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Hooked on Phonetics . . . The Many Misspellings of our Ancestors’ Names
By Kathy Jones-Kristof | April 20, 2008
From the moment the first European ship hit American soil, our ancestors’ surnames have been cruelly treated by the people inscribing them on parchment, paper and in printer’s ink. The reason is simple. Many people didn’t know how to spell them: not the person owning the name, the person writing it or the person setting the type.
The way this problem was dealt with was Phonetics. If a man didn’t know how to spell a name, he spelled it as it sounded, and every man responsible for recording those names had a different idea how to spell what he heard. To complicate the matter, many of the people speaking the names and those writing them spoke different languages.
As a result, when searching for your ancestor’s name, you need to be flexible. Below are samples of misspelled surnames that were, for the most part, easy to figure out:
- Keller: Kaler
- Kitchen: Kechen
- Douglas: Dundass
- Duncan: Dunnican
- Rees: Reice, Rease, Rice
- Sydenstricker: Sithnstriker
- Monroe: Munroe, Muroe, Monr, Monrow
- Campbell: Camble, Campble, Campden
- Jones: Johns, Johnes, Joens, Joanes, Jeanes, Joines
- Lauterbach: Louderbach, Lourderback, Lauderburgh
- Matheney: McTheny, Mehene, Methiny, Mitheny, Metheany
I could go on for pages with examples like this. And though most Phonetic misspellings can be easily interpreted with a little imagination, they can be just as easily missed if you aren’t actively looking for them when searching through a list of surnames.
Now let’s turn to harder-to-find Phonetic misspellings. These can have you tearing out your hair. In fact, one did just that to me. After going through numerous years of property tax lists at a library one day, I happened to notice the name Arebaugh. How strange, I thought. That sounds a lot like one of the names I was researching, which was Orbaugh. The light bulb not only went on over my head, it exploded inside it. Of course! Phonetics! They sound alike! I had to start all those years of tax lists over from the beginning to look for Arebaugh. I was tempted to disown the whole family line.
Here are a few other tough Phonetic misspellings that I’ve encountered:
- Jones: Ones
- Oiler: Ayler
- Chateau: Shaddow
- Tuckwiller: Duckwiler
- Jarrell: Garrell, Fitzjarrell
That last one isn’t entirely a Phonetics problem, as you can see. But it is a situation that you may encounter, so I’ve included it here. This ancestor of mine came to America named Fitzjarrell, then dropped the Fitz. After that all his documents were recorded under just the name Jarrell, so I felt safe looking only for that name, along with its Phonetic sidekick, Garrell. Several years after the Fitz had been severed from his name, I found a document where he again used the name Fitzjarrell. Horrors! Now I had to worry what other business had been transacted under his old name that I had missed. The moral to this story is never assume that an ancestor’s former name is completely dead.
And the moral to this article is a name may have a dozen different ways to spell it and your goal is not to miss any of them. When I record the data from old documents in my Family File, I always include the name as it was written originally. It may have been wrong, it may have been Phonetic, or it may have been the right way to spell it all along!
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | 2 Comments » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | April 17, 2008 The Alexander Street Website’s free access is now closed to the public. Their website can only be accessed through membership or through access to a library that has a membership Contact your local Public Library, or College, University or Museum Library that has a membership to see if they offer public access. You can access Civil War information on the Soliders and Sailors System Website for free at any time. Good news! Due to the wonderful response Alexander Street Press received for their April open house of their online Civil War archive, they have extended their public access through June 30, 2008. Thank you, Alexander Street Press! Below is my orginial post about this website: It’s free, it’s great, and it’s for a limited time. Best of all, it’s everything a genealogist wants to know about the Civil War; who the soldiers were, what battles their regiments fought in, what songs were the men singing as they marched to battle and who was writing diaries about the whole affair. Alexander Street Press is a database that has lots of great information–but it’s usually only accessible at libraries, colleges and universities that subscribe to their website. That is until now, and I mean right now. To celebrate the bicentennials of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, the Alexander Street Press has opened their extensive Civil War databases up to the public through the end of April 2008. Oh, happy day! These databases are the best repository for Civil War information I’ve come across. The Research Database is incredibly easy to use. I found all but one of my soldier-ancestors. He fought in the same regiment as his cousin, who had the exact same name. The cousin was listed on the website but the identical names may have caused my ancestor to get lost during research, which is better than being lost during battle so I’m not complaining. Check out the music or read the diaries. Search the magazines and newspapers. But do it soon, before the end of April, or this rare opportunity will be gone.
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | 1 Comment » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | March 22, 2008 Personal Property Taxes are a great place to find facts about your ancestors and to track their lives through the years. They’re just as useful as the Federal Census, plus taxes are collected every year instead of only every ten years. And they go back a lot further. The Federal Census began in 1790 while taxes were usually collected as soon as a county was formed. See my post on Courthouse Records, A Vital Step in Researching Your Family History on Feb 3 2008 to learn how to find county Tax Records. Here’s a sample of things you might learn from Personal Property Tax Records: · When a man comes of age, which would be the first year he starts paying tax. This is usually age 16, although some taxes weren’t collected until a man reached age 21. Check the column heading or the first page of the Tax Record to see what age the tax covers. · The names of a man’s sons as they come of age. · The name of a man’s father. You could learn this not only from the listing of the man’s name along with his son’s, but I’ve also seen listings where a tax collector, to differentiate between two men in the county named John Jones, noted: John Jones, son of Thomas. · The section of the county a man lives, and sometimes the exact place. · If a man was considered wealthy based on how much livestock and land he owned. · If a man owned slaves. In some counties the slaves’ names will even be listed. · The year of a man’s death can be ascertained when he is dropped from the list and his estate is listed or his widow appears, which then supplies you with her name. However, a widow doesn’t always start paying tax the year her husband dies. She may be living with one of her children. If a man disappears from a Tax List and his widow doesn’t appear, don’t assume that he’s dead or has moved to another county. Check the next few years to see if he reappears. · Occasionally in Virginia, all household furnishings were taxed. When this happened, we get to look behind the closed doors of our ancestors’ homes. What kind of metal was their pocket watch made of? Did they own a mirror? Were their candlesticks pewter or silver? What kind of wood was their bedroom bureau made of? These occasions are a genealogist’s dream come true. · Tax Lists can be used as a substitute for the Federal Census for the years it was destroyed by fire. Although there are a few transcribed Tax Records online, most of my data comes from microfilmed Courthouse Records ordered from local libraries or the Latter Day Saints library. I prefer seeing the actual list recorded by the tax collector. Below is a section of the Personal Property Tax Record for Alleghany Co, VA from 1845. What taxes are collected variety by year, county and state. This one has Persons Chargeable With The Tax listed in rough alphabetical order—by the first letter of the last name but not alphabetized by the entire last name. The tax columns, from the left, are for Free White Males over 16 - Slaves Above 16 - Free White Males over 21 - Male Free Negroes Between the Years of 21 and 55 Years - Slaves Who Have Attained the Age of 12 Years and Upwards - Number of Horses - Their Worth - Number of Cattle - Their Worth. There are more columns to the right (not shown) for various types of carriages. All of these column headings were very hard to read even on the microfilmed copy of the actual document. I recommend having a magnifying glass available when doing research on all old documents. The thing that I find most valuable on this Tax List is that the tax collector included the first initial of the men’s middle names. This is a wonderful aid to a genealogist. If there are two men in the same county or state with the same name, especially if they’re related as in father and son or grandson, it can be a nightmare to distinguish which is which in any document you find. A middle initial can be a lifesaver. Another great aid can be a nickname. Many men became so well known by a middle name or nickname that their first name was never used; even in Tax Lists, legal documents or the Federal Census. Always note in your Family File all middle initials, middle names and nicknames that might help you recognize your ancestor in old records. If I were tracing the surname Mann, I would extract from this Tax List the information for everyone named Mann, even if I knew that only Archibald Mann was my ancestor. Even if I don’t know who the other Manns are, I may discover later that they’re important to my Family Tree and I’ll already have their information on file. Sometimes a brother, cousin or uncle may be the only person in the family whose documents have survived and I can use him to trace my family back another generation. Personal Property Tax Files aren’t the only kind of Taxes to look for; there are also Land Taxes and Military Taxes. Both of these have stories to tell about your ancestor, too. Land Taxes will give you not only how many acres of land your ancestor owned and where it was located, but sometimes when it was purchased and from whom—making it easier to find a deed in courthouse records. Military Taxes were collected by local Militia Companies as a substitute for Property Taxes, plus they may provide you with valuable information on your ancestor’s military service. In addition to adding individual facts I find on Tax Lists about my ancestors into my Family File, I also enter all the information I’ve collected into a database program. The one I use is Excel. The database program allows me to not only keep track of the information collected, but also to sort the records however I want, such as being able to see how many years a man lived in a particular county. This information can also be extracted and added to family history reports. Taxes are a conundrum. Without them we wouldn’t have roads or libraries, both of which I find invaluable. Still I complain when I have to pay my taxes. But I celebrate when I look at Tax Records from another century and find one of my ancestors, who probably complained when he had to pay tax on the horse he rode into town on. That’s life, however. It’s all fun until you have to pay the check. Until next time, start looking for your ancestors’ Tax Records and see what secrets you discover.
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | No Comments » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | February 15, 2008 I love the LDS Library in Utah. It is filled with every piece of genealogy information the Latter Day Saints can find and they allow anyone to use it. If you can’t go to Salt Lake City, Utah to get up close and personal with their library, you can order copies of all the records they’ve copied onto microfilm or fiche and use them in the LDS Family History Centers located in their churches all across America. Once you’ve accessed the LDS’ online library catalog, click on “Place Search.” Type in the name of the county and state you want to research. What will you find? Wonderful things. Vital Statistics. Court records. Deeds. Wills Probates. Estate sales. Tax lists. Military files. County histories. Anything related to that county and state that can be used for genealogy research. Let’s do a search on Monroe, Virginia for Monroe Co, VA. The first screen will show you all the topics they have for that county. I’ll select Vital Records at the very bottom. The result is two screens of available records. I’m selecting the sixth item down, Marriage Records, 1799-1965, Monroe County (West Virginia). The result is similar to a very detailed bibliography card at a library. On the top right hand corner is a link that says “View Film Notes.” If it doesn’t say that, I can’t order it. Since this one does have film, I’ll click on that link and it takes me to the image below. Wow, there are a lot of options. Two screens worth, in fact. I’m only showing you part of the first screen. I’ll order the Index first. If I find my ancestors in that, it will tell me which Register to order. See the items below the index, Register of Marriages No 1? Next line, Records no 2-3, etc? Those are the books I’ll be referred to if my ancestors are in the Index. Now let’s look at the entries for the Loose Marriage Returns. If my ancestors are black and were married during one of the years those boxes include, I would immediately order that box. Many black people don’t have records at all, so I’d go through everything on that microfilm. I’ll also go through the regular steps to see if they’re there, too. For white ancestors I’d probably only order the Loose Returns if my ancestors were not listed on the Index and were married during that time period and I’d exhausted every other method of proving their marriage. If there was no Index listed, order the microfilm for the year range when you think your ancestors would have married. There may be an Index included within the Register itself. If not, you’ll have to have to go through the entire Register. Don’t panic—it doesn’t really take that long and sometimes you find people you’re not even looking for but need for your family file anyway. Although the LDS are currently working to upload all their records onto the Internet, it will a few years before this monumental task is completed. A few of the records are already online. If the file you want isn’t, you’ll have to take the film number and title you want to order to the local LDS Family History Center. Instead of writing the information down and possibly making a mistake, I go to the bottom of the final page of the film list, click on the link for the printable version and print the resulting page to take with me. I also make notes on that paper for the ancestor I intend to look for when the film arrives in case I forget why I ordered it. Yes, this has happened. There are multiple surnames that I research and occasionally I get confused over which film I ordered for what family. As for the part of the LDS website that deals with “Surname Search,” I don’t use it very often because there are no sources listed for the information. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless. I’ve found clues in this section that have lead me to lost ancestors. But remember, without a verifiable source it’s not a fact. After you find clues, you must look for facts to prove them. The LDS Library is full of places to look for those, so take advantage of their generosity and start finding your own facts at a genealogist’s dream come true—the LDS Library. Until next time, happy hunting!
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | 1 Comment » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | February 8, 2008 One of my favorite places to do family history research is Ancestry.com, an online subscription database that I discussed in my post on Feb 4, 2008. Genealogy.com is another popular subscription database, which I’ve also used. There are reasons I recommend it and reasons I’m no longer a member. Genealogy.com was the first database I subscribed to and my favorite thing about it was the history books they had online, which Ancestry didn’t have at the time. They also have a nice variety of subscription offerings that gave me access to the historical information I wanted without having to pay for sections I didn’t need. The reason I cancelled my subscription was because Genealogy.com returns all the hits for a search in one lump—not in categories as Ancestry.com does. As a result I had to wade through a lot of things I wasn’t interested in to get to the information I wanted. Example: I subscribed to the historical data collection, not the census data. Yet whenever I did a search, the results included the 1850 census index. This forced me to wade through a lot of census index hits that I didn’t want. A search for the surnames of Jones, Smith and Brown made my work impossible. I simply couldn’t spend the time required to sort through all the extraneous data to find the vital information I was paying for, so I cancelled my subscription. Anyone with more distinctively named ancestors will find Genealogy.com filled with useful data. Go to their website to see what they offer. If you subscribe to them, here’s something you should try. Do a search on just your ancestor’s last name. This will give you a list of all the first names for that surname and lets you see all the odd spellings of your ancestor’s first name in Genealogy.com’s files. Click on each one to see if there’s anything that you nearly missed just because someone didn’t know how to spell. This is another thing I did for facts about my ancestors. Until next time, keep searching!
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | 2 Comments » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | February 4, 2008 I discovered many of my family history facts on Ancestry.com. That’s right. I pay for genealogy information. It’s not a crime, as a lot of people believe. Genealogists rent microfilm from the LDS Library, local or state libraries. Some people buy compact discs to find their genealogy information. All this costs money. What’s wrong with paying for the ability to access a genealogy database—which is really an online library—that delivers first-rate genealogical information directly to my home computer? Ancestry.com saves me time, gives me great facts from verifiable sources, and I love sitting at home doing research anytime I want. One of the best things about Ancestry.com is that they’re always adding new information to their already extensive holdings. Recently I did a search on an ancestor I hadn’t run through their system for almost a year and discovered his Civil War pension certificate. What a great find! This opens a whole new world for me to research, plus I’ve added another military hero to my family line—I love those guys! There’s an option on Ancestry’s search form that’s called Spelling. Under it you can select either Exact or Soundex. Soundex is a system used to index names by sound, or phonetically. In an earlier post, I stated that I couldn’t find in an alphabetical list an ancestor named Orebach because his name had been spelled Arebach. The reason it was spelled that way is because my ancestor probably didn’t know how to spell his name so the country clerk spelled it the way it sounded to him. In a Soundex listing, names are grouped phonetically—by the sound of the name. This solves all the problems created by those creative spellings that we genealogists struggle with in our research. Therefore, when I do a search for my ancestors on Ancestry, I always choose Soundex for Spelling. This way if there’s a name on file that’s spelled creatively, the search engine will find it. Remember that the Soundex spelling option only applies to your ancestor’s surname. The first name still has to be accurate. If you don’t find your ancestor, try another spelling for the first name or an abbreviation. I’ve also done searches for just the last name and then sorted through the results to look for my ancestor, although I don’t recommend that for Jones. So, you’re asking, just what does Ancestry.com have to offer you? They have all the US and many European Census data. They have scanned history books and historical society research papers. I’ve accessed marriage data, death data, the social security death index, immigration data, obituaries, passport applications—and this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Go to Ancestry.com and under Collections, click on “See All Databases” to discover all their holdings. Don’t be fooled by everything they offer, however. Their Family Tree information comes from the public and therefore does not have verifiable sources. We want facts in our family files. Stick to the real data that gives you solid sources, which is 98 percent of Ancestry’s holdings. And don’t just list Ancestry.com as your source for any facts you find. Put that as a reference to where you found the source, but the actual source is where the information on Ancestry.com came from; the name of a book, the Civil War Index, the Social Security Death Index, etc. If you can’t afford to subscribe to an online genealogy website, there are alternative ways to access them. Check with your local library to see if they have a subscription. If they don’t, petition them to purchase one. Genealogy is the biggest hobby in America. You’re probably not the only person in your neighborhood interested in doing family research. It’s also useful in learning about regular history. Use that argument on them. I’ve learned more about history since I began researching my family than I ever learned in school. Someone should clue teachers into the fact that history is more than just the date when stuff happened. You can also access Ancestry.com at the Family History Center in the nearest LDS church. They have Ancestry subscriptions on their computers and anyone can use them for free. Of course, Ancestry.com isn’t the only subscription database on the Internet. Genealogy.com is another one I’ve used. I’ll discuss it in an upcoming post. Plus there are a lot of other subjects I want to tell you about to help you discover those elusive ancestors you’re trying to find, so check back often. Until next time, keep looking for those facts! If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to my RSS feed!
(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | 2 Comments » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | February 3, 2008 In my post on Jan 28, 2008 titled In the Beginning, How To Start Your Family Research, I said that vital statistics such as birth, death and marriage records were only required to be reported beginning in the early 1900’s in most states. Prior to that time, there were counties that collected this information about their citizens. I love those folks! Unfortunately, during the Revolutionary and Civil War some Courthouse records were destroyed. This makes genealogists’ work harder, but not impossible. We can reconstruct the information we need from census records, wills, tax lists, deeds, church records and estate sales—see my post about Estate Sales on Jan 21, 2008. I’ll be discussing the other methods in future posts. Now we’ll talk about County Records. When searching for vital statistics, start at the County Courthouse. If you can’t visit the Courthouse in person—few of us can—copies of their records can be accessed via your local library, college libraries, state libraries, state archives and the Latter Day Saints Library. At your local public library, go to the research librarian, tell her/him what you’re looking for and ask how to search for records. I love librarians. They have a lot more resources than most of us know. For your state and college libraries, check their websites to learn what they have to offer and how to access their holdings. You may even be able to order their microfilm through your local library. For the Latter Day Saints, or LDS, Library, I’ll also be discussing how to use their website in a later post. (See Feb 15, 2008.) You can order their microfilm at the Family History Center in their local churches. Now that you’ve ordered your microfilm and the librarian has shown you how to use the microfilm viewer—remember to ask if you can make copies from the film—you’re ready to start searching it for information. What does a Register look like? The images below are of a Marriage Register from Alleghany Co, VA for 1867. The Register was two pages across so it took two images to see the full length of the Register. The quality of these images isn’t great, but most of the columns are legible. This Register contained a lot of information about my ancestors including that fact that both the bride and groom were named Jones, which doubles my research troubles. (No, they weren’t kin to each other so there’s no need for any hillbilly jokes.) Don’t expect this much information from all county Registers. I’ve seen marriage listings that had only the groom’s name. If you fail to find your ancestor in the Register you ordered, go through a second time to be certain you didn’t miss anything. It’s easy to overlook the very name you’re looking for when looking at old handwriting. Even if I don’t find the ancestor I’m looking for, I make notes on anyone with surnames from my family tree in case I need them later. Below are a few hints for reading old Registers: 1. If you see an “f” that drops below the line, that usually means “s.” A double “ff” in a word also means an “s”. Any name that starts with a double “ff” may mean an “F”, but there are no guarantees. It might also mean “S”. Just be flexible when you see any “f”. 2. In Registers organized by months, check at the end of the year to see if anything was added for earlier months that may have been filed late at the courthouse. Also check at the beginning of the following year for the same reason. 3. An alphabetical listing doesn’t mean everything is alphabetized correctly. Who knew that C’s might be listed with S’s and F’s with T’s? Names can also be spelled creatively. Example: I missed an ancestor named Orebach on several years of tax lists because it was being spelled Arebach. Some county clerks who get the whole alphabetical list perfect may include extra names at the very end which were filed at the courthouse too late to be included in the original list, so always check at the end of each letter and especially after the Z’s just to be certain you haven’t missed those late additions. 4. Additional little notes added after your ancestor’s name, even if it doesn’t make sense, should be added to your file. It must’ve meant something at the time and eventually you may figure it out and realize its importance. It could be his occupation or may indicate where he lived in the county and was intended to differentiate between two men with the same name who lived in the same region. After you’ve found the person you’re looking for, write down every piece of information in the Register, even if you think you don’t think you need it. Write down the title of the Register, the dates it covers, the county and state it’s from and the microfilm number. Record where you ordered it from, and if it was from a local library also note where they ordered it from in case you need to order the microfilm again. This information is important. It is your source. It proves that the information in your Family History came from the original Courthouse register where the birth/marriage/death was officially recorded by the people involved in the actual act. If you find your ancestor and now you’re ready to take the next step, or you didn’t find her/him and need to look elsewhere, you might consider subscribing to an online database such as Ancestry.com or Genealogy.com. I’ll discuss both of those in my next posts. Until then, start ordering those microfiche. You have ancestors to find!
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | 1 Comment » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | January 28, 2008 To begin, start with yourself. Your name, birth date, where you were born. Now you have your first person in your family file. That was pretty easy. Next step, your parents and grandparents. Maybe you don’t know your grandparents’ names. Don’t be embarrassed. I thought I knew my grandmother’s name until the day I was hunting through a birth register in a courthouse in WV and came across her birth record. She had a different first name! Not Elva, as the entire family knew her as and is even on her tombstone. Her real name was Elvira. When I told my mother this shocking fact, she laughed and said that explained why whenever her father wanted to aggravate her mother, he would call her Elvira. Apparently Grandma didn’t like her real name, but the fact remains that her actual name was Elvira and that’s what I had to list her under in my genealogy file. However, I put her preferred name of Elva right beside it. I do this with all nicknames and it’s something you should do, too. Many people are only referred to by a nickname even in legal papers. Listing them only by their actual name in your family file may cause you to miss vital information in your research. If you don’t know your grandparent’s name, look on your parent’s birth certificate. If you don’t have a copy, order it from the courthouse in the county where your parent was born. Google the courthouse or call to ask what information is required to order a copy. And remember, the people at the courthouse don’t want to know about your genealogy quest. Ask your question, be polite and thank them for their time. If they ask what the certificate is for, I tell them it’s for my family file, which is true. Everyone should have copies of their family’s vital certificates. Birth certificates contain all kinds of lovely information. Place of birth, date of birth, and—best of all—the names of the parents. Sometimes, in those special moments that genealogists love and long for, it might even tell you where they were born. Once you know your grandparents’ names, if you find out where they were born you can contact that county courthouse and request their birth certificates, which will then give your great-grandparents’ names. If not, then you’ll have to start looking for death certificates—if your grandparents are dead. Their death certificates should have their parents’ names. You can request the death certificate the same way you did the birth certificate. Now you can see the pattern to follow. Find the birth or death location and date, request the appropriate certificate, obtain information needed and keep requesting certificates as far back as possible. This easy quest will end the year the state required births and deaths be officially reported, usually in the early 1900’s. Before that date it takes a little more creativity to find vital information. I’ll discuss this in other posts. In genealogy, everything depends on knowledge. Knowing where something occurred. Knowing when it happened. So start asking questions. Ask everyone in your family. Ask family friends. Ask old neighbors. Look for family records. Check family Bibles. Look for papers stored in old shoeboxes. Look for obituaries, which people are constantly cutting out of newspapers without supplying dates and locations, but may have the name of a funeral home you can contact. You have to be a detective. After all the digging, when you put together the bits and pieces of information and complete your family history, what a treasure you’ll have! There’s nothing more valuable. Okay, gold and diamonds would be great to find in that old shoebox on the top shelf of your grandpa’s closet, but that’s pretty unlikely so I’d settle for my gr-gr-gr-great-grandpa Jones’ name and history. You try researching the name Jones in Virginia in the late 1700’s and you’ll see what I’m up against. Until next time, start spelunking through your family’s closets and see what you find in those old shoeboxes!
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: Beginning Genealogists | 1 Comment » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | January 22, 2008 One place to find facts about your ancestors is on Google. That’s right. They may have been dead for a few hundred years but that doesn’t mean they can’t be Googled. You may have to be a little crafty as to what you put in the search window, however. Add the state he/she lived in or the name of the county or town where they resided to cut down on the number of hits. If you’re doing a search on “John Jones,” there’s little hope. But “Cornelius Slecht” is easy. Just sit back and see what washes up on the internet’s productive shores. There will usually be a lot of hits with other people’s family files. If they’ve included real sources with their files such as courthouse records or published genealogies, great. If the sources listed are just references to gedcoms (genealogy program extractions) or downloads, ignore it–although I do make note of deeds or wills because those may give me locations to look for my ancestors where I hadn’t searched before. Everything else I ignore. I want facts in my family history file and facts can only be proven by verifiable sources. There are other things I find on Google that are invaluable. They have scanned books loaded online and their search engine takes you directly to the page where your ancestor is mentioned. I’ve also found maps from as far back as the 1600’s that are marked with exactly where my ancestor lived. Below is a 1736 map of Orange Co, VA with border drawings of settlers’ land patents. Once I found via Google a sea chart for Bermuda that was drawn from soundings one of my ancestors had taken. And I found a published genealogy for an ancestor that kept me from duplicating work that had already been completed. Give it a try. Spend a little time on Google and see if your fifth-great grandpa is out there somewhere. And don’t forget to try all those weird spellings for his name that you’ve seen in deeds and wills. Until next time, Google away!
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(c) 2008 Kathy Jones-Kristof. All Rights Reserved.
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists | No Comments » By Kathy Jones-Kristof | January 21, 2008 The most outlandish place I’ve ever found a female ancestor’s name was on an Estate Sale record, known as a Sale Bill. When someone died in the olden, moldy days, all the property not assigned in a will was inventoried, values attached, and then it was all sold to the public. Today that’s called an Estate Sale. In old records, you’ll see it called a Sale Bill. At the sale each item would be listed on the Sale Bill with the amount of money received and the name of the buyer. This list was presented at court and recorded. Oh happy day for genealogists! Below is part of a Sale Bill from Alleghany Co, VA in 1866. Sometimes the family had to buy back their own property at these sales. That happened when a man died without a will, called intestate, which is what happened to one of my ancestors. At his Estate Sale, men that I knew to be his sons bought the farming equipment and what I realized must be their own beds. And a woman named Catherine bought the kitchen equipment and, as the Sale Bill states, “her own marriage bed.” That’s how I learned the name of one of my female ancestors. A pretty horrible experience for her, a pretty lucky one for me. Of course, I mean lucky after spending hours with my nose pressed against the screen of a microfilm machine at the local LDS Family History Center (see my post on Feb 15, 2008 about the Latter Day Saints Library and Family History Centers) reading dozens and dozens of documents. I had looked through everything I could think of and everything everyone else could think of when one day I came across the Sale Bill for my ancestor in a bunch of files where it didn’t even belong. And that lovely document just happened to have that one little extra bit of information that said, “her own marriage bed.” But I did find it and now I know that the Sale Bills from Estate Sales are one more place to look for facts about my ancestors. And so do you. Until next time, start looking for those Sale Bills. You’ll never know what you’ll find!
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