Amy was kind enough to extend an invitation for Thanksgiving in Michigan. While the snow melted here in Illinois, it stuck around for most of the weekend in Michigan. Seeing that I was in Michigan, I attempted to locate ancestors in the Michigan area. I stumbled across cousins by the name of SNUGGS. Marcia C. Tolles (b. 21 Apr 1840) married John Snuggs from England (b. 29 Aug 1829). The Snuggs family established themselves in Barry County, Michigan which is just outside of Kalamazoo. I was able to locate several grave sites for the Snuggs and decided that I would visit one of the sites on my way back to Illinois.



While I was able to locate the cemetery itself (despite its small size), I was unable to locate the headstones for the 3 Snuggs located in the cemetery. The snow hindered my search but I will take another look when it gets warmer. In any case, another 100+ individuals have been added to the tree making the count 11,882.

Now that I have about as much leaves cleaned up as I am going to get for the year, I was able to focus some additional attention on the Killion and Devine families. To give me a jump start, I read over an email I received from Michael McGinty some months ago. Even reading it the second time, I found the information in his email extremely interesting.

On the death certificate of my great grandfather McGinty, it stated that his place of birth was Ballygheer Ireland. I spent a significant amount of time reading over forums and looking at the Placenames database of Ireland (since the names of towns and counties has changed over the years) but wasn't able to locate a place by the name of Ballygheer. According to Mike:

"I can fill in at least one blank for you. The place of birth of Michael McGinty was Ballygheer, as shown on the death certificate. It is located in County Leitrim in the Northwest part of the Republic's 26 counties. The closest big town is Sligo. We visited there a few years ago, as my grandmother on my mother's side was from the same place and relatives, the Devine's, still farm land there. According to the story, the McGintys lived on the adjoining property, which had been vacant for many years. Leitrim was the poorest county in Ireland when my grandparents left there and, from all indications, it probably still is. Adjoining counties have developments that look more like Elk Grove Village or Long Grove."

In a later email Mike shared his experiences of a visit to Ballygheer when he was vacationing in Ireland. "There isn't much there. Farmland, peat bogs, windswept fields and a lovely white plaster church. We had tea and a tour at the Devine's home, which still had (in 1995) a peat fireplace plus modern electric heat."

Mike's emails were enough to shed light on possible places to look that I have overlooked in the past. With the assistance of the Chicago Tribune and Ancestry.com, I found several additional family members from the Devine and Killion families.

While I have the luxury of having access to the histories of many of my ancestors since they were either raised or lived in the Chicago vicinity, there are many of my ancestors that live out of my immediate reach. Since tombstones are often a very valuable source of genealogical information, I wanted to obtain digital photographs of the headstones of some of my ancestors from New England. While doing some research on FindAGrave (http://www.findagrave.com), I stumbled across a reference to http://www.raogk.org. The premise of the site is to give you access to local resources which may be able to assist you with your search for information in another geographical location without making the trip. So, I reached out to a volunteer to obtain digital photographs of some headstones in Cheshire, New Hampshire. While the volunteer hasn't yet been able to obtain those photograps, I was so impressed by the idea behind the site I registered as a volunteer myself.

Meanwhile, I focused my research efforts on relatives of the Kinney family. Frank W Mader was married to Julia C. Craigmile. While Julia was not a direct relative, I wanted to locate her parents. Julia and her parents were listed in the 1900 U.S. Census but she was found living with her aunt and uncle in the 1930 census (a family which I previously didn't have listed). So, this week I added nearly 400 new members to the tree from the Craigmile and Vial families bringing the total individuals in the family tree to just over 11,600.

My aunt, Hazel Wheeler, is one of the reasons that I first became interested in genealogy. She sent several letters to my father describing our ancestors. After she passed, we found several applications to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) based on lineage from John Mann Porter. While Hazel may have applied it appears that she was never accepted into the DAR.

John Mann Porter was in the French and Revolutionary Wars (beginning at the age of 16). During the Revolutionary War he worked from the rank of sergeant to the rank of major. He was eventually commissioned as a colonel in the Massachusetts militia by Governor John Hancock.

So, I sought to complete what my aunt had started. I initially applied based on lineage from John Mann Porter but there are a couple of "brick walls" that I've run into. I recruited the assistance of NEHGS but they ran into the same walls. While I continue to work out those issues, I applied and was accepted to the SAR based on lineage to Benjamin Worcester. If you are interested, you can see the acceptance card from the National SAR and the September and November IL SAR newsletters. Eventually I will submit an application to the DAR on behalf of my aunt Hazel.

For those of you who know me well, I served in the United States Marine Corps for 13 years. Some of those years were on active duty while the remaining years were on the active and inactive reserve. My time in the Marine Corps was amongst the finest years in my life. Yes, as the new movie Jarhead accurately depicts, life in the Marine Corps includes some not-so-fun time as well. Regardless, I can confidently say that if it were not for time time in the Marines, I would not be the person I am today.

While many state that the Marine Corps is 230 years old, the Marine Corps has only been celebrating the birthday of the Marine Corps since 1921. Additionally, for a brief time between 1783 and 1798, the United States Marine Corps went out of existence.

I have found that I am one of only a few in my family tree that have had the honor to serve in the United States Marine Corps. One other that I know of is my uncle John Carolan McGinty. However, there are countless others that have served in the military, mostly in the branches of the Army and the Navy. My father, grandfather and great grandfather on my father's side all served in the military. I would love to hear stories of other family members with military history.

It is timely that in celebration of Veteran's Day, Ancestry.com is releasing millions of military records never before available on the web. Those include World War I Draft cards, World War II Draft cards and World War II prisoner records.

Once a Marine, always a Marine. Semper Fidelis (always faithful). Happy birthday Marines!

So I decided to mix a little business with pleasure. I should say we (Amy and I) decided to mix a little work with pleasure. Each year FlyAway Travel hosts a genealogy conference aboard a cruise ship. In 2006, they will be hosting two - one in October and one in November. We (Amy and I) will be going on the cruise in October. The ship spends three days at port (Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten) while the other three days are at sea during which time most of the seminars take place. I could tell you more about it but the web page does a much better job. Please visit http://www.genealogycruise2006.com for a description of the events, the boat as well as the speakers.

For those of you who do research on a regular basis or are just looking to browse printed references, Google has been busy scanning books. Some of you may have heard that there were some legal concerns around copyrights which resulted in a delay of the project. However, Google is again scanning books with the idea that to mitigate any copyright concerns, Google will charge a minimal cost for printing a page from one of their scanned books. There appears to already be hundreds if not thousands of books scanned in. Search on your favorite subject at Google Print. I have heard that some have even been able to find references to ancestors in scanned books but I have had no such luck as of yet.

I welcome all of you to the Wheeler/McGinty Genealogy Blog. The is one of the latest services that I am brining to the site. I will use the blog to share with others my latest findings, what I am working on and some of the resources that I use to find our ancestors.

I just updated the site with the latest gedcom. The site now contains 10,922 individuals. The latest additions are members from the Chafee family as well as the Paschen family.

This is the latest addition to my family. Kaidan was born June 6, 2005. This picture is of him at just over 8 weeks of age. He is now 5 months old and doing great. Kaidan is a Chesapeake Bay Retriever who gets more than his share of attention. He has completed 8 weeks of socialization training with PetSmart and he is currently undergoing obedience training with Tops in Grayslake, IL.