Getting Ready for the FamilySearch Center on Saturday

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society is sponsoring a research trip about ten miles up the road to the San Diego FamilySearch Center in San Diego.  It's not far, but we're carpooling so that members who don't drive on the freeways any more can go.  We have 14 signed up for the carpool trip, and some of them are new members, and many of them have not been to the FHC before.  It should be fun.

My main job will be to shepherd the group there and help them while we're there, but I hope to do a little searching of my own. 

I have not done a good literature search on the latest group of ancestors I've added to my family tree - the ancestors of Sarah Martin (1792-1860).  She has a very rich New Jersey and New England ancestry, including one or two Mayflower Famlies if you believe the online family trees. 

I recalled that Martin Hollick had written a blog post on The Slovak Yankee about how he searches existing works - I had to go back to August 2010, but I found his post Shepardizing Your Genealogy which summarized how he does it:

1) " ... Donald Lines Jacobus, Index to Genealogical Periodicals, which will let me see all the scholarship for east coast families up to the publication year of 1953."

2)  "... Meredith Colket's Founders of Early American Families which takes me up to 1985, albeit imperfectly.  At least the major journals are indexed therein, but it is only families that fall within that lineage society's rules (a family here before 1657 and continuing in the male line to the American Revolution)."  

3)  Martin's own book, "New Englanders in the 1600s which covers 1980 to 2005 (in print), and then my own private update which takes me to the end of 2009.  That's how I see what is current for (mostly) New England families."

I have 2) and 3), and today I went through Martin's excellent book for all of the immigrant names that I think are in Sarah Martin's ancestry, and added them to my to-do list for published books and periodicals. 

Let me give you an example of what is in Martin's book (from page 94):

"HALE, THOMAS, b. 1606, d. Newbury, Mass., 21 December 1682.  Davis II:62-69 [Phoebe Tilton], including English origins.  Wife's Kirby ancestry given at Davis II:394-395 [Phoebe Tilton]; 50Imm, pp. 169-98; MBT #844; NEHGR 151:128-34 (wife's ancestry); TAG 68:77-83 (Mary-3, Thomas-2); TAG 69:212-18 (Mary-2)."

The references are cryptic but a full source citation for each is provided in the front part of the book.  I knew that "50Imm" referred to John Brooks Threlfall's book 50 Gret Migration Colonists to New England & Their Origins, published in 1990 by the author.  "NEHGR" is the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and "TAG" is The American Genealogist.

I really appreciate Martin's book, which he sent to me gratis over a year ago.  It has become the first reference work I check when I find a new New England ancestral family.

I updated my "Books I Want to Review" and "Journals I Want to Review" lists today, adding information directly from the entries in Martin's book.  Now all I have to do is print them out and I'm ready to check the stacks (they have TAG, Connecticut Nutmeggers, NEHGR, and other periodicals too).