Chickens Come Home To Roost.

Let's be brutally honest.  I suspect I am not the only one with at least some disordered documents - loosely sorted stacks (paper) and/or roughly labeled files (electronic). I also suspect that I am also not the only one using the time without FHL and Archives (and research trips!!) to explore all the nooks and crannies of house and computer, in the hope of exhuming semi-lost items and mostly forgotten wonderfuls.  

A part of me is thinking of Carter peering into Tut's tomb.. "I see wonders." 

Some time ago, I saw the touring exhibit on the most recent finds at Pompei.  Among the artifacts was a delicate gold necklace with shaped dangles, continuous and graduated.  Behind me I heard the murmur, how did they do that?  

It just takes time.  

My computer includes county histories, hundreds of newspaper clips, documents and snips about every aspect of life.   Now has come the reckoning.  Now is the time to order and arrange.

Can do. 

It just takes time. 
        

The goal is to make things findable, so I tweek the alphabet.  When I label a file or a document and use the family name in the titling, I double the first initial, ala RROSS or DDASING.  While it is unlikely that DASING would come up in a search as part of a word, ROSS gets many hits as partial words.  

I label by the BIG branch - so RROSS also includes the women/men who marry into that line, the names Wilkey, Shirley, Barbee, Compton.  CCOMPTON will probably graduate into its own line when I open up that line sideways. Rebecca was born in Virginia, married in Tennessee, and died in Illinois. She promises a great story; her family line ties into a land grant from Lord Fairfax.  How cool is that!!

Back to the piles  -- afterall, lockdown will be over in only 5 months. 

TA... 

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on other shores: Earlier this month, I submitted my paperwork for DAR membership.  My grandmother was a member; she joined during the 1920's.   Paperwork for her does not cover current requirements; lucky that I'm a genealogist and can find the missing information.  I am kept in the loop on local chapter doings, and have joined in writing cards for overseas soldiers, and sponsoring cemetery wreaths for vets.

Also, am now officially an elected member of the Illinois State Genealogical Society board, and a member of the education committee.  Laura, past president and current chair of this committee has a large vision for activities for this committee.  It promises to be an exciting time.  Stay tuned for news. If you are in Illinois and not a member, consider joining.  In fact, if you are not in Illinois, follow and consider joining - with everything via zoom during Covid, you can live virtually anywhere.  What a bonus.

and finally-- and a Happy to you, wherever and whatever you celebrate --  

Dead People Have No Rights -- (though they may well have copyrights!)

Reviewing the underpinnings, with some comments.

Dates:   DAY(1,2,3 etc.)  MONTH (Jan., Feb., Mar. etc.) YEAR (4, repeat 4 digits) 

            Why?  My cousin got a birthday card from a friend in Belgium on June 6. My cousin's birthday is June 1.  That's why.  6/10 is ambiguous. 10 May points to one specific day in the year.  Why 4 digits for the year?  When research stretches into 3 centuries, though you know you will remember that a certain snip is from 1820 and not 1920, I guarantee you won't. 

                Also interesting, and good to know, between 1582 & 1752 both Julian and Gregorian calendar were in use, depending on where. Genealogists get to juggle double dates, which is particularly interesting when calculating ages. More info here. [1]  

Names: Record as you would introduce - Maggie Thompson, Roger Anderson,  Douglas Scott.  Why?  With this convention, one does not wonder whether Douglas Scott is Mr. Scott or Mr. Douglas.  

Places: Small to large or large to small.  Ancestry offers small to large in their drop-downs; Family Search prefers Large to small when you fill in the catalog box.  For your own work, choose one (either) and stay there.  (Please include the county, sometimes it makes a difference when trying to work out a puzzle.)   Why?  Lots of cities share names with counties, and counties with states, and lots of city names are in more than one state.  Hence, Hartford, Washington Co., New York.

      

Living People & Privacy: Genealogical databases blank out vital statistics on living people.  This action, unfortunately, hardly needs a why.  Stolen identities and hacked everything require diligence, for ourselves, our families and those whose information we tend, both online and on paper.  

Dead People Have No Rights:  Unfortunately true.  Small rant here.  My mother died in April.  I have a tree on Ancestry, but the youngest person included, and long dead, is my grandmother.  Three days after my mother died, Ancestry planted a snapshot of her on my home page.  I do not know where the person ID'd as the contributor got this snapshot and he has not replied to any post through Ancestry.  Annoyed hardly starts to cover it. 

            However, dead people do continue to hold copyright. Current copyright law gives ownership of writings (and other creations) made on or after January 1, 1978 to the creator for their life plus 70 years. Interestingly enough, a letter's content still belongs to the writer, while the physical item belongs to the recepient, who may give away, sell or display the letter, but not publish. [2]

            Who would have thunk that?

TA... 

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1. An interesting article is posted on the Connecticut Library Site. Google: Connecticut State 

    Library >  History & Genealogy > Colonial Records & Topics > 1752 Calendar Change. 

2. Roam around Copyright Alliance:  https://copyrightalliance.org/about/

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since last posting: the tree is up and the larder is being stocked with celebratory food for Christmas and NY eve -- smoked salmon, herring in wine, "smelly" cheese.  You'd think we were Scandanavian (not!).  Education continues. With more than 3/4 of my lines leaping to Germany and the encouragement of a colleague, I have started DuoLingo.German, learning what I could have absorbed as a youngster. My grandmother spoke German but wouldn't speak it/teach it to her daughter (my mother).  Grandma often said, "We are in America. We are Americans. We speak English."  So I know the sounds, from songs and food names, but the language is being found again.   

Pencil, Paper, Films & Books

Back in the day, the first activity of a newbie genealogist was writing the details of their nuclear family into a lineage chart and a family group sheet.  Then the lineage chart parents sprouted branches for the grandparents, and two more family group sheets appeared. By this time the newbie had met the US census, and grabbed info from films, which taught geography and which also required learning how to use indexes, and probably soundex.  

Next steps included getting paper (official documents) to certify the information from family birthday books and "Aunt Sally" rememberings.  Birth & death certificates, marriage licenses, and pictures of gravestones joined the growing paper collection.  If lucky, many family documents were in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in the back bedroom.  If not, getting these documents meant travel to the issuing county or letters with checks. Luck in genealogy friends and casual mentors encouraged full and careful readings of these documents, and embedded hints directed future explorations. To this mix, the newbie would add in a local genealogy group, a few lectures, a weekend conference or two, reading and time.  In a bit, training wheels were left off. 

The amazing thing, however, is that "back in the day" is not 1860 or even 1950.  Back in the day was 30 years ago.  My first steps in genealogy were as written above.  I wrote letters.  I traveled to courthouses. I spent hours with the entire US census on microfilm at the Great Lakes NARA (73rd & Pulaski, Chicago).   I copied census pages longhand, (xeroxed census pages were rarely legible) and xeroxed book pages when in libraries (or more often wrote transcriptions).   Gathered information was studied closely at home, and notes kept track of future searchings. 

 

Today... "way different" is putting it mildly.  Open up a program, enter your parent's and grandparent's names and out pops a family tree of multiple generations.  When you claim them and title this assemblage with your name, the computer program starts sending hints, and an invitation is extended to add these new names to your tree. AI and other people supply you with ancestors; it's like pushing the STAPLES easy button. Do I use these big data bases, absolutely, with many thanks for all the records gathered, and never more than during this strange year.  I use these data bases to supply some of the documents that "in the before" were available only at the ancestor's hometown courthouse, or transcribed or abstracted in reference books available only in large collections.  

Anyway, back to the way back machine. Technology may move into computers that take dictation, rather than fingers on keys, but reasoning still directs what is recorded. The human brain still offers the best network for doing solid genealogy, and reviewing the underpinnings from time to time reminds.

General comments about research:

• Move from the known to the unknown
• Test every hypothesis
• Look carefully at all information available
• The further back, the fewer records
• Decide early (like today) how you are going to keep your information
• Full recording of where you got the info ("citing your sources") is VERY VERY VERY important

 

General comments about forms for the info:

• Record dates – 5 Sept 1897
• Record names – Margaret Simpson 
• Record places – Chicago, Cook, Illinois
• Living people have the right to their privacy – name/dates/locations
• Dead people have no rights 

 

Stay tuned for continuing coverage on these guidelines.  No specific order or schedule. 

If all this is thoroughly known and you feel you could write the next blogs, you still might want to check in every so often.  Other topics will enter the stream.  

(Similar comments were written in 2019, and found last week while "wandering about" my computer looking for documents saved a bit too hastily. (see above about deciding how to keep information.)  Not surprising if you have heard some version of this before, and you may hear some version of this in the future from another, but sometimes a reminder and a fresh voice is a good thing.) 

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since last posting. I am writing for my portfolio, yet, still, continuing, (choose your own word).  Yes, I have taken extensions.  Currently filling in the squares on the KDP lineage/generations.  This is a family I have been living with and collecting tidbits about for almost 30 years, so ... many choices about what to include and what to save for the book.  Continuing my education with conferences, webinars and various discussion groups, enjoying and learning from all. Honing my craft & working --- speaking to local gen groups, and writing.  

TA...