Tips and Tricks

How Wildcard Searches Can Uncover Ancestors

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.

Finding Your Female Ancestors Through Pension Files

Pension files are a great place to find our female ancestors. I didn’t know who my great, great grandmother was until I obtained my great, great grandfather, John Malin Carder’s Civil War pension files. In those files, I learned that John had been married three times.  First, to Elizabeth Steen and then to Caroline Morris. Both died very young. John then married Eliza Jane Dobbins to whom he was married until his death nearly sixty years later.

The Curse of the “Medium Build” Description

Images of our ancestors bring so much life to a person previously only known through census records and cemeteries. But for many we simply don’t have the coveted photograph. Our imagination does the heavy lifting. I don’t know about you, but I tend to conjure up all farmers about the same! Sad really. You’d think that I would be pleased by the descriptions offered in some documents, most specifically the World War I Draft Registration Cards (DRC).

Never Trust a Document – or a Patronymic

After my last blog, Linda gave me some food for thought. So we’re getting away from actual documents this time, and looking at patronymics. Not to be confused with patronising, which is something the British are REALLY good at. (British forces arrive in somebody else’s country: “Oh, you don’t have a flag? Oh dear. That’s a shame. You can’t have a country without a flag. Very sorry. Look, we’ll plant ours. Now your country belongs to us”)

Never Trust a Document – or an Aunt

When I was a teenager, my Aunty A (whose real name was Annie Jane, but she’d never admit to it – and whose husband, I understand, didn’t tell her for months that he’d registered their baby daughter’s name as something other than they had agreed – fancy calling your child, in all innocence,  by a name that isn’t hers….) told me she was 39. Since she was six years older than her sister, my mother – and since my mother was 24 when I was born, I didn’t even need to count on my fingers to work this one out. It has been a long-standing fact in the family ever since, that Aunty A is STILL 39.   Officially.  Oh yes.

When History Comes Knocking at Your Door, Literally!

It was about noon on a typical Houston summer day (Hot!) The kids and I were home, deciding it was just too hot to go to the grocery store – popcorn for lunch would be just fine! We were all startled when the doorbell rang, not because no body ever came over, but because it rarely worked.

Never Trust a Document – Especially On Your Wedding Day

I’ve found so many marriage records in my family where the bride’s age has been shaved a little…..or her marital status has been adjusted (leading to the discovery of two cases of bigamy) …..or a father’s employment has been inflated (one of the recurring ones  is the elevation of an ag.lab. to ‘farmer’ – we had aspirations, but not status, it seems)…..or a father’s name has been changed or even invented.  So maybe the answer lies in people’s perception of marriage?  It has to be one of the most conventional and respectable states in our society; so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if brides and grooms (more often brides, in my experience) adjust inconvenient truths to become the life-story they would rather tell, when embarking on this stage of life.

Never Trust a Document: A Story of My Great-Aunt Ceridwen

To begin at the beginning [spot the quote]:  NEVER TRUST THE WRITTEN WORD Why? Because all too often it’s the product of what somebody wants to hide or change; or the product of some official’s poor hearing, poor sight or inability to interpret handwriting. Occasionally, it’s wrong because somebody innocently believes something untrue.

Family History Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone

If you have ever been interested in finding out more about your ancestors, realize that what you learn and what you discover can’t be unseen or unheard and the stories you uncover may astound and even upset you.