Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #45: Have a genealogy email address

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one could turn into a time saver!

Create an email address for genealogy

Keeping track of email is a challenge for the best of us. (You do not want to see how many emails I have in my inbox right now!) One way you can make genealogy life a little easier is to create a dedicated email address specifically for emails related to your research. So if you are reaching out to cousins, repositories, or DNA matches you send your inquiries from that address and use that address on any contact forms. How you create a new email address and filter the responses depends on your email client, so I won’t go into that here. I just want to plant the seed that having an email address dedicated to genealogy might make your life a little bit easier!.

Genealogy resources at new St. Louis County Public Library headquarters

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I’ve been a little out of touch with life outside my apartment and the hospital but I’m finally focusing on email and was delighted to learn that the renovation of the St. Louis County Public Library’s headquarters has been completed and that the building, complete with its new genealogy room, has been re-opened. I drove by recently and it’s a lovely building!

Genealogy classes are being offered at the Emerson History and Genealogy Center in new headquarters in September (and beyond), including classes on doing newspaper research, beginner genealogy and interpreting DNA results and more. Click on the link above to see a list of the upcoming genealogy classes, including some offered at other branches. The library system also offers virtual programs and digital archives.

The new library branch, known as the Clark Family Branch, has a Memory Lab where you can bring photos or other documents to be digitized. The library also has a Library of Things that includes two kits that can help genealogists. One is a scanning kit with a Chromebook and flatbed scanner that can be borrowed for 21 days. The other is an oral history kit that includes a portable recorder and a lavalier microphone, as well as a memory card and adapter and a folder with instructions on conducting oral history interviews.

A St. Louis County Library card is required to access some of the genealogy sources, though there is a “register as a guest” button for the classes. So you may be able to register for virtual classes that interest you, even if you don’t live in the St. Louis area.

All residents of St. Louis County, St. Louis City, and St. Charles County are eligible for free St. Louis County Library cards. Residents of neighboring counties can receive a card for a $50 annual fee.

Once my life settles down, I look forward to exploring the Emerson History and Genealogy Center at the new Clark Family Branch!

BCGS presentation on Presentism

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I have to admit that “Presentism” isn’t a term I had been familiar with when I received an email from Donna Cox Baker about her upcoming virtual presentation on presentism in genealogy for the Bucks County Genealogical Society. (The title of the talk is Our Founding Fathers Would What? Presentism in Genealogical and Historical Research.) When I clicked for more details I learned that “Presentism is a type of historical bias in which our understanding of the present influences or clouds how we evaluate and interpret the past. Historians take great pains to avoid presentism—and genealogists should be on guard for it also.”

This topic is so intriguing to me when seen through the lens of genealogist. I think this presentation from Donna, who is a history scholar and professor (and friend of this blog!) will be fascinating. It will be held on May 4 from 10 to noon eastern time. Registration opens on April 29.

I’m participating in a neighborhood yard sale on May 4 so won’t be able to attend live but the topic sounds so interesting that I’m tempted to sign up so I can watch the recording. The fee for the program is $5 for members and $10 for non-members. Membership is $20 a year and only members have access to a recording of the program, which is available for 30 days.

To learn a little more about Donna Cox Baker, you can read her How They Do It interview on this blog as well as her guest post on organizing genealogy research with Zotero.

Contact that courthouse: It might pay off!

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Not all genealogy documents are available on the internetIt can be challenging for me to pick up the phone or even send an email when I can’t find what I’m looking for online. But in 2017, when I originally wrote this post, I had a beneficial experience by doing just thought. I thought you might appreciate this little nudge to step away from your online searching, so I’m running this post again.

Like many people, I rely primarily on documents I find by searching the internet. When do I library or cemetery research trip, I find information not available online, but when I’m in my office, I search online and if I don’t find what I’m looking for I typically move on.

I know it’s possible to contact courthouses or state archives for documents but over the years I’ve done little of that. In the last couple of weeks, however, I hit the jackpot when I took that extra step.

I’ve been working on transcribing the Civil War pension file of George Washington Adams, my 2nd great grandfather. In it was a divorce decree for his 1920 divorce from his second wife, Della. (I’m descended from his first wife, Henrietta.) That piqued my curiosity because it gave George custody of their “infant son” and the only son I knew about was 12 at the time of the divorce. I wondered if there was another son and also why the 75-year-old father was given custody over the 50-year-old mother. The decree referred to pleadings and depositions in the case and I wanted to get my hands on those. It was Christmas, so I couldn’t pick up the phone (and I don’t like picking up the phone), so I wrote a letter to the Circuit Court Clerk of McLean county, Kentucky.

To my delight, just a few days letter, she got back to me telling me that the documents I sought were in the State Archives and giving me a little extra information to make easier for the archivist to find them. She also gave me a phone number for the Archives. So I called and talked to a lovely young man and gave him a credit card number. That very same day he emailed me photos of the entire file. I think it cost me $8. If I’d wanted, he would have mailed a certified copy but I didn’t want to wait that long. (And get this: He added another divorce petition that I didn’t even know about! Six years into their 14-year marriage, Della filed for divorce from George, but she must have dropped it.)

The 30-page divorce file he sent had numerous depositions and probably sparked as many questions as it answered, but it’s another treasure trove. Turns out there was only one son from this marriage, Horace, who was indeed 12 at the time of the divorce. Apparently the word infant was used differently 100 years ago! But George went into the Old Soldier’s Home just two years later, so now I need to find out what happened to teenage Horace! [Note from 2024 Janine: I did find Horace on the 2020 census living with his older half brother.]

Neither the pension file nor this divorce file are available online, though I did order the pension file online. Both are outstanding sources of information about this ancestor. I’m processing the divorce file like I’m processing the pension file, by transcribing the documents and properly sourcing every fact I glean from them.

I encourage you to look beyond those documents available online, even if you’re not in a position to travel. There’s a whole world of documents that haven’t yet been digitized!

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