Crooked Family Tree

I just pulled an obit for Jack Pennock of Longmont, who died in 1993.  I received the request from the RAOGK website.  There was also a 2nd article about Mr. Pennock in a 1988 newspaper:

By Kaye Bache-Snyder
Times-Call Corresponent

Out on east ninth Avenue past Fox Hill Country Club golf course, a black, wrought-iron arch on two poles reads, “PEN-O-TEX.”  Up the driveway are an historic farmhouse, barns, three topless silos and fields spread out behind.

And, Jack Pennock of Longmont is sure his rag doll “Billie” is tucked away somewhere in the farmhouse walls.

Pennock, 65, remembers his favorite toy as fondly as his childhood on that farm, where he lived from 1923 to 1939

…

It turns out that the Pennocks sold the farm in 1940 to “some well-heeled Texans”.  I’m not sure what happened next, but the farmhouse and barn are still there.  They are now architectural accents to the neighborhood that I live it.  I haven’t seen “Billie” lying around anywhere, but I’m sure going to keep my eyes open.

Pennock Barn?

West 47th Street, NY NY (circa 1934)

On a recent visit with my amazing Aunt Pat on Long Island, we sat down and browsed thru some old family photographs.  What an absolute treasure.  Most of the pictures were not labeled at all, and some had partial information.  Together, we played detective for a few hours and filled in as many of the blanks as possible.

We grouped the pictures in a variety of ways … some had obviously shot the same day, others had matching serial numbers on the back from the developer, while others were so unique we couldn’t group them.  If one picture was labeled “About 1928″ we carefully wrote that on the like pictures.  If 5 pictures were all of the same people (and we were certain who those people were) we wrote the same info on each picture.  Maybe they will get separated in the future.

At one point Aunt Pat asked, “Have you done this with your own pictures?”

Ack.  The more I think about my own pictures, the more worried I get.  It’s all fine and good that the majority are digital … but almost none are labeled with names and places.  That is something that will get easier with time.

Dates and times have been part of digital pictures from the beginning.  Many new cameras have started tagging photos with GPS information (referred to as geotagging).  iPhoto ‘09 has added facial recognition.  Those technologies will become more and more the standard over time.  But what good is that if your pictures are rotting away on an old hard drive or CD-ROM.  Yup.  CDs and DVDs aren’t going to last a fraction as long as those unlabeled pictures sitting in that shoebox.

Get in the habit of printing them, or copying them to new media every few years.

To understand my favorite photograph of the day, you have to know that I’ve never seen my grandmother smile.  She was … serious.  Even when in a good mood, she had a stern look on her face.  Also, my grandfather passed away before I was born.  If this photo had been taken today, I think almost any photographer would have deleted it immediately.  But look closely and you’ll see it tells a story.

Dellers at Sunken Meadows

The camera was probably set on the ground (the grass is so close to the lens).  I think the timer has been set.  The family is in a park, maybe having a picnic.  My grandfather is sitting on his knees, with part of a smile on his face.  Had he planned on sitting lower?  Is that his suit coat under him?  To his left is Uncle Lawrence, waiting patiently.  The picture was taken the year my father was born, but he’s not in the picture.  Grandma is likely pregnant with him.  Aunt Patricia holds her baby doll and wears a grin as she watches Grandma race into position.  Look closely at my grandmother and you might see it.  Is that a dimple?  And a smile?  She tries to sit down in time.  Click.  She doesn’t quite make it, and I’m thankful.

Why are these here?

The Family History Library has 2.4 million rolls of microfilm, 3 quarters of a million microfiche, a couple hundred thousand books and a bunch of other cool stuff.  Then why is it that the majority of the people here are sitting in front of computers looking at Ancestry.com and other online databases?

I want to *scream* at these people.  What an absolute waste of time and resources.  Every decent public library in the country has Ancestry.com and HeritageQueset Online.  Don’t get me wrong, those are great tools, when you are NOT sitting next to 2 and a half MILLION rolls of 16mm and 35mm microfilms.

On the bright side, there is barely a wait for the microfilm scanners.  Most people are still doing photocopies and printouts.  Pfft.

I read a handful of blogs.  I’ve noticed that a few of the genealogy blogs seem to hash the same news as each other, making it a little bit dry.  They’ll actually post other companies press releases and junk.  As an example, if Ancestry.com had a new feature, the bloggers would share it:

PODUNK, IA - Exciting news today from the developer of Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis ac libero. Nam eros neque, convallis eu, tempor ac, gravida id, diam. Donec a lectus id dui scelerisque varius. Nulla quis neque. Quisque varius lectus volutpat sapien. Pellentesque libero lorem, rhoncus eget, fermentum non, tempus vel, leo. Nam orci libero, euismod vitae, consequat vitae, malesuada non, est. Aliquam at est. Praesent consequat. Aenean ac neque et ante dictum varius. Ut ultrices aliquam orci. Etiam vel turpis. Ut ut ipsum.

I dunno.  Maybe it’s newsworthy.  I guess it is for the original company … but probably not exciting enough for the blogosphere to simply repost it everywhere.  At any rate, I was looking at some of the hyperlinks in one of the posts:

http://www.evilcompany.com/click.mv?FTC=1234&A=evilbloggersusername

As soon as I see a URL that contains the word CLICK and/or a username, red flags go off in my head.  They usually have to do with advertisements, affiliate programs, finder fees … etc.  In this case, it’s just that.  The blogger was posting “News” as a service to his readers, that generates revenue for him every time someone reads it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to advertisements and people making money from their efforts.  But, do bloggers owe it to their readers to make advertisements obvious?  Is it okay to hide ads in what appear to be innocent links?

Random Acts of Genealogy Kindness celebrates it’s 10th Anniversary this month.

There were 5,741 volunteer requests in February.  I took care of an amazing, er substantial, er adequate 4 of them.  That’s almost .07%!

You can get help from me, or one of the other 3,900 volunteers over at www.raogk.org.

I’ll be at the Family History Library in Salt Lake for 3 days next week.  The way I figure it, I’ll have about 36 hours in the library … give or take.  I want to maximize my time, so I’ve been prepping.  I’ll be bringing:

• My trusty Macbook loaded with all of my historic documents (no clumsy binders)
• A lock for the laptop so it doesn’t accidentally walk away
• A thumb drive, to copy new scans of microfilmed documents (no printouts)
• A laundry list of microfilms to look at (I’m up to 49 so far)

Start easy

I’ve organized my microfilm reading list by location.  I don’t want to waste time, or energy, running up and down stairs from the British Isles to the United States.  I also try to have some easy wins early on.  It’s a morale booster to start out with a success.  A few years ago, I started out on the International Floor, reading German records from a Catholic Church.  They were all in Latin.  That was a discouraging way to start the week.

To get that list of microfilms together, the Library Catalog is my best friend.  The majority of the films are Vital Records, referred to as Civil Registration in some countries.  I do a Place Search for the ancestor I’m researching and see what’s available.  I start small with a City Search and then expand out if necessary (and it almost always is).  In some cases, like Ireland, Civil Registration is available for the whole country.

Nothing is more annoying than fixing a few hundred source locations, because a few hundred different people abbreviated things differently.  There is a solution though.  When it comes to the name of a location, NEVER abbreviate.  Inside the United States, the format of a location should be:

[city], [county], [state], [country]

Unless the word City or County appears as part of the official name, those facts should be ommited.   Some examples:

Longmont, Boulder, Colorado, United States
Irvine, Orange, California, United States
Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada, United States

Please don’t abbreviate any part of the location.  If you know the full details, you may omit a portion, as in this Suffolk County example:

Suffolk, New York, United States

New York City is kind of a zany example.  The city is made up of 5 boroughs and also multiple counties.  New York county makes up the majority of Manhattan.  Manhattan is the name of an island, and not actually a city.

New York City, New York, New York, United States (aka Manhattan)
New York City, Kings, New York, United States (aka Brooklyn)
New York City, Queens, New York, United States (aka Queens)
New York City, Bronx, New York, United States (aka The Bronx)
New York City, Richmond, New York, United States (aka Staten Island)

Now some terrible examples:

Dozington, Worcs., England
Drummond, Grnt, MT
Hubbardtown, , VT

Blech.

Front Page Obituary

Another volunteer request from RAOGK.  I’m craving to go into the basement of the courthouse or county clerk.  Instead, I get another obit to go find.  The public library is on the way home from work, and it only takes about 7 minutes to find it.

Stop the presses.  This obituary is FRONT PAGE NEWS.  Literally.  It’s on the front page of the local newspaper.

Like everyone before me, citations and sources weren’t something I was originally concerned about. I’ve learned my lesson now, about a dozen or so times. There are a variety of reasons to document your sources, but my favorite is so that YOU can reproduce it. A common story, that I’ve played out many many times …

I’ve got a great printout of a Passenger List. I can read the names on it. It’s a Great Grandparent and some of her kids. Wow! I forgot I even had this. I want to track down more records like this. How the heck did I find this one? What’s the microfilm number? Did I get it from a Family History Center or from the National Archives? Did I find it first on an index? When did I find it? Did I look thru that whole film and strikeout on other ancestors?

After several attempts, I’ve come up with the following strategy for tracking sources:

• Detailed source templates in my genealogy software
• An individual image folder for each ancestor that includes their date of birth: Doe, Jane 1801
• Filenames that include FHL microfilm numbers and target subjects: Birth Record Deller, Frank (1907) FHL 1991804.jpg
• A Google Spreadsheet diary of every microfilm I have looked at. This helps me avoid doing the same research over and over.

Here’s a closer look at one of my source templates in Reunion:

Citation Example

Fortunately they got this date right

“According to The Longmont Ledger, 9/8/1911 page 5 she died at the age of 33 at 105 Main Street-Longmont”.

I just saw that on Findagrave.com. Did she die on September 8th or August 9th? If you’re in the United States, it’s probably September. If you’re in Europe, it might be August. Either way, it’s a dumb way to write the date.

The really annoying bit is that I recovered the obit for that researcher, and my email stated, “8 Sep 1911″. Pfft.

Writing the date should be such a simple task and not open to interpretation. Unfortunately, many family historians manage to muck it up. There are two common issues you want to avoid:

a) Never write the month as a number
b) Never write the year with only two digits

The Good

04 Jul 1776
07 May 1942

The Bad and the Ugly

1/8/2001
8/1/2001
Jan 1, 08

You might as well be writing it as, “Either January or August the 8th or 1st”

http://www.findagrave.com/