Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Identifying potential military ancestors

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identifying military ancestorsA year ago, I wrote this post on figuring out which ancestors might have fought in which war. With Memorial Day coming up this weekend, I thought it might be useful to republish it. I think I’m going to spend some time this week updating my spreadsheet (since I’ve added to the family tree since last year), so I can easily research ancestors in military records this weekend.

Whenever I read about a records collection for a certain conflict (which seems to happen around military-related holidays, like Veteran’s Day or anniversaries of conflicts) I get excited about researching my ancestors in those collections, which can be such a treasure trove of information. But in the past sometimes I would have difficulty remembering which ancestor might have fought in which war and I’d become overwhelmed and abandon the effort.

So I created a document that shows me the prospective ancestors for each conflict, based on the dates they were born. At the time, I used a table from Family Tree Magazine but when I went looking for it to share in this post, I couldn’t find it. However, I did find an even-better table called Ages of Servicemen in Wars that lists 20 military conflicts, the years they were fought, the typical birth dates for soldiers and the  typical ages of soldiers. Thank you, FamilySearch!

Armed with that information, I created a simple spreadsheet (pictured, in part, above) with the following column headers:

  • Conflict
  • Likely Birth Year of Soldiers
  • Prospective Ancestor
  • Confirmed Ancestor

For each conflict, I entered the names of the ancestors who were born during the birth-year window listed in column 2. After I ascertained that one had indeed fought in that war, I entered an X in the Confirmed Ancestor column. What I should have done and will from here forward, is place a dash or an N in the Confirmed Ancestor column to indicate that I’d ruled that ancestor out.

This is a simple way to see at a glance who I might research when I’m looking at military collections at the National Archives, Fold3 or elsewhere. It’s easy to create and well worth the time spent.

Reclaim the Records is fighting for genealogists

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I was really pleased to learn about Reclaim the Records, a non -profit group of genealogists, researchers, historians and open-government advocates who are using Freedom of Information requests to get state governments to make genealogical and archival records freely available to the public.

The group was founded in 2015 by Brooke Schreier Ganz and has already successfully petitioned for a collection of marriage records to be released. Their pilot project was an index to the 1908-1929 New York City marriage license, applications and affidavits that was only available on microfilm on site in lower Manhattan. Thanks to Reclaim the Records’ efforts–which took the NYC Department of Records and Information Services all the way to the Supreme Court of the state of New York–that data set is now scanned and available on the Internet Archive for free and open access. You can read the complete sage on their website.

Reclaim the Records has seven other pilot projects, the second of which opened up the index to all 1930-1995 New York City marriages. Two of those projects (#6 and #7) have special interest to me because they involve Missouri birth and death indexes. My fair state has proven difficult at best and Reclaim the Records has filed litigation in both cases.

I find their efforts extremely interesting and I’m grateful to them for working so hard to make genealogical and archival information available to all. I encourage you to check out their website, including their To-Do List, to see what’s on the horizon. You can also take their Records Survey to inform them about data sets you think are wrongly withheld from the public.

Thanks so much to Organize Your Family History reader Diane Unger for telling me about Reclaim the Records!

Reconnecting with my research

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Reconnecting with my genealogy researchI was out of town for ten days and I managed to sneak in a little genealogy research. I returned on May 7 to a full client schedule for my organizing business. I’m certainly not complaining about that, but I have not had the energy and time to do any genealogy research for over a week.

I was regretting that state of affairs when I realized I didn’t have to have a large swath of time available to me in order to get some research done. Sometimes just spending a little time on it to reconnect me with my ancestors and get the ball rolling again can be really beneficial.

In the past, a big barrier to my starting a research session was figuring out what to work on. But now I have a few small, systematic projects I can always fall back on. This morning, I decided to set a timer and work on my research for just 15 minutes. I had three choices of easy things to dive into:

For any of these projects, I could make some progress in just 15 minutes. I chose to work on option #1, checking my source documentation. I have a checklist in Evernote in which I check off each source after I’ve made sure that the source citation is good, the multimedia file is attached to the source and the pertinent data from the source was included in Reunion. When I finish a source I check it off so I can always see where I stand.

This morning, the next source on the list was the Compiled Service Record for a different 2nd great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Igleheart (1845-1913). I hit the jackpot, because I hadn’t done a great job of extracting data to include in his record on Reunion. The 15 minutes flew by as I noted his eye, hair and complexion color, for example. (His eyes were listed as black!)

I didn’t actually finish going through the 16-page record, but I employed a trick I learned years ago: When my timer went off, I stopped, even though I was in the middle of a document. I know that since our brains crave completion, I’ll be anxious to get right back to the document and finished extracting data from it. Then I’ll check it off my source documentation checklist (another satisfying thing to do). I made a note in my research log to remind me where I left off. I’d be willing to bet I’ll be so anxious to finish it that I work on it this evening.

I find that if I spend too much time away from my research I feel disconnected from it. Taking a little snippet of time to work on it this morning will help me get back to it this weekend, when I have more time.

Building genealogy into a vacation

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Building genealogy into a vacationI’m writing this from New York City, where I’ve been since Sunday. I’m having a fabulous time with my college buddies, one of whom has moved to the Upper East Side. Early in the week, I had the pleasure of doing some organizing in her apartment (you can see my post on my organizing blog about the products I used in her kitchen cupboard) while she was at work.

On Wednesday, before my other buddies arrived, I had some time to myself. I purposely didn’t plan anything because I was so confident I’d win the Hamilton ticket lottery. Amazingly, I did not receive $10 tickets for the Wednesday matinee of Hamilton, so I decided to spend a little time focusing on my genealogy.

I thought I’d go to the New York Public Library, which has a great genealogy collection. I took a look at my family tree to see my New York-born ancestors. I looked at the sources I had for them and saw an index I’d found at FamilySearch.org and used WorldCat to see if I could find the book that contained that index in New York. Sure enough, it was available at the NYPL, but it was also available at the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library, at 77th and Central Park West, quite a bit closer to my Upper East Side digs than the 42nd street main branch of the public library. It was smaller and less overwhelming and therefore more appealing to me.

I learned from the website that the library is open to the public and has some strict security guidelines, in terms of what you can bring in. I also learned that it has an online ordering system that allowed me to research what I was looking for from home (well, from my friend’s apartment) and request it so that the books and manuscript collection were waiting for me when I got there.

It was a stroke of genius on my part to spend the afternoon this way. When I got to the Historical Society, located right next door to the American Museum of Natural History, I was immediately thrilled with the grandeur of the building. And while I wasn’t able to see Hamilton on Broadway, I did see the famous statues of Hamilton and Burr facing off in their duel, which is housed in the building.

Inside the library, my books awaited me and I immediately found some information that made the trip worth my while. Once I was through looking at the books, I moved to the manuscript collection for Coenties Slip, an area in lower Manhattan that was owned by my ancestor, Conraedt Ten Eyck, in the 17th century. (I blogged a little about Conraedt and Coenties Slip when I visited Manhattan with my niece a couple of years ago.)

The manuscript collection was comprised of original, handwritten documents. It contained Conraedt’s handwritten will. Not a facsimile of the will, the real deal. I photographed it through the shiny sheet protectors the pages were encased in, which created a reflection that will make it a little challenging to transcribe, but I’ll be able to do it. (That’s a picture of the first page of the will at the top of this post.)

What a satisfying afternoon. It was a delight to be in the gorgeous surroundings of this library, getting in touch with history and learning about my family. My friends don’t share my interest in genealogy, so I was so happy to be able to snatch this little pocket of time for my research while I was here. (And yes, I did log my research!)

I think I’m going to try to always find a little time for research when I travel, ideally using in-person resources available locally. I’m so glad I was able to build research into this vacation!

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