Hashtags in Legacy 9: George Hartley, Jr. (1907-1977)

The list of hashtags I've attached to my grandfather George Hartley, Jr.

I've taken over a year break from regular posting after a tough recovery from a heart attack and ongoing dialysis, but I haven't been idle!  I've been working on standardizing locations and attaching hashtags to the people on my (admittedly ridiculously huge extended) family tree on Legacy 9.

My next overarching project is going to be figuring out ways to display reports on these folks (using said locations and hashtags) that is informative and readable.




© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Repost: Tip: Use HistoryGeo To Track Changing U. S. County Boundaries

Christine first posted this on September 23, 2017.

Brighton, Colorado (now in Adams County). Note:  I clicked on a random spot near the center of Brighton.

Mary L. (Burnight) Lytle (1853-1883), my 1st cousin 5x removed, died in Brighton, Arapahoe, Colorado.  By 1910 her daughter Isabel was living in Brighton, Adams, Colorado, same area. 

There are different ways to determine what county a particular place was in, and one that I've found to be very helpful is HistoryGeo, a subscription based website that takes Bureau of Land Management land records and maps them, called the First Landowner's Project:

Here, you will find our ongoing effort to accurately map the original landowners of the 29 U.S. public land states and Texas.

This limits the time period between about 1810 to 1940, and doesn't include the land in the eastern part of the U.S. that was measured by metes and bounds, but if you are trying to determine a place in that time period and in the more western areas you might find this helpful. 

U. S. County Boundary History, from 1810 through 1940.  Note that the info is from IPUMS, which is a sophisticated data tool that I have yet to really figure out lol.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Experience With My First Location Report on Legacy 9

A screenshot of some of my Worden relations, from my Ancestry tree.  Up until I had Legacy this was the only way to systematically see where people were, and then it was only birth/death dates.  If I wanted to see any other place where they had been I had to visit each profile individually.

It's just one of those days when things refuse to go as I wish.  The location report I had hoped to blog about today is still generating and is only at about 37 percent after running continuously since 4 p.m. (it is now after 11 p.m.).  I'm sure it is taking this long because I have so many unique locations in my tree.

Since I don't have much report about locations based on the location report, I did want to say that I'm disappointed that I am among those who are unable to see mapping through Legacy 9, apparently due to an API conflict between Legacy and Bing maps.  When I first purchased the program I was able to see maps, but that has since stopped.  This is annoying to say the least.  I might have to purchase another program eventually if the folks at Legacy don't figure this out (this has been a known problem since 2014--it is now 2018).  C'mon, people.




© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Top 10 Locations On My Family Tree

This is a list of the top 10 most "popular" unique locations for people on my family tree. Screenshot from my "Family File Statics" report in Legacy 9.

Although I have over 29,000 unique locations in my family tree database, the above shows the top 10 most inhabited places for people who are either related to me by blood or by marriage.

I am a little surprised that the state of Iowa isn't on there, but Fairview Township, Jones, Iowa is (obviously I am related to a lot of people from that one place).

I am not surprised by the 2 locations (York and Hopewell Township) in York County, Pennsylvania, since I felt like I spent forever on my location cleanup there.  People from there generally seemed to stay there, with only an occasional individual or family group leaving (as my Frederick Grove/Leah Bixler did in the 1830s).



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Creating a List of People By Location

Can't do this on Ancestry!  A list of the people in my tree who lived in or had a life event in Niwot, Boulder, Colorado, birthplace of my biological grandmother Alta Mae Slater.

One big reason I purchased stand-alone genealogy software (in this case Legacy 9) was to create lists of people to research by location, or by any other specific criteria.  Although Ancestry is a giant database it doesn't allow the user to create this type of report.

This is so fun!


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Book Shelf: "North Carolina Research: Genealogy and Local History" by Helen F. Leary

One of my mom's AncestryDNA Migrations is "Eastern North Carolina Settlers".  I have a ton to learn about this state and the history of its early settlers.  I hope that will help me get through some brick walls on both sides of Mom's ancestry.

A few weeks ago I linked to Mary Hill's very informative webinar on overcoming record loss in genealogical research.  She highly recommended "North Carolina Research: Genealogy and Local History" by Helen F. Leary as a great source.  I immediately ordered a copy (not cheap: $55 at Amazon) and am waiting for it to arrive.  It was supposed to arrive by yesterday but Amazon did notify me that it was indeed late.

I'm a bit peeved since I am excited to start using it and wanted to do a legitimate book shelf post on it.  Hopefully it comes tomorrow!

By the time this map was done in 1755 I already had a huge portion of my ancestors running around in these areas, particularly Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. "A Map of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland with part of New Jersey etc.," paper, Printed for R. Baldwin in pater Noster Row, 1755; digital image, North Carolina Maps (http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/123 : 20 Mar 2018).

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Happy New Year, Dear Readers and Cousins!

An example of my corrected places, in this case the only known place is Mississippi.  The ", ," is to leave the fields of place (precinct/beat/borough/village/hamlet/town/city), and county/parish, empty for when I transfer my Ancestry tree info to Legacy 9. 

Some personal health issues related to dialysis I have had today have made it difficult to concentrate on a write up, but I am looking forward to spending an hour or so tonight working to fix my locations on my Ancestry tree. 

Once I finally complete the locations (in a few more months, unfortunately!) I will be able to do some pretty cool reports and lists in Legacy 9 (Legacy Family Tree has many free webinars with examples).



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

My Observation While Standardizing US Locations: "Wherever there’s a Newton, there’s a Jasper"

A number of my Hibbs relations ended up here from Tennessee/Indiana. Newton is the county seat of Jasper County, Iowa (here shaded in pink).  Image from Google Maps.

I didn't grow up with the Newton/Jasper thing out here in San Diego, but I have noticed that when counties and townships were being named throughout the United States in the 1800s the Newton/Jasper occurrence in place names was surprisingly common:

Newton Counties (from Ancestry's location box search)

Jasper Counties (from Ancestry's location box search)

My Turners and Hendersons were here in Newton and Jasper County, Georgia in the earlier 1800s.  Closeup from FamilySearch Wiki on Georgia.

Back in 1958, Lou Ann Everett tried to figure out the origin:

Sometimes they were associated as counties, sometimes as county and county seat; often a town or county of Marion was nearby. Maps showed more than sixty Newtons and Jaspers in all, half of them juxtaposed in an almost conjugal relationship. They were about as much a part of the American scene as Lincoln Avenue, Washington Street, and Courthouse Square," she wrote. "But why?
"My own investigation of state histories reveals that they commemorate heroes of an incident that may never have happened, that they are linked together because of a dialogue that never was spoken."
In fact, one of the duo may not have even existed.

This quote, and the rest of Ariel Cooley's 2016 article "Across country Jasper, Newton paired together because of American Revolution story" is here.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Tip: Use HistoryGeo To Track Changing U. S. County Boundaries

Brighton, Colorado (now in Adams County). Note:  I clicked on a ramdom spot near the center of Brighton.

Mary L. (Burnight) Lytle (1853-1883), my 1st cousin 5x removed, died in Brighton, Arapahoe, Colorado.  By 1910 her daughter Isabel was living in Brighton, Adams, Colorado, same area. 

There are different ways to determine what county a particular place was in, and one that I've found to be very helpful is HistoryGeo, a subscription based website that takes Bureau of Land Management land records and maps them, called the First Landowner's Project:

Here, you will find our ongoing effort to accurately map the original landowners of the 29 U.S. public land states and Texas.

This limits the time period between about 1810 to 1940, and doesn't include the land in the eastern part of the U.S. that was measured by metes and bounds, but if you are trying to determine a place in that time period and in the more western areas you might find this helpful. 

U. S. County Boundary History, from 1810 through 1940.  Note that the info is from IPUMS, which is a sophisticated data tool that I have yet to really figure out lol.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Throwback Thursday: Huell Howser Visits Old Pasadena

Huell Howser covered Old Pasadena in his "California's Communities" series (image taken from the City of Pasadena).

As I am going through my tree to clean up and standardize locations, I keep finding that many of my cousins, particularly on my 2nd great grandmother Mary Jane (Tibbetts) Hartley's side, lived in Pasadena in the late 1800s/early 1900s.  Beloved California booster Huell Howser visited Old Pasadena, and the video is featured on the City of Pasadena website (you can view the video there):

On January 12, 2010, Huell Howser visited Pasadena on the series California's Communities. Watch as Huell tours the streets around Old Pasadena and Paseo Colorado, where old historic buildings have been preserved and merged with new buildings to create a bustling marketplace.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Bremer County, Iowa is a Genealogical Hotspot for Me

Bremer County's location compared to major cities in the Midwest.  Image taken from City-Data.com's entry on Bremer County, Iowa.

This is Waverly (filmed in 1961 for the Chamber of Commerce).

WAVERLY: Bremer Co. Historical Society Museum (from KGAN CBS 2)

As I am straightening out my ancestral locations, I come back over and over again to places in Bremer County, Iowa (including the towns of Waverly and Waterloo), where my Tibbetts and Messingers settled in the early 1850s after leaving the Indianapolis area about 1845.  Although my direct ancestors left the area by the 1870s, I still have distant cousins living there.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Tip: Go Back and Check Any Locations You Added to People on Ancestry

Great to always take a gander at what is new and exciting over at Ancestry.

Ancestry has a Recently Added and Updated Collections section.


Occasionally they'll post one of the US Federal Censuses as being new or updated, and now that I'm combing through my tree I'm seeing that they do indeed correct previous indexing.

Ancestry has had the 1840 Census scanned and indexed for many years now, but I think they are continually improving the indexing.

For example, I added a location in Illinois for a likely cousin, Catherine (Patterson) Bushart, in the 1900 Census:

I think I added this location a few years ago.  The location was generated by the indexing at Ancestry, and apparently I didn't actually look at the census itself.  Bad genealogist, bad, because look at the next picture...

Look at what the actual image of the census says:

Yeah, that says Marrowbone Township in Moultrie County, Illinois.  Not Bethany village (although the enumeration district description is 0103: "Marrowbone Township, including Bethany Village"). ETA And look, there is Bethany Village written clearly below, showing yet another error on my part.  Sometimes I really get in my own way.

And even still, the index has now been updated to reflect the place "Marrowbone, Moultrie, Illinois", not even Marrowbone Township.

Thankfully Google still maps this accurately, but if there is a township AND town/village with the same name (but not in the same county) then the mapping functions for Google and Legacy can get confused.

The lesson I take from this is to look at what the census image says, not what the indexed entry says (that can change).

The 1900 Census seems especially prone to this kind of data entry error.




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Cleaning Up My Locations in Legacy Means I Can Do This....

I am cleaning up my locations database in Legacy 9.0 because I want to see who lived where.  This is one of the main reasons I bought the software in the first place.

My locations were so messed up that it is taking way longer than I originally thought.  However, once I've standardized all the locations on both the Legacy end and on my Ancestry tree I will be cooking with gas, baby!




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Getting Inspired to Continue Cleaning Up My Locations: Geoff Rasmussen Presents "September 5, 2014: Locations, Mapping and Legacy"

I'm still in the process of cleaning up my locations.  I didn't realize that we had at least 2 or 3 different ways to express any given location.  Take Anaheim, a city in Los Angeles County, California:

Anaheim
Anaheim, CA
Anaheim, California
Anaheim, Los Angeles, California
Anaheim, Los Angeles, California, United States
Anaheim, Los Angeles, California, USA
Anaheim, Los Angeles County, California
Anaheim, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Anaheim, Los Angeles County, California, United States of America
Anaheim, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

and the list goes on.

So yeah, it's taking more time than I originally expected, but that is what I get for not determining a standard way to add location names in my Ancestry tree.  Don't be like me!  Standardize your locations, in as specific a way as possible, now!


The reason I am doing all this is to have a smooth, functional database of location names.  It helps me to get inspired when I see what others do when it comes to locations.  If you also user Legacy you might be inspired by the September 5, 2014 Legacy Virtual User's Group Meeting, free from Legacy Family Tree Webinars, "Locations, Mapping and Legacy," headed by Geoff Rasmussen.  As usual, there is a lot to learn from these webinars.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.