Treasure Chest Sunday - H.A. Carringer's 1921 Automobile Registration

 This is a special Treasure Chest post.  I couldn't wait until Thursday!

I read a Facebook post by Melody Lassalle that discussed the California Automobile Registration database available on the Internet Archive.  The database is for the years 1917 to 1922, and the registrations are listed by registration number for the entire state.

I knew that my great-grandfather, Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946) had a Model T Ford automobile in the early 1920s in San Diego, but I didn't know which year or model.  

It was difficult to figure out how to find the database and to search it by name.  I finally resorted to searching for it on Google.  That worked for 1919, 1920 and 1921, but not 1917 and 1918.  Link for 1921 is https://archive.org/details/calauto78unse/mode/2up .  Search with the search icon on left.

H.A. Carringer was the only Carringer person in the 1921 database:

This record appears on page n307 of the 1921 database (image 808 of 1124).

The extracted data for the H.A. Carringer entry is:

• Registration number:  372292
• Name of registrant:  H.A. Carringer
• Address:  2104 30th st San Diego
• Make of Automobile:  Ford
• Type of Automobile:  Tour[ing?]
• Year of Automobile:  [19]14
• Engine number:  411644

A source citation for this record is:

"California Automobile Registrations, 1917-1922," indexed database with record images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org : accessed 17 March 2023), 1921, Volume VII, page n307 (image 808 of 1124), Registration #372292, H.A. Carringer entry, 1914 Ford, Touring, Engine number 411644; original data in California Motor Vehicle Department (Sacramento, Calif.), digitized by California Digital Library, Americana collection.

I wanted to know what this 1914 Model T Ford Touring car might look like, and cost, so I found an image of this automobile online on the Swope Cars of Yesteryear Museum web page:

Here is one of the photos of this automobile:

It's a convertible!!!  With a mechanical top for cold, wind, and precipitation issues..

Information about the automobile includes:

• Four cylinder, 22 horsepower, original cost $550. Top speed 45 miles per hour. Gas mileage 15 to 21 MPG. Gasoline costs 12 to 15 cents a gallon.
• The first “Wide Track.” This Ford was known as the “southern Model T”, with 60” wide axles. The extended axle width was because of wagon rut in the south were wider than those in the north.
• Between 1909 and 1927, Ford build 15,000,000 Model T Cars.
• Henry Ford’s imitation of mass production methods on a moving assembly line led to lower car prices.
• It also led to the $5.00 work day. People came from Kentucky and all over the south to work in the Ford Assembly Plant and earn the handsome wage of $5.00 a day!
• In 1914, Ford with 13,000 employees produced 300,000 cars.

My grandfather, Lyle L. Carringer (1891-1976) was very good with mechanical things, and I'm sure he drove this car all around San Diego.  He probably impressed his wife-to-be, Emily Kemp Auble (1999-1977), with the car and his driving prowess while they were dating (who knows what secrets the back seat held?).  

Thank you to Melody for mentioning this on Facebook!  This was the best Genealogy Fun I've had all day!

==============================================

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2023/03/treasure-chest-sunday-ha-carringers.html

Copyright (c) 2023, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

How Do You Fight the Empire State, and Win?

This is a fantastic genealogical records story, and the result benefits all of us because it provides inspiration, an excellent example, and tangible results.  Thank you to Reclaim the Records!!

Have you read the 16th Reclaim the Records newsletter?  

Go ahead - click on over there and read the story.  I'll wait for you to come back.

Did you subscribe to their FREE email newsletter?  I did. 

Have you checked the FREE, but unindexed, browsable New York records in the Internet Archive -   https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22New+York+State+Death+Index%22&sort=titleSorter

The same records are on Ancestry.com behind the paywall indexed or browsable - at  http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=61535

I love the Reclaim the Records story in their newsletter.  The chapters are:

I - We ask nicely
II - The state breaks the law - a lot
III - Bring on the lawyers
IV - FOIL request, take two
V - Can we scan that for you
VI - New York hires an archivist
VII - Nope, not ours
VIII - Free at last
IX - There's no such thing as a free lunch
X - Ancestry takes the credit
XI - We share our toys
XII - We FOIL Albany, Buffalo and Yonkers
XIII - More Awesome Records Real Soon

I especially like the part where NYGBS, NEHGS, FamilySearch and MyHeritage will get their own set of the records and offer indexes.

This is collaborative genealogy at its finest, and we should applaud the work of these folks.  Folks can also donate to their work - at https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/donations/general-fund/

There are 132 Seaver entries (but some are duplicates) in the New York Death Index, 1880-1956 database!  Cool.  Here is a screen image of one of the pages with a Seaver on it:

Hat tip to James Tanner's blog post - A Cautionary Tale from Reclaim the Records (posted 27 September 2017) - for leading me to the website and the records.

==============================================

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/09/how-do-you-fight-empire-state-and-win.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Tuesday's Tip - Check Out Digitized Genealogy and Family History Books

This week's Tuesday's Tip is to check out digitized genealogy and family history books to find books or articles about your ancestors.

There are a number of websites that have digitized genealogy and family history books, such as compiled surname genealogies, locality history and records, etc.:

1)  Google Books (https://books.google.com) - has over 30 million digitized books free to access.

2)  Internet Archive (https://archive.org/) - has over 10 million digitized books free to access.

3)  HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/) - has over 14 million digitized books free to access.

4)  MyHeritage Books and Publications (https://www.myheritage.com/research/category-8020/books-publications) - has over 447,000 genealogy-related digitized books free to access.

5)  FamilySearch Books (https://books.familysearch.org/) - has over 280,000 genealogy-related digitized books and manuscripts free to access:

6)  Genealogy Gophers (https://www.gengophers.com/#/) - has over 80,000 genealogy-related digitized books free to access.

7)  Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com) - has over 23,000 digitized genealogy-related books, not free to access).

8)  GenealogyBank (http://www.genealogybank.com) - has over 14,000 digitized genealogy-related books, not free to access).

Each site has a different set of search fields and search options (e.g., wild cards, exact matches, included words, excluded words).

There are other digitized books websites with significant genealogy and family history hol;dings - which ones should I add to this list?

=============================================

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/09/tuesdays-tip-check-out-digitized.html

Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- The Wayback Machine

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):

1)  Do you have a website or a blog?  Or know someone with one?  Pick yours, or theirs or another.

2)  Now go to the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/) and put the web site address in the search field.  Explore - see what the website looked like over time - start with the first available archived date and select others over the lifetime of the web site.  Make some screen shots to show your readers.

3)  Share your Wayback adventure with us in your own blog post, in a Facebook or google+ post.  Be sure to leave a link in a Comment on this blog.

Here's mine:

The Wayback Machine now starts for Genea-Musings (www.geneamusings.com) on 17 May 2008, although I have screen shots from before that date.  Here are some looks at Genea-Musings history:

*  16 May 2008:

*  7 March 2009:

*  30 June 2010:

*  7 February 2012:

*  21 June 2013:

As you can see, I experimented every year with different color combinations, and got a little fancier with a new Blogger template in 2012 and 2013.  The current template is very similar to the 2013 template - the major exception being the blog title (the font was causing problems with some browsers).

I'm still using the same picture I started with...and pretty much the same blog description and biography too.  I'm a creature of habit!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-wayback.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

The Ancestry.com Home Page Over the Years 1996 to 2015

I used the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive website to capture these screen shots of the Ancestry.com home page (not signed in) over the years:

1)  1996:

2)  1999:

3)  2001:

4)  2003:

5)  2006:

6)  2009:

7)  2012:

8)  2015:

Remember, these are the home pages that a non-logged in person would see.  You can also click on the tabs to see Search and other pages.

This is not an exhaustive list of the changes - I picked every two or three years to provide a limited number of views.

Note that from 2009 on, starting a new family tree (which is free to do) was at the top of the page rather than the Search fields.  The Family Trees tab appears in 2003.

According to Ancestry.com, I have been an Ancestry subscriber since 27 July 2000, but I'm not sure that it has been continuous.  It has been continuous since about 2006.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/08/the-ancestrycom-home-page-over-years.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Using the Internet Archive Website: Books - Post 2

In the post, Using the Internet Archive Website: Books - Post 1, I highlighted the problems I've had searching for genealogy-related books on the site working with the plain text books on the Internet Archive website (http://www.archive.org/).  I provided simple work-arounds that I use in the hope that other frustrated searchers will use them.

There are several other ways to search and read the books on the Internet Archive.  Here is the screen for the plain text book (4th screen in first post):

In order to see other formats for this particular book, the user can click on the red "See other formats" button to the left of the plain text panel.  When you click that, this screen appears:

In the left-hand panel (headed "View the Book"), there are choices for:

*  Read Online
*  PDF
*  B/W PDF
*  EPUB
*  Kindle
*  Daisy
*  Full text
*  DjVu

There is a Help file that defines the different choices.

In the right-hand panel of the screen above is source and catalog information for the work. 

If the user chooses "Read Online," then color images of the book pages, as scanned, are shown in the central panel.  Here's the cover of the Samuel Sewall book:

There is a Search Box in the top line.  I searched for "Seaver" and the page with the first instance of the search term showed on my screen:

There was only one instance in the book, and the system went right to it.  See the orange tack in the bar at the bottom of the screen?  That shows where the search terms are found.  If there is more than one, then more show up as orange tacks on that line.  Each one shows a snippet of text when the mouse is run over it.  The user can click on each orange tack and the book will flip to that page.

There are icons in the bottom bar that can be used to show one page view, two page view (as above), thumbnail view, zoom in, zoom out, flip left, and flip right.

In the online two page view like the above, the user can click on the page to "turn" to the next page.

The book can be downloaded in PDF format and saved to your computer folders.  To print book pages, the user could click on PDF and show it on the screen, then print selected pages.  The user could also take screen shots of the pages, copy them to a word processor, and print the selected images.  The user could save just those pages as a file.  Copying text from the book pages is only possible in the Full Text version of the book, which has line breaks and any OCR errors included.

Using the Internet Archive Website: Books - Post 1

I have struggled over the years to use the FREE Internet Archive website (http://www.archive.org/) effectively.  It seems like almost every time I use it, my Internet Explorer browser locks up.  I have no idea why!

I have also been frustrated by the search limitations on the site, and have finally figured out "my way" of doing it.  If others have better methods, I would love to hear them.

Here is the home page of the site:

I was looking for a specific book about Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts, so I put "samuel sewall" (in quotes) in the small search box at the top of the page.  After about one minute, I got this screen:

It told me that "The search engine encountered the following error:  search engine returned invalid information or was unresponsive. We are working to resolve this issue.  Thanks for your patience."

I was still impatient, so I turned to my trusty work-around.  I searched the website in Google, using the string: ["samuel sewall" site: http://www.archive.org/] (without the brackets).  Here were my results:

That's better - there are plenty of mentions of Samuel Sewall in the Archive site - and look what's number 1:  "Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729)."  I clicked on it and saw:

To someone inexperienced using this site, the result looks like gibberish.  The user can scroll down and find real text, but it can be confusing to someone trying the site the first time.  Why the gibberish?

The Internet Archive seems to always open with the full OCRed (Optical Character Recognition) text version.  The graphics on a scanned page often create unintelligible text, as shown above.  It seems like there are many misspelled words in the text, probably because of the OCR process of text in difficult to read fonts.

This is usually where my system locks up.  Perhaps it is because it takes a long time (sometimes a minute or more) to load this OCRed text page.  If I click on something without the page telling me that it's "Done," my system locks up.  I thought this problem would go away once I bought a new computer with more RAM.  But it hasn't gone away so far.

There is no effective search box for the site (that I can see) on this screen.  My work-around here is to go to the Edit menu on my browser, and click on "Find on this Page" and enter the text I'm searching for in the search box (see screen above).  The screen instantly goes to the first use of the search text:

If I want the next instance of the requested text, I can click on the "Next" button and the next instance will be highlighted. 

The Internet Archive has a wealth of resources available.  There are other ways to read these online books, and we'll look at some of them in a future post.