Follow-up Friday - Jan 13, 2012

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:

1. 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. 
2. 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. 
3. 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 to get distracted by a couple of other things, but I did get one thing closed and checked off my list as well: 

1. 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. 
2. 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

Genealogy Research Progress for Monday, January 9, 2012

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).

1. 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.
2. 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. 
3. 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. 
4. I met a new cousin on my SMITH side who found me on my blog. We have been exchanging information and pictures via email. 
5. 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.
6. 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. 
7. 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: 

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).