Have you heard about the Genealogy Do-Over from Geneabloggers creator Thomas MacEntee? It’s creating quite a lot of buzz in the family history world right now, and for good reason. As the name implies, the Do-Over challenges genealogists to go back and …
As some of our regular readers may know, we get many questions each week about how to find free genealogy sites on the web. New family historians can get overwhelmed looking for research options, and end up only using sites like Ancestry …
Known as the “Gun that Won the West,” the Winchester Model 1873 was a very popular rifle in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 720,610 were manufactured between 1873 and 1916, selling for about $50 when they first came out. The guns reduced in price to $25 in 1882 making them increasingly accessible.
At some point or other in their research, every family historian will likely discover the sad fate of the 1890 census. A critical time of population growth and change in America’s history, the 11th census of the United States should have contained the detailed records of more than 60 million individuals. But instead, we have but a few thousand left.
Family Stories Collection: This special collection contains a selection of family history stories submitted by our readers. Originally published April 04, 2014. Thank you to Susan D. Harris for this guest post. Image above: “My grandmother (Martha) as a little …
A Favorite Song Foretells the Discovery of a Long Forgotten Homeland .
Growing up I had always heard about Ethel Murphy, mother to my great grandmother Frances May Catherine Murphy Fazenbaker Knepp. When I started doing genealogy about twenty five years ago I asked my mother Virginia Catherine Miller Johnson about her family. She told me that her grandmother’s mother disappeared and that family “lore” had it that (and I am always skeptical about family lore) that she was killed in some sort of accident around November of 1908 or 1909. I thought, OK, I can start looking to see what I could possibly find. Of course, this was all before the internet.
My mother’s maiden name is Watkins. One of her second-great-grandfathers is Absalom Craddock Watkins, who first shows up on public record in the 1820 Census of Bond Co., IL. With him is his wife Mary “Polly” Little, and enumerated just before him are his father-in-law James Little, Sr. and brother-in-law James Little, Jr. In the 1850 Census, A.C. and Polly are identified as being born in KY, which kept me running in circles for many years following many Littles and Watkins without a connection.
I recently attended with my fiancee the funeral of a young man who not only died too young, but to whom my fiancee had been a sort of second “mother,” his being not just a contemporary of her own children, but living in the neighborhood, thus spending many hours in her home as a child, so his death struck particularly close to her. While I never met the young man, I have reached an age where it is not unusual to pick up a newspaper or receive a phone call, email or letter, and learn of the death of someone I not only knew, but remembered fondly, with it becoming increasingly common for those persons to be my age if not younger!
As part of the exercise, we matched the records to the on-line index of the NYC Health Department. While initially creating some of the records and, later, doing some of the matching, I gained a renewed appreciation for wildcards. First, while at least 90% of the records created by the Church were readable, I could not guarantee some of my transcriptions. Then, when I did the matching, it became clear I was not alone. I found some obvious mistakes in both databases and even some data entry errors where one groom was matched to two different brides and visa-versa. Having spent over 30 years in Information Technology, I was not at all surprised. To err is human.
In March 2011 I had no interest in genealogy. For 73 years the knowledge that I was adopted as an infant satisfied my need to know my origins. My adoptive parents were a loving, nurturing couple who always made it evident that I was an important part of their family. From before I knew what ‘adopted’ meant, I knew that was what I was. Under the care of my adoptive parents I grew up, went to college, married and raised a family. My education opened the door to a rewarding career that provided adequate income, interesting work and travel. Who needs more? Not I.