If you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s because FamilySearch just added a ton of new records to their website. I can’t wait to dig in and start looking. I have 227 matches for Taylor in Somerset County, Maryland alone! Not to mention the Kentucky Death and Marriage Records they added. I was so excited I had to post a second entry today!
There is always one person in your family file who frustrates you. Sometimes it’s because they show up out of nowhere. Or maybe they disappeared. How these mysteries are ever solved I don’t know. I usually just walk away from it for awhile and try again later with a clear brain. Sometimes it works, most times I have to lather, rinse, and repeat a few times.
One of those people in my family is Mr. Henry C Mays. He showed up in the household of John and Celia Mays in 1900. He’s listed as their son. When my Mom was researching this family, she was always suspicious about him. She thought maybe he was actually Nancy’s son but her parents were raising him. Who knows what the real story is. There isn’t much to verify that available to me right now. Especially since Henry was born in or around 1885. Well before Kentucky started regulating birth records in 1911.
Henry is still there in 1910, still listed as John and Celia’s son. So I’m going to go for broke and assume that he is their son. The problem is that I can’t seem to find a death record for him to verify this. There is a Henry Mays living in Rowan County, Kentucky in 1920 but I can’t be sure that is him and the family is gone again in 1930. 1920 is when John, Celia, and William Harmon moved to Ohio. Nancy married and stayed in Kentucky though. So Henry could have ended up anywhere. Eventually I hope to find him. I’ll keep trying until I find out where he went.
The even crazier part is we asked my Grandmother about William Harmon Mays’ family before she passed away. No one was even aware that William had a sister, let alone another brother somewhere. Who knows what we could have found out if my mother’s father had lived longer, but we may never know what happened to the Mays family. They seemed to have scattered and not spoken of each other.
The beauty of starting your family file over is that you know everything in there will be correct. The dilemma I have is I would never delete my old file. It’s been the file I’ve edited for many years now. I could never throw it away like a used shopping bag. (Actually I use the reusable bags now so that was a bad metaphor.) The problem I’ve come across is how much of my old file and the original (not entirely trustworthy) family tree to use.
It’s easy to say I’ll just use it as a guideline and I’ll back it up with documents as I go. Sure that’s the obvious choice. What about that first time I come across something that isn’t documented though? Kentucky was pretty sporadic in their death records before 1911. So what do I do about all those infant children that passed away in the Taylor family? I can’t immediately back them up, but surely they existed. I can look up cemetery records, and newspapers when I’m in Kentucky but what about now? If I just say I’ll go back to it later, that’s the old me talking. I always say I’ll do it later, and then I forget and never go back. My family file will never be restored that way.
So my solution for now is to source it as the Undocumented Family Tree, and make myself a list of records I need to find. This list is a start, but that could become quite crowded quickly. So maybe an Excel file will be my better option. One for the documents I need, and one to keep track of cemeteries I need to visit.
This may seem like rambling to you, but if I don’t hash this out now, I’ll never come to a decision…
Oh, and for those that remember or read this blog post I made? Yeah I’m going to be making a private family tree on Ancestry.com for each of the lines, just like my website. I won’t be doing it right away though. Most likely when I hit the inevitable brick wall.
We’ve had the pleasure of entertaining my cousin and her two energetic little girls this week. They left this morning and the house is eerily silent. I’ve done laundry (not finished), I played with the pictures in Photo Shop. I finally finished that book I was reading. Now I’m going to catch up on here! Sorry for the little absence but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Yesterday, we took the girls on a day trip to Washington, DC. It’s about 2 hours from our house and yesterday was a very pretty day. We didn’t get to tour the museums. That sounds bad but we ended up walking a total of 5 miles yesterday, so I don’t know where we would have fit museums in! The youngest, she wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial really bad because he’s her favorite coin. Everyone else just enjoyed seeing the sites.
For anyone who wants to visit Washington, DC; I definitely recommend spacing your visit out into multiple days. There is just way too much to see and they are spread out over such a big area. There are plenty of tour buses and shuttles around though if that suits your fancy. We might try one next time. We parked at a parking garage and hoofed it across the street to The Smithsonian Castle, which is pictured to the left. It’s really beautiful with the gardens in bloom. My only wish was that I could have seen the whole place decked out in Cherry Blossoms.
If you want to check out all the different museums at the Smithsonian be sure to check out their website. It’s very informative and they have all kinds of calendars so you can plan around your children’s (or your own!) interests.
Another thing to keep in mind is the season you are visiting in. It was a very warm and sunny day yesterday. So while it was great weather, there was a bit of an issue when we were walking along The Mall without shade for awhile.
When we came up to The Washington Monument, there was a very very very long line. There must have been 20 different school groups near us at any given moment. So maybe going in the earlier part of the school year would have been a better idea. 😉
We did eventually make it to The Lincoln Memorial and The White House (well as close as we could), but I don’t want to overload my blog with pictures right now. Maybe what I’ll do is do some informative posts about all the monuments under my new Category (Local Flavor). I’ve realized that living in such a historic area gives me a responsibility to not take it for granted.
Hopefully over this week I’ll get things all caught back up and I’ll be back on rhythm. I think a Monday through Friday updating schedule works the best. That’s when my free time gels the best for this blogging stuff. I really do enjoy it.
I might set up a Flickr or Panoramio account to showcase my pictures taken on genealogy trips and trips like this. We’ll see, I get excited. 🙂
