One Thing Leads to Another

After talking with a friend earlier this week (you know who you are), who mentioned my lack of recent blogging … then sitting through my hubby’s presentation on FamilySearch.org at our Lodge on Thursday, I decided I wanted to get back to working on my family lines.

Actually, these two things coincided with another BIG issue being discussed lately and that is how do we preserve our stuff now and into the future? The discussions talk about different hard drives, thumb drives, cloud options, Ancestry trees, FamilySearch trees, and any other website that will host information on our ancestors.

At this point I am convinced that the only way I want to preserve my family information is through monographs. I have written two so far (Hardenbrook family and Nunn family) and disseminated them to local libraries and historical societies. As I think about this issue and review my family lines, I realize I have a fair amount of work ahead of me. So, back to this week and my decision to pull out those family folders.

I have been working on my second Caitlyn Jamison mystery, but writing time was hit and miss. If I am going to finish another book, I had to set a certain period of time to write. I started that and it’s working. So now I'm going to set a similar time aside to work on genealogy. As soon as I got back into it yesterday, I realized how much I missed my ancestors.

I had been working on the Tucker line, and from my 1 January 2016 post I finally found the death date and circumstances surrounding the death of Amos Tucker. I was curious about his wife, and so that is what I focused on yesterday. Amos married Martha VanGosbeck (sometimes spelled VanGasbeck) of Hector, Schuyler County, New York. Martha’s parents were Abram (b: 1809) and Matilda (b: 1813) VanGosbeck. Martha had two sisters, Mary (b: 1838) and Sarah (b: 1847). Sarah married someone with the name of King, and the sad piece of information I came upon was that Sarah died in 1875 at the age of 28; Martha died 1877 at the age of 28.

In the 1855 New York Census, Abram states he as a “hotel keeper.” I wondered about this, and so to FultonHistory.org I went. There I found a number of ads in the Ovid Bee for the Union House in Trumansburg, New York that had Abr VanGosbeck, proprietor.

Abram died in 1861; Matilda died in 1871, Sarah in 1875, which left Martha living alone in Newfield, New York at the time of the 1875 New York census. I have yet to locate Mary VanGosbeck.

P.S. I still have not figured out the best way for me to secure my working files should something happen to the house. Maybe temporary cloud storage would be the answer. 

Amos Tucker’s Civil War Pension

Application for Civil War Pension by Martha Tucker November 1865

This morning, curled up by the fire with coffee cups in hand, hubby and I decided to make a trip to the National Archives next week. He is still searching for the burial place of John Pye, a New York State Civil War soldier hubby has been searching for years on behalf of a woman in our Newtown Genealogy Club. Recently one of our neighbors presented hubby with a problem with one of her Upstate New York ancestors, and so we will also be searching for a pension record on behalf of widow Rosebelle Greene.

I admit I haven’t paid attention to my Civil War ancestor Amos Tucker as I intended to in my 6 May 2015 blog. At that time I was gung-ho to research these sites:

The 1860 census.

Search enlistment registers, service records, etc. on FamilySearch.org, Ancestry and Fold3.

Check compiled military service records at NARA (and on Fold3)

Martha (van Gosbeck) Tucker died young, I won’t find her in the 1890 Civil War Veterans and Widow Schedule, but this is a GREAT resource for others.

Cyndi’s list

Library of Congress

National Park Service

Regimental Histories (A great idea!)

CW150 Legacy Project

Historical societies and museums.

The Civil War Trust is a wonderful resource and had great maps.

In searching for Amos L. Tucker this morning, Ancestry now has pension application forms available online and we were able to locate applications from both Amos’s wife, Martha, in November 1865 and another from Amos’s mother, Caroline Lanning Tucker dated March 1893. (Martha died in 1877). Martha’s application has a certificate number; Caroline’s does not, which leads me to believe her application was never granted (Caroline died in 1894). I look forward to reviewing these files to see what information they hold and hopefully will clear up the events surrounding Amos’s death.

Amos Tucker and Civil War Research

When it was time to research and write the story of Amos Tucker I was stumped when I found his military papers said he was killed in the battle of Petersburg on 8 June 1865, but his stone in the Mecklenburg (NY) Union Cemetery has the death date of 2 March 1865. Amos served in the 179^th New York Infantry.

I admit when I came upon the difference in dates I decided to bypass poor Amos and went on to the next sibling. It wasn’t until Saturday’s presentation by CRRL Librarian and Civil War researcher Holly Schemmer that I decided I had to do Amos justice. I had to write his story, and Holly got me motivated to do so.

Holly shared with those present four documents she has put together to help search Civil War ancestors. Following her suggestions I will develop a strategy.

Locate Amos on the 1860 census.

Search enlistment registers, service records, etc. on FamilySearch.org, Ancestry and Fold3.

Check compiled military service records at NARA (and on Fold3)

Since his wife Martha (Gosbeck) Tucker died young, I won’t find her in the 1890 Civil War Veterans and Widow Schedule, or Pension records, but this is a GREAT resource for others.

Other helpful sites that Holly shared are:

Cyndi’s list

Library of Congress

National Park Service

Regimental Histories (A great idea!)

CW150 Legacy Project

Historical societies and museums.

Holly mentioned The Civil War Trust is a wonderful resource and had great maps.

I have a lot of work cut out for me, but I do owe it to Amos and Martha.