I’ve received comments from several cousins that I should not be so hard on myself during this time of moving slowly on the website.  I want to thank you all for your never-ending support!

I can only guess that my avoidance of this update has to do with the lack of information readily available on the McGlothlin family.  I have an email into a McGlothlin family researcher, and if I am lucky enough to get some additional information to add to the page, I will be sure to include that in a future blog.

One thing I found to be very interesting while researching this family is that John McLaughlin/McGlothlin is listed right about Walter Mattingly/Matney on the Sandy Basin Virgnia Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution website.

Questions

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This week has been exceptionally rough for Rick and I. I’ve tried to remove all thoughts from my mind during any free time I have had this week, so I haven’t been very productive on the website, and for that you all have my most sincere apologies.

Bobby has told me many times to not allow myself to get burned out on working on this site, and I want to assure you all that this was not why I have been so quiet this week. Perhaps the break I have taken this week will help to ensure that I do not get burned out!

Those of you who have dropped by the site may have already noticed, but I have made a couple of minor updates throughout this week. The most noticable change to the site is that I have added some additional advertisements. Not all pages have advertisements yet, and I will likely reduce the number of ads on each individual page from what I have right now, as I have created a page with all of the advertisements that I am affiliated with. This page is listed under ‘Corel Cousins Info’ on the side menu navigation as ‘Advertisers’.

There has been a much more exciting new page this week, under the Photos section, you will now see that the link to James Pickens has a home! There is an index for this section, and the new page I have added is of Documents pertaining to James Pickens and his descendants. You will find many items in this section, and of course, I have missed a couple, so more will be added later! The things I found most interesting, or wanted to point out, are a Funeral Card for James Pickens Corel, the Death Certificate for Donald Charles Bishop, and the Funeral Cards for Donald Charles Bishop, Anthony James Vital, and Gloria J. Wiggins Laughlin Beauchamp. These three Funeral Cards are from my immediate family and deaths we have endured in our family in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

I found the Funeral Card for James Pickens very interesting because it shows how much things have changed through the years, but even at that time a Card was created as a keepsake for the difficulty of dealing with the loss of a loved one.

As genealogists, I think that many will find my Dad’s death certificate very interesting, to be able to see how different a death certificate is today from those we are so used to seeing.

As humans living together in this world, I share the Funeral Cards of my Dad, my cousin’s Husband, and my former Aunt, and I ask that you keep my family in your positive thoughts, especially my first cousins, who have endured too much pain over the past year.

Questions & Comments & Such

Well, there aren’t many questions today, but I do have a few comments.

• I have been working on the McGlothlin page. I am struggling a bit, so if anyone has an image that relates to this family, I would certainly appreciate it!
• I’m no where near where I had hoped to be by the end of April, but that seems to be how this site is going! I want to finish the McGlothlin, Puckett, Peart, and McGee pages before I move on to the grandchildren of William Corel and Rebecca Oney. I probably will have enough info on the McGee’s to create their own site, but I promise I will try to not get too carried away on this line!
• Sandra & Ruby - I would like to ask that you start sending me some info on the Pucketts! I expect that I will start working on the Puckett page by the end of this week!!

• Shawn - I know next to nothing about the Peart family, and would dearly love it if you could share some of your info with me as well!

• Today, Mom and I are meeting Cousin Ella and her sister for lunch! I am so very excited about meeting this new cousin face to face!

• Finally, I want to say for you all, as well as for myself, that everything in this world happens for a reason. We may not always know what that reason is, but it is there nonetheless. Whatever hardships we must endure in this lifetime are not put before us to crush us, but to teach us. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. With that said, by the end of this year I expect to be able to take on anything!!

   

   

  Have a GREAT week everyone!

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Oh there was going to be a good update today. I was working along quite well, with lots of help from Bobby, of course. Then it happened. I was getting ready to ‘fine tune’ some photos and ‘poof’ my computer locked. I rebooted, it locked again. I rebooted and decided to check to make sure I had all of the Windows downloads and updates I was supposed to have. When it rebooted, my graphics were totally fried. Then I fought and fought, but I wasn’t able to get back to ‘normal’ graphics. I gave up and went to bed, thoroughly disgusted. Rick worked on it last night, but to no success.

This morning, I booted my computer and everything was still messed up. For those of you who have Windows XP, pay very close attention, this is simply amazing. (Not you Grandma, let me or Jeff do this for you!)

OK, I had tried everything else, so I went to the Start button and to the Accessories folder. Inside there is a System Tools folder. The last item on my list of programs was System Restore. I didn’t think this would do a lot of good, because I don’t think I’ve ever made a ‘Restore Point’. To my surprise, my computer had made several ‘Restore Points’! I knew everything was working well over the weekend, So I chose to go to Saturday and there were two options (one was because I had installed some software). I chose the other option (not the new software install) and let the computer do it’s thing. It told me that I would not lose any documents or anything, I don’t know yet, because I haven’t checked yet, but my graphics are back to normal and my computer isn’t locking up.

I have noticed that some things are different from before the crash, but nothing significant. Some of the programs I had updated are now gone. That is fine, it may have been one of those that caused all of this!

Later today I will check my files. I had the Matney page done and was starting on the Dobbins page. I had also made some minor changes to the entire site. After I review everything, I will upload it, and just post a brief entry to the blog. Right now, I’m just happy to have my computer back!

OK, that’s all for now. Sorry there is no new stuff for you to see on the site. I did want to share this interesting ‘Restore’ option that I had never used before. Hope everyone else’s week is going better than this!

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Seventeen years ago today, my great grandma died. It was a very difficult day, as I was only 17 at the time, and as an older cousin said recently, that day was really our first experience with death.

Years earlier, when I was a sophomore in high school, she had bought my class ring for me. She said it was my graduation present because she would not be there for my graduation. April 15, 1990 was about 6 weeks before I graduated.

That Sunday, 17 years ago, I had gone into the ICU room several times and just stood at the foot of the bed. I could not go up to her because I was so very afraid of her leaving us. My last trip into that room, a cousin asked me if I had been up to see her yet. When I said I hadn’t, he had my grandma step aside so I could be close to ‘Grandmama’.

I’m sure I only held her hand for less than 30 seconds, but it seemed an eternity. On the other side of her bed was her son, holding her other hand. Everyone who had come to the hospital, except for my mom, dad, and sister, was in the room when she removed her hands from our grasps and folded them on her stomach. She had such strength when she took her hand from me, I could not believe that she was at her end. We all stood there and watched as she quietly moved on to the next stage of her soul’s journey. I was in complete shock. Someone said she was gone, and I ran from the room to find my parents and sister. The four of us hugged and cried together.

Being so young, I blamed myself for her passing. She told me she wouldn’t be there for my graduation. Perhaps if I wasn’t so close, she wouldn’t have left. I was terrified to go to her bedside that day, but today I feel so blessed that she waited for me.

Later, in June, I was in a bad car wreck. I might have been able to avoid it or at least made it less tragic, but I did not. Before anyone made it to my car, when everything was still moving in slow motion, I smelled Grandmama’s perfume. I strongly believe that she saved me from dying that day. I was not wearing a seat belt and I rear-ended a stopped car when I was doing about 60 miles per hour. The hood was crumpled higher than the roof of my car. It was Grandmama that kept me from going through the windshield.

I wanted to share this with all of you for several reasons. First is because I have not shared all of this story with any of my family. I doubt that any of them know that for several years I blamed myself for her passing. I’m sure that our family was like most. Once someone has passed and is buried, it is no longer something that is really talked about. I know it was a very long time before I ever heard anyone even mention her name again.

Most of you know that is from the loss of my Dad that I began researching my ancestry again. I had loss all interest after the death of Grandmama. Perhaps it was a subconscious thought if I hadn’t asked, she would have waited a bit longer.

Another reason for wanting to share this story with all of you is to tell you how very important it is to speak of those who have passed. The older generations may not understand this, because this is how you were raised. Yes, this is how I was raised, too, but after we lost Dad, Mom and I participated in a grieving workshop to help us work through our grief. We learned how very important is is to feel our emotions and to talk through them with someone. Perhaps if we had talked about Grandmama and all of the emotions at the time, I would not have carried such guilt for so long. I am not trying to accuse or blame anyone for the guilt I carried. I want you all to understand how very important this can be for some people. I do not want another teenager to experience what I did so many years ago.

I know as we grow older we become set in our ways. If you experience a loss, I am not telling you how you should deal with it. I am just telling you that without the grieving workshop, I would still be a mess after Dad’s death. Michelle thought I needed psychiatric help! Encourage the children to talk about their feelings. Help them to understand that death is not their fault. Especially when it is the first time they are faced with it.

Do this for Kathryn. Do it for Paula. Do it for your children and grandchildren.

OK, enough sadness onto the updates!

I have been so very unhappy about the navigation of the website. In checking the statistics of the website, I have found that there are some pages people are not finding. I’m still fighting a site map. Plus, with so many regular updates, it’s hard for me to keep up with everything! So, yesterday I spent the day trying to find a better way to allow users to navigate through the site. I almost even did a complete new layout! That was very scary, because that would have been quite a bit of content to change over! As it was, even the new links was a bit of a challenge, but I did get it completed and uploaded before I went to bed last night (or early this morning).

In looking at the statistics, I was able to see that everyone who has accessed the site has Java enabled on their computers, so I found a Java Script that allowed me to create a collapsible menu. On the left side of the website, where you would normally see the names of the children of Rebecca Oney and William Corel, there are now five different groups. If you click on a group, several more choices will appear that fall under the heading. I hope that this helps all of you to find all of the pages that I create for you!

You will also notice that I have made some changes to the ‘global’ links across the top of each page. I have tried to have them more closely match with the choices on the side menu. Although some of the links on the top can be found if you ‘dig’ through the side menu, I have kept those which I thought were most important on top. If anyone has any problems finding a page or thinks that there should be anything added, let me know! I can provide you with a direct link, and will consider every suggestion! I don’t think I’ve ‘over-ridden’ any suggestions made so far!

There are some links that do not have pages yet. There are also a couple of pages that are just there, with the links and outline of what the page will be. To see all of the Photo pages, the best place to go is to the Index under the Photos menu. There you will see what pages that are uploaded and ready to be viewed! Under the Corels by Marriage menu, the only completed page so far is the Justice Family.

The only new page I have added this time around is some photos of Olivia Gillespie Corel and her descendants. I have recently found that I have missed a photo, so will be redoing that page soon, but go and check out the photos up now for Olivia!

Questions and such

Well, obviously I haven’t updated much to ask questions about, but I would love to hear what you think about the new navigation of the site! Also, I have just gone back and fixed some links that didn’t make it through the upgrade too well, so if you click a link and end up at the wrong page, let me know, so I can fix it!

I have been researching on the Matney family and have found a wonderful site I will be sharing on that page.

I also want to make sure that you all know that I am always accepting new photos! If you see that your line already has photos up, but one you have isn’t there, please email me. It takes no time at all to add new photos and I love to look at all of the photos of our ancestors!

Wishing you all a great week!

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This is a minor update. I’ve done the Researchers page. Poor Bobby is all alone with a photo on this page! I tried to find a photo of me, but all I have is photos of Abby! I think the photos I had of me have either gotten deleted, lost during a crash, or are just missing somewhere on my hard drive. I looked for about an hour last night! This should motivate Michelle to get that photo of me with Abby taken, so I can crop it down to have a picture of me there! Oh yes, the rest of you need to send me a photo, too! We can’t have Bobby being the only one with a photo there!

I also created another photo album. These pictures were taken on Memorial Day last year (2006) at Oak Hill Cemetery of the Corel grave plots. Some of the photos aren’t all that great. It was very sunny that day and the shadows from the flowers we put out cause some difficulty in seeing the stones. Hopefully it will warm up a bit soon and I will be able to get back out the cemetery soon! I will be adding many more photos for James Pickens. Once I am able to get to the cemetery and take photos of other parts of the cemetery, I may move this page and have a separate section for the Cemetery Photos.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. We certainly did! Although I don’t think that I ever got nearly as much loot from the Easter Bunny as little Abby did this year!

That’s all for today, my only question is when is Spring coming back??

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First and foremost, I want to wish you all a very Happy Easter!

I have done a lot of work on the site this week, but unfortunately, my update does not show it! I have lost about 3 days of work, but not to a computer error. I decided I didn’t like the changes I had made, so yesterday morning I scrapped it all and downloaded what I had online and started over! I am proud of how much I accomplished in the past 24 hours, tho!

Now, on to the updates!

I have added much more to Cosby Jane Corel’s page. I have added a great deal of history on William Justice and some info on their children. You will see that I have not added anything for Albert Berten Justice. This is because he is the only child of William and Jane who will have his own page. Hopefully we will find more cousins and I will be able to add pages for more of the children in the future.

I have also made my first ’spouse’ family page, the Justice Family. I did not find a great deal on William Justice’s father, Alfred, but I was able to trace William’s mother back to another family that will be discussed in the future, the Parman Family. Giles Gilbert Parman married a daughter of Nancy Matney and Henry Highland Corel, Rebecca Elizabeth Corel.

I just love how so many relationships in the early years of the Corel Family intertwine with other families. While working on the Justice Family, I found the Parman’s and the Earnshaw’s! At this time, I have not found anything on the Earnshaw Family, so if anyone else has made the connections, I would love to know about it! I would dearly love to find some cousins down this line!

The next update to discuss is in the Photos section. On the album pages for Henry Highland Corel and Rebecca Oney and William Corel, I have found a new way to layout the images. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

My final update is a new link you will find in the ‘Interesting Links’ section. A descendant of Olivia Gillespie Corel McGee, Mrs. Barbara Rolph, is a co-founder/co-owner of a successful restaurant chain, Carlos O’Kelly’s Mexican Cafe. Barbara told me that the reason this name was chosen was because it was the most memorable. I must agree with that logic, who’s ever heard of eating Mexican and Irish at the same time? Ahh, well, Barbara has also reassured me that although they did try adding some Irish options to the menu, they are sticking with Mexican menu items!

Questions and thoughts

For this section of the site, I think that my biggest question is about the Earnshaw Family. As I explained above, I know that the two Earnshaw men that two daughters of Cosby Jane Corel and William Justice married must be related! Nothing really jumped out at me when I was surfing and looking, and I was eager to get this update completed, so I have left it alone for now.

My second question for today has to do with the set-up of the website itself. I feel like I need to add a main link on the top of the page pointing to the ’spouse’ families. It would be after the Photos link, but I do not know what I should call it. ‘Spouse Families’ just seems too silly and not very descriptive for people who just happen across the site. ‘Non-Corel Families’ sounds a bit weird, but might be better. Please give me your thoughts to either of these ideas, or make your own suggestion!

Also, I have been working on the ‘Researcher’s Page’, and I hope to get it up this week. Bobby Dobbins Title has suggested that we all submit a face shot to include on the Researcher’s page to allow us to get to know each other a bit more. I have a photo of Bobby and Joe Cullen, but I need to ask that the other researcher’s (Gene, Diane, Ella, Sandy, Ruby, Virginia & Tom, Barbara, and Shawn - this means you! I am so sorry if I forgot anyone here, but send it in anyway!) send me a photo. If others are in the photo, that is fine, I can crop the photos to make them all uniform.

OK, I have to wrap this up, gotta get ready to watch little Abby hunt for Easter Eggs!

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Wow, this is hard to believe, but I’ve done it. I didn’t think I would get to this point, but now I’m here! All of the children of William Corel and Rebecca Oney now have their own page!

My next goal is to go back over everyone who is posted and more completely tell their stories. I have more information about most of the children, and their parents. I even know I have more to say about William Jr., I just don’t know where I read the info at! I thought I had read more details about William Corel in the Agnes Hall manuscript, but I didn’t find it there. So, it must have been one of the many letters I have been reading lately. I need to go back through each of the letters and do what I did with Agnes’ manuscrpt last night, make notes on a copy calling out each section I want to write about.

Most likely the next couple of weeks will be several small updates, rather than the updates I’ve been doing once or twice a week. So that you aren’t overwhelmed by emails, I will keep the blog and email notifications to no more than 3 a week while I’m reviewing the first generation of Corel’s.

Last weekend I made some fun updates that I didn’t send a separate notification on. First and foremost, I have added a ‘Guest Map’ on the home page, at the bottom of the page. Click on the icon and you will be taken to a map of the United States. You will see that right now there are only two of us on the map, me and Bobby Dobbins Title. I think this will be a lot of fun for all of us to get a better idea about how spread out the family is in the 21st century! The free map allows for 100 entries, so please do not do separate entries for all of your children who live at home! But, please do an entry for you, even if you live in the same city as another cousin (for example, Mom, Grandma, and Mary Ellen all live in Lawrence and all three should make entries, if they wish!).

Another bit of updating I have done is to the Photos section. Now when you go to this page, you will see an outline of the different sections I expect to make. So far, I’ve completed photo pages for 4 sections. When you click on a section, you will see the thumbnails for the photos of that section. If you click a right or left button, you will be taken to the other sections, the up button will take you back to the outlined listing. If you click a thumbnail, you will go to a page for the photo with a description of the photo. Clicking the left and right arrows there will take you to the different photos in that section. The up arrow will take you back to the section page with thumbnails.

I have also been trying to get a site map up. For my employer’s website, I use a website that will create a site map for you for free. I’ve tried using it on Corel Cousins, but there is an error somewhere not allowing the site map to be made. I have so many pages that are connected in more than one way, everytime I have sat down to do a sitemap manually, something gets missed. I’m hoping to be able to use one of these free sites to help me get started! I’ll figure something out eventually!

I am also going to use this time that I am ‘fine tuning’ the site to make the Researcher’s page. That may even be something I am able to accomplish today at work, depending on how hectic the day turns out to be. I’ve created graphics for the email addresses for the main researchers. If I have left anyone out that wants to be added, EMAIL ME! No one responded when I asked people generally, so I emailed those who I know to be researchers of the Corel family.

I am hoping that before the end of April I will have

• the Researcher’s page completed,
• a page completed for the ’spouse’ familes (McGlothlin, Matney, Puckett, McGee, and Justice),
• more about William Corel and Rebecca Oney,
• more complete stories for all of the children,
• more Photo pages

and,

• a Site Map!

That will have me set to start on the second generation in May. Of course, this timetable is provided that there are no more serious illnesses or computer melt-downs, but I thought I’d share my vision with you all!

The grandchildren of William and Rebecca will prove to be an interesting challenge. There are so very many of them! The webmaster side of me is glad that we do not know all about all of the 100+ grandchildren, but the genealogist is sad that there are missing people! Hopefully as I am able to ‘grow’ the site, we will also be able to ‘grow’ our family by finding more missing cousins!

Questions and Discussions

I am curious about the young girl, Susan, living with Margaret McGee and William Corel. I haven’t had time to look yet, but I wonder if a grave may be in the Sutton Cemetery, also. I don’t really expect that she is, because surely she would be near Margaret and William, and Gene Dixon would have a photo of her grave as well.

I am also considering adding a section on the Peart family. For those of you who have no idea of what I am talking about…. On the 1850 Census, there are three Peart children listed as living with Rebecca Oney and William Corel. Their mother passed away prior to the census and the children lived with the Corel family. By 1855 these children were no longer living with Rebecca, but were living with Rebecca’s children. The Peart children may be cousins of the Corel children, or perhaps no blood relation at all. However, these children were a part of our ancestors’ lives. From the beginning of this website, I have tried to make this a story about the lives of Rebecca Oney and William Corel and their children, not just a list of dates. Plus, we do have a researcher of the Peart family among us!

Another question I have been asking myself since starting this is how much should I post on the McGee family here? I would dearly love your opinions on this! This site is the Corel Cousins and not the McGee Cousins, but three Corel children and one Corel grandchild married siblings from the McGee family. I have quite a bit of info on the McGee’s, thanx to Mom, Bobby, and Diane. Plus, I have discovered that through the McGee line, we have an ancestor who was in the Revolutionary War. I bet Aunt Gladys is just cursing me right now! (That would be my Grandma’s Aunt Gladys) She tried to join the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) through the Corel line. Had she looked more to the McGee side, she would have found that the great grandfather of the McGee siblings that married into the Corel family was, in fact, a soldier in the Revolutionary War. I haven’t done a great deal of research to be able to tell you many details, but I have confirmed with the DAR that Solomon Neidigh is listed as a patriot during the war.

So, I just don’t know if I should go back that far on a ’spouse’ family. I don’t have nearly this much information on any of the other families, so it would look as tho I am ‘favoring’ one line more than another, which is not my intention at all. What do you think?

Well, this is rather long, so I think I will wrap up here. I will have another entry by Saturday, but just in case any of you don’t get the chance to stop by then, I want to wish you all a very Happy Easter!

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Happy weekend everyone!

With a HUGE amount of help from Teresa this week, I have finished Rebecca’s page and have her uploaded. I am very thankful to Teresa for all of her help and guidance this past week! I have added some additional links in my writing on Rebecca. Most will go to pictures of items that I haven’t quite found a home for yet, but wanted to share. Especially Rebecca’s death certificate!

Rebecca lived through a very difficult time, as did all of the Corel Children. Yet she did endure and left a wonderful legacy of strength. Being the only child of William Corel and Rebecca Oney to not migrate to the Missouri-Kansas area, she was left being a young mother without the support of her parents and siblings. Recall that Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone until 1876, so it was not as it is today, with family only a phone call away.

One thing that fascinated me the most while preparing this page was to learn that two of Rebecca’s sons served with the South in the Civil War. Seeing that our family had men fighting on both sides has reaffirmed that the war did place brother against brother, and in our case, cousin against cousin. I have not allowed myself to delve too far into the Civil War history yet, because I know I will become quite side tracked once I get started on that one!!

Another New Cousin!

I was beyond thrilled this morning to open an email from Cousin Bobby. She has been in contact with a Friend of Corel Cousins, Stan. Stan has found a descendant of Rebecca through her daughter, Mary Evaline! The only other thing I know about this cousin so far is that he is from our area of the country, the Midwest! I am thrilled to no end to have another cousin found, and I hope to learn more about this cousin and have him and his family at our next reunion!

Other stuff

OK, here’s the ‘other stuff’ I put in the title of this blog, and something you have likely noticed by now. I’ve added a couple of ads to the pages. I am not looking to become rich off of this at all, I am just hoping I might be able to make the $10-$20 a month it is costing me to have this website. Don’t feel obligated to click on anything, because you aren’t! Right now, some of the ads are for ‘Corel Draw’ and ‘WordPerfect’, but I am hoping those ads will be gone within 48 hours and that the ads you will see will only be related to genealogy. If you see something that catches your eye, please click on it!

By adding the Google ads, I have also added a Google search to all of the website pages (not the blog pages). I had no idea until a couple of days ago that the search was not working on the site! (No one told me!!) I have done a basic search with the new search box, just remember that you need to select that you are only wanting to search Corel Cousins if you are looking for something on the site. I have added the option to not have any ‘adult’ material to come up in the search results, also, so the site should be safe for all of us!

If you have any problems with the ads or searches, please email me! I will work immediately to fix the problem, or remove the ad with the problem.

Questions and Thoughts

Well, the original questions I had have all been answered by Cousin Teresa, so I have thought about other, more appropriate ideas to discuss with this update.

John McGlothlin, from stories carried down through the family, is reported to have been a soldier in the Civil War. No evidence has been found by Teresa or myself that proves this, but the very fact that Wytheville was organizing regiments during the time when John died in Wytheville truly says to me that even if he wasn’t officially ’signed up’ yet, he had every intention of doing so. There may have been an incident that had nothing to do with the war. John may have been killed by ‘friendly fire’ while doing ‘exercises’ with the Wytheville Regiments. It is so very hard to say.

I also admire Rebecca for her strength when she found out that John had died. She would have been pregnant at the time, but it was early enough that she may not have realized she was pregnant yet. Of course it would be devastating to learn that one of your children has died, but the fact that she did not lose that baby, Amanda, is certainly admirable.

Oh yes, one final thought that occurred to me while working on this page. Has anyone else noticed that so many of the death certificates of the Corel Children show senility as a cause of death? Rebecca’s does not, and I was kind of surprised to see that. Is senility genetic? Are the Corel Cousins doomed to be senile? Well, that would certainly explain a few things about my Mom!

Just joking Mom! You know I love you!!

The next page is William Jr. - Gene, beware… the internet lines between us may heat up a bit this week!

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I just had to come back and tell you all thank you so very much for all of the comments and emails from my last blog! In case you missed anything, read the blog early before many comments were posted, or didn’t even realize that the comments existed, you can click here to go back and read what everyone talked about!

Unfortunately, I’m still stuck on the last question and haven’t been knocked over by another mystery I have encountered! To recap, I am dying to find out where Rebecca Oney Corel’s house was built. Thanks to Bobby Dobbins Title, I now have a digital version of a map with who had claimed where, at least in 1857. And thanks to Mom (Connie Bishop) I know where to see the full sized map of the area!

Wow, now isn’t that just awesome?

Well, I believe I had mentioned a while back that I was working on a bit of a side project. I’ve gotten it far enough to share with you all. But, while I am thinking about it, has anyone heard from Joe Cullen recently? I haven’t heard from him in awhile and I’m getting just a bit worried. Of course, he could be like some of the rest of you and out travelling and away from the computer. I certainly hope that is the case!

Oh yes, the project. Well, Joe has sent me some wonderful photos of his ancestors. I first created a simple web photo album, but neither of us was very happy with that. Joe asked if it might be possible to set it up as a family tree of photos. I have not added the actual lines that show the connections, but I fear that doing so might detract from the photo images themselves. I have fought and fought to get the photos to line up, and it is far from perfect, as you will see, but I am excited about this nonetheless!

Now before I give you the link to see this, I do want to explain that I have not added any text yet to detail the people in the photos and provide their information. In order to see who you are looking at right now, you will need to look at the (typically) blue bar across the top of your browser. You know, the one with the line to minimize, the boxes to maximize, and the ‘X’ to close the window. Right now, if you look up there you should see something that says “The Corel Cousins Blog: It’s…”. On each of the individual photos pages, you will see the names of the photos. I hope to get the chance to go back soon to add the actual text below the photos.

My next ‘problem’ with this page is that I don’t really have a place to put it yet! So, for now, this is the only way you can access the page: click here. To get to the individual photos, click on the thumbnail image you would like to see! I’ve been considering creating an index page for the photo pages, so that may come eventually. Another idea is to just have this page linked from the page I will create for Jemima Morris Corel. Quite possibly, I will do both. As always, I’d love to hear your ideas on how I might handle a page such as this, or anything you might like to see in the layout of it all!

OK, I think that is all for today! Hope everyone is making it through the week well!

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Not nearly all that I have is up, but I do have the basics. I found that I kept going back and back wanting to add more and more. I have to find a stopping point and move on to the next child. I already know that I need to go through all of the children to add more. A couple of the children may be as far as they can be until new information is found on the child’s life, or until I get into the stories of their children.

You know, the ‘hugeness’ of this task is starting to hit me. All previous projects I have undergone in the past were ones that I would finish easily in a week or two. LOL (LOL is ‘cyber-ese’ for Laughing Out Loud) This has already taken a month and I’m not through the first 13 people (William, Rebecca, and the children who lived to marrying age), and there is so much more to be entered just on them!

Oh yes, a side note - Be happy I’m using ‘cyber-ese’ rather than the ‘Valley Talk’ that was so big in the ’80s!

Anyhow, back to how big this project is!! So I just looked, and I have about 100 grandchildren for William and Rebecca!! Averaging one or two people a week, will have me done with that generation in about a year! Yikes!

Yes, I know you are now laughing. You were amazed when I said I wanted to do this. But understand, I thought this would be just another easy project that wouldn’t take too long. No, I’m not stopping this, please don’t think that. I am now amazed that I am doing this! You see, with all of the thank-you’s I’ve received for taking on this project, I’ve brushed it off that it was no big deal. Still, to me, it’s no big deal because I want to do it. Now, however, I understand that to each of you this is a big deal that someone is willing to take on such a huge project!

OK, so how did I come to this massive realization? I received an email from California Corel Cousin Bobby that she had some of her genealogy friends look at our little site. The response was wonderful, and I believe there was a bit of pride between the lines when she said they were jealous of not have someone in their line creating a similar site!

Minor Updates

I also made some minor updates yesterday. I went through and made sure each of the links was working right. Several were not and it was difficult to manage to one child’s page from another child’s page. That should be fixed now.

I also ‘fixed’ the full-sized photo for the 1924 Corel-McGee picnic. It is not the full original size, but it is still of good quality and much easier to see without waiting an eternity for it to download! I looked at the other photos and nothing else seemed to take too long in loading, but if you find any that do, again, please let me know! I haven’t played with compressing them any further than they are. They work good for me, but I have a cable connection. For those of you on dial up, especially, tell me if anything takes too long, it is not hard to fix and will only take me about 2 minutes per photo.

The next change has been the addition of ‘Friends of Corel Cousins’. It has been pointed out to me that it is not just the descendants of William and Rebecca who may enjoy this site, many others may find interests here in the stories of the Corel family as well! In fact, I have already personally granted Honorary Corel Cousinship to more than one person!

Never was it my intention to imply that only those who can prove blood relation are to be welcome here! So, I made a few additions of including the friends on the home page! So, to be certain, I want everyone to know that I would like to hear from anyone via blog comment or email who finds anything on this site they would like to discuss, ask questions about, or make a contribution.

As previously discussed

I have recently been contacted by a new found cousin! Her name is Janet, she lives in Oregon, and her ancestors are Cosby Jane and William Justice, Louise and Albert Berten Justice, Fern Opal and Glenn McHenry. Fern and Glenn are Janet’s grandparents. Janet has just begun digging through all of her family treasures and piecing together the family.

Questions for Today…

After working on each of the pages, I discover that I have questions without answers by the time I’ve exhausted my searches online and through my materials. I think I will start asking the questions here, first, so I don’t forget! and second, so that maybe someone with the answer can let me know! My first question involves the following photo.

Does anyone have a better map? LOL This one is pretty rough. I am trying to picture where the different families live and this is the best I’ve found so far. Yes, I know that if I go to the Douglas County Library or Courthouse, I will find the map showing exactly what I want, but life does not always allow for such trips! Does anyone have a photo copy of the 1857 map showing who owned what land? Does anyone have a digital copy?

In reading Olivia’s obituary several times in the last few days, I have become very curious about the property that is now Oak Hill Cemetery. I knew that the property was donated by the Corel family since birth, or at least since the first time I visited the cemetery! I did not know that the land that is now the cemetery is where the first house stood. Does anyone know where in the cemetery the house was? I have imagined that the tall tree next to the red McGee monument may have stood in the front yard. I have imagined that perhaps the house was on top of one of the hills that do not yet have graves. Or near the site where the Civil War soldiers are buried. One day last fall, Rick and I walked all over the old sections of the cemetery. This weekend we have discussed a second trip to go ‘exploring’, but this time with a camera!! There are far to many graves there, I have no intention of documenting the entire cemetery, or even the older sections! I have photos of James Pickens Corel’s monument, as well as the plots reserved for James Henry and his children. I need to get the McGee stones which are all right next to each other. It may take some time to find the others I know are there, but there are also just so many interesting stones. Then, I would also like to shoot the land itself. Unfortunately I will not be able to share some of the sites we saw this fall, as it was a couple of weeks after a tornado/microburst had hit and not all of the clean up had been completed yet. But I hope those of you who do not live in the area or had the opportunity to just walk around the cemetery and look at the land that was once lived on by Pioneers, and Native Americans before them, will enjoy what I hope to bring in the future, and perhaps dream with me of what the land may have looked like then.

OK, I’m wrapping! Now those of you who don’t know me too well see how I compensate after being too sick for too long! Have a GREAT week!

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