As someone who has made the effort to come to my blog, I feel I must be completely honest with you. You’ve spent your time reading my random ramblings. That’s a significant commitment to me. My family are the only ones who do that. So if you take the time to read my ramblings, you deserve the truth…
I finally sat down and started playing in my free of sources Family Tree Maker family file. The one with all of the people, and none of the sources. I keep on trying to figure out the Source Citation procedure for Family Tree Maker but it doesn’t ever end with me actually feeling like I’m doing it correctly. Even though in the newer versions, they have templates to aid you in the process. For some reason, I just couldn’t get it to be what I wanted.
I think I may have finally “figured it out.” I have to use the quotes, because… Well, I might not have figured it out. I’m never sure if I ever have things correct or not. It’s a side effect of never reading instruction manuals. One day I’ll be forced to follow the “rules” but so far I’m doing fine bumbling through life at the seat of my pants… or fluffy pajamas as it were.
Sometimes when I end up spending a big chunk of my time doing stuff on the computer, I don’t always get things done. It’s like I’ve wasted all that time. I’ve finally chased the cause of this very annoying side effect.
I made a disastrous mistake in putting my computer desk near my window. I don’t know what I was thinking. On any given day I am interrupted by birds, squirrels, stray cats, and even crazy weather. With so much going on outside my window I’m surprised I get anything done. Who can resist squirrels hanging upside down from a canopy trying to eat the bird seed? Certainly not me.
If anyone knows of a cure for this crazy disease, don’t give it to me! The world outside my window is so wonderful. In fact we even bought a table set for our deck so I can enjoy it outside too. Hmm… Genealogy blogging from the deck? Who’s in? š
I promise my blog will get interesting again someday. Remember when I wrote stories about cook books and that Irishman who is going to sweep me off my feet? Those were the days. haha.
I know it’s an old complaint. Everyone has it. I just don’t know why people can’t just get last names right! I’m not even just talking about record keepers. I’m talking about people too. I don’t have the problem on my Dad’s family, or on the Taylors. I have the misspelling problem with the Mays family. That I can deal with.
The Moyer family has been a whole new frustration though. For some reason the family goes by both Moyer and Myers/Meyers/Moyer. I thought at first it was a miscommunication with the census. However, when I looked again at the Moyer tree that was sent to me a few years ago, some of the Moyer children chose to go by Myers/Meyers eventually.
Oy, this just makes things difficult. :\
Unfortunately, there was no time to write up a post today. I was playing around with my new purchase:
Unfortunately, I forgot to get my Serial ATA cable at the same time. Then I decided why not just install it as the primary drive. My old drive is pretty old, and pretty small.
I didn’t forsee not being able to use my current Windows 7 key on my new install. Seems my key will only work on an upgrade and not on a new install. So that’s alright, just have to go back to Best Buy and get a cable. I did however, waste most of my day trying to get this to work. Good thing I figured it out today and not 30 days in when Windows stopped working!
After all the stress of today and frustration, I’m going to break out my fluffy pajamas and a cold ginger ale. š I want to relax! Shoot, I never did get the laundry in either. What a day!
Slowly but surely I’m getting stuff entered into my new shiny Family File. I decided to take a break from that today though. I want to get lost in Census stuff. In order to do that, I can’t be nit-picking on every detail. What is my new great idea you ask? Well I exported a gedcom from my HUGE Family Tree Maker file and smacked it right back into Family Tree Maker. Then I deleted all source information. It was scary and liberating all at the same time.
Okay, full disclosure, sorry. I actually did this yesterday, when I hit the jackpot. I was absolutely dying to dive in and find some Taylors in Maryland. I didn’t want to lose my source information mojo and I certainly didn’t want to just add all those people to the new clean file. So I figured a blank source template wasn’t entirely cheating… right? I mean I’m not adding these guys to my website. I’m not announcing them. I am however, adding in the sources. So when I get to these people in my clean file, I already have their source information! Genius right? Okay, maybe not so much. I’m easily distracted though, so it’s a great secondary option for my genealogy time.
Heck, I’m not even sure I ever stay on topic in these blog posts. I know I start typing with the best of intentions. So I’ll just keep working on my genealogy and my writing skills. We’ll see where they land me.
If you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s because FamilySearch just added a ton of new records to their website. I can’t wait to dig in and start looking. I have 227 matches for Taylor in Somerset County, Maryland alone! Not to mention the Kentucky Death and Marriage Records they added. I was so excited I had to post a second entry today!
There is always one person in your family file who frustrates you. Sometimes it’s because they show up out of nowhere. Or maybe they disappeared. How these mysteries are ever solved I don’t know. I usually just walk away from it for awhile and try again later with a clear brain. Sometimes it works, most times I have to lather, rinse, and repeat a few times.
One of those people in my family is Mr. Henry C Mays. He showed up in the household of John and Celia Mays in 1900. He’s listed as their son. When my Mom was researching this family, she was always suspicious about him. She thought maybe he was actually Nancy’s son but her parents were raising him. Who knows what the real story is. There isn’t much to verify that available to me right now. Especially since Henry was born in or around 1885. Well before Kentucky started regulating birth records in 1911.
Henry is still there in 1910, still listed as John and Celia’s son. So I’m going to go for broke and assume that he is their son. The problem is that I can’t seem to find a death record for him to verify this. There is a Henry Mays living in Rowan County, Kentucky in 1920 but I can’t be sure that is him and the family is gone again in 1930. 1920 is when John, Celia, and William Harmon moved to Ohio. Nancy married and stayed in Kentucky though. So Henry could have ended up anywhere. Eventually I hope to find him. I’ll keep trying until I find out where he went.
The even crazier part is we asked my Grandmother about William Harmon Mays’ family before she passed away. No one was even aware that William had a sister, let alone another brother somewhere. Who knows what we could have found out if my mother’s father had lived longer, but we may never know what happened to the Mays family. They seemed to have scattered and not spoken of each other.
The beauty of starting your family file over is that you know everything in there will be correct. The dilemma I have is I would never delete my old file. It’s been the file I’ve edited for many years now. I could never throw it away like a used shopping bag. (Actually I use the reusable bags now so that was a bad metaphor.) The problem I’ve come across is how much of my old file and the original (not entirely trustworthy) family tree to use.
It’s easy to say I’ll just use it as a guideline and I’ll back it up with documents as I go. Sure that’s the obvious choice. What about that first time I come across something that isn’t documented though? Kentucky was pretty sporadic in their death records before 1911. So what do I do about all those infant children that passed away in the Taylor family? I can’t immediately back them up, but surely they existed. I can look up cemetery records, and newspapers when I’m in Kentucky but what about now? If I just say I’ll go back to it later, that’s the old me talking. I always say I’ll do it later, and then I forget and never go back. My family file will never be restored that way.
So my solution for now is to source it as the Undocumented Family Tree, and make myself a list of records I need to find. This list is a start, but that could become quite crowded quickly. So maybe an Excel file will be my better option. One for the documents I need, and one to keep track of cemeteries I need to visit.
This may seem like rambling to you, but if I don’t hash this out now, I’ll never come to a decision…
Oh, and for those that remember or read this blog post I made? Yeah I’m going to be making a private family tree on Ancestry.com for each of the lines, just like my website. I won’t be doing it right away though. Most likely when I hit theĀ inevitableĀ brick wall.
We’ve had the pleasure of entertaining my cousin and her two energetic little girls this week. They left this morning and the house is eerily silent. I’ve done laundry (not finished), I played with the pictures in Photo Shop. I finally finished that book I was reading. Now I’m going to catch up on here! Sorry for the little absence but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Yesterday, we took the girls on a day trip to Washington, DC. It’s about 2 hours from our house and yesterday was a very pretty day. We didn’t get to tour the museums. That sounds bad but we ended up walking a total of 5 miles yesterday, so I don’t know where we would have fit museums in! The youngest, she wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial really bad because he’s her favorite coin. Everyone else just enjoyed seeing the sites.
Continue reading “The Things I Saw”