Leetes and Leets Who Fought in the Cattanooga Campaign

I have written a book, "The Friendship Tablet", which will be or is available, depending on when you read this, as an ebook on Amazon.  In the appendix of that book I discuss Leetes and Leets that fought in the Chattanooga Campaign in the context of the biography of Arthur Irwin Leet (search blog for more info on him).  Here is the current list of those who can be traced to that campaign: 

Name	e, no e, both	Com- pany	UNIT	Rank - Induction	Rank - Disch	Allegiance	History
John H.	e	A	1 Texas Infantry.	Ord. Sergeant	Adjt.	Conf	Part of Hood's Texas Brigade, except when it was detached with Longstreet at Suffolk, Chickamauga, and Knoxville.
James W.	n		125th Regiment, Ohio Infantry			Union	Passage of the Cumberland Mountains and Tennessee River and Chickamauga (Ga.) Campaign August 16-September 22. Occupation of Chattanooga September 9. Lee and Gordon's Mills September 11-13. Near Lafayette September 14. Battle of Chickamauga September 19-20. Siege ofChattanooga, Tenn., September 24-November 23. Colwell's Ford November 19. Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign November 23-27. Orchard Knob November 23-24. Mission Ridge November 25. Pursuit to Graysville November 26-27. March to relief of Knoxville, Tenn., November 28-December 8
Jacob H.	n		1st Regiment, Michigan Light Artillery			Union	Chickamauga (Ga.) Campaign August 16-September 22.Davis Cross Roads, near Dug Gap, September 11. Battle of Chickamauga September 19-21; 5 pieces captured after 27 Officers and men and 50 horses had been killed and disabled; one with 3 caissons was recaptured on September 19, and two more on the 20th, but all were unfit for duty and the Battery was ordered to Chattanooga; one gun was recaptured at Mission Ridge and the last at Atlanta. Siege of Chattanooga, Tenn., September 24-November 23. Battles of Chattanooga November 23-25. Battery stationed at Chattanooga as garrison till July, 1865. Demonstration on Dalton February 22-27, 1864 (Section). Tunnel Hill, Buzzard's Roost Gap and Rocky Faced Ridge February 23-25, 1864
Jacob S.	n					Union
Thomas F.	n					Union
Henry M.	n		32nd Regiment, Indiana Infantry			Union	Chickamauga (Ga.) Campaign August 16-September 22. Battle of Chickamauga September 19-20. Siege of Chattanooga, Tenn., September 24-November 23. Reopening Tennessee River October 26-29. Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign November 23-27. Orchard Knob November 23-24. Mission Ridge November 25. Pursuit to Graysville November 26-27. March to relief of Knoxville, Tenn., November 28-December 8. Operations in East Tennessee till April, 1864. Atlanta (Ga.) Campaign May 1-September 8. Demonstrations on Rocky Faced Ridge and Dalton May 8-13. Buzzard's Roost Gap May 8-9. Battle of Resaca May 14-15. Adairsville May 17. Near Cassville May 19. Advance on Dallas May 22-25. Operations on line of Pumpkin Vine Creek, and battles about Dallas, New Hope Church and Allatoona Hills, May 25-June 5. Plckett's Mills May 27. O
A. Haller	B	A	9th Regiment, Michigan Infantry	Private	Private	Union	Chickamauga (Ga.) Campaign August 16-September 22. Battle f Chickamauga September 19-21. Siege of Chattanooga, Tenn., September 24-November 23. Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign November 23-27. Battles of Chattanooga November 23-25. Recononissance toward Dalton February 22-27, 1864. Atlanta (Ga.) Campaign May 1 to September 8. Demonstrations on Rocky Faced Ridge and Dalton May 8-13. Battle of Resaca May 14-15. Advance on Dallas May 18-25
George K.	n		Chicago Mercantile Battery, Illinois Light Artillery	Private	Colonel	Union	Assistant Adjutant, General Grant
James Madison	n		20th Army Corps		Medical Director	Union	Served throughout Chattanooga Campaign and then Sherman’s movements until the end of the war.

Using the Leetspeak 3 to show that primary records vary between an e and no e.

RFI:   On this blog I will use a 3, part of the Leetspeak language, to indicate that sometimes the record shows Leete and other times shows Leet; eg, Leet3.

Using Gedmatch.com

I have started a tutorial on using Gedmatch.com.  Basically, I am copying stuff from the email of one of our cousins.  Here is what he says:

Once one posts their "kit" to gedmatch, the learning curving involves the following tools:

1. one-to-many : a list of your 2000 strongest matches.

2. one-to-one: a chromosome browser to look at a particular match. NB setting thresholds, weak matches

3. people-who-match-one-or-both-kits: this is the freebee for triangulations, many nuances

4. multiple-kit-analysis: for example to keep track of our Leet/Leete connected kits and who matches who.

5. fun tools, eye color predictor and "are your parents related", creating a phased kit for an unavailable parent

6. tier 1 tools. What paying an optional donation of $10 gets you.

So we need a tutorial on each tool.  I'll add to this post as he helps me and I figure out how to communicate it.  I expect the post will actually be a link to another post, but this will be the index to help.  Duane Leet

Update on Benjamin Leete #559 (1831-1927) of Nevada

First of all, it appears from various records that he did keep the "e".

I got this note:

A recent find - Just wanted to update you to Benjamin Leete, who was descendant of William Leete of New Haven and cousin to James Leete. He is buried in Hillside Cemetery in Reno. There are current plans by the owner of the cemetery to dig up the graves and move them to another lot, perhaps in a mass burial.
http://hcpfoundation.squarespace.com/

The history of the Leetes in NV is an interesting one and involves some major branches of the Leete tree in North America.  This means both US and Canadian citizens of Leete descent.  Please, everyone individually, go to this page http://hcpfoundation.squarespace.com/call-to-action/ and respond.

I have accumulated a lot of info on the Leetes of Nevada with the intent of publishing an ebook on the Leet(e)s of Nevada and California.  It is a true epic of family history.  Unfortunately, I have multiple responsibilities and haven't had time to polish, assemble, and vet the material.  Anyone that wants to help, please let me know.  It seems rather urgent that something gets done so that we can demonstrate to the elites and powers-that-be the importance to our family of this cemetery.  I'll add some more info later.

Uploading AncestryDNA data to gedmatch.com

The procedure I followed is:

A.  Get your DNA data from ancestry.com
1.  Log on to the account used to obtain the DNA test.  It might not be your own account; it is the account the test was "run on."  For example, the test was run on my father, not me, so I have to log on to my father's account.
2.  Click on Download Raw Data.  An email will be sent to the registered account, which may not be your email account.  Go to that account for the message that was sent.
3.  Click on the green button.  Better yet, right click and copy the link.  Paste the link into the browser and make sure the link is what you expect. (Avoid phishing emails.)
4.  Log on to the account associated with the DNA test; eg, my father's account.
5.  Click on the button to download the data.  It will be a large Zip file; eg, 6 MB.
B. Get your GEDmatch account.
1. On the gedmatch.com page, click the HERE in "Not Registered, click HERE."  This is the link for that:  https://www.gedmatch.com/register.php.  Fill in the info.  An email will be sent to the email address you used to register with a confirmation code.
2.  Go back to the site and enter that code.  You will be in.
C.  Upload your AncestryDNA data
On the page that is presented, find, under the box labeled File Uploads, click on AncestryDNA.com.
3.  The new page will ask for the Name of the Donor.  It will also ask for your Mitochondrial haplogroup (if known) and your Y haplogroup (if known).
4.  There is a button at the bottom of the page "Choose file".  The file you choose should be the unzipped file you extracted from the large Zip file you downloaded from ancestry.  The name of the file should be ancestryDNA.txt.  It will be huge.
5.  Click the "Upload" button.  A message will display "yada yada THIS PROCESS TAKES SEVERAL MINUTES yada yada".  Other than that nothing shows, except if you have your browser's status line displayed.  In that case you will see a % upload message at the bottom of the browser.  This isn't a very good design.  It should show a progress bar or something and throw up a busy icon.  It doesn't.
6.  After a long while- maybe 10 minutes- a new page will display without you doing anything.  This is the page that has a Processing Chromosomes.  Please wait message at the bottom.  At least you know something is happening now.  This will go on for 20-30 minutes, until 36 or 37 chromosomes have been processed.  I got an error after 30 minutes and 8 chromosomes, so I had to start again.  Will report results in a later blog.  The error was "The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete the request.  Please contact the server administrator at [no address given] to inform them of the time this error occurred and the actions you performed just before the error."  

I let the restart run overnight and this time it finished.  There were 22 chromosomes found plus X and YX.  It gave me a kit number.  At the bottom it said " Tokenizing generally takes a few minutes after uploading. After that time, this file should be available for one-to-one comparisons. Batch processing generally takes 1-2 days. After that, this kit should be available for the one-to-many report."

Benjamin Leete built his own railroad!

I have a proper document with pictures, etc. in my database, but here is the text of an article I found.  Interesting fellow.

Benjamin Franklin Leete (1831- 1927) Biography



Benjamin Franklin LEETE, the president of the Magie Salt Works and a resident
of Reno, has developed an industry of the utmost importance to Nevada
and the west, and in business circles has made for himself a prominent and
honorable place. His diligence, foresight and perseverance have been the
foundation of the gratifying prosperity which he is now enjoying, and
he belongs to that class of representative American men who, while advancing
individual success, also promote the welfare of the locality with which
they are identified.

When Nevada was still a part of the territory of Utah, Mr. Leete
located within its borders, dating his residence from 1859. He was born
in Deruyter, Madison county. New York, on the 28th of February, 1831.
and traced his ancestry in the paternal line back to William Leete, at one
time governor of the colonies of Hartford and Branford, and the progenitor
of the family in the United States.

Epaphrous Nott Leete, the father of B. F. Leete, was born in Rutland county. Vermont, on the 28th of June, 1789, and died at Lockport, New York, in 1873. at the advanced age of
eighty-four years. His mother, who in her maidenhood was Miss Polly Nott,
belonged to a well known family of Schenectady, New York.

After arriving at years of maturity Mr. E. N. Leete was united in marriage to Miss
Harriet Welthy Thompson, a resident of Deruyter. They made their home
at Lockport. New York. In early life E. N. Leete was a Democrat in his
political views and supported Jackson, but on the organization of the new
Republican party he joined its ranks, giving his allegiance to Fremont.
Lincoln and the other grand men who have been its standardbearers. In
religious faith he was a Unitarian, and his wife held membership with the
Baptist church. They were the parents of thirteen children, but only three
are living at the time of this writing, 1903, and B. F. Leete is the only one
in Nevada.

In the Empire state Mr. B. F. Leete spent the days of his boyhood and
youth, and having obtained a good literary education he then took up the
study of civil engineering, and in that capacity was employed in connection
with the construction of the New York Central Railroad. In 1858 he
took passage for California on the Moses Taylor, carrying fifteen hundred
passengers. He crossed the Isthmus of Panama and completed his journey
by steamer, arriving at San Francisco on the ist of August, 1858. The railroad
from Folsom to Maysville was then being built, and for some time he
was employed as engineer in its eonstruction. Later he went to Dayton.
Nevada. There he was engaged in the survey and construction of the
mountain wagon roads, and from Dayton he went to a district fifty miles
east of Reno, where he secured a large amount of salt lands and some salt
springs. In 1870 he began the erection of the Eagle Salt Works, which
he has since operated, having for the past thirty-three years been engaged
in the manufacture of salt. The springs from which the salt is taken are
perfectly pure, and the Eagle Salt Works turn out a practically pure product,
this salt being one and thirty-nine hundredths purer than the famous Liverpool
salt, and as there are no freight charges to be paid, the salt produced by
Mr. Leete is much cheaper for the residents of the state than- that shipped
from long distances. He manufactures salt for all the purposes for which
salt is used, and has a large •demand for his product. He also manufactures
sulphurized salt, crystalizing the sulfur into the salt, to be fed to cattle and
sheep, and it is found very effective in preventing annoying skin diseases,
such as mange in horses and cattle and scab in sheep. He has the credit
of being the first manufacturer of sulphurized salt, and has given to stock-
raisers a very valuable article. In recent years Mr. Leete incorporated the
Eagle Salt Works, his sons being his partners in the enterprise, while he is
the president and manager.

In connection with his plant Mr. Leete has built, owns and operates thirteen miles of standard gauge railroad, extending from the salt works to the Southern Pacific Railroad, which facilitates the shipment of the product of the salt works, and also provides a convenient outlet for the traffic of that section of the stae. In addition to his enterprise
here he owns mining property in Plumas and Sonoma counties in California,
and he has a comfortable residence at 41 1 Virginia street, in Reno, surrounded by flowers, shrubs and trees of his own planting.

On the 27th of November. 1861. Mr. Leete was united in marriage
to Miss Isabelle McNeal of Lockport, New York, and they now have three sons: William McNeal. Ixim at Sacramento, California, January 1, 1863; Ben McNeal. born in Dayton. Nevada, in 1867; and Xott, born in Dayton, in 1870. They are now associated with their father in business and are enterprising young men of business habits.

Mr. Léete was an active Republican until the silver question became
the dominant issue before the people of this country, when he became active
in the organization of the new silver j>arty, and is now one of its stanch
advocates. In 1856, while in L sublime degree of a Master Mason and has ever been an exemplary representative of the craft. An honored pioneer of Nevada, he has witnessed
its development from territorial days and has been deeply interested in its
welfare and progress, so directing his efforts that they have many times
been of marked value in the development and improvement of the section
of the state with which he is connected. His business career has been marked
by integrity.

Adrianne Martelli's Quadruple Scull Team Takes Bronze

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Ukraine won the Olympic gold medal in
the women's Rowing quadruple sculls at the 2012 London Games on

Wednesday.
Ukraine finished with a time of 6:35.93 at Eton Dorney in
London to claim Ukraine's second gold medal of the games.
Germany won the silver with a time of 6:38.09 and The United
States won the bronze with a time of 6:40.63.
Ukraine now have four medals at the games, with Germany
collecting their seventh and The United States collecting their
24th.

Results Table

1. Ukraine
Katerina Tarasenko/Nataliya Dovgodko/Anastasiya Kozhenkova/Yana
Dementyeva 6:35.93 
2. Germany
Ann-Katrin Thiele/Carina Baer/Julia Richter/Britta Oppelt 
6:38.09 
3. U.S.
Natalie Dell/Kara Kohler/Megan Kalmoe/Adrianne Martelli 
6:40.63

Standings going into Monday Aug 30

So, we have 2 seconds over Australia... We just need a repeat performance.

Results of our Olympian. First heat

They came in 2nd in the first heat, 2 seconds behind Germany.

A Taste of Chattanooga.... Leet's Tanyard

For a flavor of the drama around Chattanooga, see https://sites.google.com/site/leeteleetgenealogyna/home/leeteleet-biographies/arthur-irvin-leet-1812-1892.  There are some pictures on the page and a PDF file at the bottom of the list of files.  For the most part, this is just bare-bones pictures.  But many of the pictures are of original contemporaneous articles and the wonderful diary that has surfaced.  

2014 Leete/Leet Reunion

Given my progress to date, by 2014 I should have most of the major Leete and Leet trees for early immigrants to the US from England and Ireland in electronic form.  I should also have a number of epic stories to tell.  So, it is time to reconstitute the Leete Family Association and to plan a reunion.

Now, one of the greatest stories to tell has to do with the Civil War battles fought around Chattanooga.  I believe ALL the Leete/Leet lines converged in this time and place in history to fight with and against one another in the epic battles.  Absolutely fascinating and educational to all.

There are other place I could think of.  Of course, Guilford, Connecticut.  But that would emphasize Gov Leete, and the Leet(e)s in Western PA and NY would say:  We've got more history here than Guilford has!  But even there we'd miss the drama of Leet(e) against Leet(e), Yankee against Rebel.  We'd miss the literally! crazy Leet that was the talk of Washington after the Civil War, editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and major developer of Denver.  We'd miss the stories of the Leet(e)s in Nevada, where Quebec Leet(e) met Leet(e)s from the other branches.  (The Quebec Leet(e)s were of Gov Leet's line.)

In addition to being central to Leet(e) history, Chattanooga is nice to visit in its own right, and the Smokies are a couple of hours away.

So, what do you think?  A Family Reunion in Chattanooga in 2014, probably just after school is out, so you can bring your kids to learn history.

A Leete Olympian!

We have a Leete in the Olympics!  (Maybe more than one.  Any others?)  Adrienne Martelli, daughter of Chris and Gail (Leete) Martelli, has qualified in the 4 person skulls (that’s rowing a skull , a kind of skinny canoe like thing.)   She is 24 years old.  She started rowing at the University of Washington in 2006 and did very well.  After graduating from college in 2010 she moved to New Jersery to continue training with the USA National team.
So, if you haven’t watched rowing before, nows the time to see what an exciting sport it is.  I’m a kayaker, so I know something of the stamina and overall conditioning required to excel at this sport.  It’s in the Leete genes!
Here’s the link to the official announcement: http://www.usrowing.org/News/12-06-22/USRowing_Announces_Final_Olympic_Lineups.aspx
Here's the link to her bio:  http://www.usrowing.org/Pressbox/AthleteBios/AdrienneMartelli.aspx

An Important Hint on How to Use Ancestry.com

I've been giving cousins access to the main Gov Leete tree and to their own lineage branch.  I give you this access by "sharing" the tree in Ancestry, which sends you a boilerplate email with a link to the tree.

You may be confused with what you see when you first click the link to tree.  The first thing that might be displayed is a kind of Welcome splash screen.  Just click OK or whatever the button is to close that screen.  What's left is a screen that looks like this example?

  You can navigate around using this view, but it isn't very obvious how to do it.  (Parenthetically, there are good tutorials on how to use this interface.  If you don't understand, you can ask a question by emailing me.

BUT, there is a much better view for navigating around the tree.  Look in the upper left hand corner.  See that the button labeled "Pedigree" is dark(er).  This is because this default view is called the "Pedigree" view. Note the button beside it:  the "Family" view.  Click that button and this is what you will see:

(You can left click on these pictures to make them larger.)  This is the "nice" view for exploring the family.  Note the box with the little squares in the lower left corner.  If you click on the box outline inside this box, you will move around the tree.  You can accomplish the same thing by clicking on the background of the tree and holding your left button down.  A hand will appear and you can move the picture with the hand to see the rest of the tree.)  This should be enough to get you started with the Ancestry.com trees.  All the details can be found in the link I gave you on "good tutorials."

PS.  If you double left click on a person, the Pedigree view of that person will be displayed.  There will be a line near the top of the Pedigree display that says something like "go back to tree."  This will bring you back to the above Family view.  Oh, if I have given you modify access, then you can add pictures and documents to any person.  That would be really nice.  I still need to retain control over entering new information, unless we are both at the point where the rules for changing the tree are understood.  It takes a lot of work to vet the tree- there is so much misinformation in the Ancestry.com databases.  I"ve been 4 years on the master Gov Leete tree and it is still not ready for prime time.  So, once a tree is vetted, we have to be careful to not add misinformation.  Thanks, Duane  

Lillian (Bonnie) Burke (1919-2012)

Bonnie Burke, one of the Champions of LeeteLeet Genealogy, passed away May 5.  She was a talented writer and contributed several articles to the Leete Legacy, our now defunct (any volunteers?) Family Association publication.  She was a wonderful, caring person.  She was a great help to me in establishing her previously undocumented branch of the LeeteLeet family tree.  Following is her obituary, but it doesn't really enlighten us on her contributions to the family history.  Her family branch is its own tree in ancestry.com and some of her articles and findings are in that tree.  I will continue to collect her contributions and place them on our family association web site.

Bonnie Burke

Lillian L. Burke was born in Spokane, WA January 28, 1919. She was an Honor Student at John Rogers High School where her favorite subject was music. Her mother's maiden name was Lourene A. Leete. Her father's name was William D. Bonner. It was natural for everyone to call her Bonnie. she had an older sister, Lucy; and a younger brother, Bill; but Bonnie outlived the rest of the family. She was 93 years old when she died May 5, 2012 in Edmonds, WA.
After attending Kinman Business University, she passed a Civil Service examination and accepted an appointment to the War Department in Washington D. C. Her father worked for the Great Northern Railroad so she traveled on a family pass. She was there when Pearl Harbor was attacked December 7, 1941. Bonnie has been a 7th Day Adventist since March 1942.
In 1944 she moved to Glendale, California where she was employed at Glendale Sanitarium. It was there that she met Administrator, Clarence Burke. They were married in 1952. She was step-mother to his children. They moved to Sacramento, CA where she was Supervisor of a hospital steno pool. In 1962 they moved to Portland, OR where she was a Medical Secretary and Tumor Registrar.
In 1967 they moved to Seattle , WA. She became a Certified Medical Registrar and Tumor Registrar while working at Northwest Hospital. In 1980 she retired to care for her husband who was ill. He died in 1982.
Bonnie was an active volunteer at the South County Senior Center in Edmonds, WA. She became a member of the Senior Swingers there in 1983, playing clarinet in the band and singing in shows like the Lawrence Welk Program. She was an excellent drummer for two years, when a vacancy occurred.
Bonnie attended a Creative Writing class, taught by Marylyn Pedersen at the Senior Center, and became a published writer. Many of her memoir stories have been published in Nostalgia Magazine of Spokane WA.

Obituary: William Harmon Leete (2255)

Today I am going to put a new section on our Leete web site:  "Champions of LeeteLeet Genealogy."  Though the obituary doesn't mention his genealogist contributions to the family, Harmon Leete will be on this list.  I am saddened by this news.  

LEETE, William Harmon 
William Harmon Leete "Harmon" died on March 26, 2012 in Hartford, the city in which he was born on September 12, 1931 to William C. Leete and Doris Harmon Leete. The family moved from West Hartford to Longmeadow, MA, where he attended Longmeadow Junior High School. A loyal alumnus of Andover and Yale, he met his wife Betty on a blind date for the Yale Junior Prom when she was at Wellesley. Yale gave him his diploma even though he still owed a term paper on James Joyce, which he turned in after writing it while in the U.S. Navy aboard the carrier Intrepid. What he referred to as his "trade school" was Harvard Law, from which he graduated prior to his Navy service. On returning to civilian life he worked first with the law firm of Steele & Maxwell in Hartford, then for several different divisions of United Technologies, where he delighted in playing April Fool's day pranks. On one he posted a notice that the Otis elevators in the Gold Building, where UTC offices began on the 22th floor, would be out of service for ten days and that officers would be helicoptered to the roof and others who did not want to walk up could take vacation time. He traveled widely for UTC and also for pleasure, often with a group of four couples self-titled the "Boubalinas", named for a Greek heroine. 

A week prior to his death he was focusing on a trip to San Francisco for a Yale Class mini-reunion, and planning a trip down the Danube and to Turkey. 

After retirement from UTC he continued to practice law up to December of 2011, primarily as counsel to DeMaria Electro Optics, later known as Coherent Inc. 

He began rowing at Yale and continued throughout his life, primarily as a member of the Hartford Barge Club "Ancient and Honorable Four", coxed at one point by Brewster Perkins wearing tails and a top hat. Jeff Carstens, one of the four, would calculate with his slide rule what prize the Four would have taken had they been given an age handicap. After a knee injury he rowed with Riverfront Recapture, where he rejoiced in being relieved of carrying the boat to or from the water by other volunteers. 

No one enjoyed good food and drink more than Harmon; he was the hostess's delight, and belonged to the Hartford Club, the 1892 Club, the Madison Beach Club, a scotch-tasting group and a book club. He was an amateur astronomer who could spot a waning moon in a painting that faced the wrong way. He was a published and prize-winning serious poet, as well as an accomplished writer of funny doggerel and songs for all occasions. 

He loved skiing and sailing, calling his summer place "Yawl Come". A dedicated gardener, he chose law over farming so he could sleep later. 

He passed his sense of humor down to his four children, William Harmon Leete Jr. (Bill), Lisle Baker Leete, Russell Leete, and Virginia Leete Beach. He was blessed with five wonderful grandchildren, Christopher Leete, son of Bill and his wife Emily Dickinson, Zachary Leete, son of Lisle and his wife Lauri Semarne, and Gus, Max and Ben Beach, sons of Virginia and Charles Beach. He leaves two brothers, Robert Leete married to Susan Leete, and Richard Leete, married to Esso Leete. 

Using Ancestry.com

On Ancestry.com, the primary interface is a "tree" page that looks like this:

Ancestry.com provides a good explanation about how to use this interface.  Click here for the explanation.  For those who just want to look at the tree, it is best to read the section Family Chart and Report and use that view.  In a nutshell, in the picture above click on the "Family" button in the upper left corner of the default view.

If you have any questions, add a comment at the bottom and I will do my best to answer.  

Obituary: Lydia Leet Willey (1948-2012)

MILO, Maine - Lydia (Leet) Willey "Ma," 63, a wonderful mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin and friend, went home to be with the Lord on the morning before her 64th birthday April 12, 2012. Ma was born April 13, 1948, the oldest daughter to Bernice (Astle) and James Leet. Ma was a woman of many talents; she loved to cook, loved to craft, and had a talent like no other when it came to floral arrangements and Christmas wreaths. She had a passion for wildlife and nature. She never passed up the opportunity to gamble, or to advocate for someone in need. She enjoyed watching the Red Sox and was always up for a good day trip. Ma's greatest joy and pride in life was her children. She equally shared her unconditional love for all four of them. Ma was predeceased by her parents; grandparents, Nettie (Baker) and Clinton Astle; brother, Raymond Leet; and her beloved husband, Millard Willey. She is survived by her sons, Richard and Tammy Andrick, and Jeffrey Andrick; daughters, Tracey and Everett Gray, Gail and Joey Spack; stepson, Todd and Susan Willey; dearly loved grandchildren, Richie and Josh Ireland, Miranda Royal, Cody Andrick, Chris Gray and fiancee, Morgan Royal, Savannah Stubbs and Emily Spack; and stepgrandchildren, Zach and Jacob Willey. She eagerly and anxiously awaited the arrival of her great-grandson, Brody Michael Gray. She also leaves behind a brother, Robert Leet; sisters, Lynn Allen and Susan Burke; several nieces, nephews, cousins and friends; and her beloved cat, Troubles. A celebration of life will be held 2 p.m. Sunday, April 15, at United Baptist Church, Milo, with the Rev. Phil McGlauflin officiating. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Community Health and Counseling Service Hospice, 1093 West Main St., Dover-Foxcroft, ME 04426, where Ma received wonderful, compassionate care in her final months here on earth. A private graveside service will be conducted on Mother's Day at Evergreen Cemetery, Milo.

Gaining access to trees and stories- moving to a financial model to support future work on Leete genealogy

I have some 60 trees on ancestry.com in various stages of vetting.  I am permitting individuals to view the trees according to the criteria:

1. Leete/Leets or descendants
2. Understand the trees have errors in them and communicate the errors to me
3.  Will contribute pictures, stories, etc to those trees directly related to their ancestry

Finally, they will contribute a small amount to support the work.  (optional, but important)  I'll try to have more information on this last item; ie, how much, how to pay, what terms, etc. 

I'm still working on a viable business model for this effort.  I would appreciate any suggestions.  I can imagine that I might create e-books and charge a fee for access.  For example, the links on the web site would be restricted to those who have subscribed... Kind of like premium content.  Or I could charge for a customized book on your ancestry.

I should mention that one of my objectives is to transfer responsibility for each branch of the tree to someone in that branch who will maintain the information.




  

T0133 John Leet (1863-) Released

John Leet was an immigrant from Northern Ireland.  In the census records he was a saloon keeper in Philadelphia.  He had children, 2 boys, apparently by a wife who was born in New York.  I keep track of all “roots” because I continually run into Leets and Leetes I can’t fix to one of the main trees.  In such cases they can usually be traced back to another Leet(e) immigrant.  So, when I find them, I start a new tree.  By the way, this is the 133rd tree I’ve started.  I just haven’t published all of them because they have to be at least partly vetted.

Mystery Sign on the Cape

This sign was at Pirate's Cove mini golf course on the Cape (MA).  What does it mean?