Thomas J. and Florence Anna Ashburn’s Golden Anniversary

This is a photo taken at the 50th wedding anniversary of my great-great-grandmother, Florence Anna Ashburn (born Craney) and great-great-grandfather Thomas J. Ashburn. Based on their marriage date in 1871, it was taken in 1921, likely in Cherry County, Nebraska, where they were then living, and most of their children and grandchildren lived. They were …

Back to the Florence Craney Research

I have not posted for a while, and I am doing a variety of genealogy things (even discounting my regular life). One thing is preparing to apply to BCG for certification, which means I cannot post about branches of my family that might be included in that. Another thing is obsessively taking courses I think …

Stouts Grove, Illinois (a Digression)

Editor's note: this is a post I started last fall, well before coronavirus. I've been taking a while to get back to my "who was Florence Craney's father" question, since it is a real brick wall but also needs more work.  In the meantime, I've been driving through McLean County, Illinois, somewhat regularly. McLean County …

The Search for Florence Craney’s Parents (Part 2)

My break-through in locating Florence's mother's family was when I found Florence in the 1856 Iowa State Census. In 1860, she was with another family in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, and in 1856, I located her in Preparation, Monona, Iowa, which is also in western Iowa, just a couple of counties north: In 1856, Florence (whose …

The Search for Florence Craney’s Parents (Part 1)

As mentioned in the last post, Florence Anna (Craney) Ashburn died in 1923, and her husband Tom Ashburn not until 1934. In addition, they both lived close to my grandmother, who was born and grew up in Valentine, Cherry, Nebraska. While she was only 7 when Florence, or Annie, died, many of her aunts and …

Who Is Next? Maybe James Craney?

My original plan for this blog was to focus especially on tracing my various family lines back to where they were before coming to America, as well as to find out what I can about their lives before and after immigrating.  As anticipated, this became difficult quickly.  As covered in prior posts, my most recent …

Restarting the Blog

Rather obviously it's been a long time. I've been researching, as well as using DNA painter and working through and tagging matches on Ancestry, but haven't been motivated to post.  This is a promise to start up again.

Confirming Paper Research with DNA

In a post or two, I will link a few pieces on how to properly use DNA matches to map chromosomes and confirm paper research, and I'm not promising that my rough run-down here meets those standards in every case.  I'll come back to that. But I did want to create a quick record of …

K2b mtDNA

I will summarize here what I've discovered about the K2b mtDNA haplogroups, which as mentioned above seem to be somewhat rare, especially K2b2. (As discussed in a later post, my matrilineal line is one of my brick walls, and I do have an intriguing mtDNA match who is also a general autosomal match). Two sources …

Genetic Genealogy

Long time since I checked in, so more catching up later.  I've had a lot (non family history related) going on, but I also have finally started learning more about DNA and how to use it in family history. One thing I've done is test my mtDNA, and my dad's Y-DNA and mtDNA.  Surprisingly, my …