James Cruice, brother of Patrick Cruice

 Cruice  No Responses »
Apr 242012
 

I ordered the death certificate for my great-great-grandfather, Patrick Cruice's, brother, James Cruice. I was hoping to get some more information about the Cruice's parents. Here it lists their father, my great-great-great-grandfather, as James Cruice, confirming a marriage record I found online. It's a bit unclear what the mother's name is. Before, I had Mary Golden. This looks something like Mary Goulor or Goulon – perhaps a french name, since the Cruice's supposedly escaped the French Revolution.

The informant for James' death certificate was Mrs. P. Cruice, who would likely be my great-great-grandmother, Bridget (Sweeney) Cruice.

The de Guehery family history

 Burke, Cuthbert, de Guehery  No Responses »
Oct 022011
 

I made contact with the gentleman who posted the snippet about the de Guehery family 20 years ago.

Ten years ago he wrote a family history called “Some Branches and Twigs of the Elliott Family Tree”, which is on file in the OGS archives in Toronto. His mother, Edna Mae de Geuhery, was the sister of my great-grandmother, Margaret Ogilvie de Guehery. His book has a chapter on the de Guehery family and another chapter on the Cuthbert family (Margaret and Edna Mae's mother was Marion Cuthbert).

He is going to send me the chapters soon.

He also put me in touch with another cousin and this is where it gets even cooler.

His grandfather did a lot of genealogical research in the early 1930s with the genealogy research division at the library in Dresden before that institution was destroyed during WWII. His father continued this research during the 1980's with genealogical researchers in Paris. Apparently, the family tree is complete in detail back to the mid-1700s.

The story includes the de Guehery family's escape from the French Revolution, a beheading, and the loss of a noble title.

I can't wait to get more information.

We’re German!

 Burke, de Guehery  No Responses »
Oct 022011
 

Never underestimate what another pair of eyes can find.

Every 6 months or so I upload my family tree to ancestry.com. This time I shared it with a couple dozen family members. One of my cousins poked around the tree, pointed out a couple of obvious errors, and did some searching on his own. He unlocked an important discovery.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side, Arthur Burke, married Margaret Ogilvie de Guehery. Family lore had it that the de Guehery family escaped the French Revolution to Germany, then went to Canada, and then the United States.

Last year sometime, while searching familysearch.org I found a marriage record for Margaret de Guehery's parents, Marion Cuthbert and Emanuel de Guehery. It listed Emanuel's parents as Rudolph and Goddlibien de Guehery. More searching turned up nothing else on Rudolph and Goddlibien, including Goddlibien's last name.

This is where my cousin's searching comes in.

He thinks to do a search of google books. And finds this interesting snippet:

My great-great-great-grandfather, Rudolph de Guehery, was born abt 1820 in Dresden, Germany. My great-great-great grandmother was Gottlieben Mack.

There looks like there could be more.

So I email the Ontario Genealogical Society, where this snippet was published, to see if there was a way to find more information from wherever this snippet came from.

The OGS reply with more: Gottlieben Mack was born in 1838 in Mendelsheim, Wuerttenberg, Germany and that Rudolph and Gottlieben emigrated to Canada via Hamburg, Germany. Rudolph died in 1889 in Petawawa, Ontario. Gottlieben died in 1922 in Ebenezer, NY.

They also gave me the name of the person who posted this entry in the "Families" newsletter more than 20 years ago. That's the topic of the next post.

Where did I start?

 Burke, Cruice, Cuthbert, de Guehery, Millonzi, Palmeri, Parisi, Wilson  No Responses »
Jul 012006
 

The very first step in any genealogy project is to ask your parents and grandparents for any information.

Sadly, most of my grandparents were deceased when I started this, and the only one still living was in a nursing home. I remember putting together a basic genealogy when I was in school. I talked with my great-grandmother and she gave me the names of her parents and some of her grandparents. Like many school projects, that's long gone.

On my dad's side, I knew my grandmother's parents, Carmela (Parisi) Millonzi and Rosario Millonzi. My great-grandfather died when I was a few years old. My great-grandmother died when I was on a teenager. 

My dad said his father's parents were Angelo and Maria Palmeri, but did not know Maria's last name. I might have met one of them when I was little, but I don't remember.

On my mom's side, I knew my grandmother's mother, my great-grandmother, Gramma Wilson. I might have met my grandfather's father, my great-grandfather, Grampa Burke. But maybe not. 

My mom knew that there was something like a Cruice and a de Guehery, but wasn't quite sure how to spell the names, or who went with whom, so she had me get in touch with one of my aunts, who was the family historian. She sent me this family tree with another couple of pages with some of the birth and death dates.

After spending most of my efforts working on and off on digitizing and adding to my wife's genealogy, I used this as a starting point for uncovering my own.

Based on what we knew then, I was 1/2 Italian, 1/4 French, and 1/4 Irish. My mom's parents were both 1/2 French and 1/2 Irish. According to family lore, both French families fled the French Revolution, with the Cruice's escaping to Ireland and then to the US, and the de Guehery's escaping to Germany, then to Canada, and then to the US.

original Burke family tree