Family History Find of the Day

Ella Sedgwick Ralph Album 2, p.24  Caroline Ralph Miller collection,  scanned with permission.  PL Embley digital collection. There may have been a Nancy Drew mystery by that title... I started this genealogical journey in the 1970s with a mimeographed list of my direct ancestors prepared by my grandfather Marion Taylor Bird. (Probably about the same time I would have been reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Are these two facts related?)  The "Ancestors Of..." list was extensive on my maternal grandfather's line but had few details about my maternal grandmother's ancestors. This was likely in part because her father John Albert Ralph died when she was not yet 10 years old. His father,  William John Ralph , was orphaned when he was only 7. Family information that would have passed naturally over years of association was lost.   Ella Sedgwick Ralph Album 2, p.12 Caroline Ralph Miller collection  scanned with  permission. PL Embley digital collection...

This week I was finally able to confidently identify John Ralph , the brother of my ancestor Edward Martin Ralph . Family records indicated that Edward and John had immigrated together to the United States from Cornwall. But I have never been able to find any evidence of John living near his brother. So where was he? I recently used the FamilySearch messaging feature to contact someone who had made an edit to an ancestor's profile. I couldn't figure out the connection and wanted to know how we might be related. Happily, he responded quickly, and in his reply, he made reference to an old letter he had been given that provided details about both the Howe and Ralph families (our shared ancestors).  The undated letter from "Aunt Ella" Sedgwick Ralph (my g-g-grandmother) to her nephew William Withey provided many important Howe and Ralph family details, including this mention of John: Edward and his brother John Ralph came to this country when they were young me...

Margaret Howe  was my 3rd great grandmother. Born in Ireland in about 1818, family records indicate that she met and married  Edward Martin Ralph  in Cincinnati, Ohio. (If you log into FamilySearch.org and follow the links, you can see more information about Margaret and Edward.) I have been unable to find an Ohio marriage record for them, and until recently, had no records that actually tied them to Cincinnati.  Years ago I visited the Public Library of Cincinnati in person. A librarian helped me search city directories (in book form) for the time period when Margaret Howe might have lived there. I found one possibility - a Margaret Howe, dressmaker, in 1846, on 5th between Broadway and Pike.  Margaret Howe, dressmaker, Robinson & Jones' Cincinnati directory for 1846, First Ward, p.42  The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio When I visited the library, I found no other records that could confirm this was the right Mar...

Daily State Register  [Springfield] 9 Dec. 1902, p.5.  There haven't been many epidemics that have impacted me in my lifetime. Over the past year or two, we have chuckled at the way doctors' offices and hospitals quiz patients about recent travels to West Africa. When my husband answered "yes" (following a business trip to Nigeria), no one seemed to know what to do. Ebola was a serious risk in a number of parts of the world, but not within thousands of miles of where we lived. Diphtheria, on the other hand, was a very real threat to families and communities at the turn of the 20th century and for centuries before that.  A diphtheria epidemic in the Springfield, Illinois area took the life of my great grandmother's niece. Newspaper, census, and interment records help tell the story.  "Diphtheria at Keefner Home - Contagion's Second Visit There, Other Residences Quarantined." Daily Illinois State Journal  [Springfield] 11 Dec...