I post all of my Ancestor Bio posts to Facebook for family
and friends to see, and today, after posting Andrew’s story, I had a couple
friends ask, “How do you find this stuff?!” I tried to answer on Facebook but
apparently it’s currently not letting me comment on my own or anyone else’s
posts for some unknown reason. But it is letting me post from outside sites to Facebook, so I thought I’d
do a post answering the question. Tomorrow I’ll go back to my compulsive quest
to catch up on the 52 Ancestors challenge (I’ve four more posts planned – not written
yet --this week and then I should be caught up and go back to one a week, so I
can sleep, too – coming up are posts on GGG-grandfather Francis “Franz Joseph”
Henn and GGG-grandmother Katharina Phillipine Blank, #24 & #25;
GG-grandfather John “Josephat” Henn #26; GG-grand aunt Rosa “Generosa” Henn #27;
and, #28, a transcription of a newspaper article describing the inquest into
the death of Rosa’s son, Henry Strauss, jr (the latter is not my normal style
of post but I found it fascinating and hope you will too. In fact, each of
these people had fascinating bits in their stories, just wait and see!)
This post is not my normal sort of post either because I
still consider myself a beginner doing basic research, solely online, on a few
sites, so far. I know there is more on other sites online, and far more to find
offline, but what I am doing now is a first pass through both sides of my
family. At the end of this year (I think) I’ll be going back through, slower,
looking for the harder to find things. Anyway, while I consider myself a
beginner, I realize I have friends who are just
starting that might find what I do in my searches helpful in developing their
own search style.
I discovered in thinking about writing this post that I have
already developed basic search patterns that I apply to each person, with
varying levels of success. So I’m going
to talk about this in steps. (Problem: I don’t know how to do screen shots, so
I can’t show you exactly).
To begin with, I’m lucky enough to have some family research
/ written memories passed down to me on both sides of the family. More on Dad’s
side than Mom’s but both tending to the “born, married, begat, and died" dates and
names. My interest is in filling in the between spaces so I do more societal
background research for my bio posts than you may be interested
in. In any case, even though I have helpful family documents like this, I
consider them clues, not gospel. I’m sure they did the best they could in their
research/ interviewing (in terms of interviewing, probably better than me as I
don’t do enough, because I’m shy and busy.) But I don’t know them & thus
don’t know what they did for research, as most did not attach source documents
or cites, and I don’t know how they think. I know me. I know that I have had
over 20 years’ experience in assessing credibility of evidence as an
Administrative Law Judge, and I’m fixated on being able to document a fact.
True, I work in a small, extremely niche area of the law and I haven’t done a
lot of historical research since college but the principles of analysis carry
over, I think, as well as the application of logic and common sense. (Some things that drive
me nuts from other Ancestry trees: even if the offered person has the right
name, if they don’t have the right kids (or parents if you know them), it’s probably not
the right person. If the kid is born when the putative mother is 8 years old --or
before the alleged mother is born–they aren’t related; if someone is born in Illinois/Indiana
Territory in the early 1800s one month after the mother documented as being in Maryland,
the baby is not that mother's child as no one could get from Maryland to
Illinois/Indiana Territory in a month in the early 1800s – think horses or
walking – let alone an 8 month pregnant woman!)
I. My first step always starts with Ancestry.com. My working tree is there, I have the
International Membership, which is quite helpful now that I’m starting to have
ancestors on the other side of the pond, as some records from other countries
show up in my shaking leaf hints. I have to be careful in looking at the hints
because not all of them apply to my family. This is where my non-straight line
approach helps. I don’t just look up straight line ancestors but all their
siblings and their kids too (I usually stop two generations down on this sweep
through) as that provides me with more facts to double-check against others, as
how I think my Oswego Andrew Henn is right because of the newspaper notice about his
sister Rosa’s death. If I were doing straight-line I wouldn’t know about Rosa
(who has a tragically fascinating life story, btw; coming soon.) I also note neighbor’s
names in censuses as I’ve noticed that people seemed to move west in groups of
people they know and the same names showing up as before might confirm that I’ve
found the right William Erwin or Elizabeth Bixler Wolfington Moore.
II. My second step is also
Ancestry.com but I click the link to “search records” just above the “overview
tab” and go see what else I might find. You can alter the search parameters,
look in all the searchable records at once or one at a time [there are records
that are only browsable not searchable, that I’d have to look at page by page,
but I’m saving them for a different pass.] I look past the point where Ancestry says the
records are no longer likely to be my ancestor for a few pages. Sometimes I
find stuff that way: directories, yearbooks, land records, etc.
III. My third step is
Familysearch.org’s record search. I don’t have a tree up there yet, but with a
free membership I can search all the records I want. Mostly there though I look
for death certificates and marriage records as they often have them when
Ancestry doesn’t; or when Ancestry might have given me the information off a document but
not let me see the original, FamilySearch often has the original. ALWAYS LOOK
AT THE ORIGINAL of any document when you can, it has so much more information
than is in the index! (And sometimes the transcriber transcribes something
incorrectly in the index version.) If I find them, I download them and take
notes (lawyer here – we take notes on everything).
IV. If Ancestry has shown me a
draft registration, or my ancestor is alive during a war, I check Fold3.com
(subscription site), which has historical military records. Lots of them. Not
all of them, but more are added weekly so check back. I found a boatload of
information from Mariah Bailey’s application for a Mother’s pension against her
son John’s death in the Civil War. Again, you’ll have to sort through and make judgment
calls as to which records belong to your family. But you can set the search
parameters to help limit what you find.
If you already know your
ancestor was in the Civil War, look for him in the National Park Service’sSoldier’s and Sailor’s database to find out what he did in the War, plug in his name & perhaps other
details, then sort out who is yours, then click on the battle unit to get to a
description of what he went through. I've found (through Google) that some states have good archives of military
info (e.g., Indiana, Missouri & Illinois are good, Pennsylvania is difficult
to navigate) that extend beyond the Civil War. This cheat sheet helps you
figure out what war your ancestor may have fought in:
V. Next I go to Google Play,Books, and search for old e-books on the places my Ancestor has lived. A lot of
counties did histories around 1880 – 1905, some with biographical sketches of the first settlers and/or prominent people.
Most are free and most are searchable within the e-book: plug in the relevant
surname and see what pops up. Sometimes it’s a lot (Judge Erwin), sometimes it’s
just a list of who enlisted in what (Andrew Henn) & sometimes I get nothing
– except interesting background information about the area he lived.
VI. My sixth step is to look for
local historical newspaper articles about my ancestor. Small town newspapers
used to do stories or one line squibs on everything: who visited who, 50th
anniversary parties, reunions, obituaries, hospital entrance and release, legal
notices, plus regular news. This step requires patience as the search
capabilities on each site are based on scanning and sometimes on old newspapers
it scans wrong, or you ancestor decided to go by their middle name for a while
[names used to be very interchangeable, I’ve found]. But when you find
something it’s a delight. The main pay sites I’ve used are NewspaperArchive,com, Newspapers.com, and http://www.genealogybank.com/;the free
sites have been the Library of Congress and, for New York, only, the Fulton Post Card site. and when I don’t know where to look, The Ancestor Hunt site has an excellent section on where to find archived newspapers in any state. Newspaper mentions can really humanize and bring a person to life as they did for Myrtle Bailey and for Mabel Erwin Snyder.
VII. My seventh step is to Google
the person’s name and lifespan, and perhaps a key factor about him . Somebody else might have done research you want
to see. If you’re using the info for your own tree/personal use, you can just
use it probably under fair use, just keep the cite so you can find it again – there is apparently a “proper” way
to cite for genealogical purposes: I don’t know it -- I’ve got the book but
haven’t read it yet so i'm not using it yet -- I will go back through and correct cites after I have time to read the book. Right now I figure it works if I cite enough detail that I can find it again. If you’d like to use part of what is written on the site
or a photo in a blog or book, email the person or entity and ask permission first
or if you think you’ll be using their phrasing or the picture. While FACTS can’t be
copyrighted, how one writes about them can be, unless it’s old enough to be off
copyright. I’ve links on copyright issues
for family historians in my Resources page, others can explain that a whole lot better
than I can. It is not my area, so nothing I write here should be construed as legal advice.
VIII. My eighth step is to google
background things for general info & understanding. Curiosity is one of the best traits a family historian can have. For the post on Clarence Snyder I googled "Plumbrook munitions" and "teachers in the Great Depression" among others. For the post on Andrew Henn I googled: “Germans in Syracuse NY Oswego” – there’s bunch of info on
that; “German emigration passenger list” – there’s a website, plus
Ancestry has some; “Ship Radius 1850s”, “Ship Schiller 1850’s” – that was a
bust but it’s worked before; “Baden emigration 1800s” – there turns out to be a
lot on that, a good bit in German (I used Google Translate), including lists of
people who left Baden with details as to the port used & whether they were
steerage or not; I googled “emigration 1850s Bremen” and “emigration 1850s Le Havre” – fascinating stuff;
“Coopers 1850s” “Baden History” – got a birth record index that had a bit more
info than Ancestry’s – in German, thank you Google Translate; “1800s Germany
why do children’s birth registration change religion in the same family” – that
one will be used in a later post; and probably other things I’ve forgotten now. I do list sources at the bottom of my ancestor bio posts. I tend to use Google a lot in prepping for a blog post, and I Google anything I
can think of that I’m curious about, even though sometimes 2-3 hours of research results in
one sentence by the time I write it up. But each search gives me more knowledge
with which to find out more, and it carries over from ancestor to ancestor. The
irony of any information search is that you must know something to find out
more. It helps you form the questions to ask.
And last, if I’m blogging the
person, I look for images, pictures, You Tube videos, etc., to illustrate and
explain the story. Reading a big block of text without pictures is intimidating to a lot of people in our video age and people won’t read or finish it no matter how interesting it is. I
LOVE having pictures of the person, but I don’t have many (actually I don’t
have any more further up the tree on Dad’s side of the family than I’ve already put up – if you
have some and are willing to share with me I’ll be forever grateful!). Sometimes I use
images of documents, full or cropped. Sometimes images of old ads (pre-1923 is
off copyright in the USA - other rules apply in other countries) that I've found through a Google search. I've bookmarked websites that connect me to photos/art which are under the creative
commons license (which allows me to use it under certain conditions and with
proper credit) or in the public domain. I love Photopin.com, Pixabay.com, Creative Commons Search, and Wikimedia Commons. There are other sites too. I’m concerned about making copyright
violations because even though this isn’t my area and I know virtually nothing
beyond what I’ve read on the Legal Genealogist’s blog (excellent blog, btw) and/or linked to in my Resources page, I’m
afraid I’d be held to a higher standard because of the J.D., and I can’t afford a screw up in that area. So I try to be careful..
I hope this helps someone. If you’ve
got questions, leave a comment, or email me at the address on the Contact Me page; I’ll try to answer. If I know you on Facebook, well,
it’s got to let me comment again someday!
