Bonus Photos in Yearbooks

In some yearbooks, you can see the face of your ancestor as a student, plus get a bonus photo of him or her as a young child! The Junior class in the 1906 yearbook for West Virginia University provides one example of this. Margaret Buchanan of Morgantown is not a relative, but I would be extremely happy to find these photos for someone in my family tree.

"Behold in this co-ed one of the brightest of her class. She is not only a student of the University, but is at times a member of the Faculty. As an Assistant Professor in Mathematics, she has shown herself to be an efficient instructor, and yet, with all this dignity she has never lost her popularity. What it is about her that captures all the offices of Secretary we do not know, but suffice it to say that she has now to her credit not less than six such offices. Miss Buchanan is one of the small number of perosns [sic] who seem to know how to mix properly work and pleasure. In this she certainly has found the 'happy medium.'"

Margaret was one of only three women in her class. She went on to become a teacher at the university and married engineer Harry O. Cole in 1929.

Women in History: Army Nurses

There's a great book you can find on The Internet Archive or Google Books called Our Army Nurses. It includes a photo of each nurse and their personal recollections of their service during the Civil War. Mrs. Ruth Helena Sinnotte was from Illinois and spent time as a nurse on several hospital boats. She described the time she saved a patient suffering from typhoid fever:

"I got a little chicken broth, and alternated every fifteen minutes, a few drops of brandy, then of the broth. I stood over him for hours. After awhile I noticed a change for the better. He could swallow, and his pulse was quite perceptible. Finally it beat as quick as I wanted to feel it. After midnight I became quite faint; I had not eaten. I could not stop for supper. I called the best nurse on the boat to relieve me. I went to my quarters, but could not undress. I unfastened my shoes, then fell into a faint, or dead sleep. Did not awake until the sun called me, shining through the slats of my door. I went to my patient. He looked up and smiled. The doctor soon came along, and said, 'Why, ain't he dead yet?' The sick man whispered, 'She,' pointing to me. The doctor asked me what I had done. I said, 'I attended to him as though he were my own, and in our own home.' I asked if I could have him in my ward. He said, 'Yes; you deserve to have him.' When he got to St. Louis he walked the length of the boat between two men, shook hands with me, and said: 'God bless you always. You have saved me to my wife and five children.'"

Access the Archives of Colleges & Universities

The obituary of my husband's great-grandfather mentions that he was an 1898 graduate of Washington & Jefferson College, which is located in Washington, PA. So I decided to check out that school's archives to see what information they had about alumni.

In the U. Grant Miller Library Digital Archives on W&J's website, there are two alumni directories that cover the years 1802 to 1945. They also include information on college presidents, faculty, and alumni who died in various wars. On page 536 of the first volume, under the graduating class of 1898, it says this about my husband's great-grandfather:

"STEWART, JOHN BOYD DINSMORE--Son of John W. and Elizabeth Gamble Stewart; born in McKeesport, Pa., Nov. 7, 1874; graduated West Penn Medical College, 1901; practiced medicine McKeesport, '01--; married Feb. 16, '99, Anna M. Kirkendall. Physician, McKeesport, Pa."

I browsed the index and learned that John's older brother also graduated from W&J, in 1890:

"STEWART, MURRAY WILSON--Son of John W. and Lizzie G. Stewart; born McKeesport, Pa., April 30, 1865; law student with E. P. Douglass, of Pittsburg; practiced his profession in Pittsburg and McKeesport. Residence, McKeesport, Pa."

If you had ancestors who were fortunate to attend a college or university, alumni publications are another great resource for your genealogy research.

Women and the Trades: Pittsburgh, 1907-1908

In honor of our female ancestors, here are some excerpts from Women and the Trades: Pittsburgh, 1907-1908, which you can view on Google Books.

"The customary working day for women in Pittsburgh factories is ten hours. This may be shortened in some industries to five hours on Saturday, but in general, the working work is 60 hours long. In part, this customary limit to hours of work is due to the Pennsylvania law, which has for 12 years limited the working week to 60 hours; in part it is due to the general tendency, both in Europe and in the United States, to regard 10 hours a day as a reasonable maximum for women's work."

"Lunch Room for Workers in a Stogy Factory"

"The numbers of women workers in competitive industry are greater, not less, than they were fifty years ago, or twenty-five years ago, or ten years ago. There is every indication that these numbers will continue actually and proportionately to increase. We have no reason to think that the problems presented by the industrial employment of women will be solved by a cessation of that employment. But there is reasonable prospect that through change in the conditions of their labor much that seems evil in it may be done away, and the participation of women in industry may become a force of permanent value."

According to the publication, the top Pittsburgh trade groups based on the total number of women workers were:

1. Mercantile Houses
2. Food Production
3. Cleaning Industries
4. Stogy Industry
5. Metal Trades
6. Needle Trades
7. Miscellaneous Manufacturers
8. Lamps and Glass
9. Telephone and Telegraph
10. Printing Trades

Take a moment this month to remember the working women in your family tree.

Family Marriage: Wedding at St. Stephanus, Lambsheim, Germany

On this day in 1838, my 3rd great-grandparents were married in St. Stephanus Catholic Church in Lambsheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Courtesy of Wikipedia: St. Stephanus in Lambsheim, Germany

John Rüttger was 40 years old and Elisabeth Carolina Armbrust was 27 when they exchanged their vows in the church pictured above. As far as I can tell, they became the parents of two daughters and two sons. Eight years after their wedding, the family boarded a ship and headed to their new life in America. My 2nd great-grandmother, Anna Mary Rüttger, was only four years old.

Unfortunately, I haven't found any records for the family after their arrival until the marriage of 15-year-old Anna Mary in Pittsburgh in 1858. No Rüttgers are mentioned as witnesses at that wedding, and I haven't found any matching Rüttgers in the Pittsburgh city directories.

My search for John & Elisabeth Rüttger continues, but I pause today to remember them and their wedding day.

Gather Clues from Geneanet

One of the websites I like to turn to when I get stuck with my genealogy research is Geneanet. The European family trees there--in fact, the family trees on many websites--can give you some great clues to locating a possible town or names of parents for an ancestor. I consider them to be clues only because most of the trees don't provide sources to back up the information.

For example, I recently learned from church marriage records (which I'll write about in a future post) that the names of my 4th great-grandparents are Clemens Steimer and Barbara Eid of Wiesbach, Germany. I know I just stated that in a matter-of-fact manner, but I was definitely doing the happy dance!

After that great news, I didn't want to stop there, so I quickly searched for Clemens and Barbara on FamilySearch. No luck. Ancestry family trees? Nothing. So as I said at the beginning, my favorite go-to website is Geneanet. I'm not even a paid member, and I still love it. I did pay for a year or two but decided to take a break and use the money elsewhere. With some patience, you can still get to some of the same information, particularly the family trees. When you're a free member, you can only search on surname (not given name), so you usually have a lot of results to sort though. That's where the patience comes in.

Anyway, I found a tree that lists Clemens Steimer with his birth and death information, along with his second marriage to Barbara Eid. And the tree goes back another six generations to 1600. I would still need to locate the German records to verify these names, but it's an exciting thought that this information could be accurate.

You can also set up surname alerts in Geneanet, which works best for less common names. The site will email you a list of any recently added matches so you don't have to sift through the entire database again. You should check it out. And don't ignore information just because the contributor didn't provide sources; it may help you pinpoint where you need to look for your family's records.

Pittsburgh Female College

The Pittsburgh Female College was established in the mid-1850s in the Wilkinsburg area of the city. According to the Annals of Old Wilkinsburg and Vicinity, the college "had a fine class of students--boarders coming from many states in the union--as far west as California and from Minnesota to Texas. The day pupils came from the best families in Pittsburgh and its suburbs." The building pictured below burned in 1891 and was not rebuilt.

Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny Cities, 1863

Our Ancestors' Weather

With some of us dealing with unusually cold temperatures (-11°F this morning south of Pittsburgh!), I thought it would be appropriate to post this 1912 article that I found on Newspapers.com:

The Daily Notes (Canonsburg, PA), January 13, 1912

"With thermometers standing at from 16 to 20 degrees below zero, the mercury Saturday morning registered the lowest in thirteen years. Last evening the temperature marked a few degrees above zero, and the Pittsburg weather office promised a minimum temperature for the night of about five below zero. But there was a steady lowering of the temperature during the night, and this morning when people looked at the thermometer and found the mercury extending but a fraction of an inch above the little glass bulb they rubbed their eyes to see it [sic] they had read aright. The drop in twelve hours was about 20 degrees.

The coldest place in the neighborhood of Canonsburg this morning was McConnells Mills, where thermometers marked as low as 34 degrees below zero. At the store of G. H. Challener the mercury crawled down into the little bulb, the instrument being made to mark only as low as about 30 degrees below. Hickory reported 30 below; Houston, 28 and  30; the pump station near Linden, 27 below."