Thoughts, Contemplations, and Musings

A round up of thoughts on disparate details.

Vernon Erwin.

I’ve received an email from someone who reads the blog, suggesting that Vernon Erwin may have had unrecognized  PTSD based on his time in the Spanish-American war, which could explain some of his actions and inability to settle down to married life and several children. I think that’s a real possibility and I’ll be editing the post to reflect that possibility.

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My maternal grandparents, Clarence and Mabel Erwin Snyder

I’ve noticed that a lot of the blogs which are doing the 52 Ancestors Challenge start with the writer’s grandparents and moving up. On the other hand, so far I’ve spoken of everyone but my grandparents. In some ways it’s more difficult to research people who are closer on the tree to me. It’s more difficult to source my information, unless they make the newspaper, as the last census that has been released is the 1940 census. True, I have memories of them, but I was a child and therefore I’m uncertain as to whether my memories are of true events or whether my young mind misinterpreted what was happening . I’ve asked family members for memories but due to the difficulties mentioned above, and the fact that I’m still rather inexperienced in genealogical research, I find it difficult to corroborate many of the memories with sourced facts. (I’m an Administrative Law Judge – what can I say? We like cites.) I was going to skip writing about them for this reason, among others, but that didn’t feel right. So I will write about them now and just do the best I can with what I have and verify later when it becomes possible. At least by doing them last before I start writing about the other side of my family, you are familiar with the families that formed them and that may give a bit more insight into them than starting with them would have. My grandmother, Mabel Erwin Snyder, will be post #19 for the 52 Ancestrors posts, and my grandfather, Clarence Snyder, will be #20. The next post after that will be from my father’s side of the family (I’ve no idea who yet.)

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I’m moving.

I have started researching my Father’s side of the family as I worked ahead and the last several posts on the Snyder/Erwin side have been prepared in advance. That said, it’s possible, maybe even probable, that I will fall behind in my posts in the early part of summer as I’m moving July 1 to a nicer but smaller apartment and must first reduce the stuff I own, then pack the rest of it for the movers, and then unpack it after the move – while working full time. This will not leave a lot of time for research and writing up bio-sketch posts, and definitely not one a week – each one of these things takes about 8 hours to write, not including the major research. I hope to catch up and still end up posting about my preliminary research on 52 different ancestors by the end of the year.

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Vertical Pedigree of Clarence Weldon Snyder

I previously did a chart of the direct line members of my Mom’s maternal side of the family  

I could find, so I want to do a chart of those direct line members of Mom’s paternal line I've found before I move on. And here it is:

Click to make bigger