Genealogical Gratitude – My New Home Office

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My home office
My home office

It was only 10 years in the making. We moved into our house in 2003. It had an unfinished basement and we had a young family. My husband and his father got to work finishing the basement. On one side it has a creative studio space, TV/Family room, several closets and a bathroom. On the other … the new home office! It has two U-shaped desks that sit next to each other so my husband and I can work together. We also, finally, got 3 bookshelves for our books that have been in boxes since we moved in, 10 years ago. All of my Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, poetry, Shakespeare and other literature books and his sci-fi/fantasy collections finally see the light again.

All of my genealogy books and files have a home! Genealogy ShelvesMy dog has a little nest and I have a heater to take the chill off of the basement environment. We have two big windows that do let in a lot of light for a basement, so it is not a dark and gloomy as some basements.

I have plenty of room to spread my projects out (I usually have several going at the same time) and my husband has his own section that can be as messy as he likes and it’s not in our living room any longer!

So thank you hubby and father-in-law for all of the work over the years!

 

Genealogical Gratitude – Educational Opportunities

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Pamela teaching her children (1743–45)I am continually grateful for the education opportunities that are available to me on the state level, national level and online. I am also thankful for the teachers, educators, lecturers and mentors who give their time to bring those opportunities to me (and everyone else who benefits, too). I know I wouldn’t be where I am today in the field if it hadn’t been for some really excellent examples who have stood at a podium and unleashed their wisdom upon a group of eager students or those who take time to talk to me (and others) personally about genealogy-related topics.

Those who have “gone before” taking the time to teach those of us coming next is one of the best parts of the genealogical community. A big thank you to all of those who have gone before and are “up there” at the podium (or writing books and articles, or teaching webinars, or leading small study groups). You’ve been a great influence on me!

Genealogical Gratitude – Coffee!

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English: A photo of a cup of coffee. Esperanto...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia, Share Share Alike)

I don’t know about you, but I am in love with coffee. I am so grateful for coffee and how it impacts my genealogical research. I come from a long line of coffee drinkers so I am sure it runs in the gene pool! I am especially grateful for peppermint mochas. Plain coffee (with cream and sugar) is an excellent treat for next to the computer in the chilly Colorado winters. Also because it keeps me awake at night when I get on a research roll or get me going in the morning after a long night of working. Coffee is a fun way to meet up with friends and fellow genealogists! Coffee is a treat beyond the cup, it brings people together and helps create memories!

Wanna meet for coffee sometime? I’m up for it!

Genealogical Gratitude – Technology

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Assorted_smartphonesIn my last post I expressed by gratitude for the Internet, however, I am also thankful for technology in a more broad sense. In ten seconds, I can scan an aging photograph, have a copy on my computer and in another 10 seconds, I can send it to a distant cousin who may have never seen the photo. I am grateful for technologies like my scanner, computer, large monitor, smartphone with camera, iPad (with Kindle app), as well as software such as Reunion, Evernote, Google, WordPress, Photoshop, iChat, Skype, and so on.

The speed with which I can research, collect and manipulate data and share with others is astounding. Stop and look around your office, look at the apps on your smartphone, look at the Applications folder on your computer and just try to fathom how cool it all is, how utterly life-changing technology has been over the last 20 years!

I am super-grateful for my technology! How about you?

Genealogical Gratitude – The Internet

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arrowI don’t know how we ever got along before the Internet. (Well, I do, but it was a slow process!) I am so grateful at the speed with which I can communicate with my family, friends, colleagues and clients. I am grateful that I can attend a Webinar and brush up on a topic without having to drive a long distance or paying a large fee. I am grateful that I can research late into the night in my bunny slippers and jim-jams. I am especially grateful for the wonderful “cousins” and friends I’ve made almost exclusively because of the Internet. I mean I know that Josh Taylor’s dog is a dachshund named Twix and that Dear Myrtle has adorable grand kids, that Footnote Maven writes incredibly entertaining stories about her cat (Monkey Kitty) and dog (Bullet). I have since been able to connect with many of my Internet friends and various conferences and institutes. I am also grateful that the Internet allows me to close the distance between me and my ancestors, not only through research but with sharing and collaborating with other researchers.

In short, the Internet has closed the time and space gap between me and the rest of the world, and I am grateful!

Genealogical Gratitute – November, Remember

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2013-11-07 02.11.00 pmNovember being the month of Thanksgiving, I thought I would share some of my genealogy-related gratitude, things I’m thankful for in terms of my genealogical life. We all have things we are grateful for in all facets of our lives and it’s a good idea to recount those once in a while. I know I tend to get bogged down by the what’s-going-wrong that I forget what-went-right. Every once in a while it is a good idea to take an inventory.

Gratitude is the practice of being grateful, of making yourself (and others) aware of just how good you have it. Research has shown (and Buddhists have known for centuries) that practicing gratitude daily is one surefire way to eliminate the blahs, to find happiness. By focusing on what we have (genealogically speaking – photographs, diaries, bibles, original records of any kind) instead of what we don’t have (birth dates, marriage records, identities of the next generation), we can be happy with what we’ve accomplished.

I know that I have become frustrated with my research results from time to time and have sunken into a pit of “I’m a terrible researcher. Maybe I should go flip burgers.” We all have research that does not give us the answers we want. We all have brick walls, burned courthouses, missing records, relatives with tight lips and grips who don’t want to share and unsatisfied clients.

Every once in a while I have to stop myself and look back at what I have done, what I have found, where I have been to appreciate what I have going forward. Sometimes a trip down “memory lane” is all that’s needed to refresh, revitalize our genealogical attitude! So this month, get ready to see some of my gratitudes, maybe they are similar to some of your own!

 

Census Hurdles – Searching Tips and Tricks

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2013-10-07 03.46.42 pmAfter our tour through some of my favorite census hurdles, let me sum up with some of my corresponding tricks for dealing with them.

Language Barriers
Think in terms of thick accents and how the names may have sounded.

SOLUTION: Create a list of all possible spellings of your name to use when searching.

Literacy
While you may know exactly how your ancestor’s name was spelled, the census takers and indexers did not. They did the best they could.

SOLUTION: Keep an open mind about how names were spelled in both the census and the census index.

Indexing Errors
Hard-to-read handwriting & typos

SOLUTION:  Learn about old handwriting. Read a lot of old handwriting. Look at tutorials, articles and examples on old handwriting. Be sure to make “corrections” at Ancestry.com using the “add alternate information” link.

Quality of Information Given
How do we know who gave the information and how accurate it is? We don’t.

SOLUTION:  Take every bit of information from the census as a clue, not the truth. Always, always, always corroborate census data with other research. Back up your findings with birth, marriage, death, land records and other research.

Microfilming Errors
Did all of the pages get microfilmed?

SOLUTION:  Pay attention to the page numbers in the upper corners of the census records. If there are missing pages, you can write to the National Archives for missing pages.

Are the images readable?

SOLUTION:  Not much can be done here. You may have some luck with putting the image into a photo editing software and adjusting the brightness and contrast. Also looking at the images in the negative can be helpful.

Some other things you can do to make your census research more successful:

  • Use indexes but do not rely solely on them, as we’ve seen, there are errors.
  • Make a list of spelling variations. Write down every way you can think of that the surname could be written. Write down every way you find it indexed.
  • Read the census line by line for a given district if you are sure they should be there and you can’t find them in the index.
  • Learn about old-style handwriting. You can learn a lot about this by volunteering your time as an indexer through FamilySearch Indexing.
  • Corroborate census info with other research.
  • Don’t give up. Just because you don’t find them in an index doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Get creative with your searches.

I hope this series has given some ideas of what our ancestors, census takers, indexers, microfilmers, and researchers have to deal with during each step of the process. Between when the census taker stepped foot on our ancestors’ doors to these census indexes and images displaying on our computer screens many potential mistakes could have been made. Keep in mind the reasons, try to imagine the situation, and be creative in searching and you will have more success using census records.

 

Census Hurdles – Microfilming Errors

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When moving from one level of human interaction with a piece of information to the next, we introduce more and more potential for errors. I’ve already discussed some sources of errors such as language barriers, literacy, handwriting, and indexing errors. There is also the possibility of errors in microfilming.

If you are browsing images either online or on microfilm, you might want to pay attention to the page numbers. Were any pages skipped when microfilming the original census books? If there weren’t necessarily page numbers on every page, you can pay attention to dwelling and family numbers to be sure they are in sequential order and none were skipped from page to page.

I have been victim to those really dark or really faint microfilmed pages. Check out some of these beauties:

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I’m not sure how we are really supposed to read these, let alone the indexers. Thankfully, there have been some really great advances in digitization and many of these dark and light images can be corrected.

Other oddities I have seen:

  • hands in the image
  • pages not completely turned
  • blurred images, as if the page was being turned while being filmed
  • other pieces of paper in the image, over the census

I’m sure everyone has a fun example of microfilming errors. I’m hoping over time, these errors are being fixed and improved. It just highlights the fact that no one is perfect, right down to the folks who run the photography equipment.

Census Hurdles – Who was the Informant?

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641px-Volkstelling_1925_CensusYou might think that your ancestors were always home when the census taker knocked on the door. Or that they all sat down, had a cup of coffee or tea while they cooperated completely with the census taker’s questions. Honestly, we have no idea what happened. With the exception of the 1940 census, we have no idea who gave the information to the census taker. We don’t know if it was the head of household, his wife, one of the children, a neighbor, or if the census taker made it all up. We just don’t know.

This not knowing creates a lot of problems for genealogists who are trying to establish proof using the principles of the genealogical proof standard. Having an unknown informant on a record does not allow for the researcher to determine how much firsthand information that informant was likely to have. Therefore we have to assume that the information given to the census taker is suspect, likely to have errors. This should not stop us from using the census. On the contrary! The census is one of the records sets I use most often to establish ancestors in a time and place.

Having an unknown informant is one of those hurdles of the census. Use the data you find in the census as a road map to other documents, as the skeleton upon which other research is built. Corroborate everything you find in the census with other documents, with known informants. Only then will you be able to know you have the correct information.

Unfortunately there is no genealogical time machine that allows us to go back to the day the census taker visited our ancestors. (I’m still working on that technology in my lab. I’ll keep you posted.)

Census Hurdles – Indexing Errors

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We’ve all seen it. You’re looking at the index on a commercial website and you just can’t find that name you are looking for. But there are a few that are close in other regards. Maybe the first name is correct but the last name is not even close. Maybe the last name is completely butchered but the names of everyone in the household match up to what you are expecting. And then you click to see the actual census image and there they are, the last name as plain as day to you. Why then, was it indexed so poorly?

For example, unable to find William Avery, I stumbled upon this index entry:

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It very clearly says “Avery” to me, but then again, I KNOW the name I’m looking for. Thankfully Anestry.com allows you to “add alternate information” that shows up when searching. Through collaboration, some of those incorrect index entries can be corrected.

Indexers aren’t always from the same geographic area as the records they are indexing. They may not even be from the same country. We’ve all heard that sometimes these indexing projects are farmed out of the country for cheaper labor. I don’t know for sure, I haven’t looked into it myself, but I know that even indexing records from a different part of the United States can be a challenge! (I’ve done it through FamilySearch Indexing and am much more comfortable indexing Ohio records than I am Georgia records.)

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A sample of a section in Ancestry.com’s wiki on how to read old handwriting.

Aside from lacking familiarity with an areas surnames, there’s the problem of bad handwriting, old script-style handwriting, archaic letter formations, and the like. Good indexers have to try to understand old, swirly, twirly script, they have to become detectives and handwriting analysis experts. Most of the time, they simply do the best they can. There is the human factor to indexing. No one is perfect. Even the best make mistakes.

I am an active indexer for FamilySearch Indexing as well as working on indexing projects for my local area, and have come to have a completely new understanding for what it takes to be an indexer. It has allowed me to have some compassion for those who have so kindly and graciously indexed records for my benefit. I understand why ‘f’ and ‘s’, ‘z’ and ‘g’ or ‘a’ and ‘o’ get confused sometimes. Let’s not forget to be grateful for the speed with which records get indexed these days and the wide accessibility of them. (Almost gone are the days of reeling microfilm page by page by page.)

When you see those errors, think about me (and the thousands of volunteers like me), indexing your ancestors’ records to the best of my ability.