Throwback Thursday

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In honor of a hot July day, I thought I'd take a trip to the beach. My family liked to go up to the Maine beaches, but the back of the photo doesn't tell us where this was taken. From the back we have:
Lotta Smith, Primrose Rogers Tapply, Clara Smith, and Primrose (Primsy) Rogers. Love those bathing costumes and the bathing shoes. This was about 1930.

Pruning and Maintaining my Tree

I hate loose ends. When I look at my online tree at Ancestry, nothing makes me crazier than seeing this

No birth or death date.

I was amazed at how often just entering a guess for the birth date will help. Start with a date the same year as the spouse's birth. Very often the hints on Ancestry just pop up.

And there we are! I never did find a sure death date for her, but I found a death date under Minnie Tapply. I used a resource I found looking for Dora North and Frank Summerfield Tapply.

So these entries for the reading of wills very often name the spouse as beneficiary (so you can be sure you have the right person with the myriad Tapplys and Tapleys) and give the place of residence. By entering this place in Dora North's  file, I found her death entry and I used the same method for Minnie.

I've been going through the tree trying this methods with people on both sides of the Atlantic, and I've at least got either a birth or death date for the older parts of the tree. Amazing how entering a date and possible location unlocks those doors.

The next problem I tackled was this:

I've been round and round on this portion of the Smith family. Marion L. Smith had four children. Two were named Dietche and two were named Otto. I felt sure that there had been two marriages, but I couldn't find any record anywhere for the two children or for her. And her second husband was Otto Dietche. Was this a record mistake? I didn't think so. Her marriage record and the census name her as a widow. So I went back to the son and tried again on Family Search.

And lo and behold this showed up:

There it is. Allan G Otto in Fitchburg, Massachusetts who seemed to have died just after the birth of the two children. So plugging THAT into the tree for father and Robert Allan Otto for the son, the hints just fell into place. I found a directory entry for Allan and Marian living in Fitchburg just a year before his death.  I also  found exact birth, marriage and death dates for the children and neatly tied up another loose end.

It doesn't work every time. Older records are difficult. Families with many people of the same name are almost impossible. But using FindaGrave, Family Search and Ancestry I've made good progress. I found a few duplicates, loose ends, branches that needed pruning altogether and satisfied my own urge to tidy up the tree.  It may only be January, but it's time to try a little spring cleaning.

Indexing

Genealogy seems like a "tame" adventure to some who know me. When I talk about my discoveries I have friends who listen avidly, or politely and others who roll their eyes. Yeah, the hobbies of a middle-aged white girl. Right. But this is actually something that interested me from the time I was a young girl hearing about the tangle of aunts, uncles and cousins in my mother's family. Who were these people? What did they do? What were they like? As part of the younger generation moved far away from the small hometown, I drove my parents crazy with questions. My mother was reasonably forthcoming, my dad not so much. So when I started my search 4 years ago I had a number of mysteries to solve. For those of us not lucky enough to travel and do research in person, online resources have become a treasure. I soon discovered FamilySearch, an online repository of records kept by the Mormon Church. Records that are indexed are searchable by name or place or date at the click of a mouse. Many more records have been scanned or photographed and are browsable online. I was delighted to discover a written household inventory and will for a family member from the early 1800's. I knew the approximate date and place, but had to patiently browse through the volume. Time consuming, but rewarding. What a glimpse I got into his life! Last spring I got an email from FamilySearch asking me to volunteer to help them index the 1940 census. This simply means looking at a scanned document and keying data into a large form for a database. Boring right? Actually not. One of the lessons I've learned online is that getting to know the unique characteristics of the forms you discover can make your search much easier. Let's say that your family member shows up living in New York City in 1940, but you are unable to find him before that. Looking at the 1940 Census you discover that there is a field for "Residence in 1935". Voila! Your relative was last living in Albany. That 1940 Census, by the way, was indexed in record time by thousands of volunteers. They knew, as I do, that the faster the records are indexed, the sooner they are out there at TheFold or Ancestry or FamilySearch for all of us to use. FamilySearch is always looking for new volunteers. (BTW, I'm not affiliated in any way-just an enthusiastic volunteer) You download some simple software and work whenever you can. Each project has a deadline, but no one keeps track of how often you work. You can even download projects to work in bits and pieces. They especially need people fluent in other languages. Right now they are indexing manifests for immigrant ships. Does that pique your interest? Imagine finding your ancestor on the very boat that brought him to this country! So, if you have become as ensnared by this hobby as I have, consider volunteering to do a little indexing for FamilySearch.