Greta's Genealogy Bog

Live from Falls Church, Virginia: It’s the iGene Awards!

2012-01-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

As I get into the limousine to go to the iGene Awards on this cold day in January, I reflect on my oeuvre for the previous year and the award-winning posts.

It was a quiet year for me. I did not write as much as usual and focused my efforts more on getting my house, research, and life organized and on reporting the results of my research, as shown in Great Cleaning Frenzy and “What I Learned Wednesday” posts.

So the iGene Award-winning posts from 2011 are a little on the light side. To indulge in some compensatory egoboo, I am therefore planning on attending, right after the iGene Awards, the 2011 GeneaBlogJournalism Awards, which were invented by me to avoid viewing a screening of that godawaful reality show, “Greta’s Pity Party.”

So, here I am, in the audience, watching the acceptance speeches. There’s someone railing about the divide between professionals and amateurs. Now another is thundering something about bad punctuation in citations. The next one .... zzzzzzz ..... (snort) - huh? Oh, is it my turn?

This years iGene Awards for Greta’s Genealogy Bog go to:

The iGene Award for Best Picture goes to:

“This Is the Face of Genealogy.” It was one of those moments when the entire Genealogy Blogging Community pulled together to protest an insulting portrayal of genealogy and of an entire segment of the population. The careworn face of the subject of this picture - my great-grandmother Angeline Elizabeth Matlock Floyd - epitomizes what I and so many of my fellow genealogists are searching for: not rich/famous/eminent ancestors to brag about, but plain, ordinary people who in their perseverance and endurance made our lives, our way of life, and our many opportunities possible.

[A few raised fists, peace signs, and thumbs up are seen from sympathetic genealogy researchers in the audience.]

The iGene Award for Best Screenplay goes to:

“Memory Monday: We Were the Brady Bunch of Cat Families.” This fluffy little musical comedy, and in particular its feline cast, has captured hearts near and far. Nothing profound here, but the story is universal: the challenges of blended families - and families are what genealogy is all about, aren’t they? Cast: Michael Cera and Ellen Page as the clueless parents, and a talented but anonymous bunch of cats as, well, the cats.

[A critic in the eighth row writes: “Once again, the award goes to an inconsequential crowd-pleaser.”]

The iGene Award for Best Documentary goes to:

“Julius Koehl Address Study,” which demonstrated lessons learned about locating and mapping your families’ places of residence by showing rather than simply telling. “Special Effects” of this post included Google Maps and photographs and an eye-popping chart that follows the documentary trail.

[Momentary disruption by a protestor in the back carrying a sign: “We Want Citations, Not Flashy Effects!” “Hey, jerk!” I yell out. “The citations are IN the effects!”]

The iGene Award for Best Biography goes to:

“The Civil War and My Ancestors,” a somber and very loooong overview of my Southern ancestors’ involvement in the Civil War, including Civil War service records and other relevant records I have found, whether or not they were slaveholders, and their views (if known) on slavery and the Union. A controversial choice since it consists merely of snippets of the individual lives of many different ancestors.

[A critic in the second row writes: “Why, oh why, must they always give this award to the longest and most snooze-worthy entry?”]

The iGene for Best Comedy goes to:

“Things I Don’t Care About in Genealogy,” a facetious rant by a genea-comedienne, riffing on all of the things she finds partially or totally irrelevant to the pursuit of genealogy. (After considering a whole roster of irritating comedic actresses, I’m gonna flatter myself with a glam and witty casting choice: Ellen de Generes.)

[Some raucous hoots and whoops from the crowd, which is now a little squiffed after imbibing.]

And the most important awards of all - the GeneaBloggers Act of Genealogical Kindness Award - goes to three of my favorite genealogy bloggers:

Becky Jamison of Grace and Glory - for taking and sending me pictures of the graves of some of my relatives through the Brinlee line.

Jasia of Creative Gene - For thinking up and hosting the Carnival of Genealogy and the iGene Awards, events which inspire and unite the genealogy blogging community as well as showcasing their talents.

Anonymous - Yes, that’s right - this kind blogger did me a great big favor - unsolicited, I might add - but prefers to remain anonymous. You know who you are and you rock.

***

Spoiler Alert: Here are the results of the GeneaBlogJournalism [GBJ] Awards, which are given for exposes, editorials, and other random rants opinion pieces:

“The Law and Order Method of Genealogy”

“Genealogy Monopoly”

“Toward a Genealogical Democracy”

“Sharing and Scholarship”

“The Junk in my Yard”

“Why I Want to Remain an Amateur”

I gotta say, the GBJ Awards will never give the iGene Awards a run for their money - GBJ folks take themselves much too seriously and turn the whole thing into a snoozefest. And since it is on Public TV, there isn’t even a decent potty commercial break during which you have time to make Tongue-Burnin' Supernachos or Uncle Jed’s Rip-Roarin' Party Mix to snack on.

SNGF: My Maternal Grandfather's Paternal Line

2012-01-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has a habit (not deliberate, of course, but oddly on the mark with some regularity) of pinging on my “obsessions” and “NEED TO DOs” in his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

This week is no exception, and it reminds me once again that I blew my chance this year to take advantage of the sale at Family Tree DNA.

The challenge is:

Find a living male person in your database from your maternal grandfather's patrilineal line who could take a Y-DNA test. Answer these questions:

1) What was your mother's father's name?

2) What is your mother's father's patrilineal line? That is, his father's father's father's ... back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

3) Can you identify male sibling(s) of your mother's father, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

The answers:

1 - Kirby Runion Moore.

2 - Kirby Runion Moore’s father was Harlston Perrin Moore (born 4 December 1845 in Anderson County, South Carolina, died 12 December 1921 in Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas). Harlston Perrin Moore’s father was William Spencer Moore (born ca 1813 in South Carolina, died 31 October 1871 in Anderson County, South Carolina). William Spencer Moore’s father was Samuel Moore (probably born between 1856 and 1865, died between 29 January 1828 and 2 June 1828 in Greenville County, South Carolina).

3 - I don’t need to identify one of my grandfather’s brothers; I have several Moore-surnamed male first cousins who could take this test.

And that’s the rub. I was mulling over taking advantage of the Family Tree DNA sale last year (both to get myself tested and to have one of my Moore cousins tested), but I blew it.

So now I’m feeling bad about it all over again. Thanks, Randy.

(JK - next time there is a sale, I REALLY mean to do this.)

Friday Finds and Fun: 27 January 2012

2012-01-27T05:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Kathleen at Moore-Mays.org for this one:The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. I have been using the Green-Wood Cemetery website for researching my husband’s families, but it didn’t occur to me that The Evergreens would also have a searchable database. I am really beginning to get into Brooklyn research the way I am into Southern research.

This week Marian Pierre-Louis asks “Where Do You Turn for Research Guidance?” and starts the list, which is filled out with lots of good resources suggested in the comments. From another angle, however, I have been musing this week about how we can learn research techniques from published family narratives. I happen to have three: John Philip Colletta’a Only a Few Bones, which I am currently reading; Steve Luxenberg’s Annie’s Ghosts, which I read recently; and Leslie Albrecht Huber’s The Journey Takers, which I read a while back (and which is currently loaned out, so I do not have it in the picture and have to recall the details - probably imperfectly - from memory).

It is interesting to compare the different approaches the books take in presenting their research and what can be learned from them. All three have end notes and all devote separate sections to distinguish the “dramatis personae.”

The narrative part of Colletta’s book is almost exclusively occupied by the story he uncovered in his research, with both posited and documented details, and only occasional mentions or hints of the sources and evidence behind the story. It is an interesting story, but for anyone researching in the locations where the story is set the goldmine is in the extensive endnotes. The endnotes paint an equally fascinating picture of how wide a researcher actually has to cast his or her net to get the whole story.

Luxenberg incorporates his sources and techniques into his story, though the endnotes elaborate on the sources and provide additional historical background. We genealogists and family historians often think of ourselves as detectives, and Luxenburg’s tale is a variation on this - in this case, we have a researcher who has the skills of/thinks like an investigative reporter. In addition to listing a few rather surprising sources, Luxenburg drives home the other essential quality genealogists/researches must have in addition to analytical skill: persistence - persistence in the face of obstacles, persistence in spite of discouragement, persistence when confronted by evidence that gives the lie to everything you thought you knew, and persistence to the point of chutzpah when necessary.

Leslie Albrecht Huber’s The Journey Takers picks up the themes of persistence and casting our nets wide and moves them into the realm of space and time, i.e., taking the initiative to go as far afield as you need to - to your ancestor’s homeland - and, as the years pass, to stick to following your ancestors’ paths, despite the interruptions of “real life.” She studies the language (German) of some of her ancestors, visits as many ancestral locations as possible, and immerses herself in their lives of long ago, even when the present persists in trying to pull her away.

So in addition to techniques, all three books point to a kind of ultra-commitment to the pursuit of our ancestors, something like the extreme effort put forth by the best athletes: do as much as you can and then do more, find everything you can find and then search some more, immerse yourself completely.

I Started an Online Tree Error, or (Mis)Using Blogs as Sources

2012-01-19T06:33:00.000-08:00

Oopsie.

I never meant any harm. We were all having such a good time, back in February of 2010. It was the Geneabloggers Games: sources were being cited, data was being backed up - there was activity all over the geneablogging community.

I was in the middle of work on the Norman family - the ginormongous family of J.M.C. Norman, to be exact. I started on the Newton Leonard Norman family. The oldest child was daughter Dissie.

My trusty guide in this endeavor was Inez Cline. Her Norman Family History, based on extensive interviews with numerous Norman family members, contained this one throwaway line on Dissie Norman: “b. Aug. 5, 1891 d. Oct. 9, 1908 m. Jack Norman, son of Jane. Her other son named Moore. No issue.” No one else had ever listed a husband for Dissie - because her last name never changed.

This led me to try to untangle an intriguing mystery - was Jack Norman related to “my” Normans? - and at every step of the way, another mystery would pop up, making the whole story almost Southern Gothic in its twists, turns, and possible scandals. Central to these mysteries was the identity of Sarah Jane “Aunt Jane” Norman: mother of Dissie’s husband Jackson Norman (apparently illegitimate), mother of Tom Peat Norman (most likely the illegitimate son of a member of a neighboring Moore family for whom Jane had worked as a servant), and finally, last wife of the colorful and oft-married Civil War veteran Zara Cotton.

I ended up writing an 8-post series on this for the Geneabloggers Games:

Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 1
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 2
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 3
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 4
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 5
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 6
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 7
Mystery Normans and Source Citations - Part 8

Part 5, dealing with my efforts to find Sarah Jane Norman’s family, is the misleading post: “I was starting to suspect that Norman was [Sarah] Jane’s maiden name. I went back to look at the entry for her in Findagrave, and was stunned to see a name there that I had somehow failed to see the first time: ‘Daughter of Louisiana Norman.’” “Not to jump to conclusions, but … Joseph Madison Carroll Norman had a sister named Louisiana.”

And this must be the origin of the error for which I am now responsible.

I found this error last night in someone’s Public Member Tree on Ancestry: Husband of Dissie Norman > Jack Norman. Mother of Jack Norman > Sarah Jane Norman. Mother of Sarah Jane Norman > Louisiana Norman. Parents of Louisiana Norman > Thomas S. Norman and Nancy Larue. Those are J.M.C. Norman’s parents. That makes this Louisiana Norman J.M.C.’s sister.

Uh-oh.

This is the only other public tree I have seen with a husband for Dissie Norman. And it is definitely the only tree listing J.M.C. Norman’s sister Louisiana as Sarah Jane Norman’s mother. And my blog is the only place where this relationship has ever been posited.

Note to person with this family tree. Honey, you need to read the entire series. Because in the last post I kind of busted this theory by finding a husband - John Norman - for this Louisiana/Lousa/whatever her name was: “And this John Norman was born in Alabama. That doesn’t mean that he was one of “my” Normans, but it doesn’t rule it out, either.”

So, for what it’s worth: Louisiana Norman, daughter of Thomas Norman and Nancy Larue, was not the mother of Sarah Jane Norman, mother of Jackson Norman who married Dissie Norman, daughter of Newton Leonard Norman.

That and a note to the owner of the Ancestry tree should fix it, right?

Who am I kidding. My half-baked (and busted) theory is going to be perpetuated for eternity.

Photo Tagging Follies

2012-01-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

My daughters like Pez. And they LOVE Lord of the Rings. So this seemed the ideal present.

iPhoto seems to recognize these guys as human. Except for Legolas and Gimli. But they do have faces.

It's the pictures like this one in iPhoto that make me scratch my head:

Friday's Finds and Fun: 13 January 2012

2012-01-13T04:52:00.000-08:00

This week’s theme is from resolutions into reality - where the rubber meets the road (i.e., some good tools to help us out):

Using Maps

Here is an interesting new site (which I found thanks to the Genealogy Insider): HistoryGeo.com (www.historygeo.com/) by Arphax - tools for using maps in your research: marker tools, search tools, etc. I haven’t given it a try, yet, but I am thinking of it since I have three of their books and find them to be excellent research aids.

Arphax books I have: Family Maps of Jersey County, Illinois; Family Maps of Greene County, Illinois; and Texas Land Survey Maps for Collin County, Texas

Here is the blurb:

“HistoryGeo.com is a subscription service available to PC and Mac users who need only a good internet connection and a common web-browser to access it. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome have all been approved for use.

HistoryGeo.com opens its doors with the immediate inclusion of all the maps in both the Family Maps and Texas Land Survey Maps series of books. These represent nearly 40,000 maps among twenty-three states, all of which display original land-ownership in the context of modern roads, waterways, and other features.

In addition to Arphax's proprietary map library, over 2,000 historical land-ownership maps from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska, and Kansas, have also been added. Plans are to increase the breadth of the HistoryGeo.com library to include all of the U.S. and eventually, the world.”

Subscription prices are $44 quarterly, $66 semiannually, $99 yearly. Hmmm....

A Great Organizational List

Michelle Goodrum at The Turning of Generations has written one of those blog posts that I felt I need to copy in its entirety into a new document: “21 COFH - 21 Resources for Organizing the Family Archive.”

Contacts from My Website!

This week I got my first two contact reports from my website, Greta’s Genealogy! There has already been a big “data exchange” between me and the author of one of the e-mails.

The Inevitable Off-Topic

Here is another language blog that I have subscribed to (the first is Lingua Franca, which is where I found the link to this one; the subject was “word rage” - oops, that hits a little too close to home....):

Language Log

The original article in Lingua Franca where I found the reference was “The Year of Occupy” - an article which in itself deserves reading, since it invites you to consider newly minted words such as “humblebrag” and “Kardash” (hint - it’s a unit of measurement).

Help Me Out Wednesday: 11 January 2012

2012-01-11T06:36:00.000-08:00

This week's question is:

Why would three guys sign a man's World War I Draft Registration card under the certification part? Could it have been because the man claimed "Eyes deficient" as grounds for exemption? The man in question is Marcus Lawson Kinsey (who married into my Norman family) and here are the signatures:

The signatures occur under the statement “I certify that my answers are true, that the person registered has read his own answers, that i have witnessed his signatgure, and that all of his answers of which I have knowledge are true, [except?] as follows:"

Input appreciated!

Distractions - This Explains It All

2012-01-10T16:15:00.000-08:00

My husband posted this on my Facebook page. Not that he's trying to give me a hint or anything.

Genealogy: A Trivial Pursuit?

2012-01-08T18:34:00.000-08:00

There is a stimulating and important conversation going on over at The Geneabrarian Reference Desk in “Eliminating the Hobby from Genealogy.” Not since a large number of posts appeared in the wake of RootsTech roughly a year ago and I wrote about my reaction to them in “Toward a Genealogical Democracy” have I been so compelled to “add my two cents.”

However, as I have tried to write down my take on this issue and the numerous associated issues it brings to mind, I see a chaotic whirl of thoughts that could turn into the monster post that became “Toward a Genealogical Democracy.”

So, instead, I propose to break this loaded and complex subject into two smaller posts: “Genealogy: A Trivial Pursuit?” dealing with the statement of the problem by Genebrarian; and “Genealogy: Vocation and Avocation,” dealing with issues raised by the commenters and possible ways professionals and dedicated amateurs can team up to overcome the problem.

In “Eliminating the Hobby from Genealogy,” Geneabrarian proposes the rebranding of genealogy from a “hobby” (something “nonessential, [...] an extra, a nice thing to have”) into a research method. I believe that Geneabrarian has correctly identified the potentially disastrous fallout from genealogy’s image as a “trivial pursuit”: “... lingering and catastrophic effects such as lower funding for local libraries and organizations that support genealogy collections, limited access to records on a all levels, and other fields looking down their nose at those "name collectors".”

There have been many issues igniting vigorous and heated discussion in the genea-blogosphere lately - the role of genealogical societies in the changing genealogy community, the importance of genealogy bloggers representing the field of genealogy in a worthy manner (and this one is directly related to the issue at hand), and the professional/amateur divide in genealogy, among others - but what concerns and alarms me more than anything is the continually eroding support for libraries and archives and the increase in misguided restrictions on access to records. It may irritate me that genealogical research does not get much respect, but the prospect of records being shut off from the public or even disappearing puts fear into my heart.

The ignorant stereotype of the genealogist/family researcher pops up in the printed media with a discouraging but predictable regularity. In the post “Book Review: The Genetic Strand” the Minnesota Family Historian gives a thumbs down to Edward Ball’s book, The Genetic Strand: Exploring A Family History Through DNA, and quotes the following passage from the book: “Genealogy, a search for family history, is practiced by millions of middle-aged and middle-class Americans, for whom it has traditionally been a way to snatch a bit of glory or a helping of fantasy from the past. It is, after all, the little activities, visiting libraries and surfing Web sites, that allow anyone to acquire "good genes." Most people who do family research are white, and most of them look for ancestors with the goal to unearth the whitest, most moneyed forebears they can. That is one definition of good genes.”

Of course, elsewhere we can find more positive portrayals of the pursuit of genealogy. The Geneabrarian points to the TV show Who Do You Think You Are as a venue wherein genealogy can “show itself to the public.” This is one of the reasons I would like for the show to place a bit more emphasis on the challenges of genealogical research and how much work goes into finding “small details” that lead the researcher to the answers he seeks. I am aware that not too much of this can be included in a show that has to be marketed to a broad audience, but even a few minor tweaks could paint a more realistic picture of what is actually involved in good research.

Ancestry’s current advertising campaign is singled out as another promotion of genealogy as an easy pursuit that can be practiced by anybody - no particular analytical skills or long hours of research required. As opposed to Ball’s broad-brush slander of the motivations of genealogists and family historians, these commercials pander to the “genealogy as a pursuit of the non-intellectual” stereotype. It seems that both those who despise us and those who court us are intent on pushing our beloved pursuit into the realm of triviality.

So what can we do? The Genebrarian and those who commented on her post have pointed out some of the difficulties we confront in dealing with this problem and have also touched on the areas where efforts need to be applied to find solutions. I hope to make some constructive (and realistic) suggestions in my next post.

I would like to thank Genebrarian for her eloquent post and for inspiring such a lively discussion!

How NOT to Jump-Start Your Genealogy

2012-01-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

1. Get an iPad. No, really. And I don’t even have Angry Birds. There are so many wonderful apps for the iPad: Pandora Radio, Snapseed photo app, Flipboard, the Weather Channel, iTunes, and many more.

But wait, you say - how about the Ancestry and Reunion apps, Google Earth, the neat genealogy books you can load onto the readers, and a whole host of apps with genealogy relevance?

Oh, yeah. But first I have to check out the App Store, put a good station on Pandora Radio or crank up the iTunes, read my blogs ... you know.

And then it gets late.

2. Have cats. They play on their new condo, fight over Prime Real Estate (= my lap), knock my charts and papers off the table, and constantly demand to be fed and loved. Am I going to enter that ancestor into my database or kiss R.B.’s nose?

And then it gets late.

Distraction, Thy Name Is Cat

3. Work by an open window. The sun is shining, there is a bit of a breeze making the wind chimes go bing-bong-bing, a nuthatch is hanging upside down on the bird feeder, and the squirrels are playing tag.

And then it gets late.

4. Work to music. I really work best to music. So I put on iTunes or Pandora, and some of my favorite music cycles on. I think: “I should see if I can find this group on YouTube.” So I look it up, find a clip, and play it. And then YouTube suggests more interesting music in the same vein. And I click on it. And I keep on clicking.

And then it gets late.

And then I see “Popular Clips.” And I see “Kitten in a Hamster Ball.”

And then it gets really late.

5. Have Facebook, Google+, or Twitter accounts. I don’t have to detail this one for you. You know what happens. It gets late.

But it’s a new year now, time for a new start. So I am going to crawl upstairs to my office, pull down the shades on the window, keep the music off, put away the iPad and ...

Oh, look! The cats have all run to the window! There’s a squirrel on the bench, looking inside, and ....

Friday's Finds and Fun: 6 January 2012

2012-01-06T05:28:00.000-08:00

So, in the spirit of Amy Coffin’s (We Tree Genealogy Blog) “Abundant Genealogy” theme for 2012, here are some things, mostly genealogy-related, that I’m happy to have found this week:

The picture above was taken by me and altered using the iPad app called Snapseed. I found this app featured on the blog iPad Insight, which mentioned that it could be downloaded free for one day (it usually costs $4.99). (I now know why the phrase “free apps” makes some people’s hearts beat faster....) With Snapseed you can manipulate an image in various ways as well as apply various “effects” such as Drama, Vintage, and Grunge. I can’t remember, but I think I used one of the Drama settings on the picture above (you can see the unaltered image in “Greenville 1 - Swamp Rabbit Trail”).

What does this have to do with genealogy? Well, um, it’s a neat tool to use in digital scrapbooking!

BTW, iPad Insight is a useful blog for learning how to get the most out of your iPad. I learned about this blog on Midge Frazel’s technology blog, Beyond the Horizon (“Got a New iPad?”).

The next recommendation is for Cemetery Census, a website which has an impressive compilation of cemetery surveys for the counties of North Carolina and Virginia. Thanks to Ginger Smith of Genealogy by Ginger's Blog for highlighting this site in a comment on the post “When Even Vital Records Can’t Be Trusted” on Missy Corley’s Bayside Blog. Findagrave and Interment.net are great sites, but they don’t have everything, and for those who research in North Carolina and Virginia, this is an excellent addition.

And finally, this month’s Fairfax Genealogical Society Newsletter mentions that Linda MacLachlan (the dynamic leader of the Society’s New England SIG) has a new publication: New Copies of Old Records From New Hebron, Connecticut: 1708-1875 (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2011). According to the Newsletter, “Linda discovered original Connecticut township records that are not available in the Barbour Collection or on LDS microfilms. Working with town clerks, she found previously unpublished birth and marriage records.”

Hope these are helpful!

Help Me Out Wednesday: 4 January 2012

2012-01-03T17:43:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in the previous post on my 2012 genealogy and blogging goals, I would like to devote a number of posts to “giving and receiving” from the genealogy blogging community. “Giving” would be sharing helpful sources, websites, tools, etc. that I have found (Friday’s theme), and “receiving” would be drawing on the expertise of readers and fellow genealogy bloggers (Wednesday’s theme).

(This is somewhat in the spirit of what promises to be a 2012 trend among genealogy bloggers - the “buddy system.” I have been tempted in the past to participate, and in light of my failure to reach my goals from previous years, this would probably be very beneficial to my research. However, I do not wish to make promises that I cannot keep, and I am afraid that a big increase in work responsibilities may be the wrench in the works that that would make me a very poor partner who could not keep up her end of the deal.)

The question I would like to pose for today is:

Does anyone out there have experience in successfully syncing a large Reunion family file to the Reunion App on an iPad?

I received an iPad for Christmas and have installed the Reunion App on it. The instructions for syncing my Reunion files to the iPad are simple (go to Tools and click on “Sync”) and indicate that it is to be done via wi-fi, not through a USB connector. However, while the syncing process did appear to be underway, it never really got anywhere, that is, the little bar thingy never got any farther than about 25% complete.

Could the problem be that one of my family files is too big? If so, should I divide it up before trying to sync?

Advice appreciated!

A New Year - A New Attitude: 2012 Genealogy Goals

2012-01-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

2011 in Review

The great clean-up is over. New junk, dirt, and mess creep into the house, but it’s not overwhelming. The genealogy files are in decent shape, though photographs and mementos need some work. In 2011 I found some neat new tools and a lot of new information on my husband’s ancestors, but research on my own families has been very sluggish.

Figuring out how to do my family trees on my Weebly website (Greta’s Genealogy) was a significant move forward for me, even though entering information did take away from research time. I can see that it will be a good way to share information as well as a way to make me organize my information and sources. I also made greater use of Google Maps, especially in combination with address studies for particular ancestors or families.

Transcription was a great failure from last year’s resolutions (which term, note, I am no longer using, having switched to “goals”). I’m hoping that a focus on “getting all the stuff” for a particular person or family will cut things down to size: find document, log document, digitize and organize document, transcribe document, analyze document, record findings, and blog about findings. Make sure new information and conclusions are properly reflected in my genealogy program, Ancestry tree (when possible), and Greta’s Genealogy.

What Needs to Be Done in 2012

I still have to work on the time thing: What are the best ways to carve out time, even small scraps, and what can I do on days when I come home from work exhausted?

Research

I hope that my research and reporting goals are sufficiently modest for this year: Consolidate the information on my Reunion program, Ancestry Public Member trees, and Weebly website up through the great-great grandparent level and complete my Genealogy Toolboxes on Greta’s Genealogy and Greta’s Genealogy Blog. Be ready by next year to start the real research challenges: the Moore, Floyd, and Lewis families, and my Lizzie Smith brick wall.

Blog

My blog is no longer the time-sucker it used to be, but I still believe I need to make greater use of it as a research tool, particularly to highlight and organize my research, with somewhat higher posting frequency while keeping the quality and relevance up. A couple of features I would like to run regularly:

1. Question(s) of the Week: In these posts I hope to take advantage of the knowledge of this blog’s readers and my fellow genealogy bloggers by posting my latest problems and conundrums, particularly questions on where to find information and how to use technology.

2. Flip #1 around to (I hope) pay back readers and other genealogy bloggers who have helped me out by reporting on information, tools, events, etc. that have been useful to me me: books, posts on other blogs, websites, lectures and webinars, etc.

That’s it. Keep it simple.

For my readers in 2012: I hope you find joy in your research, inspiration in your blogging, and happiness in your “real” life. You continue to make blogging one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of my life.

Put It All Together

2011-12-25T00:16:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

An Ornament a Day - Day 24

2011-12-24T07:42:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... big, bold colors.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 24: Christmas Eve - Holy Supper

An Ornament a Day - Day 23

2011-12-23T05:48:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... pretty color combinations. Blue and green is a favorite.

The Genealogy Community: Where Everybody Knows Your Names

2011-12-22T19:05:00.000-08:00

In this week’s Open Thread Thursday on Geneabloggers, Thomas MacEntee writes about “Defining the Genealogy Community” and cites some recent posts that have inspired a lot of discussion:

“The Genealogy Paradigm Shift: Are bloggers the new “experts”?” (Planting the Seeds)

“Are Bloggers Really the New Experts?” (Marian’s Roots and Rambles)

“Genea-Bodies: The New Somebodies” (Luxegen Genealogy and Family History)

I am no expert, though last week I did receive a lovely message from someone who had found one of my Public Member Trees on Ancestry, thanking me for the information I had provided on a particular family that she had despaired of getting the “911” on in time to get it to an elderly aunt for Christmas: “You must be a genealogist!”

You are so kind to think so and to say so, but I am not - not a professional or even an advanced amateur. Perhaps I am in the early intermediate phase, but for that I have to thank the people who write some excellent genealogy books, who run my local genealogy society, who put on the NGS and FGS conferences, who produce Webinars, who run the genealogy rooms at the libraries I visit, who write to me and provide me with information because they have seen my blog, my website, and my online queries, and my fellow genealogy bloggers, a number of whom I think of and refer to as friends.

I do think there is a recognizable genealogy community, and I include all of these people in it - even if they belong to subcommunities that are completely separate or have only the minutest of Venn diagram overlap with one another.

While the lofty leaders of the community - the top dogs/super-achievers/ professionals/trendsetters of genealogy - may not hang out with the lowest circles of the community - the proliferators of those dubious, deathless, endlessly duplicated online trees - they write the books that may help to turn a newbie or two from a tree copier into a real researcher.

Again, I am not an expert and I do not think that I am a trendsetter. I did not start blogging to become a trendsetter. Yes, I blog about my research. That was the original purpose of the blog and continues to be its main purpose: to further my research.

Should readers take my musings and comments as professional-level advice? Certainly not. I even wrote a post not too long ago entitled “Why I Want to Remain an Amateur.”

What I can offer to the genealogy community is the experience and the point of view of a dedicated amateur - and I think that there is a need for this in the genealogy community:

The companies need to hear what we amateurs like/do not like, can use/cannot use, and will pay for/will not pay for (and that even a very tech-savvy segment of the Genealogical Community will revolt when there is even a whiff of a “No Books” policy).

The professionals need to hear what we amateurs still very much need from the professionals: education, an example to emulate, and yes, services to avail ourselves of when we just cannot get any farther with a particular line of research or need someone to help us navigate the process for admission to a lineage society.

Our fellow amateurs need to hear our expressions of commiseration/ congratulation/empathy and our descriptions of our own research methods, experiences, sources, and much more. What I like most about the Genealogy Community, in its best embodiment, is that everyone can learn from everyone else, professional and amateur alike. An amateur may hold an important document, compile a set of graveyard transcriptions, write about a recent repository where procedures have changed, or share a particular memory that can advance a professional’s research. I wrote about some of these thoughts in two previous posts: “Toward a Genealogical Democracy” and “Sharing and Scholarship.”

What the genealogy blogging subcommunity has offered back to me and to others like me - thanks to some very perceptive, active, and involved people leading the way - has been the big surprise. Friendship, support, instruction, the courage and confidence to branch out and try things I never would have tried before, and especially the sense that I can have a voice and make even a small contribution to improvements in the area of genealogy services, records preservation and availability, and recognition of the educational value of genealogical research. While there are experts among us, I think the kind of influence we may wield as a group is more like that of an advocate, whether a consumer advocate or a public advocate, than that of an expert.

A final thought: Who are the members of the Genealogy Community? They are the people you can talk to about a subject of passionate interest to you - genealogy - and they will not yawn, laugh, or roll their eyes.

As far as I am concerned, everybody in the Genealogy Community is a Somebody.

(Even the Tree Copiers? - Well, take a look sometime at the most recent generations in those trees - occasionally there is a nice surprise or two there.)

An Ornament a Day - Day 22

2011-12-22T06:02:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... silver starbursts.

An Ornament a Day - Day 21

2011-12-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... ornate patterns in gold.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 21: Christmas Music

An Ornament a Day - Day 20

2011-12-20T06:31:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... rich, deep blues.

An Ornament a Day - Day 19

2011-12-19T05:19:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... sand dollar art.

An Ornament a Day - Day 18

2011-12-18T06:08:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... old-fashioned fabric balls.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 18: Christmas Stockings

Surname Saturday: Charles Robert Brinlee and Patty Avo Poindexter

2011-12-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

Charles Robert Brinlee
b. 30 Oct 1877, Texas
d. 11 Nov 1959, Los Banos, Merced County, California
& Patty Avo Poindexter
b. 16 Aug 1881, Austin, Travis County, Texas
d. 26 Sep 1977, Merced County, California
|--Clyde Lester Brinlee
|----b. 27 Jan 1900, Oklahoma
|----d. 11 Apr 1960, Firebaugh, Fresno County, California
|---& Alma Belle Graybill
|----b. 11 Mar 1900, Fincastle, Botetourt County, Virginia
|----d. 8 Feb 1986, Firebaugh, Fresno County, California
|----m. 10 Jan 1921
|--Montie Mary Brinlee
|----b. 28 Apr 1901, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|----d. Feb 1996, Elk City, Beckham County, Oklahoma
|---& Perry Hollis Ivy
|----b. 2 Mar 1899, Texas
|----d. Feb 1985, Elk City, Beckham County, Oklahoma
|----m. 8 Feb 1921
|--Una Fay Brinlee
|----b. 18 Feb 1903, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|---& Brit E. Lippencott
|----b. 9 Oct 1892, Texas
|----d. 6 Jun 1977
|--Francis Brinlee
|----b. 5 Nov 1905, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|----d. 3 Nov 1909, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|--Ellen Brinlee
|----b. 3 Nov 1907, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|----d. 28 Mar 1910, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|--Vivian Verne Brinlee
|----b. 20 Dec 1910, Cheyenne, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 18 Feb 1977, Sacramento County, California
|---& Virena Lambert
|--Clarence Omer “Runt” Brinlee
|----b. 28 Jul 1912, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 26 Sep 1993, Merced County, California
|--Erma Lavada Brinlee*
|----b. 17 May 1915, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 15 Aug 1999, Fallon, Choctaw County, Oklahoma
|---& Dee Boswell
|----b. 21 Feb 1906, Rotan, Fisher County, Texas
|----d. 28 Jan 1962, Apache Junction, Maricopa County, Arizona
|--Erma Lavada Brinlee*
|----b. 17 May 1915, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 15 Aug 1999, Fallon, Choctaw County, Oklahoma
|---& Cyril James Howarth
|----b. 29 Aug 1908, Silkstone, Yorkshire, England
|----d. 17 Feb 1977, Palermo, Butte County, California
|--Charles Elmer “Tuffy” Brinlee
|----b. 31 Mar 1920, Streeter, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 30 May 1997, Los Banos, Merced County, California

Charles Robert Brinlee was the son of Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Petit.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

An ornament a Day - Day 17

2011-12-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... old-fashioned glass ornaments.

An Ornament a Day - Day 16

2011-12-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... long, spindly, pointy ones.

An ornament a Day - Day 15

2011-12-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... sparkly ones.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 15: December Birthdays

Spinoff! Spinoff!

2011-12-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

Definitely would like to see a spinoff series from tonight's CSI episode, "Genetic Disorder," with Pamela Reed as the genealogist-investigator who gets drawn into a different mystery from week to week through her genealogical research business. It's an idea whose time has come. And it has a built-in audience.

I enjoyed the episode tonight and especially the positive portrayal of genealogists and people who are interested in genealogy. It also included the "dark side" of research that many of us have encountered - digging up family secrets that many people would prefer to see left alone.

An Ornament a Day - Day 14

2011-12-14T05:37:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... pictures of my kids. Especially if they made the ornaments.

Last year's Advent Calendar post.

Advent Calendar Day 14: Fruitcake

An Ornament a Day - Day 13

2011-12-13T04:53:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... saints and icons.

An Ornament a Day - Day 12

2011-12-12T14:22:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... onion domes.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 12 - Volunteering: Teaching Old Church Slavonic to Third Graders

FootnoteMaven's Tradition of Blog Caroling: Heaven and Earth

2011-12-11T06:37:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Footnote Maven for hosting Blog Caroling!

Heaven and Earth (Nebo i Zemlya)

Heaven and earth, heaven and earth
Now welcome their Redeemer.
Angels and people, angels and people
Join in celebration.

Salvation is begun, born is the Virgin’s Son;
Angel’s voices ringing, Wise Men gifts are bringing;
Shepherds tell the story; star proclaims the glory;
Christ is born in Bethlehem.

In Bethlehem, in Bethlehem
God’s Word is given birth.
Born of a virgin, born of a virgin,
Master of heav’n and earth.

Salvation is begun, born is the Virgin’s Son;
Angel’s voices ringing, Wise Men gifts are bringing;
Shepherds tell the story; star proclaims the glory;
Christ is born in Bethlehem.

Nebo i zemlya, nebo i zemlya
Nyni torzhestvuyut.
Anhely i lyude, anhely i lyude
Veselo sprazdnujut.

Christos rodilsya, Boh voplotilsya,
Anhely spivayut, Tsariye vitayut.
Poklon otdayut, pastyriye hrajut,
Chudo, chudo povidayut.

Vo Vifleyemi, vo Vifleyemi
Vesela novina.
Chistaya D’iva, Chistaya D’iva
Porodila Syna.

Christos rodilsya, Boh voplotilsya,
Anhely spivayut, Tsariye vitayut.
Poklon otdayut, pastyriye hrajut,
Chudo, chudo povidayut.

Below the carol is sung by the St. Nicholas Church Choir of St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church in Barberton, Ohio.

An Ornament a Day - Day 11

2011-12-11T05:58:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... painted wooden dolls.

An Ornament a Day - Day 10

2011-12-10T04:55:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... Russian dolls.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 10: Gifts

(As a P.S. to this post, I did get a new Kitchenaid.)

An Ornament a Day - Day 9

2011-12-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... Nutcracker Soldiers.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 9: Why We Will Never Have a Conventional Crèche

An Ornament a Day - Day 8

2011-12-08T04:38:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... angels.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 8: Christmas Cookies

An Ornament a Day - Day 7

2011-12-07T04:09:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... rabbits. Especially this very special rabbit, Mosby. He belonged to our daughters' second grade teacher, and this ornament was her Christmas gift to the students when our younger daughter was in second grade. Mosby was loved by all; the janitorial staff even built and painted the neatest rabbit house ever for him, with beautiful painted vines and windows on it.

A Blog with Baylor County, Texas Roots!

2011-12-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

The other day I was very happy to find the blog Moments in Time, A Genealogy Blog by Diana Quinn. Of course, I am always thrilled to find blogs with roots in areas where I research, but that covers most of the South, a bit of New England, and, for my husband’s family, New York and New Jersey. But to find someone researching in Baylor County, the area where my mother was born and grew up (and which also has a few distant family branches from my father’s side) and a county which has never had more than a few thousand residents, is a real treat.

Diana’s family research extends well beyond Texas; recent posts connected with Irish research deal with the Irish Uprising.

An Ornament a Day - Day 6

2011-12-06T04:24:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

matryoshka-style Santas

marionette Santas (and a marionette Nutcracker Prince who snuck in somehow?)

standing Santas - any old Santa, Father Christmas, or Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) will do. Love 'em.

And I am a true believer in Santa - read about it in the 2008/2009 post, "Advent Calendar Day 6: I KNEW It! I KNEW Santa Was Real!"

An Ornament a Day - Day 5

2011-12-05T04:17:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... reindeer.

An Ornament a Day - Day 4

2011-12-04T04:14:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

...hobby horses and merry-go-round horses.

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 4: Christmas Cards

Surname Saturday: James Raymond Jones and Sarah Alice Brinlee

2011-12-03T18:06:00.000-08:00

James Raymond Jones

b. 10 Mar 1876, Texas

d. 31 Dec 1931, Okmulgee, Okmulgee County, Oklahoma

& Sarah Alice “Allie” Brinlee

b. 20 Jul 1875, Erath County, Texas

d. 14 May 1959, Whittier, Los Angeles County, California

|--Daisy Jones

|----b. 25 Feb 1896, Indian Territory

|----d. 25 Jul 1920, Oklahoma

|---& Earl Wilson

|----b. 1889, Indiana

|--Raymond Jones

|----b. 1905, Oklahoma

|---& Anna

|----b. 1909, Arkansas

|--Eliza Jones

|----b. 1910, Coalgate, Coal County, Oklahoma

James Raymond Jones was the son of John Franklin Jones and Sarah Elizabeth Hefley; two of his brothers married two of Sarah’s sisters. Sarah was the daughter of Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Petit.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

An Ornament a Day - Day 3

2011-12-03T05:09:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... cats.

Hey, what's that last guy doing there? Oh, yeah, he likes to "help." By standing right on top of the ornaments I'm trying to photograph.

The gold-colored cat on the right in the first picture was taken from a belt I bought at a thrift store. We call that "Redneck Recycling."

Last Year's Advent Calendar Post (appropriately):

Advent Calendar Day 3: Christmas Tree Ornaments

An Ornament a Day - Day 2

2011-12-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... birds. All kinds and colors of birds, birds on the wing, perching berds. After all, what's a tree without birds?

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 2: Holiday Foods

An Ornament a Day - Day 1

2011-12-01T05:12:00.000-08:00

For the past two years I have participated in GeneaBloggers' Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories. This year, instead of repeating my posts, I have decided to feature a Christmas tree ornament each day from December 1 to December 25 and post a link to the original posts (I particularly recommend the December 6 post on Santa).

When it comes to ornaments, I like ...

... old-fashioned handmade ornaments. We bought this ornament (and two others similar to it in red and white) at a craft fair more than 25 years ago. These were so beautiful, I had to restrain myself from buying more than three - at $4 each, they seemed so expensive to me then....

Last year's Advent Calendar post:

Advent Calendar Day 1: The Christmas Tree

Acknowledgments of Gratitude

2011-11-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

My big Thanksgiving weekend activity has been to write the “Acknowledgments” page on my website, Greta’s Genealogy.

The reasoning and inspiration behind this page are explained at the top of the page (which I am including below).

Most if not all of us are aware of the importance of source citations, but how many of us also pay tribute to the people and things - documents, photographs, and other items passed on to us by these people - that initially led us to the sources?

In my genealogy program, on the “Notes” page for the family that starts off (genealogically, not chronologically) each new family line, I try to outline the people and previous research that laid the foundations for my own research. But right now I am the only person who sees these pages.

Family history books may contain an “Acknowledgments” section, but what if I never publish a book?

So I decided to do the next best thing - to publish such a page on my website. There are a lot of names on that page, and I know there should be a lot more. As I go through my e-mail and the “Correspondence” sections of my research binders and folders, more names will be added to this list. Here is what I have written so far:

Acknowledgements

When I started family research back in September 2005, I knew next to nothing - almost nothing about my ancestors beyond my grandparents, nothing about how to do genealogical research, and nothing about the vast amount of historical and genealogical resources that are available, both online as well as in repositories and a host of other places.

Very soon after I got started, however, I came into contact with people who were incredibly generous - with their information, expertise, photographs, and family stories and memories. Not all of these people will show up in my source citations or photo attributions, so I would like to express my gratitude to them on this page. There are so many of them that I may not remember them all right away, so like the rest of this website, this page will be a work in progress.

I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the following people:

Eunice Sandling - the cousin who actually sparked off my passion for family history with her History of the Floyd Family.

Paul Moore - the cousin who set the example when he passed Eunice's research and his Moore family tree to me.

The Dodd family - Jim, Pat, and Paula - for their great Floyd family research and preservation of Floyd family heritage, and for sharing it all with their Floyd cousins.

Carolyn Chamberlain Loffler - the cousin who passed so many family stories to me (who had heedlessly failed to pay attention to these stories when I was growing up) and has provided so much encouragement to me.

Jo Ann Sizer - my third cousin in the Moore family line, the first Moore family researcher I found outside of the cousins I grew up with, who had done so much research on the William Spencer Moore family, shared it all with me, and set the example for me in how to do family research.

Kim Wilson - a researcher who was working on families in the Anderson County, South Carolina area - not related to my Moores - who generously shared her information and expertise with me.

Howard and Judith Koehl - for sharing family memories with me and going to extraordinary lengths to share family photographs with me.

John Hornady - for what may be the most generous sharing of family materials of all - not just scans and copies, but original materials inherited from a Lewis family hero who had no direct descendants, so John passed them to me. For giving me a piece of history: I cannot thank you enough.

My Brinlee cousins - Raymond Parker, George Brinlee, Edna Rae Spencer, and Gale Wallen - for being first-rate researchers and for so many great pictures, including the only pictures of my Grandfather Lawrence Brinlee that I have ever seen.

A. Gayle Hudgens - besides setting a great example as a researcher and knowing a ton of interesting stuff about the Lewises, Gayle is one of the most enjoyable people to correspond with and talk to I have ever known. She makes the pursuit of finding one's family, both in the past and the present, a real pleasure.

Marianne Dillow - for sharing her wonderful Lewis family research with me.

Chuck Golden and Gary Brown - For sending me pictures, including the pictures which gave me my first glimpse of my great-great grandfather Joseph Madison Carroll Norman, and for sending me Inez Cline's History of the Norman Family.

Rebecca Cardwell Sibley - and her husband Danny and her mother Leota - for sharing a treasure trove of Norman research, for arranging to meet my husband and me on our way home from Charleston, South Carolina, and for being people that I'm honored to be related to.

To some wonderful Genea-Bloggers - Carol at Reflections from the Fence, Becky Jamison of Grace and Glory, and Cynthia Shenette of Heritage Zen - for being real Genea-Angels and doing some gigantic genea-favors for me - and at their own initiative. This is what makes the genealogy blogging community great!

Mary Lou Benjamin - for being a fabulous Fichtelmann researcher and sharing her research, and for being the one who figured out who Christine Fichtelmann's father was, and sharing that.

Mary Newton - for having written that all-important message board post that connected the William Spencer Moore and Bud Mathis Moore families, for sending me the Bud Mathis Moore family materials, and for putting me in touch with other Bud Mathis Moore descendants.

George Moore - for sharing some critically important Moore family history that led to some new discoveries.

Randy and Rich Floyd - for making that all-important connection from their New York Floyd branch, descendants of Ransom Floyd, to our Texas Floyd branch, descendants of George Floyd and for reaching out and sharing precious letters written by my great-grandfather Charles Augustus Floyd to their ancestor and by my grandmother's sister Lannie Angelina, who died in childbirth.

Paula Moore - for connecting her Freeman Manson Moore line with our William Spencer Moore and Bud Mathis Moore lines, for reaching out, and, with her sister Carolyn, making my first research trip one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life, let alone one which resulted in a huge find of Moore, Lewis, and even Tarrant materials.

Richard Van Dyke - for sharing wonderful memories of Bun and Square Brinlee.

Maria Fazio - for sharing Terrana-Davi family lore and documents with me.

Surname Saturday: Raligh H. Jones and Minnie Brinlee

2011-11-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

Raligh H. Jones
b. 15 Apr 1861, Illinois
d. bef 1930
& Minnie Brinlee
b. 20 Jul 1872, Erath County, Texas
d. 14 May 1959, Whittier, Los Angeles County, California
|--Nora Lee Jones
|----b. 13 Jul 1889, Texas
|----d. 20 Dec 1968
|---& Charles Alexander Whitaker
|----b. 1 Feb 1886, Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
|----d. 17 Oct 1966, Ada, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|----m. 14 Nov 1905, Roff, Indian Territory
|--Burl Mason Jones
|----b. 6 Oct 1891, Texas
|----d. 18 Sep 1967, Modesto, Stanislaus County, California
|---& Selma Sanders
|----b. 28 Apr 1897
|--Lena “Linnie” Jones
|----b. Dec 1894, Indian Territory
|----d. Oct 1995, Muskogee, Muskogee County, Oklahoma
|---& William Clyde Frazer
|----b. 28 Apr 1886, Kentucky
|--Earl Jones
|----b. 1903, Indian Territory
|--Lillie Jones
|----b. 1910, Oklahoma

Raligh Jones was the son of John Franklin Jones and Sarah Elizabeth Hefley. Minnie Brinlee was the daughter of Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Petit. Two of Raligh’s brothers married Married Minnie’s sisters: Herbert Shelton Jones married Elizabeth Ann Brinlee and James Raymond Jones married Sarah Alice “Allie” Brinlee.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Surname Saturday: John William Brinlee and Fetnah Ann Bull

2011-11-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

John William Brinlee
b. 16 Sep 1869, Texas
d. 29 May 1960, Florence, Fremont County, Colorado
& Fetnah Ann Bull
b. 23 Jul 1869, Texas
d. 9 Sep 1940, Denver, Adams County, Colorado
|--Ethel Mary Brinlee*
|----b. 31 Oct 1893, Erath County, Texas
|----d. 7 Oct 1971, Englewood, Arapahoe County, Colorado
|---& Ernest Chester Rowe
|----b. 22 Nov 1894, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|----d. 13 Apr 1919
|--Ethel Mary Brinlee*
|----b. 31 Oct 1893, Erath County, Texas
|----d. 7 Oct 1971, Englewood, Arapahoe County, Colorado
|---& Walter Clarence Crites
|----b. 22 Nov 1893, Rye, Pueblo County, Colorado
|----d. 13 Jan 1957, Denver, Adams County, Colorado
|--Eley Russell Brinlee
|----b. 9 Sep 1895, Erath County, Texas
|----d. 26 Jun 1900, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|--Evard Mason Brinlee
|----b. 29 Mar 1897, Chickasha, Grady County, Oklahoma
|----d. 30 Jan 1960, Akron, Washington County, Colorado
|---& Nannie Pamelia Brewer
|----b. 4 Sep 1900, Vernon, Wilbargar County, Texas
|----m. 4 Sep 1919, Durham, Roger Mills County, California
|--Ervil Luther Brinlee
|----b. 31 Aug 1899, Coal County, Oklahoma
|----d. 12 Jun 1987, Covina, Los Angeles County, California
|---& Blanche Elizabeth Penny
|----b. 16 Feb 1906, Rockvale, Fremont County, Colorado
|----d. 19 Nov 1994, Orange County, California
|--Elsie Maude Brinlee*
|----b. 28 Sep 1901, Phillips, Coal County, Oklahoma
|----d. 19 Mar 1975, Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California
|---& Maynard E. Collins
|----b. 15 Dec 1896, Sanburn, Iowa
|----d. Jul 1986, Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California
|----m. 29 Apr 1961, Los Angeles, California
|--Elsie Maude Brinlee*
|----b. 28 Sep 1901, Phillips, Coal County, Oklahoma
|----d. 19 Mar 1975, Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California
|---& Mark Roberts
|----b. 1898, Missouri
|--Earl John Brinlee
|----b. 12 Nov 1903, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 7 Jan 1905, Oklahoma
|--Erwin Charles Brinlee
|----b. 18 Mar 1906, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 29 Jul 1952, Florence, Fremont County, Colorado
|---& Adeline F. Jones
|----b. 1906
|----d. 29 Nov 1997
|----m. 8 Jun 1943
|--Eltah Mae Brinlee
|----b. 31 Aug 1908, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 13 Mar 1988, Canon City, Fremont County, Colorado
|--Edith Maggie Brinlee
|----b. 13 Mar 1911, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
|----d. 27 May 1995, Canon City, Fremont County, Colorado
|---& Roger Howard Nats
|----b. 7 Oct 1912, Fort Lupton, Weld County, Colorado
|----d. 16 Apr 1975, Williams, Coconino County, Arizona

This was a family who loved the letter “E.” John William Brinlee was the son of Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Pettit.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Fun Stuff You Can Do with Weebly

2011-11-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well, okay, you can almost certainly do this with other web hosting companies, too. But it’s really easy on Weebly, and that’s why I’m doing it.

I’ve been ~~playing around with~~ using Weebly to create a family tree/genealogy toolbox website - Greta’s Genealogy - about my ancestors and my husband’s ancestors. I am not using my genealogy program to do this, but am creating it page by page, link by link. This way, not only do I not have to wait until I can update my program to the latest version and learn how to use it to create web cards, I can tailor the pages the way I want to.

While it probably would have been enough just to put up the family lines, hanging out in the genealogy blogging community has had its effect: I knew I should somehow deal with the issue of sources.

But how? A number of genealogy programs that can be used to build a family tree website incorporate ways to include footnotes, where you can click on the footnote number and it will take you to the source citation.

I wanted something like that. I figured I would set up a source page, insert the footnote numbers on the family pages, and link them to the source page. But I decided I would like to add something more.

When I was creating family tree pages, I noticed that there are four different kinds of links that can be made:

1. Links to another website,
2. Links to another page on my website,
3. Links to a file on my website, and
4. Links to an e-mail address.

Number 3 was the one that interested me. You can, of course, insert images on the pages, but I don’t want to include too many images that will clutter up the pages; most of the images I will be using directly on the pages will probably be photographs.

So here’s how the links work:

Family page with footnotes (they are the small red things in this picture) (or you can link to this page here):

Clicking on the footnote number takes you to the source page (or you can link to the source page here):

The footnote is in turn linked to the image of the source (or you can see the source here):

So far I have just done one footnote, to see whether this works the way I want it to (it does). I can’t say that I’ll be adding every single footnote right away; I’m still doing a lot of experimentation, and I really do want to get the names out there as soon as possible. And that is working, too - I got my first Google Alert from the site the other day. As a matter of fact, it’s the first Google Alert I’ve received since I set up several earlier this year, so now I know that Google Alerts is working, too.

I am actually using my Reunion program for some of the items at Greta’s Genealogy. Right now I am using descendant reports for the pages of the siblings of my direct ancestors, and later I would like to have some cool charts to use, such as those Linda McCauley of Documenting the Details has put up on her family tree website, McCauley, Lanier, Hankins, Hopkins & Taylor Families. And she is not the only blogger I plan to ~~steal ideas from~~ emulate: Valerie Craft of the Begin with Craft blog has some neat features on her site, Begin with Craft - in particular I like the Google Maps there.

Sheesh, what a geek I am.

And that is my disclaimer: Weebly did not pay me anything to write this. They didn't have to; I just wanted to geek out. And to think - I probably wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if I hadn't started hanging out with the genealogy blogging crowd.

Wordless Wednesday: November Surprise

2011-11-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

Not that I'm gloating over our 60-degree weather or anything....

Blog Tweaks

2011-11-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

As I get back into my genealogy research and blogging routine, I have been making a few tweaks to Greta’s Genealogy Bog:

- A “Lookups I Can Do” page. This page lists books that I have in which I can do lookups; these fall into two main categories: county books (Anderson County in South Carolina, Baylor County in Texas, Collin County in Texas, and Garland County in Arkansas) and land deed books by A. B. Pruitt for Pendleton District/Anderson County and Greenville County.

- A link to my Weebly website, “Greta’s Genealogy.” Right now it has half of my Genealogy Research Toolbox. Eventually the Research Toolbox on this page and the Weebly site will both have the complete Toolbox. You will notice that some headings have no entries for them right now; that is because I am still in the process of adding my bookmarked sites to these pages.

I have also started putting up my family lines on the “Greta’s Genealogy” website. My original plan was to learn how to use my genealogy program to create the web pages, but since it is so simple to create and link pages using Weebly, I have decided to simply create this part of the website page by page. That may sound like a very labor-intensive process, but it is surprisingly a lot of fun.

- Some old items have been removed from the sidebar. A few were links to sites that no longer exist, and others were research-related links that you can now find in my Toolbox. I will probably leave the South Carolina and Texas links on the main paige of the blog, however.

Surname Saturday: Herbert Shelton Jones and Elizabeth Ann Brinlee

2011-11-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

Herbert Shelton “Dub” Jones
b. 22 Dec 1863, Hillsboro, Montgomery County, Illinois
d. 25 Oct 1957, Atoka, Atoka County, Oklahoma
& Elizabeth Ann Brinlee
b. 1867, Indiana
d. ca 1886, Hood County, Texas
|--Lela Sarah Jones*
|----b. 8 May 1884, Grandbury, Hood County, Texas
|----d. 8 Apr 1968, Coalgate, Coal County, Oklahoma
|---& Thomas Belase
|----b. 15 Apr 1880, Belton, Bell County, Oklahoma
|----d. 18 Aug 1964, Carnegie, Caddo County, Oklahoma
|----m. 11 Mar 1905
|--Lela Sarah Jones*
|----b. 8 May 1884, Grandbury, Hood County, Texas
|----d. 8 Apr 1968, Coalgate, Coal County, Oklahoma
|---& Joel Jasper Carlton
|----b. 6 May 1876, Boomer, North Carolina
|----d. 25 Aug 1918, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
|----m. 24 Apr 1900

This is the family of Herbert Shelton Jones, son of John Franklin Jones and Sarah Elizabeth Hefley, and Elizabeth Ann Brinlee, daughter of Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Petit. Elizabeth Ann’s sisters Minnie and Sarah Alice also married members of the Jones family. The big question for this family is the actual date of death of Elizabeth Ann Brinlee; family reports say that she died when daughter Lela Sarah Jones was about 18 months old. After Elizabeth Ann’s death, “Dub” Jones married his brother’s widow.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

The Problem With Google Reader

2011-11-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

I think I have figured out what my problem with Google Reader is. The last couple of days the post numbers were much closer to my usual 120-180 posts a day.

The problem is that it took at least two sessions to pile up these numbers, one in the morning and one in the evening. For the previous three days, however, only 100 to 108 posts were were in the reader when I opened it for a single reading session each evening.

It appears that Google Reader is dropping posts shortly after the number of posts reaches the 100 mark. I cannot just split up my reading, since during the workweek I have no time to do any reading before I leave for work. I’ll check again Monday to see whether the evening number is still near the 100 mark.

I checked my settings to see whether there was any limit on the number of unread posts, but I cannot find anything that seems to be relevant to my problem.

There may also be a backlog problem; see Amy Coffin’s comment to the post below.

Has anyone had a problem like this with Google Reader?

What Happened to All the Blogs I Was Following in Google Reader?

2011-11-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

I follow a lot of blogs. Each day Google Reader usually brings me anywhere from 120-180 unread posts.

Yesterday and today that number dropped to the 60s.

Did I infect everyone with my cleaning frenzy so that you are all taking time off from blogging to clean house and organize your offices?

I didn't think so.

Not that I'm paranoid or anything. Well, yes, I am paranoid. And I hate change - there, I said it.

I hate Google Reader's new look and the nightmare that it has become to navigate. Those scroll bars? Much clunkier than the old arrows, and it seems almost impossible to navigate up and down my subscription list.

As I read my 63 unread items today, I checked to make sure that it wasn't just Blogger-platform blogs that are included. Wordpress and private sites are there. So which blogs aren't there? I can't figure it out.

Where is my tinfoil hat?

I miss my blogs!

Any suggestions on other readers?

Why I Want to Remain an Amateur

2011-11-06T05:14:00.000-08:00

Our genea-blogging community has an amazing range and combination of people from all demographic groups (even young people, thank God!), all walks of life, many different countries and just about every state of the United States, and, what is quite impressive and interesting, all parts of the professional-to-amateur spectrum as well as genealogy newbies and old hands that have been doing genealogy for 50 years.

As the genealogy blogging community has gelled, developed, and assumed an increasingly recognizable and well-defined identity, it has been joined by an increasing number of professionals, and, if I am not mistaken, the proportion of “semi-pros” (extensive background in research, solid skills, but not yet certified and/or only engaged in research for pay on a part-time basis) has always been fairly high. Add a good share of keenly interested and often very experienced amateurs to this mix, and the result is an eclectic group that in the aggregate covers almost every possible genealogy-related subject and possesses a huge fund of erudition and skills.

I note with interest that many of the “amateurs” are interested in pursuing some of the formal tracks of study such as ProGen study groups and genealogy institutes with the goal of eventually becoming professionals, and that many “semi-pros” are working toward certification. I haven’t really noticed any significant friction among the groups, although occasionally there does seem to be some concern about non-professionals feeling left out of discussions of topics of interest primarily to professionals such as certification and building a genealogy research business.

When I read posts or discussions on these subjects, I never feel left out or that I am being condescended to by the pros or the semis. But I have no intention of ever joining their ranks.

Don’t get me wrong: when I say that I want to remain an amateur, I certainly do not mean that I’m happy with just “amateurish” skills; like many other keen amateurs in our midst, I would definitely love to achieve professional-level skills and am doing whatever I can to learn as much as I can.

But, for a number of reasons, I have no desire to make a living at, or even earn money from, genealogy research. And while I love to help my fellow researchers - through translations, lookups, etc. - even if I could afford to, I do not want to be a full-time genealogy volunteer.

In no particular order, here are my reasons:

1. I already have a profession/vocation. I am good at it. I earn a living from it. I don’t want to give it up.

2. I like security. Some professional genealogists are able to earn a decent living, but getting to that point obviously takes a huge amount of sustained effort - in acquiring the skills, getting the certification, getting the experience, and getting the word out. Then comes the part where the professional must decide what kind of a professional/paying job or combination of jobs to pursue: his or her own business (and what areas that would cover), employee of one of a handful of genealogy-related companies or publications, archivist/librarian, educator/speaker, writer/editor/publisher, and so on. While any of these individually or in combination can be quite enjoyable and even somewhat remunerative, none of them really offers significant security. When the economy is poor, there is less money available to hire a professional researcher or pay for a genealogy class, and we all know that archives and libraries are some of the first items to go on the chopping block when budgets are cut.

3. I enjoy travel - but not all of the time. A professional genealogist does not necessarily have to do a lot of travel, but for many it seems to be a regular part of their job. I am a bit of a homebody and after a certain point, the hassles of constant travel would get to me.

4. I am not the greatest at marketing myself and would not be terribly skilled at or enthusiastic about the commercial/advertising aspects of being a professional genealogist.

5. I’m not sure I would be so good at handling poorly informed clients. “I want you to prove that I am related to Conrad Plinkelpoint.” “I can do the research that may prove you are or are not related to him.” “I want you to show that I am related to him.” “Can’t do.” You all know where this leads.

6. This one is something Sheri Fenley of The Educated Genealogist and others have addressed: When your client has contracted to pay for a certain number of hours and the research you have done has filled that number of hours, but you know that there is somewhere else you could search. In other words, the temptation to do extra work for no compensation - not a good business practice. In short, I am a good worker, but not a good businessman.

7. I want genealogy to be fun. That means no pressure. That means not having to put my own research on the back burner while I do research for clients. That means being able to keep my own work days to a manageable length (okay, workdays often get out of hand in my current job, but that’s another discussion) and to be a flibbertigibbet when I feel like it. When I discovered genealogy back in 2005, it met several real needs, mainly the need to learn about my family’s history and to do something that is incredibly enjoyable but enriching and educational at the same time. I was working very hard at my day job and at my rest-of-the-time job as a wife and mother, and genealogy sort of saved my sanity (no comments from the peanut gallery!).

It is still saving my sanity, and that’s what I want it to continue to do.

Surname Saturday: Benjamin Franklin Tinnin and Mary Frances “Mollie” Brinlee

2011-11-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Franklin Tinnin
b. Mar 1856, Missouri
d. 10 Jun 1929, Vanoss, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
& Mary Frances “Mollie” Brinlee
b. May 1861, Texas
d. 10 Jun 1938, Pontotoc, Oklahoma
m. 1 Feb 1877, Hood County, Texas
|--Emma Tinnin
|----b. Sep 1886, Missouri
|--William Beecher Tinnin
|----b. 7 Jul 1889, Texas
|--Lonnie Tinnin
|----b. Dec 1890, Texas
|--Robert Mason Tinnin
|----b. 6 Aug 1894, Texas
|----d. May 1974, Dorsey, Madison County, Illinois
|---& Viola
|----b. 24 Jan 1899, Oklahoma
|----d. Apr 1987, Bunker Hill, Macoupin County, Illinois
|--Leonard Alfred Tinnin
|----b. 4 Feb 1897, Indian Territory
|----d. Sep 1981, Stratford, Garvin County, Texas
|---& Florence Willie Hodges
|----b. 9 Mar 1901, Texas
|----d. 20 Jan 1928, Vanoss, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|--Roy Archie Tinnin
|----b. 10 Feb 1906, Oklahoma
|----d. 30 Sep 1972, Precinct 2, Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
|---& Nancy Julie Burton
|----b. 21 Jul 1911, Texas
|----d. 6 Aug 2001, Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas

This is the family of Benjamin Franklin Tinnin and Mary Frances “Mollie” Brinlee, the daughter of Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Pettit. In her article on Richard Brinlee in Collin County, Texas, Families (Alice Ellison Pitts and Minnie Pitts Champ, editors, 1994), Bessie Sims Sheppard attributes daughter Mary to Ann Eliza Simmons, but the 1900 census gives May 1861 as the date of her birth and the 1870, 1910, and 1930 censuses back this up (I have not yet found her in the 1880 and 1920 censuses). A copy of Richard and Sarah’s marriage certificate indicates that they were married 15 April 1861, so I believe Mary is Sarah’s daughter.

I have quite a few gaps on this family and would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Genea-Angeldom and Genea-Serendipity

2011-11-02T17:14:00.000-07:00

The week since my return to genealogy has been a good one, especially in terms of connections.

The first connection was with a first cousin of my husband’s father. My in-laws met with her for lunch and learned that she was very interested in family history, so they put her in touch with me. We have been sharing information on the Terrana and Davi families.

The second connection was another Fichtelmann descendant. We know how all of the descendants of the Brooklyn Fichtelmanns are connected, but this man’s family settled in North Dakota. I told him what I knew and referred him to two Fichtelmann experts.

The third connection was Becky Jamison of Grace and Glory. Becky had previously met a descendant of Richard Brinlee, the brother of my great-grandfather Hiram Carroll Brinlee, Jr., and had put the two of us in touch. The other day I received a nice present from her: she had been taking pictures at a cemetery in Colorado and had found and taken pictures of some Brinlee tombstones. And Becky has learned that she is connected by marriage to the Brinlee family - the particular family that I have just been researching! Once again, Becky is a real Genea-Angel. Thank you, Becky!

Missing in Action No More

2011-10-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

I hope.

Last week I did a bit of genealogy-related stuff and I spent most of this weekend doing genealogy stuff.

Yesterday I attended the Fairfax Genealogical Society’s Fall Fair on the subject of Military Records, with three presentations delivered by Craig Scott: “Researching Your Colonial and French and Indian War Ancestor,” “Researching Your War of 1812 Ancestor,” and “Reasons for Not Serving in the Civil War.” There were lots of places, dates, maps, resources, and funny stories. It was glorious.

Today I spent half a day researching the George Robert Brinlee family. It is great to be “back in the saddle.” I feel relaxed and relieved.

I’m not all done with chores. 3-4 people and 3 cats still manage to shed a lot of hair and fur and track in a lot of dirt. And two family members are still packrats. And we haven’t really finished our yard cleanup.

But I know where to find stuff now. And I’m putting documents away - in the right place - after I create or use them. It’s like being on a diet. Discipline must be maintained.

Yesterday I read a post on Jennifer’s Rainy Day Genealogy Readings: “Defining Research, Part 1.” A real case study in genealogical bad manners, if not outright plagiarism. Things like this are one of the reasons why I use my own template (different from Ancestry’s) for place names. That way I can see who is “clicking and claiming” my data. I don’t really mind that they do. But posting information someone has freely shared with you without crediting them, as described in this post, is shoddy and low-class.

I Found You

2011-10-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

I knew when I found my great-grandfather Harlston Perrin Moore.

It happened about five or six weeks after I first became intrigued about what I could find online on my ancestors. Until that point, I just barely knew the names of my grandparents; I knew nothing else about my ancestors except for a couple of comments and stories I had heard from my parents.

There was no death of a close relative to jar/inspire/scare me into considering family research. As a matter of fact, both of my parents and all but one of my aunts and uncles had already passed away. Not even that sad fact could force me to realize how important it was to learn about my family’s history. Though I do love the “detective experience” rush, it was the shock of the close personal connection I felt that cemented the deal. The “find” was a burst of fireworks, but the relationship was no less intense for being long-lasting. If you think that this sounds like falling in love, it was a little bit like that.

It wasn’t just putting cousin bait out there that prompted me to start blogging about genealogy; it was that I just had to share this incredible experience with others who understood, really understood, what it feels like to find a previously unknown ancestor. And when Lynn Palermo issued the challenge (“The Moment You Knew”) at The Armchair Genealogist to identify the moment when I knew that I had to research my family history, I had to respond (despite the fact that I have written about this before in “The Happy Dance: Getting Hooked on Genealogy”).

The odd thing was, the experience was more intense for some ancestors than others. Other genea-bloggers have written about this phenomenon. In my experience, it was not necessarily that I identified more with some ancestors than with others. It was that I felt a particular claim to an ancestor because I had “found” that ancestor - found in the sense that none of the relatives I knew while I was growing up knew this ancestor, and any distant cousins who did know of this ancestor’s existence did not know of his or her connection to my family. If I did find a known ancestor but learned new information, then I felt that much closer. And I feel close to my “dead-end branch” ancestors as well, because I intend to find their families.

From the brief flush of discovery to the more sustained feeling of connection, the experience continues to be the lure that will keep me looking for ancestors until my fingers are too arthritic to type, my eyes are to clouded to make out those old documents, and my mind is too mushy to put the genealogical evidence together.

Clean Your Way to a Better Life

2011-10-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Scrappy Genealogist’s announcement on Friday that she will be featuring guest posts from different geneamommybloggers this week (“How She Does It - Secrets from the Geneamommybloggers”) has inspired me to share my recent experience in trying to organize my house and simplify my life to clear the way for the things I really want to do, especially family research and blogging about my research.

My daughters are young adults now (18 and 21), so I have survived the super-intense earlier phases of raising children. I now have a bit more time to do things like read, research, and write (when work isn’t so insane that my workdays run long and leave me too exhausted to do anything that takes a brain cell or two).

And yet even before work started to demand more and more of me, I noticed that my productivity in the area of family research was falling. I realized that the main culprit was the messy accumulation of clutter, compounded by a few other things that gobbled up a lot of time.

My solution involved about a dozen elements:

1. Throw out a lot of stuff.

2. Give a lot of stuff away.

3. Identify, locate, centralize, and organize your most precious heirlooms, family documents, and physical and electronic research documents and records.

4. Figure out a system for holding/storing anything you have a lot of (books, CDs, etc.). Buy whatever shelves, boxes, storage bins you need to accommodate them.

5. Throw out some more stuff.

6. Cut down on purchases, especially those that add unnecessary “stuff” to your household. This also means fewer birthday, Christmas, and special occasion gifts.

7. Figure out what items can be replaced by their electronic equivalents. My family and I are not terribly good at this, and my husband and I in particular are attached to the physical forms of many things (= books and CDs). However, my daughters are getting e-readers for Christmas and I am getting an iPad. We figure that most of our fiction reading and some of our nonfiction/research reading can be handled on these platforms. I would like to reduce the number of DVDs we buy, since so much can be viewed online. There is still some ethnic/esoteric music that I order in CD form, but these days there is a lot more of my “weird” music on iTunes than there used to be.

8. Give away some more stuff.

9. Identify and eliminate unnecessary and time-consuming chores. For me this year this will be writing the annual Christmas letter. As a genealogist, I know that Christmas letters can be goldmines of family information, but I am just tired of writing them. It started out as a way to save time, because I was individualizing each card for each recipient to the point that it was an exhausting undertaking. But you know what? Now I have a blog, use Facebook and Google Plus, and am always happy to correspond by e-mail. With a great deal of regret, I also discontinued my Follow Friday posts.

10. Clean house, clean out and organize your closets and junk drawers, and scrub and dust off those remote corners, high shelves, and other places you rarely visit to clean. It’s a pain, but it should take care of dust moozy/dust mite havens for another year or two. Clean out the fridge and clear the shelves of old food (you know you’ve got stuff that expired in 2008 in there).

11. If you have the time, energy, and money to do so, take care of any other matters that are a drag on your energy if you leave them undone: clean up your finances and financial records, get minor household repairs done, get the car fixed and cleaned, schedule medical appointments you have been putting off.

12. Clean up the yard, or at least take care of the worst eyesores: mow, pick up twigs and sticks, pick the worst weeds.

This is what I (and my husband and even occasionally my daughters) have been doing for the last two months. I am not listing all of these things to sound virtuous. If we had been more conscientious and better organized to begin with, things would not have reached such a critical state - to the point that I felt too paralyzed to effectively continue my research. I did not take a complete hiatus from blogging, but I definitely slowed down a bit.

Most important of all: Figure out what things are most important to you, and figure out how you can focus on them and include all of them. My priorities are:

Family life - spending home time with my family, going out to eat or see movies, and taking vacations together. This includes taking time to play and cuddle with our cats and actively participating in church. Keeping in touch with other family members, including cousins and “research cousins.”

Continuing to educate myself: in the area of languages (for my profession/vocation), in the area of genealogical research (for my hobby/avocation), and in the area of general knowledge (simply for personal development and enjoyment). Putting aside time to read and listen to music.

Family research. Getting my resources (including my bookmarks and Research Toolbox) in order. Continuing to get that cousin bait out there. Attending conferences. Taking research trips.

Gardening and feeding the birds in our yard.

That’s it. Pretty simple.

Now, after peeling off layer after layer of things accumulated after more than 20 years of being a family with children, I am just about ready to crawl out from under my rock and start some serious research.

Whatever Wednesday: 5 October 2011

2011-10-05T06:06:00.000-07:00

Strolling down memory lane can be a risky undertaking. Of course, I did not know that I would be taking that stroll when I decided last weekend that it was finally time to quit procrastinating and tackle the attic. It was one of the biggest and most dreaded chapters in the Great Cleaning Frenzy book.

Going through my daughters’ baby clothes and old books was not too traumatic. I found a couple of dresses that I realized were not central to my memories of their childhood, and they went into the Good Will pile. I did not have to endure the agony of sorting out the schoolwork and artwork of their early years; that had already been taken care of in the Great Cleaning Frenzy of 1999, and every year thereafter we would sift out “the best of the best” at the end of the school year and haul it up into the attic for storage.

As a matter of fact, when I first went up into the attic, I was surprised at how neat and organized all the boxes looked. Sure, everything was pretty dusty, but all I had to do was open each box or bin, figure out whether the contents included anything that was no longer of practical use or a vessel of cherished memories, and sort out items to be given away or thrown out. Even old children’s books were an easy job, as I had resolved beforehand to use a light hand, only culling out books that stirred no smiles or memories.

By the time I had finished with the last box, there were sizable piles of trash and giveaways.

Only the little closet next to the chimney stack wall remained. There wasn’t much in it; other than half of a Nativity set and a barbed wire Christmas wreath (it’s a Texas thing), just some old mementos from some of our vacations and old Christmas cards, all dating to the last century.

I pulled out several bags, and found a bit of chewing damage from squirrels, who periodically invade our attic, get evicted by the exterminator, and several months or years later find a way to sneak back in. Only a couple of papers got chewed. Good. I started to sort through the ragged and dusty bags full of cards, brochures, maps, and schedules. Our honeymoon and major vacations each got separate piles, Christmas cards seemed to have been divided roughly by year, and miscellaneous small trips formed a final pile. Out of that pile I picked up a folded brochure for New York City:

“No matter who you are, you can be on top of the world at the World Trade Center.”

It must have been around 1991, when my husband and I took Daughter #1, then about 18 months old, into Manhattan to visit FAO Schwartz. On the way back we decided on the spur of the moment to go to the top of one of the WTC towers. We had forgotten our camera, so we picked up the brochure, which featured a classic New York skyline picture centered on the Twin Towers. Ten years later, the towers were gone. And ten years after that, I unexpectedly came across this painful reminder.

Another pile of mementos yielded a letter from a friend who has since left us, thanking us for providing moral support during a difficult time. Another bittersweet memory.

And more: Christmas cards from a beloved babysitter, a neighbor my husband grew up calling “Aunt Sarah,” dear aunts and uncles who supported me with love and faith - all gone now.

So much loss brought back so suddenly, jarringly, in just one short trip to the attic.

I placed each pile in a separate envelope and put the envelopes in a covered bin, passed down the bag of trash, climbed down the ladder from the attic, and took a shower to wash the dust off.

I am getting close to winding up the Great Cleaning Frenzy. Daughter #2 comes home tomorrow for a few days; there are some sorting chores for which I need her judgment and input. Soon after that, I hope, I will be back to research and (regular) blogging.

Other bits

Monday, while I was watching Part One of Ken Burns’ series Prohibition, I recognized some clips taken from the 1906 SF film “A Trip Down Market Street” that FootnoteMaven featured on Shades of the Departed.

One of my favorite recent blog posts: “Mistakes Are Made (but Using the Passive Isn’t One of them)” by Geoffrey Pullam on the blog Lingua Franca on The Chronicle of Higher Education website. There is a link within the post to his original article on the subject, “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.” I still have copies of that article at work and at home.

The Family Tree

2011-09-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

The tree that best exemplifies my family research is the holly tree. No, make that THE holly tree. Not just any holly tree, but the holly tree in my front yard.

We have a much larger and more beautiful holly tree in the back yard. But it’s missing something.

No, that’s not right. The big holly tree is NOT missing anything. And that’s why it doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to my family tree as my research reveals it - because there are lots of gaps in my research.

So the poor holly tree out front is the more apt symbol. The winter before last, during Snowmageddon, the weight of the snow caused one of the three main branches to break off so that one side was left almost completely bare. It looks a bit better now, as though some of the twigs and small branches on the other two sides are trying to bend around and cover the bare branches out of modesty.

But it’s still a lopsided tree, and so is my family tree.

The Front Holly Tree, minus one branch which is flopped over and covered with snow, bottom right

The brick walls are awfully low in my family tree; there are a few really long branches, but for for many lines, “growth” stops with pretty recent ancestors. We’re not supposed to call them “brick walls,” so let’s call them “dead-end branches.”

My biggest dead-end branch is my great-grandmother Susan Elizabeth Smith Bonner Brinlee. I also have four great-great-grandparents who are dead-ends: Hiram Brinlee Senior, Emily Tarrant, George Floyd, and Jerusha Elizabeth Neely. And by the great-great-great-grandparent level, there are two more of those little stub thingies: Samuel Moore and John Finley.

This post turns out to be not just an excuse for milking the tree metaphor for all it’s worth. The listing of dead-end branches is basically an outline for where I want to focus my research. The only family missing in this list are the Lewises. I know my gggg-grandparents in this line - William Lewis and Mary John - but I am more interested in figuring out the list of children of my great-great-great grandparents Elisha Lewis and Rosannah Dalrymple Lewis, as well as the fates of the daughters of William and Mary Lewis: Rachel, Sarah, Mary, and Leah Lewis. You could say that this is a long but skinny branch.

Add a few intriguing gggg-grandparents into the mix, and that’s my research plan for the coming years. With names like Smith, Moore, and Lewis prominent in this list, this is not going to be a piece of cake. Or, to put it in more arboreal terms, it’s going to take one heck of a green thumb to get this tree to grow right. Ever tried to prune a holly tree or clean up the holly leaves that collect on the ground? Those pointy little leaves can be really nasty. But I won’t get discouraged. I want a tall, magnificent tree, covered with a thick mantle of dark green leaves. And lots of those little red berries would be nice, too.

The Lopsided Holly Tree as it appears today

Submitted for the 110th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy, sponsored by Jasia’s Creative Gene.

Fan Friday: Google Alerts and Annie's Ghosts

2011-09-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

Google alerts rock.

No, I did not receive a Google Alert on one of my ancestors.

But Steve Luxenberg, author of Annie’s Ghosts who delivered a wonderful and informative presentation last night at the monthly meeting of the Fairfax Genealogical Society, did get a Google Alert from my blog. He told me so when I went up to buy a copy of his book and get it signed by him. So I did anything a serious genealogy research and blogger would do: I gushed like a fan.

There was plenty to gush about. We had a full house and you could really sense the interest during the lecture and the excitement about meeting the author afterwards. For those few of you who have not yet read the book (I was going to wait until Christmas, when I am hoping to get an iPad, to buy the book, but couldn’t wait - I had forgotten to go to the ATM and only had $13 - the exact price of the paperback - so fate meant for me to buy it), I won’t spoil it for you, but I can say that Steve included some things that are not in the book and also had some good information on getting disability records from the VA, possible avenues for obtaining medical records, and getting information on an ancestor from post-1930 censuses.

So, back to Google Alerts. They obviously work. I set up Google Alerts a few months ago but have not received a single one.

Google Alerts, you are on notice:

Harlston Perrin Moore.

I had better be receiving an Alert on him. Soon.

Whatever Wednesday: 21 September 2011

2011-09-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

The usual occupant of this space, What I Learned Wednesday, can’t be here today.

Because I haven’t learned anything - because I haven’t done any research this week.

But this is not necessarily a bad thing. The Big Cleanup and Organization Project has been leaving me physically tired but mentally energized. And I am getting in better and better “mental health shape” for research and learning.

Tomorrow I WILL learn something, because Steve Luxenberg, author of Annie’s Ghosts, will be speaking at Fairfax Genealogical Society’s September meeting.

Woohoo!

“Genealogy from the Inside Out: Tracing a Family Secret from a Single Clue”

by Steve Luxenberg

7:30 p.m., Thursday, September 22

Kilmer Middle School

Here is the blurb from the FxGS newsletter:

“When a family secret alters our understanding of the family tree - such as learning about a hidden relative, marriage, divorce or cause of death - where do we begin to unravel what had always been kept out of sight? This presentation shows how to make the journey, and how one secret can lead to others. Mr. Luxenburg traveled through burial records, birth certificates, hospital records, immigration documents, and wartime records from diverse locations - imperial Russia, Depression-era Detroit, the Philippines, and European war zones - and assembles them into a coherent paper trail.”

A Proper Place for Sentiment

2011-09-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

“Your Ukrainian book is in the freezer.”

Thus began an e-mail I wrote to my daughter at college last Friday following the deluge that left 26 inches of water in our basement.

Accidents, disasters, and near brushes tend to occur in threes, in my exerience - and the last one is usually the doozy. Recent events have been true to form: an earthquake, a hurricane, and a big honking rainstorm, with only the last one causing us any damage.

Really, we were lucky in all three cases. The only damage that caused me any grief was the soaking of my daughter’s documents and coursework from the various Russian courses and programs she has participated in. Over seven years of hard work, fun, and memories, all crammed into a plastic box with a lid that unfortunately did not stay put after being dumped into the water.

I spent the next few days, with few breaks, freezing the Ukrainian book and a spiral notebook, drying out other bound items, and lightly drying and xeroxing all of the loose sheets of paper - notes, tests, articles, and so forth. More than a ream of paper went into the effort. I dutifully tromped back and forth between the copier and the laundry room, as we were also washing and drying out soaked clothes and stuffed dolls and animals.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice finds wet papers...

and more wet papers...

and still more wet papers

The episode both interrupted and expedited our campaign to clean house and get rid of all the stuff we don’t need.

I suppose my two-day drying and copying marathon was motivated by a good measure of sentiment - these materials represent a major investment of effort by my daughter as well as an important part of her life - but it was also based on more practical considerations, because many of the items are still useful for reference. Heck, I was even able to engage in a little bit of grammar and vocabulary review as I copied some of the more advanced materials.

But the rescue operation probably also washed away any excess sentimentality as far as the contents of our basement were concerned. Exhaustion will do that.

We also realized that the less stuff we keep in the basement, the more latitude we will have to arrange the remaining items to make them less vulnerable to natural disasters. The benchmark was set: life’s work + memories = important; other bits = not.

A much improved basement

So throwing stuff out or giving it away became a positive pleasure.

Expeditious and felicitous disposal of items felt like triumphs: lightly used arts and craft sets found a home with our church’s Sunday school program; extra (now very clean) litterboxes will go to our petsitter, who actively supports stray rescue and pet adoption programs; and soaked potting soil now enriches an underperforming garden bed.

We are the rulers of recycling, the sovereigns of salvage, the masters of the makeover and make-do.

Meanwhile, after some conferring with both daughters, the truly beloved objects of their childhood stay: a kit of plastic medical instruments inside a Little Tykes pet carrier, two toy xylophones that still make music, and the awesomest collection of tiny little people and animals (Playmobil, Polly Pockets, and Pound Pets).

I did feel pangs when the girls’ impressive collection of plastic food and the last child-sized chair went out the door. On the other hand, the sight of the luggage my husband and I bought for our honeymoon in Scotland that is now leaning against the trash can out front inspires memories but not regret.

This process is not free of uncertainty and trepidation. What if I wake up in the middle of the night and realize that it was a mistake to give away my younger daughter’s go-go boots?

The circle of things that should come within sentiment’s protective and possessive embrace should not be so small that scant evidence remains of the lives we live, nor should it be so large that the items have no meaning. Determining the proper balance is not easy, but having a flood wash away a lot of flotsam and jetsam helps.

What I Learned Wednesday: What’s a Gmina Doing in an Uyezd, and Other Bits

2011-09-07T18:32:00.000-07:00

Gminas, uyezds, and gubernias - oh, my!

Translating documents of genealogical significance from Eastern European languages usually means 19th century or early 20th century - always an interesting experience. For fun and to help out, for friends and acquaintances I have translated Russian items before (curiously, the locations were actually in countries no longer under Russian control - Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus), as well as Ukrainian/Rusyn, Slovak, and Hungarian. Last weekend Chris Harvey of Family Pilgrimage had an internal Russian passport for which he needed a translation. The handwritten entries were in a very ornate script, which didn’t present much of a problem for the regular words, but names were another matter. Chris gave me the Polish version of the passport owner's name, but place names were the main challenge and required a bit of research. The gmina (community) was Serock, but the name of the gubernia (governorate, a fairly large administrative unit) was difficult - I finally figured out through the process of elimination that it was Łomża, aka Łomżyńska gubernia, aka Lomzhinskaya guberniya. And in between the two was an uyezd (district); I am used to this term in documents referring to Russia, but not for documents about Poland, although I knew that it would have been in use there, too, during the era of Congress Poland - when this part of Poland belonged to the Russian Empire. The name kept looking like Moskovskiy, though of course that could not be so; after searching a bit I found a page which listed the “districts” in Łomża Gubernia, and there was Maków uyezd. So a gmina could be part of an uyezd which could be part of a gubernia.

Duh Moment from last week:

When you sign up with online photo services, take a serious look around the website to examine the different options for photo presentation. (Confession: No, I did not do this when I signed up for a photo service. Or during the first year. Or during the second or third....).

I had just been looking at our rows of photo albums (which take up one and a half bookcases) and thinking “We can’t go on this way” when I got an e-mail from Snapfish saying that my account was about to expire from lack of use. I hurriedly tried to put together an order to retain the account and became intrigued by the “photo books” option. This is something that I had always ignored before because I didn’t think I had enough time to look into it or that I would be interested in it.

After submitting my order for some plain old vanilla prints, I clicked to see prices and formats for photo books. There were so many different choices - size, color, cover - and I liked that captions were included in the deal. This is exactly the kind of simple, no-frills presentation of my photos I want to do. Perhaps this format, especially the smaller sizes, can really save space compared to traditional photo albums. But what about price? The thing is, preservation-quality albums are not that cheap, so I would not really save a lot of money by opting for albums instead of books. And I already have a preservation-quality storage box that could hold a lot of these books in addition to loose photos.

So I’ll give them a try, and if I like them, along with my new weekend routine of starting research with bookmark organization (Genealogy Toolbox and Diigo), I will be uploading the photos from my computers to Snapfish and then, bit by bit, creating and ordering photo books.

The reorganization process is really changing the way I look at “stuff,” space, and efficient use of time. It has taken a long time, but the light bulb finally went on.

City Directories Are Fabulous

I get Cyndi’s list updates by e-mail and this week one of the links was for various city directories on Foot-, oops, Fold3. There were several years of the Dallas City Directory, and I was able to use it to track the professions and residences of my Lewis ancestors there. I love city directories!

Surname Saturday: Richard Mason Brinlee and Sarah Ellen Petit

2011-09-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

Richard Mason Brinlee
-b. 19 Mar 1836, Texas
-d. 23 Jul 1911, Roff, Pontotoc Co., Oklahoma
& Sarah Ellen Petit
-b. 1843, Clark County Indiana
-d. 22 Oct 1905, Roff, Pontotoc Co., Oklahoma
--m. 15 Apr 1861, Collin County, Texas
|--Mary Frances “Mollie” Brinlee
|----b. May 1861, Texas
|----d. 10 Jun 1938, Pontotoc, Oklahoma
|---& Benjamin Franklin Tinnin
|----b. Mar 1856, Missouri
|----d. 10 Jun 1929, Vanoss, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|----m. 1 Feb 1877, Hood County, Texas
|--Elizabeth Ann Brinlee
|----b. 1867, Indiana
|----d. ca 1886, Hood County, Texas
|---& Herbert Shelton “Dub” Jones
|----b. 22 Dec 1863, Hillsboro, Montgomery Couty, Illinois
|----d. 25 Oct 1957, Atoka, Atoka County, Oklahoma
|--John William Brinlee
|----b. 16 Sep 1869, Texas
|----d. 29 May 1960, Florence, Fremont County, Oklahoma
|---& Fetnah Ann Bull
|----b. 23 Jul 1869, Texas
|----d. 9 Sep 1940, Denver, Adams County, Colorado
|--Minnie Brinlee
|----b. 20 Jul 1872, Erath County, Texas
|----d. 14 May 1959, Whittier, Los Angeles County, California
|---& Raligh H. “Rall” Jones
|----b. 15 Apr 1861, Illinois
|----d. bef 1930
|--Sarah Alice “Allie” Brinlee
|----b. 20 Jul 1875, Erath County, Texas
|----d. 14 May 1959, Whittier, Los Angeles County, California
|---& James Raymond Jones
|----b. 10 Mar 1876, Texas
|----d. 31 Dec 1931, Okmulgee, Okmulgee County, Oklahoma
|--Charles Robert Brinlee
|----b. 30 Oct 1877, Texas
|----d. 11 Nov 1959, Los Banos, Merced County, California
|---& Patty Avo Poindexter
|----b. 16 Aug 1881, Austin, Travis County, Texas
|----d. 26 Sep 1977, Merced County, California
|--Lillie Ann Brinlee
|----b. Nov 1879, Texas
|---& Burk Frady Smith
|----b. 13 May 1875, Tennessee
|--Burl David Brinlee
|----b. 12 Nov 1883, Texas
|----d. 20 Dec 1961, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
|---& Maggie Ann “Dovie” Whitaker
|----b. 27 Nov 1890, Hood County, Texas
|----d. 5 Jan 1962, Roff, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma

This is the family of Richard Mason Brinlee, oldest brother of my great-grandfather Hiram Brinlee, Jr. and son of Hiram Brinlee Sr. and Elizabeth Ann McKinney, and Sarah Ellen Petit. Before he married Sarah, Richard married Ann Eliza Simmons (born 6 August 1842 in Warren County, Kentucky) on 15 July 1858; she is reported to have died 26 October 1860, possibly as a result of complications from childbirth.

In her article on Richard Brinlee in Collin County, Texas, Families (Alice Ellison Pitts and Minnie Pitts Champ, editors, 1994), Bessie Sims Sheppard attributes daughter Mary to Ann Eliza Simmons, but the 1900 census gives May 1861 as the date of her birth and the 1870, 1910, and 1930 censuses back this up (I have not yet found her in the 1880 and 1920 censuses). A copy of Richard and Sarah’s marriage certificate indicates that they were married 15 April 1861, so I believe Mary is Sarah’s daughter.

The following is a summary of Richard Brinlee’s service in the Civil War: Enlisted on 5 July 1862 at age 25 as a Corporal in Company K, Martins Regiment Texas Cavalry (5th Partisan Rangers) at McKinney, Texas and appears on a muster roll for 1 January to 1 July 1863. According to the Statement of Service Slip in his Oklahoma Pension Board file, there are no further records on him.

After Sarah’s death, Richard married for a third time to Nancy Ann Baker Herrell (born 15 March 1843 in Knox County, Tennessee, died 1927 in Oklahoma).

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Things I Don’t Care About in Genealogy

2011-08-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

There are so many things to love about genealogy: the thrill of research, the fabulous social aspects and cousin connections, the OCD satisfaction to be found by filling in all the little boxes, the feeling of power and competence in mastering the neat genea-gadgets and genea-apps (OK, this one doesn’t apply to me), the educational and scholarly aspects, and the opportunity to indulge our artistic side in writing and scrapbooking.

But not everything associated with genealogy holds an interest for me. Here are 10 things I can list right off the bat that I don’t give a fig about.

1. Family crests. Really. Don’t need more junk around the house.

2. The One-World Super-Duper Ginormongous Family Tree. Yeah, I believe we’re all related somewhere down the line. And the OWSDGFT kind of proves it: all families have fights, and this thing causes all sorts of fights, so we must all be related, right? And who wants to have proof that they are related to PeeWee Herman, Sylvester Stallone, Adolph Hitler, and that jerk who cut in front of you on the highway the other day?

3. Being related to Charlemagne. He’s what - my 33rd great-grandfather? I probably have more genes in common with PeeWee Herman. Oh, wait.

4. Having a gazillion people in my family tree. Not only does my computer only have so much memory, I only have so much memory.

5. Having an Indian Princess among my ancestors. I’ll be satisfied with any ole run-of-the-mill Native American.

As close as I'll ever get to an Indian Princess

6. Being related to any living celebrities. See Number 2 above. It would just be my luck.... Besides, judging from old family pictures, we tend more toward the Marjorie Main model than the Katherine Hepburn model.

7. Being able to “jump the pond” with all my lines. Well, yeah, OK, a little interest, at least for a few lines. But really, I’m plenty busy just finding out what the heck my ancestors were up to in this country.

8. Winning arguments.

“Oh, BTW, we aren’t related to Sir Christopher So-and-So. That genealogy is bogus.”

“But I found it on lots of online trees. It must be true.”

“The DNA evidence indicates that we aren’t related.”

“Oh, that DNA stuff is just pseudo-science.”

“But look at this guy here, his mother would only have been eight years old when he was born.”

“It has been known to happen. There was a case in India....”

Waste of breath/ink/time.

9. Having only ancestors who were morally impeccable and totally nice. It’s not that I have a preference for scoundrels and stinkers, it’s just that the scoundrels and stinkers left more records.

10. “Finishing my research.” Where’s the fun in that?

Surname Saturday: Louis Koehl and Catherine Reuss

2011-08-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

Louis Julius Koehl
b. 22 Aug 1881, New York
& Catherine “Katie” Reuss
b. 1884, New York
m. 20 Apr 1904, Kings County, New York
|--Louis Koehl Jr.
|----b. 1 May 1905, New York
|--Peter Koehl
|----b. 1909, New York

This is the family of Louis Julius Koehl, the brother of my husband’s great-grandfather Henry “Harry” Koehl and the son of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner, and Catherine “Katie” Reuss.

Louis worked as a butcher and later as a carpenter. By the 1920 census the family was living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and on the 1930 census the family was shown living in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

What I Learned Wednesday: Sometimes You Just Need to Clean House

2011-08-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of morgueFile

What I learned this week has nothing to do with research because I didn’t do any research this week.

Only it does have something to do with research.

I have been “cleaning house” - throwing out trash and useless junk, giving away loads of stuff that we don’t need any more, and cleaning up (= rearranging, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing) the rest. From just the few projects and corners that I’ve tackled so far, it feels as though my mind is being reorganized as well.

And it feels good.

Stuff can be such a burden.

Not that all stuff is bad. I still love my books and CDs, for instance - especially when I can find them. Which I can now. The mind shift came in when I realized that I could put most of my CDs in one place: clothes go out of first set of drawers + stuff left from cleanup of second set of drawers goes in the empty spaces = the entire second chest of drawers left empty so that it can be used exclusively for CDs. (I would never have thought of using a chest of drawers to store CDs, but it works.)

And one of the spaces cleared in the CD move was a shelf that I really needed for storing my genealogy stuff. And that freed up floor space (yes, stuff was on the floor), which enabled me to see the bottom shelf, which was full of other genealogy stuff.

So now I can find all of my genealogy stuff.

But the benefits go beyond that: it is as though there is now starting to be more lift and less drag in my life. Less time will need to be spent on moving stuff, cleaning stuff, and putting stuff back. But even more important, some sort of mental fog seems to be lifting.

More time, fewer distractions, less chaos, more focus.

I’m not just cleaning house, I’m cleaning mind.

Surname Sunday: Philip Kern and Augusta Marie Koehl

2011-08-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Philip Kern
b. 7 Aug 1878, Germany
& Augusta Marie “Gussie” Koehl
b. Aug 1879, New York
m. 25 Apr 1905
|--Helen P. Kern
|----b. 1908, New York
|--Ruth A. Kern
|----b. 1916, New York

This is the family of Philip Kern and Augusta Marie “Gussie” Koehl, the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather Henry “Harry” Koehl and the daughter of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner. I believe that Philip was the brother of John Kern, who married Augusta’s sister Julia Koehl. Some time between 1920 and 1930 the family moved from Brooklyn, New York to Bergen County, New Jersey.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Putting on My Tinfoil Hat

2011-08-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

Over at GeneaBloggers, Thomas MacEntee has correctly stated that genealogists are awfully cranky lately. He is right. We are.

He has also stated that we should take a big breath, pick our battles, and above all, be kind when we can. He is right. We should.

So.

Dear Sirs and Madams at the Big Genealogy Companies:

August seems to have become the month of Big Changes in Genealogy. Unfortunately for you all, not everyone is on vacation right now, so some of us are complaining. I love my genealogy subscriptions and appreciate what you do, but I’m starting to become paranoid.

Dear Geni.com: I don’t have a subscription with Geni.com, so I have not been affected by the changes. But some of my friends have. That sucks.

Dear Ancestry.com: I have a Footnote.com subscription. I also have Pages on Footnote, and many of the Pages are about people who have no connection to the military. I also love the other content on Footnote.com, and I love what they were doing and planning to do with NARA. I made one of my most important “cousin connections” through Footnote. With the new focus, that probably won’t be happening any more on Fold3. That sucks. (And although I understand the patriotic significance of the new name, Fold3 is nevertheless kind of lame-sounding).

Yesterday I was feeling a lot of love for Ancestry because of the free access to the 1940 census thing. (Tinfoil hat on: That wouldn’t have been a deliberate move to soften us up for the Footnote-Fold3 switcheroo, would it? No, that's too devious, even for a mastermind.)

Dear Genealogy Bank: I like you the way you are. Please don’t change. That would suck.

Hoping that there is no such thing as the Genealogy Illuminati who get together to conspire to take over the Genea-World,

Yours truly,
Greta

What I Learned Wednesday: 17 August 2011

2011-08-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

Because my Genealogy Organization Frenzy has turned into a Cleaning/Organizing/Giving Away/Throwing Out Frenzy, not much genealogy was done this week. (Yeah, I know that’s a passive construction. I like the passive. That way I can avoid taking responsibility.)

But I did learn a bit about a few Brinlee families that I am currently working on; in particular, I found the information on the 1920 census for the Burk Frady Smith and Lillie Ann Brinlee Smith to be of interest:

1920 United States Federal Census, Phillips Town, Coal County, Oklahoma, ED 15, p. 5B, 16 Jan 1920

Line 71 17 19

Smith, Birt F. Head M W 44 M Yes Yes TN US US Miner Coal mine OA
........Lillia Ann Wife F W 38 M Yes Yes TX TX TX None
........Roy E. Son M W 21 W Yes Yes OK TX TN Coal mine Cager Em
........Claud T. Son M W 19 W Yes Yes OK TX TN Coal mine Greaser W
........Alta E. Dau F W 14 S Yes Yes Yes OK TX TX None
........Audry E. Dau F W 8 S Yes Yes Yes OK TX TN None
........Allen J. Son M W 6 S Yes Yes Yes ? US TN None

Now, admittedly the census-taker has scrambled several things - he has mixed up the birth states for the parents and is totally confused by the information on Allen, but the marriage status for the two oldest sons, if true, is heart-wrenching: Roy, 21, and Claud, age 19, are both listed as widowers. It seems like a bit too much of a coincidence, especially for men this young, and yet - the Great Influenza Epidemic had been raging for well over a year, and was especially devastating to people of this age. So it could be true. I’ll have to do more research to find out. (I would also like to know what those notations are in the "Year of immigration..." column.)

The other thing I learned this week?

I’m glad that the only online trees I have are on Ancestry. A few weeks ago I posted a question about sites for online trees; Geni.com was among those that I was considering using. I think I’ll try doing my own website instead.

There have been many perceptive and even some humorous posts about this development. I loved Dear Myrtle’s wry summary of Geni.com’s logic(al fallacies) in “Official Response from Geni.com.”

SNGF: True Confessions About Genea-Assets

2011-08-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

Pipsqueak helps me sort papers and folders

I think that I was reading Randy Seaver’s mind this weekend.

Randy's assignment was:

1) Think about this: Is all of your genealogical material, which you've gathered over the years, well organized? Do you have papers, certificates, photographs and other ephemera squirreled away somewhere in your genealogy cave center? Do you have forgotten digital files, including documents, photographs and notes hiding in your computer file folders? It's Saturday night, do you know where ALL of your family history information is?

2) Give yourself a grade (from A to F) on how well you've done with your filing of tangible and digital genealogical assets (two grades, one for each). Brag about your organizational prowess if you deserve it - you can be a good example to the rest of us. Bemoan your situation if your files are like mine.

3) Look through your tangible or digital genea-assets and find something you've "lost," forgotten or overlooked that might add to your knowledge about one or more families. Tell us what you found, how will it help you, and will you commit to analyze it, source it, and use it?

Why do I think I was reading Randy’s mind?

Saturday I was going to do some research. I went up to my home office, aka “Genealogy Central,” to start work. The item I needed was under a pile. That pile included some genealogy folders. And on top of the box next to desk were more genealogy folders. I realized that some of these items should go into the folders in the box.

So I took all of the stuff downstairs to the family room, where there is plenty of space to spread out, to sort and file.

Three hours later, the materials were all sorted and filed.

This is why I am giving myself a “B” for organization of hard-copy assets and not a “C”. I must have somehow sensed that Randy’s task this weekend had something to do with organization.

A couple of weeks ago, I did some preliminary organization by consolidating some binders and hanging files into portable file boxes (each box contains materials for a particular line where I have done a lot of research: Brinlee, Moore, etc.):

The materials for most of the rest of the family lines I am researching are kept in binders:

Families for which I have only done preliminary research are kept in hanging files, along with materials on genealogical societies, genealogy publications, and so forth.

So there is a system and I can pretty much find what I need at this point. Still, there are a few odd file boxes and binders that are not organized by family: the items I obtained from my research trip to Greenville, SC still have a separate box (there are materials on three different family lines in that box), there is a file box containing documents that were too large to fit in binders or the shorter file boxes that I use, and I still have a binder full of “miscellaneous” genealogy notes.

For digital files, I would also give myself a “B”. Most of the sub-folders in my Genealogy folder are organized by family name, with sub-sub folders divided into individual generations, and sub-sub-sub folders for digital copies of vital records, newspaper articles, write-ups, correspondence, etc. The remaining folders are subject-based and have a number at the beginning of the file name so that they precede the family names: 1Forms, 2Research trips, 3To Do Lists, 4Resources, and so forth.

The main problem with my digital files is that I have digital files on two different computers (there was a third I used for a while, but I believe I have transferred all of those files to my MacBook Pro). I can access the files on my desktop computer through the Time Machine, but there is a lot of duplication and enough differences in organization between the desktop files and the laptop files that it can be confusing. Transcription projects, collections of newspaper articles, etc. can sometimes be hard to find. And I still need to put my photographs from both computers onto the Time Machine. So maybe that's a B-.

Bookmarks should also be included in digital organization. Not great - two different browsers + 3 computers = Chaos. This probably brings my digital grade down to a C+. However, I have been working on consolidating everything into a Genealogy Toolbox and have also been using Diigo.

One thing I found while reorganizing was a set of articles from doing a search on “Koehl” on GenealogyBank; the Koehls in these articles were not people I recognized as belonging to my husband’s Koehl family, but could be related, so I filed them under the “Leads” section of the Koehl family binder. The source information has already been written on them.

What has been my big advantage in organizing my files?

I’ve only been doing genealogy for six years.

If I can accumulate this much stuff in six years, what will my files look like in 20 years?

Surname Saturday: Frederick William Tönjes and Magdalena “Lena” Koehl

2011-08-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

Frederick William A. Tönjes

b. 24 Jun 1879, Bremen, Germany

& Magdalena M. “Lena” Koehl

b. 1876, New York

d. Apr 1969

m. 14 Nov 1900, Kings County, New York

|--Adelina Tönjes

|----b. 10 Sep 1901

|----d. 31 Jan 1902, Kings County, New York

|--Josephine Tönjes

|----b. 23 Aug 1903, New York

|----d. May 1975, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California

|---& Thomas

|--Ernst Tönjes

|----b. 16 Nov 1908, New York

|----d. 20 Aug 1990, Orange County, California

|---& Rowena Booraem

|----b. 15 Nov 1910, New York

|----d. 8 Sep 1991, Orange County, California

|--Hermine A. Tönjes

|----b. 3 May 1911, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York

|----d. 3 Oct 2004, Lebanon, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania

|---& Elmer H. Booraem

|----b. 13 Nov 1902, New York

|----d. 20 Sep 1991

This is the family of Frederick William A. Tönjes and Magdalena “Lena” Koehl, the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather Henry “Harry” Koehl and the daughter of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner.

Based on a passport application I found on Ancestry, Josephine Tönjes appears to have made a trip with her aunt and uncle Josephine Koehl Glashoff and Peter Glashoff to Germany in 1923.

The Other Guest in Our Garden

2011-08-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

I posted "The Summer of Pies" the day before this guest, a cooper hawk, showed up on Second Apple Tree, so I did not include her (him?). For some reason, when she showed up, the other guests left (except for a lone chickadee on a feeder, who must have calculated that he was not worth her attention).

Voyages Not Taken, Circuitous Routes, and the Meaning of “Gibbous”

2011-08-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was a straightforward Happy Dance Day, but the path I took from that point - or actually, the path that took me - was, to say the least, indirect.

The mailman brought me the death certificates for two of my husband’s great-great grandparents, Benedetto Davi and Maria Terzo. I was surprised at their prompt arrival only a little more than a week after I had mailed off the requests. The difference from the last time I had sent off to New York City Department of Records and Information for death certificates was that this time I had the dates of death and the certificate numbers (thanks to The Italian Genealogical Group website).

Both deaths had occurred in 1934, which meant the death certificates contained a decent amount of information about the deceased; this included the names of the parents of the deceased, except for the name of Benedetto’s mother - unfortunately, Maria had provided her own maiden name instead of her mother-in-law’s maiden name.

Benedetto’s father's name was given as Joseph (= Giuseppe) Davi. I have learned that you should always check to see (1) whether the parents of an immigrant also came over to this country and (2) whether an older relative’s name appears in later generations (i.e., among Benedetto’s siblings or children). So I started to look for a Giuseppe Davi in census and immigration records.

1902 manifest

This yielded an interesting hit: a ship manifest dated 10 September 1902 with a Maria Terzo and four children traveling from Palermo to New York City - and their names were all crossed out. This of course indicates that for some reason they did not make the trip. And I do have a ship manifest for the trip they did eventually make on 24 August 1903. I hadn’t found this 1902 manifest from searches for Maria Terzo, because her name had not been indexed correctly, and I stopped looking after I found the 1903 manifest (which corresponded to the year of immigration that appears for her on the census records).

1903 manifest

But there was one striking difference between the family information on the two manifests: the 1903 manifest shows only three children. Giuseppe is not there. And a glance back at the 1902 manifest revealed a comment in the “Deformed or Crippled/Nature and Cause” column: “gibbous.” Well, I know what a gibbous moon is. According to Webster’s II New College Dictionary, gibbous also means “having a hump, humpbacked.”

Was Giuseppe too ill to travel? Did he die before the 1903 voyage? His health was reported as “good” in the “Condition of health” column. Or was his deformity a possible bar to getting through the health inspection upon arrival in the United States? Perhaps the trip was cancelled for another reason? Was he left behind with relatives?

Sometimes you search for one thing and find something else. And that something else leads to more questions.

Three Years Old: Where Do We Go

2011-08-09T00:53:00.000-07:00

from here?

Image courtesy of basictextures.com

Last year at this time I reflected on how the benefits of blogging had far exceeded the expectations I had when I began blogging: it has been and continues to be a great way to get in touch with other researchers, make my research available to family members, benefit from other genealogy bloggers who comment and share their experience, and simply have fun.

But for a couple of months I have been thinking about ways to refocus my research, which mostly means doing more research. Some of the extra time will come out of my blogging time. I do not intend to blog less or to stop writing some posts just for enjoyment (SNGF, selected memes, “spouting off” (= reflecting, ranting, recollecting)), but I would like to write more posts focused on research.

The main casualty will probably be my Follow Friday posts (even though I enjoy writing them), since they take a lot of time; the past few weeks, which have been characterized by a much better balance between blogging and research, have confirmed that this is a better approach. Still, I’ll probably write a few Follow Fridays from time to time; it’s hard to resist when there is so much good genea-blog reading out there. (And you can always check out "Greta K.'s Starred Items" at the lower left to see what I recommend - I resolve to be more consistent in using it when I read blogs).

And, to repeat what I said for my second blogoversary post, I would like to thank all my readers, commenters, and fellow genealogy bloggers who make every day an adventure in reading and learning.

Memory Monday: The Summer of Pies

2011-08-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a long time ago, we had a house. It was an old house, but we had only just bought it, so to us it was new. We still live in that house.

The house had a yard. This was B.A. - Before the Addition - so the yard was of a decent size, though not large. As we saw it, it was ready to be turned into a veritable Garden of Eden and be filled with vegetables, flowers, and fruit. Our horticultural ambitions knew no limit.

In addition to carving out and building some raised beds, we planted a few fruit trees. Well, it was a few at first. But early success made us (overly) confident, and we started to add. One apple tree became two, then a peach tree joined them, then two cherry trees took up posts on either side of a vegetable bed, and finally a stick posing as a pear tree was planted to fill a small patch of unused land. By that time there was already a flourishing raspberry patch as well as a small boysenberry patch and a couple of blueberry bushes.

Our yard at the beginning of summer:

A cherry tree is at the left, next to boysenberry vines; the peach tree is at the right

Our yard at the end of the summer:

Next to the peach tree you can see the newly planted pear tree,

covered in netting as protection against the Great Cicada Invasion

Much to our surprise, the trees (well, all but the pear tree) started to bear fruit pretty quickly. The cherries were the first to ripen, first a few, then many more, and had to be checked each day. The peaches followed, and they were delicious. My husband thought he was in heaven when the Empire applies were ready to pick.

We reveled in the joy of being able to go out into the yard, pick a piece of fruit, and eat it the same day.

But we could not keep up with the trees. Soon there was more than we - and our friends and coworkers - could eat.

Time to start baking pies.

Fresh pies at first. But soon we - and our friends and coworkers - could not keep up with the pies, either.

I don’t do canning, so I started to put the pie fillings in Tupperware containers and freeze them. Soon we had to buy more Tupperware containers. Each container could hold enough filling to make one deep-dish pie plus another regular-sized pie or several tarts.

Weekends were filled with picking fruit, cooking and freezing fruit, and making pie crusts. Cherries in particular took hours and hours of work.

At some point we lost the battle to keep up with the peach tree. Fruit became overly ripe, fell, rotted. Cicadas, having gotten drunk on the rotting fruit, would dive-bomb us. Peach clean-up was not a pleasant chore.

Finally fruit production started to abate. We felt like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice after the Sorcerer arrives. Even so, we had a freezer filled with 12 Tupperware containers - peach, apple, and cherry pie fillings and even an entire container of raspberry pie filling.

We ate pies up through Thanksgiving. They were delicious, so the effort seemed almost worth it.

The next summer, the worm appeared in the apple. Well, not in the apple exactly. It appeared in the peaches. And the cherries. And it was not actually a worm, it was the caterpillar of the codling moth. I was not going to make pies with worms in them, and without going all out, it is difficult to completely prevent infestation, so this seriously reduced pie production. But we still had to get rid of the fruit.

Within a few years, the peach and pear trees and blueberry bushes were sacrificed when we built the addition to our house. The cherry trees became weaker and less productive and eventually died.

The apple trees endured. We even had our deck built with a cut-off corner so that we did not have to get rid of the First Apple Tree. But I started to cast a critical eye on the second apple tree - it was in the middle of the remaining yard, taking up space and sunlight, and did not bear as profusely or reliably as the first apple tree.

“I think we need to cut the second apple tree down.” My husband, the great Pitier of Plants and Trees, was horrified. So we did nothing for another couple of years.

Then one day I came home to find that he had had the apple tree, or at least all of it but the bottom part of the trunk, cut down.

But it was not the second apple tree. It was the First. I went into shock. My husband explained that the branches the First Apple Tree extended too far over the deck and kept scratching up against the house, and we would always have to be cutting it back.

The idea of cutting down the second apple tree did not die right away; after the addition, yard space was at a premium, and by this time a silver maple had made sunny yard space even rarer. And the shade seemed to affect the quality of the apples borne by the second apple tree: they went from apples you could eat fresh to apples you could only use in pies to misshapen little things that were good for nothing except squirrel and insect food.

A few years ago, we decided to add bird feeders to our back yard. The first two we fastened onto the deck railing. But we wanted more. Over time we added a finch feeder, suet feeders, and a peanut feeder - and we put all of them on the Second Apple Tree.

For whatever stayed our hands from cutting down the Second Apple Tree, I am grateful. The birds love it. Those who are not at the feeders often use it as a waiting area. As our cats will tell you, it’s the best show in town.

First Apple Tree

(now serving as a squirrel and bird perch)

Second Apple Tree with bird feeders

Some guests:

Downy woodpecker

Nuthatch

Yellow finch

Surname Saturday: Paul Haas and Frances Koehl

2011-08-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Paul Haas
b. 29 Jan 1876, New York
d. 22 May 1946
& Frances Koehl
b. 8 Feb 1874, New York
d. 1966
|--Herbert Haas
|----d. 1903
|--Viola Haas
|----b. 7 Apr 1905, Kings County, New York
|--Paul J. Haas
|----b. 1910
|----d. 30 Nov 1911
|--Franklyn J. Haas
|----b. 4 May 1913, New York
|----d. 22 Dec 1999, Bloomingburg, Sullivan County, New York
|--& Myrtle Stowbridge
|----b. 30 Jul 1911, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York
|----d. 28 Sep 1959, New City, Rockland County, New York

This is the family of Paul Haas and Frances Koehl, the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather Henry “Harry” Koehl and the daughter of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner. Paul and Frances are buried in the Koehl family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Julius Koehl Address Study

2011-08-04T20:02:00.000-07:00

Below is a list of addresses given for Julius Koehl in Brooklyn, New York from 1870, when I was first able to find any mention of him (on the 1870 census), to 1907, when he died. I have also listed his place of birth for all instances when it was mentioned. Early reports are very general, but Julius’ death certificate cites Meisenheim as his place of birth (the informant was probably his oldest daughter Josephine Koehl Glashoff), and that location was also given by daughter Magdalena Koehl Tonjes on the 1920 census as her father’s place of birth. The addresses are consistent; from 1870 to 1880 it was 12 Union Street, and from 1892 to 1907 it was 125 15th Street. The street view image from Google Maps shows the building currently located at a nearby address for 125 15th Street.

The next set of images show the locations of the residences of Julius Koehl’s eight surviving children at the time of his death in 1907. The first image shows the list of children with addresses from the probate papers; the second and third are the map and list I created for “My Places” on Google Maps. It looks very much like there are only six place markers, but in the Borough Park area (where my husband grew up) two markers are obscured by a third one: oldest sibling Josephine Glashoff, my husband’s great-grandfather Harry Koehl, and Magdalena Tonjes all lived within a block or two from one another. The northernmost two addresses belong to Julia and Augusta Kern, who probably married brothers.

My Genealogy Obsessions

2011-08-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a very busy one for me and I missed out on Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, “Signs You Have GOCD,” inspired by Michael John Neill’s post “10 Signs You Have Genealogy OCD” at Rootdig.com (also see Randy’s “SNGF ‘Genealogy OCD’ Compendium”). This subject is so up my alley. And I missed it.

But it did get me to thinking about things I really am obsessive about in my genealogy research:

1. The Moore Family. All of them. All of Samuel Moore’s descendants. All of the Moores who show up in Greenville, South Carolina who may in some way connected to these Moores. All the stories. Every scrap of material - besides Greenville and Anderson Counties in South Carolina and Dallas and Baylor Counties in Texas, I have to go to Henry County, Georgia (Bud Mathis Moore and Freeman Manson Moore were there at one point, plus an Andrew Moore who looks kinda promising...), plus DeKalb County, Georgia and Cleburne County, Alabama (Freeman’s son William S. Moore was in those counties, and we know so little about him), plus Izard County, Arkansas (Preston E. Moore was there in 1870, and he is a Topic of Special Obsession (TSO)).... And please, please - Samuel Moore’s wife (wives?) and parents? No piece of information is too insignificant, no courthouse is too remote. I will get the information on these people.

2. My #1 Brick Wall, Susan Elizabeth Smith Bonner Brinlee. Looking for a Smith in Tennessee is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I Will Do It.

3. “Reverse orphans.” I described this phenomenon when I hosted the “85th Editions of the Carnival of Genealogy: Orphans and Orphans” and was surprised to find out how many other researchers also get involved in researching these people with no direct descendants. And although Preston Moore is apparently not a reverse orphan, he’s still a Moore, so I am still obsessed with him.

4. Visiting and researching in all the states that my ancestors have lived in, which covers all of the South and border states (except for Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi), Vermont, and Illinois as well as a good part of the mid-Atlantic states.

5. Learning everything there is to know about the Elisha Lewis-Rosannah Dalrymple family and the Elisha Berry Lewis-Martha Poole family.

6. Finding all of my husband’s ancestors back to the first immigrants (his ancestors arrived here between the 1850s and 1910s, so I am hoping this is feasible). And, as usual, this includes all of the collateral lines.

7. Using some clues from DNA results to find the parents of brothers Hiram Brinlee Sr. and George Brinlee.

8. Finding George Floyd’s parents: was his father William Floyd (as several of us think) or James Floyd (as written by the grandson of George's younger brother Ransom to my great-grandfather Charles Augustus Floyd)?

9. Finding out how my great-great grandmother Emily Tarrant fits into the Greenville, South Carolina Tarrant families.

10. There is no #10 right now. But I have a feeling that research will lead me to another one - you know, the next brick wall. One that really intrigues me. One whose story I absolutely MUST know.

Surname Saturday: Family of Herman Binninger and Lillian Koehl

2011-07-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

Herman Binninger
b. Sep 1869, Germany
d. 13 Nov 1916, Kings County, New York
& Lillian “Lillie” Koehl
b. Apr 1872, New York
|--Lillian Binninger
|----b. Feb 1894, New York
|--Andrew Binninger
|----b. 4 Nov 1896, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York
|--& Carrie
|----b. 1895, Germany

This is the family of Herman Binninger and Lillian “Lillie” Koehl, the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather Henry “Harry” Koehl and the daughter of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner. Herman was a butcher, as was Lillian’s father; the 1910 census indicates that Herman owned bowling alleys. Herman and, I believe, Andrew and wife Caroline/Carrie are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. I cannot find a reference to Lillie; perhaps she remarried or perhaps she is the “Caroline L.” listed as being in the same plot.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

What I Learned Wednesday: 27 July 2011

2011-07-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

It’s a short one this week. I am researching the family of Sarah Alice Brinlee and James Raymond Jones. Below is the family on the 1910 census.

1910 US Federal Census, Murray Twp., Coal County, Oklahoma, ED 82, p. 1B, 16 Apr 1910

Line 72 Church St. north of 8th 18 18

Jones, J. R. Head M W 33 M1 15 TX IL IL Eng Miner Coal mine W Yes 12
Yes Yes No O F H
Allie Wife F W 33 M1 15 6 3 TX TX OH Eng None Yes Yes No
Daisy Dau F W 13 S IT IT TX Eng Musician OA Yes 24 Yes Yes Yes
Raymond Son M W 5 S OK TX TX Eng None No No No
Elsie Dau F W 4/12 S OK TX TX None
Lennie Niece F W 15 S IT IL TX Eng None Yes Yes Yes

This is a poor coal miner’s family - J. R. Jones indicates that he is currently out of work and has been so for 12 weeks.

But he is not the only one who is listed as having an occupation. Daughter Daisy, 13, is a musician. Perhaps she helped to support the family. But unfortunately she, too, has been out of work - for 24 weeks.

Notice Anything Different?

2011-07-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Yes.

It has been fixed.

Those of you with OCD no longer have to twitch every time you click on my blog.

Many thanks to the generous Bart Brenner, aka GeneaPopPop, of Stardust 'n' Roots. Not only is he a talented writer, he is technically adept, as evidenced by the fact that he was able to figure out how to resize my banner.

I have to say it again: there is nothing like the genealogy blogging community - generous and talented people.

Thank you, Bart!

Archives.com So Far

2011-07-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Back in May, at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, the people at the Archives.com booth generously gave out cards that would enable holders to use a six-month demo account at Archives.com.

I picked up one of the cards, and for the first couple of months I made a few forays onto the site to see what was there, but I did not try out all of the features. Several press releases came out about Archives.com hiring some well-known members of the genealogy community and about the addition of new material, so for the past couple of weeks I have been trying to check the site out a little more thoroughly.

It appears that the overall concept is to add and develop databases that are specific to Archives.com and to supplement this still-in-the early-stages-of-development resource by drawing on existing databases, both free (SSDI) and for-pay (some of the search results lead to Footnote.com, where you need a paid subscription to be able to access most of the document images). This is combined with the capability for building/adding your own family tree (Ancestry.com and many other sites have this), a for-fee service which you can use to request onsite county document searches by members of the Archives.com network, interaction with other members on the Archives.com message forums, and access to instructional materials under the “Learn” tab.

First, I did some searches using some of my own ancestors and some of my husband’s ancestors who had less common names. Here are the results:

I noticed that I got different results from alternate spellings of one of the family names: D’Arco and Darco. This has the potential to be useful; on Ancestry.com, one spelling brings up hits for both spellings.

When I clicked to see the results under the category for immigration records, all the links took me to Footnote, where I have an account.

A search for Brinlees on Military Records pulled up mid-twentieth century enlistment records, but they were transcriptions/extracts, not actual images. Still, it was neat to see some information on my uncles’ and distant cousins’ military service.

The main “value-added” item for me seems to be that Archives.com has some newspapers that Genealogy Bank does not have (= I could not find them on Genealogy Bank when I checked their list of newspapers). The site claims to have images of 100 million pages from newspapers.

The hits under “Cemetery Listings” are not actual hits for an ancestor’s name in a specific cemetery. Instead, the results give the SSDI information on the location where the last Social Security benefits were received, and uses that information to produce a list of cemeteries in that area.

Several times searches or clicking on a result produced an “Oops! An error has occurred” message, but trying again usually (not always) got me through to the database/information.

Other things I checked out:

Message forums: there are a lot of posts, but not many replies. I did a search for a family name, but mostly pulled up error messages.

The “On-Site County Court Records Search” tab has the following description: “Request an on-site county search for any court, criminal, or civil record in the United States. Simply fill in the information below to have someone from our network of court-runners do the job for you - saving you hundreds of dollars and countless hours.” This could be useful, but there was no information on how extensive this network is, that is, whether or not they have all the counties and states covered, and what the level of expertise of their “court-runners” is.

My favorite feature was the “Learn” tab. I read several of the articles and will be checking out the videos. There were some familiar names of people whose expertise I respect, and I hope that the quality of offerings in this area is indicative of where Archives.com will be headed in the future.

Another thing I liked was the ability to set up “Ancestor Alerts” on the site.

I believe Archives.com has brought some people on board who can take Archives.com in the right directions, but right now that seems to be on paper only. At this point it is not worth it to me to pay for this service, as it does not do a significant amount more than the Ancestry-Footnote-Genealogy Bank combination does for me. But I will be keeping an eye on it.

Surname Saturday: John A. Kern and Julia Koehl

2011-07-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

John A. Kern
b. Jan 1866, New York
d. 22 May 1948, Kings County, New York
& Julia Koehl
b. Mar 1868, New York
d. 1960
m. ca 1891
|--Julius Henry Kern
|----b. 28 Mar 1895, Brooklyn, Kings, New York
|---& Ida A.
|----b. ca 1898, New York
|----m. ca 1925

This is the family of John A. Kern and Julia Koehl, who was the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather Harry Koehl and the daughter of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner. I do not know whether John and Julia had any children in addition to Julius Henry. I suspect that John Kern may have been a relative of Philip Kern, who married Julia’s sister Augusta M. “Gussie” Koehl. This family was living in Brooklyn at the time of the 1920 census, but by the 1930 census had moved to Bergen County, New Jersey.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

What I Learned Wednesday 20 July 2011

2011-07-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

This week I did not visit any repositories or do any research on Ancestry, FamilySearch, Genealogy Bank, or Archives.com. We visited my in-laws in New York.

I learned a lot.

I brought my Flip-Pal scanner and wand scanner with me and scanned some long-coveted family photographs and two files’ worth of documents.

I learned how to use the Flip-Pal scanner - perhaps not with a great deal of ingenuity or skill, but I did finally take it out of its box and do several dozen scans with it. The greater part of these scans were duds, not the fault of the scanner, but I was testing its limits. I learned that you can make a scan through glass, but the scanner has to be sitting flat on the glass. It cannot be above the glass or angled down onto the glass. However, my father-in-law kindly removed the glass from the set of photographs that I coveted most of all, and I learned that no glass is best of all. I will be pulling up some of the tutorial videos for the Flip-Pal on YouTube to learn more.

The wand scanner once again proved its worth. I learned that it’s a good idea to backup scans with transcriptions when working from an original with bumps/discontinuities in the paper or with poor contrast.

I learned that you may have to settle for not knowing who is in those coveted photographs. One of the photographs may be of one my my husband’s great-great-grandfathers - either Julius Koehl or John Fichtelmann - but we don’t know, because anyone who might have known is no longer alive. Not that I won’t be trying in the coming weeks to get some ideas on this.

I learned that photographs are a great way to inspire relatives to share their memories. I put together a binder with copies of documents (probate records, ship manifests, descendant reports, etc.) for my relatives, but I knew this would be kind of dry, so I added a couple of maps of home cities back in Germany and Italy and the photograph I posted of my mother-in-law’s grandparents’ home in Newark (“Always Go Back and Reread Your Notes”). The reaction inspired by the photograph was amazing. My mother-in-law showed me where her room was, where she played with her childhood friend (and what games they played), and also recalled a couple of priceless stories about her grandfather.

I learned that in addition to providing new items of information, an important function of documents is to confirm or refute old information; I was particularly delighted with seeing the names of baptismal sponsors, whom I recognized as siblings and grandparents. The “smaller” details are as important as the names and dates: home addresses and church names will help tell me where to look.

Not bad for a couple of days.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Heritage Pie Chart

2011-07-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings has come up with the following challenge this week:

Your mission tonight, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) List your 16 great-great-grandparents with their birth, death and marriage data (dates and places).
2) Determine the countries (or states) that these ancestors lived in at their birth and at their death.
3) For extra credit, go make a “Heritage Pie” chart for the country of origin (birth place) for these 16 ancestors. [Hint: you could use the chart generator from Kid Zone for this.] [Note: Thank you to Sheri Fenley for the "Heritage Pie" chart idea.]
4) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook or google+.

Here are the 14 I know (plus the states for the two that I do not know based on the information given by their daughter in the census).

1. Hiram Carroll Brinlee Sr., b. 25 Dec 1808, Tennessee or Kentucky, d. 28 Jul 1885 Collin County, Texas. I am using Tennessee because that appears more often in the censuses for him (and in those for his children when they list parents' states of birth).

2. Elizabeth Ann McKinney, b. 23 Feb 1823 Kentucky, d. 23 Mar 1889 Oklahoma.

3 and 4. The parents of my great brick wall, Susan Elizabeth Smith, whoever they were. According to Lizzie Smith Brinlee’s entries on the censuses, they were born in either Tennessee or North Carolina; I am choosing North Carolina because it appeared on two censuses and Tennessee appeared on only one.

5. Joseph Madison Carroll Norman, b. 8 Jun 1833, Alabama, d. 1 Apr 1901, Arkansas. Married 4 Dec 1851 Talladega, Alabama.

6. Rebecca Monk, b. 1837, Alabama, d. bef 1864 Alabama

7. William T. Sisson, b. ca 1826, Georgia, d. 12 Feb 1894, Alabama. Married 13 Jun 1851, Talladega, Alabama.

8. Jerusha Elizabeth Neeley, b. Alabama, d. bef 1858 Alabama.

9. William Spencer Moore, b. 1813, South Carolina, d. 31 Oct 1871, South Carolina

10. Emily Tarrant, b. 1813, South Carolina, d. bef 1873, South Carolina

11. Elisha Berry Lewis, b. 1813, South Carolina, d. 23 Feb 1889, South Carolina. Married 3 Feb 1835 Anderson County, South Carolina.

12. Martha Poole, b. 1815, South Carolina, d. bef 1865, South Carolina

13. George Floyd, b. 29 Sep 1807, Vermont, d. 11 Mar 1880, Texas. Married 13 Nov 1835 Greene County, Illinois.

14. Nancy Finley, b. ca 1816, Illinois, d. 5 Feb 1864, Texas

15. Absalom C. Matlock, b. 21 Mar 1825, Kentucky, d. 1865, Texas. Married 13 Aug 1846 Warren County, Kentucky.

16. Nancy Malvina Harris, b. b. 28 Apr 1827, Kentucky, d. 11 Aug 1862, Texas

Looks like I'm 87.5% Southern Mutt.

Follow Friday Newsletter: 15 July 2011

2011-07-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

This Week in Genealogy Blogging

Amen, amen, amen

Kerry Scott at Clue Wagon gives us “5 Reasons You Should Join the National Genealogical Society.” Amen and then some.

The 1977 Blackout

The Brooklyn Historical Blog has a couple of wonderful posts on the New York blackout of 1977: “July 11th-July 14th 1977: The Week a Little Girl was Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn and the Lights Went Out Across NYC: By Chantal Valencia Lawrence” and “The 1977 Blackout.” I wasn’t there, but my husband was.

Some informative posts on Google+

Tamura Jones at Modern Software Experience provides some detailed impressions of the features of Google+ and how they differ from Facebook in “Google+.”

At the Jewish Ginger Genealogist, Banai compares and contrasts Google+, Facebook, and Twitter in “Google+ vs Facebook vs Twitter - 10 Things.” I’m hoping Google+ leaves out the games. Banai follows this up with “Google+ - What’s Missing.”

In “Some Google Plus Commentary,” Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings lists relevant posts, comments on what it is like to use Google+, and cites some of its advantages over Facebook.

At Genealogy by Ginger’s Blog, Ginger Smith lists some good posts on Google+ and adds her own observations in “Google+ ... Geneabloggers are All Abuzz.”

At TransylvanianDutch John Newmark makes some interesting predictions about the future of his participation in Google+ and Facebook in “Who Will Google Kill This Time?”

In “Hanging Out With Google,” Heather Rojo at Nutfield Genealogy gives an in-depth description of her experience hosting a Hangout at Google+: what worked and for whom and what didn’t.

A well-developed idea

At Stardust ‘n’ Roots, Bart “GeneaPopPop" has a thoughtful “list post” on “The Eight Stages of My Genealogical Development.” I think his description is spot on!

A fascinating film

Over at Shades of the Departed, catch the full-length “A Trip Down Market Street,” film footage taken just days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and read about the research that was able to date the film in “Historic Market Street 1906.”

Paying for free stuff

In “Case Study: Ancestry’s paid and FamilySearch’s open access book images match - WHY?” DearMyrtle presents the smoking gun - smoking images? - pointing to Ancestry’s use of source images that are free elsewhere as part of their “available to paid subscribers only” service, and although there are other possible explanations, Ancestry’s source description doesn’t help their case.

An article on genealogy that quotes Popper

Yeah, Karl Popper. It’s “Genealogy and Science” at J. H. Fonkert’s Four Generations Genealogy. Fonkert believes the question should be not so much what genealogy is as what methods genealogy uses.

An irresistible contest

Not so much for the prize offered, but for the challenge. Check out “Who’s That Girl?” at Maureen Taylor’s Photo Detective. I can’t wait to see what Maureen will come up with.

A word of warning!

“Is that obituary totally factual?” is the question Paula Stuart-Warren at Paula’s Genealogical Eclectica recommends we ask ourselves when we use obituaries as sources of information - and she lists the possible sources of misinformation.

Eye-candy for the genealogist

Wendy Brittain at Shaking Leaves: My Adventures in Genealogy has found lots of ancestor information and some amazing plat maps on Ancestry - I know you map-heads out there are already geeking out - check it out in “Those Places Thursday: Mapping my Family in Marion County, Alabama.”

Great advice

At Genea-Musings, Randy Seaver posts “My Research Problem Solution Advice” - his answer to people who feel they have exhausted online resources. Excellent suggestions here - this should be turned into a FAQ somewhere.

If only a college education could be this inexpensive

Valerie Elkins at Family Cherished has a great list of ways to get an education in genealogy that won’t break the bank in “Getting a Great Genealogical Education for Little or No Money.”

For more suggested blog reading

Check out “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist, “Follow Friday Gems” at Deb Ruth’s Adventures in Genealogy, “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds” at Jenn’s Climbinb My Family Tree, and “Week in Review” at John Newmark’s TransylvanianDutch.

This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

From My Tree Branch To Yours

Piney Woods and Prairie Winds

Genea-Related

Reflections

My Research Week

Other than working on my husband’s family lines this week, I followed up on some odds and ends that popped up on several of my families.

I am still working on bookmarks, Diigo, etc. and this week I mostly continued to fix up the 4 initial categories for my Genealogy Toolboxes (one Toolbox is on the blog, the other one is on Weebly). But I did import my Safari bookmarks (my single largest collection of genealogy bookmarks) from my desktop to my laptop, so that’s real progress.

Always Go Back and Reread Your Notes

2011-07-13T17:22:00.000-07:00

As I was writing up the sources for yesterday’s post, I went back to my notes on my conversation with my mother-in-law regarding the D'Arco family house in Newark. She had remembered and given the addresses! James Street was the address of Nicholas D’Arco’s store; the family house was located at 446-8 Summer Avenue. This is the street view picture Google Maps gives for that address:

I think this is the right house.

Tuesday’s Tip: Using Immigration Records in Location Studies

2011-07-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

Putting the D’Arco Family Together

One of the pleasures of researching my husband’s family lines is that it leads me to new geographic areas, new patterns of movement and family association, and, what is most interesting, new research approaches.

My Southern American, mostly rural agrarian ancestors followed certain migration patterns. I track their movements to learn about them, but their locations also help me to identify them and distinguish them from others with the same name. They didn’t have much by way of addresses, but did have rural routes, descriptions of landmarks, metes and bounds and, on a few occasions, townships, range, and sections.

No so with my husband’s ancestors, who were mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century immigrants to New York and New Jersey - they had real addresses in this country: on the censuses (which I can even read if I’m lucky) and in directories. When I first started I didn’t have much to go on, because their European names confounded a lot of the census takers and because I was unaware of how useful city directories could be.

I learned how important it was to “follow the address” from attending several presentations given by Warren Bittner at the 2011 Spring Conference of the Fairfax Genealogical Society. Sometimes the address may be the only constant for an ancestor with a name that seems to morph from year to year. And recently a researcher on my husband’s Fichtelmann line sent me a spreadsheet with year-by-year addresses for his Fichtelmann great-great-grandparents from 1859 through 1900 - be still, my heart! (Migration geeks will probably understand my excitement.)

I realized that I could do the same for my husband’s Koehl great-great-grandparents, because I have addresses from the 1870 through 1900 federal censuses, two New York state censuses, several New York City directories, and even Julius Koehl’s estate papers.

But right now I am using the address/location connection to put together my husband’s D’Arco family in Newark, New Jersey. Right now I only have three censuses and one city directory.

But I have more address information. I have immigration records.

Immigration records have plenty of juicy tidbits of information which may include: last permanent residence, place of birth, final destination, name of nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came, name or relative or friend passenger is going to join with full address, and so on. Again, if you can read the handwriting, these things are goldmines of names, dates, places.

I started with three census records for the Nicola D’Arco-Vincenza “Jenni” Rossi family:

1910 US Federal Census, Newark City, District 2, Essex County, New Jersey, ED 52, p. 13A, 21 or 22 Apr 1910

Line 4, Lock Street 191 215

Dargo, Nicholas Head M W 29 M1 1 Italy Italy Italy 1900 Alien English Driver Mason
Cannot read or write
Vincenza Rose Wife F W 18 M1 1 0 0 Italy Italy Italy 1907 Italian None
Cannot read or write
Rosie Rose Sister-in-law F W 38 S Italy Italy Italy 1907 Italian None
Cannot read or write

1920 US Federal Census, City of Newark – Ward 15, Essex County, New Jersey, ED 265, p. 22A, 13 Jan 1920

Line 26, James St. 159 267 504

Docco, Nick Head O M M W 36 M 1896 Alien Cannot read or write
Italy Italian Italy Italian Italy Italian Yes Peddlar Fruit wagon OA
Jennie Wife F W 27 M 1907 Alien Cannot read or write
Italy Italian Italy Italian Italy Italian yes None
Angelina Daughter F W 10 S NJ Italy Italy
Maggie Daughter F W 7 S NJ Italy Italy
Florence Daughter F W 5 S NJ Italy Italy
Geraldine NJ Italy Italy

1930 US Federal Census, City of Newark, Ward 15, Block 1882, Essex County, New Jersey, ED 7-263, p. 6B 7 Apr 1930

Line 78, James Street 159 22a 40

Darco, Nick Head O $3000 M W 47 M 27 No No Italy Italy Italy Italian 1901 Alien Yes
Grocery store Self Yes No
Jennie Wife F W 38 M 16 No No Italy Italy Italy Italian 1909 Alien Yes None
Julia Daughter F W 19 S No Yes NJ Italy Italy Yes None
Margaret Daughter F W 17 S No Yes NJ Italy Italy Yes None
Florence Daughter F W 15 S Yes Yes NJ Italy Italy Yes None
Geraldine Daughter F W 11 S Yes Yes NJ Italy Italy Yes None
Rose Daughter F W 9 S Yes Yes NJ Italy Italy Yes None

This was followed by the 1937 Newark Street Directory:

D’Arco, Anthony F. (Evelyn E.) gen contr 403 N. 12th h do
Florence married George Galante
Gelardina T. Seamstress r 159 James
Margaret r 159 James
Nicola (Jennie) h 159 James

I know of no connection to the Anthony D’Arco who appears at the top of this list, and he did not live at the same address as the Nicola D’Arco family (Florence, Geraldine, and Margaret were daughters), but he’s filed away just in case and I will be consulting a Newark street map.

Next comes the Record of detained alien passengers from the S. S. Neustria, arrived from Naples 27 May 1902: Nicola D’Aro arrives to go to his brother Giov[anni], who lives at 31 Garside St., Newark, NJ.

Here is an image provided by Google Maps of houses in the vicinity of 282 Garside Street (which searches reveal is in the neighborhood of Newark known as Little Italy):

The next record I found was the List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the United States Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival for the Ship Hamburg, which sailed from Naples on October 19, 1907 and arrived in the port of New York on November 1, 1907. This record contains the names of Vincenza Rossi and her mother [or sister, if you go by the 1910 census above] Rosa. Among the many interesting items of information this document includes are their Last Permanent Residence - Cava [de] Tirreni, their place of birth - Vietri sul Mare (which is near Cava de Tirreni), and their destination: brother-in-law (or, for Vincenza, uncle) Vincenzo D’Arco, who lives at 225 Freemont Av., Jersey, NJ. According to the 1910 census, Nicola and Vincenza did not marry until around 1909, so this indicates that Vincenzo may be the husband of a sister of Rosa (and Vincenza as well if she is actually Rosa’s sister).

My mother-in-law had always heard that the D'Arco family was from Naples. This illustrates what was apparently a common phenomenon when immigrant ancestors referred to the old country - they often chose a larger, more well-known city: Cava de Tirreni > Salerno > Naples. Here are maps showing where Cava de Tirreni is located in relation to Vietri sul Mare and when Vietri sul Mare is located in relation to Salerno:

So next I looked Vincenzo D’Arco up in the immigration records. Two records appear to be good matches for Vincenzo:

List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Commission of Immigration

Name: Vincenzo Darco
Arrival date: 6 Jul 1900
Estimated YOB: 1878 (could also be 1873)
Age: 22 (could also be 27)
Port of departure: Naples, Italy
Ethnicity: Italian
Ship Name: Spartan Prince
Port of arrival: New York, New York
Last residence: Cava Tirreni
Whether going to join a relative, and if so, what relative, their name and address:
my brother D’Arco Giovanni
4 Garside St.

List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Commission of Immigration

Name: Vincenzo Darco
Arrival date: 2 Jun 1903
Estimated YOB: 1872
Age: 22
Port of departure: Naples, Italy
Ethnicity: Italian
Ship Name: Palatia
Port of arrival: New York, New York
Final destination: Jersey City, NJ
Last residence: Cava Tirreni
Whether going to join a relative, and if so, what relative, their name and address:
my brother D’Arco Giovanni
282 Garside [Garsmond?]
Jersey City, NJ

This entry appears to be crossed out - perhaps he did not make the trip?

There is another entry for a Vincenzo D’Arco traveling on the Germania on 21 Mar 1907, age 46 [or 42], from “Cava de Ter.” going to his brother Saverio, 342 [Clinton St.?], Newark, NJ.

Here the age does not match, but he appears to be traveling from the same place in Italy to the same city in New Jersey - but the street address does not match and Saverio is a new name. Could be the same guy, an older relative, or someone completely different? This is another item to file this away. This same Vincenzo appears on a March 5 manifest but is crossed out - this manifests indicates that his hair is gray, so I’m guessing the 42/46 age is correct. And the point of origin of Cava de’ Tirreni is clear. I’m guessing he was a relative.

To sum up, Vincenzo D’Arco is listed as a relative by marriage for Rosa and Vincenza Rossi, Nicola and Vincenzo both claim a Giovanni D’Arco on Garside St. as a brother, and Vincenzo and the Rossis all come from Cava de Tirreni - so I believe I have at least three D’Arco brothers/relatives, two of whom may be married to Rossi sisters/relatives.

The other address that recurs is 159 James Street. This house is well remembered by my mother-in-law; according to her, the D’Arco family lived in a beautiful turreted house in New Jersey before she and her parents moved to Brooklyn. It was a duplex with 5-room and 3-room units on each side.

This is the picture I get when I input 159 James Street Newark into Google Maps:

This is obviously not old enough to be the house my mother-in-law remembers, but just in case I’ll be checking with my mother-in-law to see whether she remembers anything like this on James Street.

My plan for “putting together the D’Arco and Rossi families” is to use these posited relationships, the addresses (with some map work), and the place of origin in Italy - Cava de Tirreni - to identify members of these families, which I hope to confirm through study of directories, vital records, and other records.

Sources:

Street view photographs and maps courtesy of Google maps

Census

Nicholas Darco [Dargo] household, 1910 U.S. census, Essex County, New Jersey, population schedule, Newark City, dwelling 191, family 215; National Archives microfilm publication T624, p.13A. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

Nick Darco [Docco] household, 1920 U.S. census, Essex County, New Jersey, population schedule, Newark City, dwelling 267, family 504; National Archives microfilm publication T625, p. 22A. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

Nick Darco household, 1930 U.S. census Essex County, New Jersey, population schedule, Newark City, dwelling 22a, family 40; National Archives microfilm publication T626, p. 6B. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

Directory

The Price & Lee Co.‘s Newark, N.J. Directory, 1937, p. 1373. Accessed via Ancestry.com on U.S. City Directories database.

Immigration Records

Nicola D’Arco entry, Record of Detained Alien Passengers of SS Neustria, 17 May 1902, page 96, line 14; in New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957; National Archives microfilm publication T715. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

Entry for Rosa and Vincenza Rossi, List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the United States Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival for the Ship Hamburg, sailed from Naples on October 19, 1907 and arrived in the port of New York on November 1, 1907, page 219, lines 2 and 3; National Archives microfilm publication T715. Accessed via Ancestry.com.

Entry for Vincenzo D’Arco, List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Commission of Immigration for the SS Palatia, sailing from Naples, arrival date 6 July 1900 in port of New York, page 27, line 12; National Archives microfilm publication T715, accessed via Ancestry.com.

Entry for Vincenzo D’Arco, List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Commission of Immigration for the SS Spartan Prince, sailing from Naples 21 May 1903, arrived in the port of New York 5 June 1903, page 102, line 7; National Archives microfilm publication T715, accessed via Ancestry.com.

Entry for Vincenzo D’Arco, List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Immigration Officer at the Port of Arrival for the SS Germania, sailing from Naples 6 March 1907, arrived in the port of New York 21 March 1907, page 24, line 23; National Archives microfilm publication T715, accessed via Ancestry.com.

Entry for Vincenzo D’Arco, List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival for the SS Madonna, sailing from Naples 24 February 1907, arrived in the port of New York 6 March 1907, page 32, line 20; National Archives microfilm publication T715, accessed via Ancestry.com.

Personal conversation

Interview with J. Koehl, 9 January 2006.

Questions About Online Trees

2011-07-10T10:51:00.001-07:00

Recently I was flipping through the latest issue of Family Tree Magazine and stopped to look at some of the sites mentioned in “Dazzling Destinations,” an article about what FT considers to be the best 101 sites for tracing ancestors. Listed under the “Share and Store Alike” section were several websites with the capability for posting/sharing family trees. Some of these sites are on my “list of things to check out” and I have read about them in other genealogy blogs. Some of the bloggers mentioned various features of these sites that they liked and found helpful in research and a few even wrote about some useful cousin connections they had made through them.

It is this last item that has made me consider using yet another venue to put my family tree(s) online. Currently my family tree information appears in only two places: on this blog in bits and pieces as individual posts, and on Ancestry in the form of four public trees and one private tree. Eventually I would like to put my trees online on my own website, but I presently lack the skills to do that.

After looking over some of the websites mentioned in the article, I have a bit of an idea what they offer and how they differ, but that is not the same as actually using them and experiencing their shortcomings or benefits.

I like the setup of Ancestry Public Member Trees because they suggest documents and databases that may be relevant, let you add your own sources, photographs, documents, and so forth when you want to, and suggest possible matches in other Public Member Trees. From recent experience I can say that although I have a number of additional sources for my trees, the hints have been helpful.

For those of you who have used or are using these sites for online family trees, I would like to know how they have benefitted your research and helped you to connect with other researchers. I am not so much interested in contributing to anything like One World Tree or in the shared research/Wiki editing type of online tree, although I am aware that some sites that do this also have the option for individual/unshared trees.

Some of my specific questions are:

1. What are the specific value-added components of the site: cousin connections, research resources such as access to certain documents, tree-building and display features, aids to organization of research, or special features such as discussion forums, how-to tutorials, other content?

2. How easy is the site to use: joining/registering, uploading GEDCOMs, adding people individually, making changes, adding sources, documents, and photos, viewing in different formats, privacy settings, Help service for problems?

3. How does the site compare with Ancestry trees, private websites, or other similar websites?

4. Does the website have shortcomings or areas that need to be improved? Does joining the site lead to a large volume of e-mail offers for paid products or to an increase in spam?

The sites mentioned by the article that sounded appropriate to my intended use are:

Geni

My Heritage

Shared Tree (could not get this site to load - bad sign)

Tribal Pages

WeRelate

WikiTree

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: My Elevator Speech

2011-07-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

Tonia Kendrick’s (of Tonia’s Genealogy Blog) first challenge of 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog - to write an elevator pitch for our blogs - has become this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun at Randy’ Seaver’s Genea-Musings.

This is mine:

I’m crazy about genealogy and I’m addicted to it. Some people think I’m just a crazy addict. The purpose of this blog is to show you why I’m hooked on genealogy and why you should be, too. Should you decide to give genealogy a try, I’ll provide some pointers on how to find your ancestors. Once you have felt the thrill of the hunt, you’ll never want to stop.

Follow Friday Newsletter: 8 July 2011

2011-07-08T03:41:00.000-07:00

This Week in Genea-Blogging

Can I redo my education?

At Climbing My Family Tree, Jenn describes how she is incorporating genealogy into her children’s home schooling curriculum in “Genealogy for Kids: Family Tree Notebooking Page.” And there is a bonus in the post - check it out! She follows this up with “Genealogy for Kids: Cemetery Scavenger Hunt.”

A post that really struck home with me

Was Melissa Manon’s “The Value of Cultural Knowledge” at ArchivesInfo. I love that she is teaching her daughter how to think critically and question information that is passed off as fact. This post made me reflect on how much knowing the cultural context has helped me in family history research and how much more cultural knowledge I have acquired through my research.

An outstanding angle on Independence Day

For the 4th of July Leah at Leah’s Family Tree honors some of her “non-combatant” ancestors who did their part in making the United States of America great in “America in My Family Tree.” A perceptive take on our celebration of independence.

A neat map

Presented by A Postcard a Day: “Curiously juxtaposed USA.” Check it out; there are some really excellent town name juxtapositions! You will probably have to click on the map to be able to read the names - it’s worth it.

A neat idea

Presented by Denise Barrett Oleson at Moultrie Creek Gazette: “Build an online family journal with Posterous.” Denise makes an effective case that this is the perfect platform for the technologically-challenged, so I’m definitely interested!

For the rest of you Kentucky-heads out there

J. Mark Lowe has started a series on “Kentucky’s Revolutionary Land Grants - Part 1” at Kentucky & Tennessee Stories. Map included.

A pro with wildcard searches

That’s Lorine McGinnis Shulze at Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question. In “Hiding in Plain Sight,” she outlines a case study demonstrating how she finally traced the family of an ancestor with a difficult-to-spell Eastern European name. Brava!

Why don’t we have movies and shows like this already?

At The We Tree Genealogy Blog, Amy Coffin sends up both Hollywood and the genealogy community. And we are laughing hysterically. Read “If Genealogists Ran Hollywood.”

What would you include on the list?

Another thought-provoking post from Marian at Roots and Rambles: “The Top 3 Changes in Genealogy.” Agree/Disagree/Anything to add?

Effective message-boarding

Is described by Deb Ruth of Adventures in Genealogy in "Heard on the Message Board.” She gives some tips for writing an effective query and lists some of the main genealogy message boards.

Last, but never least

Do NOT miss reading the entries for the 107th Carnival of Genealogy - The Seasons of Genealogy at West in New England, hosted by the inimitable Bill West. Outstanding!

For more suggested blog reading,

Check out “Follow Friday on a Saturday” at Cheryl Cayemberg’s Have You Seen My Roots?, “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds” at Jenn’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Follow Friday Gems” at Deb Ruth’s Adventures in Genealogy, “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Week in Review” at John Newmark’s TransylvanianDutch, and “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist.

This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

365 Days of Genealogy

Greenealogist’s Corner

Unsolved Histories: Adoption and Forensic Genealogy

Thank-You Corner

My thanks to Patti Browning of Consanguinity for leaving a comment on my “Seasons of Genealogy” post to let me know that if I do get to go to Dallas on a research trip I might want to visit the Southwest Branch of the National Archives over in Fort Worth! You bet I’d like to! Thank you for the information, Patti!

I’m very happy to see that one of my favorite bloggers has returned to posting: Amy at They that go down to the sea celebrates the 4th of July with one of the discoveries she made: “Independence Day and genealogy.”

My Research Week

Since “What I Learned Wednesday” (which was yesterday, as I am writing this Thursday evening), there has actually been a little bit more research action.

1. I continue to eat crow concerning the usefulness of shaky leaves on Ancestry Public Member Trees (PMTs). Last night I decided to input a few relatives on the Matlock line, and for the Luney M. Goforth and Malvina Isabella Gracey family that leaf led me to the 1900 census, where I had not been able to find them before. They are listed there as Lemey M. Gofnok and Milvley I. Gofnok. Well, as if their names weren’t already unusual. In turn, I found the oldest of the five children, Thurza, who I knew must exist from the 1910 census (5 living children). However, she wasn’t on the 1910 census with the family, so I didn't know her name or whether she was a boy or a girl; I figured she was already out of the house. And, using her unusual first name and the birth states for her and her parents, I found her with her husband Doc Pitts on the 1910 census. So, I admit it, a shaky leaf helped. I don’t think I would have found the Gofnoks without its help (though I have done some imaginative census searches in my day).

2. Blogger put me into the “new-new” Blogger in Draft today. I didn’t like it, and actually could not navigate to it by selecting “New Post” or “Design.” Turns out they have the URL scrambled, so I just unscrambled it and got into the new version of Blogger in Draft - which I didn’t like. I like to think of myself as traditional, but you can call me primitive (I don’t like New Search, either). So I unchecked the “Make Blogger in Draft my default” box. Still, there seem to be some scrambled posts with messed up pictures, which I have put back into draft form until I can fix them up. Bleghh.

What I Learned Wednesday: 7 July 2011

2011-07-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

Something exciting (for me) happened this week - I got my first Findagrave message! It was a request to add a maiden name to one of the memorials that I had added. I do not yet have “big numbers” in Findagrave, both because I don’t get much of a chance to spend time in cemeteries and because many of the pictures/transcriptions that I have done are already in Findagrave, so I was really pleased to be able to do this for someone. (Note to self: Try to get out to cemeteries more often!)

More luck at Italiangen.org: I found a Benedetto and Maria Davi who, based on calculated year of birth, appear to be the people I have identified as parents of Giovanna “Jeni” Davi, my husband’s great-grandmother. I’ll be sending off for death certificates within the next couple of weeks. The Davis I found died in 1934, so I’m hoping that the form will be as detailed as the 1907 one I received for Julius Koehl and that the informants knew who their parents were.

I did some bookmark cleanup and organization - added some links to my Texas links and some items to my Research toolboxes here and on Weebly. I have also started working up a list of resources on Diigo. What did I learn? Bookmarking and bookmark organization takes a lot of time! This needs to be one of my resolutions - do a bit of bookmark management each weekend before I start regular research.

This weekend I discovered the “U.S. Cemetery and Funeral Home Collection” on Ancestry.com. It gives the full text of the record plus extracted information. Pretty neat if one of the names you are researching shows up there - for the person I was researching, in addition to the full obituary, it provided names of parents, siblings, spouse, children, age at death, residence, date and place of birth, date of death, and military service in a convenient form for reference. I’ll have to give it a whirl with some other names.

Strange item of the week:

Three Nora Lees? I have been working on the family of Minnie Brinlee and Raligh Jones. Their oldest daughter was Nora Lee, who married Charles Alexander Whitaker. Their oldest son, Cecil Odes, married a Nora Lee Small and another son, Burl, married a Nora Lee Scroggins. Or so say the entries on Findagrave.

Surname Sunday: Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner

2011-07-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Julius Henry Koehl
b. 1839, Meisenheim, Germany
d. 16 Mar 1907
& Josephine Lochner
b. 1842, Wurttemberg
d. 17 Jan 1895
|--Josephine Koehl
|----b. 11 Feb 1867, Brooklyn, Kings, New York
|----d. 1949
|---& Peter H. Glashoff
|----b. 3 May 1866, Gluckstadt, Germany
|----d. 6 Oct 1937
|----m. 1899
|--Julia Koehl
|----b. Mar 1868, New York
|----d. 1960
|---& John A. Kern
|----b. Jan 1866, New York
|----d. 22 May 1948, Kings County, New York
|----m. ca 1891
|--Margaretta Helena “Lena” Koehl
|----b. 26 May 1869, Brooklyn, Kings, New York
|----d. 22 Oct 1875, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York
|--Lillian “Lillie” Koehl
|----b. Apr 1872, New York
|---& Herman Binninger
|----b. Sep 1869, Germany
|----d. 13 Nov 1916, Kings County, New York
|--Frances Koehl
|----b. 8 Feb 1874, New York
|----d. 1966
|---& Paul Haas
|----b. 29 Jan 1876, New York
|----d. 22 May 1946
|--Julius Koehl
|----d. bef 26 Apr 1876
|--Magdalena M. “Lena” Koehl
|----b. 1876, New York
|----d. Apr 1969
|---& Frederick William A. Tonjes
|----b. 24 Jun 1879, Bremen, Germany
|----m. 14 Nov 1900, Kings County, New York
|--Henry “Harry” Julius Koehl
|----b. 4 May 1878, Brooklyn, Kings, New York
|----d. Feb 1965, New York
|---& Anna Christina “Christine” Fichtelmann
|----b. Feb 1882, New York
|----d. May 1961
|----m. 1898
|--Augusta M. “Gussie” Koehl
|----b. Aug 1879, New York
|---& Philip Kern
|----b. 7 Aug 1878, Germany
|----m. 25 Apr 1905
|--Louis Julius Koehl
|----b. 22 Aug 1881, New York
|---& Catherine “Katie” Reuss
|----b. 1884, New York
|----m. 20 Apr 1904, Kings County, New York

This is the family of my husband’s great-great grandparents Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner. I wrote a post on this family soon after I started this blog in 2008, but have learned a great deal more about this family since then, particularly in the last few weeks. As you can see, there are still gaps - death dates are missing for several of the children - but I have a plan of action. For one thing, I will be sending off for death certificates and mortuary certificates for the two children who died young - Margaretta Hellena and Julius. Some of the sources of information are: the death certificates of Julius and Josephine Koehl, the probate records for the estate of Julius Koehl, census records - including two New York state censuses, birth, death, and marriage information accessed through the Italiangen.org website, city directories, passport applications, tombstone photos, World War I and World War II enlistment records, and naturalization documents.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Follow Friday Newsletter: 1 July 2011

2011-07-01T03:26:00.000-07:00

This Week in Genea-Blogging

You tell ‘em!

Dear Myrtle (“21st Century genealogists: how websites are failing us.”) and footnoteMaven (“Making My Way in the World Today Takes Everything I’ve Got”) have gone on a tear this week - a good tear! It’s all about putting citations with images from online websites/sources - if the big websites will not do it, there are ways to do it ourselves.

BillionGraves getting its act together?

In “I’m Finally Using BillionGraves,” Taneya at Taneya’s Genealogy Blog reports on her recent experience with BillionGraves that’s a good deal more positive than some of the initial reports we’ve seen. It seems that BillionGraves has been getting some of the bugs ironed out.

Another viewpoint on BillionGraves.com

This time a negative experience is reported by Valerie Craft in “A Disappointing Day with BillionGraves.com” at Begin with Craft. But there is a positive aspect, too: A representative of BillionGraves.com replies in a comment with an apology and indicates that the necessary update to the app should be available soon.

What happened during those 5 years - check the Freedman’s Bureau records!

Angela Walton-Raji highlights a resource that can shed light on the fates of former slave families during the 1865-1870 period in “From Virginia to Arkansas, and Back to Virginia - A Freedman’s Bureau Migration Story” at My Ancestor’s Name.

A great idea from Marian Pierre-Louis at Roots and Rambles

is “What Exactly Do I Research?” Michael Hait at Planting the Seeds likes the idea and has also written on “What Exactly Do I Research?”

It cannot be emphasized often enough -

“Tuesday’s Tip - Get Connected!” is Deb Ruth’s advice at Adventures in Genealogy this week. She tells how doing this is paying off in her own research.

Thank you to Lorine McGinnis Shulze

of Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question. She provided some information in response to a query this week - “Lots of New York Info Found with Wide-spread Search” - that mentioned the website Italiangen.org. I had visited this website before but not checked it out in detail. This time I did. Big-time information information on my husband’s family, and the option of linking to the New York vital records website to pull up the forms to send off for copies. Neat and easy to use.

Walking in our parents’ footsteps

An experience Carol’s Man gets to have over at Reflections from the Fence: “THE Trip, Fort Verde State Historic Park, Man’s Close Encounter With WWII Reenactor.”

Don’t hold back!

At The Armchair Genealogist, Lynn Palermo has some good tips for first-time visitors to archives: “When Fear Holds You Back From Doing Your Best Research!”

And to prove it, a report on first-time experience

Susan Clark of Nolichucky Roots shares “A Newbie’s View of the National Archives - Those Places Thursday.” Okay, well, this wasn’t exactly new news for me - we shared experiences over dinner in DC last Friday! It was a blast - genealogy bloggers are the most interesting and enjoyable people to talk to and I wish I could do stuff like this all the time. Anyway, Susan has good info - the waiting time, getting your stuff in, how nice the staff are - the whole scoop.

There’s a new kid in town ...

Google+. And, of course, Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings will be checking it out and is already trying to figure out “What Will the Google+ Project Mean for Genealogy?” Might be good news for people fed up with Facebook quirks and endless changes.

And over at The Ginger Genealogist, you can read Banai’s opinion in “Google+ - My First Thoughts.”

When your female ancestors are in hiding ...

This week Susan Farrell Bankhead at Susan’s Genealogy Blog has two posts with lots of suggestions on finding female ancestors: “Resources for Finding Females” and “More on Finding Females.”

For more suggested blog reading

Check out “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds” at Jen’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Follow Friday Gems” at Deb Ruth’s Adventures in Genealogy, and “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist.

This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

Karen’s Genealogy Oasis

Professor Dru’s Blog

The Tree Ward

McKinney Public Library Genealogy Blog

My Research Week

In my last post, I said that I hadn’t done any research this week. That was true until about 10:00 last night. As I mentioned above, Lorine McGinnis Shulze mentioned the website Italiangen.org, I checked it out, and it filled in lots of information on some of the New York side of my husband’s family: quite a few full dates of birth, death, and marriage and the maiden name of the wife of his great-great uncle Louis Koehl - so now I know all of the spouses of the children of Julius and Josephine Koehl. And there was also information on “persons of interest.” Not bad for an hour and a half of research.

The Seasons of Genealogy: It’s Okay to Daydream

2011-06-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I wrote a post on “My Top 5 Genealogy Research Books.” Three of them are books I use to find resources and plan research projects and trips.

There is a lot of planning going on right now.

Also known as “daydreaming.”

As in: “It would be so nice to take a trip to South Carolina or Texas or Tennessee or Kentucky or Illinois.” Or: “It would be so nice to be able to take a week off to spend at the National Archives.” Or even: “I wish I had even just a day to spend looking up ancestors on Genealogy Bank.”

I daydream research plans. Moving Moores around a chessboard and connecting them with a spiderweb of lines to various associated families is a game I often play in my head. But my favorite daydreams are research trips: where should we go, how much time should we spend, which repositories, museums, and historical societies should we visit, and what information will I be looking for.

I’m in the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer in my research.

During the early season of my research - my “research spring” - I gleefully skipped around from website to website, shot off request letters to various repositories, got in touch with lots of relatives. The results were glorious. Ancestors sprang up all over. I identified where a lot of research had already been done and made some new discoveries of my own. I went from the bare dirt of almost total ignorance of my family history to a lush garden full of ancestors, dates, and places.

But now the season has changed to summer. Hot, sultry summer. A time of big ambitions but slow movement.

I want to do a lot of serious, organized, and sustained research, but things (work, children, house, miscellaneous appointments and obligations) keep me from doing everything I want to do, kind of the same way that the hot weather keeps me from getting my yard in shape.

This is not exactly the same as summer doldrums. My research is moving. And the thing is, besides adding what often seem like minor snippets of information, there have been several significant developments over the past year. To stretch the metaphor a bit (and I love to do that - even to the breaking point), these developments are the fruit of seeds I planted earlier.

I posted information in various places on my Moores, and a distant Moore cousin got in touch with me and provided the impetus I need to take a research trip to Greenville, South Carolina. I’m still working on the filing box full of documents I copied there.

I posted information on my Floyds, and a distant Floyd cousin got in touch with me who provided information on all of my great-great grandfather George Floyd's siblings, as well as copies of letters written to the Vermont branch by my Texas Floyds. This inspired me to get back in touch with my Floyd second cousins in Texas, who dug up lots of interesting court materials on our Texas Floyds from some clues I found in Genealogy Bank.

I kept in touch with some Brinlee cousins, and when our Texas Brinlees got a DNA match with some Tennessee Brinleys, we started working on those Brinleys to try to find a common ancestor and break down our Brinlee brick wall.

I posted information on my Normans, and was contacted by my wonderful cousin Rebecca, who provided me with a goldmine of family information when we met in Orangeburg.

I contacted fellow Fichtelmann researcher Mary Lou, who eventually figured out which Fichtelmann was the father of my husband’s great-grandmother and much, much more - all of which she shared with me. I followed her example to find a lot more information on my husband’s Koehl family.

But despite all of this activity, it feels as though my own efforts are just moving too slowly. I did almost no research at all this past week; I was too busy trying to get some chores out of the way so that I would actually have a free schedule for research.

So in odd moments here and there I daydream about what I am going to do when I have the time. If we get to take a trip to Dallas, where will I go besides the Dallas Public Library? How am I going to go about finding Elisha Berry Lewis’ mystery siblings? What are the next steps I should take to find the parents of my great-grandmother Susan Elizabeth Smith?

I call it planning.

Oh, and for the record: when I daydream of research trips, they are always in the chilly early spring or crisp late fall. Because I have so many ancestors in the South. And the South is hot. And I hate the heat.

Submitted for the 107th Carnival of Genealogy, created by Jasia of Creative Gene and hosted by Bill West of West in New England.

My Top 5 Genealogy Research Books

2011-06-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

Last week Marian Pierre-Louis of Roots and Rambles listed the top 5 books on her bookshelf. I thought this was a great idea for genealogy bloggers, because even though there will definitely be books that appear on many of our lists, a few could also pop up that might not have occurred to some of us. It has also inspired me to add a page to this blog, “Genealogy Books I Own.”

This weekend I am finally getting down to listing my Top 5, and a couple of interesting things about my list have already become evident. First, the books on my list do not fit as much into the “regional research” mold as Marion’s books do, and second, the books that are regionally focused are actually a set of books.

1. At the top of my list is a set of about 15 books by Dr. A. Bruce Pruitt in two series of books of abstracts of deeds in South Carolina: Pendleton District/Anderson District/County and Greenville County. Since the Moores and Lewises are my first-priority research focus, this area of South Carolina where they lived before my branch went to Texas is my top geographic area of interest along with Texas. Dr. Pruitt’s books have been instrumental in helping me sort out the families; there were other families of the same name (at least one for Lewis and several for Moore) in Greenville and Anderson. They have helped me to identify associated families and to create a list of likely family members (though I still do not know exactly how many of the probable Moore family members are related). I referred to these books and to Greenville Library’s online indices and finding aids to compile a list of documents to look up before my trip to Greenville last year.

I should mention here that there is another set of books that I also use a great deal for South Carolina research but that I do not own: Brent Holcomb’s books of births, deaths, and marriages extracted from South Carolina newspapers. Some of these are online and the others I have used in the library.

2. Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills. Naming the obvious, of course. I use it for source citations, but not just for that purpose. There are so many different types of sources and information, found in so many forms, in so many places, that it is often difficult know which distinctions to make and how to record how and where I have accessed a particular type of source. I also love the division into categories of sources; this helps me to understand how everything works together and to form a systematic picture of where my research gaps are.

My next three books are all general-purpose guides focusing on American research. At this point my research is at the stage of generation of research plans: where I need to go and what I need to get. These three books are helping me to figure that all out and to make sure that all my bases are covered. Some items I can mail off for and some can be obtained on microfilm from the local FHL, but I also use the results to plan out future research trips (dreaming right now, but I hope a reality later on).

3. Redbook of American State, County and Town Sources, edited by Alice Eichholz. I like the state-by-state organization and the map of each state with divisions into counties, townships, etc. Within each state the records are organized by type or by specialized area of research (“Special Focus Categories” such as particular religious or ethnic groups, immigration, and so forth). This is the first place I go when thinking about research in a particular state. At the end of each state chapter there is a list of current counties (or their equivalents) with the dates they were established and courthouse addresses, as well as a list of previously existing entities (such as the circuit court districts in South Carolina, for example).

4. The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking. The principle for its organization is more or less the opposite of that for #3: by type of records or specialized research subject first, and then when appropriate these are divided into states and localities. This is the book I go to first when thinking in terms of research of a particular subject or specialized area such as immigration or Jewish American research. Genealogical societies and lineage associations are listed in appendices. The notes at the end of each chapter are also extremely useful for finding further information. This book can now be accessed online as part of the Ancestry.com Wiki.

5. Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records, edited by Kory L. Meyerink. The organization of this book is closer to #4, or in other words types of documents and then when appropriate geographical location. As the title indicates, it covers published records rather than the full range of original records, so in theory these are records that could be accessed without traveling to the actual location of origin - through purchase, interlibrary loan, online resources such as Google Books, and so forth, although in reality “some travel may be required.” There are a lot of useful reference lists, bibliographies, and “how-tos” interspersed in this book, so even when there is significant overlap with #3 and #4, this is not a resource that I would want to overlook.

Follow Friday Newsletter: 24 June 2011

2011-06-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

This Week in Genea-Blogging

Next best thing to being there

There were many enjoyable posts last week on the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree, and this week the experience was beautifully summed up by Donna Pointkouski at What’s Past Is Prologue in “10 Things I Learned at Jamboree.”

I’m going there when I grow up

In a similar vein, there have been several blog posts about the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research at Samford. Several excellent posts on this topic were written by Susan Farrell Bankhead at Susan’s Genealogy Blog; her final post, “Samford 2011: Recap,” provides a good summary of this experience.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun provokes interesting debate

Over at Genea-Musings, Randy waxes philosophical in response to a couple of comments left on his most recent Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in “Thoughts on Classical and Scientific Genealogy.” The potential for debates of this types is one of the many things that makes it interesting to be a member of the genealogy blogging community. This has led to further posts on the subject, which are listed in Randy’s second post on the subject, “More Thoughts on ‘Scientific’ and ‘Traditional’ Genealogy.”

From a legal point of view

James Tanner at Genealogy’s Star is starting a series wherein he discusses evidence and proof in genealogical from the viewpoint of their original context, the law; first post: “What is evidence? What is proof?”

I like the happy ending of this story

Jenny Lanctot at Are My Roots Showing? tells the story of how she looked and looked and may finally have found the genealogical society that is right for her in “I Finally Joined a Local Genealogy Society.”

And another happy ending!

Missy Corley at Bayside Blog has great news: “The Friends Album Has Found a Home!” We have been following Missy’s extraordinary work with this album, and this is the happiest of endings to the story.

What say ye?

Heather Kuhn Roelker at Leaves for Trees has suggested that “What we need is a genealogy blogger research database, don’t you see?” Sounds like a good idea, and Thomas Macentee’s idea for the form it would take looks good, too. So what do you all think?

I’ll tell you about mine if you’ll tell me about yours

At Roots and Rambles, Marian Pierre-Louis has posted “The Top 5 Books on My Bookshelf,” which I think would be an interesting topic for a genealogy blogging meme - Saturday Night Fun, anyone (Randy)?

Why hide and seek is our favorite game

Susan Farrell Bankhead has listed some common reasons why you can’t find your ancestors and strategies for finding them anyway in “Census 103: Family Members Missing in Action” at Susan’s Genealogy Blog. Yup, I’ve encountered all of these reasons and used all of these strategies. Things have improved with member-submitted corrections and “updated and improved” indexing of the censuses, but we still need to keep these approaches in mind.

Why didn’t they teach history like this at my high school?

In “Ancestry and Academics,” Kathleen Brandt of a3 Genealogy tells about her experience in using genealogy and family history to get students involved in learning - and not just history! I am fascinated by this classroom approach and think that this is a great idea for use in the classroom.

For more suggested blog reading

Check out “Follow Friday: This Week’s Finds” at Jen’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist, and “Follow Friday Gems” at Deb Ruth’s Adventures in Genealogy.

This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

Emmasology

Family Pilgrimage

Lessons Learned in Genealogy Research

Nuts from the Family Tree