Saving Ankle Power
The “Ankle Power” quick tip, where a visit to the cemetery to see for ones self paid off, reminded me of a tactic my husband and I used when searching through older cemeteries. We assigned ourselves rows and used binoculars enabling us to scan fairly large sections quite easily. It helped save the ankles and time. This obviously works only with standing stones but nevertheless was a help.
Louise Hawley (more…)
Ankle Power!
In graduate school, thirty years ago, I ran across a book listing the people buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama. I was thrilled to find many of my relatives listed, with birth and death dates. It was a good start to my own personal journey through history. But one person was missing. My great-great-grandmother was nowhere to be found. Her parents, siblings, husband, and one child were listed, but not her. For thirty years I couldn’t find her listed after the 1900 census. After trying everything I could think of, I decided to drive the sixty miles to Mobile, find the cemetery, and look for myself. After searching the cemetery’s computer records with no luck, I walked to the two family plots. There she was. Her head and footstone had been placed on top of her husband’s slab many years after her death and had been completely overlooked by everyone. Her birth date and death date were clear, as was part of her name and her relationship to her husband. We have become so accustomed to relying on computers that we forget that the old fashioned way has its strengths too. Amazing what a little ankle power can do!
Bobbye Carroll (more…)
Moving Between Censuses
Never assume that a family resided in the same place between censuses. When available, another good resource is the state census. Some states such as Illinois and Kansas had state censuses which were done every ten years, between federal censuses (1825, 1835, etc).
For many years I tried to figure out why a few branches of my husband’s line left Dunklin County, Missouri, and ended up in Alexander County, Illinois. I looked at the 1865 census to see if they had moved there by that time. I didn’t find them in Alexander County but did find them in Massac County, Illinois.
To my surprise I also found my husband’s direct-line great-great-grandparents as well as a long lost half-brother of that great-great-grandfather. His great-great-grandparents had moved back to Dunklin County by 1870 to the same area they were living in 1860, so checking the 1865 state census alerted me to the fact that they had moved around between censuses.
Why did they leave? The family was originally from Indiana. The area in which they lived in Dunklin County, Missouri, was populated with more Confederate sympathizers than Union. The family most likely left to not only support but allow some family members to join the Union forces.
Debbi Geer
St Ann, Missouri (more…)
Institutional Records at the State Historical Society
My father’s family had all been placed in state homes and the mother institutionalized. I found one Aunt in Minnesota. I wanted to know more about the circumstance surrounding why they had been taken away from their parents. My father had told stories that he knew. For years I kept most of the stories in my head and a few years back began to search for them. I found a lot of them thanks to ancestry, but the story was yet to be found. I found the institution where they had lived was closed in 1976 (Sparta Wisconsin) and after a trip back there found all the records were placed in boxes and were stored at the State Historical Society. It took a copy of my fathers death Certificate and communication with the head historian to find some of the answers. Now I have a much better understanding of what took place back then and the laws of the times.
Maybe this will help someone else.
Susan (more…)
Today is Tomorrow’s History
Being the family historian, I am immediately thrilled when I find something written by my ancestors—a card, a letter, a note to the milkman; even a shopping list takes on added proportions, because it gives me an insight into their lives.
I have been concerned for some time now, that in the age of e-mails, computers, and e-cards, my descendants won’t have the same benefits, so this year I decided to take matters into my own hands. Having five married children and sixteen young grandchildren, I asked each family if, instead of a purchased Christmas gift, they would give me a potted [condensed] history of their lives over the past year. I told them they could do it in any form they wished, it could be done by one member of the family, as a project by the grandchildren, just whatever they were comfortable with.
Christmas came and I can honestly say I have never been so thrilled with the gifts I received. Some had made scrapbook pages of special events. Some had written a month by month run down and included photos. One was excerpts from her diary, and another had included pictures drawn by each of the children. Still another had copied and laminated school awards and prizes. Every one of the projects was special and unique.
As they all read each other’s projects there were lots of oohs and ahs and, “you didn’t tell me that.” Everyone enjoyed it so much that we’ve decided it’s to be a regular Christmas event and this is one family historian who is a lot happier knowing that our tomorrow’s history will not be lost.
Mary Rogers
Wedderburn, Australia (more…)
Book Review on Nineteenth Century City Life
Have you ever wondered what life was really like for your ancestors? If they were working class people in an American city in the nineteenth century, the book Challenging Chicago, by Perry Duis (University of Chicago Press, 1992) will reveal how hard the business of everyday life was for them. For example, we all know that the horse provided transportation for people and goods. The movies give us romantic images of horse-drawn carriages clip-clopping cheerfully along the street. But Duis describes what that meant in real life–streets covered with a semi-frozen slush of manure and snow in winter, muddy manure oozing between the pavestones in spring, and stingy, smelly brown dust covering everything in summer. But people could no more do without horses than we can without the internal combustion engine. A nationwide equine flu epidemic in 1872 killed half the horses, bringing factories to a halt, leaving produce rotting in rail cars, and ushering in an economic panic that lasted two years.
As its title suggests, the book is about Chicago, but in many ways, it paints a portrait of any large city at that time. It covers topics such as housing, work, transportation and food. It describes the shopping options for an urban housewife and the enterprising people who created the “curbstone economy,” buying goods wholesale and selling them to individuals on street corners or door-to-door.
Duis is more historian than popular writer, but his prose is clear and engaging, and he peppers the pages with quotes from writers of the time. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about urban life in the “good old days.”
Linda Kush
Boston, Massachusetts (more…)
Simplify Finding Distances between Locations
Not long ago I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how far my ancestor lived from the cemetery that I believe he is buried in “as the crow flies.” I could locate both locations on a map, but didn’t know where roads might have been on the frontier. I have since found a free website for joggers and bikers very useful for getting distances. GMaps Pedometer allows you to get straight line distances (manual) between two or more points.
Distances on current roads are available taking into account curves and turns onto other roads (automatic). This will be useful to get an exact driving distance from a landmark to a cemetery or other location. The site is based on Google Maps and has that look and feel to it. Double click to set your start, turn, and end points. I like to zoom in quite a bit and then click and hold to move the map when my route starts to go off the edge. The cyclist route will not let you go down a one-way street the wrong way like the runner route would.
Gerald M. Graves
Van Meter, Iowa (more…)
Spellcheck Your Family History Notes
If your record management program does not include a spell checker for an individual’s notes, try this. It’s fast, easy, and it works! Open a new, empty Word document and minimize it. Now open an individual’s Notes page and copy it to your clipboard. (Yes, copy–don’t cut yet!) Open the Word document and paste the copied notes there. Draw a short line at the lower end. Select the spell check feature and work through the set of notes. When finished, copy the corrected set of notes and paste at the top of the individual’s Notes page. When you are satisfied that all is well, highlight and delete the old set of notes below the line you added and then delete the corrected set on the Word document. Voila! Correctly spelled notes!
I use PAF and printed a list of all the names of individuals whose record contained notes (File > Print Reports > Lists > Individuals with Notes > Print.) I then worked through the list using the above idea.
Della Nielson Steineckert
AWJ Editor’s Note: Family Tree Maker 2008 and 2009 have a spell checker for the Notes section. Just open up the note for a particular ancestor and click on the spell check icon. Be sure to check the entire note though. If you close the check window before the program has checked the entire note, your changes will not be saved. (more…)
Scanning Multiple Photos
Scanning photos can take a lot of time. I learned to lay as many photos on the scanner glass as I can fit. I make one scan of them. Once it’s in my computer, I make one copy of the scan for each photo on the sheet. Once the copies are made, I crop each sheet to include just one photo. This does save oodles of scanning time.
Kate Sprague
California City, California (more…)
Another Item for Your To-Do List
I use the notification service at Ancestry, and this morning I received two notifications of additions to my site. This means I have placed the information in my online tree, but I know I did not also put it in my genealogy software. I can print out the notification and can use it to make sure I enter the information where it needs to be. Then I can file the completed page in my family folder and it gives me an approximate date of my entries/research as well.
Gay (more…)
