Genealogy's Star

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Burned Courthouse - Obstacle or Excuse?

From time to time, in talking about missing ancestors, I hear the comment that "of course, I can't find any records because the courthouse burned down." For the most part, I view this as an excuse to give up, not a real obstacle to finding an ancestor. But the question is a real one: what is the impact of the loss of the courthouse records in any given county? Is my perception that this "problem" is highly overrated, an accurate impression?

Let's get some basic sources for help first, before I go into a deeper analysis. I suggest starting with the FamilySearch Research Wiki article, "Burned Counties Research." You may also want to have a look at the Research Wiki article, "United States, How to Find Genealogy Records." Where there has been a fire or other disaster, whether in a city or a county, is also referred to as a "lost record locality."

The first consideration to compensate for the lost records is to determine the exact time frame involved in the loss. Next, determine, if possible the exact type of records lost and whether any partial records were preserved. Then determine what surviving records can be used to determine the content of the destroyed records.

Land records, even if destroyed, need to be reconstituted because people still have to buy and sell real property. Look for records in private record repositories such as title insurance companies and abstractors offices.

My example is Appomattox County, Virginia. This county was created in 1845 and the record is that "all records in the courthouse were destroyed by fire on 1 February 1892." See Library of Virginia, Research Notes Number 30, Lost Records Localities: Counties and Cities with Missing Records. So what other records are available for that time period and which records have been reconstituted? You will probably note that the time period includes the years of the U.S. Civil War.

Records kept by concurrent jurisdictions and entities would have records covering the place and time involved. Let's see what records are in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah for Appomattox County. In searching for records in the Library for that county, I find the following records:

Appomattox County : history and genealogy
Author: Featherston, N. R., Nathaniel Ragland

Appomattox County, Virginia
Author: Heritage Book Committee (Appomattox County, Virginia)

Historical notes of Appomattox County, Virginia
Author: Farrar, Stuart McDearmon

Virginia, Appomattox - Land and property - Maps ( 1 )
Buckingham and Appomattox counties, Virginia land ownership map, 1863
Author: Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division

Virginia, Appomattox - Land and property ( 2 )
Petitions to form Appomattox County, Virginia, from Buckingham, Campbell, Charlotte and Prince Edward counties, 1825-1845
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.

Historical notes of Appomattox County, Virginia
Author: Farrar, Stuart McDearmon

Virginia, Appomattox - Maps ( 3 )
Buffalo Ridge quadrangle, Virginia : 7.5 minute series, (topographic), SW/4 Shipman 15' quadrangle
Author: United States. Geological Survey; Virginia. Division of Mineral Resources

Gladstone quadrangle Virginia : 7.5 minute series, (topographic), SE/4 Shipman 15' quadrangle
Author: United States. Geological Survey; Virginia. Division of Mineral Resources

Buckingham and Appomattox counties, Virginia land ownership map, 1863
Author: Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division

Virginia, Appomattox - Military history - Civil War, 1861-1865 ( 5 )
The final bivouac : the surrender parade at Appomattox and the disbanding of the armies, April 10-May 20, 1865

Author: Calkins, Chris M.

Appomattox County, Virginia during the War Between the States
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.

Biography of Wilmer McLean
Author: Cauble, Frank P.; McLean, Wilmer, 1814-1882

Roster of the Appomattox Reserves : Company I of the Third Virginia Reserves, Confederate States of America, 1864-1865
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.; Confederate States of America. Army. Virginia Reserves Regiment, 3rd. Company I (Appomattox County)

The battles of Appomattox Station and Appomattox Court House, A Author: Calkins, Chris M.

Virginia, Appomattox - Military records - Civil War, 1861-1865 ( 2 )
Roster of the Appomattox Reserves : Company I of the Third Virginia Reserves, Confederate States of America, 1864-1865
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.; Confederate States of America. Army. Virginia Reserves Regiment, 3rd. Company I (Appomattox County)

The Confederate cemetery at Appomattox
Author: Schroeder, Patrick A. (Patrick Andrew), 1968-; Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (Appomattox County, Virginia); United Daughters of the Confederacy. Appomattox Chapter (Appomattox, Virginia)

Virginia, Appomattox - Military records ( 1 )
Virginia, Appomattox - Obituaries ( 1 )
The Farmville Herald : index to births, deaths and marriages
Author: Andersen, William F., Jr.

Virginia, Appomattox - Schools ( 2 )
Some Appomattox County, Virginia school attendance rolls, 1907 through 1913
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.

C. H. Chilton's Union Academy records, 1860-1874
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.; Chilton, Chapman Hunter

Virginia, Appomattox - Social life and customs ( 1 )
Historical notes of Appomattox County, Virginia
Author: Farrar, Stuart McDearmon

Virginia, Appomattox - Taxation ( 3 )
Appomattox County, Virginia tax lists, 1845 : only extant record for the first year the county was established, includes land tax rolls, personal property tax rolls
Author: Chilton, Harriett A.

Personal property tax lists, 1845-1863
Author: Appomattox County (Virginia). Commissioner of the Revenue

Land tax lists, 1845-1863
Author: Virginia. Commissioner of the Revenue (Appomattox County)

Virginia, Appomattox - Vital records - Indexes ( 1 )
Appomattox County marriages, 1854-1890
Author: Jamerson, Vicki; Nash, Edith; Nash, Clyde

Virginia, Appomattox - Vital records ( 2 )
Appomattox County marriages, 1854-1890
Author: Jamerson, Vicki; Nash, Edith; Nash, Clyde

The Farmville Herald : index to births, deaths and marriages
Author: Andersen, William F., Jr.

Now, of course, this is only one repository, but it should be noted that many of the records listed above cover the time period when the courthouse records were "lost." I might also go look for newspapers from and around Appomattox county. This is only the barest beginning of the search. The point: You have plenty of places to look beside moaning about a burnt courthouse.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Mystery Photos 2013-05-20

This is another in the series of mystery photos from the Overson Photographic Collection. After processing over 5,5000 photos, I have determined that Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Overson was the primary photographer, but that photos were also taken by her father, Charles Godfrey DeFriez Jarvis and likely by her daughter, Eva Margaret Overson Tanner. There were also a number of contributed photos and as shown here, copies of earlier photographs from a variety of photographers. These photos were taken primarily in and around St. Johns, Apache, Arizona. But some came from Utah and a few from California and other states and even other countries.

The earliest photos appear to have been taken in the 1840s or 1850s. Some were taken from that time to about 1900, with the majority being taken from around 1900 to 1920. Some of the photos date into the 1940s with one or two taken just before Margaret Overson died. There are family photos that date into the 1950s but these are not included in this collection.

Here are today's photos:

Bridging the Chasm in Genealogy through Indexing

In a recent blog post, The Ancestry Insider pointed out that in genealogy, there is a chasm. He said,

On one side of the chasm are the ancestors and relatives we know personally. We know them as people. We grew up with them or with our parents talking about them. On the other side are ancestors and relatives that we know only through records.

He goes on to explain that on the "easy" side of the chasm we use modern records with abundant details and that on the other side, the records are "incomplete, spotty, illegible, unindexed, hard-to-locate, or offline."

Since reading that post, I have been thinking about this issue extensively. I have had several discussion, some at length about different aspects of the problem and come to some conclusions. One of the recurring suggested solutions to the problem is involving those approaching the chasm or even those who potentially may come to the chasm, in the FamilySearch Indexing program. By participating in the Indexing Program, people who have limited experience with difficult records, learn valuable tools that assist them in moving from the "easy" records to those that are more difficult.

The FamilySearch Indexing program currently has over 156,000 volunteers. By participating in the Indexing Program, the volunteers become acquainted with a variety of records and learn the connection between searching records and finding the names of ancestors. This link is the key to bridging the chasm. It would be very interesting to know how many of the people who do Indexing go on to doing research in their own families. I would guess that given the opportunity and incentive, they would be the prime candidates for moving in that direction.

I have had several conversations about involving the youth in the Indexing program. Where that program is operating among the youth, the transition to doing genealogical research is facilitated. The burden for initiating such a program lies with the youth's parents and leaders. Where there is little interest among the parents and leaders, there is no youth activity. If you want to bridge the chasm, get the youth involved in Indexing. In my own area, my LDS Stake, the main obstacle to implementing an active Indexing program among the youth is not the youth, it is the leaders.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Sitting with a Corpse

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on various occasions, "When I talk with a genealogist, I seem to sit with a corpse."

See Emerson, Ralph Waldo, and Ronald A. Bosco. Later lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1854. Athens, Ga. [u.a.]: University of Georgia Press, 2001, Vol. 1, Page 103. Also found in Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William H. Gilman, Ralph H. Orth, and Alfred R. Ferguson. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap P., 1977, Vol. 13, Page 443. See again in Emerson, Ralph Waldo, and Joel Porte. Emerson in His Journals. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard U.P., 1982, Page 461.

Emerson's comment, which he seemed to use in a variety of contexts, refers to the practice of having a watch or vigil held beside the body of someone who has died, sometimes accompanied by ritual observances including eating and drinking. In our culture, here in the Southwest, this practice has evolved into a three part affair: a visitation, a funeral and a graveside service. Depending on the background, culture or national origins of the family of the deceased, some or all of those three different steps in the burial process may be expanded or omitted.

The Emerson quote has been used in different contexts to support different views. Sometimes, we use stories in the same way, ignoring the historical setting and context of the story.

I find it strange that genealogists, who deal with records of the dead continually, seem to largely ignore the cultural and historical context of the very acts and events they record. In the current movement to expand "genealogy" into "family history," the emphasis seems to me to be extraordinarily superficial. Even the preservation or dissemination of a "story" loses any real meaning once the events related in the story are removed from both the historical and cultural context in which they occurred. It would seem to me that if you really want to know the "family history" then any competent story teller should have an understanding of the context of the story.

The quote above from Emerson is a good example of the challenge of finding the context. The quote, on its face, could be used to make any number of different points, both positive and negative about genealogy and genealogists. But in reading all three of the different times Emerson recorded this same statement, it appears that he liked the turn of the words and used the saying to make different points, none of which had anything to do with genealogy, as such. Of course, you could read the original sources and draw your own conclusions. But the point here is that the quote had meaning to Emerson only in its original context, no matter how it is used by us to establish our own opinions or views.

I grew up hearing several stories transmitted through the family. It would be facil to conclude that my "interest in genealogy" came about as a result of hearing storing about my ancestors. However, in my case, that would not be accurate. In fact, one of the stories I heard over and over again as child was recently made into a movie about my ancestor. See Utah filmmaker creates movie about his ancestor. The movie, Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story, generally relates a story that is recorded in the book, Tanner, Maurice, and George C. Tanner. Descendants of John Tanner: Born August 15, 1778 at Hopkintown, R.I., Died April 15, 1850 at South Cottonwood, Salt Lake County, Utah. [S.l.]: Tanner Family Association, 1942, Page 14.

It is not in my interest to compare the movie to the written story. Movies are interpretive and do not and cannot convey the reality of any story they tell, but the last two lines of the written story are important. At page 23 of the John Tanner book, it states, "This sketch was written by Nathan Tanner, Jr. son of Nathan Tanner, who was the son of John Tanner, the subject of this sketch." There are no further attributions or citations of sources to the story.

John Tanner was born in 1778. His son Nathan Tanner was born in 1815. The composer of the story was born in 1845 and died in 1919. John Tanner died in 1850, so Nathan Tanner, Jr. would have been five years old when his grandfather died. Unfortunately, there is no explanation how Nathan Tanner, Jr. got the story. It is possible that the document in question lies in the George S. Tanner papers in the J. Willard Marriott Library of the University of Utah Manuscripts Division, but then again, where did the earlier writers get the information? I do find references to the fact that the records were originally accumulated by Nathan Tanner, Jr. and then compiled by a Grandson of Sidney Tanner, Maurice Tanner, but other than this short attribution, the original document does not seem to be available.

The point here is not to question the story, but to point out that there is more to story telling that simply copying down what someone else has published. Some of the details of the story can be verified but, absent the context of the story, there are many details that, although inspirational, may not be based accurately in fact. There is such a thing as inspirational fiction.

Do we want to cut ourselves loose from the facts of the past and build our own history? Or are we interested, as genealogists, in accuracy and source citations?

Surprise, most of the typos have been corrected.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

In this Quick View of Genealogy, I am showing how to edit and merge in FamilySearch Family Tree. As always, if you have suggestions for future videos, please let me know in the comments. I hope you enjoy this latest Quick View.

Update on MyHeritage.com

During the past few weeks, I have been answering a whole lot of questions about MyHeritage.com due to my involvement with the company at RootsTech 2013. In a few cases, I have worked with the people asking the questions on a one-on-one basis to see if we could figure out the problem. In addition, I have been getting some pretty varied comments on my previous blog posts, some very positive and some decidedly negative. Most of the comments and problems center around the issue of Smart Matches and Record Matches.

Almost all of the negative comments have come from relatively new users of the program. In every case, the new user had not looked at the downloadable manual to the program. In a couple of instances, I have worked long enough with these other users to resolve the issues. In every case where I have worked through the issues, I have found the problem to lie with the database uploaded by the user. In one case, as an extreme, I had to delete all of the information in MyHeritage and reload a "clean" GEDCOM file in order for the problems to go away. As soon as I did this, the user began receiving matches to the program. I also found that when the user was identified merely as "living" without further information, the Smart Matching feature did not work properly. As soon as the person was identified by name, she immediately began to get Smart Matches. I am guessing, but it seems to me that the "living" designation blocks some of the features of the program.

I must still say, despite all of the comments and questions I have fielded in the last few weeks, I still think the program works very well. There could be some improvements to the navigation in the family tree view, such as allowing the names to be viewed in a more compact format, but overall, the program seems to work. Now, I am certain that this comment will elicit another round of criticism from those who are unhappy with the program. But I hear the same type of criticism about most of the other online genealogical databases regularly. In fact, I don't believe that I know of any program that I haven't heard negative comments about from someone. This seems especially true about genealogy programs.

I have noticed that Smart Matches seem to come rather quickly and frequently, while Record Matches come less quickly and in bunches rather than individually. It is sort-like waiting for the cycle to come around. If you happen to join the program as the beginning of a cycle, then you might experience a delay, if not, if you are near the end of the cycle, you may get matches more quickly. It is very common for new technology to have a growth period where the program does not work as well as expected or where there are unforeseen difficulties or bugs. It is when the program is more mature that these types of problems become an issue with me. In the case of a new program and especially as here with a new technology, I suggest cutting some slack.

This situation is also similar to what I experience when I do presentations. Some of the people's comments say how much they liked the presentation, others express the fact that everything I said was a complete waste of time. Did these two people hear the same presentation? Sometimes I wonder if my commentators are looking at the same program?

Friday, May 17, 2013

Mandatory Reading for all those using FamilySearch Family Tree

Sometimes I feel blind, deaf and dumb (even more than I am normally). This last week was the National Genealogical Society Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Although Las Vegas is only a few hours away, we had prior commitments that prevented attendance at the conference. I did miss several important announcements and, of course, the opportunity to talk to people from around the world. But most of all, I felt out-of-touch i.e. deaf and dumb. Sometimes reading the blog posts is a good substitute and I thank Randy Seaver and The Ancestry Insider among many others for their contributions to keeping me informed.

Today The Ancestry Insider published what in the news industry would be considered a scoop. The blog post is entitled, "#NGS2013 - Futures for FamilySearch Family Tree." This post should be mandatory reading for anyone trying to work with FamilySearch.org's Family Tree, if only for the reason that it gives hope and a very weak light at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, I can't let this gem of a post go by without comments. I fully realize that I am not responding directly to what Ron Tanner of FamilySearch may have said, but to what The Ancestry Insider has written, but I trust that the reporting was fair and accurate because of the source.

Understand that my progress in doing any additional meaningful work at all with FamilySearch Family Tree ends at about four generations or so up my pedigree. At that point, virtually every ancestor has multiple submissions that put them into the category of Individuals of Unusual Size (IOUSs). This essentially means that there are still multiple pedigrees (attached to multiple individuals) out there that cannot be resolved by merging. This issue is addressed in the blog post by the AI, as follows:

Family Tree is currently in a transition phase with synchronization occurring between Family Tree and NFS. “Today, if a combine is not allowed in NFS, then we are not allowing a merge in Family Tree,” said Tanner. “Once we can separate the two, then you’ll be able to do the merge.”

This statement has been made several times in the past, but it is reassuring to have it said again. For me, and many, many other users of the program, it is the deal maker or breaker. Either get it fixed or the program doesn't work at all. I answer questions about this issue multiple times a day when I am working with patrons at the Mesa FamilySearch Library. The latest 10 May 2013 version of the Family Tree manual, Using the FamilySearch Family Tree A Reference Guide (10 May 2013) LDS Version states as follows at page 146, about merging:

You cannot merge records in the following situations:
• The gender on one record is male, and the other is female.
• One record indicates the person is alive; the other is deceased.
• Both records come from the membership records of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.
• One of the records came from new.familysearch.org, where it has been combined
with too many other records.
• The duplicate record has already been deleted due to another merge.
• One of the records has restrictions that would prevent it from being changed.

Apparently, there is no solution to this problem from the standpoint of the user. We just have to wait until the problem is resolved by FamilySearch.

Some of the other developments coming in FamilySearch Family Tree are nice but not deal breakers. For example:

Printable family group sheets and pedigree charts
Taking a photograph and making a source out of it
Notes and copied notes from New.FamilySearch.org
Sources from New.FamilySearch.org

All of these have been discussed at one time or another in both public and private. The second item above, the ability to take a photograph and make it a source, may refer to adding your own documents as sources? That is speculation on my part.

The AI also mentions the ability to "match records in historical collections to ancestors in the tree." This would be a huge development and hopefully similar to what is being done now by MyHeritage.com and Ancestry.com with their family trees. Perhaps an agreement with one or the other is in the offing to implement this feature?

There is quite a bit about preventing or solving "revert wars." The AI uses the term "toggle war." As a long time user of the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki, I see this as a potential problem, but not as one that occurs very often. There are already a number of features built into Family Tree that discourage this type of behavior. I wonder if any revert wars have already been reported to FamilySearch? The solution, as outlined in the post, is simple; lock the program to the participants.

Attaching records to an entire family would be a huge timesaver. Of course, there are other items mentioned but there is no timetable for their implementation and some of the features may simply be on a wish list. But it is nice to get a peek at the future, even through my deafness and dumbness.

My Upcoming Presentations

28-29 June Northern California Family History Expo 2013
2-3 August, Colorado Family History Expo
6 - 7 September, Midwest Family History Expo 2013
28 October - 1 November, October Salt Lake City Family History Library Retreat 2013
4 December, 11:00 and 1:00 Maricopa County Library
10 December 2013, Sun City Vistoso Genealogy Club, Oro Valley, Arizona.
6 -8 February, 2014, RootsTech 2014,
22 February, Sunland Springs Village, Wiki, Automated Record Searching and DPLA
12 May 2014 West Valley Genealogical Society Presenting FamilySearch Family Tree
24 May 2014, Vancouver Island Conference

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