Week 2 (April 10-16 2015)

This week's assignment: 1) Setting Research Goals
2) Self interview
3) Conducting Family Interviews

1) Setting Research Goals
The purpose of participating in the Do-Over is to better focus on my genealogy research to ensure that the data entered in my Rootsmagic database is accurate. But how to go about doing that?

I feel that I have been doing that from the beginning of my genealogy research. I've always been suspicious of data posted by others online, but I'm willing to read and use as starting points for me to research and verify to my satisfaction that the information is correct - or not. On a lark one evening, I did an internet research (can't remember which search engine, but it was pre-Google...yes it was that long ago!). Low and behold, one of the hits was for someone's tree on Rootsweb that listed my grandfather's parents (John Schell and Mary Deadman) and going back several generations to the ancestor that had emigrated from "Germany". Boy was I surprised that several generations had apparently spent time in the Herkimer New York area. I have travelled through that area enroute to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown New York. Little did I know I was travelling through areas that my ancestors had walked. Maybe that's why I often felt a strange sensation? I just thought it was the steep hills and altitute change.

BUT wait! How accurate would this tree be? This tree did list John and Mary having a son George (my grandfather). But the spouse listed for this George was not my grandmother. I was a teenager when my grandfather died and an adult when my grandmother died. I never ever heard that George had a wife prior to my grandmother. And the dates listed in this online tree for their marriage and life spans wouldn't have corresponded to my grandmother being Wife 2.

So obviously something was wrong in the posted tree. Trying to be polite, I sent off an email to the woman who posted the tree asking where she had got the information for George and explained my connection. Her tree also had a middle name (Agnes) for Mary Deadman. My family information never had a middle name for her, but that didn't mean that she had one. I don't remember ever getting a response from her, but I monitored her online postings. She did modify her tree to reflect the information I provided, so at least I was able to correct an error from being copied by many others down the road.

As I began my genealogy research, there were few records available online, so I continued to name gather and tried to prove as best as possible. Working at a university library, which is a depository for the Canadian government, I did have access to documents like transcriptions of early Canadian marriage records as well as microfilm of the Canadian census. At least the marriage records had indexes, but one needed to know which District or county to look in (checked them all to be on the safe side). The microfilm was more challenging. It took me awhile before I discovered that reels for parts of Simcoe County were not missing,the were enumerated as Cardwell (the historical district pre-Confederation continued to be used for decades). But it was still time consuming loading, scrolling and trying to read the images as each page need to be checked as there was no index. The eyes could only take so much at a time.

LDS sold disks of the 1881 census, which I bought and used extensively. They never did expand to other years, but it would have gotten quite expensive and it was still only a transcription. I found it hard to believe that my Allen great-grandparents were both born in Quebec. When I saw an image of that census, the location had been entered as 'O' for Ontario. But the style of handwriting had a curl on the 'O' which the transcriber misread as a 'Q'.

I was overjoyed when Ancestry created a Canadian site. But even then not all of the Canadian census had been digitized, but it did speed up the research. When I had time, I would check census records for the years not yet available on Ancestry or Library and Archives Canada, but as time past, Ancestry has all of the Canadian census images available, and even better, indexed. Granted one needs to be very creative with names to find the ancestor in the index, but that just gives me more purpose to focus. I continue to prefer to use Ancestry, but if I have trouble locating someone on Ancestry, I'll search the FamilySearch.org records to see if their transcribers did a better job. Then 'Cluster Researching' will kick in and I'll search for neighbours on Ancestry to locate the image with my mistranscribed ancestry. In some cases it has been mystifying how the transriber came up with the spelling used in the index. Of course, that requires me to post a correction for the name.

There have been times that the search on FamilySearch hasn't unearthed the ancestor. If the year in question was a year transcribed by Automated Genealogy, I will search there for their transcription. Most of the transcriptions were done by individuals, involved in genealogy research, knowledgeable in the community covered by the records as opposed to the outsourcing done by Ancestry. Still not 100% accurate, but very helpful.

With the Do-Over, I haven't really had to "set my research goals" as I continue with the same goal: accurate, verified, data. It is now easier as images for all of the Canadian censuses are now online at Ancestry. Ancestry does continue to update the Ontario birth, marriage and death records each year when the Ontario Archives releases another year. Given the number of twigs in my trees were in Ontario during the years covered by Ancestry records, searching from the comfort of my home has kept me busy enough. So I have yet had to make the time for a research trip to a physical repository. Some day.

For the purposes of the Do-Over, my Research goal: Search anew all twigs on Ancestry, etc to check 'official' records (birth, marrige, death, census, directories, voter lists, cemetery photo) available online. Check all available for an individual before moving on to the next individual. In the Do-Over database, colour individual once all possible online records have been checked.

2) Self interview

Wrote a biography and included childhood memories.

Did not create a new Family Group Sheet. Accepted the one generated by Rootsmagic from data recorded in my database.

3) Conducting Family Interviews

Only a few aunts still living, as well as my mother and at least two of my aunts are suffering from dementia. Over the years, I have had many discussions of life with my mother, so I wrote a biography of my mother based on information she has provided throughout my life.

Did not create a new Family Group Sheet. Accepted the one generated by Rootsmagic from data recorded in my database.

Conclusion

Seeing some posts from people on the various genealogy related Facebook groups, I've been doing many things "right" from the beginning.

There are some individuals who refuse to enter anything into their database until they have researched the hell out of the individual, using extensive Research Logs, etc to focus on the individual. I feel comfortable entering the individual into my database and with that individual's record open in Rootsmagic, search Ancestry, etc for all the pertinent information before moving on to the next individual. I try to avoid following the BSOs, unless it involves someone connected to the person I'm currently focusing on (ie a google search for an individual references the death of a daughter-in-law). As information comes up regarding children, enter them and check all pertinent information, etc. As I feel all sources have been checked, I colour code that individual and move on to a sibling and eventually up a generation. If important information cannot be located at this point in time, I will make an entry in the To-Do List of Rootsmagic.

Eventually, these individuals will be revisited, either by Reports or GenSmarts (or any other software I may obtain)to see what pertinent information is missing and check new sources, or previous source which may have been updated since my original search.