by Sharon Hall | Mar 8, 2014 | Surname Saturday
The surname Kerfoot (or alternately spelled Kearfott), like many other surnames, was a locational name and would have meant “dweller at the hill-slope at the foot of the hills (or valley)” or simply a family who lived at the foot of a hill or in a valley. Surnames...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 7, 2014 | Feisty Females
Catherine Anselm “Kate” Gleason, like her good friend Lillian Moller Gilbreth, was an engineer and businesswoman long before those career choices were considered appropriate for a woman to pursue. Her father left Ireland in 1848, three years after the potato famine,...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 4, 2014 | Tombstone Tuesday
Titus Walter Blessing was born on August 4, 1855 in Dubuque, Iowa to parents Franz Joseph and Magdalena Rausch Blessing. His father, who went by his middle name Joseph, was born in Germany in 1826 and immigrated to America in 1850. His mother was born in Bavaria in...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 3, 2014 | Mothers of Invention
Lillian Moller Gilbreth was born on May 24, 1878 in Oakland, California to parents William and Anne Moller. She grew up in a Victorian, German-American home, the second and oldest of ten children (the first child died in infancy). Lillie (she later changed her name...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 1, 2014 | Surname Saturday
The Quackenbush surname has a unique distinction in American history. It is one of only a few surnames in North America which can be traced back to one single progenitor – Pieter van Quackenbosch. Records indicate that the name was primarily concentrated in a region...
