I have started to research my wife’s ancestors, the Habers, Henrys, Burkes and Kohlhepps. Of those, I have found quite a bit about the Habers, Henrys and Burkes, but very little about the Kohlhepps. Clearly, there is still much to do. Most of what I have on the Habers I got by slogging through census records. They lived in Schenectady and the surrounding area. New York in the 1800s and early 1900s is a relatively easy place to hunt ancestors, since New York did their own census every 10 years, usually offset 5 years from the federal census.

Read more →

Today I learned about the concept of “replacement children”. I have noticed that several of the families I am researching have multiple children with the same name. When a child dies, the name is sometimes re-used on another child. An example is my 2nd great grandmother, Elizabeth Coles Padden, who was born in 1828. She had a sister, Elizabeth Coles Padden, who was born in 1824 and died in 1826.

Read more →

Last year, I posted an article about our family’s move to the U.S. from England. In that article, I mentioned that I did not know why the family, originally planning to travel on the Titanic, took and earlier ship, the Baltic, instead. My brother, who clearly paid much better attention to our grandfather when we were younger, has an explanation: the National Coal Strike of 1912. This was a strike by Britain’s coal miners with the goal of setting a minimum wage for their work, and it was the cause for many shipping cancellations.

Read more →

This is the only photo I have found of my great grandparents, William and Annie Baker. As you can see, the quality is poor, but the original is much, much worse; it’s barely recognizable as a photograph. I was able to get it in this condition only with some help from Photoshop. I hope I can eventually find some more pictures of them. William was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, England in 1862.

Read more →

Fellow Bakers, I discovered a possible new family name today. It appears we have a 5th great grandmother named Joan Jennings (or possibly Jening, but I am assuming Jennings is correct for now.) She lived in Somerset, England from 1700 to 1785, and married Thomas Knapton, the 2nd great grandfather of my great grandmother, Elizabeth Ann (Annie) Knapton, who of course was the wife of William Henry Baker. The records on her and the couple of generations of Knaptons following her are a bit tenuous, so I’ll be on the lookout for better documentation.

Read more →

I was researching my grand uncle, Ralph Swarthout, today. He was married to Hilda Baker. Both are buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Penn Yan, NY in a plot that was originally purchased by my great grandmother, Annie Baker. My father mentioned to me several times that Ralph had always been his favorite uncle. While looking through the cemetery records at the Yates County Cemetery Project, I noticed that Paul Baker, who was born and died in 1936, is also buried in that plot.

Read more →

There is a family story that the Baker family, headed by my great-grandfather William Henry Baker, had originally planned to come to the United States on the Titanic, but had changed their plans and come on different ship. While I don’t have any documentation of that, I believe it to be true, since my grandfather, Idris Baker, told me about it several times. He should have known whether it happened or not, because he was there; he was about 8 years old when the family made the trip.

Read more →