Writing & Education

Birthplace Pedigree Chart

I saw several of these charts posted on blogs and Facebook, which come from an original post by J. Paul Hawthorne.  So I decided to follow suit and have created birthplace charts for both myself and my husband.

I went to seven generations (including myself and my husband).  It was really interesting to me to look at the data in this way because it really confirmed for me some key things…

  1. My family has been in the United States for many generations, pretty consistently across the various branches of the family.
  2. My husband’s family has much more recent immigrant roots on his mother’s side of the family.
  3. I have more research to do to find the roots of my mother’s family.
  4. I have more research to do on my husband’s father’s side of the family – there are a lot of missing information about that branch of the family.
  5. My father’s family is pretty much Irish and German immigrants to the New York area (mostly Brooklyn).  Very strong roots in that region.
  6. My mother’s family is primarily from Georgia and Mississippi, with a little migration from Virginia and South Carolina.
  7. My husband’s mother’s family were all Polish immigrants (even though the birthplaces are variously Poland, Prussia and Germany).  I find it an intriguing example of how much the history of Poland has been dictated by the political history of Europe as a whole.
  8. My husband’s father’s family moved around a lot and their roots are largely unknown… They were primarily in the midwest (Missouri/Oklahoma), but it looks like if we go back a little farther, there may be more roots in the area of Illinois/Ohio/Pennsylvania.  They were definitely the more migratory of all the branches of our families.

My chart:

My Birthplace Pedigree Chart

My Birthplace Pedigree Chart

 

My husband’s chart:

His Birthplace Pedigree

His Birthplace Pedigree

52 ANCESTORS – #10: Annie

Annie was born in New York in approximately 1749.[1]  Her maiden name and information about her family are unknown.

 

Draught of New York

Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. “A draught of New York and Perthamboy Harbour.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-eed3-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

In the 1810 US Census, her husband William Golden is listed in Westchester, Westchester County, New York, and presumably, she is the female over the age of 45 noted on the census as well.  There is one boy between the age of 10 and 15; three girls under the age of 10; one girl between the age of 10 and 15; one girl between the age of 16 and 25.  Also listed within a few entries of William Golden are other Golden families (presumably sons): Isiah Golden, notated as 26-45 years old and Simmonds Golden, notated as 16-26 years old.[2]

In the 1820 US Census for Westchester, a “Mrs. Golden” is listed, and in addition to herself, a male over the age of 45 years is marked as living in the household.  This is probably son living in the home with her, as if it was her husband, the household would have been enumerated under his name.  Some of the same neighbors as in the 1810 Census are enumerated on the same page as her, including the Bathgate, Hunt and Leggett.  In addition, the several Ward households are also enumerated nearby, which is the family her grandson Isaiah married into in 1809.[3]

Annie died in September 1850 in West Farms, New York at the age of 101.  Her cause of death was listed as “Old Age”.[4]

1850 US Census Mortality Schedule, Annie Golden, Ancestry.com

1850 US Census Mortality Schedule, Annie Golden, Ancestry.com http://bit.ly/1oQQOhL

[1] 1850 US Census Mortality Schedules, New York, Westchester, Roll M2, Page 364, Line Number 27, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2010)

[2] 1810 US Census: New York, Westchester, Westchester, Roll 37, Page 1152, Image 0181391, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2010).

[3] 1820 US Census: New York, Westchester, Westchester, Roll 75, Page 185, Image 153, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2010).

[4] 1850 US Census Mortality Schedules, New York.

52 Ancestors – #9: William Golden

William Golden was born sometime in 1740 and baptized on November 7, 1740 in Seal, Kent, England.[1]  Seal is a small village in the district of Kent in England, located about 30 miles southwest of London.  Seal is an ancient village, having been recorded in 1086 in the Domesday Book, a survey of England completed by William the Conqueror.[2]  At some point, William Golden came to the colonies and settled in New York.  William presumably died sometime between 1810 and 1820.  He last appears in the 1810 US Census, with his family, in Westchester, Westchester County, New York.  Living in his home at the time are; one man over the age of 45 (William); one woman over the age for 45 years (Annie); one boy between the age of 10 and 15; three girls under the age of 10; one girl between the age of 10 and 15; one girl between the age of 16 and 25.  Also listed within a few entries of William Golden are other Golden families (presumably sons): Isiah Golden, notated as 26-45 years old and Simmonds Golden, notated as 16-26 years old.[3] Listed as neighbors in the few pages of the 1820 U.S. Census covering the town of Westchester were some well-known founding New York families, including the Leggett, Hunt, Bathgate and Drake families.

Excerpt of Map of Westchester County

Excerpt from: Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. “Map of the county of Westchester” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 22, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-f277-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

 

[1] England and Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906, Seal, Kent, England, 1740-1741, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2008)

[2] “Seal, Kent,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal,_Kent, Accessed: 3 January 2016.

“Domesday Book,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book, Accessed: 3 January, 2016.

[3] 1810 US Census: New York, Westchester, Westchester, Roll 37, Page 1152, Image 0181391, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2010).

Papaly.com – Organizing My Online Bookmarks

First let me say – I have no connection to Papaly.com, other than I recently discovered the website and really like how I can use it to organize my online bookmarks.  I have tons of websites that I’ve bookmarked, but it almost becomes pointless at some point because it’s too hard to find anything.  And once it becomes hard to find a bookmark, I end up re-bookmarking websites, which just exacerbates the problem!

So I started looking for another solution and I found Papaly.com.  Here’s what I like:

  1. I was able to import my existing bookmarks using an HTML bookmark file that I exported from my browser (Chrome).
  2. I can create multiple boards, and then within the boards have multiple sub-boards by category to keep everything organized.

The one thing I didn’t like: it made itself my default new tab when I open a new browser window without asking me.  And finding the setting to change that was a little difficult.

So here is how I’m using it to organize my bookmarks:

  1. I have multiple categories of bookmarks – not just genealogy.  So I created separate boards for each of those topics.  To start, they currently are:
    1. Just for Fun (silly, mind candy websites)
    2. Work Related (my 9-5 FT job)
    3. Truck (for my husband’s 1958 Chevy Truck Restoration)
    4. Dogs
    5. My Husband’s Business
    6. Personal Finance
    7. Genealogy (of course!)
  2. Within Genealogy, I have multiple tiles with lists of the websites related to those topics.  I have so many Genealogy topics, however, that I think I may need to even break up that board into multiples.  But for now, within my genealogy board, I’m organizing my bookmarks in the following way:
    1. Different sub-categories for Places – State, Cities, Countries where my ancestors lived.  Some examples: Germany, Georgia, Brooklyn
    2. Blogs I Follow
    3. Genealogy Sub-specialites, such as Military, Native American, Genetic Genealogy, Newspaper Research, Immigration
    4. Maps and Geography
    5. Genealogy Education – webinars, classes
    6. Genealogy Societies
    7. Images – sources for royalty-free, public domain and unrestricted use images
    8. Timelines – websites for generating timelines
    9. My blog – websites I use to manage my blog and generate content specific to blogging
    10. Genealogy writing websites
    11. Professional Genealogy websites
    12. Google books and other digital books I’ve found
    13. Repositories and Libraries
Papaly.com

Papaly.com

Update for My Genealogy Do Over

I’ve been working with my Genealogy Source Checklist (see previous post here). I’ve made a couple of modifications, and actually combined it with my Ancestry Document Download spreadsheet (see previous post here).  To combine them, I added a column for tracking if I had downloaded all the documents from my Ancestry account for that ancestor, along with a column for linking to the file location where those files are saved.

As an aside: I save all my computer files to a Dropbox account and for the spreadsheet, I went to the web interface and used the URL for the file location for the ancestor in question.  I actually used a bit.ly short url for the spreadsheet so that I didn’t have long, messy links in my file.

Excel

Excel

As I worked on my checklist here are some additional changes that I’ve made:

I added a hyperlink to each ancestor name that points to the Ancestry profile page for them in my tree.  To add a hyperlink, highlight the cell > right-click and select “Hyperlink”.  Copy and paste the URL of the Ancestry profile page into the dialog box and click OK.

Excel

Excel

 

I added a column for the surname.  This allows me to sort by the surname if I want to work on a particular family line.  For family members who I don’t have a surname (mostly wives whose maiden names are unknown), I put in the surname of the husband, so I can keep track of those people along with the rest of their family group.

Excel

Excel

 

I also added a column for tracking if I’ve completed downloading the documents for that ancestor.  I use three options: Complete, Not Complete and None.

Excel

Excel

 

And as I’m working through downloading the documents from Ancestry, I’m also using that opportunity to clean up my online family tree.  I removed a whole bunch of disconnected who are no longer connected to my family tree as I had eliminated them as being a part of my family.  I also decided to trim down who I include in my collateral relatives.  I realized when I was looking at the profile page for the “maternal grandfather of the mother-in-law of the husband of my great aunt” that I really didn’t want to spend the time tracking, researching and organizing for that distant a relation, who is only related through marriage.  I decided to draw the following line:

  1. I will include all siblings of direct ancestors.
  2. I will include spouses and children of all siblings of direct ancestors.
  3. I will include parents and siblings of spouses of siblings of direct ancestors (because this may be useful for cluster research).

In the end, I ended up with 1130 people in my current tree – which is still a fairly good number of people to research, track and organize!  672 of them are on my maternal side, 444 are on my paternal side and 14 are what I termed as immediate family.

I’ve updated the available templates here (though if you are already using the spreadsheet, just add the following columns:

  1. Family Name
  2. Doc Download (Complete, Not Complete, None)
  3. File Location