Granddad Daniel Grant Varner

Granddad Daniel Grant Varner
Daniel Grant Varner (front, far right) and siblings with spouses

Friday, December 21, 2012

Working on SMETHERS branch of family and indexing on the World Archives Project

As I mentioned in my last blog post I have resumed indexing on Family Search.  I was working on the New York Naturalization project.  I thought I would try something different  so I begin indexing on Ancestry's World Archive Project as well.  I've been working on the Kansas (city and county) state census there.

Comparing the two I believe the indexing tools are fairly equivalent with a slight edge to Family Searches.  However, Family Search far surpasses Ancestry on project instructions, examples, help forums and accuracy ratings.  In fact on Ancestry there appears to be no way of knowing what changes had been made to your indexed records.  For that reason the frustration level is much higher working with the World Archive Project.  At least on Family Search you know what the arbitrator changed and if you do not agree you can request a further review.

For now I will continue to do some for each.

Also this week I was able to spend a lot of time on Ancestry working on my paternal 2nd great grandmothers family the SMETHERS (SMITH'S).  With the help of another researcher on Ancestry I was finally able to determine and prove her maiden name of WELTY.  So far it appears as though the most of the family have stayed in the Madison and Wayne County, Indiana areas.  A few (my great grandmother) came to Missouri and one or two to Kansas.  I have found several death and marriage records and many census records on Ancestry.  I also found some burial locations, and tombstone photos on Find A Grave.  The family tree grew by almost 30 people this week.

I still have much work to do on the Elias SMETHERS / Barbara WELTY family.  There are 9 children in the family and most (if not all) married and had children of their own.  I will be spending the next few weeks on this branch of the tree.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Documenting the HOLLY / HOLLOPETER / MARTIN family connection

It's been a very busy last three weeks.  Thanksgiving was great with all of the family here at the new house.  I've also re-started my Family Search Indexing efforts again.  I've just past the 5,000 records indexed mark. I've also been volunteering at the Henry County Museum and Genealogy Library a couple of days a week.  That has left little time to spend on my family history.

No new relations uncovered but I've been concentrating on more complete documentation of those I already  have in the family tree.  My concentration areas of the last few weeks have been the MARTIN / HOLLY / HOLLOPETER connections.  These connections are related to the VARNER side of the family.  Primarily I've found census records, marriage records and a few obituaries.  The HOLLY name came from Ray V HOLLY who choose to shorten his surname of  HOLLOPETER  to HOLLY.  At this point I'm not sure how many of his siblings's choose to do that as well.  I have a research "TO DO" to look into this a little more at a later date.

I received some invaluable assistance from Bill Martin to set me on the correct path for his mother's (HUEY) side of the family.

I've now decided to rework my research strategy with the focus being on more complete documentation of the family file I have.  My intent is to focus more on family history and less on genealogy.  Now to put together a game plan.  Also for the new year I plan on rethinking my genealogy "Tool Kit".  That may be a future blog subject.