The Genealogical Pen

Patrick Trainer, Burial Location Solved!

By |November 23rd, 2020|Family Geography, Thrush Family History, Trainer-Traynor|

For many years, there was a great debate amongst family members, particularly the genealogists in the family as to where Patrick Trainer was buried.  Some, such as Opal Danner plan to visit Jackson, Ohio to tease this out.  Unfortunately, she was never able to make that trip.

None of the research that people made revealed a cemetery that he could have been buried at.  The Trainer family did not have a lot of money, nor did they have a great deal of resources or prestige in the community.  Patrick was a laborer […]

Getting Rid of Tree Parrots

By |September 26th, 2019|General Genealogy|

A pretty common mistake beginning and amateur genealogists make is the “click & add” method of tree construction–especially when confronted by source confirmed information.  This can include birth and death dates, children and spouses of a family member, or even adding a non-relative with an identical name.  Ancestry.com makes this ever so easy!  What inevitably happens is that other Ancestry members find this incorrect info–and copy it to their trees as well.  Let’s call these folks ‘Tree Parrots.’

My guess is that many of us have deliberately or inadvertently done this–only later to find […]

Jackson Ohio Trainer Migration to Michigan

By |May 8th, 2019|Family Geography, Trainer-Traynor|

Patrick Trainer moved to St. Charles, Michigan sometime between 1897 (the birth of my grandmother Eliza in Jackson), and 1899 (birth of my great-uncle John W. Traynor) in St. Charles, Michigan.  Then Frank Trainer/Traynor moved there between 1901 (birth of Carl Moody Trainer in Jackson), and 1902.  Opal Susan was born in January of 1903, so we can probably bank on it being in 1902.  Sometime prior to 1910, […]

The ‘Mac Threinfhir’ Question

By |May 6th, 2019|Thrush Family History, Trainer-Traynor|

In the several decades now that I have been trying to dig out my Irish ancestry via the internet–and pin down immigrant Patrick Trainer’s upstream line–the subject of the Mac Threinfhir sept or clan kept popping up.  There were various narratives which put this group as Ulster-Scots, native Celts, or some admixture thereof.  The meaning of the name can be broken down to ‘Mac’ (son of) and ‘Threinfhir’ (strong man).  But first, I need to get how this is pronounced.  By the beginning of the 19th century, many branches […]

Hello Visitors!

By |March 20th, 2019|Family Search, TNG Websites|

Welcome to Journeys in Genealogy

This website details the genealogical history of the Thrush-Traynor and Birdsall-Danzi families of Patrick & Donna Thrush.  It was begun in September, 2015 as a simple WordPress site, and is now in its fourth design iteration.  The project has become much larger and more complex an undertaking than I initially believed–as the first vision was to simply tell the story of my immediate family.  As planned, I thought to write a page on each member of the family going upwards about four generations.

It did not take long to […]

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