Month: December 2010

Wednesday Fun!

Posted on by Kathleen

Thanks for your opinions on my dilemma yesterday! Both on twitter and in the comments. 🙂 I decided to have a little fun today before I got started on work and last minute wrapping for Christmas.

I’ve been catching up on The Generations Project. I’ve been recording it on my DVR for the last few weeks and I’ve finally found some time to catch up. While I was watching, I realized I’d like to see if there were previous episodes available to view online (there is!). While I was there, I decided to do some of the fun activities they have on their site. I usually skip by those things but for some reason I decided to do them this time. As a website designer I really want to make more of an effort to view bells and whistles on other websites so I can learn more!

Make Your Own Family Pedigree

The first activity was to make your own family photo tree! This was really fun for me. The only thing I wanted was one more generation because I actually have photos that far back! Very fun, In fact, I might even try printing this out at some point and framing it for my wall! Why not, right?

Make your Family Crest.

The second activity was to make your own family crest. I chose the cell phone and book as our symbols because that’s what we usually talk about. Books and gadgets! The rest were picked as personal preferences by me. 🙂

There was also a lookalike activity that I did not do. I have phobias about people looking at my picture and judging it. You should try it if you don’t have that phobia though! The activities were definitely fun to play with though! Try it yourself at The Generations Project on byu.tv.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with BYU or The Generations Project. I was just wanting to play with stuff and their stuff was there for the taking. I don’t own any of the images except my own personal family photos.

Opinions Welcome

Posted on by Kathleen

My internet was very spotty last night, so I decided to take the time to work on my Roots Magic source lists. I was going good, but things got out of hand and I ended up putting most of my info into FTM instead of RM. So I decided to start the source list over since I hadn’t gotten much done there anyway. It wasn’t long before my original roadblock came back.

FTM 2010 Source List. Click for full size.

The image above shows how my FTM source list is going. I’m actually really pleased with how easy it is to sort through the sources on there.

RootsMagic Source. Click for full size.

Here is the same source in Roots Magic. Here’s my question. Should I really separate the censuses by county? In Roots Magic this could mean 15 different sources for the 1860 US Census alone. How do you organize your sources in Roots Magic? Here’s another wrench, how do you solve the problem of recording other families. I’ve been reading all over that I should be also noting the neighboring families. I can go back and do that no problem, but how exactly do you record that in your program without making a source citation completely ridiculous?

Please help this clueless, fumbling genealogist. My misadventures are getting very frustrating lately!

Tombstone Tuesday: The Mays Family

Posted on by Kathleen
Mays Family Tombstone. Bethel, Ohio.

There are a few reasons that I chose to highlight this tombstone. In all my hijinks into my family history, I have stumbled onto learning how to do certain things. One of the first things I realized is that even official records can be wrong. I’ve also learned that spelling doesn’t matter in the early and late 1800s.

An important thing to remember about tombstones is that they aren’t always accurate. Take the example above. The names are mostly right, spelling mistakes aside. I also need to state that the death years are all correct (hard to get that wrong, right?)

  1. Ralph (1924-1952): Everything here is correct.
  2. John (1853-1927):  His death certificate states his birth year as 1842. Since John is living in the 1850 census and listed as age 5, either date could be wrong but 1853 is more wrong then 1842.
  3. Cecilia (1842-1914):  I’ve only seen her referred to as Celia or Cela. That could be a shortened nickname but I might never know unless I find her birth record. Her death record also lists her birth date differently. I have 1840 and her age in censuses always matches that.
  4. Harmon (1872-1952): Everything here is correct too!
  5. Ivah (1897-1949): Iva’s name has been spelled a million different ways and that’s not including her maiden name (Moyer/Meyer/Myers). Once again I have her death certificate and her birth date is listed as 1894 and not 1897. The 1900 census actually gives her birth date as Sep 1894 too, which is spot on with her death certificate!

So basically what I’m saying is don’t always trust the tombstone. You never know who was giving the information at the time of your ancestor’s burial. In fact, it’s usually the same person giving the information for the death certificate. That’s why I’m so surprised the death certificates and tombstone varies so much here.

Florence Redford-Moore's tombstone. July 2010

In fact, even newer tombstones can be a bit wrong. This is my grandmother’s tombstone inscription. Everything is spot on except the fact that she was actually born on April 13 and not April 15. Oops! Be sure your family knows that they can come to you for correct dates!

Tombstone Tuesday is a blogging theme used by many GeneaBloggers.

Mystery Monday: Another Couple

Posted on by Kathleen

Mystery Couple

What I know about this photograph:

  1. The couple is connected to the Thorward side of my family.
  2. They are the same couple from this Mystery Monday post.

What I want to know about this photograph:

  1. Everything else :p
  2. Who are they?
  3. How are they connected to the family?

Mystery Monday is a weekly series I do on Mondays. It is also a blogging theme used by other GeneaBloggers. Feel free to post about your own mysteries and maybe someone will be able to solve it someday!

Gladys Crisp

Posted on by Kathleen
1930 Census. Roy Williams household. Rowan County, KY

I’ve been looking for various Crisp children in the 1930 census. I finally found Gladys (child of Jacob Crisp) living in the household of Roy Williams as a lodger. I noticed that there is a child, Roy, listed. For a minute I was sure it was Gladys’ son because it shows his last name as being the same as Gladys’ and it says Lodger son. Taking a minute to view the rest of the incoming information, I realized that maybe there was a miscommunication, because Roy shared a name with his mother’s landlord.

I left the two other households in the image because Caudill and Puckett families actually married into the Crisp family also.

Kentucky Birth Index, 1911-1999

This led me to the Kentucky Birth Index on Ancestry. With such a big Kentucky family tree, I really love this index. You can see above that I find Gladys’s son Roy Fultz in the index. So this brings up more questions. My next step would be to look for a marriage between Gladys and a Fultz. There isn’t a marriage index for that time period so I’ll have to add that to my Kentucky research trip list.

My Family File

Interestingly enough, Gladys’ mother was actually a Fultz.