Ancestors of

Faber Miller b. 1905 and Elizabeth Speedy b. 1917 have ancestors traced back to the 1600s. Gladys Cable b. 1913 and Stanley Roose b. 1915 have ancestors traced to the 1800s.

Lizzie Flood b.1867

/ Kirstin Miller

Elizabeth Matilda Flood great aunt of Elizabeth Speedy who married Stanley Roose. Lizzie on RootsMagic tree.

Elizabeth went by Lizzie and was born January 28, 1867 in Butler County, Iowa. The year she was born, Harvard opens the 1st dental school, Nobel files a patent on dynamite, Nebraska becomes a state and Charles Dickens gives 1st public reading in the US.

screenshot 2Lizzie was a dressmaker. She was single and rented her home, in Iowa around 1900. Did she wish to stay single, did she have marriage proposals that she refused?  Did her parents hassle her to get married, start a family and settle down? Three of her sisters married and had children, one did not. Both her brothers married.

Lizzie died at about 36  years old, following an operation. She is buried near her family: mother Delia Viola Angell and father William Flood, brothers and sisters in an old cemetery near Clarksville, Iowa.

Postcard Waterloo, Iowa US HistoricalI think Lizzie liked living with her four sisters, two brothers and parents but was restless to be on her own. So she moved out of her family’s small town home at 20 years old and went to the closest city, then lived on her own until her death. Maybe she was a successful dressmaker during the day, then at home in the evenings she designed her own dresses and pondered opening her own dress shop. After Lizzie’s death her youngest sister, Nettie, owns a millinery shop. Perhaps Lizzie’s estate left all to her sister?

Flood, Lizzie swatch book

Lizzie may have kept a notebook similar to this Swatch book where she recorded her ideas for dress designs and her knowledge of textiles and sewing.

The Swatch book is at Winthur.org in their Digital Collections.

“Swatch Book :: Textile Patterns and Designs.” Swatch Book :: Textile Patterns and Designs. Winterthur Digital Collections, n.d. Web. 05 Jan. 2016.

 

One year, here’s what I’ve learned top 5

/ Kirstin Miller
  1. Life stories are amazing. Every single life has a story. Whatever the current population is  plus all the people who have ever lived! … have a story. It’s wondrous. And that’s only people. Who’s to say if every cat and bird and wolf and alligator don’t have exactly the same kinds of stories?
  2. Organize as you go (I know it’s very basic).  Jump in, find what records, names, dates and notes you can AND keep on top of it or within a very short time you will be buried in a mass of records, names, dates and notes that, as a group, are much harder to herd than each individual record, name, date and note.
  3. HathiTrust is brilliant. Free, searchable, savable, downloadable, copy and pasteable, this is a phenomenal online resource.  At HathiTrust the options are a full text search or a catalog search. It’s easy to create a ‘friend account’ to save books you’re working with in a single collection, or specific numerous collections. More about HathiTrust soon, I’m still discovering it’s awesomeness.
  4. There is a benefit to letting your research guide you as opposed to having a set goal and not straying from that goal. I’ve happened across a number of both direct and indirect ancestors because I followed where the search led. Like shopping at a Goodwill or similar thrift shop. If you go in looking only for a burgundy chair or a book by Robert Graves, you’ll likely leave empty handed. If you go in with an idea of what you need but totally open to whatever … you may walk out with a pair of Old Navy size 14 tall burgundy boot cut corduroys and a small statue of the goddess Athena.
  5. Start when you’re young!