Sunday, February 24, 2013

family history friday might need a new name

Geesh.  I am really bad at this Friday thing.  Yesterday was a day that was full of many good things that needed doing, thus blogging had to wait.  Sorry, you 2 readers out there.  :) (cough.  mom and dad. cough.)

I have actually been having a few too many late nights this week while working on genealogy.  For those of you out there that haven't been bitten by the genealogy bug, let me warn you that it can be a wee bit addicting.  Last week I got a letter from my great Uncle Joe that talked about where my 2nd great grandma and grandpa lived. (in different places)  I had no idea that they were divorced (although my dad and grandma were very aware of this, I guess) and I was a little surprise that a couple that was married in 1881 got divorced.  This got my searching around on ancestry.com to find details on who they married and when they got divorced.  In the process, I ended up getting seriously side tracked and finding my 2nd great grandpa's siblings and their families.  Some of this info was not on new.familysearch yet so I ended up entering many new names and completing a few families on there.  It was exciting, but it kept me up late.

A little interesting thing I found was John Wesley Tunnell's second wife.  Everyone seemed to think that he never remarried, but there is a 1910 census that has him remarried to a Henrietta Tunnell.  On the 1920 census he is divorced and all of the records after that have him widowed.  I then found Henrietta Tunnell living with John's brother and wife (who was a creepy 32 years younger than him) for a couple of census records.  AND she kept the last name Tunnell, even on her headstone.  Interesting....

and here is a question for you, dad.  Which John Wesley Tunnell is this?  

family history tip of the day: don't use the same exact name for several generations in a row.  
(especially if you are both going to marry a girl names Mary.)



3 comments:

Annalia said...

I TOLD Tony that.

Denise said...

I read too...nice to see you blogging again

Jim said...

I believe this is Guy Dudley Tunnell's grandfather, John Wesley Tunnel, who was married to Mary Wilson, aka Polly Wilson.