by Sharon Hall | Mar 15, 2014 | Surname Saturday
Some of the earliest records of this surname (pronounced EYE-sham) occurred in eleventh century England. There are two Isham families that settled in the Colonies, one in Massachusetts and one in Virginia. The families migrated from Northamptonshire in England,...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 12, 2014 | Digging History Magazine, Ghost Town Wednesday
This ghost town was originally named “Rock Island” but was later changed by the Rock Island and Pacific Railroad to “Glenrio” or “Glen Rio”. The name was a curious choice, however, since “glen” means...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 11, 2014 | Tombstone Tuesday
Enoch Holton was born on October 19, 1796 in North Carolina, and his wife Tabitha Pipkin was born on November 28, 1796. Enoch and Tabitha married on April 2, 1822 and had a family of at least five children (my estimates): Elvira (1823 or 1824) Jesse Walker Pipkin...
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...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 26, 2014 | Digging History Magazine, Wild West Wednesday
Charles H. Utter, a.k.a. “Colorado Charlie”, according to most sources was born around 1838 in New York state, near the Niagara Falls region. One individual in this past week’s Surname Saturday article, Abraham Utter, lived in New York state, so perhaps they were...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 25, 2014 | Tombstone Tuesday
Perrin Ross was born July 4, 1748 to parents Jeremiah and Anna Paine Ross in New London, Connecticut. Jeremiah Ross was one of the Connecticut settlers who helped form the Susquehanna Company in 1753. The Company acquired two thousand acres of land in the Wyoming...
