Keeping Track of My 2nd Great-Grandparents

I have 8 sets of 2^nd great-grandparents with a total of 16 individuals.

Paternal Line:

Set # 1: Claude Rual Smith (1896 - 1975) and Willie Harriet Riddle (1899 – 1985)

Set # 2: Fred Fox (1884 – 1974) and Melvina West (1882 – 1978)

Set # 3: John Milton Binns (1868 – 1961) and Perthinia “Pert” Eula Brooks (1873 – 1942)

Set # 4: Nathaniel Gustaves Hill (1873 – 1944) and Jessie Inez Barton (1875 – 1950)

Maternal Line:

Set # 1: Alvin Theodore Godwin (1879 – 1950) and Louella Davis (1882 – 1947)

Set # 2: William Edward Peters (1874 – 1948) and Dora King (1875 – 1912)

Set # 3: James Franklin Lasiter (1876 – 1968) and Rosalie Putman (1875 – 1961)

Set # 4: Barney Sheron Benson (1884 – 1952) and Eva Mae Dennis (1889 – 1983)

I was born in 1976. As you can see, two of my paternal 2^nd great-grandfathers died 1 or 2 years before I was born and 2 of my paternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me in their arms (The obituary of one of my 2^nd great-grandmothers, Willie Harriet Riddle Smith, mentioned that she had 18 2^nd great-grandchildren!)

One of my maternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me. I wasn’t the only one though. She had several other 2^nd great-grandchildren that she travelled around to visit with. Check out my 5-generation photos:

 Back Row: Sue Lasiter (my grandmother), Marilyn Godwin (my mother), Louise Benson Lasiter (my great-grandmother); Front: Eva Dennis Benson (my 2nd great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me!). Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, inherited from Louise Lasiter. Copyright 2012. 

Back Row: Claude Rual Smith, Jr (my great-grandfather) and Willie Harriet Riddle Smith (my 2nd great-grandmother); Front: Tim D. Smith (my father), Ginger R. Smith (me), Darrel E. Smith (my grandfather). Taken 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

L to R: Reba Fox Smith (my great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me),  Melvina West Fox (my 2nd great-grandmother), Tim D. Smith (my father), Darrel E. Smith. Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

Most all of my sets of 2^nd great-grandparents lived in Arkansas with the exception of the Bensons. I’m pretty lucky because the Arkansas death certificates started about 1914. I can actually probably take my ancestry back another generation to 3^rd or even 4^th great-grandparents just by using death certificate research!

As I said in my last post about requesting death certificates from the Arkansas Department of Health, it can become quite addicting and difficult to keep up with all of the requests and processing of incoming certificates. I try to space them out. I have employed the following two tables to help me with my research. They track my progress in securing and processing death certificates and obituaries. From looking at these tables I can see from a glance what I am missing.

From the tables I have filled out below, I can see that I have the obituaries and death certificates of 8 of my 16 great-grandparents. I am half way there! The obituaries I obtained either from family members or from various newspapers. My cousin, Doris Hamblin Smith, sent me copies of a bunch of Smith family obituaries in 2010 before she passed away.

In order to understand what the headers Scanned?, Transcribed?, FTF Notes?, and FTF Source? refer to, you must first know my genealogy work flow:

1.       Scan and save obituary and death certificate as a PDF, TIF, and JPG file

2.       Transcribe and save to Word document or Notepad File

3.       Copy the Transcript to the notes file for that person in my genealogy software

4.       Enter the Birth, Death, Burial, Occupation, Marital, etc facts into my genealogy software, including the parents' names

5.       Create a source and attach to the Facts (some call these "Events")

Nos. 3 and 4 are included under the FTF Notes heading in the table. FTF stands for “Family Tree File.”

As I collect more obituaries and death certificates, I can  update this table. I already know which death certificate I plan to order next – that of Rosalie Putman. However, since 6 of the remaining 8 died in Arkansas, I can go ahead and order them all at once.

Dora King died in 1912 in Missouri. I have not found a death record for her yet, probably because she died before deaths were required to be recorded. Family stories say she died of a snake bite. I might be able to find a death notice for her in a local newspaper. But I've found this to be difficult; or at least time consuming when you don't know the month and day. 

Barney Benson died while visiting his son in California. I have not yet ordered a death certificate from California, so this will be my first experience.

Obituary Resources
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	yes	yes	yes	yes
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	No	No	No	No
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	No	No	No	No
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Death Certificates
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	No	No	No	No
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	No	No	No	No
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

How do you stay organized? Does your genealogy work flow look like mine? If not, how does it differ? How is it similar? I’m looking forward to hearing how other people process the obituaries and death certificates they receive. 

Lessons Learned at the NGS Conference

Me 

I’m WHAT?

Totally NOT organized!

One thing I took away from the conference is that I am still being held back by not being WELL ORGANIZED. I very rarely use paper, or print anything off, so I don’t really have a need for a big paper filing system. But I understand the things that I read so much better when I DO have a print out of them right there in front of me and I can take notes right on the paper as well.

For example, when I reading about someone’s family, I have to write it all out in tree format in order to understand it or take it all in or in order to compare it to my own family.

A Ginger drawing

But then I find myself tossing those pieces of papers aside into a huge pile of “to be filed” or if I do decide to be a good girl and file them when I’m done with them right away, I run into the dilemma of having to decide how to file them. I swear I spend more time making decisions than I do actually doing genealogy.  Once I decide where or how to file them, I either already have an existing folder that I can just drop them in to, or I have to create a new one. Creating a new one entails finding a folder, putting a label on it (goes back to deciding how to describe it), and then finding space and the correct location in the filing cabinet in which to file it.

I’ve been reusing my file folders for 20 years now, so some of them have labels on the tabs already with either printed text or handwritten text on them. Some of them have post it notes covering up the previous labels. Creating a label on the computer is an additional time sucker. I have to remember how I did it the last time, 2 years ago. And of course I have to improve the process (again) while I’m at it. More time sucking.

DYMO label maker

In her talk Reporting the Facts: Record as You Go, Pamela Boyer Sayre mentioned using a handheld label maker to label her file folders.  That sounded like a great idea to me except last I knew, label makers only came with those plastic rolls of labels that were thick and embossed and stuck to everything…forever. But I went to the store and I checked them out and I bought one and alas! They do come with paper labels that you can use for your file folders, or whatever else you have that you know won’t get wet or last forever. So I’ve found at least one way to make my paper filing situation a little bit easier.

Having the proper supplies will ease the anxiety and time sucking-ness. I put my new handy-dandy label maker to use last night in fact when I needed to file away the 15 pages of emails that I had printed from a lady in GA I had been corresponding with before I left for the NGS conference. Then I noticed the two folders beside it that needed labels…

Pendaflex hanging file folder

Last month I bought more hanging file folders as well. So once I got these two other folders labeled, I put all three of them into a new hanging file folder and then I added a labeled tab to it so I could identify it easily.

What tools do YOU use when tackling your file cabinet?

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This is probably going to be a multi-part discussion series about how I deal with my paper files, digital files, and my all-around working habits that are either hindering or contributing to my successful research abilities. 

My Weekly Genealogy Rewind - August 3, 2010

School Break is Over - 

My summer break is coming to an end and school is about to start back up in approximately 3 weeks. I'm slated to take 3 classes again. I tried this my first semester and I struggled a bit, but I think this time around I will be ok. I've got a great support system at home now, so I'm fairly confident that I will do well again this semester. I hope, however, that my class schedule will not interfere with my work schedule too much. This semester I'm taking two classes on campus, both of which are scheduled on Tuesdays which cut into my work day a bit. I have therefore agreed to work extra on other days.

New Laptop and Digital File Organization - 

Another thing that will help pull me through school this semester (I hope) is the purchase of a new laptop!!! The laptop I've been using is 6 years old and has held up surprisingly well, however it is quite slow. I will be going from a 17 inch screen, but heavy laptop to a 14 inch screen ultra lightweight under 5 pounds laptop. It has a Pentium i5 processor with 4 MB ram and 500 MB hard drive, built in web cam, 5-in-one card reader, CD drive, and a 6.5 hour battery life!!! It seems too good to be true. All of this for under $1000!!! I can't pick it up until Friday when the tax free weekend starts.

One concern I have is transferring my files over to the new laptop. I have almost 400,000 files on my older laptop. This week I spent some time thinking about how to reorganize my files in order to make them more efficient and easier to find and get to. However, I didn't come up with any new ideas. Last year I tried to follow Miriam's suggestions in her post Organizing Your Digital Files by creating a folder for each surname and then creating a "Documents" folder to go in each surname folder. However, I found that awkward because under each surname folder I had additional folders for each person with that surname. When I clicked on the Godwin_Jonathan folder I wanted to see his estate record in that folder. I didn't want to have to go back to the Godwin surname folder then to the Documents folder and then find it that way. If a file belongs to a specific person, it should be in his or her folder. I also don't like the idea of putting a Documents folder in each person's individual folder because that's just way too much work. I have too many individual folders! So this is my dilemma. I would love to hear more about how people organize their digital files. I was hoping to have this settled before I transfer all of these files to the new laptop.

Database - Place Name Consolidation

Last week I took Randy Seaver's advice in his post Will I Ever Finish My Family Tree about taking time in between research and other genealogy driven activities to clean up our Family Tree databases. I started working on resolving place names. I should have done this in Family Tree Maker 2009 prior to transferring to RootsMagic 4 as it was very easy to do so in FTM. However, I didn't do it, so now I'm working on it in RootsMagic 4. One of the things I've had to do is strip the Place name of Cemetery Name and put this in the Details field instead. When I imported my FTM file into RM4 it appended the Cemetery Name to the place name. Although this is really not that big of a deal, I prefer to have it in the details field.

I am standardizing the place names with city, county, state, Country (abbreviated USA) to look like this:
Ash Flat, Sharp, Arkansas, USA. However, I am not comfortable leaving either the city or the county out of the equation. If I left out the city for example, then the place name should look like this: ", Sharp, Arkansas, USA." Having it start with a comma or a space makes it difficult to search on or to auto fill if I do not know there is not already a "Sharp, Arkansas, USA" already in the Place name database. I have therefore spent most of my time finding the cities and counties of each place and adding it to my database in order to avoid this. I use the Naco county locator website for most of this.

Jonathan Godwin Research Puzzle -

I've also been busy writing and scheduling blog posts for various memes in order to get back into the blogging community: Amaneusis Monday, Tombstone Tuesday, Wordless Wednesday, and Treasure Chest Thursday.
This week for Amanuensis Monday I featured a document outlining the inventory of the estate of Jonathan Godwin. I also somewhat touched upon a controversial issue about who Jonathan's children were. I got a lot of good support about this issue, so I hope to be able to post more information about this family and maybe go back to the source of the controversial information and see if we can resolve some of these issues. Also, I would like to write more about the progress of the DNA testing. I was supposed to be taking over the DNA surname project, however, I'm not sure where I stand in that endeavor right now.

I have also reconnected with a researcher I worked with back in 2006 who is also interested in this family. Like me, he is either trying to connect or eliminate Jonathan and Rachel Bullard Godwin as his ancestors. I'm very excited to have someone to work with closely on this project.

Winnie Barefoot and Silas West Connection to Enoch Godwin Family of Sampson County, North Carolina - 

I received a comment on a post I wrote last year about Enoch Godwin of Sampson County, North Carolina. The comment originated from a descendant of a young girl who was enumerated in Enoch Godwin's household. She had married a young man by the name of Silas West. She had questions about why I had written that Silas West was a "Negro slave" as that had not been mentioned in any documents she had in her possession or in any of her family's oral history. I was able to pull up and email to her the death certificate of Silas' son that mentioned Silas West was a "Negro slave" next to the place where you fill in the father's birthplace. This was, however, only mentioned on 1 of the 4 death certificates I found for Silas and Winnie's children, so it could have been a mistake. I removed this from my post and my commenter and I have both agreed to keep each other informed if we come across any information linking Winnie Barefoot to this Enoch Godwin family.

I think that sums up the past week for me. I've also been catching up reading the blogs I follow and I've been trying to make time to leave comments on blog posts I find helpful and interesting as well.

Organizing Genealogy in File Cabinet

Currently I have my genealogy files organized in 3 drawers of a file cabinet as such:
drawer 1: Smith files
drawer 2: Brooks/Williams files
drawer 3: Godwin files
Within each drawer the files are organized alphabetically.
My question is this: Should I put all of my files together and organize alphabetically and if I do that, how will I know if a file folder belongs to the Smith, Brooks, or Godwin genealogy group?

My Great-Grandparents

I have 4 sets of great-grandparents with 8 total individuals.

Set # 1 were my mom's mom's parents: Thelma Louise Lasiter (1912-1996) and James Putman Lasiter (1908-1974)
Set # 2 were my mom's dad's parents: Nova Lee Peters (1908-2000) and Orville Godwin (1905-1956)
Set # 3 were my dad's mom's parents: Kathryne Blanche Hill (1912-1992) and John Brooks Binns (1910-1989)
Set # 4 were my dad's dad's parents: Reba Fox (1920-2003) and Claude Rual Smith, Jr (1919-1996)

I knew and interacted with 6 of my 8 great-grandparents throughout most of my childhood - Louise "Mamaw" Lasiter, Novi Martin, Blanche Binns, Johnnie Binns, Reba Smith and "Big Daddy" Smith. James Lasiter and Orville Godwin both died before I was born. Orville Godwin and Novi Peters were my only set of divorced great-grandparents. Orville Godwin was murdered in his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the young age of 51.

The 6 great-grandparents I knew all lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, with the exception of the Smiths who lived out in the country in Kibler, Arkansas (near Clear Creek State Park).

Obituaries and Death Certificates
I have the obituaries of 7 of the 8 of my great-grandparents that I obtained either from family members or from the Fort Smith Library's microfilm collection of newspapers, including the Southwest Times Record, and associated online archives. I do not have a copy of the obituary of my Mother's Father's Father, Orville Godwin, who died in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I do, however, have a copy of the news article that was published about his murder.

I have four death certificates - Blanche Hill Binns, for Nova Martin, Louise Lasiter, and James F Lasiter Sr.

I created a checklist to see if I had obtained copies of all of the obituaries of my great-grandparents, and also to see if I had scanned and transcribed them, and saved them to the notes section of my Family Tree Maker software and created source entries for them. Here are my results:

Obituary Resources

Name	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?	Scanned?	Transcribed?
Nova Peters	yes	yes	yes	yes
Orville Godwin	no	no	no	no
James Lasiter	yes	yes	yes	yes
Louise Benson	yes	yes	yes	yes
John Binns	yes	yes	yes	yes
Blanche Hill	yes	yes	yes	yes
Reba Fox	yes	yes	yes	yes
Claude Smith Jr	yes	yes	yes	yes

Death Certificates

Name	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?	Scanned?	Transcribed?
Nova Peters	yes	yes	yes	yes
Orville Godwin	no	no	no	no
James Lasiter	yes	yes	yes	yes
Louise Benson	yes	yes	yes	yes
John Binns	no	no	no	no
Blanche Hill	yes	yes	yes	yes
Reba Fox	yes	yes	yes	yes
Claude Smith Jr	yes	yes	yes	yes

Results:
I have copies of 7 of the 8 great grandparents' obituaries which were scanned and saved to my harddrive. I have transcribed them, pasted them into the notes section of my genealogy software, and entered them as sources in my database and attached them to the basic facts (birth, death, marriage) of my great-grandparents and added them as sources to any relatives' names that are mentioned.

I only have copies of 4 death certificates - one of them is the original copy of my great-grandmother, Nova Martin's death that my grandfather gave to me. I scanned the copy and saved to my hard drive. I then transcribed it and added it to the notes in my genealogy software and added as a source. I obtained a copy of my great grandmother Blanche Binns' death certificate from my grandmother who had a copy of it in her scrapbook. I scanned it right from the scrapbook and saved it to my hard drive. I transcribed it, added it to the notes section of my genealogy software and added it as a new source.

Since I originally published this post, I ordered two additional death certificates - those of my great grandparents on my Mother's side - Louise (Benson) Lasiter and her husband James P Lasiter. I had put them off because I already have all of the vital information that is provided on the death certificate from the obituary and from my grandparents' tales. However, these certificates are available and should be included in my great-grandparents' files. They cost $10.00 each and took 4 weeks to arrive. I ordered them from the Arkansas Department of Health via an online form that I printed and mailed in to them, along with a check for $20. Update 7/27/09 & 2011: Copies of these two death certificates were received and scanned, transcribed, added to the notes section and source section of my family tree file.

Goal: To obtain copies of the rest of my 4 great-grandparents' death certificates!!

Saving genealogy photos

This is the word table that I create to index and organize the photos I get from other people. This table illustrates a collection of photos I received from David Campbell. I can open this Word doc and look at the description of a particular photo I am interested in.

Notice the column under "file name" is blank - I have not figured out how to name my photos yet. And I have not decided if I am going to continue to use this Word Doc table as an indexing system for my photo files.

Another cousin of mine sent me some photos so I named them all with a simple convention using the initials of their name because I didn't really know right away who the people in the photos were or what their relationship was to my family. Nor did I know the dates or places where the photos were taken. I just wanted to make sure I knew who sent me the pictures. I also use this convention because sometimes I want to share the photo with another cousin, post online to an online family tree site, or use in a blog - I always ask permission from the owner of the photo before I do this. So I called them simply "BPU_001" - The BPU are the initials of the person who sent me the photos.

Getting organized...progress for Jan 2009

I have started working on Dear Myrtle's January Organizational Checklist:

Step 1. Create a LASITER surname notebook

- done

Step 2. Put all direct line family group sheets in chronological order in a section labeled "Direct Line"

- done

I have an FGS for my grandmother, Sue Lasiter; behind that I have one for her father, James Putman Lasiter, and behind that one for his father, James Franklin Lasiter.

Step 3. Put all collateral line family group sheets in chronological order in a section labeled "Collateral Lines." - These include the siblings of my grandmother, Sue Lasiter; the siblings of her father, James Putman Lasiter, and the siblings of his father, James Franklin Lasiter.

- done

I have an FGS for my grandmother's sister, Barbara Lasiter, and one for her brother, James Putman Lasiter, Jr. I do not know of any siblings of either James Putman Lasiter Sr or his father, James Franklin Lasiter.

Step 4. Put research papers on any suspected ancestors and families in a section labeled "Research-Not Proven."

- I currently do not have any research to add to this section

Step 5. Place all important documents in page protectors

- I have not done this yet either because I need to purchase the oversized file tab dividers that can be seen behind the page protectors. Also, I do not have many documents to add to this binder as I have not done much research on this family.

I feel accomplished and ready to move on to next month's tasks.

Dear Myrtle also suggests we participate in Familysearch.org's indexing project.

Getting organized - January

I'm still trying to find an organizational method that works best for me with my printed files. Currently I have a few binders that I made when I first started researching. But most of my files are in file folders - My Brooks, Williams, and Binns files are in a basket in my closet; my Smith and West family files are in a box on my office floor; and my Godwin family files are in a file box also on my floor, usually with the Smith box stacked on top of it.

I have been looking for an affordable 4 drawer filing cabinet on craigslist to put in my office. They are hard to come by. When I get it, I plan to implement a new filing and organizational system based on one of two methods I read about in Organizing Your Family History Search by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack: (1) Filing by surname and record type or (2) filing by individuals. Knowing me, I will probably try to do both, each as a test set with two different families. The system I choose might actually be dependent on how many records or family members I have in that particular family group. I think I can get this done in a weekend.

In the meantime, as kind of a "mini-test" I plan to implement Dear MYRTLE'S January Organizational Checklist. This applies to the use of binders. I have already started putting together a binder for one of my smaller, less researched family lines - the Lasiter family. Each month a new step is posted. I plan to start collecting materials on this line as we go through each month, so I will have something new to add to my binder. I call it a "test" because it will "test" me on my ability to focus and to stick to one project until it's completion. (Also it will test my ability to follow directions!) I will keep you posted on my success!

Back up Blog

Here is my method for backing up my main blog posted here on Wordpress.com:

1. Done weekly
2. edit post
3. click on HTML view
4. copy all html and text from the edit post box
5. open new post in my genealogybyginger.blog.com blog
6. Click on the HTML view
7. paste html and text from my wordpress blog into the blogger.com window
8. change all links pointing back to my blog to the blogger.com blog addresses (all posts' web addys are saved to a google document)