If you are fortunate enough to know where your ancestors lived, do you know how far they were from all the nearest political borders? I grew up a half mile from the nearest township line, about ten or so miles from the nearest county line, and about fifteen miles from the state line. The knowledge may not directly impact your research, but the more information you know about your relative’s relative location to political features, the less likely you are to look for records in the wrong place.
When encountering a family tradition, take each statement suggested by the tradition and put it in one of two categories: probably generated a record most likely didn’t generate a record “Grandma sold sandwiches to support herself after her first husband accidentally drowned in the 1850s. Then she married Grandpa Haase and they moved to the farm.” Probably generated a record: The drowning may be mentioned in a local paper There may be estate or probate records related to the first husband’s death There may be a death record of the drowning–although in some US states this is too early for a death record There should be a marriage record to Grandpa Haase The place to start looking for these records is where Grandma was believed to have been living in […]
Census answers can appear to be wrong for a variety of reasons. Most of those stem from issues with the informant or the enumerator. Sometimes the “wrong” information is not really wrong at all and is the result of the genealogist not being fully aware of the instructions given to the census enumerator. Of course some enumerators did not follow instructions. Others did. In preparing for my webinar on the upcoming release of the 1950 US Census, I discovered this reference to how places of birth are to be handled in that enumeration. Quoting from the instruction manual’s instructions on item 13 (place of birth): For a person who was born in a hospital or elsewhere outside of the State in which his family was living at the […]
Census enumeration district maps at the National Archives (1880-1950) are online and can be searched here. Try searching for “yourstate yourcounty” or “yourstate yourcity” to locate items of interest.
I’m not a lawyer and I don’t pretend to be one on the internet. However, having read through more than my fair share of probate records–from modern ones to pre-colonial ones–and having been involved in the settlement of estates, I have a rough idea of how things work. And when I read the comments to an online column about an estate issue, I was shaking my head over and over. Some of the advice was flat out wrong. Some of the advice only worked in certain states. Some of the advice clearly indicated the commenter had not read the original question. And there were a handful of comments that were spot on. The same goes for answers ones gets to online posts about genealogy questions. Comments and suggestions […]
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.
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