Beyond The Census: A Family Story

I am far from an expert writer, but I guess this means if I can write a family story anyone can.

First of all you will want to make a timeline of all your facts and sources, I like to use Note Pad because I can transcribe or copy/paste into it easily. Next you will want a word processor, preferably one with a grammar checker, and thesaurus. I also use a free text reader so I can hear how it will sound.

I previously did an article, “What Is In A Census”, now I hope to show you what is possible when you add all you have found. Again I am going to use Thomas Chapman of Rocheport Missouri, built from censuses, newspapers, ship manifest, county histories, cemetery & vital records.

Thomas Chapman was born 9 Jan 1824 in Northallerton, Yorkshire, England and moved to Stockton, England by 1830. He came to Boone County Missouri about 1841, possibly departing Liverpool, England on the ship “Ebro” and arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana on 2 Jan 1840.

My first account of Thomas Chapman in Boone County was on the 1850 census where he lived with Henderson Wheeler, the local blacksmith, where Thomas was working as a wagon maker. Thomas continued working as a wagon maker for most of the rest of his life. In 1860 he had real estate in Rocheport worth $200 and a personal estate of $200, and 1870 his real estate was worth $400 and a personal estate of $300. Not a rich man compared to his neighbors. He did become a respected citizen of Rocheport where he or his son Thomas became the Mayor of this community.

In the Daily Democrat 16 Dec 1872 it was reported, “he had seen the first and last rrilroad engine--the first in 1830 or 1831, at Stockton, England and the last at the depot at Columbia, that day. Mr. Chapman is a native of Stockton, and when quite a boy saw the first train of carrying coal from the coal pits in Derham county to Stockton on the Tees. The road was first constructed for horse cars; but at the time named a rude steam engine was made and attached to a coal train of 18 or 20 coal wagons, the train traveling at the rate of only about two miles an hour.”

Thomas married Sarah Hulett 22 Feb 1854 in Boone County Missouri. She was born 14 Apr 1838 in Rocheport Missouri, the daughter of Edward Hulett. They had 11 children: Thomas (20 Nov 1854-25 Oct 1935), James Buchanan (15 Nov 1856-24 Nov 1942), George William (9 Jul 1858-20 Sep 1952), Mary S. (6 Jun 1860-23 May 1918), Sarah (31 Aug 1862-25 Jan 1940), Elisa (27 Aug 1864-22 Sep 1875), Emily Hulett (2 Nov 1864-13 Feb 1901), Mildred Victor "Millie" (15 Nov 1868-8 Aug 1938), Guy (23 Jan 1871-29 Mar 1906), Niel (born 18 Jan 1873-), and Annie Wilton (about Jan 1877-29 Mar 1953).

Thomas died 13 Mar 1894 in Rocheport Missouri of pneumonia. He left a wife and nine children. Funeral services were conducted Wednesday morning at 11 o'clock by Rev. J. H. Wood.

What Is In A Census: A Family Story

Way to many people will look at a census and just see dry facts & don’t look at what all is going on in these documents. Quite often with just a few censuses a nice picture of your family will start appearing.

Here is the story of Thomas Chapman of Rocheport, Missouri that is built from just those dry facts so many people over look.

Thomas Chapman was born about 1824 in Northallerton, England (1). By 1850 he had immigrated to Boone Co. Missouri (2). Here he lived with Henderson Wheeler, the local blacksmith, and worked as a wagon maker (3).

By 1860 he owned his own home (4) in Rocheport (5) and continued working as a wagon maker until after 1880. He married Sarah about 1864 (6), Sarah was born about April of 1837 in Missouri (7). They had 11 children (8): Thomas, James, George, Mary, Sarah, Elisa, Emily H, Millie, Guy, Niel, and Annie W. (9). One of the children died by 1900 and another by 1910 (8).

Thomas Chapman Passed away by 1900 (10). After Thomas’s passing his wife Sarah A. stayed in Rocheport living in their home (11) with her children George, Emma H. and Annie W. and in 1910 only Anna was left in the home. Sarah passed away by 1920 (12).

1. Uncommon but the 1850 & 1860 listed the town he was born.
2. 1850 was the 1st census he appeared on.
3. 1850-1930 shows who is in the house, and their occupation.
4. 1860 & 1870 showed real estate.
5. 1860, 1880, 1900 & 1910 shows town of Rocheport.
6. 1900 gave number of years married even though she was a widow
7. 1860 shows his wife & 1900 gave month and year of birth.
8. 1900 & 1910 shows number of children living & dead.
9. 1860-1910 had the names and ages of the children.
10. 1900 his wife is listed as a widow.
11. 1900-1920 shows living in home or farm, rented or owned, and if it is mortgaged.
12. 1920 Sarah appeared on no more censuses.

Now if this story was built using only censuses, just think what could happen when you find newspapers, county histories, land, cemetery, church & vital records, just to mention a few

Free blank census forums can be downloaded here:
http://www.ancestry.com/charts/census.aspx

Elyse90505 on YouTube is working on a set of census videos that make it very easy to understand what you can find on these censuses. I suggest you check them out http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=Elyse90505&p=r

Looking For Suggestions

I am looking for suggestions & feedback so here is a way to help me make this blog more interesting. Let me know if you are on dialup which makes the videos hard to watch. Would you like to have the videos embedded in this page or do you prefer links. Let me know what you would like to learn.

Use the Comment part of this message or use the Contact link on the bottom left of this page to send me a private message.

I will continue to try and keep this blog educational, report local genealogy happenings and share free resources.

Internet Book Search

Rede has done some videos on Internet book searching worth checking out.

Google Book Search:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/927705/
<http://books.google.com/>

Heritage Quest Book Search:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/934918/
http://www.eogen.com/HeritageQuestOnline for availability>

Internet Archive Books:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/936597/
<http://www.archive.org/>


Getting Books With Interlibrary Loan:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/936622/
<http://www.worldcat.org/>

Should you be on dialup you can download the WMV file which average 1-2 megs a minute or review some of my older write-ups.
Interlibrary Loan:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2007/10/interlibrary-loan.html

Google Book Search:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/11/google-book-search.html

Relatively Speaking, Radio Talkshow

I was searching for new genealogy podcasts & stumbled on ksl radio in Utah "Relatively Speaking with Jackie McKay & Mary Slawson". You can listen to it live on the internet Sunday afternoon 4-6 mountain standard time, I believe that would be 3-5 AZ time in the summer (http://www.ksl.com/ , click radio & click listen live). It also has a toll free number you can call in on to ask questions.

Looks like they only save the last 3 episodes for downloading. but you can check it out here:
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=640045


I guess I'm a bit behind the times, it has been around a couple of years.

Making An Audio Book From Lectures And Podcasts

With digital recorders & podcasts you can now build a nice collection of informative information, but many times they are rather long to listen to in one sitting. Audiobook Cutter http://audiobookcutter.sourceforge.net/ makes it very easy to chop it up into smaller sections so you can come back to where you left off, and many MP3 players will remember the track you stopped at and continue from there. You can also burn these tracks into audio files that will play in a regular CD player.

Audiobook Cutter also has another advantage, file sizes can be too big for emailing. With this program you can change the length of the track & it will be smaller files so it passes the size limits on attachments.

Rede has done 2 videos on how to edit and convert your sound files into MP3 files with Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and cut up those files with Audiobook Cutter at ShowMeDo http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=DRALbzyJZ

Spam proof your email address

For those of you that have your own websites I found a cool way of making it harder for spammers to get your email address. Carnegie Mellon University is doing a digitization project with Internet Archive http://www.archive.org. They give you a special URL that you can make a hyperlink into your page. Then people that want to contact you have to transcribe 2 words before they will give them the email address.

All you do is register your email address with http://recaptcha.net/ (no you don't even have to sign up, just click email protection). Then add that link they give you into your webpage.

Read more about it here:
http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/May/may24_recaptcha.shtml
http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

I'm not much of a script writer, so the only problem I had was making their webpage open in as a new page. But I now have it running on my blog & google pages.

Bouse Genies Upcoming Speakers

March 14 meeting
Carol Brown & Dennis Chapman will be talking about pay & free features in Legacy Family Tree http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/.

Location:
All meetings will be held in the building beside the Bouse Public Library 10:00 AM to Noon (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ). More info here http://bousegenies.weebly.com

Portability Of AniMap

Playing around with AniMap http://www.goldbug.com/AniMap.html I have discovered I can run it off my USB stick. Now I don’t have to be limited to just my computer, I can run it when I’m away from home.

I have not upgraded to their newest version 2.6, I am still running 2.51. But the only thing I have to do is copy the AniMap folder onto the root directory of my USB stick & make sure the assigned drive for the stick is between C-F. I have only had problems on 1 computer, but I’m sure the problem was the hard drive had been partitioned. So between the partitions & 2 CD drives, that put my stick higher than F.

More on AniMap:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/05/county-boundaries.html

Bouse Genies Upcoming Speakers

January 18th meeting:
Barbara Nehruing will be here for the January 18th meeting, speaking about "Generalities of reaching in Europe and touch on a few oddities in each of the countries"

She will cover some specific things she has found in each of the European country.

February 15th meeting:
Bonnie McDaniel will be here for the February 15th meeting. She will be talking about how to use land records in genealogy

February 29 meeting:
Dennis Chapman will be talking about fixing damaged pictures using GIMP graphics program http://www.gimp.org/

Location:
All meetings will be held in the building beside the Bouse Public Library 10:00 AM to Noon (44031 Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ). More info here http://bousegenies.weebly.com

ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers

Here is a site with links to digital online newspapers from around the world, many of which are free http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm . The pay sites are clearly marked with a dollar symbol in a circle.

I have used Colorado Historical Newspapers & Utah Digital Newspapers for a few years and found some real gems. One hint is 1st search by name & time period, but if that doesn’t work I have had good luck is searching by date only. Say you have death date, search in that paper just after the event then look in the next 3 papers. Smaller papers will have sections for local news for different towns & if it is a real small paper death & marriage will be front page news.

Land Research

Rede had done several videos on Land Research using very useful websites. I covered 2 of the sites April of 2006 http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/04/using-blm-land-patent-search.html

Searching Land Patents Part 1
http://blip.tv/file/506725
Using the BLM website http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ to find homestead land patents.

Searching Land Patents Part 2
http://blip.tv/file/506735
Using TSR-data website http://www.esg.montana.edu/gl/trs-data.html to find land patents on a map.

Searching Land Patents Part 3
http://blip.tv/file/506740
Plotting land descriptions on a map.

See http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/Visitors/PLSS.asp for more info on plotting land descriptions.

Plotting Land On Quad Maps
http://blip.tv/file/527860
Plotting land on free quadrant maps from http://libremap.org/

I was VERY impressed with the quality of the maps on Libre Map Project http://libremap.org/ , but the TIF files were a bit large (I averaged about 10 megs). I would recommend converting them into PDF so you can just print out what you need.

Basically to use the Libre Map Project, Click “Data” > Click the state you want > Then use the “Search” or Click “View the entire list of USGS Oklahoma Digital Raster Graphic Maps” > Then look in the “Cell Name” or “Longitude & Latitude” for the map you want.

Finding Towns In Your Genealogy

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names http://geonames.usgs.gov is wonderful site to find towns in your genealogy & also figure which maps you may need. The nice thing it will link you over to Google Map, TerraServer, MapQuest if you need county bounders, and others.

To use it for US places, click domestic > click Search GNIS > then enter your location > click on your location > then you can view the location on many online mapping services.

Rede Video:
http://blip.tv/file/485490

Genealogy Training Course

Genealogy Training Course
With Carol Brown

9:30 am - 11:30 Thursday’s (Except as noted)
December 6, 2007 - February 14, 2008
In the building beside the Bouse Public Library
44031 E. Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ 85325 phone 928-851-1023
Sign up - contact nrcmackey@yahoo.com
Everyone Welcome

Suggested donation is $5.00 per class per person
Each week Carol teaches a different aspect of genealogical research followed by an open discussion session. All classes are approximately 2 hours in length. You do not have to attend every session. You can choose the topics you wish to attend.

• December 6 - Class 1 - Beginning Genealogy, Record Organization and Source Citation
• December 14 (Friday at 1:00) - Class 2 - Computers and Genealogy on the Internet
• December 20 - Class 3 - Census and Social Security Records
• January 3 - Class 4 - Researching in Libraries and Court Houses
• January 10 - Class 5 - Immigration and Migration Patterns
• January 17 - Class 6 - Genealogical Societies and Magazines
• January 24 - Class 7 - Over Coming Dead Ends
• January 31 - Class 8 - Preponderance of Evidence
• February 7 - Class 9 - Researching in Military Records
• February 14 - Class 10 - Sharing Your Family History

Communication

I can’t stress the importance getting out on there and contacting other researcher, via message boards, people that have posted their genealogy to the Internet, etc… But to avoid spammer you may want to get another email address because the spam bots are out there reading email address that have been posted to the web.

There are many free places out there to get emails but it can be rather tiring always checking them just to find nothing. The way I handle this is using the instant messaging programs that are also offered with them. Myself I use a free program called Pidgin http://pidgin.im/ , it capable of connecting with AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, XMPP, ICQ, IRC, SILC, SIP/SIMPLE, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Bonjour, Zephyr, MySpaceIM, Gadu-Gadu, and QQ all at once. It will notify me when an email comes in & will give me the sender’s name & subject of the message. The disadvantage to this program is no voice or video chatting. But what I like the best is it doesn’t change or add things to my browser, you can choose to have it load at boot up or manually load it, and I can several identities on one mail server.

Now you may want to scan and organize your pictures and documents because they are great things to trade with, and people will go more out of their way getting you information if you give them something they don’t have.

When first starting out Surname message boards are good, but I have more success with county & religious message boards. County histories & Church records are wonderful in your research.

A good thing to remember what goes around comes around. So find out what local resources are available to you and volunteer to help other via message boards and lookup services like www.raogk.org and www.usgenweb.org county sites.

Making A PDF Document

People ask, why would you make a PDF file when all you can do is print or view this document? The main reason is different computers and even different word processor programs will not open a document the same. So when layout is important, like when a document with an index or newsletters or limit how people can use your document you will want to do it as a PDF file.

One I use a lot is PrimoPDF http://www.primopdf.com/ , it work like a printer driver so if you can print it, you can make a PDF file and best of all it’s free. I see the last version the horizontal printing problem has been fixed. To a horizontal print click “custom” when PrimoPDF’s screen comes up.

There are many different free PDF creators out there so look around & see what you like. They all work about the same, you click File > Print > select the PDF creator > click OK > tell it where to save the file > click OK. The only differences are how you change the settings.

Rede’s demo with PrimoPDF:
http://blip.tv/file/476452

Converting PDF into RTF

PDF is a very popular way exchanging documents because the layout stays the same no matter what computer you are on, BUT there is no way to edit them or put them in your notes in your genealogy program. There are two ways I do it. Copy/Paste from Acrobat Reader or OCR it.

With Copy/Paste you need to paste it into word processor using the text selection tool. But you have to find the beginnings of your paragraphs & take out the end of lines within that paragraph. I will “Justify” all the text and do an indent, that way I can see my paragraphs.

The other is OCR but rather than print, scan, and convert to text, you just use the snapshot tool in Acrobat to copy and paste it into your OCR program. I found a free program that does an ok job of this called TopOCR http://www.topocr.com/ . It doesn’t work well with bold, italics, or pictures, but for free it does speed things up. I just found out if you change your setting to scanner mode "Settings->Image-> Source->Scanner" it will do a better job even with this copy/paste method in TopOCR.

Rede’s method:
Share Convert a PDF into a RTF Part 1 (Copy/Paste)
http://blip.tv/file/449914

Share Convert a PDF into a RTF Part 2 (OCR)
http://blip.tv/file/449936

Interlibrary Loan

If you are luck enough to find someone that has listed a book as a source in their genealogy, a good way of getting that book is through the interlibrary loan at your local library. A good place to start is WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/ to see if it is available. Your local library has their own network they work with. So if it shows up on WorldCat doesn’t mean they can get it but if your search pulls up a close library it increases your chances.

I like the advance search, but on the homepage your can enter a title, subject or person in the main search. When you find the book you want it will list whether it is a book, microfilm, computer file, etc… Click on the book you want, and where it list the libraries type in your zip code and click go. This will sort the libraries by how close they are to you. Take down the information like title, author and anything else you think your library will need & ask you librarian about it.

Two things to remember, not all libraries are in WorldCat and just because it is in WorldCat doesn’t mean your library can get it. This is just a way to increase your chances to find it.

Note: I have had family actually get microfilm from state historical societies via interlibrary loan, so that is another good source.

Using Notepad For Your Genealogy

Click for video

Using Notepad to transcribe images & copy text for your genealogy. Read my way of doing it click here.

Making Multi Page PDF Images With IrfanView

One nice thing about Multi Page PDF files are for things like Wills and other documents that take several pages, you can make a single file out of them for archiving & emailing.

I have talked about making multi page documents with IrfanView back in April of 2007. With the new update they fixed the compression problems I was getting with making multi page PDF documents with IrfanView. You can now choose how much compression you want to put into the images, thus making smaller files.

You will need to download & install the program & plugins from http://www.irfanview.net/ . It is DonationWare which means anything you want to donate is appreciated.

I think you can actually scan with IrfanView and save as a multi page PDF. But for this article I will just take a few pictures & combine them.

Steps for make a multi page TIF that some people prefer for archiving:

• Open IrfanView.
• Click “View”> put mouse over “Multiple Page Images”> and click “Create Multiple Page TIF”.
• Click “Add Images” find the images you want> sort if needed> click “Compression” choose what you want> click “Browse” to put it where you want it on your computer> give it a “name”> click “Create TIF Image” and your done.

Steps for make a multi page PDF with IrfanView:

• Open your TIF file in IrfanView.
• Click “Save As”> choose "Save as type: PDF - Portable Document Format".
• In the PDF Settings Tab "layout" Page Format=Like Image. Page Rotation=none. Page Border=unchecked. Compression Tab=Activate Compression is checked & "True Color Images" and "Grayscale Images" are set to "JPG (medium quality)".
• Give it a name and click “Save”.

7 color images totaling 8 megs became a 76 meg TIF, on the medium compression setting I ended up with a single 1.64 meg multi page PDF file.