Favorite Photo Wednesday

my great-grandmother Beryl Louise Kline Moorhead Sanborn (1877-1957) and my grandmother Mary Frances Moorhead Hyde (1899-1991) - photo taken approx. 1919

Find A Grave - I Love you!

Find a Grave is a web community of genealogists and lovers of cemeteries. It is filled with cemetery records and photos that have been submitted by the site's members. I've created memorials to some ancestors, and I've also become a volunteer, traveling to local cemeteries and taking photos of graves from requests that come through the Find A Grave website.
Since there are millions of graves saved on the site, I thought my chances would be pretty good that I would find some family graves. And boy have I! My favorite so far is the graves of my great-grandfather Earl Hyde, and my great-grandmother Nellie F. Hyde. Earl's grave was already posted on the site, and Nellie's appeared after I put in a photo request for her grave.
So, I now know where they are buried (Marietta, OH), and I can't wait to visit some day!

Back to Blogging...

I'm going to make a concerted effort to blog about my genealogy journey...I think I burned myself out last year trying to keep up with 4 blogs. I've deleted my New York City blog, my Levittown,PA blog, and my American Girl blog. Now I'm just down to my Family tree blog...hopefully the one that is here to stay!

Another blog problem! Argh!

I loved my blog template - it was PERFECT for a family tree blog - it was red and had a tree with lots of branches at the top, and the leaves on the tree were little red hearts. What a perfect background for a redheads family tree blog, right?
Well, apparently the person who created the template and posted it online for use pulled the artwork off of their Photobucket account, so now my perfect little blog was not so perfect anymore.
I'll using this Blogger template - it's good because it looks old fashioned. And it won't go away.
Now I have to fix the missing photos, and I'm all set again!

Missing Photos

Sorry about the missing photos - they were loaded through Flickr, and I've deleted my Flickr account due to lack of use. I'll upload them again soon!

Obsession!

Lately every day is consumed with searching for ancestors! Online, at the library scanning through books, trips to NYC to look at books at the Public Library...I'm obsessed! Up to now it's been all about the number of ancestors I could add to my tree, and how far back I could get. I think I'm going to switch gears. I want to start researching family history, by concentrating on one or two people at a time, and try to find out as much as I can about them. Should be interesting, but my problem is resources. I just don't have the money (like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick do on "Who Do You Think You Are") to travel the country and the world to do my research. SO, I'll be sticking to the internet and local libraries (Lower Bucks County, Philadelphia Free Library and the New Your Public Library) at first.
Good luck to me!

Scans from Old Negatives

These were all scanned from old negatives I brought home from my parents - I think they came out great! I scanned them on a flatbed scanner, then inverted the colors and tweeked them a bit in Photoshop Elements. Not bad!

caught up in other things....

but I am going to get back to my Family Tree very soon! First there was a trip to NYC, then Rob's final race of the season, and now the Phillies in the World Series! (Go Phils!)
I'll get back to posting as soon as possible.

The Other Side of My Story

Last week I upgraded my Ancestry.com subscription to include international records. My reason was because I've hit brick walls on the Crawford and Camidge sides. I've not looked at anything family tree related since last Tuesday because I got frustrated. I was searching through passengers lists to see if I could find what ship my family members had come over on. VERY time consuming.
I think that I need to try to find a class that I can take to learn where to go from here.

It's late, and I'm tired. For now, I'm going to post a couple of Crawford pics...

Walter Crawford 1912

The Crawford Family - year unknown

Walter Crawford and Aunt Bessie (this is my favorite picture of my grandfather - I wish I had gotten to meet and know him)

found the missing link

I found it - if the information in Ancestry.com is correct, I've been able to link our branch of the Hyde family to the Royal family of England. Here we go...it's a little confusing, so try to keep up...

Robert Hyde born 1465 in Norbury, Cheshire, England had 5 children, 2 of which were Hamnet, born in 1491, and Laurence born in 1511.

Our family descended from Hamnet, and 3 generations later, William Hyde came to America. Obviously, we are the poor branch of the tree.

The Royal Family descended from Laurence. Laurence had a son Henry, who had a son Edward, who had a daughter Anne. Anne married James Stuart, the Duke of York, who eventually became King James II. Anne and James' daughter Mary became Queen Mary, and when she died in 1702, her sister Anne became Queen Anne. So, what this means is that I am some kind of cousin to Queen Elizabeth.

Also, to go back a few generations, Anne Hyde's brother Henry, the 2nd Earl of Clarendon, had a son named Edward, who was the 3rd Earl of Clarendon. He came to America as Lord Cornbury, and was appointed as the Govenor of New York and New Jersey. Unfortunately, it looks like he was not a good govenor or a nice guy - click here for the story they have in Wikipedia. Here is a picture ....

So, like I said earlier...I always knew that I was a princess, and maybe Princess Fergie really is my long lost relative.