Category: 12 Steps of a Problem

About 2 weeks ago, I had a conundrum with George Yohn/George Thorward. The next step in my dilemma was to ask questions. Who else should I ask but my Grandpa Moore! The thing is I’ve had a lot of genealogy conversations over the years and the one thing I forget to do is take notes. I don’t know why I fail to do it everytime. It is what it is. This time was different though.

My next step in this process? Actually having specific questions first. I just realized out of the many, many hours I’ve talked family history with my Dad’s side of the family, we’ve never discussed the Moores except for a little nugget Aunt Lori had for me. So I need to ask Grandpa about what he remembers about the Moores. Then I need to verify the dairy information he gave me last time because I wasn’t clear on it before.

The inset of the picture above is awhat my original notes look like. I am a messy note taker but I can’t stand trying to read those kind of notes on a regular basis. So I got myself a separate notebook just for my neat notes.

I even took both sets of notes with my handy archival pen! I’m learning here folks! Slowly but surely!

When I was a kid, my Mom used to hate taking us to the store. It was a guarantee that one of us would get caught in the excitement at whatever store we were at, and we’d lose track of her. More than once my Mom has told the story of my sister walking into columns at the store, despite numerous warnings of  “Amanda. Amanda. Watch out Amanda. AMANDA.” BAM. Of course I never did that… I did use to follow the wrong Mom around the store though… Okay so I did that last week.

Never has this handicap of ours become more apparent then it did today. I have a few hours to myself. So I decided to finally add some tombstone photos I took at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell to Find A Grave. First thing I noticed when reviewing the photos I’d added a few years back was that I missed a few! Somehow when I got all the Thorward photos from my very helpful Photo Volunteer, I forgot to add some of them! He left it to me, and look what happens!

It was shortly after adding Frank Thorward and his wife to the site that I noticed something. Do you see in the sidebar where it says “Find all THORWARDs in”? Well, that’s something that I’m sure has been there all along, but this is the first time I’ve ever noticed it. Please try not to hold it against me, you’ve seen I have a handicap of sorts.

Since I was working on the Thorwards and it isn’t a common surname, I decided to click on New Jersey instead of a lower area.

Only 12 Thorwards came up and 11 of them were added by me in Prospect Hill Cemetery! That 12th name at the bottom looks familiar too!

It just so happens, this is Frank S Thorward’s son. In Mercer County, New Jersey where I probably wouldn’t have known to look for him. The only thing that keeps me from being completely angry at my own inattentiveness is the fact that this record was only added in July.

So please remember the lesson I’ve learned… Always pay attention to ALL features of a website. I only went through 3 steps here, but I’m sure as I learn and venture more I’ll come across more instances.