Month: June 2010

Follow Friday: Family Search

Posted on by Kathleen

I am in love with this website. I love this website so much, I’m pretty sure I’d take the drastic step of marrying it if I could. I’m not experienced or smart enough to get lost in the technical jargon about the website, so you’ll have to go elsewhere for that.

I have been using the FamilySearch “Pilot” site for many years now. Mostly in past years for their wonderful collection of Ohio Death Certificates. Recently they’ve made a drastic change. That change is adding so many names to the database I’ll probably never come out on the other side.

I’ve always been hampered in my research in the fact that I have practically no means of travel. If it isn’t in my own town, most likely I can’t get there. Washington D.C. is a day trip that doesn’t happen often, maybe more now, but we’ll see. With these new website updates though, I may not have to stress too bad about that any longer.

A lot of the records they’ve recently put online are just indexes. So they aren’t the most helpful (mostly because of transcription interpreting I think). That doesn’t even hint on the way that they source the indexes and how valid the actual index information is.

This is my favorite part though. I found this marriage record for Mary J Webb. I don’t know who Mary J Webb is quite honestly. I know who her parents are though. Enoch Webb and Jane Lindsey. I’m actually pretty sure of Webb research, so it did surprise me to find a daughter for these two. She was born around 1884 and didn’t marry until 1915. So by all intents and purposes she should be living at home with her parents in 1900 and 1910. That isn’t so though. In fact, it wasn’t until I found this record that I remembered something that always stumped me before. Enoch had an older brother Amos. In 1900 and 1910 Amos had a niece living with him named Minnie/Mammie. I was always stumped by who this girl could belong to. She popped up in 1900 out of nowhere. If I had the 1890 census, things would have been clearer. Once I found this record though, I got excited. I’d finally identified her! The birthday fits and everything.

Is this a 100% identification? Maybe not, but it’s the closest I might ever get! What can I do to verify this information? Well I’m going to have to see where Family Search got their information.

So I took the Film Number and plugged it into the Family History Library Catalog Search.

This is the microfilm that gives me the above information. Straight from the Brown County Courthouse! That’s without a 10+ hour trip to Ohio with people who aren’t exactly into going through old records and cemeteries.

What exactly do I plan to do with this?

I plan to see it for myself, in person if at all possible.

The Genealogy Gods are smiling down on me today folks. They do have a Family History Center in my town! This is great news, and I plan to get a to do list together and head in there in the very near future!

FamilySearch Record Search

Follow Friday is a daily blogging theme I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Follow Friday, simply create a post in which you recommend another genealogy blogger, a specific blog post, a genealogy website or a genealogy resource. Tell us why they are important to the genealogy community and why we should follow.

Good Ol’ Days

Posted on by Kathleen

Since we’re all friends here, we won’t discuss what I did last night. Just know that I deeply am sorry for the constant changing of my mind. The Random Relative Project™ is still happening, but in a different way. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind last night. Here I was doing all this work on sourcing these random people in my tree and adding them to my website. Then the thought showed up, the one that clung on for dear life and wouldn’t go away. In fact, it won’t go away now, when I’m desperately hungry for a sandwich. So I need to get this out quick so I can make a date with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

So the thought was, “What if these people turn out to be the wrong people?” “What if I spend all this time adding them and sourcing them, and they don’t even belong in my tree?” Yikes. That’s a scary one. One I’m sure I thought of before, but said I’d come to that when I got there. Then more thoughts came, “You assigned them numbers. If you assign them numbers and they aren’t part of the family what will happen to that number?” “Will you keep a list of numbers to recycle?” Oy oy oy with the poodles!

So yes, I will keep on with my Random Relative Project™ in a very unofficial just looking through the census manner. I’d like to at least verify where these folks are in case they are family, and then in case they aren’t maybe they live nearby the real family. The official numbers will have to come from my “Official Family File” though. The one where nothing enters it without a source attached. Of course,  there isn’t much movement on that one except adding in my cousin’s information right now.

I came across this gem today. Poor Nathan Ellis is only 60 years old (Well he was in 1850), and he’s already being considered put out to pasture.  I am positive that sooner, rather than later I am pushing myself to this end. Of course it’ll be another 10 years before anyone can embarrass me on a census. So there’s still hope. Don’t ask me who belongs where in that household. I couldn’t tell ya. I only had Jeremiah, a wife Anna (not Nancy) and a son Washington (he’s next door). So everyone else is up in the air.  Who said genealogy was relaxing anyway? Oh that was me. ^.^

Wordless Wednesday: George Thorward

Posted on by Kathleen

The transcription on this photo is George Thorward – 1st car -1905

Wordless Wednesday is a daily blogging theme I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Wordless Wednesday simply create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some people also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Some have begun doing a “Not So Wordless Wednesday” with the main focus still being an image but there is a backstory to the image.

Google Searching

Posted on by Kathleen

Since I spent so much time transcribing and adding Bartholomew Taylor things into my family file, I’ve decided to go ahead and research him for fun. One of the things I do randomly when I research is I plug the ancestors name into Google and see what comes up. It’s pretty interesting to see what comes up.

I make sure to put the name in quotes. That just helps to cut out a lot of the wrong things. I added Maryland for good measure, since the Taylors are most often associated with Maryland.

Once the search is done, I check out the main results but then I go into my favorite part of Google searches… Books! This will search through a database of books that Google has online. These are all with the cooperation of the publishers so no need to feel like you’re sneaking something.

This is what was in the Marylanders to Kentucky book. I just wanted to show you what type of things are in here. That is definitely my Bartholomew Taylor, and you can see that it gives a whole bunch of Reference numbers. You can line those up with the sources. I actually found this exact book in my local library a few months back. So I’ve already been through it. 🙂 I have photocopies around here somewhere, including what all those numbers mean. I’m pretty sure it’s easy to figure out though, like KPR:1835 is the 1835 Kentucky Pension Roll. I think all the things listed as reference to him have to do with the Revolutionary War, which I believe all those sources were created from his pension request.

The next result was The Wright Ancestry. The Wright family married into the Taylors a few times so I wasn’t surprised that Bartholomew acted as a witness to this Wright family member’s will.

Looking further into the will, you can see that once again a Wright has married a Taylor. Immediately I set about seeing if I have these particular Wright/Taylor ancestors in my file already.

It turns out that the “Sary Wright” is actually the wife of Bartholomew’s first cousin. My Maryland ancestors are a mess in my file though, so I don’t want to leap before I check everything out. Everything here would have come from those descendant reports from my Grandma.  So we’ll see how this turns out!