Category Archives: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Cousins, Cousins and More Cousins

Allen, Cleages, Grahams, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

I haven’t participated Saturday Night Genealogy Fun lately but I came across this one and it seemed interesting so here is a tally of my 1st cousins, 2nd cousins and several degrees of removed cousins. I am several weeks late but you can find the original challenge at the link above. 

1) Take both sets of your grandparents and figure out how many first cousins you have, and how many first cousins removed (a child or grandchild of a first cousin) you have.

My Paternal Side

The Cleage family about 1930 in front of their house on Scotten. From L to R Henry, Louis, (My grandmother) Pearl, Barbara, Hugh, Gladys, Anna, Albert Jr (My father) and (My grandfather) Albert Sr.
The Cleage family about 1930 in front of their house on Scotten. From L to R Henry, Louis, (My grandmother) Pearl, Barbara, Hugh, Gladys, Anna, Albert Jr (My father) and (My grandfather) Albert Sr.

My father had 6 siblings. His three brothers had no children. His oldest sister had 1 son. His 2nd sister had 4 children and his youngest sister had 2 daughters.  I have 7 first cousins on this side.

cleage_cousins
My sister Pearl in the blue. Cousin Jan in the red. Behind Jan, Warren. Front right, Dale. Behind Dale, Ernie and behind him me. About 1958.
shreveshenryblairgammiexmas
Front are my other 3 cousins. In zipped coat on left, Maria. Center, Blair. On right, Anna.  Aunts & uncles in background.
  • Warren has 2 daughters. They have a total of 6 children.
  • Jan has 3 daughters and 1 son. They have a total of 4 children.
  • Ernest has 2 children.No grandchildren.
  • Anna has 4 children. No grandchildren.
  • Maria has 2 children. No grandchildren.
  • Dale has 1 child. Unknown number of grandchildren.

I have 14 1st cousins x removed on this side and 10 cousins 2X removed here.

 

 

grahams+with+mershall_2
Mershell & Fannie Graham with Mershell Jr, Mary V. & Doris. 1927.

My Maternal Side

My mother had three siblings. Both of her brothers died as children. Her sister had 3 daughters.

  • Dee Dee has 3 children. They have 8 children.
  • Barbara has 2 children. They have 5 children.
  • Marilyn has 1 son. He has 1 son who has 1 son.

I have 3 first cousins on this side, 6 cousins 1X removed and 14 cousins 2X removed.  This makes a grand total for me of  10 first cousins, 22 1st cousins 1X removed and 24 cousins 2 X removed.

daughters_grandaughters_'56
My mother Doris & her sister Mary V with their children – Cousins Dee Dee, Barbara & Marilyn with dark hair. Sister Pearl and myself with braids.

 

2) Extra Credit: Take all four sets of your great-grandparents and figure out how many second cousins you have, and how many second cousins once removed you have.

"At Home Eliza's descendents"
My mother and her sister with 2nd cousins, aunts and uncles.

My maternal grandmother had 2 sisters. Neither of them married or had children.  My maternal grandfather had 3 siblings. Only 1, his sister, had children. She had 4 children.  My mother had 4 first cousins.  That gives me 4 1st cousins 1X removed and 4 2nd cousins.  The family lost contact with my grandfather’s sister and I don’t know how many cousins I have on that side in future generations.

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My paternal grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage had 7 siblings.

header_Annas_Family

  • Josephine had 2 children. Unfortunately the family lost contact with those children after 1900.
  • Sarah had 9 children. Between them, they had 14 children.
  • Louise had 2 children.  They had 6 children.
  • Hugh had 4 children. They had 13 children.
  • Minnie had 12 children. They had 30 children.
My father and his brothers with Uncle Hugh Reed Averetts sons.
Two Reed cousins.  My father and his brothers with Uncle Hugh Reed Averett’s sons. Front are Henry and Hugh Cleage. Back are my father Albert Cleage, Hugh Averett, Thomas Averett and Louis Cleage.

My father had 29 1st cousins on his mother’s side. He had 63 1st cousins 1X removed on his mother’s side.  Josie’s Branch disappeared.  That gives me 63 known 2nd cousins on this side.

cuzcleages
Cleage Cousins – some of  Albert, Henry and Edwards children.

My paternal grandfather Albert B. Cleage had 4 siblings. Henry had 3 children. Edward had 6 children. Josie had 5 children.  My father had 14 1st cousins on his father’s side.  He had 30 1st cousin 1X removed. That gives me 30 2nd cousins on this side.

So, on my father’s side I have 43 1st cousins 1X removed and 93 2nd cousins.  On my mother’s side I have 4 1st cousins 1X removed and 4 second cousins making a combined total of 47 1st cousins once removed and 97 2nd cousins.

 

What’s In A Name?

Biography, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

I was named Kristin at my Uncle Henry’s suggestion, after the heroine of Norwegian author, Sigrid Undset’s trilogy, “Kristin Lavransdatter“.  My mother had considered naming me after her mother, Fannie, but my grandmother said that was an awful name to inflict on a child, so she didn’t.  My other grandmother, Pearl Reed Cleage, thought everybody should have a family name. In the case of my name she made an exception because it came from, she said, the best book in the world.

The name Kristin reached it’s height of popularity in the 1940s, however my health care professionals seem to be continual startled to find such an old woman with the name of Kristin. They think that only younger people have received that name.

I’ve always liked my name, even though people like to spell it with an “e” instead of an “i”.  During the late 1970s, Penguin Books came out with a new edition of the trilogy. I was stunned to read that Sigrid Undset wrote the series while raising 6 children. I was raising 4 and hardly had time to read, much less write Nobel Prize winning literature. I started trying to find out more about her life. I wrote letters to Undset experts at various universities and made connections that resulted in a 7 week trip to Norway in the summer of 1981.  I found out how she did it and I will write more about that experience in another post.

kristin cleage williams in Norway 1981
An interview with me in the Norwegian paper “Aftenposten” starts with mention of me being named after  the heroine of “Kristin Lavransdatter”. I did not do the interview in Norweigian.

I got the idea for this post from Randy Sever’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, although I didn’t do it exactly the way he described.

Then and Now – Atkinson 1953

Cleages, Photographs, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, , ,

The “Saturday Night Fun” assignment from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (along with some of the fine results) can be found here.  It involved picking out a photograph to use in this challenge for August 16 by the Family Curator.  For the original challenge you hold up an old photograph and match it up to the present day scene.  This means you have to be in the area.  Unfortunately, I live far from the sites of my past and that of my ancestors so I was am not able to do this exactly.  I also was not able to just choose my photo and let it go at that. Here is what I did.

The parsonage now and us back in 1953.

In 2004 I spent a day driving around Detroit taking photographs of places where I used to live and of other houses family members lived in.  The angle of this house fit almost perfectly with the photograph taken in 1953 of my father with my little sister Pearl and me.  We are in front of the parsonage on Atkinson. My father was the minister of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church, two blocks up the street on the corner of 12th Street and Atkinson.

My sister and I shared the bedroom on the upper left.  We used to look out of the side window into the attic of Carol and Deborah. They were our age and lived next door and got to stay up much later then we did. They had a wonderful playroom in the attic.  I taught Pearl to read by the streetlight shinning into our bedroom.  I don’t know why we waited until we were supposed to be in the bed to teach and learn reading.

On our other side lived Eleanor Gross with her family. Eleanor was a teenager and babysat with us during the rare times our parents went out.  My paternal grandparents lived down the street and I have a 2004 photograph of that house which I think I will mix with one from the 1950’s.  I was trying to think of someone still in Detroit that I could get to take a photo from the proper angle of St. Mark’s. I like this assignment!

Who Was Born On My Birthday?

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun,

The Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge this week:

1) Is there a person in your genealogy database that has the same birth date that you do? If so, tell us about him or her – what do you know, and how is s/he related to you?

2) For bonus points, how did you determine this? What feature or process did you use in your software to work this problem out? I think the Calendar feature probably does it, but perhaps you have a trick to make this work outside of the calendar function.

Me, my niece,Deignan and my step-grandaughter, Maya.

 I  found three people in my Reunion data base with my birthday.  
1.  My niece Deignan was born on August 30, 29 years after I was.
2.  My step-grandaughter Maya was born on August 30, 58 years after I was.
3.  Elizabeth Ferguson was born 22 years before I was and is the wife of my first cousin twice removed husband’s great uncle.  In other words, she is not a blood relative but a result of one of my wandering searches.

It took me some time to figure out how to find this information in my REUNION genealogical software, which is why I am posting on Sunday night instead Saturday.  I found it by going to my calendar, under LIST, then picking Birth as the event, include ALL PEOPLE, month of AUGUST and then picking LIST.  I got a window with all the August birthdays, scrolled down to August 30 and voila, there they were.

An Ancestral Home on Google Maps

Cleages, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, , ,
910 Fayette Indianapolis Indiana – two story house on the right- Google maps

I decided to accept the  Saturday night challenge. After looking and not finding anything but parking lots and weed covered land where my ancestors used to live, I found 910 Fayette standing. For several years I was confused about which house it was because the houses in Indianapolis were renumbered and it turned out it was the two story house on the right and not the little gray/blue one on the left.

My father, Albert Buford Cleage, Jr, was born in this house on June 13, 1911. His parents had married the year before after Albert completed his medical training and received his physician’s license. The three Cleage brothers, Jacob, Henry and Albert and wives Gertrude and Pearl shared the house until the following year when Albert opened a practice in Kalamazoo Michigan and moved his family there.