Ep 18 - Ichabod, Ancestry and Taylor's Tidbits

Are you ready for another exciting adventure into the world of family history? Then tune in this week as we combine genealogy with good old-fashioned storytelling.  Kim and Laura share their experiences of researching family trees and explore the intricate web of family ties that connects them all.   From the Belyeas and Orsers of Sleepy Hollow, New York,  we'll discover how even the most distant relatives can share a common past. Don't forget - Ichabod Crane.  He's in this episode too!!  And don't miss Kim's fascinating story of how she helped a friend learn more about her family history, including uncovering a surprising article on Newspapers.com, in just about 10 minutes time!!   

Transcript

Kim: 0:03

Hello everybody and welcome back to Chasing Hazel's Tales, a family history podcast presented to you by two registered nurses and off-duty genealogy nerds, or as some like to say a family historian. I'm Kim McLaughlin. And I'm Laura Ireland. And you might ask. Is Kim still talking I've never heard that question before. Kim if it's genealogy, I'm talking. So and right now we're still talking about the Van Tassels. We were talking about them last week and how we kind of connected into that family line and it's from New York. we just want to go on a little bit further about that because they, are just really quite interesting. So Van Tassel is in New York and it's just another example of connections to Sleepy Hollow that we find, and it's all about connecting. Of course. For example, the Van Tassels are not a direct ancestor per se, but they're cousins in the storm family line. So we're connected that way and we met Mr. Van Tassel earlier this year and hope to meet up with him again to learn more about that line and maybe can report about that timeframe to you.

Laura: 1:12

And because of all this, I felt compelled to go back and do a little reading. finding out that our line went through New York and Sleepy Hollow was pretty interesting to me. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, of course, is the famous book by Washington Irving,

Kim: 1:30

and I've never read it either. So

Laura: 1:32

well, I was intimidated thinking it was gonna be this big old piece of literature. So when I looked it up and saw that it was, I don't know, like 30 pages or something on my Kindle, it was very, very short. Well, it took me, it took me about an hour, you know, hard to focus sometimes, but I always wanted to read it and I hadn't. So I did do that. And. I wanted to see how Whitney had told me about the connection to that Van Tassels name was in Sleepy Hollow. So that of course, added to my interest in it. So I read the story with an eye to look, or maybe an ear to looking to find out how the van Tassels are portrayed in the book. the author, Washington Irving. Was said to have stayed in Sleepy Hollow with the real Van Tassel family. And he had their permission to use their names as characters in a later story. And so he wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow after he returned to England. And of course in the story he writes, that Katrina Van Tassel is the object of Ichabod Crane's desire. Ichabod Crane is the school teacher who then goes on to meet the headless horseman you know, spoiler alert, but she's, so, anyway, the Van Tassles are portrayed as a very prominent family in the book. The Short Story, which, mm-hmm. was kind of how I, I guess I just was interested in how that looked. and of course it's a Disney movie and it's a reg, I don't know,

Kim: 3:01

it's taken off how many movies and how many, you know events every year it's turned. A Halloween event every year. Right. I guess it's a story test of time. Yeah. Really. So it's a classic we might say. Mm-hmm. But anyway, interesting.

Laura: 3:18

And you know, as far as our Our direct ancestors go in Sleepy Hollow. As we mentioned before, Dirk Storm was the first of our family to live in Sleepy Hollow, leaving Holland in 1662, and his great-granddaughter is where we connect with this line. She married a Belyea, and it was her son and our fourth great-grandfather, James Belyea. That would've been the loyalist or the Tori that moved to Canada after the revolutionary.

Kim: 3:46

Right. And when Laura and I were talking about this, I remembered that on ancestry.com. Cause once I had connected to the Belyea line and done some fishing around, I did find that there is a wonderful genealogy written and I wonder how many pages there are. There's, anyway, it's, it's very long. It's, it's, it's more informal, so it's not paginated. So we don't really know how many pages there are, but she did a really great. Her name was Marlou Belyea. And so I'm gonna read just a little bit about our ancestor. That was the one that left the United States and went to Canada. And so she writes about James Albert Belyea. He was born, in 1755 in on Phillipsburg Manor, and his wife was Jemima Purdy. P U r d Y. She had been born in 1765 in White Plains. So they married in 1782 in White Plains. She was only 17. He was 27, and they went on to have how many children, Laura?

Laura: 4:48

Too many

Kim: 4:51

17. 17 seventeen's it, so they had 17 children who lived to adulthood. Of course, this is all according to, Marlou, and I think, in my research, they're not wrong. There are a lot of children, so. They say, they're saying Jemima Purdy and James Albert Belyea had been forced to leave New York because they had sided with the British. And so in, in a memorial to the British crown for losses sustained during the revolution, James Albert Belyea explained That he had lived at Courtland Manor before the war and had not been forced to fight for the rebels because he was subject to fits. He and his father had farmed 90 acres together, but in 1780, the farm had been taken over by rebels. The rebels stripped him. And Ill used him so he could not stand it any longer. And he offered his services to the British. He fought under Colonel Delancy and did duty with other Westchester refugees. He might well have fought with Henry Shepherd in the Battle of White Plains during the Revolutionary War. James Belyea said he also assisted the ships of war once swimming got, this is a pretty good story. He once was swimming out into the Hudson River and boarding the warship Phoenix. James' Father Hendrick, or Henry as they called him, claimed he lost all of his lands because all five of his sons served in the British Army and he was reckoned a Torie, besides the 90 acres, he farmed with his son James Henry and his son Joseph, had shared 180 acres, which he had bought 40 years before for 25 pounds. Wow. 25 pounds. He had done a great deal. They had, you know, property, they had horses, cows, sheep and corn. And they were all taken by the rebels. Henry's, they picked the wrong side. They picked the wrong side. It just didn't work out for them. So Henry's son, Joseph had lost also the ox and the cows, the horses, and. also to the rebel army. They all valued it at about 300 pounds. So the British compensated Henry and his sons with land on the St. John River in New Brunswick. The British government agreed to provide transportation provisions for a year allowance of medicines, clothing, millstones for grist mills, saws for sawmills, nails, spikes, hose and axes, spades, shovels, the works, and also a proportion of window glass. That's probably a big deal. That's probably not easy to. But the land agents reported to the Belyeas that the St. John is a fine river equal in magnitude to the Connecticut or Hudson. at the mouth of the river is a fine harbor accessible at all seasons of the year, never frozen or obstructed by ice. There are many settlers along the river upon the interval land who get their living easily. The interval lies on the river and is a most fertile soil. Annually matured by the overflowing of the river and produces crops of all kinds with little labor. They cut down trees, burn the tops, put in a crop of wheat or Indian corn, which yields a plentiful increase. These intervals would make a finest meadows. The the uplands produce wheat, both in the summer and winter kinds, as well as Indian corn. So encouraged by the good reports and pushed by American patriots that tarred and feathered, any Tory that tried to stay and exp appropriated their lands. Thousands left and went to New Brunswick. They erected tents and met for worship. The settlers would set aside lands to support churches and schools. So that's all I'm gonna say about that, but we could kind of gives you a little flavor about why anyone would leave beautiful New York, the Hudson Valley, the Hudson River, because they're not a fan of being tarred and feathered. The tarred and feather thing probably put'em over the edge and the the land agents made it sound really great. And to tell you the truth, probably that it was the truth. It probably, it, it was, it probably was beautiful. Yeah, it was beautiful. And all the soil was ready to go. so when we read about the Belyea's genealogy, of course I get a little excited, but then there's one of my good friends that we found out to be related to the Belyeas through Canada as well. Her family was one of the Belyea lines that came from New York. Hello friend and cousin Holly. so, you know, I said one time and she said Belyea and the next thing you know we're cousins. Has she tested on Ancestry? I'm not. I'm not sure. I think

Laura: 9:14

that's a good question. I wonder if we would be

Kim: 9:17

connected at all. Right. Yeah. So, but then of course the most fun was finding out that my husband Andrew was also connected to Sleepy Hollow. His family tree includes the, Orsers. and the Orsers are a Dutch name. It was originally spelled like a r s e, I think almost sounds like arse, but that's,

Laura: 9:41

I was gonna say that's the British version of,

Kim: 9:43

But his was, but it, it kinda, it kind of morphed into Orser and so they came to, new Brunswick as well, but they all, we all connect back there. My husband happens to be about my eighth cousin So

Laura: 9:56

he's just a little bit more closely related to us than Queen Elizabeth is what you're saying?

Kim: 10:01

Just a little. Just a little. So maybe he's related to Queen Elizabeth too. I haven't checked I'm not sure. I can't remember our line, which line takes us to Queen Elizabeth, but yeah. Anyway.

Laura: 10:15

And you know, to be honest, I guess I never realized that our great grandfather on the Smith line was born in new Bruns. right? Yeah. So our grandfather was the first one to be born back on American soil. Right. For in his paternal line. Right. The, his mother's line. I think they were, there for a long time, but mm-hmm. But yeah, I, I had never put together that whole piece of, you know, I knew there was a connection to Canada. That part of the family still lived in Canada. I remember we went to a reunion there, right. I think when I was, I don't know, like 10 years old. So, you know, 20 years ago,

Kim: 10:53

little, where we had no idea who anybody was Right. And I'm not sure anybody

Laura: 10:58

knew anybody, but That's right. You

Kim: 10:59

know,

Laura: 11:01

But it was a really long drive and then, you know. Yeah.

Kim: 11:05

But anyway, I do it now. Sign me up. Yeah. Yep. Well,

Laura: 11:11

maybe we can make that

Kim: 11:11

happen,

Laura: 11:14

So in the last few episodes, we've been explaining some ways to start researching your family history, where to search for documents and sub websites that are useful as well. So then what do you do with it Once you get a little bit of this information, you know, what are you supposed to do? And I think the best way to make it all make sense is to put it together in a family tree, right? I know that Kim knows there are many different websites where you can build a tree, right? And they're web-based and they store your tree on their sites. So it's seems like a, a good situation.

Kim: 11:51

Right. Not all of them are web-based, but mine is. Okay. Yeah. And

Laura: 11:56

your, so you've tried a few, which ones? You've looked at many.

Kim: 12:01

Well, the one that I use to do my research is Ancestry. Mm-hmm. Just because that's where I started and that's where I've stayed. So it doesn't, I just, I've found no reason to leave. I've, I've always liked it and I've, I think I've had a subscription since you could buy a subscription. I mean, that's how long it's been So I think, I don't doubt that. Yes. Right. So maybe they ought to. I don't know, may, can I get like a pin or something that says I've been doing it so long, like, you know, I'm, I'm a golden member or something. Yes, yes. They should have this. So, and that's what I like. One thing I like about Ancestry is that number one, it's not going anywhere. It's solid. Mm-hmm. it's been there forever. And so I feel pretty good about my tree being on that site, but I also have a backup of family tree maker. So I have family tree maker, and the LA latest version is 2019. And what that is, is it's a desktop program, but you can enter all your information that you want. You, you don't have to be connected to the internet to enjoy it or to use it.

Laura: 12:57

But you can, so some people might find that more helpful.

Kim: 13:00

Right. And some people don't wanna be on the internet, so that's okay. but this does work on the computer, and that's, and I, I've been using this since the dawn of time as well. It's the first one I bought. It's one when you went to the store, you bought a disc, a floppy disc, and you put it in your computer and now you just download'em. But it, so the initial cost is just to buy the, the program and it's not that much money. But after that, you don't have to pay for anything. If there are updates or anything, you can get those, either emailed to you or online. You can download. That kind of thing. But basically you can keep your tree on there. They'll make all kinds of charts and they just make it really easy. And if you choose to use that, there are ways to link to Ancestry if you want. If you want to take their hints, you can link it to a tree On Ancestry. You don't have to. So you can still maintain, offline presence. but me, of course I connect it. Mm-hmm. I connect the two so I can update. If I put something on one, I can update to the other. Because they, they connect also, family Tree Maker will connect to family search.org, which is what we talked about last week. The, Mormon, the Mormon website, right from the, Salt Lake City. So, you can use that one as well. But if you want something that's online that you can use their database to kind of fill in some information, you can use Ancestry, you can use My Heritage, you can use FindMyPast. and you can use family search. They all have tree functions, so they will build a tree for you or you can build it on their website. Mm-hmm. And then they give you hints. If you want to use the free version, you don't get to research on their site, or at least you don't get to see the full. Document when you get a hint. So if they say they, you know, on Ancestry, they might say, Hey, you've got, you know, birth records or something. But you have to be a member, a paying member to actually view those. So that's their mm-hmm. that's their thing. But you still can build a tree and you can still find your own documents other ways, but the whole online thing makes some of that just a lot easier.

Laura: 15:06

So why don't you tell everyone how many people you have in your ancestry tree?

Kim: 15:10

Oh, well, so there's, there, that's another thing. Some people get really crazy about it. I have probably, what, 4,200 or more? Somewhere around there. It's over 4,000. But those are only the people that I can actually say, yeah, I know that that's them. Right? Mm-hmm. I've, I've seen the document that's, that's the right answer, and if I have a person on there like General Johnny Burgoyne that I'm not exactly sure about it. Mm-hmm. you're able to notate right there. This is a theory, that kind of thing. Oh, okay. So I have over 4,000 people on my family tree and. That's a, that's, that's a lot for me. To me, it

Laura: 15:52

sounds like a lot to me. And it sounds like a lot of time, right? That you've

Kim: 15:55

put into it. I mean, since, I mean for, I've been doing this 30 years, 30 plus, 35 years, so I've been collecting information for a long time. But there, now there are others on the website, on, on Ancestry, you might see their tree and it might have 30,000 people in their tree. I have seen a few of those. Yeah. And I just don't, I just don't know how one person can do that. And I think what happens is people. Take, let's just say they look at my tree and they say, oh my gosh, she's got the Belyeas. they'll just copy it and not really look to see if what I have is real or, or if it's accurate. Put it that way. So, I feel like my tree is big, but there are lots. Bigger ones on there and how accurate they are. That's for you to choose, that's for you to, you know, if you, if someone else had the Belyeas, I'm happy to go look and see what they have and, and maybe see if it connects to me some way and maybe they have a record. I don't like this beautiful a document that Marlou Belyea had created. I mean, that, that's just been amazing for me. So it's so nice to be able to share those kinds of things on ancestry, but you just have to do your own work to see if it's.

Laura: 17:01

Right. And what I really like about that document is it just, it looks like it's family history written down, right? Like some, somebody, they knew that story and they took the time to write it down, and now it's in ancestry and so others can, can benefit

Kim: 17:14

it and learn about it. It's really a nice way to share your information. But not every, everybody, some people are maybe a little intimidated by Ancestry or another online program thinking that it, you know, it might be really difficult, but, it's just, no, it's, it just takes one step. Just start and then the next thing you know, you've got 4,000 people So, and I could do a lot more. It's just, I have so many avenues that I go that I just haven't gotten there recently. So there is one funny thing. So sometimes I'll follow lines. So, there's one line. So we we're related through my, our mother, the York line. And so I, I looked on there and I said, oh, look at all these other trees that have the same Yorks. That's great. And so I found one tree and I followed it and it took us back to, which one was it? King, Richard, the third. Remember Richard the third? Yep. It was buried. I remember that in, that was buried in a parking lot. Yeah. He's remember the one that had the deformity in his back and so I'm thinking, are we really rel this tree says we are, but I have never looked at it. Right. And I mean, it's, the name is York. I mean, it's, it goes to England. I just haven't proven it. But wouldn't I love to? That would be, I mean, I would really like to be able to say, yeah, all I can say is that a tree that I connect with has has it on their tree. Right. That's all I can say for any factual information.

Laura: 18:35

isn't that the same line is back through the York's mother Clark. Right. So takes us right back to the Mayflower, the pilot of the Mayflower,

Kim: 18:45

you know, so all the tree and that, and that's another thing. Right, so the Clarks who are through Washington County mostly came from Plymouth A, just like our families, our grandfather came from the Sleepy Hollow. Lots of families over there. my grandmother. Lots of families came from Washington County, who came from Plymouth, Massachusetts and have that early colonial, vibe. I mean, they all, a lot of'em are probably attached to the Mayflower. I just, that's why

Laura: 19:12

they have the best accent. That's,

Kim: 19:14

that's right. they've been here the longest. they've been here the longest. They've earned it, so. That's right. But the, what, you know what the Clark line does? There is one tree that shows it, going back to the first mate. of the Mayflower, his name was Clark. But he was not considered part of the Mayflower pact he was just running that boat back. He was running the ship. Right, right. And he went back and forth to England all the time. And he has some great stories on that too. If someone could, you know, I don't doubt these people, it's just that I'm not sure. Right. And I just haven't had time to. All my own research and, and to, to look at it. But if someone wants to help me out there, I really like So you're saying, so you're saying trust

Laura: 19:54

but verify

Kim: 19:55

that's what you're saying? Right, exactly. I have no reason to believe that they're not right. It's just that I haven't actually gone back and, put the effort in and, but I'd love to and I'd love someone to, if someone wants to hold my hand and, and do it, I'd love to, you know, if there's someone out there who can prove that Clark line, let's do. Or the Yorks, I wanna be related to the guy in the, that was buried in, in a parking lot, and

Laura: 20:18

Queen Elizabeth at the same time. And Queen

Kim: 20:19

Elizabeth. It's amazing. Our day is just getting better. anyway, back to, I had one

Laura: 20:25

last thought

Kim: 20:25

on the trees. Yeah.

Laura: 20:27

The, the one thing that I find I think is a, a really useful tool is the, that you can make them private or public. Yes. But when you're working on ancestry. Yes. So in the case, like what we found out, you know, when we got our results and we were exploring, right? You know, different paternity, right? You know, of our father. The Humphrey line, right? Yes. The Humphrey line. You were able to make a private tree, right? That. Other people just don't see, but you're able to build it and try to make sense of it all

Kim: 21:00

right. And so that's what I did with the Humphrey tree until we knew Right. I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna make a tree. And then other people stumble upon it and take it for fact or take it for, oh, you know, new a surprise. Right? Right. So rather than do that, we, I just kept it private. No one can search it, no one can find it. But I can use ancestry.com. Build that tree and to learn more. And then when I did learn more, then I made it public. So, yeah. And it's, lots of people keep their trees private because they don't want other people to, just build it into their tree automatically. which some people do like, Hey, look, I love that York branch. I'm gonna put it on my tree And there are ways to do that, and I just don't, I just don't do it that, you know, I, it's not something I do, but other people do. And so people just feel like they want to keep their information private. They just say, yeah, we have a tree. If you'd like any information, you can contact them, but you can be private or public depending on your comfort level.

Laura: 22:02

And so with the two different trees that we. Basically we have a social tree, right? And a biological tree.

Kim: 22:10

Yes. So, well I call, sometimes I call it legal as well, is that, you know, like, oh, legal tree. Okay. Right. So legal paternity. Right. And it, cuz it was, it, it's still, it's still our family. It's just Right. There are different lines, you know that. Yes. Does it have to be two separate trees? Well, here's the thing. It was at first because I was just trying to figure it out, but then afterwards what I did was I said, okay, cat's out of the bag. Everyone knows Ancestry has the ability to, you know, to, they put, Stan was my father's. Was my father's father, and then they put his, and then I put biological father as well. So you can have many branches, you can have step families, you can have biological families. Right. And that

Laura: 22:52

makes sense for the world that we live

Kim: 22:54

in, right? And so, and right. They keep, as things change and, terminology changes and things like that, so, mm-hmm. And also there are, In some programs, and I don't know which ones they are, there are ways to determine if you can, you can assign someone their gender and then if they are transgendered how to, how to, there are different ways to put that into the computer so people kind of have an inkling, you know, of, of their identity. So people, that's, that's a hot topic. I don't, I haven't had to use that. So it's not something that I'm very well versed on. I'm just wrapping my

Laura: 23:32

head around the other part. I, I'm not ready

Kim: 23:35

for that part yet. it's, it's, you know, it's a thought. People wanna be able to include everybody, so that's what they're, they're trying to make the computer program fit the way families truly. right Step and legal and not married and partners and that kind of stuff. So it's, you know, it's always, always changing, right? And sometimes, some of these programs cost money and some of them don't. But there are some links that I have that I will put on our show notes so that people can kind of see comparisons as to different types of programs that they can use. I've, I, there's, there's many. A lot of'em are really good. These are just the ones that I happen to use because the dawn of time, right? It's like I'm not gonna change unless they go out of business, then I'm not gonna change. You are Member number five. Five I might be, I wanna know. I'm calling Ancestry, so, well, how long have I been doing this? I don't know if I've ever let it lapsed. I don't think I've ever let it. My subscription lapsed. Wow. I don't know. I don't wanna know. I wanna believe that I didn't. Does it predate

Laura: 24:41

your days as a nurse? Yes.

Kim: 24:44

Okay. Now we're talking because, cuz it used to go way back to when, when we owned our business and when I had downtime, that's all I did on my computer was research. All I did was research general Johnny. That's all I did. General Johnny Burgoyne, the elusive ancestor. Anyway, So I'll put on some, some little notes. If anybody has any questions, they're welcome to your, or want any, you know, advice or anything, just give us a, give us a holler. All right, so I have just a little bit of a tidbit, and it's one of my favorite things to do is what I do is I fish around and see what I can find out for people who happen to be curious about genealogy, but really don't have any time or experience. I just start a family tree, and then I let it, I call it percolating, which means on ancestry. For me, percolating means I put in the data. and then hints start to just bubble up, right? And I just give it some time and bing the little, the little green leaves start shaking and it's like, oh, we've got hints on these people. So for me, that's a really quick and easy thing I can do. But other people, Who've never done it. They're just a little more intimidated. So I just start searching records. And so earlier this month I did it for a friend at work, Taylor. Hi Taylor. I just don't think that she's ever had time or experience and she just, and her, one of her comments was, you know, do I have to do dna? You do not have to do DNA to build a tree at. Right. Your family is your family. Whatever you know your family to be is what it is. If you take a DNA test and you find out perhaps that, you know, maybe one of those people are not biological, it's still okay, right? You just have this, there's just another story coming up that's all Oh, you just have another

Laura: 26:27

branch of your family tree. That's

Kim: 26:29

all right. And, and sometimes it's still keep all the other branches. Right? And sometimes it's upsetting. We've, we've gone over all that. We know all that now. But but for her, she thought, you know, some people equate doing a family tree with dna. You don't have to. They can be totally separate entities. So anyway. did you, Taylor, did you get very far for her? Well, I did. I did. Went, I went back quite, quite a ways, but it didn't take me long to find something interesting. So Taylor was lucky enough that she knew all of her grandparents and and I think some of her great-grandparents. So that's really, that's kind of awesome. So she knows these people. Mm-hmm. And I found two articles right away. About one of her grandfathers. And the first thing she did was call her grandmother. Did you know And this only took me 10 minutes. 10 minutes cuz she knew the data, she knew her grandparents. I had the information where they lived and things just started coming around. And so I did find a couple of things. It did not take me long. And

Laura: 27:31

where did you search? Where did you

Kim: 27:32

start your search? I started my search on Ancestry and so there you go. Whenever I get curious about a family, and someone asked me for a little advice or whatever, I start a tree on Ancestry. I start it and I make it private because I'm researching it. No one else needs to know about it. Mm-hmm. So if anybody's wondering, anytime I'm doing research on someone else, it's private. I only have one, one tree, one or two trees that are public on, on Ancestry. Everything else is private. And do you wanna fathom a guess as to how many trees I have on Ancestry? I'm

Laura: 28:04

gonna go with

Kim: 28:05

42. It's close to a hundred. Oh. And so I have pages and pages and pages. So to me, you know, I find if I, if I'm doing some research for somebody, I'll just start the tree. I make it private. No one else knows I'm looking for it so that if someone else, let's say, is looking for Taylor's grandfather, they're not gonna know that I have found information on them. So because it's private mm-hmm. unless Taylor wants to own that tree, I'll let her have it. And she can then make it public herself. But anyway, so I'm on there and I find, doesn't take me very long. And I find some interesting articles because along with my ancestry subscription, I have newspapers.com, which is attached to Ancestry. They have a deal if you, you can have just plain old ancestry, but if you like newspapers, if you wanna, all that information, there's a lot of stuff in newspapers. Wicked. And, and yeah. And you just never know what you're gonna find. So this is exactly to the point. You never know what you're gonna find. And so Taylor she's never done any genealogy or anything like that, hasn't had an experience or time to do it. So I found out that, for the first thing I found out was her grandfather, and this is the Green Bay Gazette. and it's from 1966, so it's Green Bay, Wisconsin. So this is her grandfather and he's, he's in the, he's in the court News I said, oh, great. I said, oh, oh look, we have some court news here. his name was Albert Ewalt. And he's a, and this is what it reads. It says, Albert Ewalt Green Bay, no paddler's license,$10 in costs. So I said, well, he got fined$10 for no paddler's license. And I thought, what's a paddler? Was he, yeah, I don't know what that is. was he in the river paddling or what? Without a license. Two others, two other people that same day. With the same. and two of them were paddler licenses and the other one was peddler. Oh. So it was a peddler's license. He was selling books. And so first thing I told, you know, we found this same thing. We're 10 minutes into this, this conversation. And she calls her grandmother right away and says, did you know that grandpa got caught? You know peddling? I don't know what he was selling. He was selling door to door with no license. and, and grandmother said, yeah, I know he did encyclopedias, I don't, I'm not sure what he was saying. I can't, she probably told me I just don't re, I just don't recall. And so he was selling something and he didn't have a license, cost him$10 and a night in jail. So that's the extra that Gram knew, that Taylor didn't know. Imagine. Imagine your grandfather selling something door to door and getting thrown in jail for not having a license. He spent the night in jail, along with two other fellas here, Eugene and Jerry. All three of them got caught and they spent a night in the clink night in the clink for selling that stuff. So I mean, that was just an opportunity for Taylor to make a phone call to Gram and just connect. Right. And they talked for a few minutes and then they were. Yeah, so that was fun. But the other story I found was, this is just interesting too, was another I think it's her two times great-grandfather in Wisconsin. And it was from 1897 in the Mantiwoc Pilot, that's the name of the newspaper. And come to find out, William Frank was her. That

Laura: 31:28

town is infamous right now. What's. that town is infamous right now. Why Manitowoc? Manitowoc County. That's the making of a Murderer, the setting of that Netflix documentary series. Anyway, really? I digress.

Kim: 31:40

Nevermind. Okay, so there's something, if you wanna check that out, that name is burned into my head. Yeah, So um, her great two times great-grandfather William Frank. The article says, William Frank was arrested on Sunday last night on the charge of shooting a man named Mattias. Oh, I'm sorry, William Frank is not her. great grandfather. that's the name of the boy. So it says, William Frank was arrested on Sunday last on the charge of shooting a man named Mattias, Keefer, or Mathias. The parties live in the town of Two Rivers and Frank who did the shooting is only 17. He explains that his mother and Keefer had a quarrel over a hunting dog, which Kiefer owned and which was kept for him by Mrs. Frank. She refused to surrender possession of the dog. On Keifer's demand until he had paid her for the animal's keeping and a board bill of his own. He assaulted the woman who called her boy for help. He came with a 32 caliber rifle and says, Keefer, who was her grandfather Yeah. Grabbed the barrel of the rifle and then when wrenching the gun from Frank's hands, it was discharged, shot him in the baby fat. I think Keifer received only slight flesh wounds after securing possession of the gun, he struck Frank. With it and broke one of his hands. So he gra he got shot, grabbed the gun and smacked the kid and broke his wrist because he

Laura: 32:59

didn't wanna pay for his room and board and the upkeep of his dog.

Kim: 33:02

Right? So that's what happened. So after so Frank is the most seriously injured of the two and. And those who know the parties say he is the more wronged. So they're saying the kid was. The kid was, oh, right. Okay. Yeah. So he has spoken of as a well behaved young fellow. So Frank was admitted to bail in the sum of$500. So this is 1897, and his bail was$500 and readily secured it. So he came before Judge Anderson yesterday for examination, but the case was adjourned until the 24th. So I never, so he had the

Laura: 33:38

money to pay for his room and board

Kim: 33:40

and the dog. He had money, right? He had money to pay for the bail, but he wouldn't pay the woman. Oh, there must be a story there somewhere. There's, there's a story that we don't, but anyway, that's how quickly I found an interesting story. For Taylor, and by the way,$500 in 1897 is now$17,642 and 51 cents. So he could have paid the board for the dog. Absolutely. And his own, or I don't, anyway, to be continued. That's, that's for her to find out. That's her family. So that's a, that might be just something that might get someone interested in genealogy by finding out these little tidbits of stories. Right. So, I have a tidbits are where it's at. I love little tidbits and we've found lots in our family history. Mm-hmm. So I have a few others on tap and next week I'm gonna just, you know, bring, bring light a few more, some interesting, fun things that will be next week. So

Laura: 34:37

thanks everybody for listening, So if you wouldn't mind going over to your favorite podcast platform and rate review and subscribe and tell all your friends and let us know if you have any interesting stories or tidbits from your family tree. And

Kim: 34:51

well, maybe you want me to look for a tidbit. I mean, I found, I found all of that in 10 minutes. We'll see if we can get you to a hundred trees. Okay, next week I'll tell you the golden number and whether or not they send me a pin from ancestry.com that says I've been, I've been here since the dawn of time.

Laura: 35:08

you should get a pin for the number of plugs

Kim: 35:10

we've given them. that's right. All right, everybody all. So until next week, we'll see ya. Goodbye. See you later. Bye.