Tag Archives: family history

Wordless Wednesday – The Lucey Grandchildren

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"The Lucey Grandchildren"

On the back – “The Lucey Grandchildren”

This picture was probably taken in the spring of 1915 in Rochester, New Hampshire, I’m pretty sure my grandfather Vincent is one of the babys in the front row, he was born in Sept 1914.

Vinny’s brothers  are also in the picture: Donald (second from left, back row), Gerald (center, back row) and Richard (far right, back row).

Other possibles, all cousins to Vinny: Mary Lucey Corson and David Joseph Lucey (the other two babys), Bernadette and Mary Frances Lucey (Davids older sisters, girls in the front row), John Francis Lucey (back row, far left). 3 are unidentified.

Tech Tuesday – DNA Test Results, Update 2

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Back in April 2012 I received my AncestryDNA results and wrote about my surprise at seeing Scandinavian and Persian/Turkish/Caucasus in my Genetic Ethnicity results. I’ve had some recent results that possibly shed some light on both question marks in my, and hopefully others, genetic ethnicity as AncestryDNA sees it.

My Ethnicity Summary

My Ethnicity Summary

Scandinavian

At the time of my DNA test, the most popular theory was that the Vikings were lovers as well as fighters and that most of my Irish/English heritage is shown as Scandinavian. Back in August I connected with a cousin from my Stanhope line (Hi Susan!) and she pointed me to the website of Michael Stanhope, which seems to support that theory.

Michael, with the disclaimer that the information is“…what might have been rather than what definitely was”, documents the Stanhope line back to “…Halfdan Olafsson, Jarl of Vestfold, Ringerike, Hadeland, and the Opplands.” around the year 700 in Norway. The line supposedly goes from Norway to Normandy to England to America. That could certainly account for some of my Scandinavian ethnicity but it’s all but unprovable from a genealogical perspective. I was hopeful for something more concrete.

My Irish/English and Stanhope ancestry is on my paternal side, so every time I saw someone with Scandinavian listed as our “Shared Ethnicity” on Ancestry DNA, I automatically looked for surnames and locations from that side of my tree. Turns out I was being shortsighted.

My maternal grandfather’s parents are German and Lithuanian and although my grandfather is no longer here, his wonderful sister Jane is. My great-aunt Jane took the DNA test in December and yet another surprise when her results came in: 64% Eastern European, 36% Scandinavian.

Jane's Ethnicity Summary

Jane’s Ethnicity Summary

When I look at the matches we have in common, it turns out that on many of them the Shared Ethnicity is Scandinavian and the Shared Birth Location is Germany.SharedBirthLocations

Most of the matches have no obvious Scandinavian heritage (surnames or birth locations). Some matches have Central European ethnicity as well, which is where you’d expect German heritage to show.

So, it seems that some German ancestry shows as Scandinavian in the Ancestry DNA system. Perhaps these people originally were from Scandinavia and the test is picking up that deep ancestry or perhaps it’s just an error in the way the system works.  Any readers with Scandinavian in your DNA results where you expected German?

Persian/Turkish/Caucasus

My maternal grandmothers parents are both from Quindici, Avellino, Italy, which is a small town near Naples. You’d expect them to show as Southern European in my ethnicity, but I don’t have any.  I recently found a DNA match where the persons grandmother was a Manzi and our only shared ethnicity is Persian/Turkish/Caucasus.

Legend has it that my Fusco’s from Malden, Massachusetts are cousins of the Manzi’s from Lawrence, Massachusetts but I have not been able to find documentation of the connection yet. I’ve sent a message to the match to see if we can find a connection, I’m hopeful we will.

Are you seeing a similar or contrary pattern in your AncestryDNA results? I’d love to hear about it, please leave a comment.

Can I get your number?

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I’m a numbers guy. I like to know how I’m doing against my goals and track statistics to see trends. I have an app on my iPhone that tells me how many cigarettes I haven’t smoked since I quit 6 months ago (3500-ish) and how much money I can redirect into my genealogy habit as a result (about $1000!!). I have apps to track my weight, my money, etc… It’s probably one of those things that has bled over into my personal life from work where “if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. There’s something Pavlovian about it for me.

The one area that was for the most part safe from statistics was genealogy, until I read Crista Cowen’s “What’s Your Number?” post. I mean, I know about how many people are in my tree (5070 as of today), but that doesn’t really say anything about how I’m “doing”. What does that even mean in this context? I’m not doing any of this just to collect a bunch of names and dates. I want to know who I come from and where they came from, so I can go there and walk where they walked and hopefully eat some delicious desserts (to immerse myself in the experience, of course). But, I like this statistic, lets check it out.

As Crista outlines, in 10 generations each of us has 1,022 direct-line ancestors. Count up how many you have documented in each generation, add ‘em up and divide by 1022 to get your percentage. So how am I doing?

Not too bad, 10.6% overall. On my maternal grandmothers’ line I can’t get past my great-great grandparents (yet) so that takes quite a few possibles out very quickly. Fortunately, my paternal grandmothers’ family have been in America for around 300 years and left a nice document trail. The great thing is I now have a renewed focus and motivation to work on the lines that are sparse. Sometimes I get caught up in peripheral lines (making the tree wider, rather than deeper), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this is a number I’ll keep looking to improve.

Out of curiosity, I ran the numbers for my wife’s line and it came out slightly better at 12%. Her paternal French-Canadian lines are fairly well documented (Berube and Michaud). Her maternal lines are more recent (mid-to-late 1800’s) Irish immigrants, thus a little harder to track down.

I’d also highly recommend reading The Legal Genealogist’s entertaining blog post “More lost than found” on this same topic. So, what’s your number?

Source: Crista Cowan, “Family History All Done? What’s Your Number?,” Ancestry.com Blog, posted 16 Aug 2012 (http://blogs.ancestry.com : accessed 29 Aug 2012).

Workday Wednesday – New England Forestry Co

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Around 1908, my great grandfather Julius (Jules) Frost started a Forestry business.

In 1914, the business was advertised in the Bridgeport Connecticut Directory and several photographs were added to the family photo album.

Fred Frost, spraying trees – June 1914


Jules brother Fred was involved in the Forestry business as well. He later became a plumber.

Joe Metzger, Geo Palmer, Ed Judd. 1914


Assuming that these guys worked for the company.

Edward Benham – June 1914
Spraying Machine, Stratford, CT

Jules Frost’s moving company

By 1925, Jules had moved to the Bronx and in the New York census that year he listed his occupation as “Piano Company”. He was likely moving Pianos, as he eventually owned a moving company for many years.

Tech Tuesday – DNA Test Results, Update

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Cousin found! Well, technically he wasn’t lost as we had connected via Ancestry.com trees several months ago, but it’s nice to have the documented relationship backed up by DNA results.

Chris and I are 4th cousins, via the O’Brien family of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. Here’s how AncestryDNA presents a match when a common ancestor can be identified. They could have picked either 3rd great-grandparent, Patrick O’Brien or Bridget O’Hare. I think the system is very precise when it comes to names, dates and locations. It does not seem to accomodate for alternate spellings, abbreviations or common date modifiers (like circa or about) like the Ancestry search engine does.

My 2nd great-grandfather Patrick J. O’Brien was born in 1848 in Tuam (pronounced choom) and came to America around the late 1860’s. In August of 1874, he and Ellen Ryan (1846-1934) were married in Portland, Maine. They lived in Rochester, NH and had four daughters: Katherine (1876-1956), Bernice (1879-1948), Mary (1881-1972) and Sara (1883-1900).

I’m seeing a lot more potential matches on the AncestryDNA Member Match page now, averaging about 10-15 new matches every 7 days. Each match is shown with several pieces of information: possible relationship range and a confidence level. Interesting to note that Chris was shown as a possible range 5th-8th cousin and a “Low” confidence level on page 3 of my matches, so it took me a while to even notice that he was listed. I have six people listed as 95%+ confidence, 4th-6th cousins, 3 of which have trees that are public, yet unfortunately no obvious connection. Interesting leads though, lots of Virginia/North Carolina families but all of my people are from New England, maybe an unknown sibling went south at some point? I’ll just have to keep digging.

Wordless Wednesday – Vincent Lucey School Photos

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Inspired by Randy Seavers’ (Not So) Wordless Wednesday post, I thought I’d share a couple of school photos of my grandfather, Vincent Lucey (20 Sep 1914-20 Sep 1976). Vinny grew up in Rochester, NH, the family lived at 75 Portland Street and he went to Rochester High School.

Here’s one from the beginning of his school career, looking thrilled to be there…

Vinny – 1921

and two from senior year.

circa 1933

circa 1933

Tombstone Tuesday – Fred Frost – Arlington National Cemetery

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This is the tombstone of my great-grand uncle Frederick Charles Frost and his wife Nita Conner. They are buried in Section 31 at Arlington National Cemetery, to the right of the Women in Military Service Memorial.

Fred was a plumber and served in the U.S. Marines Engineering Battalion, Fifth Company in that capacity. He reached the rank of Sergeant and was stationed at Quantico Marine Base in Dumfries, VA.

He was discharged honorably in Apr 1923.

Fred and Nita, Newark NJ 1921

Fred was born 11 Nov 1891 in New Haven, CT, the youngest child of Julius H and Susan (Odell) Frost. He married Nita in 1919 and after retiring from the Marines, they lived in Washington DC where he continued working as a plumber.

1957 Washington Post death notice

Their daughter Oritha (Rita) married Joseph H Miller around 1940. She died in Georgia in 1994. I have not been able to locate the four grandchildren mentioned.

Arlington National Cemetery Section 31, Site 8307                                                                       Looking from Frederick’s gravesite towards front gate

The Family Obsession

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If a stranger were to peruse my collection of old family photos, he or she might assume that we owned a car company in the early 1900′s. We did not, but cars are in so many of the pictures, sometimes just the car and no people, that one can safely assume some of my ancestors were obsessed with autos.

I am going to try to post a picture/car a week, I should finish when I’m 150 or so.

Polly and Jackie at Aunt Mae’s NJ

Aunt Mae (Frost) Hotchkiss was my great-grandfather Jules’ sister. Polly (Pauline) and Jackie (John) were his kids (my grandfather Bob’s sister and brother). Mae and her husband Nelson lived at 10 Cross St, West Orange NJ in the 20′s. If you look closely through the octagonal window, you can see Jules’ wife Helen. The plate on the car says NY 1924. Based on the clothing, license plate and ages of the kids, it’s likely this is summer 1924. Note the dent on the fender behind Jackie’s head.

XMas at Gramma’s 1923 Bridgewater, Mass

This car shows up in a few more photos taken in 1923 and 24, so best guess for the year of the car is 1919-1923. Near as I can tell it’s a Cole Aero-Eight Sportsedan, or a Model 878 as it was known. The unique octagonal rear windows help to confirm the make and model.

According to the Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal, the 878 was introduced by the Cole Motor Company of Indianapolis, IN in 1919. From the journal:

Provision for adjusting the upper glass panels is a feature of the doors, gives means of ventilation…

In other words, the windows roll down. The price was $3895 and you had a choice of Aero gray or American Flag blue, the top was black.

Jules and Helen (and the Cole) 1924

Tombstone Tuesday – We Miss Thee At Home

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David Joseph Lucey (my 2nd great-grand uncle, brother of James) was just 47 when he died in Dec 1904, leaving his wife Jean (Brodie) and daughter Lucille.

This cemetery plot was owned by Jean’s father, Peter Brodie and he, along with his wife Mary, son Robert, daughter Jean, Jean and David’s children Arthur and Lucille are all buried here. This death notice appeared in the Haverhill Evening Gazette on 12 Dec 1904.

On 14 Dec 1904, the following obituary was published in the Haverhill Evening Gazette:

SOLEMN HIGH MASS

The funeral of the late David J. Lucey was held this morning from St. James church, requiem mass being celebrated by Rev. Fr. Graham. The services were attended by a large number of friends of Mr. Lucey, including a delegation from Haverhill Lodge of Elks, of which he was a member. Many businessmen, who had business dealings with the deceased, were also there to pay their last respects to the memory of one of their number. The floral tributes were profuse and were silent testimonials of love and esteem.

At the conclusion of the services the remains were borne to St. James cemetery [he was actually buried in Riverview, not St. James, not sure if he was reinterred], the bearers being Dr. W.F.B. Reilly, Edward F. Sullivan and Thomas H. McDonald from Haverhill lodge, B.P.O.E.; John Lucey of Groveland, James Lucey of Groveland and John Fielding of this city, nephews of the deceased.

The floral tributes were as follows: Pillow, inscribed “Husband” wife; pillow, inscribed “Brother” Mrs. Chas. D. Sargent [Margaret Lucey] and Mrs. John Fielding [Mary Lucey]; cross, “Papa” daughter, Lucille; roses, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. McDonald; Easter lilies, Mrs. Charlotte Ford and Miss Annie Moran; spray of pinks, Miss Nellie Curtis; spray of chrysanthemums, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Merritt; spray of pinks, Mr. and Mrs. John Fielding Jr.; roses, J.B. Brosnan; chrysanthemums, Elizabeth Mann [daughter of sister Annie, who stayed in Ireland]; chrysanthemums, Mr. and Mrs. Olivers C. Frost; spray of pinks, Dearborn & Pinkham; cross and mound, Haverhill Lodge of Elks; pillow, “At Rest” Mr. and Mrs. James Lucey and family; spray of pinks, Mr. and Mrs. Monroe L. Corson; roses, Edward Charlesworth and Lyman Worthen. [David, Edward and Lyman visited Ireland in 1901]

Mr. Lucey left a wife, one daughter, Lucille; one brother, James Lucey [my 2nd g-g-father] of Gonic, NH and three sisters, Mrs. Margaret Sargent of Groveland, Mrs. Mary Fielding of Groveland, and Mrs. Annie Mann of Queenstown, Ire. [one sister stayed in Ireland!]

Military Monday – War of 1812

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In the Boston area, going to visit the U.S.S. Constitution in Charlestown is a right of passage for every kid. Two hundred years ago today, America declared war on Britain and the Constitution would earn its nickname “Old Ironsides” in the ensuing naval battles. The War of 1812 is sometimes called the “forgotten war”, overshadowed by the American Revolution and the Civil War. But, it was an important step for America, to prove to Britain and the world that it could stand up on its own.

Image Source: Library of Congress website http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005691642/

My 4th Great-grandfather Rodolphus Stanhope enlisted at Robbinstown, Maine as a Private in Capt. Thomas Vose Jr.’s Militia, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Shead’s Regiment.1 He was 15 years old at the time. I can’t find any record of engagements for this unit, so I don’t believe he saw any fighting. He does show up in the War of 1812 Pension Application Index on Ancestry.com. The actual Pension files are being digitized (you can support the cause here) and will be available on Fold3 as they are completed. I will probably order the records from the National Archives this summer.

Rodolphus (1796-1870) was the son of Peter and Elizabeth (Parmenter) Stanhope. He married Susannah Hickey in 1815 and they had 13 children including my 3rd great-grandfather, Rodolphus in 1817.

1. Ancestry.com. U.S., Adjutant General Military Records, 1631-1976 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data: Various. Sacramento, California: California State Library.↩

Funeral Card Friday – Johanna Donahue Lucey 1922

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Johanna Donahue Lucey, my 2nd great-grandmother, was born in Upper Shronaboy, Glenflesk, County Kerry Ireland on the family farm. There are still Donoghue’s living there today! Her father John wrote her this letter from Ireland in 1896.


This was published in the Rochester Courier the week after her death.

Sunday’s Obituary – James Lucey, 87, Gonic Civil War Vet, Dies

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Funeral Services for James Lucey, 87, of Gonic, were held Saturday morning at St. Mary’s church. Rev. John J. McNamara officiated. The services were widely attended by relatives, friends and members of military organizations of which he was a member.

Death put an end to a most interesting career with the passing of Mr. Lucey at the Wentworth hospital in Dover Thursday. Born in Queenstown, Ireland, 87 years ago, James Lucey came to America at the age of twelve, making his new home in South Groveland, Mass. There he learned the trade of carder in one of the textile factories.

With the event of the Civil war Mr. Lucey, although too young for actual duty enlistment, joined Co. M. of the Second Massachusetts Heavy Artillery as a drummer, and soon found himself a regular soldier, engaging in many of the principal battles of the war. He saved his money that he received for fighting and when he returned to his home he once more took up the trade of carder.

In 1879 he moved to Gonic, where he lived until his death. He was employed at the Gonic Manufacturing company mills for 54 years, first as a carder, then as overseer of the card room. Last March he retired to enjoy life at his home on Church Street, where he lived with his daughter.

He is survived by a sister, Mrs. Mary Fielding of South Groveland, Mass.; a son, James Lucey, Jr., of Gonic; and three daughters, Mrs. Anna Stevens and Mrs. Margaret Brown of Dover, and Mrs. Agnes Corson of Gonic.

A past commander of the G.A.R., Mr. Lucey was accorded a military funeral by the A.O.H. and the American Legion. He will be missed by his many friends, to whom he seemed a necessary part of the Memorial and Armistice day celebrations. Hervey Edgerly was in charge of the funeral.

From the Rochester Courier, front page, 21 Dec, 1934 edition. Transcribed by David Lucey.

Amanuensis Monday – 1896 Letter

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Transcription of a letter from my 3rd Great Grandfather, John Cornelius Donoghue to his daughter Johanna (wife of James E Lucey). Johanna had been in America about 25 years at the time of this letter. Transcribed by me from a photocopy of the original letter.

Shronaboy Jan 7th 1896

Dear Daughter,

             I received your welcome letter and xmas present in due time for which I am more than thankful for.  I suppose I have not deserved as much from you as I never gave you anything but you know I thought more of you than any of the others and I tried to keep you with myself. 

            Johannah I am very glad to know that yourself, husband and family are in good health and going well a blessing which I hope you all will enjoy for many years to come. Now as for my going to America, I am too old and I suppose I would not live to reach you so I think it would not be worth my while to carry my old bones to a foreign country as I have not long to live, at best I am 80 years old.  I am thankful for your kind offer and there is nothing would please me better than to be with you but it is to(sic) late now.  I was glad to here (sic) that Hagerty is getting on well now.  I was sorry he should have met with any difficulties he was always kind to me and never forgot me.

            Now about your sister’s children the ages of Kate’s are from 20 years down to 9 and Norah’s about the same.  I will send you a more accuret (sic) account of them the next time I write you.  They are getting on nicely and if anything don’t occur that I am not aware of they will for some time to come.  This was a very good year for the farmer’s they had very good crops and a fair price for cattle and sheep butter is low but is bringing a better price lately. The country is the same as when you left is the people generally live better but everything else about the same.  Potatoes 2 shillings 6 pence per peck of 147lbs butter 1 shilling per lb meat 8 pence per pound for beef and mutton pork 6 pence flour 21 shillings per 224 lbs meal 15 shillings per bag of 280 lbs the prices of the different things are gon down and in many instances the rents are reduced some but not enough to corispond with the fall in prices.

            Now I cannot think of any more to tell you this time, hoping those lines will find all of you enjoying the New Year in good health and spirits

            I remain your fond father

                        John C. Donoghue

                        Shronaboy, Glenflesk, Co. Kerry Ireland

(Good bye write soon)