It's National Candy Corn Day

Candy Corn was invented by George Renninger, an employee of the Wunderle Candy Company.  He was born December 14, 1856 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of John Renninger from Germany and Johanna Kimmerle of Ireland.   He married Sarah Lunney of Irish descent. They had eight children.  George died September 28, 1944 of lung cancer.

      His recipe was bought by The Goelitz Confectionery Company, now called Jelly Belly Candy. The recipe for candy corn was simple: sugar, corn syrup, water, and other ingredients were put into massive kettles that could hold up to 45lbs of the mixture. It was cooked into slurry and, once well blended, marshmallow and fondant were added to the kettles. This served to smooth out the texture and make the candy soft to the bite. The mixture was poured into buckets called “runners” and workers called “stringers” would walk backwards while they poured the mixture into large kernel-shaped, cornstarch molds. The workers passed over with the buckets three times, each time with a different color: white, orange, and yellow. Fun fact: candy corn is made from bottom to top. The yellow bit is the top and the white is the bottom.

Happy Halloween

Are there any witches in your family tree? If we can trace your family back to colonial times, there have been many documentations of witch trials, not only in Salem but in other towns that aren't quite so notorious. Genealogical research can be bewitching. It’s nearing two of my husband’s ancestor’s favorite time of year. They were witches and he can claim them in his family tree. I am referring to Colonial America when the fear of witchcraft prevailed. These “witches” were the subject of an overriding fear of things that the colonists did not understand. In the case of Lydia Gilbert, she was accused of killing Henry Stiles. She never held the weapon or was anywhere near the place of death. Thomas Allen, a militiaman, cocked his musket during a training exercise and inadvertently knocked it against a tree. The weapon fired killing Henry Stiles. Mr. Stiles lived in the household of Lydia Gilbert. It is not known if there was trouble between them, but subsequently she was accused of witchcraft, because “by the devil’s help”, she caused the musket to fire. Collecting names and dates is part of genealogical research, but the interesting part is when there is a good story to be told. There were many books and articles written about the witches in Colonial America, many concerning Salem, and Massachusetts. But many men and women were accused and indicted in Connecticut as well as other less known courts. There is a lineage society of the descendants of witches, called Associated Daughters of Early American Witches. Membership is by invitation only. I can check their list of approved ancestors.

Using Timelines

            We have ancestor charts and family group sheets from the software that we use, but they tend to hide many of the details of a person's life.  For a different view of an ancestor, I create a timeline to plot out the events of an ancestor’s life.  You can use a spreadsheet, like Excel, a word processing document, or special timeline software or websites. Whichever tool you choose, creating an ancestor timeline will enliven the dash between your ancestor’s birth and death dates.  If you have a tree on Ancestry or FamilySearch, they provide a time line of events in your ancestor’s life for you.  Use that to look for gaps in your research.

 Here are some reasons to create a timeline:

*Summarize a person’s life

*Focus on further research needed

*Aid in evaluating the quality of another researcher’s work

*Divide an ancestor’s life into workable parts, i.e. childhood, marriage, old age

*Demonstrate how lives interconnect

*Discover discrepancies and inconsistencies

*Eliminate possibilities when two or more individuals with the same name live in an area at the same time.

            There are two keys to effective timelines.  Add as many points as possible.  Make the points as specific as possible. In addition to the birth marriage and death, I add every event that I have for that ancestor -- his residences, occupations, births and deaths of parents and children, newspaper items, education, military data, immigration and travel, burial, etc. Much of this detail would have been lost on a family group sheet.
            See why I think timelines are awesome!  I think they are one of the most effective tools we have for spotting gaps in our research and sparking ideas for more things to look for.

Back to Blogging

I have shut down my regular website "Rootspursuits.com".   I will be using my blog to keep everyone up to date.  I will continue to do research for clients.  My new email is karen.peterson.familyresearch@gmail.com

Civil War Letters

Maybe you found your Civil War ancestor.  Perhaps you have his military record or pension papers from Ancestry or Fold3 websites.  Did he or anyone in his regiment write home?  The letters might contain accounts of life in camp, marches and battles.  They might describe every day experiences such as shelter, clothing, food and general morale.  Were your Civil War ancestor's letters saved and submitted to an archive?  One way to find out is to Google "Civil War Letters".  The results are many.  Some repositories include but are not limited to Virginia Tech, Virginia Military Institute, Civil War Archive, Civil War.net.  You can also search Civil War Archive for regimental histories.  Civil War books that contain collections of civil war letters or regimental histories can be found at Civil War Mall or Camp Pope.  One book in particular that relates to our family is Duty Honor and Country.  It has transcripts of 119 letters written by Captain William P. Black of the 37th Illinois Infantry.