Maryland, 1637-1976 by Edward B. Carley, published in 1976. The original records were created by the priests of the church.

May 5, 1768 Christened Henry Counsil

January 27, 1783 Christened Thomas Counsil

May 6, 1784 Marry'd John Counsill and Rebecca Gray

1784 (no date) Bury'd Luticia Counsil at ye families graveyard

January 13, 1790 I married John Councill, Jr. and Nancy Browning

February 14, 1796 Buried John Councell, Sr. (at Tully's Neck)

February 24, 1799 Buried a child of Henry Counsell's at Counsell's

Councell, John Carey, Born February 11, 1804, Baptized February 20, 1804, Parents Elijah and Martha Councell, Queen Anne's County

Councell, Samuel, Born March 25, 1806, Baptized June 15, 1806, Parents Elijah and Margaret Councell, Queen Anne's County

Councell, Francis. About 9 months old; Baptized May 21, 1818. Son of John and Anne Councell. Sponsors: Joseph and Polly Councell

Councell, George W. Born May 17, 1818; Baptized July 20, 1818. Son of Elijah and Martha Councell. Sponsors: James and Mary Councell

Councell, Robert H, 3 years old
Councell, Joel Franklin, 1 year old. Baptized May 14, 1823. Both children of Elijah and Martha Councell of Queen Anne's County.

These are just a few of the Councill records in this book. I suspect that the Francis Councell baptized on May 21, 1818 is my 2x great-grandfather, but I need more proof. I've seen the Councell spelling in earlier records for the family and the dates and location fit. I don't have any evidence either way on whether or not Francis was Catholic. I didn't find the marriage of Francis or any children for him, but there are quite a few gaps in the records.

I noticed that there is a John Councell, Jr. married to a Nancy Browning in 1790, so they might be the parents of Francis. The mother's name was given as Anne, so hard to say if that could be Nancy or not. I've seen several trees on Ancestry.com that have the father of Francis as John Councell, Sr. even though he died in 1796! I think maybe John Jr. and John Sr. have been mixed up in some of the online trees.

This is a great resource for early church records in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. Thanks to Cindy S. for posting about them on the Upper Eastern Shore of Maryland Genealogy group. The book is out of print, but available in some libraries. There is a nice bit of history about the church here.

Thrifty Thursday - Favorite Blogging Freebies

Here are a few tools I've found handy while blogging. All of them are free with no regisration required!

FastStone Image Viewer - Fantastic free image viewer, converter, and editor. I use this all the time for viewing, cropping and editing photos and converting between formats. There are a lot of nifty tools in here too, including the Image Strip Builder I used to create the strip on the top of my blog.

Online OCR - Converts scanned images of text into a searchable Word, Excel, PDF, text or Html file.

Web2PDF - Converts a web page to a PDF file. This is great for saving something you want to go back and read later. They also offer some services I haven't tried like receiving the PDF file via email and adding a button to allow saving your blog posts to PDF format.

Web Resizer - Quick and easy way to resize photos for your blog. You can do some basic photo editing with it too.

Microsoft Clip Art - All kinds of free clip art, photos, and illustrations, including the one on the top of this post!

What are your favorite freebies?

Tombstone Tuesday - Katharina M. Hagedorn Gast

Birth: May 7, 1823, Germany
Death: Nov. 11, 1915
Maria Stein
Mercer County
Ohio, USA

Katharina M. Gast was my 3x great-grandmother. She was married to Mathias Gast and was the daughter of Hermann Hagedorn and C. Maria Tebben.  I've also seen her name listed as Mary Anna K. Hagedorn, but it would appear that she went by Katharina. She is buried in the Saint John's Catholic Cemetery in Maria Stein, Ohio. Thanks to Harley Rider for posting the picture on FindAGrave.

Military Monday - 1883 List of Pensioners

The US 1883 List of Pensioners listed soldiers or their dependents that were on the pension roll as of January 1, 1883. It gives the name of each pensioner or dependent, the cause for which pensioned, the post-office address, the rate of pension per month, and the date of original allowance.  The list covers pensioners from all wars.

The list is available on Ancestry.com, but the searching seems to be hit or miss. I found two of my Matson ancestors by paging through the Mercer County, Ohio sections in the database. I knew John Matson lived in Mercer County, but didn't know about Eliza Matson. I also didn't know that any of the Matsons were in Mercer County this early. I always wondered why my Creeden family chose to relocate from Clinton County to Mercer, so the fact that there was already family there helps to explain the move.



I've been a member of The Ohio Genealogical Society for a little over a year now and was pleased to see them merge their regular and Civil War memberships. Since I was a regular member, this gave me access to years of Civil War newsletters that I hadn't seen before. One of their newsletters had the 1883 List of Pensioners for Mercer County and I was surprised to find an additional Matson listing.

The newsletter article explained that Michael Elliott is creating an updated database which adds the name of the soldier (in cases where a widow or dependent parents were listed), the unit in which the soldier served, years of birth and death, and cemetery. Michael's updated databases are available for sale through the Summit County Genealogy Society. The databases for Northeast and Northwest Ohio are available now. Additional sections of Ohio including coverage of Mercer and Clinton counties will follow.

Michael's database added that Eliza was the widow of Jarez L. Matson, who served in Company G of the 79th OVI, and died in 1863. John Matson also served in the 79th OVI and is buried in Buck Cemetery.

The third Matson in Michael's database didn't show up on Ancestry since it was listed under Mary A. Watson!

Michael's database corrected this to Mary A. Matson and added that she was the widow of Thomas J. Matson who served in Company F of the 60th OVI. Thomas died in 1864 and is buried in Salisbury National Cemetery.

Despite some of the errors, this is a nice resource if you have ancestors who served in the Civil War or earlier wars. If your ancestors were from Ohio, you might also want to check out the additional information compiled by Michael Elliott.