Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Like a dog with a bone

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One of the reasons I frequently feel overwhelmed with my family history research is that there are so many different lines to explore and people to research. I’ll often jump from one to another in the course of a research session.

But for the last few days, I’ve been focusing on one person, my father’s paternal grandfather’s father, George Washington Adams. I can’t seem to verify his birth date and death dates and his name is common enough that there quite a few red herrings out there. I’ve been trying various online sources and scratching my head over this. I’ve made some assumptions along the way that I realize might not necessarily be right. I think I’ve found his Civil War records and if I’m right on that, then that’s him living in the National Home for Disabled Soldiers on the 1930 census.

Usually when I get frustrated, I move on to another ancestor. But this one has kept gnawing on my brain, like a dog gnawing on a bone. I haven’t been able to move on.

But I think I found him listed on an index of Illinois deaths from the Illinois Death Certificates Database. I have to write to the Vermilion County Clerk to request his death certificate, but the index included the death certificate number, which gives me hope. When it arrives I hope that it will confirm that this is my guy. We shall see.

Now I just have to wait for the death certificate. (I mailed the request this morning.) So I’m going to put George Washington Adams out of my mind and move on to another family member. I think giving my brain a break from this little frustration will do me good!

Sharing information is a two-way street

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I visited my parents earlier this month in Walla Walla, Washington, and as I posted last month, I was hoping to get some more family-history information from them.

Well, it turns out they didn’t know the answers to most of my questions (perhaps I’m asking the wrong questions), though my mom was able to fill in the information that her cousin, Jerry Brown, had asked about in a comment to that earlier post.

(Confidential to Jerry: My grandfather, Crawford Brown’s fuel business was called International Fuel and its address was 730 North Washington in Spokane. And my mother’s childhood home, which you visited in around 1949, was E 30 31st also in Spokane.)

But even if I didn’t get my own questions answered, I was able to share information with my mother about what I’d learned about our family history since my last visit. A large part of that was due to the above-named Jerry Brown and his sister, Judy, who generously shared their genealogical information about my mother’s paternal side of the family. That includes a delightful oral history and it was really fun to share that with my mother. I also shared the emails I had received from her cousins when Jerry first found this blog.

So thank you, Jerry and Judy. I appreciate your help. And I appreciate the reminder that even if my mother’s not in a position to further my research, I can enhance her life by sharing what I learned.

I just started a Facebook page for this blog. If you’re on Facebook, please hop over there and like it. I’ll be posting links to blog posts and starting conversations.

Civil War recordkeeping

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Laban Taylor Rasco Civil War documentToday I had the good fortune to find the Civil War records for my great-great-grandfather (my paternal grandmother’s paternal grandfather), Laban Taylor Rasco. I initially found him listed in Alabama, Census of Confederate Soldiers, a document I found on Ancestry.com. That listed his company and regiment (he fought for the Confederate Army), which allowed me to easily find a lot of documents at Fold3.com.

He’s not the first Civil War ancestor for whom I’ve found documents, but he is the first on the Confederate side. Through the documents, I learned that he was injured in the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgie in September 1863 and that he was a held as a prisoner of war in a Union prison camp in Talladega, Alabama, and paroled on June 3, 1865, after the war had ended.

Of course, I’m dazzled and amazed that in a matter of a few minutes I can uncover and read these documents via the miracles of scanning and the internet.

But I’m also really amazed by the recordkeeping that took place in this war. When you consider that most forms were filled out by hand and that thousands upon thousands of soldiers fought, it’s remarkable. My great great grandfather was a mere private and today I saw 10 different documents.

I saw the movie Lincoln this weekend (and heartily recommend it) and it brought to life the absence of technology of that era. I am so impressed with the organizational skills that allowed these records to be kept and retained. And, of course, it’s very impressive that they continue to be well organized and accessible.

I love a mystery

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I think one of the reasons I enjoy genealogy research so much is that it makes me feel like a detective. The mysteries can be frustrating, but solving them is oh so satisfying.

Today’s mystery: the death date of my great, great grandmother, Antoinette Garlock Brown. I thought I had it nailed. She died in Missouri in 1922, so I had easy access to her death certificate. (In fact, I blogged about finding her death certificate in a blog post called Those Darn Nicknames.) The hand-written death certificate lists January 9, 1922 as her date of death. The filing date is listed as January 11, 1922. It didn’t seem ambiguous to me.

Today, I found a photograph of her headstone at Find A Grave. It clearly states her date of death as February 9, 1922. It’s etched in stone, so it feels very official. I also have a yellowed newspaper clipping of her obituary, which was found among my grandmother’s belongings after she passed away. It, too, lists her date of death as February 9. Unfortunately, that clipping doesn’t show the date of the newspaper nor the name of the newspaper.

When I squinted harder at the death certificate, it started to become a little more equivocal. It looks like the undertaker wrote the bulk of the information, but the medical examiner is the one who filled in the dates. Under age, the undertaker wrote 66 years, 5 months, 26 days. Since she was born August 13, 1855, that would make her death date February 9. Is it possible that the medical examiner got his months mixed up and no one noticed?

I spent some time trying to locate any other record of her death, so far to no avail. I searched for an obituary to try to get a newspaper date (if that obit appeared in January, clearly it would be wrong). It’s hard for me to imagine that both the obituary and the headstone are wrong. But it’s also hard to imagine the medical examiner not knowing what month it is.

I’m bound and determined to solve this mystery. I can’t wait to find out what the answer (and perhaps explanation) is. And when I do I’ll report it here!

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.