Thomas Carroll Mitchell’s father, according to his death record, was Joseph Mitchell. Also according to his death record, Thomas was born in “Jonesburrow”, TN in 1826. So, in the 1830 census he should be 4 years old. I looked in TN and turned up a Joseph Mitchell with a boy under 5. This could be the family. I looked for other Joseph’s and none of the others (there were only 2 or 3 total) had a boy under 5. This document is located in my Ancestry.com shoebox.
This could be a possible father to Thomas. I’ve got to do some more checking and working by elimination since I can’t find anything else about him right now.
Thomas Carroll Mitchell was born in Jonesboro, TN 18 Sep 1826. [1870 census, obituary, death certificate]
He married Angeline (maiden name unknown but “Higden” is a possibility) sometime before 1850. [1850 census]
They had 12 children. [census research]
He died 29 Apr 1914 in Upper Loutre township, Montgomery County, MO. [death certificate, obituary]
My biggest aim right now is to locate their marriage record. I suspected that they were married in Barren County, KY around 1849 because they are in the 1850 census there, married and with no children. However, research into that county has turned up nothing.
One of the beautiful wooded areas on the campus of Samford University. Photo taken by the author.
Samford University in Birmin’ham, Alabama is a gorgeous campus teeming with beautiful architecture, wonderful magnolia trees and apparently snakes. It is in its 174th year as a private university. I have lived in Wyoming and Colorado since 1988 and having been in a dry climate for that long I had nearly forgotten about lush, green vegetation, rolling hills, rivers, lightning bugs and all other things that come along with just a little bit more precipitation.
I am here attending my first ever IGHR (Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research). Tomorrow I will have the pleasure of learning from Elizabeth Shown Mills for an entire week! I am excited (and truth be told, a little bit nervous) to be here. There are many rumors that the nightly homework can be quite involved!
Today was the welcome dinner where I got to meet and visit with some of my colleagues and fellow classmates. I especially enjoyed the time getting together with the ProGen Study Group, past and present. What an amazing group of people. The mentors and coordinators are truly interested in promoting genealogy as a profession and in giving each individual participant their attention when needed. Many of my fellow students I have never met in person, so have a chance to put a face with the name is really fun.
Since sleep might be scarce for the rest of the week, I think I will turn in early tonight!
I recently decided to attend the FGS (Federation of Genealogical Societies) annual conference this year which is being held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, home of the Allen County Public Library, August 21-24, 2013. When I made my genealogy plans for the year, I hadn’t included FGS. I just had so many trips I wanted to take and I had to limit myself. However, several things lined up that allowed me to go. First of all, I have a travel companion that will help cut down expenses (you know who you are). Second, I have never been to the Allen County Public Library. Third, I really have a hard time resisting the chance to listen to wonderful speakers such as D. Joshua Taylor, John Colletta, Elizabeth Shown Mills, Tom Jones, Mark Lowe, Curt Witcher, George Morgan, and that’s just the beginning; there are dozens of great speakers on the schedule. Forth, did I mention the Allen County Public Library?
In addition to attending lectures that are sure to increase my knowledge and skills, I am planning on doing a bit of research at the Allen County Public Library. From their 16-minute Orientation Video I learned that the Genealogy Center in the ACPL has over 340,000 printed volumes including published family histories, county histories, directories and local records from across the United States and Canada as well as holdings for the British Isles, Ireland and Western Europe. Also, they have over 550,000 pieces of microfilm and microfiche. This video also walks you through each of their five genealogy rooms. ACPL is also the creator of PERSI (the Periodical Source Index) which indexes surnames and topics from periodicals.
I had some collateral ancestors in one of my brick walls that lived in Allen County. Carrill Long married Harry Rudd in Michigan. She was born in Missouri abt. 1892 and died in Fort Wayne, 12 July 1967. She is buried in Wood County, where the rest of her family lived. However, I don’t know a thing about her husband, Harry. I will be looking into Harry Rudd and why they moved to Fort Wayne. The couple are not buried together, she died before he did and I speculate that he remarried and is buried with his second wife. But I need to find the proof!
I am also very interested in learning about what other great treasures can be found at ACPL. Much of my ancestry is based in Wood County, Ohio, which is in the northwestern part of the state. Being that close to Allen County, I hope I might find other resources I had not discovered before. Family histories, county histories, periodicals, maps, microfilms, and more!
With all of the time I will be spending at the conference and then at the library, with their extended hours for conference attendees, I wonder if I will get any sleep! But who needs sleep with all of the great genealogy happening?
Being an “organized genealogist” is like trying to reach enlightenment. It seems like such an unattainable goal, like me climbing Mount Everest. (I’m lucky if I can climb the stairs sometimes!) However, there are many tips and tricks, blogs, books, magazines and people (they call them “professional organizers”) to help you get and stay organized.
A new Facebook community got me thinking about this topic. Susan Peterson started the community “The Organized Genealogist” which allows genealogists the chance to swap ideas, photos, ask/answer questions and get some great tips on organization geared directly at genealogists. People have been sharing their personal systems for organizing everything from their photos, to their files and research to their entire office. You should go and visit. It is a great group to be a part of.
Currently my office is crammed into our guest bedroom. I mean crammed. I have boxes of books stacked in the corner, bins of office supplies stacked up, two bookshelves over-flowing, a card table, a few piles on the floor, two small filing cabinets, a hutch, on top of the hutch… well you can see for yourself:
There is no way for anyone to use this room! When we have visitors, I have to “clean up” which means put everything into a pile on top of my desk while they are visiting. I’m not saying I mind having visitors, I am saying I mind not having a REAL office.
We have lived in this house for 10 years now, and for the entire time, my dear husband has been “finishing” the basement. Granted, he works a full time job to put food on the table and the roof over our head that houses said basement, however, this summer is the summer of completion! I can count the projects left to complete on one hand: finish the mudding/sanding in one section of the basement (the rest is done), prime that section, paint, carpet, floor/window trim. We did a lot of prep work over the last few weeks to get this ready to finish. We moved a lot of stuff upstairs (the upstairs is a series of piles right now), we stapled and taped plastic to various sections of the basement where we’d like to keep the dust to a minimum, we bought primer and paint, we have some cash set aside for carpet (I hope it’s enough) and we moved as much out of those two rooms as possible to give clear working space for sanding/painting and carpet.
There are basically two large sections to our basement, one will be family/TV/video-game play area and the other, larger section will be our offices. My husband and I will be getting two of those U-Shaped desks to put together, his and her offices. There will be plenty of room for shelves, I have two large filing cabinets already that were given to me (I love free!) and the basement has really nice large windows that let a surprising amount of light in.
So, this fall look for the “grand opening” of GenealogyPants, LLC home offices! I will keep you updated!
So, I went “on the clock” (for BCG certification) in December 2012. In the meantime a lot of “life” has happened but a lot of “life” is going to happen when you take a step like this. I’m the type of person who needs a deadline, so I went on the clock. Once I sat down and tried to locate a family/problem for my case study, I got concerned. One look at my office, my binders, my computer files, told me that I was horribly unorganized and I needed to do a lot of catching up, fixing, data entry (I have a thumb drive with scans from Salt Lake City from 2009 that I haven’t worked with yet!) and organizing, before I could even make an educated guess on the case study.
Well, in the last week, I went through a very large pile of notes with “to-do” items on them, some dating back to 2003. They said things like “find tombstone for …” or “locate obit for …” or one sticky note “I am not convinced that ––– is really –––’s father.” (Names being left out in case this REALLY is my case study.) That one sticky note sent me on a swirl of reviewing documents, notes, computer files, quick look-ups on Ancestry and FamilySearch. I MAY just have found my case study. I have a few pieces of indirect evidence but nothing conclusive that says who the parents of my subject are.
This project is so counter-intuitive for the genealogist. If you’ve never reviewed the Case Study requirements for the BCG portfolio, it basically requires that you use the genealogical proof standard to solve a problem of conflicting evidence or by using of indirect evidence. I know that I have many of these in my family research, but finding a good one can be challenging. And then, what happens when you start to work hard on it and then find that piece of direct evidence? … ah … back to square one.
I did get through my pile of to-dos and either figured out that they had been done (recycled), or if they were easy to do (just did it), or they went into my Evernote to-do list (then recycled). Now, on to some research! So pray for my project, that I find no direct evidence on this man’s parentage and instead am able to locate a lot of really good indirect evidence!
I just wanted to share the events I will be attending as well as the programs I will be giving for the rest of the year. I have a busy few months ahead!
May 23-June 2: Road trip to visit family and do a little research in Ohio
June 8-14: I will be attending Elizabeth Shown Mills’ course on methodology at IGHR (Birmingham, AL)
June 21-July 5: Family vacation to Minnesota (I don’t have any ancestors up there, so I will probably do a lot of reading and/or writing when we aren’t fishing and canoeing.)
The Federation of Genealogical Societies is hosting their 2013 Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana, August 21-24. You’re invited to attend and see what you think of the updates to genealogy. The theme for this year is “Journey Through Generations” and will have several tracks, one of which is a focus on Midwestern research which I am particularly interested in. I wanted to pass along some really great information about the conference. I have been highly impressed by the amount of online information that FGS has been giving to genealogists. Their conference blog is constantly full of new information about the plans for the conference, tips on planning research days around the conference, lists of repositories in the area, and lots more.
I am very excited by the various tracks being offered:
Records
Methodologies
Military
Transportation
Online resources
Genetics
Midwest and neighboring states, including repositories and religious communities
Federal records
Technology
Migration and immigration
Writing, speaking, and publishing
Ethnic origins and records, including European, German, African American, and British Isles
Check the program on the conference web site for specific presentations.
The exhibit hall, plus evening social programs Wednesday and Friday, round out a full genealogical experience for the next-to-last week of August. And next door to the Grand Wayne Center, the world-famous Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center will be offering extended research hours early and late during the conference. Since I have never visited this library I am excited to be able to at least take a look and learn firsthand what is available and possibly plan a research trip in the future.
It has been about a month since I attended RootsTech. I wanted to let the dust settle a bit before I wrote about it. It was an enjoyable trip. As a mom of two kids, ages 10 and 12, it was a nice break from reality. Grandpa came and took care of the kids so my husband and I could attend. The best part was not having to worry if everyone had eaten or had their homework done.
The second best part was when we checked in at the conference hotel, we were told that the organizers of RootsTech had arranged for free self-parking and a free breakfast buffet every morning! That alone saved my husband and I around $200. What a deal! We also frequented a restaurant that was new to us, the Blue Lemon. It had healthy food with gluten-free options that were reasonably priced and not at all far away from the conference center and library.
The conference itself was full of energy. If you’ve read anything about RootsTech (everyone else has already blogged about it by now) I’m sure you know that it was the biggest one yet with over 6,700 attendees! There were people I knew there that I never saw! It was very exciting and full of great ideas, forward thinkers and new products. I am going to highlight a few of my favorite programs or products beyond the big sponsors and obvious happenings of the conference, which have already been written about:
D. Joshua Taylor gave a very interesting program on “Gaming and Virtual Realities: Attracting the Next Generation of Genealogists” which highlighted some very intriguing comparisons between gamers and genealogists, probably most profound is that each group can sit at a screen and “waste” hours of time every day, yet neither feels like it is a waste of time. Also, each group, when they get really into it, keep amazing records. I know gamers who will keep detailed notes about how to solve the games or strategies that have worked, etc. Doesn’t that sound like a genealogist’s research log?
Evidentia was there showcasing their exciting new software that guides your research through the genealogical proof standard. You can download a free 30-day trial (for MAC or PC) at: http://ed4becky.com/products/evidentia/
Kin2 is still in Beta but it has some great potential to be a fun website. It uses Facebook connections and a large celebrity database to find out who you are related to and how. Currently there’s no gedcom upload possibilities yet, but when I spoke with the representative at the booth, he said that was one of the first things they would be implementing. Also, this site has some very cool pedigree charts, very modern looking and not at all like your basic pedigree chart.
Another new product that is “coming summer 2013” is HalfTale.com. It is sort of a collaborative blogging, family history, oral history tool. It is hard to describe, however the tour I was given had me very excited. Often I will email a relative and ask them a simple question “Do you know what happened to grandpa’s military uniform and medals?” to which I will get a several paragraph reply with all kinds of memories about that question and others. This site will be a way to collaboratively answer those questions and create “walls” or “pages” on various ancestors that many family members can contribute to. It’s not available yet, but you can sign up for a beta test account.
The worst part: the internet was either incredibly slow or at capacity and you couldn’t get on at all. For being a “tech” conference, you’d think they would plan on a lot of internet-ready gadgets. I like to look at the websites the speakers are showing, while they are talking, and was completely unable to. In addition, the hotel internet was very, very slow. So connectivity was limited for the week. Another aspect that was something of a let down for us, most of the sessions we attended seemed to be a bit basic for the level we are at. My husband, who is a developer, felt like many of the sessions he attended did not go into the depth he expected or would have liked to have attended. Personally, I attended several that were marked with “I” for intermediate in the program and felt that they were more like beginner level sessions. I struggled to find sessions that challenged me and brought me completely new ideas.
Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience. I enjoyed the exhibit hall the most, learning about new products, services, and learning opportunities as well as talking to other genealogists, developers, speakers and other collaborators. Next year, Rootstech will take place on February 6-8, 2014 again in the Salt Palace. I am looking forward to hopefully attending again with my hubby! We had a great time.
I turned in my BCG preliminary application for certification at the end of December, so I’m officially “on the clock” as they say here in genealogy land. It is a little stressful to think of all of the work that lies before me, not only for certification but also while pursuing a Master’s Degree. I have this unrealistic personal belief or maybe it’s my personality type, but I think I can get amazing amounts of work done and love to “climb big mountains” of tasks. I inevitably end up stressed out at various times, but usually I get the things done I say I’m going to do.
There are several things in play that I believe will help me be less stressed and get my portfolio finished. First of all, I am in a group of other genealogists from my general area who are also “on the clock” or plan to be soon and we are working together reading the BCG Standards Manual and understanding the requirements. Also, I am a member of a smaller group, what I call my genealogy “support group.” This is a group of 5 women who have been meeting for many years to discuss what’s new in their genealogy journeys, basically a discussion outlet so our families don’t get bored with our ramblings. Third, while I am pursuing a Master’s Degree, the workload has been quite manageable, only overwhelming toward the end of the semester. Fourth, while I do still have kids at home, they are in school all day and I am not working right now, so, while I am poor, I do have uninterrupted time during the week days to work on BCG and homework.
The BCG website gives a proposed timeline for how long certain projects will take. I began working on my portfolio, in a rather unorganized fashion, a few years ago. So I have at least some rough drafts finished on several of the items. So I feel I have a slight head start on some of the tasks. However, if by December of this year, I am not ready yet, they generously allow you to apply for an extension for 1 year for a nominal fee, which has taken some of the pressure off! Wish me luck!
Thomas Carroll Mitchell’s father, according to his death record, was Joseph Mitchell. Also according to his death record, Thomas was born in “Jonesburrow”, TN in 1826. So, in the 1830 census he should be 4 years old. I looked in TN and turned up a Joseph Mitchell with a boy under 5. This could be the family. I looked for other Joseph’s and none of the others (there were only 2 or 3 total) had a boy under 5. This document is located in my Ancestry.com shoebox.
Genealogy Pants 