Sometimes a tombstone for a married couple will be erected after the first spouse dies. The surviving spouse’s information will be inscribed on the stone–except for the date of death. The surviving spouse may fully intend to be buried there when they eventually pass. But life happens in the interim. That surviving spouse may move, marry again, change their mind about where to be buried, or pass away with no one to care if the stone is completed. A failure to etch the date of death on the stone does not mean that the person is alive. If they are old enough to likely be deceased, it doesn’t mean they are buried there–just that the intent was there when the stone was originally set. Check our my DeedMapper […]
The notice regarding the returning home of the 78th Illinois indicated that they were leaving on the 10th “instant.” That means “this month” and is sometimes abbreviated “inst.” We are excited to offer these two genealogy classes starting in the next few days. Check out details about our offerings:
Witnesses and informants frequently can’t remember specific dates of events. It’s possible that they: It can be difficult sometimes to tell which and it’s best to avoid rushing to judgement. Use any dates in the document itself to establish some broad time frame for when the event could have taken place. Be certain to cite the source and include the name of the known or probable informant. The information can’t be analyzed if you don’t know who gave the information and the circumstances under which it was given. We are excited to offer these two genealogy classes starting in the next few days. Check out details about our offerings:
A first cousin of my great-grandmother disappeared in the 1920s and was last seen in California and Colorado by various members of his family. he was approximately fifty years old at the time of his disappearance. He was never found. The last record he was mentioned in was the estate settlement of his brother. That brother died in the 1940s and his only heirs were his siblings and their children–including the missing brother. The judge overseeing the settlement of the brother’s estate declared the missing man dead in order to complete the settlement of the estate and disburse the balance to his children. The estate settlement contained testimony from the missing man’s children regarding their father’s disappearance and what attempts were made to find him. The court record […]
Details on our announcement page. Coupon code is save50now. List of webinars are on our website.
There was an envelope of pictures my mother had that were entirely undated. But there was a clue: a picture of a child (cropped from the illustration used for this post) and their birthday cake. Using the age given on the cake and the child’s year of birth, the photos could at least be dated to a year. Mom took quite a few photographs and there seemed little chance that the ones in the envelope were taken in separate years. They were in an envelope with their negatives which made it clear they were all taken on the same roll of film. It would have been easy to overlook the age on the cake–one needs to pay attention to every detail. What context clue could you be overlooking?
We are excited to offer these two genealogy classes starting in the next few days. Check out details about our offerings:
If you need a personal history writing prompt and you wear glasses, when did you first start to where them? When did you discover you neeed to wear them? For me, it was one summer when we were sorting calves in the barn and my Dad told me to get calf with a certain tag number in its ear and I said I could not read the number on the tag and I was standing the same distance from the calf as him. A few days later I was at the doctor’s office getting an eye test where it was determined that I needed glassses.
When you find that online obituary for a relative who died relatively recently, do you look in the comments section for additional clues? Good thing to do.
We’ve announced details of our March 2026 trip to the Library of Virginia in Richmond–join us!
Sometimes the connection the adminstrator of an estate has to the deceased is obvious or easy to determine. Sometimes it’s not. It’s always worth finding out if there is a connection. For years, I assumed incorrectly that the administrator of the estate of Michael Trautvetter who died in Hancock County, Illinois, was a neighbor, friend, or interested creditor. I knew little about Trautvetter’s family and, after a while, gave up on determining what the relationship was. Years later, after learning more about the family it was discovered that the administrator of the estate was the husband of a daughter of Trautvetter’s sister. The sister had a marriage in Germany I was unaware of and that was the maiden name of the administrator’s wife–which meant nothing to me at the time. Always […]
A friend recently posted some thoughts from a minimalist who really seemed to think that you need to throw away as much of your “old stuff as possible.” I’m not necessarily a fan of throwing away as “everything,” but there are things to get rid of as one cannot preserve everything. Some thoughts as someone who has at least twelve totes of stuff. 1–Anything you can do to reduce the bulk should be done. This includes those artsy scrapbooks with all the extra paper, “decorations,” and the like. Don’t create archival things that require significantly more space than the item already occupies. 2–Digitize and identify on the image what you know about it. Metadata is fine, but annotations added to the bottom/side of the image are very helpful. People […]
The Gum Drop Cookie recipe we mentioned recently contained coconut as an ingredient. The reference to coconut reminded me of evidence when constructing a genealogical argument. Genealogists research records to obtain information about a problem. Sometimes the information contained in the records directly addresses the problem. Sometimes the information indirectly addresses the problem. Sometimes information supports our conclusion and sometimes it conflicts it. All relevant records should be referenced in any discussion of the problem and the information they contain should be examined. We might not choose to use every piece of information from every record to make our case, particularly if we have numerous records stating the same thing. In this case, we may choose to mainly include those contemporary-to-the-event records with information contained by informants who […]
One of the reasons newspapers are valuable resources for genealogists is because they are hard to “close” once they have been published. Court cases may be sealed, but a newspaper reference to that court case is “out” forever. A birth certificate may be sealed if there is an adoption, but if the baby’s birth was in the local newspaper–it is still there. If there’s a record you cannot access, ask yourself what you are trying to find out or discover and are there other records that may provide that same information?
I need to have a post-it note above my desk with this phrase on it. There were two men named Charles H. Shipe who lived in southwestern Hancock County, Illinois, and adjacent northwestern Adams County, Illinois, in the late 19th century and well into the 20th century. One was born in 1872 and the other was born in 1867. They had different fathers (one was the son of Samuel Martin Shipe and the other was the son of a Cornelius Shipe). The one born in 1872 was my uncle by marriage. The other one was probably his cousin. When I began researching my uncle, I was initially confused at first because certain details were inconsistent. Once I realized there were two Charles Shipes (the census made this realization […]
Recent Comments