My Long Lost Genealogy Projects

The purpose of this post is to help me remember all the genealogy projects I've started for family and friends, many of which I've let fall by the wayside. I'm sure we all have those kinds of projects. Genealogy research just gets so overwhelming sometimes, especially now with so many online resources freely floating at our fingertips, that we put projects aside to organize and present to others later. And sometimes other life events just get in the way of finishing someone else's project. Some of the projects that I have been successful at "finishing" or nearly "finishing" are the following:

• My first cousin's father's side of the family. My mom and her mom are sisters, so I've done tons of research on her mom's side (Pemberton), but she wanted me to look for some Chamberlain information on her dad's side. Her father's biological father left the family when her father was very young, so she knew very little about him. She did not even know her great-grandparents' names. I was able to find her paternal grandparents' marriage record at the county clerk's office, which listed her great-grandparents, Martin William Chamberlain and Gertrude Devers. From there, I was able to find several marriage and death records from the family and trace them back at least 2 more generations. Ironically, it appears that Martin's father, Edward Felix Chamberlain, was actually the son of Nelson DeLisle and Sarah Sherky. Sarah was married to Jarvis Chamberlain before she married Nelson DeLisle, and she was a widow at the time of the 1850 census with no son named Edward in the household. Edward was not born until about 1854, after she married Nelson DeLisle in 1852. On Edward's 1880 marriage record to Alice Swartout, his name is given as Edward Felix DeLisle, though no parents are listed. I can't figure out why he started going by Chamberlain, his mother's first husband's name, after his marriage in 1880. His mother also used Chamberlain at the time of her death in 1910. My suspicion is that DeLisle was a French Canadian name and may have been more prone to prejudicial views by others than Chamberlain would have been. So my cousin may not be a Chamberlain after all! I also did some research for my cousin on her Chatterson and Plonkey lines, those of her paternal grandmother, and found that she is a fourth cousin to Madonna, assuming Madonna's genealogy research has been researched correctly.
• My brother-in-law's family is an ongoing project that I am currently working on, as many of you have seen in my DeLuca series of posts. Some of his other surnames are Hartman (Missouri/Kansas), Roberts (Ontario), and Haste (Louisiana/Arkansas/Illinois), so be looking forward to those posts.

Below are my poor little projects that I have temporarily abandoned (though not permanently):

• My fiance's famly tree. I started this research back in 2005 or 2006 when I was in grad school, about a year before we were actually engaged (this is when he should have gotten scared!...LOL!). I even added stuff to my Family Tree Maker database, but of course I did not source it properly, as I was prone to do back then. Some of his paternal lines include Sepulvado (my soon-to-be last name...yikes!), Leone, Laroux, Procell, Bebee, Campbell, and Blackman. His paternal ancestors were from NW Louisiana (primarily Sabine Parish). I suspect that the Sepulvado and Leone families descend from Spanish soldiers stationed in Mexico who traveled south to Texas and then into Louisiana. Some of his maternal lines include Hyatt, Dickerson, Spikes, Marze, McMahon, Cole, Wright, and Chapman. The Hyatt, Dickerson, Spikes, and Marze families settled in SW Louisiana in present-day Beauregard Parish (then Calcasieu), though the Marze and Dickerson families had SE Texas ties as well. The McMahon, Cole, Wright, and Chapman families settled in SE Texas (Newton and Jasper Counties, just across the border from Beauregard Parish, Louisiana).
• My best friend Rachel's family tree. Her paternal surnames include Jones, Bridwell, Marks, Woods, Curtis, Bright, and Combs. These families were primarily from Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana, though I think we did trace her Jones ancestor back to Minnesota. Her maternal side includes Plimpton, Loungway, Hebert, and Gauthier, all from Massachusetts and Quebec.
• My future niece's family tree on her dad's side. Her mom is my fiance's sister, so that side of the tree ties back into Forgotten Family Tree #1. Her father's families include Kravchuk (Ukraine/Massachusetts), Hollier, Fontenot, Berzat, Reed, Henry, Jeansonne, LaHaye, and possibly Guilbert. Other than the Kravchuk's, the remainder of these families come from southwest Louisiana (Evangeline Parish).
• My aunt's family tree. My aunt married my mom's brother (Pemberton) from Michigan, but she is a Domingue from Louisiana, and on my dad's side, my third great-grandmother was a Domingue from Louisiana as well. I am pretty certain we are related because all Domingue descendants in Louisiana descend from Manuel Domingue who came to Louisiana in the 1770s from the Canary Islands. Her third great-grandfather appears to be Jean Pierre Domingue, who married Emilia Hernandez in 1856 in Lafayette Parish, and his father seems to be Manuel Domingue who married Marie Hernandez, but I'm not sure who Manuel's parents are. I believe he is probably a grandson of the immigrant ancestor, Manuel Domingue. Therefore, I haven't determined our exact relationship yet.
• My stepcousin's famly tree on her dad's side. Her dad died when she was young, and her mom has been with my uncle for twenty years now. This uncle is also my mom's brother from Michigan (though a different brother than the one mentioned above). My stepcousin's great-grandmother on her dad's side was also a Domingue. Seems like those Pemberton's from Michigan like to marry Domingue descendants from Louisiana because my stepcousin is also married to a Pemberton, her first stepcousin, one of my mom's other brother's son's. (Are you lost now?) It looks like my third great-grandfather, Joseph Numa Sonnier, and my stepcousin's third great-grandfather, Rufus Emmanuel Domingue, were half-brothers. Though I do need to verify this further. I am not 100% sure that Rufus Emmanuel Domingue, son of Pierre Antoine Domingue and Rosalie Basilisse Armigela Domingue, is the exact same person as Emmanuel Domingue, son of Pierre Domingue and Rosalie Domingue (again, cousins marrying cousins...Rosalie's maiden name was Domingue).
  

Anyhow, I *think* this concludes my list of forgotten family trees. Now I can refer back to it when I am ready to take one of them on again.