Researching My Hometown Ancestors

It is nearly Christmas and winter still hasn't arrived for us. We had two weeks where the temperatures got down into the 50s and 60s but this week it has been in the mid to upper 70s again with frequent rain showers. It is hard for us here in Florida to realize that many parts of the rest of the country are having winter storm advisories. With weather like that we really don't get forced into staying indoors for days to do our family history research but when I do get a good chance to research, I want to make sure I am getting the most out of my time. So, here are some suggestions on making sure you are focusing on sources with the potential for high returns.

Map of Ohio where my research is focused.

I am one of those lucky people who don't have far flung ancestors to research. My research focuses on a very small area of Ohio consisting of parts of four counties; Auglaize, Darke, Mercer and Shelby. And within those four counties it is mainly within the four corners area as shown in the red square on the map.

First of all, I want to discuss the general process of finding the sources for your locations. This step, developing a locality guide, can help you learn more about the area you are researching and help you find the important resources that you need to be successful. The FamilyLocket blog and podcast have some great tips on creating locality guides. They have three podcasts on this specific topic: RLP 4, RLP 5, and RLP 18.

Where are some good places to begin developing your locality guide? First, I would suggest using the FamilySearch Wiki. If you aren't familiar with the FamilySearch Wiki, it is "a free, online genealogical guide created and maintained by FamilySearch. It contains links to genealogy databases, websites, other resources, research strategies, and genealogical guidance to assist in the search for your ancestors. Articles included are locality pages for countries around the world and topic pages that include pertinent genealogy record types explaining how to use the record, what it contains, and how to find it." The Wiki is developed and edited by teams of users, much like Wikipedia, who are familiar with the research topic and want to help provide the resources necessary for you to have successful discoveries. The Wiki can be searched by genealogy topic as well as locality. Since the topics are developed by volunteers, some sections may be more complete than others. For example, in my research of Auglaize, Darke, Mercer and Shelby counties in Ohio, I would look up each county in the Wiki to see what information is readily available: Auglaize, Darke, Mercer, Shelby.

Another website that I would use to help develop my locality guide is The Family History Guide. The Family History Guide is generally seen as a tutorial for learning how to use the big four genealogy sites (FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage) but it is also a great resource for finding locality information to help research your ancestors. To find the location information, click on Countries in the menu bar at the top of the Family History Guide web page and select the country you want to research. In my case I selected United States. Once on the US page, I selected Ohio from the list of states under the title bar and before the general lessons on US Records and Searches. On the Ohio page there are a series of general lessons to help you understand researching the state and there is a list of county resources at the bottom of the page. This list has the name of each county and a series of letters (for example, Auglaize A L G U). Clicking on the county name will take you to the FamilySearch Wiki page for that county. Clicking the A links you to the Ancestry card catalog for that location, L goes to the Linkpendium list for that location, G goes to Genealogy Inc's list for the location, and U goes to the USGenWeb page for the location. Each of these sites may provide you additional resources to add to your locality guide.

Google is another source for your research. Make sure you do a thorough search on Google and its various sites. Searching Google can help you find the local historical societies, libraries and museums which may have resources of information that can assist you. The search can also link you with others researching the same families and locations. Searching Google Books can provide county histories and other resources that can help build the historical context for your research. For example, I was able to find a book titled "History of Western Ohio and Auglaize County with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Pioneers and Prominent Public Men" published in 1905. These county histories can provide excellent hints for your research.

Newspapers are also an important resource when researching a particular location. I was lucky enough to have several of my local newspapers already online for free. One of my favorite free sites to look up newspapers is Ancestor Hunt. They have a general page about using newspapers for your research and a more specific page for finding resources by state. For Ohio, they have links to several hundred newspapers around the state in various collections. Two of my most used newspaper resources are the Community History Archive of the Coldwater Public Library and the Minster Historical Society's Newspaper Collection. These collections have more than 100 years worth of local newspapers for the Auglaize County area available online. You might also have luck finding local newspapers on the Library of Congress' Chronicling America site. Other locations to look for newspapers are University collections. For example, Bowling Green State University has their collection of newspapers here.

I also suggest that you look at maps for your area as you are researching. Historic maps will show boundary changes and potentially towns that no longer exist. Plat maps will show land ownership changes over time. Current maps will help provide current landmarks for you to use during your research. One of my favorite mapping sites is Historic Map Works. They provide a variety of old maps including plat maps and gazetteers.  Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps can provide details about buildings in an area. These maps show the footprint, construction materials, and floor plans of various building. Examples of these maps can be found in the Library of Congress map collections.

I hope these links will help you develop your locality guide and set you on the way to successful researching. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

Thinking Outside the Box

I have been somewhat busy with conferences and speaking engagements lately. As you all read in my previous posts, I was in Salt Lake City for a week earlier this month attending Roots Tech 2018. The week after that I did a presentation for our local German Genealogy Interest Group and a couple hour talk for the Treasure Coast Genealogical Society then went up to Jacksonville for three talks at the North Florida Genealogy Conference. The next week I did a radio spot where I talked about genealogy research and had a presentation at the Martin County Genealogical Society and did a two hour program for our Stake Family History Consultants. So now I am getting ready for the Indian River Genealogy Conference coming up on April 14th where I have three more talks and am the conference coordinator. 

One of the talks I have been giving lately is called Thinking Outside the Box. This talk discusses websites that some may not have considered. The following post is a shorter version of that talk, explaining how some of the sites I included have helped me with my research. I hope you enjoy it and find something useful to take with you.

We all tend to begin our genealogy research in similar ways by looking for names, dates and places. We gather family information, visit cemeteries where our ancestors are buried, look at the books in local libraries and search the major online databases. But limiting yourself to these sites may result in you missing out on some important clues and great stories. Thinking Outside the Box is all about finding those rare and little-known stories that may be stored in the corners and attic of the internet. The sites discussed here are the ones that you may not have considered in your genealogy research but just may turn out to be treasure troves of information.

To begin thinking outside the box, you need to consider what information may have been important in an individual’s life. Consider their career, land ownership, writings, travel, accomplishments, voting, and pictures. For example, I have a relative who was a veterinarian. I happened to find an article that he had written in a veterinary journal. My wife had a relative who ran a lumber company. We were able to find a picture of his company's steam locomotive that was used to transport the lumber. In this discussion, I will give you some hints on web sites that may help you find these little known treasures by thinking outside the box.

First of all, Google is your friend. Beyond the standard Google search engine, Google has many very specific search engines.

1.    Google Books (books.google.com) is a great source for out of print and out of copyright books, especially regional histories. One example that I have found is the 10^th reunion of the Princeton University class of 1895. This book had a short one page biography of one of my wife’s relatives. The biography included his wife and son’s name, date of marriage and birth date of son, and some details about his business ventures.

2.    Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) is a search engine for professional, educational and government journals and documents. While researching a family name, I ran across an article from the Smithsonian Institute about the restoration of a 19^th century English papier-mache chair. You may wonder how this could provide relevant genealogical information. Well, in one of the footnotes it discussed the invention of a new papier-mache technique developed by Charles Bielefeld, one of my wife’s relatives. The footnote referenced a London newspaper from August 1853 where a story of Mr. Bielefeld had run. The newspaper story described how his new technique was used to construct houses that could be shipped in pieces (early modular homes) from England to Australia. Builders were then able to use these modular pieces to construct a small town in just a matter of days.

3.    Google Patents (patents.google.com) searches the US Patent Office records. If any of your relatives submitted a patent, the record would be found there. I have discovered that several of my relatives, as well as my wife’s relatives, were inventors. One of them invented the insulation for the Arctic pipeline.

4.    Google Images (images.google.com) searches a large collection of images from all over the internet. These images can be used to help tell the story of your ancestors. You can find images of places, events and even people that might be important to your research.

5.    Google Maps (maps.google.com) is a great tool that many of us probably use frequently to find directions. But did you know that you can actually add features to the map? You can add information, like addresses and dates from a census, to a Google Sheet and then import it as a map layer. I have used this to trace migration patterns of families. You can also see landmarks such as towns, cemeteries, churches, schools, rivers, mountains, etc., that might have influenced your ancestors’ lives. These maps can be used to place your ancestors in context with their surroundings.

Now that you have explored some of the Google world, we can move on to some other outside the box sites. Since we were talking about maps, let’s look at a few real estate sites. I use Zillow and Trulia quite often to research residences. Using the address from a given record, such as the census or city directory, you can search these real estate sites to see if the residence is still there. They often give you information like the year it was built and details about the floor plans. One example of this showed that my great-grandparent’s home in 1930 was built in 1925.

Have you ever gone to an auction and found some antique that intrigued you? You might have wondered what the story behind a photograph or painting might be or who was in that image. Internet auction sites provide a great opportunity to find old treasures. One of my favorite auction sites is eBay. There you can find old family bibles, photographs, books and other memorabilia. Some of it might even belong to your families. I have been able to find tokens for a bakery that my family had run as well as Westerheide Cigar boxes and other items. You can set up e-mail notifications by saving your searches. Our most prized discovery was found in an online second-hand store in Seattle, Washington. That was a painting on my wife’s 4^th great-grandmother, Sarah Pullen Walters (1816-1896). Not only is it a great painting of her, but it also had some family history information written on the back.

Many states have Memory Projects. Florida’s is located at www.floridamemory.com. This site has a variety of records that you can search through. They have voting records, vehicle registration records, military service cards, and a huge collection of photographs and post cards. It was interesting to learn that a relative drove a Cadillac Touring Sedan in 1913, or that one served on the USS Wissoe during WW I. We have found photographs of a relative’s front porch and even a steam locomotive with their company name emblazoned on it. All of these small items provide just that much more to the story of their lives.

There are many more sites that you can discover beyond the standard sites when you start to think outside the box. But before I end, I want to recommend that everyone take a more detailed look at social media as a research tool. Facebook has thousands of genealogy related groups and pages. A document at https://socialmediagenealogy.com/genealogy-on-facebook-list lists nearly 12,000 Facebook groups related to genealogy and is about 400 pages long. This list is updated regularly so you should check it often. I have found these groups to be invaluable in discovering new research sources.

I hope some of these sites give you ideas on how to think outside the box as you research your family history.

Central Florida Family History Conference - 2017 - Afternoon Sessions

And now for the rest of the story.....What I did during my Summer Vacation.....Not really. Here is a description of the lectures I attended during the afternoon session of the Central Florida Family History Conference. By the way, they did have a good lunch catered from Panera's.

Debra Fleming presented Google for the 20th Century. I always like to attend the classes on using Google to search for your family history just in case they have something new that I can use. Debra talked about the search strategies and how to use the different search engines on Google. Most people already know how to use Google to do their regular searches on the internet. But those of us who have been using Google for some time really take advantage of the different search engines Google has. For example, Google Books is a great way to search for historical books which are out of copyright, published prior to 1923. These books are viewable online and can be searched and downloaded into your library. Newer books that are still in copyright can be seen in snips and may not be as useful. I use Google Books to search for county histories and regional books quite often. Another interesting search engine on Google is their Patents Search. Did any of your ancestors invent something? You may not know this part of their life but you can search for it here. I was able to discover a patent for the thermal insulating sleeve for the Alaska pipeline that was invented by a cousin of mine. Another search engine on Google is Google Scholar. I use Google Scholar all the time at work to look up scientific reports. But you can also look up documents written about your ancestors or where your ancestor was mentioned. I was able to discover an interesting story about a great uncle in a veterinary journal. It's a bit disgusting to talk about but I'll just mention it had something to do with a carnivorous cow and pig intestines and leave it at that. Google Maps is another one of my favorites. I like to look up the old addresses and see what the area looks like today. For example I have been able to show people the old apartments their ancestors lived in. Also, I was able to explore the neighborhood in Amsterdam where my great-great grandfather lived. Many of these areas, especially those in Europe, still look like they did a hundred years ago. The Google News Archive is also a great search engine. At one time Google was going to digitize the newspaper collections of the world and then in 2011 they stopped. However, all the digitized newspapers they had completed are still available and searchable. Some of these newspapers are not housed anywhere else and are an invaluable source for genealogy research. Have you tried Google Images?  You may be able to find images of your ancestors if they have been posted online or you can find historical images of their hometowns or important events that add to your stories. One thing I like about Google Images is the way you can specify the search parameters. For example, if you get too many results in your search and you only want to see pictures of people who could be your ancestors you can go to the Tools button and select "black and white" to get old pictures and then click on "face" to see only pictures of people. Using this technique, I was able to find this picture of my 3rd great grandfather, Joseph Bornhorst who immigrated from Germany to Ohio.

 

Debra also discussed using Google Translate and Google Calendar to aid in your research. Google Translate is useful in figuring out what documents written in a foreign language say or in translating foreign websites. Debra uses Google Calendar to track important dates for her ancestors such as births, deaths and marriages. She also highly recommended joining G+ as a social media platform for genealogists. I agree that G+ has a better "environment" than Facebook and is less confrontational in nature but it is hard to convert over to a different platform, even for someone like me who was an early adopter of G+.

The second afternoon session I attended was one by Margo Fariss Brewer who discussed Local Support Groups for Free. This discussion focused on using libraries, universities and other collections in your research. She explained strategies to make your research visits more rewarding. One tip she mentioned was avoiding exam times or times when students would be using the libraries. By avoiding these times you have a better chance of getting assistance from the library staff. She also recommended calling a few days in advance to make sure the collections you want to view are available. In some cases they may be housed offsite or in closed collections and need to be brought in for use. Always go online and research the library you will be visiting. Check their hours, availability of the collections, are there any restrictions on what you can bring in (phone, computer, camera, scanner, notebook, etc.), location of parking and local places to eat. Also, you should ask the librarians if they have any special collections or suggestions for the topic you are researching. Don't waste their time going on about your research stories, get right to the questions and be sure to thank them for their assistance.

The final session was Jeff Haines' discussion on GEDMatch: A Goldmine of Genetic Analysis Tools. This was one of my favorites of the day due to the amount of new information he provided. I have been using GEDMatch for a while now but don't use it everyday. I probably use it once every 2 - 3 months just to check on new matches. Jeff provided a lot of information in his 1-hour slot and I may have to write a full blog on GEDMatch in the near future once I try out his tips. GEDMatch has a good selection of free tools that can provide most of what everyone uses. However, there are some pay services that cost $10/month. The good thing is you only purchase one month at a time and they don't continue to bill you after the end of the month. One thing that has happened recently is that GEDMatch has partnered with WikiTree. This allows the trees on WikeTree to be used in the GEDMatch matching. GEDMatch has an expanded set of ethnic admixture models that you can use. Each model uses a different set of genetic data and provides a different set of values for your ethnicity. This is similar to comparing Ancestry to MyHeritage or FTDNA results, they will be different because each one uses a different model. The One-to-Many analysis compares your DNA to all the DNA sets within the database and lists all of your matches. One thing I like about GEDMatch matches is that it tells you right up front what proportion of DNA match you have so you can see who is most closely related to you. Once you get this full list, you can go to the One-to-One match and see a graphical display of which sections of chromosomes are matched. You can move that information over to third party programs or even into Excel to do more detailed analysis and compare various matching people through triangulation. A really cool tool Jeff demonstrated was Chromosome Painting. This compares two sets of chromosomes and provides a color coded ethnicity map of your chromosomes and shows which areas were inherited from each parent. You can find the comparison tool under the Admixture analysis and then select "Paint differences between 2 kits". One last thing he recommended was to try Genome Mate Pro to help analyse your genetic data from GEDMatch. This tool helps you manage the information you get during your DNA research.

Well, it was a long day and there were some great talks. I hope to make this conference a regular on my schedule in the future. I hope the information I provided in my blog helps others learn a little more about these topics.