Wednesday, February 29, 2012

GenForum and the Carpenters

While I was doing a Google search on the surname Carpenter last week, one of the hits was on one of my wife's ancestor William Henry Harrison Carpenter.  It was an inquiry in GenForum dated 2005.  I took a chance and sent an email hoping that the email address on the inquiry was still good.  To my surprise I received an email back from a distant cousin of my wife.  This cousins great grandfather wrote articles for the Lebanon Democrat newspaper in Lebanon Tennessee using the pen name "The Observer".  The cousin sent to us copies of transcripts from some articles dated 1891, 1896, 1900 and 1904.  What a joy it is to add these articles to our Carpenter Family files.

Friday, February 17, 2012

New Pages - Work In Progress

The following pages are currently "works in progress."  Revolutionary War Ancestors, Civil War Ancestors, WW l Ancestors, and WW ll Ancestors.  I will begin to add individuals that served in or provided services to these war efforts when I am able to document that service.

Beginning of Family Picture Photography

While I was still a youngster, I enjoyed taking pictures.  I had a small Kodak camera that took black and white pictures.  In the 1950s, we did not have digital cameras.  You had to load the camera with a roll of film that had 12 pictures on it. Take your pictures and then send the film off to someplace to have your pictures developed, printed, and returned to you.  Like all children I took pictures of all kind of things....flowers, animals, landscapes, trees, ponds and a few family pictures....Little did I know then that this early interest in the photography would become a life long interest in recording my family history thru pictures.  One of my regrets is that I did not begin to name the individuals in my pictures until much later in my life.  Memory fades over time unfortunately.
 Picture Lesson # 1 - Always record the names of the individuals in the picture, the date and the location where the picture was taken.  


Sunday, February 12, 2012

"Maybe I Don't Want You To Find Me"

My wife and I were having dinner with another couple tonight.  The conversation came around to talking about genealogy and our ancestors.  I was telling them about one of my "Brick Walls."  Our dinner guest said something that I have not thought about before.  "Well maybe the person doesn't want you to find them."    How many of you have had this same feeling before?

Friday, February 10, 2012

1940 Census

I can hardly wait until the 1940 census is available for viewing.  Maybe I can find out when and where my uncle Carson changed his name.  He would have been 31 years old, married and possibly had children living in Colorado.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Surnames That Are Related To My Family

When I started this adventure in genealogy it was very easy for awhile.  The reason I'm saying this is that the surname Hugonin is not very common.  So when I typed the name "Hugonin" in a search engine I found ancestors that were mostly related to me.  As I began to branch out to my maternal side of the family, the surnames of my ancestors became more and more common.  To further complicate matters one of my dad's brothers changed his name from Hugonin to Carson.  I'm always interested in locating cousins with the following surnames: Hugonin - Farnell - Myers - Williamson - Mitchell - Wooten (Wootan) - Chamness - Pepper.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Why I named my blog Hugo's Musings.

Hugonin is my family name.  When my father Arthur Elsworth Hugonin was growing up in the Cypress Texas area, not many of his friends could pronounce his last name.  So they started calling him "Hugo".