Visiting my living history

Yesterday I went to visit my great-grandmother's sister, Tudy, who is 94 years old. To my honest shame, I had forgotten she was alive until I went to my great-aunt LaRue Smith's funeral a few weeks ago. Tudy walked into the funeral and took my breath away because she looks exactly like my great grandma. Just an adorable little spry bird. A wave of love and appreciation crashed over me and I rushed over to give her a hug and was greeted with an adorable "oh, hello!," followed by "now who was that?" as she walked away.

Right there and then I resolved to visit her more often. Then she fell and broke her hip, I got swamped with work, and here it is weeks later. But I finally went to go see her yesterday and I am so glad I did.

I grew up in the Army, so I didn't spend a lot of time in the small Idaho towns where my parents were raised. Every time I visit our ranch, I am required to recite my ancestry so that people know who I am. When I explain that I'm Tom's daughter, understanding lights their eyes and I am once again told what a wonderful voice my mother has. And they are right. I am so blessed to have such wonderful family history.

So I was embarrassed to realize as I was driving to the rest home yesterday that I don't even know Tudy's name anymore. She's not a Smith anymore and hasn't been for over 70 years. Turns out she's Castleton now, and she loves chocolate. We were best friends right away. I visited with her for over an hour. I told her about my family and love for family history. She told me about her three husbands, her kids, grandkids, and how she came to be known as Tudy. (She was born Alice Ruth Smith, but couldn't pronounce "Ruthie;" it came out Tudy, and she has been known and loved as Tudy ever since.)

She was born in 1916, and waited 36 months for her sweetheart Nate Thomas to come home from his LDS Mission before they were married and had three girls. Nate's best friend tried to steal her while Nate was gone, but she didn't "go with" anyone else; she knew she wanted Nate. They wrote every week, and the sweet romantic story absolutely melted my heart.

She loves basketball, hates cats, and can't remember how old her grandkids are, but there are 9 grandkids and 9 great-grandkids. She remembers my father, and knows that he loves her dearly. Despite being 94 years old and breaking a hip just a few weeks ago she is still spry and mobile and sharp as a tack. She walks up and down the halls so much that she says she's afraid they're going to tell her to stop wearing the hall floors out. (LOL!) She likes to read, but she'd rather crochet.

As she sat in her lazy-boy recliner, bright eyes blinking under her huge glasses and beautiful snow white hair I just kept thinking how lucky I am to meet my great grandmother's baby sister. I am so grateful for the time I had yesterday to get to know this woman. Not just because she reminds me so much of my dear great-grandmother, but because she's my great-great-aunt. She belongs to me and I got to meet her and hug her before she became another name in my database. I am really grateful to know her.

A case study in location identification

Tonight I was working on my mother's side of the family, for once, and was following the trail of George Roberts and Martha Thomas, who lived in Lambston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, at the time of the 1851 census.[1]

Here's how it looks at Ancestry.com:


The image quality was a little scratchy. It looks like Martha was born in Harrelston West, Pembrokeshire, and that's how Ancestry.com transcribed it. I have some choices here. I can accept the transcription. I could cheat and look at New Family Search, the IGI, my grandfather's typed pedigree charts, and other compiled sources which might be correct. But that's not the point. The point is that I want a clean, well-sourced, accurate family database true to each piece of evidence according to modern research standards. And I also happen to want to read and transcribe this record correctly so that I can find Martha later.

So, I did what I would do if I didn't have a way to cheat, and if Ancestry.com had transcribed it incorrectly. Which happens sometimes.

The Family History Library Catalog doesn't think they know of a place called Harrelston. Google Maps and MultiMap were likewise confounded. Even The National Gazetteer of Wales and GeoNames came up empty handed. Time to pull out the big guns. When The NGA GEOnet Names Server (GNS) didn't have a match, I knew I needed to get a little more creative.

Searching har* in the UK, the closest match I could come up with was Harleston. Unfortunately it's not in Wales, let alone Pembrokeshire.

So, it was time to use the free Parish Locator Program which is a wonderful indispensable tool for UK research. (did I mention that it's free and I love it?) I ran a report for all parishes in Pembrokeshire, and what do you know? There was Haroldston West.


Turns out that it was right there on MultiMap all along. Funny how that works! Now I'm off and running in the right direction...Haroldston West.

Footnotes:

1. 1851 Census of Wales, Pembrokeshire, Lambston, Class: HO107; Piece: 2478; Folio: 413; Page: 6; GSU roll: 104236., George Roberts; digital image, Ancestry.com, www.ancestry.com (accessed February 2010); Original data: Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1851. Data imaged from the National Archives, London, England.

GeneaBlogger Games Update

I have been absolutely swamped with a big new client project, but I am pleased to report that I have not let the ball drop completely on my personal goals. I've continued to squeeze in a few quick activities here and there; I just haven't had time to blog about them all yet. I need to report my progress for the GeneaBlogger Games, but will continue to blog in greater detail about my experiences today and tomorrow. I don't anticipate the following statistics will change.

So here's what I did:

1. Go back and cite your sources: Platinum.
I added over 500 citations to my new, clean database. Wow; that feels so good!

2. Back up your data: Diamond in platinum setting?
I have a comprehensive backup plan including digitizing my hard copy files. Original documents and photos are all now in waterproof containers and my newly organized data is backed up to server. To be honest, though, maybe I didn't quite reach platinum if "all data" is to be taken literally, because the sheer volume of my files makes it impossible for me to have *everything* scanned yet. Only the "good stuff" has made it to moisture protection yet. Copies of books, notes, etc. are still in the cabinet waiting for digitization. So if Salt Lake City were hit by an earthquake today I would lose some stuff. But I'm well on my way.

3. Organize your research: Platinum
I'm thrilled at the improvement in my organization. It's still not quite perfect, due to the sheer volume, but I have organized *well* over 20 each of hard copies, digital files, photos, digital photos, and data from my voluminous collection. I have also prepared a report (which is still improving) to share with my family.

4. Expand your knowledge: Platinum
Used Google Maps, TimeToast, and Wordle. I browsed the FamilySearch wiki both for client and for personal reasons. I started a page for my grandmother, Anna Helen Hill Henderson Howard using Footnote.com's I Remember on Facebook. I really enjoyed these activities and I'm really glad Thomas MacEntee suggested them.

5. Write, write, write: DNF
I started tasks in each category but got swamped by a huge project this week and, a la Lindsay Vonn, caught an edge on this project and ended up in the netting far from the finish line. Just not enough time in the day. But that doesn't mean I won't finish them eventually! I am still working on my blog summary and adding pages, participating in Genealogy Carnivals, writing biographical sketches, and creating an ancestor index for the blog.

6. Reach out and perform genealogical acts of kindness: Platinum
I visited, followed, and commented at several new blogs and made new "friends" this week. Great! I posted photos at Find A Grave, invited genealogists to join the 21st century social network, participated in Family Search indexing, and joined the Baltimore County Genealogical Society in preparation for my research trip there in two weeks for my Sartors.

It has been a busy, busy week but I appreciated these tasks tremendously and look forward to growing from this new & improved footing. Just as our athletes will go home and keep practicing the sports they love, I'm going to keep improving every day as a professional and personal family historian.

USA! USA! USA! And Scotland, Denmark, Wales, Norway and frontiers yet to be discovered.

Timesaving Firefox plugins

I love having 100 things going on at once, and I've noticed this busy week that Firefox deserves an "assist" (or best supporting actor nomination!) in accomplishing my GeneaBlogger Games tasks this week because I've had to juggle a lot of random and completely unrelated stuff this week! Unfortunately for my computer, this means I frequently have 20+ tabs open at once in my Internet browser. Here are some things that have really helped me.

First, I've organized and synchronized my bookmarks using Xmarks. This way I can go from netbook to laptop to desktop to library computer without losing a bookmark. I've organized them into folders including folders for various clients and projects currently underway so that I can bookmark frequently referenced FHLC entries. For instance right now I have a folder called "Joe" and within that folder I have bookmarked the FHLC pages containing the film numbers for the wills, deeds, and other records I am planning to use so that I don't have to look them up again and again as I progress through the research and so that I don't have to keep the tabs open from day to day. I just synchronize them and then I don't have to worry what computer I happen to be using that day.

I also recently found another Firefox plugin which does essentially the same thing, except I don't think it synchronizes to a server for use on multiple computers. It's called ScrapBook, and it will allow me to save a collection of tabs into a single session so that I can recall that session and "reclaim" all the tabs I had open for that particular project. Nice.

I also tried Read It Later, although I have a folder called "Read this later" in my Xmarks. Like Xmarks, Read It Later lets you save a url to a list synchronized on their server so you can retrieve it from your iphone, whatever, to read later. Nice, but I decided to stick with my "Read this later" folder in Xmarks so everything would be in the same place.

While I'm on the subject, I have two more plugins that I've been using a lot this week, as I plow through my GeneaBlogger Games goals. The first is called Screenshot Pimp. It allows me to capture an entire website as a .png. This is handy for grabbing the entire screen of an Ancestry.com database search result, database transcription, etc. if I don't pdf it. It's an image, so it's not text-searchable, but it will capture the full screen including title, breadcrumbs, transcriptions etc. in one click & save for storage as reference. Very handy.

Example screenshot using Screenshot Pimp for Firefox on an Ancestry.com census view. Notice breadcrumb, citation, and transcription for reference!

And, lastly, I love TableTools. It allows me to copy and paste html tables as tab or comma delimited text to paste into Excel for sorting. That way I can port over the results of a search and crunch the data better in Excel by sorting, adding cross references and comments, etc. Linked to the .png of the reference generated with Screenshot Pimp, I can start something, get interrupted, and still pick up right where I left off without losing my train of thought.

And these days, that means a lot!

A note about Christian Dalziel

It was a busy, busy day doing a little thing called "billable work," but to post my GeneaBlogger Games update tonight: I added over 30 source citations and 17 "new" (verified) people in my new clean database. I documented and confirmed the line from James Henderson born 1847 back five generations to William Aikman and Margaret Birnie who married April 1717 in Colinton Parish, Edinburgh. (Efficiency thanks to the OPRs at ScotlandsPeople.) Also documented Dalziel and Inglis lines along the way.

Of note: Thomas Dalziel and Nicol (christened Nicholas) Ingles were married irregularly in Edinburgh 18 Sep 1778. [1] It was recorded in their parish at Musselburgh later; squished in the correct date area clearly after the fact. Although this sometimes suggests...added incentive, shall we say, to hurry and marry without posting banns, the first child I see registered for them is a Christian Dalziel (female) who was born 19 March 1780. Nothing wrong about the math there, so unless they miscarried first, it could be that Thomas and Nicol just never got around to filing the paperwork.



Here's the noteworthy highlight of the day, though. Thomas and Nicol Dalziel had two daughters named Christian Dalziel. According to New FamilySearch, my ancestor supposedly was the one born in 1780. But I don't think that's right. I think my ancestor was the *second* Christian Dalziel, who was born 24 May 1789. [2] She married James Henderson on 19 March 1811, at which time she would have been 22. [3] Although it is not impossible for her to have married older, the 1841 and 1851 censuses of Scotland both reflect a birth date about 1791 for Christian Henderson [nee Dalziel], which is much closer to the 1789 christening. [4] So, surprise surprise, I think I have a correction to make in New FamilySearch.

I also did two batches of FamilySearch indexing for baptisms in Spain in 1712. It's going to be another busy day tomorrow but I'm going to crop some photos while watching our USA team go for the gold!

Footnotes

1. ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, "Old Parish Registers (OPR) Banns & Marriages," database, ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: accessed February 2010), 18/09/1778 Dalziel, Thomas (OPR Marriages 689/0120 0477 Inveresk and Musselburgh) 1778; no page number.

2. ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, "Old Parish Register (OPR) Births," database, ScotlandsPeople (ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk: accessed February 2010), 24/05/1789 Dalziel, Christian (OPR Births 689/0090 0172 Inveresk and Musselburgh) 1789, page 656.

3. ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, "Old Parish Registers (OPR) Banns & Marriages," database, ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: accessed February 2010), 19/03/1811 Henderson, James (OPR Marriages 685/003 0170 0363 Canongate) March 1811 page 181.

4. Ancestry.com, "1841 Scotland Census," database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed February 2010), James Henderson, age 50, Pencaitland, East Lothian; 1841 Scotland Census. Edinburgh, Scotland: General Register Office for Scotland. Reels 1-151. General Register Office for Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland;
Ancestry.com, "1851 Scotland Census," database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed February 2010), James Henderson, age 64, Penston, Gladsmuir, East Lothian; 1841 Scotland Census. Edinburgh, Scotland: General Register Office for Scotland. Reels 1-151. General Register Office for Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland.

On the trail of William Pitt Sartor...genealogy stone soup

Facebook is amazing. Let me tell you a fabulous story. I have a book called _The Sartor Search_ which has formed the basis of my Sartor research for over 10 years. It was written in 1984 by a woman who poured her whole heart and soul into researching the Sartor family. Unfortunately, she didn't cite her sources. And then she died. Bummer.

So the torch has passed to me, and I've been wandering around trying to retrace her footsteps. On page 14 of this book, Mrs. Taylor says:

William Pitt Sartor b. 1790/1800. This is the elusive William that Sarah Hughes Sartor named in her application for Rev. War pension in 1852 as having carried her Bible to Miss.

And that's all I knew of William Pitt Sartor until last November, when I received a Facebook message from someone saying "Hey, my ggggrandfather is William Pitt Sartor. Let's compare notes." Thanks to this distant cousin, last week we learned that William went from Union District, South Carolina, to Rutherford County, Tennessee. In Tennessee he had several children before moving on to Mississippi by 1852, when his mother Sarah complained of her missing bible.

Searching Rutherford County deeds turned up only two deeds mentioning William Sartor, but they were good ones. It turns out that William Sartor was the executor of the estate of Thomas and Elinore Linam, who died intestate in 1841. Further research shows that Thomas and Elinore Linam came from Union District, South Carolina. Thomas sells land in Union at the exact time I would expect him to sell in order to show up in Rutherford County, Tennessee, by 1835, where Elinore purchased 6 slaves from her son; which is the only other deed pertaining to Thomas and Elinore Linam.

Although I have not been able to prove it yet, I strongly believe that William was Thomas and Elinore Linam's son in law. Marriage records in South Carolina are notoriously difficult to find; therefore I am not all that surprised to find that even Holcomb has no suggestions for me. But a week ago I didn't even know where William Pitt Sartor had gone. So I'm not complaining. I have faith that somewhere there is an answer just waiting for me to come find it.

So thank you, Facebook, for finding my distant cousins and providing more pieces of the Sartor puzzle. Perhaps if we all put our heads together, this community will make a well sourced genealogy soup from stones after all.

GeneaBlogger Games stats as of 15 Feb

With Apolo Ohno as my inspiration, I'm off the starting line and heading down the track nicely in the 2010 GeneaBlogger Games. Here are my statistics so far:

1. Go Back and Cite Your Sources:
23 source citations added today

2. Back Up Your Data:
Aside from my automatic hard drive backup I have not addressed this "event" yet

3. Organize Your Research:
Digital files shuffled into the new organization system: Over 2,000, but about 500 of those still need renaming. Have not yet cropped out individual photos from batch scans. Added meta data including source citations to about 40 files.
New digital files added today, including metadata: 8 new documents
Haven't touched the filing cabinet

4. Expand Your Knowledge:
Did Wordle; will blog about it later. Did Google maps on Kesko's blog. Started a TimeToast timeline; will blog about it later.

5. Write Write Write:
Does Google Maps count again since that was this week's 52 Wees to Better Genealogy challenge? If not, I haven't done anything here yet.

6. Random Acts of Genealogy Kindness:
Haven't done any yet. That makes me feel mean. I think I will make that a priority tomorrow so I can feel better!