Since we spent last weekend taking B to Middlebury, time and energy have been a bit short this week. I did not do any real research, but I did play around a bit with Ancestry Public Member Trees and did do some “cousin correspondence.” This may be a full genealogy year, after all!
Norman
I was contacted by a Norman-connected cousin, who had apparently seen my posts on the Norman family on this blog. Add another hurrah! for blogging as a way to get in touch with other researchers. We talked about our connections and he was familiar with Normans who had moved to Baylor County. One of his cousins in Garland County does genealogy research, and I have seen her name connected with a lot of Norman family research. Maybe someday I can visit Arkansas….
Moore
It appears that a research trip to Greenville, South Carolina may be in my near future (maybe September?)! More on this later.
Brinlee and Smith
I have not yet gotten started on my next round of Brinlee research, but I mean to start soon. I also have to do some additional “brick wall” work on Susan Elizabeth Smith (Brinlee) before the Knoxville conference. And finally, I’d like to take a look into the Tennessee line with whom a DNA connection has been found to exist for our Brinlees.
Ancestry Public Member Trees and Footnote
As I mentioned in the article below, I have started to put up a little bit of information in a couple of trees I started on Ancestry. I’ll probably go ahead and add information on my father’s family tree, but I may not do as much on my mother’s side as yet. I’m very curious to see who, if anyone, contacts me based on these trees. I’ll probably go ahead and contact some of the people who have some of “my people” in their trees. I should also do some more work on my pages on Footnote and perhaps add a couple of pages, since that seems to have turned up a major contact for me.
Showing posts with label Ancestry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ancestry. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Using Ancestry Family Trees in Research
It is commonly accepted that while online genealogies may provide helpful hints, as a whole they tend to be unreliable or at least poorly sourced. I often use WorldConnect to find “leads” on families and also as an avenue to get in touch with other researchers. However, up until recently I had made only limited use of Ancestry’s Public Member Trees as a separate search function. They didn’t seem to provide any more information than any other online genealogies and often even less in the way of sources. The best contacts I made through Ancestry searches were with researchers who had made corrections to census transcriptions or other database entries or who contacted me through my corrections.
However, the tie-in to Ancestry trees that now appears on the image page as a function of the search parameters used has turned out to be far more helpful than I expected. This has been especially convincingly demonstrated by my most recent project, the compilation of a database of candidate families from Tennessee for my brick wall, Susan Elizabeth Smith. This is a fairly sizeable set of families selected based on the following criteria: last name Smith, a daughter named Elizabeth/Elisabeth, Lizzie, or Susan (or appropriate initials) born between 1866 and 1870, plus the family should be residing in Tennessee or at least Lizzie should have been born there. Right now there are 60+ families in the database, although a number of them have been relegated to the bottom (= least likely) categories based on the poor fit of certain data to the established profile.
And this is where the family trees come in useful – they often contain the additional information that reveals a poor fit; in other words, the “negative evidence” that I am looking for in order to narrow down the group of likely families: the daughter of interest may have died young, never have married, or married a different person. In deciding to whether or not to accept the information as provided I go by how complete and carefully presented the information on the family is: if the researcher has provided complete names (not just the names that appear on the census) and dates, has provided sources within Ancestry constraints, etc. And the sources listed add another benefit: they provide links to the databases – usually a census page – used as the source, so this is often an even easier way than doing a regular search for finding more information on the family. It has helped me confirm my “paired” families (families found on both 1870 and 1880 censuses and identifiable as the same families) and in one case revealed a mistake I had made in connecting an 1880 family to what I thought was the same family in 1870. This information has also helped me with a couple of families that I refer to as “Initial Families” – families with only initials and a last name. In only a couple of cases have I found what I believe are dubious connections.
I would sum up the advantages of the Public Member Tree tie-ins as follows:
1. Potentially useful researcher contacts
2. Finding family members in other censuses
3. “Negative” or supporting evidence for the identity of the family
So, while I will continue to approach online genealogies with caution, I have come to appreciate the usefulness of Ancestry Public Member Trees as an integrated research tool.
However, the tie-in to Ancestry trees that now appears on the image page as a function of the search parameters used has turned out to be far more helpful than I expected. This has been especially convincingly demonstrated by my most recent project, the compilation of a database of candidate families from Tennessee for my brick wall, Susan Elizabeth Smith. This is a fairly sizeable set of families selected based on the following criteria: last name Smith, a daughter named Elizabeth/Elisabeth, Lizzie, or Susan (or appropriate initials) born between 1866 and 1870, plus the family should be residing in Tennessee or at least Lizzie should have been born there. Right now there are 60+ families in the database, although a number of them have been relegated to the bottom (= least likely) categories based on the poor fit of certain data to the established profile.
And this is where the family trees come in useful – they often contain the additional information that reveals a poor fit; in other words, the “negative evidence” that I am looking for in order to narrow down the group of likely families: the daughter of interest may have died young, never have married, or married a different person. In deciding to whether or not to accept the information as provided I go by how complete and carefully presented the information on the family is: if the researcher has provided complete names (not just the names that appear on the census) and dates, has provided sources within Ancestry constraints, etc. And the sources listed add another benefit: they provide links to the databases – usually a census page – used as the source, so this is often an even easier way than doing a regular search for finding more information on the family. It has helped me confirm my “paired” families (families found on both 1870 and 1880 censuses and identifiable as the same families) and in one case revealed a mistake I had made in connecting an 1880 family to what I thought was the same family in 1870. This information has also helped me with a couple of families that I refer to as “Initial Families” – families with only initials and a last name. In only a couple of cases have I found what I believe are dubious connections.
I would sum up the advantages of the Public Member Tree tie-ins as follows:
1. Potentially useful researcher contacts
2. Finding family members in other censuses
3. “Negative” or supporting evidence for the identity of the family
So, while I will continue to approach online genealogies with caution, I have come to appreciate the usefulness of Ancestry Public Member Trees as an integrated research tool.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Lessons Learned Sunday: “Working” the South Carolina Death Records
My big genealogy project of late has been compiling as complete as possible a list of the descendants of my third-great-grandfather, Samuel Moore of Greenville, South Carolina. It is an ambitious undertaking, but the Moores are a primary research focus for me, and I hope this database can serve as a basis for future research to expand the line back in time. The work is certainly familiarizing me with South Carolina state resources as well as Greenville and Anderson County Resources. One of the best tools for working this line is a database that was added to Ancestry relatively recently, South Carolina Death Records, 1821-1955 (or at least the images of death certificates in that database are a new addition).
I stated previously that I would try to use “Lessons Learned Sunday” as a feature to write up what I learn from my mistakes in genealogy. So far I have not exactly had a “Duh!” experience with these records, but there definitely is a learning curve aspect in using them in combination with other tools to the best effect. Some of the other resources I am using are the “usual” Ancestry databases (censuses, etc.), the Greenville County Library System obituary index (an extremely useful and much appreciated tool) combined with a Greenville researcher who will copy and mail obituaries for a reasonable fee, Findagrave and Genweb cemetery listings for South Carolina, and several genealogies provided by other researchers for partial branches of this family.
My approach with the SC Death Records database has been not only to look up individual names (this is done automatically by Ancestry in a search localized for South Carolina), but to use the database separately, varying the items input for searching. Sometimes this means just putting a last name and a county (usually Greenville, but they didn’t always stay there). For the last name Moore, that brings up a lot of names. However, going through all of the hits paid off. The first hits to appear often have only the last name, and most of these are infants. Of course, I also wanted to find any children who died young, but none of these fit that bill. However, one of the death certificates had several items which fit Susan Moore Blakely – parents, dates of birth and death, and the informant was her son, James Moore Blakely. There was only one thing missing – her name! So the people indexing the certificates had simply put in the name of her father, (B. M.) Moore. Had I not looked at all these certificates, I would never have found her death certificate. I have also discovered that sometimes names are input backwards, so that may be a trick to try if I get desperate.
These death certificates can then be used to order copies of obituaries. The Greenville Library obituary index provides names and the date and page of the Greenville News on which the obituary appears. In the case of common names, knowing the date of death helps to narrow down which one is the correct obituary so that I don’t have to order all the obituaries with the name in which I am interested. I also use this obituary index in a similar manner, inputting only the last name or even an unusual first name to make sure that I get as many family members as possible. (Inputting a woman’s maiden name in the first name field will often pull up her obituary under her married name – a convenient way to find out who some of the daughters in a family married!) The obituaries I order based on what I find in this index then often provide additional names to be looked up in the South Carolina Death Records and Greenville Library obituary index, so there is a sort of circular aspect to this method.
Because I am constantly moving back and forth from database to database, I know that I am often missing things as I do this. Therefore, when I am “done”, I plan to go back over the obituaries and the death certificates (I have downloaded the images) and double-check all the information. It’s a lot of work, but the Moores are worth it!
Here is Susan Moore Blakely's death certificate - with no name:
I stated previously that I would try to use “Lessons Learned Sunday” as a feature to write up what I learn from my mistakes in genealogy. So far I have not exactly had a “Duh!” experience with these records, but there definitely is a learning curve aspect in using them in combination with other tools to the best effect. Some of the other resources I am using are the “usual” Ancestry databases (censuses, etc.), the Greenville County Library System obituary index (an extremely useful and much appreciated tool) combined with a Greenville researcher who will copy and mail obituaries for a reasonable fee, Findagrave and Genweb cemetery listings for South Carolina, and several genealogies provided by other researchers for partial branches of this family.
My approach with the SC Death Records database has been not only to look up individual names (this is done automatically by Ancestry in a search localized for South Carolina), but to use the database separately, varying the items input for searching. Sometimes this means just putting a last name and a county (usually Greenville, but they didn’t always stay there). For the last name Moore, that brings up a lot of names. However, going through all of the hits paid off. The first hits to appear often have only the last name, and most of these are infants. Of course, I also wanted to find any children who died young, but none of these fit that bill. However, one of the death certificates had several items which fit Susan Moore Blakely – parents, dates of birth and death, and the informant was her son, James Moore Blakely. There was only one thing missing – her name! So the people indexing the certificates had simply put in the name of her father, (B. M.) Moore. Had I not looked at all these certificates, I would never have found her death certificate. I have also discovered that sometimes names are input backwards, so that may be a trick to try if I get desperate.
These death certificates can then be used to order copies of obituaries. The Greenville Library obituary index provides names and the date and page of the Greenville News on which the obituary appears. In the case of common names, knowing the date of death helps to narrow down which one is the correct obituary so that I don’t have to order all the obituaries with the name in which I am interested. I also use this obituary index in a similar manner, inputting only the last name or even an unusual first name to make sure that I get as many family members as possible. (Inputting a woman’s maiden name in the first name field will often pull up her obituary under her married name – a convenient way to find out who some of the daughters in a family married!) The obituaries I order based on what I find in this index then often provide additional names to be looked up in the South Carolina Death Records and Greenville Library obituary index, so there is a sort of circular aspect to this method.
Because I am constantly moving back and forth from database to database, I know that I am often missing things as I do this. Therefore, when I am “done”, I plan to go back over the obituaries and the death certificates (I have downloaded the images) and double-check all the information. It’s a lot of work, but the Moores are worth it!
Here is Susan Moore Blakely's death certificate - with no name:
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