Today I am working on the "Regan" branch of my family tree.  This is my wife's father's line.  I have had a major wall in moving this line backwards in time through my mistaken belief that her great grandfather's name was Jeremiah.  I made the mistake of believing unsubstantiated data instead of researching facts.  Once I cleared my mind of anything but facts and went about either proving or disproving the line suddenly opened up to me and I was faced with the reality that her great grandfather's name was Timothy and her great great grandfather was Jeremiah.  The beauty of all this is I found all of Timothy's children and can now begin to trace them forward ~!  What we learn from this is to gather all your information and research it thoroughly to sort out the rumors and untruths from the actual facts.  Today after entering all the new data I have discovered in  my database I hope to visit the cemetery timothy is buried in and find if there might be a family plot there ~!  Happy hunting to you all and remember to thoroughly investigate every fact if possible backing up the truth with several sources.

Thanks to Joseph and Grace the web site is almost back up... new domain and new hosting company ... all my file uploaded and ftp--ed to the manager.. all that remains is a bit of tweaking and pointing... see you there soon !

The Blog Is Back
First off, Welcome back.  I have taken my web site ( goodirishstock.com) off line.  The site needed a major update and I wasn't going to have the time at present to get it done anytime in the next half year.  Aside from the data needing to be converted from the Linux machine I had created it in and then converted to use for FTP to windows plus the format changes I so much want to do I decided not to waste the hundreds of dollars spent to just have it sit dormant for my own amusement.  That being said my research into the Ferris Family History and Genealogy continues.  What I will do until maybe the fall is each week focus on another branch of the family and research them the entire week posting my findings here and on Facebook.  I continue to amass names in the Family Tree Maker in Windows but have discontinued the GRAMPS software I used in Linux deciding to just use the one most people would be most able to identify with.  As always in my research I invite you the reader to participate by adding, subtracting or even just commenting on my data and research.  I will not post information about live family members without their express permission of course.  I hope to share my collection of old family pictures as I focus on that branch of the family.  I also will include occasionally some of the records and documents used to gather this data.  So once again feel free to comment, compliment, correct, or castigate as you feel the need.  

This week until Saturday evening I am focusing on Mary Catherine Maloney (Ferris) my Paternal Grandmother.  The above record is from the 1927 Somerville, MA directory showing Thomas and Mary Ferris living at 91b Boston Ave and showing their business "Ferris Used Car Exchange" working out of the rear of 291 Broadway.  Above is a picture of this garage with what I believe is a young Thomas Ferris. The Ferris family seems to have deep roots in transportation as Thomas has worked as a chauffeur and mechanic.  His father for many years was a horse trader and dealer.  Mary worked as a bookkeeper before marrying Thomas and no doubt was a great help in assisting in keeping the books of the business current.  Tomorrow using Federal Census Records and State Vital Records I will start to spread the branch of Mary and her immediate family.  

The above picture is for the address Thomas and Mary lived in during 1927. 




Thanks for checking in.  Be sure to leave your comments here or on Facebook about this project ~!

FERRIS. Charles Alexander

FERRIS, Charles Alexander - 28th of August 1869 - 20th of June 1899:  Working of FERRIS family during month of October starting with the children of  Thomas FERRIS I plan to work on the basics of obtaining references for Birth, marriage, death and other documents for all 10 children.  Today worked on Charles finding Birth Record, two Federal Census records, record of Marriage, one death and three birth records of children and finally one record of death for Charles.  Still missing records for one of his children (Walter).  Beginning a timeline for Charles's life helps to build facts and history on him and his family.  Left messages on Ancestry.com for people I found who had added Charles to their family trees in hopes of collaborating with them.  All in all a decent start to getting back into researching a bit each day and putting back the discipline needed in my time to take my research a few levels up ! Today I found Charles was born to Thomas and Sarah on 28th of August , 1867 in Cambridge.  He shows up on the Federal Census of 1870 at 3 and 1880 at 12 yrs old living in Cambridge still with both parents and siblings.  In 1894 working as a glass polisher he marries Margaret L DeArmond of Nova Scotia.  In 1894 their first child Charles Perley Ferris is born.  William comes along in 1895 though perishes from Enteritis in 1897.  John is born on October 13th ( same birthday as mine ) though in the year 1897.  Charles dies from Phitisis ( consumption or Tuberculois ) at the age of 31 on the 20th of June 1899 and is buried in Cambridge Cemetery.  His wife takes the children and returns to Nova Scotia to her family and farms the children out to different farms.  I have found the descendants of this family and met with one of them and talked to several of them.  I am hoping this next summer to once again get together with my "cousin" and continue to collaborate on filling in the missing people of this branch tracing the them from back in the late 1800s to the present.  I discovered that Cambridgeport had several large glass factories which several of the FERRIS family worked in.  One husband of a FERRIS started their living in such a factory and started his own business which continued for a generation or two afterwards.  Charles is buried in a Family plot ( pictured ) with his father and other Ferris family

2012

Happy New Year !  I am once again connected back to my membership in Ancestry.com and will soon hook back with NEHGS.  This year I will once again reorganize and publish my website.  I am hoping through Ancestry to collaborate with others who are researching the same surnames as I am.  Finally I hope to reconnect with some family through the web and visits to share my research.  Since this is a leap year and I have all that extra time I am going to share a "Who Are You - and How to Trace Your Family Roots" blog in here once a week. 

Organizing the Data

For about twenty years I have been collecting data on my family history. Through those years I have used many kinds of software to store the data. I began like many of us just writing down the information as I found it on paper, later starting notebooks to try and organize it. As time went on and the data became more involved and disorganized I began to separate the families data and try and focus on different branches. Over the years I have created many trees, registers, ahnentafel and other reports. I visited vita records offices and copied data from books when I couldn't afford to pay for the official record. I made trips to look at microfilm at the National Archives for Census, Passenger lists, and Naturalization Records. My interest never wavered though the time I had to spend doing this hobby did. Sometimes years would pass without me doing that much. Other times a few months would go by and other times maybe just a week or two would pass without me being able to look at my hobby. The desire to create this web site grew out of the hope of finding a way of putting all I have learned over the years in one place to share with my family. I thought that if I could do this and maintain the site I would attract more and more family to contribute and become interested in my research. Rainwave.com was the first to go up and it was thanks to my son Joseph that it had the flash it had due to his programming skills. Little content of actual genealogy data made it to the site unfortunately and I was baffled as how to get this dream done. Finally I found myself fully involved again and spending consistent time to sort and work through the data I collected. I began to use Family Tree Maker and GRAMPS at the same time with the thought of comparing them to see which would suit my needs the best. I found excellent qualities with both that to this day makes me continue to use both. It was through GRAMPS that I finally began the plans of a new web site. GoodIrishStock.com has been in it's third year now and I am proud to be the sole person who codes and updates the site. I continue to sort through the massive amount of paperwork I have collected using both Ancestry.com and New England Historical and Genealogical Society to confirm my older research. I try to update the site a couple times a year and as the new year approaches I find myself in the middle of another plan to revise. Communication with living family members continues to amaze me as I find new cousins from different branches of our family and they add their stories and data to the mix. I finish out this month working on my paternal family name: Ferris.
I will be reaching out to many who are out of the loop and do not even know of me. I am hoping to make new friends and family while continuing to document our history. My hope this coming year though is to find someone to share this task with who is computer literate and has the enthusiasm and time to dedicate towards improving, validating, sharing and researching this project. Those are my thoughts.
I hope someone out there shares them with me. So back to work at entering old data into the FTM software. From there I will create a GEDCOM file to transfer it to GRAMPS And compile it there. I will move the data then to code both in Kubuntu Linux and Windows 7 and upload it to the site. I hope this new version will find it's way into some new computers around the world and bring the Ferris Family and it's many branches closer together.

PLANS FOR 2011

As 2011 looms closer, I begin today the task of updating all the data collected this past year and inputting it into FTM and GRAMPS. Another revision of the website should be out before years end. Enough blogging.. Now onto the work at hand ~!!!!