Laurie's Family History Notebook

  The Tragic Death of Emil R. Farmer, 1918 In March and April of 1918, newspapers across southwest Missouri followed a heartbreaking story from Linn Creek—one that rippled through Camden County and left a young widow and a widowed mother in deep grief. This week’s look back brings us the short, bright life and tragic death of Emil R. Farmer , age 22, whose name appeared repeatedly in the headlines during the spring of World War I. A Dispute at the Ford On Sunday afternoon, March 17, 1918, Emil Farmer was driving his buggy across the ford of the Niangua River near Linn Creek on his way to church. According to multiple reports, he encountered Earnest (Ernest) Kendrick , also 22, a neighbor and fellow draftee. Tension had been brewing between the two young men over their draft classifications—Farmer had been placed in Class IV as the sole support of his widowed mother, while Kendrick was in Class I and expected to be called up sooner. Witnesses later told authorities that Kendrick h...

  Fountain County, Indiana Nancy A. Morine lived a short but well-documented life that spanned Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana during a period of rapid migration and settlement in the Midwest. She became the first of three wives of John B. Lindsey (1815-1894) and the mother of three known children before her early death in 1851. Early Life According to compiled timelines and family trees, Nancy was born in 1815 in Ohio. Her childhood appears to have been spent in or near Kentucky, where several individuals believed her siblings were born. Nancy's parents and siblings are not yet proven through primary documentation. However, based on current evidence -- including geographic proximity, naming patterns, and the appearance of Morin / Morine individuals in Kentucky and Indiana -- the most likely candidates for her parents are Josiah Morin and Mary "Polly" Shipp. The individuals listed as her siblings should likewise be considered probable but unconfirmed pending further research....

Every so often, a research thread pulls you deeper than expected — and this week, that thread belongs to my great‑grandfather, David Wesley Kelley . Before I can tell his story, I need to lay the foundation of the household he grew up in. That means starting with his father, David Andrew Kelley , and the family structure documented in the 1900 and 1910 census records. This is the kind of work that looks simple on the surface (“just a census record!”), but once you start comparing ages, birthplaces, and household changes over time, the story becomes much richer — and sometimes more complicated.

🌱 The Man Who Started It All If you had told me years ago that the Fleming line -- the one no one in the family could explain -- would become the backbone of my genealogical work, I would have laughed. We didn't have stories. We didn't have documents. We didn't even have a rumor. We had a name: Lintsfield Fleming That was it. No dates. No wife. No children. No context. Just a name floating in family memory like a loose thread waiting for someone to tug on it. I didn't know then that tugging on that thread would unravel and reweave an entire lineage. 🔍 Starting With Nothing When I first opened a blank research page for Lintsfield, I felt like I was staring into fog. There were no census entries that made immediate sense. No Find A Grave memorial. No family stories passed down. Even his name was unusual enough that I wondered if it had been misremembered. But the more I searched, the more I realized something important: Lintsfield wasn't the mystery -- he was the ke...

  Every family story begins somewhere -- and this is where I am choosing to begin mine. For years, I've been researching my family's history: the people who settled, moved, married, worked the land, raised children, and left traces of themselves in records scattered across counties and states. Some of their stores are well-preserved. Others are barely whispers. All of them matter. I created this blog as a place to share that journey -- the discoveries, the puzzles, the "aha!" moments, and the quiet details that bring ancestors back into focus. My goal isn't just to collect names and dates. It's to understand the lives behind them, to place each person in their time and place, and to build a narrative that my family (and anyone researching similar lines) can follow. Here's what you can expect to see here: Ancestor snapshots  -- short profiles that highlight a person's life and context Research updates  -- what I'm working on, what I've found, an...