Not once, but twice the William Hawley family was devastated by fire. The logging industry was a primary industry in Northern Michigan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. William Hawley’s family was no exception. William moved his family from upstate New York to Long Rapids Township, Alpena County, Michigan…
I typically research newspapers using the website Newspapers.com to find details about the lives of my ancestors that may not be available in other typical genealogical sources. When searching for information about my second great grandmother Mary Anna (Annie) Faught, I found information not only about her but also some…
The theme for week 9 of the 52 ancestors in 52 weeks challenge is multiples. I was struggling with this theme. Nothing jumped out at me that was interesting enough to write about. But thanks to Valerie Hughes from the “Genealogy with Valerie” blog, my writers block was cured. Valerie…
One of the many topics that I have fallen in love with as I have been researching my own family history is the history of my home town of Alpena, Michigan. Although Alpena was and still is a small town, there is so much history to share. In this blog…
Background In My last blog post, Charles at Large: The Search for Charles Hawley, I wrote about my great granduncle Charles Hawley and his disappearing act in the summer of 1910. As I have written about before, I have been doing significant research into Hawley DNA connections. This research has led to…
Everyone has an ancestor who presents a challenge, a mystery waiting to be solved. One such ancestor for me is Charles Hawley, my great granduncle. In the summer of 1910, Charles seemed to drop off the face of the planet. Today, I am going to share his story in…
I was raised in Alpena, a small town located on Lake Huron in northern Michigan. One of the early newspapers in Alpena was the Alpena Argus . Throughout my research, I have come across several newspaper articles referencing “houses of ill fame”. This peaked my interest. I could never imagine…
The blog posts I write typically relate to my ancestors or collateral lines. However, after years of research, I couldn’t help but come across some amazing, funny, tantalizing, sad and sometimes tragic stories about others. A lot of these stories come from newspapers and books about county history. I once…
I mentioned in my last post Finding the Parents of William Hawley… One Step Closer…, that I found my 2nd great grandfather William Hawley in the 1850 census. William was 14 years old and living in the household of John W. Lockwood in Urbana, Steuben County, New York. As you can imagine, I…
In a previous post called, Re-thinking Research: The Parents of William Hawley, I made the claim that William C. Hawley and Mary Oakley were not the parents of my 2nd great grandfather William Hawley. I used several methods to help back up this claim including a timeline comparison of the…
If you grew up in Northern Michigan during the winter, as I did, you are more than familiar with the blustery conditions that we endure during the months of November thru March. I recently found a small notice in the Detroit Free Press about my 2nd great grandfather William Hawley…
In a couple of previous posts, Elizabeth Miller and the hope of a cure and The Founding of Long Rapids Township and the Role my Ancestors Played, I mentioned a letter written from William Faught to his brother, my Third Great Grandfather, George Faught. In his letter, William provides a wonderful description of…
Sometimes it is the research I do on a location, rather than the people, that leads me to a piece of interesting information. My plan for my next blog post was to write about a letter that was written by William Faught to his brother George Faught in 1871. While in…
I previously wrote a blog post called Mary Anna Faught: One Tough Lady, about my 2nd great grandmother Mary Anna (Faught) McKenzie. In that blog post, I outlined the life of Mary Anna. Since then I have come across more information that helps to tell the story of Mary Anna’s…
As all beginning genealogist, I relied on online public family trees to start my research. Over the last year, I have been going back over my research, verifying information, adding sources and filling in the gaps. During my research, I started to add sources for my second great grandfather William…
