Almost a Genealogy Blog and searching for the Erb Family in Richland County, Ohio Land Records

The Separate Genealogy Blog Question

In a post about a month ago I pondered the question of whether my genealogy posts should be in a separate blog. I really appreciated the comments, including one from the king of genealogy blogging, Thomas MacEntee, who manages a
group of over 900 genealogy bloggers at GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com). He clearly has a Google alert set up for the words "Genealogy Blog"!

Thomas recommended a separate blog and others said they would like all the content in one place. For the time being I've compromised. I've added a link in the navigation bar at the top of this blog to my genealogy content. You can also go to the genealogy content directly at

http://marionvermazen.blogs.com/marions_blog/genealogy/.

Searching for the Erb Family in Richland County, Ohio

My Dad's Mother, my Grandma Ruth was an Erb. She told me that her Grandparents were Joseph Erb and Mary Harris Erb but she didn't know a lot more about them than their names and the fact that they lived in Wabash County, Indiana.

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Over the years other family researchers and I have discovered that Joseph Erb's father was also named Joseph. Joseph Senior was born in 1788 in Maryland. His wife's name was Elizabeth. They show up in the census in Allegany County, Maryland.  He was drafted and served for a few months in the war of 1812. In the early 1830s Joseph and his family which by that time included 8 children moved to Richland County, Ohio. In the mid 1850s they moved to Wabash County, Indiana.

In my genealogical digging the questions about Joseph Senior and Elizabeth that I am working on right now include:

  1. Where and when did Joseph die?
  2. What was Elizabeth's maiden name?
  3. Where and when did Elizabeth die?
  4. Who were Joseph and Elizabeth's parents? (An Ancestry.com family tree may take the Joseph Erb family back several generations. The tree shows that Joseph's father was Michael Erb. There is a Michael Erb of about the right age on the same page as Joseph in the 1820 census but I'd like some real proof.)
  5. Did Joseph have siblings?

In addition to these specific questions I like to fill in details about my ancestors to make them more than just names.

So……. I am currently working on finding the land records for Joseph and Elizabeth and their children in Richland County Ohio. I ordered the microfilm of the Grantee Index for the Richland County Ohio Deed Books (film # 388652) from the Family History Library and it arrived while I was gone on my road trip. A couple of days ago I spent several hours pouring over the index and extracting all the entries for the names Erb, Arter, Caldwell and Calwell. I created a Google spreadsheet of the relevant entries and I took digital pictures of each page that had an interesting entry.

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The next step is to search the Grantor index and to start looking at the Deeds. I have the microfilm of the Grantor index to the deed books and  the microfilm of deed book volumes 13-14 on order. I love doing research and solving mysteries. I'll keep you posted on what I find out.

Her is a picture of Joseph Erb Junior, my Great Great Grandfather.

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The Retired Ladies Road Trip to Zion National Park – Part 2

My friends and I just returned from our Retired Ladies Road Trip to southwestern Utah. My post for part one of our trip is here. It covers the first three days of the trip.

On day four we hiked to see some petroglyphs at Anasazi Ridge above the Santa Clara River west of St George.

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After lunch we hiked in Snow Canon State Park to a natural amphitheater set in white sandstone.

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On day five, Saturday, we hiked again in Zion National Park. We hiked the Angels Landing Trail. It was amazing and spectacular. The first part of the hike is up, up, up a trail cut into the rock of the canyon wall. You can see my friend Amy on the trail about two thirds of the way up the cliff.

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From the first cliff top we switched back through a narrow canyon.

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And then along the cliff face and up using chains to hold on. This was the part of the trail that was scary although if I didn't look down it wasn't too bad.

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We stopped for lunch at a flat spot with a fantastic view. From there the trail goes up a very narrow crest to the top. We decided to go no further. The trail is challenging enough without adding ice and snow! The picture below is of our lunch stop. You can see the top and the crest that the trail goes up to get there.

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I think the Angels Landing  trail is perhaps the most amazing trail I have ever hiked.

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On day six of our trip we headed home across Nevada on Highway 50. It is a beautiful drive. We saw very few cars but we did see plenty of hawks, some pronghorn, and a very unusual weather phenomenon, hundreds of little mist columns coming from the clouds to the ground. It was beautifully unearthly. Here is a picture of some of the pronghorn from the truck window.

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The Retired Ladies Road Trip to Zion National Park – Part 1

My friends Amy and  Linda and I are on a road trip to visit another friend Stephanie. She lives near Zion National Park in southwestern Utah.

On day one we drove from Reno to Lone Pine down the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was overcast as we drove south so we didn't have too much of a view of the mountains. We stopped at Manzanar, one of the World War II Japanese internment camps. It is a sobering place with an excellent visitor center. Well worth a visit,

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On day two we awake to beautiful blue skies and a wonderful view of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states.

 

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From Lone Pine we drove down into Death Valley, the lowest place in the United States, and back up to Stephanie's house in southwestern Utah

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Today – day three we went to Zion National Park. It was snowing when we started our hike up Zion Canyon and then the sun came out as we reached the end of the trail and started back to the truck.

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From Zion Canyon we went east and did the Canyon Overlook Trail. We saw very few people and we saw a family of mountain sheep right near the trail. I took a lot of pictures.

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The view from the overlook was phenomenal too. Do I look like I am having a good time?

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All my pictures form this trip are on Flickr here.

9800 Savage Road by M.E. Harrigan

In the fall of 1973 I was a senior at Iowa State University
finishing up my degree in Computer Science. Several times a week I went to the
placement office and signed up for interviews with companies who were coming on
campus to interview. After the on campus interviews I was sometimes called for
follow up interviews at the company’s headquarters. It was a heady experience flying
all over the U.S. imagining myself living and working in the city I was interviewing in.   Probably the most unusual
interview I had was a two day interview in Baltimore with the National Security
Agency. NSA does super secret work figuring out foreign signals intelligence.

The interviewers couldn’t tell me what I would be working on
and part of the interview process was taking 
a lie detector test. Unfortunately they had to get me a security
clearance before they could offer me a job and they told me it would be several
months before I could get a job offer. I had been working at Boeing in Seattle
for three or four months when I finally got their job offer. I’ve always kind of
wished I had gone to work for them.

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This is my draft security clearance application. I occasionally pull it out if I wan to remember one of the many addresses I had as a child.

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I just finished reading 9800 Savage Road by M.E. Harrigan.  
Harrigan worked for NSA for thirty seven years. 9800 Savage Road is her first novel and it was
great. It was a story of  espionage and murder inside the NSA complex and in Afghanistan. It was full of suspense and very believable. I could easily imagine myself in the middle of what was going on. I don't think anyone has ever written a story set inside the NSA which makes the book even more interesting.

I would highly recommend it.

 

Should my Genealogy Postings be a Separate Blog?

I'm torn! I'm trying to decide whether to start a new genealogy blog or whether to start publishing genealogy content along with everything else here on this blog. On one hand it makes sense to start a new blog because family history and genealogy are very interesting to me but to most people they are pretty boring. On the other hand readers can skip the genealogy content if they are not interested and there is something to be said for keeping all my content in one place. It is also possible to select a tag like Hiking or Reno or Genealogy from the list at the right and get the content you want.

As I say in my tag line I am a renaissance woman or what Barbara Sher calls a scanner. I have a wide variety of interests and enjoy moving from one interest to another. My blog has always reflected that diversity of interests.  It means that I can't market my blog as being about one topic but it also means the blog reflects me.

Here is a list of some of the Genealogy content I want to post.

  1. The more detailed story for each of my Grandparents.
  • Marion Etta Bagnall Gibson – Born in Prince Edward Island, married in Vancouver British Columbia, Lived in Jasper, Alberta, emigrated to the U.S. after the death of my Grandfather. She started and ran a sanitarium in Spokane, Washington.
  • Robert Alexander Gibson – Born in Kilmaurs, Ontario, Canada, died in Jasper, Alberta, Canada. Worked as an Engineer on the Canadian National Railroad.
  • Mary Ruth Erb Robinson – Born in Boone, Iowa. Homesteaded with her family in Dunn County, North Dakota. Married, lived for more than 50 years, and died in Bismarck, North Dakota.
  • Ray Robinson Born on a farm near Viroqua Wisconsin. Homesteaded with his family in Dunn County, North Dakota. Served in the Army during World War I. Worked for the North Dakota Highway department for 45 years eventually as Chief Maintenance Engineer.

    2. Stories of some of my research and the brick walls I am running up against

    3. Stories of some of my exciting moments of discovery

    4. Descriptions of some of the tools I use. Like this post.

    5. Stories of other ancestors

    6. Questions that I would like answered.

One of the advantages of blogging about this kind of stuff is that when people Google search a name they are researching they will be led to my blog and I may find 'lost' relatives.

Blogging about a question like whether to start a separate genealogy blog turns out to be a good way to work out what I want to do. After composing this post I am leaning towards leaving all my content in one place.

I'd be interested in input about this question from anyone reading this. Thanks!