Your Quick Tips, 30 April 2007

Photo glasses watchjjpg.bmpReproduce Old Photos
I am seventy-two, and have been in possession of a daguerreotype photo of an ancestor for about fifty years. It wasn’t in the sharpest condition when I received it. About ten years ago, I tried to get it reproduced and was told it couldn’t be done. Last year, I tried again with a different photo lab and he said he’d try but it was in pretty poor condition. The result was astonishing. I have a negative now and a print; it is so sharp, you can see the strands of her hair. Where I used to think she was a very dour old woman, the print shows a gentleness and sadness in her eyes not seen before. This is the only remaining picture of my fourth great-grandmother, Sarah Lyons Goble.  My message is: If you have this type of picture, find a lab and have it reproduced NOW; these pictures do continue to deteriorate with time.
 
Carla E. Connell

Try Searching Through Other Relatives
I had been having trouble finding my maternal grandparents in any census records and recently found out why. The person who recorded their names could not spell them and apparently didn’t want to ask, so wrote down what he thought they sounded like. 

I had been looking for Ulius Grant Craft and Susan Octavia Clark; nothing would come up. However, when I looked for my aunt (their daughter) in the 1930 census, I hit pay dirt. Instead of the correct spellings, I found their names listed as Eulas Craft and O Claveal Craft, and it reminded me that I should look through other relatives to find my people. 

The same thing happened with finding Ulius on the 1920 census. I had
to search for his father to find Ulius because the name was misspelled again. When I located the entry, I found that he had a younger brother that I didn’t know he had, who had died in the twenties. 

I also learned that my great-great-grandfather had married again after my great-great-grandmother died. I knew of their children, but didn’t know that they were from a different wife. 

Great finds that day! So, if you can’t find your ancestor in the census using the correct spelling of their names, go a different way. You may find what you are looking for. (One more thing–don’t always look for the correct initials; sometimes they were written down wrong, and sometimes they were mistranscribed.)
 
Teresa Snow Harris 

He Lied to Get In
I want to make one other comment about incorrect ages for the guys signing up for World War I. My father, William J. Cobb, was born on 9 September 1897. In the first registration for World War I, he signed up for the Navy and was aboard the USS Nevada for the duration of the war. He told us he was not old enough at the time of the registration to join the Navy so he said he was twenty-one and gave his birth date as 9 September–nothing else. So if the dates don’t add up, it could be because the men who were registering were under age. 
 
Nina Cobb

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3 thoughts on “Your Quick Tips, 30 April 2007

  1. HE ALSO LIED TO GET IN!

    I wondered for a long time how my great-uncle managed to fight for the Union in the Civil War when he was only born in October 1849. When the Civil War ended in April 1865, Jacob was only 15 years old. His enlistment record showed that he signed up in a neighboring state just TWO WEEKS before the war ended, substituting for another draftee, and told the recruiter he was 18! Obviously he was still in training camp when Lee surrendered at Appomattox, but wasn’t mustered out until June.

  2. When will I start receiving the Newsletters through my email? I haven’t been receiving them since Dec 2006. My spam filter is not stop them. I’ve sent emails to the support center. Several times I was told that ancestry.com is longer a weekly newsletter. Most of the time I’ve told it is my fault. Now I was told they are having some trouble with the Newsletters.
    Please advise. Who else is having trouble with not receiving the Newsletters?

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