Day Thirty-One: Scary

One month in on my Fall Cleanup project, and I am just now hitting the folder for "S." Scary. There's not much month left in this marathon.

Notwithstanding the fact that my own surname begins with that letter, thankfully, the folders I'm routing from my old file cabinet contained papers from my earliest years of online research for my family's roots. Back then, I had started with my mother-in-law's lines; the pursuit of my father-in-law's Irish roots came much later.

Still, my mother-in-law had her own fair share of surnames beginning with that popular letter of the alphabet. Snider, for one. Then Stine.

The first of those names claimed a thick file. A very thick file. I've heard it said that Snider is one of most common surnames in the state of Ohio, and I believe it. Finding the right Snider was a challenge that many of us addressed in online forums, back in the 1990s, apparently. And I was the one to insure that all those threads got printed up and preserved for posterity.

Well, my progeny can now heave a sigh of relief. I tossed almost all of the Snider speculations—plus a good handful of other people's family group sheets and IGI leftovers. Anything I'd want to add to my own database, I'd first want to have accompanied by some solid documentation, thank you.

Stine was a different matter. It may have taken me twenty years to get up to speed on Snider, but Stine had definitely been reserved a permanent seat on the back burner. Like Rinehart from yesterday's cleanup, Stine was a name oft talked about, yet not really successfully pinned in the right spot on the genealogical database. Like Snider, Stine was a name which many people in Pennsylvania and Ohio claimed, but few aligned with my family's story.

When I began this project at the beginning of October, it wasn't as if I had decided to complete it all in one month. But I thought it would be nice. At least, it would make a tidy package: all wrapped up in one month sounded inspiring.

When I got mired in the Flowers part of my family's surname alphabet, though, I gave up hope on that prospect, forgetting that letters like "I" or "K" might not present as daunting a heap of work to conquer.

Now, facing that last stretch from "S" to the end of the line, the rest of the day may yield me the prize: an empty file cabinet drawer, ready to be filled with all the rest of the genealogical files I've currently relegated to storage boxes tucked away in the far reaches of the house. I already know that the folder for "T" will not contain any Tully information, because I hadn't yet tackled that research problem—though it does also include a file for Taliaferro, that surname which gained me entrance to Daughters of the American Revolution.

Maybe, just maybe, since I've already overcome the hump that is "S," I can reach the goal of making it to "Z" before the day—and the month—is out.  

Above: "Glen Birnam," oil on canvas circa 1890 by English artist Sir John Everett Millais; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. 

Day Thirty: Wait! Thirty?

I thought this month would never finish, but now that it has—nearly—I'm wishing for more time.

Today, in my Fall Cleanup project, I squarely faced the task of dispatching all the files in the folder for "R." Yes, that meant double-checking each of the issues of the Rootsweb Review before tossing it—mainly a perfunctory exercise. But it also meant uncovering an equally hefty folder under the heading for one surname I've yet to conquer: Rinehart.

The contents of the folder included genealogies offered up by several other researchers on this particular Rinehart line—from Greene County, Pennsylvania, some of whose descendants migrated to Perry County, Ohio—including their speculations on just what the roots of this family might have been.

I say "speculations" because that is all we were left with: guesses. No one seemed—at least, back in the 1990s when I last addressed this puzzle—to have found any documentation for any of the assertions which had been flung across the nascent Internet with abandon.

At least one of the people in on this Rinehart discussion was a woman who had a copy of her grandfather's journal, in which he had been careful to note his recollections of various long-gone family members. That was about the closest we could come to knowing anything for sure.

When you think about it, someone recalling, in the 1990s, a by-then deceased grandfather might have been referring to someone born in the 1890s. That grandfather, in turn, might have been able to remember stories of his ancestors which stretched back another hundred years. It might be feasible to conclude that such a person might have had enough time on his hands to actually be accurate in recording his memories.

Or not. We all know how family legends evolve.

Finding the Rinehart file and all the conversations surrounding this one root in my mother-in-law's heritage made me wonder whether I could now piece together all these hints and assumptions and draw up a tentative proposal for a family tree. That, in turn—somewhat like search angels might do for an adoptee hoping to find a birth family—might be a solid enough hypothesis to run through some stringent tests to see if supporting documentation can be located. After all, it's been almost twenty years since I addressed this research issue. A lot has materialized in digitized records—and even in finding aids for local collections.

With that in mind, I ended up keeping about seventy percent of the Rinehart file I originally started out with. It's still a sizeable stack. I assuaged my organizing alter ego by means of a reminder that I had just tossed an entire folder of like size not one hour previously. Surely that would count for something.

Above: "Farmhouses with Autumn Colored Trees," undated oil on cardboard by German landscape painter Walter Moras (1856 - 1925); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Twenty-Nine: Oh, My! Ohio!

Don't think it was with one monstrous leap that I flew from "M" to "O" in my Fall Cleanup project. Rather, thanks go to the fact that this is, after all, the weekend, when there always seems to be more time for cleaning.

The folder for "M" did indeed present a tedious review of some old printouts of early online genealogical publications. Still, I couldn't help myself: I had to look at every page, to insure I wasn't throwing out anything priceless. I confess to saving one item: a genealogy joke especially designed for history lovers of the antiquities kind.

The letter "M" kept me busy for many more reasons than just reviewing The Missing Links editions for 1999 onward. Keep in mind, I have two major family lines claiming their own files in that folder.

One of those lines was for my McClellan family in territorial Florida. Starting with my third great grandfather, George Edmund McClellan, I've been able to track almost all his descendants down to the present day. But before that? Nothing. He's one of my persistent brick walls. Yet, buried within the "M" folder, today I found some helpful notes from a distant cousin.

The only reason I met this McClellan cousin back in the 1990s was courtesy of the old Family Tree Maker policy allowing a customer to request the name and address of the submitter of a matching family tree. My file folder included a stack of photocopies of material later sent to me by this cousin. I couldn't help myself: I started working on that material right in the middle of the cleaning process. Talk about getting sidetracked.

Following that, my roots in New York City presented a file with information on how to access records in The Big Apple, 1990s style. "Reclaim the Records" hadn't yet come of age when I was stowing paper in that NYC file folder. A lot can happen in twenty years, making most of that file's contents modern day recycling fodder.

But when it came to "O"—oh, what a stash that file was. Remember, it was for my mother-in-law's family that I had tried my first tentative steps in online research. (Before that, I had done years of extensive work on another family constellation based in California, but that was working the process the old-fashioned way.)

Many of the pages in that file for Ohio included references to websites with promising resources. While I made mental notes that many of the resources now could be accessed through more modern, updated websites, there were a few such notes that I just had to set aside and check out. Call it the pull of The Bright Shiny.

I remembered using one of those websites mentioned in those notes. It was a useful section on the site of the Ohio Historical Society. Back then on that site, a researcher could pull up a digital copy of old death certificates of Ohio residents if the person had died within the right set of years in the early 1900s. Now? Well, I had to take a look.

Sadly, the web address didn't lead to the right page. Searching the site internally didn't bring up the page, either, despite there being a link provided for the right topic. It led to an error message.

I couldn't just walk away and be satisfied with that answer, though, so I googled it. According to Joe Beine's site, there were other, updated, resources to obtain the same stuff. The Ohio Historical Society still has an option to search the death index, though it is a stripped down version of what I remember using, back in the 1990s. Forget that, though: FamilySearch itself promised a version with "name index and images of Ohio statewide death certificates" for the same date range as I remember seeing before. Only caveat: once entering a name, the website requires that I sign in, then pops up to tell me I need to access the records at one of three types of family history centers.

Strangely, after all that, it gives me the image anyhow.

It would be unreasonable to assume that any resources gleaned from projects tackled nearly twenty years ago could come from sites now still viable, of course. And that's what enables me to blitz through all these file folders so blithely in this cleaning task. As in any other field, there is a constant state of flux in the realm of genealogy. What's changing is certainly not those static records of people now no longer in their own dynamic state, but how we locate the information we seek about them—a good reminder to always be on our toes about being fresh with our own continuing education efforts.

Above: "Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning," 1891 oil on canvas by French Impressionist artist Claude Monet; courtesy Google Cultural Institute via Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Twenty-Eight: The Afterburners Kick In

Escaping from the folders for "F" and "G" in my Fall Cleanup project was a significant accomplishment. The first surname I cut my teeth on, in those preemie online genealogical research years, was my mother-in-law's name: Flowers. Then followed the next surname, one in which I met and developed an online friendship with a fellow researcher seeking the same Gordon family as I. Oh, how much I had accumulated back then, when online research was new and everyone was reaching out and finding themselves in the digital ether. There was a lot to review, to assess, to toss or revamp.

Now free from those memories encumbrances, I'm seeing progress accelerate. Thankfully. Here's the Reader's Digest version of my conquests for today.

"H" was a null set. Thankfully, no surnames of significance there. I got a free pass to the next letter in the alphabet.

"I" was for the Indiana.edu Listservs, complete with directions on how to access the conversations, how to subscribe to specific groups, and how to behave one's self with the new online etiquette. It's easy to see that made a quick leap into the recycling bin. After all, what could be so 1990s as a Listserv?

"J" was another free pass for me. That was before I discovered my paternal grandmother's mother was indeed a Jankowski. I'm glad I've since made that discovery, but for now, I'm ecstatic to be moving along in this cleanup project so quickly.

"K" was a folder with only one file, but the consequences for this file's topic could have been extensive, since my husband has not one, but two distinct Kelly families in his roots. However, the one file still remaining in the cabinet was for copies of all the obituaries received on the one Kelly family from Fort Wayne. I already know I have them transcribed into my desktop database, but I'll double-check for sure. Besides, I could be a conscientious volunteer and share them on their respective memorials at Find A Grave.

When I came to the file for "L," it slowed me in my tracks...slightly. Once again, I hadn't yet discovered all I've subsequently learned about my paternal side's Laskowski immigrants, so there was no folder drawn up for that name. However, the one file under that letter contained something I still may find useful: directions on how to navigate the old land grant records. The contents of the file were mainly copies of old articles by—there she was, again—Myra Vanderpool Gormley, posted on an old Prodigy "interactive personal services" bulletin board in the mid-1990s.

Lest you assume I'm finally on a roll—after all, there are still more folders to conquer than there are days remaining in the month—this juggernaut came to a screeching halt at the folder for "M." After all, a letter with this much magnetism sucks more than its fair share of content from any given topic. Of course, it doesn't help that one of the online newsletters of the time—which I had a strange compulsion to print and stash—was named Missing Links. While the file may be amply filled to bulging, though, I suspect it will easily be dispatched into the awaiting circular file.

Beyond that, hopefully it will be clear sailing through the rest of the alphabet, as the cabinet drawer is much more than half empty.

Or would that be half full?

About this cleaning duty, does that make me an optimist? Or a pessimist?

Above: "Early Snow," late 19th century painting by Ukrainian-born Russian artist, Konstantin Kryzhitsky; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain. 

Day Twenty-Seven: Remember the Godfrey?

It has been an interesting exercise, this Fall Cleanup purge of old files in my genealogical file cabinet. Besides evoking many fond memories of online friendships with fellow researchers, the process has uncovered resources from bygone days, prompting thoughts about the evolving state of our research.

Today, I ran across a folder for the Godfrey Memorial Library. Apparently still in operation, situated in Middletown, Connecticut, the library houses an enviable collection of genealogical books and resources. However, not to be limited by geographical confines, in 2002, the library developed the "Godfrey Scholar," an online resource allowing subscribers anywhere, for a modest fee, to access some material on their holdings, as well as gain entrance to some other key online resources.

It wasn't until 2006 when I first decided to join the ranks of the Godfrey scholars, something I can still say with certainly, because the folder for today's Fall Cleanup happened to contain my welcome letter, from then-director Thomas Jay Kemp, as "the newest member of our library." Along with the letter came a genuine hand-inscribed membership card, directions for entering the "portal," and a copy of the Summer 2005 edition of The Godfrey Update.

Over the years, changes to the Godfrey Scholar program seemed to yield less and less satisfying resources, at least for my research needs, and I eventually abandoned the subscription. In its place were so many other new options, the decision wasn't hard to make.

Isn't the world of genealogy like that? In a meeting for one of our local genealogy society's special interest groups yesterday, someone had commented that "beginners" classes aren't really just for true neophytes, but often benefit those who do know something about genealogy—but only how to do it the old way. Genealogy classes today aren't just about genealogy per se, but are also about how to access digitized records, and where to find them. There are so many new websites now available—and even the more established sites are so thick with information that it seems beneficial to spend some serious time with a tutorial on how to use the old, familiar ones.

For us as genealogists and history lovers, nostalgia may be our hidden vice. We may pine for such long-gone resources as I'm re-discovering in my file cabinet, but with so many new options making their appearance online, this is hardly time to mourn those changes. In a matter of days, Find A Grave will have a new look. Rootsweb, the old stalwart of 1990s researchers, will soon follow with changes of its own.

Meanwhile, as online genealogy mailing lists and message boards die out, new options spring up to become the next generation's avenue for research connectivity. Genealogist Katherine R. Willson publishes a directory of the more than eleven thousand English language Facebook pages and groups related to genealogy from around the world. Following Katherine's lead, Gail Dever created Facebook for Canadian Genealogy as a guide to the eight hundred Facebook resources—in either English or French—focusing on Canadian genealogy. Alona Tester created a guide for those interested in Facebook for genealogy in Australia. Undoubtedly, there are finding aids for Facebook resources in other languages, as well.

While digitized records represent only the tip of the historical documents iceberg, those online resources we now know about—and know how to use—are themselves but the tip of another iceberg, one representing a future avalanche of information downloads. We simply must resign ourselves to the concept that, from now on, learning "genealogy" will not only be a matter of understanding how to document our family history, but a matter of learning how to find, access and master the mushrooming amount of upcoming resources which will provide us those documents.

Above: "The First Snow, Minnesota," 1895 oil on canvas by German-born American artist Robert Koehler; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.
        

Day Twenty-Six: G is for Gaining Ground

Once I cleared all the files in the "F" folder, I figured progress in my Fall Cleanup project would accelerate. Sure enough, it did.

First step in the folder for "G" topics was labeled, generically enough, "General Info on Genealogy." My, what a lot of old resources I found in that twenty year old folder! Most of them were for websites which have long been gone, or at least have morphed into other resources. Most, thankfully, were for topics for which I know I now have up-to-date resources, listed in my online records or in my much more concise notes.

It still amazes me to see how many people I was in touch with during those early days of online genealogical research. There were so many "lists" where people could exchange information—"listservs" from the University of Pennsylvania and other colleges, early computer services such as Prodigy, and, of course, the many mailing lists hosted by Rootsweb.

Not only were folks trying to compare notes on mutual connections with ancestors, but they were also keen on sharing great tips and resources. One man shared tips on how to visit a cemetery for family history purposes. A woman on a different mailing list provided a formula for determining a person's date of birth from the precise age at date of death (gleaned either from old headstones or from more recent death certificates). One wonderful, multi-post resource was a dictionary of archaic medical terms. Others shared a naming pattern, or the geometric progression of how many direct ancestors a given person could have. Someone shared a poem about genealogy.

Of course, many of these resources can now be accessed via online resources, but I didn't know that then. All I could do was figure out a way to be organized about saving all these bits of information in the filing system of the day. Mostly, it was a simple matter of finding a post and clicking on the button for "print." Presto: more stuff to file.

Some of those names from back in the 1990s are still around in the genealogy world today. Saved, among the papers in my many file folders, were excerpts from the "Rootsweb Review" for which I still remember the editor's name: Myra Vanderpool Gormley. Apparently—though in a different guise—she has been active in both writing and research ever since those early years in which I carefully saved her work from the Rootsweb days. Having published several books (including a last hurrah for Rootsweb, The Official Guide to Rootsweb.com, the same year she retired from the organization), she now even keeps up with a genealogy blog, which she dubbed "Shaking Family Trees."

And I thought all patron saints were from bygone centuries. Genealogy, it appears, is a different case.

The majority of the pages I unearthed from the folders in the "G" file found their new home in the nearest circular file. I have to confess, though: some gems were just too hard to toss. But they were only five or six. Maybe seven. Certainly no more than eight.

Above: "Rainy Day, Boston," 1885 oil on canvas by American Impressionist artist Childe Hassam; courtesy Google Art Project via Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Twenty-Five: More Friends

I hit the jackpot with today's Fall Cleanup folder. Remember how I kept waiting to run across the file for those letters exchanged with that first Flowers family researcher I met online? Well, when I was first setting up this file system for my genealogy "stuff," by the time I got to the letter for this person's surname in the Flowers folder, I must have gotten tired of having a separate file for each researcher, and lumped them all together under "Flowers—Misc."

That was back in the 1990s. Today is the day I got to go through all those emails. By the time I made my first pass through the stack, I was tempted to change the title of today's post to "Grunt Work." The reason? All the letters I decided to keep are for records or descriptions I need to confirm are part of my online tree. Thus, that folder now joins several others in moving from my genealogy file cabinet to a to-do stack for follow-through.

I ran across several other exchanges of correspondence from the late 1990s in that folder, reminding me of just how many others I had met and worked with in those early years of online research. Since that was nearly twenty years ago now, I'm realizing there is a secondary reason for me to keep these letters: nearly each one of them contains an explanation for just how they were related to my mother-in-law's Flowers line. Fast forward to today's research milieu, with matches for DNA cousins in the mix; perhaps these old connections—added to my tree, thanks to the records from those old letters—can help me place a few DNA matches.

Forget that; perhaps some of my husband's DNA matches are with the grandchildren of these researchers.

Above: "Lane at Gerolstein [Germany]," 1891 oil on board by German landscape painter Fritz von Wille; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.