Ancestery’s Member Connect – Use with Care!

I cannot remember exactly when I started doing genealogy research.  The closest I can get to an educated guess is remembering a 4th of July family get together where I had my new binder of information and asking my cousins to fill in the blanks in the family group sheet for each of their families.  My oldest son was crawling then, so I’m guessing that I’ve been doing research for about 21 years.

At that time, I had no clue about citing sources and of course, I just KNEW I’d remember where I’d found my information.  How could I possibily forget such important stuff?  But now, 21 years later, I really have to wonder if some of my information is just a matter of bad information being passed on from researcher to researcher with absolutely no sources!  If someone told me a date, I just accepted that and added it to my database.  And I have to wonder if the new “Member Connect” feature on Ancestry.com won’t just add to that.

Yesterday, I was able to spend some time with my uncle and 2 cousins.  One of my cousins has a co-worker who enjoys doing genealogy research, so she put together a binder of research for her.  I was anxious to look at the binder to see if there was anything that I didn’t have and there was!  In my tree, I have Andrew Jackson Stephens married to Lucy Stephens on 5 Apr, 1858 in Kentucky.  Almost every timeline event that I have for Andrew and Lucy says Russell County, Kentucky – some with sources and some without.  The only exception is that I have Andrew being born in Cooke Co, Mississippi, but again, no source.  I have no sources for the marriage date, but (cousin) Susie’s co-worker had found a marriage register for Andrew J Stephens and Lucy J Stephens married on 5 April, 1858 in Ripley County, MISSOURI!  Missouri?  Why Missouri?  I used google maps and found that Ripley County would be an 8 hour drive from Russell County today.  Imagine how long that would have taken in 1858!  I have no other notes showing Missouri as a location for my family.  So I thought I’d get onto Ancestry to see what I could discover. Perhaps this would open some doors for my research!

I was surprised when the “Member Connect” portion of the screen popped up on the Ancestry Home page.  I believe that today is the first day for this screen.  I was curious, but didn’t want to take time to dig into it just yet, so I moved onto my screen for Andrew Stephens.  I was surprised again to see a “Members Connect” section of my page telling me that there were 10 other people also researching Andrew.  I clicked on the box to see these 10 people and EVERY ONE of them had the marriage date of 5 April, 1858 (a couple had 25 April, 1858) – but NO ONE had a source!  How can we all have the exact same date with no source?  Could it be that the “merge this person into your tree” option is just a little too tempting?  Better to have SOMETHING in the blank than nothing?  I admit that I’ve used the “merge” option from time to time, but usually when someone has a long list of children that I don’t have because the parent is not in my direct line.  And I have no illusions that everyone puts every source into the Ancestry database – I know that I don’t.  But the document that Susie’s researcher had found was very simple to find and attach to my tree, so it seems strange that out of 10 other researchers, all with the same date, not one of them had ever attached this file to their page for Andrew or Lucy.  But is the fact that many researchers have this date a good enough reason to feel confident that this Andrew and Lucy are MY Andrew and Lucy?  Could it be that someone long ago found this record for their ancestor and because the names matched, other people assumed it was THEIR ancestor and the date was passed on and on and on?

So is “Member Connect” going to be an enabler of sorts for spreading unconfirmed information?  You could spend HOURS just clicking on others’ databases and merging to your file – without ever “connecting” with any members at all!

I made my Ancestry trees “private” quite awhile ago.  I did this for several reason, but mainly, because often I attach a record and when it shows up in my timeline portion, I use the “description” line to explain why it’s NOT the correct person!  I even have one description line that says “this is NOT the correct person – stop attaching this file!” because I have one of those family where the same name pops up mulitple time in the same family.  Or if a record seems like it could be a match, my description line will have questions to follow up on to confirm the information.  But if a person merges my file into their tree, the description line doesn’t go with it, so they would have no way of remembering that I added the file to disprove the information or to remind myself that I’ve looked at that record before and it is not for my person.  How many incorrect death dates, for example, could be added to other databases because of 1 or 2 people merging my file and then 1 or 2 people merging from each of those files, etc.  How many people are putting “Kentucky” as a location simply because they’ve never found a record from anywhere else and they assume that their ancestor was always in Kentucky?  I’ve seen alot of databases that give a date of birth around 1810 in Russell County, Kentucky, when Russell County wasn’t formed until 1825!  And the more people who show the same information for a person, the more likely it appears to be correct to a new researcher.

For MY Andrew and Lucy, my plan is to look for local tax records for Ripley County, Missouri to see if I can find this family.  Is there a state census for Missouri around this time?  I have no information for Lucy’s parents, so perhaps it will be HER family that I could find.  A quick search (and I mean very quick) search for an 1860 federal census for Missouri for this family was not successful.  How far back can I take this family at this location?  Can I find a birth record for the 1st child?  What about a Civil War record? If I can follow this family forword to a time where I have a Russell County record for my family (1870), then I will consider that “proof” that this is not the correct family and therefore, bad information for the marriage date.  But what if I can’t disprove it?  Is that enough reason to think I’ve confirmed it?  And if someone else who DOES have access to my tree attached the record to their file and then I disprove it, how many others will have integrated it into their file by then?

I know that all experienced researchers would look at new information like this and follow up with their own confirmations.  New researchers beware!  The “merge” option of Ancestry could really tempt you onto the wrong path for your research and the “Member Connect” program could be bringing you even more temptation opportunities then ever before!

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My, how times have changed!

For quite awhile now, I’ve been thinking of creating a list of  “everyday items” that I use without a second thought that my great-grandparents would never even have imagined.  It makes me wonder how much life will be changed for my grandchildren.  And I imagine about reading the diary for my grandparents telling about some wonderful new device they’ve just invested in to make their life easier.  As high tech and wonderful as we think our gadgets are, I’m sure my grandchildren will be laughing at how I had to “rough it”!

Anytime I think about starting a list, I soon get overwhelmed with the possible size of the list.  So I as sit in my bedroom, I thought I’d take a look around to see the things that my grandparents could never even have imagined.

1)  I’m writing this on a fairly new laptop computer with wireless connection to the internet.  It’s quite common for my husband and I to tell our kids how there was no internet when we were in college!   I was thrilled to get an electric typewriter for high school graduation.  I can just imagine if we had given one of our kids a typewriter for graduation instead of a laptop!  Somewhere, I have a photo of my dad working in the computer industry in the early 60′s.  He is surrounded by giant wheels of tape and the computer was pretty much the entire room!  It would be interesting to compare the computing power of this laptop with the computing power used to send the first astronauts to the moon 40 years ago!

2)  I’m currently watch a color tv – no only color, but HD tv!  And directly below it is an HD DVR.  No matter how hard I tried, I don’t believe I’d be able to find a blank video tape in a store to record a television program on now.  And I can remember when the hot thing in college was to rent a video disc and player from a gal in my dorm so that my boyfriend (and current husband) and I could have a cool date night in the room.  My mother remembers getting her very first television.  It was black and white and contained in a huge cabinet.  I’m sure my grandparents would have been excited by the new radio they had just purchased.

3)  Speaking of radios, we have a nice clock/radio on the night stand.  It can be programmed with 2 different alarm times and can be turned on and off by remote control.  We also have a 2nd radio that displays the time on the ceiling and plays a variety of sounds (waterfall, crickets, etc) to help drown out the noisy world outside when we are trying to sleep.  (OK, it’s really to drown out the snoring on the other side of the bed – but birds are noisy too!)  I have never listened to a weekly adventure story or political speech on our radio, but I’d imagine that was something to be looked forward to in my grandparents house.  In fact, my mom talks about how her oldest brother used to turn the volume down pretty low and then sit with his ear against the radio just to irritate his siblings who wanted to hear the story too!

4)  I am sitting in an air conditioned house with a ceiling fan overhead.  We had an incredibly hot spell here in the early summer and I’m sure that was pretty common for my grandparents on the farm.  My mom talks about sleeping outside when it got so hot in their house.  What would my great-grandparents think about air conditioning?  A health hazard?  The best thing since sliced bread?  (Hmmm…would my great-grandparents have had sliced bread?)

Well, that’s just the beginning of a list that I hope to add to over time.  I’d like to think of a format that I can save for my descendants to read someday.  I think it would be neat to start a type of scrapbook that could be a collection of advertisements from various time periods along with my recollections and my mom about those items.  Could be a fun winter project when I’m spending so much time on the road doing research!

Time to start my day!  I’ll be using my indoor plumbing to brush my teeth with my sonic wave toothbrush and then downstairs to make my morning tea in the microwave.  I will probably be watching a little bit of 24 hour newscoverage on a fiber optic television system before running a few errands in 1 of our 2 cars which will probably need a little bit of $2.29/gal gas!  (This could go on forever!)

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Russell County Brainstorming

Generally, I “work best under pressure” – but what that really means is that I procrastinate and then am amazed at what I get accomplished in the final hours before a deadline.  So in an effort NOT to feel overwhelmed on the way to the family vacation to Russell County, I’m going to try to think through my options over the next couple of weeks to be as organized as I can once I get there.  I want to make the best use of my research time and not feel guilty for being away from my family during our trip.  Who knows, maybe I’ll get a hint or two from someone who lives in or researches in Russell County.

It seems like a pretty safe bet that I’ll be able to find many tombstones in the cemeteries of my ancestors.  After visiting Concordia Cemetery in Chicago with over 80,000 graves, I feel hopeful that finding gravestones will not be as tricky.  Although I do worry that a cemetery might not be well maintained since this will not be as urban an area as Chicago.  Actually, I’ve always pictured Russell County as being pretty “countrified”, so I may be very surprised when I get there!  Luckily for me, the Russell County Historical Society has completed a couple of books in the last few years of tombstone transcriptions, so I’ll begin with a visit to the Allen County Library to go through those books to make an Excel spreadsheet of the cemeteries and the stones I’d like to photograph.

I’ll also do my best to make a map of the cemeteries using Google Maps.  I have visited the Kankakee County, Illinois Genealogical Society web site and it contains maps showing the locations of all of the county cemeteries.  It would be great to find something like that for Russell County as well!  Perhaps I’ll find something along those lines by doing a PERSI search.

But I think the very first thing I’ll do is to print out my 5 gen charts and use my highlighter to organize my thoughts on exactly what I’d like to find and where I’d be most likely to find it.  I see a new Excel file coming!

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Preparing for another research trip

Today is my birthday (ugh!) and my gift from my husband is a short family vacation in about 3 weeks to Russell County, Kentucky where my ancestors are from!  I think it’s a wonderful gift!  I’ve been wanting to travel there for years – but not alone.  My kids will be happy with the boating, fishing and swimming on Lake Cumberland and I will get to do research!  (Of course, I’ll enjoy the boating, fishing and swimming as well…)

So now I need to make my research plan.  I know I want to visit the cemeteries for gravestone photos and I will visit the library, but I need to make sure I know exactly what I’d like to look for.  Should I try to squeeze in a visit to a courthouse?  That would involve arriving early or leaving later since we are going over a week-end.  Is there a genealogy room similar to the one I visited in Johnson County, Indiana?  THAT would be a dream come true!

I need to know I’ll be using the best use of my time – and still be able to spend time with my family.  I can see me doing early morning research while my kids sleep late.  Hmmm…let the brainstorming begin!

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Andrew Dabelstein family – Tombstone Tuesday

Dabelstein family plots

After my family research trip to Chicago this week-end, I have most of the blanks in the Andrew Dabelstein group sheet filled in. I need 1 date of death for a son and confirmation of the marriage guess that I have made (and the parents of Andrew or his wife, Alvina Carsten).  A combination of church records on microfilm from the Newberry Library and a visit to the cemetery helped fill in blanks or confirm educated guesses that I had made.  Here’s what I have:

Andreas “Andrew” J Dabelstein – b. 27 Jan 1853  m. around 1879  d. 23 Nov 1929 in Kankakee County, but buried in Concordia Cemetery, Chicago.
Alvina Carsten/Karsten – b. 17 June 1857 d. 27 May 1912.

Andreas was born in Lubeck, Holstein, Germany and Alvina was born in Kayhude, Holstein Germany.  They came to America in 1882 along with their 11 month old son.

John (Hans) Dabelstein – b. 27 Dec 1881 in Germany.  I don’t believe he was married.  He died 6 Mar 1903 in Chicago and is buried in this plot in Concordia Cemetery.

Martha Dabelstein – b. 5 Jan 1883 in Chicago.  Never married.  d. 27 Mar 1913 in Chicago and buried in this plot.

Wilhelmina Dorothy Dabelstein – b. 25 Apr 1885  m.  Paul Danker on 28 Apr 1909 in Chicago  d. 18 Feb 1972 in Rockford, Illinois.  Also buried in Concordia Cemetery with her husband and 3 daughters in the Danker plots.

William Dabelstein – b. 13 Sept. 1887 in Chicago.  Never married.  d. 18 Jun 1917 in Chicago.  Buried in this plot in Concordia Cemetery.

Henry “Andrew Jr.” Dabelstein – b. 26 July 1894 in Chicago.  Possibly married to Emma Stolz on 26 July 1916.  I have no date or location of death.

I would love to be able to fill in the final blanks for Andrew Jr and obviously, I’d like to find the next generation back.  For the next generation, I think the next step will be to take a look at some Kayhude and Lubeck records, but I’m uncertain what is available and if I’ll be able to determine which church records to look at.  There are some records for Lubeck on Ancestry, but everything is in Germany and the last time I was at the library, I was unprepared to do any translations.  I don’t believe any of the records were church records.  I know that AWAP is working on transcribing an index for Lubeck census records and I’m anxious to see those!  Guess it’s time to visit the Family Search web site!

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Newberry Library Impressions

Finally, after weeks of great anticipation, I was able to do family research at the Newberry Library!  I had been so nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. I found the web site to be very difficult to find answers to my questions because the site is so large.  I thought I’d give my overall impressions here as well as the answers to basic questions that I had been asking myself so that if someone else is in the same shoes as I was, they could take comfort in the wonderful experience that I had.

There is no dedicated parking for the Library.  On the web site, I had read that there are 2 parking lots nearby and that if you bring your ticket into the library for validation, parking would be $7 for up to 8 hours.  We arrived at the Newberry on a Saturday at 9am (when the library opens) and were lucky enough to find a street spot directly across from the front door, so I do not know how close the parking lots are.  We used our credit card to purchase parking for 2 hours from the paybox nearby.  Parking cost $2 per hour.  A receipt was printed for us to leave on the dash of our car.  My husband did come back out later to purchase another 2 hours.  We didn’t quite use 1 hour of that and then we walked to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch and made it back just as our time expired. 

As we entered the library, we were greeted by an incredibly friendly gentleman who asked us what we would like to be able to do at the library.  I told him that I was going to look at some microfilm on the 2nd floor.  He explained that we would have to get a free “Reader’s Card” first and asked for our drivers licenses.  I knew this ahead of time, but it was so nice for someone to greet us and answer any questions before I even asked them!  It was clear that they don’t expect you to know what you’re doing before you get there and they are happy to help.  He clipped the licenses to the application forms and sent us to the 3rd floor and told us which desk to take our form to.  We took our forms upstairs and were again greeted by a very friendly young lady.  You could just tell that the workers were all going to be helpful and friendly and I would not have felt out of place if I had come alone.  She filled in our cards (good for 1 year) and explained how to request books.  (I did hear her tell the women in front of us that they could take photos of the books, if they liked.) She informed us that the online catalog was down, but that we could use the physical card catalog instead.

We headed to the 2nd floor where we had to sign in.  We were assigned 2 spots at a table to do our work – but we were only interested in the microfilm so we didn’t leave our things there.

We went to the microfilm desk and told her that we didn’t have a catalog number, but we knew which microfilms we wanted to look at.  She knew the films immediately and said they were in the cabinets behind her desk.  She gave us the microfilms and assigned us to a reader.  Each reader is in it’s own roomy cubicle with 1 microfilm reader, 1 microfiche reader and counters for spreading out your materials while you work.  We were given a larger cubicle area because 2 of us were working together.  I was concerned that I would have a difficult time reading the records, but they were very readable.  So I asked if we’d be able to go directly to the microfilm printers because I’d just be running down the list of records in chronological order.  If I had been doing a “blind search”, I would have spent time at the reader and then when I found the record I wanted, rewind the film, take it to the printer, and make the copy.  She agreed to let us stay at the printers to do our work.  I don’t know if it is different on a week day or afternoon, but there were very few people there, so I did not feel rushed at the printer.

When you find the record you’d like to print, you can scan it to a flashdrive for free, or make a paper copy for 50 cents per page.  I saw no coin slots, so I’m assuming that after all of your copying was complete, you’d pay the girl assigning the readers, but I had my flashdrive handy, so other than the parking costs, my library trip was free.

Other than the driving downtown, I would feel totally comfortable going back to the Newberry by myself – and that’s saying alot for me!

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Be Careful What You Wish For…

I admit, I am a photo addict.  Being married for 24 years and having 4 kids has given me TONS of photos for my family scrapbooks and I love it!  I’m always wishing I had more photos of my ancestors.  Part of that wish came true recently with the acquisition of my grandmother’s negatives – but it has just about taken over my life!

First, I just wanted to identify who was in each negative so that I could decide which ones to have printed.  Then, I wanted to make them clear enough to be digital images on my computer without printing anything.  That lead to days of trying different methods of taking digital photos of the negatives and then inverting the colors.  Then, I began to search for online PhotoShop tutorials to help me make the images better.  Then, I bought a light box, which made the images MUCH better – which means I’d like to take all of the pictures AGAIN!

I decided to put all of the pictures into a PowerPoint program so that they would be easy to show to others on the computer screen and easy to rearrange.  I can also add information I learn in the notes section for each slide until I’m ready to make a final format.  My mother helped with the arranging, so that part wasn’t too bad.  I printed out a 60 page “book” with all of the photos in Notes format – 3 photos to a page.  Because the photos weren’t taken in chronological order, I went through and added the image number under each photo so it would be easier to find on my laptop.  My next project (besides retaking all of the digital photos) will be to add information as I show the book to family members.  What do they remember?  Can they help me narrow down the dates?  Do they have additional photos that they had forgotten about that would be nice to add to the collection – which will all eventually be burned to DVD’s for everyone?

The problem is that while I am loving every minute of this, I am not getting very much new research done!  What happened to all my research goals for the summer?  School will be starting again before I know it and my research time will be drastically reduced!

So while I’m incredibly grateful for these negatives, I’m going to HAVE to force myself to put them away – or at least limit the amount of time I work on them each day – and get back into research mode.  Back on the top of my list?  A trip to Chicago for some Newberry Library research and then a trip to Kentucky to find some cemeteries as well as hidden nuggets from the local library!

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