Summer vacation and mission trip

Again this year we went on the Canadian mission trip with our church.  We decided to combine that trip with our annual vacation.  So we drove through the pacific northwest to go into Canada and then come back to the Calgary area.

While vacationing on the west coast we were able to spend an afternoon with one of my first cousins (once removed).  My cousin and his wife are both well advanced in age and he is in poor health.  So it was very good to be able to visit with them possibly for the last time.

Chuck was born and raised in the area where I still live.  He had left the area before I was born but he and his family returned to quite often to visit my father and his other cousins in the area.  Because of the age difference we did not know each other very well.  However, I was able to provide him a good time reminiscing on his youth and growing up with my father and uncles.

We will probably do another pacific northwest trip next year but the chances are very good that he will no longer be with us.

New family members found in my Cobb and Smith lines - Continuing Find A Grave research

This past week I continued my research using Find A Grave.  It was a very fruitful week with several new leads and a few photos found.  Find A Grave has again proved to be an invaluable source.

In the Cobb line I was able to confirm the birth and death dates for one set of GGrand Parents (Catherine Bird Means and William Burnston Means).

I also located the burial location (and birth / death dates) for several extended cousins.

• William Zachariah Bird Sr
• Eliza Ann Derrick Bird
• Margaret M Bird Brown
• William Zachariah Bird Jr
• William M Billy Means 
• Missouri A Cox Means
• Estella Means Holley
• James Alvis Cobb
• Edwin Cobb
• Mary Francis Bishop Cobb
• Martha Catherine Warren Cobb
• Henry Franklin Cobb
• Mary Elizabeth Hogg Cobb

For the Smith line I located the burial locations (including birth / death dates for this grand uncle and aunt and a first cousin.

• Fletcher Lindsay
• Charles F Lindsay
• Mae L Lindsay

In all I found nine tombstone, two individual and one family photo.  Fortunately the photographer granted use permission on their Find a Grave profile page.

This past week I also continued my arbitration of indexed records for Family Search.  There is finally a project being worked for Missouri obituaries.  So far this month I've submitted slightly more than 2,000 records.

I've been keeping up with sourcing my information in my Roots Magic database but I've not been updating my trees on Ancestry and Family Search.  I've got quite a bit of work to do there.  Plus I just looked at Ancestry and I now have 508 new un-reviewed hints (plus a lot of older ones as well).

I may need to consider stopping the arbitration and concentrate more on my research and updating various trees.  Once the Missouri Obit project is completed I'll stop for awhile and try to get everything caught up again.

Working in Find A Grave

This past week I have spent my family history research time in Find A Grave.  

I ran a report out of my Roots Magic system that showed all those with a death fact and no burial fact.  Then I ran a report for all those with a burial fact which I exported to Excel where I then ran a comparison against a  list of people with a Find A Grave source.  After removing those that had a Find A Grave source I then combined the two lists.  That gave me my work list for Find A Grave.

This weeks research time was spent searching Find A Grave for people on that list.  I found memorial pages for 18 people and only 4 people searched with no pages found.  Also most of the memorial pages had tombstone photos added.  So far so good.  

This next week I hope to spend more time on research and less on indexing.  I really only spent one afternoon this past week on research.  I did more indexing this week than I originally planned to do.  Got caught up in the flow.  Also, I now have my work process flow established and a good Evernote template as well as a source template setup in Roots Magic so that should speed up the process.

Researching the Jesse Smith & Julia Booher family of Athena, Umatillia, Oregon

For the last few weeks I've been concentrating on my Granduncle Jesse Smith (Julia Booher) family.  I've found numerous records on Ancestry.com.  These included, censuses, marriage records, death records (SSDI & death indexes), burial records (Find A Grave).

I was able to grow the family tree by three first cousins, plus two spouses, and six second cousins.

After finding the record on Ancestry I added it to that person on my Ancestry member tree (this worked great)  and loaded it to my ancestry shoebox.

Then working from my shoebox I downloaded the source records to my computer and updated my Roots Magic 6 database.

Finally I updated my Family Search Family Tree directly from my Roots Magic database.  This process also works extremely well.My Jesse Smith family tree on Ancestry.

My Jesse Smith ancestry tree may be found at Don Varners Jesse Smith ancestry tree

I was also able to acquire several tombstone photo's from find a grave and have received permission to use them.

Still working my SMITH line - more descendants of Phebe SMETHERS found (BRATTAIN, WILSON, SPARKS and GINDER)

This week I continued indexing on Ancestry's World Archives Project.  Added approximately 600 more names to my index total.  Getting a little faster each week.  Skipped indexing on Family Search and used my indexing time to start a family tree.

I decided to try the new (in beta testing) Family Tree in Family Search.  I'm not an LDS member but anyone can request to help with the beta testing prior to the general release to all.  I could not find a way to upload a GEDCOM using my FTM 2012 file.  Watched the training videos and it appears as though the only way to create the tree is to manually add one person at a time.  When a person is added to the tree the program checks Family Search to see if that person is already connected to an existing tree in Family Tree.  If found, there are two options given.  One is to choose the person or if not the right person there is an option to create a new person.  I like the interface but it will be very slow going to build out the tree.  I believe I will limit the tree to my direct line only.

I've added a few more second / third cousins to the tree.  They are part of my paternal Grandmother Smith's line. Working primarily on Phebe Smethers Brattain.  She was my great grandmother Mary Francis Smethers Smith sister

Phebe SMETHERS was married to Samuel BRATTAIN and they had four children.
Clara BRATTAIN, married John GINDER
Della BRATTAIN, did not marry
Lillie BRATTAIN, married Earl SPARKS
Nellie BRATTAIN, married Lona WILSON
All of the families lived in the Hamilton and Madison County Indiana area.

Holidays and new cousins (BRATTAIN / WILSON families of Madison County, IN) found

The Christmas and New Year's holidays have come and gone.  The last two weeks have been extremely busy and very enjoyable.  This year we were able to meet not only with all of the immediate family but also my two sisters and their families as well.  Nephew Eddie Neuenschwander and niece Debby Vanslyke and family were the only ones missing this year.  We had an extremely full house (30+) on Christmas eve.  We again waited until Grandson Kaleb Varner could be here to have our family Christmas, which was done on December 26th this year.  On Christmas day Carolyn and I drove to southern Missouri to pick up Kaleb and bring him back.

With all of the holiday activity I was still able to spend a couple of days at the Henry County Museum volunteering.  I'm working on creating a database program to store their collection records. Hopefully I will be able to finish this project in the next two or three weeks.  Current plans are to move to the genealogical library next to digitize their records and automate some processes.  I was also able to spend a few hours indexing for both Ancestry and Family Search.

On the family history front I've been working on the Brattain and Wilson families of Green Township, Madison County, Indiana. These are the families of  Phebe Smethers the daughter of Eli and Barbara (Welty) Smethers.  The Smethers are my paternal 2nd great grandparents.  I have found several 1st cousins (1x and 2x removed) and 2nd cousins.  Ancestry.com came through again with their fantastic census record,  Indiana marriages and SSDI collections. I still need two or three days to finish up the documentation on the Brittain and Wilson branches of the tree.

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.

Census finds for John F SMITH & Daniel VARNER

Last week and so far this week has been very busy.  My wife and I just returned from a trip to the southern tip of Missouri to pick up my grandson for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Down and back in one day (13 1/2 hours).  It's so good that he will be able to spend it with the rest of the family.  All of the kids/grand kids will be home for Thanksgiving.

Last week I resumed my Family Search Indexing,  I've indexed a few more records for the first time since the 1940 census was finished.  I also spent quite a bit of time doing photo requests for Find A Grave.  The weather has been very cooperative so far this month.  It's really been a very mild November so far.

I've not progressed much on the family tree in the last week or two.  Spent a couple of days on Ancestry and I was able to finally find my maternal great grand father (John Franklin Smith) in the 1880 census.  This has eluded me for quite some time.  He was enumerated as John SMITT.  I also found my paternal grandfather in the 1900 census.  He was enumerated as Daniel VERNER.  Also found marriage licenses for a couple of cousins.  I hope to be able to spend Friday on research.

New VARNERS added to the tree and new sources for VARNER/SMITH/LEONARDS/SMETHERS

This has been a very productive week from a genealogical research stand point.  I've been able to spend a couple of days concentrating on my paternal grandfathers line.  I found several new source documents and was able to add an entire family (2nd cousin 3X removed) John Peter VARNER of Fayette Township, Juniata County, PA.

Cousins MARTIN and HOSTETLER added to the family tree

Last week was a very good week.  Got lots done.

I spent one day visiting Teays Chapel and Clinton Memory Gardens cemeteries.  Took a total of 14 volunteer pictures for Find A Grave.

Then I spent a couple of days doing some file cleanup of my Legacy database.  It wasn't in as bad of shape as I feared.  Still need to do lots of source work (converting old basic style sources to the new sourcewriter templates) but that is not a pressing task.  Will work on as time permits.

With the help of my two sisters, Ancestry.com and Family Search.com I was able to add some cousins to the family tree.  These cousins are from my Grandmother Varner's  SMITH side of the family.  Those added were the Claude / Barbra MARTIN, of central Missouri, and Roland / Fay HOSTETLER, of  San Bernardino, California, families.

I was very pleased with the progress last week especially in light of the household visitors.  Our son's four year old twins spent two days with us and our daughters two sons spent a day and a couple of nights.  It was a very enjoyable time with the grand kids.