Anna Merriman Busby: Who's Your Daddy? (52 Ancestors #8)

Anna Merriman Busby is my 3rd great grandmother. Another female brick wall. A really tough one. There are quite a few people looking for her parents. There is a great deal of confusion surrounding the facts that have been discovered. This will be a short post.

Anna Merriman (or Merryman) was born 28 July 1807 according to her headstone on Find A Grave. Census records indicate she was born in Maryland.


Anna Merriman married John Wisner Busby in Harrison Co OH in April of 1826.


By 1840 the couple was residing in Carroll Co OH, where they remained until death. It is reported that they had 14 children.


Anna is buried in the Palermo Cemetery on the grounds of the former Palermo Methodist Protestant Church in Carroll Co, OH.

Over the years there has been lots of talk, theories, speculation on who Anna's father was. Some say it was Micajah "Cage" Merryman/Merriman. This has been discredited as "Cage" and his wife Sophia Snyder were actually married four years after Anna was born. "Cage" and Sophia did have a daughter named Anna and did live in Ohio in 1820, hence the confusion. There has also been another name bandied about, "Page" Merriman, but I am unclear as to the origin of this line of thought.

I must admit I have been away from this branch of the family for several years. With the Genealogy Do-Over I am jumping back in and working my maternal line once again.

So the questions remain.

Who is Anna Merriman's father?

How did she get from Maryland to Ohio, and why?

When did she arrive in Ohio? Was she an adult or a child?

She's buried in a Methodist cemetery, was she a member of the Methodist church?

To date there are a lot more questions than answers. I hope with time, and as more and more records are being discovered, we will one day know who Anna Merriman Busby's daddy was!

FTM Is The Devil (sorry RW): Genealogy Do-Over Week Seven

Week Seven.

The week I have been waiting for!

The week you all are going to tell me which genealogy software I'm going to love AND use.

No. No, I can't decide. I want you to do it for me. Please??

I began my journey with Family Tree Maker back in the early 90's. I never really used it. It didn't make sense to me. When Ancestry first showed up I embraced it's ease of use and dove in.  I LOVED it!! I built my entire empire in Ancestry.com. I loved that I could access it anywhere, any time. I loved it's visual appeal. I loved the design of it - it made sense to me. Then I started hearing about the foolishness of having all your work stored off site - in someone else's database. What if Ancestry should go belly-up? Then what?

I purchased an updated, 21st century version of FTM thinking it would simulate the ease of use that Ancestry provided. It still didn't make sense. I never used it.

FTM - the devil

Then Ancestry came out with Tree-Sync and I began to get 'visions of sugarplums' dancing 'round my head. I liked the idea of Tree Sync! I could do all my work on Ancestry.com and then sync it to FTM - saved on my home computer.

I purchased the upgrade.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

In reality, what has transpired is one big fat mess. One GIANT mess that I don't even want to THINK about, as it will require mindboggling hours of tediously deleting the triplicate records that have crossed over. TRIPLICATE! In ALL my synced trees (of course I synced them all!!)

And even with the new upgrade, I still hated FTM. It still didn't make any sense. It still seemed hard to use. (I know you are asking yourself right this very second, why Anne, why did you continue down this path of  perpetual error?) I don't know. FTM would not even work correctly on my brand new Win8.1 laptop (which I also detest - but that's a rant for another time).  I was forced to uninstall it and reinstall it on my desktop (this is where the triple records problem originated). Either I didn't have a clue or there is no good way to remove all the synced trees from one computer and re-sync them to another computer. I am so angry with it now I doubt I will ever agree to use it again.

And all the money I wasted! All the time! All the frustration!

FTM is the devil.

And I STILL don't have an off-line program.

Afraid of recreating my previous experience I have refrained from pursuing that activity.

Until now.

Now it is a topic point, now it is something to look at, study, compare and pursue.

So, here's where you all come to my rescue, right?

footnote: I see this same problem over and over again on synced trees on Ancestry.com. Duplicate, triplicate, quadruple records. I am the first to admit that I am just slightly above clueless when it comes to many aspects of the whole computer "thing", but there has got to be a better way! Dang it!

Genealogy Do Over: Recap or How I Got HERE: Part Two

And now for some good news.

I've spent a lot of time dragging my heels, complaining, weeping.

But I have actually accomplished a few things.

This Do Over has been hard. Harder than I imagined. Mostly because of my own inability to stay focused. Stay on task. Allow enough time.

And, there's the wanting to do it all. NOW.

And, of course my squirrell like attention span when there is something I don't want to do because it is not F.U.N. (ahem ... spreadsheet anyone??)

So, here is what I have accomplished over these past seven weeks.

• I set all previous research aside on the portion of my tree that needed the do over. I isolated the branch and am in the process of stripping it bare of all frivolous willy-nilly 'ancestors' I have no proof of. I decided to keep the original research my grandmother had done in tact and build from there - correctly this time. (Week 1)
• I already had some good base practices set from my experience working my paternal line. I had learned a lot of what to do and what not to do and have become a much better researcher because of it. (Week 1)
• My research goal was/is to clean up and well document my maternal line. (Week 2)
• I have been tracking searches with notes and comments attached to the individual ancestor's information page - this seems easiest for me, but I did create a series of notebooks to also do some written documentation. (Week 4)
• I have a nice bookmark "tool kit" going in a subfolder under my Genealogy bookmark tab - so I felt pretty good when this topic arrived! (Week 5)
• I also have been very meticulous at citing sources more recently, learning the hard way what happens when you think you'll "remember". A practice I will carry forward! (Week 5)
• I have also been very good at evaluating evidence. So I feel good about this one too! (Week 6)
• I have begun another bookmark with online education opportunities and have attempted to watch at least one podcast a week. (Week 6)

Huh. Look at that. In reviewing my accomplishments at this 'half-way' point I realize I actually have made some progress. The "hard" stuff (for me) is still left to do, but I seem to have a good handle on some of the other topics and assignments. Alright. Ok.

Yet I still feel lost.

Behind.

Overwhelmed.

I have hours and months of work ahead of me cleaning up and removing "ancestors" that never should have been claimed in the first place. It is a daunting task - one I tip-toed around for years. I still believe it is easier (if easier is the right word for this sort of tedious task) to remove than to re build. Who knows, I may chuck it all in a fit of frustration one afternoon, but for now I plug away like an assassin killing off long dead un-relatives. 

And there's the whole spreadsheet thing (let's not go there, I was feeling so accomplished!).

To be continued .....

Genealogy Do Over: Recap or How I Got HERE: Part One

Genealogy Do Over - Restart Button

Well, well, well. Here it is Week Seven. Where am I?

Stuck somewhere back in Week Three or Four.

I lost it. Lost total control. Everything was moving way too fast and my mind was reeling. I kept a paper bag on my desk in my Cave for the increasingly frequent bouts of hyperventilation.

And I wept.

Genealogy is hard ...... When you do it right .....

But here I am. Back in the Cave. Reviewing the topics of the previous weeks. Making yet another checklist of what I did and what is still left to be done.

And, as providence would dictate, these past two weeks I have been flooded with replies to old (some very old) message board posts and new DNA matches - BSO's that distracted me, caught my eye, sucked me in. Took me off course and down the rabbit hole.

Why is it so easy to follow that darn rabbit!?!

Seems I need to recommit. Seems this is a recurring theme. Seems I need to learn some focus.

Or make another checklist.

So. Back to the beginning I go. To the beginning of the year and my grandiose plan of cleaning up my maternal lineage.  I have been avoiding this for several years, as you may know from reading some of my previous posts. The Do Over was my savior. The thing I needed to kick my butt into action. Alas, it is a self-guided course, and I am famous for guiding myself to the coffee pot, facebook, pinterest, what the neighbors are doing next door .......

The beauty of this is that with each "restart" I have made a bit of progress. Each time I "restart" I am a little farther along. I have a bit of new knowledge and a new technique or two under my belt (or should I say in my tool kit).

As I review the past seven weeks I feel terribly lost. Terribly behind. Terribly inadequate. I glance at my paper bag feeling the twinge of overwhelmedness. I pull it together and begin to make a list of all I still need to do:

• Interview the living / conduct self-interview        (Week 2)
• Stupid spreadsheet - stupid, stupid spreadsheet, er, I mean Research Log (Week 3)
• Another stupid, stupid spreadsheet - um, Project and Task Log (Week 4)
• 
  

Wait? That's it?

So what has clearly been holding me up and creating undue anxiety and pig-headedness is the SPREADSHEET!  The elephant in the room that I am trying very hard to ignore as I squeeze past to get to my comfy Cave chair.

Well, if that's all it is maybe I need to just turn my focus on creating this Spreadsheet. I already have the template on my computer...... I'll just go grab a cup of coffee .....

And take a quick peek out the window .....

Isobel Burness: "Of The Same Stock As Burns The Poet" (52 Ancestors #6)

It all started with the death of my father and the discovery of a hand drawn Family Tree from 1880 that my mom found stuck behind the furnace. It was labeled IRONS FAMILY TREE in my dad's handwriting. It was rolled up in a mailing tube, cracked and brittle. I was afraid to unroll it.

Backtrack a few years. My dad was doing some research on his mother's side of the family, the Irons family, and had inherited a few bits of information from his uncle, who spent his retirement doing genealogy. We knew of the family cemetery plot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, and one Saturday we all drove into the city to visit. I  immediately experienced a hushed sense of awe at the number of family members resting there. And an urgent need to discover who they were when they were alive.

Life got in the way and my desire waned. I put it aside to pursue other things.

Then my dad died. He was buried in the family plot in Graceland Cemetery surrounded by his ancestors. It was, still is, sobering. People, my people, who walked the streets of Chicago over 150 years ago. Who lived through the Great Fire. Who immigrated to America for a better life. Who were among the early pioneers of a tiny little frontier town called Chicago.

Out came the box filled with research he had been conducting (that I was not aware of) the letters from his uncle, stacks of old, old family photos. the Family Tree. My dad was an only child and a pack rat, so lucky for me he had everything his mother had saved from her family.

My curiosity was ignited anew.

Isobel Burness,who 

"Tradition said was of the same stock as that of Burns the Poet"

One afternoon, when curiosity got the best of me, I cautiously unrolled the Family Tree. It was not the Irons Family Tree at all - it was the Fraser Family tree dated 1880. The earliest entries were for Duncan Fraser and Isobel Burness, who "Tradition said was of the same stock as that of Burns the Poet". What? Who were these people? I needed to find out!

I dug in to try to discover who Isobel was. I started a public tree on Ancestry to do some fishing. I added her to WikiTree. I searched and searched to the best of my online ability. A trip to Scotland was not in my realm of possibility any time soon.

From the Family Tree I learned only a few key bits of information. Isobel Burness or Burns might have been born about 21 June 1748. She married Duncan Fraser in 1763 (was she really only 15?) and she died 15 Jan 1806 at Leslie, Scotland. She would have been 57 years old. The ONLY record I have been able to discover for myself is the baptism record noted on the Family Tree. It is still unclear 135 years later whether this is, in fact the correct Isobel.

So the mystery continues. Who was Isobel Burness or Burns? Was she "of the same stock" as the poet? Who were her parents? Did I and the author of this Tree find the correct baptism record? Did she really get married at 15? How did the Tree author conclude when Isobel died? And where? Where is her grave?

All my answers lie so far away. In both chronological time and physical distance. I hope to someday have more answers to this mysterious matriarch of my Fraser family branch.

And one more thing .... how did this mysterious Family Tree, authored in Scotland in 1880 by John Fraser, make it's way to America and wind up behind the furnace at my father's house?

I love a good mystery, don't you?