3 Things to Do at Graduation Time

Graduations are a great time to celebrate! They are a time for families to gather, and when families gather they share memories. Thinking about graduations made me recall that Mrs. Lindsey, wife of New York City’s Major John Lindsey, attended my graduation from preschool. My Brother recalled that author Frank McChort spoke at my PhD graduation.

1. Capture the memories. Have the graduate write, or record, about his or her favorite memories about the school experience.
2. Capture others’ memories. While you are remembering, list the graduations you attended.
3. Scan the ephemera. There may be programs, awards, certificates and notes generated for the event. Be sure to scan them, and use descriptive file names. Store the important ones, like the programs, using archival materials.

One of the things I like to do is capture the data that I wish I had about past generations. Start capturing graduation memories for your children, grandchildren and yourself! This Graduation Memory Worksheet and School Memory Worksheet can help you to capture the stories.

It’s Complicated: Marital Status State Diagrams

When you are looking for records, you have to play to your strengths. State diagrams are important in my field of Computer Science and Engineer. They show the state that a computer can be in, and how it moves from one to another via a transition. State diagrams are merely roadmaps showing how to move through a computer system in time. For football fans, John Madden uses something similar to show how plays are made.

While I was trying to formulate how to continue searching for records of a married ancestor, I enumerated all the possible variations of her marital status that there could be. She might remain separated, divorce, remarry or die. It occurred to me that this path through life could be captured in a state diagram! So I got out my tablet and did some drawing.

When a person is born, she is single. She might die single or marry during her lifetime. If she marries, then she is a married person. You can follow the arrows from her single state to either of these.  A married person can be separated, divorced, widowed, or dead. As you can see by following the arrows, a separated, divorced or widowed person can marry again. Then her status would go back to married. For a woman, this probably means a change in surname, and that is where your search becomes more complicated.

If you might want capture more information, by adding another status like “engaged” or “it’s complicated”.

This really helped me to focus my searches for the ancestor in one particular geographic area. It reminded me to check the available marriage and death records.

This particular diagram only captures changes in marital status. If you still cannot find a person, keep in mind that people also move or migrate.

Found Ancestors in the Workhouse?

Did you tear up when the episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” took us to a workhouse? Does your stomach tighten at the thought of families enduring this hardship, and your heart ache at the thought of the very young children being taken away from their parents?

Imagine how it feels when you see records from the workhouse that contain your ancestors’ names.

My Great Grandmother never spoke of her family. The only thing that her Grandchildren knew was that she was born in England. In fact, she rarely spoke to her Grandchildren at all. Researching her has been challenging. Recently I had some help finding her census records, and in one, she, her mother and her siblings, are in the workhouse.

Here are three things to check if you find your ancestors in the Workhouse. Make sure you are ready to go forward and take these three steps.

1) Where are they in the next census?

Search for family members in the next census after you find them in the Workhouse. This can be done with an international subscription to Ancestry.com, FamilySearch or on The Workhouse website (described below).  Be advised that the census records on The Workhouse website are transcribed, and that family members entries may appear out of order. You will want to locate the actual image of the original census page.

2) When you are ready to face bad news, check for family members’ death records for the registry district.

Use a Birth/Marriage/Death index such as FreeBMD. Indexing of the BMD records for the UK is ongoing and may not be complete, but it is worth checking. It is possible that some of the family members may have died while there.

3) Find the resource that hold the records to verify that this is your family. The best records would be the admission and discharge.

There is a very informative website about the The Workhouse. (Watch out for the numerous ads!) The website includes the history of each Workhouse and what repositories may be available. The webpage for the Bolton Workhouse contains links for the staff and inmates in the censuses of 1841-1891. It also has a link to the Bolton Archives and Local Studies Service.

 

 

From the page of Archives Indexes, I selected Workhouse registers.

 

 

The Workhouse registers webpage showed which records are available at their Research Centre. From 1839 onwards, the people admitted to the Bolton Union Workhouse were from the townships of: Bradshaw, Breightmet, Darcy Lever, Edgworth, Entwistle, Farnworth, Great Bolton, Great Lever, Halliwell, Harwood, Heaton, Horwich, Kearsley, Little Bolton, Little Hulton, Little Lever, Longworth, Lostock, Middle Hulton, Over Hulton, Quarlton, Rumworth, Sharples, Tonge-with-Haulgh, Turton and Westhoughton

From the information on The Workhouse website about the Bolton Workhouse, the were records that would have my family are:

Fishpool Admissions 1861-1880 Microfilm D9:27-31
Admissions 1880-1948 Original GBO/9*
Discharges 1880-1948 Original GBO/9*

I did check to see if FamilySearch held these filmstrips. They do, but the filmstrips have not been digitized.

 

There are quite a few filmstrips I would have to check, and I was not sure when the family would have been discharged. So I investigated another option to learn more.

 

 

I contacted the Bolton History Centre. My assumption was that the staff there are more familiar with the records than I, and that they have indexes. They will do free research (for twenty minutes) and provide copies of the records at a reasonable fee. I sent them an e-mail requesting the information for the four members of the family, and a transcription of family’s information from the 1881 Census. They e-mailed a transcription of the admission and discharge records. To get copies of the original records required a call during their business hours and a credit card.

The story continues past the Workhouse for my family. They left the Workhouse a year later at the Mother’s request. There’s more work to be done to find out the rest of their story. So far, I only know the fate of one child.

 

3 Reasons to Post on a Message Board

If you have attended one of my classes about using social media or beginning genealogy, you know that I always recommend reading and posting in message boards. My favorite is boards.rootsweb.com which is also tied to boards.rootsweb.com. All of the boards are searchable, so only put your post on one board.

 

1. Organizing material helps you understand it

I have always my college and graduate students to send the questions that they had outside of the classroom in an e-mail. The act of reviewing the material and formulating a question makes your brain actively engage with the problem. This may cause you to have additional insights and ask new questions that lead to solutions.

 

2. People you don’t know may be able to help

There may be people out there who hold the answer to your questions, or know how to find them. Those cousins you have not met yet might have vital records, bibles, pictures of other memorabilia. Others who read the message boards understand the location, the records that are available and how to search for them.

 

3. Putting your request online is cousin bait

When a cousin you do not know yet searches for the names and places of your common ancestor, your post will be in the results. Message boards can be searched for keywords, and can also be located using Google searches.

 

An example:

Whether you enter through Ancestry.com or Rootsweb, the interface and the message board is the same.

 

 

If you are already signed into Ancesty.com

Help -> Message Boards

 

 

Remember to search the message boards for your family members. There may be a post waiting for you!

A search of the surname message boards yielded no good leads. The surname is common. I elected to make a post in the threads for a place rather than a surname. So I checked the message boards for the location I knew for one of the family’s events, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, England, Cheshire, and put my post in the General message board.

 

 

I clicked on BEGIN NEW THREAD and entered my post.

 

 

Things to include in your post:

• Tell people what you are looking for
• Keep your post brief and direct
• Keep your post informative
• Include family structure for potential matching
• Include other key information

CAVEAT: Not all message posts are answered within hours. Make your post and be patient.

Good luck posting and let me know how you do!

 

 

Genealogy Education: BYU Independent Study Courses

Education is a key part of genealogical research. There are many online opportunities. This post will cover the BYU Independent Study Courses. They can be found at: http://is.byu.edu/site/courses/free.cfm.

Look for the offerings in the categories within: Family History / Genealogy

Some of the courses are several years old, but the information in them is relevant, Succinct, and useful. Because of the changing nature of the Internet, the links may not work.

Remember that the records that were difficult to find might now be digitized, and indexed.

 

Accessing the Courses

The first time you access a course, you will be asked for your name and city/state/zip. You will need to validate your e-mail address through an e-mail sent to the e-mail address you used. Just open the e-mail and click on the link in it.

From now on, you will use your e-mail address to access the courses.

The Mastery Checks that have blanks to fill in can have very detailed answers. Do not be put off that you have not listed all the steps; learn from the answers that are provided.

 

The Courses

The courses that are currently listed Family History / Genealogy — Introductory are:

FHGEN 070 — Introduction to Family History Research

• This class has  four lessons, each with multiple pages. The lessons cover getting started, getting organized, discovering new facts, and using that knowledge.
• It discussed the five steps to the basic research process, and developing research objectives.
• There are links to the charts, forms and logs that you will need.
• There are mastery checks with automated feedback so that you can check your understanding.

FHGEN 075 — Writing Family History

• This course links to a manual that contains the whole course.
• Walks through the process of writing a family history.
• Discusses making a family history CD.

FHGEN 080 — Helping Children Love Your Family History

• This course comes in three lessons, each of which is a pdf document.
• The steps to gather, validate and record your family history.
• Bring your family history to life in comic and coloring books, plays and clothing, vacations and interviewing.
• Scrapbooks, autobiographies and videos are also included.

 

The courses that are currently listed Family History / Genealogy — Record Type are:

FHREC 071 — Family Records

• There is one ten-part lesson in this course.
• Use diaries, journals, letters, civil and military records are covered. Others are covered.
• This has been my favorite of the courses. It lists the records that might have people think out of the box in their research.

FHREC 073 — Vital Records

• There is one fourteen-part lesson in this course.
• It covers understanding and locating vital records, as well as locating substitutes for vital records.
• Links to websites of interest, and a blank research log form.
• There are mastery checks with automated feedback so that you can check your understanding.

FHREC 076 — Military Records

• There is one lesson in this course. The lesson has twenty-eight parts.
• This covers three types of records: pre-service, service, and post-service.
• This lists the eight series of service records in the National Archives
• There are six appendices (separate from the lessons)
• Remember that there are websites, such as the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors database that can be used instead of indexes.

 

There are also several other courses that focus on Family History / Genealogy — Regional and Ethnic:

FHFRA 071 — French Research
FHGER 071 — Germany Research
FHHUG 071 — Huguenot Research
FHSCA 073 — Scandinavia Research