52 Ancestors 2026: Favorite Photo – A Fresh Look at an Old Favorite

 

I can’t help it—the winner of this year’s “Favorite Photo” challenge is last year’s winner. This photograph shows my great-grandfather’s family. Pictured from left to right are David Cassatt, his wife Susan Houseworth Cassatt, and their sons Orville, Virgil (my grandfather), and Bascom. I wrote about this image and the family a year ago and, with the help of ChatGPT, determined that it is plausible—perhaps even likely—that the photo was taken around 1888, possibly in the fall after the broom corn harvest.

That earlier post led to even more discoveries. To the right of the photograph is broom-making equipment, which sent me down a path of researching, and posting about, this home industry. I also learned that broom corn is a type of sorghum, though not the variety used to make molasses.

Perhaps it was the animals on leashes that sparked my curiosity, but I soon found myself heading down another rabbit hole—figuratively—learning about the livestock kept on the farm, their uses, and the crops grown to feed them. The Agricultural Schedules from the census were especially helpful in this deep dive, along with analysis aided by ChatGPT as I fed information into the model to help fill out the picture of this farming family. The records I most wish I had, however, are the 1890 census and the Agricultural Schedules from the 1900 and 1910 censuses. The former were destroyed accidentally by fire, and the latter intentionally, deemed no longer useful—clearly without future genealogists in mind.

Finally, while we see the boys in this photograph, we are also reminded of the children who are missing. In the 1900 census, enumerators asked mothers how many children they had borne and how many were still living. Susan reported having six children, but only three were alive in 1900—a sobering reminder of the ever-present reality of childhood mortality before modern medicine. There is a grave for their firstborn son, George, who died at fifteen months. Two other children, Laura and Hubert, were born after Bascom. Laura died at age two or three, and Hubert may have died shortly after birth, as he does not appear in this photograph.

We live in an age of abundant photography, but for many generations in the past, we are left with fragments—images combined with other records—to piece together the events that shaped our ancestors’ lives, and ultimately our own. Because a family portrait was a significant expense and a major event, much thought went into these formal images. When I look at this photograph, I wonder what David and Susan were hoping to record and what legacy they thought they were leaving behind. Had they recently lost two children and wanted to preserve what remained of their family? Were they highlighting their industriousness? Or perhaps expressing a sense of humor—laughter through pain—with the leashed rabbits? David had lived through the trials of the Civil War and later headed west, where he found success in farming. Perhaps they believed this image captured the essence of their lives in 1888. Whatever the reason, we are all the richer for have this treasure.

52 Ancestors 2026: A Breakthrough Moment – Off to a Good Start

My first breakthrough moment came soon after I began my genealogical journey of discovery, probably during my first visit to the local Family History Center. A volunteer helped me navigate their computer system, introducing me to the records available through the International Genealogical Index (IGI—rich with records) and the Ancestral File (AF—filled with compiled family trees).

At the time, I had a book on the Fast family line and began exploring maternal lines that were poorly documented. A few searches led to dead ends—at least initially—but eventually I found a promising match for my third-great-grandmother, Hannah Robbins Day. She was described as “a native of New York,” with parents, Samuel and Hannah (Robbins) Day, who were natives of Vermont and Massachusetts. One published history described her pedigree as being from “New England stock.”

This was not just a name match—she was listed with the correct husband, John Jay Fast—and her information appeared in the Ancestral File. Suddenly, generations of New England ancestors emerged. Having New England roots often means access to well-researched lines, and this discovery led to one revelation after another. These ancestors were part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: the Puritans, famous—or infamous—for their deeply Reformed Protestant faith, their failed attempt to reform the Church of England, and their determination to establish what they hoped would be a “City on a Hill” in the New World. Names such as Fay, Joslin, Larkin, Cleveland, Morse, Hale, and Shattuck suddenly tumbled out of my family tree.

Many of these New England lives are preserved not only in family genealogies but also in broader American histories, including figures such as John Hale of Salem witch trial fame. I also found evidence of their religious convictions in the names they gave their children. Over time, I began to see my ancestors in a new light. The Puritans are often viewed through a narrow stereotype, yet New England also gave rise to public education and to revolutionary and reform movements. My own family became part of the westward migration across the Midwest, linking these early settlers to later chapters of American history.

Today, with the rise of the internet and shared FamilySearch trees, discoveries like this can be just a few clicks away. Thirty years ago, however, it required digging through libraries and records—though even that was an improvement over road trips and writing letters to churches and courthouses. It will be nice to experience more breakthroughs, but having one so early in my research journey was truly inspirational. 

52 Ancestors 2026: A Theory in Progress – A Sweet Harmony

 

One of my tasks this year is to update my local computer's genealogy database, beginning with the paternal side. I turned to my ChatGPT assistant to talk through my plan, including the pros and cons of wholesale downloads from FamilySearch. It suggested that I stick to updating my local tree by hand unless a FamilySearch tree was long and well documented (as many of my New England lines are), so I decided to harmonize my databases one measure—or rather, one generation—at a time.

That approach proved wise when a long Van Horne line began to crumble, revealing several generations with little or no documentation. When I moved on to the DuBois family, I paused to think more carefully. We have already met Jacob DuBois, son of Louis “the Walloon” DuBois and Catherine Blanchan, who was very likely one of Catherine’s children taken captive by Indians. Jacob had two wives: Elizabeth Gerritse Vernoye and, most likely after being widowed, Gerritje Gerretse Van Nieukerk. What do we actually know about these marriages and Jacob’s children?

At this distance in time, records are essential to piecing the story together. There is a marriage record for Jacob DuBois and Elizabeth Vernoy(e), dated March 8, 1689, which gives Elizabeth’s father’s name as Cornelis C. Vernoy. Jacob’s second marriage—presumably after Elizabeth’s death—is listed on FamilySearch as March 1690, but no marriage record is cited.

So where does the problem arise? My sixth-great-grandmother was Magdalena DuBois, Jacob’s daughter. According to FamilySearch, her mother was Gerritje Van Nieukerk; however, Magdalena’s christening record, dated May 25, 1690, lists her father but does not name her mother. Many records from this set omit the mother’s name, so I did not want to draw conclusions too quickly. Still, if we accept the FamilySearch timeline, this would mean a March marriage followed by a May birth. While short intervals between marriage and the birth of a first child are not unusual, this does raise red flags.

There is, however, another important clue. In the witnesses and sponsors column of Magdalena’s baptism record, the names listed are: “The Father. Annetje Vernoy. Louis DuBois.” This strongly suggests that Magdalena’s maternal family was the Vernoy family, not the Van Nieukerk family. Supporting this interpretation is a marker in the Huguenot Cemetery in New Paltz, New York, which lists Jacob DuBois (1661–1745), Lysbeth Vernooy (1662–1690), and Gerretje Gerritsen Van Nieuwkirk (1669–1739).

Gerritje herself had been widowed; her husband, Barent Janse Kunst, died on October 13, 1689, leaving her with a daughter, Jacomyntje. Magdalena would therefore have had an older stepsister, Jacomyntje Kunst, whose christening record from May 3, 1693 does include her mother’s name: Gerritje N. Newkirk.

So far, we have been working with names and dates, but these records allow us to assemble a plausible narrative. Jacob—who had survived Indian captivity and, along with his father Louis and other patentees, helped found New Paltz in 1677—married Elizabeth Vernoy in 1689 at age twenty-eight. Elizabeth was a year younger than he was. The following year, they welcomed a daughter, Magdalena, but Elizabeth died that same year, possibly as a result of childbirth. Jacob was likely supported by his family and perhaps by his late wife’s family as well, who were already closely connected through Jacob’s brother David, who had married Elizabeth’s sister, Cornelia. The closeness of these families is underscored by the fact that David and Cornelia’s daughter, Catryn, was baptized on the same day as Magdalena.

Between 1690 and 1692, Jacob married again, this time to the widow Gerritje Van Nieukerk Kunst. Magdalena grew up alongside her older stepsister and, over time, twelve half-siblings. Magdalena later married Peter Van Nest, and at some point the family moved from Kingston, New York, to Somerset County, New Jersey. There, their daughter Margaret married Francis Cossart, the well-known patriot who founded the Conewago Colony of Pennsylvania.

Two lessons emerge from this exercise. First, death was an ever-present reality in colonial America. Second, online trees—even reputable ones—must be confirmed with records before being blindly downloaded into a reference family tree. Next task: correcting the FamilySearch entries to bring the databases into harmony.

52 Ancestors 2026: What This Story Means to Me – Working the Coal Mines

 

I am very fortunate that one of my cousins, Cindy Cruz, is an ace genealogist who has devoted her time and talents to researching our shared McWilliams line. I have written earlier about my 2nd-great-grandfather, Benjamin Cruiser McWilliams, who left behind a wealth of stories about his service for the Union cause during the Civil War and his efforts to make something of himself afterward.

The McWilliams family were Scots-Irish, and the original McWilliams immigrant, William, hailed from County Armagh and made his way to Pennsylvania sometime before 1750, eventually settling in Northumberland County in northern Appalachia. By the mid-1700s, the best land in William Penn’s colony was already settled by Quaker landowners, whose descendants worked the land themselves or hired tenant farmers, so later immigrants headed for the hills. It was not long before these Scots-Irish began to intermingle and intermarry with German settlers. It is with William’s grandson, also named William, that this story begins.

William married Frances (Fannie) Knauss in 1843 and began raising a family. With their eldest son, Ben, serving in the Union Army, the family moved to Shamokin, Pennsylvania, where William and his sons found work on the railroad and in the coal mines.

In his memoirs, Ben—now twenty-two years old—described his new start after being mustered out of the Army in 1865:

When I arrived at home, Shamokin, where my parents now lived, I wanted a job of work. My father and one brother was then working on the railroad, while my other two brothers were working in the coal breakers. I went on the railroad for a couple of days and that didn’t suit me. I then got to be car loader at the Enterprise Colliery four miles East of Shamokin. Here I got the best job I ever had in my life.

He continued:

Each coal company had their own houses for their employees to live in. My father moved up to Shamokin the Spring of '66 and was made slatepicker boss at the Enterprise colliery. The coal as it came from the mines went through rollers and was broken up and run through screens which assorted it out into different sizes and dropped out into chutes which run down past the boys, “Slatepickers,” who picked out the slate as the coal passed in front of them. We worked ten hours per day, excepting Saturdays when we worked eight. I stayed here until the sixth day of July, 1866, when I started West.

I went first to Belleview, where my uncle and family lived, helped Sam Knauss [Samuel Knauss, 1840–1924] take care of his grain, then his sister Lib Knauss [Elizabeth Ann “Libbie” Knauss Boyer, 1837–1908] went to Michigan to Andy Billmeyer [Andrew Billmeyer III, 1827–1910], who lived at Clinton, both of them my mother’s cousins. I accompanied her from here there. I stayed there a couple of weeks hunting and fishing, then struck out for Missouri the latter part of August.

This story is fascinating on many levels. First, thanks to Cindy’s research, we gain a clear picture of the hard life this family endured. Second, we see Ben at the beginning of what became a lifetime of moving from one opportunity to the next—a journey that took him from Pennsylvania to Iowa to Missouri, where he eventually became a successful farmer. Third, we see the importance of family. In his memoirs, Ben described traveling throughout the East and Midwest to visit relatives who had moved west, and ultimately his own family’s relocation to Missouri. Finding their names on the FamilySearch tree was like finding buried treasure!

Finally, this is a story about the different stages of immigration. Early settlers in these Appalachian mountains came largely from the British Isles and Germany. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe, including Poland and Ukraine. These successive waves of immigration to Pennsylvania are reflected in my own family history—from Quakers, to Scots-Irish and Germans, and later to Polish immigrants who settled in other parts of the Northeast. These are the ordinary laborers and farmers who built our nation.

52 Ancestors 2026: A Record that Adds Color – Tragic Endings

 

This story begins with the extensive Civil War pension file of Benjamin C. McWilliams. In the 1990s, I made a trip to the National Archives to examine his service and pension records for clues to his experiences during and after the Civil War. I was puzzled when the archivist brought out a large folder containing files for two soldiers—alongside Ben’s file was one for Hiram Carter. I was about to point out the apparent error when I realized the connection: both files were linked through Ben’s second wife, Mary Ann Case Carter McWilliams. Ben’s first wife, Mary Ann Cloud, had died in 1907, and he later married her first cousin, Mary Ann (Case) Carter, the widow of veteran and pensioner Hiram Carter.

More recently, my cousin Cindy sent me a large cache of image files containing the complete pension material for both Ben and Hiram. I have been cataloguing the 359 images and made detailed notes for the McWilliams file, intending to simply set aside the Carter materials for later study. While doing so, however, I came across a card that immediately caught my attention. It was a simple Form 3-1143, used to record family members who had served in the World War. Three names were listed:

Lyle R. Voorhees, deceased

Harry Carter, living

William Carter, living

The fact that one family member had served and died—and that Mrs. McWilliams had received compensation—piqued my interest. I suspected there was a deeper story behind this small document. There was.

Using FamilySearch, I identified all three men as grandsons of Mary Ann Carter McWilliams. I also found a death date for Lyle Voorhees: January 20, 1919. He had served with the 2nd Engineer Regiment, a unit that constructed fortifications and filled in as infantry when needed, earning him the rank of sergeant. Notes attached to his Find A Grave entry state that he died of lobar pneumonia at age twenty-two. This was a common complication of the influenza pandemic sweeping the world in 1919–1920 and serves as a stark reminder of the role disease has played during wartime.

But why did Mrs. McWilliams receive compensation? That answer lies in Lyle’s childhood. He was born on April 18, 1896, to James Voorhees and Mary Margaret Carter, daughter of Hiram and Mary Ann Carter. James and Mary had married in 1894, when Mary was just seventeen years old.

The young family’s happiness was short-lived. In 1899, a daughter, Ruby, was born, but she died on August 11 of that year. Within two months, both parents had also died—James on October 1 and Mary on October 10. The 1900 census shows young Lyle living with his grandparents, Hiram and Mary Ann Carter. A guardianship record from 1901 indicates that his aunt, Carrie Carter, assumed legal guardianship. Yet the 1910 census still places Lyle in the household of his grandmother and step-grandfather, Ben McWilliams.

Adding another layer of complexity, newspaper articles referenced on Find A Grave list Lyle’s next of kin as his uncle, Charles Carter, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and note that Lyle graduated from high school there. This raises many questions. Was Carrie’s guardianship largely legal rather than practical? What circumstances led Lyle to live with his uncle in Colorado and attend school there? And what caused the deaths of so many family members in such a short span of time?

In the era before vaccines and antibiotics, diseases such as diphtheria and typhoid claimed countless lives. Childbearing and the death of an infant placed additional physical and emotional strain on young mothers—Mary Margaret was only twenty-one when she died. We may never know all the answers to questions surrounding events that occurred more than a century ago, but family tragedies shaped by disease and war have been part of the human experience for as long as humans have existed.

All of this—uncovered from a single card buried deep within a pension file.

52 Ancestors 2026: An Ancestor I Admire – A Study in Perseverance

We begin another year of the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge. I originally planned to participate only occasionally, joining in when a prompt particularly interested me, but it just so happened that the very first prompt sparked an idea.

Many of the colonial ancestors we learn about—and are often taught to revere—were people of their time. As the New World was settled, land was taken from Indigenous peoples, and slavery was an accepted practice. In telling these stories, we try to acknowledge positive contributions while also confronting the realities of the past, rather than hiding its warts away. We look to the ideals, but we also learn from the errors. With that in mind, I turn to the story of my 8th-great-grandmother, Catherine Matthyse Blanchan.

Catherine was born on October 27, 1637, to Mattheus and Magdeleine Blanshan in Armentières, Artois, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France (then part of French Flanders, sometimes described as Belgian territory). As Huguenots, the family moved in search of religious freedom, eventually settling in Mannheim. Mannheim lies in the Palatinate (Pfalz), and it was there that Catherine met and married Louis DuBois, also from French Flanders, on October 10, 1655. In 1660, they emigrated to New Amsterdam with two of their sons, Abraham and Isaac. The couple ultimately had twelve children, eight of whom lived past infancy.

The DuBois family was part of the migration into Ulster County, and in 1663 their settlement was attacked by the Esopus Indians. Catherine and three of her children—though it is unclear which ones, as they then had four children, with Jacob and Sarah having been born in the colonies—were taken captive along with other women and children. After some time in captivity, they were to be killed, but according to family tradition, they began singing Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion” (King James Version). Perhaps they were thinking of their own captivity. Their captors, perhaps charmed by the music, relented long enough for a rescue party, which included Catherine’s husband Louis, to locate them and secure their release.

After hearing this story, I became curious and began to dig into what song they might have been singing. As Reformed Protestants, these Huguenots were restricted in the types of music permitted in worship, though congregational singing was encouraged. Following John Calvin’s desire to emulate the practices of the early Christians, they sang only texts found in Scripture—specifically, the Psalms, often described as the songbook in the middle of the Bible. To support worship, composers set the Psalms to music, resulting in the Genevan Psalter. Some tunes were newly composed, while others may have adapted melodies already in use. From this tradition comes the well-known “Old Hundredth,” still widely used in worship today. Given this context, it is likely that the captives sang a tune from the Genevan Psalter, “Estans assis aux rives aquatiques.”

A modern English translation reads:

Along the streams of Babylon, in sadness

We sat and wept, rememb’ring Zion’s gladness,

And on the willows there we hung our lyre,

For there our captors did our songs require;

While we lamented, joy and mirth they wanted.

“Sing for us one of Zion’s songs!” they taunted.

 

What became of Catherine and her children after their release? She and Louis went on to have eight more children, continuing their biblical naming pattern. In addition to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, they had David, Solomon, Rebecca, and Rachel. Fourteen years after the conflict with the Esopus, Louis—nicknamed “Louis the Walloon”—along with some of his sons and others, received a patent and purchased land from the Esopus, founding the village of New Paltz. The village was named for a place of refuge familiar to them, and today it commemorates its Huguenot heritage through the Huguenot Street Historic District.

Catherine outlived Louis and, after his death at age seventy, married another Huguenot, Jean Cottin. Reflecting the complexities of colonial America, the DuBois household included enslaved individuals. However, at her death in 1713, Catherine’s will called for the manumission of her two enslaved people. Her family went on to include many notable descendants, among them the scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, whose lineage traces back to a Loyalist descendant of Louis and Catherine who received land in the Bahamas after the American Revolution.

Here, then, is a complicated history—and a lesson in perseverance. Through her faith under extreme stress and her actions later in life, Catherine lived a remarkable life and remains someone we can admire.

Photos:

DuBois Fort: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93550776 from Ralph Le Fevre, History of New Paltz, New York and its old families (from 1678 to 1820): including the Hugenot pioneers and others who settled in New Paltz previous to the revolution, Fort Orange Press, 1903. 

Pidoux, Pierre, Le Psautier Huguenot du XVIe Siècle, Edition Baerenreiter, 1962. https://archive.org/details/lepsautierhuguen01pido/mode/1up

Year-End Reflections: A Year of Listening

As I look back over this year of genealogical writing and research, what stands out most is not a single discovery or solved mystery, but a growing sense that I spent the year listening—to records, to artifacts, to family stories, and sometimes to silence where answers have not yet surfaced.

This was a year of moving back and forth between the tangible and the intangible. Census pages, probate files, military records, DNA results, and maps formed the backbone of much of my work, yet again and again it was the human dimension that demanded attention. Names on paper slowly became people with choices, constraints, and inner lives shaped by their time and place. In many ways, the work felt less like collecting facts and more like learning how to stand quietly with them.

Migration emerged as a constant thread. Families crossed oceans, colonies, state lines, and cultural boundaries—not once, but repeatedly. These movements were not abstract arrows on a map; they were responses to pressure, opportunity, belief, loss, and hope. Tracing those paths reinforced how provisional “home” often was, and how resilience became an inherited trait long before it was recognized as such.

Another recurring theme was uncertainty. Some stories deepened and clarified, while others resisted tidy conclusions. Rather than feeling like failure, those unresolved questions became part of the narrative itself. Accepting ambiguity—acknowledging what cannot yet be proven—felt like an honest and necessary discipline this year. Genealogy, after all, is as much about asking careful questions as it is about finding answers.

Personal artifacts and firsthand accounts brought particular weight to the work. Heirlooms, memoirs, and family objects bridged the distance between past and present in ways no index ever could. These moments reminded me that history is not only recorded; it is carried—sometimes literally—from one generation to the next.

Writing throughout the year helped shape the research rather than merely report it. Putting words on the page clarified thoughts, exposed assumptions, and occasionally revealed connections I might otherwise have missed. The blog became not just a record of findings, but a space for reflection, reevaluation, and dialogue with the past.

If this year taught me anything, it is that genealogy is not a straight line toward certainty. It is a layered, iterative process—part detective work, part storytelling, part humility. The reward lies not only in discoveries made, but in the patience learned along the way.

As I move into the next year, I do so with a deeper respect for the people whose lives I am trying to reconstruct, and for the process itself. Their stories deserve care, context, and time. This year was an important step in learning how to give them just that.

Acknowledgment:

This year-end reflection was drafted by ChatGPT (OpenAI), based on my published blog posts and research.

Picture: ChatGPT Image Dec 25, 2025 at 12_08_31 PM