Records of funeral homes and churches are private records and these businesses and institutions do not have to allow you to access their records. If they do, it is only as a courtesy and access is not something you should expect nor demand. Genealogists should always be polite and respectful when requesting records, but that’s even more the case with these records as the genealogist does not have any legal right of access on their side as they do with public records. Purchase my Funeral Home Records webinar for $16–download immediate. More about this webinar: “Unburying Funeral Home Records” is a discussion of the records typically kept by funeral homes, determining if the home is still in existence, and locating where the records of the home may be […]
If you are using information that you transcribed or manually copied, always double check it for accuracy before completing your analysis or constructing online searches. It can be very easy to transcribe something incorrectly or transpose digits in an age or year of birth. Doublechecking may save you time and frustration.
There are times when reading a document that it is clear someone made a mistake. A place name is spelled incorrectly, a year of birth has the last two digits transposed, a maiden name for a mother is the last name of her third husband, etc. Despite the error (real or perceived), a document should be transcribed exactly as written. It may be helpful to put a “[sic]” (without the parenthesis) after such an error to indicate that the word was written that way on the actual record. Never correct when transcribing a document. Transcriptions are always true to the original, at least as much as possible. We want to know what something actually said. Our correction may not be so correct after all. If there are statements […]
We’re running a sale on “More Genealogy Tip of the Day.” Details on our announcement page.
A relative was married twice in the 1856-1880 time frame in the US Midwest. Her first husband’s last name was Williamson and the second husband’s last name was Willingham. The relative was probably divorced from the Williamson and the Willingham husband died a few years into their marriage. There were clearly two distinct husbands. The relative subsequently married a man whose last name was Graves. I keep getting the Williamson husband and the Willingham husbands confused because the names start with the same five letters. While working on the relative had her family, I had a post-it note on my computer with the first two husband’s names written down with a “1” next to Williamson and a “2” next to Willingham. Apparently others got confused as well. Various […]
Do you notice who is not listed in records where other family members are? In going through a series of “gossip columns” for a family in the early 20th century, I noticed that one individual’s husband rarely attended anything. I’ve made a notation about his frequent absence in my compilation of the columns. There are other records where sometimes people who “should be listed” are not. This happens in more than the gossip columns of local newspapers. Are you making a notation of this in your analysis of the record? Some absences mean more than others. Missing family functions may just mean there’s been some sort of disagreement, that someone is a loner, is not able to get away from work, or needs time away from their spouse. […]
Joseph Daby had four deeds recorded in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in 1738–some of which had been executed nearly ten years earlier. Not everyone always had their land record recorded immediately. Some people just waited and others waited until they had more than one to record. For these reasons, always look for land records after you “think they should be recorded” and for multiple deeds to the same person recorded at the same time. Joseph Daby may have dabbled getting his deeds recorded but he was not the only one. Deeds were recorded in the order in which they were brought to the local recorder’s office, not the order in which they were executed. Sometimes it may take decades for a deed to be recorded and that delayed recording […]
The use of the “in-law” did not always just indicate the relationship that it does today. In most modern uses of “in-law” a “father-in-law” is the father of someone’s spouse. In the same way a “mother-in-law” is currently generally interpreted as the mother of one’s spouse. In earlier uses, particularly the early 19th century and before, a “father-in-law” could be indicating that the “father-in-law” was actually a subsequent husband of the person’s mother. Today that person is generally referred to as a step-father. Similarly a “mother-in-law” reference could mean that the “mother-in-law” was a subsequent wife of the individual’s father. Today that person is generally referred to as a step-mother. The “in-law” portion of the term stems from the marriage contract signed between the two individuals marrying.
There are several genealogy reminders from this 1962 funeral notice from a newspaper in Quincy, Illinois. It never hurts to search digital images of newspapers for people even when “you know everything about them.” That’s how I originally located this item when searching for my great uncle Alvin Ufkes in a database of newspaper clippings on Ancestry.com. I had not seen the item until I performed that search. My uncle had been a pallbearer at the funeral for his great aunt Anna Buhrmeister. Four of the other pallbearers were names I recognized as members of the same family. The original database of newspaper clippings where I found the funeral notice did not include the precise date of publication. I wanted that and decided to search for the item […]
Always read those “aside” comments that occasionally get made in records. Clerks and records officials don’t add them because they are bored. There is usually a reason and working to determine that reason could lead to additional discoveries. The example in the illustration indicated that the administrator of an estate in Illinois in 1903 wasn’t certain what type of title the deceased held in a certain piece of property, but that he believed it to be a fee-simple title. That uncertainty suggests I look into that piece of real estate and how the deceased came to acquire it. There could be a story there. And if I don’t know what a fee-simple title is I need to look up that detail as well.
The obituary for a relative did not leave out any of her children. It did leave out the first husband from whom she was divorced. It left out the second husband who died a few years into their marriage. It did mention her final husband (who was her third). Sometimes obituaries leave out more than they include. The obituary did include the last names for her children, which (based on the last name of one son) suggested there was at least one relationship other than the third husband. Always transcribe obituaries as written and include them in your records as written. Use them in your research as clues. Do not assume all given facts are accurate and do not assume they are complete. No matter what you call […]
For years, I had difficulties finding the sister of one of my great-great-grandmothers. This sister was born in Indiana in the 1840s. She was living in Missouri in the early 20th century when she was mentioned with her married name in several obituaries of siblings and newspaper references to family visits. One reason I had difficulty locating her was because she had two short-term marriages in the 1865-1880 era. Whether these husbands died young or whether there was a divorce is not yet known, but for some reason these two husbands were not mentioned in family history records. It did not help my research that newspaper references to this relative were only from about 1895 and after–a time frame outside her first two marriages.
A court case I located from Virginia in the 1820s contained numerous depositions and statements made by witnesses. This was common in some cases since it did not require witnesses to attend court on those few times a year when court was in session. The statements were taken at various locations–which was always stated in the initial portion of the document. Those locations are clues and are helpful clues in a time period and place where one does not always know where within a county an individual lived. Individuals who made out statements at the same time in the same place were probably relatively close neighbors to each other. Probably. One should always keep the likely method of transportation in mind as well. Check out our Genealogy Tip of […]
There are other things one can do as well, including learning about the time period and location of the “lost person,” their religious affiliation, occupation, educational level, etc. Genealogy Tip of the Day book is here. Learn more about it and get your own copy.
I’ve had Gmail since 2004. Recently while searching it for some correspondence from a few months ago, I also discovered correspondence with a relative regarding our common ancestors from 2017. There was nothing new in that correspondence that had been neglected, but I did realize that I had lost touch with the relative. Seeing their message reminded me that I had never asked him if our common ancestors had a family Bible of which he was aware. He wasn’t. But I realized that I had written about the sibling of our common ancestor for a recent issue of Casefile Clues and that I should send him that issue along with what I had discovered. I also realized that it might be time to keep a spreadsheet of my […]
Recent Comments