Genealogy Bits

Here are some of my Sisco family’s Michigan and Washington death certificates and records. My gg-grandfather Albert Sylvester Sisco was half-brother to William Henry Sisco and Mahala Rebecca (Sisco) Whitcomb. William and Mahala’s parents were Richard and Celina (Thomas) Sisco. Richard was born 22 Mar 1775 in Saville Township, Sullivan Co, NH, and Celina was born between 1775-1785 in VT. Albert’s parents were Richard and Sarah (Garland) Sisco (Richard’s second wife). Sarah was born about 1780 in VT.

Death certificates/records for:

Pierson, Beulah (Sisco) d. 1929 WA (Albert’s daughter)

Pierson, Beulah Death Certificate Addendum

Sisco, Albert Sylvester d. 1915 WA* (my gg-grandfather)

Sisco, Dana Horace d. 1906 MI (Albert’s son)

Sisco, Edna May d. 1910 MI (William H. Jr.’s daughter)

Sisco, Elizabeth (Waring) d. 1896 MI (Albert’s second wife)

Sisco, Ethel Irene d. 1901 MI (Dana Horace's daughter)

Sisco, Fred Fearless d. 1918 MI (Albert’s son)

Sisco, George Ernest d. 1951 WA (Albert’s son)

Sisco, Lloyd Irving d. 1900 MI (Dana Horace's son)

Sisco, William Henry d. 1904 MI (Albert’s half-brother)

Sisco, William Henry Jr. d. 1917 MI (Wm. Henry's son)

Warren, Nancy Mahala (Whitcomb) d. 1904 MI (Mahala's daughter)

Whitcomb, Mahala Rebecca (Sisco) d. 1901 MI (Albert’s half-sister)

Whitcomb, Whitcomb, Rockwood J. d. 1912 MI (Mahala's son)

*A discrepancy exists regarding my gg-grandfather Albert Sylvester Sisco's birth date. Family records say 11 Nov 1828; death certificate says 4 Nov 1827. The certificate does not show who provided the information for the death certificate, but it probably was his daughter, Beulah, or possibly his son, George Ernest.

Also, notice the various spellings of the surname 'Sisco' in the death certificates. My grandmother Lora Irma (Sisco) Clark and her mother Emma Caroline (Morgan) Sisco (Dana Horace's wife) always spelled it Sisco.

Hope you find this info useful!

Jan Routh
jan.routh@gmail.com

My previous post seems to have aroused some interest in Martin Dawson (1772-1835) the younger brother of our Susannah Dawson Adams. While considerable information can be found online about Martin and his famous 1835 Will, there is little about what actually came to pass.

A 1970 self-published 41 page Dawson history by Mary Roy Edwards and available only at the Albemarle County Historical Society contained a 1954 newspaper article on what actually resulted from Martin's good intentions.

I have prepared a PDF of that article for others to enjoy:

Martin Dawson 1954 newspaper article

Most of the Dawson family wills exist from Martin's era. Unfortunately, this Dawson family continued to use the same given names generation after generation, making it difficult to zero in on an exact ancestor.

After months of looking we have finally located the 1837 Albemarle Circuit Court source which listed our ten Adams' children. It was found in the Chancery Order Book 1, page 247, contained in a list of plaintiffs for Dawson vs. Dawson case #178, October 14, 1837. The case concerns portions of Martin Dawson's 1835 Will which have not been completed. These involved freeing his slaves, disposition of his Bel Air estate, and extensive donations to the University of Virginia.

In this case Susannah Dawson Adams was deceased by 1835 so her children were listed as plaintiffs:

“... James Adams, Pleasant Adams, William Adams, Benjamin Adams, Martin Adams, Sally Adams, Lynch Adams, Dawson Adams, Elizabeth Adams, and Henry D. Adams only heirs at law and distributees of Susan Adams deceased, formerly Susan Dawson ...”

1837 Albemarle Chancery Court Order Book 1 - page 247

This court record validates our Missouri Adams families as Richard Adams and Susannah Dawson's children. As further proof, a living Adams descendant of our Missouri group recently matched Y-DNA with three Georgia descendants of our Virginia progenitor, Robert Adams of Goochland (1680-1740).

This has opened up a wonderful Virginia family for many Adams researchers.

Pleasant Adams (1790-1846) was an early settler in Clay Co, MO and one of my key ancestors. Two of his daughters, Rebecca and Hanna Lee, were mothers to my great-grandparents, Josephine Garner and Jonathan Newby. We knew Pleasant had married Ruth Sutherland in Casey Co, KY, but researchers had never been able to identify his parents or birthplace.

A casual Google Books search one evening popped up with: Pleasant Adams of Clay Co, MO in "Appendix 8, Emigrants from Albemarle Virginia to Other States." This 1901 book, "Albemarle County in Virginia", by Edgar Woods is on the shelf at two local libraries, but how could we have known to look. THANK YOU, GOOGLE BOOKS!

Once we knew 'where to look' our research pieces started falling together. The big breaktrough came on page 232 of Carol Ruth Dawson's 1983 book "DAWSONS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR (AND THEIR DESCENDANTS), Volume II":

SUSANNAH (DAWSON) ADAMS, who married RICHARD ADAMS of Albemarle Co, VA had ten issues:
5-12i James Adams
5-12j Pleasant Adams
5-12k William Adams
5-12l Benjamin Adams
5-12m Martin Adams
5-12n Sally Adams
5-12o Lynch Adams
5-12p Dawson Adams
5-12q Elizabeth Adams
5-12r Henry D. Adams

There it was, the entire family laid out in correct order! Missouri researchers had suspected relationships among some of these lines for years. A couple of months work has now sketched out most of the siblings, and identified a few of the serious researchers in those lines.

Again, Google Books searching supplied a number of useful bits to support our assumptions. We found details of the family travels from Kentucky to Missouri in the winter of 1819-20, we found Jackson Co, MO voter lists, details of a murder in Ray Co, MO, and mention of Richard Adams as Elizabeth's father when she married Isaac Odell in Independence, MO. Again, THANK YOU, GOOGLE BOOKS!

Careful study of the Casey Co, KY tax records 1807-1820 has helped to validate the family, as well as estimate some of the older sons birth dates. We found Charles Adams and Benjamin Dawson, both brothers of our couple, living nearby in Kentucky at the same time.

Details can be read in my following documents:

Richard and Susannah Adams Discovery

Overview of Adams Siblings

Richard Adams Casey Co KY Tax List

Albemarle VA Adams Family Links

None of this could have happened without context searchable old books, THANK YOU, GOOGLE BOOKS!

Among the many personal accounts we discovered while researching Germans from Russia in our recent project, one collection has stuck in our minds. We think the Colorado State University oral archive we found is worth sharing.

CSU collected sixty personal histories between 1975 and 1978 as part of a Germans from Russia in Colorado Study Project. They have posted twenty interview transcripts and audio interviews online covering a wide range of stories about life in Russia, emigration, and early days in America.

Listen to some of their stories:

Transcripts and audio stories - page one

Transcripts and audio stories - page two

Great history here, thank you CSU!

Finally located some good maps showing locations of the Volga German colony villages of Alt-Weimar and Neu-Weimar. Turns out they were at the very bottom, or southern tip, of all the German Volga settlements. Makes them easy to locate on maps, if they are actually identified.

Here are links to three maps, two showing Neu-Weimar and the last one showing the Volga German region in proximity to Moscow and the Black Sea (Schwarzes Meer).

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jeruslannachrichten/VGColMap.htm
- Neu-Weimar at very bottom of map

http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/images/Volga_Map_english_large.jpg
- Neu-Weimar clear at bottom of map
- note Dobrinka Village location on Volga (early Dieterle settlers there)

http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/images/Deutsche_Auswanderung_nach_Russland.jpg
- red spots are German settlements (mother colonies)
- Dieterle family came from far right Volga Samara
large red patch (east of Moscow)

It really helps to see where the Dieterle families were living.

We just finished a delightful week of research looking for our sister-in-law's grandparents' 1913 immigration from Russian Volga Valley German settlements to Idaho. We collected a few family newspaper obituaries, did some Ancestry.com searching, and put the results together in a 10 page PDF file for Dieterle family members.

Some of the best news was that we verified they came from the small Volga Valley province of Samara and their village was Neu-Weimar. They arrived at the Port of Baltimore on 31 Jan 1913 aboard the S.S. Brandenburg and took a train to Sugar City, Idaho. It was great to learn that their Dieterle surname was not changed at immigration and that there were three small families from the same village traveling together. Each of those families named a relative back in Russia - wonderful!

We posted our finished study along with the primary George Dieterle research files on our server for anyone interested:

Georg and Maria Dieterle 1913 Immigration Doc Study - PDF

1913 George Dieterle Baltimore Imm Pass List page5A - JPG
1913 George Dieterle Baltimore Imm Pass List page5B - JPG
1918 George Dieterle WWI Draft Registration - JPG
1920 George Dieterle U.S.Census - Prowers Co, CO - JPG
1930 George Dieterle U.S.Census page1 - Prowers Co, CO - JPG
1930 George Dieterle U.S.Census page2 - Prowers Co, CO - JPG

Hope you enjoy the report. We encourage you to check out the Germans from Russia web pages we listed on page 8 of the paper. Those web sites are packed with rich Russian Volga Valley German history.

Let us know what you think...