Time for a Break.

It is time for a break so I won’t be posting to the blog for the month of October, unless there is something absolutely groundbreaking or so important it cannot wait. (Can you believe it is already October!?)

A couple months ago I posted how I am going to split up my genealogy time between the different lines I am researching, you can read that post here; Research Prioritization and Focus.

So, this is the beginning of a new quarter so I am making the switch from my maternal lines; Pakledinaz and Lucas, to my wife’s lines; Rogers, Capen, Nisgoda. My wife’s lines have, by far, been the most neglected in our research so I need to take some time to gather what information I have and ensure it is all updated in our database, Legacy Family Tree and everything is documented and cited correctly. As I’m doing this, I need to determine my next steps, develop my research plans, and then execute on those plans. Somehow I am thinking that it may take the whole quarter just to do this stuff.

Along with that, I have some loose ends on the Pakledinaz and Lucas lines to tie up before I can officially break from that line. I have a couple research logs that I have been following and I want to make sure they are tidied up and everything is documented correctly so when I pick up with this line in several months, I have a clean transfer and I don’t end up duplicating research. Plus, I still have some information that I’ve found or received and have not entered into the database yet. I don’t want to leave it lying around and then in a couple months it is forgotten or buried within papers of another line – mistakes I’ve made in the past and do not want to repeat.

Those are the excuses I have for taking a break from the blog for the month of October and I am sticking with them. I will be back on the first of November. Don’t forget that it is the first of the month so back up that data.

Have you taken a break from your blog to tidy up your research? How did that work out for you?

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris

Tuesday’s Tip–Is My Source Lying to Me?

I am going to give two tips for this post and then offer a ‘what if?’ case study from one of my records.

1. Don’t always trust your sources at first glance especially secondary sources. Try and have at least two or more separate sources which tell you the same information. Of course, there are exceptions to this but I believe they are few and far between.

2. Get in touch with older or distant family members who knew the ancestor you are researching. Of course, this is not always possible depending on how far back you are researching. For instance, the record I’ll talk about below if for my great grandmother who passed before I was born. Her daughter, my grandmother, passed before I started researching so I can’t talk with her either. My mother knew her grandmother but didn’t know enough about her to answer questions that I had. However, when I started researching I still had great aunts, my grandmother’s sisters that I could contact. They have been a great help with stories and information that I just can’t get anywhere else.

So, if you don’t read anything else in this post, you have the two tips that I believe are priceless when researching your family history. For the rest of this post, I’m going to describe how those two tips combine to help piece together my great grandmother’s arrival in the United States and what could have happened if I did not follow these tips.

For the rest of this post I am going to be using the ship manifest which shows my great grandmothers arrival in the United States. You can read my initial post about that manifest here: Ship's Manifest. More specifically, I’ll be talking about the information given in the final destination questions on the manifest, shown in the picture below.

 

Looking at the final destination questions of the manifest it tells me that Anna was going to join her cousin Jakol Dorjak in Trenton, NJ. If I knew nothing else about Anna and where she was at different times after she arrived in the United States and I did not follow the tips I gave above, I would probably start a search for her in Trenton, NJ. She arrived in August of 1909, so I would start with the 1910 Census in Trenton. I would not only search for her but also the cousin, Jakol Dorjak. Before I start searching, I want to know this Dorjak name. I look through the family book of Anna’s home village and I cannot find a Dorjak so I suspect the spelling is a little off. I find a similar name, Doriath. I search through the names and I can find a Jacob Doriath who is Anna’s cousin. I also find Franz Doriath who I suspect is the Franz Darjack traveling with Anna. The information on age and family matches what is said about him on the manifest. He has a brother, Josef, who he says he is going to join and their father is Josef, the closing living relative in country of origin. So, I’m pretty sure the Dorjak/Darjak names on the manifest are actually Doriath. I cannot find any Doriath or variant of it living in Trenton, NJ in the 1910 census so I expand the search to surrounding areas and other sources like city directories, etc… I’ll keep searching and expanding my search to maybe even trying to find the other Doriath lines hoping to find where Anna settled. As you can see this search could go on and on but I am not going to find Anna in New Jersey or the surrounding areas. Of course, I did not do all this searching for Anna because I followed my own advice above and checked different sources and I asked family members.

At the time I found the manifest I already knew that Anna was married and living in Detroit in 1914, I had a copy of my grandmother’s baptism record which showed this. Between 1909 and 1914 I had no idea where Anna was, where she met her husband or where she had her first two children. I had not found them in any census yet.

So, with the manifest and my grandmother’s baptism records it looked like Anna immigrated to Trenton, NJ in 1909. Then, in December of 1914 she gave birth to my grandmother. Everything in between was a mystery. This is pretty much all I knew about Anna at the time. If I had not followed my advice above and tried to contact family for information, I would have spent many countless hours searching as I described above. I did start to search in the Trenton area but at the same time I also contacted family, my great aunts to be exact, to see if there were any family stories about my great grandmother’s immigration. I was told that Anna immigrated with another family where she was going to tutor their children in English for room and board. They weren’t sure where she was lived for this but they also said that they believed Anna and John (their parents) met at Anna’s brother’s house, Adam Hinterhauser. But again, they didn’t know where this was. However, I had a knew clue to follow and a connection that I could make. I had found an Adam Hinterhauser in a ship’s manifest but didn’t know who this was and if there was any connection to Anna. Now I could make the connection that this could be Anna’s brother. In the manifest Adam said that his final destination was Youngstown, Ohio. To not drag this on too much longer, this is the final connection that put the pieces together. I found Anna and John in Youngstown, Ohio in the 1910 census, they were married. In fact, they were married in January of that year as I found out by writing to the Archdiocese of Youngstown and asking if they had a record of a marriage between Anna Hinterhauser and John Pakledinaz. They were very helpful, found the record of their marriage on 15 January 1910, and even sent me a copy of the marriage certificate.

With all this information, I believe that Anna’s final destination was probably Youngstown, Ohio where her brother already lived and she was going to be tutoring children in English. Things changed fast after she got to Youngstown. She met her future husband and they married just 5 months after she arrived in the United States.

Can I completely disregard the information about Trenton, NJ and her cousin? No, I can’t! I have two theories about this information.

1. The information recorded about her final destination was incorrect due to recorder error or maybe misunderstandings.

2. Anna, on her way to Youngstown, was going to stop and visit with her cousin for a while before moving on to her final destination with her brother. Jacob Doriath is Anna’s cousin and there is a Jakob Doriath arriving in NY in 1908 hailing from the same village as Anna, the ages match so this could be her cousin although is final destination is listed as NY. When asked what her final destination was she could have misunderstood and told them her next destination, which was to visit her cousin.

I would tend to believe that my second is more probable since her cousin is named in the document. This is just a theory and more investigation and research may lead to more proof that is concrete but I honestly doubt I will ever know the exact travels of Anna between New York and Youngstown, Ohio.

I made many mistakes in the early days of my family history hunt. However, in those early days I also read a lot of advice on how to conduct your research and the two tips I presented here are some of what I learned back then. I am glad I listened to that advice or I would have spent many useless hours searching for Anna in all the wrong places.

What was some of the best advice you remember from your early days of your genealogy journey?

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris

Question Guy photo courtesy of: Scout

© 2014 Copyright, Christopher Shaw, All Rights Reserved.

Research Prioritization and Focus

Over the past several weeks or so I have done a little research on several different ancestor lines. I have touched on my wife’s paternal lines; Rogers and Capen.  I’ve also done a little on her maternal lines; Nisgoda and Gierig. My plan, however, was to be working on my maternal side; Pakledinaz and Lucas. Then, of course, my sister was visiting for a little while so I also dabbled down our paternal side; Shaw and Canter. My sister is actually doing the research for this side of the family but I am the one that does the writing for the blog so I have to stay in step with the information she has. That is a lot of different lines to be researching in just a few short weeks.

So, I have come to the conclusion that dabbling in every ancestral line a little bit here and a little bit there does not get anything done (duh!).  Here are the problems I have encountered over the last few weeks and I attribute every one of them to my lack of prioritization and focus:

1. My research is scattered and I am not keeping up with my logs. I have specific research goals and a plan, but with all this jumping around between lines – I lose sight of the goal.
2. I have hand-written notes about more than one ancestor on the same sheet of paper and I cannot tell which note belongs to which ancestor.
3. I have so much going on with different lines that when I have time to sit down and do some actual family history duties, I do not know where to start. And on more than one occasion this has led to nothing actually getting done.
4. Confusion sets in when I am thinking or talking about a certain ancestor – I have gotten two ancestors in completely different lines mixed up with one another.
5. I run into the same issue when I sit down and hammer out some blog post ideas or the actual posts. I have so much running through my mind with the different lines that I do not know what to post about next – so nothing gets posted.

I know I have to get better at how I use my time for each line or I am just going to keep spinning my wheels and will not get any serious research done. I have actually been thinking about this for the last week or so with several different ideas flashing through my brain. However, I think what makes sense me and allows research and focus time with all our family lines within a given year is to break my time quarterly, like this:

January – March = Shaw/Canter (my paternal side)
April – June = Nisgoda/Gierig (wife’s maternal side)
July – September = Lucas/Pakledinaz (my maternal side)
October – December = Rogers/Capen (wife’s paternal side)

This does not mean that I will ignore the other lines if it is not their quarter. I will still be open for new leads or new contacts but I may not act on them right away. For instance, this quarter is Pakledinaz/Lucas, if I come along some information on Capen, I will take note of that information in OneNote (my note taking software) so it is saved for when the Capen quarter comes up. I cannot think of any lead or piece of information that would be so time-sensitive that I would have to drop everything and pursue it. If a cousin or other researcher contacts me I am not going to ignore them. This is the only scenario that I can think of that may make me stop everything and focus, for a short period of time, on another line.

Have you found yourself in the same boat? How do you divide your time between the different ancestral lines that you research?

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Photo, Confusion by Zielanella, courtesy of Funny Images on Flickr.

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© 2014 copyright, Christopher Shaw

Footnotes and Source Citations

I recently read a post on one of the history blogs that I follow which talks about the importance of footnotes in historical work. The author is very passionate about using footnotes and having footnotes in the works that he chooses to read. You can read that post here; For Love of the Footnote at the Journal of the American Revolution.

I completely agree with the author. I have also put down books where footnotes or endnotes were not included. Reading this got me thinking that maybe my blog posts should contain more footnotes and source identification. That goes against what I felt in the past.

When I started blogging I thought about using footnotes mainly for source citations but opted against it to try and keep posts shorter and maybe a little less technical or academic. I wanted to keep my posts and the blog clean and uncluttered, at least as much as possible. I thought that if someone wants to know where I got my information, they can just ask. I would be happy to provide the information.

However, I think I may be changing my mind, at least a little. There are two sides to this, at least when it comes to my blogging goals and expectations.

1. I want to keep posts fairly short as not to overwhelm readers or potential readers with gobs of information. Let's face it, if you look at a blog post and it keeps going on-and-on, don't you skip over it and move on to the next one. I know I do. One of my main purposes for the blog is to present findings to family and maybe attract some family that I don't know about yet. Keeping the posts short and to-the-point of what I found is probably what most family want, the meaty stuff.
2. As a researcher, I want to make sure that what I put out there is credible. I want readers to know where I got my information so they can go look for themselves. If they can do that, maybe they'll see something that I didn't or interpret the information differently. I also want to show all the evidence that I use to make my conclusions, which, I hope, adds more credibility to my content.

I think I'm going to try a few things different in future posts so I can include both my conclusions (the meaty stuff) and also how I reached those conclusions (the proof or technical, academic stuff).

I am going to do two different posts for each record or piece of evidence. The first will be the meaty and to-the-point post which focuses just on what the record is and what it tells me about my family. This, I believe, will be more appealing to family who just want to know about our history.

I'll make a second post which will cover my analysis of the information and how I came to the conclusions I made. This will be a format more in-line with the Genealogy Proof Standard. This will include the footnotes and citations of all the information I used to reach my conclusion. This is the more academic approach and allows readers to dive deeper into what I researched, if they choose.

I am going to be playing with format for these two posts over the next several weeks or even months. I need to see what works best so there will probably be a lot of tweaking. My hope is that I can come to a happy medium between providing the basic down-and-dirty information that some want and also the academic technical analysis that proper research requires.

What do you think of my idea or how do you think we should approach source citations in our blogs?

Thanks for reading and please keep diggin' for that family.

Chris

Old Country Church Records–Reading them.

Yesterday, I posted about the birth/baptism record of my great grandfather, John Pakledinaz, and how I have concluded that it is, indeed, the correct record. Today is a follow-up to that post because I wanted to give a more detailed evaluation of the record collection and also give some tips on how I deciphered the contents.

The record collection where I found my great grandfather is the Croatia, Church Books, 1516-1994, specifically the Roman Catholic, Sotin, Births, Marriages, Deaths 1857-1885, filmed and then digitized by the LDS. This particular collection consists of 399 images and I have combed through about 180 of them so far (all of the Baptisms). The records are in great overall condition considering the originals were over 100 years old when they were filmed. I would say that 90% of the pages in the images are very legible. The digitized version is far superior, in my opinion, to the microfilm version. They are clear and I can zoom in and out without loss of legibility and I can view them at home on my home computer, much better than viewing on a film reader.

The main difficulty with these old church records, obviously, is that they are not in English. This particular collection is in Latin and Croatian. They are in a spreadsheet type record form with headings. The headings start out in Latin and then half way through they turned into Croatian. This isn’t so bad because the English translation stayed the same; Nomen (Name – Latin) is the same as ime (Name – Croatian).

However, the entries do the same thing, they started in Latin and then, all of a sudden, whoever was doing the recording starting writing everything in Croatian. I don’t speak Latin or Croatian, so I was pretty confused several times during my search. See the examples on the left. The top record of Jacobus is from 1857. This is written in Latin – Maji (May), Legit. (Legitimate Child), and colonus (could be farmer).  The bottom record is from 1885. This is is Croatian – Ožujak (March), Zakonit (Legitimate), Zak, supr (Legal or legitimate marriage).

To make things worse, as with all handwritten records like these, the same person did not record every entry. Some entries were very neat and clear and some are just downright scribble. But, with the help of a couple different websites, I can pretty much decipher most of what is written.

The first website I went to and used much through the entire process was www.Croatia-in-English.com. They have great explanations of the church records with word and name lists that I used to make my way through the harder parts of the records. Along with that site, I also used Google translate A LOT! I never used just one site to make sure I was getting a word correct; I always used at least those two sites. I also used the Family History Research Wiki from www.FamilySearch.org just to verify some of the harder words.

Lastly, when I just could not figure anything out or at least wanted to verify what I have found, I went to the Ancestry.com message boards (for this record, the Croatian board). I did not jump to the message boards first because I feel that I need to do everything in my power to try and decipher these records on my own. The more I can do on my own, the better I’ll be doing further research in records just like these. Anyway, I just could not figure out this word that was under my Great Grandfathers Fathers name. I was almost sure it was his occupation or something like that, but I could not decipher it completely. So I posted to the board. I received two answers within hours of posting and my suspicions were confirmed, the word means farmer or peasant farmer (in Croatian).

There will always be portions of these records that you may never decipher. In the observations column of my great grandfathers record there is some writing with what is probably dates: Ex Offo?? 2/12 1905 ??? 14/11 9?9 I believe the first date is something to do with his emigration date, as it is very close to the date I found him on a ship’s manifest at Ellis Island (Aug 1905), but it doesn’t match for sure, so I will probably never know.

 
Another part of these records that threw me for a moment was there were some dates and a + sign by some of the Baptism names. I have German Genealogy also so I have reviewed many of their village books and I remembered that the + sign in those records meant death. So, do these annotations mean the same thing? I quickly picked an example and then started searching the death records of this collection and there it was, the annotation on the baptism matched a death record of the same person. However, my example almost through me off with the language again – the Baptism was written in Latin so the name was Johannes and the Death was written in Croatian, so the name was Ivan – Ivan is Croatian, Johannes is Latin, and they both can become John in English, just like in my Great Grandfather’s case.

This is enough for one post but I will continue to post about these records because I have found a lot of hope-to-be ancestors. Over the next couple months, I’ll be continuing my search into these records, making some conclusions from what I find and then I’ll post my findings.  

Do you have any suggestions on reading these old church records? If so, please leave a comment and tell everyone about it. 

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris

Documenting the Present?

Are you documenting your kid’s life as you go? I thought about this the other day during my boy’s cub scout meeting. I was a cub scout when I was about their age, but all I really remember is going to the meetings and wearing the little blue uniform. I don’t remember what rewards, badges, or accomplishments I earned during that time. I kind of wish I remembered that or had something that told me.  I don’t want my kids, 30 or 40 years from now wondering the same thing. But how should I go about doing this?

We are already keeping some of the patches, belt loops, and certificates in a box, but what if this box gets damaged or lost? I think we need a backup plan. A scrapbook would work, but those are time consuming and have the same possibility of getting lost or damaged as the box. Then it hit me! My genealogy software would work great for that. It has an event process to enter awards, honors, memberships, etc… and I’ve used these for my ancestors but have not been very good at using them for documenting the present.

The boys cub scout and our daughters girl scout advancements and awards fit nicely within this program. I can add pictures of the events and electronic versions of their certificates. This is the perfect backup plan and something I should have been doing all along.

I think we get so caught up in finding out about our ancestors that we forget to think that our descendants are going to want to know about our life. I need to get better in documenting the present accomplishments of our family to help out our future generations who may want to know what we were up to. Remember, the past of the future is the present.

What present moments are you making sure you document? Have there been some that you’ve missed?

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris

Rookie Mistake–Source Documentation

I am working on my genealogical documentation, as stated in my previous posts: A New Start and also Slow and Easy. I have run into yet another snag in my previous research and documentation, that if done correctly the first time, would have saved much time now.

The current problem is within the marriage of John and Anna Pakledinaz (my great grandparents). It is not that I do not know when or where they were married, I am confident I know this information. They were married on 15 January 1910 in Youngstown, Mahoning County, Ohio. The problem is with my documentation of this information. Here is a list of my sources/information:

1. Back in 2000, I wrote to the Youngstown Diocese to find out about St. Joseph Church and the marriage record of John and Anna. The Chancellor wrote back that same day saying the church does not exist anymore but she has the records in her office. She gave me the information I requested, here is exactly what she wrote: "There is a marriage record for Pakledinaz/Hinterhauser. Although the record is difficult to read, as it was written in cursive Latin and fountain pen, it looks like the name is Joannes(John) Hinterhausen and Annam (Ann or Anna) Pakledinaz. The witnesses were Adam Willie and P_____ (unreadable) Flagger. January 15, 1910: married by Rev. J. W. Klute. The parents' names are not listed.” NOTE: The last names are reversed for John and Anna?  
2. The day after that email traffic, the Chancellor typed and certified a Certificate of Marriage with the seal of the Chancellery and sent it to me. (I only have the certificate, I did not keep the envelop or anything else she may have sent with it). (Again the last names are reversed for John and Anna).
3. I also have another Marriage Certificate in my possession, although this is a copy. This is a certificate obtained May 7, 1951. This lists the same information but does not reverse the last names and does list the name of John and Anna's parents (Score). It also says on the lower left corner, "Vol 1 Page 133.

What I have is pretty good evidence to prove the marriage of John and Anna on 15 January 1910 in Youngstown. However, here are the questions I have when trying to put these sources into my database and my rookie mistakes when I got these sources.

For #2, I do not know if any other information came with the certificate since I did not keep the envelope. I also do not know which type of source was used to compile the information although it sounds like the church book as was mentioned in #1 above. I would much rather have a photo or copy of the original church book, then I can evaluate what was written for myself and see if the names were actually reversed in the book or was it a mistake of the Chancellor who gave me the information.

For #3, where did this information come from, where did it originate? Where did I get it from? This was obtained in 1951 and it is singed by a Reverend, so I'm guessing that it came from church records. But if this did come from the church records then why did it contain the parents names and #2 did not? I'm guessing that the vol 1 page 133 is showing the book it came from, but who has that book? If the Chancellor does then why does it not have the parents name again? Maybe this record is from the official court records for the marriage and the vol 1 page 133 refers to their documentation at the courts?

All these questions frustrate me because most could be answered if I would have kept better record of my sources. This is what I am learning:

1. It is not enough to document your source information, you must also know where that source came from. Ask the questions! I could have asked the chancellor’s office in the email chain about #1 and 2 but I did not.
2. When you receive a copy of a source from someone else, whether it be in the mail or in email or in person, keep everything that accompanied that source - the envelope , the original email and all accompanied emails. Then make a note of everything that came with it and from whom you received it so you do not question yourself later, as I am doing now.

One of the reasons that I started this project, which I call my restart, is to find instances just as I am describing. I've learned a lot over the last several years about research and documentation, stuff that I wish I knew back in 2000 when I made these mistakes. But, I was a rookie way back then and I'm sure I'm going to find a lot more just like this.

What kind of rookie mistakes have you found in your own research? Have you fixed them? Leave a comment and tell us about them so we can all learn from each others mistakes.

I hope that someone can learn from my mistake here and not repeat it. Thanks for reading and keep diggin' for that family.

Chris

Note: I have written of John and Anna a couple other times, you can read them in these posts: Surname Saturday - Paklendinaz - Pakledinac and Pakledinac- Irish? and also Ancestor Appreciation Day: My Immigrant Ancestors.

Pakledinac-IRISH? What to do with Disproven Info!

I did not think Pakledinac sounded like an Irish name? Nor does Hinterhauser sound Irish. But to my surprise, in the 1930 Census, John Pakledinaz and his wife Anna (Hinterhauser) were born in Ireland and actually spoke Irish. Hmmm??

Obviously this is a mistake. Unless the enumerator was drinking a little too much when they passed by the Pakledinaz household that day, I am chalking this information up as false probably due to a communication gap – John and Anna were not native English speakers and probably had hard accents.

I know it is false because many other sources have John from Croatia (the now term) where his native tongue was Croatian and Anna from Austria-Hungary where her native tongue was German.

So, what to do with this information?

I could basically ignore it and just act like it isn’t there; that may be the easiest thing. But, what of future researchers who get my information? If I do not mention this and basically do nothing with the information then couldn’t that discredit anything else I have. It would be like I missed it – then that would bring the question of what else have I missed.

Document and move on!

The correct thing to do, as far as I am concerned, is to document the information within your database and list your analysis as to why this is false. I use Legacy Family Tree so I use the advice I got from Geoff Rasmussen on the Legacy Family Tree website. I will add events for both John and Anna for Nationality and Language Spoken but I will edit those events and put Disproven Nationality and Disproven Language Spoken (see screenshot below).  I will then add my analysis or

reasons for why this information is false.This also goes on to show how to record conflicting and alternate information.

Whichever database or software you are using to record your family research may have a different way of recording disproven information but the important thing is that the information is recorded in your research.

How do you record disproven or alternate information?

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris