DID YOUR ANCESTORS HAVE PATENTS OR WRITE POEMS?
Brenda Kellow
March 17, 2013
We spend years searching our ancestors and spend much too much money doing it. What you do with it after you gather it determines exactly what kind of researcher you really are. Do not be a gatherer. Be a producer. Write your family’s history. Tell in it where you have gone, what all you have done and what you did not find. If you found many photos as I did, then be sure to reproduce them in the history. Did you find a dress worn by an ancestor? Did you collect funeral cards, birthday cards or anniversary wishes? Old post cards so often had relative’s photographs. Did you find any of these?
When did your family come to America? Did you find the reason they came or their circumstances? Did they live in the city or country? What was their occupation?
When your family reads your history, will it pose questions or did you attack that while writing? Make your words pictures so the readers experience the ancestors’environment and understand their circumstances
while at sea.
In researching, I found one ancestor, Joseph Kellow, was a geologist, founder of slate in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania, had several patents, owned several quarries, was a poet, and contributed to several mining journals published in England. To my surprise, I found that he collaborated with James Johnston, a man in another family line on a non-refillable bottle, patented in 1895. Two individual ancestors collaborated on the same patent. Wow! Furthermore, he married Johnston’s daughter.
Kellow invented an inexpensive rail-joint that is a lock for securing the meeting ends of railroad rails. He patented this in the U.S. Patent Office on May 19, 1885, patent number #318,189. Joseph patented a process for slate mining used into modern times, or at least until 1970. He also developed a blasting method for removing slate from the quarry.
Another ancestor, Chessborough J. H. MacKenzie-Kennedy had a patent for a “Toilet Article Case” in the United States and in Canada. He invented and patented the first tail gun used in our “aeroplanes” in 1922. His invention allowed the gun to rotate and gave the gunner a position at the tail of the plane. The patent was filed in the United States even though he lived in Westminster, London, England. In 1934 while living in New York, he received a patent for an airplane with a hollow body or fuselage that allowed passage and accommodations from behind the engines to the tail of the plane. He developed a giant bomber airplane at Kennedy Aeroplanes, Ltd in Hayes, England in 1914. Despite its four engines, the Kennedy Giant was so underpowered that once airborne it could do little more than fly in a straightline. Well, everyone has a failure from time to time.
Digging deeply into your family brings out many details that make the ancestor once again live. Begin at the beginning, delve into the details that turn a ho-hum history come alive. This is how weresearch. We are not simply gatherers.
FOLD3 DIGITIZED CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHS AND WW II NAVY MUSTER ROLLS: The newly added digitized Civil War Photos are separate from the Brady Civil War Photos. There are thousands of photographs in each database but they come from different sources. Both were taken from the Mathew Brady team of
photographers during the Civil War era. The Brady Civil War Photos come from the National Archives publication T252,“Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes,” but, the Civil War Photos are from the Library of Congress collection of Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints. It costs
nothing to view these collections on www.Fold3.com.
ALTERNATE SEARCH ENGINES: Seldom do I use another search engine besides Google, but there are others. I tried Dogpile, www.dogpile.com, for a while. When Bing, www.bing.com, began I tried it. Another is Yippy, http://search.yippi.com. Two search engines devoted to genealogy are LiveRoots, www.liveroots.com and Mocavo,
www.mocavo.com. Give them a try.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history, teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s histories in 2007, Brenda held certification as a Certified Genealogist and as a certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunion announcements, books to review, and genealogy queries
to: [email protected].
When did your family come to America? Did you find the reason they came or their circumstances? Did they live in the city or country? What was their occupation?
When your family reads your history, will it pose questions or did you attack that while writing? Make your words pictures so the readers experience the ancestors’environment and understand their circumstances
while at sea.
In researching, I found one ancestor, Joseph Kellow, was a geologist, founder of slate in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania, had several patents, owned several quarries, was a poet, and contributed to several mining journals published in England. To my surprise, I found that he collaborated with James Johnston, a man in another family line on a non-refillable bottle, patented in 1895. Two individual ancestors collaborated on the same patent. Wow! Furthermore, he married Johnston’s daughter.
Kellow invented an inexpensive rail-joint that is a lock for securing the meeting ends of railroad rails. He patented this in the U.S. Patent Office on May 19, 1885, patent number #318,189. Joseph patented a process for slate mining used into modern times, or at least until 1970. He also developed a blasting method for removing slate from the quarry.
Another ancestor, Chessborough J. H. MacKenzie-Kennedy had a patent for a “Toilet Article Case” in the United States and in Canada. He invented and patented the first tail gun used in our “aeroplanes” in 1922. His invention allowed the gun to rotate and gave the gunner a position at the tail of the plane. The patent was filed in the United States even though he lived in Westminster, London, England. In 1934 while living in New York, he received a patent for an airplane with a hollow body or fuselage that allowed passage and accommodations from behind the engines to the tail of the plane. He developed a giant bomber airplane at Kennedy Aeroplanes, Ltd in Hayes, England in 1914. Despite its four engines, the Kennedy Giant was so underpowered that once airborne it could do little more than fly in a straightline. Well, everyone has a failure from time to time.
Digging deeply into your family brings out many details that make the ancestor once again live. Begin at the beginning, delve into the details that turn a ho-hum history come alive. This is how weresearch. We are not simply gatherers.
FOLD3 DIGITIZED CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHS AND WW II NAVY MUSTER ROLLS: The newly added digitized Civil War Photos are separate from the Brady Civil War Photos. There are thousands of photographs in each database but they come from different sources. Both were taken from the Mathew Brady team of
photographers during the Civil War era. The Brady Civil War Photos come from the National Archives publication T252,“Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes,” but, the Civil War Photos are from the Library of Congress collection of Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints. It costs
nothing to view these collections on www.Fold3.com.
ALTERNATE SEARCH ENGINES: Seldom do I use another search engine besides Google, but there are others. I tried Dogpile, www.dogpile.com, for a while. When Bing, www.bing.com, began I tried it. Another is Yippy, http://search.yippi.com. Two search engines devoted to genealogy are LiveRoots, www.liveroots.com and Mocavo,
www.mocavo.com. Give them a try.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history, teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s histories in 2007, Brenda held certification as a Certified Genealogist and as a certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunion announcements, books to review, and genealogy queries
to: [email protected].