Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

A small enhancement to my genealogy map

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A small enhancement to my ancestor mapAs I’ve blogged here before, I have an ancestor map hanging on the wall with pins in it for the birth and death/burial places for my direct-line ancestors, up to my third great grandparents. I enjoy looking at it and I love how it makes migration more visible.

I initially started with a map that I pinned over a bulletin board I already had. But that board was bowed. So I put the map onto a thin sheet of cork on top of a piece of foam core, and placed the whole little parfait into a DIY frame. But over time the edges of the map kept pulling out of the frame, so I ended up buying an identical framed map and repinning everything. (So my advice to you if you’re interested in starting a similar project is to cut straight to the pre-framed map.)

The other day I made one tiny enhancement that I wanted to share. The map came with short pushpins with colored heads. On the map, I use longer pins, also with colored heads, so that I can add flags to them indicating the person the pin represents. I took the short pushpins and put them in the areas that I have personally visited for my genealogy research. Primarily that’s cemeteries, though I have spent some time at repositories in Kentucky. Click on the link above to see a larger version of the photos where those shorter pins are more visible.

I was pleased to see that I was able to add four pushpins representing visits to Kentucky, Nebraska, Alabama and western Missouri. I’ve visited graves of ancestors in all four of my lines (Adams, Brown, Rasco and Jeffries). I hadn’t really realized that before this exercise and that makes me feel happy.

The next time I travel to a new place for research, I’ll be delighted to add a pin to the map!

What’s hiding in your unprocessed documents?

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One of the mysteries I’ve been pondering for years is the whereabouts of my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1938-1945) after his divorce in McLean County Kentucky in June of 1920 and before he checked into the National Home for Disabled Soldiers in Danville, Illinois, in July 1922. I haven’t found him on the 1920 census and it’s been bugging the heck out of me. In the divorce, he was awarded custody of his 12-year-old son Wayne Horace Adams (1907-1976) and for the longest time I was looking for the two of them.

A few years ago, I found Horace (as he was known then) on the 1920 census living with his half brother. I blogged about how an indexing error kept his whereabouts elusive. But I still haven’t found George on the census. When I was at RootsTech this year, I did a free consult with a genealogist from Trace, seeking help on the question George’s whereabouts between 1920 and 1922. The genealogist asked me why I wanted to know. I didn’t have a good answer, but I still wanted to know. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any Eureka! moments in that short session, but she gave me some avenues to pursue.

In any case, as I was working through my backlog of downloaded documents during the August 30 x 30 challenge, I processed a couple of newspaper articles that shed some light! It was very exciting. (I found out an article about him visiting a son in Oklahoma in 1921 and returning to Kentucky in 1922, a month before entering the soldiers’ home, with his son, after an extended visit to Oklahoma. I don’t know which son, but it’s something.)

Those newspaper articles had been languishing on my hard drive for two years! If I were processing my documents as soon as I downloaded them, which is always my goal, I would have had this information years ago. This is an inconsequential example, but it shows how these newspaper articles–which can be a bit tedious to process–can contain important nuggets. (Here’s a post I did on how I process newspaper articles.)

Lesson learned. My resolve is stronger than ever to eliminate that backlog, which I’m working on once again in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge.

Small lessons from a cemetery visit

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When I drove home to St. Louis from Walla Walla, Washington, last month I planned my route so that I could stop at the Carleton Cemetery, in Thayer County, Nebraska, where all four of my 3rd great grandparents are buried. These are the grandparents of my grandfather, Crawford A. Brown (1906-1996).

Though I had seen their grave markers on Find A Grave, I think it’s always nice to visit a cemetery in person and make that connection. (I blogged a few years ago about why I prefer in-person visits to cemeteries.)

What I was actually looking for were two shared graves. One was for Newton Perry Brown (1853-1938) and Antoinette Garlock Brown  (1855-1922), my grandfather’s paternal grandparents and the other was for Samuel Vorce Wheeler (1852-1937) and Elizabeth Jane (Jennie) Nebergall Wheeler (1857-1933), the parents of his mother.

I didn’t have the luxury of visiting when the sun was high in the sky (time of day can really make a difference in the quality of your cemetery photos), since I started the day in Wyoming. And I was a little distracted while I was at the cemetery because a pebble hit and cracked my windshield on the way there. Plus I had to pee. So I didn’t spend a lot of time at the cemetery looking for other relatives. But I’m really glad I went.

A couple of tips I occurred to me when I was there.

Look for a cemetery directory of graves. I knew what section of the cemetery to look in for the grave of one set of ggggrandparents because it was noted on Find A Grave. I looked around that section for the grave of the other set but I didn’t it. Then I went back to the entrance to see if I could find a directory. This is what the information area inside the cemetery gates looked like:

 

I wondered about the metal case and lifted the door. There I saw a set of drawers and, sure enough, each contained the cemetery records!

I found the section and plot number the grave and was able to go right to it.

If you’re casting a shadow, consider taking the picture upside down from the other side of the marker. Because it was late afternoon, my shadow was cast onto the gravemarker, which was flush to the ground. But I had the idea of taking it from the other side and just flipping the photo using my phone’s Edit feature. Voila.

Right side up:

Upside down:

I felt like a genius.

I think visiting an ancestor’s grave is a great use of time. I always feel more connected to my ancestor and I absolutely remember where they’re buried if I’ve visited the cemetery. It was nice to drive in the little town where my grandfather was born, even if I didn’t get the chance to spend much time there.

A special 90th birthday present

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My dad, Gene Adams, two days shy of his 90th birthday

I am so happy to be posting again! I left St. Louis on September 6 to drive to 2,000 miles to Walla Walla, Washington, to help my father celebrate his 90th birthday. (He was born 11 Sep 1930.) I drove because I didn’t want to risk transmitting the coronavirus to him and I felt more in control of who I interacted with driving than flying. On the way, my MacBook Pro went belly up and I ended up having to send it in to Apple for repair. I wasn’t up to trying to blog from my phone, so that’s why I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks.

In any case, my computer has been returned good as new (it had a swollen battery that had to replaced) and I’m delighted to be back to blogging.

I had a lovely visit with my father, whom I hadn’t seen since February, and I’m so glad I made the trip. I took four days/three nights in each direction and I drove alone. It was amazing to see this part of the country. I spent the night in two states, South Dakota and Montana, that I’d never been to before. That brings my total number of states visited to 48! I listened to lots of podcasts and I even managed to do a little cemetery research on the way home. (More on that in a future post.)

What I wanted to write about today is the birthday gift I gave my father. At 90, he doesn’t need stuff. Because of COVID, we couldn’t have a birthday party. So, at the suggestion of a friend, I reached out to dozens of people from various parts of his life, asking each of them to send me a 30- to 60-second video wishing him a happy birthday and marking the occasion any other way they wanted to.

I used Trello to track my invitations and responses, which made it really easy. It was such a joy to communicate with these folks and receive their wonderful videos. I ended up with forty videos. I purchased an iPad for him so he can watch the videos when he wants. (He’s a Luddite with no computer and no internet access and no desire for either.)

I put the individual videos on the iPad and also used iMovie on my Mac to string them all together into one video, which I put on the iPad. That turned out to be the way he likes to watch it most. Finally, I bought a lightning-to-HDMI adapter so that he can watch the video on his TV. I did everything manually and found it quite easy, but since then, I have found out about a service that will send out the invitations and the compile the videos for you for a small fee. It’s called VidHug.

He was blown away. Because he’s a Luddite I think he thinks it was a lot harder for me to do than it actually was, though I tried to set him straight. The hardest part was finishing the project without a computer! He really enjoyed hearing from so many loved ones. The video was just plain heartwarming.

This is the best gift I’ve ever given (I’m not great at gift giving) and my father appreciated it so much. I mention it here in case you have an elderly relative (or, really, anyone) you’d like to honor this way.  It seems particularly helpful these days when travel and in-person gatherings are so difficult.