Decade Notes

I’ve been researching my Stephens family line for years. And I LOVE my notes for each generation! My notes are in timeline format and I enter every single thing I can find including “probable” events such as births that I don’t have an exact date for. My source citations in these notes are as complete as anything that I have and are MUCH easier for me to keep up to date than within my genealogy software. I include maps and cropped images of the records that I’ve found within the notes so I don’t have to dig through files unless I need to see the full page. I make colorized notes to myself along the edge with text boxes around them to make them stand out. In these notes to myself, I include ideas of books to look at when I go to the library, questions as to why something might be happening or why I think my records might have a mistake.  For example, I may have a clue to a birth location from someone else researching my family, but when I put it in the notes, the location does not match the proven location of the parent. I also include small images of simplified group sheets with the ages of each person at that time period to help me keep the people straight in my mind. By including the ages at that time, it helps me see if a son is old enough to be found in the tax records or if he is too young to be married. If a mother and father have passed away, but still have young children, where are the children living? These are all questions that I would put along the edges of my notes.

But I still get confused when I have to compare the notes from one generation to another generation.  For example, I can’t find Andrew Stephens in the 1870 census. So I wanted to look at Andrew’s father’s notes as well as Andrew’s children’s notes to see where THEY were in 1870 to see if Andrew was nearby. When that didn’t work, I looked at Andrew’s siblings and their children. Now I’ve got people named the same thing in various locations and my brain just has a hard time keeping it all straight. (I blame this on the medication that I’m taking – and I’m sticking with that story!)

So, during the ride home from Spring Break, I decided to combine all of the notes from my Stephens research into one file. I took each individual’s records and made the text for each a different color. Then, I copied and pasted them all into one file while still keeping everything in chronological order. I’ll still keep my original notes, but by combining them all, I’m hoping to see better patterns in locations and records available. But this new document became QUITE long – beginning with 1715 and continuing through 1928, so I decided to put it in my binder with dividers for every decade. I REALLY like it! In 10 year time periods, I can make some nice maps of the changing county boundaries to get a better idea of where to look for records – and what counties are nearby at that time. It’s much easier to keep track of where each person is that I’m tracking by having a US map with a pin for each person’s locations. And gaps in records become much more evident. By having entire lifetimes in one document, it wasn’t giving me a realistic idea of how much time had gone by from one record to the next. Two pages could be 5 years or 30 years depending on how much information I’ve found.

I’ve decided on a 2 binder approach. One binder has my notes and the appropriate source records all in chronological order. The other binder will be my “clues”. Printed emails, web sites, church histories and such go in the “clue binder” that I can have open side-by-side with my notes binder. This keeps all of my records in order while still having easy access to whatever I’ve found online that I want to follow up on. Group sheets for every family member – even siblings – will go in the Clue Binder. Each decade will have it’s own Research Plan. Before this, I’ve been creating Research Plans for each person, so the new Research Plans will deal with all of the people I’m tracking within that decade.

I’m looking forward to putting these binders together and adding records and hints. I think it will help me stay focused because the time period I’ll be researching will be shorter rather than looking for anything that matches an individual within his entire lifetime.

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Citation headaches

Ahhhhh…..snow day! Actually, “icy streets” day, but no matter – an unexpected day to work on genealogy! So I thought to myself, I will open my group sheets that are stored on my computer and change all of the citations that only say “Find-a-grave” to be actual, genealogically happy citations. And thus began my citation headache…

I decided to start with a specific group sheet that had all kinds of information for every name on the sheet – births, deaths, spouses, marriage dates, etc, but my citations tended to be things like: 1) ACPL 976.901 R91sh v. 1. or 2) Accd to William’s birth record or 3) Marriage Bonds book 6. CERTAINLY not complete citations! And what about the marriage dates that had no citations at all? Oy vey!

I decided that I would not work on any other group sheet until I entered proper citations for everything on this group sheet.

I began with burial citations since that was my original intention anyway. Because I took a trip to my county of research a few summers ago, I had many of my own images from cemeteries and such, so I cited those first and then moved on to Find-a-grave listings that I had not created myself. I did a Google search to see how others were citing Find-a-grave sites and could not find anything that didn’t refer to getting information from the image of the tombstone. I have quite a few ancestors who are listed in Find-a-grave, but do not have an image of the stone included. I decided on a citation format that was close to what I was seeing online and that would work well for me including linking the person’s name to the Find-a-grave listing so I could continue to check back for images at a later date with just a single click. There are some wonderful volunteers in Russell County who are posting images of obituaries and wedding announcements that have been delightful surprises and I am very grateful for that! I only wish that the name of the newspaper and date of publication were included, but someday, I’ll be able to make a trip to the area and find those myself and I’m thrilled with the information that they do contain.

Next came hours of re-researching. Quite a bit of information that I had came from a web site that no longer exists, so I was looking for print outs or other sites that the information may have been copied to. (Thank you RootsWeb!) If I didn’t already have a print-out, I made one today with the surnames that I research along with any information given on the source that the information had originally come from.

I then went to my Ancestry account to see if I had entered sources in the notes on there. Sadly, there were not many. When information came from microfilms, I searched the FamilySearch catalog to find the films that I had rented in the past to get the information needed for those records. When information came from books, I found the book on the WorldCat site, copied the Chicago style citation and added page numbers if I knew them and red notes to look them up if I didn’t.

Bottom line – I’ve spent 8 hours adding fresh information and working to update citations for ONE group sheet and my backside is pretty sore because I’ve spent every minute of that kicking myself in the rear for not doing this correctly from the beginning! BUT, I now have a group sheet (yes, only one) that is fully cited and I have LEARNED MY LESSON!

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A Free Afternoon = A New Database

I made sure to get all of my work for Monday’s classes done yesterday so that I could have a genealogy afternoon today! But I’ve been in the process of creating a photo album scrapbook for my daughter’s graduation this May, so my genealogy files weren’t in any condition to do traditional research. Instead,  I decided to work on creating a database in Excel of all of the Stephens gravestones in Russell County cemeteries. It’s pretty mindless work, so I can also “watch” marathons of my favorite HGTV shows while entering information. To keep from getting TOO overwhelmed with it, I decided to only enter information for people who were born before 1900.

I had a column for name, birth date, death date, parents, spouse and cemetery.

I LOVE creating databases like this in Excel because of the information that I see (REALLY see) for the first time based on sorting the database by columns. For example, when I sort by name, I can see all of the men named Andrew J. Stephens and fill in some of the blanks on the various groups sheets that I have. When I consider the location of the cemetery for each man, it helps me see which locations within the county are most likely to go with each man.

I can sort based on date of death and then see a list of people who died in the time frame in which death certificates are available on Ancestry to see if there are certificates that I haven’t discovered yet.

I can sort based on Parents and an incredibly complete group sheet appears before my eyes because of the links added to family stones and images of obituaries that volunteers have added. Often, I’ll find a spouse or child that I didn’t know about by doing this.

Or I can sort based on the Cemetery and begin to see possibilities for family connections that I didn’t think of before.

This sheet of the database is now part of a Stephens workbook that I’ve been working on over the years. Any time I’m at a standstill in research for one reason or another, I try to take one source – a specific book or website – and add all of the entries that I can whether I know they are related to my line or not. I have solved many puzzles with databases like this one! Now, if I have a date of death on the Cemetery sheet, but no parents, I can check to see if I have information on the Death Records worksheet to see if parents are listed there. I have worksheets for Birth Records, Marriage Records, Deeds, Taxes, Census Records, Military Info, Death Records and now – Cemeteries. And of course, every entry has the source included so I don’t have to go back to the actual book or website to add a record to my software database.

While it isn’t an earth shattering revelation for doing research, I’m always surprised by what I discover even though it was looking me directly in the face before!

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Wishful thinking…

I was taking a look at my blog statistics today and I noticed that quite often, people find my blog by doing an internet search for people who happen to be my ancestors.  For example, a search for “John Smith Russell County Kentucky”.

Oh, how I wish those people would let me know that we may be researching the same line! I’ve always heard that a blog would be a great way to meet “cousins”, but I can only think of a couple of times that I’ve been contacted by a related researcher who found my family information through this blog.

Now, I really don’t want to sound “snooty”, but if I put my information out on this blog and find researchers who are reading it, but not at least letting me know that we may be related, then there can be no sharing of information, but only taking. Even if a person feels they have nothing to share, at the very least, we could become research “buddies” who could each look at questions from different angles and look at research opportunities that one of us has that the other doesn’t.

Doesn’t that sound lovely??

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Awesome Maps!

2 hour school delay this morning – yes! I love these unexpected chunks of free time when I don’t feel guilty for doing some genealogy surfing!

This morning, I was looking at some genealogy newsletters that I get in my email and I saw a hint to take a map of the area you are researching and to draw concentric circles 5, 10, 15, etc. miles out from the location of your ancestor to see when places on the map might be likely places to research for more information on an ancestor. In the article, it mentioned USGS web site as a great resource for downloading topographic maps – and what a goldmine I feel like I’ve found!

The area of Kentucky that I research is very hilly and covered with little creeks and branches from the Cumberland River. I’ve always intended to take a more detailed look at the County Map that I have to pinpoint the different waterways that have been mentioned. The waterways are always mentioned in the tax records to show the location of the land being taxed.  The maps I’ve found on USGS are excellent for this type of research and you can download them for free!

So now, my plan is to take a look at my County map to make a list of the towns around my ancestor’s locations and to download the maps that are available to put on my research wall. I think that till now, I’ve been a “can’t see the trees because of the forest” kind of person. I know I have the County map, but I’ve never taken the time to focus on which part of the county my ancestors are in – something I should have done loooooooooooooooong ago. This will be my opportunity to do that!

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1940 Success!

A couple of week-ends ago, my Mom came to my house for a visit. I thought it would be cool to be able to show her the 1940 census for her family, although she would not be born for a couple of years yet.  At the time, Indiana had not been indexed, so I used the One-Step tools on the Ancestry site to find my mother’s maternal grandfather but that’s where my luck ended. When she arrived, we used our detective skills to finally find her family in a near-by county.

Ironically, the announcement came 1 week later that the Indiana index had been completed, which could have made my search much easier. At the same time, it was announced that Kentucky had also been indexed so I did a search for my mother’s paternal grandparents in Kentucky – but no luck.

I thought it would be a pretty simple search! Last name, Smith – which is pretty darn common – but their first names were Oliver and Mintie. How many could there be? Well, apparently, there were NONE.

So today, I had 30 minutes to kill and I decided to see if I could find each of the children of Oliver and Mintie thinking that they probably lived nearby one of them and it worked! They lived next door to their 3rd son. The reason I could not find them was because the names had been indexed as Alian and Misstie.

So I believe I’ve now found all of my direct ancestors that can be found in the 1940 census. I do enjoy reading the employment information and the number of hours each person worked in a week. Because of this, I’ve been doing more research into the WPA as a few of my ancestors listed their employment that way. I’m thinking of creating a spreadsheet of the different occupations of my ancestors through the years – although I believe they are overwhelmingly farmers. But you never know what you’ll find when you begin to look at your information from a different perspective.  That just may be on my “to do list” the next time I find a free 30 minutes!

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Gone Fishin!

For the first time ever, a few people in my Mom’s family have asked that we organize a time to get together to take a look at my family history information! So I’ve spent a couple of days trying to get my stuff into a more entertaining format that might “hook” me some more information. I will be giving them a Word print out of a 3 generation timeline/narrative format of my notes with as many maps, photographs and certificate images as I could reasonably put in there. I have information from my great-great grandparents births to my grandparents deaths. I also included a lot of pictures of my mom and her siblings growing up hoping to jog some memories out of my aunts and uncles.

It’s a 30 page, color coded, sources cited wonder to behold! (Well, at least to me!) We’re getting together tomorrow and it will be interesting to see the reaction and to see if they are interested in seeing more details or more generations. A warm-up for the DVD project to come!

Wish me luck!!

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Not the Year I Thought This Would Be

Well, here I am, looking at this blog and thinking how sad it is that I haven’t posted in so long. Not only that, how long since I’ve done any real research! This year of new job responsibilities plus quite a battle with health issues have made this a VERY different year than I thought it would be!

So last week, while my mother was visiting for the 4th, I decided to FINALLY take a look at the 1940 census to see if I could find her family – although she wasn’t born for a couple of years yet. I used the links that Ancestry has on the home page to use the Stephen Morse and Joel Weintraub work and I pretty quickly found my mother’s grandfather in Franklin, Indiana, by entering the E.D. from their 1930 census but I could not found her family using the same method.

She tried to think of all the places that she had heard about her family living before she was born and I used that information along with my aunt’s birth certificate (she was born in 1939) to discover that the family probably lived in Shelby County. From there, I used the 1940 census Enumeration District map available at the Online Public Access site found at Archives.com.  (Find instructions for using this site under Number 3 at http://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/start-research.html)

Luckily, Shelby County was not a booming metropolis like Chicago or even Indianapolis! I used the Ancestry option of selecting a district within a county to begin a page by page browsing to look for Mom’s family. They weren’t in the same district as the address on my Aunt’s birth certificate, so I began searching districts between that location and the Franklin location where my grandfather lived. As I moved across the county looking for the family, I began to think they would never be found this way. After about 2 hours of searching (and a tiny bit of a census reader’s headache!) I found them! And while I didn’t discover any earth shattering information, we all know that it’s all about collecting all the information we can and I’m happy to have it!

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Midwest Geneabloggers Meetup!

I’ve been in countdown mode for quite awhile and it’s finally here! I’ll be attending the MGM today at the Allen County Public Library and I’m super excited to be meeting so many bloggers who share a passion for family history research!

I think part of the reason I’m so excited about today is because I wasn’t able to participate like I had hoped at the RootsTech convention due to illness.  What I thought was food poisoning at the time turned into a month-long hopscotch from test to test that resulted in several days of thinking I had cancer only to have a biopsy reveal that I have sarcoidosis in my lungs along with painful swollen lymph nodes throughout my torso.

I’m looking forward to making some new friends as well as getting some research done.  This will be my first trip back to the library in months and I’m actually a little nervous about it! I had hoped to make a very detailed research plan for the day, but that didn’t happen.  Before my illness, I was deep into research on my Smith family and even though I thought I renewed my FHL microfilms in time, I believe they may have been sent back and not all have returned to the ACPL yet. When I started getting back into research during my recovery last month, I re-opened my Stephens research so I’ll be bringing that along for the day as well.

So my goals for today:

1)  Hoping that the microfilm with the index to deeds for Mercer County is in. Look for Smith deeds that can help me connect my Russell County John M. Smith to Mercer County.

2) Use the ACPL computers to access Fold3 to look for a pension file for Andrew Jackson Stephens. I have the file number, just need to see if it’s been scanned yet.

3) Spend some time looking for information on Andrew Jackson Stephens in Pulaski County. Is he related to my Russell County Andrew Stephens? I haven’t done any research with Pulaski County records, so it has the potential for lots of new information for me.

4) Make lots of new genealogy friends and enjoy a day of genealogy research – doing my very best to forget about illness and work and instead get re-energized about doing genealogy.  After all – Spring break is a week away and I’ll just happen to be in the city with the 2nd largest genealogy library in the world!!!

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“The Andrew Jackson 5″

I was showing my daughter the cover that I’m making for my Andrew Jackson Stephens binder.  My son – who is a graphic designer – created the outline of a tree with the silhouettes of 5 men in the tree. When she looked at the image, she told me that the 5 shadows looked like a “boy band” and she told me I should title it “The Andrew Jackson 5″.  Well, she caught me at just the right moment and I found that extremely funny and giggled about it the rest of the night.

I told her that I’d like to use her fingerprints to make the leaves for the tree.  (An idea that I totally stole from the Budget-Minded Bride blog.) So I thought I’d give an update with a picture of my cover as well as a picture of my daughter diligently coloring her fingertips with highlighters to use like rubber stamps to create the leaves of my tree.  I just love it!  She drew the line, however, when I asked her if I could use her hair like a paint brush to fill in the grass.  I guess helping out mom and “being one with the tree” only goes so far…

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