Treasured Branches

Been busy!

2010-06-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been pretty busy in the family history field these last few weeks (I know, it's been longer than a "few weeks" since I posted last, but for awhile I was mostly scrapbooking family history rather than doing research.) It gets addictive, which is not great for my eyeballs! (All the staring at the computer screen.)

I've been trying to clean up the info, etc., that I have on my Family Tree Maker program. I've decided it's to be the primary repository for the family history stuff, rather than Ancestry.com. That doesn't mean I won't still have my Ancestry tree, but that I'll be doing the primary research from within FTM rather than from Ancestry. This matters because, although you would think the two would be incredibly compatible, FTM being an Ancestry.com product, they don't work together as well as one would think. I won't go into it all here, it's too complicated.

ANYway, I have also been using other resources to find "stuff" and it's been interesting. Footnote.com is still very useful, especially in finding military records. I joined WorldVitalRecords.com (just with US access, adding World was a little too expensive), and have found mostly land records through them (they aren't very strong on census info, tons of which I already have, and they link to FindAGrave.com, which I think is kinda silly, since F-A-G is free). I tried GenealogyBank for a couple of weeks -- it wasn't terribly useful to me. Their big thing is newpapers and historical books, and the people in my family tree didn't live in big towns or do much that would land them in the books. I did find several articles on W. M. Green, our Texas Ranger, from the Dallas and Ft. Worth newspapers they had, so that was cool, but it wasn't worth extending my free month's membership into a paid subscription.

Using FamilySearch.org (which is free!) I found a whole bunch of Death Certificates for my Texas ancestors. It sounds morbid, but it is interesting to know what people died of, and there's other info on these records as well, including parents' names (although in one case they had it completely wrong), where the deceased was living when they died, hospital names, etc. It's not so bad to read the ones for people who lived long lives, but in one case I found the death cert for one of my grandmother's brothers who died of diphtheria when he was just a very little thing, and even though I've known the story of his and another brother's death, it was still sad to see the cert.

I think I have Confederate Service Records now for all my ancestors who fought in the Civil War (unless there's someone I'm not sure fought). I have a couple of Revolutionary War pension apps. I found a copy of the letter one of my Civil War ancestors (Elijah W. Smith) wrote to whoever was in charge when he formed a regiment to fight in that war -- the "Abbeville Tigers," of the 37th Mississippi Infantry (the group was later called "Smith's Rifles," and the 37th Mississippi became the 34th, for whatever reason). I had seen a transcription of that letter online, but it was so cool to find a copy of the original, in his handwriting! Here it is:

Although family history research is always a sleuthing job, sometimes you have to "sleuth" harder than others. I almost never found E. W.'s Confederate records. I kept finding an "Enoch" Smith listed (this was at Footnote) in the 37th Mississippi. Obviously there are a LOT of Smiths, and anyone could be named Enoch Smith, but I could not find Elijah under any name -- Elijah W., E. W., just Elijah. So I decided to look at Enoch's files just to see if maybe someone got the name wrong. What I found was that someone had combined Enoch Smith's files with E. W. Smith's files -- and that this E. W. was, indeed, my Elijah, based on what I know of his military service and his death date (he died during the war). Enoch's stuff was very, very close to Elijah's, but not exactly the same -- Enoch died on October 10, 1862, in a hospital of disease. Elijah died on October 14, 1862, in a friend's house, also of disease. Anyway, this was also the file where I found the abovementioned letter, so I knew it was my Elijah. I asked Footnote if they could separate the two files, but apparently this couldn't be done (I guess since the files came from the National Archives, and probably had to remain in the same format, shape, etc. as they came.) At least they're going to put an annotation on there and make it searchable under E. W. Smith, also.

Lots of fun stories like that (one of the death certs revealed we had the wrong death date and place for J. B. Smith, who was E. W.'s son). I'll share more later, along with more of the scrapbook pages I made. At the moment I'm kinda burned out on scrapping, so it may be awhile before I get the family history scrapbook finished!

Okay, off to do more sleuthing!

Confederates everywhere!

2010-01-05T11:39:00.001-08:00

We've been watching Ken Burns' "The Civil War" PBS documentary lately. In doing family research, I discovered that I have at least 9 ancestors who fought in the Civil War, most, if not all, on the Confederate side. A couple were captains, most were privates. Some have a lot of documentation, some have very little, and one whose service I have not yet been able to document, it's pretty much just "family tradition" that he fought. And since he was from Missouri, he could've been on either side. Anyway, digging through all this information made me realize I didn't really know just tons about the details of the Civil War. So we've been renting the documentary from NetFlix (I will confess that I actually tracked down my own DVD set used on Amazon for just $20! It should be here any day. So, I liked it, I bought it -- I'm like that). It's an amazing documentary, very interesting. And because of it, and because I decided I liked one of the interviewees, Shelby Foote, a lot (he knew everything about the war, it seems, and I love his Mississippi accent!), I've also become the owner (via Christmas gift) of Mr. Foote's non-fiction 3-volume set about the Civil War (MASSIVE 3-volume set!), and I also got one of his fiction works, Shiloh, which is about the Battle of Shiloh as told from the perspective of six different participants. It's a very good, well-written book, I recommend it.

Anyway, back to the ancestors ... while I am deeply regretful that several of my ancestors had slaves, I still love these people, and I still find their lives interesting, especially the fact that they fought in this war. I may have written about this before in some form, but there are at least two of them who did not want the South to secede, once their state did they felt obligated to fight on their state's behalf. E. W. Smith was one of these, at the moment I can't remember who the other one was.

The whole thing is just so tragic. The South was doomed to lose from the beginning, since the North had almost all of the industry and the South was much more agrarian. This meant the North could make more munitions, weapons, etc., and in general had better access to uniforms and other comforts. So even though the South started off well and won a number of battles in the beginning (and throughout the war), they had no way of sustaining that advantage. And, honestly, the North could have won it fairly quickly if General McClellan hadn't been an idiot and waited so long to move his troops into Richmond -- he had several good chances in the first year or so.

So, anyway, I just think it's kinda cool that there are these records of my ancestors' service in the first place, and just having them there, present in one of this country's most historic events, knowing how it changed many of their lives ... for a historian like me, that's like finding gold! (Larger amounts of that "gold" would be appreciated -- like photos, letters home, etc -- but I'll take what I can get at this point!)

My ancestor Capt. John Milton McCreless (on my dad's mother's side) has quite a few records in the Civil War Confederate Service Records database (both at NARA -- the National Archives and Records Administration -- and at footnote.com), including requisitions for supplies. Here's one of those:
(You can click on the image to see it larger.)

And here's one of the Muster Roll records for John Wesley Reece (on my mother's mother's side):
(This isn't the original muster roll for his regiment, which would have all the men's names on it, but rather a record put together in the post-war years for him as an individual soldier. And I must say I like the way the Confederate records were done much better than the Union ones ...)

So you get an idea what these records are like. I know from these records that some of my ancestors died during the war (E. W. Smith and W. P. Dorn, for example), and that they died of disease rather than being killed in action. I know that some of my ancestors received furloughs for business purposes as well as for illness, and a couple of them (McCreless included) ended up as prisoners of war for a time. (None of my ancestors seem to have spent very long as POWs, which was a good thing given the photos I've seen of some of those poor men after they came out of the prisons.)
It's only a very small portrait of their Civil War service, not complete by far, but I'm happy to have that much! I really, really do wish I had photos of the ones who still remain faceless to me. Maybe someday I'll find a source that will have some. There are lots of Civil War photo sites, but none have so far had photos of any of my ancestors.

A Civil War page

2009-10-02T09:39:00.001-07:00

I had a number of ancestors in the Civil War (I think I've talked about this before?), Confederates, and found a wonderful kit especially for scrapping Civil War stuff at Heritage Scrap. So this is my first page devoted to one of them. And in reality, this page isn't really all there is to tell about J. B., so I'll be doing another page with more info about him.

Again, for credits and ingredient details, go to my craft blog, Stacy's Stamp-n-Scrap Loft.

Branching out

2009-09-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, that was a lame title! lol -- but I have begun to make my "branch" pages for my family heritage album. This one stars my maternal great-grandparents Arthur Lee and Maggie Ophelia (Westbrook) Campbell. The larger photo at the bottom is of my grandfather, as he is my direct ancestor. I didn't have a photo of his sister who died while still an infant, so I used a silhouette, but now my mother tells me she has a photo of baby Maggie Idora -- she just doesn't know where. As she put it, "Maggie Idora is buried twice; once in Deport and also in my house!"

If you'd like details on the designers/kits I used, you can hop over to my craft blog page here. There's also a bit in that post about my plans for the branch pages. In addition to those "strictly facts" pages, I want to make separate pages for special pictures, or particular people, or whatever reason pops into my head!

You can click on the image if you'd like to see it larger.

Oh, yes -- my page about my grandmother was featured on Faith Sisters' "Made Ya Look Monday" page this week! Woooot!

More heritage scrapbooking

2009-09-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

I've done another layout that will eventually go in my Family Heritage album. Again, this one is digital instead of paper. (For more info about the scrapping part, you can go to my "Stacy's Stamp and Scrap Loft" blog where I've also posted this layout.)

The girls are my dad's mother Susie Richardson Smith (in the middle) and two of her sisters (Kate, on the left, and Ida to the right). I love how they had these photos taken in the same positions five years apart! The Richardsons were a very close family, and from the tales I've been told, they had a lot of fun together! "Ma" Richardson (Una Dorn Richardson) kept a journal at the family home, and whenever any of the kids were home visiting they would write in it. Often it was just facts like "Susie and Mike were here, with kids," and the date, but it was in that person's handwriting. Sometimes they commented about how stuffed they were from Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner. The last entry is quite sad and poignant, as it was written by Ida after Ma was moved to a nursing home. It talks about the great memories that home holds, also, so it's bittersweet.

I'll be back later with more heritage scrapping. I've got plans for the Family Heritage scrapbook ...

Heritage Scrapbooking

2009-09-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

This is something I've been really wanting to do, especially since I've been collecting heritage photos of my family. So this weekend, since I needed an excuse to use some of the digital scrapbooking stuff I'd been collecting, I thought I'd make a layout using my favorite photo of my maternal grandmother and referring to the Bible passage that describes how she was so well (Proverbs 31:10-31) Now, normally I'm a "traditional" (paper) scrapper. I love to feel of the paper and embellishments in my hands as I manipulate them around to make the layout I want. Digi-scrapping layouts, when you get them printed, are, of course, completely 2-D, no matter how 3-D they may look. That bugs me. But I like a lot of things about digital scrapping (like the way you can reuse "papers" and elements over and over, and change their size or color to fit what you're doing), so I'm not averse to doing the occasional digital layout.

Here's the one I made of Granny (you can click on the image to see it larger):

I think she would have liked this page, although she would have disagreed with my assessment of her as being so wonderful (she really was!).

So this is something I really want to do more of -- scrap my family tree and also make layouts of individual people, to honor them as I think they should be honored!

Spiritual Heritage

2009-08-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to finishing a digital scrapbook layout I did a few months ago when I was still a member of PaperCraft Planet social networking site and moderating a group focused on Christian crafting. I had a faithbooking project going there, and this is the last page I made for it. I didn't have as many family heritage photos scanned in then, and really didn't like the one I had to use for my dad's dad, so last night I decided to go in and change the photo. It took me 1-1/2 hours to do that simple little thing (I had altered the original color of the oval frame that I used on all the pictures, and hadn't saved it, so I had to try to match the color, then scale it, then figure out how to cut the right size oval out of the photo and get it behind the frame -- it all sounds so simple, but clearly, it wasn't!). I posted it on GenealogyWise, which is a new social network for family historians and genealogists, in the Scrapping Your Family History (or whatever it's called) group. So here it is:

If you'd like to see it larger, just click on it.

I have no recollection of the designers or whatever of any of the elements. (I always like to post the brands, etc. of the things I use in scrapping and card making, because I figure they made the stuff, they deserve the credit.)

ANYway.

I joined Footnote.com the other day. It's a website with tons of digitized original documents (like Civil War Service Records, census images from 1880 and 1930, etc.). It was $60 for a year (they had a special). I don't know yet if it will be worth the money. For some reason my ancestors are always undocumented or it's hard to find their info. Census images aren't a problem, but I already have most of those off Ancestry. I did find the actual images of one of my ancestors' Civil War records. Before joining Footnote I only had the index information on that. So that was cool. But the Civil War era is so frustrating because they often just put the soldier's first and middle initials with their last name. So instead of finding Elijah William Smith, I have to look through all the other E. W. Smiths in Mississippi (and they are legion, or so it seems) and try to decide if the info is for MY E. W. Smith. Fortunately, for most of my Civil War soldier ancestors I know the regiments they were in. This helps tremendously.

Oddly, I'm having trouble finding military documentation for my 5-greats-grandfather who served in the Revolutionary War and then was one of the original Old Three Hundred colonists who came to Texas. He's been celebrated by the DAR, has DAR medallions on his headstone, etc. But I can't find the documentation on his service with the South Carolina militia that was under Gen'l Francis Marion. I found several Alexander Hodge papers for North Carolina ... wondering if there was a mistake or if he served somehow for NC. Or if that's a different Alexander Hodge entirely. I wouldn't think that was an incredibly common name, but what do I know about common names back then?

Well, the morning is almost over, I need to go take a shower and get dressed, and then take the kid to the orthodontist. So, until next time ...

Cemetery desecration

2009-07-10T20:29:00.001-07:00

I've been reading in the news of the outrageous crime that took place recently in a Chicago-area black cemetery. Three workers (maybe more, I can't remember at the moment) hatched a scheme to make money out of nothing by digging up graves, tossing the remains, and reselling the plots to unsuspecting buyers! This shocks and angers me more than you can imagine. Being a family historian, and respecting highly the memory of my ancestors (heck, I love these people, and I didn't even know most of them!), I have come to view cemeteries not so much as places of death and sadness, but of connection to those who have gone before us. Now, being a Christian I know full well those people's souls, the very essence of who they are, aren't out there at the cemetery. They're either enjoying Heaven with Jesus or they're awaiting judgment for not having accepted Him as Savior. But the bodily remains are still there, and that makes for a connecting point between the living and their deceased loved ones. A very important connecting point.

So now there are 2,000 families looking for their dead, and many are finding that their graves have been dug up, the bones nowhere to be found, and there are also headstones missing or damaged. I just find this horrific. The accused even dug up plots in "Babyland" where most of the children are buried. I can't even imagine the pain of losing a child and then having some calloused, evil person come along and dig up their remains and just tossing them somewhere!

So -- on the subject of cemeteries: When I was younger, I really hated cemeteries. To me they just seemed places of sorrow and death, and I have never wanted to dwell on those kinds of things. A number of years ago we went to Ireland, and I honestly adored their cemeteries -- of course, if I had a loved one who was recently buried there, I probably wouldn't feel the same. But they were such peaceful places, places full of gorgeous Celtic crosses, with vegetation growing wild everywhere and just this sense of holiness about them. I enjoyed wandering around among the crosses and headstones and just enjoying the peace. I didn't think I would ever "like" American cemeteries, though. They seemed too well-manicured and sterile by comparison.

But now that I've gotten serious about my roots (that reminds me -- I need to color my hair again ...), I've discovered that I don't mind the American ones so much. Granted, I can't say that I "adore" them -- there is still a touch of sadness in them. But it's comforting, somehow, to walk around a cemetery and find the names of my ancestors, to see the different headstones that were chosen to stand as testimony of their lives. The older headstones are so fascinating, but the newer ones are also beautiful. For example, on my paternal grandparents' headstone, there's a heart in between the names that gives the date on which they were married. To me that is so sweet!

And the inscriptions (what we commonly call epitaphs) ... some are just straight to the point: "Resting in Jesus." And there are some that are more lengthy, such as this one on John Ross and Clarinda (Pevehouse) Kegans' headstone: "Our Father and Mother are gone, they lie beneath the sod; Dear parents, though we miss you much, We know you rest with God."

Let me tell you, the Kegans' children forked out for their headstone! It's no mere headstone, but an entire monument. Check this out:

Honestly, John Ross and Clarinda deserve this. They were both there at the birth of the Republic of Texas, John was imprisoned at the notorious Perote prison in Mexico for his role in the Mier Expedition and suffered horrible things he wouldn't even talk about when he returned home. In their photos, they both look so old and tired. But Clarinda wrote her memoirs, and described John as being very funny, very cheerful, etc. He just refused to talk about his experiences at Perote. (Many other men described the horrors they went through, so we know it was no holiday in Cancun.) And Clarinda, by a granddaughter's account, was a more quiet person, but always ready to laugh, and a very loving, devout Christian woman.

Whoops -- I went off down a rabbit trail! I'll tell you more about John Ross and Clarinda some other time. I will just let you know that Clarinda was part of the Runaway Scrape, and she and her family actually watched the Battle of San Jacinto from a thicket of trees!

Anyway -- for a long time I thought I would want to be cremated, but my mother (who is against cremation) made me think the other day when she said, "Isn't it nice to have those graves to go visit? I wonder what people do whose loved ones have been cremated and had their ashes scattered to the four winds?" WOW! Now, having ashes stored in a mausoleum or something might be passable, but just think how these people are robbing their descendants of having a specific spot to visit to make that sort-of connection with their family history!

I've written a novella again. I could really write a lot about many of my ancestors, and hope to do so in future posts. But for now, I'll let this do, and close with:

My heart goes out to those people whose loved ones' gravesites have been desecrated. I pray that they can find peace in knowing that, no matter what may happen to the bodies of the dead, their souls go on, and for those who are Christians, they'll see more than just a body again one day, but the perfected PEOPLE who have gone on!

Texas General Land Office awesomeness

2009-07-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

I drove the million miles into downtown Austin today and went to the Texas General Land Office's Archives and Records department. I wanted to see what they had on my ancestors Alexander Hodge and James Kegans. Both of these men were settlers in Austin's first colony (which makes them part of the Old Three Hundred), and I had already seen a digitized copy of Hodge's original land grant petition online, so I knew I would find some good stuff there.

I had no idea what to expect when I went down there. For starters, when you enter the General Land Office building, you have to sign in and get a visitor's badge. That makes sense, it being a government building. Then you enter the Archives and Records department (hee, I first typed "Archivers" -- you can tell I'm an avid scrapper/stamper person!). They have their own security methods in there -- you have to put all purses, backpacks, etc. and cell phones in a locker before you can begin to look at anything. Computers are okay. You may only use a pencil to take notes, and you have to take notes on the yellow paper they provide (unless you've brought your own note paper). When you're ready to leave, they'll inspect your notes (I'm assuming this is to make sure you aren't trying to sneak anything out).

I asked for help finding any documents pertaining to Hodge and Kegans, as original settlers, and they directed me to one of their "librarians" (for lack of a better word) who specialized in the Spanish section of the records. (For those of you who may not know Texas history, Austin's colony was officially in the State of Coahuila y Texas, Mexico, so all documents from that period were written in Spanish.) He brought out an index book, we found some things and then he set off into the back to pull them for me. When he brought them out, he went through and explained each document to me before leaving me to my research.

I have to tell you, it was so amazing to see these original documents! The land grant petitions are in individual folders, and are protected by a kind of sleeve that looks like see-through parchment (probably some form of archival paper). So you can see the documents, but not touch them. Again, this makes perfect sense. I was impressed with the good condition these documents were in! Although the edges were worn, they weren't ragged, and there were only a couple of stains from where someone awhile back had stamped a number on one of them in ink that bled. Originally, these had been pages in a book, but now they're individual documents.

They provided translations for me of the land grant petition documents. I ordered a copy of Hodge's, but hand-wrote bits of the other two I was interested in.

There were also smaller documents placed in a book with protective "parchment" over each of them. In these we found hand-drawn maps showing the land Hodge was given before it was parceled out (it had originally belonged to Stephen F. Austin himself), then a map showing the five leagues he gave (or sold) to Hodge and four others, with the designations as to whose land was whose, and including little notes like "Peaches" or "Cane" to show where this kind of vegetation was located. There were also "field notes" -- notes taken by the original surveyors on pocket-sized paper (originally small notebooks).

I ordered copies of all these documents. I ended up spending about $41, but it will be SO worth it to have true first-generation copies of them. (I think the pricing was $2 per page if you want color, and $1 per page for black and white -- that was for the documents. Not sure how much the pages of the translation cost. They were just typed out on regular paper.) It's going to be so amazing to have these copies in my possession!

The documents themselves are interesting. Here's what the digitized version of Hodge's original petition looks like:

So at the top you have the seals and fee rate (it cost 2 reales to have these drawn up). Underneath that you have the name of the commissioner to which they petitioned. The man at the Land Office told me that they couldn't apply for land grants unless there was a commissioner in office. Austin was the Empresario of the colony, but he didn't have the right to actually grant land. So that's why, even though they came to Texas in the early 1820s, they weren't able to apply for their allotted league until later because there was no commissioner. In fact, I believe Hodge's petition for land for his orphaned grandchildren (not my directs) was begun in one year, but had to be re-done in 1831 because the commissioner had been accused of murdering his mistress' husband, so he was in jail!

Anyway, they put in their petition, then someone had to vouch for their right to have the land. Once that was okayed, they had the land surveyed, and eventually, if all was in order, they were granted the land ("tax, title and license not included," lol -- they had to pay fees, etc., so the land wasn't technically "free"). All of this is included in the land grant petition.

What's really cool are the signatures -- right there, in their own handwriting, are the siggies of my actual ancestors! And, of course, all the other people involved. One of the commissioners (you can see his siggy on the left-hand side of this document) had a very fancy rubric he included with his signature -- it must've taken a few minutes to draw it, with all those squiggly lines!

So I'm going back on Friday to pick them up (I have to be in town, anyway). Hopefully the copies are excellent quality. I thought it would even be cool to frame some of them if the copies were good enough.

That's what I've been up to lately, in addition to just doing a lot of data entry and transferring into the Family Tree Maker program. I need to get back to scanning photos and posting them into the program. *SIGH* So much to do! But it's all worth it, even if nobody else but me appreciates it all. (Fortunately, several in my family are appreciating it!)

New software

2009-06-21T21:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. Finally I have something to write about! Okay, so seriously, I have tons of things to write about, I'd just hit a kind of doldrums.

Anyway, I broke down and bought Ancestry's "Family Tree Maker" family history software a couple of weeks ago, and it got here this past week. I've been having fun playing with it (although at first it was a little frustrating, and I still have some questions). It's so much more "elegant" than the old version of Personal Ancestral File that I'd had for several years. Plus it interacts automatically online with Ancestry.com, and that's a huge bonus since I have an Ancestry membership.

The software promised that you could transfer files from a number of other family history programs, including PAF (Personal Ancestral File), which was one of the selling points for me. I definitely didn't want to have to go back and manually enter almost 1500 individual records, including notes and sources. But when I tried to do the file transfer straight across, which the FTM (Family Tree Maker) program was prompting me to do, FTM would crash and tell me I had to restart. I tried oh, so many times to make it work, and even searched online for answers, but couldn't find what I needed. In desperation I finally decided I would have to make a GEDCOM file out of the PAF file, which I knew would at least contain all the basic name-birth-death sort of data, and load it into FTM that way. I could manually transfer the notes and sources by cut-and-paste later.

Blessedly, when I used the GEDCOM file, it worked, and not only was the fact information intact, but the notes and sources showed up, as well! Hallelujah! Now, FTM is different enough from PAF that I still haven't really figured out where the sources are attached to the individual files (the notes are obvious on the person's page). And the photo links I'd attached to the PAF files didn't make it over, so I'm having to manually insert those, but in all actuality, this has been a blessing. In PAF, you had to attach the photo to each individual person who was in it -- i.e., if you had four people in one photo, you had to go into each person's file and add the photo, so that was one photo, four times. But in FTM, you load the photo, and then attach the people to it (like tagging in Facebook), so you only have to do the photo once and just pick the people from the list. Super easy.

Another cool thing about FTM is the way it links directly to my Ancestry.com tree. When I select the "family" (i.e. pedigree) view in FTM, if I have an internet connection, it will show me any "hints" it has for my tree members. A "hint" in Ancestry is a link to a possible source or other tree containing information about that individual, i.e. census records, birth records, entries in One World Tree, etc. I can look at each hint to see if it does, indeed, go with that person, and if it does, then I can choose to merge it into my FTM tree. And that's cool because it will attach the actual image, if there is one (like a census image) to the FTM file for that person! Which means I don't have to go through all my hundreds of census images and manually attach them to the people they go to. Yay!

The only negative thing about this is that the "hints" feature doesn't always find every record for that person, even if I have the records attached to their information on my Ancestry tree. So I might have the 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900 and 1910 census files, plus a death record attached to a person on my Ancestry tree, but the "hints" feature has only pulled the 1860 and 1870 census records for my FTM tree. Which means having to do another time-wasting lookup on that person through FTM to attach it to the FTM tree. It may be that there is a way to transfer all that information directly and I just don't know about it yet. Of course, I probably could have transferred my tree file from Ancestry instead of PAF, but I had more notes in the PAF version, so I wanted to go with it.

So, I've been having fun merging census records and such, and adding photos. Oh! FTM has another awesome feature that will show you where on a map (through Bing maps) your ancestors lived, and if you have their census records or other migration-revealing info, it will show you their paths of migration! I think that's pretty awesome. I plugged in all the places I've lived in my life, and it looked like a little kid's messed-up yarn ladder, with one very long spike off to London and back! lol

I really think this software is going to be much more useful than the PAF program I had been using, mainly because I won't have to do so much manual adding of records when I find something new. Plus, being plugged into Ancestry I could make a book or poster or something like that if I ever get things together enough to do that.

Well, this turned out sounding like a review of Family Tree Maker, which wasn't really what I intended it to be, but I do like the software so far, even with the minor inconveniences, which may be just because I haven't taken the time to explore the tutorials.

Next time I promise to be more interesting! ;-)

Where was I?

2009-06-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

I have been sick now for a week. Darned throat thing morphed into the sinus infection from the lowest depths of Hell. My brain has been seriously fogged, and I have done little but cruise the web and watch movies via Netflix "Watch It Now".

I can't for the life of me remember where I was in my genealogical research.

This is mainly because I had maxed out all the "simple" research bits anyway -- the family tree "following" on Ancestry, along with the "Ancestry Hints" that go a long way toward the basics; the easy-to-find graves on Find-a-grave-dot-com; tracking things in an orderly fashion on my Personal Ancestral File software that's on my hard drive. Most of the "easy," somewhat orderly work has already been done.

My biggest problem is that I am NOT prone to be linear in my research. At the beginning it was easy to be linear ... you just plug in what you know of your family history, and then the Great Genealogical Websites (Ancestry, RootsWeb, FamilySearch, etc.) help you go backward from there. At first you don't know you have to be a little careful because you're basically copying other people's trees, but after awhile you get that and you're more discerning of the info you put into your own tree. From there you get into finding copies of original documents. Ancestry.com is amazing at helping you do this. Of course, Ancestry is not a free website -- it's fairly expensive, but well worth the money (and if you save up Christmas and/or birthday money, it's not so bad). They have sooooooo much in the way of original documents or indexes of documents that you can download to your own computer! I have enough original Census images on my family to choke a mule, were I to suddenly decide to roll them all up and try to stuff them down said poor creature's throat (which I really don't see happening).

From there things for me got crazy. I would get interested in one particular ancestor and decide to google him/her. Sometimes this would lead to more info, sometimes not. If they were in the military I would try to find out more about their unit, or see if I could find their military records at NARA (the National Archives database). I discovered Find-a-grave and realized I could get photos of many of my ancestors' headstones. I tried tracking down obituaries (which often have tons of personal information in them), land records, etc. And when I'd done all I could for the moment on that person, I'd find someone else and do the same all over again on them.

But it wasn't always linear. I might be interested in J. B. Smith, and from there get interested in his father, E. W. Smith. Then a relative would e-mail me about someone on the other side of the family and I'd get interested in them and abandon E. W. for awhile. Or I'd start scanning old family photos and find myself wanting to search out more about someone there. Bouncing around like a lemur on speed. I suppose at this point I should mention I have ADHD.

SO, that's what's making it difficult for me to go back and pick up whatever thread I was on when I got sick and my brain refused to do any more work. I haven't kept a log of what I was doing and when. Other than knowing that I was working on labeling photos in my computer and attaching them to people in my Personal Ancestral File (PAF).

Well ... guess I'll just have to "go fishing" for awhile and see what might jog my brain. Or, just start someplace new and see where it leads ...

Sickness in the "olden days"

2009-06-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here tonight with a sore throat, feeling yucky, and it got me wondering how people reacted a hundred years ago or so when they felt unwell. Did they worry the minute their throat or stomach hurt that they had something deadly? (I wasn't worrying about that, I promise!) When their children complained of a sore throat or headache did they automatically fear tetanus or diphtheria or some other potentially fatal disease? I mean, I know I get a little "motherly" whenever Aidan comes down with something (is it meningitis? swine flu? ebola? Okay, maybe I don't really worry about ebola -- yet). So how must it have been "back then" when we didn't have the amazing medical technologies we have today and the good medicines? Did they just freak out? I imagine those who were Christians had to rely on their faith in God to help them not do that, but even then ... I think I would've been a "freaker".

As the Irish say, "C'mere til I tell ye" a story of sickness related to this photo. These three boys were my maternal grandmother's brothers. The oldest one is Boyd, the middle one Noel and the youngest one Hoyt. When Noel was about four and Hoyt two, they caught diphtheria, one from the other (I don't know who had it first). Tragically, both boys died. Naturally, their deaths were very hard on their mother and daddy, and on their big brother Boyd, too. But it was their daddy who took it the hardest. Their mother had to be the brave one as the daddy had a nervous breakdown over it. The little boys were buried -- we don't know exactly where, somewhere in Erath County, TX. Their daddy never could go visit their graves, it was just too hard on him. In fact, they moved from Erath County to Lamar County soon thereafter.

My grandmother was born the year after they died, and then another sister three years later. When my grandmother was still very small, she (Granny) contracted diphtheria. According to the story she used to tell, her daddy nearly fell apart, horrified at the prospect of losing yet another child to this same evil killer. They had a most wonderful doctor, Dr. Grant, who came out to the house and sat with Granny and took care of her until the crisis was over. With all credit given to God, she survived and lived to be 95 years old, passing away just last year (2008).

The story, although I've told it badly, is really a very emotional one. When Granny used to tell it, it was obvious it was something that had colored all her family's lives, even hers and her sister's, though they were born after the little boys' deaths. Her daddy (DeDaddy, as the grandkids all called him) lived to be very old, and was a sweet, loving Christian man, but could never, ever discuss what had happened to the little boys or even mention them. Her oldest brother Boyd struggled with depression all his life, no doubt some of which was triggered by that traumatic childhood loss. When it comes up now (primarily within the context of my family history research) my mother can hardly stand to speak of it, and even I get teary eyed thinking about poor little Hoyt and Noel and their devastated mother and daddy (and brother!).

It would be lovely to know where their graves were so we could pay our respects to them in this, the 100th anniversary year of their deaths. But the location is lost to us now. My grandmother never knew, so obviously Mom doesn't know. Mother's cousin Glenda (Boyd's daughter) doesn't know, either. Glenda's son Paul and I have been trying to find out, but have run up against brick walls in locating anything via the Internet. I managed to find Hoyt's death certificate online (and discovered his name was John Hoyt), but found nothing at all for little Noel. It's almost as though he never existed. And there is no mention at all of any burial site.

Of course, there's always the option of checking with the Erath County clerk's office vital records information, but that has to be done either in person or via special request, and there are fees involved. I hate to spend money for something that may not even exist. Someday, though, I plan to make a trip up there and just see what I can find.

So, anyway, I guess today we still have our equivalents of those "terror diseases" that used to haunt our forebears -- there's still meningitis, encephalitis, those kinds of things. And now we have MRSV, E-coli, potentially swine flu (excuse me, "H1N1" or "N1H1" or whatever), there was SARS ... and any number of things we haven't heard of yet. For many of these we have successful medicines. For others we don't. As a mother, it sometimes scares me to death. But, just like those mothers a hundred years ago, that's when I remember that God is the same, He never changes, and I can still put my trust in Him.

Think I'll go get another throat lozenge.

What's with the sappy name? (No pun intended, lol)

2009-05-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well ... I decided I should create a separate blog for my family history attempts, musings, stories and whatever else comes along in my brain as a result of my family history research so that I don't clog up the scrapping/stamping blog with all of it. I know, just what I need, THREE blogs to keep up with. But, hey, I'm a multifaceted person, and sometimes I need to wax prosaic about some facet or another, and some facets get more emphasis than others. Therefore ...

Oh, the name. Yeah, "Treasured Branches" is horribly, um, sappy. But I'm not the world's best title-creator. I can write entire brilliant novels and never think of a name for them. I wanted to convey the fact that 1) this is a blog about family history (branches -- family tree ... get it?), and 2) these particular branches are very special to me. I don't just do family history so I can see if I'm related to Charlemagne or William the Conqueror (isn't everyone?). I do it to find out more about the people who lived on this earth before me and who have had a part in creating my genetic makeup. People whose lives were real, people who lived, loved, struggled, celebrated, hoped, dreamed ... all that "sappy" stuff. (Sap is really a perfect word here, because sap is the lifeblood of a tree, and aren't all those things the lifeblood of human beings' emotional lives?)

When I was growing up I was so blessed to have a mom and dad who told me the stories about their childhoods, about their parents, their grandparents, their cousins, aunts and uncles, all the people who were very important in their lives. My grandparents also added threads to this rich tapestry by continuing the stories back beyond what my parents could remember. And even though I have now lost all of my grandparents, I am still blessed to have my parents and an aunt who remember so many things of our family heritage and who are passing these things on to me. And because all these people have told me these stories with so much love and have imparted so much LIFE to the ones who have gone before them and me, I, too, have not only a deep reverence for my ancestors, but I love them, too, even the ones who died long before I was ever born.

So I do family history research to find out more about these very precious and treasured people, to keep their memories alive (even if the only possible way is as a name on a family tree chart), to remind my own son that these people MATTER, their lives COUNTED, whether they were soldiers in the Revolutionary War, players in the Texas Revolution, or just "ordinary" farmers and storekeepers raising their children to love God and be good citizens.

My hope is to tell their stories here, show some of their photos, help some of them come alive. And undoubtedly, knowing me, there will also be a bit of venting about the frustration of the process, as well as celebrating the little victories that will come along the way as I work my very amateur way through the research process.

I know that many, many of my ancestors were Christian people. And that really excites me because I know that someday I really will get to meet them face to face. And I plan to spend a lot of time in Heaven getting to know all about them!