ThruLines Breakthrough? Not So Fast!

When I first heard about using DNA to help with genealogy, I wanted nothing to do with it. I felt like it would be “cheating” and would take all the fun out of the hunt! Well, times have changed!

For my first step into DNA, I asked my uncle if he would do a Y-DNA test to help me break through the brick wall of my ancestor, John M. Smith. Since the Y-DNA test shows your father’s father’s father’s, etc. line, I figured it would lead me directly to the pesky Smith who dared to name his son John! But no….it didn’t do that. That was several years ago. Since then, my mother and 2 aunts plus one of their cousins have all tested.

But I haven’t looked at much of anything related to DNA in quite a while. So this week, I decided to take a look to see if Ancestry ThurLines had any great hints for me.

I have a theory that John Smith, the son of John Schmidt is the father of my John M. Smith. Yes, that’s a lot of John Smiths! To keep my theory John Smith straight when looking at files, I think of him as “John Smith 1809” because that’s the year that he died. I have a copy of his will and within that, a list of his children. And yes, he had a son named John.

So I went to ThruLines for my mother’s kit and was thrilled to see several DNA matches that lead to John Smith 1809! Having multiple people connected to John 1809 must mean that my theory is correct, right?

To make sure, I wanted to see if any of these matches triangulated with the other matches. And they did not. Hmm. Since John 1809 was so many generations back, I thought that maybe we could all still be related to John 1809, but that we all got a different “piece” of his DNA. So I decided to write out the “path” from John Smith 1809 to each of the matches and then I would go back and prove each line for myself. And that’s when I noticed that none of the matches actually went back to any of John Smith 1809’s children.

Now if you look at the image, there is a solid line around John M. Smith, indicating that he is a “confirmed” son of John Smith in my tree. The 3 DNA matches coming through John M. Smith are my aunts and their cousin. But all of the rest are just dotted lines.

As I looked at the trees for these matches, they all showed that the person in the dotted boxes had last name of Smith, but few had a father named John Smith (most of them had no father listed at all), not to mention John Smith 1809. So what ThruLines has done is to look through all of my matches to see which people also have a Smith in their line that fit into the same approximate time period as John Smith 1809. They have taken information from all kinds of trees to try to piece together trees that might lead back to my John Smith 1809…whether these people know it or not.

Let me give you an example of how this is working. Notice the line on the far left for WE. Their line shows 5 generations between WE and Nancy Smith at the top. However, when I actually look at WE’s tree, they only have the 2 boxes above WE in their tree at all! The rest of the tree is hypothetical. After looking at other trees on Ancestry, ThruLines is saying that this MIGHT be a path to Nancy Smith who MIGHT be a child of John Smith 1809 based on the surname and date spread.

So is it a total waste of time? No, I wouldn’t say that. There are some interesting things to explore here. For example, Nancy Smith has 6 DNA matches to my mother in her line.

I will certainly be taking a look at these 6 matches. It’s easy to assume that THEY are all related – after all, Ancestry is showing me the tree and everything, right?

I’ve learned that I can’t make assumptions here, so I will be clicking on the “evaluate” button to see how “proven” each of these lines are, because to create this chart, Ancestry is looking at all kinds of trees to make connections. Not just trees of my DNA matches, but all trees. When you click on a button that says “evaluate”, you get several blocks of information. Here’s an example of a “proven” relationship in this chart.

I would need to click on each of these records to see if I agree that there’s enough proof for this relationship.

There are also boxes to tell me that there are 72 trees on Ancestry that also have this father/son relationship along with a link to each tree. Below each link, Ancestry tells me how many records each tree has attached to that individual, so I can decide if it’s worth clicking on or not. If there are zero records, I don’t even bother to click on it.

If I continue up the tree, I eventually get to Nancy Smith. When I click on her “Evaluate” button, I see this.

So what I think they are saying is that there is a DNA match who has a Smith connection at about the right time and that they MIGHT be a child of John Smith 1809, but that’s only based on the name Smith and only because I asked for matches that include a Smith. It would be interesting to see if any of these people show up in ThruLines for a different ancestor just because they also have THAT name in their tree.

So where do I go from here? I’ll definitely be following this group of 6 matches. Do they all triangulate? How far do I have to go back to “prove” that they are all connected to Nancy Smith? What other DNA matches do I have that might triangulate with any of these matches? Perhaps Nancy Smith WAS a daughter of John Smith 1809 and just wasn’t listed by name in the will, or perhaps she’s a niece of John Smith 1809, which would still be helpful to know.

Why doesn’t this ThruLine example have more concrete information for me? Because my target ancestor – John Smith 1809 is so many generations back. He would be my mothers 4th great-grandfather – 6 generations back. If DNA were passed down consistently to each new generation (which it isn’t) then my mother would only have about 1.5% of her DNA from John 1809. To find another DNA match would mean that they inherited the same small segment of DNA. Pretty low odds. And in this case, having the name John Smith certainly doesn’t help. But knowing that the odds are low doesn’t mean that I should stop looking! I’ll never find that match that I need if I don’t check out all of the possibilities! And Ancestry is trying to help me find that match!

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File Names Too Long?

Did you know there’s a limit to the length of file names on your computer? In general, the length of a file name is limited to about 255 characters. That means your file names can be very descriptive. How descriptive? This paragraph is 256 characters long.

But there’s more included in that character count than you might think. Rather than counting the characters in the file name itself, your computer is actually counting the number of characters in the path of your file. Let me give you an example.

For the family reunion book that I put together over the summer, I downloaded a newspaper clipping from Newspapers.com. The file name was:

1955 The Daily Times Tue 1 Mar Helen Kowalinski.jpg

51 characters. Plenty of space! I could be more descriptive and made the file name something like:

1955 The Daily Times Tue 1 Mar Helen Kowalinski wins an award from Col Nelson.jpg

81 characters. I could almost transcribe this short little article and include it in the file name! However, I’ve written in the past about my file structure and that’s where I can run into trouble.

I like to keep my files in Google Drive. While working on this book, I wanted all of files to be placed in a specific Google Drive which automatically syncs on my hard drive. That way, I didn’t have to sign-in to a Google account on the web, download, make edits then re-save the file into that Google Drive.

So to keep track of the file, my computer has to track the path name of the file so it will know where to look the next time I want to open it.

Your computer probably has multiple drives on it. Perhaps C: for your main hard drive. D: for a CD/DVD drive. E: could be a slot for a small memory card from your camera or Flip-pal. F: could be an external hard drive. G: could be a flash drive you’ve inserted into a USB port. You get the idea.

So this newspaper clipping is stored on my main hard drive.

C:

My computer has the capability of having multiple users, so it also tracks which user has saved this file. I only have one user, but the computer still includes that information in the path name. And as I mentioned before, I have the file in Google Drive. So far, my path name is:

C:\Users\Google Drive

If I were to put my organization system into an outline to represent the folders and files, you’d see a folder/bullet for each of my 8 great-great-grandparent couples. These folders are numbered so that they line up in the same order as my 5 gen-chart. Each of those folders contains 5 folders – Excel, Group Sheets, Notes, People and Places. For this example, I’m using the People folder because these are files that pertain to a specific person. In the People folder, I have a folder for each generation. These are numbered so that I can quickly see the generations moving back through time. This pattern continues as needed through my system. Once I get to a specific person, if I have files that pertain to a collateral line instead of my direct line, I’ll start a folder for “Children” or “Collaterals” and then break down from there. To get to the newspaper clipping I started with, here’s how the outline would look:

• Google Drive
  • (All of my family folders)
  • Husband’s family
    • Charlotte’s family
      • 1 – Schmidt – Fritz Research
      • 2 – Berger – Kaese Research
      • 3 – Zimmerman – Grabbe Research
      • 4 – Betz – Herscher Research
      • 5 – Danker – Hoops Research
        • Excel
        • Group Sheets
        • Notes
        • People
          • 1 – Paul Danker and Wilhelmina Dabelstein
            • Children
              • 1 – Paul Arthur (Kowalinski)
                • Kowalinski
                  • Newspaper clipping
              • 2 – Alvin Andrew (Zabel)
              • 3 – Alfred Danker (Dunbar)
              • 4 – Irma Dorothy (Gaus)
              • 5 – Arnold Hugo (Sperber)
              • 6 – Ellen Alvina (Smith)
              • 7 – Ruth Emma (Noffke)
          • 2 – Heinrich Danker and Bertha Altong
          • 3 – Johann H Danker and Adelheid Hoops
          • 4 – Harm Hinrich Danker and Maria Lemmermann
          • 5 – Christopffer Danker and Gesche Boschen
          • 6 – Ulrich Dancker and Gesche Meyers
        • Places
      • 6 – Altong Research
      • 7 – Dabelstein – Niemann Research
      • 8 – Karstens – Voss Research
    • Gene’s family

Is there such a thing as being too organized? In this case, there may be! See what happens to the path name now:

C:\Users \Google Drive\Barry’s Family\Charlotte’s Family\5 – Danker – Hoops Research\People\6 – Paul Danker and Wilhelmina Dabelstein\Children\1 – Paul Arthur (Kowalinski)\Kowalinski\1955 The Daily Times Tue 1 Mar Helen Kowalinski wins an award from Col Nelson.jpg

Oops! I’m now at 265 characters. In fact, when I tried to rename my file to the longer file name, my computer just cut it off at the 255 character mark.

So if you have multiple layers of folders and your computer refuses to allow you to keep typing on a file name, you’ll know why.

Because the reunion book included at least 2 more generations, I would have been in real trouble if I tried to continue with my folder system for those generations as well. But there are some obvious things I could do to shorten the path name.

1. I could take out the spaces on either side of the dash: “Danker – Hoops Research” becomes “Danker-Hoops Research”
2. I could remove some of the “extra” words – “Danker-Hoops Research” becomes “Danker-Hoops”, ” Paul Arthur (Kowalinski) ” becomes ” Paul Arthur” or “Paul-Kowalinski”
3. Instead of having a folder for “Children” which includes 7 individually named folders, I could get rid of the “Children” folder and just have the 7 individual folders.
4. I could use dashes instead of the word “and”. “Paul Danker and Wilhelmina Dabelstein” becomes “Paul Danker-Wilhelmina Dabelstein”.
5. I could “bump up” the folders for my husband’s 8 great-great-grandparents to be included directly after mine. I would just begin their numbering with 9 instead of 1 so the lists wouldn’t become mixed. But this could become an issue when it comes time to move things back to their correct Google Drive.

If I do some of these things and stick with my original file name, my new path could become a “mere” 196 characters:

C:\Users \Google Drive\Barry’s Family\Charlotte’s Family\5–Danker–Hoops\People\6–Paul Danker-Wilhelmina Dabelstein\1–Paul-Kowalinski)\Kowalinski\1955 The Daily Times Tue 1 Mar Helen Kowalinski.jpg

All of these things are something to consider when developing your own folder system. I don’t think I’d want to go back and rename every folder on my system for the sake of 1 or 2 file names! In this case, the desire to keep the files in the Google Drive that synced with my laptop resulted in a couple more layers than I normally would have. It won’t be an issue when I remove the files from this Google Drive and put them back in their original Google Drive. But I have had the issue crop up on a couple of other file names, so I know it isn’t totally out of the question.

Another Family History Book

A “spur of the moment” decision for my husband’s family to have a family reunion led to full-time work on updating a family history book that was started for a reunion in 2001. At that time, every family was asked to provide a biography and to include a family photo. That information was included along with family tree charts and printed and put into a binder for everyone to take home. There was an amazing completeness to the book – I don’t think a single family was left out! In the introduction to the book, it was stated that the book would be updated at each future reunion. There have been 2 reunions since then, but no updates to the book.

My husband’s stepfather passed away last December. At the dinner after the funeral, my husband and his cousin decided the time was right for another reunion. The cousin and her husband have a farm, so an early August date was chosen and a family cook-out planned. The cousin is a sales rep for hotel linens, so she used her connections to get a block of hotel rooms at a discounted rate as well as a meeting room for us to use. Everyone would be asked to bring their favorite snacks and games to play. An invitation to the event was posted on Facebook and through that or word of mouth to those not on Facebook, we began to get in touch with everyone we could.

So when summer started, I decided the time was right for updating the book after 18 years! We started by putting the old address information into a spreadsheet on Google Drive and asking everyone to go in to make updates. We asked everyone to not only update their own information, but if they saw family members who needed updates, to go ahead and supply that information as well. We had very few email addresses 18 years ago, but soon, our collection of email addresses grew and now I have an email address for just about every member of the family.

I put the email addresses into contact groups based on the “original” family siblings. 7 siblings = 7 email groups. I started sending emails to each group giving what they had written originally and asking everyone to update their information as well as to send a current photo.

In the email to the groups, I also included a picture of their family tree as it was printed in the original book and asked for updated information for the new generations that have come into the family since 2001. I think that seeing this visual chart of their family made it easier to collect the full name and b/m/d information that I was looking for rather than just asking everyone to send the info to me.

I told everyone that we would not be printing copies of the book for everyone, but that a digital copy of the book would be made available to everyone after the reunion was over. Each person would then have the option of printing their own book, if they wanted. I asked everyone to start looking through their old photo albums for any pictures from the past, but especially for photos of the original 7 siblings – all of whom have now passed away. I was amazed at the great photos that were scanned and sent my way! I incorporated all of the new biographies and recent photos to update the book and then went back to the biographies for the original 7 and included a “memories” section for each of them and started adding the old photos. I continued to remind everyone that I was looking for photos, documents, newspaper clippings, etc. and I reminded them that a book in digital form could have far more images than our previous book since we wouldn’t have to worry about printing costs. I told everyone that I would be bringing my portable scanner to the reunion, so if they didn’t have a scanner of their own, to bring their old albums and I would scan during the reunion.

One thing that I think contributed to getting good results from everyone was seeing what the original siblings had written back in 2001. They included memories of growing up, fighting in WWII and how they met their spouses. Reading these biographies made everyone think about questions they wished they had asked and were therefore more willing to provide that information about their own memories knowing that the book will be available to future generations.

I was able to take the family line back 3 additional generations than we knew before the reunion. The family line is 100% German, so I was burning the midnight oil researching in FamilySearch and Ancestry looking for digital versions of the birth/baptism, marriage and death records that would prove the lineage. I leaned heavily on FamilySearch Communities and Facebook pages to help me translate these pages. I made a special binder of just these records for those family members who were interested in the research side of things and they enjoyed seeing copies of the original records as well as having the translations included. But I’ll talk about these pages in another post.

I printed 1 version of the book to take to the reunion and everyone looked through it and made notes of corrections or missing information. Seeing the old photos often brought forth new memories, which are now also included in the new edition. After making these updates, I put a PDF version of the book out on Google Drive and sent the link to all of the email groups I had created at the beginning of the summer.

Updating the book was a project that I worked on literally every waking moment that I could for 2 months leading up to the reunion and I think everyone was really pleased with the result. The best part for me was making sure that everyone now knows that I am interested in collecting any old photo or document that is available. (I won’t mention the aunt who threw away all of her mother’s old photos after she passed away! “Who would want these now??” ME! That’s who!)

I am now the “official” family historian, and everyone knows it. The number of digital photos in my collection increased substantially! I now have scans of photos that no one knew existed including the 1st couple to come over from Germany in 1867. I am currently working my way through the scans and digitally repairing the cracks and rips that most old photos have. These scans will be added to the book as well, which means that in the future, anyone who uses the link to the book in Google Drive will always have the most recent copy of the book and it won’t necessarily have to be as huge of a project before the next reunion. Being in charge of the reunion book means that I can include the type of documents, clippings and memories that all family historians would feel so passionately about preserving. I may be a little biased, but I absolutely LOVE this book!

Back to School time is great for my genealogy!

I am a retired teacher and my heart skips a little bit when all of the back to school supplies come out. What a great time to buy folders – and not just any folders, but heavy duty plastic folders to keep my current project printouts in! I love how these hold up when I take them on trips in my backpack or carry bag. Pens in all kinds of fun colors to color code my notes! Index cards – lined and unlined – to create evidence cards or timeline information when I’m trying to sort between individuals with the same name! Graph papger, rulers and protractors for drawing out maps from my ancestors’ deed descriptions. You get the idea. It’s not as if those items aren’t available all year long, but the special prices and having a large selection all gathered into a large area – it makes shopping a little more fun.

So one thing that I purchase every year is a planner. Students used to use them for writing down assignments, but I’m sure that’s all done digitally now! But I use them for keeping track of webinar dates, subscription renewal dates and correspondence notes and such.

When I bought my planner for this year, I realized that I’m a little behind in my shopping. This planner starts with the first week of May 2019 and goes through the end of June 2020. That’s no big deal, but it does make me look at all those pages for June, July and half of August and think what a shame it is to waste them! So here’s what I do with the extra pages.

At the front of the book is an address section. I use this section for genealogy website passwords. On my laptop, I keep all of my links to websites and their passwords in Microsoft One Note. But often, when I go to my library, I know I’ll be using the library computer to access a database that I can’t access from home and I don’t bring my own laptop. That’s when I realize I don’t have a password memorized that I need while at the library. I’ve talked before about using many different gmail addresses so that I can have a Google Drive for different lines that I’m researching. When I download a document at the library, I like to immediately save it to the correct Google Drive and it never seems to fail that when I THINK I know the password, I’m incorrect and can’t access the Drive. The same thing for sites that I don’t use every day, like the Ellis Island site or for sites that assign you a password that is not easily memorized – like the David Rumsey map collection site. My personal laptop browser stores passwords for me so I don’t have to try to remember them on my own even though I visit the sites regularly – like FamilySearch, Ancestry and MyHeritage. Having these written in a planner that is easy to take along in my bag allows me to access these types of sites.

The planner pages for the dates that I’ve missed will become areas for brainstorming – what is my research question and where can I look for try to find the answer? Notes to myself about where I saved a record or who I’m sharing a folder with in Google Drive. Reminders to send a record to a family member or a note about who has a certain family photo that I plan to scan on my next visit. This allows me to avoid post-it notes that get lost over time as well as giving me a place to write down spur-of-the-moment thoughts without opening files on my computer. Later, when I’m back home with my computer, I can transfer important notes to my digital files and forms, where I know that everything will be.

A small planner is easy to take along anywhere – even if I don’t plan on doing actual research. No matter where I’m going, my brain always seems to be churning through some genealogy thoughts in the back of my mind, so it’s nice to have a place to collect those kinds of thoughts when they do pop up.

Creating a Family History Book

I mentioned that last summer, I worked on a family history book for my daughter-in-law Ericka. (Why is it so much easier to work on someone else’s project than it is to work on my own? I’m sure it’s because of the emotional connection and feeling like you’re never REALLY finished.)

I used the “MyCanvas” book option on Ancestry and it really did save me tons of time because I was collecting all records and images into a tree I created for her on Ancestry, so every image or document could be placed in the book all from one central location. But once I got going on the book, I quickly became overwhelmed. I soon realized that I needed some type of “template”… a list of things I was hoping to include for each person. Parts of the “template” were pre-designed by MyCanvas and others were things I decided to include.

Every person got 4 pages. This allowed me to plan for 2-page spreads. If something didn’t fit on one page, I could make sure it fit on the facing page. A few individuals got 6 pages (or even more) depending on the details I could find for that person. For example, Ericka has an ancestor who was hung as a spy for the Union during the Civil War. There were several newspaper articles detailing his adventures and I transcribed those and included them because the clippings were too difficult to read on the page due to size and resolution restrictions. To allow her to view these clippings and all other documents in better detail, I placed all digital images into folders and gave her a flash drive of all digital media to go along with the book.

The first page for each person was a pre-designed group sheet supplied by the software. At the top of the sheet, MyCanvas included the name, birth and death info, parents’ names and an image which it pulled from a person’s profile in Ancestry. It doesn’t take going too far back in a family’s history to find that you have no pictures of an individual, so if I didn’t have pictures of both individuals, I used a picture of what the American (or their country of origin) flag looked like the year they were born. The default template for this page also included a line with the marriage date and location followed by the family group sheet. Sometimes the group sheet took up the remainder of the page and other times, it was very short. If I was able, I included pictures and information for the US President at the time of the subject’s birth as well as the number of states in the US at that time.

The last item I always included, whether it was on this first page or the next page, was a “bread-crumb trail” of how my DIL was descended from the couple. With the setup I was using, I could only include 5 generations, so if I was able to get back further than that, the “trail” would begin with one of Ericka’s parents.

On the 2^nd page, I wrote a short “biography” for the couple. I used the Ancestry LifeStory tab to give me a start. Soon, I realized that there was very little variation in how a biography began, so I came up with a list of about 8 different ways to say the same thing.

• When William was born on September 7, 1850 in Columbus, Ohio, his father, Stephen, was 32 and his mother, Mary, was 30. (Ancestry’s version)
• William was born on September 7, 1850 in Columbus, Ohio to Stephen, age 32 and Mary, age 30.
• The oldest child of Stephen, age 32, and Mary, age 30, was William, who was born on September 7, 1850 in Columbus, Ohio.
• On September 7, 1850, Stephen and Mary, aged 32 and 30, had their first son, William, who was born in Columbus, Ohio.
• William was the oldest of 2 boys born to Stephen and Mary. He was born on September 7, 1850 in Columbus, Ohio shortly after the family moved to Ohio from New York.
• You get the idea…

I broke the LifeStory paragraph into parts – birth, marriage and death – and combined the information for the husband and his wife into one “couple’s bio”. I then looked up the year of birth for each individual to see if there were any historical events that I could add for the year they were born or married. If there were any interesting life events – such as an occupation, military service, or moving to a new state – I added that information. I added images to this page as well. Sometimes, the images were family photos or documents for the couple, such as a marriage certificate. If I was looking for “filler” to get to the 4-page mark, I’d add images of items that were talked about in the biography. It might be an image of an item that had been invented during the year of their birth or a short section about the town of birth or a local landmark. Wikipedia was invaluable for this!

If the “bread-crumb trail” of descendancy had not fit on the 1^st page, I made sure it fit on this page.

On the 3^rd page, I’d include images of as many documents for the family as I could. It might be cropped census records, guardian bonds, marriage permissions, newspaper clippings – anything I could find. If appropriate, I would include information giving background on something that was on the page. For example, why there was a guardian bond if the mother was still alive.

The last page for each section was always for death information. Pictures of gravestones or cemeteries, obituaries, family photos, etc.

MyCanvas was a real lifesaver for this project. I could add or delete pages and the page numbering was automatically updated. Once I had designed a layout for a page, it was easy to copy and paste it into each person’s section so I didn’t have to design if over and over. There are many pre-designed pages with dozens of themes that can easily be added with a simple click and the information automatically added based on the information you’ve included in the traditional Ancestry pages.

• 5 different versions for a 4 or 5 generation tree
• A descendant list or descendant tree
• A timeline prefilled with all events you’ve included on an ancestor’s profile page in Ancestry
• The Family Group Sheet
• Pages with pre-designed layouts for photos or documents
• Section divider or Title pages
• A Table of Contents

Due to the cost of have a 159 page book professionally printed and bound, I decided I was going to print the book myself – an option that is readily available on the MyCanvas site. But most of the decorative embellishments that are built into the book design software cannot be printed with the Higher Quality option. (If you ever decide to create a book using the MyCanvas site, do a preview of the page before you design too many pages to make sure it’s really going to look the way you think it will.) Instead, I added many images to the gallery of certain individuals to pull into a page if I needed filler. I even created a few fictitious people in the tree just to add images to their gallery. For example, I had one individual named “America” whose gallery contained all of the flags and Presidential portraits. I had another ancestor whose gallery contained decorative Bible verses, vines, flowers and corner embellishments to add throughout the book. When I added these people, I disconnected them from all parents so that even though they are there, they don’t appear to be part of the family.

Overall, I was thrilled with the process of putting the book together and it was a nice break from the research I’d been working on for so long. Because it really never ends, does it?

Stephens Family Research Restart

Quite awhile back, I wrote about getting organized digitally. I decided on a specific file naming convention and as I went through all of my many, many flashdrives and backup folders, I moved everything into my Google Drive account, making sure to rename each file appropriately (see this link to read my tips for an effective naming convention) and to put it into my newly organized file system.

The one family that I did nothing with was my Stephens line. I just had sooooooooooooo many documents and files, the thought of renaming each one and determining which folder it belonged to was overwhelming. So I did what every busy person does – I put it off. And now the chickens have come home to roost.

My Stephens family is quite a puzzle. I’ve written in the past about the 5 men named Andrew Stephens. Well, I’m willing to bet there are just as many Williams and Johns! So I have moved all of my digital files (well, those I’ve come across so far) into my Google Drive, but they aren’t in their specific folders yet. Every file name starts with the year, so they are already arranged chronologically – thank heavens! So when I have a little time, or need a break, I work on renaming the files. My file naming convention looks like this:

Year County State Source p# Subject’s name.  For example:

1806 Adair Co KY Court Orders Book A p197 William Stephens

My first project for my Stephens line is to update all of the group sheets. As I’m going through them, I’m adding missing citations and linking to other group sheets. The documents that I have to support the information in the group sheet are copied into the appropriate folder as soon as it is renamed.

In the bottom half of the group sheet, I’m either adding a short timeline to show where the family was for each census (or other helpful event) or the text for the will. With so many men with the same name, having the will right there is very helpful for keeping the men straight. If the will is short, I’ll be adding the timeline AND the will. Having the timeline so visible can help me eliminate a person if I’m looking at a land or tax record. If my record is in Kentucky, but the person had clearly moved to a new state, I can move on to other people with the same name who WERE in the correct area.

I have done one additional thing that is helping me tremendously as I work through these group sheets.

I don’t normally use any genealogy software. I keep everything in Ancestry and in Google Drive. So I downloaded my GEDCOM from Ancestry and then downloaded a free program – RootsMagic Essentials. I imported the GEDCOM into RootsMagic and then printed a Descendants List for my “root” ancestor, planning to use that to update my group sheets. After running the report, I was THRILLED to discover that it also included an Index of Names including every single person in the tree, including in-laws. Hallelujah! The Index is organized alphabetically by surname and tells the page number they can be found on in the Descendants List. This has been SO helpful! Whenever I run across a name and think “where have I seen that before?”, I go right to the Index to see if the person is listed in there, and 95% of the time, they are. That has helped me keep the correct Andrew, William or John with each family.

Heavenly!

One final thing that I’m doing as I work through my group sheets is to assemble a detailed “to do” list. Many of the records I want to see are only available to view from a Family History Center or affiliated library – both of which I have here in town. So when I find a “record” on Ancestry or FamilySearch that gives me information, but can only be viewed from a specific location, I’m keeping that citation in red on my group sheet to indicate that I don’t have the record yet and adding the item to the “to do” list for the next visit to the appropriate location.

Lots of group sheets to get to yet….better get back at it!

Time to get back at it!

It’s been a little over a year since my last blog post. After I “paused” my blog, I decided to work on a family history book for my daughter-in-law. I worked on that book every spare moment I had until her birthday in July. And by then, I was pretty burnt out! So I took several months off completely, but I am back at my research now.

I have recently received emails from two “cousins” which got me back into 2 specific family lines. And, my husband and his cousin have volunteered to organize a family reunion this summer, so I’ll be doing research on their line as well. So I’ve got plenty to do!

Between those lines and spring gardening and a big crochet project that I work on in the evenings (oh yeah, plus my “real” job), I’ve determined that I need to be very purpose driven with whichever project I’m working on. So my goal for the blog is to post about once a week – most likely on my Russell County, Kentucky roots – to give a quick account of what I’m working on and how I’m organizing it. My husband’s line is 100% German, so I may occasionally post about German resources or surprises.

So please plan to stop by and see what I’m up to! If  you also have Russell County roots, drop me a line in the comments. I just might come across your family lines connected with mine!

Pausing the Blog

When I first decided to start a blog, I had 2 goals – to begin a conversation with people researching family in Russell County, Kentucky and specifically, to connect with “cousins” to collaborate with on research.

As I look at the amount of time I spend working on the blog, I find that I am spending less and less time working on my own research and more time writing for the blog, without a lot of feedback.

While I love being able to provide resources and “how to” information, that just wasn’t my original goal, so I’m going to hit the “pause” button for a bit and think about what I want to accomplish in my research and how much time I want to invest in the blog to accomplish that goal.

I don’t plan to ever take down the blog. I find myself using the links I’ve included for Russell County far more often than I thought I would. That may be the most organized part of my research process and I don’t want it to go away!

Continue to enjoy the free downloads and links to Russell County resources. And THANK YOU to those who stop by on a regular basis!

~Lisa

120 Years Ago Today – Mar. 30, 1898

A continuing feature on the blog for 2018 is be a series called “120 Years Ago Today”. I’m collecting newspaper clippings relevant to Russell County from The Adair County News in the year 1898. I hope you find some surprises to add to your family tree!

I’ll be doing a bit of digital cleanup on the files to remove streaks and scratches, but you can download the original file from the link. Right-click on my image to save the cleaned-up version. I also plan to include a list of names mentioned in the articles at the end of the blog post to make it possible to find with an internet search.

This week’s paper was pretty “splotchy” and difficult to clean up.

Here’s the link to this edition of the newspaper. Link

Abner Jones, Dr. A.M. Jackman, Dr. W.B. Armstrong, Pem Allen, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. M.C. Barger, Chas. S. Harris, W.L. Bradshaw, Lewis Wilkerson, S.A. Simpson, Tiny Haynes, Dr. Baugh, Margaret Tucker, J. Shelby Rowe, A.H. Baugh, W.C. Adams, Mrs. Texas Rowe, Effie Falkenburg, W.E. Falkenburg, Mrs. Ollie Stone, James Clayton, Mrs. M. Scholl, N.H.W. Aaron, Dr. R.A. Jones, Creelsboro, Font Hill, Jamestown

Spring Gardening – Genealogy Style

March in Indiana is notorious to weather swings. Sunny and beautiful one day and snow storms the next. Today, for a few hours, I had the sunny and beautiful weather in front of 5 days of forecasted rain. So I took the opportunity to get outside for an hour to do a little garden clean-up and I couldn’t help but think about how my goals for that hour were analogous to my genealogy work.

#1 – Take a look at what’s popping up below the surface. 

The bed I chose to work in today is one of several iris beds. Two years ago, I dug up, split and transplanted hundred of iris bulbs. The bed I worked on today seemed to struggle last year and was very behind all of the other beds. So last fall, I decided to leave all of the foliage alone over the winter to allow the dying leaves to feed the bulbs to give them a little extra strength. Now that the weather is starting to warm up, I took a peek under these leaves and sure enough, lots of new plants popping up underneath!

This made me think about how often I open a page in Ancestry for an ancestor who I haven’t looked at in quite awhile and been pleasantly surprised to see new records available for that person. Haven’t worked on a specific line for awhile? It might be worth going back for a “peek underneath”.

#2 – Take care of issues early rather than waiting for a better time.

My neighbor has a large maple tree in their front yard. It is beautiful. But the seeds of a maple tree have wings and I’m pretty sure that ALL of the seeds from that tree land in my flower beds! As I cut out the old, dead leaves of my irises, I found dozens and dozens of those seeds in the dirt.

I know what would happen to those seeds if they were exposed to 5 days of rain plus warming temperatures. I needed to make sure that I was removing every single seed or I would be looking at a major headache this summer!

What is the seed that you need to remove from your research before it gets out of control? About a year ago, I noticed that someone on Ancestry had an image of my grandfather’s family in their tree. I have the same image and I may very well have shared the image with the person, but I couldn’t recall for sure. The only problem was that the image description had the wrong name for the parents. Instead of my great-grandparents names, the description listed my great-great-grandparents. Oops! But I didn’t say anything. I was amazed at how quickly (and how often) that image started popping up as a “hint” for my great-great-grandparents – and from more than one account. The mis-labeled image had been incorrectly attached to trees over and over and over. And some of those people had cropped the image to have individual headshots – which is fine – except that they were incorrectly labeled because of the first image description. I’ve commented on several of the images to try to spread the word, but I have a feeling that this image has already spread too far and that the comments won’t reach everyone. Perhaps if I had made my comment sooner?

Do you have a record in your online account that is mis-attributed? I’d say this happens most often when 2 different people have the same name. Take a closer look to “weed” these sources out of your research as quickly as you can.

#3 – Slow and steady makes the process much more enjoyable

It happens every spring. The weather turns nice and I go out to work in my beds. But there’s so much to do! I push myself to get as much done as possible. And the next day, the aches and pains remind me that I can’t do as much as I used to and still do a great job.

It’s the same way when I don’t work on my research for awhile. Or if I don’t work on a specific LINE for awhile. How painful is it to go back and figure out where I was? How much time do I waste finding the same things over and over because I didn’t stick to my organization system? Why didn’t I label that digital file with the date or the location or even the ancestor it applied to? Because I was rushed and figured I’d fix it later. We’ve got to know exactly where our files will be stored and what our naming template will be. We’ve got to have a plan in mind and stick with it!

#4 – You’ve got to do the prep work before you’ll see the flowers.

If I don’t start early to clean the dead stuff out of my beds, the flowers that come up later will be sickly and pale. And part of my “prep work” in my gardens has got to be making a plan so that everything gets done when it needs to be done.

Prep work in genealogy not only means having my supplies gathered and having a goal in mind for that research session, but it also means doing the “boring” stuff at the end of the session so that I can get a quicker start on my next research session.

It’s much easier when I make good use of my Research Plan and keep good notes to remember which record sets I’ve already looked for. But updating that plan is so BORING! I can be spending that time to RESEARCH, right? I need to remind myself that I don’t have to find every record in one setting. Much better to take my time, really analyse the record in front of me and to take good notes in my Research Plan so that my next steps won’t be painful.

#5 – All the work will be worth it when the results are blooming!

I think this one’s pretty self explanatory!

I hope you’re enjoying the spring season!