Video Of The Week: Basic Series: Part 4 - Adding Sources to the Family Tree - James Tanner

We watch a lot of videos in the Cave. Webinars, instructional videos, continuing education videos, you name it! If it helps with our genealogical pursuit we are all over it!

Each week we thought we'd share one we've enjoyed.

Hope you enjoy it too!

©2018 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

Video Of The Week: Basic Series: Part 3 - Beginning Descendancy Research - James Tanner

We watch a lot of videos in the Cave. Webinars, instructional videos, continuing education videos, you name it! If it helps with our genealogical pursuit we are all over it!

Each week we thought we'd share one we've enjoyed.

Hope you enjoy it too!




©2018 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

Video Of The Week: Basic Series: Part 2 - Communicating what you know about your Genealogy ...

We watch a lot of videos in the Cave. Webinars, instructional videos, continuing education videos, you name it! If it helps with our genealogical pursuit we are all over it!

Each week we thought we'd share one we've enjoyed.

Hope you enjoy it too!




©2018 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

Video Of The Week: Basic Series: Part 1 - Getting Started with FamilySearch Family Tree - J...

We watch a lot of videos in the Cave. Webinars, instructional videos, continuing education videos, you name it! If it helps with our genealogical pursuit we are all over it!

Each week we thought we'd share one we've enjoyed.

Hope you enjoy it too!




©2018 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

the Sunday Soapbox | Responsibility In Genealogy or Please, Stop!

Stop! Stop right now! If you are unsure of something, or if it just 'seems' like it might be correct - please, don't do it! Make sure all the facts are, in fact, correct before proceeding. Especially if you are going to meddle in a public crowd-sourced project. You are not being "helpful". You are potentially messing up years of other people's research. Of course I'm talking about genealogy here, and the big, group-effort world trees. There is enough bad genealogy out there already, why add to it? Some days I want to just say "STOP" this is a job for the professionals! But love of genealogy is not something I really want to discourage. However ......

 Earlier this week I was greeted with an inbox message from FamilySearch detailing the weekly changes on my watch list. "Recent Changes In Family Tree" it was titled. Now, usually I glance at these but nothing raises the alarm flag.

Usually.

This week was different. This week listed Samuel Faulkner, James Faulkner, Harrison Faulkner and Martha McBride among others. At first I was excited - another Faulkner researcher!! I've dreamed of this! It's been a long, lonely road thus far and Finding Faulkner has not come easily. But then I saw this:

 DELETED!!!!! What the #%**?!? Oh, no. No, no, no. Then I saw this:

Argh!!! adamjerrypeters1 what are you doing?!? Yes, I hoped that adamjerrypeters1 found Samuel's actual birthdate, christening record and wife's surname, among all the changes he preformed. 

I hoped.

I was wrong. Of course I was wrong.

adamjerrypeters1 was being helpful. Merging some names that were similar enough. Deleting other's that no longer fit the new family. The reason given for the changes? "updated info". That's all. No other explanation, AND none of it was sourced! The 'new' Samuel Faulkner was born and christened in England in 1741, death date UNK. Wife? Martha, daughter? Ann. Married? Yes, in England. Sources? NO. The 'old' Samuel Faulkner was born in New York in about 1740, died in New York about 1811, son Col. James Faulkner. Source? 1.

As for deleting Col. James Faulkner? I just don't know. adamjerrypeters1 replaced him with a James Faulkner also born in 1779, wife UNK, two children (maybe) one born in Nova Scotia, one born in Massachusetts. Then he tried to link Harrison Faulkner, born in New York as another child.

Rat's nest.

I don't know. I have no words. I eventually restored it, left detailed notes and added a few more sources to be on the safe side. I wondered what other messes adamjerrypeters1 left around FamilySearch. And, if no one is watching, will these 'improvements' become 'truths'?

Normally I leave a wide berth around all of the community trees. Geni is the worst of them. I have dabbled in WikiTree, I had not yet really explored FamilySearch, but I did expect more from them. 

Lesson learned.

I have strong, but mixed feelings about all of this. My frustration with all the bad research made public, the abandoned trees, the just plain nonsensical reasoning led me to choose to keep my research mostly off-line. I do keep a private online tree at Ancestry and at FindMyPast. I plan to go 'public' with my Faulkner tree now that the research is solid. This mess of public trees was the driving force behind my decision to start my blog. A place where I could document my research publicly, but where I remained in control. 

Just coming off a week of intense education in the form of  BCG's Free Day of Quality Education webinars, I was reminded that we must be mindful in our work and to practice responsible genealogy.

Genealogy, once  the hobby of grandmothers and the academic crowd. Researching pedigrees and descendants of nobility. Serious stuff. Not a lot of fun.

But genealogy IS fun. And the World Trees make it more inclusive than ever before. It's fun to put your family history up on Ancestry, FamilySearch, WikiTree, etc and find cousins and kin you didn't know existed. And we've all made some rookie moves, okay lots of rookie moves, when we first started out. We had to crawl before we could run.

So, how do we encourage these enthusiastic 'helpers' without chasing them away? How do we keep the public research as accurate as possible? I don't really know. Maybe it's something that just needs to work itself out. 

But please, I beg you. As tempting as it might seem to 'help' out and 'fix' a few things, it does so much more harm than good. And someone, somewhere is left to straighten out your mess. When they had better, more productive things to do.

Preaching to the choir, I know.

Thanks for listening.

©2106 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

Field Notes: My Love Affair With City Directories

Do you use city directories? You should, and here's why.

There is a wealth of information contained in a city directory. There are listings for schools and churches, there are maps, there are business listings, there are lists of newspapers, city officials, societies, new buildings, and of course people!

Chicago City Directory Contents Page 1847

 Trying to figure out which church your ancestor might have attended? Consulting the city directory for that time period will give you a list of churches, their location and denomination.

Can't find someone in the census? Check the city directory!

Think your ancestor might have lived in an area where a tragedy struck? (New York Fire, Chicago Fire, San Francisco Earthquake ...). Consulting the city directory will give you an exact address.

I have used the city directories to determine when my ancestors arrived at a location, and when they departed; much more precisely than a census record could.

Wondered what happened between 1880 and 1900? City directories to the rescue!

They are useful for pinpointing a death as well. Look for the last year your ancestor was listed in a directory and that will give you a clue for possible year of death.

Generally city directories were published for the prior year. For example, the 1860 directory for the City of Chicago was published May 1, 1860 and included names of business and inhabitants who were in the city from May 1, 1859 to May 1, 1860.

Sometimes city directories will not only give you names and addresses, but countries of origin and years of residence!

As with all non-indexed records, you will need patience to flip through - but it is so much fun!

There are some sites that offer a search bar, but I highly recommend a manual search. If you try the search bar and come up empty, don't think there is nothing there! Dig in and page through - you'll be surprised.

Oh, and let's talk about spelling. Just like census and other records, you might find your ancestor's name spelled a variety of ways.

Here is a good article about city directories.

My go-to site for city directories is Fold3 but there are many others. Ancestry has a good collection too. (Which can be accessed through HeritageQuest for free if you belong to a library that participates) For a list of paid and free sites look at FamilySearch. And don't forget Google!

There is a wealth of information contained in these tomes that will add color and depth to your research. All just awaiting your discovery.


(*disclaimer: I have not received any compensation for endorsement of any sites in this post. I am merely passing on my opinions and experience)

Field Notes: I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

In my last Field Notes I made the confession of my haste to win genealogy {again} and the embarrassing error of my ways. It happens. Even to the best of us.

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

But today I would like to share with you how that plan ultimately came together, and I found more information in an afternoon of ease, that hours and hours of struggle.

Once I realized the error of my ways I was able to search intelligently. I was looking for my grandmother's marriage information and her death information. I knew when and where she died, but I did not have a death certificate or an obituary. I only knew a timeframe for her wedding and had no idea where, so that was a bit more of a challenge.

First stop: FamilySearch where I input the correct information and easily obtained an indexed record of her death certificate. (No photo) It didn't tell me anything I did not already know, but I found it. (No marriage information to be found, however)

On to cyberdriveillinois and the Illinois death certificates database. Entering her name and the county where she died (obtained from the indexed record on FamilySearch) I found the entry and was able to learn the official death certificate number. (Made a note to order a copy)

Next stop: my local library online remote access to the historical Chicago Tribune to search for an obituary. I entered my grandmother's name and the year of her death and received 97 results. Scrolling down to the obituary with the correct date, I opened it to learn of the church where her funeral was held. This was brand new information! And, to be quite honest, a little eerie for some reason - this was the first time I had ever laid eyes on it. It made her death all that more real. (Quick backstory, I never knew her, she died when my dad was 15 and my grandfather had already remarried by the time I arrived)

I need to say at this point, I tried the Chicago Tribune archives first with no success. After finding the obituary on the ProQuest site I was then able to return to the Tribune archives site and simply by adding yyyy/mm/dd after the url successfully found the paper, and the obituary, but I did need to "read" the paper to find the obituary section.

From her obituary I learned the church where her funeral was held, and on a hunch I googled it to get an email address. I sent an email inquiring after my grandmother, if she was a church member, and wondering if she may have been married or even baptized there. (Another aside: Before emailing, I checked the FamilySearch non-indexed database on this church, but it stopped a year short of when she might have gotten married - and there was no record of her baptism .....)

The following morning there was a reply to my email from the church pastor!

YES! She had been married there!

He gave me the date, the witnesses and the church where she had been baptized (gotta love the Catholic Church for their record keeping!) Her baptism record had been destroyed by fire, but there was an affidavit from her parents attesting to her baptism.

I FINALLY had an answer to the mystery of her marriage! And her baptism.

**Thorough researcher that I am, I went back to those non-indexed church records on FamilySearch and browsed the baptism records from the correct church - indeed there had been a fire, and the record books noted it! I was able to find her brother's baptism 5 years later, so I felt a bit of consolation.**

Happy ending to an afternoon of armchair research.

_____________________________________

links:

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases/idphdeathindex.html

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/yyyy/mm/dd