RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine 20 December 2006, Vol. 9, No. 51 (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/2006/1220.txt http://e-zine.rootsweb.com/ ========================================================= IN THIS ISSUE: 1. 1a. Editor's Desk: News and Some Sites Worth Seeing; Notes, News: SSDI Updated Sites: Vintage Christmas Cards; GenDisasters; North Carolina Collection Biographical Index Book Notes: Bethuel RIGGS and Nancy LEE Descendants 1b. Tips from Readers: Yeah, Right! Switching Names Checking Trees and Branches Online Long-distance Telephone Genealogy 1c. Using RootsWeb: Sharing Your Family with Your Worldwide Family 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb: Linking Some Broken Limbs Pursuing Families Through Pages of History 3. New User-contributed Databases 4. New/Updated FreePages and HomePages 5. New at RootsWeb 6. RootsWeb Review's Bottomless Mailbag: Lost in Oz -- Tribute to a Missing Relative 7. Humor/Humour: Bottoms Up! 8. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints ======================================================= IN THIS ISSUE: 1a. Editor's Desk: News, Notes; Some Sites Worth Seeing NEWS. SSDI Updated. RootsWeb offers free access to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), which currently includes deaths records through October 2006. This database contains several important bits of information on the more than 78,440,205 persons whose deaths are on file with the U.S.'s Social Security Administration (SSA), including: social security number, date of issuance, state of issuance, date of birth, date of death, and last address of record. The SSDI is created from the SSA's Death Master File. It is a database of people whose deaths were reported to the SSA beginning about 1962. The SSA Death Master File and SSDI are used by leading U.S. government, financial, investigative, credit-reporting organization, medical research, and other industries to verify identity as well as to prevent fraud -- and to comply with the U.S. Patriot Act. http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/ http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/lesson10.htm * * * SOME SITES WORTH SEEING. Vintage Christmas Cards from the early 1900s. Perhaps your ancestors sent or received some like these http://www.twogatos.com/vintage/christmas/ GenDisasters.com chronicles the events that touched our ancestors' lives -- train wrecks, fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, storms, mining explosions, ship wrecks, drownings, and accidents. These are transcribed newspaper accounts, excerpts from historical books and photographs detail hundreds of life's tragedies that our ancestors' endured, from the 1800s to the 1950s -- and it's free. Search hundreds of articles or browse by state or event. http://www.gendisasters.com/ The North Carolina Collection Biographical Index, compiled by the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a comprehensive index of more than 500 books containing biographical sketches of North Carolinians. The index now contains over 150,000 entries. http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ncc_bio/index.html * * * BOOK NOTES: Bethuel RIGGS and Nancy LEE Descendants ELDER BETHUEL RIGGS (1757-1835) OF MORRIS COUNTY, NEW JERSEY AND HIS FMAILY THROUGH FIVE GENERATIONS. This new book, by Alvy Ray Smith, is devoted to Bethuel RIGGS, a Revolutionary War veteran and Baptist preacher and church founder, and to five generations of his and his wife Nancy LEE’s family. Bethuel RIGGS was born in New Jersey, probably a sixth-generation descendant of Edward RIGGS. (The expression "Edwardian Riggses" refers to those in the same genetic family as Edward RIGGS, immigrant to Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1633.) Betheuel RIGGS was stationed in the Revolution in New Jersey, in western Pennsylvania and in North Carolina, participating in the Battle of Kings Mountain. As an "elder," or minister, of the Regular Baptist faith, he started several churches while moving west from North Carolina and Georgia to Kentucky and then Missouri. His movements mirrored those of Daniel Boone, an older contemporary -- the two families living in the same locales and their histories intertwined. Bethuel and Nancy’s children populated early Cincinnati and environs (including northern Kentucky) via marriages to the WEBB, CORBLY, ARMSTRONG, and MILLSPAUGH families; the Lincoln County area of Missouri via marriages to the SMITH, SITTON, and TURNBULL families; parts of Texas via marriages to the SHAW, GILILLAND, and WEBB families; and to Utah and adjoining states via migration and marriages to the BOREN, KERBY, and MORTENSON families. The book makes large genealogical contributions to 75 surnames and minor contributions to more than a thousand others. The book includes 35 illustrations, some in color; 11 appendices; bibliography; and full-name index. This 7x10 hardcover book has 794 pages and is available for $60 (plus shipping). Order from: http://www.pictonpress.com/ * * * 1b. Tips from Readers: Yeah, Right! By L. Brenckle in California, USA My story isn't dazzling or brilliant sleuthing though it could be called uncanny luck. I have spent a lot of time trying to find my husband's ancestor in the census records. I finally found George ARDAUSKAS in the 1930 census in Niagara Falls, New York under the name ARDOWSKIS. I knew George had arrived in 1898. His wife came in 1903 and their two children in 1907. They settled in Pennsylvania. I searched and searched the 1910 and 1920 censuses but were unable to find them. I thought I had tried every name spelling possible but to no avail. After going page by page in the county they lived I finally found them in the 1920 census under the name HARDOWSKI. No such luck with the 1910 census. Here's where the uncanny luck comes in. I visited a LDS Family History Center (library) and was getting frustrated hitting so many brick walls. One of the kind ladies working there asked if she could help. I explained my problem. She suggested I try the surname SMITH. I thought "yeah, right," but I tried it and there they were. I could not believe it. It was my lucky day that the lady was working the same day I visited. I thanked her and let her know how much I appreciated the time she took to listen and help me. Without her suggestion I would never in a million years thought to try the name SMITH. I have yet to find George in the 1900 census or the ships they came on but I will keep looking. You never know when someone will suggest something that will knock down brick wall. Don't be to quick to think or say "yeah right". * * * Switching Names By an AOL subscriber In searching for my great-grandfather, William Wenham JAMES, I found out that he had switched his middle and last names. His father was William James WENHAM and I found his family on the census in England. * * * Checking Trees and Branches Online By Robert J Becraft It is wonderful to have researchers all over the world contributing their genealogies to RootsWeb and Ancestry. However, I recently noticed that the same contributors have multiple copies of their files on these services. In addition, the two sources have been cross-indexed so that the contributions on each show up on the other. What happens is you may find up to 20 or 30 entries from the same researcher. Multiply this by the number of people they may have in their GEDCOMs there could be more than 50 percent duplicated data online. In one instance, I found a researcher had submitted the same GEDCOM file seven times with a different "title" on each submission, all within minutes of each other. My suggestions to researchers who are submitting family tree material to the online sites: --Submit a current version, remove any old contributions --Beware of software that makes these submissions easy to submit, but hard to manage and remove --Make sure submissions are accurate, comprehensive and useful to other researchers (many GEDCOMs contain spurious references and data that make no material contribution to the collection as a whole) --Make sure that your contact information is up-to-date and keep up with changes that might occur --Source [cite or reference] your data -- many times the question comes up as to where a bit of information was found. Perhaps there is another bit of information in that source that would assist a researcher with their own brick wall --Look at what has been contributed before, if your work is a subset or a copy from already published content, maybe it would be kinder to all to not muddy the water with more of the same --Consider splitting out common data and only submit the unique data from your research --In all instances, do not publish any data on living persons. In general, these suggestions would greatly enhance the ability of researchers to find the data that they seek. It would also create a more comprehensive, up-to-date repository of data for us all. [Editor's note: If you upload your GEDCOM to WorldConnect at RootsWeb, it is not necessary or feasible to upload it also to Ancestry. At WorldConnect when you upload a new or revised GEDCOM to the same account that you've created, it will overwrite the older version and does not create an additional tree as happens at Ancestry.com. The latter is one of the reason for multiple copies of the same, or nearly the same, trees being online there. You can have all the accounts for various GEDCOMs that you wish at WorldConnect -- an option that is handy for many researchers who prefer to keep their various trees separate. Identifying Where a Tree was Uploaded Each family tree has a unique database number (also called a user code), which appears after the db= string of characters in the URL (address) of the family tree. For example, "cleadus" in the addresses shown below is the database number for that family tree. http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=cleadus http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=cleadus&id=I281 http://awtc.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=cleadus&id=I114 http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=cleadus&id=I00210 Trees Uploaded to Ancestry If the database reference number begins with a colon (:), it indicates the file was originally uploaded through the Ancestry site. Database numbers that begin with a colon followed by an "a" indicate that a file was uploaded through the Ancestry World Tree (for example, db=:a09876) before a system was in place to allow users to edit or remove files. These trees cannot be updated, removed, or changed in any way by those who submitted them. In cases such as these, a submitter needs to contact Ancestry's technical support (Member Solutions) department directly, which can be found by going here: http://ancestry.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ancestry.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=560 If there is not an "a" after the colon, it was uploaded through Ancestry's Online Family Tree (for example, db=:012345). This means it was submitted after a system was in place to allow contributors to edit their own entries online. Trees submitted to WorldConnect can be updated, edited or deleted any time: http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igmuser.cgi] * * * Long-distance Telephone Genealogy By Mike Mathews in Camrose Alberta, Canada Another site for cheaper long distance calls is Yahoo Messenger with Voice -- easy to use and put credit on with a credit card. It uses a PC to make the calls and is VERY economical. I use it all the time and have called all around the world for just a few cents. * * * 1c. Using RootsWeb: Sharing Your Family with Your Worldwide Family It's the holiday time of year once again when we think of gift-giving and, let's be honest now, we delight in receiving gifts as well. We've all heard that it is better to give than receive but we also have to admit that we enjoy being on the receiving end of gifts -- especially unexpected gifts and pleasant surprises. When the spirit of giving and sharing with others is considered as it relates to our genealogical research, we give and share data and photos with the world when we post them to a RootsWeb/Ancestry message board, mailing list, or submit a WorldConnect GEDCOM. We often post our data with no actual consideration of who will benefit from it and find it in the future. We have no way of knowing what unexpected and pleasant surprises await us in the form of others who find us through the data we've shared with the world and return the favor by supplying us with additional information from their own family records. Someone out there on the Internet -- now or tomorrow -- may be the one person in the world who possesses the family Bible for the branch of the family that has been a dead end in your research. These miracle "finds" happen all the time. Next week or next month you might hear from a distant cousin who has a copy of grandaunt Bertha's baptismal record or that tombstone information you have long sought. So what will you share with the world this holiday season? How about using that new digital camera to take some family photos -- and during that trip back to grandma's house see if she will allow you to scan older photos and documents that you can upload to the message boards. Perhaps she even has unidentified photos that might be recognized by someone out there who finds the picture online. While at grandma's house ask to go through the old records and albums and ask questions of the older family members while they are still able to give you information no one else may remember. While you hope grandma will be around for many years to come, you will never have a better opportunity to discuss family history with her (and your other relatives) than right now. When you return home and sort through the information you have gathered you will want to submit a new or updated family tree at WorldConnect (http://wc.rootsweb.com/). And, if you have gathered a lot of family information that doesn't fit into a GEDCOM format you might consider requesting a Freepages website account here: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/index.cgi?op=show&page=freagree.htm Your Freepages website can supplement your WorldConnect database and you can easily link them together. The thought of sharing and having others share with you in return will fill you with the true spirit of the season. It is truly better to give than receive, but it is even better to give AND receive. All things are possible when you share your family history with the world through RootsWeb. * * * * * * * * * * Advertisements * * * * * * * * * * 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/ * * * Have you thought about your health? We have. Join AARP Today. Join AARP today to belong to a network of 37 million people with the same interest at heart: getting the most out of life. Anyone over 50 can get all the great benefits of membership in AARP for only $12.50 a year. Plus, free membership for your spouse or partner! Some of our benefits include AARP The Magazine, access to AARP-sponsored insurance plans, access to the AARP Legal Assistance Network, opportunities to volunteer in your community, and much more. At AARP, we work on the issues that matter to you. Get the latest information on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, economic security and health care. Our goal is to deliver value to our members through information, advocacy and service. Click here to join AARP today! http://www.aarp.org/sk/membership.html?keycode=M5PAA9 * * * * * * * * * * End of Advertisements * * * * * * * * * * 2. Connecting Through RootsWeb: Linking Some Broken Limbs By Bob Wilson in Beaufort South Carolina, USA My paternal grandfather, Samuel Hugh WILSON (1865-1903), died when my father (1901-1986), [who assumed until 1975 that he was the only child of Sam and Margaret D. McNEAL (1865-1950)] was only 18 months old. His mother kept a portrait of Sam on her dresser for the almost 47 years that she was widowed. There was a story in my family that Sam, who married my grandmother in 1898, had had a prior marriage, but my grandmother always professed to know nothing more than that about Sam's life before she met him in Brooklyn, New York. In 1975, I subsequently discovered that in 1880, Sam was living in the household of the Brooklyn chief of police and was married to one of the chief's daughters. Then five years or so later, I discovered that Sam and his first wife had a daughter named Vinia in 1880 or 1881. So, before dad passed away in 1986, I was able to report to him that he had had a half sister via his father, born some 20 years before. His dad Sam, and Sam's first family lived in the same place in Brooklyn through- out the 1880s according to the Brooklyn city directories. Then for the next seven or eight years he seemed to move every year until he married my grandmother in upstate New York in 1898. A search for a divorce from his first wife has proved futile, as has an official record/license for his second marriage. In the 1900 census and directories, Sam is with my grandmother in one location in Brooklyn and his "former" wife and daughter are in another location. The "former" wife is listed as a widowed schoolteacher living with her daughter Vinia. Contact via the RootsWeb Message Boards to the resident family record keeper for his first wife's ancestral family confirmed to me that their data showed that she was indeed regarded as a widow with a daughter, and that her husband had died sometime before 1900. It has been speculated that in 1900, separation or divorce for a schoolteacher and mother was considered very negatively. But, at the most, she was a grass widow. Further digging from data kept by his first wife's family revealed that her daughter by Sam had married in 1905 and that she in turn had a son born in 1906-07. The son grew up in Rockland County, New York with his parents, and that he married in the late 1920s and lived with his wife for the rest of his their lives in Hackensack, New Jersey. Regrettably, they never had any children. He died suddenly in 1973 and his wife, who was very active in community affairs, lived on until the early 1990s. How I wish that my dad and I had known of any of these people from my grandfather's first marriage before all of them had passed away by the year 2000. However, I would have known but very little of them at all had it not been for resources that RootsWeb made it possible for me to tap into. But some questions remain -- did Sam ever become officially divorced from his first wife? Did he and my grandmother ever have an official marriage license for their 1898 wedding? I fear that none of us interested in this will ever find out the answers to these questions. * * * Pursuing Families Through Pages of History By Paul Alan ROTH This trip through my past and that of my parents and other ancestors has been very educating for me and my family. I'm not certain if the schools have genealogy classes, but if they did, more students would become interested in American and world history. Genealogy has made history come alive for me and actually mean something to me . . . My original impetus for learning about genealogy was generated by my paternal aunt -- Mildred LaBertha ROTH-SPRINGMAN, who had compiled quite a bit of family data in the form of Family Group Sheets. She sent my family copies when I was a teenager. I had studied the sheets off and on over the years, but didn't seriously begin my own search until 1998. By then, I realized that I new next to nothing about my paternal grandparents: Richard Edgar ROTH and Minerva Ann DURHAM, whom I had only seen once, when I was three years old. They had lived in Comstock, Custer County, Nebraska and my family lived in Akron, Summit County, Ohio. I had no memories of my grandfather and only one memory of my grandmother: My mother and I were feeding grandma's free-range chickens in the backyard. I was having a great time until my grandmother came out of the house, grabbed two chickens by their necks and twirled the life right out of them . . . Read the entire story about Roth's genealogical adventures at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~paroth/PERSONAL/Why_Genealogy.html * * * 3. New User-Contributed Databases at RootsWeb http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/ ---------------------------------------------- The following databases have come online recently. They are searchable, but not browseable. Search: To look for specific data or occurrence of text in a file. Browse: To view the entire contents of a file or a group of files. ILLINOIS. Lake County. Navy. 14 records; Paula Lucy Delosh http://userdb.rootsweb.com/military/ NEW JERSEY, Hudson County. Holy Name Cemetery (KENNY surname) 460 records. Mariruth A. Kim http://userdb.rootsweb.com/cemeteries/ 4. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages -------------------------------------- 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 * * * If your genealogical or historical related site is located somewhere other than at RootsWeb.com, you can add the link here: http://resources.rootsweb.com/~rootslink/addlink.html * * * FULGHAM, FULGHUM. The Fulgham-Fulghum Family National Association, Inc. (FFFNA) is a non-profit educational, historical, and genealogical research society. Its mission is to study, research, interpret, and preserve family history and the achievements of this family and related families through the ages. The Fulgham-Fulghum Y-DNA Project results indicate that Captain Anthony Fulgham is the common ancestor of the American line. http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~fulghum/web-text-html.htm * * * 5. New at RootsWeb To Request a Free Web Account: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------- No new webpages were created this week. * * * New Mailing Lists at RootsWeb Request a New Mailing List: http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- For information and an index to the more than 30,000 RootsWeb-hosted genealogy Mailing Lists and for easy subscribing (joining) options go to: http://lists.rootsweb.com/ No new mailing lists were created this past 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]. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lost in Oz -- Tribute to a Missing Relative By Liam Martin in Cheshire, UK We can spend years searching for a wayward relative using all the known genealogy resources and yet not succeed in tracking him down. When the realisation sets in that the cause is probably lost and there is little hope of a successful trace one can still write a memorial panegyric to celebrate the life of the untraceable ancestor. This is my tribute to a great-uncle And if you come, when all the flowers are dying And I am dead, as dead I well may be You'll come and find the place where I am lying And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me. A gravestone in the Roman Catholic parish cemetery in Dunloy, County Antrim, Northern Ireland bears an inscription which begins "Erected by John CAREY in memory of his beloved mother Margaret CAREY who died in 1903 and his father Richard CAREY who died in 1908 aged 81 years." It ends with "also his uncle, James CAREY, who died in Australia in 1889, aged 72 years." As Richard CAREY was my maternal great-grandfather I enquired about his brother. No documentation remained about James CAREY so the date he sailed on (and with whom), the ship which carried him there and from whence, its port and date of arrival, what he worked at or where and the site of his grave, are all unrecorded. Oral history recollects James as arriving and living in Melbourne as a bachelor and, before he died, willing his property to his relatives at Glenbuck Townland, Rasharkin Civil Parish, County Antrim. Eventually, subsequent to probate, some ¢800 pounds was allegedly transferred to Ireland (see note below) and distributed among his nephews and nieces. This injection of funds (and possibly previous sums) allowed the family, back home, to invest in businesses and property and laid the foundation of their subsequent prosperity. One of his nephews, John CAREY, used his share to buy a farm in Gortgole (Rasharkin), and his niece Ellen, (my grandmother), used her portion to purchase a leather workshop and two shops in Ballymena (County Antrim). Several family descendants are millionaires, some several times over and one is a Papal Knight of the Order of St. Gregory. Many others have succeeded in commerce and the professions and some have scaled the heights of academia. At least seven entered and served in the priesthood throughout their lives at home and abroad. Their genealogy can be viewed by Googling "Postman Bill." Death certificate requests to the various Australian states (except Tasmania) and a search of the Oz probate records by Genfindit did not yield any positive information. Efforts by various kind Aussie E-list members were to no avail. James left an impoverished Ireland for Australia in the desperate times of the 1846-1850 potato famine. His subsequent lonely efforts Down Under fuelled the progress of those he left behind and they represent a disproportionately large contribution by an individual to the prosperity of his relatives. A number of Carey descendants are now living in Australia. These and any visitors from back home would like to visit James's last resting-place, if it could be found. They could kneel there among the microlaena grass under the eucalyptus trees and intone an Ave for the repose of his soul. And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me. Note: In 2005, ¢800 from 1889 was worth: £#612;58,912.36 using the retail price index Or in U.S. dollars $34,505.92 using the Consumer Price Index See http://measuringworth.com/ * * * 7. Humor/Humour: Bottoms Up! ---------------------------- Thanks to: Sam McCauley who writes: While searching at ancestry.com unsuccessfully for a relative by their first and last name, I decided to search only by the last name -- FANNIE. I came across several entries in the U.S. for Fannie SLAPPY. I can't imagine what they were thanking when they tagged a woman with a name like that. * * * Found a funny or "proper name for the job" in old records or an amusing entry in census, parish, church, etc. records? Send them to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com 8. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints ----------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIPTIONS. To manage your e-mail communications (i.e. to subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, or to sign up for others), visit our newsletter management center any time at: http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/ If you use a spam-filtering program, in order to receive the RootsWeb Review please make sure that you're allowing e-mail from: newsletter@reply.myfamilyinc.com The RootsWeb Review is a free publication of MyFamily.com, Inc., 360 West 4800 North, Provo, UT, 84604 * * * The RootsWeb Review does not publish or answer genealogical queries, and the editor regrets that she is unable to provide any personal research assistance or advice. RootsWeb Review welcomes short (500 words or less) articles, humor, stories, or letters, and reserves the right to edit all submissions. The announcement of books and products is provided as a community service and is not an endorsement in any way. All mail sent to the RootsWeb Review editor is considered to be for publication -- send in plain text (please, no attachments) to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com and please include your full name and e-mail address in the text. * * * ROOTSWEB REVIEW ADVERTISING CONTACTS. AdSales Worldwide: Shana Davis, creative@myfamilyinc.com * * * REPRINTS. 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: 20 December 2006, Vol. 9, No. 51 * * * *