{"id":28717,"date":"2018-01-30T11:28:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T16:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=28717"},"modified":"2018-02-05T10:48:36","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T15:48:36","slug":"sniffen-out-my-cousins-in-westchester-county-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/sniffen-out-my-cousins-in-westchester-county-new-york.html","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sniffen\u2019 Out My Cousins in Westchester County, New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally, I like to pick a name from my family tree that I don\u2019t have a lot of information on and see what I can find in GenealogyBank. Today, I picked the name of my great-great uncle Merwin Sniffen (1834-1924)<\/a>. Because \u201cMerwin Sniffen\u201d is such an unusual name, I figured that if there were any records that included this name, they would have to be my relatives.<\/p>\n

I started by simply searching GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> for Merwin\u2019s first and last names.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I quickly found this wedding announcement for Charles Merwin Sniffen and Emma A. Feuring.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, New York Tribune (New York, New York), 6 June 1897, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A quick look at FamilySearch and I learned that Charles Merwin Sniffen<\/a> (1863-1926) is Merwin Sniffen<\/a>\u2019s nephew, the son of my great-great uncle Elliot Howard Sniffen<\/a> (1828-?).<\/p>\n

This wedding announcement is very helpful because it not only provides me with Charles and Emma\u2019s<\/a> (1874-1949) marriage date \u2013 9 June 1897 \u2013 it also gives me other information I didn\u2019t have: the groom\u2019s brother\u2019s name: Daniel G.; Emma\u2019s maiden name, Fuering; her father\u2019s name, Philip; along with the bride\u2019s brother and sister\u2019s names: Philip and Elise M. Fuering.<\/p>\n

Notice the surname of the bride\u2019s family, spelled in this newspaper article as it was pronounced\/heard: \u201cFuering.\u201d Digging deeper, I found that it was consistently spelled in all other family records as \u201cFeuring\u201d \u2013 a good reminder that you need to be flexible in searching for names because they might not always be spelled the same way from record to record.<\/p>\n

Also in my further research, I discovered that their first child was named Philip Leslie Sniffen (1898-1940)<\/a>, no doubt honoring the bride\u2019s father and brother. Name patterns are everywhere.<\/p>\n

According to census records linked to his FamilySearch page<\/a>, Charles was working in the grocery business in 1910, about a decade after his marriage to Emma. By 1920, he was working in retail, selling car tires. The family lived at 56 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, New York.<\/p>\n

Charles died 9 August 1926 and was buried in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York.<\/p>\n

Genealogy Tip:<\/em><\/strong> Because names are often passed down within families, searching for the distinctive names of your relatives will often lead you to discovering new information you can add to the family tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by Thomas Jay Kemp about exploring the \u201cMerwin Sniffen\u201d line in his family tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[6215,12,2719,2020],"class_list":["post-28717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-ancestor-name-research","tag-genealogy","tag-genealogy-search-tips","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/photo-0130-2018-featured-graphic-jacob-purdy-house.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}