Just back from my periodic foray to the Family History Library, for a week of immersion in genealogical research, and a chance to reunite with a group of fellow conspirators from the Midwest. The weather was cool but mostly dry (as a Californian, I earned a few laughs for wearing a jacket outside when the temperature was in the low 60s).
It is always a treat to be there and learn what changes are taking place in and around town. The local rapid transit system goes right to the airport terminal now, for one thing. The Salt Lake Plaza Hotel has remodelled most of their rooms, for another (and my closet was cleverly concealed behind a huge mirror -- took me a while to find it). In the library itself, there is at least one photocopier right out on the third floor (US/Canadian books), as well as the film-to-print-or-flashdrive equipment on the second floor. (I haven’t investigated the lower floors where my Minnesotan friends hang out, looking for their Swedish, German, and Norwegian lines.)
We hiked over to the LDS office building most days for hearty but very inexpensive lunches, and were in time to see the holiday decorations being put up in Temple Square. Hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice on Thursday night was a pleasure, as always.
My big find was on Ancestry.com (their “institutional” version is free to use at the Library). Browsing for Lewis Hartwell Thompson, whom I know had come west by 1860, I found him in a database of “California Pioneers,” with place and date of his birth, and the names of his parents. A real piece of luck! The list had been compiled by the California State Library (applause), originally from Hubert Howe Bancroft’s seven-volume History of California. Of course, if I had thought of it at the time, I could have followed up by looking at the books themselves, since the Family History Library has a set in print and on film.
Another rather intriguing clue I picked up was the discovery that my great-grandmother, Nancy Jane Sherwood, had signed her name “Nancy Sexton” in some probate documents after the death of her first husband, David Hammond. I was looking for some clue as to when she might have married my great-grandfather, whose surname was Howard. I had always thought he was her second husband, but it seems there was another brief union first. Unfortunately this all took place in Jasper County, Indiana, before the time of their 1864 courthouse fire. So, no marriage records are available, and I will have some digging to do in order to learn about this Mr. Sexton.
There were a couple of other pieces of information which came to light in my searches, but as we all know, the longer you work on this, the fewer the discoveries. At first it is like skimming the cream off the top. Later is it more like sifting through already-mined sources to find a tiny nugget or even a bit of gold dust.
Nonetheless, I had a really satisfactory visit, and now there are some real clues to stalk.
Showing posts with label Nancy Jane Sherwood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nancy Jane Sherwood. Show all posts
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Thursday, July 23, 2009
A matter of notes
What are YOUR genealogy program’s notes like? What kind of information do you place there, and how do you arrange it? Do you store sources in a separate file, so you don’t have to repeat the citation in every individual’s record? Do you write a narrative, or simply list the facts and state where you found them?
I have tried a number of styles (and no style at all), and am still not settled on an overall, consistent, format for my notes. But I have come up with some moderately useful ideas that I’d like to share.
Trying to find and include a lot of relatives when I started genealogy many years ago, I would often enter a single sentence indicating my source -- something to justify including the individual as part of a family. Later, when I went back to add more details, I didn’t want to delete this initial evidence, so I inserted the phrase “originally found in ... “
Sometimes the search was so intriguing I wanted to put down every twist and turn -- the false leads, the early surmises, the circuitous path that finally allowed me to complete the record (insofar as a reconstructed record of anyone’s life can be said to be “complete”).
I have found it worthwhile to keep references to most family stories, even if they are later proven to be exaggerated, askew or downright false, if only to illustrate for any future family historians that I was aware of the legend/gossip. Why didn’t I accept the note from an aunt that my great grandmother’s first husband was a Sherwood? Well, because I found Nancy with her Sherwood sisters in various records, as children in the household of their father, Thomas E. Sherwood. Her first husband turned out to be a Hammond. And what about her sons by that Hammond marriage, said to have died young, probably in the Civil War? A look at their ages, and records of their deaths from family bible transcriptions, showed that they died years after the war ended.
These family accounts did offer useful starting points, however, such as the possibility that Nancy Sherwood had been married twice, and that she reportedly had sons who died as young men.
After noting the original source for an individual (even if it turns out to be incorrect), I like to enter information in the notes field in chronological order, with the year highlighted. Thus census records, marriage returns, land grants, tombstone inscriptions and the like are arranged logically and are easy to check. I still put my sources in the notes field, but you may prefer the separate source list that most genealogy computer programs feature. “Copy and paste” keeps me from having to retype too much. I highlight personal names in the notes field too -- it is so helpful to have a program that allows for typographic variations such as boldface and italics!
Of course the chronological arrangement, from birth to death, is just the opposite of what we are supposed to do in our research, working back in time. But often neither is the actual path we take. Looking for a woman’s death record, I found instead the death of a child, giving the mother’s birth name and the full name of her husband. And searching for a man’s tombstone inscription I found, in the same plot, the name of another man, who upon investigation turned out to be a brother-in-law.
Following these leads and placing my findings in order does require a lot of editing and rearranging of notes -- thank goodness for computers and word processing programs!
And I do add comments and observations about the intriguing clues that lead me from one person to another -- they are what makes the whole process so absorbing.
I have tried a number of styles (and no style at all), and am still not settled on an overall, consistent, format for my notes. But I have come up with some moderately useful ideas that I’d like to share.
Trying to find and include a lot of relatives when I started genealogy many years ago, I would often enter a single sentence indicating my source -- something to justify including the individual as part of a family. Later, when I went back to add more details, I didn’t want to delete this initial evidence, so I inserted the phrase “originally found in ... “
Sometimes the search was so intriguing I wanted to put down every twist and turn -- the false leads, the early surmises, the circuitous path that finally allowed me to complete the record (insofar as a reconstructed record of anyone’s life can be said to be “complete”).
I have found it worthwhile to keep references to most family stories, even if they are later proven to be exaggerated, askew or downright false, if only to illustrate for any future family historians that I was aware of the legend/gossip. Why didn’t I accept the note from an aunt that my great grandmother’s first husband was a Sherwood? Well, because I found Nancy with her Sherwood sisters in various records, as children in the household of their father, Thomas E. Sherwood. Her first husband turned out to be a Hammond. And what about her sons by that Hammond marriage, said to have died young, probably in the Civil War? A look at their ages, and records of their deaths from family bible transcriptions, showed that they died years after the war ended.
These family accounts did offer useful starting points, however, such as the possibility that Nancy Sherwood had been married twice, and that she reportedly had sons who died as young men.
After noting the original source for an individual (even if it turns out to be incorrect), I like to enter information in the notes field in chronological order, with the year highlighted. Thus census records, marriage returns, land grants, tombstone inscriptions and the like are arranged logically and are easy to check. I still put my sources in the notes field, but you may prefer the separate source list that most genealogy computer programs feature. “Copy and paste” keeps me from having to retype too much. I highlight personal names in the notes field too -- it is so helpful to have a program that allows for typographic variations such as boldface and italics!
Of course the chronological arrangement, from birth to death, is just the opposite of what we are supposed to do in our research, working back in time. But often neither is the actual path we take. Looking for a woman’s death record, I found instead the death of a child, giving the mother’s birth name and the full name of her husband. And searching for a man’s tombstone inscription I found, in the same plot, the name of another man, who upon investigation turned out to be a brother-in-law.
Following these leads and placing my findings in order does require a lot of editing and rearranging of notes -- thank goodness for computers and word processing programs!
And I do add comments and observations about the intriguing clues that lead me from one person to another -- they are what makes the whole process so absorbing.
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