Lesson 9 -History and Genealogy Resources - Ancestry Library, Heritage Quest and Sanborn Maps

Discovery Exercise 1

I searched for my maiden name and retrieved one result: my cousin. Her complete maiden name was listed on her daughter’s Texas birth certificate. I’ve never met her but I’ve talked to her father on the phone years ago when I was trying to track down more family history information. He’s the one who told me that she and I shared the same maiden name. Yes, we shared the same first, middle, and last maiden names.

I tried a couple other search variations of my name but never retrieved my own information. It is easy to “refine a search” thinking you are refining the broadest search but in reality you are only refining the search in a narrow part of the database. For example, if I “refined” the search described above (that retrieved my cousin’s name) by clicking the “refine search” button near those results, I would only be refining the search in the Texas Birth Index, not the entire Ancestry database. I could easily then wrongly conclude that my name was not in the database anywhere when the refined search only covered a smaller range of the larger database.

I may have made all my refined searches in the Texas Birth database. That would explain why I never found my name and my own records.

Discovery Exercise 2

From my past genealogical work, I already knew that I could find several sets of my grandparents and great-grandparents in various censuses back to 1860. But, based on what I do know about my family, I still haven’t been able to find everyone in those branches of family tree in all the censuses where they should be listed. I suspect many times that these are typographical difficulties and other times inconsistencies of names, nicknames, etc.

For the sake of this challenge, I did repeat some of those searches so I could look at actual family records. The 1900 census spells my paternal grandmother’s maiden name with two Ns while she always spelled it with only one N. The 1910 census omits an A from her first name, and the same 1910 census page spells my Uncle Gus’s first as “Gusste.” These and many other similar variables and inconsistencies can make or break genealogical search, especially census searches.

Some census takers had wonderfully legible handwriting and other’s didn’t, so the census databases are only as good as the census transcribers are.

Then there’s the “lost” 1880 Census (it burned) that might have resolved many of my genealogy dead-ends.

Plus throw in multiple variations in the spellings of my family names, people who dropped their first names and used variations of their middle names for their first names, inconsistencies in consecutive censuses about birthplaces, etc., etc. etc. I even have one great uncle whose family shows up at two different Kansas City censuses in the same year. Who knows...they may have moved. Each page of the census does show the date the information was gathered although all the information is supposed to be guaged to the "official" census date for that census.

My advice to newbies: keep trying. Don’t throw away any tidbit of info…you never know what you will finally notice on a page later. Be clever about variations. And ALWAYS stay alert to details, nuances, and inconsistencies.

Discovery Exercise 3

My search for “South Dakota” under “Photos and Maps” retrieved 5 categories of results under “Pictures” and 2 categories of results under “Maps, Atlases, & Gazetteers.” I clicked on the “General Photographs of the Bureau of Ships, 1914-1946” that had 45 results.

I clicked on one of the thumbnails and saw a 1942 picture of the USS South Dakota as it was under construction in the New York City shipyards. This particular image had parts of the photograph identified with numbers and labels.

Discovery Exercise 4

I searched my paternal grandfather’s first and last name in HQ books and retrieved 7 results. I did not consider any viable to my research because all appeared related to the town Vails’ Gate, New York. Since my paternal line has never been linked to this location I went no further.

I searched my paternal family name (my maiden name) in HQ BOOKS and retrieved 383 results. I perused several pages of results and choose to open
# 80:

Rubincam, Milton, The Eckel family of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Delaware Hyattsville, Md.?: unknown, 1955, 76 pgs.

This was a most interesting hand typed history of the Eckel family. Using the View Image option, I did advance through most of the book one page at a time. I never found any names that would have explained why it was retrieved by my query. It is possible to use the FIND on page option to search for names, but it has to be done one page at a time. In some cases, parts of the text on a page appeared to be missing.

There were some interesting (understatement) passages in the book.

Finally I choose to go to a page number at the back of the book so I could find the index. Sometimes a contents page at the beginning of a book is helpful to find the most promising or helpful parts of a book.

I did find one variant spelling of one family name in the index, but my efforts were thwarted when I went to that page of the book. Not all the text on the page was shown, so I never found this family name variant in the book.

Discovery Exercise 5

I chose Brookings and decided to try to find my house that was built in 1898.

The index page for the 1928-1948 map was difficult to view even after clicking the largest size icon. I kept opening and reopening various sheets to see if I could find my street and block. The prime candidate Sheet 11 would not open.

I tried several dates of maps, but sometimes I couldn't find my section of town anywhere. Eventually I did find my house on the 1928 map sheet 11.

I also eventually discovered better zoom capabilities and could see a good view of the outline of my house. The house diagram showed the original wraparound porch that no longer exists but that I did know about and a small room or porch at the southwest corner or back of the house that I did not know had existed.

It was a bit frustrating to use this database. Either the database or our computer network worked very slowly. I was frustrated when trying to print the page. Even using the print button on the screen did not produce acceptable results. When the page did print, what had been an entire sheet and full screen printed the disappointing size of a “thumbnail.”