Whittaker Family Photo

Whittaker Family 1890

Standing in back (if arranged from eldest to youngest) is: Cassius, George, Frank, Charles, and John.  Sitting are Juliette, Ellen, Stella, Alice, and Barna Whittaker.


This past summer I attended the FGS Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  It was so excited to meet the many of the big names in genealogy.  One of them was Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective.  I paid a consultation fee and showed her this picture on my iPad.  I didn't give her any clues as to what my guesses were about the photo.  If everyone is placed from oldest to youngest, I have all of them named and my best guess is that the photo was taken @1888.


Here is what she said:
24 Aug 2018: Photo Consultation with Maureen Taylor the Photo Detective.  She said that the photo was taken @1890.  The girl in the middle with the neck choker is the youngest sister.  The puff sleeves on the shoulders help date the picture to 1890.  Barna is a very conservative/religious man with his under the chin beard.  These are their clothes (they did not belong to the photographer) and the women were dressed particularly nicely (especially Juliette's skirt sash and the detailed shoulder work).   These were purchased dresses (rather than homemade) that would have been colored in rust, red, dark blue, and garnet.  They were very dressed up for the occasion.  They were healthy.  She was curious to what the occasion might have been for them to have the photo taken.

Cindy Ribbeck, Maureen Taylor, Jeanette Sheliga

Edmund Sheliga

I've been asked to write a bio for my Grandpa Ed's 50th Year for the Adams Fire Company's Installation.  Here it goes:

Edmund C. Sheliga was born on October 21st, 1922 in Buffalo, NY.  He was the 2nd born to his parents of 4 children.  Life growing up wasn't always easy as his father abandoned the family and his older brother died in 1932 leaving Ed as the "Man of the House" at the age of 9.  Living through the Great Depression, it is easy to understand how he developed early on the trait of fixing things by repurposing items.

As a teenager he developed an interest in radios and became an amateur radio operator using only Morse Code.  He graduated from Burgard Vocational High School in 1940 and started a career as an apprentice pressman.  Shortly thereafter, he served 5 years in WWII, and was Honorably Discharged with the rank of Private.

He married his wife, Ruth, on August 2, 1952.  They were married for 54 years having three boys: Jeffrey, Carl, and Donald.  They started out their marriage living in Buffalo, moved to Tonawanda, and eventually settled in Wheatfield.

He worked as an electrician for Bell Aircraft, Sylvania, and Mennen Medical.  Many of the projects he worked on at Bell Aircraft and Sylvania were government contracts and classified.  You can try asking him about them, but he can't tell you.

He joined Delaware Hose Fire Company around 1958 and Adams Fire Company in 1969.

Ed and Jeanette after the Shawnee Parade June 2013

Hello Blog. I've missed you...

I've started to blog again on behalf of NCGS featuring items in our genealogy library.  You can link to it here: https://niagaracountygenealogy.wordpress.com/  It's help to encourage me to get back to blogging on my own genealogy and presentations that I give.

Yesterday I presented for NTLGC on RootsTech2019.  I taught about the new features that Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FamilySearch announced while at RootsTech.  Many of those features are DNA based, but the new MyTreeTags from Ancestry is not.  I can't believe how many of my direct ancestors that I haven't yet obtained death certificates for.

MyTreeTags is helping me identify items like that so that I may complete the vital records on at least my direct ancestors.  If I ever want to join a descendancy society like Mayflower or DAR, I'm going to need to have all my ducks in a row (as Grandpa Ed always says).

I visited Grandpa Ed yesterday in the Nursing Home.  He's 96 now and at this year's Adams Fire Co. Installation Dinner, he will be honored as a 50-year member.  I hope we can safely get him there for the dinner.

I've spent all day working on my genealogy, but I've been all over the place.  It's like I can't focus on one thing.  At first, I was trying to get down the number of shakey leaves that I had.  It's a pretty vicious cycle as I started with 5,809 and after hours of work, I ended up with 6,060!!  Each time I add a new ancestor, a bunch more hints pop up.  Especially the census records that add parents and siblings.  I actually started ignoring records of spouses that were nowhere near my direct line.  It's hard to do, though, as I know that they were most like part of my ancestor's FAN club and could be in pictures, etc.

I spent quite a long time going through my old Reunion Tree and copy/pasting the notes that I took from interviews with various people and uploading them as stories to my FamilySearch tree.  I'd like to go back and add pictures to some of them too.

Later I worked on uploading the church records that I got from the FHC this past Tuesday on the GLEISNER family and making sure that I was citing where I got them and uploaded them to both Ancestry and FamilySearch.  It is soooo slow taking the time to properly document and transcribe each record.

My Dad just got back from vacation in Jamaica.  He sent me a picture that I couldn't help but see a resemblance to Grandpa Ed.  I couldn't stop laughing!!