Methodology Monday with shared addresses in Philadelphia

Do you check the whereabouts of friends, associates, and neighbors in the censuses and forget the cemeteries?

"Cemeteries are neighborhoods too." That staying has stuck in my mind ever since I first heard it from Elissa Scalise Powell. It could be the tagline for Kay Haviland Freilich's article in the March 2014 National Genealogical Society Quarterly identifying the parents of Philadelphia native Harry Harding (1852-1894).

The 1860 census provided a hypothesis as to Harry's parentage. But it might have remained a hypothesis if Freilich had not found a significant cemetery discrepancy. Harry, his wife, and two children are buried in one Philadelphia cemetery. But their first (stillborn) son is buried elsewhere -- in the same lot as Harry's hypothetical parents.

Read the whole thing, including an elegant two-page table of joint locations of various family members between 1850 and 1906 that support the connection.




Kay Haviland Freilich, "A Family for Harry Harding of Philadelphia," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (March 2014): 11-20.

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with shared addresses in Philadelphia," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Are you ready to go for a credential?

The hardest question about seeking certification (through BCG) or accreditation (through ICAPGen) is the very first one: Am I ready?

Self-evaluation is tough at the best of times, and no measure of readiness is foolproof. So I will suggest several independent measures, from various sources. Each of them has pitfalls, but if they all point the same way, then it's probably time to postpone your procrastination and get into the process. (My examples are BCG-based because that's my experience.)

Measure #1 (from Elissa Scalise Powell): If you've done serious genealogy two or three times a week for seven to ten years, you may be ready. This turns out to be close to the idea of 10,000 hours of practice needed to gain mastery in cognitively demanding fields, popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers.

Pitfall of this measure: have you really had ten years of experience or only one year's experience ten times over? One way to overcome the pitfall: if you spent your ten years of experience without dealing with any land or probate records, subtract at least five years.

Measure #2: If you can pass the weighted quiz questions on the BCG web site, you may be ready.  

Pitfall: Sometimes we kid ourselves when taking quizzes of this sort.

Measure #3: The easier you find it to read and understand NGSQ articles, the more likely you are to be ready -- especially if you started out not understanding them at all.  

Pitfall: Reading is not always the same as doing.

Measure #4: If you have published in a peer-reviewed journal, you may well be ready.

Pitfall: Sometimes you're not -- especially if you make the plausible but false assumption that an article is the same exact kind of job as the required portfolio materials.

Measure #5: If you cannot stay awake during a lecture by Elizabeth Shown Mills or Thomas W. Jones, then you're definitely not ready. [No pitfall here.]

Measure #6: If everybody you know says you're really good at genealogy, then you might be ready.

Pitfall: The people you know may be extremely polite. Or they may be telling the truth, but have no idea what serious genealogy involves. As in chess, there are more levels of expertise than we can easily imagine.

If you find most of these measures are favorable, then I say go ahead. There is additional generic help available once you are "on the clock."

Don't forget -- some of us learn by doing (which is a polite way of saying that we learned to swim by jumping into the deep end of the pool). As a result, some of us had to go through the process twice in order to succeed. There are worse fates, such as never trying . . . and hence never knowing whether you really had what it takes.



Harold Henderson, "Are you ready to go for a credential?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

IGHR Samford Day Three

The homework for Course Five is mounting up. Highlights of Wednesday:

Elissa Powell introduced us to the existence of the website MagCloud.com, for self-publishing your own printed magazine.

You cannot be considered a genealogy geek unless you know the meaning of the superscript "b-2" when used as a generation indicator.

DuPage County has a longer reach than you think

The other day I looked up the program for the February 23 annual meeting of the DuPage County (Illinois) Genealogical Society, and got a pleasant surprise. (FYI if you're not from Illinois: DuPage is Chicago's biggest suburban county.)

The society is bringing in speakers that should attract genealogists with no ancestral ties to the county at all, such as yours truly. They include Elissa Scalise Powell, CG, of western Pennsylvania; Jana Sloan Broglin, CG, of Ohio; and Michael John Neill (whose blog made me give this a second look; if you don't recognize his name, you really have not been paying attention). I like the idea of bringing in folks from "upstream" states, where our research will often take us, whether we approve or not!

Information here on the one-day event will be in St. Charles. (It's not too late -- see you there?)

DPCGS president Jeffrey Bockman will also give an overview of using maps in genealogical research; he got some publicity last month in the local Naperville Sun.