I am very proud to announce that the Otter Lake Express (and the Family of Michael McCormack) has a new sister website, the Family Tree of Michael McCormack! Whereas the Otter Lake Express is a (written) blog about the family, the Family Tree of Michael McCormack is a graphical and pictorial blog about the family.
I have spent the last month or so setting up the website by uploading LOTS of pictures and assigning all of the pictures to the right people. I also spent a lot of time uploading census sheets and linking them also to the right people. Even with all the time that I have spent working on the website, there is still LOTS to do.
With all that having been said, one of my very top priorities is the privacy of the living members of the McCormack family. If anyone has privacy concerns after visiting the website, PLEASE let me know and I will do my best to address your concerns. Also, if you see anything that needs correcting in terms of incorrect dates or anything else, please let me know and I will fix the error as soon as possible! If you have any suggestions, I am also very open to them too!
Thank you for your time and I hope you like the Family Tree of Michael McCormack!
I am back and very anxious to restart the telling of the story of the Michael McCormack family!
Today, I want to share an exciting development concerning the former William McCormack house in Otter Lake, Michigan. For most of us, the picture below is the shared vision of the McCormack house. I got this view from Google Maps. Unfortunately, as you can see below, the front of the house isn’t in good shape.
The William McCormack house
Several weeks ago, on Apr 13, a woman named Julie Devine contacted me through Pinterest. She had bought the William McCormack house in Otter Lake last year and wanted to get some history of the house. She had tried another distant cousin on Pinterest, but apparently, that person never returned her messages.
As we can see in the picture, the house was very run down. The grass was all over the place. So, before her family and friends started the front and side yards, this is what the front and side yards looked like.
As we can see in the picture, the house was very run down. The grass was all over the place. So, before her family and friends started the front and side yards, this is what the front and side yards looked like.
Julie is doing a COMPLETE renovation, I believe, both inside and out. But unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the house inside before she started. But I have a video of a tour of the inside that Julie gave after the demo was almost completely finished.
Restoring McCormack Manor -Tour
Julie has a channel over at YouTube named the “McCormack Manor Restoration.” She has many more videos of other parts of the house, like the basement, the windows looking into the cellar, and different sections of the house.
I have talked to the last two people that have actual memories of the house, inside and out. They are both thrilled that someone is caring for their grandfather’s home better.
Here are some pictures of the house in her better days;
The caption that I have is “McCormack House – 1882.” Reason unknown.
The McCormack House front door. Date 2022.
William E. McCormack in front of the house. Date unknown.
Date unknown.
The McCormack House in winter. It was taken from an Otter Lake centennial booklet published in 1973.
I have reached out to Julie to offer my help in some way with her research on my great-grandfather’s house. I share the hopes of all of William McCormack’s descendants that his house be returned to its former glory. In Julie Devine, I believe we have someone with the right desire to do what is necessary to restore the house!
Hello once again! It has been way too long since I have posted anything here. I mean to restart the series that I intended to start over 4 years ago. Just a brief reminder of what this series is about. In 1925, my grandmother and her sister, Ruth took a trip to Europe. This series is intended to partially document that trip.
had in the baggage rack. “Suitcases and things,” said Herb. “Well that’s not the point.” “What have you in them?” Got through O.K. Had dinner at London. Have one awful time finding a place to eat, at least Herb did. Finally land at Iroquois Tecumseh Hotel.. Very nice place. Miss Brown gets sprinkled. Have wonderful ride from Hamilton into Niagara. We rode for miles on the bluff overseeing miles of land all valleys and trees and we then rode about 10 miles parallel to . . .
To be continued!
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you learned something today!
Since I debut the Family Tree of Michael McCormack, I have been asked if I could give a brief history of Michael and Catherine especially prior to their immigration and tell what I know about them.
Michael and Catherine McCormack
Prior to the birth of his first child and son and subsequent marriage to Catherine, I don’t know anything about Michael. That is, I don’t have any documentation that states exactly where he was born or where he grew up. I also don’t have anything that documents what he did for a living. I have a few family stories but none of them have proven fruitful. Since he was married in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, I assume that he was from somewhere in County Kilkenny. His marriage took place in 1853.
As for Catherine, here is what I know. I know that she was married once before Michael in Dublin to a soldier, I don’t if he was British or native Irish. That was 1849. Then I find her in Kilkenny marrying Michael.
Catherine’s first marriage
I don’t have any documentation for either where she born or where she was from.
I have listed a few blog posts that help detail the life and times of Michael and Catherine.
Those were just a few of the posts about Michael and Catherine. I would like to thank my cousin that requested something about our great-great-grandparents.
Thank you for stopping by and hopefully learning something new about the McCormack clan. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask!
I believe that I have said it before, but little gems like this clipping below are very interesting. It just shows a little slice of daily life. At one time, John Michael McCormack owned a hotel in Reno, Nevada. This is a notice of arrivals at John Michael’s hotel on June 17th, 1910. [1]
I would like to thank everyone for stopping by and hopefully learning something new about the McCormack clan.
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Copyright (c) 2020, Jeff Ford
Footnotes;
John Michael McCormack, “Hotel McCormack Arrivals,” The Reno (Nevada) Gazette Journal, 17 Jun 1910, p. 10, col. 2, digital image, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com, accessed 6 Jun 2020.
I know that it has been a while since I last posted. I think that I found a little gem that might make up for some of my absence.
When you become the family’s genealogist/historian, one of the things that you feel as an obligation is to find things that tell a story or something about members of your family that help to tell a story about them. When you do find something that shows off ancestor, you can’t help but feel a good deal of satisfication.
I went looking for family gems at Newspapers.com. When I did, I had gone there intending to look for another family member than the one that I found. What I found was a little gem about Henry McCormack, the sixth son of Michael McCormack. A little background on Henry is that he was a prominent member of the Ithaca, Michigan business community. He was a store owner and at one time a board member of a local bank.
Here is my little gem;
Henry and the globe [1]
Who would have known that Henry McCormack was such a supporter of education?
I would like to thank everyone for stopping by and hopefully learning something new about the McCormack clan.
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Footnotes;
Henry McCormack, “Y. M. C. A Notes,” The Alma (Michigan) Record, 4 Dec 1913, p. 2, col. 1, digital image, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com, accessed 24 May 2020.
Two of the things that have driven my research in the last few years are my desire to find out if Michael had any family in Ireland and if he came from County Kilkenny.
Several years ago, a friend of mine found a baptism entry for a Michael (Mc)Cormack. Michael’s parents, in the entry, are Patrick Cormack and Catherine Brodrick. This document was the very first time that I may have had a glimpse of the name of Michael’s mother. Through my research, I only know of one of Michael’s parents, his father Patrick. The name of Michael’s mother is a complete unknown to me.
This was the entry was found in the baptismal and marriage records for the St. Canice civil parish of County Kilkenny.
I looked at several years before and after the date of the entry in the same file for any other (Mc)Cormack entries. I didn’t find any additional (Mc)Cormack entries, but I may have overlooked an entry or two.
I decided that perhaps I should try a slightly different approach. Since I didn’t find any more entries, I felt that I need to look in other places around County Kilkenny to find any evidence of a marriage between Patrick Cormack and Catherine Brodrick and also any other children.
I started with a few of the many spelling variations of McCormack. The terms I came up with were Cormack, Cormick, and McCormack. I looked for different spellings of Brodrick. But there are just two main variations, Brodrick and Broderick. My final list of surnames that I came up with was Brodrick, Broderick, Cormack, Cormick, and McCormack. With those terms, I needed to find just where in County Kilkenny they were located.
The place to find that information is JohnGrenham.com. How the website works is that you supply a surname to locate and it will show you where in Ireland your surname is located by county according to Griffith’s Valuation. The first surname that I tried was McCormick. But there were no entries for McCormick in County Kilkenny. I had better success when I repeated that approach for the rest of the surnames on my list. I then listed each surname by the civil parish to see which parishes matched across the surnames and how many in each parish.
I left out the parishes that only occurred in one surname. I tried to get the parishes that had the most occurrences in a parish and also occurred in other surnames.
I will update everyone with any results that I happen to find!
I would like to thank everyone for stopping by and hopefully learning something new about the McCormack clan.
The one thing that we are all known by is our name. That’s especially true for genealogists/family historians who look for their ancestors. We run into problems during our search when we come upon relatives with the same or similar names. We also run into problems when the relative’s name is spelled differently than what we have seen before. In the story that I will lay out for you in this post, one thing that I have been saying since I found the following information on Ancestry is that it isn’t how our ancestors spelled their name. It is how the census taker wrote down their name. It is how the clerk making the entry in the marriage books wrote their name as/ In this case, it is how the person transcribing the baptismal entry wrote the names of the McCormack family.
In the McCormack family, we have (or had) three men with the first name of Henry. Henry Peacock “HP” McCormack, the son of John Michael McCormack. Henry Davis McCormack, the first child of the previously mentioned HP. Finally, there was as he was known for most of his life, Henry McCormack, brother to John Michael and son of Michael McCormack.
Henry Peacock McCormack
Henry D. McCormack
young Henry McCormack
The Three Henrys
In talking to various descendants of the last Henry, they mentioned that they were told either by Henry himself or other family members that his actual first name was Thomas. I said ok, but I need a little more than hearsay evidence to convince me. Last December 2019, I got an ubiquitious Ancestry hint. As I have privately told others, this hint found me. I didn’t and I don’t think I could. Why? Everyone’s last name was spelled much differently than I have seen before.
Henry McCormack’s Ancestry hint
McCormas? Paul? McCormis? As I told a descendant of Henry, I don’t know if there are enough wildcard characters to find this record. I have seen dozens of ways to spell McCormack. This was the FIRST time that I had seen McCormack or Payne spelled this way.
Henry’s baptismal entry
I made a few changes to reflect the fact that Henry’s actual first name was Thomas and not Henry. For example, at FamilySearch, I changed the birth/baptism name from Henry McCormack to Thomas Henry McCormack. But as I think I told this descendant of (the new) Thomas Henry, he may have been born and baptized as Thomas Henry McCormack, but he spent the rest of his life being known as Henry McCormack. He was married twice as Henry. He signed legal documents pertaining to his brother Frank’s probate case as Henry. He was also buried as Henry McCormack.
Another quick story that I would like to share with you is that if you notice that Henry was baptized as a Roman Catholic. This goes to support a family legend that a deal was made, I think, when Michael and Catherine were married that the boys were to be raised as Catholics and the girls were to raised as Protestants.
One last thing, now that Henry has/is a middle name, this makes three of Michael’s sons have known middle names. John Michael McCormack, Francis “Frank” James McCormack and Thomas Henry McCormack. There are two other sons of Michael that have middle initials, William E. McCormack (my great-grandfather) and Arthur A. McCormack. That leaves one son, Edward J. McCormack. I don’t think that I have found any documents that state if J was his middle initial or not or if the J stood for James or something else.
I would like to thank everyone for stopping by and hopefully learning something new about the McCormack clan.
A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Roberta Estes, the author of the DNA Explained – Genetic Genealogy blog. It was about a web-based service that colorizing b&w, sepia, and other old family photos.
As you can see, it really looks pretty good although there are several obvious areas for correction, like some of the areas around of the eyes for example.
I hope that you like the results.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you learned something!
Today’s document for Amanuensis Monday is a teacher’s contract for Lura McCormack Palmer in Oscoda County, Michigan.
It is my belief that documents like this contract add flavor and texture to someone’s life that otherwise may just consist of dates and locations.
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It is hereby Agreed, By and between the Board of Education of School District, incorporated by the name and style of “The Public Schools of the Townships of Big Creek and Mentor,” in the County of Oscoda, and the State of Michigan, for and on behalf of said District, and Lura Palmer of the village of Luzerne in the County Oscoda and State of Michigan, a legally qualified Teacher in said County of Oscoda that the said Lura Palmer shall teach the Luzerne School of said District for the term of nine months, commencing on the 7th day of September in the year one thousand nine hundred twenty five for the sum of nine hundred Dollars to be paid as hereinafter specified.
The said Lura Palmer hereby agrees to teach said School, for and during the term above mentioned, to keep a correct list of the pupils, and the age of each attending the said school, and the number of days each pupil is present, and to furnish the said Board of Education with a correct copy of the same, at the close of the School, and to faithfully observe and enforce the rules and regulations established by said Board of Education for the government and management of said School.
The said Board of Education on behalf of said District, agrees to keep the said Schoolhouse in good repair, to provide the necessary fuel, and to pay said Lura Palmer for her services as Teacher of said School for and during the term above mentioned, the sum of Nine hundred Dollars, to be paid as follows;
Provided However, That in case the Certificate of said Lura Palmer . . . . . . . authorizing her to teach, shall expire by limitation, and shall not be immediately renewed, or in case said Certificate shall be suspended or revoked by proper legal authority, for immorality, or incompetency to instruct and govern said school, or for any other reason authorized by law, or, in case of the violation of this Contract by said Lura Palmer then, in any such case, the said Lura Palmer shall not thereafter be entitled to any compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In Witness Whereof, We have hereunto subscribed our names, this 29th day of June A.D. 19025
Board of Education of “The Public Schools of the Townships of Big Creek and Mentor.”
Francis W. Hunter
Newell Angell
August J. Ladensack
Henry Bitter
Dan Pierce
Lura M. Palmer
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Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another. This topic was started by John Newmark of theTransylvanianDutch blog.
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In this contract, Lura Maude (McCormack) Palmer ((1897-1936), the daughter of Edward James and Elizabeth Jane (Rohr/Dimmick) McCormack, is contracted to be a school teacher for the townships of Big Creek and Mentor.
I was given a digital copy of this contract by Lura’s grandchildren. I would like to thank them for sharing this little piece of history with me and the rest of the world.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you learned something!
The Otter Lake Express 
