Month: April 2010

Mays Family Update

Posted on by Kathleen

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After I made my Mays Family post yesterday, I went back through the Kentucky Death Records on Ancestry.com. I decided to just put random details in there and see what came up. You may not be able to tell from the size of that death certificate but that is Jurena Mays‘ death certificate. It shows her married name as Adkins. So that was a nice little hint. It also showed her parents as William Mays and Anna Click. That answered the questions about whose family she belonged to, but not my questions about why she showed up out of the blue in 1870.

Having the tip of the married name of Adkins, and the Informant name of Milburn Adkins, I set about finding Census records for Jurena. What happens next is why I took a two day break from the Mays family. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

1900 was the first census I tried to find. I couldn’t find Jurena anywhere. I tried all the combinations I could, but I couldn’t find her. So I jumped to Milburn Adkins. In all the remaining census years Milburn has a wife whose name varies. The birthday never various. The birthday matches up with Ellen Mays, but her name is mostly listed as Eliza, except for one year when she was known as Eliza Ellen. So my immediate next thought was that this must be Ellen’s husband and he acted as informant for his sister-in-law. Only when I started relaying this information to my Mom. She broke out her old notes, she had a complete different husband for Ellen.

It’s about that moment, I threw my hands in the air. Put on my fluffy pajamas, and grabbed myself a cold drink. I was done. So now I’m going to take a break from the Mays family and focus for a bit on the Taylor side. They are so much easier to locate!

Now I Remember

Posted on by Kathleen

I remember now why I allowed my Mom to have control over the Mays Line of our tree for so long. It gets very confusing. With that many different people I guess it’s only a matter of time. Since I’m determined to do things right this time, I found that I was trying to ignore big discrepancies between Census years.

In the 1850 and 1860 census years, the children of William and Anna Mays were very easy to match up. The birth years weren’t off by more than a year or so. I was able to figure out who everyone was by name and age. It was glorious… Then I went to 1870. Things just got complicated.

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At first, I couldn’t find them in Morgan County, KY where they had been in 1860 and 1870. Then I found William and Anna in Elliott County, KY. After a quick peek at the history of Elliott County, I found that it was formed in 1869 from parts of  Morgan, Lawrence, and Carter counties. So that little mystery was solved. They most likely didn’t move, the county border did!

Things didn’t improve after that little nugget of information though. It’s when I started to try and match up the kids that I ran into more troubles. Thomas Lindsey Mays wasn’t an issue. He matched up perfectly. Besides that weird stuff at the end of her name, Anna Mays lined up pretty well also. I think I was almost too confident at this point. I had to be, because what else could I have done to deserve this.

Rebecca Mays threw me for the big loop. The problem she threw at me started because I can’t decide what to believe about her. You can see in the image her age is shown as 18. However, I know she is older than that. In fact, my dates put her at 10 years older than that. What on earth went wrong here! I certainly can’t take the age of 18 as fact, because she was in both the 1850 and 1860 censuses as 8 and 18 respectively. So I just scratch my head and put a little note in the file about this discrepancy.

I then moved on to Arminda, age 17 from the image. I’m going to assume that she is Amanda Mays, (born. about 1854). I’m finding that Arminda and Amanda were basically the same name back in those days. It’s like Sally and Sarah. They are a bit interchangeable.

Jane, age 15 is my big frustration here. Her age shows that she should have been in the last census. I promise you there wasn’t a Jane. There was an Elizabeth J though. Jane was a very common middle name for Elizabeths in my family. Very very common. It wouldn’t be an issue if my Elizabeth wasn’t supposed to be 23 in this census. Of course, they were off by 10 years on Rebecca, so could this be another case? Or is this a niece/cousin/relation staying with the family. It wasn’t until 1880 that they even started adding relationships onto the census.

blog-144I had to look at the 1880 census before I made any decision about who Jane was. Maybe I’d get lucky and she’d be there. So I looked. Luckily Rebecca was back to her rightful age. My Jane from the last census is now in the form of Jurena I think… This is all really confusing to me. If Jurena is another daughter. She should have been on the 1860 census, aged 5 years old. There was no Jurena, just Amanda/Arminda who was close enough in age, but she’s accounted for in the 1870 census.

So my final conclusion is I have to add Jurena as a separate child, but I have no idea where she could have been in 1860 census, but maybe when I check in with all the other families, I will find her. I’ll just have to make note of her special circumstances.

I made the plunge…

Posted on by Kathleen

For better or for worse, I went ahead and just deleted my “old” Mays family tree from my website. It started as just deleting the living individuals. It evolved into a small rebellion on my part. People who have visited this site since it’s inception know how many times I’ve deleted everything and re-added everything. Not to mention when I’ve accidentally broken the website coding. This is how we learn though right? Well, I just forced myself over the ledge for the betterment of my family website.

Some may not like that I put all my research and documents out there for the data loggers and research thieves out there. I don’t mind though. As long as I’m not harming anyone living, I don’t see a problem with it. It’s amazing how much my genealogy world has widened just by reading blogs by other genealogists. I’ve always had all my information out there for the world to enjoy and yes people use a lot of what I put out there. I don’t mind though. It’s such a good feeling to be able to help someone in their own research. My family from all over enjoy being able to see all my research, especially since we usually only see each other once a year at the reunion. I don’t exactly carry the whole of my research with me. Sometimes some pictures, but usually only my laptop.

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Family File (Before)

So I’m slowly adding a person at a time to the website and citing all their sources, while I also enter them into my program. Another plunge I made was I finally purchased the full version of RootsMagic. If I am a little short of my September Ancestry subscription goal, so be it (I don’t think I will be though)! I’m sorry but I just couldn’t get the sources to be a neat and manageable in Family Tree Maker. The way is there, but I just couldn’t get over the ease of RootsMagic. This by no means suggests I’ll forever give up one program for the other. In the case of building my “official” Family File though. I’m doing it in RootsMagic for now.

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Family File (After)

The after picture shows you the real impact of this undertaking. In my old file I had 25 sources and 162 citations for 4171 people. With just 31 people in this tree, I already have 15 sources and 79 citations. That’s half of what I had in my old file and I’ve only added 8 families. This is probably the best thing I ever did for my family tree. Now I just have to figure out the best way of preserving the records and photos I have. One thing at a time though. Today the plan is to add some more census records and to search through the Kentucky Death Records.  I love how much enjoyment I can get from an evening spent with a nice cold Ginger Ale and my fluffy pajama pants, going through Census records. In fact I think the Census records are by far my favorite thing in the whole wide world.

Oops I got distracted

Posted on by Kathleen

I may or may not have spent my last two evenings lost in Google Earth and Panoramio. I don’t mean to be distracted by these things but I can seem to help it. I’ve realized over the last couple of weeks that I haven’t done much traveling at all. Back and forth to family reunions doesn’t count as traveling. Especially since they are usually quick weekend trips. I long to travel. I don’t know how well I’d hold up, because I’m kind of a homebody, but I’d like a chance to try.

In these contemplations, I also realized I have a great obsession with medieval castles. I have certain obsessions with certain time periods and the medieval time period seems to be another one. I can’t help it. I don’t romanticize it, I promise! I know it was a brutal and bloody time. It’s the architecture and families and that fascinate me. Family dynamics are so complex and unpredictable. Maybe that’s why I love genealogy so much too.

I’m big on full disclosure, as you all know, so I have to be upfront about my recent distraction. It wasn’t just castles I was caught up in. I was caught up in Scottish Clan histories and matching up castles with clans. I brought up a list on Wikipedia of all the castles in Scotland and I started trying to plot them in Google Earth so I could come back to them anytime I wanted. It was wonderful.

The photography on Panoramio is just gorgeous. I’ve got to read the Terms of Service and stuff before I post any pictures from there. I might have to contact the original photographers. It might be months before I build up an awesome Castle post, but boy do I want to. I get so inspired when I see the great things other people do. I even played with my camera yesterday. Found settings I never knew existed. Someday I’ll have a new camera, until then mine will work to get the logistics down.

I better go get the laundry in before I get distracted again! Sorry for no pretty pictures this time, I’ll just have to leave you with one of Castle Menzies from one of my Google Earth Adventures!

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Forward Progress

Posted on by Kathleen

I’ve put this off for a long time but now I’m breaking it out and working on it. I am restoring a damaged photo of my Grandfather, Stanley Mays. It’s one of the few pictures we have of him, and it’s certainly the best one. So here’s my progress so far.

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Not bad so far if I do say so myself! This is only after a few minutes of doing it so I had some progress to show. 😉