Follow-up Friday Post – July 7, 2011

Death Certificates:

                In last week’s Follow-up Friday post, I mentioned that I ordered 5 death certificates from the State of Arkansas Department of Health Vital Records Section in Little Rock.  I received the first 2 of those death certificates in the mail this week. I scanned, transcribed them, and entered them into my notes and as new sources in my RootsMagic database.

                I received the death certificate of my 2^nd great-grandfather, William Edward Peters from Pocahontas, AR. He died in 1948. Unfortunately it did not list his parents’ names, however it did list his date of birth as March 10, 1874 and place of birth has Thomasville, Missouri. This information correlated with his obituary; however, most of his census records said he was born in Illinois. Click here to view his death certificate. 

                Follow up: I feel more comfortable going back and combing the census files again for Peters families in Thomasville (also Moore Township), Oregon County, Missouri now.

                I also received the death certificate of my 2^nd great-grandfather, James Franklin Lasiter from Fort Smith, AR. He died in 1968 at the age of 92. I found a photo in my grandmother’s collection of him and someone called “John Riley Lasiter,” presumably his father. The death certificate stated his father’s name was John R. Lasiter and his mother’s name was Emily Jones. His mother’s name was new information to me.

                Follow up: I can now start looking for records for Emily Jones Lasiter and John Riley Lasiter including census records, death records, and marriage records.

Richard Smith’s Confederate Service Records:

                As I also mentioned in last week’s Follow-up Friday post, I located the Confederate service records of my ancestor, Richard Smith.  I posted the muster roll cards to my Smith and Fox family Blog here. And I set some new goals and things to follow up on for next time, including to continue looking for his original enlistment muster roll and to see if I can find the Confederate records of Richard’s brothers John and Claiborn Smith who supposedly joined at the same time as Richard.

Fox Family:

                One of my Family Finder matches indicated that we might have a connection via the Fox family in Indiana. My Fox family is concentrated in Arkansas and Oklahoma, however, for some reason, my 3^rd Great-Grandfather, John A. Fox, moved to Indianapolis after his wife, Sophronia Maynard died in 1917. I guess his son Dillard Fox lived up there, so he went up there to be with him. Anyways, he was only there for 3 years before he died in Indianapolis. My grandfather had given me a copy of John’s death certificate, which is how we were able to locate him in Indiana.

So I went into my RootsMagic database and “touched” it up a bit by adding my sources and updating my notes in both John and his son Fred Fox’s files. Fred Fox was my 2^nd great-grandfather. I did things a little bit differently this time: I added the notes about each source to the individual notes section for each fact. Normally I just add everything to the main notes section under the name fact. I then added my commentary on the source.

I also updated my sources to Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained standards. Boy was that complicated! I encountered several problems with doing this, one of which was that Rootsmagic has several template options to choose from which may or may not follow EE.

As it turned out, my match mentioned Parke, Vigo, and Putnam counties, Indiana and I immediately knew right off the bat that it was NOT the Fox family that we connected on. This location would be my Godwin family that moved from North Carolina to Putnam County, Indiana in 1828. This is the first connection I’ve made with someone on my Mother’s side of the family!

Follow up: I am still waiting to hear back from him to see if he recognized any of the surname I sent to him.

Update ** October 5th, 2011 ** I have heard back from this Family Finder match and he said that he did not recognize any of the Godwin collateral line surnames that I sent to him from Parke, Vigo, Putnam and Clay Counties, Indiana, so we are back to square one!