Genealogy By Ginger's Blog

Motivation Monday - 6 Feb 2012

2012-02-06T22:49:00.001-05:00

I am falling really behind in my genealogy and blogging these past couple of weeks. I haven't had much focus either. I think I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. That's normal for February, right?

Ok, so let's get back on track. Here's what I have on my plate these days:

Process the 60 pages of genealogy papers I copied from the Thomas Hume papers at UNC's Southern Historical Collection last week. In order to make heads or tails of it, I need to reconstruct Thomas Hume's genealogy and find the connection to the Godwin family of Nansemond Co., VA and then try to understand the connection with Mildred Holliday who wrote a LOT about the Godwin family. Oh yeah and then I have to determine if my line of Godwins descend from this line!!!
Process the O'Neal family wills, photos and genealogies that one of my Family Finder matches sent to me. (Yes, a confirmed "cousin!") My match is in her 80s so if I want to learn more information about the O'Neal family I better ask sooner rather than later!
Finish entering information on the William Godwin who married Pheriby who moved to Georgia and then settled in Alabama in the 1800s. One of his descendants took the 12-marker Y-DNA test and came back as a 100% match to the group of Godwins that my line descends from. A 12-marker match is not enough to prove we have a common ancestor, however, this tester does not match any other Godwin/Goodwin in the project. We hope a higher marker test will be performed in the near future. I have also been entering data about a similar William who is often confused with this one. He married Winnefred (maiden name thought to be Farabee). You can see why there might be confusion. Although this William lived and died in Johnston Co., NC in 1845, his heirs settled in Dale Co., Alabama.
Process the new Find-A-Grave photos for the Barton Family that someone took and posted for me from Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas.

I really need to stop starting new projects until I finish existing projects. And I need to process items that I obtain from libraries, archives and from other researchers or family members. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this problem though!

A Question of Dates

2012-01-26T17:40:00.000-05:00

Here is an entry from Nugent’s Cavaliers and Pioneers:Abstracts of Virginia land patents and grants, 1623-1800. Vol. 1, 1623-1666 (Baltimore:Genealogical Pub. Co., Inc), p. 471 that I pulled from Ancestry.com on January19, 2012.

Most of these entries are for patents given to people whopaid for their own transport to Virginia – called a “personal adventure” - orwho paid for the transport of other people into Virginia – called a “headright”(Nugent, Introduction, p. xxiv). In the entry below, Martin Baker must havereceived a patent for 1750 acres and then sold it: 100 acres was sold to Jno.Gynes (?), 100 acres was sold to Tho. Tilsey, and the remaining 1350 acres wassold to John Stanup on March 18, 1662.

Here is the transcription of the above entry:

JOHN STANUP, 1350acs. New

Kent Co., 18 Mar.1662, p. 238, (158).

S. side of YorkeRiv., beg. At corner by

Henry Ashwellspath, running S.W. by

S. &c. tocorner by John Basbies path,

thence S.Ely. toThomas Collings cor-

ner &c.,including 1750 acs. Granted to

Martin Baker 28Nov. 1658, 300 acs. of

Which sd. Bakersold to Tho. Tilsey &

100 acs. to Jno.Gynes (?), which is

excepted out ofthe bounds according to

the bills of salefrom Baker; 1350 acs.

assigned sd.Stanup by sd. Baker.

My question isthis: Fromthe entry above, do you think that Martin Baker sold the 300 acres of land toTho. Tilsey and 100 acres to Jno. Gynes (?) on March 18, 1662 as well? Or doesthis date only apply to when he sold the 1350 acres to John Stanup?

Determining a genealogical connection using Ancestry.com online family trees - Part 2

2012-01-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I talked about how to find anAncestry.com online family tree using a Google search. So now I have identifiedmy match, I have found her online family tree, where do I go from here?

How do I find a connection between us?

I will start by looking at her online family tree inpedigree view. I will assume that my match is the home person in this treemarked as "private." This view illustrates my match's ancestry fromher to all 16 of her 2nd great-grandparents.

I don’t recognize any of the people listed in the firstpage of this pedigree. So I start by clicking through each of the arrows one byone to expand the tree. I start at the top with Leroy Beauchamp. Clicking onthe arrow beside his name brings up the expanded trees for the Beauchamp-Martinfamily. This view shows her ancestry back to her 6th great-grandparents.

The Family Finder test says it can find matches up to the5th cousin level. 5th cousins share the same 4th great-grandparents. So Ishould be able to find a connection to my match without going any further backin her tree. I don't see any familiar surnames in the Beauchamp-Martin familytree, so I’m ready to move down to her 2nd great-grandmother, Nancy EllenLayman. To return to the original view of her 2nd great-grandparents, I simplyclick on the minus button beside Leroy Beauchamp's name. This will bring theoriginal pedigree chart back into view. Next I click on the arrow beside NancyEllen Layman. Again, I go through the surnames, but I do not see any in common.I click the minus sign beside her name to collapse the tree and do the same forthe remaining 14 of her 2nd great-grandparents (except for Thomas W. Dyer whodoes not have any ancestors listed).

When I expand the ancestors of Thomas Daniel Dendy, I seea familiar surname - TINSLEY. I wrote about them last week in my Follow-up Friday post. My match's 6th great-grandmother is RachelTinsley. This is what it looks like in expanded view:

I hover my mouse over the name of Rachel Tinsley and Isee that she died in Newberry County, South Carolina. My Tinsleys were fromLaurens County, South Carolina. My curiosity piqued, I then expand the treefurther to show me the Tinsley family by clicking on the arrow beside RachelTinsley's name.

The expanded tree includes Thomas Tinsley I and II as thefather and grandfather of Rachel Tinsley. BINGO! That’s it! Thomas Tinsley I wasthe 9th great-grandfather of my match and the 10th great-grandfather of me,making us 9th cousins 1x removed. Our common ancestor is Thomas Tinsley II andhis wife Sarah Jackson.

Just for kicks and giggles, I kept going, looking throughmy match's pedigree. I got down to the very bottom and expanded the tree forNancy E. Minter, another one of my match’s2nd great-grandmothers. Doing so pulled up two Hill ancestors. Hill is anothercommon name that comes up a lot when doing the Family Finder test. I didn'trecognize the Abner Hill or Tibitha Hill that showed up in this view, so Iexpanded their trees further. As it turns out, both Abner and Tilitha Hillturned out to be children of Robert Hill and Tabitha Green. And as it turnsout, their grandchildren intermarried with each other (see Abner Hill Minterand Charity Chapman in the red box).

To my surprise, I am also connected via Robert Hill andTabitha Green's daughter Ann Hill who married John Steed in Brunswick County,Virginia. Robert Hill was my 9th great-grandfather. He was my match's 7thgreat-grandfather, making us 8th cousins, 2x removed (in addition to being 9^thcousins, 1x removed on the Tinsley line).

Finding a 2nd connection was the "surprise" Imentioned in my last post. I am not really surprised to find a connection sofar back as 8^th or 9^th cousins. The test is validated orguaranteed or whatever terminology Family Tree DNA uses in their FAQs to goback to 5^th cousins with a good amount of surety. After that, theDNA gets diluted. In fact, on their FAQs page, they say that the chance offinding a match to a 6^th cousin or more distant is “remote ortypically less than 2%.” I have 7 confirmed matches so far and of those 7, 2are 3^rd cousins, 1 is a 4^th cousin, 1 is a 5^thcousin 3x removed, which can be rounded up to a 6^th cousin; 1 is an8^th and 1 is a 9^th; and 1 I have not figured out yet.

The reason I'm highlighting this methodology as a post isbecause when I first started trying to connect with my matches there was a lotof family tree exchanging, especially on Ancestry.com. And the problem I wasrunning into was that I was constantly getting lost in all the profiles of eachindividual and then losing sight of exactly how my match was connected to theprofile I was looking at. In my genealogy software, all of my direct ancestorsare color-coded red. So when I look at the index of names, I know immediatelywho my direct ancestor is. But in Ancestry.com's family trees, especially inthe profile view, there are no color coded ancestors.

This is what the list of descendants look like in the profile view. From this view, there is no indication of from whom or how my match is related to Robert Hill.

I finally figured out that the success to finding aconnection to a match is to find the COMMON ANCESTOR and he or she WILL show upin the PEDIGREE VIEW of their tree. I do not have to look at all of thechildren of everyone in their tree to find my ancestor. I only have to look forthe common ancestor. At least this is what has finally started working. So giveit a try and let me know if this works for you or not.

Follow-up Friday – Jan 20, 2012

2012-01-21T02:53:00.001-05:00

I definitely got sidetracked this week and my surname research took an entirely different turn, but for the better! Even though I have committed myself to setting and following certain goals for the new year, I encountered one of the many quagmires involved with genealogy research and we are only in our 3rd week of the year. I set a few goals for particular surnames that I wanted to research, either because I wanted to learn more about them or because they had presented a brick wall. But I also committed to finding connections to the 178 autosomal DNA matches I have acquired in the 6 months since taking the Family Finder test.

I know I haven't written much about the test and all that is involved in working with my matches (that is also on my goals list - to write more about my experience). But anyone who has taken the test knows that 1) your tree has to be pretty well built up 2) that includes your collateral lines and 3) you will inevitably spend more time exchanging more family and historical data once a match is determined which means building up your tree some more, entering more sources, transcribing more records, etc. but the bottom line is that you will get sidetracked into looking at several different surnames at a time, especially if you have any of those annoying common surnames that you will inevitably have in common with 75% of your matches like Jones, Smith, and Johnson!

So long story short, even though last week I was researching my Ward and Joy, Peters, and Dunlap families and still had a bunch of Ward and Joy information to input into my database, this week I was researching my HARDIN and TINSLEY families!

It started off with one little email to a match who had a few surnames in common with me. I'm not even sure why I picked him. I guess I was bored last weekend and just randomly emailed him. (Now you see why I don't write too many posts about this - wouldn't want the method to my madness getting out). Anyways, he sent me his ahnentafel and told me that we connected through my 6th great-grandmother, Clara Hardin who was born 1793 in Kentucky. She married John Carman LaRue in Maury County, Tennessee in 1811. Clara Hardin's great-grandfather, Mark Hardin, born sometime in the late 1600s, was my match's 7th great-grandfather and my 9th great-grandfather, making my match and I 8th cousins, twice removed!

So I spent the first half of the week (Monday was a holiday for me for MLK's Birthday and then I was out sick one day) looking on the internet at all the conflicting information about where and when said Mark Hardin was born and who his possible parents were. I reviewed sources and analysis and research reports. And then I found out that my cousin Kay Haden (you might remember her because she was featured on the FGS blog as the first registrant for the FGS conference in Birmingham!) is also descended from Mark Hardin! She had done a lot of research on him when she lived in AL years earlier and sent me some stuff to look over.

Then my match and I used this not-always-so-handy-tool called the "In common with" filter on our ftDNA homepage to see who else we both matched to and it came up with two names. I emailed them thinking they might be descendants of Mark Hardin as well. One of them wrote me back and although she did not have and Hardins in her ancestry that she knew of, we did find not one, but TWO connections via the TINSLEY and HILL lines!!! How cool is that???

I never really did much research on my Tinsley line because frankly, there was already tons of information out there on the internet and there looked to be two or three very capable researchers who had posted their research on the internet already, so I figured they had it covered and I could use their research as a guide when the (free) time came. But we know it's never that easy, so of course I had to perform my own research. Including starting an annotated bibliography of the secondary sources on the Tinsley family that came into Virginia in the 1600s which included my ancestor, Thomas Tinsley.

It didn't take long to find the connection to her Tinsley line, even though it was several generations back. It turned out we were 9th cousins 1x removed! She had sent me the name of her Ancestry.com online family tree and I was able to find the link to it by running a google search on it. Her tree was very easy to navigate in the pedigree view and by going through each of her lines I found a 2nd connection to Robert Hill (1678-1766) and Tabitha Brown Green (1690-1765)! My lines goes through their daughter Ann Hill who married John Steed and my match's line goes through their daughter Tabitha Hill who married David Chapman.

I have to admit, I'm getting pretty good at finding connections using genealogical tools like Ancestry.com's online family trees! It does take patience though. Oh and with this connect, we were 8th cousins 2x removed.

So as you can see, I'm a pretty well-rounded genealogist. Or you might say I get bored easily. But I don't think this is a bad thing. Last year I was more focused on one of two things and this year I plan to make more connections and get back to building my tree up some more.

So not bad for a first 3 weeks. Last week I added some new information and worked on breaking down a couple of brick walls. This week I opened two new can of worms and got my brain's juices flowing and started pushing myself to think about how to deal with what I find on the internet, how to resolve conflicts, how to cite my sources, how to deal with not being able to make the report I want to make with my gen software (that's never ending right?), how to find books, and how to start thinking about the historical context of the area that my ancestors lived in. Oh yeah and how cool DNA is! And did you notice that my test seems to be really sensitive? They guarantee to only go back to 5th cousins, but most of my matches have been 8th cousins. I think that's pretty cool!

Determining a genealogical connection using Ancestry.com online family trees - Part 1

2012-01-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

This is Part 1

The autosomal DNA tests offered by 23andMe and ftDNA arebecoming more and more popular for use in genealogy these days. Oftentimesgenealogists are overwhelmed by the number of matches they get back with theirtest results though and are not sure where to go from there. I have 178 matchesto date and I took the test 6 months ago! They might have sent out severalemails to matches only to be disappointed when no one wrote them back. Or myfavorite so far is a match who simply tells me “My tree is online, check it outand when you find a connection, let me know.” Of course, I am onlyparaphrasing, but you get my point. And if you are lucky enough to find a matchwho is interested in finding a genealogical connection, he or she mightactually ask to see your tree in exchange, so it might be good to have a copyof your online family tree on hand as well. (I recommend keeping yourAncestry.com tree private and invite matches as guests with viewing privilegesonly).

So what happens when you find a match?

Last week I emailed one of my matches from my ftDNAFamily Finder test. It said we had 28.54 shared cMs of DNA and a prediction of 4^th to distant cousin. She was also a match to agentleman that I had already confirmed a connection to via a paper trail – heand I were 8^th cousins, 2x removed on the HARDIN line from VA/KY. SoI prefaced my email with an inquiry as to whether or not she had any HARDINS inher paper trail. Unfortunately, she didnot have any surnames uploaded to her profile, so I also requested a list ofher surnames with a promise of an exchange of my own (even though *my* surnames*were* posted to my profile – some people don’t know how to access this or usethis utility of the ftDNA homepage.) She emailed me back and said she did nothave any HARDINs in her family tree, but she had Denham, Coats, Minter, Peugh, and Crew andthat her tree was posted online on ancestry.com. She told me the name of heronline tree – “Beauchamp-Denny” - but did not provide me with a link.

Although I have been using ancestry.com online familytrees for several years, both accessing other members’ trees and updating myown, I still do not feel like I have a good handle on how to use it with anymeasure of expertise. I find myself constantly bungling around the database andwaiting for pages to load and hitting the back button so I don’t lose my place.

How to find a member tree without a link:

The name of my match’s tree is “Beauchamp-Denny.” I couldnot figure out a way to search for a tree name in Ancestry.com. The onlyoptions I could find were in the Research Interests tab which searched by LastName, Location and Year. Typing in her last name brought up 2800 results.

Next I tried the Basic Information Tab and put in hername as the User Name. I don’t know her actual Ancestry.com user name, but Ifigured it would resolve a user name from whatever real name I put in, right?Well that gave me over 10,000 results!!!

Ok, so simple solution…I noticed a trend lately. One ofmy goals for 2012 is to do more Google searches and one of the annoying thingsI’m finding come up in my results are links to entries at Ancestry.com (inaddition to geni.com and werelate.org, etc), so finally the light bulb went off.

I couldn't resist adding a DNA-themed lightbulb

What if I do a google search on the “Beauchamp-Denny”tree on “site: Ancestry.com”?

I click on the first result which says “Membersresearching Ambrose Dixon – Ancestry.com.” I don’t know who Ambrose Dixon is,but since this is my first time using Google search to find an Ancestry.comonline family tree, I am going to click this link to see where it takes me.This is what comes up when I click the link – a list of members researchingAmbrose Dixon.

Even though I am not interested in Ambrose Dixon,Ancestry.com has displayed a list of public online family trees, with usernames, and the names of the trees for me to peruse. The very first one on thelist is the “Beauchamp-Denny upload” tree name. I have put a red box around it.So you see the Google search did a very good job retrieving this online treefor me and I didn’t have to know the user name. It does tell me the user namePDenny9470. It just so happens that my match’s name is P Denny, so this seemsto be the right tree, which is good, because as you can see, the box in the upper right hand corner tells me that there are 462members researching the surname Dixon! I would hate to have to weed through allof those trees!

In Part 2, I discuss how to navigate my match’sBeauchamp-Denny tree and find a connection to my own line. I will also reveal asurprise!

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Photo credits:

Dog and Cat shaking hands from Free Printable Coloring Pages
DNA Lightbulb copied from Terry Barton's worldfamilies.net page

Surname Saturday - Ward Family

2012-01-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

I got an email this week from someone on Find-A-Grave who asked me if I could connect my ancestor, Martha Ward Putman to her parents, Castleton Ward and Mary McGrada. I opened the links and found a wealth of information for both Castleton Ward and his wife Mary that I did not previously have. I emailed the contributor and asked her where she learned all of this information from and she has been sending me articles, emails, and information ever since. So from this little request I have learned more information about my Ward family, and learned about two new surnames - McGrade and Ake. Here is my Surname Saturday Ward Family Profile:

My 3rd Great-Grandmother was Martha Ann Ward Putman. She was born July 24th, 1850 [1] in Arkansas and died 10 Jan 1924 in Fort Smith, Sebastian County, Arkansas.[2] She married Thomas Adolphus Putman on January 20th, 1869 in Sebastian County, Arkansas. Thomas and Martha Putman lived in a house at 3720 Park Avenue, Fort Smith, Arkansas until they died in the 1920s. Their daughter Rosalie Putman and her husband James Lasiter lived in the house as well. Rosalie and James Putman's son James Putman Lasiter Sr and his wife, Louise Benson Lasiter (my great-grandmother) lived in the house as well. After Louise's death, the house was sold. Louise's brother Jimmie Putman Lasiter Jr lived next door around the corner until he died a few years ago. His house burned down in a fire.

Martha was the daughter of Castleton Ward and Mary Malinda McGrada. I was unaware of Mary's maiden name and Castleton's parents' names until the FAG contributor emailed me. Castleton Ward was born October 1st, 1820 (or 1821) in Tennessee to William Ward and Letha Leah Ake. He died September 18th, 1899 in Lavaca, Arkansas and is thought to be buried in the Ward Family Cemetery at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Castleton's wife Mary McGrada was the daughter of Robert and Sally McGrada.

So this is what my pre-Research chart looks like:

Ancestors of Martha Ann Ward (pre-Research) with new Surnames

Here is a list of Castleton and Mary Ward's children I've learned about so far:

Asberry Alexander Ward (1842-1852)
William Franklin Ward (1844-1897)
John Robert Ward (1845-1895)
James Madison Ward (1847-1889)
Martha Ann Ward (1850-1924)

Mary Ward died in 1881 and Castleton Ward remarried to Sallie Hood in 1882.

From emailing with the FAG contributor I have learned that most of the information about the Ward family came from Martha Ward Presson and a book she wrote on the Ward and allied families. The FAG contributor forwarded a digital pdf copy of the 130 page book to me. Unfortunately it is not searchable, so navigating the information in the book is a bit difficult. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how the author, Martha Ward Presson, was related to this Ward family. And there are no sources (of course). Although I am happy to have more information about this family, I am not 100% comfortable taking it at face value without verifying it first. I can, however, use it as a guide. In fact in my post from yesterday I already found some errors on the information the author wrote about my family (Martha Ann Ward Putman).

Another surname I learned about is JOY. Castleton Ward's brother, Joseph S Ward, married Amanda Joy and his sister Nancy Ward married Amanda Joy's brother, John William Joy. With regards to autosomal DNA, any children that Castleton's brothers and sisters had, regardless of surname, would be genetically linked to me and could possibly show up as genetic matches to me through ftDNA's Family Finder DNA test. This is why building up my collateral lines has become a priority for 2012.

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Sources:
[1] Headstone for Martha Ward Putman, Forest Park Cemetery, 5001 Midland Blvd, Fort Smith, AR: "Martha Ward-Putman, July 24, 1850, Jan 11, 1924"
[2] See Note 1 above; Fowler, Robyn and Karrant, Wanda, Fowler's Index to Interments in Forest Park Cemetery, 5001 Midland Blvd, Fort Smith, AR: 1910-1988, "Martha H Putman died 10 Jan 1924, Interred by Putman Mortuary."

To Cite or Not to Cite? That's not really the question!

2012-01-13T16:54:00.000-05:00

What if I WANT to cite my sources on my blog posts but I have no idea how?

I somehow missed all the hoopla about whether bloggersshould cite their sources in their blog posts that was discussed on somemailing list that seemed to cause some huge divide between “certified”genealogists and non-certified genealogists. I read a few posts discussing thematter, which I won’t link to in an effort to “stop the insanity!” – as a sidenote, people have often told me that I looked like Susan Powter, who coined theabove catchphrase, so I like to use it too and refer to it often.

Anyways, one theme I saw common to the posts that I readabout was the issue with exactly how does one insert and formatfootnotes on a blog? Well, it’s pretty simple. I have done it several times andyou are probably already doing it, but just don’t know it.

If you are like me, and you distrust the blogger platformto the point that you write all of your posts in a Word Processor prior tocopying and pasting into a new Blogger post, then you can create your footnotesin your Word Processor. In Microsoft Word 2007, you can click on the “References”tab and then click the “Insert Footnote” button at the end of the sentence thatyou want to cite.

(Click on image to open a larger image. Then click your browser's back button to return to this page).

Footnotes are usually inserted at the end of thesentence, outside of the period or quotation marks, without a space. When youinsert a footnote, Word will then direct you to the bottom of the page where anumber is inserted and the cursor is placed. This is where you will write inyour citation. Or if you are not comfortable writing out a citation, you canwrite a note about the information you would like to cite. For example, if Ifound the will of Samuel Lewis, I might write the following note: “Will ofSamuel Lewis, 1823, Randolph County, North Carolina; Found at the NorthCarolina State Archives.”

So now you have your text and your footnote and it lookslike this:

Now you are ready to copy and paste to a new blog post. Login to Blogger, click on new post. Give your post a name. Then from your Worddoc, press Ctrl + A to select all of your text. Do not worry about the textcontained in the bottom of the page within the footnote itself. It will becaptured with the Ctrl + A. Then press Ctrl + C to copy and then go to your newblog post window and click Ctrl + V to paste it in. This is what it will looklike in your blogger edit window.

Blogger does retain the hyperlink between the footnotes,however, they do not work, so I would recommend that you remove them. If youclick on the hyperlink, it will just open a blank page and your reader will getlost. To remove the hyperlinks, left-click your cursor on the [1] then clickthe “remove” link. Do this for the footnote [1] beneath the line as well.

Your new post will look like this: the [1] is regularlyformatted text

Again, it doesn’t have to be perfect. If you want to putsources on your blog post, then this is an adequate and easy way to do it.

As a side note, I did try to create the footnotes andhyperlinks myself in Word, using the bookmark and hyperlink feature; andalthough the hyperlinks transferred over to blogger, they still did not workproperly and opened a blank page when clicked. This would probably work if youcreated customized html code within your blog post editor, however, I did notsee why that was necessary. The footnotes and citations are there for thereader to review if they want. The important part is making the citations available for my readers (or me) to review.

If you would like to share the way that you include footnotes in your blog posts, please feel free to leave a comment below or link to a post your wrote about how you post citations on your blog. And remember genealogy is a collaboration, not a conflagration of our peers~!

Follow-up Friday - Jan 13, 2012

2012-01-13T09:03:00.000-05:00

Today is Friday the 13th and there was a Full Moon this week, so it's been a pretty weird week so far. I haven't had much luck posting comments to other people's blogs, nor have I even been able to reply to people's posts on my own blog! So blogger is acting up this week as well. And I saw there is a new feature of blogger - you can now indent your comments and reply to other people's comments individually! This makes for a more personal feel to the interaction between me and my readers. I've used this a lot in my WordPress blogs and I'm happy to see it finally being implemented in our blogger platforms. So even through all of this funk, and starting back to school this week, I managed to get some of my genealogy goals accomplished! whoo hoo! I know you're probably bored with reading all this, but it finally dawned on me that I needed to get my research interests and surnames out there. And if that means that a brief mention of a line I am working on gets the attention of another blogger, genealogist, or cousin who contacts me and we make a connection, then I'm all for the boring or ho hum. So bear with me please :-)

I posted some of my goals for the week last Monday in Genealogy Research Progress for Monday, January 9, 2012 and I copied them below as well and reported on my progress:

Enter the information I received on my collateral SABIN and SMITH lines from folks that contacted me via my blog and Find-A-Grave memorials. This is a tangible and do-able task and counts towards my 2012 goal of building upon my collateral lines. - Done. I entered the 15 children of George SABIN into my genealogy database. George SABIN was married to Margaret GODWIN, the daughter of Etheldred GODWIN who is believed to be the brother of my presumed ancestor, Nathan GODWIN. My cousin just received 150 pages of George SABIN's Civil War pension file too, so I've been reading all the fun stuff she's been sending me about that as well; I have not heard back from my SMITH cousin, so unfortunately I have no new information there. I sent him some photos of his great-grandmother and requested a scanned copy of a family photo from him. I also shared with him the origin of his Grandfather's name, Avery LaRue SMITH. He was named after his Mother's Grandmother, Phoeba Ann LARUE! I hope to hear from him again, as it is always disappointing when you get that very exciting first email, you write them back and then you never hear from them again.
Start reviewing the information on my WARD family that the FAG researcher sent to me and ask her about her collateral JOY line, also counting towards my goal of building upon my collateral lines. In addition, I should take advantage of asking her any questions I might have since she is currently available. - In progress. I created my source citation for the Ward and Related Families book by Martha Ward Presson, but I am hesitant to copy any information from it into my genealogy database because she did not provide many sources for her facts. I usually like to start with looking at what was written about my own family, the more recent part, to see how the author treated that information. In my case, my 3rd great-grandmother, Martha Ward Putman was mentioned, along with her 4 or 5 children - on one page only 4 children are mentioned - Vanona V., LaRosa M., Pearl, and Willie O; On another page, there were 5 children mentioned - Varona, Annie, Pearl, Laura (married to Mr. Lasiter) and Willie O. So already there are errors. In fact there were actually 6 children born to this couple. I would not trust this book and unfortunately the author passed away last year.
Continue writing more blog posts - including a post about the deeds I have found on my DUNLAP family and how I am trying to learn about the family from the transfer of land. I am at a standstill with the DUNLAPS right now, so there is no hurry to break down this "brick wall." I also need to get to the North Carolina State Archives to do more research. - We had planned to go to the Archives this Saturday, however, the Archives will be closed because Monday is Martin Luther King's Birthday and for us in North Carolina, that is a State Holiday (I will be off of work). I still have not written my post on using Deeds to research my DUNLAP family, but I did manage to write my post on Metes and Bounds. That helped me to understand how a 375-Acre land grant was divied up and sold off 50 years later.

As usual I did manage toget distracted by a couple of other things, but I did get one thing closed andchecked off my list as well:

I finished corresponding with the descendant of the James and Martha PETERS family of Anderson Co., TN and determined that their Martha PETERS was not the same Martha PETERS that I found on the Oregon Co., MO census report in 1880 (her descendants say she remarried to a WILLIAMS). This Martha on the 1880 census is still a good candidate to be the mother of my 2nd great-grandfather, William PETERS though.
I was looking for an obituary for a friend's grandmother (which I was unable to find) and stumbled upon back issues of The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. I did a quick search for a few of my AR surnames and found a photograph of Ruby BARTON, the sister of my 2nd great-grandmother, Jessie BARTON! The article was a story written by a retired Oklahoma school teacher who graduated from three-year high school at Center Point (Howard County), AR in 1910. What a cool find!

photo credit: Cheo! via photopin cc

Determining No. of Acres of a Land Grant in the State Land States

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

There are two types of landdescriptions in the United States:

1) Metes and Bounds

2) Public Land Survey System

The original thirteen colonies were considered State Land States and were described using the metes and bounds survey system whichwas historically used in England. “Metes” refers to the measurement of the land in terms ofdistance and direction. “Bounds” refers to the waterways, lands, buildings, etcthat “bound” the land being described or are adjacent to it. Most landdescriptions have a starting point, or “beginning” and an ending point whichreverts back to the “beginning.”

The metes and bounds survey system is measured in chainsand poles. A chain is 66 feet and a pole is 16.5 feet.[1]

This is a photo of Gunter’s chains held at the Campus MartiusMuseum. From Wikipedia.org. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gunter%27s_chain_at_Campus_Martius_Museum.JPG)

This contrasts sharply with the rest of the country whichuses the Public Land Survey System,or rectangular survey system. This system uses parallel lines, or baselines onwhich a grid is designed. Further section, township, and range maps are designedand from them land is surveyed off using chains and links. I will cover thissurvey system in another blog post.

Let’s look at a Land Grantfrom the State of North Carolina:

In 1756, Patrick Mullen received a land grant from theEarl of Granville for 375 acres in what was then present day Orange County,North Carolina.[2] Itwas a square piece of land that bordered the north and south sides of the DanRiver.

SurveyDescription:

“This plan represents a tract of land surveyed forPatrick Mullen lying on both sides of Dan River Beginning at a Black Walnuttree on Walnut Island below Snow Creek then running South 63 Chains to a pinethen East 60 Chains to a pine; Then N. 63 chains to a Spanish oak. Then West 60chains to the first station. Surveyed the 30^th day of May 1753.”[3]

If we were to map this out from chains to feet to milesthen we could determine exactly how many acres were contained in this survey.Because the survey describes 63 chains to the South and 63 chains to the North,and 60 chains to the East and 60 chains to the West, we can assume it is asquare plat because the distance in each direction corresponds to the samedistance in the opposite direction. Also, because the description says thesurvey runs South then East, we can assume the starting point or “beginning” isin the upper left hand corner of the plat.

There are 66 ft/chain, so if we go South 63 chains, thenthat distance is 4158 feet (66x63=4158). Going East 60 chains results in 3960feet (66x60=3960). Now we have a plat that is 4158 ft by 3960 ft.

So how manyMILES is that?

There are 5280 feet / mile.

Therefore, 3960 ft x 1 mile / 5280 ft = 0.75 miles

And 4158 ft x 1 mile / 5280 ft = 0.78 miles

Our plat is now (0.75 mi x 0.78 mi) = 0.59 sq mi big

How manyACRES is that?

There are 640 acres in a square mile of land. Our platcontains 0.59 sq mi of land.

640 acres x 0.59 sq mi = 378 A. This survey containsapproximately 378 acres of land.

What did the original survey say? “Containing ThreeHundred and Seventy Five Acres.”

This is what the original survey (1756) looks like:[4]

This land passed through several hands and became ofinterest to me when a couple pieces of it came into the hands of a John Dunlap in Stokes County in 1803.By that time, the land’s named boundaries had changed from Orange to Rowanto Surryand then finally to Stokes County, North Carolina, all in the courseof just 50 years. This land is located in the current day town of Walnut Cove,however it actually covers most of the county of Stokes.

If you would like to learn more about the measurement ofland with Gunter’s Chains, check out these websites:

Howto Make Measurements with Chains at eHow.com

Metes, Bounds andMeanders by Kimberly Powell of About.com

If you would like more information on Patrick Mullins, feel free to visit Bill Murray's genealogy page. I have not been able to find any connection to Patrick Mullins (yet). I just used his land grant here as an example.

[1]Wikipedia.org, Metes and Bounds.

[2]The land grants says Orange County on it, but this land would have been inRowan County at the time it was entered.

[3] North Carolina Officeof Secretary of State, Granville Proprietary Land Office, Granville LandGrants, Box 96-M, File Nos. 160 & 161, Patrick Mullen, 15 March 1756,Orange County; North Carolina State Archives microfilm, Secretary of State,Granville Land Grants, reel no. S.108.252; North Carolina State Archives,Raleigh, North Carolina.

[4] North Carolina Officeof Secretary of State, Granville Proprietary Land Office, Granville LandGrants, Box 96-M, File Nos. 160 & 161, Patrick Mullen, 15 March 1756,Orange County.

Season 3 of Who Do You Think You Are? Premieres February 3rd, 2012

2012-01-10T08:17:00.000-05:00

NBC Announces The Celebrities Tracing Their Family Trees On Season Three Of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' Premiering February 3

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif.-- January 6, 2012-- Viewers can take an up-close and personal look inside the family history of some of today's most beloved and iconic celebrities when NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" returns for its third season on Friday, February 3 (8-9 p.m. ET).
The celebrities who star in the series are Martin Sheen, Marisa Tomei, Blair Underwood, Reba McEntire, Rob Lowe, Helen Hunt, Rita Wilson, Edie Falco, Rashida Jones, Jerome Bettis, Jason Sudeikis and Paula Deen.

I'm really excited to see this season's lineup, although some names are completely new to me. I'm also excited to see which familiar genealogist friends' faces we will get to see on the 'tele this time. Will we see D. Josh Taylor again or Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak again? Also, I will be joining hundreds of other genealogists on our Friday night Twitter chats following and replying to the #WDYTYA Twitter hashtag and playing drinking <GASP> games and laughing at the shaky leaves commercials ;-) You know who you are!

Genealogy Research Progress for Monday, January 9, 2012

2012-01-09T17:37:00.001-05:00

We are already into our 2nd week of the New Year! With that in mind, I wanted to take some time today to review my progress towards the goals I set for myself for 2012. Here are some of the things I worked on last week (usually I would write these as a Follow-up Friday post, but I missed it last week).

Wrote more blog posts - I got more than 1 blog post written during the course of the week which I'm really pleased with because I really love writing to my blog and sharing with others.
I worked on my DUNLAP brick wall some. I reviewed my research log and I organized the North Carolina transfer of deeds into a timeline. The deeds still have not given me any clue about a familial relationship.
I got sidetracked by an email exchange with a FindAGrave contributor of the WARD family - She asked me to link my ancestor to her parents. The memorials of her parents contained a lot of new information for me. This is new research that can be done! She also sent me a copy of a book written in the 1950s on the Ward family which I need to make time to review.
I met a new cousin on my SMITH side who found me on my blog. We have been exchanging information and pictures via email.
I reviewed the Civil War Pension file of a cousin's ancestor (George SABIN) and I received information on the pensioner's children that I need to find time to enter into my genealogy database. This goes towards my goal of working on collateral lines.
I am collecting information on the Davis, Cockerell and GODWIN families who are related by Y-DNA to see if and when a Non-Parental Event (NPE) occurred.
I emailed a descendant of James and Martha PETERS of Anderson County, Tennessee to see if there could be a connection to my 2nd great-grandfather, William E. PETERS. So far no one is willing to consider the idea that Martha moved on and had 3 more children after her husband James "disappeared." Martha still seems like a good candidate to be my William's mother though.

I hope to continue working on this research throughout this coming week. One of the difficulties I have with staying on track and keeping up with my goals is what I get in EMAIL! It always distracts me and throws me off course. One little email can send me into weeks of tossing and turning and flipping of pages and before I know it I've thrown all my other projects to the back burner. But we all know what happens if we don't follow up on our emails. If we wait too long, the person who sent us the important message has already moved on, probably forgotten about us, or what they originally wrote to us about, or deemed us as too high and mighty to write them back and are possibly no longer interested in corresponding with us. So the moral of the story is that we have to be flexible.

So for this week I aim to do the following:

Enter the information I received on my collateral SABIN and SMITH lines in #4 & #5 above. This is a tangible and do-able task and counts towards my 2012 goal of building upon my collateral lines.
Start reviewing the information on my WARD family that the FAG researcher sent to me and ask her about her collateral JOY line, also counting towards my goal of building upon my collateral lines. In addition, I should take advantage of asking her any questions I might have since she is currently available.
Continue writing more blog posts - including a post about the deeds I have found on my DUNLAP family and how I am trying to learn about the family from the transfer of land. I am at a standstill with the DUNLAPS right now, so there is no hurry to break down this "brick wall." I also need to get to the North Carolina State Archives to do more research. We had planned to go this Saturday, however, the Archives will be closed because Monday is Martin Luther King's Birthday and for us in North Carolina, that is a State Holiday (I will be off of work).

Using a Timeline to Visualize Your Data

2012-01-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

This weekend I worked on one of my goals for 2012: to find out the parents of Jesse Dunlap. I would consider this to be a brick wall since to date I have been unable to determine who his parents are with traditional genealogy methods.

I have been looking at land grants and deeds in Rowan, Surry, and Stokes County, North Carolina for the past few weeks. Land has a tendency to pass between several sets of hands and over the course of 50 years can also pass through several county boundaries, so it's important to keep very good records in order to not lose track of what you are looking at.

Although I have been implementing my research logs and they have helped me tremendously, I have taken one step further to help me visualize my data upon quicker glances using a timeline. I am using an excel-based timeline template that I found a few years ago. This timeline is different from many others in that it's FREE and it allows me to enter all of my information in to the spreadsheet with one column being the year and the other column being the event description. This information is then automatically incorporated into the horizontal timeline. I can then customize the placement of the events according to height. It was very easy to create this simple, yet effective timeline.

Here is what my finished timeline looks like:

You can download a copy of this timeline for your own personal use here

Check out Pam's timeline for Jonathan Seavey on her post 13 Children, 5 Child Graves

Follow Friday - Jan 6 2012

2012-01-06T16:49:00.000-05:00

Today is Follow Friday where I post some blogs I've read and found interesting. Some are new to me this week. Check them out!

The Keough Corner - Tessa has started participating in the Motivation Monday meme in which each blogger posts their goals on the first Monday of the month and reports back on their progress for the previous month. She has some inspiring expectations for data entry, organization, and working smarter, not harder!

Cousin Linda - Linda is fairly new to blogging and is starting with stories about the house she bought, the cemetery next door, and the church. She also did a 31 day genealogy challenge for the month of December.

Corn and Cotton - Stephanie has been very active in the genealogy blogging and twitter community and has been rallying up other bloggers to find a genea-buddy and set some goals! If you'd like to join in the fun, check out her Motivation Monday post.

Denise's Genealogy Journal - Denise is very excited about the 1940 census being released and offers her readers a preview of it here.

A Look Over the Mending Wall - join Vincent as he stumbles through the archival process - start to finish - of a single collection involving estates and probate packets (and some financial account records) from the Maine Historical Society Research Center in Portland, Maine.

I have really enjoyed reading everyone's 2012 genealogy goals posts! Some genealogists are even pairing up with genea-buddies to help motivate them along the way and to offer them support. These were some of my favorites posts:

Denise Levenick's The Family Curator
Amy Coffin's The We Tree Blog
Elyse's Genealogy Blog
Stephanie's Corn and Cotton: My Family's Story
Terri O'Connell's Finding Our Ancestors
Laura's The Last Leaf On This Branch
Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings

My Genealogy Goals for 2012

2012-01-02T19:58:00.000-05:00

My class load this year will really start to wind down, so I will need to start to focus more and have some goals if I'm going to get any major genealogy research done. So I have set quite a few goals for myself for the upcoming year based on what I've been thinking about these past few weeks and hoping that I could start working on one of these days. I have organized my goals in to categories to hopefully help me keep even more focus. One thing I do not have on this list is a goal towards increasing my genealogy expertise. I think this will occur naturally and can be incorporated once I get a feel for how the ebb and flow of my life will start to take shape. So without further ado, here is my list:

Think outside the box:

Extend my research to University collections, for example, the Thomas Hume papers at UNC (and evaluate Mildred Holladay's papers from UVA which Lori ordered)
Search for brick walls on Google and in Google Books - maybe do one surname per week
Search for brick walls in newspaper archives online

Organization:

Organize my paper files and file cabinet
Scan, transcribe, abstract, and analyze all of the documents I have retrieved in the past 7 years of research (they are in a pile), file them in respective family folder(s); add the relevant information to my genealogy database and submit transcripts to respective USGenWeb sites

DNA:

Connect with 5 more Family Finder matches - I connected with 5 from July to Dec of 2011, so this shouldn't be a problem
Sort through my Family Finder matches by maternal and paternal - my mother took the test in Dec so this should help me sort through them
Work more closely with existing Family Finder matches from July-Dec to exchange historical data and recent data; my goal is not just establish a connection then never speak to them again, but to build a relationship with them; ask them for photos, documents, etc...share, share, share!
Try to connect some American Godwins to English or Irish Godwins via Y-DNA
Update my Goodwin-Godwin Y-DNA surname project website with goals, success stories and summaries of existing lines

Brick Wall Research:

Find the parents of Jess Dunlap from Stokes County, North Carolina
Find the parents of William Peters, b. 1873 in Thomasville, Missouri
Find the parents of James Silas Barton from South Carolina

Research:

Do research on my O'Neal family from North Carolina - other researchers, including my grandfather, have a pedigree already drafted which I can use as a guide to find the documents
Use more research reports to tract resources searched and analyzed
Use more matrix reports to better display disparaging or corroborating information
Build on my collateral lines to help me collaborate with my Family Finder matches in order to see where different branches of each family migrated to (ex. the Cox family)
Add the South Carolina wills and probate records on FamilySearch.org to my Cox, McCoy, Cheek, (my SC) family files
Work on my Steed and Lewis families of North Carolina. I have lots of documents. I need to scan, transcribe, abstract, and analyze them and add to my genealogy database
Obtain copies of the deeds mentioned in Ann Jobe Brown's genealogy files to validate parentage from Ephraim Thomas and his migration
Start building a genealogy profile for the parents of James Franklin Lasiter: John Riley Laister and Emily Jones (per his death certificate, obtained July 2011)

Blogging:

Write more blog posts
Write about my Family Finder DNA experience
Make my blog look more snazzier
Turn my header into an image so that I can post a blog link to Facebook and Google+ and the "description" will be of the blog post and not of the blog itself

Graduate School:

Graduate in 2012...but in order to do that, I have to complete a few more things...
Take 1 more class this spring
Write a Master's Paper
Take Comprehensive Exams
Test out of 1 class
Do a Field Experience (Internship)

Addition - I would like to add the creation of Annotated Bibliographies for the geographic locations of my Brick Walls to my list.

Amanuensis Monday - The Will of Samuel Lewis of Randolph Co., NC

2012-01-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Transylvanian Dutch blog author John Newmark started the Monday blog theme called Amanuensis Monday. According to John, “amanuensis” means:

"A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another."

This week I want to share some records about my LEWIS family from Randolph County, North Carolina that I haven't worked on in several years. I started looking at this family again after connecting with a woman who was a Family Finder autosomal DNA match to one of my matches. Although we were not directly related via ftDNA's Family Finder DNA test, we did find we were related via the STEED family. You will see some STEEDS are mentioned in the will I've presented below. We did not let the lack of shared DNA deter us from exchanging information about our respective Steed family connections. Both of us have yet to find the connection to the other woman that we both match to.

Below you will find scans of the will of Samuel Lewis. He was born sometime before 1759 either in Virginia or North Carolina. It was written 23 August 1823 in Randolph County, North Carolina. Although Samuel does mention all of his children, including the married names of his daughters, he never does mention his wife's name. I have not been able to identify her name to date either. I am descended from Samuel's son, John Lewis.

Here is the transcript of the above will:

In the name of God Amen, I Samuel Lewis of the County
of Randolph and State of North Carolina being of
a sound mind and disposing Memory and knowing that it
is appointed for all men once to die do make and
ordain this my last will and testament in the following
manner To wit,
1st I give to loving wife my dwelling House
with two Acres of Land with one cow and calf one
feather bed & furniture, and one Sow and pigs. One pot
during her Widowhood.
2nd I give to Son John Twenty five cents in cash.
3rd I give to Son James Twenty five cents in cash.
4th I give to Son Clayton Steed twenty five cents.
5th I give to Daughter Polly Wood twenty five cents.
6th I give to Daughter Peggy Blaylock twenty five cents.
7th I give to Son William twenty five cents –
also one half of my Land including the
plantation and Land where he now lives
to the South line of my tract.
8th I give to Daughter Rachel Smithson
twenty five ets.
9th I give to Son Jesse Twenty five ets
also one half of my Land including my old
plantation Except my dwelling house & two Acres
of land which is giving to my wife unless
She and son Jesse can otherwise agree ---
As to Negro Georo [George?] my - will is that he be sold
and purchased by some of my children if they
can otherwise to sell him where he wishes.
10th I give to grand daughter Levicy Steed twenty five ets.
11th I give to Grand son Lewis Steed twenty five ets
then the balance of my property to be sold
and Equally divided between my wife
and my children named with my two Grand
children Levicy Steed and Lewis Steed after paying
all my just debts -------
my two Grand children is only to have the part
of one of my children ----------
Also my wife to keep what property she had
when I married her.
Lastly, I nominate and appoint Thomas Thornleigh [or Thornbough]
and Samuel Hill Executors to this my last
will and Testament in witness whereof I have
hereunto set my hand of seal 23 day of
August 1823.
Witness
Jesse Shaw Jurat. Samuel His Mark Lewis
H. Nailor

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

State of North Carolina )

Randolph County ) August Term 1826
The execution of this will of Samuel Lewis
was duly proven in open court by Jesse Shaw, one of the
subscribing witness thereto & order to be recorded.
Jesse Harper

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

According to the will, I was able to glean the following information:

He willed twenty five cents to each of his 8 children (named) and two Steed grandchildren.
His wife is not mentioned by name. He willed to her 2 acres and the house.
He willed half of his land to sons William (lives on it) and Jesse Lewis.
Eight children named in his will:

i. John Lewis

ii. James Lewis

iii. Clayton Steed

iv. Polly Wood

v. Peggy Blaylock

vi. William Lewis

vii. Rachel Smithson

viii. Jesse Lewis

Executors:

i. Thomas Thornleigh (or Thornbough)

ii. Samuel Hill

§ Witnesses:

i. Jesse Shaw (Jurat)

ii. H. Nailor

One of the children that is missing is Elizabeth Lewis. She died probably around 1802, prior to the signing of this will. She was married to Clayton Steed, who is listed as "son" in this will. Their two children, Lewis and Levicy Steed are listed as grandchildren in Samuel's will. Clayton Steed was my 6th great-granduncle. His wife Elizabeth Lewis was my 6th great-grandaunt. I was related to both of them through the Lewis and Steed families. Their children, Levicy and Lewis were my 1st cousins 7x removed. We shared two sets of ancestors in common - Nathaniel Steed and wife Susannah Franklin, and Samuel Lewis and his unnamed wife.

I am descended from Samuel Lewis via the following:

Samuel Lewis, d. 1826 Randolph Co., NC
John Lewis, d. 1830 Randolph Co., NC; md Lavinia Steed (daughter of Nathaniel Steed and Susannah Franklin and sister of Clayton Steed mentioned in Samuel Lewis' will)
Nancy Lewis, b. ca 1809, Randolph Co., NC; md. Elijah Godwin 1826, Randolph Co., NC
Agrippa Spinks Godwin, b. 19 Mar 1827, Randolph Co., NC, d. 28 Sept 1864, Ironton, MO in the Civil War; md. Elizabeth Ann Orr (daughter of David Orr and Eliza T. Caldwell)
David Orr Godwin, b. 10 May 1854, South Fork, Fulton Co., AR, d. 24 Oct 1928, Mammoth Springs, Fulton Co., AR; md. Zilphia Ann Elizabeth Pulley (daughter of William Henry Pulley and Emily Casinda M Gooden)
Alvin Theodore Godwin, b. 27 Jan 1879 Mammoth Springs, Fulton Co., AR, d. 17 Nov 1950, Mammoth Springs, Fulton Co., AR; md. Lou Ella Davis (daughter of William Davis and Dora Nix)
Orville Godwin, b. 12 Oct 1905 in Hardy, Sharp Co., AR; d. 10 Sept 1956, Tulsa, Tulsa Co., OK; md. Nova Lee Peters (daughter of William Edward Peters and Dora King)

2011: A year in Review

2011-12-31T20:07:00.000-05:00

This time last year I set 5 goals for myself. They werereally only supposed to run for the month of January, because I could neverimagine setting a WHOLE YEARS WORTH of GOALS for myself like many of you diligentgenealogy people out there. But of course, they ended up running for the entireyear, so no harm done. Here was my list from Jan 2011 and my progress to date(along with any future goals I might add to each):

1) To scan all of the genealogy documents that my cousinRichard sent me on the Binns and Brooks sides of my family and enter theinformation into my genealogy database:

I scanned all 95 pages he sent me. Most of it was genealogyhis Aunt Rubye (Binns) Brashears had compiled back in the 1950s and then hisown additions from the 80s. These were scanned in .tif format and pages fromthe same group were also saved as a .pdf file for easier reading. Much of thisinformation I already had in my database. I didn’t find any new information inwhat he sent me. One of the files was a type-written genealogy of the Binnssurname and information about the family coming from England compiled by “TheMedia Research Bureau” – whatever that is. This compilation did mention myparticular line. It had a very short bibliography, but no references cited inthe text, so it would be hard to determine what information came from whatsource, but I might be able to use them as a future guide, especially forresearch in England. A future goal might include typingup a transcript of this text (or finding an online version of it which issearcheable; or possibly converting the scan to OCR text – something I’ve neverdone before).

2) To enter all of the Binns, Anthony, and Pye namesreferences from the Wilkes County Georgia books I copied from the Library intomy excel spreadsheet. Determine the major Binns family lines in Wilkes Co. GA

Ok first of all, let me say that I didn’t even know I hada spreadsheet! But alas I see that I did, in fact, start one in Jan of 2010!!!I don’t see anything with a 2011 date, so it doesn’t look like I added anythingfrom 2011. In fact, I think most of this stuff in on my “To SCAN” list. Sochances are this was not even started. Guess it will be marked as a futuregoal.

Oh and guess what? I bought one of the books from agenealogy conference I went to (NGS in Charleston) which mentions my Binnsfamily in VA! Reviewing that deed book will be added toa future goal.

3) To read Christine Rose's Courthouse Research forFamily Historians: Your Guide to Genealogical Treasures book

Yeah, I read this off and on throughout the first 6months of the year and then I got bored with it. I didn’t learn anything new.So I ordered myself 3 new books – Helen Leary’s North Carolina Research book, Val Greenwoods, The Researcher’s Guide, and something else, probably ElizabethShown Mills’ Evidence Explained (thebig one) that would probably be more interesting. Add those to goals for 2012,especially since it sounded like the bookclub in Second Life was really goodthis year with “The Researcher’s Guide.

4) Get back to working with some cousins on James GodwinSr and Jr (not necessarily father and son) of North Carolina, including puttingall relevant documents online on the Wiki site

This was our best accomplishment. I worked with 5 otherresearchers on this project throughout the year. We pulled land grants, deeds, wills,and estate files from Sampson and Johnston Counties (North Carolina) andabstracted them. I created an online abstract form using Google Docs (thanks toThomas MacEntee’s webinar on Google Forms), which saved the information into anonline, shared spreadsheet. And then I created a Word Doc which pulled theinformation from the online spreadsheet into an abstract Word Doc(automatically) which we then were able to save to our Godwin wiki site. As itturns out the Sampson County (North Carolina) deeds are now online at the Sampson County Register of Deeds. Whoo hooo !!!That was a big help. So far we have over 100 deeds transcribed.

My colleagues on this project are all descendants of thisline except for me and Lori – to me it is worth it to work with excellentresearchers such as Lori, Sara, Tracy, Charlie and Ashley even if I am notrelated to this line because by finding records and Godwins who belong to their line, we are finding ones that do NOT belong to ours!

One of them started mapping land grants and deeds with aDeed-Mapper like software. We also incorporated Google Earth to see where theland would sit in modern day. We also managed to sort out who all of theprogenitor’s (James Godwin who died in 1801, Sampson Co., NC and who married toElizabeth Dawson?) children were. I thought this was a huge accomplishment. Wechallenged each other in all sorts of aspects. And it was a joy to work withthem and I hope it continues. Oh yeah and we’ve incorporated DNA into the mixas well. That’s how we know that Lori and I are not related to their lines.

5) Continue evaluating some Family Finder DNA testresults of some Godwin relatives.

It has proven to be quite a challenge to keep up withsome of my Godwin Family Finder testers. I actually took the test myself inJuly, thinking I would have more time to “play” with it while I was on summerbreak from school. Boy was I in for a big surprise! I caught on pretty quickthough and figured out how to work with it. Unfortunately I wasn’t veryproactive with blogging about my experiences, sothat will definitely be high on the priority list for 2012! There were also a lot of challenges becauseftDNA kept making changes to its site and things “stopped working.” Fortunatelyas a project administrator I was only helping 1 person with their results andshe caught on pretty quickly with how to deal with her brother’s results; shealso caught on to when things “stopped working.”

I’m going to leave my goals for 2012 for the next post.Oh and as a side note, did you know that when I write a post and set a goal init, I tag that post with the label of “goal?” That way I can easily find allthe goals that I posted and shared with you, my readers. You can see the labelon the right side of the page under the “Other Misc Items” category. Speakingof, that reminds me, one of my goals for next year is definitely going to be to create a very cool family history / genealogy related blogheader!!!

What about you?

Did you set some genealogy goals for yourself in 2011?

How did you do in working towards them?

What worked well for you in achieving them?

What didn’t work well for you?

Did you work with a genea-buddy?

Please feel free to write your own blog post and linkback to it in a comment below or tell me about it in a comment below.

I look forward to hearing about your goals!

Photo - Clip art licensed from the Clip ArtGallery on DiscoverySchool.com (This is what the website told me to write. It is copyrighted, but the website says I can use it as long as I link back to their site).

My Rooted Technology (a Meme)

2011-12-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

With the RootsTech2012 Conference quickly approaching, JillBall of Geniausstarted the following meme “My Rooted Technology” to share all of thetechnology we currently use, would like to know more about, or have no use orinterest in. She has invited her readers to share their thoughts. Here is mytechnological profile:

Here are the rules:

· Technology you already use: bold face type

· Technology you would like to use or learn moreabout: italicize(color optional)

· Technology you don’t use, have no interest inusing or no longer use: plain type

· Explain or give opinions in brackets [ ] at the end of each bullet point.

Here are my answers:

1. I have a tabletcomputer such as an iPad that I use for genealogy [I wouldn’t mind giving aniPad a spin for genealogy applications].

2. I havedownloaded one or more apps to a Smart Phone or similar device. [Idownloaded them onto my first android phone, but not to the 2^nd oneas I was running close to going over my 2GB data plan limit.]

3. I belong to a genealogy society that usessocial media. [I am the one who brought my society to terms with socialmedia.]

4. I useGEDCOM files and understand the various compatibility issues involved. [Thesehave especially come in handy with trying to find paper trail connections to myFamily Finder DNA matches.]

5. I haveadded metadata to some of my files and digital photos. [I would love to domore of this, but I fear it will disappear or not transfer.]

6. I have utilized an API from agenealogy-related application or website.

7. I havetaken a DNA test related to my genealogy research. [Both of my Grandfathershave taken the Y-DNA test and I have taken the Family Finder DNA test and Ijust recently purchased kits for my parents.]

8. I have used the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

9. I have a Facebook account and use itregularly for genealogy.

10. I usetech tools to help me cite my sources in genealogy research. [Probably not inthe way you are referring, but I have my methods ;-)]

11. I have developed a genealogy-related app for aSmart Phone or similar device.

12. I use agenealogy database program. [Rootsmagic]

13. I usecloud computer resources to store my genealogy data. [some of it is storedin the cloud – I try to keep my tree updated in Ancestry.com and I use Dropboxa lot.]

14. I have made one or more contributions tothe FamilySearch Research Wiki.

15. I have attended a genealogy webinar.

16. I have organized and administered a DNAtesting group related to my genealogy.

17. I use apps involvingGPS and Geo-caching for my genealogy research.

18. I have a Google+ account and use itregularly for genealogy.

19. I have created and published a family historye-book.

20. I have created a wiki related to mygenealogy research.

21. I have conducted a genealogy webinar as apresenter.

22. I readgenealogy-related blogs to help improve my own research. [Yes, I lovereading about new technologies and how people solve problems.]

23. I have one or more genealogy-related blogsto help improve my own research. [I have 3.]

24. I have a Twitter account and use itregularly for genealogy.

25. I have one or more genealogy-related websiteswhich I run and administer. [Sounds like too much work! – I know the wiki isenough for me!]

26. I have created ascreencast or video related to genealogy and posted it at a video sharing site(Vimeo, YouTube, etc.).

27. I use oneor more digital tools to capture and record my family history. [I have usedthe video feature on my camera. I do not use my phone because I don’t know howto get them out of my phone.]

Reverting back to Blogger Profile

2011-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about the option to switch your Blogger Profile over to your Google+ Profile. I found the major disadvantage to this being that when I left a comment on someone else's blog, the comment linked back to my Google+ profile instead of linking directly back to my blog. This kind of defeats the purpose of blogging which is to attract readers. Actually the link from comments was going back to my blogger profile and from there you could click on the link to my blog. This still seems better than going out to Google+, then having to come back to blogger?

The seamless or automatic updating of my Google+ profile with my new blog post did work well. When I clicked the "Publish" button, I was prompted with a dialog box and asked for a description or comment of the blog I was about to post. And it showed me a preview of the blog post (text). What showed up on my Google+ profile was a brief snippet of my most recent post and the comment I had written in the dialog box prior to posting.

Dialog box prior to posting on profile

Previously, manually pasting a link to my most recent blog post would not include a brief snippet of the post, but rather a snippet of the blog itself and was always the same no matter what new post I had written. It always said "I was researching Godwin and related families, etc..." I could probably fix this problem on my own just by removing the text from the header of my blog. I just hadn't gotten around to it. This is what my posts used to look like when I manually posted the links to Google+:

Manually updated link to my blog post

This is what my automatic post looks like on Google+:

Automatically updated blog post

Even though the new automatic posting process includes the post snippet, no where does it say that it comes from my Genealogy By Ginger blog! In fact, this "link" looks just like any other link I've shared on my Google+ Profile. How will people reading my news feed know if this is a post *I* made or if it is one that I shared?

And what about scheduled posts? How do you think Google+ will handle those? I had this post scheduled for Tuesday morning at 9 am. We will see what happens.
**Update Tues 9:32 am: This scheduled post did NOT automatically update to Google+. It did, however, automatically update to Facebook!

Summary:
1) When I leave comments on other blogs, readers are directed back to my Google+ page instead of my blog or blog profile, where they have to look for and find my blog address
2) Automatic posting of new blog posts is nice because it gives my most recent post snippet and allows me to write a comment; but it doesn't even say the name of my blog and makes it hard to discern between my blog post and other peoples' posts I've shared; Also, it does not automatically post scheduled posts.
3) I can alleviate the problem of manual posting not adding a snippet by removing text from my header
4) Last, but I'm sure not least, another reader told me that she didn't like that with the switch, the entire contents of the Google+ "Introduction" section of the "About" page were reproduced on her blog(s)' sidebar.

So what do you think? Is this really a choice or do you think we will all be forced to switch over to our Google+ profiles in the near future?

Oh and what if you want to revert back to your blogger profile? You do have 30 days to do so. Here's how you do it. Go to your Blogger dashboard (or whatever you call it). And click on the gear symbol below your name. There should be a link that says "Revert to Blogger Profile." See screenshot below (click on image to make it bigger).

Blogger Profile Switch to Google+ Profile

2011-12-12T17:05:00.000-05:00

Back in October, Blogger started allowing us to connect our blogger profile to our Google+ accounts (See the news here). This was supposed to offer a seamless approach to automatically post our new blog posts to our Google + profiles much like Networked Blogs does on Facebook.

Well today I finally took the plunge and converted my blogger profile over to my Google + profile. From what I've read, most people were excited to do this because now their photo will show up next to their blog page when it comes up from a Google search. Well that's not news to me, as my photo has been coming up with my blog all over the internet. Except it does get confused when I change my photo sometimes.

When I created a Google+ account, blogger got really confused because I posted a different photo than what was on my blogger profile. It started showing a black box with the outline of a triangle in the photo that was supposed to stand beside my name when I left comments on other people's blogs.

Speaking of leaving comments. The first thing I noticed is that now that my blog is connected to my Google + account, when I leave a comment on someone else's blog, it shows my photo and my name, however, now when people click on my name, they are taken to my Google+ profile. Prior to switching to Google+, doing so would take them directly to my blogger profile which had my blog link directly on it. I think I like the former way better. And to be honest, this is how I visit many of my readers' blogs - by clicking on their names when they leave comments on my page. I'm not really interested in their Google+ profiles, but I am interested in their blogs!

So I think I might like to switch back to my blogger profile. After all, it did say that I have 30 days to do so. The purpose of this post is to try out the automatic posting feature that Google+ is promoting. I would also like to see if it actually gives a description of my blog post rather than just repeating the text that is in the header of my blog every time. That was the complaint I had with manually posting the link to each new blog post to Google+. I didn't have that problem with Facebook.

So here goes!
What will YOU decide to do?

Looking for Estates in all the Right Places...

2011-12-06T10:45:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how the North and South Carolina wills and probate record images have been scanned and placed online for users to browse on the FamilySearch.org website.

Today I was trying to find the probate record for Susan McCoy in Greenville County, SC (1847-1850) and grew increasingly frustrated when I realized that the index (if one existed) was not posted to the FamilySearch.org site. Without an index, I could not figure out what "apartment," "file," or "no." her probate records were filed in. I looked through a bunch of the images to see if I could determine if they were filed by date or by surname, but they were not. I simply needed an index.

On a whim, I went to the Greenville Co., SC USGenWeb site thinking they MUST have an index posted somewhere. Although I didn't find an index I did find a link to the Greenville County Governement Online - with a page dedicated to historical records and there I found an Index to Estate Papers, 1787-1976. I clicked on the "M" link for "McCoy" and it brought up the browsable image index for all the "Ms." This is what I found:

McCoy, David - Apartment No. 5, File No. 339, Year filed 1822, Robert Cox, Admr.
McCoy, Susan - Apartment No. 11, File No. 74, Year filed 1847, Robert Cox, Exor.

Here's what the scanned image looks like:

This is exactly what I was looking for!

Now I have TWO - actually THREE Options: 1) I can go back to FamilySearch.org and look for these probate records in the browsable images 2) I can stay on this site and look for these records or 3) I can do BOTH!

Option #1:
Searching for Estate Records at FamilySearch.org:

Now I can go back to the browsable images posted on the FamilySearch.org website:

South Carolina Probate Records, Files and Loose Papers, 1732-1964

Click on the link for Greenville, click the "Probate Court, Probate Records" link, the "1787-1868" date range.

A list of file numbers come up. Since I am looking for file no. 5, I click the link for "Files 04-06, Nos. 215-420." (Although the link has been included here, I cannot guarantee it will continue to work longterm, so please follow my description of how I found the files.)

This is the hard part. This set of images only contains file nos. 4, 5, and 6. I have to find file no. 5 in there somehow. I know no. 5 is in the middle somewhere. At the top, it says I am on image 1 of 730. So there are 730 images in this set. That means the middle is probably about image no. 375. I can type in 375 into the Image No. box and press enter to go directly to that image. This gives me the estate record for Jesse Moody. Going back one page brings up the first page of his estate record which says it is file no. 338. So all I need to do is fast forward until the end and that should take me to David McCoy's file no. 339.

I only had to go 2 more pages to get to David McCoy's file. The first page was missing, however, so I might want to order the entire record from the South Carolina State Archives if I feel as if it is not complete.

**OR**

Option #2:

Stay on the Greenville County Government Site and Searching for Estate Records:

Click on the Estate Records link.

Click on the Apt 0004 File 265 - Apt 0006 File 366 Link

Start going through images as above. This is system is much slower and the images are of poorer quality.

HOWEVER, I retrieved only 9 images from the FamilySearch.org site and I retrieved 22 images from the Greenville County Government site!!!

So my recommendation is...

Option #3:

DO BOTH!!! - This just goes to show you that even in the realm of genealogy, things really are changing relatively quickly. Sometimes we have to check several places before we give up and then check them again because new things are being added all the time.

A word of caution: **If** you do pull records from both, please make sure you cite them properly. If you found one loose piece of paper listing all of the children of the deceased off of one site, but that same piece of paper is NOT uploaded to the other site, then it is YOUR responsibility to note that.

Now if you have ancestors from Greenville, South Carolina, be sure to check out the Greenville County, SC Government Online Historical Records page !!!

Matrimony Monday - Lou Ella Godwin to Roland A Rye

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

Lou Ella Godwin and Roland Rye applied for a marriage license on September 18, 1947 in Alma, Crawford County, Arkansas. Roland swore that he was 21 years of age and Lou Ella swore she was 18 years of age. They were issued a Marriage Bond the same day in the amount of $100 promising that they would follow through with their lawful marriage. Also on the same day, they were issued a Marriage License obtained in order to solemnize and publish the "banns of Matrimony." On the Marriage License, it is listed that Roland is from Alma, Crawford County, Arkansas, and Lou Ella Godwin is from Fort Smith, Sebastian County, Arkansas.

Lou Ella was involved in her husband's construction business and was the President of the Home Builder's Auxiliary in 1966. She and Roland were divorced in 1975 in Fort Smith, Sebastian County, Arkansas. Lou Ella Godwin Rye was my grand-father's sister. She died in 1988. Unfortunately, I was too young to remember her.

This is the only photo I have of Lou Ella and Roland Rye and their daughter Linda Lee.

Tombstone Tuesday - Charley King

2011-11-08T08:35:00.000-05:00

The inscription reads:

Charley Son of W. F. & Mary King, Born Dec. 7, 1895, Died Nov. 27 1898

Sleep on sweet babe and take thy rest God called thee home.

Charley King was the son of William Fletcher King and Mary French. William Fletcher King was the brother of my 2nd great-grandmother, Dora King who died around 1912 of a snake bite. Charley and his brother Alvy King died at a very young age and are buried next to one another at Joliff Cemetery in Rover, Oregon Co., MO. Other tombstones I have photographed in this cemetery include French, House, Huddleston, Joliff, Judd, Kimbrough, King, Nichols, Peters, Richards, and Willard.

This cemetery is approximately 1 mile north of Koshkonong on Highway 63. From Highway 63, take M Highway and go approx. 10 miles on M Highway to 160 Highway. Go approximately 3/4 mile east on highway 160 to first dirt road south. Keep bearing east for approximately 1 1/2 miles. Look for a sign post for the cemetery.

This post is part of the daily blogging theme hosted by GeneaBloggers.

Matrimony Monday - Alvin Godwin and Ella Davis

2011-11-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Alvin Godwin was my 2nd great-grandfather. He was married 2x that I know of. Lou Ella Davis was his first wife. It took me a long time to learn what Lou Ella's maiden name was and this marriage license was a key find in determining that her maiden name was Davis.

According to the license picture above, Alvin Godwin was 22 years of age when he applied for a marriage license and living in Sharp County, Arkansas. Ella Davis was 19 years of age and living in Hardy, Sharp County, Arkansas. They applied for their marriage license on March 14th, 1899 in Sharp Co., AR and were allowed to marry on March 17, 1899. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last long, as they were divorced by the 1920 census report. They had two children, Lorine and Orville Godwin, the latter being my great-grandfather. I have not been able to locate any information about Lorine Godwin, however the family does have a photograph of her and her two children, one boy and one girl.

Source: Arkansas County Marriages, 1838-1957", database, FamilySearch; from Arkansas Courts of Common Pleas and County Clerks. digital images of originals housed at various county courthouses in the State of Arkansas. Marriage records. FHL microfilm, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Accessed by Ginger R. Smith on 30 Jun 2010.

Follow-up Friday - Nov 3 2011

2011-11-04T08:03:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I had a pretty good genealogy day over the weekend because I finally got my new desk set up. I heard that many of my genealogy pals got some good genealogy time put in over the weekend as well. I don't know if it's because the weather is getting cooler and we are staying inside more or if it's just because things are starting to slow down or what. But I definitely have a happy face on, despite the trials and tribulations I've been experiencing at work.

So in my genealogy news, I've been working on finding the parents of William Peters who was born in 1874 in Thomasville, Missouri. One of my DNA Family Finder matches believes the Peters line is our connection, however I don't have a leg to stand on because I can't get past William Peters. I did find a Martha Peters on the 1880 Oregon County, Missouri Census Report who could have been his mother as she had a young William living with her that fit my William. But then I got distracted by trying to trace this Martha to a James Peters family out of Anderson County, Tennessee. Turns out this family moved to Missouri and James disappeared leaving Martha to fend for herself and their 2 (or 3) children. Descendants of this family are not receptive to the idea of them having a son named William though, nor to the idea that Martha was living in Oregon County, Missouri in 1880! Another find I had is a newspaper article in which a John Peters was shot and beaten to death on his employer's farm by a gang of brothers in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I had heard my William was beaten to death but his death certificate said he died of a heart attack in Pocahontas, Arkansas. I wonder if maybe this John was William's father (or close relative) and he was the one the family remembers who was beaten to death. Only problem was that the 1880 Council Bluffs census says John Peters was single (William was born in 1874), he was living in Iowa and not in Missouri or Illinois where William was rumored to have been born, and John was from Denmark. Surely I would have heard something about Denmark in the family! Well the nice thing is that I've been able to comb through a bunch of newspapers that my University subscribes to.

In addition to working on my Peters line, I have done someresearch on my Dunlap family in Stokes County, North Carolina. Jesse Dunlap left North Carolina about 1820and moved to Tennessee and then moved to Texas and then finally settled inArkansas about 1840. His two sons, Jesse Dunlap, Jr and Lorenzo Dow Dunlap werekilled in the Mountain MeadowMassacre of 1857 in Southern Utah. You might have heard about it. Click theabove link for more information. Anyways, I started off my search in thetotally wrong direction and it took a nice genealogist named Rex Bertram to setme straight. He sent me back to the North Carolina original records. So I havebeen combing through the Stokes County, North Carolina deeds (they are online – whoo hoo!), using the NorthCarolina State Archives online catalog called MARS to find landgrants and wills, and compiling census records in order to piece together thehistory of the Dunlap family prior to their removal from North Carolina. Thiswas also prompted by a Family Finder DNA match.

Lastly, I finished transcribing the estate files of John F. Dry ofPerry County, Illinois. I happened upon these scans as I was making a list offiles that I needed to scan during the next Scanfest.If you don’t know what this is, it happens the last Sunday of the month and it’sa time when genealogists all over the world get together in a chat room andchat while they scan their photos and documents. I usually do a pretty good jobof keeping up with my scanning, but I always have a lot to catch up with aftera trip to the library. These estate files were scanned once but at a very lowresolution. I must have had a problem with the scanner. So they have not beentranscribed. I did manage to rescan this set of estate files, so I was able totranscribe them. And then, my biggest feat of the week is that after readingMichael Hait’s blog post on Doyou understand source citations? I decided to try my hand at writing an“official” citation to the estate file I was sent copies of and transcribed asmentioned above. It is probably missing several pieces because I was not theactual person who went to the courthouse and made the copies. In fact, I probablywould have copied where the book sat on the shelf!

Anyways, here’s the citation I came up with (complete with footnotenote):

John F. Dry Estate File No. 128, dated 1847; Perry County, Illinois Probate Records, Box 307; Perry County Courthouse, Pickneyville, Illinois. This estate file was copied by Stella Runyon, sarjas@hughes.net, Illinois, USA, in February of 2007 and sent to me by snailmail. Note that Stella told me this was file no. 158, however according to the Perry County Probate Index that is online at sarjas.com, and accessed 03 November 2011, (this is Stella’s homepage), it is file no. 128. I have change it to File No. 128 because I believe this index was compiled since 2007.

Check out Michael’s post if this citation doesn’t make sense to you!

Using Google Images to find your Ancestors

2011-11-03T13:00:00.004-04:00

I think by now, we've all heard about TinEye, the reverse image search feature where you upload an image or type in a URL pointing to an image and it will show you all the places where that image has been used in the past or is currently being used on the Internetz.

And I'm sure you've all used Google Images to find that neat and great-looking image to use on your next blog post to spice it up a bit, but do you know...

How to identify an image using the Google Image search box? You can actually drag and drop a photograph you took or one that is in your collection directly into the Google Image search box and it will bring up on web pages containing that image.

Google has already let the cat out of the bag. You can follow along with their directions from their Google Image site. Here is a screenshot telling you how you can drag your image directly into the search box. (Remember you can click on any image to make it bigger, then click the back button in your browser to go back to the blog post).

So let's get started!

I opened up my folder with my images in it. Then I opened up the Google Images webpage and I put the folder and the webpage side by side. The first image I chose was an image of Albert Einstein that I pulled off of the internet. As you can see the image was named "Albert Einstein.jpg" and it is a very popular image which is all over the internet, so I would expect google to find multiple instances of it.

I simply drag the Einstein image from the folder into the Google Image search box. When I started dragging, the search image box got bigger and it told me to "Drag Image Here." I managed to capture this in the below screen shot:

Google Images had no problem finding information on Albert Einstein and finding additional images of him. It reported that there were 89,800 results, so surely you could find whatever you were looking for.

So I have shown how Google Images can pull up information based on an iconic figure, but what about my ancestor, T. J. Benson? I have saved a copy of his photograph in my Image photo and I named it "Image.jpg." I want to see if Google Images is searching by file name or by visual image characteristics. So I drag the photograph of my ancestor into the Google Image Search box and this is what I see for results:

At the top of the page it displays the image I searched with, then below that, it displays "Pages that include matching images." And of course, the only page it comes up with is my very own blog. Unfortunately, for some reason, it does not display the actual blog post, however it does display the Archive for the Month and Year in which that blog post was made. Users can then click on the link and scroll down through the list of posts for July 2010 until they come upon the post about T. J. Benson.

How is this good for genealogy? It has been my experience that oftentimes several descendants have the same photographs of ancestors hanging in their living rooms while they were growing up. There has been at least two instances where I've received copies of photographs in the mail from cousins and then had the same photographs show up from different cousins several years later! (And no, it wasn't because the photos were distributed and copies all over Ancestry.com!) So I can see the benefit of running some of your ancestor's photos through the Google Image analyzer to see if any other copies of the photo has surfaced. Who knows, maybe one of your unknown cousins wrote a blog post about them!

And what about those unknown people? Put those photos out there! You never know when you might find your photo on DeadFred!

Speaking of Ancestry.com, I was NOT able to pull up photographs that I knew were saved in public trees on Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com has their information locked up tight behind a membership wall. Likewise, I was not able to pull up headstone photographs from FindAGrave either. I was kind of surprised by that. I guess I kind of take access to FAG for granted.

I am not quite sure how exactly Google Images does this. But I can tell you that it doesn't seem to have a strong aspect of facial recognition because when I put random pictures of myself in the search box, it came up blank. One of my end of semester projects will be on exactly how queries are processed based on images submitted to a search box, so I might be able to answer this better come Christmas time. In the mean time try it out. Submit your photos of heirlooms, ancestors, and the cool stuff you see while on vacation and let me know about your experience!

Oh and feel free to share, tweet, etc. You know the drill!

Wordless Wednesday - Tabitha House

2011-11-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

Tabitha "Bitha" House was born in Thomasville, Oregon County, Missouri in the 1840s or 50s and died in the 1930s in Missouri. She married 1st Robert "Bob" King and 2nd Samuel H. Watson. She had two children with Bob King, including my 2nd great-grandmother, Dora King and her brother William Fletcher King and a slew of other children with Mr. Watson. Tabitha House was the daughter of Mr. Hollingsworth House who purchased land from the State of Missouri in the Land Case Files I wrote about previously.

Land Case Files – Part 3 – Cash Entries

2011-11-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I started a series of posts about my trip to the National Archives (NARA) in Washington, D. C. where I obtained copies of several ancestors' Land Case Files. Although the final Land Patents are available to download from the Bureau of Land Management website, the Land Case Files that are housed at NARA are the original documents pertaining to your ancestors and sometimes contain information about your ancestors that is of genealogical significance. Last week I covered Military Scrip Warrants and this week I am going to cover Cash Entries. You can read my original post on Land Case Files if you are interested in learning about how to order Land Case Files onsite from the Archives.

Cash Entry Files:

On December 8^th, 1856, my ancestor, Hollingsworth House, made anapplication to purchase 142 acres in Lot No. 4 in the Northwest quarter ofSection No. 1 in Township No. 24, North of Range 6 West and the Southeastquarter of the Southwest quarter of Section No. 35 in Township No. 25 North ofRange 6 West in Oregon County, Missouri.

Application ofHollingsworth House for 142A of land in Oregon Co., MO, 08 Dec 1856, copiedfrom Land Case Files at NARA, Washington, DC

In many instances, applicants had to fill out an affidavitattesting to what they planned to do with the land, and then another witness hadto testify to the validity of the applicant’s statement.

Affidavit ofHollingsworthHouse, copied from Land Case Files at NARA, Washington, DC

In his affidavit, Hollingsworth House swore that the landwill be used for the purpose of “actual settlement and cultivation under theProvisions of the Act of Congress of 4^th August 1854.” He also sworethat he had been occupying the land since the 1^st day of January1851 and that he has a dwelling house, kitchen, cribs, stables, and otherbuildings thereon about 35 acres of said land which is now in cultivation.Lastly, he swore that he was 21 years of age.

An additional affidavit stating he was 39 years of age and currently residing in Oregon County, Missouri, was a male and head of house. One small note here is that his age does not actually match up with the date of birth I have for him of December 25, 1816. He should have actually been 40 years old at the time this application was filled out in 1856. [1]

Affidavit of Hollingsworth House, copied from Land Case Files at NARA, Washington, DC

Benjamin A. Huddleston was a corroborating witness whoswore that Hollingsworth House was the same guy who had been residing on saidland since the 1^st day of January, 1851.

Affidavit of Benjamin A Huddleston, copied from Land Case Files at NARA, Washington, DC

Hollingsworth House paid $17 for this transaction. Here is a copy of hisreceipt:

Recipt for land purchased by HollingsworthHouse for $17, copied from Land Case Files at NARA,Washington, DC

He also received a proof of purchase that he wasinstructed to bring to the Commissioner of the Land Office (Jackson, Missouri):

Proof ofPurchase of Hollingsworth House for land purchased, copied fromLand Case Files at NARA, Washington, DC

Here is a copy of the final patent that my ancestor received after he had filed an application, proved he was going to cultivate the land, paid his money, and presented his receipt to the Land Commissioner:

Land Patent certificate No. 24495, copied from the BLM Website, Holingsworth House

Conclusion:

I was a bit skeptical at first about the worthwhileness of my trip to NARA because it seemed like most of the Land Case Files I pulled consisted of the patent (which I already had a copy of thanks to the BLM online records) and a receipt, which didn't even offer a signature. However, it only takes coming across one "thick" file to make it all seem worthwhile. In this packet, I found an adequate description of the land, when my ancestor had moved to it, what he had done to the land, how old he was, and who his closest friend or acquaintance was, enough to paint a nice picture of my ancestor's life on the land.

Cherie wanted to know the link for ordering the Land Case Files from the NARA website. You can access information on ordering Land Case Files from the NARA (Washington, D. C. site) here. Thanks Cherie for the suggestion!

[1] This date of birth came from his grave marker in Union Hill Cemetery, Thomasville, Oregon Co., MO.

Inside the National Archives

2011-10-24T14:21:00.000-04:00

Liz of My Tapley Tree...and its Branches wrote about her experience at the National Archives andI wanted to give readers my take on it as well. It was a week day, so the linegetting into the Archives was not that long. We had to walk through securityfirst and foremost: put our bags through the metal detector thingie, empty ourpockets, remove our coats if we had one, and walk through the metal detector,just like you do at the airport. Then at the desk, we show our picture id andhand over our equipment – cameras, scanners, and laptops – to the securityofficers who then record the serial numbers of our equipment on our “equipmentreceipt.” This receipt is good for 90 days and is presented to the officerseach time you enter the Archives. Once our IDs are confirmed and our equipmentis logged, we are given a yellow badge and then we sign our names into the log.

**Note: I have heard that renovations are currently going onat the Archives, so what I’m about to describe may or may not be standardprocedure at the Archives during non-renovation times.

Upon entry into the Archives, we are greeted by a main deskand archivist who directs us where to go. For land records, we are directed tothe “Finding Aid Room” to the left; for microfilms (AKA military Records), weare directed straight ahead. But first, as first time visitors, we are directedto the microfilm room where we are required to obtain our “Researchers Card.”The archivist there tells us to sit at a computer, watch a powerpointpresentation, fill in the form at the end, and then we will have our picturetaken and a card made up. It took us about 10 minutes to complete this processon a Thursday morning around 10 am, however a peek back at the orientation rooma little later on showed a bit of a back log of persons waiting to receivetheir researchers card, so make sure you get there early.

Land Case Files

We decided to go ahead and tackle the Land Case Files firstbecause they required records to actually be pulled (ie, they are NOT onmicrofilm). I do not remember if we knew this ahead of time, or if the lady atthe desk told us this when we first walked in. The reason it is important totackle the original documents firstis that these documents are only pulled at certain times of the day – 10, 11, 1:30 and 2:30 (and 3:30 W-F). And thenyou have to wait at least an hour for the records to arrive. So you have toplan accordingly. We walked into the Finding Aids Room right before 11, so wehad to fill out our request forms in a hurry. Luckily the archivist on staff atthe time showed us exactly how to fill out the forms. The BLM records we hadprinted out ahead of time had all of the pertinent information we needed tofill out the forms and we got most of our requests in by the 11 o’clock pulltime. The other requests were submitted for the 1:30 pull time. The archivistreviews the forms and hands them over to another archivist who keys theinformation into the computer. Read my previous blog post on Day1 at NARA – Land Case Files – Part 1 if you would like more information onordering Land Case Files.

Military Recordsand Microfilm

While we were waiting for the Land Case Files to be pulled,we visited the microfilm room. Another Archivist greeted us here and we swipedour researchers card when we walked in. This was when things got confusing. Youreally have to go on the NARA.gov website to understand exactly what they havefor military records onsite at the Washington, D.C. Archives and what is onmicrofilm and what is original records. Here are some of the lessons I learnedabout military records and microfilms:

Most of what NARA has is already on fold3.com and Ancestry.com now, with the exception of the pension records
Fold3.com has more information than I found on NARA microfilm
The NARA microfilm is easier to use than Fold3.com
NARA has microfilm of the 1812 pension index
The 1812 pension records are original records, not on microfilm
NARA has Revolutionary War Records and Pensions on Microfilm
NARA has Compiled service records of Union and Civil War soldiers
NARA has Civil War Pensions of Union soldiers only (Conf. Pensions in State Archives)

Archivists orReference Librarians, whatever you call them!

Before I move on to the Research Room I want to say a fewthings about the Archivists. I’m not sure if they are Archivists or ReferenceLibrarians because each person rotates through each post every two hours. Oneadvantage of this is that each person gains experience in each aspect of theentire library. However, one disadvantage is that you run the risk that you endup with no one person who is especially skilled in one area over another. Thefirst person we encountered in the microfilm room told us to look our stuff upon the internet. This kind of frustrated me at first. Why did I drive 5 hoursto visit a place to learn about records I could have easily downloaded from theinternet? Well I learned later that he also neglected to tell us that thereactually WERE more to the 1812 records than what we saw in the microfilm – thatis, you had to actually order the 1812 pension records because they wereoriginal records! By the time we were told this, it was too late to get ourorder placed before the last pull time, but they assured us the records wouldbe waiting for us in the Research Room the following morning. So the moral of this story is that be sure toask the next librarian or archivist, whatever they call themselves, the samequestion you asked the last person on duty, especially if you did not get theanswer you were looking for!

The CentralResearch Room

Finally, we ordered Land Case Files and 1812 Pension recordswhich we learned at the end of our first day were actually original records thathad to be ordered and viewed in the Central Research Room. This is a roomlocated in #203 on the 2^nd floor accessible by the elevator orstairs. Access to this room and the rules around it were also confusing, but Iwill try to explain it the best I can.

First of all, you have to put your bags and coats and stuffin your locker before you go into the Central Research Room. You are onlyallowed to take in your electronics like the camera, tripod, laptop, scanners(flatbed only), pencil and looseleaf paper. Each piece of paper has to bestamped, so only bring in what you need.

You are greeted by a security officer who scans your researchercard and looks through your looseleaf papers and asks you to open your flatbedscanner. You then have to get your looseleaf papers stamped at the desk. If itis ok with you, they will staple them and then stamp just the back copy.**Note: I did notice that each archivist does things a little differently. Somewill ask if it’s ok to staple your papers, others will not; some will staplethem, others will not and just stamp every page. Just be aware of this. ** Once you get yourpapers stamped you find a researcher’s desk and wait for your name to becalled. When your name is called, you go up to the desk and you sign one of therequest forms you filled out (one form is usually good for the whole pack ofthem you filled out, if they are all for the same kind of record), date it andput the time on there. Then you sit back down and wait for the records toarrive. The archivists retrieves your records and brings the cart to your desk.You are allowed to place one box at a time on your desk and take out one recordat a time. Use a place holder!

You can scan the document, photocopy it, or take pictures ofit (without a flash). The photocopiers use your researchers card. So before yougo up to the Central Research Room, stop at the cashier’s office on the firstfloor and put money on your researcher’s card. I added $10.00 to mine. Thenwhen you want to photocopy, just swipe your card, make your copies and themoney is automatically deducted. We could not figure out a way to tell how muchmoney we had remaining on our cards, but if you go over, you simply pay thecashier the remainder of your balance.

Copies are made on the blue copy paper you may have heardabout. Although it doesn’t really look blue and I’m guessing it won’t affectyour ability to re-scan your copies once you are at home. (I have not triedthis yet).

You are allowed to leave the Central Research Room at anytime. They will keep your records for up to 3 days. You can keep your stuff atyour desk for up to an hour’s time absent, so if you want to go get lunch andcome back you can. You want to leave your looseleaf papers your desk so yourdon’t have to get them restamped.

Your copies are not allowed to leave the room unless theyare put in a locked green bag! If you do have to leave for a few hours, thenyou can have them put in a locked bag and then have the archivists hold yourbag for you until you can come back later. This is a nice convenience for itspatrons. Once you are ready to leave the Research Room, your documents arelocked in your green bag, your green bag is checked by the security officer,along with your looseleaf pages, and then you are allowed to leave. You can putyour locked green bag in your locker if you have other research to do. When youare ready to leave the Archives, you collect all of your personal belongingsfrom your locker and you go through security like you did when you came in. Yougive your locked green bag to the security officer and they open it and pullyour items out, go through them one last time, then hand them over to you.

I think I’ve covered everything, but I’m sure there’s morethat I’ve forgotten. I have included a couple of photos below from inside theCentral Research Room #203. Please let me know if you have any comments orquestions below.

Liz looking for George Scwalls

Fellow genealogist Craig Scott at NARA

Day 2 at NARA - Land Case Files - Part 2 - Scrip Warrants

2011-10-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

Box Label for Cash Entries, National Archives, Washington , D.C. October, 21, 2011

In yesterday's post, I discussed how to order the Land Case Files for my ancestors at the National Archives in Washington, D. C. The archivists pulled about 20 records for me yesterday, consisting of Cash Entries (pictured on the left), Military Script Warrants, and Homestead Acts. Today I had another 15 or so records to pull.

This time there was a different archivist showing me how to fill out the forms a little differently. I must have filled them out incorrectly because I didn't receive 3 boxes and 2 boxes were not the correct ones.

Luckily the archivist who was pulling the records caught me as I was submitting the 2nd request and asked me some questions about my requests and we were able to get them sorted out and he got the records to me finally. I didn't bother with the 2 boxes that were pulled incorrectly because I was land-record'd out!

Let's look at the Military Scrip Warrants. These are land patents that were granted to soldiers for their service in particular wars. The soldiers then had the option to keep or sell the land. My Ancestor, Agrippa Spinks Godwin received one such patent in 1853 from Reuben Clark.

Here is what I pulled up from the Bureau of Land Management website (Agrippa Godwin, Sharp County, Arkansas):

Here is what was in the Land Case Files for document number 27441:

This is document number 27441 and it is a patent for Bounty Land given by the United States of America Department of the Interior Office of the Commissioner of Pensions under the Act of September 28th 1850 entitled "An Act granting Bounty Land to certain officers and soldiers who have been engaged in the military service of the United States."

Patent was granted to Reuben Clark, Private in Capt Elmore's Company, Kentucky Militia, War 1812, Also Private in Capt. Bowyer's Company, Illinois, Volunteers, Black Hawk War, and Private in Capt. Carny's Company, Tennessee Volunteers, Florida War.

Patent was signed the 27th day of January 1852. No where on this patent does it mention my ancestor's name, however it is still pretty cool to look at and to run my fingers over the raised seals. The reverse side of the patent has information written by Reuben Clark in which he is transferring the patent over to my ancestor, Agrippa Godwin. It says the following:

"For value received I Reuben Clark, to whom the written warrant No. 27441 was issued do hereby sell and assign unto Agrippa S. Godwin of the County of Lawrence in the State of Arkansas and to his heirs and assigns forever this said Warrant and authorize him to prorate [?] the same and receive a patent therefore.
Witness my hand and seal this 3rd day of May A. D. 1852. Reuben Clark [with seal].
Attest: E. T Burr & C. B. Magruder"

The middle part of the page says the following:

"State of Arkansas, County of Independence:
On this 3rd day of May in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight hundred and fifty two personally appeared Reuben Clark to me well known and acknowledge the above assignment to be his act and deed: and certify that the said Reuben Clark is the identical person to whom the within warrant issued and who executed the above assignment thereof.
Jesse Pearry Justice of the Peace"

Here is the Warrant that Agrippa had filed with the Batesville, Arkansas land office:

Land Warrant No. 27441
Register and Receiver's No. 238
Land Office, Batesville Arks May 3rd 1852.

"We hereby certify that the attached Military Bounty Land Warrant, No. 27441 was on this day received at this office, from Agrippa S. Godwin, of Lawrence county, state of Arkansas.
J. A. Patterson, Register
C. F. M. Nolond, Receiver.

I, Agrippa S. Godwin, of Lawrence county, State of Arkansas, hereby apply to locate and do locate the Southern half of the North West quarter of Section No. Eight /8/ in Township No. Eighteen (18) N of Range No. Six (6) W in the District of Lands subject to sale at the Land Office at Batesville Arks containing Eighty (80) acres, in satisfaction of the attached Warrant numbered 27441 issued under the act of 28 September, 1850.

Witness my hand this 3rd day of May A. D. 1852
Attest: J. W. Patterson, Register.
C. F. M. Nolond, Receiver

Signed Agripa S. Godwin

I request the patent to be sent to Batesville Arkansas Land Office, Batesville, Arks, May 3rd 1852.
We hereby certify, That the above location is correct, being in accordance with law and instructions.
C. F. M. Nolond, Receiver
J. A. Patterson, Register."

The Scrip Warrants are instances of where additional information will probably be included in the Land Case Files that are stored at the National Archives. The image that I downloaded from the BLM website is the final patent awarded to my ancestor, Agrippa S. Godwin, however the papers I pulled from the Land Case Files were all the documents relating to the land and the warrant/patent itself. In this case, the original patent which was distributed for the 80 acres to Reuben Clark for his military service was included; hand written on the back of that was Reuben's agreement to transfer the patent over to Agrippa Godwin and a Justice of the Peace verifying he did such and he was who he said he was; And then Agrippa's warrant that is transferred to the Batesville, Arkansas land office. You should also be able to see all the folds and creases in the papers. They really are kept and housed folded up in a "shuck" which is really just the outside page folded up around the inside pages and the whole thing is no bigger than about 8.5 x 2 inches.

In my next posts I will describe the Homestead Acts and show some examples of Cash Entries. Tomorrow we are off to visit the Library of Congress, head back to the National Archives to view the Declaration of Independence and maybe take a tour or two.

Day 1 at NARA - Land Case Files - Part 1

2011-10-20T23:21:00.001-04:00

Ginger R. Smith waiting for the train at Huntington Station in Alexandria, Virginia.

Photo courtesy of Liz Tapley, October 20, 2011.

Photo of our destination train stop - Archives - Navy Memorial - Penn Quarter

- from inside the Yellow line Metro Station. Photo by Ginger Smith, October 20, 2011.

For this trip, we are staying in Alexandria, Virginia. Our hotel is about 1 mile from the Huntington Metro Station (Yellow line). It was a 22 minute train ride to the National Archives / Naval Memorial / Penn Quarters train stop. We got off the train, took the escalator up and crossed the street to get to NARA.

Photo of the National Archives (NARA) building at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance side where researchers enter.

The "touristy" entrance is around to the left -

that is where visitors go in to view the Constitution.

Photo by Ginger R. Smith, October 20, 2011.

Day 1 of the archives consisted of getting our researcher's card, learning our way around the finding aid room, the microfilm room, and the 203 reading room (and locating the cafe in the basement).

We started off in the finding aid room (First floor to your left) to submit forms for the Land Case Files we wanted to look at. These are original records that are pulled at certain times throughout the day. Since I had so many of these, I wanted to get as many ordered for the next pull time that I could - by 11 am.

Land Case Files

Before you arrive at NARA, you should have printouts of all of the land records your ancestors made transactions with. You can obtain this information by going to the Bureau of Land Management website and searching for your ancestor. You should print out the first page that contains pertinent information such as the Land Office, State, Document number, and Authority. You will need this information to fill out your order form. Here is one of my examples of what I printed off before I visited NARA:

We managed to snag a copy of the form you have to fill out so I can share with my readers what it looks like and what you should expect. But don't worry because there is always trained staff on hand to walk you through the process and of course they will check your forms to make sure they are filled out correctly. Here is what a completed form looks like (This is reconstructed to suite this example):

This form includes your name. Liz filled this one out for me. And then your researcher ID number. This is the number that is on your researcher ID card that you keep with you at all time. The date goes at the top. All land case files are in record group 49 which you can see on the left side of the form. The meat of the information goes in the big white space - this is the land office and the state. This is NOT the county, but the LAND OFFICE. This is very important. Below that goes the authority which is usually Cash, Homestead, or Military Script Warrant, and then the document number.

In my first pull, I had 12 files I wanted to see. I wrote one up incorrectly. It was for Cash and I wrote it up for Homestead by mistake, so I have to reorder this file tomorrow. I also tried to take a short cut and printed out the summary page which had a list of all the patents that one ancestor secured. I realized when I went to order them that I did not have all of the information required to order the records like the land office and the authority. So I will be looking them up tonight and placing another order tomorrow. I had an additional 8 records that I pulled for the 2nd pull time today. So in total about 20 files were reviewed and about 17 boxes were pulled for me. Tomorrow I will request an additional 15 land case files!!!

In my next post I will discuss what kinds of information I found in these land case files. Most of them contained only the original patent and a receipt which may or may not have been signed by my ancestor. A couple of documents contained affidavits about what they planned to do with the land and how long they had lived on it.

I will have to deal with the issue of getting the images out of the cameras that I used today. My kodak camera died right away which is pretty typical so I used my phone to upload most of the images. However, the land case files are housed in a box and they are folded, so I found it hard to get them to lie flat long enough for me to take a picture of them. I did not even think to bring my flat bed scanner. I tried Liz's flipPal scanner today but found it slow and the I kept hitting the button when I didn't want to. I did load my researcher's card up with money so I could use the photocopy machine, however, sometimes that did not work so well either, especially if there was any blue paper items in the shucks (which there were)! Oh and in case you are wondering, copies are $0.25 a page, they print out as 8x14, and they are $0.50 for microfilm copies (I will definitely discuss microfilm and military records in another post).

So more land records tomorrow and we will receive the 1812 service records we ordered tomorrow as well. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments below or on Google+ or Facebook. Part 2 is forthcoming...

First Ever Trip to the National Archives in Washington, D. C.

2011-10-20T00:12:00.000-04:00

Today we left North Carolina and made the 5.5 hour trip up to Washington, D. C. to visit the National Archives at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue. It rained most of the trip (as usual), but we got here before dark and we even made a stop at IKEA in Woodbridge, VA on the way. I am travelling with Liz Tapley of My Tapley Tree...and its Branches. We planned this trip several months ago to coincide with my Fall Break and have been waiting patiently ever since for the time to arrive.

I am primarily interested in looking at Land Case Files for several of my mid-western ancestors of the surnames GODWIN, THOMAS, KING, HOUSE, and SMITH.

While I'm at it, I think I will try to venture into some military files. I have a George Brooks Revolutionary War file I need to review; I have a John Lasiter and Jesse Dunlap 1812 Service Records to review; Robert King and Agrippa Godwin Civil War files; and I'm sure I will think of more.

Between the two of us, I hope we can figure out and keep our fingers on what we are allowed to bring in what research rooms, which electronic devices to use on what documents, which films to order for which records, and which metro train to take, etc. We both did a lot a lot of pre-trip reading and researching which hopefully will be worth it. One post I found especially helpful was Myrt's Day at the Archives post.

We will keep you posted over the next couple of days as our research progresses.

Happy hunting!

SNGF - My Genealogy Database Statistics

2011-10-08T23:31:00.001-04:00

It's that time again...for some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun! Randy Seaver has posted this new fun task on his Genea-Musings Blog to list the statistics from your genealogy program:

1) If you have your family tree research in a Genealogy Management Program (GMP), whether a computer software program or an online family tree, figure out how to find how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database (hint: the Help button is your friend!).

2) Tell us which GMP you use, and how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database(s) today in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status or Google+ stream comment.

Here's mine:

I use RootsMagic 4 as well (so does Randy) for my main genealogy program. In order to see my statistics, I go to File > Properties and the following window pops up:

According to this, I have the following:

People: 8561

Families: 2795

Events: 17603

Alternate Names: 61

Places: 1711

Sources: 1397

Citations: 22644

Repositories: 67

To do Tasks: 50

Multimedia Items: 2

Multimedia links: 1

Addresses: 11

Correspondence: 17

Obviously from these stats you can tell that I don't mess with multimedia items and from the few number of places I have, either I have done a good job consolidating them, or my people just didn't move around much; I have quite a few sources, but this number could probably be higher if it were easier to create them. However, I am using the citations I created because I have over 20k citations! I'm using the repository function of my software, although I haven't quite figured out its usefulness yet. I do like to have them linked to my to-do list which I have just recently started using.

Tell us what your stats look like and leave a link to your blog as a comment on Randy's blog.

Follow Friday - October 7, 2011

2011-10-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

I've been very slack in participating in the Follow Friday meme, mostly because I really just don't get the chance to 1) read many genealogy blogs and 2) write on my own blog; but as I was driving in to work today I thought of some sites I had read and stuff I had read about in the past couple of weeks that had an impact on my research or piqued my general genealogy interest and I thought I would share with my readers.

Journey Through the Hallowed Ground

First of all, I followed along with blogger Liz Tapley of My Tapley Tree during her trip Through the Hallowed Ground, a 180-mile traverse of scenic highway through history and time from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Frederick County, Maryland. Liz is a big Civil War buff and this trip was an opportunity for her to see all the places where significant battles and events took place; there was also some Colonial period history mixed in there as well. I was totally jealous I did not get to go along, but felt like I was there through her words and pictures.

Indirect Evidence

If you want to know what all the hype is about Indirect Evidence, then check out some of the these blog posts: From Michael Hait's Planting the Seeds Blog, My First Encounter with Indirect Evidence; Claudia Breland's In Which I First Encounter Indirect Evidence; and Harold Henderson's post on Archives.com Indirect Evidence to the Rescue. My own take home from all of this is that a document should not be discounted or thrown out just because it does not explicitly state that someone was a direct relationship to someone else.

Family Tree Maker 2012 and TreeSync

Back in August I started reading Randy Seaver's posts here and here about Family Tree Maker 2012 and its new TreeSync feature (These were posts about his experience syncing with the Beta version). Click here to start reading about his experience with the released version). Tamura Jones also kept on top of the news with his posts on What's New in Family Tree Maker 2012? FTM's Beta Experience, and TreeSync's Limitations, I learned that Russ Worthington was blogging on the Family Tree Maker User Blog and found some interesting posts there on how to use FTM 2012 and how to access new features.

Direct Lineage Reports

In her post No Lineage Charts on Family Tree Maker 2012? Heather Wilkinson Rojo presented a direct lineage report that she used to be able to create in FTM 2006, but has been unable to create in later versions of FTM. She stressed the importance of this report when filing applications to lineage societies like Mayflower, DAR, or Colonial Dames which require a report of each generation, BMD data and spouse data (along with spouse BMD data). The closest available reports in both FTM and similar genealogy software are outline reports, however they include sibling data which is not required for lineage societies. Russ Worthington offered a way to do this with FTM which entails creating a new database, deleting the siblings, then creating the Outline Descendant Report. Midge Frazel offered a similar suggestion for using Rootsmagic and their Direct Descendant Report.

This was enough to keep me busy and entertained. I will look forward to reading all the posts about how people will find their way around FTM 2012 and the new TreeSync feature. There is also a lot of discussion about how to manage trees online, but that's in Google+ and can't exactly be shared here. You have to be in certain "circles" to be privy to that information!

Photo Credits:
1. Photo of ff from ibevymay
2. Photo of Liz Tapley from her blog, My Tapley Tree

North Carolina Probate Records on FamilySearch.org

2011-10-03T16:20:00.002-04:00

I have been looking for the parents of Jesse Dunlap, myfifth great-grandfather. I found an article written about Jesse Dunlap in thebook A History of Boone County Arkansas(p. 217) in which it is said that Jesse Dunlap was born in Stokes County, NorthCarolina in 1783. The only problem is that Stokes County wasn’t formed until1789.

But all information is good information in my opinion, so Idecided to use that as a starting point. Whenever I am looking for someone’sparents and I don’t have anything to go on except a location, I usually startby looking through the wills for that surname in that location.

The North Carolina State Archives has access to the Mitchell’s Will Index through theironline catalog called MARS. Sometimes a person didn’t write a will, but thereare items relating to their estate recorded in the county in which they died.Items relating to a person’s estate have been scanned and digitized byFamilySearch.org. Although the digital items have not been indexed, they arebrowsable online for FREE on their website and many of the county records haveindexes contained within the bound books.

Some genealogists might wonder what the benefit of suchdocuments are if you can’t do a collection-wide textual search for yourancestors’ names. I still find the images useful. I loaded the images for the NorthCarolina Probate Records, 1735-1970 and then selected Stokes County. UnderStokes County, there are 5 sets of wills – volumes 1-5.

Volumes 1, 3, and 5have an index at the beginning; volumes 2 and 4 do not. I do not want to missany Dunlaps who might have recorded a will in either of these two volumes, so Ilook through both volumes, one image at a time. Volume 2 has 184 images whichis roughly about 90 pages total because each image is a scan of two pages ofthe book. As I “browse” through each image, I look for the signature or name ofthe person who wrote the will. I don’t actually have to read each wills, butmerely scan through the images for the short block of text that looks like asignature to see if it is a Dunlap. Here is an example of a will written byFredric Hausen.

I don’t have the best attention span, but browsing through 182images is not that bad. It took me about 40 minutes to look through this volumecontaining 182 images. Unfortunately I did not find any Dunlaps in this volume.Volume 4 will probably take me another 40 minutes as it is 197 images.

Have you checked out FamilySearch’s latest browsable images?North Carolina and South Carolina Probate Records have been very valuable to methese days!

SNGF - Matrilinial Madness

2011-10-01T22:14:00.000-04:00

Randy Seaver has given us another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun mission and it goes like so:

1) List your matrilineal line - your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how your mitochondrial DNA was passed to you!
2) Tell us if you have had your mitochondrial DNA tested, and if so, which Haplogroup you are in.
3) Does this list spur you to find distant cousins that might share one of your matrilineal lines?

Here is mine:

1) My Matrilinial Line - I can only go back 6 generations including myself. The oldest direct female ancestor is Lucendy "Cindy" Gentry who was born April 12, 1868 in Tennessee and died February 19, 1905 in Lamar County, Texas.

1. Ginger R. Smith
2. Marilyn Godwin Smith
3. Sue C. Lasiter
4. Thelma Louise Benson
5. Eva Mae Dennis
6. Lucendy Gentry

2) I have had my mitochondrial DNA tested and I am in haplogroup H

3) Although I seem to have a good handle on what to do with my Family Finder autosomal DNA results, I have no clue what to do with my mtDNA results. Most of my autosomal matches have been for my Father's side of the family. I haven't been able to find any connections to my Mother's side of the family as of yet. I don't think this is very uncommon however because researching the females lines can oftentimes be very difficult.

Trade Offs - Do We Really Have to Choose?

2011-09-30T11:13:00.000-04:00

I took the family finder test in June and to date have about 150 matches. I have made contact with several of my matches so far. Much of the process involves going through my family tree and looking for the surnames that they send me. Sometimes they send me a link to their online family tree on ancestry.com. Although my family tree is published on ancestry.com it is not updated because I do the updating on my desktop application. I prefer to use the desktop application because it is faster than the ancestry.com trees and it is easier to manage my sources which I am very particular about.

My tree is private, but when I do make a connection to a known cousin, I share my tree with them and I assign them as a “guest” which gives them the right to view the tree and to save items from my tree directly to their tree. I have also found it very convenient to view my matches’ trees and to copy their lines directly into my tree. Unfortunately, because I still maintain my most up to date information on my desktop, I then also have to copy information from their trees into my desktop application as well.

The discontinuity between my online tree and my desktop tree hasn’t really been an issue until now - since I’ve taken the DNA test - and I’ve had to rely more heavily on my genealogy database / family tree. This has really made me start thinking on how I can make the process of collaborating and determining kinship with my matches more streamlined.

Last month I read Randy Seaver’s blog posts about his beta user experience with Family Tree Maker 2012 which has the new “Tree Sync” feature between the desktop application and the online tree. I have to admit, this feature is very appealing to me. However, I do have my reservations.

1. ~~You have to either start a NEW online tree or start a new FTM tree.~~ You cannot merge one into the other. Clarification: You have to choose one tree to work with: either an existing tree that is in your Family Tree Maker Software that you want to upload to a NEW online family tree; Or an existing online family tree that you want to download as a NEW family tree into your Family Tree Maker software. Thanks to Russ for pointing this out in the comments below.

2. Sources created in online tree stay in a free-form like or general format. Sources created using the Evidence! Explained templates in FTM 2012 will show up in the online tree, but cannot be edited in the online tree. The only sources that can be edited in the online tree are the ones created as free-form. (From Randy Seaver’s Notes Post)

This 2nd point is a biggie for me. If I cannot access my desktop application, then I will access the online version. And half of my tree editing is done via the source citation process. My long term goal is to become a professional genealogist and in order to achieve that I have to practice writing correct source citations every chance I get, including while I’m using my genealogy software. It doesn’t seem like I can do that with this software or online version of Ancestry.com trees and this is a limiting factor for me.

So what is the trade off?

I switched from FTM to Rootsmagic a couple of years ago. My number one reason was RootsMagic On-The-Go. Simply said I can take it anywhere with me on my flash drive. I don’t have to have the program installed on any machine to access my files. I actually have it installed in dropbox and I can open it anywhere. I love this feature. And the file is so much smaller than FTM which means it opens up on a dime. (And no, I don’t have any media attached to my file).

I also switched to Rootsmagic because I thought the sourcing features would work better and I liked the reports. However, I am on the fence about these two things and could be happy with either FTM or RM in this regards.

So again, I ask, what is the tradeoff? It’s not that I want to be able to access my tree anywhere I go. If that were the case, I would just use an application on my android. I want to be able to fully use my application, including writing proper source citations.

What do you think? What is more important to you?

My Most Important Encounter with Indirect Evidence

2011-09-30T10:24:00.000-04:00

I recently read a couple of blogs in which the authors illustrated their first encounters with indirect evidence. In his post, My First Encounter with Indirect Evidence, Michael Hait talked about a Deed-in-Partition that a researcher told him about in which his ancestor was found selling a piece of land along with another person who was presumed to be his brother. Claudia C. Breland also discussed her experience with indirect evidence in her post, In Which I First Encounter Indirect Evidence. I would like to contribute my own experience with indirect evidence, albeit I’m sure it’s not my first experience, although I would say it was probably my most important one.

I have been looking for the parents of my ancestor, Elijah Godwin for years. He was born in Randolph County, North Carolina in 1801. He entered 200 acres of land in Randolph County, North Carolina in 1822, married Nancy Lewis in Randolph County, North Carolina in 1826, and was enumerated in Putnam County, Indiana in 1830.

Two likely candidates for parents of Elijah Godwin were Dred Godwin and Nathan Godwin who lived in Randolph County, North Carolina from 1800 - 1828 and who also removed to Clay County, Indiana in 1830 (Clay neighbors Putnam County).

Nathan Godwin disappeared after the 1830 census in Clay County, Indiana. Dred Godwin died and his children appeared selling off each of their 1/7th parts of his land in 1852 in Putnam County, Indiana. (See my previous posts on Determining the heirs of Netheldred Godwin via Land Records). I learned that 3 of Elijah Godwin’s children were born in Illinois between 1830 and 1833, so I started looking for Godwins in Illinois and I learned that Nathan had actually died in 1833 in Perry County, Illinois and his widow Sarah was living there in 1840.

A nice researcher pulled the estate records of Nathan Godwin for me and made copies and sent them to me. In the estate records I learned that Elijah Godwin had purchased several items from Nathan’s estate and that he had signed an affidavit saying that Nathan Godwin had died September 17, 1833 in Perry County, Illinois!

Although no relationship was indicated in this sworn affidavit, I believe Elijah Godwin to have been the son of Nathan Godwin. There is a lot more information and indirect evidence to support this statement which I have not included in this post for brevity; However this is the only piece of evidence that actually links these two men besides them simply living in the same county at the same time.

FGS - Haphazard posts from this week's classes

2011-09-10T10:07:00.000-04:00

It is Saturday, September 10^th, 2011 and we areon our last day of the FGS conference. I am able to write because it is 8:30 inthe morning and I am taking a break from classes because I did not findanything I wanted to attend. Nothing bothers me more than sitting through aboring class. I had one of those yesterday. It was just awful. All it takes isone of those to really burn you. Actually, I woke up on the 2^nd daysick as a dog with a cold. Guess I haven’t been taking enough vitamins. So I’mstruggling to keep up with my classes. This is why I haven’t been bloggingmuch. Or taking many pictures of the events I’ve attended.

Yesterday (Friday), we shared a table at breakfast withRandy Seaver of Genea-Musings andhis wife Linda. Our hotel (The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Hotel) isundergoing some renovations (still) and was not ready to sustain a huge influxof conference goers and then a busload of bikers that came in the night after.So they asked us to consolidate our tables and being social genealogists thatwe are, we agreed to let complete strangers share tables with us. Of course, inour case, Randy and his wife were not complete strangers.

Randy asked what about the conference had surprised us mostbut I didn’t really have an answer. Although this was my first FGS conference,it was my 2^nd National conference – I had just attended my first Nationalconference, NGS, in May, so there were a lot of similarities between the two. Idid think there were a lot more advanced genealogists at this conference.

We didn’t get any sight-seeing done on Friday because it wasraining. I got in a full day of classes though, starting with Joshua Taylor’stalk on Digital Preservation. He talked librarian speak which was very cool andI was surprised he didn’t lose the audience at “metadata – data about data.” Iwas able to follow along just fine because I am, after all, a fellow librarian.We met a fellow gen society manager from PA in this class as well. It was niceto put a face to a name.

My next class was about Researching your Pioneer Ancestorsby James Hansen from the Wisconsin Historical Society. He talked about the LandRecords and the Case Files that you can get from the National Archives inaddition to the Land Patents that are online. He also reiterated my belief thatyou would always look at the original records. Lastly, he said you shouldremember to search records in the lands in between migrations.

Well I’m off to my next class, so I will close for now andwrite more later.

FGS - Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Visit

2011-09-07T23:02:00.001-04:00

There are many things to do while attending genealogy conferences. We decided to visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum during our first day of the conference. We thought they were doing one of their private viewings of the library today, but that is not until tomorrow. But we viewed the museum today anyways. We got a discount because we are conference attendees.

Cameras were allowed in the main gallery, but prohibited in the smaller galleries off to the sides of the main gallery. This is due to copyright issues. The kind folks who were commissioned to recreate the museum scenes have copyrighted their exhibits and everything in them, therefore, in order to prevent any issues to arise around copyright having to do with photography, they have simply prohibited it altogether.

We took our photos with the family in the main gallery, some in front of Lincoln's boy hood home in Indiana (just over the Kentucky line) and a photo of the white house.

Ginger and Liz from My Tapley Tree

Kim from Le Maison Duchamp

Ginger in front of Lincoln's boyhood home

Ginger and Linda from Documenting the Details

The White House

P. S. My 5th great-grandfather Calvin West was friends with Abe Lincoln when they were little boys.

Abraham Lincoln's Tomb

2011-09-07T22:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we visited Abraham Lincoln's Tomb which was just a short drive from the conference. The structure is located in an actual cemetery, although I did not see the name of the cemetery posted anywhere. This is the sign that was posted at the entrance of the cemetery. This granite and marble sign reads "Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site."

This is the view of the structure and obelisk surrounding Lincoln's "tomb" in the back of the cemetery.

With some close ups of the statues adorning the top of the structure

Mr Lincoln himself greets us as we walk inside.

Here is the tomb. Lincoln's body is buried 10 feet beneath this structure made of Arkansas marble. Behind me Lincoln's wife Mary Todd and 3 of their 4 sons are buried in crypts (in the wall).

A Plaque describing the flags.

FGS - Focus on Societies - Day 1

2011-09-07T22:12:00.000-04:00

The first day of the conferencewas a success and fun was had by all. Iattended David Rencher’s opening session about how to keep societies fromextinction. He pointed out the following:

In order to understandwhy societies go out of existence, we must first understand why they exist inthe first place.

Historically speaking, Rencher reminded us, genealogicalsocieties were formed around a bunch of genealogy people who got together totalk about genealogy; these meetings often centered around potlucks. People got together because they enjoyed the socialexperience. This has become much more difficult to maintain with theadvent of the internet which increased access to records and material to peoplewho no longer had to leave their homes.

In order to sustain a society, one has to evaluate thecosts involved of each service provided and then identify ways in which toreduce those costs in order to reach a goal of a $0 membership. Remember whyand how they got together in the first place? Additionally, the society’smission statement must keep up with the changinglandscape, including the technological changes.

The whole day was dedicated to the Focus on Societiessessions. I attended two morningsessions, then we took a break to visit the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Library,and then I attended one more society meeting before ending the day.

The two morningsessions I attended were about copyright issues and internet collaborativetools you can use for outreach and education. Most of the copyright information wasn’t new to me. However, I wishthere was a webinar about it that I could play for my members and newsletterand journal editors so they will be informed, especially about sharinginformation with each other, whether it be a cool blog post you read about anew software tool or some genealogy you read out of a book that you would liketo incorporate into your own family tree. A good point was made that as asociety board member or editor, by following the copyright rules, we areproviding good examples to our members/readers. It has been difficult for me to teach my newsletter editors the importance of obtaining permission and/or attributing the work to someone else.

The final session I attendedwith Paula Stuart Warren was about creating a Society Handbook or OperatingManual of sorts. This is what I am trying to build in my genealogy society rightnow. I have requested that each committee submit a document about what they do,how they do it, and/or what they would like to see done or any improvementsthey would like to see implemented, especially if there were more volunteers. Thissession was good because we broke into groups and outlined what we would do ifwe held a particular board or committee position.

We didn’t attend the Old Fashioned Prairie Social becausethe description said it only had desserts and we were short one ticket. So wewalked a block down to the Italian place to have dinner instead. Back in thehotel room by 7:30 to write this blog post and relax. I am hoping to get somephotos of the museum uploaded as well and a blog post written about that. Tomorrowwe are attending a breakfast panel hosted by Jonathan Good from 1000memories.comwith Dear Myrtle and Josh Taylor. They will be speaking about how to engage theyounger generation in genealogy by using various digital tools. Check out theirwebsite today! http://1000memories.com.

Family Search Bloggers Reception at FGS

2011-09-06T23:05:00.004-04:00

We finally made it to Springfield IL for the FGS genealogy conference which starts tomorrow.

Tonight I attended the Bloggers Reception put on byFamily Search that was held on the 29^th floor of the Hilton hotel indowntown Springfield, Illinois. This offers an opportunity for the bloggers toget together and meet each other in person and interact with the members of theFamily Search team. It is also a way inwhich Family Search can disseminate information about what they have beenworking on to fellow geneabloggers who can then share with their readers.

Some of the announcements on current Family Searchprojects:

1) Asmany of you know, the 1940 census report images will be released onAncestry.com on April 2^nd, 2012. Family Search has joined a consortium to index it and make it free“in perpetuity.” They hope to engagethe public and local genealogical societies for their help in bringing thisproject to fruition prior to the April 2^nd release date.

2) DavidRencher announced that Family Search did a 4 generation pedigree of the AbrahamLincoln family, framed it and presented it to the Abraham Lincoln Library andMuseum this week. Prints of the pedigree will be made available for sale in themuseum store.

3) Morenews on the Civil War Records being released by Family Search can be found ontheir website at www.familysearch.org/civilwar.Information about places, regiments, and events can be found on their wikialong with current indexing projects that need your help! One thing that caughtmy eye was an indexing project of union soldiers’ headstones!

4) Ifyou are an indexing volunteer or would like to learn more about theirvolunteering opportunities, stop by the Family Search booth during theirVolunteer Appreciation Reception on Thursday night from 6 to 8 pm.

5) Besure to check out the white paper on “PreservingYour Family History Digitally” which has been recently updated anddiscusses the advantages and challenges of preserving your family historyrecords digitally.

6) Wealso saw slides of the learning center webpages which have been redesigned andoffer over 200 free learning courses for you to choose from.

Two huge announcements released this week include thetransition of digital scanning from the field to on-site digital publishing andthe replacement of the BYU archive of family history books which goes into betathis week in the Family History labs.

Field Express:

You may have noticed a lot of records being made available“by image only” prior to being indexed by volunteers. This is made possible byover 165 field cameras placed throughout the world which are responsible forcapturing digital images and uploading online from the field. This is much faster, providing a “digitalpipeline” directly to the genealogists who used to have to wait years beforecontent was captured, indexed, and delivered to the public. To date, turnaroundtime is approximately 4 weeks from capture to delivery; the goal is 2 weeksturnaround time.

The BYU Family History Archive will be replaced by thenew Family Search Family History Books which can be found in the FamilySearchLabs. Check it out!

They also announced next year's RootsTech2012 conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb 2-4, 2012. All FGS conference attendees receive a discounted $99.00 conference registration fee good for yourself and anyone else you would like to register while here at FGS. This is a $30 discount off of the early bird registration fee of $129 and almost half off the $189 full registration fee.

Tomorrow is the Focus on Societies Day of the conference. I hope to gain insight into how to manage a genealogy society, provide education and outreach to our members, secure funding and setup fundraising events, and organize volunteers.

Geni.com - It's not Just Me Afterall

2011-08-17T14:41:00.001-04:00

There has been a lot of controvery about Geni.com'sannouncement on their Blog Geni.comPro Just Got a Whole Lot Better which says that from now on any Pro userwill be able to make changes to MY tree without my permission and free accountholders can no longer post profiles past your 3^rd great grandfather.You can read Geneablogger’s Geni – Stuck on Stupidblog post, DearMYRTLE’s Geni.comdidn’t ask my opinion, Randy Seaver’s Whatabout Geni Free? post and so on to hear some bloggers’ reactions. I’veactually been complaining about Geni.com for months now but I seemed to havebeen the only one who thought there was a problem.

I had been keeping my comments to myself thus far becauseI had not seen any effects of this other than the usual several requests amonth from people wanting to merge my people with their people. However today Iwent into my (free) account and saw a "revisions" tab. When I clickedon it, I was surprised to see that 142 changes had been made to my tree,including ones in which someone had changed the parents of my ancestors. NOTOK.

First of all, I do not believe in the Universal Tree. Ithink this failed miserably with Ancestry's WorldOneTree which used algorithmsto piece same names together. Secondly, I think this is an effort for a company(and I'm not necessarily saying Geni.com is doing this) to try to own as muchgenealogy as possible.

With that said, I became a Geni.com user early on when itwas still in beta after weighing my options for several months. I even convinced myfamily members to join and they have been adding their family members to it aswell. But I stopped using it as soon as I "accidentally" accepted tocollaborate with someone and then everyone they collaborated with startedmaking changes to MY tree. My family members started emailing me and asking mewhy people we didn’t know were making changes to our tree. I tried to talk togeni.com and I couldn’t get any straight answers. Had I known when I joined inAugust 2008 what their intentions would be, I would not have gone through allof the trouble to set my tree up on this site and to invite my family members tojoin.

I’m pretty disappointed and nagged by this because I feellike the free users are the ones who put most of the content into the geni.comdatabase and now geni.com is sellingthis to the pro account users. I feel like this should have been disclosed 3years ago when I joined. I understand that plans change and technology changes,but I feel like there should have been an opt out option. I was alreadyhesitant about putting my tree online and the only reason I chose geni.com wasbecause it WAS PRIVATE. Amy Coffin of the We Tree Blog mentioned her disappointment over the lack of privacy controls as well in her Where Keggers and Social Genealogy Intersect post. Now I have to try to explain to all my family memberswhat these changes mean and let them know that they don’t have to upgrade to aPro account if they do not want to.

FGS 2011 – Social Media Policy

2011-08-03T09:00:00.006-04:00

FGS recently posted their social media policy to their website.I was very happy to see that they are allowing attendees to engage in variousforms of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and live blogging about thespeakers and conference highlights. In fact it is encouraged. This is a nicechange from the last conference I went to that did not allow any cell phone useat all.

Click here to view the Social Media Policy

They were also very clear about certain grey areas likephotographs – they ask that you request the speaker’s permission beforephotographing them – and that you do not use flash photography; they alsoclarify that cell phones do not have to be turned OFF, but merely that theringer should be turned off so as not to interrupt the presentation. Lastly,the social media policy clarified that although snippets and highlights areallowed to be broadcast, the speaker should be properly cited or credited, and presentationmaterials should not be reproduced “in full” during the conference.

Now will all of this even be possible? Paula recently posteda blogpost to the FGS Conference Highlight blog about how a couple of co-chairswent around and tested these features in the conference center and theStarbucks across the street. It worked for them but you never know what happenswhen a couple thousand technology-savvy genealogists come along!

So make sure you get your Tweet on at FGS 2011!

You can follow my highlights on Twitter at Smitty327 or search for the hashtag #fgs2011.

A Good Old Fashioned Prairie Social

2011-08-01T19:45:00.002-04:00

Paula gave us a “headsup!” over at the FGS Conference Blog about what to expect if you plan toattend the Prairie Social on Wednesday night while attending the FGS Conference inSpringfield, Illinois this coming September.

Do you think you can fit your Civil War uniform in yoursuitcase?

-------------------------

Disclosure: As an Official Blogger for FGS 2011, I received a complimentary pass to the Prairie Social on Wednesday night.

Photo of General Robert E. Lee from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

Wordless Wednesday - Putman - Lasiter

2011-07-13T21:47:00.000-04:00

My Great-Grandfather James Putman Lasiter (1908-1974) in the middle

His Mother, Rosalie Putman (1875-1961)

His Father, James Franklin Lasiter (1876-1968)

Fort Smith, Arkansas, c. 1912

Google+ ...Geneabloggers are All ABuzz

2011-07-11T13:25:00.004-04:00

Everyone in the Geneablogging community is all abuzzabout Google+ these days and how it compares to Twitter and Facebook. As Banaisays in her post Google+ vsFacebook vs Twitter - 10 Things: “People are flocking to Google+.” Severalbloggers have written about the similarities and differences between the 3 and Ihave included their posts below, with highlights and my thoughts about them.Please feel free to weigh in and if you’ve tried Google+ let us know what yourexperience has been like thus far.

I’d like to start off by pointing you to PCWorld’s post, 9Reasons to Switch from Facebook to Google+.

# 3 Better Mobile App - Integration with Android Phones -I forgot that Google runs the Android system. So of course it will be asuperior product. I can't wait to try this!

# 5: Can you get your data back: This was a huge concernfor me, especially around sharing genealogy information with cousins or otherresearchers. The new FB group features makes this easier because you can nowget notifications via email which I can save. But prior to that, this was notan option and things posted were lost in the feed down below. Well this was notreally the point about Google+; the point was that you can walk away from itand take your information with you.

# 6: Better photo tagging - Google+ displays a warning toyou that the person you are tagging will be notified that they are beingtagged. Facebook does not do this, allowing for the possibility of unflatteringphotos to be posted without knowledge or consent.

#7: ad hoc group VIDEO chats using the Hangouts featureand the group text feature called Huddle on the Android sound really cool! Ican't wait to try them!

So…thoughts from some actual geneablogging users…

Tamura Jones' post Double-Plus Good, from June10, 2011, emphasizes that Google+ will become a non-desktop Cloud environment whereeverything can be controlled by Google services without leaving Google.

So far you may have noticed that Google Photos has takenover Picasa Web Albums and Google Blogger has taken over Blogger. Has your BlogURL switched over to the new Google one yet? Tamura also comments that hewouldn't be surprised if the commenting function on blogs is replaced with theone in Google+.

Google+ has “Hangouts” which is an ad-hoc video groupchat.

Everyone in the geneablogging community has beenwondering what the Google +1 is. We’ve had it sitting at the bottom of our blogposts for months now, not really sure what its purpose was. Well it was a kindof like a “see how this feels” button and precursor to Google+’s Facebook “Like”button.

Banai's take on Google+ vsFacebook vs Twitter - 10 Things:

With regard to Google+ circles versus Facebook friendslists, Banai says that Facebook friends lists have been around for a while, butthey are difficult to find and maintain.

I agree. I havefriends lists in Facebook as well, but I don't use them to be selective aboutwho I sent posts to. I use them to be selective about who I READ posts from.

And yes, Banai isright, you used to be able to see what list your friends were in in FB, but nowyou can't do that anymore. It's difficult to do now.

Banai tried the Hangout and thought it was totally cool.

According toGoogle's help page, you should be able to start a hangout by clicking on the"Start a Hangout" link on the left of your stream, however I do notsee mention of this anywhere on my stream or profile. They also provide a linkto click on, however that sent me to a page that said the information requestedcould not be found.

Update - I found the hangout link on the RIGHT side of my stream page. I will try this at home tonight when I have my camera hooked up. Is anyone game?

Banai goes on to say that one big difference betweenFacebook and Google+ is that there are no walls in Google+. You interact withyour friends by leaving comments on each others' posts. Another thing thatmakes Google+ superior over Facebook is that you can edit your posts which youcannot do in Facebook.

Another difference has to do with how your friends areorganized and how you interact with them which is a combination of Facebook andTwitter. With Google+, you can add someone to your circle and not be in theirsand vice versa. If someone has you in their circle, their posts will show up inyour feed.

By the way, did you know that TwitPic changed their termsof service recently and now they are claiming ownership of all your pictures?

Thanks Banai forreminding us of this!

Randy Seaver talks about his experience on his blog, Genea-Musingsand has a fun little graphic about Google+. He also notes that there is not acharacter limit on posts and there seems to be a lot more genealogy content!

Lorine McGinnis Schulze talks about her experience in herpost Jumpingon the Google+ Bandwagon where she has some tips for all the Google+newbies to make the transition smoother, including to fill out your profilecompletely and with a photo of yourself, and how to add your blog posts updatesto Google Buzz, and how to see your Google+ notifications right from your gMailaccount.

If you have anytips and tricks to share or thoughts on your experience, feel free to sharethem in the comments below.

My biggest fearwith Google+ is that things won't work the way they say they will, the featureswon't be as powerful as they claim, and there will not be enough, if any atall, support documentation and available technical support staff to contact.But I am certainly willing to give it a try.

This photo was copied fromthe NewYork Computer Help Blog, 11 July 2011. I chose this photo because it has a hockey circle. And yes, I have one hockey friend so far in Google+. And the crazy circle...well if you are friends with Greta, then you are already part of her Crazy house (see her elevator speech).

Follow-up Friday Post – July 7, 2011

2011-07-08T09:26:00.001-04:00

Death Certificates:

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

Ireceived the death certificate of my 2^nd great-grandfather, WilliamEdward Peters from Pocahontas, AR. He died in 1948. Unfortunately it did notlist his parents’ names, however it did list his date of birth as March 10,1874 and place of birth has Thomasville, Missouri. This information correlatedwith his obituary; however, most of his census records said he was born inIllinois.

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

Ialso 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. Ifound a photo in my grandmother’s collection of him and someone called “JohnRiley Lasiter,” presumably his father. The death certificate stated hisfather’s name was John R. Lasiter and his mother’s name was Emily Jones. Hismother’s name was new information to me.

Follow up: I can now startlooking for records for Emily Jones Lasiter and John Riley Lasiter includingcensus records, death records, and marriage records.

Richard Smith’s Confederate Service Records:

As Ialso mentioned in last week’s Follow-upFriday post, I located the Confederate service records of my ancestor,Richard Smith. I posted the muster rollcards to my Smith and Fox family Blog here.And I set some new goals and things to followup on for next time, including to continue looking for his originalenlistment muster roll and to see if I can find the Confederate records ofRichard’s brothers John and Claiborn Smith who supposedly joined at the sametime as Richard.

Fox Family:

Oneof my Family Finder matches indicated that we might have a connection via theFox 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 guesshis 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. Mygrandfather had given me a copy of John’s death certificate, which is how wewere able to locate him in Indiana.

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

I also updated my sources toElizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explainedstandards. Boy was that complicated! I encountered several problems with doingthis, one of which was that Rootsmagic has several template options to choosefrom which may or may not follow EE.

As it turned out, my matchmentioned Parke, Vigo, and Putnam counties, Indiana and I immediately knew rightoff the bat that it was NOT the Fox family that we connected on. This locationwould 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 myMother’s side of the family!

Follow up: I am still waiting to hear back from him to seeif 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!

Follow up Friday Post – July 1, 2011

2011-07-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

Death Certificates:

This week I sent off for five death certificates – my 2^nd great-grandfathers, James Franklin Lasiter and William Edward Peters, my great-grandparents, Reba Fox Smith and Claude Rual Smith, Jr, and Melvina West Fox, my 2^nd great-grandmother.

I was prompted to order the death certificate of William Peters because he was the connection I had to the first person I matched to and talked to via my ftDNA Family Finder DNA results!! I was somewhat embarrassed that I couldn’t provide more information on my Peters line to my match who believed we were close cousins through our Peters line. And even more embarrassed when I realized I had never ordered William’s death certificate which can oftentimes provide you with the names of your ancestor’s parents. There has been a lot of discrepancy about William Peter’s place of birth as well, so even if his death certificate does not provide me with his parents’ names, I am hoping to get a place of birth at least.

James Franklin Lasiter is one of those so-called “elusive” ancestors. You know, one of those that you know existed but you just can’t seem to find him on those certain records you expect to find him on. I have a photo of him and someone I believe to be his father, John Riley Lasiter, according to the information written on the photo, and I would like to see if the names of the parents are listed on his death certificate and if so, if they match up with what the photograph says.

Back in 2009 I wrote a post challenging myself to see if had copies of the obituaries and death certificates of all 8 of my great-grandparents. Since Claude and Reba Smith were the last of them to pass away, I just never thought to obtain them. And actually I figured my Grandfather had copies of their death certificates already. Since I’m already sending off requests for these other death certificates, I might as well toss two more into the mix…

I was prompted to order the death certificate of my 2^nd great-grandmother Melvina Fox from my Family Finder test as well. I matched to a close cousin on my West and Criscillus lines. Melvina Fox was the daughter of Calvin West and Elizabeth Jane Roberts. My match is a descendant of Calvin’s sister, Serepta West. We compared family trees and they were identical. We compared brick walls and they were identical. I did learn that our West family descends from one Robert West b. 1612 in England thanks to her cousin who submitted to a Y-DNA test.

Richard Smith’s Confederate Service Records:

I finally located my ancestor, Richard Smith’s Confederate Service Records on Footnote.com. I have a copy of his pension records and notes from my Grandfather that mentioned Richard’s Confederate service prior to his service in the Union Army. I had trouble locating his records at first because all I knew was that it was Clarkson’s Battalion, Ark and Mo., however when I looked up the records in Footnote, the collection titles went by State first and then by Regiment number. Not having a regiment number threw me off. I finally found one collection title called “Confederate Soldiers – CSA” and that was the correct one. My persistence paid off.

Of course my grandfather’s notes also said that Richard Smith’s Confederate Enlistment papers listed his parents as David and Sarah Smith. I can’t find a copy of his enlistment papers in any of my files. Does anyone know how to order Civil War enlistment files? And is it common for them to list the soldiers’ parents’ names?

FGS Luncheon Tickets Still Available

2011-06-29T08:27:00.000-04:00

Do you hate to wait in that long line or fight the crowds at the concession stand for lunch each day at the conference?
Do you want a high-quality meal that comes with a salad, entree, and dessert?
Do you want to listen and learn from a long list of great speakers who are experts in the fields of genealogy, family history, writing, etc?
Do you want to network with other genealogists, speakers, and writers?

Then an FGS Conference Luncheon is the place for you!

Each day of the conference offers up to 4 different lunch options to choose from. The luncheons are a great opportunity to take advantage of at least once during the conference. I didn't sign up for any luncheons when I was at NGS in Charleston, however, I did receive the opportunity to attend one. It was so nice to just waltz right in, find a seat at a table, introduce myself and start talking to my neighbors about their research interests, where they were from, how they were enjoying the conference, etc. I didn't have to spend half my lunch hour waiting in line or looking for a place to sit or people to sit with. It was very relaxing and I had a lengthy conversation with my neighbor about whether he really needed to start using Facebook. I shared my experiences and he shared his concerns.

I definitely plan on attending at least one luncheon at FGS this year! Of course the hard part is choosing which ones to attend! And from what I hear, they are filling up fast! You can sign up for luncheons from now until the conference starts by using your pin number you are assigned when you sign up for the conference. But they are filling up fast!

To see a list of speakers and the menus being offered, click through each day's schedule of the program brochure.

Cheesecake anyone???

What I Learned Wednesday - June 29, 2011

2011-06-28T09:06:00.003-04:00

I was looking through an Ahnentafel report I made of my LaRue ancestors that I prepared to send to Greta from Greta's Genealogy Bog when I happened upon Generation 5 for Peter LaRue and beneath his name was an Elizabeth Cresson. I have been seeing the name “Cress” pop up over and over again throughout my Family Finder results and was wondering where that name came into play. This is not a line that I have actively researched. In fact, the information in this report is from the family tree file that my Grandfather compiled. I keep it as a separate file for reference only and when I am ready to start researching this side of the family, I will use it as a guide.

Speaking of Family Finder DNA results…

One of my matches emailed me about a Thomas and Saunders/Sanders connection. I took one look at my database and realized I had a grand total of 1 Sanders and 1 Thomas family member listed. Now why on earth would I have these two surnames listed in my surname list in my Family Finder DNA page if I didn’t have any information on them? Because they are the surnames of my 4^th and 6^th great-grandmothers.

I looked through my sources and notes on my 4^th great-grandmother, Millie/Milly Thomas and found reference to a couple of WorldConnect online Family Tree files that other descendants of Milly Thomas and her husband Hollingsworth House had posted. The last time I accessed them was in 2005. I accessed them again to see if any of the information had changed or been updated and sure enough one descendant had updated her file to include the parents and grand-parents of Milly Thomas! She even provided transcripts of the documents she had reviewed and cited them accordingly in such a way as to convince me that the parents she designated for each generation was correct.

So now I have that Milly Thomas’ parents were William Thomas, b. abt 1792 in Franklin Co., VA, and Nancy Huddleston, b. abt 1795 in VA; and that William Thomas’ parents were Ephriam Thomas, b. abt 1775 in VA and Maria Catharina “Caty” Teal/Diehl, b. 25 Aug 1774, Dover, York Co., PA.

Thanks to a Family Finder DNA match contacting me, I learned who the parents and grand-parents of my 4^th great-grandmother, Milly Thomas House were!

Unfortunately, my match is in the same situation I started off in: He has one person named Thomas in his tree. It is a female named Olive Thomas, md to Enos Ingraham, Hartford, CT, 1797. So we aren't able to "connect" at this time. But at least I was able to go back two more generations in my tree!

What did you learn today?

FGS Conference - Free Kids Camp !!!

2011-06-27T20:24:00.000-04:00

FamilySearch is hosting a FREE kids camp on Saturday, September 10th from 9 am to noon at the Hilton Hotel in Springfield, Illinois. This is a great opportunity to introduce your kids (ages 10-14) to the concepts of family history and genealogy: here they will learn how to interview relatives, collect information into a journals and their family tree, and do some hands-on work with computers to find information on their ancestors!

You don't have to be an FGS conference attendee to sign up for this event. It is open to the public and is being held in conjunction with the conference. So if you know anyone in the Springfield area who would like to attend, please encourage them to register.

You can register by sending an email to kidscamp@fgs.org. Provide the names of the kids who would like to attend and your contact information. For more information, visit FamilySearch Kids Camp.

FamilySearch is the leading genealogy organization in the world and is a service provided by the The Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints. For over 100 years FamilySearch has been gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide and providing access to millions of patrons via online at FamilySearch.org and through their family history centers in 70 countries. Learn more at FamilySearch.org.

Register For FGS 2011 by July 1st and Save $50.00!!!

2011-06-25T09:00:00.001-04:00

Don’t forget to register for the FGS Conference by July 1^st, 2011 to take advantage of the $50.00 discount being offered. After July 1^st, the registration price goes up by $50.00. However, you can use this extra $$ in the exhibit hall to purchase that book you’ve been looking for, some t-shirts, software, and other goodies; or two conference luncheon tickets; or use it to join us at the FGS 35^th Anniversary Celebration where you can maybe win a trip to Salt Lake City for two!

So what are you waiting for! It’s easy! Register here.

First Look at my Family Finder ftDNA Results

2011-06-23T22:14:00.000-04:00

Back in April, FamilyTreeDNA had a big sale to celebrate DNA Day so I took advantage of it and ordered me a Family Finder autosomal DNA kit. The Family Finder test looks at your autosomal DNA that is inherited from both your Mother and your Father. You can use this to determine who your 1st through 5th cousins are and start building up your genealogical database or verify kinships. I'm very excited to be a part of this scientific technology. You can learn more about ftDNA's FamilyFinder kit on their home page.

I ordered my kit on April 15th and I sent it off before I left for NGS in Charleston on May 10th. This is what I did when I received notice that my Family Finder DNA results were in on 6/13/2011:

I logged into my personal ftDNA page with the kit no. and password I was given by ftDNA when I placed my order.

I navigated to the Family Finder test results on the left hand side of the page. I clicked to view “Matches.”

The list of matches that came up defaulted to the “Close and Immediate” relationship setting. This setting displays a list of your matches who have been “suggested” by ftDNA as either 4^th cousins or below. For my results, I have only 3^rd and 4^th cousins listed and there are 4 pages of results. I can change this setting to "Show All Matches" for example, just by clicking on the drop down box and selecting it from the list. (Hint: If you want to know exactly how many matches there are with the “Close and Immediate” relationship, click on Chromosome Browser and it will tell you).

Statistics…

Total number of matches (6/13/2011) – 113

Total number of matches time of this post – 117

Total number of “Close and Immediate” suggested (3^rd & 4^th cousins) matches – 36

Total number of “4^th to Distant” cousin matches – 29

Total number of “5^th to Distant” cousin matches – 52

Surnames…

The first thing I did was start scrolling through the surnames listed beside each of my matches. The surnames that are in bold (far right) are names that we supposedly have in common (or variation thereof). My very first match is a good example to use (his name has been whited out for privacy purposes).

My Surnames: (this list is abbreviated for this example)

Cheek, Davis, Fox, Godwin, Hill, Johnson, Maynard, O'Neal, Peters, Pulley, Rasco, Roberts, Smith, Steed, Thomas, West, Williams

My Match’s Surnames:

Chaudoin, Dickerson, Edmunds, Johnson, Justice, Justus, Overstreet, Parrish, Penn, Pool, Roach, Sivley, Smith, Snoddy, Williams

It was a little hard to swallow how some of these names might be “variations” of each other. I am still trying to figure out the similarity of “Roach” and “Rasco.” And Snoddy has me stumped.

I have a funny story to tell about the Snoddy name. When I got my results, I called my grandmother and rattled off some of these names to her and she told me that my Great-Grandmother had a crush on a one of the Snoddy boys growing up in Dierks, Arkansas! She was often told as a child that had her mother married this Snoddy boys, then her last name would have been Snoddy instead of Binns!!! Can you imagine “Barbara Snoddy?”

One of my matches has the surname of Bracco in bold indicating a common surname. Here are all of my Surnames that begin with a “B”:

Barton

Benson

Binns

Bolen

Brooks

Bullard

Bullington

Burton

I guess it’s supposed to match to Brooks?

Other Observations:

If you have King in your list of Surnames as I do, then anyone who has United Kingdom listed as a country will light up. They will also light up if King is part of their surname, as in Pilkington.

I was surprised by how many people do NOT have any surnames listed AT ALL. 59 out of a total of 118 matches do not have any surnames listed at all. That’s exactly 50%. Come on people, what’s the point?

Surname Occurrences

- These are the number of matches that shared my most common surnames:

Smith – 9

Johnson – 8

Williams – 6

Davis – 6

GEDCOMS….

Some people have GEDCOMS posted as well. You can tell if they have a GEDCOM by the little pedigree symbol beside their name. This is a nice feature to have in that you can look through their tree and see a name that looks familiar that you might also have in common but might not have loaded in your surname list. I added a surname that one of my matches and I had in common but it has not yet been changed to “bold type;” so I don’t know how long it takes for ftDNA to update these lists. It’s also fun to comb through these pedigrees while you are waiting to hear back from a match you may have emailed. Unfortunately it does not list the children and siblings like your genealogy software at home would. And most of the kinship determination is through cousins, so these pedigrees can’t take you much farther than a name, approximate date, and place.

Conclusions...

This is all I looked at the first few days after I received my data. My initial thoughts were summed up into this one thought:

Hmm…this might not be as fun as I thought it would be. Everyone and their brother is gonna have a Smith, Davis, Johnson, Williams, Thomas, and Moore in their family somewhere. When do I get to the good stuff?

How about you? Have you taken the plunge? Any initial thoughts to share?
Feel free to comment below. Next time I will talk about the data and the chromosome browser.

Looking for Wills at the NC State Archives - Updated

2011-06-16T23:58:00.004-04:00

In 2008 I wrote a post, “Looking for Wills at the NC State Archives” in which I talked about how to use the NC State Archives’ online catalog (MARS) to see if your ancestor left a will in North Carolina. Since then the Archives has totally redesigned their online catalog, so my screenshots are obsolete. I have updated them in the post below. Please feel free to leave comments or questions for help in the comment boxes below.

I consider Mitchell's "Will Index" to be my #1 resource material to researching NC families. It is a two volume printed set that sits out on the main counter at the NC State Archives. It can be searched online using the NC State Archive MARS search Engine. This is how I went about finding the last will and testament for Henry Williams in Caswell County, NC:

Go to NC State Archives webpage

Click on the MARS Catalog link on the left side and a new window will open. It may take a couple of minutes to completely load. You will see the main search page. I have included a screen shot below:

Because I want to look in a specific resource –the Mitchell’s Will Index – I click on the Browse Button to open the list of collections. The Mitchell’s Will Index is found under the Popular Collections Heading. Click the little plus sign beside “Popular Collections” to expand the sub-headings and then click the box beside “Mitchell Will Index” to select it. Make sure a green check box appears.

Once the Mitchell Will Index is loaded as the collection I want to search, I type in “Williams” in the main search box:

And I get the following 49 pages of results!!! – What???

If you look at the Mars ID, all results have the same first 4 digits – 5200, but different set of 2^nd numbers. The first result has a 5200.1 – this is for Alamance County. The next 3 results have 5200.2 – This is for Albemarle County. They are listed alphabetically by county. The Archives uses a set of numbers for county codes. So this is good to know if you are looking for a particular county. I happen to know that Caswell County’s code is “20” and I could scroll through these results until I get to 20, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to go back and use the search box again.

I can enter “Williams, Caswell.”

And then I get 5 results, one of which is my Henry Williams. And you see the county code is in fact, 20.

The MARS system is only a catalog, it is not a digital repository with digital images. But using this will tell you if your ancestor left a will in the state of North Carolina.
However, there ARE some wills written before 1776 which have been scanned with digital images accessible from this catalog. You can NOT access them from the Mitchell's Will Index though. They are accessed from the Secretary of State Record Group. (More on this later)

Double clicking on Henry Williams brings up the information for this record:

This record depicts information for this Henry Williams. The will was recorded 1786 in Caswell Co., NC. The call number and MARS Id number are not important.

What's Next? - Head to the Archives

Once you find the will date, person's name and county, you can go to the Archives and look through the will boxes. They are organized by COUNTY first, then alphabetized by last name. Before you can look through the records you have to fill out a Call Slip.

County:
The call numbers start with a 3-digit prefix assigned to the county of interest. Caswell County's 3-digit prefix is 020.

Document Type:
Then the next 3-digits are assigned to document type. For wills, that number is always 801.

Folder Number:
The last number of the call number is the box number that contains your ancestor's file. This last number is left blank on the call slip.

You will put your surname on the call slip instead. They will bring you the box that contains the surname for the county of interest. For example, I might find the will of Henry Williams, 1786, Caswell County, using the following call number: 020.801.25. Box 25 containing the surname Williams.

The archivist will give you the whole box and you can only take out 1 file folder at a time. You must keep all documents inside the folder in order at all times. You can request copies be made by filling out a copy request form. Copies are $0.10 a page.

Here's some information on Estate Records at the NC State Archives in my post "A Peek into the NC State Archives: Loose Documents of Estate Records"