Tag Archives: recertification

Analysis and Correlation Tools used in George Long Project: Timeline

Long, ,

I love timelines. They have so many benefits when it comes to genealogical research. It helps you see an ancestor’s life in order. We get so many records, bits of information, and other clues, that putting them in time order helps me to see their life. It also helps to solve some genealogical problems such as if you’re working with one man or more of the same name, like my 12 George Longs.

The main thing I use them for is to help me find holes in my research. When I find gaps in time especially if they also changed location, I start asking questions, the main one being “what records can I find that will help fill in this gap?”

For George Long, I had twelve candidates. Many of them I could easily eliminate, usually because they didn’t end up in Hancock County, Ohio. Some of them died too early, or married women not named Isabella. But when I narrowed in on the “correct” George Long, I found him in a couple of locations before he made it to Hancock County. I had to be sure his time in those locations made sense. A timeline did this for me.

I’m just showing you part of the timeline, and I’m not showing the footnotes, but rest assured, there are citations for each fact. I needed to show that the George Long in Cross Creek Township of Jefferson County, stopped showing up in the tax lists just as the George Long of White Eyes Township in Coshocton County buys land and starts paying tax in that county. Later, I show the sale of his Coshocton County land (an him no longer on tax lists) just before his purchase of land in Hancock County.

The timeline helped me demonstrate that this was indeed one man and his life events lined up with those of the Hancock County George.

Of course, other records were used, there is a DNA portion to my case, and I had a series of conflicts I needed to resolve, but these last several blog posts have hit the highlights of my George Long project. I hope it gave you a bit of insight into my recertification process.

Analysis and Correlation Tools used in George Long Project: Mind Map

Long, , ,

To keep track of the data, and to be able to visualize the information I was dealing with, I successfully used a mind map on this project. I shared a very zoomed out view in a previous post. I identified 12 George Long candidates! I had to figure out some way to keep track of them, determine which George Long a particular record belonged to, and compare information so I could eliminate the wrong men.

I have not used mind maps much in my previous work. They just didn’t seem to apply to projects I was working on as well as another tool did. When I am writing, I usually start with an old school outline. That’s just how I was trained in my early english writing classes, and it stuck with me and makes the most sense to me. However, it was not working when it came to dealing with all of the George Longs. I had many documents and needed to be able to distill them down to individuals. A mind map worked great for this.

Here is a zoomed in section of my mind map for candidates numbered 1 and 2.

As I collected data from documents, and as I could determine who they belonged to, I added them as a “bubble” to my mind map. The colors didn’t mean a lot except to depict a different type of record, and I wasn’t necessarily consistent. The red bubbles were the starting point information and any records I could tell belonged to the same man.

Keep in mind, the mind map evolves over time. You’ll notice that there is a note in the image above about the 1840 census for a George Long in Columbiana County, that the correct man was found in Coshocton in 1840. That note came later, of course.

As I was working, I would suspect that two men I had were actually the same man, so I would make notes to that effect, such as the question in this image. “Is Candidate #8 the same man as Coshocton George?”

Then I would do more research to answer that question.

I would go around and around with questions and research until I felt like I had a solid understanding of who each man was and why they are not the “correct” George Long.

Again, keep in mind you are seeing the last version of this before I started writing. This was used as the outline to write up my final findings on the George Long project. The mind map, in my use of it, is never meant to be a final product. I would not publish a mind map as a visualization of my research. It is just for my own organization and visualization of the information gathered.

Next time we will look at the timeline I created for this project. It was the other major tool I used to prove which George Long was the correct George Long. Until then…

George Long in Coshocton and Jefferson Counties

Long, , , ,

So, after combing through all of the George Longs that just didn’t fit the parameters of the George I identified in Hancock County (i.e. age, wife, names of children, etc.) I found only one that could have been the man who moved to Hancock County and bought land there in 1848. There was a George Long who owned land in Coshocton County. Why did I look at Coshocton County? If you recall from several posts ago, George Long was supposedly from “Carroll County” (but it wasn’t a county at the time that he was supposed to have been there). So my searches had to take place in the five counties that Carroll was formed from: Stark, Columbiana, Jefferson, Harrison, and Tuscarawas. You may notice that Coshocton is one county to the southeast of that cluster. Why did I look at Coshocton? George’s son, George W. had Coshocton County listed as his birthplace his obituary. We can’t leave any clue unexamined, and thank goodness I didn’t ignore that seemingly one-off comment.

In 1833, George Long purchased 80 acres from William Cunningham in Coshocton County.1 George was listed on the Coshocton County tax lists from 1833 through 1848.2 Then, an 1847 deed recorded that George and his wife Isabella sold the land bought from Cunningham to Ranzel Butler.3

If you recall from the last post, George bought land in Hancock County in 1848.

There was a George Long who paid personal property tax (no real estate tax) in Jefferson County, Cross Creek Township from 1828 through 1831. He was enumerated in the 1830 census there as well, living near Dolly Long, Hugh McCullough, and Alexander McCullough, possible relatives.4 This George Long was not living in Jefferson or Carroll counties by 1840; he had moved on to Coshocton County.

Following tax and land records and comparing them to the censuses, and one clue from a son’s obituary, allowed me to track down George Long in two counties prior to his appearance in Hancock County.

We will discuss some correlation tools I used to keep track of this information and to present it to the judges in the next post or two.

  1. Coshocton County, Ohio, Recorder’s Office, Vol. 11 (1837–1838), p. 601, William Cunningham deed to George Long, 8 Feb 1833; FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C37X-CQF8-9), IGN 8578415. The land was described as the west half of the southwest quarter of S8, T6, R5 in the Military District.  ↩︎
  2. Coshocton County, Ohio, tax records for George Long; Coshocton County Auditor’s Office, Coshocton, Ohio. Records were searched and copied for the years listed; special thanks to Laurie Hermance-Moore MLS, AG® for visiting the Auditor’s office for me. ↩︎
  3. Coshocton County, Ohio, Recorder’s Office, George and Isabella Long, deed to Ranzel Butler, 6 Sep 1847, Vol. 21 (1846–1847), pp. 634–635; FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSLX-LSLC-K), IGN 8194076. ↩︎
  4. 1830 U.S. census, Jefferson County, Ohio, population schedule, Cross Creek Twp., p. 176, George Long household; image, “1830 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8058/images/4093942_00281).  ↩︎

Known Information about William Long

Certification, , ,

Since we work from the known to the unknown, I had already researched the Long family line from myself back to William Long. In William’s records, he overwhelmingly reports that he was born in Ireland in about 1819. (If George Long arrived in Ohio in 1817, then William was born in Ohio, or George did not arrive in 1817 but later, or, William arrived later as a young child and was born in Ireland, but then George would have been married in Ireland, not Ohio… You see how this goes?)

Anyhoo, William married Sarah Metzger on 15 April 1841 in Stark County, Ohio. In 1850, William and his family lived in Allen Township, Hancock County, where he worked as a wagon maker. By 1860, William was farming in Findlay Township to the south of Allen Township. William was killed at Stout’s gristmill at Gilboa, Putnam County, on 13 August 1861, when his clothing got caught up in the belts, and he was dragged into the machinery; his body was horribly mangled.

Knowing the information about William pins him in a time and place. I then looked for George Long in Hancock County, as mentioned in J. W.’s biographical sketch, the family relocated to Hancock County. Two George Longs lived in Hancock County at the right time and were of similar ages.

  1. George W. Long lived in Amanda Township in Hancock County in 1840. A land patent refers to him as George Long “of Franklin County.” Franklin County is not one of the five counties that made up Carroll, and it is located in central Ohio, several counties to the south and west of the counties in question. George of Amanda Township was reportedly born in Maryland. He died on 18 August 1880 and was buried in Salem Cemetery in Houcktown, Jackson Township, Hancock County.
  2. George Long lived in Portage Township in Hancock County in 1850. He purchased 40 acres from William R. Alexander in Portage Township, Hancock County, in 1848. He died in Hancock County on 8 October 1855 and is buried next to his wife, “Isabel,” at Thomas Cemetery.
Map expanded to show the Carroll County cluster, Franklin County, and Hancock County.

So, two candidates in Hancock County exist. I need to determine which one is the father of William before I can then identify which George of the twelve is the correct George. The answer next time…

Identifying 12 Candidates

Certification, , , , , ,

In my recertification project, I examined census, tax, land, and probate records and identified twelve candidates in the right time and place to be George Long, father of William Long. But how did I decide on those twelve?

  1. Census – The biographical sketch of J. W. Long mentioned in the last post stated that William’s father was George Long and he arrived in Ohio in 1817 from “North of Ireland” to Carroll County, Ohio, where he married and had several children. I used that information to look for George Longs in the 1820 and 1830 censuses in the counties that would later make up Carroll County. They also had to have been born in Ireland, and of an approximate age to fit the other criteria such as the approximate age of William. His age was the one I left most wide open in terms of filtering results.
  2. Land – Knowing that many immigrants came to the United States for land opportunities, I identified George Longs in the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office (BLM GLO) database as well as in deed books in the five counties.
  3. Tax – Many counties in Ohio have tax records digitized and online for the years in which I was expecting to find George Long. Tax records can act like a yearly census.
  4. Marriage – Also, many counties in Ohio have marriage records available online for the counties in question in the right time frame to match the information from the biographical sketch. If the correct George Long married in one of the counties that made up Carroll County, then I should find a marriage record, ideally. (I never did.) But the marriage records let me sort out the other Georges into separate individuals.

Basically, I collected every George Long I could find in these records, matched them up as the same man, if I could with other context clues (land descriptions mostly), and boiled it down to twelve candidates. How did I keep track of everyone? Besides just textual notes in Scrivener where they were linked to their records, I also used a mind map which I created in Scapple. I am not traditionally a mind-mapper, it’s just not how I think, but it worked beautifully for this project.

A very zoomed out view of my mind map. You’re not necessarily supposed to understand my thoughts, but this is how I organized those candidates and narrowed it down to twelve separate men.

Mind mapping can be used to organize your thoughts. I’ve been to lectures and webinars on the topic. Many times they are used to help with writing in which you can just dump your thoughts into a mind map in no particular order and then later drag the pieces around to become more organized. I personally generally do better with outlines. However, as you can see, I had a lot of little bits of information I was trying to match up to individuals of the same name.

As I am looking at this mind map now, months after its use was finished, I don’t recall the point of the different colors. I believe the red/pink was definitely the wrong man but the blue and yellow I can’t remember why I used them. I’m sure I had a great reason at the time. They all ended up being the wrong man except for the green one and his connected records. And once I got to a certain point of understanding who was who, I stopped using the mind map and started writing. So, it is unfinished as a work product on its own.

Some of the boxes have questions, thoughts, reasoning, and information items. This was very useful when having to set the project aside to say, make dinner, and work, and then come back to it several days later. This allowed me to recall my thinking about a particular man and why I thought he was the wrong one.

Different tools fit different situations and different brains. You might absolutely love mind mapping and use it a lot more than I do. Someone else may prefer to have done all of this in a spreadsheet. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it works for you.

Recertification: What is it? And What Did I Do?

Certification, , , , , , ,

Once you pass your first portfolio with the Board for Certification of Genealogists, you have to submit a project every five years that shows you are not only keeping up with your skills but also improving on any shortfalls they noted in your last portfolio. This time only one project is required at minimum, but it must meet the Genealogical Proof Standard.

My recertification project this time was to identify the father of William Long, my third great grandfather. I had one starting piece of information about William’s father. His William’s son, J. W. Long’s biographical sketch in the Wood County, Ohio, county history. The sketch claims that his grandfather, George Long, came from “North of Ireland” to Carroll County, Ohio, in 1817, married there, and then had several children named in the sketch: George, William, John, Catherine, Ellen, Susan, and Alexander. It does not name his grandmother, George’s wife.

There are some problems with this statement, which I will breakdown over the course of this series. As I was researching this family, several things became clear to me. The first thing was that Carroll County did not exist in 1817. It was not formed until 1833 when it originated from land taken from five counties: Columbiana, Harrison, Jefferson, Stark, and Tuscarawas.1 When George Long arrived in “Carroll County” in 1817, it must have still been one of these other original counties.

This meant that I had to widen my search from one county to five or six, depending on the time frame.

If George arrived in Ohio in 1817, then surely he was enumerated in the 1820 census. Of the nine George Longs in Ohio in 1820, only two lived in one of the target counties: George Long in Salem Township, Columbiana County, and George Long in Brown Township, Stark County. A similar search in the 1830 census shows there were 22 households in Ohio headed by a man named George Long (or similar), four of whom were in a target county. Depending on what record sets I looked at, I found MANY George Longs in and about the correct area in 1820 to 1840.

I identified twelve (12!) candidates that could have fathered William Long. The main purpose of my project was to examine these twelve candidates and eliminate them until only one man made sense. Some were easy to eliminate, others were trickier. I will share some of my information organization tricks in the next post.

1. Acts of A General Nature Passed at the First Session of the Thirty First General Assembly of the State of Ohio (Columbus: State of Ohio, 1832), p. 8; image, Google Books (https://books.google.com/).↩

I’m Recertified!

Certification, , , ,

I’ve written in the past a little bit about a project I was working on involving George Long, my 4x great grandfather. It was for my recertification project for the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Once you pass your first portfolio, you have to submit a project every five years that shows you are not only keeping up with your skills but also improving on any shortfalls they noted in your last portfolio.

I finished the project in mid-December and shipped it off before the holidays because I did not want to worry about it while trying to relax and enjoy family time. I was told the wait could be up to six months, so imagine my surprise when I got the email informing my my project passed and I am certified for another five years!

Well, when the news came I was sick in be with the worst “stomach flu” I may have ever experienced. We assume it was Norovirus based on the symptoms. My son, who works in hospitals and medical clinics, got it first, and likely brought it home. We immediately started wiping everything down and doing laundry and trying to help him feel better. But I did not escape. I was sick next, and it put me in bed for four solid days, and I honestly didn’t feel like 100% until Sunday, so a full seven days to recover. I got the recertification news on Tuesday (day 3) of being sick. I checked my emails and gave out a very puny “yay.” My husband got a very minor version of whatever our son and I had. Thank goodness, because we needed someone to go get Gatorade and ginger ale and applesauce and otherwise hold down the fort.

I then spent the next week trying to catch up on work. So I’m only now taking a moment to share the news. Over the next few blog posts, I’m going to share some of the problems I solved within that larger project, some of the techniques I used to stay organized, and anything else that jumps out at me about it.

I do want to share this. The anticipation, the worry, the anxiety, and the imposter syndrome I think we all experience (in any field), is real. I definitely worried that some major flaw in my reasoning would be found, that they’d realize they never should have passed me in the first place. Yet, at the same time, I felt more confident on this one than I did on the last recertification. The confidence did nothing to alleviate the anxiety, but, looking back, I think that is a sign of increased skill, knowledge, familiarity with material, and having a good support system, not just with my family but my colleagues as well. It took me one portfolio and two renewals to think, “maybe I DO know what I’m doing.” Ha! If you know me or have been a participant in any of my study groups or courses, I’m sure you’re thinking I’m ridiculous. If you are a certified or accredited colleague of mine, you likely know what I’m talking about. Overall, my point is, don’t let the anxiety hold you back. Do your best and learn from it.

A bit of a rest…

Certification, , ,

Leading up to GRIP (GRIP Genealogy Institute) was a whirlwind. Cyndi Ingle, Paula Stuart-Warren, and I put together a brand new course about researching your farming ancestors. We had so much fun doing the research to put the course together. We ran into so many interesting topics, resources, historical events, inventions, records, repositories, and so on, that the course probably could have been two weeks, easy. But that’s a story for another time. All of that work and then the teaching for the week, while fun, was also exhausting; I took a little rest from the blog.

But I’m back, at least somewhat. I’m now working on a big project that has a due date… my recertification project is in full swing! I cannot believe how fast five years goes. Well, these last five years have been weird anyway, so that didn’t help matters.

I am one of those crazy morning people. Since January and getting ready for GRIP, I have been getting up at 5:30 am and shortly thereafter heading to my office to get a couple of hours of work in before my workday at Ancestry ProGenealogists. It has been going very well. Now that GRIP is over, I’ve been working on this project in the same time slot and have made some great progress.

I’ve written about this project before. The target ancestor is George Long, who died in Hancock County, Ohio, in 1855. Where did he come from before Hancock County? I identified 11 candidate George Longs in the right time and place. So, my project has been first identifying and then eliminating those candidates, and then researching the one left standing to prove he is the right man.

Stay tuned for more fun times.