Family Search

As luck would have it, I stumbled into a gold mine of family records while I have continued to pursue my wife Ellen’s ancestors. As I have recorded through many blog posts, Ellen’s ancestry is rich and compelling, with roots that include United Empire Loyalists and American Revolutionaries I can trace her ancestors back to the 1620’s in New England, their arrival occurring just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Ellen appears to be one of the few people who can claim U.E.L. (United Empire Loyalist) and D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Revolution) status (although neither has been applied for to date).

With such a lengthy and deep ancestry in North America, spread over hundreds of years, family members in subsequent generations have been found in all corners of the United States and Canada.

In the past couple of weeks, I have devoted time to tracking down the family members directly connected to Ellen’s second great aunt, Elizabeth Nusbickel (nee Wagner). Elizabeth was the sister of Ellen’s second great grandfather Jacob Wagner. Both Jacob and Elizabeth had immigrated to the United States along with their parents Heinrich ‘Henry’ and Anna Marie ‘Mary’ (nee Eckhard) Wagner around 1833, settling in Wayne County, New York. Henry provided for his family by both farming his land and by plying his trade as a cooper. The photo, above right, was taken by Ellen’s uncle Gordon Wagner in 1976 and was provided to us by Gordon as part of his genealogy work charts and papers on the Wagner family. The photo, which I scanned, depicts Stewart Smart (a cousin) with a barrel made by Henry Wagner over one hundred years prior to the photo.

Elizabeth Wagner married Frederick Nusbickel around 1843. Elizabeth and Frederick had five known children, the youngest, Catherine or ‘Kate’ was born in 1855 in Rose, Wayne County, New York. Around 1880, Kate married a Lyons, Wayne County, New York school teacher named Josiah F. Kletzing. Subsequently, Josiah and Kate left New York state and moved to the Chicago, Cook County, Illinois area where they settled down and raised their family.

While I have used the Ancestry website to view and save many records connected to the families, when the Ancestry ‘well ran dry’, I turned to FamilySearch.org to explore the Cook County databases that are available. This is where I got lucky. Through FamilySearch, I was able to locate and save vital records for the births, marriages, and deaths for the five known children of Kate and Josiah. In the case of their daughter Kathryn Kletzing, I was able to go one generation further by finding an image of her 1912 marriage license to Ralph Clayton Moulding as well as the birth records for three of their four children.

Fortunately, I was possibly one of the last people to access the record images online. Yesterday, FamilySearch ‘announced’ through it’s wiki that these images would no longer be available directly through FamilySearch. The wiki now explains, under the “Image Visibility” section, that, “Due to the provisions and guidelines of a newly revised contract with Cook County, FamilySearch has removed all images for Illinois, Cook County vital records from its historical records collection online; free indexes to the collections will remain.”

This affects the following databases:

Illinois, Cook County Birth Certificates, 1878 – 1922
Illinois, Cook County Birth Registers. 1871 – 1915
Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1878 – 1922
Illinois, Cook County Marriages, 1871 – 1920

Although the images are no longer available online, they can still be acquired through microfilm viewed at a local Family History Centre, through the Cook County website for a fee, or through a Family History Library “photoduplication” request. I feel lucky that timing was on my side in the past few days as none of the now current acquisition methods is nearly as convenient as my experience.

I have shared previously, and most recently in July 2011, about the uncertainty of information about one of my maternal great grandfathers, John Foley. This past week, fellow Canadian genealogy blogger, John Reid of Anglo-Celtic Connections, posted a note on Google Plus that Family Search had added 126,534 Ontario Roman Catholic Church Records to their online databases.

I immediately thought of my Foley ancestors and the puzzlement about verifying John’s birth. Census records have provided conflicting information ranging from locations in the United States to Barrie, Simcoe County, Canada West (now Ontario) and birth years ranging from 1860 to 1865.

Fortunately, the Ontario civil registration for John Foley’s marriage to Mary Jane Fitzgerald on April 25, 1894 provides the name of the church in Toronto in which they married. My first stop then was the church records for marriages at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in 1894. Unfortunately, the images added by Family Search are not yet indexed so finding the church marriage registration meant ‘surfing’ through numerous images. The church registrations are in chronological order so using the marriage date, I was able to find the marriage registration information fairly quickly. All of the information contained in the church record was identical to the civil registration record.

When he married in April 1894, John gave his age as 29 years, meaning he was likely born around 1865. John’s gravestone in Toronto’s Mount Hope Cemetery lists his date of birth as February 16, 1864 but due to the various pieces of conflicting information, I have always been suspicious of the date.

I then proceeded to viewing the church baptismal records for Barrie, Ontario, the location John had maintained was his place of birth. The church record images available through Family Search for Barrie consist of one Roman Catholic church – Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary including two mission, or satellite, locations. The baptismal records cover the period 1858 – 1875 and consist of 218 images in the main church register.

Like scrolling through microfilm images, I went through the baptismal records one image at a time, hunting for the Foley name. Fortunately, this was made easier as the family surnames were printed, not written, in the left hand column of the register book. On image #86, line #706, I found it! The baptismal record for John Foley, although the surname was misspelled as ‘Froley.’

The parish priest, Father P. Rey, listed: Froley, John; Date of Birth – 16 Feb. 1863 in Essa (a small town near Barrie); Date of baptism – 21 March 1863; Parents – William Foley, Ireland and Bridget McTigue (misspelling of McTague); Sponsors – Joseph Cain and Elizabeth Hussey.

So, at long last, I know that my great grandfather was born in Essa, part of the Barrie, Ontario area, on February 16, 1863, exactly 125 years before his great great granddaughter, my daughter, Jenna was born! Finally, a puzzle solved.

Ian Hadden's Family History

Welcome to my genealogy blog featuring, primarily, the stories of the Hadden and Wagner families along with the occasional research tip and genealogy commentary from Ian Hadden

Sometimes My Genealogy Stars Are Aligned

Solving My Foley Family Puzzle