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.]

How to research

Yesterday at Allen County, I found a published cemetery reading. In order to take it home, I photocopied the page it was on, the earlier page that identified the cemetery, two earlier pages that located the cemetery in a map of the township, and the title page of the book. If the authors had written an introduction explaining how they conducted their project, I could have made six copies instead of just one.

Granted, it's not the best evidence -- that would be a visit to the original record (the grave marker or sexton's list) or a photo on Find A Grave or other similar collaborative site. But in order to know about the information I did have, I really did need all those copies. No normal person would remember a year later exactly where that single page came from.

Of course, that specific procedure of photocopying is 20th-century stuff. But the same principles apply when I pull a microfilm or whisk over to check an original census page on Ancestry or an Ohio probate on FamilySearch. Unless I know where the information came from, it's not all that valuable.

Taking the time to image or write down the particulars of the source before opening it up is the best way to research -- in any century.


Harold Henderson, "How to research," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 22 November 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Digging graves

The following comparison was inspired by Dick Eastman's recent notice that BillionGraves has crossed the 5 million entries mark. A quick check of Find A Grave found that it has more than 116 million entries. How does that play out in actual searches?

I searched for my wife's ancestor Lewis Bassett. Find A Grave returned 38 people of that name. BillionGraves returned 3,102, most of whom were named something else, such as Lucy Bassett. (Users of certain commercial services will have experienced this same "search inflation.") With "exact match" turned on, BillionGraves returned zero for this search.

I searched for my ancestor William Thrall. Find A Grave returned 48 people of that name. BillionGraves returned 206, many of whom were named something else. With "exact match" turned on, BillionGraves returned six men for this search.

Finally, I searched Jane Smith. Find A Grave found 3550 of that name. BillionGraves, whose search engine in general ran much more slowly, produced "error" messages.

So I searched for Jane Smith in Illinois. Find A Grave found 128. BillionGraves found 945, most of whom were Smiths with other given names than Jane. With "exact match" turned on, BillionGraves found two women in Illinois. One them, a Jane Smith who died in Woodside (Sangamon County) in 1825, was not on Find A Grave.

I was playing hooky anyway, so these are the only searches I did.

When I need a global search, I'll use both services, while recognizing that my chances of finding a potentially relevant connection are very much better on the older one. And, once in the right county, I'll check for local resources, both on line and in print.




Photo credit: Furzepig Festival's photostream on Flickr.com, http://www.flickr.com/photos/furzepig/2688035, per Creative Commons.

Harold Henderson, "Digging graves," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 September 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Winter 2009 Illinois State Quarterly

Three feature articles stand out in the current issue of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly:

* Sheryl Trudgian Jones tells the story behind the story of the Lillian Trudgian diaries of Galena, Illinois, now playing on her blog, "Leaves on the Trudgian Tree."

* Eric Willey enumerates the sources for Illinois divorce records from 1809 to 1961. Believe it or not, there are some statewide indexes!

* David C. Bailey, Sr., gives the first part of Union Civil War burials in Scott County.

Montgomery County Illinois on line in a big way

The Historical Society of Montgomery County's digital archive holds tons of information that would be even better with a bit more context:

* searchable index of 27,044 death certificates 1877-1950, with a link to the form for requesting actual copies from the County Clerk/Recorder.

* searchable index of 6,946 first land purchases, mid-1800s; helpful information on how to read these descriptions is at the Illinois State Archives' web site, from which at least some of the information appears to come.

* vintage photos, biographies, and historical tidbits for 17 towns from Butler to Witt.

* searchable list of 10,214 veterans with DD 214 discharge forms registered with the county clerk/recorder, going back to World War I.

* searchable index of 22,737 obituaries 1980-2008 from two local newspapers, as scrapbooked by society members.

* names and detailed location information for 125 cemeteries.

And that's just on the research tab! If you don't lose track of the time perusing this site, your ancestors sadly must not have passed this way.

Hat tip to Cyndi's List What's New.

Midwestern News from New England

Valerie Beaudrault of the New England Historic Genealogical Society keeps on finding Midwestern research resources in NEHGS's eNews:

One is Worthington Memory, an "online scrapbook of Worthington history" -- so far, 1373 items from 1803 to the present from this Franklin County town. In the cemeteries database, you can choose to search Flint Road, St. John's Episcopal Church, or Union cemeteries individually or all together. The Worthington News index so far covers one full year 1812-1813, and nothing more until 1925-1942, 1950-1956, and more recent years. A link to the Worthington Historical Society leads to some information (and the chance to order more) on estate records 1803-1850, Scioto Company members and descendants, and genealogical gleanings from property records.

Another is from Hartford, Michigan. Under the title "Pearls from the Past" are many photographs, a scattering of obituaries from 1918 to the present, transcriptions of three local histories, and accounts of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, who have survived and persisted in the area.

Boone County Indiana genealogy

Boone County is what takes up most of the distance as you drive from Lafayette to Indianapolis on I-65 -- county seat Lebanon. The genealogy society there has a new web site (still under construction, the best part is a complete list of cemeteries in the county along with which library if any has records thereof). They also have a new blog -- the second entry links to an up-to-date article about managing research. (Hat tip to Cyndi's List.)

A few days ago we had notice of the disbanding of the Sangamon County, Illinois, Genealogical Society, it's good to see one working to adapt. Being able to research and plan research on line shouldn't be the end of collaboration, but it's got to mean doing things in new ways.

Crossing state lines in South Bend

The October issue of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society's Quarterly Newsletter features a history of the House of David 20th-century religious cult located in Benton Harbor, Berrien County, Michigan, compiled by Ken Reising. Other material:

"Minutes of the September 29, 2008, Members Meeting," including a summary of Matt Baumgartner's talk on Oliver Cromwell.

"Tombstones Recovered" -- an account of the rescue of five tombstones found in the manure pit of a 19th-century barn in Union Township in 2005 and since restored and reset in Lakeville Cemetery.

"List of Telephone Subscribers" from the 18 November 1896 issue of the South Bend Daily Times. The South Bend Telephone Company boasted nearly 600 patrons.

"Newspaper Tidbits" by Richard Berkheiser, drawn from the South Bend Tribune of 29 April 1920.

"1910 Index of Heads of Households for River Park, Indiana," now part of South Bend -- continued from the July issue.

The society's website now hosts the Michiana Genealogical Index, a database of over 900,000 Michiana surnames, mostly from vital records, cemeteries, and newspapers, contributed by Norbert Cramer of St. Joseph, Michigan. Users who want to get the most out of the database should not stop at the overall surname search form, but proceed to the particular event search form in order to get some indication of the original source.

Ohio Genealogy News spring issue

OGS always has a lot going on:

"Ohio, the Gateway to the West: Genealogy Resources at the Columbus Metropolitan Library," by Russ Pollitt

"Ohio Death Certificate Images Online, 1908-1953," by Deb Cyprych

"2009 OGS Conference Call for Papers"

"Cemetery Chronicles," by Lolita (Thayer) Guthrie

"More Accessible Resources in the Cincinnati Public Library's Genealogy Department," by Patrician Van Skaik -- including an RSS feed, the River History Collection, "the leading African American research collection in the nation," and digitized Cincinnati city directories for many of the years 1819-1866.

Buffalo County, Wisconsin

The New England Historic and Genealogical Society's e-news highlights the Buffalo County Historical Society, whose online resources are strong on cemeteries and obituaries. Careful researchers will need to go beyond these. Here's one person buried in Cascade Cemetery:

Benjamin, Arthur, b: 1887, d:1963, Grey stone. He farmed in Cascade Valley.
Married to Cecil Best. They had 2 sons. He had many town offices, was one
of the founders of Nelson Telephone Coop, and sold Insurance. Moved to
Durand died there at home.

This is great, but it's not as great as it could easily have been. Some good person added biographical information beyond what was inscribed on the gravestone, and now those of us "from away" don't know which information came from where. And for the part that obviously wasn't on the stone, we have no idea where it came from, or how reliable it might be.

Cemetery records in Putnam County, Indiana, and Franklin County, Ohio

Genealogy Roots Blog strikes again, with updates and additions to its list of online indexes to death records of various kinds. For the Midwest, we have readings of cemeteries in Putnam County, Indiana (not complete but searchable across cemeteries, which is great), and readings and some photographs of Obetz Cemetery (AKA Zion's Lutheran) in Hamilton Township, Franklin County, Ohio. Enjoy -- and check the original one way or another if you want to prove anything!