Forum Diving — Searching the Census

Dawn, one of our forum regulars (can you have forum regulars for such a small forum?) received as a gift the Family Tree Maker Program. I'm not sure which version she was given but it came with a FREE YEAR OF ANCESTRY.COM. Okay scoff if you want about this being some nefarious plot to enslave her by the big bad corporate giant of genealogy subscription services, but I for one am completely jealous — in a quasi sort of I'm happy for you Dawn kind of way. It sounds from her posts that she is already making good use of her time.

One of my favorite things about Ancestry is their every name index for all the census years. In my opinion, there are two kinds of people in the world — those who come close to swooning with joy at the words, EVERY NAME INDEX, and those who don't. I'm a do.

One of Dawn's family lines is Maenle. She searched high and low for them in the census. Fortunately, she knew where they should be living and finally found them with the last name indexed and written as Manley. Dawn made the observation that either the head of household or the census taker couldn't spell. Either case could be true. Prior to the twentieth century, many people could neither read nor write. On the other hand, census takers would sometimes forget to ask for a proper spelling, and would spell a last name phonetically or assume a more common spelling. Sometimes, the head of household wasn't home, and they interviewed a wife or child. Even if their husbands were literate, the wives might not be — a lot depended on the society in which they had been raised. Other times a neighbor might end up giving the census taker the information about the family, when the family members themselves were unavailable. You can imagine how many problems that could create.

An additional problem, even when you have something as wonderful as an index available, is that the writing on the census isn't always legible or the quality of the microfilm isn't the best. That means the person responsible for creating the index had to give it their best guess — so you wind up with Jacobus indexed as Jacobs, Smathers indexed as Smothers, King indexed as Ring etc. 

Jana Lloyd, in her article “Leonis or Lewis? Some Quick Tips for Finding Your Ancestors in the Census” addresses these very issues. You can find the article at http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=11803. Pay particular attention to the GETTING AROUND THE ERRORS part of the article. “

Top 10 Search Tips for Census Success” by Kimberly Powell at http://genealogy.about.com/od/census/a/census_search.htm is also helpful. In addition to issues that I've already raised, she talks about the use in the census of nicknames, looking for neighbors when you can't find your target family, and of taking advantage of the every name index by looking for siblings or children when you can't find that elusive head of household. 

If you are having problems finding your ancestors in the census records, these are two articles well worth your time.

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! Note this post first published online, October 18 , 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

©18 Oct 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Genealogy Quick Notes — Internet & Genealogy Class and Forum Diving

INTERNET & GENEALOGY CLASS 

Some things I learn by reading. Some things I learn by listening to someone's explanation. Some things I learn by a hands-on approach of doing them. But I find, for me, the best way to learn something new is when I use all three senses — sight, sound and touch. Attending the Internet Genealogy class at the Hayes Presidential Center Library this Saturday, October 20 will allow you the opportunity to do all three. The class is from 9:30 to 11:30 and is taught by Head Librarian, Becky Hill. It is an overview of genealogical Web sites useful to the family genealogist. The cost of the class — free! Call (419) 332-2081 for more information. 

FORUM DIVING

I don't know how many of you are reading the comments in the Desktop Genealogist forum, but right now, there are eleven different threads going on. I thought it might be a good idea to shine a spotlight onto some of the topics being addressed and the questions being asked. Until I can come up with something better I will be calling these posts FORUM DIVING.

 If you are new to genealogy, you might be surprised to learn that as a whole, family genealogists are a very helpful bunch. I'm always amazed at the lengths individuals will go to aid another. I've seen that trait in many of the posts that people have left on the forum. I'm hoping that this is something that will continue. I am encouraging you to fill in any blanks that I might leave when I put in my two cents. I also hope that if you feel that I am dead wrong about something, you will add YOUR two cents. 

The cool thing about genealogy is that while it can be an individual “sport,” It can also be a group endeavor. I hope we learn something from each other — kind of a group picking of the brain. Okay, that didn't come out the way I wanted, but you get the general idea. 

Tomorrow, I hope to post the first of these forum diving topics. 

 Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging Note this post first published online, October 17, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 17 October 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

How to Use the Social Security Death Index

Yesterday I wrote about the Social Security Death Index. Today I want to show you some ways you can access the information. I'm using Rootsweb's Social Security Death Index as the example (http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi).

1. BASIC SEARCH

In the basic search, you have the following fields:
LAST NAME, FIRST NAME, MIDDLE NAME (INITIAL) AND SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.

Let's look for the Social Security record for Owen K. Lynch, my grandmother's brother. I fill in LYNCH for last name, OWEN for first name and K for middle initial. I don't have Owen's Social Security number so I leave that blank. Then I submit the information. I get one hit, but I know from a family bible entry that Great Uncle Owen was born June 16, 1883. I also know he died in Texas. This Owen K Lynch was born in 1911 and his last residence was Bronx, New York. Obviously, this isn't the correct Owen K. Lynch.

Next, I try putting in just the last name — LYNCH, and submit the information again. Wow, that gives me 40, 728 hits — no way can I sort through that amount of information.

Let's give it one more try with the basic search. This time I put in LYNCH for
last name and OWEN for first name and submit. Now I get 24 hits — a more
manageable list.

I'm looking for someone whose last residence was Texas and who was born in
June 1883 (there's always a possibility that the actual birth date might not match).

On the second page of hits, I find him. Owen Lynch, birth date June 16, 1883, death date November 1970, last residence was Kerrville Texas (which now that I see it, I remember that Kerrville is a place where the Lynch's lived) and a surprise, his SSN was issued in Missouri. This tells me that at some point, Owen lived in Missouri. Interesting — this is something I will want to follow up.

Moral of this search: Searching is a lot like the story of the three bears — you can input too much information or too little information — it's important to put in just enough information to find the individual you are looking for.

2. ADVANCED SEARCH

To get to the advanced search click on the button that says, Advanced Search, located next to the Clear button.

The fields on you can search on this screen are the following:
LAST NAME, FIRST NAME, MIDDLE NAME (INITIAL) LAST RESIDENCE ZIP, LAST RESIDENCE STATE, LAST RESIDENCE COUNTY, LAST RESIDENCE CITY, LAST BENEFIT ZIP, LAST BENEFIT STATE, LAST BENEFIT COUNTY, LAST BENEFIT CITY, BIRTH YEAR, BIRTH MONTH, BIRTH DAY, DEATH YEAR, DEATH MONTH and STATE where the Social Security number was issued.

In the 1900 Census, my grandfather's family is listed. He has three sisters, the youngest of whom is listed as Nina Dorcas Hoy, age 1, birth month November, birth year 1898. (The 1900 census is the only federal census that has been released that includes the birth month and year, making it the first census I check whenever possible.)

I want to try to find Nina's married name so that I may add her and her husband to my family tree.

I fill in the first name NINA, the month of birth NOVEMBER, and the year of birth 1898 and I am going to put the state her SSN was issued as OHIO. One match — a Nina Tanner, birth date — November 27, 1898; date of death — December 1980, Last Residence — Winter Haven, Florida, Issued SSN — Ohio.

This could be her. My next step is to go to the Hayes Presidential Center Obituary Index (http://index.rbhayes.org/hayes/index/index.asp) to see if a Nina Tanner is listed. I find a listing for Nina Tanner with a December 1980 obituary listed in the Tiffin Advertiser Tribune. The obituary is in the Tiffin Seneca Public Library and I can either order the obituary to see if I have the right individual or I can visit the library myself and read the obituary free of charge.

Of course, there is no guarantee that you will find the individual you are looking for when you are doing one of these types of inquiries. But I have had enough success to keep this as an option. In this case, I have found the correct Nina. Her obituary lists her husband as John Tanner. And so, another piece of my family puzzle snaps into its proper place.

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging!

Note this post first published online, October 16, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

Genealogy Tip — The Social Security Death Index

Want to have access to Social Security's Death Master File and have it updated quarterly? No sweat. You can get the complete file and quarterly updates with an annual subscription courtesy of the folks at National Technical Information Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The cheapest method is to get your information on DVD or CD-Rom. If you live in the U.S., Canada or Mexico it will cost you $6,900. For those wishing a subscription with a quarterly update living anywhere else on the planet the price is bumped up to $13,800. Think that's a little too pricey? And just what kind of information does this master file contain that would make a family historian interested? Well, it's a list of over 80 million deceased individuals who have been reported to the Social Security Administration. It may have some or all of the following: 1. Decedent's name 2. Decedent's Social Security number 3. Decedent's date of birth 4. Decedent's date of death 5. State where Social Security Number of the Decedent was originally issued 6. Decedent's Last Residence or zip code of last residence 7. Zip code where Decedent's lump sum payment was sent Sound like information that a genealogist might want to tap into? Well, no worry, there are several genealogical Web sites that have this information and get it updated on a regular basis. My favorite one to use is the Social Security Death Index on Rootsweb's Web site: http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/. There are two reasons that the Rootsweb Web site is my favorite. First, it's free to use and no registration is required. Second, the index features a basic search and an advanced search, which I find very useful. Social Security records were not computerized until 1962, so the majority of deceased individuals listed are from that point forward. Some reasons that you might not find a deceased individual in the index include: 1. The death wasn't reported to Social Security 2. The individual didn't have a Social Security number. 3. Human error — it could be yours or the person who originally input the information into the file. (For example, the last name Vescelus may have been input Vescelas. Or you may have input incorrect information in your search.) 4. The decedent's benefits are still being paid to a spouse or child. Besides looking up a specific individual, I can sometimes use the index to find siblings of my ancestor. In tomorrow's post, I will give an example of how I might use the Social Security Death Index to find a sibling of my grandfather and how I can use the index to find my grandmother's brother. Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! Note this post first published online, October 15, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02 ©13 October 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

Ohio and World War II

Between December 1, 1941 and December 31, 1946, over 16.1 million personnel served in the U.S armed forces. Of that number, approximately 893,000 came from the Buckeye state and served their country during World War II. Between 1,000 and 1,500 World War II veterans die each day in this country. To keep their stories from dying with them, the PBS stations in Ohio, in conjunction with the Ohio Humanities Council, have banded together to form the Ohio War Stories Program. Veterans and civilians who lived through the war years are encouraged to contribute pictures, videos or write a blog about their wartime experiences.

You must register to submit material, but registration is not necessary to view the contributions made to the Web site, http://www.ohiowarstories.org/?q=node/2. 

Some examples of stories already submitted: 

1. Wendy Cochrane in a video called, “About My Parents,” shares the story of how her British mother and her American father met while her father served in England.

2. Read about Mildred Gillars (Axis Sally) and her Ohio background in the post, “Ohio's Connection with Axis Sally.”

3. There were four German P.O.W. camps in the state of Ohio during the War. Scott Trostel writes about these in “Ohio's German P.O.W. Camps.” 

4. In the video, “George H. Snyder, Jr.: P.O.W,” George talks about his time spent as a P.O.W. in Europe and his first day in battle. 

5. Bill Ruth's video talks about the sites he witnessed in liberating a German concentration camp in a video called, “Bill Ruth, Dachau Witness.” 

6. “Saipan Fear” is the image of a Japanese postcard depicting Pearl Harbor and the blog that accompanies that image.

7. In “The Day That Changed Everything” by Alberta L. Montgomery, she writes her story as a young wife experiencing the news of Pearl Harbor

 8. Christopher Purdy submitted a series of letters written by his father while he served in the US Army. The title of his post is “War letters.”

These and other stories can be found at The Ohio War Stories Web site at http://www.ohiowarstories.org/?q=node/2. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! 

Note this post first published online, October 12, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

©12 October 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

For National Family History Month — One Definition of Family

For someone who professes a great interest in family history, I have dragged my heels on mentioning the fact that October has been designated as National Family History Month. As I mentally planned this post, I intended to link you to some terrific ideas on how to celebrate the month. 

 Instead, I find myself squirming about writing on the subject. Preferring instead to put the laptop down, and go foraging for something to eat, or something interesting to read. Or, when I finally make myself sit with laptop in hand, I suddenly feel the need to find spoilers for “Grey's Anatomy,” or a good recipe for crock-pot Chili or googling about any errant thought that flitters through my brain — anything but actually writing this post. 

 The sticking point for me is I'm suddenly self-conscious about the definition of family. If human beings conducted their lives in a nice orderly fashion, and if we all lived to be ninety the concept of family would be easy. But we don't. We sometimes die in automobile accidents, or get cancer, or we find the love of our life isn't, or we somehow derail a perfectly good life for liquor or drugs or lust. I'm not making judgments; I'm stating that human beings lead messy lives. And these messy lives have consequences, one of which is that the definition of family gets bruised and muddied. 

 Is a favored uncle by marriage who died more than 40 years ago, still part of my family? Is the Aunt of my youth, no longer married to my biological Uncle still my Aunt? The grade school project of making a family tree seems innocent and straight forward, unless you happen to be an adopted child, or a foster child, or child of a blended family. What tree does that child make? What genealogical chain does he follow? What family history should she celebrate? 

 Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, author of “The Family of Adoption,” talks instead of a family tree, a family orchard that includes as many trees as necessary for an individual's identity. The concept allows for both biology and reality, for inclusion of nature and nurture. In my family, it allows the man who adopted my grandfather when he was 10, and whose last name I carried until I married, to be recognized and honored in our family orchard. It allows my orchard to include four beautiful grandchildren for whom I am not grandmother by blood, but rather grandmother by heart. It is a concept I embrace. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! Note this post first published online, October 11, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 11 October 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Before there was West Nile Virus there was Ague Fever

Note: My great-great-great-grandparents, Joseph and Magdalena Good, came from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Liberty Township in Seneca County in the early summer of 1831. They purchased 160 acres of land just outside of what would later become the village of Bettsville. Ague Fever (rhymes with Nixon's disgraced VP, Agnew) or Malaria as we call it today, was a disease common to all those who lived in the area known as The Black Swamp. Anopheles quadrimaculatus, the species of mosquito that carries the disease, is one of approximately sixty species of mosquito that still inhabits this region today. (The Anopheles quadrimaculatus does not carry the West Nile Virus.)

The Good family wagon would have lumbered along, through the growing town of Tiffin, on its way to “their” land in Liberty Township. They may have noticed grown men bundled up in heavy wool clothing and thought it odd attire for a summer day. How long before someone knowingly asked them, “Have ya got the ague fever, yet?”

Joseph, and certainly Magdalena, must have been dismayed when they saw the soggy wet land where they would start their new life. They would have seen dense thickets of trees and shrub, smelled ripe decaying vegetation. From dusk until morning, hoards of mosquitoes would buzz loudly around the family and their livestock. At least one book records the death of a small child bitten by mosquitoes in nearby Scott Township of Sandusky County. Was the Good family wise enough to keep smudge pots going at night to drive the mosquitoes away?

A female mosquito that had bitten one of the “old timers” a couple of weeks before and had ingested his blood, probably had not noticed the fever and the chills in the man. All the mosquito cared about was getting the vital protein in the blood that allowed her to lay the optimum number of eggs. She was following an age-old instinct of survival of her species. Nor would she care that the blood she ingested carried along with the needed amino acid, a protozoan that was causing the illness in the man she had bitten. Once the protozoan had remained inside the mosquito for a week, multiplying and growing, the mosquito would be transferring the parasite when she bit the next individual.

Joseph Good would have appealed to the mosquito only because, he was nearby and he had left an arm or maybe a neck exposed so that she could land, bite him, and suck out just the right amount of blood she needed. Of course, as she bit him, she would be transferring saliva into the open wound. The saliva contained a chemical that kept the wound from clotting. It also contained the protozoa that caused malaria. Joseph would have noticed the itch from the bite, the red mark on his skin, but he would not connect the symptoms that would eventually follow.

The protozoa laced saliva of the mosquito would have traveled to his liver, where it found the right conditions to grow and multiply. Sometime between 8 days and several months after the mosquito's bite, the parasites would leave the liver and enter Joseph's red blood cells. There they would grow and multiply still more, bursting the red blood cells as they grew, attacking still more red blood cells, all the while releasing toxins into Joseph's blood.

It would be at this point Joseph would start to feel ill. He would have severe chills and shakes, and would understand why a man would put on woolens on a hot summer day. Then there would be the high fever and headache, as well as an overwhelming fatigue accompanied by muscle aches, nausea and possibly diarrhea. From the destruction of his red blood cells, Joseph would become pale or possibly jaundiced. Any mosquitoes biting Joseph now would also ingest the parasite, allowing the cycle to continue.

Joseph and the rest of the settlers thought this terrible fever came from inhaling the “bad air” of The Black Swamp. The discovery that a protozoan in the blood caused the disease and that the lowly mosquito was responsible for transmission, would not be made until the late 19th century.

Though the relationship of mosquitoes to the disease would be unknown for more than another half century, the settlers did realize that there was a cycle to the disease. It would first strike during the warmth of late spring, peak with the humid hot days of summer, and taper off after the first crisp fall day.

When the disease was at its peak, “work schedules were fixed to accommodate the fits. The justice arranged the docket to avoid the sick day of the litigant; the minister made his appointments in keeping with the shakes; the housewife hurried through her morning chores, then sat down to await her visitor; and the sparking swain reckoned the ager schedule of self and intended. Neither a wedding in the family nor a birth or death would stop the shakes,” this according to the book “The Midwest Pioneer: His Ills, Cures & Doctors,” by Picard and Buley. Livestock went unattended when whole families became bedridden with the illness.

Almost as bad as the disease itself, were the cures that the local doctors prescribed for their hapless patients. Bloodletting was a common practice along with such diverse cures as opium, spider's web, the bark of a horse chestnut and even arsenic in conjunction with the bark of cinchona. (Quinine, the traditional cure, is a derivative of the bark of the cinchona tree.)

All this was part of the daily life of the Northwestern Ohio family. A reduced supply of stagnant water due to ditch laws enacted in the 1850s, created a reduction in the number of mosquitoes’ eggs. The fewer supply of mosquitoes interacting with the human hosts, disrupted the multiplication of the parasite, which put an end to malaria as a common illness for local inhabitants.

The first few decades that Joseph and Magdalena spent in Seneca County, however, would have found the family along with those of their neighbors plagued with malaria. It was just a part of daily life that had to be endured.

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging!

Note this post first published online, October 10, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 10 October 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder