Organize Your Family History

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Time of day matters with cemetery photos

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As I’m processing the photos I took on my Kentucky research trip, I’m realizing an important aspect of research-trip planning that I hadn’t taken into account: the time of day I visit cemeteries.

On my June 2019 trip, I visited two cemeteries I’d seen in October 2014. I took pictures in both cemeteries on both trips–there was more to discover on my second trip, since I knew more about my family tree. One thing I noticed is that my 2014 photos taken at noon at the Sacramento Cumberland Presbyterian Church are so much better than the ones I took at 6 pm in my June 2019 trip to that cemetery. (The I visited the other cemetery, Poplar Grove Cemetery, at the same both trips, about 2 pm.)

Taken 16 Sep 2014, 12:07 pm

grave marker taken in good light

 

Taken 24 June 2019, 6:04 pm

grave marker taken in poor light

I understand there are all sorts of variables that can go into getting a great shot, but you can see that the first photo, taken on a partly cloudy day at noon, is much better than the second photo, taken on sunny June day at 6 pm. It doesn’t help that the grave marker faces east! (Since I knew I had a great shot of that grave marker, I didn’t worry much about the quality of that second photo.)

Here’s another example, of the marker for my second great uncle, Ellsworth McEuen, in the same cemetery:

Taken 16 Sep 2014, 12:35 pm

Taken 24 June 2019, 6:03 pm

 

On my next research trip that includes cemeteries, I will do my best to visit them when the sun is high to avoid these challenges!

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.

Sometimes you gotta browse

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Sometimes you gotta browse recordsI was going crazy looking for my great great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Igleheart, and his family on the 1880 census. None of my searches of various sites turned him up. I really wanted to find that census, because I knew from the 1900 census that his wife, Mattie, had given birth to 11 children, only three of whom were alive in 1900. I had found five of them, but I assumed that finding the 1880 census would reveal the names of more. (Mattie was 25 in 1870.)

So I decided I would browse my way through the census looking for the family. I had a good idea they were living in McLean county, Kentucky, where he lived before the Civil War. (He fought in that war.) I knew that in 1870 they lived in Arkansas, something I initially doubted but was confirmed in his Civil War pension record. But since they had a child born in 1881 in Kentucky, I felt comfortable trying Kentucky first.

I had found Ben’s mother and stepfather in the 1880 census in Sacramento, McLean, Kentucky, so I started there. I browsed forward a page at a time, scanning the handwritten names. After a few pages, I decided to start looking the opposite direction, so I went back to his mother and started scanning a page at a time backward. Sure enough, just two pages behind his mother, there they were! The words “Igleheart, B.F.” jumped right out at me. His age and his family members’ names and ages matched up. Eureka!

So why didn’t they show up on a search? A simple transcription error. The name had been indexed as “Lylehuist.” When I look at it, I can see why. (I bet you can too, if you squint at the image above.) In Ancestry, where I found the document, I edited the record to add the name Igleheart in order to help others. I don’t see that record coming up on a search of Igleheart, though.

The 1880 family included two children, born in the 1870s whose names I didn’t have. They’ve now been added to my family-tree software. I still have four more children to find.

I have to say, it was really exciting to spot this family. I was in a college library among strangers, so I managed to keep from shouting out.  I did raise both arms in victory, though!

Processing Civil War pension files

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Processing civil war pension filesAs I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I received my 3d great grandfather’s Civil War pension files from the National Archives in record time. I’d been prepared to wait 45 to 120 days and it arrived the week after I submitted the request online.

I dug right in and started processing the information. I was so grateful that I had attended the class Anatomy of a Military Pension, presented by Certified Genealogist Julie Miller at the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference that month. She provided step-by-step instructions of what to do with a military pension.

So the day after I received that 65-page pension file, I did what Julie suggested. I put the documents in chronological order and I assigned a number to each. Then I figured out a citation for the overall file and a  citation for each of the numbered documents.

Coming up with a proper citation was a bit of a challenge and I emailed Julie, who was kind enough to share the citation she uses for these files. (She had given us that info in the talk, but I hadn’t written it down.)

Here’s the citation I’m using for the overall pension file for my ggggrandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries:

[278] Jeffries, Richard Anderson (1st Sgt., Company D, 13th Regiment, Missouri Volunteer Infantry, Civil War), application no. 567612, certificate no. 529585, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications, 1861-1934; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Department of Veteran Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington, D.C.

278 was the next number in my source list in Reunion, my family tree software. Each of the individual documents is numbered, starting with 1, and has its own citation. My intention is that when I enter a fact into Reunion, I’ll use Source 278, but I’ll include in the detail field which of the 26 individual documents that particular fact came from.

I created citation labels for each of the documents and affixed them to the appropriate pages. (That’s the citation for document 16 above.) Then I scanned the whole document into a pdf. I elected to have one pdf, rather than 26 individual ones–time will tell whether that was a good choice. (Edited to add a year later: Yes! That was a great choice.)

The next step, according to Julie is to transcribe the documents. Yes, I’m going to type word for word exactly what is on the documents. Julie urged us not to skip that step because when we transcribe, we learn things we would not otherwise learn.

After I transcribe, I will abstract the documents, so I can tell at a glance what they are and what info is contained within each. And then I’ll enter the new-found facts into Reunion, my family-tree software.

That’s a lot of work, but I’m delighted to have learned how to be thorough with it. And I know I’ll learn so much about my ancestor.

I am so grateful to have this structure, because just a few days after receiving Richard Anderson Jeffries’s file, I received the pension file for my gggrandfather, George Washington Adams. That file is over 100 pages; I had to request and pay for the rest of the file (another 80 pages) to be copied–I’m still waiting for part two. That same week I received the third and final pension file, for another gggrandfather, Benjamin Franklin Igleheart. All three pension files, probably 250 pages, came within two weeks of my request.

If I did not have the structure Julie provided in that talk to thoroughly process the information, I know I would feel overwhelmed. I would probably skim the documents, pluck out a few easy-to-find facts, and put them away intending to get to them later. And I don’t know when later would be.

I have skimmed the most recently received pension files to get a preview what I’m going to learn. (G.W. Adams had a big dispute about the amount of his pension–an adversary in the Soldier’s Home turned him in for saying he was more disabled than he was!) But I’m not going to analyze them until I’m finished with Richard Anderson Jeffries. So that will be motivation to go through the process.

I think these pension files are going to be a great learning experience not just about my ancestors, but also about doing proper genealogical research. This feels great!