Contagious Genealogy: A Pandemic

Jesse Pitcock's name might appear fairly average upon first examination, but there's something fun hidden in his middle name. He was my 1st cousin 4x removed on one of my mother's lines. And before a day ago, I didn't even know he existed, let alone would have picked him for this blog's subject line. But due to coincidental timing this week, I happened to discover him and have the perfect opportunity to shine a spotlight on him and his family. Jesse was born in 1890 in Greene County, Pennsylvania to parents John and Sidney Pitcock. John was my 3rd great granduncle. I believe Jesse was their youngest child out of 9 kids! He went on to marry a woman named Lucy John and they had 5 daughters together. Now, I don't have any strong evidence to back up this suspicion, but I believe Jesse's parents had a wonderful sense of humor. Jesse's name only sprung out at me while leafing through my Ancestry.com tree's image hints. His obituary had been uploaded by ano...

After my maternal great aunt, Frances (Dean) Wise, passed away in 2019, her daughter saw it fit to ship me two of the enlarged, framed photographs that had adorned her walls in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had hung above the ancestral bed that had once belonged to her great grandmother, Elizabeth (Pitcock) Rockwell, who happened to be my 3rd great grandmother. I was already well acquainted with the two pictures, seeing as I was already in possession of much smaller versions in the photo albums I had inherited from my grandmother (Frances' sister). But I was stoked to add the framed stills to my personal collection, all the same. The frames themselves are pretty unique as they are made with sturdy wood and convex bubble glass over the picture. My best guess is that the frame may date back to the 1930s or '40s. The other thing that makes the photographs interesting is the fact they were hand-painted to bring color to minute details within the image, such as rosy cheeks. The smaller vers...

At the June 2018 Southern California Genealogical Society's Genealogy Jamboree event in Burbank, California, I had the pleasure of sitting down with The Photo Detective, Maureen Taylor, on the convention floor. She was offering immediate, in-person consultations on two photos for just $20. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to get her expertise on a photo of my 3rd great grandmother (actually two of my 3rd great grandmothers!). I admit I was a little intimidated. Although I had been studying my tree for years, I was still a baby genealogist and was rather green when it came to doing research the right way. Maureen was already well-known and established, so this was kind of like meeting a celebrity in genealogy circles. And I could tell she meant business when we began our session and she broke out her audio-set with a microphone that helped amplify her voice above the buzz of the expo floor. I asked if it was okay to record our session and her response was, "Absolutely!...

In a previous blog post on my Great Grandaunt Mary , I wrote about her quilting hobby and how I coincidentally found a photo of her sewing a pattern that wound up in the hands of a cousin whom I had just met online (all due to this blog!). Quilt made by Mary (Dixon) Stalnaker Hogg and gifted to Nancy Hogg.  Photo supplied by Nancy Hogg, 2022. Mary wasn't the only quilter in the family though. Her mother, Lizzie (Rockwell) Dixon, and grandmother, Elizabeth (Pitcock) Rockwell, had also been avid quilters. In 2009, our family attended a small reunion outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma at my Great Aunt Frances (Dean) Wise's home to celebrate her 90th birthday and her sister Thelma's 81st. It was the perfect opportunity to raid Frances' closet, figuratively speaking! She gave us the low down on several family heirlooms and photos hung about her bedroom, including the many handmade quilts she had stored in a box, as well as two garments she produced herself. Both she and Thelma are n...

  NOVEMBER 04, 2021 A bride’s fashion choices on her big day typically wind up as the most important outfit of her life….and one that she’ll likely never don ever again! After the wedding zips by in a flash, she’s left with the question of, “What do I do with this dress?” Week 40: Preservation My mom had a very unfortunate story surrounding her wedding gown, where her aunt Frances had hand-beaded an extravagant dress for her that tragically did not arrive in the post by the day of the ceremony! My mom had been the one to design the dress, and Frances patterned it in Oklahoma and sent a muslin back to California for her to try it on. Her mom, Edna, helped pin it and they sent it back to Frances for finishing. But when Frances shipped out the final product, the airlines went on strike, and the dress was stuck on a plane in Texas! So, the night before her wedding, my mom drove to the Del Amo Fashion Center (then called the Del Amo Fashion Square) in Torrance, California with her soon-...

  JANUARY 17, 2021 Nope, that’s not Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! But it seems fitting that this is the THIRD week of the 52 Ancestors project, and you would shout his similarly sounding name THREE times to resurrect him, and I have THREE generations all named Beatrice! Perfect for a rant on namesakes. Week 3: Namesake Naming patterns tend to be seen as both a blessing and a curse in family history. Sure, it’s a fairly easy tool to use as a generational link between father and son -- especially when their records diligently record whether they’re the I, II, or III of that namesake, however, it also introduces a common hurdle of separating and identifying (wo)men of the same name. Luckily for me, there’s one string of my family members who are named for each other who are close enough to me in the tree that there’s no question as to each of their identities. The namesake spans three confirmed non-consecutive generations, dating back to at least January 4th, 1861. That’s whe...