My Task Today: Master Plan for Job Taylor

No more haphazard searching!

Using the research form ideas from Marian Louis Pierre (specifically from her 2012 webinar and syllabus: "Plan Your Way to Research Success"--available for subscribers to Legacy Family Tree only or single digital download) and Evernote, I have started to put together an actual research plan (gasp!) for Job Taylor, one of my "brickwalls."

Master Research Plan

Ancestor: Job Taylor

Project Start Date: 15 Feb 2018

Specific Goal:  Establish what is known about Job Taylor; look for additional information within given records; follow his trajectory and try to understand why he went there.

Questions:

What did he do as a living?

Who was his wife and when did they marry?

FAN club needs to be established (neighbors and names associated with his records)

Historical events in his lifetime?

Background Information:

Birth: abt 1800 in New Jersey

Death: 27 Aug 1850 in Johnson County, Iowa

Parents: unknown, possibly Daniel Taylor as father but that is speculative

Married (presumably) to Betsey (abt 1805 in PA or OH), not sure if his only marriage

Inferred children: 

Simon Taylor (1832 Ohio)

Betsey (possibly my Elizabeth) Taylor (1835 Ohio)

George Taylor (1842 Ohio)

Info derived from Federal Census Records (1830, 1840, 1850), GLO patent record "sale of Public Lands" (to Job Taylor of Washington County Iowa"; land office in Iowa City), and Iowa Probate Records (on Ancestry)

Research Plan:

Task	Source	Location
Birth date and place
Who are his parents?
Death Date?
Determine Births of Children in Ohio
Probate/guardianship records for Job Taylor
Land records for Job in PA, OH, and Iowa
Church Records?
Gravesite/Cemetery?
Literature Search for Job Taylor in PA, OH, and Iowa
Local histories of Westmoreland County, PA, Holmes County, OH, and Washington/Johnson counties, IA
Manuscript search for Job Taylor
Manuscript search for contemporaries of Job Taylor
Maps
Historical timelines

So now I need to fill in the sources I plan to use and where those are location.  Then I can make a plan for each task.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

FamilySearch Offers a Fan Chart in the Mary Hill Color Coding Option

My fan chart at FamilySearch.  My father's people are blue and green, Mom's people are red and yellow, just like in Mary Hill's color coding system.

I'm probably the last person to notice this, but FamilySearch also follows the Mary Hill color coding that I mentioned a few posts back.


Good to know I've adopted a system that is well recognized.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Spring Cleaning: Weeding Out All the Unsourced and Unnecessary Profiles on My Tree

It was over 57,000 profiles in my tree last year.

I'm paying the price for putting all those unnecessary in-laws and step-brothers of stepbrothers on my tree without any reason besides just getting carried away (see my previous posts here and here).  In other words, not straightening up as I went.  While I know that distant relations, even non-relations, can be very important in studying someone, this was just ridiculous.  A lot of these people were on the tree because they were bright, shiny objects.

But today I finally got below 50,000!


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Spring Cleaning Continues

My cat Whirly inspecting the new supplies

As I mentioned in a blog post last month I am organizing my genealogy paperwork a la Mary Hill.  I got all the necessary supplies today.

The gray one on the left I've had for about 20 years, I got the black one today.

My colors are set (this can be done easily in Legacy 9).

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Re-Installing Legacy 9

I'm still getting used to the program.  This is a chance to review how to set up and customize the program, which never hurts.  The new features in Legacy 9 can be previewed here.

Well, my plans for genealogy tonight were altogether different.  I planned to experiment with an older version of my tree with the "Map Your Family" on my Legacy 9 and realized that it didn't work (something to do with Bing's new programming maybe?).  It's a  new year and I don't feel like futzing about with this, soI've decided to just re-install my Legacy 9 tonight and start fresh.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Spring Cleaning 2018: Using Mary Hill's Color-Coding System in Legacy

My pedigree with Mary Hill's color scheme, which is included in Legacy 9.

I have a tendency to overthink things.  Organization is one of them.  I've needed something that works for my genealogy papers and notes, and while I have my online files well organized, until now I had yet to settle a system for my offline work.  I think Mary Hill's relatively uncomplicated color-coding filing system might just do the trick.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars has a great collection of how-to organization videos, most only for subscribers.  Mary Hill presented "Get Organized Using the FamilyRoots Organizer Color-Coding System" in 2014.  I prefer the narrative and explanation of the webinar, but if you don't have a subscription to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, you can visit her website The FamilyRoots Organizer Color-Coding System.

I already have the folder box with the lip or ridge around the edge.  Now I need to buy the appropriate hanging colored folders and supplies and can set up my color coding system.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Limited Free Time Webinar: "Did I Get Everything? Creating a Checklist for Genealogy Research" by Thomas MacEntee

If one of your New Years' resolutions is to research your genealogy in a more orderly and comprehensive way, you might enjoy Thomas MacEntee's presentation "Did I Get Everything? Creating a Checklist for Genealogy Research" yesterday:

Are you really done with researching that ancestor? Many genealogists think they have a brick wall when, in fact, they just haven't done a reasonably exhaustive search. Learn how to assemble a genealogy research checklist to take your genealogy to the next level.

1 hour 28 minutes
Free through January 10, 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.

Getting There

It used to be over 57,000 people.  I've eliminated almost 6,000 since the beginning of this year.

I don't know what an ideal amount of people on a tree is, but I don't think it is anywhere near 57,000+.  I've been doing an overhaul of my tree, taking off people who don't seem to be relevant to my lines and updating, correcting, and otherwise upgrading all of the profiles on my tree.  It has taken a lot of time, but it was very necessary.  I was originally inspired to do this so that I could standardize my locations, making my tree more functional for the Legacy 9 software I purchased.  Now I'm hoping to finish this upgrade by the end of the year.  We'll see if it happens that soon.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Spring Cleaning in October

Crista Cowan explains and shows why a clean tree improves your genealogy.

Let's just say I've gotten carried away with the research and shiny bright things since I started using Ancestry in 2009.  Right now I have over 52,000 people on my tree (down from over 57,000! a few months ago) but that is truly unnecessary and ridiculous.  I'm not sure what the right amount of people on a genealogical tree is, but it can't be that many.

So as I've been standardizing my locations (i.e. fixing all the locations in every profile) I've also been pruning any and every one who isn't a blood relation or FAN club member.  Turns out there are a ton of siblings of distant cousins' wives and husbands, as well as stepchildren galore (including stepchildren of stepchildren), who don't add anything to the tree or my research, but are just there as remnants from an over-enthusiastic research session.  I figure that if any particular person is important I can always add them back on.

I can't wait until I've tightened up my tree and standardized the locations, because I have a lot of plans for using my Legacy 9 software to do some interesting reports. But for now I have to atone for my sins and do some much needed clean up.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Tip: Look Closely When Adding City Directory Records on Ancestry

Crop of the Oakland, CA city directory title page.  Note that other addresses in other nearby cities are also included. R. L. Polk and Co. of California, "Polk's Oakland (California) City Directory, Vol 1930 XL, Including Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville and Piedmont; Containing an Alphabetical Directory of Business Concerns and Private Citizens, a Street and Avenue Guide and Much Information of a Miscellaneous Character; Also A Buyer's Guide and a Complete Classified Business Directory" (Oakland, CA), 1930; digital image, U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 database (http://www.ancestry.com/ : 29 September 2017).

I highlighted some examples of people who appear in the Oakland city directory but actually live in a nearby city/town.  A = Alameda, B = Berkeley, Pied = Piedmont.  Some people worked in Oakland but resided in other places like Richmond and San Leandro.  If you added one of these highlighted people's indexed record Ancestry would automatically put "Oakland; Alameda; Berkeley; Emeryville; Piedmont, California, USA" as the residence, although they may have actually lived in just Berkeley or Piedmont.  Page 600 of the Oakland City Directory 1930.

Ansgar actually lived in Berkeley.  This particular indexing reflects the major cities/towns represented in this directory; some indexed city directories just add the main city (like Enid, Oklahoma, or Seattle, WA) and it is up to you to know there are other options.

I admit it, I'm guilty of adding records like the above without edit.  Let's just say mapping tools don't like addresses like this!


© 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.

Throwback Thursday/Free Legacy Family Tree Webinar: Geoff Rasmussen presents "Timelines and Chronologies - Secrets of Success"

Another day, another day spent cleaning up my locations on my tree.  Part of why I'm cleaning up/standardizing the locations is so that my chronologies will be more useful.  Ancestry provides a basic timeline already, but I need to prepare for using Legacy software's timelines to further enhance my research once my cleanup is complete.  This webinar, Timelines and Chronologies - Secrets of Success by Geoff Rasmussen, originally recorded almost 4 years ago (October 19, 2013), is still relevant even though I have a later Legacy product.

 Join FamilyTreeWebinars.com's host and Legacy Family Tree developer, Geoff Rasmussen, as he presents "Timelines and Chronologies: Secrets of Success" to a live audience in Anchorage, Alaska. Geoff will teach:

- Benefits of using a timeline in your genealogical research
- What a good timeline includes
- Methods of creating a timeline
- How to embed historical events into an ancestor's timeline 

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Legacy Quick Tip: "Creating a custom report, hashtags, DNA and more"

I've mentioned before that I am cleaning up my database, and have posted numerous times about said cleaning.

Well, the cleaning continues apace. For inspirations and to see what is waiting for me at end of the tunnel is another quick tip video by Geoff Rasmussen, "Creating a custom report, hashtags, DNA and more."  It is free to non-subscribers of the webinars.

Originally aired August 2, 2017. Runs about 21 minutes.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Passwords on Rolodex

My password rolodex

Let's just say I'm selectively organized.  Much of my house looks like the aftermath of a game of Jumanji, but sometimes I figure things out.

A few years ago I realized that I use a variety of sites with passwords daily.  The computer can save the passwords, of course, but when there is a computer crash those passwords have to be typed back in.

I read somewhere that a Rolodex could be used to store the passwords.  It can't be hacked online, and it is conveniently accessible.

The username and password I use for GenealogyBank can be accessed immediately.

© 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.

Throwback Thursday: Karen Clifford's 2011 Webinar "Organizing for Success"

Karen Clifford, CEO of Genealogy Research Associates, shares her tips on setting up an efficient organization system using Legacy in the webinar "Organizing for Success."  You can also see much of this information at her site FileYourPapers.com:

Have you ever found a relative sharing erroneous data on your favorite research line? You're willing to take the time to politely point out those errors (to prevent others from being misled), but the complexity of how to explain your years of research settles upon your brain like a fog. You rally to the attempt, only to be thwarted by an inability to quickly locate the key supporting documents. After hours of effort, a numbing paralysis sets in at the realization that in order to adequately explain your conclusions, you will need to reconstruct your research process. The result thousands of individual family relationships that could be explained just STOP, or end up in heaps of unsubstantiated opinion files on the Internet. People have asked me over the years, how I can research hundreds of families in the same week, return to a specific spot where I left off fifteen years ago on a client's line, and in a short review period take off again. The best way to prevent a wasteful repetition of work is by consistently using an organizational system that weaves together paper files, research notes, to do lists, evidence located, and conclusions reached. This incredibly simple, yet very successful organizational system has been successfully used by thousands of genealogists. With this system, the essential evidence and its supportive explanations are located in a safe retrievable place, available for constant re-examination. This frees the mind to focus on a new hypothesis, to creatively compile a life-time of work, or to calmly summarize your work for others. In fact, this organizational system makes the entire research process more efficient.

Originally recorded August 3, 2011.  Runs 1 hour 58 minutes.  If you are a Family Tree Webinars subscriber you can skip to the lecture, otherwise you will have to sit through information about 2011 genealogy events.




© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

As Ye Research, So Shall Ye Delete

What I saw all day yesterday.

I've been doing this the past few days during my genealogy database cleanup.  I realized a while ago that the Thomas Taylor and Sarah Lynchard lines I pursued for a long while are not my ancestors, but didn't remove the work right away.  I just forgot how MUCH I worked on these lines, how very many hundreds of people I added to the tree in my increasingly desperate attempt to connect us to them.

Which reminds me, I have to delete an entire upline from our John Chappell (1763-1828).  A cousin contacted us a while back to detail how we probably have his parents wrong.  I really must get my Virginia research skill set up and running, I have so many brick walls there.

It's more fun to add people than delete them. Oh well, I had my fun, now I must pay the cost!





© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.