52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 8 - Heirloom

heirloom

noun heir·loom \ ˈer-ˌlüm \

something of special value handed down from one generation to another

We do not have many heirlooms in our family.  Mostly we have photographs.  One of our heirlooms is a desk that was originally my husband’s oldest cousin, Florence aka Honey.  She used it when she was about 3 years old until 5 when she became too tall to use it. The desk stayed in her house until about 1946 when it was passed onto my husband. After we married and had children it was used by all three children, it resides at the top of our stairs to this day.  It is still in very good condition.  It is made of wood, it has two drawers and cubby holes and a roll top.  It also has the accompanying chair.

Roll Top Childs Desk

Honey using desk about 1938

Blogger Amy Johnson Crowe started this 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks because family history is better when it’s shared.  This is a series of prompts to help share discoveries I’ve made in my genealogy.

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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 7 – Valentine

This week the theme is Valentine, most likely Valentines Day, or a Valentine Card.  I will tell you about my husband’s aunt, Valentine Glessoff.

When I first met my husband’s aunt, she was introduced as Aunt Dee Dee or Aunt Val.  It was several years later that I found out that her real name was Valentine.  I always wondered maybe she was born on Valentines day and that was why she was named Valentine, but no she was born in June of 1907. She was born to Ivan Glessoff/Glassoff and Alexandria Konacova/Conacova both born in Russia and came to the United States in 1897.  The first daughter was given a Russian name at birth, Glafira (changed to Florence) and Valentine was the second daughter and Valentine in Russian is Валентина. This name was popular in Russia and was used by both men and women.  The first Russian women astronaut was named Valentine.

Aunt Val (Valentine) was a wonderful woman.  She loved fashion, music and dancing.  She used to go to the Roseland Ballroom in New York City before and after she married, dancing all the 1920’s and 1930’s dances.  One dance I always loved watching her dance was the Peabody. Valentine married Alfred (Freddy) Zito in December of 1929.  

Freddy Zito and Valentine Glessoff

Wedding Day December 29, 1929

They were great together, when I met them they had a 14-year-old daughter and loved to have family over all the time.  It was the noisiest house with a lot of laughter and good Italian cooking. 

Valentine worked in the Oyster Bay, New York town office for many years and was very involved with the Republican party.  Her husband died while dancing at a wedding in September of 1969.  Everyone said that was the way he would have wanted it, they just loved to dance together.  She continued to work until her late 60’s.  Her daughter married and had 2 sons and Valentine was the best grandmother ever to those boys.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 6 Favorite Name

Blogger Amy Johnson Crowe started this 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks because family history is better when it’s shared.  This is a series of prompts to help share discoveries I’ve made in my genealogy.

This week’s prompt is Favorite Name!

We are a family of plain names like Mary, Elizabeth and Catherine.  So, coming up with a favorite name that was special and unusual I had to look back into the 1700’s.

My favorite name is of my 3^rd Great Grandmother, Thankful Foster Moore.  She was born in Machias, Maine in 1783 to Benjamin and Ruth Foster.  She married Tristram Moore in 1802 in Moore’s Mill, Canada and died there in 1868.

The name Thankful was a very popular Puritan name but I don’t believe the family were Puritans.   I don’t know why she was given this name, her sisters were Susan, Sally and Lettie.  I guess that her parents were just very thankful when she was born.

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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 5 Census.

The theme for this 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is the Census.

There is more to genealogy than hatchem, matchem, and dispatchem[1].  The dates are important but that doesn’t tell you about the person, what they did for a living, how they lived their lives, their spouses and children and when they might have come to the USA.

The tool to use for that information is the federal census records.  The census were taken in the United States every ten years starting in 1790.  The only census that is missing is the 1890, it burned in a fire.  Some states also did a census every ten years starting 1855.

One of my ancestors, Horatio Nelson Moore, born in 1825 in Moore’s Mills, New Brunswick, Canada, came to this country sometime between 1857 and 1860.  When I trace him, I find that he married in 1850 to Mary Rose in St. Stephen, NB, Canada.  Their first child, Tristram, was baptized in 1851 in Canada.  The last child was born in Canada in 1857. Then I find the family in Mobile, Alabama in the 1860 census. This census made me look for further documents to find out why they came to Mobile, Alabama.

I checked back in the 1851 census in Canada for any of Horatio’s sisters and brothers and noted that one of his sisters was missing.  I then searched for her in the census. I found her, Emily Moore Williams with her husband and family living in Mississippi.  I did eventually received copies of letters Emily had written back to her parents confirming that Horatio had followed her family down south for work.

Through the years, in the census, Horatio was a music teacher, piano repairman, and a piano tuner.  In one of Emily’s letters she mentions that Horatio was giving voice lessons to her daughter.  Horatio also worked for the Chickering Piano Company as a piano tuner.  I researched patents and found he had a few concerning the workings of the piano for the Chickering Piano Company.  Horatio had his beginnings working with his brother John Warren Moore building furniture and pianos in St. Stephen, NB, Canada.

Also, Horatio was in Mobile during the Civil War, so I researched and found that he belonged to the British Guard.  It was a company with foreign born men who protected the docks in Mobile, Alabama during the war.

The census records gave me a more complete picture of my Great-Great Grandfather, Horatio Nelson Moore.

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[1] Births, Marriages, and Deaths used by my genealogy mentor, James P. Reilly