Surname Saturday - KIRBY

Huh, Saturday again already! Amazingly, we got yet another major storm here in the Northeast, what a nasty winter this has been! Although, not as bad as the ice storms we got every week for several weeks back in 1995 or 1996.

Of course, back then I was younger so maybe it seemed more significant. Snow storms don't stress me out the way they used to because I guess I don't have as much angst about how I'm going to get in to work. I just bring my laptop home and voila, work from home. What an awesome world we live in.

ANYWAY, here's my surname for this Saturday - KIRBY. I'm sticking with my mysterious theme, so this will be the 3rd week in a row of surnames I have that have been little buggers.

We're still in the state of New York for the KIRBY family, only this time we are over in Seneca County, in the town of Waterloo. That's where I have my furthest back reference to a Samuel KIRBY in the 1850 NY Federal Census.

Last week's posting on AKINS generated a lead for me when another genealogist commented and gave me a link to what she thought might be wills for relatives in Tompkins County, NY. And I think they are! I'll be ordering them shortly and will be looking for a way to pay it forward for someone else!

So here goes, my KIRBY ahnentafel:

1. Leah KLEYLEIN - Me!

3. Deborah DOMELLE - my Mom!

7. Ann MIX - my Grandma! She was born in Tompkins County, NY and spent her childhood years there. After marrying my grandfather (William DOMELLE), they moved around a bit.


15. Cornelia Elizabeth AKINS, born 23 Apr 1887 in Village of Lockwood, Tioga County, NY; died 24 Jan 1986 in Ithaca, Tompkins County, NY. She was married to William MIX, of Tompkins County, NY.


31. Hattie Elizabeth KIRBY, born 19 Mar 1866 in New York (likely in Seneca County); died 04 Jun 1963. She married John Francis AKINS in 1885.


63. Laura Lunett KIRBY, born 21 Mar 1849 in New York; died 31 Oct 1866. So here's the scoop on poor Laura: she died young (only 17 yrs old), 3 days after giving birth to her daughter Hattie (above). Family lore states that she died of a broken heart because....Hattie's father was Laura's sister's husband. Got that?

Laura's sister stayed married to the man and had more children with him after Laura's death, and even named a daughter born in 1868 after her sister. So would that REALLY have happened if her sister had slept with her husband and had a baby? I don't know, stranger things have happened. Sadly, the little Laura born in 1868 didn't live to see her 2nd birthday. Whatever the true situation, the fact is poor Laura died young, and I don't have any proof of Hattie's paternal parentage other than family lore.


126. Samuel KIRBY, born 22 Sep 1814 in New York; died 15 Oct 1894. He married Elucinda Gibbs, born 23 Dec 1820 in New York; died 06 Dec 1901.

I've located Samuel and Lucinda on the 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 NY Federal Census's - always in Waterloo, Seneca County. Beyond that, I've got nothing.

Interestingly, the 1880 census showed that Samuel and Lucinda both stated their father's were born in England and in 1870, it states that Lucinda's father was of foreign birth. Samuel and Lucinda both state that they were born in New York state. I haven't yet located immigration records to support this.



And that's it for the KIRBY family!

Surname Saturday - Akins

This surname has been some trouble for me in researching it - a couple generations and BAM! Brick Wall!!!

Also, there are many spellings in the records I've come across: AKINS, AIKINS, AIKENS, and AIKEN.

I suspect it is English/Scottish/Irish, but I have no actual proof as yet. This particular AKINS family was in the Finger Lakes region of New York; specifically in Tompkins and Tioga counties. Where they were before that, I just don't know yet!

Here is my ahnentafel for AKINS:

1. Leah KLEYLEIN - Me!

3. Deborah DOMELLE - my Mom!

7. Ann MIX - my Grandma! She was born in Tompkins County, NY and spent her childhood years there. After marrying my grandfather (William DOMELLE), they moved around a bit.

15. Cornelia Elizabeth AKINS, born 23 Apr 1887 in Village of Lockwood, Tioga County, NY; died 24 Jan 1986 in Ithaca, Tompkins County, NY. She was married to William MIX, of Tompkins County, NY.

30. John Francis AKINS, born 13 Mar 1841 in New York; died 13 Feb 1890. I've located him in Tioga County, NY in the 1870 and 1880 Federal Census's, but that's it so far. He was married to Hattie KIRBY, who I believe is from Seneca County, NY, as the earliest record I've located her in is in the 1870 Federal census in her Grandfather's household in the town of Waterloo.

60. John AIKENS, born 1810 in New York. He was married to Deborah, surname unknown.

120. AIKENS. He married Elizabeth, surname unknown. I have a record of Elizabeth because she was living with her son John AIKENS in Ithaca, Tompkins County, NY during the 1850 Federal Census.


And that's it for my AKINS family!

"I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food."

HAHA, who am I kidding, we all know me cooking means it must be Christmas!

That's not to say I don't think about food all the other days. Usually what will pop into my head as I wait impatiently for the 3 minute count-down on any given microwave is something like this: "oh my god could that timer be any slower why does it have to be so long do I have time to go to the bathroom before it finishes holy cow what would I do if I had to actually COOK this".

Cooking used to take a long time (and if you do it right, it should be a chunk of time (as in: more than 3 minutes), just like you should leisurely sit down to enjoy the fruits of your labor). I often consider what my ancestors did for meals while I do my genealogy research. Beyond genealogy, I just enjoy history in general, but not the boring old "on this date this happened" kind of thing - I like to figure out how people actually lived day to day, those little clues to how life is different now.

Here's an example. A couple years ago I watched the movie "Gaslight" for the first time. Great movie!!! But here's a little clue I picked up (I promise I won't ruin it for you if you haven't seen it). Back when people used gas to light their houses, when you turned on an additional lamp somewhere else in the house, the one's that were already going would dim for a second. Makes perfect sense right? You have your flow of gas into the house and when suddenly it has another outlet, there's a disruption in how it's flowing. But you would always know when someone else in the house turned on a lamp, how about that? I know I know, not significant, but still, a tiny little detail of life I tucked away in my memory.

But back to food. How people like their food to look and taste changes a lot from generation to generation. I would love to taste a meal from a couple hundred years ago, I imagine I would probably be stunned at how much I didn't like it, but I'd still like to taste it!

A few years ago I came across a wonderful book that I highly recommend for anyone who is interested in how people prepared food throughout history. It's not too scholarly, I found it very readable and interesting. It's called "Food in History" by Reay Tannahill. Certainly in one book all topics can't be covered, but I came away knowing more and feeling more aware.

There's also a few blogs I follow that focus primarily on historical food that I'd like to recommend if you are interested:

1. Medieval Cookery - http://medievalcookery.blogspot.com/

The author is not a prolific poster, but there have been some really interesting posts, one for instance showing a 17th century German etching of a woman selling hot dogs! Take that Oscar Meyer!

2. The Old Foodie - http://www.theoldfoodie.com/

I really enjoy this blog - there's actual recipes, discussions on spices that are little-used today; and it's not just medieval, it's all over the place in history. Very interesting!

On the topic of colonial American food, I came across an interesting article entitled: "Fast Food in Colonial America". This touches a bit on foods you might find in taverns or would take on the road with you.

Finally, another bookmark I like to keep close is to "The Food Timeline: Colonial America and 17th/18th Century France". There is an interesting note on how our meals have changed - our current idea of breakfast is nothing like an american from the 18th century would have known - and our big sit down evening dinner wouldn't have made sense either. This page also has links to other sites on the same topic.

That's it for now! I'll stop rambling. If you're interested, do check out the sites, it's amazing how different our cooking is now - I'm such a wuss, I know I'd probably die of starvation if I actually had to pluck the feathers out of my own chicken. Yikes! All the cooks of yesteryear have my utmost respect!

Finally, to circle back to the quote at the start of the post, if you aren't familiar with W.C. Fields (you young whippersnappers you), not only was he a great comedian, but check out this juggling:

Wordless Wednesday - 10 February 2010

Not-So-Wordless-Wednesday:

Pennsylvania - 10 February 2010 - 12 inches and counting on top of the 20 inches from last Saturday! Storm still has 8 hours to go! Someone come save me! Hellllpppppp!

Family Tree Maker Kinship Report Question

Hi out there all you Family Tree Maker users! If you're up for it, I have a question.

I am newly upgraded (as of about an hour ago) to FTM 2010. For the past several years I've stuck with FTM 16 for mainly one reason...the ability to see what multiple relationships exist in my family tree. I admit that I'm a sucker for finding out I'm my own 6th cousin, I just love that stuff. So I skipped FTM 2008 and 2009 after I saw comments that the kinship report didn't show all the relationships anymore.

So here's my question...

Is it really supposed to take 19 minutes to generate a kinship report for a database that has about 7800 people?

And should the generated report really be 420 pages, with nearly 70% of the relationships noted being the type of "Mother-in-law of 2nd cousin 2x removed" and "Nephew of Husband of 10th cousin 3x removed"?? No offense to those people, but I don't consider them actually related, I'm curious about actual blood relations here.


You see, I did NOT have the checkbox for "Show Unrelated Individuals" checked, so I'm confused as to why all these un-related people are in the report? There's even more un-related people in this report than there was in the FTM 16's version of the report!

Not to mention the 19 minutes??? What's the difference in report generation? My FTM 16 generated this report in 6 seconds. It's all those unrelated "Husband of Aunt of Husband of 2nd cousin 6x times removed" of course!!!!

Am I doing something wrong here? I have to be doing something wrong. Missing something right in front of my face? Any advice from more experienced users would be appreciated!

I could probably deal with it if it weren't for the whole 19 minute thing. To me that's un-usable, sorry, my attention span for that kind of wait was last seen around 1996.

Help!