Monday, December 31, 2007

Kendrick Census Record Break-Through

I finally found some Kendrick census records. The lack of documentation has been really frustrating, because I knew these people had lived in Murray County, but I simply couldn't find them. Bad spelling and fancy handwriting were the sources of my problems.

1860 - the secret is to search on "Kindrick." I found Thomas, Mahalia, and Francis Marion, as well as some children of whom I had been unaware.

1880 - "Kindrich" is the census-taker's version of the surname this year. I found Thomas and Mahalia living in Francis Marion's household, along with Barbara and France and, again, new children's names.

1900 - this one was tricky, because Ancestry had transcribed Francis M as Thomas. Don't ask me how that mistake was made, but the name is very clearly Francis M if one zooms the census image to 50%. The census taker apparently had many difficulties, because there was a lot of marking out and writing over throughout the whole page. I'm also suspicious of some of his details, such as number of children belonging to the mother and family birthplaces. I've rated this source as a "2," instead of a "3" because of these detail questions.

1910 - Fancy handwriting and OCR software do not get on well together. The census-taker had beautiful, loopy handwriting, such that the OCR software interpreted Francis M Kindrick as Rancis M Kindrickf. Barbara and two of the sons are also in the "Kindrickf" household.

While I didn't find any new ancestors, I feel like I definitely filled in some pieces of the puzzle with these finds.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Interview with a Grandmother

The Oral History Project is now underway. I bought the toys yesterday, namely a digital voice recorder and speech recognition software. Today I visited my grandmother and, with a little prompting, got her started down the reminiscence road. She talked for about an hour and a half and I got some great stories.

For example, her brother Worth was killed as a young man. I had always known this, but never really knew what happened. It turns out that he was stabbed by his uncle in a fit of jealousy.

I also found out that my great-grandfather had worked as a streetcar driver in Birmingham. I didn't even know he had lived in Birmingham. I can place him in Georgia during each census year, so that just goes to show the limitations of relying on census data for the places that a person lived.

I'll be writing up these stories and others and posting them on the website after I learn how to use the Dragon software to transcribe my recordings. I also hope to edit the recordings and come up with some usable audio files.

Friday, December 28, 2007

The Oral History Project

I've decided to start an oral history project and I would encourage you to do the same. Our older relatives have priceless memories and it is not too soon to start collecting them.

My maternal grandfather was a gifted, natural storyteller. He could spin a beautifully-structured tale with such vivid details that his listeners were riveted. I always wanted to capture his stories on paper or tape, but I thought I had plenty of time. He passed away almost three years ago, but he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease about 10 years ago. By the time I realized it was too late, well, it was way too late. I will always regret that I waited.

My maternal grandmother has recently been diagnosed with this same, horrible disease. However, she is currently losing only the day-to-day details; I think there is still time to capture her memories of childhood, growing up, her parents and grandparents, young adulthood, etc. I usually visit her on Sundays, so I plan to start documenting these memories.

With today's technology, I can record our conversations, download them to my computer, and I will have audio files as well as transcriptions and source notes for narrative stories. I have found some great resources for interview questions to prompt her memory.

In addition to interviewing my granny, I plan to interview both my paternal grandparents, my parents, and possibly other family members. This is a rich source of data that will add color and depth to my genealogy research. After all, it's not just about dates and names, it's about people and their lives.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Spring Place Cemetery

It was a nice day today, so I made a visit to Spring Place Cemetery. It had been many, many years since I had been to this cemetery. I was searching for four headstones, in particular, but had hopes of finding a few more that might belong to my ancestors. I spent about an hour there and wandered over the whole cemetery. Ironically enough, the one headstone I remembered and that I was seeking, was the last one I found.

The markers that I found were for Monteville Roberts and his wife, Mariah Langston, and their son Martin LaFayette Roberts and his wife, Rosie Ellis. Both of the Roberts' men had Mason symbols on their headstones and both of the wives' headstones had Eastern Star symbols.

I knew that many of my male relatives were Masons and that many of the women were in the Eastern Star. I know a bit about the Masons, but I plan on researching Eastern Star. Look for a post sometime soon.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Kendrick Research

I reviewed all the indexed items for "Kendrick" in Murray County Heritage today. It was at times frustrating and at other times exhilerating. Many of the Kendrick references had only initials instead of first names. That's great if you already know who the people are, but if you don't, it's not helpful at all. Many of the male Kendricks had similar initials (i.e. lots of first names that started with F), so I couldn't tell if the person referenced was one of my ancestors or not. As a case in point, there is reference to a store owned by F. T Kendrick in Cisco. This may be my great-grandfather. I know that my grandfather owned a store in Ramhurst when my dad was little, but I've never heard anything my great-grandfather having a store. My mother may be able to help with these questions.

I did find one really good section. (Isn't that always the way? You search and search and find nothing; just when you are ready to give up, you hit the mother lode. That's part of what makes genealogy fun.) This section confirmed that my 3x great-grandparents, Thomas Kendrick and Mahalia Lawson were married in Polk County, Tennessee and identified a burial place of Hopewell Cemetery. I don't know where this cemetery is, but when I locate it, I'll add it to my list of places to visit when the weather warms back up. It also confirmed the names of their children for me.

The Kendrick's are a big brick wall for me, so I would say that is not a bad day's work.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

A Genealogy-Related Christmas Present

For a couple of years, I've put the word out that I would like to have a copy of Murray County Heritage as a Christmas present. No one took the bait, so my parents got me a copy this year. This book was compiled by the Murray County History Committee of the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society in 1987. I was pleased to see that it is now in its sixth printing.

As with most county histories, this book includes narratives related to the towns and communities within the county, family histories, and other narratives of interest. It also includes a number of appendices including the 1834 Georgia census, land lottery records, federal census records, Civil War militia, Civil War soldiers (including references to the various companies), slave schedules, and more.

I have to say, compared to some other county histories that I have seen, this one is well organized and a very good source of information. I can't wait to start reading. If you are interested in a copy of your own, contact the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society.

Monday, December 24, 2007

To Do List

One of the challenges I face when working on a new project is that I want everything completed right now. For some reason, I'm fine with the genealogy research being long-term, but I become overwhelmed with all the things I want to do on the website. It would be easy for me to focus all my short-term time and attention on the website and ignore the research, but I don't really want to do that.

So, I decided to make a to-do list and post it here. Sort of a "coming attractions" trailer. I may add this as a sidebar list.

  • Military page, detailing veterans of the American Revolution, Civil War, other American wars, etc.
  • DAR-approved lineage proofs of all American Revolution ancestors.
  • Unite the blog and the website, possibly through a content management system like Joomla or postNuke.
  • Possibly add a wiki.
  • Add Google Maps for places and cemeteries.
  • Add a website search feature, possibly Google search.
  • Possibly add charts like those on the Roy-Reyes site.
  • Possibly add some marriage charts for common counties, like this.
  • Customize the photo in the header bar.
  • Continue customizing the home page. In fact, I need to really think about the home page, because I'm not sure if the current layout is effective in drawing people into the site. Here is an example of another TNG site that I really like. This is not one of the standard TNG templates and, frankly, may be beyond my meager php abilities, but I can probably manage to replicate a few of the elements that I like.

That's ten things, which will surely keep me busy for weeks, if not months, to come.

And now, since it's 10 pm on Christmas Eve, I think I'll check out where Santa is on his journey.

Merry Christmas to all!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

What's New Last Week

Last week was fruitful in the discovery of media to add to my genealogy site, http://www.toniasroots.net/. I got some great old photographs from my grandmother, including a photo of her father at his still, a photo that includes her parents when they were courting, and a photo of her brother.

I also found a court document at the Maryland State Archives that references Sutton Quinney, my 7x great-grandfather. The document is dated 1700-1701.

I also found a good website - http://www.findagrave.com/. Users can add cemetery records, including headstone photographs. The website is searchable. I did a quick search by state and county, then scanned through some cemetery names that I recognized. I found three headstone photos of my ancestors - Elizabeth Tucker Ellis, Churchwell Branch Tucker, and Rosamund Maude McKinney Tucker.

On the minus side, I ran into a glitch with my new genealogy website program, TNG. I had added some information to Ancestry, so I wanted to import a new gedcom into TNG. Big mistake! Apparently there is a well-known glitch with Family Tree Maker, and I'm assuming it also applies to Ancestry, because the results were the same. Individuals were tied to unrelated persons over and over again. The database is a complete mess. The clean-up process is tedious, because there is no easy way to identify the corrupted records. I'm going through family by family to clean it up. If you see something crazy, like a child born 100 years before the parents, please let me know.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Welcome to Tonia's Roots

The purpose of this blog is to be a companion to my genealogy website, http://www.toniasroots.net/. It will be a narrative record of my journey in searching for and documenting my ancestry. The genealogy website is a pedigree study of my ancestors and includes a wide range of information including surnames, lineage, photos, histories, and much more. Please check out both. I am pleased to share any information that I have that may further your own research. If you see errors or omissions, please contact me. Email admin at toniasroots.net.

A little about my background in genealogy. . .my mother has been researching the family for years. I did some work several years ago, but fell out of the habit for a number of reasons. A few months ago at a family reunion, the topic came up and the person mentioned Ancestry.com. I had used Genealogy.com years before, so I was curious to see what had changed in online genealogy research.

Wow. It was like a whole new world. I signed up for Ancestry's free trial period, and after only a few days, I was hooked. It's a great tool, not only for research, but also as a repository for personal information. However, there is a fee. . .

During my research, I found so many personal genealogical websites with great information - not only people and pedigrees, but also stories, photos (including one of my great-grandmother!), cemeteries, and more. Because I found so much through the generous sharing of others, I wanted to give something back. And that's where Tonia's Roots started.

I hope to keep both the website and the blog updated frequently. Check back often and I hope you'll drop me a comment to say hello, ask a question, or share some insight.

Tonia