52 Ancestors: Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie) Vollick, the Blacksheep of the Family

Amy Johnson Crow has a new challenge for geneabloggers called Challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Amy challenges genealogists to write about one ancestor once a week. 

The only photo I have of Lizzie
on the right

My great grandmother Mary Elizabeth Vollick had what I consider a rather difficult life. I knew she married Stephen Peer against her parents' wishes and I knew they disowned her. But when I connected with the grandchildren of her siblings several years ago, I learned even more. 

Lizzie, as she was called by her siblings, was known as the black sheep of the family. According to her sisters she was a "wild thing". In 1879 at the age of 16 she eloped with Stephen Peer who was 10 years her senior. Her parents were not happy, both because of her age but also because the Peer family were considered rather unsavory. Nothing criminal, but they were a family of daredevils and considered irresponsible. For example, Stephen's brother was the first ever base jumper and his cousin walked Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

The entire family lost touch with Lizzie and she had no contact with her parents or siblings again.

Lizzie's family all lived in the Elmvale Ontario area but she and Stephen began moving from town to town, finally settling in Guelph in 1890. By then they had 6 young children and not much money. My grandmother Olive was the oldest. 3 more children were born, the last in August 1896. One year later Stephen, age 44, died of typhoid fever and 34 year old Lizzie was left a widow with no money and 9 children aged 1 year to 17 years. 

The City of Guelph established a fund to collect money for the impoverished widow and her family. Notices were put in the newspaper asking for donations. Because Lizzie was destitute, the Baptist Church arranged for burial of Stephen (to date I have not been able to find his burial location). In an ironic twist of fate, Stephen's death notice ran incorrectly under the name of his father. You'll understand the irony when you read about Lizzie's death registration later in this article

Oct. 28, 1897
        Levi [sic] Peer died at General Hospital on Wednesday afternoon from typhoid fever.  Leaves a wife and nine children in destitute circumstances.  City relief officer made arrangements for burial and attended to needs of family.  Trinity Baptist church also assisting.  (article from Guelph Herald.)

Somehow Lizzie managed to support the family but I know it was rough. My grandmother never spoke of those days and I always wondered if they ended up in the local poorhouse (now the Wellington County Museum just outside of Elora) 

Lizzie's Tombstone in Woodlawn Cemetery Guelph

Lizzie's difficulties were not over. In May 1914 she died. She was just 51 years old. Her cause of death was starvation. All her children except Edgar, the youngest, had married and left home. It was left to Edgar to provide the information to the clerk for her death registration. In his grief and confusion he must have misunderstood the questions asked of him for he gave his own father and mother's names as the first names of Lizzie's parents. 

So her death record gives her correct maiden name of Vollick. But instead of her parents' names (Isaac and Lydia) it states "Stephen and Mary Vollick". And thus poor Lizzie is forever recorded with the wrong parents and even death was not kind to her. 

To add to the family tale of hardship, young Edgar enlisted in World War 1 less than a year later. He was only 17 at the time, an orphan. Sent to France he suffered as many did through the War years and in August 1918 he was killed. He was just 20 years old.

I am only glad that Lizzie did not live to see her youngest die.

Creating Memory Books on Shutterfly

Creating one of the McGinnis Memory Books

As you can imagine, I've been researching my McGinnis family for many decades. Part of my ongoing quest is researching all siblings on all generations back to the immigrant ancestor who came to Ontario Canada from Ireland in the 1830s.

The immigrant ancestor John McGinnis had 7 sons and 2 daughters that I've found so far, and most of them left Canada to settle in the USA. I'm sure you get the idea of how much data I have now on each generation of each branch!

Recently I decided it was time to organize and preserve my research - documents, photos and so on. I've wanted to do this for a very long time but keep re-thinking and changing my ideas on how best to accomplish this.

Finally last month I decided it was time. Make a decision and go with it! And I'm pleased to say that I've done that with the help of Shutterfly.

Making Decisions

My first decision was that these books are just for family. So I am comfortable with showing photos, documents and information for living people.

My second decision was that I would create one book (volume) for each generation starting with my father and working backwards.

Normally this is the stage of the process where I start second-guessing myself. I end up with several different ideas on how to best create the book(s) and as a result - I become bogged down in minutia and am unable to forge ahead!

With the encouragement of my husband who simply shrugged his shoulders and repeated (often) "Just set it up how YOU like it and do it!" I was able to minimize the internal "maybe this way is better" agonizing that I usually face.

Creating Different Volumes Within One Surname

My final decision was to create one title that would be used for each volume, and number the volumes starting with my father and working backwards. I know - one would normally number from the immigrant ancestor coming down the generations. But unlike my usual flip-flop over what was best, I simply made the decision and went with it. No looking bad, no second-guessing, no "gee I wish I'd done xxx instead of yyy" It was liberating!

Having one book for each generation worked well for me. I forged ahead quite quickly, gathering my scattered documents and photos, uploading them to Shutterfly into "albums", one album for each volume I planned to create, and then inserting them into the appropriate books.

Using Albums in Shutterfly

Once I had my photos and documents that I had uploaded into what I called McGinnis Album Dad inserted into Volume 1 (my father, mother and children) it was easy to write the text and photo captions that I wanted to add to each page. 

A hard lesson I learned after creating dozens of other books in Shutterfly was to carefully and precisely name my albums where my photos and documents were being uploaded.  I had not done this, instead leaving the default name/label which was simply the dates of the upload. That meant that I had to look through dozens of albums every time I wanted to move more photos from the albums to my books!

It took me awhile to figure out how to rename albums in Shutterfly so I urge you to name them with an identifier immediately. You can see in this photo on the right that I have not finished renaming all my original albums.

Organizing Pages Within the Book

I kept it simple. I started with the marriage of my grandparents, then the birth record of my father. The next several pages were devoted to information, photos and documents that pertained to my dad, up to his death. Items were placed chronologically for ease of reading. The nice thing about Shutterfly is that it is easy to rearrange pages if you need to add or move a page.

I allowed 2 pages for some photos of myself and my siblings, but I already have a book I created about us so I didn't need to go into details in this project.

After my dad's section was complete, I created pages for each of his siblings. Some siblings only have one page as I don't have much information on them. Some have many pages.

Consistency & Organization

Backgrounds for my book theme

Consistency is my downfall. On this project, which incorporates 5 volumes on one family (McGinnis) I knew I could easily slip into a freer less-consistent method of organizing the books. It was important to me that each volume had the same look and feel, so I created a plan on paper ahead of time.

My plan listed what fonts and text colours I wanted to use. I chose one book style (theme) to use for each volume.  I listed my method of organizing within each book - parents, then child who was my direct ancestor, then siblings of direct ancestor.

As I began to create each volume, I listed what records I had, and what I should get if I didn't already have it. This included census records, vital statistics and so on. Then as I added those documents I ticked them off on my list.

This is the most organized I've ever been on a project and it helped me to finish two volumes very quickly.  The photo you see above is the volume for my great-grandparent Alex McGinnis and I'm almost finished! The volume for my dad has been ordered. The volume for my grandfather is done but not ordered.  I'm amazed at how quickly these are coming together, and very excited to carry on with other family surnames.

Tools for Recording Life Stories

Recently Olive Tree Genealogy received this email from a reader. It's a great question for discussion!

This month my neighbor and I and one more friend are starting a genealogy club at the assisted living center in our town. We thought that we would begin by having each member of our club tell their personal story as we record it. I bought two digital recorders today but my sister suggested that we use Dragon Dictate. Would anyone have an opinion on this for me?

Recording and preserving life stories and memories is a wonderful idea. I think the digital recorders will work well but the group might also consider using a Smart Pen. With a Smart Pen you make jot notes in a special notebook.

The Pen not only records the person talking, but your jot notes allow you to touch a word on the paper and you get immediate playback. Later you simply plug your pen into your computer and transfer the recorded story or stories to your hard drive.

It's an amazing piece of technology and great for interviews as it is less intimidating than a recorder. I've written about using the Smart Pen if you care to read the articles:

Echo Smart Pen: Handy Tool for Genealogists

Capturing Memories Told By My 88 Year Old Aunt

 I'm not sure that Dragon Dictation would work well as it types as you speak.  It's a voice recognition program which is different from digital recorders. It requires editing the written text too. As well Dragon Dictation requires that you "speak" the punctuation you wish to insert. So if someone is speaking and you are using Dragon to record that person it will be a run on sentence with no punctuation.

Let's have my readers weigh in with their ideas and suggestions - what do you use?

Scanning Auntie's Life Story Pages with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner

Using LiveScribe to Record Auntie's Memories

Here's another way I got to use my Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner with Auntie. We usually chat and drink tea while I scan her box of photos.

This time I recorded some of her memories using my LiveScribe Pen and then I used my Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner to scan the start of her life story she'd written out on loose pages.

You can see the pages she'd written sitting on the coffee table waiting to be scanned. The stitching software with Flip-Pal allowed me to easily scan the pages in sections then stitch them together seamlessly when I got home.

All I did was transfer the scanned sections to my computer and let the stitching software do the work putting them together in one seamless page after the other.

Journal for Auntie's Memorie

I also bought a small journal for Auntie to write down more life stories as she thinks of them. I'm looking forward to visiting again to see what else she's remembered. I'll take my Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner with me of course to scan any memories she has done. 

Scanning Auntie's Photos with Flip-Pal

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Auntie and I Scan Family Recipes with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner

Auntie and I at Greek Restaurant

A few days ago I visited my 88 year old auntie. That's us sitting in a Greek Restaurant that she wanted to try for lunch.

After a lunch of Greek Salad and Chicken Souvlaki in a Pita, we headed back to auntie's apartment. She continued telling me more stories of growing up with my mom and my grandparents (her parents)

My great-uncle, my grandpa Fuller's brother, turns 100 this summer and we were trying to figure out if we could pay him a visit and get his family stories too!

The problem is he is stone deaf and doesn't like to wear his hearing aid! And he's a bit gruff too so he kind of scares me.

But the stories he could tell me might help me overcome my hesitation

Scanning with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner

Back at auntie's apartment we pulled out the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner as auntie said she had some of her mother's recipes written in her own hand.

I was eager to get copies since I love to cook and want to try some of Grandma's recipes.  I've got two of my grandma's recipes that aren't in her hand as I wrote down what she told me when I was a newly married bride.

Auntie had two recipes from Grandma for Christmas Fruit Cake that my Grandmother wrote out for her so I scanned them and took photos with my iPhone.

The recipes are written on 6 1/2x10 inch paper so couldn't be scanned in one scan but with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner stitching software I'm not concerned.

I just scanned them in three sections - top, middle and bottom and later I'll stitch them together to make one image.

Grandma's Fruit Cake Recipe

One of the recipes I have from Grandma is for Spotted Dick, and it was actually her mother's (my great-grandmother) recipe.

The other is for Cow's Tongue and a relish-sauce to serve with it.

Spotted Dick might as well be called Heart-Attack-in-a-dish so I've only made it once. We do enjoy Cow's Tongue and I use that recipe frequently.

One of the funny stories auntie told me on this visit was how her grandmother Fuller (my great-grandmother) used to pull humbugs out of her pocket to give to auntie to keep her quiet in church. But the humbugs were unwrapped so were covered in lint and hairs! To this day auntie says she hates humbugs.

The Legacy of Our Genealogy

Everyone dies. It's a sad fact of life, and one we all face. For genealogists this natural order of things is compounded by the fact that we have invested so much time into researching our family tree. What will happen to our years of work once we're gone?

As we've discussed previously on Olive Tree Genealogy blog, genealogy is often a way of life, an addictive all-consuming hobby or avocation. If you're like me you have boxes and binders and filing cabinets chock full of papers and documents you've collected on your ancestors.

But do you have a plan for your papers after your passing? You not only need a person or repository for your work, you need to have it in some semblance of organization in order to pass it on.

Let's face it, do we really think anyone else wants our piles of unsorted papers? I can't think of anyone in my family who would offer a spot in their homes for my records. I have two 3-foot long filing cabinets, 3 drawers high - the kind that pull out so the files are sideways not facing front. I also have 2 smaller front-facing filing cabinets. I also have several large plastic tubs. They are all full of my genealogy research. I'm only kidding myself to think that anyone would take them and give up room in their house to store them.

And let's not forget my Genealogy program with data entered that is not printed off. I'm not even sure my husband knows how to access all those digital family files.

As avid genealogists we each need to put together a solid plan for our work. The plan should cover three areas:

1. Where will our work go - an individual family member? An institution?

2. In what format will our work be organized so that it can be passed on

3. How have you ensured that your executors or loved ones know about your plan

Many genealogists seem to think that an institution such as a local library or an Archives or Museum or the Family History Centre in Salt Lake City will jump at the opportunity to have the research. But have you verified that this is correct? Have you found out what format they want it in, IF they want it at all?

Do you know of an enthustiastic family member who is hoping you'll leave all your research to him or her? I don't!

My plan is to continue creating small family booklets which I've talked about previously on Olive Tree Genealogy Blog under the topic Genealogy Memory Books and also larger in-depth books.

In each of those I will place scans of documents I've found. It isn't realistic to think I can include scans of every single document for every individual - the census records alone would create a book so mammoth it would not be feasible to print it.

So I will note my sources carefully and accurately so that others reading my work will be able to duplicate (i.e., find) what I have found. I'll only be able to include scans of the more obscure documents, and of those which are original one-of-a-kind documents or photographs in my possession. I hope to create these booklets and donate them to local libraries during my lifetime. I plan on one booklet or book per family surname.

For family lines where I've not yet done in-depth research I will simply put together a very small booklet with a pedigree chart, family group sheets or genealogy report printed automatically from my genealogy program, and copies of documents. These I won't donate during my lifetime but will add to them as I can.

Instructions for disposal of my genealogy research notes and booklets have been added to the set of instructions I have for the executors of my will. Both my husband and my son know where this is kept. It's a large manilla envelope with several pages of important items - my bank accounts, credit cards, burial wishes, facts for my obituary, my wishes for disposal of family treasures, life insurance policies, etc. Everything to make my executors' lives easier.

I rest easy knowing I have a plan that I like. But I haven't yet begun organizing the genealogy data and that leaves me feeling uneasy. Genealogy is important to me. The truth and the story of my ancestors is something I am compelled to pass on to others.

Facing our own mortality isn't easy but it's inescapable and so I've vowed that 2011 will be the year I organize my over 40 years of research. Do you have a plan and a goal for ensuring that your genealogy research survives? What a wonderful legacy we can each leave if we take some time to make it happen.

The Things Family Don't Know

Last week I joined my brother and nephew and families for a dinner out. During the evening I showed them a booklet I was creating for our McGinnis family ancestry.

My nephew expressed surprise that my mother and father (his grandparents) had been married in a double wedding ceremony with my mother's sister. This was news to him!

This may seem like a small thing but I was startled. That double wedding was something I heard about as a young child. I have the wedding invitation. I have newspaper articles about the two sisters in Guelph who were to be married in a double ceremony.

I have articles about their showers, their trousseau teas, their wedding and their honeymoon plans. I have a photo of my mom and dad standing on the steps of the church on their Wedding Day. I have a group photo of the Wedding party.

So for me, this is old news and something I know as if it happened to me. I figured everyone in the family knew. It never occured to me that my nieces or nephews might never have heard of it.

Didn't my brother ever mention it? Did he know? I suddenly feel quite a bit of pressure to spread the word! To share the stories and the facts I've known for so many years.

I think it's time for me to put together a little booklet with all the events in my parents' and grandparents' lives that I've known about for years. Maybe I'm the only one who knows and boy that worries me. I made an error by assuming everyone in the family knew of this special day. What else don't they know (that I do).

I grew up hearing stories. My mother, grandmother and aunt all told me stories of their childhood and their lives. I asked for the stories over and over again. They showed me clippings from newspapers. My mom had a scrapbook (which may actually have been my grandmother's, my memory is fuzzy on that) which she eventually gave me and that is where all the newspaper clippings, the wedding invitation, etc were.

Maybe that's why I am a genealogist. I love hearing the stories, learning about the people living their daily lives. It's not about the names or dates or going back the furthest in time. For me it's all about the people - who were they, what events did they experience, what emotions did they feel, how did they live their lives... these are important to me and finding the answers to those questions make my ancestors alive for me.

So, I'm having my brother and nephew to my house this Thursday. They're getting a copy of the booklet I made (plus more pages including that all important Double Wedding information complete with copies of the newspaper articles, wedding invitation and the rest of the goodies I have on it)

It's one small step but it's a start.