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Wordless Wednesday: Unknown Man
Wordless Wednesday is a Daily Blogging Prompt from GeneaBloggers.
Genealogy Go-Over: Actually Do-Over
The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
It doesn’t matter much what I call it. However, I was fired up about something this week and I went on a walk to think about things. I try to do that if I really want to think about something. 20 minutes later, I decided I’m opening up a new, blank Legacy Family Tree file and starting fresh. I could spend a lot of time “fixing” my current working file or I could open a new one and start fresh! I am already going through all this trouble of re-examining my documents and re-writing my sources, so why not just start fresh. I wanted to make this decision before I got into any new researching. I’m hopefully setting myself up for never having to do this kind of thing again! I am certainly much more organized already.
While I am conducting my family interviews, I am re-entering myself, my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncle, and cousins all into my clean file. I had previously went around at a family reunion and got dates from my cousins on one side and my Grandmother had all my cousin information from the other side. I still wanted to do something to make sure I was getting the right information though, so I created a Google Form that I’ll be linking to in my sidebar and on my Facebook page for family members to fill out if they want to.
If you are a family member that would like to check out the form, you can click here.
I have also been entering all my documents into Evidentia as I go. I will probably do a post on Evidentia soon! I am working on entering in all the birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, and obituaries that I have for my grandparents down to my generation. It’s actually surprising me how much information 1) I am lacking from some things and 2) How much information I have for others. It’s a fascinating process. Going over everyone again is going to really help out my research. I can just feel there are holes in it and I’m only working with a small amount of information now. Can you imagine with how long I had been working previously how many holes I had in that file? I guess we will find out!
Other posts in this series:
- Genealogy Do-Over or Go-Over?
- Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started
- Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines
- Genealogy Go-Over: Actually Do-Over <- You are here.
- Genealogy Do-Over: Where I’m At
- Genealogy Do-Over: More Decisions
- Genealogy Do-Over: More Prep Work
- Genealogy Do-Over: My Research Toolbox
Source List for this Post:
1. Thomas MacEntee, The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook (Kindle Edition);GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com : downloaded 31 December 2015), Month 3
Find a Grave – Sutcliffe
While I am starting the Genealogy Do-Over/Go-Over, I am not researching anything new. However, I had a couple of post ideas before I started that I thought I’d still share.
I recently got in the marriage record for Paul Sutcliffe and Mary Senior from the State Archives. The New Jersey State Archives is a wonderful source of New Jersey information for me and I am planning a trip there someday, hopefully soon!
What I usually do after I’m done analyzing a new record is I hit census records and I hit Find a Grave. Just to see what kind of opposition I’m going to run into with the new people in my tree. Paul Sutcliffe and Mary Senior have to be two of the easier people in my tree to search for. I haven’t tried super hard yet, but I was able to find possibilities for Mary’s parents pretty quickly. Ancestry suggested a Find a Grave link to me, so that was even better.
Here is the entry on Find a Grave for who I think Mary Senior-Sutcliffe’s father is. Everything looks fine here, it doesn’t have Mary listed as a child but that’s no big deal. Then I saw that there was a huge group of Senior graves in that top picture and I needed to blow it up a bit.
Well folks, that is exciting and disappointing at the same time. Exciting because I might have gone back another generation, and disappointing because the tombstone was cut off. Thats alright though, because I still have potential parents and siblings of Mary Senior to explore. I even have a cemetery location to look at. If they are in a family plot, that will tell me a lot about Paul and Mary. I checked Find a Grave, but the Sutcliffes aren’t listed. I suppose whoever did the Senior graves didn’t know that Mary might be a Senior. Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree completely and that tombstone says Westcliffe.
I will be adding this to my to-do list for when I get there in my re-analyzation of my records!
Adobe Spark
I watched a great tutorial video from Amy Johnson Crow about Adobe Spark. I was inspired to make a video about my grandmother’s ancestors to share with my family. I also attended a Google Hangout with DearMYRTLE’s distant cousin, Sweet Sadie, which was another great walk-through of creating a video. It was a fun, quick process… well besides hearing myself talk. That’s always strange!
There is also the option to create what they call “pages” and “posts”. I didn’t try the pages section yet, but had a little fun with the post section.
Wow, that’s a big, crisp image! I just took a free stock image of Scotland (my dream destination) and used all the different font and shape settings Adobe Spark had pre-built. My blog template will shrink it down to fit a certain size but the original dimensions of the image is 2052 pixels by 2052 pixels. I have to say I love this and will definitely be playing more with it!
Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines
The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
This post is about the procedures and guidelines I am setting up for myself. I even made pretty Word documents, because if I make a list, that means I mean business! I hope at least!
None of this is too earth-shaking, but it’s what I should have done every time I researched. I still have to add a section where I make sure I am tracking my searches and negative results… Okay, I added it before I forgot, you can’t tell but it’s there. 😉
To organize myself better, I am also playing around with ways to keep track of what I have yet to do. Right now I am playing with an Excel file I call my “Genealogy Task Tracker”.
The hard part of this is to remember to use it. These are all things I will be working on when I am not researching. I will probably do another tab for a different list while I am researching. I added in Filters to the file so that I can just focus on Blog, or Computer, or Documents if I want. I can even turn off those Done items and not look at them while I am working on things I still need to do. The biggest thing I have done for myself during this time, has been to work on my time management. I don’t have a traditional 9 to 5 occupation. That means that I need to be extra aware of where my time is going. Sometimes before I know it the day is done and I couldn’t tell you where it went.
All this has been very helpful because I started reading and working through Mastering Genealogical Proof and things are clicking! I am definitely setting myself up for a stronger foundation in my genealogy. I know how to solve research problems I didn’t have any idea were possible before. I am better able to decide if a record is actually an original or if it is a copy that might have some wrong information on it. For the most part, it is just that I feel my eyes are seeing more than they used to.
I also got a webcam, you can’t tell from that picture but I didn’t take the picture, my webcam did! Which maybe means I could make videos if I found a need for them. I don’t know, I haven’t figured out what to use it for yet. It’s there though. I find myself getting very excited about what I am doing again. It feels good to be excited about things again.
Other posts in this series:
- Genealogy Do-Over or Go-Over?
- Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started
- Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines <- You are here.
- Genealogy Go-Over: Actually Do-Over
- Genealogy Do-Over: Where I’m At
- Genealogy Do-Over: More Decisions
- Genealogy Do-Over: More Prep Work
- Genealogy Do-Over: My Research Toolbox
Source List:
Thomas MacEntee, The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook (Kindle Edition); GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com : downloaded 31 December 2015), Month 2.
Microsoft Office 365. My family loves to use Office, we pay the yearly subscription price and share it within our household. This beats everyone paying for a single license CD version of Office. If you don’t like Office, you can check out Google Drive or Open Office, both free alternatives.
Decoration Day, 1923
In 2011, I posted one picture from my great-grandmother’s collection. It was of a Decoration Day parade in Caldwell, New Jersey. Here is another few pictures from that same day. I happen to also know thanks to Llewellyn’s diary, that her and her mother used to volunteer with her church to decorate the graves of veterans also. She sure was one great lady. I am thinking of all our fallen soldiers today.
SNGF: My Ancestor’s Occupations
Randy Seaver has posted another great Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topic! The mission this week is to list the occupations of my ancestors. Well, I certainly can do that! To protect privacy, I will omit anyone who is still living.
Randy suggested using the Ancestor Chart number for each person, so here we go!
4. William Thorward Moore (1930-2012)
Odd jobs
Police Officer in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
Police Chief in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
5. Florence Jean Redford (1930-2001)
Housewife
A&P Cashier in Denville, New Jersey.
6. Stanley Lee Mays (1923-1976)
Farmer
U.S. Army during WWII
Farmer
7. Emogene Taylor (1929-2005)
Various odd jobs
Housewife
8. William Lawrence Moore (1901-1980)
Bookkeeper
Clerk
Assistant Stenographer
Senior Accountant – AT&T, for over 30 years
9. Llewellyn Josephine Thorward (1899-1986)
Bookkeeper, Insurance Company, 1920s.
Housewife
10. Clifford Herbert Redford (1894-1955)
Phonograph Errand Boy, (1910 Census)
Plumber, (WWI Draft Card, 1920 Census, 1930 Census)
Maintenance Man – Battery Manufacturing (1940 Census)
11. Jane Mable Parkin (1896-1957)
Phonograph Inspector (1920 Census)
Housewife
12. William Harmon Mays (1872-1952)
Farmer
13. Iva Belle Moyer (1894-1949)
Housewife
14. Marshall Howard Taylor (1892-1958)
Farmer
15. Lula Margaret Applegate (1901-1978)
Housewife
Cashier at Coney Island Amusement Park in New Richmond, Ohio.
16. Robert James Moore (1871-1925)
House Painter (1892-1915)
17. Mary E. Johnson (1873-?)
Housewife
18. Lewis Thorward (1875-1946)
Butcher at Vanderhoof and Wilton Market.
Butcher at Thorward and Van Duyne’s Market
Butcher at Thorward Meat Market
- He was in the same market for over 42 years. It changed owners, but he stayed.
19. Jennie Viola Love (1876-1960)
Housewife
20. Herbert Redford (1872-1940)
Hatter (1900-1940 Census)
21. Sarah Ann Sutcliffe (1873-1924?)
Housewife
22. John Walter Parkin (1863-190?)
Sandpaper Factory (1880 Census)
Motorman (1900 Census)
I think that is enough for now, but it was fun to see. 🙂
Herbert Redford
Herbert Redford happens to be one of my favorite ancestors. I know I’m not supposed to play favorites but I just can’t help it. He is the first ancestor whose record I sent away for. I was so excited and it took quite a long time. It was well worth it though. 🙂 Plus I have this photo I believe to be him. It was passed down through the family and I was given a photocopy of it where someone identified him as “Herbert Redford”.
November 14, 1872
Herbert Redford is born to Samuel Redford and Frances Wright Travis in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He is their second child and second son.
October 7, 1874
Herbert‘s first sister, Sarah Elizabeth Redford is born in Bloomfield, New Jersey.
September 30, 1877
Herbert‘s little brother Samuel dies shortly after he was born.
Note: Index entry, need to obtain original.
April 23, 1879
Herbert‘s little sister, Lillian Redford is born.
June 1880
Herbert is 7 years old living in East Orange, New Jersey. He is going to school with his older brother William. His dad is working as a hat manufacturer, which is a trade that was passed down from Frances Travis-Redford‘s family.
March 20, 1894
Herbert marries my 2nd great grandmother Sarah (Sadie) Ann Sutcliffe (daughter of Paul Sutcliffe and Mary S. Senior) in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Herbert lists his occupation as Hatter, continuing the occupation to the fourth generation through his mother’s family. Both Herbert and Sadie were 21 at the time of their marriage.
October 29, 1894
My great grandfather, Clifford Herbert Redford is born in Bloomfield, New Jersey.
Note: Index entry, need to obtain original.
1895
New Jersey took a census in 1895. Herbert, Sadie, and Clifford are living in Bloomfield with Herbert’s parents and siblings.
September 28, 1897
Herbert‘s father Samuel dies in Bloomfield, New Jersey. His age is about 54, I do not currently have his birth record or know where it is.
Note: Index entry, need to obtain original.
December 18, 1897
Herbert and Sadie‘s second child Howard Redford is born in Orange, New Jersey.
April 13, 1899
Herbert and Sadie‘s first daughter, Edith Redford, is born in West Orange, New Jersey.
June 1900
The United States Census rolls around again. Herbert and Sadie are now living on Whittley Avenue in West Orange. They own their home but have a mortgage. His sister Sarah Redford-Tinston and her husband are living with the family.
June 1905
Herbert is enumerated in Essex County, New Jersey in the State Census. He is living with his wife Sadie and their three children. Also living in the house is Herbert‘s brother William and William’s son Harry Redford, age 10. Herbert‘s mother Frances Travis-Redford is also living in the household. They own their home but have a mortgage on it.
Note: I will have to go to the State Archives to see the actual census. All I have online is an index. 🙂
August 29, 1906
Herbert and Sadie‘s fourth child, Lillian Elizabeth Redford, is born.
April 1910
Herbert is working as a hat finisher. He has been married for 17 years and they have 4 total children now, with all still living. His brother William is still living with him and is also working at a hat factory. William’s son is now living in Los Angeles, California with his aunt Sarah Redford-Tinston. Herbert’s mother Frances is now living with her daughter Lillian Redford-Stemmle. They live at 16 Gist Place, Orange, New Jersey and they pay rent.
1912
According to a 1912 Orange, New Jersey city directory, Frances Travis-Redford (wid of Samuel), removes to Los Angeles, California.
September 12, 1919
Herbert fills out a World War I Draft Registration Card. There is no evidence he ever had any military service. His occupation is listed as Hatter. He is described as being short (tell me about it. haha), Medium build and he had blue eyes and brown hair. He gives his address as 16 Gist Place, Orange, New Jersey.
January 1920
Herbert and Sadie are still renting their house at 16 Gist Place. He is still employed at a Hatter. Their sons Clifford (age 25) and Howard (age 22) still live at home. The youngest child, Lillian (age 13) is also living there. The household also now has a boarder named Alfred Ireland who is a machinist in a factory.
Herbert’s mother (Frances) is living in Los Angeles, California with Sarah Redford-Tinston and her husband.
August 27, 1921
Herbert‘s mother Frances dies in Los Angeles, California of chronic myocarditis. She was 80 years old. She is buried at the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery in Los Angeles. Sarah Redford-Tinston is the informant on the record.
1924
Note: Herbert’s wife Sadie possibly died in this year. I don’t know the place, but my current thinking is New Jersey. There is a Sadie Redford buried in Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey. Someone took a picture of the grave for me on Find A Grave, but there is nothing on the marker to indicate this is my Sadie. The year does fit for her birth year.
April 1930
Herbert is now widowed and living as a lodger in Los Angeles, California. He is one of nine lodgers in the house of Margaret Clement. All the boarders have various types of jobs and are from lots of different places.
April 1940
Herbert and his sister Lillian Redford-Stemmle are living together at 3469 Siskiyou Street in Los Angeles, California. Lillian is listed as widowed but Herbert is listed as single. The x mark indicates Herbert is the person giving the information. Herbert states that he is a Hatter but has been unemployed for 16 weeks.. He also says he is actively seeking work.
September 11, 1940
Herbert dies in Los Angeles, California at the age of 67. His cause of death was chronic myocardial degeneration due to Coronary Artery Sclerosis. The Informant on his death certificate is his daughter Lillian Redford-Swiggart. (Whom I previously thought went missing.) He was buried at the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery in Los Angeles and a kind Find a Grave volunteer fulfilled a photo request for me. 🙂
Records to Find:
- I want to fill the gap between 1880 and the 1890s.
- Samuel Redford’s birth record.
- The 1905 Census entries at the New Jersey State Archives. ( I would like to make a list of ALL people that I would like to find before I go.)
Records to Order:
- Herbert’s birth record from the New Jersey State Archives
- His siblings birth records from the New Jersey State Archives
- Samuel Redford Jr’s death record from the New Jersey State Archives
- Marriage Record for William Redford
- Birth Records for Herbert and Sadie’s children.
- Samuel Redford Sr’s death certificate from New Jersey State Archives.
Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started
The series of posts I will be writing is based on the Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee. I highly recommend it. 🙂
Okay, so the best way to get through things is to just jump right into them. I’ve learned that about myself over the years. Starting on Thursday of last week, I started getting things ready for my Genealogy Go-Over. The first section of the Do-Over/Go-Over is to clear your slate. I know myself, which means I’m going to have some problems keeping my fingers out of the cookie jar. My intention isn’t to start completely over from scratch. What I do want to do is revisit my current family file person by person. One of the big things that I wanted to happen in my Family File Cleanup was I wanted a good sync between my Ancestry.com DNA Family Tree, my computer database and my website database. I don’t want to have one thing in one, and have to use another for something else.
Since I will only be going over what I have, I do want to have access to my old files. I just don’t want to jump in and do 8,000 things at once. To help myself with this, I took all my paper documents which I have in acid-free page protectors and I put them in 3 ring binders that I have here. Eventually, when the time is right, I will be analyzing each of those documents. I will be getting rid of some. Anything that comes from a state repository will be staying (basically that I paid for). To help myself not get lost in the documents, I have made myself an index using Google Sheets. This way, I can easily access the list of paper documents that I have.
I know that I could have spent hours deciding how to index this and what to put on it. That’s just how I am. Instead I went with being short and sweet. I have the focus of the record, the type of document, and whether it is scanned or not. I didn’t allow myself to even check my digital files for scans. If I knew off the top of my head it was scanned, it got a yes, otherwise it got a no. I have separate tabs for each binder. It will be very easy for me to just glance at this and get to what I need to find. The documents are in the order that the list is in, so I shouldn’t have to flip back and forth looking for anything. It’s already saved me a lot of time just when I was doing my Timeline post for William Harmon Mays.
The next big thing that I have to take into account is my digital files. When I went through my previous cleanup, I set up a numbering and organizational system that works for me. I am still trying to decide if I’m going to keep it that way, or re-organize it some other way. I don’t have to think about that yet though. Right now I’m just clearing my slate so I can breathe again. That means I did a thing.
This is the current state of my Genealogy Drive. I’m not going to lie to you, I still panic a bit when I look at it. I tell myself that I can still use my old organization if I want to. That thought is what pushed me into going ahead and moving everything into the Hold Over folder. In fact, I might even move the Hold Over folder to my Media Drive so that I can’t be tempted too much to go wandering in there. The only thing in my Family Files folder is my current working Legacy file. The Office Files only holds one file currently. It’s my new Genealogy Task Tracker.
There will be a few resources I will be using as I go through this process. I will be working through Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas Jones before I get back into researching. I will also be trying out Evidentia for the first time during this process. It is a lot, but I think if I take my time and go through it slowly, I will be setting myself up for success in the future.
The last thing I’m going to share today is that I’ve made a new e-mail address just for genealogy! In a perfect world, I would use my moore-mays.org email. However, it’s always been temperamental. So instead I am now using leeny.genealogy@gmail.com. I had every intention of trying to ditch the leeny part of my e-mail. I thought maybe I should have a more grown-up sounding e-mail once and for all. It was almost impossible to find one that wasn’t already in use and I’m not a fan of adding a million numbers into an e-mail.
So that’s where we stand as of today, I’m still working on the next part of Month 1 in the workbook. I will tell you more about that next Wednesday! 🙂
Other posts in this series:
- Genealogy Do-Over or Go-Over?
- Genealogy Go-Over: Getting Started <- You are here.
- Genealogy Go-Over: Setting Guidelines
- Genealogy Go-Over: Actually Do-Over
- Genealogy Do-Over: Where I’m At
- Genealogy Do-Over: More Decisions
- Genealogy Do-Over: More Prep Work
- Genealogy Do-Over: My Research Toolbox
Source List:
Thomas MacEntee, The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook (Kindle Edition); GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com : downloaded 31 December 2015), Month 1.