Post by papaof2 on Aug 12, 2023 1:54:39 GMT -6
I've been the keeper of the family trees (mine and my better half's) since the first grand was born. At various times, I've gotten requests for a "Family Tree" from two of the grands and questions such as "Did anyone in the family fight in World War I?"
The family trees were easy - just select the grand and tell the software how many generations of ancestors. The WWI info was more difficult because I don't have a lot of info on one son-in-law's ancestors so I could only tell the one asking "My grandfather volunteered for the Navy in 1918" and that she'd need to ask the other grandmother what was known about the males in that line in the WWI time frame - but I could include a list of those in the right age range. Having some records on 10,000 people doesn't mean that I have details on all of them :-(
I thought I did a decent job on tracing the better half's line. I have a digital copy (either via camera or a scanner) of a typewritten family tree someone had done 40+ years ago, but I was almost certain some of his data was questionable and some was simply wrong - the better half was listing as having one daughter but with both girls' names.
Further research showed me that the author of that document had gotten confused by having 5 generations with the firstborn male being named James. A lot of time searching through the US Census records and state and county marriage records let me correct things the previous history collector got wrong, such he had James V being married to the wife of James IV - no, I don't think he was married to his mother and the census records confirm that. And that collector had the patriarch named James.
I found a much newer published history of the family that was assembled by a Marine colonel with a Ph.D. who was living in a location where he could search dusty boxes in courthouse basements. That copy had stamps inside that it was an "extra" sent to the Library of Congress as part of ensuring the copyright. I found the book at Abe Books and it was possibly the best $50 I spent on genealogy research ;-) My online research and his "getting hands dirty" research came to the same conclusions: that family's patriarch was named William and there's no information available about his birth in the US or his arrival on a ship from England (or elsewhere) in the 1700's so no knowledge of this birthplace or date.
Folks usually liked the trees I provided because they included photos of many of the people, including scans of tintypes and other historical types of photographs. Where available, I included birth, marriage & death dates & places and any other interesting bits - such as a family that lived in a different county (same state) in 4 or 5 consecutive censuses. They didn't move - the county lines kept being redrawn. There's a very good tool for following that, called Ani-Map. It can trace a location back through all the available maps and animate the changes so you can literally "see" how the political boundaries changed from year to year. And there was the great-grandmother who was in one year's census twice when she was a kid - once at home and a few days later at her grandparents' house.
I'd never be able to keep mental track of all the close relatives, let alone third cousins, twice removed, without the computer records. And they're even readable ;-)
The family trees were easy - just select the grand and tell the software how many generations of ancestors. The WWI info was more difficult because I don't have a lot of info on one son-in-law's ancestors so I could only tell the one asking "My grandfather volunteered for the Navy in 1918" and that she'd need to ask the other grandmother what was known about the males in that line in the WWI time frame - but I could include a list of those in the right age range. Having some records on 10,000 people doesn't mean that I have details on all of them :-(
I thought I did a decent job on tracing the better half's line. I have a digital copy (either via camera or a scanner) of a typewritten family tree someone had done 40+ years ago, but I was almost certain some of his data was questionable and some was simply wrong - the better half was listing as having one daughter but with both girls' names.
Further research showed me that the author of that document had gotten confused by having 5 generations with the firstborn male being named James. A lot of time searching through the US Census records and state and county marriage records let me correct things the previous history collector got wrong, such he had James V being married to the wife of James IV - no, I don't think he was married to his mother and the census records confirm that. And that collector had the patriarch named James.
I found a much newer published history of the family that was assembled by a Marine colonel with a Ph.D. who was living in a location where he could search dusty boxes in courthouse basements. That copy had stamps inside that it was an "extra" sent to the Library of Congress as part of ensuring the copyright. I found the book at Abe Books and it was possibly the best $50 I spent on genealogy research ;-) My online research and his "getting hands dirty" research came to the same conclusions: that family's patriarch was named William and there's no information available about his birth in the US or his arrival on a ship from England (or elsewhere) in the 1700's so no knowledge of this birthplace or date.
Folks usually liked the trees I provided because they included photos of many of the people, including scans of tintypes and other historical types of photographs. Where available, I included birth, marriage & death dates & places and any other interesting bits - such as a family that lived in a different county (same state) in 4 or 5 consecutive censuses. They didn't move - the county lines kept being redrawn. There's a very good tool for following that, called Ani-Map. It can trace a location back through all the available maps and animate the changes so you can literally "see" how the political boundaries changed from year to year. And there was the great-grandmother who was in one year's census twice when she was a kid - once at home and a few days later at her grandparents' house.
I'd never be able to keep mental track of all the close relatives, let alone third cousins, twice removed, without the computer records. And they're even readable ;-)