LakeCumberlandBoaters.com

Well over the years I have played around on genology.com etc. and not really found out any more than I already knew. Tonight I went ahead and bit the bullet and paid for Ancestry.com and in the past couple of hours have already found out that my Great Great Great Great Grandfather who was born in New York actually had a Doctor's office in the little villiage I live in.. I know when I moved here 10 years ago a 80 year old man talked about some Hillmans in Leesburg and said they were good kind people but I never was sure what the relation was. Well apparently he "Dr. Sylvester" had a son "John" that actually lived in Leesburg as well who then had a son "Harry" that some of the time lived in Leesburg who had a son Kenneth who had a son Kenneth who had a son named E that just happened to live in Leesburg as well... lol


This one shows good ole Leesburg but is hard to see in a resized pic because of the white wash. Here is one that appears he moved to Fayette County. Note sure if he was in hospital or if he lived there...

See how the importance of family escalates when you have a child

Naa its not that, I have been meaning to do it and tonight I watched the Ancestry.com one with Brooke Sheilds (Just who do you think you are) show tonight and decided to go for it since I had some time... I have hit a brick wall at Sylvester though. Up to him it was pretty darn fast.

Since you joined maybe you can research mine...see if I have any family left anywhere....

That's pretty cool I have thought about that too but never wanted to go so far as you have. I don't know much about any of my family period.... so this would be a looonnnggg stretch for me.

I do know that my blood grandmother and grandfather on my dad's side married and divorced "each other" 4 times, lol.... I think that falls under that golden rule.., Can't live with you, can't live without you, LOL.... egads. I do however, know for sure they liked to party, pictures

I did all of those in just hours last night. For me it was a mystery as well Katie as my dad's parents divorced and then his father moved and remarried while my father was still an infant. My father stayed with his mom and thus the disconnect. Dad only saw his own father a handful of times after that and never really had any information. Really the information I had heard came from people that had lived in the area instead of family and it appears a lot of what they told me was correct but now I have names and documents to back it up. However now that I have made it to Sylvester Hillman I have hit a brick wall figuring out who his parents are. Now on my grandfather's wife's side of the family I was able to go waaaay back and could have kept going. I got as far back as the 1600s with them and most of the time they were in the same area I live in today until around 1710 when many of them were still in the coastal towns. I knew they had been around for a long time since the farm my father owns (he has been collecting back old family land) has a Cabin on it from my grandfathers maternal side that was built around 1790 by Perry Courtney and expanded in the 1800s with a two story expansion on the side. There was also another cabin on a neighboring farm that belonged to my great great great grandfather Alpheus Courtney that my grandfather Kenneth Alpheus Hillman was named after.

But I really want to research the Hillman side further for sure. I have researched the family in theoretical terms where from what I can tell they came from Germany and were named Heilman and as they moved into England and France in the 1400s-1600s their name morphed into Heilman. (I understand how this happens now since some documents I found I knew were the correct documents of the right people but they were translated as Hellman, Hilman, and Heilman and the only way I knew it was correct was by the name of the wife, her family and the children along with the dates and location.) From the 1500s-1700s several of them moved to North America under the name Hillman and from what I can tell all were related until the late 1700s when some slaves took the family name as well.

But I would really like to be able to trace not just the theory but a line back to some home country. I may finally one day use one of the professional services they offer and pay them the 1,000-3,000 to have someone on their site trace it for me.


On thing that helped me was a picture I took of a family book that the Kitchen and Courtney side of the family had of my Great Grandfather Harry Hillman. The notes with that picture got me in the right direction.

Made a little more progress today

wow E that is neat that you have found out so much about your family tree. I did not know that you could actually see some of the old documents. Very cool!

Well I have hit a wall with one of my grandfathers "Dr. Sylvester Hillman"

I can not find his parents etc. ARgh. I have the general idea of where the family comes from beyond them but have not been able to get any further on ancestry .com and have not been able to talk to some of my relatives that might have the other info.

WOW, I'm impressed! You've gotten a long way Have you contacted any of these people that are still living that you didn't know previously?

Nope, and that is just half of my side of it and not all of that half. I have went pretty far on Julie's side as well and I got back into the 1600s on my Mom's side.

How is this for a Christmas present...

New message sent to you on Ancestry.com
From: HJones,

To: E Hillman,
1 of 1 messages, view conversation



Subject: Sylvester Hillman

Hi E:

My name is Hank Jones {Henry Z Jones, Jr., Fellow, American Society of Genealogists} and I too am a descendant of the Hillman family of New York, my great grandfather being an uncle to your Sylvester Hillman who went to Kentucky. I have just published a book on the Hillmans called "A Few More Left: The Story Of Isaac Hillman" which documents the family back to their German ancestral town of Iggelheim where they left in 1709 and then first settled in County Limerick, Ireland and then came on to New York in the 1760s. Our Hillman family anglicized the name from "Bergmann" meaning "man from the Hill" to "Hillman" showing once again how surnames can really evolve in strange ways.
I'd be happy to send you a copy of my new book documenting the Hillmans as a gift, should it help you in your own research. If you would like one, please e-mail me at my private e-mail address: HZJ3@***.com and then send me your snail mail address; I'll then send off a copy of my book to you with my best wishes.

Good hunting!
Hank Jones
www.hankjones.com

________________________________________

Hank's story above matches pretty close to what i have heard but did not know. I had heard we came to the USA in 1790 but it seems he found a part of the family 30 years prior... I had heard our family name had a couple changes through time one being Hillman from Heilman (German for warrior from the hill) and then I had heard that name was changed from something else so this might just be the missing piece....

Pretty cool...

Do any of you work on your family history?

WOW! That is really cool, an author in the bloodlines!!

what is the cost to do what you did?

Yes, what where the costs? My issue with researching heritage, what little I have done, is my parents, especially Dad were from parts of Kentucky that still may not be part of civilization. No one was born in a hospital, any court house records have vanished or been destroyed by flood and fire. Most info is strictly word of mouth. No real physical proof, no pictures, uh no one had a camera. It becomes very frustrating to the point to the heck with it. My wife can go back to before her people came over on the boat. It just seems like my family has always been in Kentucky. Maybe didn't come from anywhere

Jaybird wrote:Yes, what where the costs? My issue with researching heritage, what little I have done, is my parents, especially Dad were from parts of Kentucky that still may not be part of civilization. No one was born in a hospital, any court house records have vanished or been destroyed by flood and fire. Most info is strictly word of mouth. No real physical proof, no pictures, uh no one had a camera. It becomes very frustrating to the point to the heck with it. My wife can go back to before her people came over on the boat. It just seems like my family has always been in Kentucky. Maybe didn't come from anywhere

Maybe a BIG Banger ? in a coal Mine is the word down there around Whitley County, and out flew the jaybird Family

some say we all came from the BIG Bang Somewhere, sometime is what they say I tell you, tiss the truth

LOL @ Dolphin...

As for the rest of ya I got a 3 month membership for free during a deal and all of the first posts etc. were found during that trial that I could have cancelled. The problem was I did not want to give up and kept my membership and made it a global membership for around

http://www.ancestry.com/subscribe/produ ... rld_deluxe

I pay 24.95 a month to keep it going or you can pay 299.40 for it per year.

Book came in today, has some cool stuff in it!

Here are a couple low quality cell phone pics of pages from the book.. This is awesome that Henry Jones found me on Ancestry.com and sent me this book for free...

Shew!!! I was afraid you were going to find my name in there somewhere and say we were related!!!

Since last update I have traced the Hillman side of the family back through a brief stay in Ireland (about 30 years?) to Iggelheim Germany in the 1600s to the orig family name of Bergmann having the same meaning as Hillman. Also at a funeral this year I got to see more pictures from a old family photo albumn and got some pics of it of my Grandfathers...
Now Julie's Daulton/Dalton family I was able to easily trace to 1400s England and could have went further I think. Apparently they have MUCH better records in England.

Not sure if this Ancestry.com link will work for ya or not.
http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/pedigree.aspx?tid=20764542
http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/20764542/family

That's pretty cool stuff! Since my fathers side of the family comes from England I may have some luck with something like this! My grandparents on my fathers side were very closed about talking about their past! Maybe there is some juicy tidbits in there somewhere! I have no idea bout my mothers side and I expect that would end up in a dead end somewhere.

I need to get back to this, maybe on a day off while Avery takes a nap. Did you ever take the plunge KY Canuck?

You read my mind!!!! I was just thinking about this a week or so ago and was going to send you a message to see if you were still doing this and if you were happy with the results. As I read through it again I see that you made a lot of headway.

I will probably look into this in the new year. This year has been a little on the lean side but I am working on getting back to a point where I can do stuff like this! After all, I have NOTHING but time on my hands these days!!!!

Sooo, I have been paying my membership all along to keep from losing my memebership and place in the research for nothing. If you get to a point you are ok to pause or stop you can stop your membership and your family tree remains out there on their servers. You can still access it you just don't have access to all the registries for research. I have not had a chance to mess with it and let it lapse in Feb and then realized you can do that instead of paying monthly / yearly.

A story I had not heard....

(ATTACHED in PDF) Story of Dr. Sylvester P Hillman being shot by cross fire during a altercation of two other men whom one of which ran into his home. Story on bottom left page and continues back to top of next column

Have to zoom in 100% to see it.




Another little except from the KY Digital Library
http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7t4b2x4f0m_1
The Louisville Journal Oct. 5 1861

Guess some of this is because of the Civil War activities....

Some extended family info I received

TurboScandocumentphotofromphone

Fields Courtney Hiten FamilyTree

Interesting E . Looks like you have done extensive research .

Wow, that was way too much information on there, I've got a headache now..j/k

Nice job!
My aunt did one of those for our family, only she did it herself, not on the computer. Pretty cool.

A new find of a article that speaks of a Mr. Hillman that would be John Hillman, son of Sylvester Hillman.

That is cool information. Reminds me of a simpler time.