For years I didn't really give my ancestor's location much thought. I noticed that my maternal second great grandfather was living in a new location for each census. How many people move around that much? One time I got curious and found a township and county map so that I could trace where he and his family were each decade. It looked as though he moved around in a circle. After that, I didn't consider maps and locations of much importance. I didn't think about how the area during that time was changing or how the boundaries may have affected their lives. I didn't think about what history might tell me about the time period and how that affected their lives. I didn't think about the fact that the ancestors being researched were on the frontier. I definitely didn't think about what that really meant for my ancestors. I had a lot to learn. What does the actual study of location entail? I started by finding a map of the area for the span of years I
Curiosity Who was Catherine Hoak Noel? Why does this topic make me shake my head thinking I don't know what to write? Genealogy is all about curiosity. In fact, every discovery that has been made was because I was curious. One could say that curiosity is the foundation of genealogy! In fact, without curiosity there wouldn't be any discoveries nor that next odd and curious discovery that keeps a person digging! Today, I am curious about my maternal third great grandmother, Catherine Hoak Noel. She is one of those ancestors that seems to be a blip on the screen, pretty much invisible. Really though, she is a typical woman of the early nineteenth century. In nineteenth century American society, a woman’s role was predominately that of cook, wife, mother, and homemaker in a rural setting. Families were large. Women were relied upon to provide children who then supplied manual labor on the farm helping to maintain the family income and welfare. Women during that time enjo