What I'm working on this week...

To help me remember what I’ve done as time passes, I’m hoping to post a weekly update about what I’ve been working on and a brief summary of any findings and work completed. My GOAL is to write the stories I find in blog posts that I will link to from Facebook so my kids (or anyone else) can read them if they are interested. I have so much research mostly done but not ready to be passed on. My ultimate goal with all this is to put my research into a usable form - I’d love to say finished form but genealogy is never finished - for my kids and grandkids.

In December I decided I wanted to start working on breaking down some brickwall ancestors. They are:

Melissa (Donaldson) Whittecar
Susan (Westervelt) Newcomb
Elizabeth (Robison) West
Charles and Lydia ( ? ) Swift
John Jones
Aaron Robinson

The first three are on dad’s side and the last three are on mom’s.

I started with Charles and Lydia Swift. Using old Family Group Sheets from cousin Donna Shepard from the ‘80’s, I was able to find information on ancestry.com and familysearch.org about them, their children and Charles’ ancestors. I found military information on Fold3.com which provides information about Charles’ father, John Swift, who fought in the Revolutionary War. And beyond that, John and his wife Anna Throop are each descendants of people who came over on the Mayflower. I will post more about them in the months ahead.

So what am I working on specifically this week? Yet another goal with my research is to be sure every fact had a citation that shows the source of the information. So this week I have been working on Charles (1829) and Eunice (Robinson) Swift’s family. I found census and marriage records for their children Harriet, John, Leroy, Flora Lucinda (our ancestor) and Lafayette, and created citations to put in Legacy Family Tree. John and Lafayette died in their early 20s and I’d like to find out more. I sent a request on January 4 to the McDonough County Genealogical Society for Swift family information. They have a “Grandma Flack’s Scrapbook” that has quite a few mentions of the Swift family so I’m anxious to see what they have. Maybe with a little bit of luck we will discover the dates and places of death of Charles (1790) and Lydia Swift. I need to contact the Crawford County, Iowa, genealogy community to see what I can find about the death of Lafayette there in 1883.

Next: write citations for the Civil War widow's pension records of Eunice (Robinson) Swift Hurlburt, specifically the pages that give the births of her children. When I’m satisfied with the Charles (1823) Swift family, move up to his parents.

Context: How are we related to the two Charles’? Me - mom - Lizzie (Worth) Jones - Flora Lucinda (Swift) Worth - Charles (1829) and Eunice (Robinson) Swift - Charles (1790) and Lydia (Bates) Swift.