My Blog Was the Recipient of the Ancestor Approved Award!

I learned last week that Heather Doherty of the "Good to Know: A Genealogist's Guide" Blog awarded my blog the Ancestor Approved Award!!!  The Ancestor Approved Award was created in March 2010 by Leslie Ann Ballou of the Ancestors Live Here Blog.  Leslie created this award to recognize blogs that are "full of tips and tricks as well as funny and heartwarming stories." As a recipient of this award, I was asked to list 10 things that surprised, humbled, or enlightened me about my ancestors. Most of these have come from my more recent ancestors, as I have not yet transitioned from fact-finding genealogy to the telling of my family history yet.  I don't have much enlightenment of exactly what my ancestors went through or endured during their lives like Rosie O'Donnell did with her Irish ancestors who escaped the workhouses of Ireland to build new lives in America (From Episode 3 of Who Do You Think You Are?) or Ashley Judd's Civil War ancestor who was a prisoner of war two times.

Well here are my 10 things:

1.  I was surprised to learn that my grandparents had been married and divorced TWO TIMES!

2.  I was humbled by the fact that my great-grandmother Louise Benson finished High School in Oklahoma in 1929. That was a huge feat for a woman to finish her education back then. And she was the oldest child in the house as well, so I'm sure her parents relied on her to help with the younger children and household chores as well.

3.  I was enlightened by my great-great grandmother, Eva Dennis Benson (mother of Louise Benson above) who lived in OK but who always managed to keep up with all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (including my Mother who lived in Arkansas) through cards, letters, and visits. Here is a letter she wrote to my grandmother in 1963.

4.  I was surprised to learn that my great-great grandmother Lou Ella Davis Godwin Otten had been married 5x!!!

5.  I found it very humbling that my great-grandparents, John and Blanche Binns went back to school after their children had entered High School in order to get their teaching degrees.  They both taught elementary school. Here's a picture of their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

6.  I was surprised to learn that my great-grandfather, Orville Godwin had been murdered in Tulsa, OK by his neighbor in 1956. You can read the news article here.

7. I am amazed that my ancestors left North Carolina in 1828 to move to Indiana. Although I'm still not sure why they did this, I'm sure it was a huge ordeal to pack up all of your belongings, your families, and make that trek North like that through the mountains.

8.  I am humbled that my 4th great-grandfather, Agrippa S Godwin, died in the Battle of Pilot Knob in Ironton, Missouri in 1864. We have not been able to determine exactly where he was buried. We believe it to have been a mass grave at the battlefield site.

9.  I still can't believe that my 5th great-grandmother, Zilphia Pulley Godwin had 15 children! (Actually I'm sure she had more, but this is how many lived to adulthood. The 15th child died in her first year).

10.  Lastly, I am impressed by my great-grandmother, Nova Peters who took her 4 children and left her alcoholic husband for a new life! You can view a picture of her and I here.

The last thing left to do is to recommend ten other blogs to give this award to. I have chosen the following to pass this blog on to. These folks have inspired me and have taught me so many things about research and family history. Thank you for all of your hard work.

1.  Documenting the Details
2.  Olive Tree Genealogy
3.  Clue Wagon
4.  iPentimento Genealogy and History
5.  Desperately Seeking Surnames
6.  Elyse's Genealogy Blog
7.  Geneageek
8.  The Journey Takers Blog
9.  The Scrappy Genealogist
10.  The Mad Genealogist

Final Episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

Tonight NBC aired the last episode of Who Do You Think You Are? with Ashley Judd.  It was a really interesting and educational episode and kept my attention the entire time.  I'm really sad that it's over though.

I've grown to love and look forward to my quiet Friday nights at home in front of the TV with my "pop" (From Lorine at Olive Tree Genealogy Blog) and my leftovers for dinner. I also like to follow along with the comraderie and conversation about the show over in Twitter.

I have my Tweetdeck open on one side of my laptop and I pull up a search for the show's hashtag #WDYTYA to follow along and then I have Facebook open in the other window so I can delete my Tweets that automatically post to Facebook and clog people's news feeds.

Tonight's episode featured Ashley Judd and her Civil War ancestor Elijah Hensley from Kentucky who entered the service at the young age of 15 and was a prisoner of war twice and who had his leg amputated on the battlefield!!! They used Ancestry.com's Civil War records to find him (Ancestry.com is allowing FREE access to its new Civil War Records from April 7-14th).

Then we met Joshua Taylor at the New England Historic Genealogical Society to discover her BREWSTER Mayflower ancestor who had been imprisoned in England for religious reasons!!! He managed to sneak out of England, get aboard the Mayflower and make his way to New England.

I think Ashley was impressed by the "rights" her ancestors had to fight for, even to the point of imprisonment.  How many of us can say we had an ancestor who went to jail for what he believed in? She had 2!!!

Now we just have to figure out what we are going to do with our Friday nights for the rest of the summer, until Who Do You Think You Are? starts back up again!

Having trouble finding a deed in FHL film

This is a repost from 2009. I was really looking for some feedback on this particular situation. Now that there are so many more experts out there, I am hoping to get some help in this area.

Ok, I've been going to my local Family History Library for several years now. I've had very good success in finding records that were pertitent to my genealogy research. I got stumped one year on some deed records that I am trying to locate. Here is my story. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I went to the FHL website's library catalog and in the Search Box I selected "Place-names" and in the "For" box I entered "Illinois, Perry."

A list of results came up. I then clicked on the "Land and Property" link to pull up the Perry County, Illinois records on Land transactions. I then clicked on the "Land Records, 1827-1950, index" link. This brought up a list of all of the microfilm from 1827-1950, including the Grantee and Grantors indexes and the deed volumes themselves.

The first film I ordered was the Grantor's index, 1827-1876, film no. 975892. When I viewed the film I listed the items I wanted to see the actual deeds of. The typical Grantor index allows you to search for the surname alphabetically, then usually the date, names of the parties involved, and book and/or volume and page number of the actual deed records are listed. This particular index included the names of the parties involved, the book and page number. Dates were not included. Here is my list:

Cornelius Godwin to James Huggins, Book 6, p. 14

Sarah Godwin to Wilson Godwin, Book 6, p. 45
Sarah Godwin to Wilson Godwin, Book 6, p. 45
Ezekial Godwin to Patrick M Farlin, Book 6, p. 446
William Godwin and wife to William A Allen, Book J., p. 221
Cornelius Godwin to Frederick Fleck, Book L., p. 273 (Mortgage)
Daniel Dry to John Woodrun, book A, p. 86, deed
Daniel Dry and wife to Jacob House, book B, p. 30
John F Dry to Edmond House, book B, p. 38
John F Dry to John House, book b, p. 39

Some of these entries reference a Book followed by either a number or a letter. Now I want to order the corresponding films in the Family History Library catalog and order them.

The first book I want to order is book no. 6.

The first options of films I have to choose from are Deed Book volumes A-Z and dates 1827-1873, contained in a total of 14 reels of film. Each film contains two letters of the alphabet. As the letters go through the alphabet, the dates associated with the films get more recent. Deed Book Volume A-B corresponds with dates 1827-1842. Book volume C-C1 corresponds with years 1841-1848 (volume C1 covers 1872-1878). And so forth.

The next set of films available are the Deed Book volumes 1-15 covering years 1872-1888. Since I was looking for Deed Book #6, I ordered the Deed Book v. 5-6 film no. 975910. This film covers 1876-1950.

A couple of weeks later the film arrived but it was not as I expected. This film did not contain deed transactions between two parties; It contained land grants that were issued to individuals from the state. And most of these land grants weren't recorded until 100 years later! For example, I found a land grant issued to John Huggins in 1854 that was recorded in 1923. I also found a land grant issued to Daniel Dry in 1838 that wasn't recorded until 1948.

Since I don't know the dates of any of these deed transactions, how do I know which films to order? Are these films only for land grants or deeds or both? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Oh and I didn't find what I was looking for in Deed book 6 either in case you were wondering. I'm afraid to order more deed books in case I'm not doing something right. I don't want to waste the time or the money.

Do you have any suggestions? Have you run into this before?

The Carolina Digital Library and Archives

Ok, so I was in the Wilson Library on the UNC campus this week waiting for my class to start and came across this display at the end of the hall and had to take a photograph of it. I thought it look super cool, and wanted to share with everyone.

We are very lucky to have an organization like this on campus. The Carolina Digital Library and Archives (CDLA) is primarily responsible for transferring materials to digital format.  They have completed such projects as North Carolina Maps, Going to the Show, and one project that I had a chance to work on last semester - Driving through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway.

Photograph taken by Ginger R. Smith, 22 March 2011, Wilson Library, UNC, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Keep It Coming!

People are finding and reading my blog! I have received several emails already this year on a couple of different families represented on my blog by unrelated, distantly related, and closely related researchers / cousins who have found my blog.

One reader has offered to join our Goodwin-Godwin family surname DNA project in exchange for assistance in researching and placing her Godwin line among our North Carolina Godwin lines.

Another reader is the grand-daughter of the brother of my 2nd great-grandfather. Her grandfather was the last of these siblings to survive. We were very disappointed to learn of his death in 2007, however I am excited to gain contact with his granddaughter. Although we are both on the same quest to determine the birth and death information of her great-grandfather, T. J. Benson, and we may not glean anything new between the two of us; at least I will learn of her grandfather's life and maybe of his siblings (including my great great grandfather, as well).

Then there's the occasional request for me to send my entire tree out to someone who is "helping his friend" on a family to which I responded that I did not have a printable family tree to distribute but I would be happy to answer any specific questions he might have.

I am averaging about 4 weeks to respond to these requests, but that's just because I'm still in school. I have 4 more weeks of school and then I'm off for the summer so I will be able to ramp that time up.

Keep them coming!

A look at a real business case study in archives

As some of you may know, I am currently in Library School, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management.  My class schedule is structured in 3 different categories - library classes, IT classes, and Archives classes.

Tonight we had a class in the UNC Wilson Library in the Rare Books Room. The guest speaker was an archivist from the Southern Historical Collection. She gave the class a presentation about the Burlington Industries collection that they accessioned back in 2006 into the library. This collection was an example of how a fairly large collection was processed as it was accessioned.

Processing is the act of collecting, preserving, arranging, and describing the materials (MY understanding of it, at least); There is a lot of debate about whether the archivists should keep the materials in their "original order," ie, as they were received - for example, if the person who created and/or donated the materials organized their files in a certain manner, should that file system be preserved as such in order to give the future users a look into the motivations of the creator? - or should those files be reorganized in such a manner as to better serve future users in locating and reviewing materials, and in preservation as well - for example, do you put them in chronological order, or by important person's name; and for preservation sake, do you remove the staples and paper clips and hanging file folders?

At the end of the presentation, she showed us some of the materials - some that that been left in their original order and some that had been reorganized. I noticed a box of photos. It looked as if the photos had been mounted on a folded cardstock in which one piece of the fold had the photograph and the other fold had a sticker on it with a typed description of the photograph. I thought that sounded like a good idea for organizing photos. I would imagine, though, that it would take up a bit more space.

I really need to get back to reading Sally's archiving tips on photographs. But there just seems like there are so many options. I did manage to get all of the photographs out of the magnetic album. I still have tons of photos that I brought home from my Mom's house that are in manilla envelops organized by category.

Back to the Burlington Industries collection. I emailed my professor and asked if they had in fact mounted them on two folded cardstock and she said they had not done anything to them at all. What I saw was what the original owners had done. I guess it's good enough preservation-wise because they kept them that way!

The One Lovely Blog Award

Tim over at the My Georgia Roots Blog just informed me that he awarded me The One Lovely Blog Award! I'm so grateful to receive this award and excited as well to be introduced to Tim's blog because I also have deep roots in Georgia (but don't live there). Thank you Tim!!! This award is passed between bloggers to show their appreciation for all the hard work they put into their blogs.

Here are the rules for accepting and passing the One Lovely Blog Award to your fellow bloggers:

1.  Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who granted the award and their blog link.
2.  Pass the award on to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered.
3.  Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Here is my list of 15 newly discovered blogs:
The Journey Takers Blog
Find Your Folks
So That's Where I Get It From
Putting the Family Puzzle Together
Of Trolls and Lemons
Good to Know
More Than Names
Tangled Trees
Family Forest Blog
Relatively Curious About Genealogy
Lucie's Legacy
Terra Del Sole D'Oro
The Turning of Generations
Adventures In Genealogy
Lesley's Journey to Graduate School