As in many of your homes I’m sure, spring cleaning is well underway in my house (much to my daughter’s chagrin!). Closets, cabinets, drawers, and shelves are being reorganized and we are making regular trips to the Goodwill store with drop-offs. I’m also doing a gradual spring cleaning in my office. I had to move some things around to accommodate the new all-in-one printer/scanner I got for my birthday and decided it was time to go through some of the storage boxes I had stashed under the printer stand.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about being a gatherer and the positive side of that practice.  The downside to it is that it can lead to an overabundance of papers that can quickly become overwhelming. Every so often we need to go back and take stock of what we’ve gathered and clear some things out. In some cases it may mean letting go of things we don’t need. Yes, I mean actually throwing things out. (Gasp!) I know, it goes against the grain. After all, we’re the preservers of our family history. We should be preserving everything, right?

Well, maybe not. I read a post a while back on Sally Jacobs’s “Practical Archivist” blog that stuck with me. The article was talking about photographs, but is totally relevant to other family history materials as well. Accompanying the article was this warning sign:

“Caution: Keeping everything means that someone else decides what gets tossed later.”

Scary stuff! It made me really think about not only what I kept, but where I kept it. So this week, let’s take a look at some ways we can dispose of some of our excesses, so that someone doesn’t overdo it for us down the line.

Storing the Maybes
I typically keep a separate section in the back of my family binders for those folks that may be related–“the maybes.” Keeping them there is convenient, but in cases where they are starting to take over, I am moving them to a different binder. I’m also going through them and actually getting rid of some that I know I don’t need anymore. For example, once upon a time we found a record that gave one ancestor’s maiden name as Nesen. For year we collected every scrap we could find on Nesen, Nessen, Nesson, etc. Turned out that was a typo. Her maiden name was Nelson. Do I really need to keep all the Nessens now? No. The Nesens are off to the recycle bin. Continue reading →

On the day before the 15 April tax deadline, there aren’t a whole lot of people with the “warm and fuzzies” for the IRS, but this year family historians may soften their opinion of that particular government institution thanks to a new database at Ancestry.com. In last week’s newsletter you may have seen links to a new database–U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918. (Click on the image to enlarge a sample from this collection.) This week I had a chance to dig deeper into this database and I’m ready to share what I’ve learned.

About the Records
Because of the cost of the Civil War, the American government was in need of money. As a result, the first income tax (for individuals) was enacted by Congress in July of 1862. Most of the Confederate states were not initially taxed, but as they came under federal
control, taxes were imposed.

This income tax was challenged after the war, but it was not until 1895 that the Supreme Court ruled that the tax was unconstitutional. (In 1913, the sixteenth amendment would re-impose the income tax.) Upon the 1895 ruling, the individual tax returns of our ancestors were destroyed, but the assessors’ lists were retained because they included references to licenses and other taxes. Those that survived the years were eventually microfilmed by the National Archives. Within these records–in addition to income taxes–you’ll see taxes on watches, pianos, carriages, estates, silver, billiard tables, and
securities, as well as various other items. Continue reading →

I’ve determined I have deep-seated hunter-gatherer genetic roots. This isn’t something I found out through DNA testing. It’s more common sense. It must be why I have compulsion to save everything. But this year as I tackle my spring cleaning I’m going to break with my gatherer ways and get rid of some of the clutter. Technology magazines more than a year old are going in the recycle bin since they’re obsolete by now anyway. The manuals for software I no longer use are history as well. I’m even going through my bookshelves and thinning out the books that I really don’t need–although this can be a painful process for a bibliophile like me! I’ll take comfort in the fact that they’ll be donated to my library or to charity and it will clear space for the ones I use regularly (and make space for new ones).

Despite my new resolve, when it comes to my family history research, I am determined cling to those old gatherer ways. I don’t mean that “she with the most people in her GEDCOM wins.” I’m not one to grab a branch off someone’s tree and graft it on to mine. I want to make sure they’re really my relatives. If I’m only looking at a name, date, and location, they could be imposters trying to weasel their way in.

I like to get to know people before they get added to my tree. For me, adding names and dates only is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle upside down, with the brown cardboard side up. It lacks interest. As I gather the pieces of my family history, I want to see the picture that is forming. So in this manner, I will remain a gatherer and in many ways this is a good thing.

Getting to Know Strangers
I like to think of myself as an equal-opportunity family historian. I not only research my own family lines, I often find myself gathering the records of strangers. This is particularly true of lines where I’m working with common surnames and families with incredibly unimaginative given names.

Three generations of James Kelly–Hello! Not that James isn’t a fine name but you couldn’t sneak in a Seamus or something to shake things up a bit? Then they plop themselves smack-dab in the most populous city in the U.S.–a city that would soon be full of other James Kellys who were fleeing Ireland during the potato famine. This has the makings of a genealogist’s nightmare.

To separate mine from the rest, I had to get to know a lot of James Kellys. There was James the Alderman, James the baker, James the distiller/liquor dealer, James the grate manufacturer, etc. I spent several trips to the Family History Library pulling James Kellys in Manhattan city directories, year after year, tracking them by occupation and by address and eventually compiled a spreadsheet of them with more than 250 listings for James Kellys. With the spreadsheet I was able to sort by addresses and/or occupation and I was able to follow up with census records on Ancestry at home. When I could match a directory entry to a census entry, I was able to see the whole family and add spouses and children to their profile. Sorting through this was enabled me to see patterns and it helped greatly with picking my James Kellys from the rest of the pack. Continue reading →

I’ve been busy preparing the newsletters this week for March 24th and 31st. I’ll be out of the office during the week of March 24th, to spend some time with my daughter while she’s on spring break.

I did want to take a moment though to wish you all a happy spring and a Blessed Easter!

Juliana

P.S. I found this photo in the LOC Photo Collection. It is General Washington at Christ Church, Easter Sunday, 1795, by J.L.G. Ferris and thought it was pretty neat. Click on the image to enlarge it.

This week I’m doing a little jig, and it’s not just in honor of St. Patty’s Day! I finally got a copy of my great-grandfather’s naturalization record and found some pretty cool stuff. (Click on the image to see his declaration of intention.)

Last week I mentioned closing up some holes in my Szucs family timeline. The family had been bouncing back and forth between Cleveland and the southeastern Ohio counties of Jeffersonville and Belmont so I wasn’t quite sure where to look for his naturalization record. I found the birth date and place of my grandfather’s sister in the Ohio Death Indexes at Ancestry and that spurred me into action. The death index gave Irene Szucs’s birth in Belmont County in 1913–just one year before her father had been naturalized, according to the 1920 U.S. Federal Census. It was time to focus the search for his naturalization on Belmont and nearby Jefferson counties.

Finding His Naturalization Record
So what were my options? According to They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins,

“From 1790 until very recently, any individual could be naturalized in a federal court, although most people went to local courts. After 1906, the vast majority of naturalizations took place in federal courts, although some local courts continued to naturalize long after that date.”

Years ago, my mother had searched unsuccessfully for John’s naturalization in federal court records for Cuyahoga County, Ohio that are held in the National Archives-Great Lakes Region in Chicago.

This time I would look at local courts. I checked the Family History Library Catalog for both Belmont and Jefferson counties and found that the library had films of naturalizations for both counties for that time period. Mom and I decided that with neither of us planning a trip to Utah for a while, we would hire a researcher to check those films for us. The researcher from ProGenealogists.com quickly found the record and soon I was looking at John Szucs’s declaration of intention, petition, and naturalization record. Yeah!

John’s Place of Birth
So what goodies did I find? One of the first things I noticed was that this record listed his place of birth as Ozoreny, Hungary. All of the family stories and his passenger arrival records from New York in 1902 had told me that he was from Horka. Continue reading →

The other day I phoned my Aunt Judy, my dad’s little sister. She’s very special to me, but with more than 300 miles separating us, we don’t get to see each other or talk as often as I’d like. Her husband answered the phone, and we had a nice chat. He’s been working on his own family history for several years, and now he’s putting together some information for our side of the family. He had located the family in the 1920 census at Ancestry.com, but was unable to locate the same people in 1910 or 1930. He asked if I had ever found them in those census years and if I had any other information I could share.

Since I hadn’t really worked on my dad’s family in a while, I took some time going through my files in search of interesting items that they might enjoy and find helpful. I have to confess to having a little ulterior motive: I want to keep them interested. Family history is always more fun when someone wants to join you in the hunt. I quickly shot off a few e-mails filled with family history goodies. This little exercise surprised me with some great new clues. Some clues had been there all along and were overlooked, but by adding more recent discoveries to the mix I’ve found a new path to follow.

Put Your Thoughts in Writing
With each record I sent, I wrote a paragraph or two about that particular record so that they could better understand why I was sending it. In some cases I just pointed out interesting tidbits that I’d found in the document. In others I addressed discrepancies and questions that still need to be answered. While I try to make notes immediately after I draw conclusions from documents, I found a few cases where I hadn’t done that. After sending the e-mails to Uncle Bruce, I printed the documents with their respective e-mails and placed each in the appropriate family three-ring binder. These highlights and explanations will help me the next time I need to revisit the files. Additionally, if someone else wants to join in the hunt in the future, these annotated documents will also serve as a guide to the research I’ve completed and why conclusions were made. Continue reading →

We all have ups and downs with our research, and I’m coming out of a serious down cycle. After fighting with my computer for months as it died a slow, painful death, I finally have a new one and am hoping to get my research back on track.

But it can be tough to get things going again after you’ve been away for a while. For the longest time, the thought of surfing the Net for anything more than what was necessary to get my work done was unfathomable. After a long day of screaming at my computer and making threatening gestures in the general direction of the nearest window, the last thing I wanted to do was spend more time in my office–even if it was in a search for ancestors. 

That’s all changed now. I’m taking my time transferring my files and doing a little electronic housekeeping as I go, and I can’t wait to get back in the hunt.

Has your research been in a bit of a rut lately? Maybe you’ve run into some dead ends and are not sure where to pick up next. Or perhaps life hasn’t allowed you the time to chase ancestors for a while and you aren’t sure where you left off. Whatever the reason for the rut, you just need to find the right place to start. Then you need to do just that–start! Today let’s take a look at some ways we can get that momentum back.

Focus
I think the most important thing to do is first, to focus your attention on one family, or even an individual. Looking at all those binders and folders is like looking down a long corridor of doors with no idea which one to open. The good news is that behind each door is an ancestor, waiting for me to find him or her. I can just choose a door and walk through. If I find a brick wall behind the door, I can try another door, but knowing myself it’s more likely that I’ll look for something I can use to demolish that brick wall–particularly if it’s a wall I haven’t tackled in a while. Things change quickly in this field and a new tool may be available to help me break through. Last week, I mentioned using a research log to create a to-do list. If you have a to-do list, that’s a perfect place to start. Pick an item you can start on right away and knock it off your list.

Inventory
Once you’ve selected a focus for your current search, take some time to inventory what you have collected for that ancestor or family. Are there gaps that need to be filled? Have you thoroughly researched collateral lines? Years ago, you might have had to ration research time and money, devoting the lion’s share to direct lines. With the censuses of several countries now indexed and online, along with so many other records, there’s now no reason to limit your research to only direct ancestors. Your chances for success are much greater if you round out your research by seeking out all you can find on collateral relatives. Newspapers are also being digitized at an amazing rate. (Look for a huge release of historical newspapers from Ancestry.com in the near future!) Continue reading →

At a time when many libraries and archives are facing tough decisions because of tight budgets, it was nice to read this article from The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register regarding plans to construct a building to house historical records from Belmont County, Ohio. This is particularly good news for me since I recently found through my great-grandfather’s World War I Draft Registration at Ancestry that the family was living there in 1918. This was news to me since they appear in both the 1910 and 1920 U.S. Censuses in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

I hope that more counties follow Belmont County’s example!

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned my Grandpa Pyburn in the article about the U.S. Passport Collection. As I followed up on researching that neglected family line, I found a passenger arrival record for him as he returned from Trinidad, which lies off the coast of Venezuela. When I shared it with my mom, she remarked that the record was from the time he spent working in South America–a trip on which he contracted malaria. I hadn’t heard this fact. She told me a story then that my Aunt Madelon had told her about visit him at his father’s house when he was ill; she could hear the bed rattle upstairs with the violent tremors that are symptomatic of the disease.

We don’t often think of this type of disease when it comes to our family history. When we hear about disease in the context of family history, it’s often in relation to our own health and of conditions that are hereditary. This is of course important and a great reason to investigate your family health history. In fact, it is so important that the Surgeon General here in the U.S. has a “Family History Initiative” online with tools to help you record a family health history that can be shared with your physician.

But although our family health history is perhaps the best reason to look into the health of our ancestors, it is not the only reason. Just as our own health impacts our lives and many of the decisions we make, the same held true for our ancestors. Continue reading →

It’s going to be a little quiet here on the blog over the next few weeks. I am taking some vacation time between December 20th and January 2nd and right now I’m hustling to get the Ancestry Weekly Journals for the 17th, 24th and 31st put together and ready to roll so that you won’t miss an issue.

In the meantime, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a blessed and peaceful holiday season!

Juliana