RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine 4 October 2006, Vol. 9, No. 40 (c) 1998-2006 RootsWeb.com, Inc. http://www.rootsweb.com/ * * * Editor: Myra Vanderpool Gormley, Certified Genealogist Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com Certification: http://www.bcgcertification.org/certification/ * * * ROOTSWEB HELPDESK: Check here for announcements: http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/ * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW ARCHIVES: Current and previous editions: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/review/2006/1004.txt http://e-zine.rootsweb.com/ * * * ========================================================= IN THIS ISSUE: 1. 1a. EDITOR'S DESK: NEWS, NOTES, AND SOME SITES WORTH SEEING NEWS: PROV from Down Under BOOK NOTES: New Jersey SITES: Biblio; Dillon County, SC 1b. Tips from Readers: Looking at Family History Differently In Search of Standards: Recording Differences 1c. Using RootsWeb: Judging a Book by Its Cover 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb: Message Boards Produce Cousins and Answers 3. New User-contributed Databases 4. New/Updated FreePages and HomePages 5. New at RootsWeb 6. RootsWeb Review's Bottomless Mailbag: Fabricating Family Trees Finding Shady Roots Assuming Relationships 7. Humor/Humour: Family Ties of Thin Threads 8. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints ======================================================= IN THIS ISSUE: 1a. EDITOR'S DESK: NEWS, NOTES; SOME SITES WORTH SEEING NEWS: PROV from Down Under This year's issue of PROV's free scholarly journal contains contributions by scholars whose research interests focus on different aspects of Victoria's rich social history. They include: --Keir Reeves looks at the life of James Acoy, the Castlemaine miner, court interpreter and businessman imprisoned for corruption in 1869. --Barry Patton investigates the trial of three policemen charged with the murder of Jim Crow, an Aboriginal man, in the Wimmera in October 1843. --Jessica Stagnitti and Zoe Carthew, History Honours students at La Trobe University, present two vivid "true crime" narratives, set in 1920s Melbourne. --Judith Buckrich presents her research into the illustrious history of Prahran Technical School. --John Leckey reports on his use of primary sources in preparing a biographical study of Victorian cricketing great Bill Ponsford. To read or download Provenance 2006, at no charge, visit http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/provenance/ * * * BOOK NOTES: New Jersey "Our Brothers Gone Before," by Charles Eckhardt and Robert MacAvoy, is now available. This new book (in two volumes) is published by Longstreet House (Hightstown, New Jersey). It's an inventory of graves and cenotaphs in New Jersey cemeteries for Union and Confederate Civil War soldiers, sailors, marines, surgeons, and nurses. Includes a full alphabetical listing of more than 40,000 burials from more than 1,000 cemeteries. Each entry lists soldier's name and cemetery, death date, regiment or ship, if known. Contact Dr. David G. Martin, PO Box 730, Hightstown, NJ 08520 (dmartin@peddie.org). * * * SOME SITES WORTH SEEING: BIBLIO. Provides tens of millions of used, rare, and out-of-print books and textbooks from a global network of independent booksellers. http://www.biblio.com/ SOUTH CAROLINA. DILLON COUNTY. Index for obituaries (1903-1939) found in the Dillon Herald and a link to obtain, at no charge, the fully transcribed obituary. There also is a link to "Helen's Little Corner" where excerpts of obituaries (1939-2006) are available with instructions on how to obtain the full obituary. http://www.dillon.lib.sc.us/ * * * 1b. TIPS FROM READERS: Looking at Family History Differently By Paul Fredrich Bramscher in Circle Pines, Minnesota In the late 1980s I was a history and anthropology undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. I studied wonderful things, but it always took me far afield -- doing family history on the side seemed almost academically sacrilege. The Minnesota Historical Society's main research building was then located at 1500 Mississippi Street in Saint Paul. I scanned the microfilm there to learn that my great-great-grandfather, Friedrich BRAMSCHER (born near Bramsche, Germany in 1856), was a truck farmer at 1466 Mississippi Street in the early 1900s. I got into my car and drove around the block -- and later determined that I had literally been sitting on, or at the edge, of his property. Unfortunately, I didn't keep steady with my research -- genealogy isn't really a hip hobby for young 20-somethings. It wasn't until I was settled down and had children of my own that I got back into the hobby during the long Minnesota winters and learned that one of my great-great-grandfather's late-born daughters, Vera (BRAMSCHER) SPREIGL, had lived in a house next to that building -- and had lived to be about 95 years old. She would have been an invaluable resource for a personal interview, but I learned it too late. So this discovery was both an astounding stroke of luck and a missed opportunity. However, I was able to learn more about my great-great-grandfather from her son and from additional research. He had a few acres and farmed celery. His son (my great-grandfather) was killed in his thirties from an accidental fall while working for a meat-packing company in 1917. So much history of that line of my family was lost, or was never generated in the first place. I learned from Sanborn Fire Insurance maps where the building was in which he took his fatal fall and located it as a small parking lot in downtown Saint Paul today, near the current Farmer's Market where I often shop. I further learned that various spellings of Friedrich have been given as a first or middle name to first-born males starting with my great-great-grandfather for five generations including me. Fortunately I learned this much in time -- and of course it became the middle-name of my first son, making it six generations. One of the lessons I came away with is that the best time to do genealogy is always now. It's also made me look differently at things: every building, parking lot, or piece of urban property probably has an interesting history to it, written or as-yet unwritten, but still rich. * * * In Search of Standards: Recording Differences By Peter Rutherford in the UK I started my family tree in 2000 after I retired. Since then I have found as much satisfaction and benefit in my genealogical researches from the interaction between people I have met by e-mail (often generated by RootsWeb mailing lists) as I have from primary research. All genealogical files are essentially private to the individual person creating them and to their families, but many have been willing to share their researches with others and I have been very grateful for this. It has "put me straight" more than once! This being so, it is of more than passing interest to me to suggest some sort of common practice in recording incomplete or partially known information that is made available for others to consult and perhaps copy, especially from WorldConnect. This was drawn to my attention most vividly in "USING ROOTSWEB. Revisiting the Wild LNUs" in RootsWeb Review 21 June 2006. May I confess right from the start that I am writing from a UK, mainly England, perspective -- complete with our spelling, dating and grammar methods? Dates -- These seem to be of prime importance, especially of births and, to a lesser extent, of marriages. As the American way of writing dates is not the same as the English way (as a date, 9/11 means something quite different to us) may I make a plea for recording dates as 19 Aug. 1908 rather than 19/08/1908 or 08/19/1908 or even as 19080819? Dates are absolutely vital where Christian or forenames occur in successive and parallel generations in families. The awareness of an earlier relation but not of her/his date of birth is not uncommon. Some dates can be ascertained by the ages shown on census returns, which may or may not be accurate, but others are completely unknown. The suggestion is that they all be recorded as e.g. circa 1684, with a footnote or endnote giving any other information, such as the source of that information -- if any. Addresses -- It is obviously desirable for these to be recorded in as much detail as possible, but if very little of this is known, even a country name on its own is usually better than nothing at all, bearing in mind the "internationality" of many of our families. Where politics have changed the name of the country, there may be a problem. Example: my wife had an uncle who was born in 1878 in a village in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1918/19 it became Czechoslovakia. The Germans re-named it Sudetenland in the 1930s. In 1945 it reverted to Czechoslovakia. It is now in the Czech Republic. In all circumstances, I suggest that the country name recorded should be that in which the birth, marriage or death took place. It is just possible that someone may have found some surviving records of that particular country. If however, no details are known, I suggest that the field be left blank. You can never tell -- someone may have the answer. I would welcome guidance on the use of a country name with what, to me, are obviously English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh counties. I know that there are numerous UK city, town or village names in other countries but none within a "county" of the same name. Does any problem arise with some large cities in UK where we never use the county name with them, e.g. Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, etc. -- as well as those towns that have the same name as the county, e.g. Derby and Warwick? Some cities, of course, are (or were before 1974) counties in their own right, e.g. London and Bristol. Can people bear with us on this? We have difficulty with the American addresses in States called MA, ME, MI, MO and MU, etc. Names -- In days not very long ago many adults were unable to read or write and consequently to spell, so there was often doubt as to how a name "should be" spelled -- or in extreme examples, even what that name should be. Regional accents in UK can do strange things to a name away from that region! The best example I have come across is a person whose family name was URRY that was recorded less than 100 miles away as ANY! The difficulty is knowing how these should appear on our family history records. What about the following? The birth record of my wife's uncle (above) has his name as Josef Andreas. When he came to England in the early 1900s he anglicised this to Joseph Andrew and this is the name that appears on his marriage certificate in 1909. I have therefore entered his name as Josef Andreas, with a footnote that this was anglicised to Joseph Andrew. A colleague of mine (now deceased) spelt his surname as LEECH, as does his son. He told me that his great-grandfather had altered the name to LEACH, which continued for the next three generations -- until my colleague altered it back again. I suggest that the names be entered as they appear on the records, in this case either as LEECH or LEACH without trying to "correct" them. Another name in the same family seems to appear indiscriminately in various records as either HAMBLY or HAMBLEY. I have been recording this as HAMBLY (HAMBLEY) but only because I have not thought of a better way. There often seems to be variation in the spelling of forenames or Christian names (not nicknames) such as Selena or Selina; Irene or Rene; Esther or Hester; Tamsen or Tamson; or even Amelina, Emmelina or Emma. I have tried various ways of recording these but suggest probably the best is to enter the name that is found first and record any others as a Note unless I find that one name occurs more frequently than the others when I treat the others as "one-offs." As explained previously in RootsWeb Review, all unknown names, either surnames or forenames should be recorded as [--?--] with notes added to give any other information. By following this practice others know you have not overlooked the names, but rather do not have the information. Nicknames should be entered, but enclosed within quotation marks. Generally these names are those by which a person is known even though it is not a name with which she/he was registered. * * * 1c. USING ROOTSWEB: Judging a Book by Its Cover Heard the expression that you can't judge a book by its cover? That may be true, but many RootsWeb users do just that on a daily basis in checking their mailing list mail (especially the index portion of the digests) and the notifications they have registered to receive for their favorite message boards. While it might be an exaggeration to compare a query posted to a RootsWeb mailing list or message board to a book, there actually is a basis for comparison. The title of a book could be compared to the subject of a list or board post. If you are not attracted by the subject, you probably won't bother reading any further. In our busy lives we are often forced to make quick judgments as to what we are going to read and what we are going to discard, especially when scanning through e-mail from our mailing lists and browsing through message board posts. In many cases, you have a split second to draw the reader to your message before he clicks delete and moves on to the next. When you post a query on a message board, do you carefully consider what information to include in the subject? Or perhaps you just say "genealogy" or "looking" or "searching" or something equally unoriginal and uninformative. This might be why you have not had any responses. Future board visitors who browse through the messages are likely to scan the subjects quickly. They are most likely to click on those that immediately grab their attention or where they find a name or location that is a possible match to a name or geographic area of interest in their research. In addition to visitors who browse the board posts many board users make use of the "My Notifications" option. In using "My Notifications," board users register to be notified of all new posts on a board. The notices are delivered daily via e-mail and they include the subject of the new board post and a link to the message on the board. If the subject is not well defined or one that grabs their attention it is not likely they will click on the link and bother to read the post no matter how well-written the query might be. The very persons you hope to make contact with -- those who have been researching a particular family for many years -- are not likely to respond to messages with poorly written subjects. For example, some researchers might have several dozen Henry KLEPFERs and even hundreds of Catherines in their database. Provide enough information so they can search quickly. For mailing lists the same is true of the subjects in the list mail in the subscriber's inbox or in the index of a list digest. A quick check of recent actual subjects in board notifications and digest indexes produces actual subjects such as "Family?", "Census Records", "Obituary", "Marriage Notice", Smith Family" and the ever-popular "Digest Vol. 1, No. 6." Put yourself in the place of the person viewing the digest index or board notification. Consider how likely you would be to click on any of the above links or scroll down to view the actual message. How much more likely the reader might be to take time to read a message with the more informative subject "John SMITH, born 1799, New Haven, Connecticut" or "Looking for census records for Martin JONES, New Castle County, Delaware, about 1910" or "Need marriage record for Morris LEVIN and Pearl JACOBS, New York City, 1930." While subjects should be as brief as possible, include sufficient information to explain the message the subject is introducing. Include names, dates, and places where possible and also the type of information you wish to learn. When your message is a reply to a post from a mailing list digest remember to change the subject and not just list "Digest Vol. 1 No. 6," which explains nothing about the topic of your reply. Make sure your message is a "best seller" and stands out from the crowd so that the readers will know at a glance that they may have the information you seek or may find a connection to their own research interests. Make a mark with an informative, memorable subject line. * * * * * * * * * * Advertisement * * * * * * * * * * ANCESTOR SEEKERS SEVENTH SALT LAKE CITY RESEARCH TRIP -- THE IDEAL GENEALOGY VACATION! FEBRUARY 18-23, 2007 Join others from throughout the USA and Canada for the ideal genealogy vacation. Spend a whole week at the Family History Library, accessing the world's largest collection of genealogical records with help and advice from accredited genealogist professionals. Opening social, theater trip, and sightseeing tours! "Thank you all for such a wonderful experience." (Marsha, Iowa) Call TOLL-FREE at 877-896-0974 (9-6 MST) or visit http://www.ancestorseekers.com/ * * * * * * * * * * End of Advertisement * * * * * * * * * * 2. CONNECTING THROUGH ROOTSWEB: Message Boards Produce Cousins and Answers By Pamela D. Pabst in Sunnyvale, California I have had tremendous luck with postings on the Web. My first blessing arrived shortly after Christmas a couple of years ago. I had posted a message in July requesting any information on my grandfather. Family legend said he was a "remittance man," which in plain English means a bit of black sheep. His family sent him money so long as he stayed away. I knew my grandfather had had a first wife and a child just before 1920 but I didn't know anything more about that part of his life. I had only his mother's and father's names and one lone photo of his mother. I posted my message and had basically given up on it. Then I came home from a trip over the holidays and there was a message that said, "If this man is your grandfather, then you are my half cousin!" I wasted no time responding and the upshot was that I spoke on the phone with my new "cousin" and his parents within days. His parents (my half- uncle and his wife) were traveling to Northern California on business that spring so we were able to drive up to the Lake Tahoe area and meet them in person. I would have known my uncle anywhere as he so resembled his father -- he had not even known that he was adopted by his step- father until he was 18. The blessing was that we had this time together as he passed away about nine months after our reunion. I am still in touch with the family and hope to visit them in their home state. Prior to his passing they shared some letters written by my great-grandfather to my grandfather's first wife -- something I didn't even know existed! The second blessing really blew through my brick wall. Again I posted on the surname list with a query now that I had a little more information about my great-grandparents. I found them on the census before they were married and later, prior to their move to Scotland, but I couldn't seem to find anything prior to the census in which they were both in their early twenties. I posted with high hopes after my earlier experience. Within weeks I received an e-mail from a wonderful woman, a fourth cousin (by marriage), not only giving me the family back about eight generations, but explaining why I could find no information on my great- grandfather as to birth etc. Apparently his father was in the Royal Artillery and he was born in Malta -- like that was going to be the next place I checked after Edinburgh! I discovered that he was a twin and his father died very soon after his birth. His mother (my great-great-grandfather's third wife) returned to England as a widow with five young children. Although there are still a few gaps in the history, a large part of it has been filled in for me. I also have found a fourth cousin in London via the message boards who provided me with photos and in-depth information on the other side of my family -- some photos going back nearly 150 years. Now I just have to figure out how to prove a Native American "tradition" in our family that dates to before the Mayflower! So, when your brick wall seems insurmountable, just take a deep breath and count on the goodness of others and the kindness of your cousins -- after all, someway, somehow we're all cousins! * * * Did you leap over some brick walls or cleverly figure out where your grandmother was hiding in a census? Do tell! Dazzle us with your brilliant sleuthing or uncanny luck. We're all ears. Send your tales of genealogical adventure to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com 3. New User-Contributed Databases at RootsWeb http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/ ---------------------------------------------- MISSOURI. Vernon County. Nevada. 1884 Nevada Daily Mail Index; 699 records; Tri-County Genealogical Society Volunteers http://userdb.rootsweb.com/news/ VIRGINIA. Rockingham County. Peaked Mountain Church records; 1755-1802; 569 records; Robert Shobe http://userdb.rootsweb.com/churchrecords/ * * * SHARING OPPORTUNITY. Does your alma mater, old military unit, newspapers, church, parish, province, county or state have material available that you think would be of interest to genealogists? Do you have any compiled lists of names or databases (other than your personal genealogy) that you would like to share and that you think would be of value and interest to others? In most cases, RootsWeb would be proud to host such material. http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/ 4. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages -------------------------------------- COOKSON (England, Canada, USA). Genealogy of Cookson family, which originated in England. Other surnames include: APPLEBY, CODY, DEMONT, HUNT, MALLOY, MORRIS, SAULT, and WANNAMAKER. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cookson/ CORNWALL. Cornwall Online Census Project. Free-to-view searchable database of 19th-century Cornish census returns. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html LANGWORTHY. The Langworthy Families in America website has been updated. Using vital records, census data, published accounts and the input of more than 100 contributors, it includes most Langworthys who lived in America through 1930. Sources are provided for all data on the site. http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~hal/Langworthy/ NEW ZEALAND. BATTLE OF PASSCHENDAELE--12 OCTOBER 1917. A list of the 1,200 New Zealanders who fell in this battle and whose bodies were never recovered. New Zealand lost 117 officers and 3,179 men within a few hours. Their names are on the "Memorial to the Missing" at Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, West Vlaanderen, Belgium. Also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, this was one of the major battles of the World War I, which was fought by the British, ANZAC, and Canadian soldiers against the Germany army near Ypres in West Flanders, northwestern Belgium. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~sooty/passtitle.html * * * Can your cousins find your website at RootsWeb? Has it ever been mentioned here or do you have a new, updated, or substantially revised website at RootsWeb (it will have "freepages" or "homepages" in the URL)? Send the URL (its Web address), along with a brief description, including the major pertinent surnames and what is available on your site, to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com * * * 5. New at RootsWeb To Request a Free Web Account: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------- Some of these webpages might not yet be accessible. They are created by volunteers, so if one that interests you isn't up yet, please check again in a few days or next week. http://www.rootsweb.com/~xxxxxx[accountname] AUSTRALIA auslordh -- Lord Howe Island (New South Wales) CANADA cansthya -- Saint-Hyacinthe (city, Quebec Province) U.S.A. txmcbudc -- Mid-Cities Bluebonnet (Texas) Chapter UDC vawchs -- Wise County Historical Society (Virginia) waeecdar -- Elizabeth Ellington (Washington) Chapter DAR DAR -- Daughters of the American Revolution UDC -- United Daughters of the Confederacy * * * New Mailing Lists at RootsWeb Request a New Mailing List: http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Brand-new mailing lists can be found under OTHER/MISCELLANEOUS until moved to their proper categories. For information and an index to the more than 29,800 RootsWeb-hosted genealogy Mailing Lists and for easy subscribing (joining) options go to: http://lists.rootsweb.com/ No new mailing lists this week. 6. FROM ROOTSWEB REVIEW'S BOTTOMLESS MAILBAG [Editor's note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editor or of RootsWeb.com]. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fabricating Family Trees By Nadine Christall I agree with the article regarding attachments to databases that are undocumented. I was fortunate to inherit my cousin's correspondence and return letters from 1956-1965 on our JACOB and JOSEPH FLETCHER lines as she prepared for her DAR (Daughters of American Revolution) application. Can you imagine my shock when I discovered via her correspondence that she had fabricated some of her sources, such as marriage records and had altered some Bible records? Our Joseph FLETCHER, born 1814 Virginia, had married in Halifax County, Virginia in 1839 and moved to Wilson County, Tennessee by 1846. He lived there with his wife, Mary TALBOT, until their deaths in 1888 and 1893. My now deceased cousin, who had not found the marriage record of her great-grandparents in Halifax, had "documented" letters dated 1958 finding another Joseph W. FLETCHER who married a Mary SHELTON also in 1839 -- only in Kentucky. This is the information that has been out in Ancestry RootsWeb trees all these years! In fairness, my cousin attempted to "fix" her mistake for many years, but found out as we all do, that once it's out there, it's impossible to take back. * * * Finding Shady Roots By Betty Boot It took years of seeking grandmother, who left home leaving four young children, but she was finally found. However, according to my oldest cousin, "she had the world's oldest profession." * * * Assuming Relationships By Cecilie Gaziano in Minneapolis, Minnesota I noticed a reference in a recent RootsWeb Review about assuming that a John Smith, Sr., who lived in the same community as one's known ancestor, John Smith, Jr., is the father of John Jr. In records of parts of the U.S. that I've worked with, the Jr. and Sr. designations distinguished which of two or more men with the same name in the geographic area were older or younger. They may or may not have been father and son or even related. 7. Humor/Humour: Family Ties of Thin Threads ------------------------------------------- This summer I was finally able to stand in my ancestral CLATTERBUCK cemetery in Missouri. Having never met another CLATTERBUCK outside my immediate family I was awestruck by the rows and rows of my forebears. As I walked among the headstones I came across a newer headstone with the surname "BUCK" on it. Curious, as there were no other BUCKs in the cemetery, my father leaned over and said with a wink, "That was a half brother." --Thanks to: Cathy Murahashi in Bellevue, Washington, USA * * * I was looking -- without success -- for a Dr. Nathan SMITH in the 1900 Kent County, Michigan census. I decided to do a search using "Smith" and his approximate age, then scanned down the down the list looking for a first-name variation. Found "Hate Smith!" That could be either "Nate" or "Kate. Was the person male or female? I looked across to end of the line and laughed: Hate Smith, Grand Rapids, Ward 3, Kent [County] Michigan, born abt. 1835 New York, White. Relationship: Mother-in-law --Thanks to: Anne Halford in Adrian, Michigan, USA * * * Found a "proper name for the job" or humorous sign, amusing entries in census, parish, church, etc. records? Send them to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com 8. 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Permission to reprint articles from RootsWeb Review is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, provided: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 4 October 2006, Vol. 9, No. 40. * * * *