Ancestry Update

On account of striking up an email acquaintance with a new distant cousin across the pond, I got fired up to add letters from “Louie” Cook, written in 1900 and 1930, to the Ancestry section of the Chappell Family Website. Louie’s position in the genealogy picture had been less than clear, although the evidence was there had I examined it sufficiently. Having recently added the Genealogy Documents page, which I think makes a kinda cool presentation by use of javascript, I decided to employ the same method to showcase Louie’s letters. Well, it snowballed. Quite a few “letters from the past” are sprinkled throughout the ancestry pages of the site, mostly as “pdf” files. I thought presenting them in the same fashion as Louie’s letters would make them more accessible and readable. So, it became a project, culminating in the Letters From the Past page. There are more letters yet to include; but I need to take a rest from the project and deal with them later, like after I get a little caught up on my “day job” and get my taxes done.

Meanwhile, I think it’s much easier to enjoy the letters that are there, and see how they overlap with common references, yielding a more dynamic view of our “living” ancestors.

Genealogy Documents

I uploaded several genealogical documents I obtained during investigation of Jesse Chappell’s ancestry. They’re accessible in an “album” sort of format. On the Chappell Family Ancestry page there’s now a button marked Genealogy Documents. Click the button to get the documents matrix. Click on individual documents for enlargements. I would invite people to look, in particular, at Charlotte Chappell’s birth certificate. If anybody can make out the date of birth, let me know. It’s clearly February of 1840; but the date in February? I’m leaning toward “Seventh”. Still doesn’t look right, but I can’t come up with anything else.