Category: Mays Family

William Harmon Mays

Posted on by Kathleen

timelinefriday

This weeks timeline focus is my great-grandfather, William Harmon Mays. Lets see what I can find to do next with him. 🙂

June 2, 1872

William Harmon Mays is born to John Mays and Celia Slusher in Elliott County, Kentucky. He is their second child and first son. [1. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 14438 (1952), William Harmon Mays; digital image,   FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 Sep 2010)]

June 1880

William is counted in the 1880 United States Census. He is 8 years old and lives with his parents and older sister in Elliott County, Kentucky. John and Celia tell the census taker they are unable to read and write. John is also sick with dysentary.

Mays Family, 1880
1880 U.S. census, population schedule, Elliott County, Kentucky. Martinsburg township, enumeration district (ED) 20, p. 579-C, dwelling 117, family 117, John Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 1 Apr 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T9, roll 412.

June 1900

William is going by his middle name of Harmon on the 1900 United States Census. He is working as a farm laborer for Andrew Fraley in Elliott County, Kentucky.

William H Mays, 1900
1900 U.S. census, population schedule, Elliott County, Kentucky. Devils Fork township, enumeration district (ED) 17, sheet 06-A, dwelling 98, family 98, Andrew Fraley; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T623, roll 518.

October 19, 1905

William marries Sarah Elizabeth McDaniels in Rowan County, Kentucky. The wedding takes place at her father’s residence. This is the first marriage for 33 year old William and 17 year old Sarah.

William Mays, Sarah McDaniels
Rowan County, Kentucky, Marriage Register 1880-1954, 5, 1904-1906: 327, Mays-McDaniel, 19 Oct 1905; digital images, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 Mar 2016)

September 1, 1906

William’s first child, Mary Jane Mays is born in Morehead, Rowan, Kentucky. William is 34 years old and Sarah is 18 years old. [2. Clermont County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1800-2013, 35, 1926-1930: 228, Jegley-Mays, 1928; digital images, Family Search (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 24 Mar 2016).]

January-May 1910

Family Lore: I believe sometimes in this time period Sarah dies. The rumor in the family was that she was sick with tuberculosis. We have no records to indicate that.

May 1910

William is counted with his wife Elizabeth and young daughter Mary in the 1910 United States Census. They are living in Rowan County, Kentucky next to his parents. He owns his own farm. Elizabeth is crossed out of the census, but all her information is there.

William H Mays, 1910
1910 U.S. census, population schedule, Rowan County, Kentucky. Hogtown township, enumeration district (ED) 156, sheet 14-A, dwelling 226, family 227, William H. Maize; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T624, roll 498.

November 11, 1914

William‘s mother, Celia Slusher-Mays, dies at the age of 73 in Tate township, Clermont, Ohio. She suffered from Mitral insufficiency and senility for 6 months. The informant for her death is Harmon Mays. [3. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 59028 (1914), Cela Mays; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus.]

April 27, 1918

William marries Iva Belle Moyer in Clermont County, Ohio. William lists his parents as John Mays and Celia Slusser. He states he has been married once before. Iva had never been married before.

Family Lore: My grandmother told me that Iva Belle started off taking care of Mary Jane (Janie), and William married her later. She gave the impression is was a year or more after Iva began caring for Janie.

William H Mays, Iva Moyer
Clermont County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1800-2013 285, Mays-Moyer, 1918; digital images, Family Search (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 17 Mar 2016)

January 1920

William is now living in Monroe township, Clermont County, Ohio. He is now renting the farm he lives on with his second wife, Iva Belle Moyer. His daughter, Mary Jane Mays, is now thirteen years old. William’s father, John is living with the family and he is now able to read and write.

Observation: It’s very cool to me that John learned to read and write between 1880 and 1920. It looks as if he could write in 1910, but not read. Just very awesome and shows you it is never too late to learn things.

William H. Mays, 1920
1920 U.S. census, population schedule, Clermont County, Ohio. Monroe township, enumeration district (ED) 60, sheet 03-A, dwelling 52, family 52, William H. Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T625, roll 1355

January 21, 1923

My grandfather, Stanley Mays, is born to William and Iva Belle Mays in Tate township, Ohio. He is their first child. His birth was originally falsely recorded as being in 1913 but it was corrected in April of 1923. This isn’t a false correction. The birth certificate was pre-printed with 191__ and it was corrected to be sure that 1923 was given as the correct year of birth. [4. Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics, returned 910 (1923), Stanley Lee Mays; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus.]

May 3, 1924

William and Iva’s second child, Ralph Dallas Mays is born in Tate township, Ohio. This is their last child. His birth certificate doesn’t show his name but the details all match him. [5. Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics,  43991 (1924), blank; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus.]

January 20, 1927

William‘s father, John Mays, dies in Tate township, Ohio at the age of 84. He had internal injuries after falling. No other details were given at the time of his death. Harmon Mays is the informant for his death. John’s name on his death certificate is listed as Harmon Mays and the cemetery office also lists him as Harmon. These are the only two times I have heard of John referenced to as Harmon. [6. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 639 (1927), Harmon Mays; digital image,   FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 26 Sep 2010)]

January 11, 1928

William‘s oldest child, Mary Jane Mays marries George Jegley in Clermont, Ohio. She lists her parents as Harmon Mays and Elizabeth McDaniel. She lists her birthplace as Morehead, Kentucky. [2. Clermont County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1800-2013, 35, 1926-1930: 228, Jegley-Mays, 1928; digital images, Family Search (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 24 Mar 2016).]

May 1930

William is 57 years old in the 1930 United States Census. He is now living in Tate township with his wife Iva and two sons, Stanley (my grandfather) and Ralph.

William Mays, 1930
1930 U.S. census, population schedule, Clermont County, Ohio. Tate township, enumeration district (ED) 19, sheet 07-A, dwelling 178, family 186, Harmon Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T626, roll 1758.

May 1940

William is now shown as living in Monroe township. It should be noted that he is probably living in the same area and not moving around. This is a rural area and these townships are usually all near each other. William and his sons are grain and tobacco farmers. Tobacco was big for this area and our family is even kind of known for it.

William Mays, 1940
1940 U.S. census, population schedule, Clermont County, Ohio. Monroe township, enumeration district (ED) 15, sheet 17-B, household 367, William H. Mays; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 May 2016); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T627, roll 3041.

May 3, 1947

William’s son, Stanley (my grandfather), marries his wife Emogene Taylor.

Family Lore: Some members of the family say they married in Kentucky, and some say Ohio. I am still looking for their marriage certificate.

October 2, 1949

William‘s second wife Iva, died after a year long illness at the age of 55. Her cause of death was heart disease. The informant on her death certificate is William Harmon Mays. [7. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 61919 (1949), Iva Belle Mays; digital image,   FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 May 2016)]

January 19, 1952

William‘s second son, Ralph, dies in Tate township, Ohio at the age of 27. The informant on his death certificate is my grandfather, Stanley Mays. [8. Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 07293 (1952), Ralph Dallas Mays; Ohio Department of Health, Columbus]

March 7, 1952

William dies at the age of 79 in Monroe township, Ohio. It says on his death certificate that he had arteriosclerosis for many years before his death. His parents are listed as John Mays and Cecelia Gray. His daughter Mrs. George Jegley is the informant on his death certificate.

William H. Mays death certificate
Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, death certificate 14438 (1952), William Harmon Mays; digital image, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 Sep 2010)

Records to Find:

  • I am still looking for some kind of birth record for William. There should be a county birth record, I just have to locate it.
  • Stanley and Emogene’s marriage certificate. Might be in Campbell County, Kentucky.
  • There is a 20 year gap between 1880 and 1900. I need to fill this space in with alternate records.
  • I will probably look into Andrew Fraley’s family also. Since William lived and worked on his farm, it might help me to find more information on William.

Records to Order:

  • I can’t think of any records to order at this time. Everything else for William will most likely have to be done in person. I will need to research which records are available.

Note: There are more events but I didn’t put them to protect the privacy of living individuals. 🙂

William Mays and Fanny Atkins

Posted on by Kathleen

I had some amazing progress yesterday on my Mays ancestors. It all started on Tuesday, when I shared a bunch of old photos on my Facebook. I like to do that for my Aunts, Uncle, and other relations because it helps jog their memories of things. It was a wonderful day full of pictures and stories, and none of us were in the same place. Gotta love technology when you are far apart!

When I woke up on Wednesday morning I was refreshed and excited. After running the morning errands, cleaning, relaxing for a bit, and then cooking dinner, I really should have just watched a movie and went to bed. It must have been that boost from the day before though, because I just had to get onto FamilySearch and research more.

Usually when I’m searching FamilySearch, I just plug in various search terms and see what it finds. Don’t worry I smacked my own knuckles for that! I know I should make research plans, but it never turns out that way. However, I learned something new this week. I learned that if you have a specific locality you are wanting to search, you can use the catalog to see if FamilySearch has anything at all for that locality. It could be book, microfilm, or even online records. I know I’m late to the party with this. I knew about the catalog before but there is a newer feature I hadn’t know about previously.

catalogUsually when I use the catalog I use a film number to see what record group the information I am looking at came from. This is the first time I’m reversing the process. Since I was talking with my Mays relatives the previous day, I thought I’d go for broke and see if Montgomery County, Virginia records would show up for me. Montgomery County is where indexes tell me my 4x great grandparents were married in 1798.

vitalrecordsOh boy, this made me excited. To know the records were somewhere in the records was wonderful. That means I just had to get to them. I knew from the indexes they were supposedly married in September of 1798. So I clicked on Register of Marriages, Montgomery County Virginia, 1773-1863.

browseimagesI have no idea when those little icons started showing up but I am officially in love with them.

jackpotThis is when I stopped being able to contain my excitement!

0588-WilliamMays-MRLuckily for me, I knew from the index that I needed the year 1798. I thought at the time I was looking for September 17, but this record clearly says that William Mase and Fanny Atkins were married on September 20th. I checked my dates one more time, and nowhere did I have the 20th as an alternate date. Since this was the first actual record that I saw with my own eyes, I added it as the preferred marriage date, entered all the information in and patted myself on the back. I got curious about those Marriage Bonds on the list of Montgomery County records though. I mean, it can’t hurt to look right? Where did the 17th come from anyway? That was the date given in the index. I usually can tell how a transcription error has happened, but that 20 does not look remotely like 17.

1798 Marriage Bond

Nope, I suppose it can’t hurt at all! I found it pretty quickly in the 1798 section. This is also where the 17th of September came from, everything is so much clearer to me now! The interesting part is that it has Moses Atkins acting on behalf of Fanny. My excitement wanted me to add Moses as her father, but then I realized, it never actually says that. In bonds before and after this one, it will specifically say Father. I will take time right now to thank all the wonderful genealogists I learning from. If this was 5 years ago, I might have gone ahead and added Moses as her father. I would have assumed it was true and never thought twice. It makes me so happy to know that I have built better habits. Now if I can just learn some better ones in other areas of my research!

This is still an awesome find though, and I thought to myself, years I’d been looking for this and finally I’ve seen it. I am going to start planning a weekend trip to Montgomery County, VA. Not just for record searching, but because this is verifiable proof that my ancestors were there. This is the first known record of my Mays line, this is as far back as we go. There are still so many mysteries about them. Who is William’s father? Were they living in Montgomery County long term? Were they just on their way to Kentucky from a further East Virginia settlement? Now I am going to be diving into an uncomfortable place for me. The census records before 1850. I haven’t really used them before because they are hard to use in some of my families. When they are all named William, all about the same age, and all have 8 million children. Okay, I exaggerated the last part.

It doesn’t stop there, maybe because I was afraid to stop looking, I decided to look in another marriage records listing on the catalog page. The one that said Marriage Records, 1785-1861.

1798 Marriage Bond - clearerIt looks like at some point, Montgomery County decided to make a much more legible, indexed copy of the marriage bond records. Once again, Moses Atkins is specifically not mentioned as Fanny’s father. I suppose that means I made the right decision in not putting him down yet. Now I just have to research those three witnesses and the area and see what that brings!

 

My Orange Highlighter Went Crazy

Posted on by Kathleen

It would be a gross understatement that I’ve recently become re-obsessed with office supplies. After making a Genealogy Binder, it was all downhill from there. Unfortunately, I was very sick all week and I’m just now coming back around. Funny how that happened. You get sick on Saturday and then by time Saturday rolls around again, you’re finally feeling human again. I hate being sick, I’m so glad it doesn’t happen often. I’m not one to sit still for long!

Before the “Great Illness of 2012”, I had started to decide what my next project was going to be, since I’m going to finish my new file soon. Okay in a couple of months is still soon, it’s been two years! There’s one thing that’s been bugging me and I figure it’s going to have to be that… I have to go back to the Mays and finish them off.

You may be a little surprised to hear me say that. However, when I got lost in the Mays’ the first time around, I was sinking fast. They’re hard to comprehend on the best of days. This project had seemed to be going on forever and most of that time was on the Mays’. So I made a decision to not go insane researching all of the Mays’ children who descended from William Mays and Frances Adkins unless I could find solid links to them. So there are four Mays children who I skipped the first go round because there was no clear (i.e. easy) connection between them and their parents. Mostly because they were not living with or next to their parents in the 1850 US Census.

To give you an idea of how many were skipped from my Original file, the ones highlighted in orange have been added and sourced in my new family file.

That’s a 9 page report. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I only hope that I can make some sense of it. These Mays’ don’t like to make it easy.

My Obsession with Naming Patterns

Posted on by Kathleen

I’m coming clean today about my addiction to naming patterns. My brother is a 4th generation William Moore, and that wasn’t even the beginning of the Williams. In my old “Original” family file, I had 180 Williams in a database of 4,349 people. That’s 4%  of my tree being made up of men named William. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things but in my new revamped file, where I still have two branches of the tree to add, there are 49 Williams out of 923 people. That’s already 5% without adding in the Taylors, Crabbs, or Webbs. To anyone but me that doesn’t seem like much but I know for a fact I have 475 people with the Taylor surname in my old “Original” file.

I think it’s this over abundance of Williams that has led to my fascination with naming patterns. I’ve used naming patterns for the Scottish ancestry on my father’s side of the tree. I’ve talked about naming patterns on the blog. I’ve printed out every naming pattern variation I’ve ever come across online. I’ve tried to find patterns in my families that don’t follow a naming pattern. When I say obsession, I mean OBSESSION.

One thing I haven’t done with naming patterns is see if they pertain at all to my Mays line. The Mays family were the most prolific of my lines, so it would be really interesting to dissect them!

Click for full size

The naming pattern rules I’m using were found on the genealogy.com website. The article was written by Donna Przecha. An important part of the article is that you can’t put too much credence in naming patterns. They are very helpful if your family happened to follow them, but not everyone did. Especially if there are skeletons in the closet or a lot of children. A lot of times you can also count on a “regional” or “period” name. You’ll see it most in census records where you see so many names at once. I have only heavily researched the Ohio/Kentucky/Virginia and New Jersey areas. However, I can tell you the names Mahala and Arminda are more common to the rural Ohio/Kentucky area then New Jersey. In New Jersey you’ll find a lot more traditional names; Catherine, George, Lewis, Josephine.

  • First son: Father’s father.
  • Second son: Mother’s father.
  • Third son: Father
  • Fourth son: Father’s eldest brother.
  • First daughter: Mother’s mother.
  • Second daughter: Father’s mother.
  • Third daughter: Mother
  • Fourth daughter: Mother’s eldest sister.
The family I’m using this time is the family of my 3rd Great Grandparents, William Mays and Anna Click.
  1. William and Anna’s first son, James. I don’t know the name of William’s father, so there is no way to see if the pattern holds up.
  2. William and Anna’s first daughter, Frances Susan. Frances gets both her names from her grandmothers. Her first name after her father’s mother and her middle name after her mothers. Frances went by both names at different points in her life.
  3. William and Anna’s second daughter, Nancy. I don’t see any instance of Nancy in the immediate family, but I know they use this name often in future generations.
  4. William and Anna’s third daughter, Rebecca. She is not named after her mother.
  5. William and Anna’s second son, John Harmon. Anna’s father was named John, so this fits with the pattern.
  6. William and Anna’s third son, William. He does have the same name as his father.
  7. William and Anna’s fourth daughter, Elizabeth. Anna’s eldest sister was named Elizabeth.
  8. William and Anna’s fourth son, Thomas Lindsey. As far as I know, William’s eldest brother is named James. So this doesn’t fit in with the pattern.

So I came up 4/8 on the first four of each gender. That’s actually not bad especially with quite a few holes in the family picture. Another thing I noticed while looking over the siblings of each family for a few generation is a few middle names that most likely came from surnames that married into the family (ie. Harmon, Lindsey, Hudson). For the sake of research sake I also must mention that William’s brother, Nathan, had at least 18 children and I don’t think any of them followed any type of pattern.

Now the fun part would be to see if the Mays family follows their own pattern. Maybe I can make a chart and dissect the family names myself. Do you see what I mean by obsessed now?

Disclaimer: I am no expert at naming patterns. I’m not even sure about most of the information a generation above William and Anna. I used my “original” file to analyze this hypothesis. I haven’t delved deeply into Anna’s family yet, because I know it twists and turns amongst the Mays/Slusher/Whitt lines, so I decided to hold off until I had the rest of the tree re-added. That way I can keep moving forward instead of continuously going sideways for now.

Margaret Slusher, you might have been found!

Posted on by Kathleen

As anyone who researches their genealogy knows, the women can be hard to track down once they leave the house. It gets doubly hard in very rural areas where records might not have been kept. I run into this problem a lot in my Kentucky/Ohio research. One of my more recent “brick walls” is Margaret Slusher. I say “brick wall” because technically it isn’t. I know who her parents are and I know who her husband is. I even know the year she married. However, in 1860, she’s not living with her new husband or her parents. I’m a stickler for the details, so it bugs me when I can’t find people in certain censuses. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but most times it’s just you’re not looking in the right place. The key to the problem is Margaret’s marriage to James Mays happened in September of 1860.

What a lot of people forget is that most censuses take a few months to complete, however, the enumerator is supposed to record the data as it reflects the household on a certain day. In 1860, that day was June 1, 1860.

I was transcribing the surrounding households of Joseph and Nancy Slusher, Margaret’s parents, when I came across William Jenkins household. At the very end, it shows a 20 year old Margaret Slusher. Since I don’t know my Margaret’s exact birth date yet, this one definitely fits with her estimated birth. The birthplace of Virginia fits. It’s the little tick that the blue arrow points to that interests me now. That tick is to show that the person was married within the year. I’d say this is my Margaret. I got very lucky that she didn’t get missed in the census all together since her marriage fell at such an awkward time of the year for the census. 🙂 I also got lucky that the Jenkins household gave Margaret’s maiden name. If they hadn’t I might have just had to live with not locating Margaret on the census.

SNGF on Sunday: My Matrilineal Line

Posted on by Kathleen

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!

I did the Genealogy today

Posted on by Kathleen
Yes I put the Thorward Market picture in front of my sewing machine to head off temptation!

 

As if life wasn’t hectic enough, the universe threw us for another loop. It’s really amazing how your perspective changes when adversity strikes. It really made me see how important the people in my life are. I know you can’t tell through the computer, but I’ve mellowed out so much in the last few months. My perfectionism is limited to my quilting and I go days, sometimes even more then a week without sitting at the computer for more then a half hour.

Last night I was in need of a break from my current reality. My sister needed it too. So we got into our pajamas, booted up our laptops and we had “sister time”. For us that means watching a movie and futzing around on the internet. She was trying to “build” a new car after hers was totaled on Tuesday and I decided to pick up my genealogy. Thanks to a bookmark in Family Tree Maker, I knew exactly where I left off.

It was wonderful. It was relaxing. It was the Mays Family! How is that possible? In fact it was so much fun that I decided to carve a few hours out of today for a little more. I guess sometimes absence does make the heart grow fonder because I was pretty fed up with deciphering the Mays family!

Do you want to know the even better news? I might almost be DONE with getting the Mays family re-entered into my database. I can’t say for certain because I have to research the leads I have on the other children of William Mays and Frances Adkins. Currently, I’m not putting them in my file or onto my website without some kind of documentation. So I might have a lot more, or I might be almost done. This genealogy thing is always changing!

A Dilemma, but Not Really

Posted on by Kathleen

Now that I’ve come to the top of my Mays Family information, I’ve run into a dilemma. Except it’s not really a dilemma. I’m determined not to clutter up my new family file with sourceless information. The only problem is I don’t think most of my Mays family information is sourced. I’m starting to believe what I have is second hand information. So the dilemma is what to do about all those Mays children that I’m unsure of.

The obvious choice is don’t put any of them in. It’s the right thing to do. The problem is, there’s a lot of people I’d be leaving out.

OLD Family File

As you can see from the graphic above, in my old file there were seven children for William and Frances Mays. In my new file, there are only two. Hopefully I can find documentation for the others. Part of the problem is that I have census and vital records for a lot of them, but they don’t lead back to William and Frances currently. So I have to find a way to link them back before I add them.

West Liberty, Morgan County, Kentucky. 1860 Census.

I just wish they didn’t make it so tempting! Look at all them just sitting there! How much more obvious can you get. The Mays family was always right next door to each other.

Mays and Barker Families

Posted on by Kathleen

Today is a beautiful day, and it’s making me feel very productive. I’m sitting in the living room on my laptop and talking with Grandpa Moore. He’s already cleared up some Thorward things for me that I was unclear on. Today is devoted to the Mays family though. I’ve got to keep moving forward towards my summer goal.

I’m up to Millard Mays in my family file. I know he married Nora Barker. I was looking in the Kentucky Birth Index on Ancestry.com to verify some of her children on the census. I ended up having to go to some more extreme measures to find one of the children, because they just weren’t showing up for some reason. When I did that, I might have found out what happened to Millard’s sister Barbara.

It just so happens there was a Barbara Mays who was giving birth to Barker children. Knowing the Mays family like I do, this isn’t at all surprising for me. To be honest I’m finding that I look for these connections more then not. It’s just the marriage pattern of the family.

I was mainly looking for the younger children, but there are some things I really like about this 1930 census record. Barbara has a son named Millard! Lorene from the Birth Index is there, but Robert, the youngest is not. A quick check of the Kentucky Death Records gave me a big idea of what Robert and Barbara Barker went through with their children. They had three stillborn children and Kline who died at one month of meningitis.

Unfortunately, nothing I found actually gives me clues on whether this is my actual Barbara Mays. I haven’t fleshed out enough of the Mays family to know how many other Barbaras there might be. I’m going to add this family into my FTM file, without identification numbers but with sources. That way when I find out where this Barbara fits, it’ll be an easy merge.

The next task I might work on is linking Nora Barker, Robert Barker and Lela Barker (wife of Luther Mays).

They Hate Me, I Know It

Posted on by Kathleen

I’m pretty sure my ancestors hate me. This may be going out on a limb, but I really think that the Mays family did everything they could think of to be very deceptive about who they were and what they were doing. I’m not going to feel guilty about all the attention I was giving my Dad’s side of the family now. I’ll probably annoy you with the amount of rants I’ll end up posting here while trying to figure out the Mays line of my family tree. In fact, I’m debating setting up an Elliott/Rowan County genealogy file. I’m tempted to just go through all the available records and map out the major surnames. They’re all in my tree somewhere so it may even help me later down the line. It’s just so confusing trying to find the right people when they were all named the same thing at the same time. Last night, I had a first for me though.

That’s two death certificates for the same person. Here’s where things go squirrelly. The death certificates give different birth dates. I actually had recorded the May 28th date into my database as the preferred date because that’s the date that Walker gave on his WWI Draft Card. I’m confused that there are completely different causes of death on each certificate. If that wasn’t enough, there are even different dates of death. I’m wondering why his hometown would have a death certificate done when he most likely died at the hospital in Boyd County.

So here’s yet another reason why I am beyond frustrated trying to sort out the Mays family.