Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Dear Genea-Santa

Hey, fellow geneaholics, it's Saturday Night, and time for lots of Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission: Impossible music), is to write a nice letter to Genea-Santa Here are the directions:

1) Write a letter to Genea-Santa and ask for only ONE thing. It could be hardware, software, a missing family Bible, a record that you desperately want, etc.

2) Tell Genea-Santa what a good genea-girl or genea-boy you've been this past year and give examples.

3) Exhibit your letter on your own blog, in a Facebook post commenting on this note, or in a Comment to this blog post.

So - go forth and write your letter!

Updated 4:45 p.m.: I didn't realize that the Carnival of Genealogy would include a Dear Genea-Santa theme this year. So my advice is to ask for everything you want in the Carnival post and only one thing in your SNGF post.

Surname Saturday - LAMPHIER > SMITH (NY>WI>IA>MO>KS>NE>CA)

It's Saturday, and time for another Surname Saturday post about one of my family lines. I'm doing these in Ahnentafel List order - starting with the first entry for the specific surname in my Ahnentafel List.

I'm starting this SMITH list with my great-grandmother, Abbie Ardell (Della) SMITH (1862-1944). She is #13 on my Ahnentafel List. I've included my descent from Della to myself in the list below:

1. Randall J. Seaver (1943-....) - moi.

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

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

12. Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946)
13. Abbie Ardell (Della) Smith was born on 11 April 1862 in Waupan, Dodge County, WI. She was born on 11 April 1862 in Waupan, Dodge, WI. She died on 1 January 1944 at the age of 81 in San Diego, San Diego, CA.

26. Devier James Lamphear Smith was born on 7 May 1839 in Henderson, Jefferson County, NY. He was adopted before 1843 in Jefferson County, New York. Devier died on 1 May 1894 at the age of 54 in McCook, Red Willow County, NE. Abigail A. Vaux and Devier James Lamphear Smith were married on 4 April 1861 in Rolling Prairie, Dodge County, WI.

27. Abigail A. Vaux was born on 28 October 1844 in Aurora, Erie County, NY.. Abigail died on 11 September 1931 at the age of 86 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA. Devier James Lamphear Smith and Abigail A. Vaux had the following children:

...13 ...i. Abbie Ardell\Della Smith, born 11 April 1862, Waupan, Dodge County, WI; married Henry Austin Carringer, 11 September 1887, Wano, Cheyenne County, KS; died 1 January 1944, San Diego, San Diego County, CA.
.......... ii. David Devier Smith, born 15 October 1863, Rolling Prairie, Dodge County, WI; married Leava A. Smith, 20 June 1889, McCook, Red Willow County, NE; married Amy Ashdown, 25 May 1908, San Diego, San Diego County, CA (CA MI); died 2 February 1920, San Diego, San Diego County, CA.
.......... iii. Mary Ann (Matie) Smith, born 7 May 1866, Rolling Prairie, Dodge County, WI; married George Chenery, 10 December 1889, McCook, Red Willow County, NE (divorced April 1895); married Joseph C. Cramer, after 1895, prob. San Diego County, CA; married John Frank Morrill, about 1920, prob. San Diego County, CA; died 14 July 1922, San Diego, San Diego County, CA.
.......... iv. Agness Bell Smith was born on 26 February 1868 in Rolling Prairie, Dodge County, WI. She died on 26 April 1870 at the age of 2 in Bedford, Taylor County, IA.
.......... v. Lucian\Lutie H. Smith was born on 16 June 1875 in Bedford, Taylor County, IA. She died on 19 March 1878 at the age of 2 in Concordia, Cloud County, KS.

52. Lanphier???
or.
53. Lamphier???

Devier J. Lamphier changed his name to Devier James Smith on 21 March 1866 in Dodge County, Wisconsin. His birth parents are not known, but were probably living in Jefferson county, New York in the period before 1843. His father may be a Lamphier (or with other alternative names - Lamphear, Lamphere, Lamfear, Lanphier, Lanphere, Lanphear, Lanfear, etc.). His mother may be a Lamphier also - she may have had the baby out of wedlock and gave him up for adoption.

Devier J. Smith's adoptive parents were Ranslow and Mary (Bell) Smith, who married and lived in Henderson, Jefferson county, NY before 1840. They moved to Dodge County, Wisconsin before 1843, and Mary died there in 1865. Ranslow Smith, and his son, Devier J. Smith, moved to Taylor county, IA in 1867, thence to Andrew County, MO, where Ranslow died. Devier Smith moved to Cloud County KS, Pottawatomie County KS, Marshall County KS, Red Willow County NE and Cheyenne County KS.

If anybody has information about the Devier J. Smith family, or the Lamphier/etc. family in New York and Wisconsin in the 1820-1870 time period, I would appreciate hearing from you!
.

Advent Calendar: Day 20 - Outdoor Lights

On the 20th day of Christmas,
my neighbors gave me a treat,
they lighted up the whole darn street!

1) Did people in your neighborhood decorate with lights?

When I was a kid (1950s and 60s), there were few lights outside the homes, if any, in San Diego. We had no lights outside the house, mainly because we lived on the second floor and with the lighted Christmas tree in the cubby-hole, it was visible to passers-by on the street.

Starting in about 1970 (when we married), I noticed that some neighbors would string lights around their roof eaves or on a bush or tree in the yard. We put strings of lights on our roof eaves all across the front of the house and garage and in the entry-way starting in about 1975 until about 1995. We haven't done it since, mainly due to safety reasons (I'm not confident on the roof any more!).

With our daughters away from home, we were often not home at Christmas time.

In recent years, several of our neighbors on our cul-de-sac have the mesh-lights on their eaves, and several have blow-up displays or lighted figures in their front yard.

2) Did some people really go "all out" when decorating?

Oh yes. And they still do, even more. One of the Christmas traditions for our little family in the 1975 to 1985 period was to drive around "Candy Cane Lane" and "Christmas Tree Circle" in Chula Vista to see the outdoor displays - lights, scenes, music, etc. One of our family traditions for awhile was to go to a pizza place with family friends, then drive by the lighted streets, and then have a gift exchange at our house with the friends. Unfortunately, they moved away, and we haven't done it since.

"Candy Cane Lane" is gone, but "Christmas Tree Circle" still exists in Chula Vista. There are many more of these neighborhood displays now all over the San Diego area. I saw a map in a local magazine yesterday of the biggest and best displays. Someone could drive around to about 20 sites using the map.

Originially published on 4 December 2007.

Making FTC Disclosures about Blog-swag

Dean Richardson (hikari17 on Twitter, writer of the GenLighten blog) tweeted this morning:

"hikari17 A humorous way to deal with the new FTC blogging conflict-of-interest rules: http://bit.ly/8zeUzm #genealogy #blogging "

So I clicked on the link and found Louis Gray's post FTC Disclosures Made Simple For Bloggers With Conflicts with a number of graphics to depict what a blogger or writer could use to depict what emoluments, if any, they received for a blog post. Here's one of them:

See Louis Gray's post for all of them.

Follow Friday - the California Genealogical Society and Library Blog

It's Follow Friday, where I get to choose another "Favorite" blog and recommend it for my readers to follow.

My choice this week is the California Genealogical Society and Library (CGSL) blog, authored by Kathryn M. Doyle. The URL for the blog has changed recently - it is now http://blog.californiaancestors.org/. Here is their home page from this morning:




Kathryn and her society have tailored their blog to provide interesting and up-to-date information about society activities to their membership and their other readers (like me). I am not a member, but I enjoy seeing how the society brings in programs, speakers and does their library activites.

One thing that sets this blog apart from other genealogical society blogs is the liberal use of photographs to depict society activities. They have excellent photographers that seem to capture the best part of events and even daily activities. In this way, their blog is an extension of their monthly newsletter (which is available for email reception for anyone).

Several CGSL members created a terrific poster last year that was displayed and sold to researchers at the SCGS Jamboree and other events:

Isn't that a great poster? It conveys the message well just with the graphic - and the words explain the message succinctly. This is an excellent fund-raiser for their society.

I can hardly wait to visit their library on one of our occasional trips to the Bay Area. Maybe we can arrange a genea-blogger meetup.

Advent Calendar: Day 21 - Christmas Cards

On the 21st day of Christmas,
my true friends sent to me
Christmas Cards from their family.

1) Did your family send them?

My parents sent Christmas cards to family and friends all of my life. My mother made them for many years (I know I have several in my boxes of stuff...somewhere) - usually a fairly simple madonna or angel theme with a "Merry Christmas" and "from the Seaver family" or something similar. I remember a single color (red or green) stencil on card stock folded into a card, with writing on the inside.

2) Did your family display the ones they received?

In my childhood home, I don't remember having a mantle or shelf space that had displayed cards. I'm sure that my mother displayed them somewhere - perhaps on a bulletin board in the entry way. I'll have to ask my brothers. I wish I could remember more about this time of my life.

We received cards from my father's mother and siblings in New England which often had family letters in them. These were prized because this family never made long distance phone calls and rarely wrote letters, so this was our only contact each year with the family 2,500 miles away.

3) Do you still send Christmas cards?

Oh yes! That's what the post-Thanksgiving hecticity (is that a word?) is all about. "We have to get this done so we can do this and this next ..." Angel Linda is a taskmaster. This solemn process includes:

* finding the boxes of cards bought during the year at thrift shops or 99 cent stores. Or going out and buying more. We only get angel cards, naturally.

* Randy prints off the Christmas card address list and Linda updates it. The list is then printed on peel-off labels.

* Linda affixes the labels on envelopes, puts the return address labels (hopefully, Christmas motif) on the envelopes, and puts stamps on the envelopes.

* Randy writes the two-page Christmas letter (more on this in a later post), Linda edits it, and Randy creates 120 copies of it (this takes about four days to finish).

* Linda writes messages on the cards, since Randy thinks that the Christmas letter covers everything that could be said. Linda's handwriting is much better, too! Randy and Linda stuff the letters in the envelopes and seal the envelopes.

* We typically send these out in early December - soon!

This process takes about ten days from start to finish, but it's now a tradition and we have a proven process for it. I also send the Christmas letter to email correspondents, but I don't want to post it online because it has some personal details not appropriate for the world to see. If you want one, please send me an email address (if I don't already have one - at rjseaver@cox.net).

Originally published on 4 December 2007.

Family Tree Maker Cannot Make an Ahnentafel List - Still!

I've been using Family Tree Maker since Version 5 (I believe) - when was that, about 1998? One of my reasons for investigating genealogy software programs other than Family Tree Maker is the lack of a simple Ahnentafel List. Every other program can create an Ahnentafel List - defined as a numerical ancestral list in pedigree chart order, containing:

* Ahnentafel Number of the Father
* Name of the Father
* Birth date and location of the Father
* Death date and location of the Father
* Marriage date and location of the Father and Mother
* Ahnentafel Number of the Mother
* Name of the Mother
* Birth date and location of the Mother
* Death date and location of the Mother

The "Ahnentafel List" is one of the basic, standard lists that genealogists know and use to keep their ancestors in good order. I carry mine in my notebook that I take to the repositories to do research - with it, and other lists or reports, I can quickly figure out if the information in a source is about my ancestor or not.

All versions of Family Tree Maker, including FTM 2010, can create an "Ahnentafel Report," and the later versions can create a "Simple Ahnentafel Report." The screen below shows the "Genealogy Report" selections available in FTM 2010:



I created an "Ahnentafel Report" for myself in the screen below:

In the screen above, I selected only the name, birth, death and marriage dates and places. I was unable to deselect the children. In order for me to use this report as an Ahnentafel List, it requires me to edit the report and delete all of the children data plus some text in the Father and Mother sections.

The "Simple Ahnentafel Report" is shown below:

Again, the children are shown, plus the "More About Facts." This report does not satisfy my need for a simple "Ahnentafel List."

In years past, I've edited the FTM file to obtain the Ahnentafel Lists for my Father and my Mother - the edited list for my Father (no children) comes out at about 50 pages long (it started out as over 300 pages long, and took hours to edit out all of the stuff). Now, I transfer my database to RootsMagic 4 or Legacy Family Tree 7 and create an Ahnentafel List, save it to my hard drive, and print it out when I need to.

I know that other researchers need to make an Ahnentafel List, so rather than complain about it solely in this blog post, I filled out an "Enhancement Request" on the Family Tree Maker Support page with my suggestion on how to improve the situation:

Maybe that will get some attention from the FTM software developers. I mentioned it to them verbally when I visited Ancestry.com last January, and again at the SCGS Jamboree in June and FGS Conference in September.

It's not as if this is hard to do - it is much simpler than creating an Ahnentafel Report. All of the elements are just like the Ahnentafel Report - they just need to add check boxes to select listing of children and listing of Facts other than birth, marriage and death.

[OK - rant off. There - I feel better!]

Found a Family Home on Google...

I love to Google... and am often surprised by what I find. I Googled my address today, and found the www.realtor.com site which has information about my house and the others on my street - when last purchased, how much, assessed value, size of lot, size of house, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc. I Googled other addresses too...

When I put "2130 Fern St" and "San Diego" in the search field, one of the sites that came up was a Vacation Rentals site. It appears that they've turned the little house on Fern Street, that my grandparents built in 1920, and sold in about 1950, into a vacation rental. For $120 a night, anybody can rent the place out and enjoy living in the middle of San Diego. It has only one bedroom and one bathroom, but sleeps four somehow.

Here are some screen shots from the Vacation Rentals site for 2130 Fern Street:

They "lie" a little bit here in claiming that it's only five minutes from the Zoo and downtown, and 10 minutes to the beaches on Coronado. Maybe as a fast crow flies. Driving it takes a bit longer!

The top upper-left photo above is of the entrance to the house, and the other photos show the nicely appointed living areas.

The bottom-right photo on the screen above shows, I think, the back door area. It looks like there is a covered patio in the back yard.

Do you know what the house your ancestors built or lived in looks like now? Have you driven by the old homestead recently? I did several weeks ago, and took some pictures.

My biggest surprise is the size of this house - about 700 square feet. I thought that it was bigger than that. My grandparents had only one daughter, my mother, but they also housed my great-grandmother, Georgianna (Kemp) Auble, for many years. I wonder if my mother and great-grandmother slept in the same room? I seem to recall my mother telling me that, but cannot clearly recall it.

I really want to go take a look inside this house sometime. I have no real memories of it, since I was only seven when it was sold. However, this is probably the house where I learned to walk, talk and go potty, among other things. My grandmother watched me while my mother taught school. We moved to our own apartment (at 2116 Fern Street, next door!) in late 1945 after my father came home from the US Navy. Ah, memories.

Advent Calendar: Day 22 - Christmas Tree Ornaments

On the twenty-second day of Christmas,
My super-wifey says to me
It's time to decorate the beautiful Tree!

Did your family have heirloom or cherished ornaments? Did you ever string popcorn and cranberries? Did your family make ornaments?

I really don't remember many heirloom or cherished ornaments from my childhood. Almost all of the ornaments were small or medium sized round glass balls of varied colors. We usually applied a lot of tinsel to the tree branches.

As school children, we brought home paper chains for the tree. Sometimes we had a popcorn string, but never cranberries. I don't think we made ornaments - we were boys! We did have some of Dorothy's home-made ornaments on our trees.

When we had children, my mother made Christmas ornaments for each of her grandchildren. Each was unique and incorporated angels into the design. They were kiln-fired enamels on flat copper plate. Each had the child's name and the year on it. These were given featured places on our family Christmas trees as my kids grew up. After my mother died, and as my daughters started their families, we gave them to our daughters as a Christmas gift. Each has chosen to display them year round in a case on the wall rather than put them on their Christmas trees.

Originially published on 1 December 2007.

Are There Errors in the Social Security Death Index?

I was searching through the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) this morning and ran across someone born 16 July 1810. And with a reported death date of July 1911.

A little more checking showed the same item in the SSDI on Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, Footnote.com and GenealogyBank.com.

A little more searching on the Rootsweb.com database showed:

* 33 persons born in 1800 (check out Margara Morales - she died in 1987!)
* 21 persons born in 1810
* 22 persons born in 1820
* 26 persons born in 1830

There were no entries with a birth date before 1800.

According to the GenealogyBank database, where you can input a birth year range, there are 998 entries for birth dates before 1830, with the earliest in 1800. And there are 1,816 entries for deaths before 1936. Admittedly, these are small errors - 2,814 obviously mis-keyed entries out of about 85 million entries. About 0.0033% - or one in every 30,000 entries.

The errors are probably inevitable. And it looks like some of them have been corrected - there is another entry for Margara Morales with a birth date of 31 June 1898 instead of 1800 (another error there, of course, June has 30 days) with the same death date and location.

Since Social Security numbers were first applied for in the 1937 time frame, almost all of the listings for a birth date before 1830 must be errors. And most of the deaths reported before 1937 must be errors, since the persons should not have had Social Security numbers. What about the 118,950 deaths reported between 1937 and 1950, and maybe even up to 1962? Are they all correct, or are they keying errors also? Undoubtedly, some of them are correct, but many may be erroneous.

There are some cases where the birth and death date are approximately the same and before 1950 - for instance, Samuel N. McNutt is listed as born on 8 October 1950 and died the same day, and he has an SSN issued in Maryland. These are probably not correct - the death date is probably keyed incorrectly as the birth date. A check of newspaper obituaries would probably correct the discrepancy.

The point here is that we researchers cannot rely on the Social Security Death Index as the sole source for a birth date or a death date - we need to find other sources with primary information (if possible). The SSDI is a wonderful finding aid, and leads us to the SS-5 application.

The SS-5 application is often used as a "gateway document" leading us to information about birth date, birthplace, parents names, location and occupation when they applied, etc. The application itself is an "original source" (created by someone with knowledge of their identity) with both "primary information" (the name, residence, location) and "secondary information" (birth date, birthplace, parents names).

Have you obtained the SS-5 application for your family members? If not, you might consider requesting it and perusing the information on it for more leads to earlier generations.

For the record, GenealogyBank.com seems to have the best search field capabilities and permits wild cards, Ancestry.com and Rootsweb.com permit wild card entries and will write a request letter for you, and Footnote.com permits wild cards and the user can create a Footnote Page for each individual for stories, photographs, and additional data.