nichepoetryandprose

In an attempt to keep making progress on my explorations of family history, and to justify my monthly contributions to Ancestry.com, I have implemented ‘genealogy Saturday’. On most Saturday’s, I pledge to discover more about my family, and to organize into a written account the information I already have. We’ll see how long this intention lasts.

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I continue to be interested in the life and family of my great-grandmother Ella (Mary Ellen) Hawk Norman (1859-1933). I now have information on much of her life. Thanks to the City Directories at Ancestry.com, I know where she lived almost every year from 1894 onward.

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My only photo of my Great-Grandmother Ella (Hawk) Norman (in about 1928). She is second from the right, with her hands folded. The group is standing in front of Harowitz’ Restaurant in Scranton, Pennsylvania where she worked as a pastry cook in the early 1900s.

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I also know about her husband, my great-grandfather Frank Norman, from the date of their marriage in 1886 onward

(see my post about their marriage

https://janetims.com/2014/05/15/the-tale-of-a-marriage-certificate/

and about Frank’s fall from a horse https://janetims.com/2014/05/12/searching-the-newspapers-2/).

But I know nothing about him before 1886. Most of all, I would like to know the names of his parents, my great-great-grandparents. Of my sixteen great-great-grandparents, these are the only two names I do not know.

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Unfortunately, the name Frank Norman was common in the mid-eighteen hundreds. I know from various documents that Frank was born about 1855 in Missouri. There were about forty Frank Normans born in Missouri in the mid-century and deciding ‘who was who’ has taken a major effort.

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I used the following ‘rule base’ to help me sort through the many Frank Normans:

1. Discard any females (the names Francis or Frances have been used for both males and females)

2. Discard any Franks born before 1845 or after 1870 (he was at least 16 in 1886 when he married and no older than 40). Since Frank’s birth year (1855) comes from two sources and is likely near to correct, I was more stringent than this when looking at each record. I have often found birth dates in the Census suspect, probably because people were vague when providing information to the Census taker.

3. Discard any Frank Normans who had other spouses before 1896, especially those with children born in the 1880s (Ella and Frank divorced in 1896, so he could have remarried). This takes careful searching through the Census records and family trees, going back and forth to see who was in the various Frank Norman families. It is too bad we don’t have the 1890 Census !

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Hooker, Laclede County is in south-central Missouri; Bethany is in Harrison County in northern Missouri

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After all this, I have found only one Frank Norman who meets my criteria. Francis M. Norman (born 1852 Missouri) lives with his father Moses Norman (born 1821 Tennessee), his mother Betsy (born 1820 Tennessee) and his brother Benj (born 1848 Missouri) in Hooker, Laclede County in Missouri (1860 Census).

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There were two Moses Norman families living in Hooker, Laclede in 1860. The other Moses Norman (born 1895 Tennessee) lives with wife Lucinda and their children. Moses 1895 was a landowner in Laclede. Although I have not been able to connect the two Moses Normans, it is reasonable to think they were related. In the Census, they are living fifty houses from one another, perhaps a long way in the days of large farm properties and the ‘open country neighborhood’.

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I cannot find Moses and Betsy in any Census after 1860. A person named Benj (died 1873) is buried in the Moses Norman Cemetery in Sleeper, Laclede and this may be Moses’ (1821) son Benj.

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On Frank’s Application for a Marriage Licence (1886), he wrote that he lived in Bethany, Harrison County, Missouri. There were Norman families in the Bethany area by 1880 and Frank may have gone there from Laclede to live or work.

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I may never know the names of my great-great-grandparents for certain, but Moses and Betsy sound like good candidates. I will keep looking until the powers invent a time travel machine just for genealogists!

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Copyright 2016 Jane Tims