I will probably spend it on the computer or in front of the TV. It’s a tradition you know. Not to mention we recorded the Ten Commandments in HD last night. Who can beat that?
Today is Easter
Author: Kathleen
Surname Saturday: Oy Vey
Today, is Surname Saturday over at GeneaBloggers. I wasn’t even going to post again until Monday or Tuesday. Then I watched the newest episode of Who Do You Think You Are? That show is so great to give me motivation to get off my duff and get back to work on my family file. I really do want to clean it up and get it in order. The right way this time. So here I am, spending my Saturday going through census records on Ancestry.com and citing my sources correctly on my website and in my programs. Yes I said programs. I’m a long time Family Tree Maker user but I’m checking out RootsMagic Essentials.
2010 Cenus, have you filled out yours?
Mine has been filled out for over a week now, but I will be sending it out today (Now that it’s after April 1).
Treasure Chest Thursday and My Favorite Things
Today’s blog can double for a GeneaBlogger topic and a My Favorite Things post! The “treasure” I’ll tell you about is my Great Grandmother Llewellyn’s journal. I’ve tried transcribing to the site a few times but nothing that has stuck. I’ll get that worked out soon.
Backing away from the ledge…
I am having an issue. As I jump into Genealogy blogging with both feet, I also need to remember my responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to correctly show and identify where my information comes from. So far, I haven’t posted anything that I would consider super factual or important. I take a very tongue in cheek, fluffy pajamas method of life. Trust me when I say that I do actually cite all my sources, and anything in my tree that isn’t cited, is not actual information to me. I do joke about things I haven’t “proven” yet, but I don’t actual dwell on those things.
I was reading some blogs today and it struck me that I might not actually come across as a serious person. I do take my family history very seriously, fluffy pajamas aside of course. My problem is that when I began to really delve into my research, I was 18 years old. So even though I have my sources cited, they aren’t cited correctly. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’m going through one person at a time, and I’m fixing my family tree. I do have the whole tree up on moore-mays.org and I’m fixing it as I go. If I were putting my tree up for the first time, I’d only put verified information in. The problem is when I was 18, I published it out there in the Ancestry.com world. It was a horrible thing to do but it is what it is. The reason I haven’t taken it down is that many people have emailed me over the years about that tree. Even if I were to delete it, it’s still in Ancestry.com’s database. I can’t get it deleted for the life of me. It was almost 8 years ago that I uploaded it there and they’ve changed formats so much that it’s a complicated process to remove it. This is the main reason I’m so hesitant to put another tree on Ancestry.com. I don’t like that people can just merge the trees and then that’s it. Your information is on someone else’s tree and they take it as 100% proven fact.
Wordless Wednesday: Taylors
Mary Elizabeth Taylor
Lula Margaret Applegate-Taylor
Wordless Wednesday is a Daily Blogging Topic that I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Wordless Wednesday simply create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some people also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Some have begun doing a “Not So Wordless Wednesday” with the main focus still being an image but there is a backstory to the image.
Theme Troubles
I have been having a bit of trouble getting the right theme to work and customize for the site. Please be patient while I find something that displays correctly. I don’t plan to have an all pink blog for long. 😉
Castle Menzies, how I wish to visit you…
I’m going to make it clear before I even get started. I’m not in the habit of assuming things about genealogy. I promise. Okay, I don’t officially assume things. Just because I haven’t proven it yet, doesn’t mean that I won’t eventually right? Well in any case, I don’t make a habit of it. Sometimes though, in the case of things that involve my other passions, I can’t help but keep the door open. Those passions I speak of are Ireland, Scotland, Brooklyn, and architecture. You don’t know this because you don’t know me, but I actually took Computer Aided Drafting and Design in high school. I always loved looking through house plan books and passing through small towns where the buildings are old and a mixed variety from different eras.
Kids by the Dozen: Nathan Mays edition
I have re-written this entry many times. I just can’t seem to grasp the scope of Nathan Mays and his big family without over complicating my narration. Usually when I decide to sit down and do genealogy research, I pick a random family and then I aggressively research that family through the census and any other documents that may be found online. Luckily for me there are a lot of Kentucky vital records on Ancestry.com and then Family Search has Ohio Death Records at my disposable.
The problem that usually pops up is I become limited by not being on site. Soon I hope to be able to start to take genealogy trips over the summer but that doesn’t help me today. When I inherited the information I have on the Mays family from my mother, Nathan Mays was listed with 19 children. Then when I started searching for death records, I discovered 2 more bring the total to 21. Oy!
The problem I eventually ran into was trying to line up all the different census years and compare the children listed. So I went to old school methods. I printed out blank census forms and I transcribed the family for each census.
To Collect Spares or not to Collect Spares, that is the question
I was watching the latest episode of Ghost Hunters this morning. They investigated the Stephen Crane House in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It really got me thinking about those extra branches of the family tree. For the record, this isn’t a random subject. There is thought and a little documentation that Stephen Crane was related to the Thorwards through the Plume family. I even think the Cranes married into the Plumes. So it’s never going to be a blood relation for me. Does that really matter though? How interesting is it to see how we all connect together in these ways. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’d be cool to be related to someone who has their own Wikipedia page. Wikipedia pages are the scale in which I judge things if you didn’t notice. (^.^) I refuse to be caught into the trap of searching only for those things though. All of my ancestors are special and memorable in their own rights, I don’t value any over the others. Does that mean I should just stick to my main line and forget about all those beautiful branches?
Who do you leave out? Where do you draw your line? How can you make that decision and not regret it when the tree winds back around? How sad does a tree look when it’s not full and brimming with many leaves and branches? I just can’t imagine it. I’ve always been torn on this issue and I’ve even had to clean out my family file a few times because I did get a bit carried away. One day I got real ornery and told myself no one gets excluded! Everyone plays on this team! Since that day, I’ve made a point to note the families of people who marry into my related families. To compromise with the saner part of myself, I don’t go in depth on these families. I find the parents of the person who married in. Most times, I try to find their birth or death records and any census information I can find. I make sure to note all the siblings of the person who married in. That’s a practical thing though. If you’d ever seen my family file, you’d know how many brothers and sisters married the brothers and sisters of their in-law. (Mays, Slusher, Click, Whitt families; I’m looking at you).
I just don’t know if I’ll ever resolve myself to excluding people. Whether it be a first cousin, fifth cousin two times removed or someone who is the brother of the spouse of my 8th cousin; everyone is welcome in my tree. Someday I may even learn your story. Everyone deserves their story told, and I’m determined to find them. I’m realistic though, I know I can’t do this for everyone. That’s why many people stick to just their main line. I understand their thought process completely, I just don’t know if I could limit myself in that way. I’ve always been a collector. It just seems now I’m collecting people instead of toys and books! My only question is, How on earth will I manage when I get married? Even more people, I’ll need to have an office just for my genealogy for sure!