Welcome to my blog. This month I am looking at my maternal family line for the Booth Family.

This is the second month of working on my challenge of one family line per month. The challenge is really in trying to stay on the current family line and not wander off on other tangent lines.
Last month I had read another bloggers post about Staten Island newspapers being digitized and available online. I took a quick detour and checked it out. This week I took a closer look because the Booth family can be found on Staten Island starting around 1850.

Above you can see the search criteria I used. I did a general search for “Booth” . Then I selected the time period I was particularly interested in viewing. Then I selected the County “Richmond” . In choosing the county I could not select an individual paper or a city.

The above screen shot shows a selection of the return hits. 1 out of 4 is for the word booth (ie telephone booth) found in various articles. Another frequent hit was for General Booth of the Salvation Army and his daughter and son-in-law. If you are looking for an item related to a specific known date do not forget to look at all pages for that date (first page shown here). If you have family on Staten Island you might want to visit this site. In reading the newspaper clippings I could see just how social the community was and how involved the family was in the social life of the community.

Ada Jane Booth was my mother’s, mother’s, mother. She was born 9 October 1867 in Castleton, Richmond Co. New York to Ada Jane Jones and Joseph Booth. Ada was the fourth of  8 children born to Ada and Joseph Booth.

George M. was the eldest child born in 1859 in New York and died at age 26. The following is from a newspaper clipping found at genealogybank.com.

BOOTH – In Brooklyn, on Saturday, December 25 (1886), George M,, eldest child of Joseph and Ada Booth, in the 26th year of his age.

Funeral on Tuesday, December 28 at one o”clock, from his residence, 18 Water st., West Brighton. S.I.

the follow up was in the Richmond County Advance, January 1, 1887 (from the above illustrated site).

BOOTH. – At Brooklyn, L. I., on Christmas day, George M, Booth, aged 26 years, eldest child of Joseph and Ada Booth, of Roe Street, West New Brighton. The funeral services were held  on Tuesday afternoon in Trinity M.E. Church, Rev. S.P. Hammond officiating.

Richmond Lodge No. 88 I.O.O.F., J. H. Carson, Noble Grand , attended the funeral in a  b__ly,  and preformed the service of the order at the grave in Fountain’s Cemetery.

Does any one know what the abbreviation L.I. refers to?

I do not know what happened to George, that he died so young. We know he had married Abby King on the 18 November 1884. Were they visiting her family for Christmas? Had he been ill? Was there an accident? We will need to send for Georges death certificate.

Walter L. Booth was born in 1862 New York and died in 1959. His wife was Anna Denker and they had one child Walter.

William R. Booth was born 29 August 1865  and died 24 April 1886. He married Mary Alma Corbett and they had two boys Arthur C. and Walter.

Isaac S. Booth was born in 1870  and died in 1949. He was a Fireman for the Wyandotte Hook & Ladder Co. He was married to Wilhelmina Simpson and they had 4 children, Helen S., Harriett W.¹, Wilhelmina, and Isaac Jr.

Harriett W.  was born in 1872 and was married twice. Her first husband’s last name was Armstrong (1910 US Census shows Hattie at home on Staten Island and she is listed as divorced). Her second husband was Eugene Parker whom she married  on 9 Sept 1910. They had no children. Hattie died 27 April 1923.

The next child born to Joseph and Ada Booth was Charles L. in 1875. He married Elsie Maass and they had three children, Elsie, Joseph, and Edna M.. Charles died 14 May 1926.

Emma L was the last of the eight to be born on 26 February 1890. She married Joseph A. Sullivan. and they had one daughter Ada M. We were fortunate to visit with Ada at her home in Kennett Square, PA. She was the same age as our Mother.

That completes a recap of the generation that started our connection to the Booth Line. I will be continuing back to the next generation with Joseph Booth and his siblings in my next blog.

If you have stories to add or any comments please do so in the comment section below. I  also would love to hear from my Booth cousins.

 

¹Harriett my grandmothers cousin lived in Virginia Beach where we visited her in the 1990’s.