End of Summer

     Summer's about over and I've stayed in Hawaii enjoying home for a change.  My grandkids (Emily 16, Braden 13) were her all July and we had a busy and fun time.  Emily was involved in "Project Hawaii" as a teen mentor for homeless/disadvantaged kids on the Big Island for two weeks, so I took Braden to the Big Island for a week as he'd never been there.  Braden and I stayed two nights in Hilo and stayed busy doing geocaching, visiting the shores, the zoo, some caves and the Pacific Tsunami Museum.  We drove out to Kalapana where earlier lava flows have covered houses and entered the ocean for many years.  And we took a helicopter ride to see what was going on - we saw red flowing lava in spots.  Three days after we left Big Island a new lava flow engulfed a house and covered more of the road.  We had some rain but not as wet as it often is there.  Then we stayed up in Volcano for three cold nights.   The Halemaumau Crater of Kiluea Volcano is active and the huge red glow from the inner crater lights up the night sky at the Jaegger Museum lookout.  I hadn't realized that the crater rim drive has been closed for two years, since the volcano had it's latest destructive explosion, and gases/smoke continue to spread over the rim.      

      Back on Oahu we went on the Atlantis submarine ride and went down about 111 feet off Waikiki. We hiked to the mountain tops, and did a little kayaking also. On day we went sailing in Kaneohe Bay and spotted the pirate ship "Queen Ann's Revenge" while they were filming "Pirates of the Caribbean -4 - On A Stranger Tide"  or something like that.  It was a big black ship, and looked intimidating!  We didn't see Johnny Depp, however.  Arrgh!   So it's been busy, and I loved having the kids, now it's back to the normal things of life like genealogy, hiking, daily walks, and back to volunteering at the military hospital.

     My new blog, which is mentioned in the last post, " Ancestor Tracking Dream Roadtrip" about my 2001 to 2002 roadtrip tracking my roots. 

     Just this week I've connected to distant cousins on the John L. Squier side and we've been able to compare old family photos.  In fact, last night Cheryl sent me photos that have identities with them, which answers my years of wondering "who is in that old photo?"  In addition we will be able to correct and add Squier information to what's already entered at the Akin Family Tree on ancestry.com

    I've initiated a new "thread" on the Ancestry.com "Hague" Message Board.  I'm calling it "Hagues of Rhode Island" and hope that all Hagues with ancestors who came to Rhode Island will go to it and add information about their Rhode Island roots.  I think that most of the Hagues there came from the Lancashire/Yorkshire, England area, after the time of the industrial revolution, and they brought their cotton/silk mill-worker skills to the mills in Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the mid to late 1800s. 
   Below is my Hague family in Warwick, Bristol Co., Rhode Island, enumerated Aug 13, 1850.

   Above is the 1850 census of Warwick Co., Rhode Island.  It was a real breakthrough in finding my Hague family in USA because the census taker wrote the last name as "Ache"  - which, I assume, is how it sounded.    At any rate these are all the right children and parents.  [By the way, it took me a long time to select three parts of the two pages of census images to paste them together into one image.  Does anyone have a favorite was of making this happen - like a collage or something?  I have photoshop and powerpoint, but generally use the free photo software from http://www.paint.net/.]  I've never mastered the use of "layers."

     Of sad note was the death of a highly esteemed Pacific Navigator, Mau Piailug, on July 12, at his home in Satawal, Micronesia.  He taught the Hawaiians the skills of navigating in the vast Pacific without instruments.  This enabled the replica of an ancient voyaging canoe, Hokule'a to traverse all corners of the Polynesian Triangle, and beyond, without any instrumentation/compass, etc.  I was on one of the voyages in 1995 from Tahiti to the Marquesas.  Last Thursday I paid tribute to Mau, with a presentation for the Adventurers Club of Honolulu.  I honed my power-point skills and was able to use my little Acer Netbook to hook up to the digital projector at the meeting.  I was happy that the presentation went well, and people learned much about the important man.

Busy in Hawaii

Now it's April and I'm preparing for another trip, this time to Machu Picchu in Peru and the Gallapagos Islands in Eduacor.  I'll be going with a tour group "Overseas Adventure Travel" and so all the logistics, etc. are taken care of by the tour guides, etc.  I'll also plan on going on another Operation Smile medical mission later in the year.
  In the meantime I spent a week on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in March, just relaxing, catching up on e-mails and going on lots of geocaching hikes.  A big spider jumped on my neck one day, and I was not pleased with that, but happy that it didn't bite.  I took a photo of it with my GPS.

As near as I can figure by looking online, it is a "Garden Spider" found in the Pacific.  It's body looked metallic silver and metallic gold to me.  Wtih striped black and tan long legs... very big! ....shiver!

                        
    I have not been ignoring my genealogy research.  In fact my Akin cousin, Larry, often sends me little "Akin mysteries" that I should try to solve.  I found a Hannah Akin in the new Ancestry.com release of the 1880 US Census of Defectives, Blind, etc.  She was listed as Blind, but neither Larry nor I can figure out how she fits into our Chatauqua County, NY Akins.
              I did find this Hannah Akin born abt 1793 in NY,  in the regular 1880 US census and she is living with her daughter, Betsey Moore b.1861 NY, and Betsey's daughter Pluma Hazard age 22 with her husband Dennis Hazard age 29 in Carroll, Chautauqua Co., NY.  Then I found Pluma Hazard in the 1930 census with other Moores, evidently Betsey's brothers, i.e. Wm and John. (ie. Hannah Akin's grandchildren??)  I can't place any of this family with my Joseph Akin family.   In the 1820 US census I did find a Hannah Akins in Ellicott, Chautauqua Co. --but no help really because the only information lists the ages in her household.   Who was Hannah's husband?.....an Akin from somewhere.
           And of course, I am totally mesmerized by watching the ancestor-searching show "Who Do You Think You Are" on NBC on Friday nights.  And before that, the other genealogy/family history show called "Faces of America" on PBS.  I just learned that WDYTYA has been renewed for another season - yea!!!!!

Jan in Ariz-Genealogy Akin-Stevens

Fitting in some time between the kids and grandkids, I've been able to vist a Family History Center for the first time in a long time. 15 years ago was in Honolulu, and this months it's been in Sierra Vista, Arizona. I love browsing through all the good books and that has been my priority, as I usually do a lot of research on Ancestry.com and other internet sources. I found a good booklet of "10,000 Vital Records of Western New York 1809-1850" by Fred Q. Bowman, 1985. This listed several Akin and Stevens family relations. This booklet has marriages and death notices from five areas in Western NY. I was mostly interested in the Jamestown Journal, of Chautauqua Co., and the Wayne Sentinal (Palmyra Register) of Palmyra, Wayne Co., NY.
I found
-Akin, Lucinda, 34, wife of John H. died 1/31/1843 in Carroll, Chautauqua Co., NY - [I didn't know the exact day of death before.]
- Akin, Grace, 38, wife of Elijah, died 1/12/1835 in the Jamestown Journal.
-Akin, George, 22, formerly of Auburn, NY, died 7/14/1835 in Natchez, Mississippi. (in the Wayne Sentinel).
- Moore, Joseph K. married 12/12/1834 Betsey Akin in Carroll, Chaut Co.; Rev Peck (listed 1/7/1835)
- Morey, Freeland married 1/8/1844 Lucy Akin in Bust, Chaut. Co.; E. W. Parker, Esq. (listed 1/26/1844)
-Hall, Samuel E. of Sugargrove, PA married 2/10/1841 Mary Akin of Carroll, Chaut. Co., NY in Sugargrove, PA; M. Wilson, Esq. (listed 2/24/1841)
-Lacy, Samuel S. married 1/2/1844 Mary A. Akin, both of Chili, Monroe Co., NY, in Chili; Rev Billington. (listed 1/10/1844)
-Stevens, Phineas, Jr. 21, married 11/7/1817 Rhoda Glover, 35 in Phelps (in the Geneva Gazette - Geneva, Ontario Co., NY) [I don't know if he is related to "my" Phineas Stevens family?]
-Stevens, Gilbert, 12, son of Phineas, died in Canadaigua, NY -(listed 12/26/1827)
-Stevens, Walter of Richmond, Ontario County, married Lucy Osgood in Almond, Alleg. Co., NY (listed11/38/1827)
-Stevens, Walter, about 30, son of Daniel, was accidentally killed by a rifle shot by Cabot Barlow while deer hunting in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin - The parties were formerly from Chautauqua Co., NY (listed 6/30/1842)
-Stevens, Ebenezer (Maj Gen) 71, died 9/2/1823 in Rockaway, L.I., NY where he had gone for benefit of his health (LTC in Rev. War) (Listed in Geneva Gazette, Ontario Co., NY 8/17/1843)
-Stephens, Asa, 22 died 8/4/1843 in Ripley (Chautauqua Co.) (listed 8/17/1843).
- Stephens, Walter married 12/9/1834 Matilda Tew, both of Jamestown (listed 12/10/1834).

As my Akin cohort, Robert Akin, pointed out - according to the 1830 census, there was Edward, Elijah, Howard, James, Joseph, and William Akin living in Chautauqua County. It is somewhat easy to elimate some of these head of households as the father of Betsey, Lucy or Mary Akin (above) of Chautauqua County, but it doesn't exactly confirm who belongs to which family.

Here's what Robert found about Mary Akin listed above:

From a record of a letter I long ago sent him (that I found at the Fenton Library, in Jamestown, NY). It was from Mrs. Pamela Spanogle dated 12/1985, Subject: Correction to Fredonia Censor Gleanings. This letter identifies the Mary Akin that married Samuel Erastus Hall, Jr. as the widow of Aura Cronk Akin (1815-1839) s/o James Akin, II. Her maiden name was Wheeler.

He then found Freeland and Lura Morey in the census records. In 1850, he is called Freeland Masey, and they are on p. 21 of the Busti census. This record indicates that Lura was born abt 1824 . He found Freeland and Lura in the 1860 census for Busti, p. 37. He is listed as Frelan Mory. In 1870, Lura is living alone with Deloss, their son, in Busti - census p. 28. He did not find them in the 1880 census. The son is called Carlos in 1850, Dallas in 1860, and Deloss in 1870. He could not find him in 1880,either. Apparently Lura Akin, b. abt 1824, is the d/o Edward and Lura (Wilcox) Akin. The only little problem is that Edward and Laura seem to have this Lura b. 1824 and then later another daughter, named Laura, b. 1845. Why two daughter's named so similarly? Could this Laura be a granddaughter?

There are other possibilities to nail down the Betsey Akin from the newspapers. More work here to be done. Here is the website of Robert Larry Akin:

http://www.akinfamilyhistory.com/

The jury is still out on the Phineas Stevens relation of mine to the Stevens/Stephens mentioned above. I will continue with other findings at the Family History Center next time.

November in Hawaii

On the genealogy research scene, I've been slacking, because I had to study for my Pediatric Advanced Life Support Certification. Well, I took the class and test this weekend, and I am elated to say that I did pass, and hopefully I'll be able to now qualify to volunteer for Operation Smile - a medical mission to do cleft lip and cleft palate repairs in children around the world. We'll see what evolves next year. The photo on the right shows me attempting an Intra-Ossceous access (instead of IV access in a vein)... this is the new thing. You twist a needle into the shin bone marrow to put fluids through in an emergency. I hear the medics in the war are currently using a battery powered "E-Z I-O" drill to gain quick access for resuscitative fluids in the wounded....amazing!

But, even with the studying, you can't keep a genealogist completely away from the the fun, so I did some searching around to clarify some geography quandaries on the Akin family in Minnesota for my distant cousin, Robert Akin and his wonderful website http://www.akinfamilyhistory.com/. One question was about a note that said Verna Adeline Erie, wife of Thomas Garrit Akin, was born in Faribault, Minnesota. Did that mean Faribault County or Faribault (City), Rice County? Hmmm, I guess this is an example of poor foresight of the Minnesotan name makers with this and other city/county mismatches, such as Blue Earth (city) in Faribault County, verses Blue Earth County just to the north. I looked up the Erie family and found Verna Erie in the 1920 census at Faribault, Rice County, so that's where we figure Verna was from. I think the lesson here is to always identify both the county in addition to the city. If it is a township, then so state it. If you're not sure, then state the possible confusion in added notes.

I've been listening to the many Genealogy podcasts on my iPod at the gym, and I'm eager to try out some of the new websites or new features of my favorite websites. Anything happening with Ancestry.com is always of interest to me. I've watched two of their free webinars on my computer when they were offered. The next one is about the new edition of Family Tree Maker software version 2009. I'm not sure if I'll get the new version. I'm still with version 2006 and like it fine, but I'll see what's being offered.

July 7, 2007

I'm on the "mainland" now. The weather in Arizona is sizzling, and it was 114 degrees in Las Vegas yesterday. I'm heading for Las Vegas today with grandkids, Emily and Braden. We will arrive there after crossing the Arizona desert, in the evening. Then Sunday we'll stop by to see sister-in-law Chris Hague, and nephews. Also get a chance to see nephew Rich's wife, Lucy, and son, Michael, again. Michael is two now and almost talking. We plan to go see my brother's grave. Richard Hague died last November and I haven't seen his grave marker yet. Then we'll have to high-tail it on to St. George, Utah, where we'll begin our Elderhostel Intergenerational Program.

This Elderhostel program is about dinosaurs in S.W. Utah. It promises to be a terrific program for the grandkids and their grandparents. We'll stay 4 nights in St. George at the College Inn, part of Dixie State College. We're going to Grand Escalante National Monument and to the Dinosaur Discovery Site. We watched a Discovery Channel program on a new type of dinosaur found there (or somewhere close) that is a mass grave of a dinosaur than is transitioning between a meat eater to a grass eater. Should be interesting.

Then we go on to Bryce Canyon and stay at Ruby's Inn for two nights, including taking in the Bryce Rodeo. Hopefully we'll be able to meet up with more relations on the trip - Jeff and Leslie and their five children. Then back to St. George for another night and the end of the program. I plan to drive back to Sierra Vista via Flagstaff and show the kids where my mother stayed with Aunt Fern Blanding Ferrell in about 1920 on a potato farm on the northwest side of Flagstaff.

In my disorganization to plan/pack for two trip this summer (Arizona, etc. and China) I forgot to put my cell phone charger into my suitcase. Hmmmm. No other way around it, I had to go and buy a new charger. Well, now I've got an extra I can keep in my suitcase - ready for any trip. I helped Emily cleaned out some of her closet yesterday so she could pack for the Utah trip. What a chore! Luckily Braden is better organized even though he's only 10.

Genealogy news: I've found the 1870 Agriculture Census online at Ancestry.com. I don't know why they added this Ag Census for Goodhue County, MN - but I'm glad they did. It's very interesting to see that my David Akins had two horses, two milk cows, one swine, spring wheat, indian corn and oats. He, my great-great grandfather, had homesteaded near his cousin, Marshall Akins, his wife's father, James Warren Ells, and his son, Edwin Ells, and another cousin, John Orcutt. These early pioneer families stayed together when they got land in Minnesota from where they were in Wisconsin. Edwin Ells had some of his land surveyed and established the village of Skyberg, Goodhue Co., Minnesota. Today is is a ghosttown. Click to enlarge census.

I've sent photos back and forth with Terry Akin and Howard Blanding about relations in Chautauqua Co. NY. We still can't seem to find photographer George Morris Akin in the business directories, etc. for Fredonia, NY. We know he was a very good photographer from looking at some of his work - probably at the turn of the century. Also Terry and I are sending "Mystery Photos" to each other from our pile of old, old photographs, in the hopes of identifying the ones without names. I love a good mystery!

Is this Welton Akin? --------------A Ship in Newport RI -----An Akin of RI -maybe his ship?

July 1, 2007

I've been happily tracking down new family history and websites on the Akin line, thanks to my contact with cousin Terry Akin through cousin Larry Akin. Terry has carefully put much Akin information on the website www.findagrave.com. It is a free website where people can enter information about people and which cemetery they are buried in. Since Terry is my 3rd cousin once removed we share many relations that lived in Chautauqua Co., New York near Jamestown in the southwest corner of the state. I've spent many days, over three different years, driving around the area and researching my ancestors in that county, which also includes the Stevens, and the Blandings up in the Silver Creek area. Terry is my closest Akin relation that is doing genealogy and we are very happy to have found each other. Anyway, I was able to send him the tombstones photographs that I took at the Stillwater Cemetery and the Busti Cemetery. The oldest tombstone pictures are of Joseph Akin (1761 - 1847) (pictured) and wife Elsey Holloway (1760-1833) who were among the very first settlers in the Jamestown area. The photo on the right is of the original Akin homestead area at the Stillwater, Kiantone Twp, Chautauqua County, NY. Joseph traveled from near Albany along trails to purchase land from the Holland Land Co. near Erie. Then he probably sailed down the coast of Lake Erie to Westfield area and then followed Indian or trapper trails back eastward to claim his land in 1807, on the east end of Lake Chautauqua. He tried to establish a village called "Akinville" - but wanted to lease the lots instead of sell them fee simple. So eventually Jamestown became established and more popular. But Joseph had the first house in the township.

My great-great grandfather, David Akin moved west from Chautauqua County New York, to Wisconsin to teach, but became ill with tuberculosis. Terry's great-great grandfather, John Howard Akin, Jr. asked his younger 25 yr old brother, David, to come back to New York and stay with him and sit in the sun in his apple orchard, so he could get well. David did return to his brother's farm and he was identified as staying with him in the 1860 census. Luckily for me, David did recover, and went back to Wisconsin to marry Sarah Minerva Ells. Together David & Minerva and their Squier cousins then moved west on to new land in Goodhue County, Minnesota, to farm and establish the town of Skyberg. David Akin had dairy cows and built a school house on his property for the community. Good thing too, as he had 12 children. On the left is a picture of apple blossoms I took around Busti near John Howard Akin, Jr's land. The lower left picture is David & Minerva Akins in Minnesota about 1927. The picture on the right is David's brother, John Howard Akin, Jr. in New York in earlier years.

It's really fascinating history around there. Guess what Westfield, NY is famous for??? Two things - Welchs Grape Juice and the place where President Lincoln got off a train and a little girl said he'd look better with a beard -- and the rest was history.

I finally had to stop doing the fun things and settle down to getting my stuff together for my big trip to the Mainland. I courageously and cautiously approached my old Vaio laptop computer - which was such a faithful friend on my two-year Vagabond roots-finding journey - and attempted to start it. I bought it in 2000. After a few coughs, it started right up when plugged in. I don't think the batteries are any good anymore. Anyway the next challenge was to find the external CD player that connects to the laptop and see if I could download the latest version of my Family Tree Maker program. Amazingly it worked. The next challenge was to move my present 432 megabyte Family Tree file onto a flash drive, from my PC, and that went surprisingly well. Then with that flash drive stuck into the Vaio laptop I hoped beyond hope it would work, so I could transfer the family file to the laptop. But no, the laptop couldn't find the driver for the flash drive - of course. The Vaio laptop has Windows 98 still on it and the modem no longer works, but if I find the CD that came with my other the little flash drive and load the driver, it would work.... But the little flash drive is only 128 megabytes, so it wouldn't work. Anyway, I decided to burn the family file from my PC to a CD and copy it to the laptop. This worked!!! But then the copied file in the laptop is a read-only, so I had to re-copy it in the laptop and rename the file in order to be able to edit it. At last all systems are go, and I can pack up the laptop in hopes it will work when I attend the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Indiana in August.

Now I have to collect all the stuff I'll need for my iPod and iPod microphone, for my Sony VideoCamera, my Sony digital still camera, and who knows what other crazy gadgets I must have. The worst thing is that I have to carry it all onto the airplane. So let's see: Laptop computer, two cameras, iPod, cell phone, all the cords for recharging the items, food, ear plugs, empty water bottle to fill up after security, a book, chapstick, medications - what else needs to be in the carry on? I'll be flying the ATA red-eye, an all-night delight from Hawaii to Las Vegas, then on to Tucson.... Oh yes, I need to carry-on my noise canceling headphones. Of course I'll have to remember to print out my e-ticket boarding passes before I leave.

I don't know if I'll be able to add to this blog while I'm gone, but maybe I'll be able to use my daughter's computer to do it. So until then, I'll say aloha. Don't forget to add comments to any of the pages.

June 25, 2007

Friday I spent the morning searching the Akin line to try to answer a question that Akin historian, Larry Akin, asked me to help answer. Larry has a wonderful website on the Akin History (www.akinfamilyhistory.com) that he painstakingly put online a few years ago. We "collaborated" on some of the data, and even did research together in Albany, Quaker Hill, Hoosick Falls area, and Glens Falls, NY in 2002. I haven't really searched the US Census for Akin too much since they've become available online, I guess because I got so much information first hand during my "Vagabond Travels" of 2000-2002, especially in Chautauqua Co., NY. The picture on the right is of the land around the Akin lands in Pittstown Twp, Rensselaer County, NY in 2002.

Suprise for me later in the evening when I was searching for my Thornburgs when Larry Akin's website came up as a resource! The Akins and the Thornburgs are on opposite sides of my family tree. As I researched how Larry came to have Thornburghs on the Akin tree I stayed up until 4am. That is way too late, but very exciting to put puzzle pieces in place! It turns out his Ethan Akin III ancestor, in Iowa in 1882, married a granddaughter of Hannah Thornburg. Hannah may be the sister to my GGG-grandfather, Amos Thornburg. Extensive research has been done tracking Larry's Thornburg/Griffith family through the Midwest, through Virginia (West Virginia/Tennessee) and back to Ireland and Wales. I don't know if further research can really prove the relationship since Amos and Hannah were born before the US Revolution.....but I can't wait to contact Larry and see what we can find out. If that doesn't work, I do have Griffiths in Wales in the 1500's! To be continued!

Lucille, my traveling companion from the Adventurers' Club, just returned from her trip to Peru, Ecuador, Machu Pichu, the Amazon River, and the Galapagos. I relayed the procedure to send her passport in to get visas for our upcoming trip to China and Cambodia in September. She is really a world traveler and just put her photos on a slideshow on a photo website. They are wonderful. The last meeting of the club had, Thursday, was a nice presentation of traveling to Egypt. I was amazed at how close hotels and other buildings are now to the Pyramids.

I've downloaded 6 lectures from last year's Federation of Genealogical Societies in Boston to my computer from lulu.com (They are listed under "Talk Radio" ) then synched them to my iPod. They cost $1.99 each mp3 lecture and are certainly a savings over attending the conference in person. Since I will be going to this year's conference in Ft Wayne, Indiana, I decided to listen to some of the lectures that weren't offered or are repeats that I won't have a chance to attend do to conflicts in the schedule. I chose one lecture to download called "Pianos to Popcorn Makers-our ancestors inventions" ----- because I wanted to figure out how I can find the patent information for the inventions of my Grandfather, Alfred G. Hague. I know you can go to the US patent & Trademarks Office's online site, but you have to know the patent numbers, which I don't have.

Great Discovery!!!! Thanks to podcasts!
On my iPod today I listened to the lecture on Inventions and Patents and found that there are 50 libraries in the US designated "Patent & Trademark Depository Libraries " - they have indexes to the patent numbers by using the inventor's names. At home I found that the Hawaii State Library is one of the libraries. Since they didn't answer their phone, I continued looking online, and thought I'd click on to the Iowa State Library which also has the index by names. I figured I would visit Des Moines this August. Much to my surprise they are one of the only libraries that have a complete listing -online- of all the patents that have issued for their state - in this case Iowa inventors!!!!! How great is that?! I found ten inventions that my grandfather patented, and was able to access some of the drawings of these patents back at www.uspto.gov.

My grandfather did the drawings for his patent applications, and others where he worked at Orwig & Hague because he started out as a draftsman. One of his best inventions is a car dumping apparatus (to dump grain out of train cars-picture on left); some others are a trolley catcher, a needle to repair runs in knits; a caster, a culvert, a silo, and a photographic device (see upper right). It is really amazing to find out all of these inventions. I only had heard of the car dumping device when I interviewed my father many years ago. It was a good thing I did, or I never would have thought to look for patents that my grandfather made!