The Stanford Boys

I will spare the readers too many details of the process of how I uncovered many of our ancestors and their stories, but suffice it to say, I duplicated many errors of other hack genealogists by linking to the wrong families, accepting others' work without verification (never again!), and jumping to wrong conclusions. Nonetheless, the more I delved into the process, the smarter I became.Serious genealogy requires being a natural sleuth, solving puzzles, noticing inconsistencies and anomalies. It requires more patience with niggling details than with my fellow human beings, like a good homicide detective.

It wasn't enough for me to simply find the right ancestors and post them in a tree - I wanted to know why our forefathers/mothers immigrated to America, why they lived where they lived, how they met their spouses, and who were those strange children living in their house? I wanted to know if they owned slaves, what they did for a living, how many acres they owned, and whether they served in the military. I wanted to know if they lived long lives, how many of ther children survived, and a little about their circumstances in the 1700s, 1800s and early 20th century. I guess I was just ridiculously curious - more curious, sadly, than most of our predecessor cousins, since most of the Cook and Smith family didn't even exist on any family trees on Ancestry.com until I tracked them down.

The Hawk family gave us a smorgasbord of interesting stories.

Introducing the Hawk Family

It's time to introduce the most interesting family in our tree, the Hawk family. Its patriarch, Hans Jerg HAG arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1748 aboard the ship "Hampshire" at age 41 with his son(s) and his wife, Anna Caterina Hanselman. He was probably known as "George" since the German tradition was to go by your middle name. Jerg/George Hag was well documented by his many, many descendants, so we were lucky to be related to such a prominent pioneer of Pennsylvania!

Hans Jerg HAG's son, Conrad Haack (later to be spelled HAWK) b. 1741, was somewhat famous in his day, and several books and articles about Westmoreland County, the early churches of Brush Creek, the early settlements of Pennsylvania, and several Hawk family histories document his life in detail. Nevertheless, the many spellings of Hawk - including Hag, Haag, Haack, Hauk, Hack, Hawks, and other variations, along with the highly common German names of Jurg, George, and Conrad, created some confusion among the families. There was a nearly identical Hawk family in Maryland and a second Conrad Hawk in Pennsylvania with similar dates. It was important to connect the dates and geography to make sure we were following the right Hawks when it came to finding the census records, church records, etc..

I first hit upon our Hawk family when I discovered a website dedicated to the Hawk family tree, and one called "Find a Grave." Because of the accuracy of the Hawk family site and the work our Hawk cousins provided listing pictures and locations of many of our Hawk relatives' graves, I was able to find an ancestor born in the USA as early as 1733. Later, we would find ancestors in the USA as early as 1630, but we'll get to those folks later.

From "Find a Grave" I found Lydia Mable Hawk, Grandpa's mother, who married Henry John Dillemuth in 1901 in Oil City, PA. Lydia's father was David Keppel Hawk, whose father was Daniel Hawk, whose father was Michael Hawk, whose father was George Hawk, whose father was Conrad Hawk, whose father was Hans Jurg Hag. There is absolutely no doubt about this, as we have volumes of documentation to satisfy even the most fastidious genealogist.

From all accounts, our earliest ancestor from this line is George Yerian (Anglicized from the German name, "Irion") who was born in Northampton County, PA in 1733. His father, Mathias Irion, arrived in 1732 as a Palatinate refugee escaping religious persecution. The story goes that Mathias was a "redemptioner" - an immigrant who paid for his passage to America through several years of indentured servitude. Mathias married Mary Magdalena Pfister, whose family ultimately came to Pennsylvania as well.

The Terrible 1920s

In the decade of 1920, at least ten important people died in the Cook family as well as Mary Theresa Dempsey Monaghan, wife of Marcus Gage Monaghan, who had outlived seven of her children and her husband, and had raised her grandsons, Don and Frank Ranney when her daughter, Mary Bernadette, died of tuberculosis in 1911 at age 30.

In 1920, James Cohen, second husband of Mamie Cook's mother, Frances Neathammer, died at age 57. Frances' first husband, Charles Noonan, had died before 1900, and we find Frances living in Cleveland in the 1900 census, having moved up from Niles, Ohio, with two teen-aged daughters, Sadie and Annie. We are not certain when exactly Charles Noonan died, or how, but he must have been very young, since he would only have been 36 in 1890 and he disappears before 1900.

The move to Cleveland by Frances Noonan at least explains how Mamie met Bernard Cook, since she grew up in Niles, at least 50 miles south of Cleveland. We are not sure how Mamie met Bernard, but we can speculate that her father, Charles, visited the saloon operated by J.J. Cook and Mamie could have been sent by her mother to fetch him. There may be a more innocent explanation, of course.

How Regina was the Key - Part II

Once you think you have identified an ancestor, you can't be satisfied you are correct until you have undergone a sort of scientific method of attempting to *disprove* your hypothesis. Without absolute proof of someone's identity, you are making many assumptions that can be wrong! Therefore, when I thought I had identified the perfect Smith family living in Maryland but having hailed from Pennsylvania, with the right "Catherine" born the right year, I had to make sure she was really our Katie. The best way to disprove a woman is an ancestor is to find her either married to someone else, or alive or dead at the wrong time.

If the Catherine Smith born to George and Elizabeth and living in Taneytown, MD in 1870 was our Katie, she should not show up in 1880 in Maryland married to someone else! However, while searching for the mother, Elizabeth Smith's maiden name, I found her daughter, Catherine married to a man named Dorsey, who happened to be relatively well-documented. I therefore had to eliminate that wonderful Smith family from contention, after hours of researching them. Heck, I practically knew the names of their pets by the time I realized my mistake. I had to bid a fond farewell to the wrong Smiths. Auf wiedersehen!

How Regina was the Key to Identfying the Smith Family - Part I

In previous entries I introduced you to Regina Smith, youngest daughter of Charles and Eva Smith, youngest sister of Katie Cook, who was counted in two censuses in 1900. She lived with the Cooks and the Evers for almost 30 years as a maiden aunt/housekeeper/seamstress.

Regina was a cipher, really. She had no husband, no children, no job outside domestic duties to her niece and sister (which was surely voluntary). She left her home and family in PA at age 30 to live in Cleveland with a sister with whom she did not grow up, and a niece whose husband and she were the same age!

We know Katie Smith had left home before Regina was even born in 1870. We find Katie in the Sprigg household in Maryland, and we don't find Regina at all. Regina does not exist in the 1870 census, even though she was born June 2 of that year. We learned later that children born after June 1st are not counted in that year's census. If she had been born one day earlier, I would have saved hours of searching! Fortunately she does appear in the 1880 census with her family in Somerset County, PA listed as "Virginia M. Smith" when her name is actually Regina G. Smith. Fun, fun, fun with the idiotic census-takers. (Oh, you have no idea.)  Regina Smith appears in censuses as Virginia M. in 1880, Ragina L. in 1900, Raeina in 1910, and finally, correctly as Regina in 1920. Never mind that her age is listed differently in every census.

These are the kinds of challenges you face in genealogy, and you have to be a bit of a masochist to bother with it at all.

The Smith - Wambaugh Family

After much searching, following many red herrings, and barking up the wrong family trees, I finally determined Katie (Catherine E.) Smith Cook's parents were Charles Francis Smith and Mary Eva (called Eva) Thekla Wambach/Wambaugh, from Somerset County, PA, which is just north of the Maryland border. Charles Smith was born in Bavaria in 1824 and was most likely Schmidt when in Germany. (That name is not much easier to research.) Charles Smith had a large orchard on land that he purchased from his father-in-law, Louis "Napoleon" Wambach/Wambaugh. Charles and Eva Smith had 12 children from 1848-1873. Here is an excerpt from the book "The History of Early Settlers of Allegheny Township":

Charles F. Smith, a native of Germany, born in 1823, came to America at the age of sixteen, and commenced work in Bedford County, near Mann's Choice. He afterward purchased of his father-in-law, Lewis Wambaugh, the farm in Allegheny Township on which he now resides. Mr. Smith has the best orchards in Somerset County; indeed they will compare favorably with any in this section of the state. He raises all kinds of fruit in great quantities, and ships to local markets as well as to Altoona and other points. Twenty-two years ago, his farm of one hundred and fifty acres, of which eighty are cleared, was a dense forest. Mr. Smith, by industry and careful management, has today one of the finest and most productive farms in this section.

Eva died six years after her youngest child Marcellus (Mars) was born. I found a cemetery record from St. John’s in New Baltimore PA., and her headstone says she died June 30, 1879. Eva Wambaugh Smith was only 48 when she died, and with 12 kids, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and no servants, that's no surprise. Within a year, Charles Smith remarried a widow, Elizabeth Reed Baldwin, who had also been the second wife of a widower, Benjamin Baldwin. She not only raised Benjamin’s children when he died, but two of her own, plus four or five of Charles’ children. We kindly refer to her as Second Hand Liz.

The Cook Kids & The Mysterious Regina Smith

Joe and Katie Cook sort of alphabetized their children's names, but not quite; we have Anna, Albert, Bernard, Bertha, Charles, Delbert, Elroy, Louisa and....Sebastian. Where Uncle Bass's name came from, who knows? Louisa was named after her paternal grandmother, and there was a Sylvester in the Wambaugh family (Katie Smith's mother's maiden name was Wambaugh, but more on that later). In 1916, Katie's youngest brother, Mars (Marcellus Janora Smith) b. 1873 who was close in age to his nephews Bernard and Sebastian named his youngest son Bernard Sebastian Smith.

These are just some of the trivial but amusing things you learn while researching your genealogy!

Having The Wrong First Names Can Really Mess You Up!

(click on photo to enlarge: Joseph "J.J." Cook in center, next on right, Bernard Joseph Cook)

In times long past, the tradition of our ancestors was to document the family history in the family Bible and pass that along to future generations. Alas, we had no such marvelous resource, so we had to rely on my eldest sister Eileen's baby book where my mother had dutifully listed her recollection of the names of four generations of the family tree. My sister read the names to me over the phone: on my mother's side was Marcus Monaghan, Berthalia Jacquet, Herman Fertig and Maude Waldeck. On our father's side was Bernard Cook, Mamie Noonan, Henry Dillemuth, Albert Cook, Katherine Smith, Patrick Noonan, Frances Neithammer, Lydia Hawk, someone named "Cape" and someone named "J.J."

It was a good start.

First, I searched for an Albert Cook in the census records and only found one in Staten Island married to a woman named Kate, but he was an Irish immigrant living with his Irish parents, so that ruled him out. We knew he was German and likely the original spelling was Koch or Kuch. I never found another viable census record for an Albert Cook. I had to conclude that either “Albert Cook” of our family never in his entire life participated in a census, or his name wasn’t Albert. Similarly, I couldn’t find any “Patrick” Noonan married to someone named Frances, so I had to assume we had the wrong first name for him as well; which, it turned out, we did.

Bringing Our Ancestors to Life

The purpose of this blog is to share the research and stories we have uncovered about our ancestors. At first, my interest in genealogy was merely a lark; as with many of my larks, it turned into practically a full-time job. From family lore, I knew we had a Mohawk Indian as an ancestor, but not exactly who she was or how far back she entered the scene. I had always been interested in knowing who she was. I found some information on Ancestry.com posted by one of our cousins, but reading the details required a paid subscription. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend actual *money* on this, but my curiosity got the best of me. I joined a 3-month membership to the poor-man's-version of Ancestry - Genealogy.com, for about $10 a month and within a couple of days found excellent information posted by a Cleveland cousin on the Monaghan side that detailed exactly who our Mohawk ancestor was: her name was Mary Bill, b. 1784 near or in Baltimore and was raised as an orphan. According to this story from Don Ranney (our cousin who was raised by Mary T. Dempsey Monaghan):