Tools of our Fathers

These are photos of tools used by three generations of Eiermann men from Frederick Eiermann who came to New York in 1879 at the age of 16 from the little village of Rohrbach Villingen in the Grand Duchy of Baden (in what is now S.W. Germany). He became a carpenter building houses in Brooklyn and Queens, he pass the business down to his son Frederick Herman Eiermann and his Grandson Frederick George Eiermann who build houses in Queens and  Nassau Counties. These are just some of the tools that have survived to be pass down to Frederick Eiermann’s Great-Granddaughter and my wife Adele Grace Eiermann Boyle   

Hammers and planes used by the Eiermann's Builders

Tool Box made by Frederick Eiermann who came from Baden now Germany in 1879 at the age of 16 and build houses in Brooklyn and Queens and used by two generations that build house on Long Island's Nassau County.

Molden Plane

Many families into one family

It is nice to trace your family back as far as you can, but the documentation of the working class gets fewer and less reliable the closer you get to the 16^th century. Once you get pass that if you are lucky you find a few upper-class people like Knights, Lords even some Kings and Queens. Remember your direct descendants double every generation your go back, but the population gets less and less and only the upper classes are documented. So you are related to a whole group or even more lightly many groups of people until even they marge into one group the human family.    

The Jeanette Wilkes Boyle (Rampone) Story

           By her younger brother Richard Boyle 

 I believe that Jeanette was born in Brooklyn, but since our parents moved around a lot do to the Depression she might have been born in Manhattan on the 15th day of January 1935.  She already had an older brother by 1 and ½ years named Hugh Wallace Boyle Jr. named after our father. Jeanette was named after our mother Jeanette Wilkes Greenwood (Boyle).  Jeanette spent the first part of her childhood in Brooklyn she told me once she decided to run away, but she wasn’t allowed to cross the street so she just went around the block. Our parent would bring her and her brother to Coney Island beach which was a easy ride by subway from Brooklyn. Our parents would move about every six months for during to depression landlords work offer six months free rent for some of their apartments.  They did find time to bring her to Prospect Park for a pony ride so she did have fun in Brooklyn.  When she was six years old she got real lucky for she got another brother, who she could help her mother take care of like having a real live doll, I am that doll. Almost a year later our father got a job in Republic Aviation in Farmingdale Long Island making fighter planes for the Air Force for the was a war going on at the time. So we moved to Amityville which is the next town south of Farmingdale. Our parents rented a house on Park Avenue and enrolled Jeanette in the Amityville Public Schools that was only one house down from the house we were living in, but in 1947 we moved again this time our parents bought a house of their own a little farther south on Carleton Avenue.   We didn’t have either a Television or a car until about 1950 so my sister and I entertain ourselves playing card games, checkers/chess or just guessing games like 21 questions where one of us would think of event or person in history and the other would have to ask up to 21 questions to guess the answer.  When summer rolled around my sister and I would walk to the Amityville railroad station, take an LIRR train to the Wantagh railroad station, then a bus to Jones Beach State Park.  Which is a beautiful big beach, pool and games.   Jeanette graduated with the first class to graduate from what was then the new Amityville High School in 1953. Jeanette with two of her girlfriends went on a trip to Havana Cuba which was of course before the revolution. She had gone to work as a bookkeeper for an insurance company in the city (NYC) taking the LIRR from Amityville to Penn station and back. One day she took the day off and the train she would have been on had an accident. Jeanette went to work for a cement company in Amityville as a bookkeeper and payroll clerk. She said that she had to go in the back door of one of the local banks with two thugs to get the payroll and the thugs would stand behind her with their hand on their gun as she gave the company employees their pay. She soon quit that job to take a job as bookkeeper in Islip a town just east of Amityville. 

 Jeanette started to date a young man from Massapequa who had also graduated from Amityville High School named Bob Rampone. After dating for a while they got married on the 9th day of June in the year 1956. Then on the 21st day of March in the year 1957 Jeanette gave birth to Peter Douglas Rampone. Jeanette that the name Peter could be for either Bob’s Stepfather Peter Van Den Brande or our Uncle Peter McGregor Greenwood depending what side of her family she is talking to at the time. Then on the 11th day of December in the year 1958 she gave birth to her second child Lori Anne Rampone and moved into a new house in Lindenhurst Long Island.    Even if my sister and her two children were having the good life on Long Island, Bob’s parents decided to buy a group of housekeeping Cottages on Long Boat Key on Florida’s west coast. It was called the Little Gull, Bob’s parent wanted Jeanette and Bob to go down to Florida with them so they could help run the business. So Jeanette pregnant with her third child went down to Long Boat Key Florida. Soon Jeanette gave birth to her third child and second daughter that she named Elizabeth Anne Rampone.  The way it turned out Jeanette ran the business just about by herself getting customers by having brochures made up. She also got contracts to rent Televisions and Air conditioners, she had to do all the cleaning of the cottages too. The one thing I found funny about that was that when we were growing up on Long Island she would scream for me to save her from a little spider that had her trapped on the sofa and now she had to deal with the little creatures they had in Florida.    Jeanette did all this plus raise three children by herself for her husband Bob got a job up in Tampa quite a few miles north of Long Boat key. Bob got involved with a coworker and Jeanette and Bob got divorced in 1980. Bob’s mother Anita and Jeanette agreed to sell the Little Gull and move to Bradenton which is just southeast of Long Boat Key.  She worked for a while a real estate agent renting homes in the Bradenton area.  After our father died she took good care of our mother taking her on a trip to China and buying a Senior care home. Jeanette’s oldest daughter Lori helped run the home and take care of our mother. Jeanette used some of the money from the sale of the Little Gull to buy houses for all three of her children, who stayed close to her most of their lives, only Lori wandered around the country with Jeanette’s first Granddaughter Jessica. Jeanette finally had to take care of Jessica raising her to adulthood.   Jeanette’s son Peter gave her two Grandsons David and Mark Rampone and her second daughter Liz gave her two more Grandsons Andrew James (AJ) and Tyler Hershberger. All three of her children took turns taken care of her in her last years of life. Jeanette’s Granddaughter Jessica gave her three Great-grandsons Edmond, Nicolas and Joshua, Grandson AJ gave her a Great-Granddaughter Hayley Hershberger and only a month before her death her Grandson David gave her another Great-Grandson Dominic George Rampone. Jeanette Wilkes Boyle Rampone died on the 28th day of May 2016. 

Date Watching

I was reminded once again recently to watch the dates of birth of both parents and child. I was finding names of some of my ancestors on familysearch at first all looked well, Then I notice that according to this Tree Alexander Huton born  1546, but his mother Janet Beveraige was born in 1563. So this information has to be rejected, but used to clarify to see if the dates or names or both are wrong.

          I usually look for the parents by looking twenty years before the oldest child and the mother. This is also why ancestors should be added one at a time to avoid errors.   

Write a story of the Life of Ancestor

I think it is a good practice to write stories of your ancestors starting with the people you know best remembering that you too will someday be an ancestor. I started with my parents first my mother’s story then my father’s story all the while updating my own story. I tried to get my brother to write his own story he says when the spirit moves him. If writing about the living you have to respect their rights and ask them if you can and what to include and what to leave out. It easier to stick to the dead I think everyone has a story to tell and Genealogist yet to be born might be interested.

          Those that were born in the last hundred years or so might have photos that can add greatly to their story after all a picture is worth a thousand words. I have been lucky in that both my parents and my wife’s parents took or had taken enough photo to chronicle their lives.

          I use the sources such as Birth, Baptism and Marriage Certificates,  Census in the US from 1790 to 1940 (except 1890), UK Census from 1841 to 1911, some States also have Censuses such has New York State, The Valuations in both UK and Ireland and Death Certificates. I found these to be of great help in writing the story of those I know and the only thing you can go by for those distance ancestors. When I was writing my mother’s story I remembered her saying that she was born in Wishaw Scotland, but raised in Alva Scotland. My mother’s birth certificate confirmed that she was born in Wishaw in 1909, but the 1911 UK Census says she was living with parents on the Isle of Arran in Brodick her father working on a farm. Now that makes sense of her story of bring her father a Potato for his lunch and dropping it into a cow paddy pushing it off and giving it to her father. Naturally the more information the better the story and might put their lives in some prospective.

My Genealogical Philosophy

When I started researching my family tree I first looked at how others research their families and the web sites available. The first group that hit me right in the face was those looking for legendary ancestors. I knew from talking with my parents there was little chance of any aristocrats in either side of my family, they were for generations poor struggling people from Ireland, Scotland, England and on my wife's side Germany, which meant that information about them would be harder to find, but their life stories should still be told. Some others just played the numbers game just a long list of names with not too many facts about how they lived. So I decided to try to find out as much as I can about each generation to best reconstruct their story with as little guessing thrown in as possible.

    My wife and I did a DNA test through ancestry.com to see what that would tell us and it confirmed what I already thought that our family came out of Africa some forty thousand years ago around the Black Sea and down the Danube River valley. Some becoming the Celtic peoples others the Germanic peoples of Europe. Even if you think you know the answer it is good to confirm it as much as possible. I have a outline of where we came from, what I and hopefully future generations have to do is fill in the blanks.

          One thing I learn along the way was get as many fact about a person before you add them to your tree. Just name is not enough, when I put the name of my 2^nd great-grandfather on a site for Ireland there were a enough Hugh Boyle to fill a good size book. When I page through indexes I notice that people in Scotland name their children the same names John, Hugh, Peter Steven and Patrick for boys and Margaret, Sarah, Anne (or Ann) and Mary for girls so it is easy to go down the wrong path. So if you can get Location, Age, Occupation, and relatives to be sure you have the right person. 

Eiermann-Boyle Family Genealogy how I got started

I wish I started researching my family tree before my father died in 1982 so I could have gotten some serious answers out of him. My son Michael did ask him for a family tree, after his Grandfather he made up the rest. Lucky I do remember some stories he told me while I was growing up as did my mother about her side of the family. My parents both came to New York in 1929 from Scotland, so I have no relations nearby to as ask, but later starting in 1997 my wife and I began making trips to Scotland to see my cousins on my mother’s side and my mother’s brother Uncle Peter did tell me a lot of family stories if I could only remember them. It is important to get as much information from the older members of the family as possible, they may not think their stories are important, but everyone has a story to tell and future generations would like to read about where they came from.

          One thing that put me off at first was that the early web site advertisements said you could trace your family to the Kings and Queens of Europe being fairly sure my family and probably my wife’s were poor serfs then working people and research  showed that to be fairly close some becoming merchants, but most servants and tenant farmers. I soon realized the every person’s life no matter how poor should be remembered. It has been a slow going research trying hard not to go down the wrong path, but it has been worth it.

          I will go into the software, Photos and wed sites  that I used in later post on this blog.