Monthly Archives: August 2008

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Weekly Planner: Catch Back-to-School Fever

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I love to watch my daughter at this time of year. It’s the start of a new school year and she’s excited about returning to new classes and challenges, and planning what extracurricular activities she wants to take part in. Just because we’re out of school doesn’t mean we can’t catch back-to-school fever too! Plan to master a new skill–whether it is a new technology or utilizing a new record group or tool. Help files, reference guides, books, and even online tutorials can be your guides to new skills that will help you locate even the most elusive ancestor.

Ten Exercises to Jumpstart Your Research, by Juliana Smith

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With the new school year fast approaching in just under three weeks, I’ve started prepping my daughter with some extra reading, math worksheets, and Internet research. Last week I had her investigate how garden pests keep finding my pine tree. I thought I was rid of them last year, but alas this year they’re back. Turns out the smaller larvae can be carried by the wind. Who knew?  Anyway, I’m hoping that these last-minute preparations will help her get off to a good start this year.

I’ve found that similarly, when we’ve been away from our research for a time, there are some exercises we can do to regain our momentum and jumpstart our research. Here are ten ideas you can try:

1.) Tackle Someone Else’s Problem.
Every so often I volunteer to do some work for friends and neighbors on their family history. This fine tunes my skills and gives me experience in new areas. Often while I’m solving other people’s problems, I get ideas for solving my own. If your friends aren’t open to the idea, check message boards or mailing lists for posts in which people are looking for assistance. In addition to honing your research skills, you’ll build up some karma points!

2.) Volunteer on an Indexing Project
A while back, we announced here on the blog that Ancestry was going to be launching a new volunteer indexing program. While it’s still not available to the public, at the time employees were asked to try out the tool. I spent several nights working with it and it was really interesting trying to decipher unfamiliar names and places as they were written. Check out volunteer indexing projects through societies, FamilySearch, and soon, through Ancestry and give them a try. In addition to the knowledge that you’re helping to preserve history, you really get a feel for the records you’re working with, and the skills you acquire are bound to help in your own research.

3.) Read History
In these dog days of summer when it’s too hot to be playing outdoors, curl up in front of a fan or next to the pool with a good historical read. Check for sales and in used book stores for good deals. Getting a closer look at historical events and social conditions of your ancestor’s era give you a better glimpse into what their lives were like, and the knowledge you gain will help you create a much more interesting family history. You may even find reasons for a sudden migration, economic downturn in the family fortunes, or some other unexplained event.

4.) Get Religion
Sometimes we tend to see our ancestral families with an isolated view–living and moving around in a new world full of strangers. But just as we interact with our neighbors and in our communities, our ancestors were part of a larger world of people who weren’t necessarily related to them. Many times these communities centered around religion. How much do you know about your ancestor’s place of worship? Have you looked into the history of the congregation? Checked for minutes of meetings in which your ancestor may have taken part? Were other members of the congregation mostly from a particular ethnic background? Learning about your ancestor’s religious community could open some new avenues for research. Continue reading →

Getting the Most out of Obituaries, by Michael John Neill

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Krebs obituary 8-4-08.bmpAncestry.com recently added 20 million images to their newspaper collection. There are many genealogically significant items one can find in a newspaper, but we frequently turn to the obituaries. This week let’s take a look at an obituary that was discovered in the newly uploaded additions to Ancestry.com and see how it can be analyzed for further clues and search ideas.

Conrad Krebs died in November of 1899 in Davenport, Iowa, and his obituary appeared shortly thereafter in The Davenport Weekly Leader of 21 November 1899 (click on the image to enlarge it). As I looked at this newly found death notice, I was reminded of some things we should keep in mind when working with obituaries.

Read the Whole Page
Some of the newspaper results at Ancestry.com will highlight the name on the page, others will not. Regardless of whether or not this happens, scan the entire page manually. There may be more than one reference to a person on the same page and OCR searches do occasionally miss entries. For Conrad there was an obituary and, on the same page, a notice about the “Krebs Obsequies” (“obsequies” refers to the funeral service). If the obituary had not provided details about the service and I hadn’t scanned the entire page, this information about the church and burial would have been overlooked.
 
Consider the Source
Most information in any obituary is secondary. Many of the details in the obituary are being reported years after the actual events and typically by individuals who were not firsthand witnesses. Even when it comes to “current” information, a newspaper can easily make an error.

Saving a digital copy of the obituary is best, but if you must transcribe, copy the obituary exactly and do not edit it. Include obvious errors as they were written and use the “sic” notation immediately after the likely mistake (e.g., “John Smith was born on February 30[sic], 1900”). This indicates that you were aware the information looked odd, but that it was not your mistake. Continue reading →

Tips from the Pros: Post-It Notes Are a No-No! from George G. Morgan

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The popular Post-It notes and other brands of self-adhesive “sticky notes” may be great for leaving a quick note for yourself or a friend, but they are definitely not for use in books and original historical documents. The paper used in the product is not acid-free, and the adhesive on them contains chemicals which can leave behind a residue that can damage and/or discolor anything to which it is applied. Don’t use these products on any historical documents, photographs, books, or any other materials in libraries, archives, or on materials in your personal collection that you wish to preserve for posterity.

Click here for a printer friendly version of this article.

The Year Was 1877

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1877 RR Strike.bmpThe year was 1877 and following the disputed election of 1876 it was still unclear who the next American president would be. Samuel Tilden had carried the popular vote by more than 250,000 votes, and held 184 of the electoral votes. Rutherford B. Hayes only had 165 of the electoral votes–but twenty electoral votes from South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida were still being disputed. There was also an issue with one elector from Oregon.

To resolve the problem, Congress set up an election committee, comprised of fifteen men–five from the Senate, five from the House of Representatives, and five from the Supreme Court. Along party lines, the count was seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one Independent. As if things weren’t complicated enough, the Independent, who was from the Supreme Court, refused to accept the position and was replaced by a Republican, shifting the balance of power in their favor. The twenty votes in dispute were awarded to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. Southern Democrats began a filibuster to protest the decision and eventually an informal agreement was reached.  The agreement was that a southern Democrat be admitted to the Hayes administration; that all U.S. troops be removed from the South; a second transcontinental railroad through the South was to be built; and federal legislation was to be enacted to aid the industrialization of the South. More information is available at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center.  Continue reading →

Photo Corner, 04 August 2008

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Margaret Ann Liscomb Gayder (1894-1995) and Pearl Davis Blank, St. Catherines, Ontario, CanadaContributed by Joanne Elizabeth Booth
This is a photo of my great-aunt, Margaret Ann Liscomb Gayder (1894-1995) dressed as clown, and her dear friend and witness at her wedding, Pearl Davis Blank. The photo was taken about 1912, probably in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Thirza Mary Alice (Booty) Lawlor, Alice Thirza (Brace) Booty born 1989, and John Bertrum BootyContributed by David J. Lawlor
This is a picture of my mother Thirza Mary Alice (Booty) Lawlor on the left born 23 March 23 1914, my grandmother Alice Thirza (Brace) Booty born 1989, and my Uncle John Bertrum Booty born 1918, taken in
Stondon Massey, near Brentwood, Essex, England.

USCIS to Launch Genealogy Program 13 August 2008

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The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, formerly the INS) will soon be launching a fee-for-service genealogy program that will expedite the process of requesting records for genealogists. The service will include an index search, where you’ll be able to get the necessary citation to request the actual records. Record requests will also be available through the service. Records included in the program are:

  • Naturalization Certificate Files (C-files) from September 27, 1906 to April 1, 1956
  • Alien Registration Forms from August 1, 1940 to March 31, 1944
  • Visa files from July 1, 1924 to March 31, 1944
  • Registry Files from March 2, 1929 to March 31, 1944
  • Alien Files (A-files) numbered below 8 million (A8000000) and documents therein dated prior to May 1, 1951

You can learn more about this service on the USCIS Genealogy page.