Organizing Family Files

We did some changes in our home including re-arranging furniture and getting a new carpet for our family room...the storage place for family records. I had several stacks of materials not in their proper place and these odds and ends landed in three bags. They've been on top of my ironing basket for weeks. My goal is to get things sorted and put where they belong. It might be fun to relate what is in these three bags and share thoughts about them.

The first is a folder of information for the Isle of Man. My grandfather Fred Daugherty had told his children that the Daugherty family originated from that place. It makes more sense that the family came from Ireland. I'm not sure where he got that idea. We have no information on his family before his ggrandfather, who lived in what is now West Virginia. Aunt Dolores once visited the Isle of Man and shared her information with me. She was unsuccessful in finding anything of consequence. The folder has some good basic info concerning the island. I'll keep it with my records as a reminder of an interesting place to visit.

Then comes the ominously full file of information that needs to be put in my Family Tree records. I've got several pages of information on the Walz family. Mom's cousin Jean DeHaven had an aunt also named Jean who married into this family. Though the second Jean isn't a blood relative of ours, I can't help but be proud of her. Graduating from Wessington, SD HS, she ended up with a MA degree and was an educator for over 40 years. Her bio is immense. She married Robert Walz, whose family is well respected in SD. I'll probably just include all this information in my Daugherty looseleaf notebook.

There is an interesting letter from Gloria Van Sickle, who is related to Mamie Wilson, the daughter of John Fletcher Wilson, brother of my ggrandfather, William White Wilson. I'm hoping to get more from her about Mamie's siblings. William and Lydia raised Mamie to adulthood after her mother died when she was only 2 weeks old. Mamie was killed in Walla Walla, Wash. I hope to find some newspaper clippings concerning this murder that happened in 1927.

I had forgotten about my listing of Hamilton Township Cemeteries (WI) that I'd like to visit in the LaCrosse area seeking the resting site of my gggrandfather, William Carrington. I can't find a death certificate nor a burial site for him. The cemeteries include: Christ Lutheran - Hwy 16, east of Co. M, next to Halmilton Cemetery; Hamilton Mausoleum; Neshonoc - Hway 108, north of West Salem,; and Lakeview, Lakeview Hospital Grounds east of West Salem.

I have a message from the Chatholic Charities. I'd been trying to find the Wisconsin Orphanage that Leland Daugherty left her son when she worked in Mpls. I haven't gotten in touch with Catholic Residential Services. 608-784-5323.