Is it possible that the last name you think you have for a person is really a truncated version of the actual name? Could the last half of the name have been “cut off” to avoid sounding a little too ethnic? Could your VanDerWalle relative used the last name of Wall(e) instead?
Part of genealogical research is evaluating what you have and altering conclusions when new and more reliable information warrants. Early in our research when we are inexperienced, it can be tempting to rely too much on family information. It can also be easy to rely on incomplete information–especially before we learn that “official” records can be incorrect or inconsistent. And sometimes DNA and other information will cause us to re-evaluate what we thought was true even when we had a number of records and completely analyzed them. My children’s great-great-grandfather (father of their great-grandmother) has morphed through many iterations over the nearly thirty years that I have researched him–always because I have located new information: a Greek immigrant to Chicago, Illinois, born in the 1880s–turned out he was […]
We’ve still got room in our prepping for the 1950 census release webinar. Ordered recordings will be available after the session on 9 Sept 2021 and can be viewed at the purchaser’s convenience. Details on our post.
Some towns and counties kept records of chattel mortgages. These mortgages generally are for property other than real estate and can include: livestock, tools of a trade, merchandise in a store, household goods, and similar items. These records may or may not be available on microfilm or in digital format. Like other records, they can provide additional background on your relative’s life, social standing, and family relationships (sometimes). One advantage to these records is that your relative did not have to own real estate in order to appear in them. Some ways to determine if these records exist in the location of interest include: searching the FamilySearch catalog; asking local librarians; contacting local historical or genealogical societies; asking researchers familiar with the area
Always indicate when a date, name, or a relationship is conjecture. Make it crystal clear to anyone reading the information later that the information was a hunch. Be careful making hunches. Be careful sharing hunches. Have a reason for your hunch. Include that reason with your hunch. Cite your reason if you have a document. Think one more time about the reasonableness of your hunch. Once someone spreads them as fact it can be impossible to prevent the spread.
Are you ready for the 1950 US census to be released to the public on 1 April 2022? The index will take a while to be ready and won’t solve every research problem or find every ancestor. In this hour-long session, we will look at ways to get ready for the release of the 1950 census, including locating addresses, working with enumeration districts, analyzing probable family structure, creating an effective search strategy, determining which individuals to look for first, prioritizing manual search techniques when necessary, and more. Presentation made by Michael John Neill–there will be time for questions in the live session. Handout is included for live presentation and recorded version. Webinar will run live on 9 September 2021 at 11:30 a.m. central time. Registration is limited. Pre-order […]
Years ago, I had a quick translation done of this postcard. Over the years the translation became separated from the card. I should have appended the translation to the image, put them both in one PDF file, or stored them in a separate folder as two separate documents-the image and the translation. Make certain that documents that really need to be filed together are filed together in a way that they won’t get separated.
There was a lady my paternal grandmother would occasionally mention as someone she knew when she was growing up. I had forgotten about this woman until I did some census work on this grandmother’s brother-in-law. While looking into the siblings of my grandmother’s brother-in-law, I discovered he had a sister named Cozy. It’s not the most common first name in the world and I knew I had heard it somewhere before. In fact, I said her last name of “Witt” out loud as soon as “Cozy” flashed in front of my screen. I could even hear Grandma saying Cozy’s complete married name in my head. I had not thought of the name since my Grandmother died in 1994 and I’m pretty certain I never ever said it. Grandma […]
Don’t forget to look for the entire family in a city directory. In this small town the others were easy to see, but in an urban area it wouldn’t have been so obvious that the wife and children were living in a separate location. Geo. Trask (listed at 110 E. North Street) is the husband of the Jennie Trask living on Beecher Avenue. There’s not other individuals with these first names living in the area and both of them died well after 1930. In this example, everyone with a dot by their name in the illustration were members of the same family, but for some reason the husband (George) was living at a separate address. The householder is listed as “Mrs. Jennie Trask” and the others living at […]
Records contain many statements and each of those statements can either be true or false. Analyze each statement separately, thinking about who likely gave the information, how likely they were to actually know the information, and the circumstances under which they were giving the information. It’s also helpful to think about whether the person might have any motivation to give incorrect information and whether there would have been any penalties for giving false information. It’s also worth considering if more than one person could have been involved in giving the information and how publicly that information was given. A recent blog most on Rootdig discusses some of these concepts in regards to a 1907 court case.
Sometimes doing something is better than doing nothing at all. I have a significant amount of family pictures, papers, and other items that I may never get property scanned. Some of the items will be difficult to scan given their age, original paper, how long they’ve been folded, their condition. etc. Taking pictures of items with my phone is significantly faster than manually scanning each item. It is also less potentially damaging for those items that will not lay flat or are fragile. Pictures are also great for artifacts that are not “naturally two-dimensional.” I have quite a few photograph albums. In some of these the photos can be easily removed. Other albums have the photographs affixed in a way that makes removing them difficult if not impossible. […]
A death certificate indicates that a relative was born Rush County, Indiana, on 23 December 1846. The tombstone indicates that the relative was born on 25 December 1846. The 1850 census indicates that the same relative was a native of Indiana and was three years of old at the time of the enumeration. That means that the person was born in either sometime in 1846 or 1847. It’s not additional evidence that the person was born specifically on 23 December 1846. It is consistent with that date of birth (which is good), but the census does not indicate that precise date of birth. Use the death certificate as the source for the 23 December 1846 birth in Indiana. Use the tombstone as the source for the 25 December […]
Do you have family history items that only exist in their original physical form and have never been photographed or digitized? A picture of an item can be a way to preserve it in a fashion and create a means by which the story of the item can also be shared. What have you not digitized?
When citing a census page that has several page numbers written on it, make certain you indicate which page number you are using in your citation. Common ways to indicate include using the type of writing and the location of the page number, such as: page 55 (typed, upper right) page 44 (handwritten, lower right) Genealogy Tip of the Day book is here. Learn more about it and get your own copy. If you’d like to get our genealogy tip daily in your email for free, add your address here.
Depending on the handwriting, the letter groups “tt,” “ll, “tl, and “lt”can be confused, interchanged, and misinterpreted. When reading handwriting manually, it’s easy to see what the “intent” was, especially if the name is in a record where you expect it to be. Not so easy using indexes. Butter, Buller, and Butler can easily be seen in the same word–along with some other renderings as well. The same is true for Trautvetter, Trautvelter, and Trautveller. Appropriately constructed wildcard searches (usually for Bu*er or Trautve*er) will locate them all. Searches based upon the sounds in the name may not since “t” and “l” do not sound the same. Something to think about when looking for that special feller.
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