Climbing Someone Else's Tree

First let me say - BACKUP YOUR WORK!  - my computer's hard drive crashed over the weekend. (yes, I'm asking for sympathy.) On the good side - I have a current back-up. On the bad side - It's going to take hours for the recovery. So, in the meantime, I've been working on a friend's family tree. Lorie and I sat down and created an online family tree at Ancestry.com when she came to visit. 


When Lorie first arrived she and her family had been watching this season of "Who Do You Think You Are" and were fascinated with the process and what the stars were able to find. It was a real treat to explore her family history using the online tools at Ancestry.com and my membership. 


After a few phone calls home, Lorie and I created a tree with about 35 known people and now, just one week later, we have over 95! When Lorie went home she and her family spent more time exploring their family history and I've spent time killing leaves.


Killing leaves is what I do when I have a few minutes in between other obligations. I just open the online trees I have at Ancestry.com and search for shaking leaves and research the hints. Because I have the online trees synchronized to my computer based trees, it is a very productive use of time. So, when my new hard drive arrives, my family tree will not have been sitting around dormant for the week.


As I've mentioned before, working on someone else's tree is rewarding because it reinforces my practices or challenges my assumptions. It was a real treat working with a friend and explaining how we genealogists put together evidence and what things work and what things don't. 


I also had the chance to get to know Lorie better by working with her family tree and that was the real gift from our time climbing her tree.


So - help someone else get involved with genealogy and ...


Happy Hunting!

Ancestors from New York: Celebrate!

If you have ancestors from New York and access to Ancestry.com today could be your lucky day. There are many indexes to NY censuses that recently came online. Some have been there for ages but I did not go looking for them because I did not know they even existed. I don’t want you to suffer the same fate.

So here is the direct link to all the cool NY stuff at ancestry.com:

http://www.ancestry.com/search/locality/dbpage.aspx?i=d&tp=2&p=35&cj=1&netid=cj&o_xid=0001231185&o_lid=0001231185&categoryFilterID=35&showPaging=true

: basically it’s a query result from the ancestry.com home page. I’ve written before (Better Search Results) about how important it is to search specific card catalog items instead of always doing broad searches. This collection of NY databases is a treasure trove of information. I’ve posted a partial list below from the ancestry.com link above.

Specifically the NY census databases include – drum roll please – 1890 and 1892! The 1890 police census is for NY City residents (not inmates) and is almost complete and the 1892 census is for the whole state. For those newbies out there the issue is that the Federal 1890 census was destroyed and only small fragments remain. This means that there is a 20 year census record gap between 1880 and 1900 if you only use the Federal Census records.

I have a lot of NY state ancestors and finding these databases has been wonderful. I used to wish all my ancestors had lived in Missouri (with their huge online repositories of vital records) but now I can be grateful that many were from New York.

I hope you find your ancestors spent some time in the Empire State, too.

Happy Hunting!

Summer Clean-up

It’s summer clean-up time in my family tree. It’s HOT outside. OK, yes, I know it is summer but that does not change my original statement. HOT for me means southern hibernation: like winter hibernation without the layers of wool and hot chocolate. It also means it is a good time to review how my family tree data has grown so far this year and fill-in some blanks.

As you know, I use Family Tree Maker 2012 but this should work in all other programs. What I’ve been doing in those little bits of time between other home projects is perusing my tree for missing information that should be relatively (Sorry about the pun – it just happened) easy to find without opening the front door.

Starting with myself and working back in time; I’m checking each of my entries for Birth, Marriage, and Death dates. I’m also checking each family I know well for missing kids. I can’t believe that I forgot to add my aunt, entirely. I also noticed that I don’t have a maiden name for one of my favorite aunts. Then I realized that I don’t even know it! Cue phone call!

I’m not making a big production with this work: it’s more like busy work but valuable. I’m still working on more concentrated family history searches but this summer clean-up is great for those bits of time that show up while waiting for the dryer to buzz or while waiting for the air conditioner repairman.

Happy Hunting!

Finding Birth, Marriage, and Death Records Online

Finding supporting documents online is easier if you know some dates and use them. I have spent many hours online looking for birth, marriage, and death records (BMD.) I know that they aren’t all online but I am surprised at how many are and by combining three particular websites I’ve been filling in gaps in my documentation this week.

I use Family Tree Maker 2012 for my genealogy software but this hint works with any of the products. The three websites I use are:

http://www.familysearch.org – and make sure you sign-in because there is a new feature – the source records – that is like Ancestry.com’s shoebox.

http://www.ancestry.com – I know it’s not free but it’s cheaper than lots of road trips and they have so much.

http://www.genealogybank.com – also not free but less than a premium cable channel and often on sale.

OK, now that you’ve done this.

Go into your records in your genealogy software and for each BMD you are missing do specific date range and place searches with the given and surnames at each of the above sites. In fact, now that I think of it, try ancestry.com LAST. You will often find what you need at the other two sites before you get to ancestry.com. Surprised? I sure was but Ancestry.com does not have 6100 newspapers and FamilySearch.org has digitized records in addition to the indexes.

I even found that I could leave out the given name and just use the surname, state, and date range and find whole families at these sites. This works best on US records since Genealogy bank only has US papers and records.

GenealogyBank.com has a new interface for members and it is much nicer and for some reason faster than the old interface. If you go to genealogybank.com and are not sure which interface you are looking at, there is a link at the top of the page. If it says “go to old site,” then you are using the new interface. If it says something along the lines of ‘try new site;' DO THAT. Also, be aware of a quirk with GenealogyBank.com, the surname is FIRST and then the given name.

So, sometimes, genealogy is like using a dictionary. If you know some specific information first, it’s easier to find more information.

Happy Hunting!

May All Your Ancestors Live in Small Towns

I am blessed that some of my ancestors stayed in small towns! When I look at the meager death notices from papers like the NY Times and even the Brooklyn Eagle I am envious of those researchers whose ancestors hailed from little burgs like Mount Carmel, PA.

I recently started reviewing an old file folder of information that had various copies from over the years. I needed to see what information I already had on some of my ancestors. I’ve mentioned this technique previously when referring to the depth of information available in census records.

It’s not that I’m not observant; it’s just that when I obtained the obituaries, originally, I was looking only for my direct line ancestors. Now, that I have some “brick walls,” I’m spreading out into collateral lines to work around the walls. I also find that I’m becoming more interested in what the family structure was and who these people were.

Don’t forget while doing your family history research that your experience grows at the same time your tree grows. Information may be buried in your own archives.

Here is what I discovered in some obituaries that I already had from a small town paper’s obituary.

Mrs. Thomas Magee (not McGee, like I had) was formerly Helen (not Ellen) Fairley (I had this) from Scotland (I had this.) She settled in Branchdale and stayed there for 40 years (not quite accurate but confirmation of what I had) and resided in Mount Carmel for ten years (news to me.) They’d recently celebrated their golden wedding anniversary (handy to know.)

Now, here comes the good stuff:

“The deceased is survived by one daughter, Mrs. Lewis Gottschall of this city, and an adopted son Robert Magee, of Rhode Island. There are fourteen grandchildren. Her brother John resides in the West, and brother Alexander in town. She was a sister of the late Mrs. Thomas Wardrop.”

PAYDIRT!!

First, I was not sure how the girls in the family were related. Now, I see that one might well have been a sister and not a daughter. I’ve since found some additional evidence of this.

Second, I have confirmation that Robert was not her biological son and the information that I had saying he was in Rhode Island was not erroneous.

Third, she had additional siblings here in this country! I had no idea! I even have the name of a spouse.

Now, to be fair, obituaries are also not primary sources of information and some of it is wrong. “Shortly after her marriage to Thomas Magee the couple came to this country” – WRONG!

She married in 1854 in Pottsville, PA.

Had she died in New York City, I would have had a death date (maybe) and some idea of funeral arrangements but because she died in a small town I have so much more.

May all your ancestors live in small towns.

Happy Hunting!

There is no time like the Present!

As I was looking at my own family tree this morning I realized that I had not completed the family tree information for my own generation. I have my information in but not the information for my first cousins. This information will be very difficult for the next two generations to complete unless they have genealogist or packrats in their immediate families.

More and more libraries are closing, more records are online only, more families are moving away from hometowns earlier and more often. When you combine these trends with privacy concerns; the chances of obtaining accurate information for the current generations, in the years to come, becomes less likely.

Take time NOW to complete the vital records sections for your generation and for those who came after you. Include pictures, notes, and remembrances. It’s likely that anyone in your family who knows you ‘do genealogy’ assumes you already have all of this information “filled in” and also expect that you will provide it to them whenever they or their children need it.

I did not fill this information in, yet, because it’s all in my head. Well, the older I get, the more I realize that that’s not as reliable as I would wish.

So – now is the time to fill in the current events. Your descendants will thank you. (keep in mind that you should not post information on living individuals. Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker will privatize any posted trees to help prevent your accidentally posting this private data.)

Happy Hunting!

Helping others while helping yourself

I’m working with some other genealogy club members on a local figure’s family history project. I did not think I had enough time to do my own research to make time for yet someone else’s genealogy but I was wrong!

Working on another family’s genealogy has already (in two weeks) taught me a lot about my own family research. First – I assume too much when doing my own research. Second – I need more maps. {I will include other observations in future BLOGs.}

Specifically – I found that in my own family research I’m too quick to assume that a family with the same surname and many of the same givennames in the same colonial town is mine. When I am working on the project’s family: I want PROOF! I should be as picky with my own family.

In my own family I know where the places are that are in my line. In the project’s family – I did not know the counties. I went to a few places in addition to Google Maps to find historic county lines. Don’t forget that many, many records are only available at the county level so knowing which county someone lived in at the time they lived there is critical. I also went to some other sites to find historical county lines.

Boy was I surprised to find the reason I could not find some records was because the county did not even exist for the time period I was researching. I should have checked this information FIRST!

Here are some of the resources I used:

Wiki.familysearch.org

Ncgenweb.us

And the most fascinating was:

http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/

I started with then “interactive map” for the area we are researching. You need to spend some time with the interface and make sure you refresh the map after you change selections. There is supposedly a way to download the shape file of the historical boundaries for a specific year and overlay a Google Earth Map with the data but I’ve not figured that out, yet.

I found the files – I’m just not certain how to use them.

This site also has county chronologies and historical boundary dates for existing and extinct counties.

In the meantime, though, helping on this project has given me insights into my own family research so the time I thought I had given to the project actually was time well invested – not spent!

Happy Hunting!