Seeking Family in Farewells

You know I can't leave anything alone. So, even though I've concluded that the Rufus Littlejohn who dies in Pennsylvania in 1934 is indeed my 2x Great-Grandfather, I still want more proof. Something closer to a smoking gun. The obituary of Rufus' brother Ed Littlejohn was so helpful in placing Rufus in Cleveland in 1923 that I've been wondering if any of his other siblings have obituaries that could do the same thing for other years. So, I guess now I'm on The Sibling Hunt.

Based on the 1870 and 1880 Census, plus death certificates that include parents' names, I've been able to pull together the following list of Rufus' siblings, children of Strap and Eliza Littlejohn. And, because I like charts, I've been using one to track information I've been collecting on their passing.

Photo Friday: Of Pufferfish and People

One of my maternal uncles and his wife recently moved into a new house nearby and, not too long ago, some of us went over to check it out and say welcome to the neighborhood. The previous owners had left quite a few things behind, and as we got the grand tour, one of the items we all stopped to have a conversation about was a mobile hanging on the ceiling in one of the rooms. Its theme seemed to be “marine life,” and the sight of several pufferfish dangling from the piece sparked a memory for my uncle (and several jokes about not eating fugu fish from the rest of us!).

For a time in his teenage years, my uncle lived with his paternal grandmother, my great-grandmother Katherine (Shepherd) Sharpe, in the Bronx in New York City. One of the ways they passed time together was to go fishing, and he remembers on several occasions accidentally catching pufferfish.