Putting my toe back into the Genealogy pool

Cousin Love!

The big move is over but still figuring where to put stuff.  My craft room is still being used as a bedroom.  Everything I want in the craft room is still packed.  But I have my laptop and I have my digital files.

Recently I got the chance to learn more about my uncle who was adopted.  He recently did a DNA test & found out more about his birth parents.  So I have been working on that sporadically. Went to the library for some obituaries. And used the census to find out that his birth parents were neighbors.

I also explored the largest library in my new county.  They do have genealogy materials so spent some time looking things over.  I did take some photos of materials I found interesting.  There was also a picture of my g+grandparents that I've never seen!

I also attended a local conference where we were encouraged to blog!  Going to conferences always gets me fired up to work on my tree too.  Learned a lot and feel like I'm heading in a good direction still.

I also re-connected with wikitree.com.  I made an account in 2012 but didn't even have the same email.  Got that all straightened out and have been working on adding my lines to the great tree in the cloud.  That has been a good experience since sourcing is very important.  But it is fun when you connect your line into an existing tree!

Good Luck & Good Night

Lubbers, Lubbers and More Lubbers

Since my first post I have heard from another Lubbers that there were two groups of Lubbers.  My Lubbers came from Bentheim and the other from the Netherlands.  Since my group had so many children there are tons scattered all over West Michigan and other locals.  The dutch Lubbers seem to be centered around Zeeland area and I don't know how many or what the descendant count is looking like.  And since the first house post, I had my disaster so I'm spending lots of time trying to get everything back into the file.  But going along with my paperless status, I'm shredding paper files that are not original and I have digitally copies of.

Why I deleted my Ancestry.com Family Trees

I have had an account with Ancestry.com since Mar 2002, that is 15 years folks.  Some of that time was via a membership and other times not.  My mother did a DNA test through Ancestry.com and she also got one for me, a few months later.  When my mother first got her test results, I was able to see the PUBLIC family trees managed by people who were related to my mother.  A lot of people don't have them but it was nice to have the option to browse DNA matches tree.

A few months later I did my DNA test through Ancestry.com and guess what.  Yep, I couldn't view the family trees from anyone except my own.  When I click on the link, it sends me automatically to a membership screen (see below).  All I wanted to view was a tree that someone created and posted in the public trees.  Why does this require a subscription?  Why does Ancestry think that my research should only be viewed by members?  

Since my DNA results are there, I do still have an account.  But I will not be purchasing a membership anytime soon. Frankly, Ancestry has gotten so huge that even a basic search returns too many results to manage because it includes tons of internet sites as well.  So if you are interested in finding relatives via DNA testing, I would recommend using a different company.

UPDATE: Aug 20th - just found out why my mother could view trees and not me.  Nothing was changed by Ancestry EXCEPT my mother actually bought a membership.  I'm not even sure she knows what that means.  So still would not recommend Ancestry.com DNA.

3 Rules of Genealogy (for beginners)

1st (and easiest) rule of Genealogy : Always start with yourself and work backwards

2nd (harder) rule of Genealogy : Always site your sources so you can find that information again if needed

3rd (hardest) rule of Genealogy : Always site your sources so that ANYONE can find that information again; including yourself when you forget what you meant in rule #2

Genealogy Redo Progress

I started the Redo in March 2015 and it has felt like a really long journey.  I'm still in the "organize what you have rather than find more" stage which has been really hard to accomplish.  But I finally feel like I am making some real progress.  (Although there is a long way to go.) I had a ton of saved documents that were only divided by family.  So I finally decided to sort by type of record, i.e. newspaper, census, dutch records etc. and that has helped out a TON.  I also labeled them by number, 1-13 and I'm on number 5 already!

So being "done" with a section means that the each item is saved as a jpg on my external hard drive, saved as a pdf on my dropbox account, and logged into the corresponding family research log.  Then it is also add to my roots magic family tree and each person & fact has a source attached.  I know everything is not perfect because I do make mistakes but I do love seeing those files lining up by numbers!

PS: this is my 200th posting!

Keeping it all Together

I have been working hard (when I have time) at reorganizing my genealogy files and making sure to source, source and source again for everything in my tree program.  Part of that organization is my need to see what I'm missing easily, without having to go through all the people in my tree.  So this is my master ancestor listing:

(I ONLY have direct ancestors on this sheet.  Adding more would just cause chaos.)  So I have the generations listed on the left, then the ahnentafel number, the last & first name of the ancestor, then all the primary records, then additional information and finally all the census records.  It is color coded at the name level to match the binders I have for each family.  When I find a vital record, I change the font to green.  If I know that person is not going to be in a certain census, I gray out that field.  I actually really love just viewing the chart!  It really appeals to the part of me that loves lists!

I didn't come up with this chart on my own.  I started with another chart a genealogist had used (and offered it to everyone in the group) and then I've just kept adding things.  The last thing I added was Military/Draft field so I can keep track of military records.  I am positive I will never ever complete this chart.  I can keep on adding names without running out of space.  And there is always something I cannot find.  But I will keep on hunting!

Duncan Livingston's first marriage

So my husband has an ancestor named Duncan Livingston.  And he is really hard to pin down because the dates of his birth and immigration from Scotland keep changing with every census.  I did have his marriage to Ida May Cook (who is another problem, at least for her birth record) proven with a record but beyond that and the census, not much.  From the census (and family information) I knew he had been married before Ida but the family really didn't seem to have much information.  I had been searching around for a while, looking for a marriage record without any luck.  Then I happened upon a death record for Kate Livingston who died in 1898.  The name of the reporter was given as D. Livingston.  Not much to go on really but it did seem like a good fit.  So I kept looking for the marriage record without much luck.  But there were two useful things on this death record.  One was that Kate Livingston had 1 child and Kate had been born in Canada.

I followed the child lead and actually located a marriage record for Ella Livingston in 1903.  Her birth fit with the possible marriage date for Duncan's 1st marriage and Ella's parents were given as Duncan Livingston and Kate Mc Intire.  (Yep, the death record did give Kate's father Michol Mc Intyre.)  But the really exciting information was the witness named Ida M Livingston!  Oh yeah, this was a really good fit!  But Ella had a daughter too and at her marriage, Ida M Livingston again was listed as a witness!  So know I had the names of three women that had been lost!

It does make you wonder how this information was forgotten until I found the death records for both Ella and her daughter Kathleen.  Kathleen died in 1929 from Ilaus with contributory induced abortion.  And Ella died in 1930 from a strangulated hernia after a surgery.  Duncan didn't die until 1945 so he had already lost his entire 1st family.

But I still had to find his marriage record to Kate Mc Intyre.  And that is when the born in Canada helped out.  Because what if they didn't get married in Michigan, where Duncan lived but in Canada where Kate was born?  So Family Search helped out again with marriage records from Canada.  Of course these records where divided by province and I didn't have a clue where to start.  So I picked the closes province to Michigan, Ontario.  And the very first record that showed up was the marriage record of Duncan and Kate in 1882.  Case closed!

Death Records & Modern Medicine

It is both interesting and heartbreaking to browse (or find) death records.  So many causes of death are preventable in our day and age but would wipe out most of a family before modern medicine.  It just makes me wonder about the mother who lost THREE children from Scarlet Fever in less than a month, what she would have risked or given to have been able to prevent that tragedy.

1872 Michigan death record: King children age 9, 12 and  6

It is easy to blame vaccinations for this happening or that, but it really comes down to is poor Margaret King would have jumped at the chance to prevent this kind of tragedy or many others like it.  (Scarlet fever doesn't have a vaccination but is curable today.)  The type of disease that vaccinations due work against are NOT as severe as they once were because modern medicine is much better at treating the symptoms.  But we shouldn't loose sight of the tragic past we can find in the old records which show us just how deadly they once were.

Brick Wall Comes Tumbling Down, Pt. 2

After locating the birth records of Jan De Vries and Luiktje Mulder, I felt fairly confident that this was the correct couple.  But how could I be positive since there had been mistakes made before?

Based on family naming practices in the Dutch tradition, the first born son would be named after the paternal grandfather, the first born daughter named after the paternal grandmother, the second born son named after the maternal grandfather and the second daughter after the maternal grandmother.  Looking at the children of Jan & Luiktje should reflect the family names that I found on the birth records.

Jan De Vries's father was Kornelis Geerts de Vries and his mother Jantje Geerts.  (The Geerts should reflect the previous generations first names.  I wonder why Jantje doesn't have a last name listed?  Maybe because it was 1816 and she was married before the whole "pick a last name" mandate came down?)  Jan and Luiktje did have a daughter Jantje born 1860 and died in 1881. She was the only daughter that we know about so that does fit with her grandmother's name.  There is also a son named Cornelius but very little is known about where he fits into the family.  Since there were no dates, he always fell at the end of the family but it makes sense if he was the first born son. The only record he can be found in is the burial records at the Beaverdam Cemetery.  There is no stone for him while Jantje does have one.  And he is not listed in any of the census records I have seen.  So he must have been born and died somewhere between census records.  Plus the couple immigrated in 1854 so there are a number of years between then and 1860 where a child (or two) would fit and there are very few records from that time.

Luiktje Mulder's father was Jakob Hendriks Mulder and her mother Pieterke Lammerts Jolman.  As soon as I saw her father's name I knew it fit!  My ancestor Jacob was born 1861 and died 1949.  His marriage record has his name spelled as Jakob.  He should be the second born son so having Cornelius before him works out with the naming practices.

My other ancestor is the third son, Johannes was born 1863 and died 1943.  He was probably named after his own father.  I will have to do more research around Kornelis and Jantje to see where the name Jan fits in.  Jan K. must have older brothers otherwise he would have been named after the grandfathers Geert.

Brick Wall Comes Tumbling Down, Pt. 1

I finally had a big break through on one of my double family tree lines after many years of frustration!  I am related through BOTH my parents to a pair of brothers, Jacob & Johannes De Vries.  From a family tree created by another family member, I knew their parents were Jan Kornelius De Vries & Luikje Ebels.  I never questioned that information.  Why not?  I guess I figured they had documentation to back it up.

But now I have new information and it came about because I wanted to correctly source my main tree.  As many newbies do, I was so excited collecting information that I didn't source anything.  Maybe this is because there is SO MUCH information coming at you at first that it is just so overwhelming.  Whatever the reason, I wanted to make sure my sources where documented.  I started with my own birth & marriage records and started going back, looking for birth, marriage and death records for each ancestor.  This finally brought me back to the Johannes De Vries & Jacob De Vries brothers.

Johannes De Vries's marriage record in 1887 to Gertrude Bos lists his parents as Jan De Vries & Luikje Mulder.    Jacob De Vries's marriage record in 1887 to Agina Marlink does not list parents.  It actually was a few years ago that I looked up the marriage records and I really hadn't given it much time since then.  I figured that it was a mistake.  But recently that old block was haunting me again.

In past years, I had done numerous searches on Genlias (now WieWasWie) for a De Vries married to an Ebels, coming up with nothing.  I looked for any name close to Luikje Ebels in birth records and found nothing.  Yes, there were a lot of Jan De Vries's but I only knew the father was Kornelius so I wasn't able to pin point the right record.  But guess what happened when I tried De Vries and Mulder?  Yep, it came right up!

From this record, it was an easy search to find both birth records.  Jan De Vries was born November 13, 1816 NOT February 1816.  (I think the February date came from his death record which listed is age as 75 years 11 months.)  Luiktje Mulder was born February 29, 1822 to Jakob Hendriks Mulder & Pieterke Lammerts Jolman.

Kidder Confusion

So the whole Jennie Kidder situation just got worse.  I'll have to start over and look at everything very carefully!

Since Clark & Jennie supposedly got married in 1887 when they were 26, and I cannot located that record on FamilySearch, I thought maybe Jennie had been married before.  So I looked around and found a marriage to Thadeus Doud in 1878.  

The age of Jennie is correct as well as the area where she was living but I don't know what M.D. means for place born.  So this is good!  I have another name to use for the 1887 marriage.  But nope, I didn't find what I expected.  I found a Jennie Doud getting married on July 4, 1887 (the exact date expected) but to the wrong guy & the wrong place!  (I looked in the 1880 census and found Thaddeus with his wife Jane...plus their 6 month old child.)

And I still cannot find any marriage for Clark V. Green.

Death Record, Rose Kidder

This might be the death record for my husband's ancestor, Rosa (Gainer) Kidder.  (There is some confusion with this line which I need to research.)  This record shows Rose Kidder dying at age 34 in child birth.  I think the other part says Premature Confinement.  So the baby came early.  I don't have a record of a child born this year so I am pretty sure the child didn't survive IF this is the right person for the line I am researching.