Friday, July 1, 2016

Rediscovering Old Material

It often pays to go through genealogical material more than once. Recently I came across a forgotten envelope full of newspaper clippings from the 1920s and 1930s and later. They weren't new - just forgotten. What a treat it was to re-read them! My grandmother had clipped the articles, mainly obituaries, from the Hardin County (Illinois) Independent but did not note the date on any of them. Fortunately, I can determine the date for most of them.

One clipping is an obituary for my great-grandmother, Mary Ann Wolstenholme Smith, who died in 1933 in Rosiclare, Hardin County. This obituary is especially interesting to me now because I am once more researching her father, Hugh Wolstenholme Jr. and his family. Hugh was born in England ca 1818/1819, came to America ca 1820 and lived many years in Davidson County, Tennessee. I know he visited his daughter, Mary Ann  and her husband, Reddick Smith, but I have not found the date or place of his death.  My goal for the next six months is to determine where he was after the 1880 Davidson County census and where he died. Family tradition has it that he died while traveling between Tennessee and Illinois, but I have never found proof.

Mary Ann lived with her children after her husband died in 1913. She would stay first with with one child and then another. Apparently, she entertained her grandchildren with stories of growing up in Goodlettsville, Tennessee not far from Nashville. It is a good thing she did as she does not appear on the 1850 and 1860 census records even though she was born in 1848. Her stories provide the only view of her activities before her marriage to Reddick Smith in 1866.

So, the Wolstenholme family is back on the research list and I hope to have something to report periodically.


Published 1 July 2016, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog, http://wkygenealogy.blogspot.com/

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