It boggles the mind!


Get a load of this ancestor’s family.  My 4th Great Grand Uncle, John Scalf, and his wife, Edeah Carlisle Scalf, had SIXTEEN children.  Their children‘s number of children below:

Nancy = 5 children

Polly = 11 children

John = 14 children

Brittan = 19 children (Count ‘em, NINETEEN!!)

Dicey = 17 children

Lydia =5 children

Berry =8 children

Lee = 7 children

Ira = 7 children

Jesse = 8 children

Peter = 4 children

Betsy = 1 child

Robert = 6 children

Lela = 4 children

Two of John and Edea Scalf’s children died in infancy and had no children.  As far as I can tell.

Edea had their first child in 1788 at the age of 18, their last child in 1823 at the age of 53.

I.

Cannot.

Imagine.

I am 53 NOW!

I’d kill.

No wonder all the women look old for their age in old pictures.  :(   Their grandchildren, assuming all lived, which is probably not likely, would have numbered 116 grandchildren!

I’m thinking of cooking Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinner for 132 people at one sitting.  DAYS AND DAYS of cooking.

I am so glad I have an electric stove, crockpot, electricity, gas!  I can’t imagine doing all that cooking without electricity, etc…..I’d give up before I started.

I have some aunts and uncles who married more than once, would have 10 children each marriage, but none of them, that I have seen records on, had that many grandchildren.  WOW.

WOW!

Invents cooking

Invents cooking

Shoot, I can’t even imagine cooking for 14 kids!  Goodness.

I am in AWE!

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So many things….


Hmm.. Where to start.

Nothing major going on, just lots of little stuff.

I am working overtime, for a month, until the end of this month.  Started last week.  I am already tired.  But…I LIKE THE MONEY!  Well, I will, when I get paid. :)

I got a raise.  YAYAYAYAYAYAY

My sister is in San Diego, with her two kids, on vacation for about 11 days.  I was SUPPOSE to go, ended up not being able to afford the whole trip.  Might try to go for a long weekend when summer is over.  I want to see my Grandmother.  She is 94.  Miss her a lot. I was really bummed when I could not go.  The airlines hiked up the rate on the tickets about 60 days before we were leaving and I had not paid yet.  Then…work hadn’t said it was ok to go yet, so I had to put it off.  If I could not go I could not afford to lose the money I would have paid for the ticket.  My sister is going to bring me back a little San Diego beach sand to put in a jar.  :)   Wish she could bring my Grandmother with her too.

Remember we had snow and rain almost two weeks ago?  Or did I mention that?  Well, the day before yesterday it was 101 degrees.  Yesterday about 94.  At night tho, when I am out watering the flowers at work, as I usually do during the “Summer”, I have HAD TO WEAR my flipping COAT!  It was 40 degrees I guess, about 2 am. I am freezing my butt off.  ‘Course, I get water all over me too, which doesn’t help at all!

I paid off my car.  YAYAYAYYAYAYA ME!

There is a site, WikiTree, that is attempting to link everyone they can through their family trees.  You can upload your ged.com files to help do this. I uploaded mine.  They told me to trim it down.  If they took mine, it would create approximately 7300 pages on the WikiTree, one for each and every single person in the tree.  They want the info, however, as they explained, as you go further back in time; there are less people, so you end up being related to just about everyone.  :)   They also said my tree appears to go back to the 1500′s.  Guess I haven’t seen the whole family yet, the little side branches and stuff.

So, I am trying to trim it down.  FUN!  When I first downloaded a copy, don’t wanna use the original, I started deleting my sister’s husband’s family.  She is researching his side, not me.  I kept coming up, as I went back, across people I knew were in my DAD’s family, they had married.  So, I thought, maaaayyyybbeee the file is corrupted?  My mom started out using this file 20 years ago, from one of the original family tree programs.  She would update the software but it allowed you to keep the original from the prior version of the software.  Thought maybe after 20 or more years there were a few glitches.  Would not have surprised me at all.  You know?  So, I deleted my copy, downloaded a copy of the original three more times.  It kept happening.  I figured, finally, I better just check and see if it was so.

Guess what?

It is SO so!

My sister’s husband’s first cousin, 2 removed (I think that was it) had had a child, who had children, of course, and one of those children married my dad’s brother’s wife’s aunt. Can you imagine?  I hope that made sense.  WOW!!  I found another too, but haven’t checked it yet.  I will in a bit.  Not blood related of course, as my aunt married into my family, I sure didn’t expect that particular finding.  Very exciting.

So far I have only gotten the number of people down to about 6500.  Still working on it, deleting the unknowns first.  (If my mom didn’t know the maiden name or surname of a  person she would create a profile anyway, least she would know not to look from the beginning, where she had no info at all, a name is a good place to start)  So, I am writing notes on each and every person’s profile, within the fields provided for “comments” on each profile,  that was a spouse of an “unknown” or the parent of an “unknown” child and then deleting the “unknown” person.  Rather keep the information on all those that are known if I can.  Even if I have all of them in the original file.  Feel like it doesn’t help anyone to get rid of the stuff that is for certain.

My niece, the 14 year-old, had knee surgery Saturday, I think it was Saturday, and my brother had a golf tournament the next morning. (He paid for the tournament before knowing about the surgery, lose your money if you are a no-show) So I went to their house the day after so he could go to his golf tournament and so his daughter would not be alone.  I had to work that night so went home about 1pm.

Shadow was beside himself when I came in the door!  He was bouncing around the walls when I came in.  Jumping on me.  Very excited.  Now, I have never had a small dog before.  I had NO IDEA that their tongues could fit inside someone’s nose when they are trying to greet you after a long, to them, absence.  Yep, yep, yep.  They sure can.  Got my eyeball too.  My EYEBALL!  ‘Course, he didn’t know, or care.  I was slapping myself silly all over my face trying to get the slobber off.  Not that such a little dog has much, but still.

Shadow is funny.  When I try to go to sleep, he wants to play. Oh, yes, he can jump on my bed now, barely, but he can.  Yesterday he tried to jump up and slid right off, the sheet wasn’t giving him much in the way of grip.  Sheet went with him too and he slid right back down the side of the bed. :)   Anywhooo….When I try to sleep, the little bugger wants to play. Do you know how excited a small dog gets just by wagging your finger?  Moving it an inch, one way or another?  I don’t do much, fall asleep and before I fall completely asleep I twitch my finger once in a while.  He is ALL OVER IT!  You’d think my finger was attacking him if you saw the vigor with which he returns the attack. Never knew a pet could be so easily entertained!

I lost my Kindle too!  Well, I thought I did.  I was in panic mode when I could not find it.  I could not imagine telling my sister that I lost her gift to me. :(   My brother found it at his house. YAYAYAYYAYAY  I was so happy.  I turned my house and car upside down looking for it.  Kept calling work to see if they could find it.  I left it at my brother’s house tho, not at my house at all.  Which in a way made me feel better as I couldn’t even remember taking it out of my backpack when I went home later that day, I pretty much just went to bed because I had to work that night.  I was very relieved he found it!

Lotsa stuff to cover…


I have been playing “hooky” much longer than I intended.  Sorry.

The reason?  I have become enamored of actually doing Genealogy research.  It has consumed hours in my days, without me realizing it.   It just happened, before I knew it.  It has overtaken my life.

First.  I know many people gave my blog awards, the last time I counted there were 14.  I am going to be a meany and not post about the awards.  I was overwhelmed.  I do want to thank everyone who gave my blog an award.  I am honored, and grateful, to have been thought of in the first place.

Second.  I am no longer going to accept awards for my blog.  I am sorry if this offends anyone.  That is not my intention.

Third.  Pictures of Shadow will be forthcoming.  He has grown.  He is also a GREAT watchdog, ask my sister.  :) Heheheh And only 7 months old too!

Fourth.  I did miss everyone.  I think I needed a break.  As usual, when I start something, I go at it with breakneck speed.  Remember, the 37 posts a day?  Then I knocked that back after being asked, nicely, about how many posts I make in one day.  So I toned it down a bit.  I have realized I need to learn to pace myself.  If I don’t, I lose steam, or interest, and end up going down another path.  My life has kinda been like that.  Wish it hadn’t taken me until my 50′s to realize I need to pace myself.  Have heard it needs to be done, but hearing it and actually realizing it are two different things.  So, I took a break.  Need to pace myself with the Genealogy too, find myself doing the same thing.  I then end up tired and worn out.  I don’t wanna do that.

Today is Monday.  I had forgotten today would be Monday; wasn’t thinking, and I didn’t have any “About” pages ready to post.  Some will be posting in the next few hours.  Sorry I forgot about them. ;(

I am enjoying the research.   I love History, always have.  My mother use to try to get me to help her with the research.  I never wanted to.  At the time, I thought it would be nothing but dry old dates and such.  It isn’t.  Wish she had told me.  The people come alive.  It isn’t just old dates and names.  You can see their stories.  Parents dying fairly young, in their 40′s.  Mothers at childbirth, fathers in wars.  Sometimes you don’t know why they have passed away, that bugs the crap outta me and I will hunt and hunt, online, trying to find the reason.  I finally realize I won’t know the reason unless I can travel to their home areas and research the information or unless I am lucky enough that someone else is researching the same family and can afford to do just that and place the information online.  It really kinda sucks not knowing.  There are a few people in my family that are just driving me nuts.  Sometimes, they just disappear.  No idea where.  I hate that too.

This morning I was looking for Thomas W. Harris, who married Juanita, don’t know her last name, in 1929 or 1930.  They were neighbors to Thomas’ parents.  They married when Jaunita was 15, and he 23, the census was taken when she was 16.  Within a couple of months of their marriage.  Height of the depression.  Can’t find them anywhere after 1930 and that is the only mention of the two I can find so far.  I go bonkers.  I GOTTA KNOW. NOW.   Sigh….

It isn’t just dates and names.