Wedding Wednesday: William Harmon Mays and Iva Belle Moyer

Today’s Wedding Wednesday is for my great grandparents William Harmon Mays and his second wife, Iva Belle Moyer. Next week I will post the record for his marriage with his first wife.

1918 marriage of William Harmon Mays and Iva Belle Moyer

As far as I’m aware, there are no known photographs of William or Iva. There are a few family members who remember them at the end of their lives but I haven’t been able to find any pictures of them.

There is a lot of jumping around going on with my posts since I’m working on my Do-Over. To help orientate anyone who is confused on where people belong on the tree and just how far back I’ve gotten into my Do-Over, just scroll a little further for an updated pedigree screenshot.

The current pedigree

My Pedigree

As you can see, I have only gotten back to my great-grandparents but I’m pretty close to doing my last set! I’ve been systematically going through my research plan and I’ll update you on that soon.

Just for the Curious

You might be curious about what the little red error boxes on my pedigree screenshot mean. Those are my program telling me that three of my grandparents were born quite awhile after their parents marriages. The program suggests that I might have to look for other children born between the marriage and the birth of my grandparents. According to family knowledge there are none, but we all know that can be wrong!

SNGF on Sunday: My Matrilineal Line

This week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun assignment is to list my matrilineal line.

  1. List your matrilineal line – your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how your mitochondrial DNA was passed to you!
  2. Tell us if you have had your mitochondrial DNA tested, and if so, which Haplogroup you are in.
  3. Post your responses on your own blog post, in Comments to this blog post, or in a Status line on Facebook or in your Stream at Google Plus.
  4. If you have done this before, please do your father’s matrilineal line, or your grandfather’s matrilineal line, or your spouse’s matriliuneal line.
  5. Does this list spur you to find distant cousins that might share one of your matrilineal lines?
MY MATRILINEAL LINE
  • Me
  • Mom
  • Emogene Taylor (1929-2005) married to (1) Stanley Lee Mays (2) Harley Wayne Utter
  • Lula Applegate (1901-1978) married to Marshall Howard Taylor
  • Elizabeth West (1868-1938) married to (1) Unknown (2) James William Applegate
  • Zeroah Black (1837-?) married to Isaiah West

There is actually a bit of a controversy for Elizabeth West’s mother. There are a lot of online trees that show Isaiah West marrying Zerelda Jane McClanahan. There is even a Kentucky marriage record for this fact. However, all of Isaiah’s children list Zeroah Black as their mother on the death certificates. Also, the marriage record shows the marriage as happening 10 years before I estimated it from different sources. So for now I’m on hold with the West family until I can sit down and timeline the family so I can find out where I can attack it from next.

I haven’t had my DNA tested but I plan to once I finish the family file cleanup. I’m fascinated by the process and would love to see what kind of results I would get.

I’m always on the lookout for distant cousins! No extra spurring needed!

Follow Friday: Never Give Up

For many many years (okay for 4 years), I have been trying to locate where the New Zion Cemetery in Pendleton County, Kentucky is located. I found the New Zion Cemetery listed on James William Applegate‘s death certificate. He is the second generation of Applegates and his father died fairly young, so information from that time is hard to find. So having a cemetery to go to and look around might solve some things for me. Maybe he’s in a family plot? I don’t know until I find it.

Unfortunately for me, all mentions of this cemetery are vague at best. My Google-fu obviously needs polishing. However, I was adding in James’ source information on my website last night and I was re-checking some websites. I got the most pleasant surprise!

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James and his wife were added into the Find a Grave database! Not only that but there was a photo of the headstone to boot!  This record was only added on March 25th of this year. So my checking back was a very good thing! To think if I had given up on New Zion Cemetery, I never would have gotten the extra gusto needed to keep on task. Now that I see there is proof, I could add that in to my file, but I am not adding photos unless they are taken by me. Just a little thing I want to do for myself. I want to visit all my ancestors eventually.

So that’s where I got the idea for this “Follow Friday”. Find a Grave is such a valuable source! Especially if you can’t get to the cemeteries yourself right away. I’m even signed up as a Contributor and Photo Volunteer. So if you need any pictures from cemeteries in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, just let me know!

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In fact, something new to Find a Grave since my last visit is the ability to add Relationship Links and Transcriptions! I’m going to have to check that out!

Find a Grave

Follow Friday is a Daily Blogging Topic I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Follow Friday, simply create a post in which you recommend another genealogy blogger, a specific blog post, a genealogy website or a genealogy resource. Tell us why they are important to the genealogy community and why we should follow.

Wordless Wednesday: Taylors

Mary Elizabeth Taylor

Lula Margaret Applegate-Taylor

Wordless Wednesday is a Daily Blogging Topic that I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Wordless Wednesday simply create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some people also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Some have begun doing a “Not So Wordless Wednesday” with the main focus still being an image but there is a backstory to the image.