Follow-up Friday 17 Feb 2012

Here's a list of goals I set two weeks ago in my Motivation Monday post of February 6, 2012:

1.     Process the Thomas Hume papers I photographed from UNC’s Southern Historical Collection.

2.     Process the O’Neal family papers I received from my new O’Neal cousin (determined by DNA test)

3.     Enter information on the William Godwin family of Escambia County, Alabama (whose descendant was determined to be a match to our line of Godwins from NC)

4.     Process the Barton family Find-A-Grave photos from Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas that a volunteer uploaded for me

And here is my progress so far:

1.     No progress

2.     No progress

3.     I believe I have all of the information on William’s descendants entered into my RootsMagic database. We got sidetracked by trying to find information about a John Godwin from North Carolina who was found on a Revolutionary War Roll. Evidently he fought with a bunch of people who moved with William Godwin from North Carolina to Georgia and then eventually they all settled in Escambia County, Alabama together. It also seems that Zilla Godwin who married Jesse Baggett (one of the men who was on the Revolutionary War Roll and who moved to GA and then to AL with the others) might have been the same woman who was the daughter of Richard Godwin and Zillah Thomas who moved from Sampson County, North Carolina to Hancock County, Georgia about the same time my Nathan Godwin moved to Indiana. We have always believed this Richard was related to our line of Godwins, but  have been unable to determine how.

4.    Several Find A Grave memorials had already been created for my Barton ancestors in Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas back in 2008 by FAG volunteers. I requested that photos be taken of the headstones and was notified this week that my request had been fulfilled and the photos uploaded by a volunteer. I compared the information in the memorial biography to what was on the headstones from the photographs that the FAG volunteer took. However, the resolution on many of the photos rendered them unreadable, even if I downloaded them and tried to zoom. So I emailed the volunteer and asked her to email me copies of the originals. I thought that the ones that were uploaded to FAG somehow lost resolution when they were uploaded. Unfortunately the ones she emailed me were just too low quality of resolution that I could not zoom to read them. They were 50-150kb in size. Maybe if she had set her camera to a little higher setting I would have been able to zoom in better? Oh well. Also, I’ve been struggling with creating a citation for my FAG entries in my RootsMagic database and although I finally settled upon some standard text, there was only one field in my RootsMagic source template that I could squeeze all of this text into. So I created a custom source template in my RM software in which I could enter the deceased person's name, memorial number, memorial creator's name and date, etc as separate fields. This made me much less stressful about creating my FAG source citations!

5.     My Mother’s Family  Finder DNA results came back, so of course I got distracted with those. She had 214 matches! Which for Family Finder is a LOT! Of those 214 matches about 90 of them were matches she and I had in common. She has a lot of 3^rd cousins as well and suprisingly, I have already received emails from 2 of her matches requesting information! (usually you have to beg and plead with people to get them to respond to YOUR emails). Unfortunately I have not been able to find a connection to them yet.

6.     Learned more about my JONES family. My 2^nd great-grandmother was Emily Jones and she married John Riley Lasiter. Jones was a possible common surname with one of my Mother’s DNA matches, so I did some research to see if I could find more information about Emily Jones. I found Emily and John Lasiter living in Madison Co., AR on the 1870 census report and then I found the family of Thomas and Saphronia Jones also living in Madison Co., AR in 1870. Going back to 1860, I found Thomas and Saphronia Jones with a daughter Emily C Jones who matched up to my Emily Lasiter. Based on the places of birth listed for the children of Thomas and Saphronia Jones on the 1860 census, I was able to determine that the family moved from TN to AR about 1851 and that Thomas and Saphronia Jones were probably married between 1840 and 1847 when Sally Ann Jones, the first child listed on the 1860 census, was born. I did a search on Ancestry.com in the Tennessee Marriage records for Thomas J Jones and found it right away: Thomas J Jones to Safrona Phelps, 18 Dec 1844, Davidson Co., TN. I followed it up with an 1850 Davidson Co., TN census record for Thos J Jones, 30 years old, Sophrona Jones, 26 years old, Sarah Jones, 4 years old, and Tennessee Jones, 1 year old. I have now taken my tree back another generation and learned of a new family name and location from which to start searching in!

Treasure Chest Thursday: Death Certificate of James Franklin Lasiter

James Franklin Lasiter was my 2^nd great-grandfather on my Mother’s Mother’s side. He was born April 16^th 1876 in Ione, Arkansas. He married Rosalie Putman on June 27, 1906 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He died October 8, 1968 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He was a barber and he lived with my great-grandparents in their family home on Park Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas until he died.

In July of 2011 I requested a copy of his death certificate from the Arkansas Department of Health. I had to fill out a form and include as much information that I knew. I knew when and where he died from his obituary.  It cost me $10.00. It arrived within 2 weeks. Here is the information I learned from this document:

[Click on the photo to make it bigger.]

James died at St. Edward's Hospital in Fort Smith, Sebastian Co., Arkansas. Fort Smith only has two hospitals, one on each side of town, either the North side or the South side. I believe this is on the South Side. Sparks Hospital, where I was born, is on the other side of town.

He resided at 3720 Park Ave, Fort Smith, Sebastian Co., AR at the time of death. He was living with his son, James Putman Lasiter and daughter-in-law, Thelma Benson Lasiter in the house where he himself grew up - A small two-bedroom on a corner lot. The enclosed porch acted as a third bedroom at times. My grandmother, the youngest child, had moved out a few years earlier.

He died at 5:30 pm, on October 8^th, 1968. He was 92 years old. His wife, Rosalie, had preceded him in 1961.

He was born Apr 16, 1876 in Ione, AR.

He was a Barber in a barber shop.

His father was John R. Lasiter and mother was Emily Jones. – Bingo! This is my treasure. I had suspected his Father was John Riley Lasiter as that was written on the back of a photo; however his mother’s name – Emily Jones – is news to me.

The informant was J. P. Lasiter of 3720 Park Ave, Ft. Smith, AR, 72901. This was his son, my great-grandfather, James Putman Lasiter, Sr.

He died of Uremia due to Nephrosclerosis from generalized arterio sclerosis, colitis, acute with bleeding; no autopsy was performed. He was attended by physician from Mar 65 to Oct 68. I’d say not bad for 92 years old!

He was buried at Forest Park Cemetery, Fort Smith, AR, on October 10^th, 1968 by Jesse G. Putman of 815 No. B Street, Fort Smith, AR, 72901. Jesse Putman owned the Putman Funeral Home. He was one of two big Funeral homes in the area. I do not believe there is any relation to James’ wife, Rosalie Putman, at least not that I ever heard from the family, but who knows.

Here is a photo of the Putman funeral home taken in 1977 at 815 No. B Street: 

Photo courtesy of Dr. Mo

And this is what it looks like today, converted to apartments:

Courtesy of Google Maps

The Putmans and Lasiters are all buried together in a huge family plot in Forest Park Cemetery. James Franklin Lasiter and his wife, Rosalie Putman Lasiter each have their own flat in-the-ground marker side by side next to Rosalie’s parents, Thomas and Martha (Ward) Putman.

Here is a photo of James Franklin Lasiter’s marker:

Forest Park Cemetery, Fort Smith, AR, taken by Ginger R Smith,
5 May 2006. "James F Lasiter, Apr 16, 1876 - Oct 8, 1968" 

My Genealogy Goals for 2012

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:

1. 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)
2. Search for brick walls on Google and in Google Books - maybe do one surname per week
3. Search for brick walls in newspaper archives online

Organization:

1. Organize my paper files and file cabinet
2. 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:

1. Connect with 5 more Family Finder matches - I connected with 5 from July to Dec of 2011, so this shouldn't be a problem
2. 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
3. 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!
4. Try to connect some American Godwins to English or Irish Godwins via Y-DNA
5. Update my Goodwin-Godwin Y-DNA surname project website with goals, success stories and summaries of existing lines

Brick Wall Research:

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

Research:

1. 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
2. Use more research reports to tract resources searched and analyzed
3. Use  more matrix reports to better display disparaging or corroborating information
4. 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)
5. Add the South Carolina wills and probate records on FamilySearch.org to my Cox, McCoy, Cheek, (my SC) family files
6. 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 
7. Obtain copies of the deeds mentioned in Ann Jobe Brown's genealogy files to validate parentage from Ephraim Thomas and his migration
8. 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:

1. Write more blog posts
2. Write about my Family Finder DNA experience
3. Make my blog look more snazzier
4. 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:

1. Graduate in 2012...but in order to do that, I have to complete a few more things...
2. Take 1 more class this spring
3. Write a Master's Paper
4. Take Comprehensive Exams
5. Test out of 1 class
6. 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.