An old book - from 1879

As I mentioned in by previous entry about doing family tree searches, I've found a neat source - a rather different one from the usual three or four for those of you in the United States (and maybe other countries) -

The most capable one is http://www.ancestry.com/ I'm too cheap to pay for a membership, but you can do searches and find a lot - its just the details will be tantalizingly hidden from you until you pay for a membership.

A free one - that works nearly as well is https://beta.familysearch.org/ Its free to register, and once you do, if an image of the source material (say a 1920 US Census page) is available - you can see it on-line and download it if you wish.

I've found the Social Security "death index" to be useful http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ but only with a few constraints - the person you are searching for has to have been alive to register for Social Security (i.e., alive around or after 1930 or so) and have died. I find this useful in that it provides birth and death dates, as well as where they registered with Social Security (usually where they were born) and where they died.

Just putting your ancestors name, birth year and death year along with the word "obituary" into Google will often bring back their printed obituary!

The unexpectedly useful place to research has been - Google Books. Google has scanned in a bazillion of pages of books of all types and indexed them with their lightening fast search engine. Now, if you go there, you will see "common" and "current" books in print, but don't be fooled!

I was stuck looking at my dad's paternal side of the family tree - I knew my 6-greats-grandfather Joseph Mousley was born in 1803 in Leicester, England, came to Philadelphia and died there in 1883. His wife was Sarah Hose and their children were: Sarah Elizabeth, Charles George, George, Harriett, Joseph Edward, Joseph William, and Clara Louisa.

Joseph the immigrant with wife Sarah Hose, was the son of Joseph and Sarah Mousley. Reaching for the aspirin bottle yet?

What confuses me is the Charles, Georges and Josephs. You see, my 5-greats grandfather Charles George came over from England with his dad Joseph. His brother George did not. George came over later on with one of the brothers named Joseph.

Charles G. had a boy named Charles Jr. that died at 28 years old but had married and worked in the brass foundry (here). His brother George also had a son, named George Jr., what else? :)

So there were a lot of Charlies and Georges running around. I'm still sorting this mess out. But in the meantime, I found this while searching Google Books...


The Log of the Ninth Annual Cruise of the Second Presbyterian Fishing Club of Philadelphia, July 3d to 14th 1879 Inclusive on the Schooner "Emma Collins".


On July 3d, 1879, precisely at 2 PM today, the club left Clement and Dunbar's wharf above the Shackamaxon Street (Note: This very close to where William Penn landed in Philadelphia)...


I couldn't figure out why Google had brought this book up in response to my search - until I noticed the members of the fishing club included brothers Charles and George; my 5-greats-grandfather and many greats-uncle.

The log goes on to detail Charles' bouts of seasickness, how George's rheumatoid arthritis keeping him from walking on a beach, and their catching many fish off the shores of Cape May, New Jersey. My own brother gets seasick at the slop of a wave - maybe it runs in the family? My grandfather speaks of many summers fishing at Cape May - perhaps there is something "out there" that pulls my family to the Delaware River and Bay?

If you'd like, you can read the entire (46 page) book (here) What you really might want to try is popping your grandfather's name in the book search and see what you might find!