Updated June 5, 2009
PROGRESS
REPORT--JUNE 1, 2001
The LeValley e-mail
list at RootsWeb is now one year old. It is hard to
believe we have been doing this for
only one year, because we have
accomplished so much. Let's
review:
Twenty-eight people
now subscribe to the list. They represent four
branches of the Peter LeValley family,
two branches of the Xenia Ohio
LeVally/LeValley group, two other
previously known but unrelated LeValley
families, and some new fragments that
we haven't attached to anything yet.
Not surprisingly, the larger families
have more subscribers. It seems like I am
doing most of the talking on the list,
but I guess I don't mind if other people
don't.
We have a LeValley
web site that--even without any fancy technological
stuff--is getting high praise for
its usefulness.
In various branches
of the family, we have made these major
breakthroughs this year:
Peter>Peter Sr.
Contacts with the
King family have turned up more variations on the
pirate story.
Peter>Christopher
The Christopher
Columbus LeValley fragment has been firmly attached
here.
Peter>Peleg
We learned of a
historical novel based on the early LeValleys.
Peter>Cook
Cook's grave was
located, and names found for some of his daughters
and granddaughters. We discovered
new Pennsylvania cousins descended from
James Nelson's son Daniel.
Peter>Gardner
Some of Gardner's
daughters have been named.
Peter>Peter Jr.
We have heard from
a new cousin in California, and found a whole bunch
of them in Oklahoma.
Xenia
Marc LaValley,
the leading expert on this line, has joined our group and is
pretty much handling correspondence
with his relatives. He is now
incorporating all of my limited information
into his.
Valcartier
Our very first
accomplishment was in tracing this group across the ocean
to the Channel Island of Alderney.
Joseph
We learned of this
family's immediate origins (as the Valley family) in
Ontario.
Victor
Many dates of living
persons were added to this family tree.
There have been
less spectacular gains in almost every branch of every
LeValley family. It's been a
productive year.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2002
The LeValley e-mail
list at RootsWeb is now two years old, and progress continues.
Thirty-two people
now subscribe to the list. Much of our work this past year has
been
with the finally available 1870 and 1880 censuses. And our web
site
has grown to include many new features. These include people with
LeValley as a first or middle name, and several early manuscripts: the
Snow Manuscript on the family of Peter LeValley, several manuscripts on
descendants of Peter's son John, Bible records from the family of
Peter's
son Michael, and the Paxson Manuscript about the separate Xenia, Ohio,
LeVally/LeValley family.
In the various branches
of the LeValley families, we have made these discoveries:
Peter>Peter Sr
The long-known
Walla Walla, Washington group of LeValleys has been attached
here.
This came as a surprise.
Peter>Christopher
We have shared
previously unseen documents from Lockport NY.
Peter>John Jr.
Some cemetery tramping
at Flint MI gave us more dates.
Peter>Cook
We have shared
some biographies and documents from Victoria IL.
Peter>Peleg
A pile of newspaper
clippings and a copy of The Basket Letters have yielded lots of
fascinating
details on the LeValley/LaValley family at Fernwood NY.
Peter>Gardner
Another of Gardner's
daughters has been identified.
Peter>Peter Jr
We have learned
more details of the Oklahoma LaValley bunch.
Charles F.
I received an inquiry
from a woman trying to locate her school friend from Hickman CA.
By the time we finished exchanging clues, she had found her friend, and
I had found the link to this New England family.
Xenia
Keith Cline from
Part 2 of this family has joined us, bringing lots of fresh
information.
All three branches of this group are now represented on the list.
Valcartier
Michael Fragasso
has joined us, bringing more information on the earliest generations.
Joseph
The 1880 census
revealed a previously unknown daughter.
Coldwater
A new contact has
updated part of this family tree.
Erskin
We are speculating
about a possible link to Cook's son John--just educated guesswork so
far.
Less dramatic breakthroughs are happening
almost everywhere.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2003
The LeValley e-mail
list at RootsWeb is now 3 years old. Progress this year has been
uneven.
There are now 36
people subscribed to the list. Much of our effort has gone into
the
newly available 1930 census. The results--along with those from
1880--are
now on the web page.
Research in the
various LeValley families has yielded this information:
Peter
Not much has happened--mainly
because I have been too busy with other things. Only one branch
shows
a significant development:
Peter>Gardner
For the fourth
year in a row, I have been contacted out of the blue by someone who
could
identify another of Gardner's daughters. That leaves three
daughters
still unaccounted.
Xenia
Marc and I finally
got our charts completely into agreement--sharing everything we both
have.
The Edna LeValley
report has been posted onto the web page.
Valcartier
A new contact sent
lots of additional names and dates.
We have speculated
on identifying Daniel LeValley of Bucksport ME as the vaguely known
second-generation
Daniel who reportedly moved to the US and had children.
Prosper
A researcher on
a totally unrelated topic contacted us, trying to identify a clipping
which
happened to have an article by Victor LeValley on the back. In
the
process, we learned about his career as a police reporter.
Bible and other
records of this family were added to the web site.
So it has been a
productive year or not--depending on which LeValley family you are
researching.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2004
The LeValley list
at RootsWeb is now four years old, and we have 36 members. This
year,
we got to see the 1910 census records for those states that were never
soundexed. That closes the final gap in the census records.
As the Rhode
Island Roots article on the movements of the Peter LeValley family
had grown ten years old, I updated it and posted it on our web
site.
Other features added this year include a most wanted page, the Social
Security
Death Index, LeValley authors, and the very few fragments on
black
LeValleys.
In specific branches
of the LeValley families, we have made these breakthroughs:
Peter>Christopher
Christopher's second
daughter has been identified.
Peter>Peter Jr.
A Bible record
of the early California LeValleys has finally been located.
Coldwater
A descendant of
this line has recently identified the mysterious "Pony" LeValley as
Joseph
LaValle (b. 1859 Quebec), son of Prosper. We are waiting to see
the
evidence. Assuming that it holds up, this is an important
breakthrough.
We continue to refine
smaller details in other branches of the various LeValley families.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2005
The LeValley group at RootsWeb has reached an
anniversary of sorts. We have been doing this for five years
now. When we first pooled our resources, we made some great leaps
of discovery. Since then, progress has slowed to a steady pace.
This year, our web site continued to grow, with
new pages on LeValley place names, veterans, and documents on the
Coldwater Michigan Orphanage family. We have also learned a
little more from the 1900 census as the every-name version became
available.
Progress has varied from year to year in the
separates branches of the LeValley families. This year, we can
report the following:
Peter>Peter Sr.
Bonnie Knox is the first member of this branch to
join us. She brings with her the diaries of Lucinda LeValley
Snow, whose son wrote the all-important Snow manuscript on early
descendants of Peter LeValley.
Peter>Christopher
A listing of the graves in Lansingville, Tompkins
County, NY has helped us tie up a lot of early loose ends there.
Peter>Cook
The last unnamed son of Cook has been tentatively
identified as William LeValley, who lies buried at Charlton NY.
We still don't know much about possible descendants.
Peter>Gardner
After years of searching, we are once again in
contact with a living member of this tiny branch.
Peter>Peter Jr.
Relatives in Oklahoma continue sending details of
early family history there.
Xenia
Marc has shared some updates on this large Ohio
family.
-----
PROGRESS
REPORT--JUNE 1, 2006
The LeValley list at RootsWeb is now six years
old. We have 41 members with current e-mail addresses. Our
web site continues to grow. This year, we expanded our two
surname lists to full names, added a picture list, and added
abbreviated family trees.
For
a few months, the Godfrey Library made a couple
of powerful search tools available. We were able to harvest the
LeValley information on both before they disappeared from the
Internet. FindUSA enabled us to clear up two-thirds of our
mystery telephone list.
This research has convinced me that--except for the Xenia
LeVally/LeValley group--our days of discovering whole new lines are
past. We have accounted for most of the people out there.
The same
search tool revealed several maiden names and later married names.
The Godfrey Library's no-longer-available file of small-town newspapers
yielded many details on LeValley settlements in California and parts of
Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. (More remains on the Xenia
Ohio group, but nobody got it before it disappeared.)
Also
for a brief time, Ancestry.com made some lists
available. We were able to glean the 1870 census and World War I
draft cards. Their partial list of World War II veterans helped
us expand that list too.
And
we must acknowledge the legwork of Kathleen
Pettycrew, who spent part of her vacation checking out mystery LeValley
weddings in Las Vegas. Several families benefited from her effort.
Progress on specific lines happened mainly in the
Peter LeValley family. Judy Newman visited the original house in
West Warwick, RI, and reported that renters are not keeping the place
up.
Peter>Peleg
The
remaining two novels of the Freedom Quest trilogy have been
published. They are loosely based on early LeValley history.
Peter>Peter Jr.
A
living daughter of Burton LeValley of Colorado has
finally been located. Also the Godfrey Library's file of Los
Angeles Times articles turned up many juicy details on the LeValleys
there.
Years of searching misspelled census records enabled us to
piece together much of Reuben LeValley's family in
Oklahoma. That branch had grown so large that I peeled off
the Oklahoma part (who have always spelled their name LaValley) and
made them a separate branch.
Peter>Benjamin
Descendants of the Philadelphia LeValleys are providing old photographs
and newspaper clippings.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE
1, 2007
The
LeValley e-mail list at RootsWeb is seven years
old. Even after the machinery recently expunged several obsolete
addresses, we have 45 active researchers on the list.
This
year, we have done much posting of census
information on our web site. Heritage Quest first made their
heads-of-household electronic indexes available for 1790-1820,
1860, and 1900-20. Some months later, Ancestry made available
their comparable indexes for 1830-40, and their every-name electronic
indexes for 1860
and 1900-20. Doing the smaller set first was not a waste of time,
because each
index contains several names that the other missed. We have now
posted every census year in the fullest detail available.
Ancestry's expanded military database helped us
double our list of Korean War veterans.
Research on specific families happened mostly in the
Peter LeValley family this year. A brief subscription to
Genealogy Bank brought us more newspaper clippings--many from Rhode
Island. We also made progress in these branches:
Peter>Christopher
A military record of James has been found--but still
not for the Revolutionary War.
Peter>John Jr.
The Bible records of John Jr. and his son
Christopher came to us in a very roundabout way--having passed through
the hands of very distant cousins descended from each of the original
Peter's sons.
Peter>Cook
Newspaper clippings gave us a little more
information about Cook's presumed son William.
Peter>Peter Jr.
We
have been contacted by an apparent
descendant of the elusive Reuben LaValley of Oklahoma.
Establishing
firm links is difficult because we are dealing with two or three
generations of people who married frequently, and seldom listed the
same
birthdate twice.
Peter>Caleb
The Rhode Island newspapers revealed more about
Caleb's estranged marriage.
Not much has been reported this year from the other LeValley families.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE
1, 2008
The LeValley list at RootsWeb is eight years old,
and we have reached a milestone of 50 active researchers.
This year, we slightly expanded the books page on
the LeValley web site
by identifying the initials of contributors to scientific journals.
Specific progress has happened in three different
LeValley families:
Peter
Judy Newman sent her fine picture of the original
LeValley house in
West Warwick, RI, and I turned it into a card. We have also
received tombstone pictures of Christopher's descendants in both
Lockport NY and Fairgrove MI.
Valcartier
A major breakthrough here. We had long been
aware of Daniel's
descendants, and of his origin in Alderney in the Channel Islands.
A few years ago, we learned that two of his brothers and their
widowed mother accompanied Daniel to the Quebec area. Now new
research by Shelley Murray reveals that nearly all of the ten siblings
eventually came, though at
least one nephew's family remained in Alderney for several more
generations.
Prosper
We were contacted by a woman whose mother's dying
wish was that the
World War II navy ring of her long-ago sweetheart, Victor LeValley Jr.,
be returned to its original owner. With Elise's help, we were
able to connect the woman to Victor's wife, who gave him the ring as a
Christmas surprise.
-----
PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2009
The LeValley list at Rootsweb is nine years old, and
membership has dropped slightly to 49.
The big endeavor this year has been our DNA test
sampling of almost every LeValley family in America--plus most branches
of the larger families. While we wait for the last results to
come in, we can now see that the separate LeValley families are not
closely related on either side of the ocean. We still continue to
exchange information.
Preparing for the test brought renewed contact
between the various LeValley families. We have made progress in
these families and branches:
Peter>Christopher
We learned details of Lorne's daughter in
Saskatchewan--a longstaanding mystery.
Peter>Cook
Judy shared Leonard's Bible records, which are now
on the web site.
Nina Arbios got me a copy of the Otterson family
book, which contains many LeValley details.
Peter>Peter Jr.
Brief access to online marriage and divorce records
in California and Nevada clarified some much-married LeValleys.
We have been contacted by a descendant of Reuben's
daughters with a few more fragments of information.
Valcartier
With so much information now known on the immigrant
generation, it seemed appropriate to add to our web site the records of
Alderney in the Channel Islands.
Charles F.
A few documents have been added to our web site.
Andrew Jackson
We have made new contacts and cleared up a mystery
or two. Recently posted old Nevada newspaper clippings are
filling in details on one man the family knew little about.
Coldwater
In trying to arrange the DNA test, we came across an
adopted son with lots of updates on his near relatives.