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random thoughts of a disordered mind skip to content random thoughts of a disordered mind menu search about odds ends daily questions contact me genealogy getting started tips best practices handouts search for search once upon a conference on 21 july 2026 by anne in change work leave a comment my national professional organization is holding its annual meeting right now and my facebook feed is full of photos and stories from people i mostly no longer know the annual meeting was always one of the highlights of my professional life a chance to gather with colleagues from across the country network learn new things catch up with vendors about new products and services and relax over shared meals and late night conversations in the hotel bar my first annual meeting was in 1981 in washington d c my last was in 2015 in philadelphia just before i retired and moved to texas looking at this year s photos i feel my age i don t see many familiar faces anymore and most of my closest colleagues have retired and are watching from home just as i am don t get me wrong i m delighted to see that the organization is thriving with fresh faces new ideas and people tackling a new generation of challenges i m simply not part of it anymore that realization is both a little sad and oddly comforting these days my time is filled with genealogy research and jigsaw puzzles instead of endless calls to vendor customer service faculty requests for books that haven t been published yet or impossible demands to produce an obscure source by tomorrow morning i don t miss supervising people or writing performance appraisals one bit but i was a better librarian because of the network of colleagues and vendors who became genuine friends rather than just professional acquaintances those relationships enriched my career in ways that had nothing to do with budgets databases or committee meetings i miss seeing so many of you in person but i m grateful that facebook lets us stay connected the story of agnes brookmyer jones on 25 june 2026 by anne in genealogy leave a comment the first time i noticed agnes was in the 1880 census living with her mother sophia brookmyer in beaver county pennsylvania sophia was the person i was looking for but there was agnes enumerated as a daughter with two 19 year old children living in the household those children were sophia s grandchildren unfortunately agnes s surname had been obscured in the record i had no idea what it was or how to find her in earlier records a search of the local newspapers for sophia brookmyre uncovered an obituary for her son matthew who died in 1920 his obituary listed a surviving sister mrs agnes jones wait could this be the same agnes yes yes it could more newspaper searches uncovered agnes s own 1924 obituary she died at age 86 described as the oldest of a family of eleven and the last surviving member because she remained in beaver county throughout her life it became much easier to follow her through later census records full text searching at familysearch also uncovered deeds showing that sophia and agnes jointly owned property and later that sophia conveyed her interest to agnes for one dollar and love and affection then another record changed everything while researching the civil war pension application filed by sophia brookmyre after the death of her son william at gettysburg i found depositions given by john mccullough and agnes jones there she was again the pension file revealed far more than william s military service it showed that william s army wages had helped support the family while he was at war it also revealed the circumstances of agnes and william s father david brookmyre a glass mixer who had worked in pittsburgh s glass industry for nearly seventeen years during the last two years of his life he suffered from consumption and was largely unable to work before his death on 6 march 1866 almost three years after william received the wounds from which he never returned all of which i learned from the pension deposition by march 1866 agnes and her four children were living with her widowed mother sharing both a home and the financial burdens of the household before sophia s death in 1891 she transferred her interest in the family property to agnes for one dollar and love and affection but what about agnes s husband who was he and what had become of him the 1880 census described agnes and her children but no husband yet someone had been their father where did he go once again the newspapers provided the answer a small article reported that jonah jones had been arrested on christmas eve 1865 for deserting his wife and four children agnes had four children twins born in 1861 another child born in 1863 and an infant born in 1865 she was a jones could jonah be her husband a legal notice published in the beaver argus in january 1869 answered that question it announced that agnes jones had petitioned the beaver county court of common pleas for a divorce in march 1868 and ordered jonah jones to appear at the march 1869 term to answer the charges using the law librarians network i learned which court had jurisdiction confirmed that the 1869 records still existed and was connected with a second year law student in beaver county she located the original decree and transcribed it from the courthouse record on 15 march 1869 the court granted agnes an absolute divorce after finding the allegations in her petition to be true and ordering jonah to pay the costs of the proceeding but why did it take so long between jonah s arrest in december 1865 and agnes s petition for divorce in march 1868 the answer lies in pennsylvania law a divorce a vinculo matrimonii based on willful and malicious desertion required that the desertion continue for at least two years before the court could grant an absolute divorce agnes filed her petition as soon as she became legally eligible to do so the lives of people within a household overlap marriages fail babies are born the family s breadwinner dies property changes hands children grow up mothers become widows sons go to war and never return the lives of agnes and her mother sophia were intertwined for decades by following newspapers pension files deeds court records tax records and census records it became possible to recover the story of one nineteenth century woman whose life might otherwise have been reduced to a blurred surname in a census the campus stays young on 12 may 2026 by anne in life leave a comment today marks fifty years since my college graduation it does not seem possible that i graduated from vanderbilt fifty years ago fifty years that would mean i m older than i feel and i know perfectly well that i m not nearly as old as those ancient 50 year alumni we used to see at earlier reunions they were old we are not i think the last reunion i attended may have been the 20th though honestly i m not even sure working on a college campus for forty years made me less interested in going back to walk around another campus and reconnect with people i missed but hadn t really stayed in touch with over the years so it may have been a very long time since i last walked vanderbilt s campus in nashville still i would like to see people this year but i have to pass on going i haven t traveled anywhere for fun since getting the wheelchair and a solo trip to nashville feels impossibly complicated oh i know people travel with wheelchairs all the time but trying to manage a suitcase and a manual chair which requires both hands to move leaving no extra hand for luggage is more than i want to tackle and airlines do not have a particularly reassuring track record when it comes to transporting wheelchairs safely mine isn t optional equipment i depend on it what i miss most though is campus life itself the energy that comes from being surrounded by young people embracing information relationships possibilities and evolving ideas about the world and themselves every year the students got younger while the campus somehow stayed young i ve been away from that world for eleven years now and i have to admit that a senior living community simply does not carry the same kind of energy campuses are places built around beginnings there is always movement curiosity reinvention and anticipation in the air i miss that more than i realized the brookmires have arrived on 29 april 2026 by anne in genealogy leave a comment margaret brookmire was my great great grandmother i knew she had been born in scotland to an irish father and a scottish mother that she came to the united states in 1864 married charles morrison had children and later married someone else while charles was in the insane asylum but i didn t know about all the other brookmires oh i looked for them for years i found her parents marriage record but no birth record for margaret no siblings and nothing more about her parents they seemed to pop out of the earth and then disappear back into it i never had much luck using irish records because well they were missing i missed the lovely centuries old english parish records most of what i needed from ireland was destroyed by fire in 1922 so i eventually stopped looking and wrote them off as a mystery that would not be solved but my friend chatgpt convinced me to try again using a combination of sources findmypast rootsireland irishgenealogy scotlandspeople familysearch and ancestry i created a spreadsheet with all the name variants i could think of along with specific names dates locations and relationships i was surprised at how much i could find once i approached it systematically and then things began to shift margaret was not the only brookmire birkmyre family member who came to the united states there were many of them and they didn t wait to come because of the great famine i identified eight men likely related who came from templepatrick county antrim and were already in pennsylvania by the 1830s the group in philadelphia worked in the textile trade while the families in warren county were mostly farmers robert b 1816 my third great grandfather did not make that trip but his children margaret and james did as part of a second wave of brookmire emigration that settled among the earlier arrivals they landed in carbon county pennsylvania where uncle ezekiel was already established i don t yet know how all of these men are related some were likely brothers others cousins i may never be able to prove the exact connections given the limitations of the surviving records but this is far more than i had for many years and i m feeling profoundly connected these immigrants carried the same names and passed them on to their children i now have three robert j brookmires multiple samuels and an abundance of marys sorting them out takes time matching records to the right people but i have plenty of that and honestly this is what i do pension file gold on 17 april 2026 by anne in ancestor bio family genealogy leave a comment literally the day after i posted about reconstructing edwin heginbotham s life i got the digital file of his civil war pension records and they are a gold mine he was indeed a band leader for a new jersey regimental band until they were abolished by congress in 1862 the file gave me medical information as well as marriage and family names and dates quick note about the pension a soldier didn t need to have been injured in the war to qualify he just needed to be a union army pension who was physically or mentally unable to earn a living pension law prior to 1890 did require a war related disability to qualify other types of pensions were widow s pension and dependent pension for children but neither of those applied to edwin edwin had no war wounds but by 1892 he suffered from insomnia nervous instability and impaired balance those symptoms are consistent with conditions observed in individuals exposed to mercury in hatting trades though no direct evidence confirms this as the cause in his case here is one of the files a questionnaire from the bureau of pensions in 1898 completed by edwin himself yes the section of the top shows the name as edward but it was signed by edwin posts navigation older posts search for search recent posts once upon a conference the story of agnes brookmyer jones the campus stays young the brookmires have arrived pension file gold categories categories select category 52 ancestors ancestor bio appearance arts entertainment assorted stuff attitude being fat being whole blogs body body image books boston car stuff caregiving cats change christmas church clothes college computers control cooking cool stuff crockpot decorations disabled doing nothing eating out emotional eating emotions moods exercise family feeling fat flanders food food issues friends fun funny and weird genealogy general groceries gym healthy eating hobbies activities holidays home impulse eating knee problems life lonely massage meadow lake medical stuff motivation moving muscle soreness 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