Where do I click?

In the comments to my Disaster post, Thomas MacEntee of Thomas 2.0 suggested I research old newspaper articles to see if there were cholera or typhoid outbreaks in Texas and Pennsylvania in 1840. I haven't found the answer to that question yet, but that did inspire me to search some of the old newspaper resources online for my Sliver ancestors.

I haven't focused much on this branch before. Even though I don't know the parents of, or much of anything about, my fourth great grandfather, John Sliver, I've focused my research elsewhere. There's been a lot of research done on the family tree of his wife (Barbara Fretz), so it wasn't as if the tree completely stops there, and I think I partially had the concern that I'd experience the same problems I had with my Denyer relatives in searching newspaper articles. Optical Character Recognition by its nature has to be a little fuzzy, and as Denyer and Denver are easily confused, so would Sliver and Silver.

But I knew his daugther, Elizabeth Sliver, was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and that she married William Denyer in Baltimore, Maryland, before they headed South to Texas. So I knew where to expect the articles to be. And the search turned out better than I expected.

At GenealogyBank, I found in several issues of the Baltimore Patriot, "lists of letters" left in the Post Office, like the one above. The Slivers (Parents John and Barbara, along with daughter Elizabeth) appeared a few times from 1818-1820. I wanted to know where to click to view the letter, but apparently that feature isn't operational yet.

While it's just a name in a list, it does place them in Baltimore. Elizabeth married William Denyer in Baltimore in 1821. None of the brief biographies I'd read in family histories mentioned that the Sliver family had definitively moved there from Pennsylvania. I knew William Denyer also spent time in Bucks County, so Elizabeth and William might have gone to Baltimore on their own.

I know Elizabeth's mother, Barbara, joined Elizabeth and William on their journey south, as she died in Texas, though I don't know when and where John died. It could have been at either endpoint, or on the journey inbetween.

I also turned up an 1851 obituary for an Abraham Sliver in Baltimore. I'm not sure if he's related or not, but in the 1810 census there is an Abram, John and a Henry Sliver in the same village in Bucks County, all with small children. Siblings? Cousins? Happenstance? It's not clear.

But I do have a sliver of more data.

This post is a DISASTER!

This post is written for the 77th Carnival of Genealogy

As human beings, our very existence is proof of the survival skills, faith, or just plain luck our ancestors possessed in order to persevere through millennia of disasters: epidemics, wars, pestilences, famines, accidents, and acts of nature.

Tell about a disaster that one or more of your ancestors lived through. Did they survive a hurricane, flood, tornado, train wreck, sinking ship, plague, genocide, explosion, mine collapse, or some other terrible event? How did they survive? Research the details of the disaster and explain how it affected your ancestor (guilt, fear, faith, gratitude, etc.), your family's history, and even yourself!

I have relatives who survived (and others who didn't survive) genocide, but my ancestors managed to get out of Europe before World War II. There are no disasters I am currently certain any non-living ancestors directly experienced. (I exclude War, and the Great Depression, though there may be a strong argument to include the latter.)

However, there were two great cyclones/tornadoes in the St. Louis area which have been written up as noteworthy disasters, and I had ancestors living in the St. Louis area at the time. The question is how much they were impacted.

The Great Cyclone of 1896
[image from NOAA's National Weather Service]

"The 'Cyclone of 1896' has been described as the single most deadly event that hit the St. Louis area in recorded history."

Over 250 dead, over 150 missing, over 1000 injured.





The St. Louis Cyclone
Words by Ren. Shields, 1868-1913
Music by George Evans, 1870-1915

In the city of St. Louis on a busy afternoon,
Just before the ev'ning shades began to fall,
The streets were filled with people who were home from toil,
No danger seemed to threaten them at all;
Each one was smiling gay as they strolled along the way,
The world to them had never looked so bright,
When a cyclone with a roar down the streets and byways tore,
Leaving sorrow and destruction there that night.

CHORUS
Many hearts are aching,
Many homes forsaken,
Many lov'd ones gone forevermore;
Wives and mothers weeping,
At the harvest death is reaping,
As it travels on its way from door to door.

Rest of song (NB: midi auto-plays)

My paternal Cruvant, Feinstein and Blatt ancestors were all in St. Louis in 1896. However, the path of the cyclone is described as hitting the Southwest portion of the city, and my ancestors were in the central corridor at the time.

The Tornado of 1927
[image from NOAA's National Weather Service]

Between 72-79 killed, over 550 injured. This tornado struck the central parts of St. Louis City. However, I think my ancestors had moved west of the city by then.

In addition to all four branches of my paternal ancestry, my maternal grandmother, Myrtle Van Every, was in town. The divorce proceedings from her brief marriage in California to Dale Ridgely had been filed a month earlier, and according to her employment records from the US Post Office, she had resumed her job on Sept 26th. The cyclone hit on Sept 29th.

While I'm not certain what impact these natural disasters had on my ancestors, I also have an inverse situation. There may have been a disaster that killed three of my ancestors, but I am unable to identify it.

• My fifth great grandfather, Mark Fretz, lived from December 1750 to Feb 24, 1840.
• His daughter, my fourth great grandmother, Barbara Fretz Sliver, lived from April 21, 1775 to June 10, 1840.
• Her daughter, my third great grandmother, Elizabeth Sliver Denyer, lived from Feb 20, 1798 to Aug 10, 1840.

The latter two are recorded in family histories as having died in Texas, while their father/grandfather is likewise recorded as having died in Pennsylvania. It could easily be happenstance, but three generations dying in the same year seems suspicious to me.

Show and Tell

Honoring the season of Back to School - The theme for the 55th Carnival of Genealogy is Show and Tell

Show us and tell us about an heirloom, a special photo, a valuable document, or a significant person that is a very special part of your family history. Don’t be shy now, show us what you’ve got!

I have two items to share:
1) Fireplace tongs. At first glance, they don't look that special. They were used to start every fire as I was growing up, and I knew they were old. I think I knew they had been in the family multiple generations. But I didn't know the details. I may have been told them at some time as a youth, but I didn't retain the knowledge.

They come through my maternal grandmother, and they were forged in Pennsylvania. This is the extent of our definite knowledge. However, research shows that our lineage was last in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s.

The tongs were possibly forged by a 3rd great grandfather, William Denyer, either in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or Philadelphia. He would have passed them on to his son, Ebenezer Denyer, who would have passed them to his daughter Margaret Denyer, who passed them to her daughter Myrtle Van Every, my grandmother. So I am at least the sixth generation to have started a fire with these tongs.

It's possible they come from the family of William Denyer's wife, Elizabeth Sliver, in which case they could date back to the 1700s.

2) The second item is a family heirloom of which I am proud. However, it is not something I can easily photograph. Though it's part of one of the first photographs I ever shared on this blog. My middle name. Cruvant.

I wasn't always as proud of it as I am now. It's unusual, as a middle name. The family name of a paternal great grandmother, it derives from the Lithuanian city, Kruvandai.

Photograph of modern day Kruvandai.
Source: photogalaxy.

My Surnames

At the beginning of every meeting of the St. Louis Genealogical Society the attendees are asked, "Is there anybody here for the first time?" If there is they are asked to introduce themselves, and tell everyone the surnames they're researching. The latter makes a lot of sense at a local society since it's not completely unlikely you might run into a distant or not-so distant relative you were previously unaware of.

But it's also a small world, sometimes, and I don't think I've done that yet. I've introduced myself in several ways over the past few months, and mentioned surnames here and there in various posts, but I haven't created a single post that lists all my surnames. A complete surname list could get rather lengthy. But if I limit it to surnames of direct ancestors, it's more manageable.

There are several ways I could organize these names. I decided to alphabetize them, but group them by how many generations they are away from me.

Some may notice there are 17 names in the first list, when some might expect only 16. That's because there was a surname change. There are a couple surname changes in the earlier generations as well.

1-4 generations

ADLER, BLATT, BOKSERN, CANTKERT, CRUVANT, DENYER, DEUTSCH, DUDELSACK, FEINSTEIN , HARTLEY, LICHTMAN, MOJSABOVSKI, NEWMARK, PERLIK, STUART, VAN EVERY, WEISS

5-8 generations

BEASLEY, BLATYTA, COLEMAN, FRETZ , GOLDFINCH, GOLDSTEIN, HOLMES, HORTON, KIPERSZTOK, LIPMAN, LUCELLAS, OBERHOLTZER, ROSENBERGER, SHOWERS, SLIVER, SLUPSKY, SWAYZE, VAN IVEREN, WILCOX

9-12 generations

BETTS, BURGER, CHAMBERLAIN, FREDERICKSEN, HAYNE, KINGE, LANGTON, MEYER, SCHUYLER, WINES

I am going to link to this post from my sidebar, and I will update it as I have names to add (or change).

Descendents of William Denyer and Elizabeth Sliver

I included a poem by an ancestor a few posts ago which I found in a Fretz Family History book published in 1890. I have now entered the 7 pages from the book that pertain directly to the descendents of William Denyer and Elizabeth Sliver, and since much of the information isn't available anywhere else online, I created a page for it on my website.

There is a lot of good story information in the text, and since it was published in 1890, most of the information probably came directly from the individual, or a sibling/child. It's probably as trustworthy as first-person narration usually is. (Which means some of the story might be slightly exaggerated, but the general details are probably accurate, as are the dates.)

The one consistent alteration I made to the text is that I spelled out abbreviations. (I think the only exception I made were a few titles like Dr. and Rev. since it is rare that they are spelled out as titles.) The author over-abbreviated to conserve space, which is completely understandable, but space isn't an issue online, and I feel it is easier to read without abbreviations.