Free Downloadable eBook for Mother's Day

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Renee Zamora (who I briefly met in Salt Lake City last week for the first time) posted Free Downloadable ebook "Getting Started in Genealogy Online" from FamilyLink on her Renee's Genealogy Blog.

This is a 67 page book, published in 2006 by Genealogical Publishing Company, with some useful information. The page to start the download from is here.

I'm not sure how long this will be available online - so go get it ASAP!

Thank you, Renee, for the post!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Matrilineal Line

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Hey genealogy buffs - it's Saturday Night again -- time for more Genealogy Fun!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) List your matrilineal line - your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how your mitochondrial DNA was passed to you!

2) Tell us if you have had your mitochondrial DNA tested, and if so, which Haplogroup you are in.

3) Post your responses on your own blog post, in Comments to this blog post, or in a Note or status line on Facebook.

Here's mine:

My matrilineal line is:

a) Randall J. Seaver
b) Betty Virginia Carringer (1919 San Diego CA - 2002 San Diego CA) married Frederick W. Seaver
c) Emily Kemp Auble (1899 Chicago IL -1977 San Diego CA) married Lyle L. Carringer
d) Georgianna Kemp (1868 Norfolk County, ON - 1952 San Diego CA) married Charles Auble
e) Mary Jane Sovereen (1840 Norfolk Co ON - 1874 Norfolk Co ON) married James Abram Kemp
f) Eliza Putman (1820 Steuben Co NY - 1895 Norfolk Co ON) married Alexander Sovereen
g) Sarah Martin (1792 NJ - 1860 Norfolk Co ON) married John Putman
h) Betsey Rolfe (1766 NJ - ????) married Mulford Martin
i) Sarah Campbell (1746 NJ? -1838 Tompkins Co NY) married Ephraim Rolfe
j) FNU LNU married Robert Campbell (?)

I have had my mitochondrial DNA tested, and I am in Haplogroup K. I reported on it in My mtDNA is in the K Haplogroup, Working with my mtDNA Results - Post 1 and Working with my mtDNA Results - Post 2. There were two exact matches in the GeneTree database, but their end-of-line surnames don't match mine. It appears that mine may be Scottish or Irish, though!

On my Seaver side, the matrilineal line of my father is:

a) Frederick W. Seaver (1911 Fitchburg MA - 1983 San Diego CA)
b) Alma Bessie Richmond (1882 Killingly CT - 1962 Leominster MA) married Frederick W. Seaver
c) Julia White (1848 Killingly CT - 1913 Putnam CT) married Thomas Richmond
d) Amy Frances Oatley (1826 S. Kingstown RI - bef. 1870, Killingly CT) married Henry A. White
e) Amy Champlin (1797 S. Kingstown RI - 1865 Killingly CT) married Jonathan Oatley
f) Nancy Kenyon (ca 1765 RI - bef. 1850 S. Kingstown RI) married Joseph Champlin
g) Anna --?-- (perhaps Kenyon) (ca 1740 RI? - ???) married John Kenyon

To my knowledge, none of my female-line cousins have had their mitochondrial DNA tested. That's another thing for my to-do list, I guess!

Surname Saturday - ROW (?? > NJ)

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It's Surname Saturday, and I'm "counting down" my Ahnentafel list each week. I'm up to number 57, who is Anna (Row) Auble (ca 1787-1860).

My ancestral line back through the two generations of my Row ancestral families:

1. Randall J. Seaver

2. Frederick W. Seaver (1911-1983)
3. Betty V. Carringer (1919-2002)

6. Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976)
7. Emily Kemp Auble (1899-1977)

14. Charles Auble (1848-1916)
15. Georgianna Kemp (1868-1952)

28. David Auble (1817-1894)
29. Sarah Knapp (1818-ca 1900)

56. Johannes Auble, born 11 March 1780 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ. He was the son of Johannes Able and Sophia Trimmer. He married 15 July 1804 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ.
57. Anna Row, born about 1787 in New Germantown, Hunterdon County, NJ; died 12 June 1860 in Stillwater, Sussex County, NJ.

114. Philip Jacob Row, born about December 1752 in probably NJ; died 09 January 1817 in Tewksbury, Hunterdon County, NJ. He married July 1772 in probably Hunterdon County, NJ.
115. Maria Smith, born about November 1753 in probably NJ; died about 1842 in Hunterdon County, NJ.

Children of Philip Row and Maria Smith are: Mary (1773-????); Elisabetha (1776-????); John Jacob (1779-????); Peter (1782-????); Anna (1787-1860); Phillip (1791-????); Johannes (1795-????)

I have only two documents to support the facts listed above - the abstract of the will of Philip Jacob Row in New Jersey Archives and the Revolutionary War Pension File for the widow, Maria (Smith) Row.

One online family tree claims that Phillip Row is the son of Johannes and Catherine (Loscher) Rau of Columbia and Dutchess Counties, New York, but there is no evidence other than they had a son named Phillip who evidently had land near his parents in New York in adulthood. Several other online trees conflate a Phillip Jacob Row with a Phillip Johannes Row, who may have been the New York son of Johannes Row. 'Tis another mystery!

The other question is, who is Maria Smith? Or was it Schmidt?

I would appreciate being contacted by anyone else who has this family in their ancestry, especially if they have more information than I do about them! With sources, of course!

Finding Ancestry.com Databases without Name Indexes

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I posted twice last year about Ancestry.com databases that do not have name indexes, but have a significant number of names included in the database images. The two posts were:

* Updated List of Unindexed Ancestry.com Databases on 2 October 2009

* Unindexed Databases at Ancestry.com Redux on 5 May 2009

In both of those posts, I used this search string on Google: [site:ancestry.com "no search function for names" ] . Unfortunately, that search string no longer returns many matches - apparently Ancestry.com has changed their database descriptions and are no longer using a standard phrase for databases without name indexes. It was so easy before! Arggh!!

I wanted to update this list, so I went through the lists in the two previous posts to determine if the databases listed still were not name indexed, plus Googled some search terms, and came up with these (there are a few new ones):

* Missouri Still Birth & Miscellaneous Records, 1805-2002

* Selected U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1992 (Image Only - World Archives Project)

* U.S. Revolutionary War Miscellaneous Records (Manuscript File(, 1775-1790s

* U.S. Index to General Correspondence of the Record and Pension Office, 1889-1904

* War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index, 1812-1815

* Hamburg Passenger Lists, Handwritten Indexes, 1855-1934

* Returns from U.S. Military Posts, 1800-1916 (World Archives Project)

* AJHS New York Hebrew Orphan Asylum Records, 1860-1934

* AJHS Industrial Removal Office Records, 1899-1922

* AJHS Selected Mayor's Court Cases, New York, 1674-1860

* AJHS Selected Insolvent Debtor's Cases, 1787-1861

* Mecklenburg, Germany, Jewish Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1813-1918

* Mecklenburg, Germany, Parish Register Transcripts, 1876-1918

* Paris & Vicinity, France, Death Notices, 1860-1902

* New Orleans, Louisiana, Slave Manifests, 1807-1860 (World Archives Project)

* Dept of Interior Decisions on Pensions and Bounty-Land Claims (1886-1930)

* London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812

* U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Croix Slave Plantation and Head Tax Lists, 1772-1821

* U.S. Freedmen's Marriage Records, 1861-1869

* Summit County, Ohio, Death Records, 1870-1908

* World War II Japanese-American Internment Camp Documents, 1942 -1946

* Returns from Regular Army Regiments, 1821-1916

* U.S. Circuit Court Criminal Case Files, 1790-1871

* Lübeck, Germany, Births, 1813-1875

* Lübeck, Germany, Marriage Banns, 1813-1871

* Lübeck, Germany Citizenship Register, 1591-1919

*  War of 1812 Papers, 1789-1815

Several of the projects above are in the Ancestry.com World Archives Project (AWAP). The current list of Ancestry World Archives Projects is at http://community.ancestry.com/wap/dashboard.aspx. The page includes databases that are Available (for indexing), Unavailable (for indexing), Completed (indexed and images are available) and Live (being indexed, but available for searching and browsing on Ancestry.com).

There are also several (how many?) databases on Ancestry.com that are poorly indexed. These include:

* Many of the Massachusetts Vital Records to Year 1850 ("tan") books are not first-name indexed.

* The US Revolutionary War Compiled Service Records database is arranged by State and Regiment.

* The Berks County, Pennsylvania Estate Papers, 1752-1914 surname search returns no names after Bleckley.

* The California Voter Registrations, 1900-1968 are notorious for not providing exact matches of first and last names, and for having the street names indexed

* The Newspapers matches do not provide for exact matches of first and last names, and are keyword indexed so that names are not distinguished from ordinary words

The last four items were noted by Genea-Musings reader and commenter Geolover in the earlier posts.

What good are these online databases if there is not a useful name index? If a researcher searches for a name, the records in these databases will not show up on the list of matches. Not every researcher knows that there are some databases on Ancestry.com that do not have name indexes.

The Ancestry.com Card Catalog can be used to determine the databases available for specific subjects. There is a link to the Card Catalog in the "Record Collections" box on a person's home page, but it is not prominent.

IMHO, a link to the list of unindexed databases in Ancestry'c collection should be highlighted on a member's home page.

If you know of another unindexed database, or a poorly indexed database, please comment and I will add it to the list above.

Last updated: 3 July 2011

Images of the Will of Thomas Page (died Hawstead, Suffolk, 1637)

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I took advantage of my one day at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City last week to find the will of Thomas Page, yeoman of Hawstead in Suffolk, the father of my ancestress Susanna (Page) Gleason. The rampant online family tree errors and the fortuitous Googling that led me to this relationship was discussed in my post Who were parents of Susanna Page (ca1611-1691)?

While at the FHL, I ventured to the British/Canadian Floor and talked to one of the consultants about my specific problem. I had a name, a parish and a year, but was unsure which resource to use. The consultant was excellent, and after consulting a notebook on the shelf concerning Suffolk resources, advised me to check British film 97,086 for "Original wills, 1634-1635, indexes." I did that, and did not find an index entry for Thomas Page. So I looked at the next film , 97,087, for "Registered wills, v. 53 Gael 1636-1638."

After much scrolling, I found the will of Thomas Page of Hawstead on pages 146 and 147 (there are two leafs for each page). Here is the image I captured from the microfilm to my USB drive for the right part of Page 146:



As you can see, there is quite a bit of bleed-through from the other side of the paper, but you can see the start of Thomas Page's will at the bottom of the page.

I brought the images of the three pages into my Photo editing program, and adjusted brightness and contrast and obtained images with somewhat improved readability. Here is page 146:

And page 147 (left leaf) with the mention of "my daughter Susan Page ... wife of Thomas Gleeson" in the 18th line into the 19th line (Gleeson is the first word of the 19th line down):

And the third image from the will, with the will of Marian Frost taking the balance of the page:

I was pretty lucky to find this will to be fairly clear - there were many wills on this microfilm that had significant bleed-through and thick pen strokes to the extent that they were unreadable. These pages are clear enough to read most of it, and if I could figure out the Elizabethan paleography, I would transcribe it. I can make out some of it, but some of it is really difficult.

The lessons learned in this effort include:

* You can find old wills and other records in English parishes and counties - mostly on the FHL Microfilms.

* It was really unclear which set of probate records would have this record - there were two different sets of original wills on microfilm.

* The FHL films list volume numbers for these probate records, but the numbers don't match those in the published book Index of the Probate Records of the Court of the Archdeacon of Sudbury, 1354-1700 (compiled by M.E. Grimwade, British Record Society, 1984 (942 B4b v. 96)) listed this particular will (on Page 409) as

"Thomas Page, yeoman, Hawstead,

1637 R2/57/146

W1/92/182."

Apparently, the volume that was used by the index book was Volume 57, while the FHL volume was Volume 53. It was on page 146!

* The Page family researchers did a marvelous job of finding and abstracting information from these wills!

* Online family trees can really suck, especially for "unconnected females" in colonial New England.

UPDATED 8 p.m.: Martin asked in Comments "Question: Did the web page on which you found the information give the proper citation for this will or just a transcription? How much work on your own did you have to do to verify this information?"

The web page that I found this on - here - noted only that "...They have been sifting records for Co. Suffolk, England..." and "THOMAS PAGE of Hawstead, yeoman, 13 January 1636/37" for a reference. The page had a wordy abstract of the will rather than a transcription.

In order to find the actual will, I consulted the LDS Family History Library Catalog before I went to Salt Lake City, looked for "Suffolk, England" and "Probate Record Indexes" and printed off the pages for two references - this book and this list of registered wills in the Archdeaconry of Sudbury. Before I got to SLC, I had identified film 97,087 (1636-1638) as the most likely candidate, but didn't have a page number for the will.

At the FHL, I checked the book first, noted the volume/page for Thomas Page of Hawstead 1637, and then the volume number in the book didn't match the volume number in the microfilms. So I asked the FHL consultant, who looked in a notebook, and said to check the 1634-1635 index, so I did. Nothing there helped me. So I went through the 1636-1638 volume page-by-page until I found the right will on page 146. It helps that they wrote the testator's name in large print in the margin! That's when I figured out that the book's volume 57 equalled the FHL Volume 53 (you would think that the FHL would have kept the same numbering system, but no...). This exercise took about 60 minutes total at the FHL, including getting the images from the film to my USB drive.

As you can see, I had to find the right microfilm using finding aids and scroll through it to find the prize. The message board post definitely helped, though!

Then to verify the information, I pored over the secretary hand of the will long into the night and after many head scratches (and pulls on my favorite beverage) I decided that the will abstract matched the actual will pretty well!

Follow Friday - Boston 1775

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One of my daily pleasures is reading the recent posts of over 600 genealogy and history blogs, and one I really look forward to is the Boston 1775 blog authored by J.L. Bell.

The description on the blog page says "History, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts."

J.L. writes one blog post each day, often in a series format, and often according to the calendar (i.e., what happened on this date back in 1775 or some other year). I've learned so much about Revolutionary War history by reading his posts each day for the past four years. The current series about Isaac Bissell grew out of posts about the Lexington Alarm on 19 April 1775, and discusses one of those little-known actors in history with 15 minutes of fame. J.L. also blogs occasionally about his Twitter comments...an interesting collection of links. Brave man!

Check out the Resources, Other Blogs and Favorite Sites on his left sidebar, and the topics on the right sidebar. This is a truly wonderful collection of articles.

First Look at Branches - Genealogy Software

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One of the most interesting exhibits at the NGS 2010 Conference in the GenTech Zone was a new genealogy software offering called Branches - Genealogy Software for the 21st Century. I was provided a 15 minute exploration of the software and was fairly impressed by its concept and capabilities.

I think that the two biggest positives I saw were:

* The entire family tree database was exhibited on the screen - it could go back hundreds of generations. Navigation was accomplished using this large graphical family tree. A user could select a portion of the tree and zoom it in or select a specific person to see that person's information.

* Doing tasks in the software seemed to be very fast - perhaps it was because of a small number of persons in the database, but I'm not sure. It looked like there were several thousand persons in the sample database.

Branches has a retail price of $39.95, but offers a free download for a 31-day free trial.

The home page of the Branches website -- www.BranchesGenealogy.com -- looks like this:




If you run your mouse over the colored boxes at the bottom of the Lincoln image above, the graphic changes to reflect the colored box theme - Zoom, Events, Merging, Pruning, Adding, Map, Search, Trees, and Views.

There are several tabs across the top of the screen - Home, About, Buy, Contact Information, Download FAQs and Privacy. I clicked on the FAQs page and there are 22 questions answered there, including the note that a GEDCOM file with over 30,000 persons might slow down the program due to its graphical nature.




Being the adventurous sort, I decided to Download the program to my desktop computer and start my 31-day free trial. The download went very quickly and smoothly on my Windows XP machine, and the files downloaded included Microsoft SQL Server Compacvt Edition and Microsoft Synchronization Services, but I cannot find the actual executable Branches code in my computer files (I'm not an expert at this stuff!).

After the program is downloaded and run, the Initial Startup Instructions appear:

In the screen above, the user has the choice of Transferring data from another genealogy program (via a GEDCOM file upload), Setting up a new file manually, or bypassing this process for the time being. If you choose the latter, you have a blank gray screen with the Branches menu across the top.

I chose to import an existing GEDCOM file made recently by Family Tree Maker 16 with almost 40,000 persons and about 16 megabytes in size. The GEDCOM upload stalled after about ten minutes and eventually a warning message appeared, as show below:

The message was the "Unhandled exception has occurredin your application" in the Microsoft .NET Framework and my choices were to Continue or Quit. I chose Continue and the Upload never ended, resulting in this screen:

After 60 minutes, I ended the Branches program session and tried again. The GEDCOM upload didn't finish again.

So now I'm stuck on Day 1 of my free trial without any idea of what to do next. Perhaps I should make a smaller GEDCOM and try again? Perhaps I should try the Branches free help support line.

Comments are welcome here!

Randy's NGS 2010 Conference Photos - Post 3

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I have been posting photographs taken at the NGS 2010 Conference in Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, I took relatively few photos, so I don't have much to show my faithful readers. Here are some "crowd shots" rather than "people shots":

1) Ancestry.com was a major presence at this conference, with at least three exhibit areas, two of them in the GenTech zone. The one in the general exhibit area looked like this as you entered the Exhibit Hall:


On the left is a small seating area with a large screen where Ancestry employees gave short presentations about Ancestry.com products. In the background, behind the partition, was an area with about ten computers where persons could search Ancestry.com's databases and ask questions. There were always several Ancestry.com employees available to help researchers. Duff Wilson manned a Family Tree Maker 2010 table in one corner of the exhibit.

2) FamilySearch.org had perhaps the largest display area in the Exhibit Hall. They had many computers and many employees available to help researchers.

FamilySearch.org gave away free green T-shirts that said "Branch Out" (on the table in the foreground) but I didn't see many people wearing one in the crowds. I got one!

3) Adjacent to both the GenTech Zone and the lunch room was the computer bank set up by FamilySearch to help researchers use the Internet for free - to search FamilySearch, Ancestry, or, in my case, email, blogging and Twitter! The computer bank was between two large areas with stages for speakers and large screens and perhaps 100 seats for an audience to hear the speaker (or perhaps rest their feet or take a nap). This picture below shows some of the computer bank and one of the stage/screen/seats area:

The computer area was very well used, especially during the 30 minute breaks between the speaker presentations. Unfortunately, the 20-minute speaker segments on the two stages were not well attended.

4. One of the busiest vendors seemed to be the Fun Stuff for Genealogists exhibit, shown below:

5) Footnote.com had a fairly large exhibit area that was always busy. Dick Eastman had a table in this display:

6) When you first walked into the Exhibit Hall, you couldn't miss the National Genealogical Society display - there were many society leaders and members to talk to and help visitors:

That's almost all of the pictures that I have that are fit to print. Please see other genea-bloggers who have posted pictures - I don't have a complete list, nor the time to compile one. There were at least 40 genea-bloggers at this conference.

Treasure Chest Thursday - A Graduation Announcement

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It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look into my genealogy files for a family history jewel.

As I've noted before, my Aunt Geraldine (Seaver) Remley died back in 2007, and I asked for and received her family papers and some artifacts. Many of the papers were from Gerry's own persona life, including her high school and college diplomas, newspaper articles on important events in her life, and her professional resume.

One of the important events in Gerry's life revealed a useful family history clue. Here is a newspaper article, probably not from The Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel (I couldn't find it in the Ancestry.com collection) in May 1939 (my estimate):

The article reads:

"S.T.C. Graduate

"LEOMINSTER, May 19 -- Miss Geraldine Seaver (above), daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Seaver of 90 Main Street, who will be graduated from Lowell State Teachers College at commencement exercises in June, has accepted a position as assistant in music in the public schools of Northampton.

"Miss Seaver, who has specialized in music at the Lowell institution, will present a voice recital at the college next Wednesday, May 24, at 2 o'clock. She is soloist at First Church of Christ Scientist in Fitchburg. She was graduated from Leominster High School in 1935."

What did I learn from this? The useful facts include:

* The name of her father, and that both parents were living in 1939.

* The residence of her parents in May 1939 - 90 Main Street

* Gerry was not married in 1939.

* The name of the college she attended and graduated from.

* The location of a job after graduation.

* Her high school location and her graduation date.

Newspaper articles such as this often provide significant biographical details that cannot be found in any other resource. Since this article was, apparently, not from The Fitchburg Sentinel or The Lowell Sun (both of which are indexed on Ancestry.com for this time period, I should try to determine the source of this article that was clipped and put in Aunt Gerry's family papers. My first guess is that there was a Leominster MA newspaper that published it. Or perhaps it is a Northampton newspaper that published it.

Another lesson learned here is that not every newspaper, and not every issue of a newspaper, is microfilmed, digitized and indexed. At least, not yet!

SDGS Meeting on Saturday 8 May - Wendy Elliott

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The May program meeting of the San Diego Genealogical Society is Saturday, 8 May 2010 at 12 noon at St. Andrews Lutheran Church (8350 Lake Murray Blvd. in San Diego, near Jackson Drive).

The program speaker will be Wendy Elliott, PhD, FUGA on “Tracking Your Fore-Mothers” and “Writing and Publishing Your Work” in the two separate program segments.

Wendy Elliott, PhD, FUGA (Fellow, Utah Genealogical Society), is a professor of history at Cal State University-Fullerton and a nationally known speaker and author with five chapters in Redbook and two articles in Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West.

Wendy has been a professional genealogist almost 40 years and is past president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies.

You will not want to miss these special presentations tracking our fore-mothers and writing and publishing your work.

The RootsMagic Users Group and the "Basic Genealogy" class will meet at 10 a.m. at St. Andrews.