Organize Your Family History

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Processing newspaper articles (screencast)

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Last week I blogged about how I’ve been finding newspaper articles about my father’s family in Olympia, Washington, in the first part of the 20th century. Despite being the state capital, Olympia’s newspaper has a decidedly small-town feel. I was able to find a couple of dozen (if not more) articles about my family, each of which gives me a little nugget of information and a little more of a sense of how they lived.

This morning, I created a twelve-minute screencast of how I process these articles. If you haven’t set up a process yourself, you might find it helpful.

As I said in the screencast, this is one of probably many ways to do it and it’s not necessarily the best way, but it works for me.

To summarize the steps, here’s what I do:

  • Click on the article in Genealogy Bank
  • Click the PDF button to get a pdf of the full page
  • Open the page in Preview
  • Zoom in on the article itself
  • Use Grab to take a screenshot of just the article, in an easily readable size
  • Name the full-page pdf, using my file-naming protocol, and file it in the Surnames folder
  • Copy the name and paste into the filename of the zoomed-in snip, adding the word “snip” to the first part of the file name
  • Add one fact from the article in Reunion, creating a source record for the article
  • Paste the source information from the Reunion source record into the Comments section of the two image files in Finder
  • Move the full-page and the snip file from the Surnames folder to the appropriate subfolder for the person mentioned in the article
  • Drag the image files into the Multimedia area of the source record in Reunion
  • Glean the rest of the information, attaching the newly created source to each fact

Watching the screencast will probably make that more understandable.

I hope you find it helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Using newspapers to fill in the blanks

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I’ve been limiting my research to the Adams line of my family this year. I love the focus that gives me and there has been no shortage of information to ferret out!

Recently, I’ve been looking at newspaper articles in Olympia, Washington, where this family lived in the first four decades of the 20th century. The Daily Olympian (which I access via Genealogy Bank) was full of articles about things we wouldn’t consider of much interest today (like family members who live in the same town visiting one another). These articles help paint a picture of my ancestors’ lives and occasionally help connect dots.

For example, I read that my great great grandfather’s second wife, Della Adams, was critically ill in 1930 and that her son, Wayne Horace Adams, traveled to be at her side at the hospital all the way from Maryland, where he was attending the U.S. Naval Academy. I don’t know how he traveled cross country or how long it took, but it reveals a devotion that is an interesting detail as I try to piece together this family’s puzzling early life. In 1919, according to divorce documents, Della abandoned Horace (as he was known then) to the care of his 74-year-old father (my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams), when he was 12. As a 23-year-old he crossed the country to be with her when she was critically ill. By then, his father was living in the National Soldier’s Home in Danville, Illinois. (Della recovered from her illness and  lived another 13 years.)

These newspaper articles also have allowed me to see how active my great grandmother, Hattie, was in various societies, like the Daughter of Union Veterans and the Daughters of America. I’m also learning the various cities where my grandfather’s sister lived. And I came across a delightful article on a badminton tournament that my own grandparents played in together.

I have the good fortune that my grandfather, Dave Adams, was a reporter for the Daily Olympian when he was in his twenties. So I was able to find some first-person articles that gave me some insight into his life (as well as a picture of him at work). I think my favorite was when he wrote about participating in a spelling bee. He was an excellent writer.

I spent a few hours on Sunday with the newspaper and was faced with the challenge of whether to be selective about which articles I downloaded or to take everything I found. Downloading and processing the articles can get quite tedious, so I wanted to be selective. But I know that even the smallest detail might shed light on a future quandary. (Of course, I have to bear in mind that newspaper articles are not always accurate, but they can provide some great clues.)

So I downloaded with abandon and decided that a few of the articles would reside in the appropriate person’s folder on my hard drive without necessarily getting entered as a source in my genealogy software. But the vast majority are being used as sources because a nugget–even if it’s just a data point about residence–can be gleaned.

In the near future, I plan to outline here how exactly I process these newspaper articles, in hopes that it will be helpful. (I plan to do a screencast.)

How about you? Do you use newspapers in your research? What’s your favorite source for relevant newspaper articles? And what’s the most helpful thing you’ve found in your newspaper research?

Those Eureka! moments

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I just had one of those moments where I raised both arms in the air and whooped. I think I startled my standard poodle, Bix.

I’ve been trying for the five research sessions to ascertain whether a couple I had found was my couple. I had downloaded seven documents for a George Washington Adams born in 1882 (this is the son of the George Washington Adams whose Civil War pension file I transcribed this year). He had a wife, Elizabeth Major Adams, who passed away from influenza in 1929, leaving behind seven children. Before processing these documents, I wanted to be certain that this G.W. Adams was my G.W. Adams.

A year ago, I would have accepted that he was the right person, perhaps overlooking the fact I didn’t have any definitive proof. The Genealogical Proof Standard requires reasonably exhaustive research and kept bearing that in mind as I kept researching until I found a definitive connection.

I’m keeping a research log in Evernote, so I can see everything I’ve done on this search and at the end of each session, I’ve jotted down next steps. I’ve had to keep my sessions short, so these next steps have been really helpful–and there have always been plenty of them.

One of the challenges is that on his World War I draft registration card, George, who at the time was married to Elizabeth (Betha), listed his birth date as September 19, 1883, rather than 1882 as his father had listed in a pension document. The World War II draft registration I found for George, married to Estle, listed his birth Sepember 19, 1881. Both documents show him with brown eyes and brown hair. (Brown eyes are uncommon in my family, I’ve noticed.)

I hadn’t focused on Estle until today. My Eureka moment came when I found George and Estle on the 1940 census, living with children the same names and ages as those listed as survivors in the news article about Elizabeth’s death. That’s when I whooped and hollered. I also found Estle in the burial plot next to George and two spots away from Elizabeth.

I am so glad I pursued this until I felt I’d made a real connection. If I’d gone ahead with the assumption that George and Elizabeth were the right couple I might have had lingering doubts. And I know that would have driven me crazy. Also, there’s nothing like the thrill of those Eureka moments!

Join me at the St. Louis Genealogy Conference!

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I attended last year’s St. Louis Genealogy Conference, a free conference sponsored by the LDS church, and it was terrific. So I was delighted to be invited to present at this year’s conference! The theme is Remembering Families.

The registration for the conference, which will be held Saturday, October 14, just opened. If you’re interested, you can register here. I will be presenting twice on the same topic, Going Paperless in Your Genealogy Research. If you’re a regular reader here, you know that’s a passion of mine.

The lineup looks great, with presentations on social media, maps, Missouri Digital Archives, researching Civil War ancestors, and German research, among other topics. If you plan to attend, please let me know in the comments or via email!