Monday, October 31, 2011

Amanuensis Monday: Application for Marriage - Herman Feinstein and Annie Blatt - 1912

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week, I transcribe the application for marriage for two of my paternal great grandparents, Herman Max Feinstein, and Annie Blatt.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Week In Review

Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

Around the Blogs
Some genealogists may wish to consider ways to celebrate Dia de los Muertos.  This Mexican holiday, "Day of the Dead," occurs on November 1st and 2nd, traditionally in conjunction with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died.

Other Weekly Link Lists

Monday, October 24, 2011

Amanuensis Monday: Everett Van Every - April 2, 1924

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week, I transcribe an article for the April 2nd, 1924 edition of the San Antonio Express.  The article is very brief, but confirms what I have learned from other sources regarding the death of my maternal grandmother's nephew, Everett Van Every.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Week In Review

Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

Around the Blogs
  • Jessie at The National Archives announced that they have released some digitization tools on the social coding platform, GitHub. "Over the last year and a half, our Digitization Services Branch has developed a number of software applications to facilitate digitization workflows.  These applications have significantly increased our productivity and improved the accuracy and completeness of our digitization work...We have made two digitization applications, “File Analyzer and Metadata Harvester” and “Video Frame Analyzer” available on GitHub, and they are now available for use by other institutions and the public."
Newspaper and Magazine articles

Other Weekly Link Lists

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Ancestry Can Be Quick to Fix an Error

Michael John Neill at RootDig wrote a post entitled, Ancestry.com - There is More To Illinois than Cook County

Ancestry's Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index (1916-1947) provided the following source information:

Ancestry.com. Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.Original data: "Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916–1947." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2010. Illinois Department of Health records. "Certificates of Death." Division of Vital Records, Springfield, Illinois.
But the description indicated that the records were extracted from the Cook County records.  This wasn't accurate as there were records in the database from all over Illinois. I use the past tense, as while his post was this morning, and he has a screen print of a record, someone from Ancestry must have read his post, because they have already corrected the error.

Below is an image of my Great Great Uncle, Max Newmark's record copied a few minutes ago:
No longer does the description indicate that it is only Cook County Records.  Which is a good thing, as my great great uncle died in East St. Louis, Illinois - a fair distance from Chicago/Cook County.

Something else I'll note -- this is another good example of the issues with record transcriptions without accompanying images.  While the transcription comes originally from FamilySearch, they too don't have the image.  Though with the microfilm number, I can obtain a copy if I wish.

Max's wife's name should be Dora, not Iona.
The cemetery's name is B'nai Amoona, not Bnar Amoona.
I'm sure the informant said he was born in England, even though I'm pretty certain that isn't the case. The Newmark family moved to England shortly after his birth.

I transcribed the newspaper account of his death back in February of 2010.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Week In Review

Set this to post on Sunday morning and somehow Blogger failed me.

Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.



Other Weekly Link Lists

Amanuensis Monday: Judson Van Every - Manchester Journal - 1915-1917

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week, I share more transcriptions from The Manchester Journal (Manchester, OK).  Judson Van Every, the brother of my great grandfather, Melvin Van Every, appeared often in the pages.  These transcriptions were originally written down by Wayne York, a grandson of Judson Van Every.  I found the transcriptions attached to an entry on an Ancestry Public Member Tree belonging to plnjmw. They are shared with her permission.

Last week, we saw Jud and his family left the Manchester area in April of 1910 for Idaho.  But his travels didn't end there.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

SNGF: Ancestor's GeneaMeme

 For tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings suggested:
1)  Participate in the Ancestors GeneaMeme created by Jill Ball on the Geniaus blog.

2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note, or in a Google+ Stream item.
The Rules:

The list should be annotated in the following manner:

Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type

You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item


[I've added some notes in brackets]

The Meme:
Which of these apply to you?

1.  Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents
2.  Can name over 50 direct ancestors
3.  Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents  [I have photographs of 6 of my 16 gg-grandparents]
4.  Have an ancestor who was married more than three times  [several]
5.  Have an ancestor who was a bigamist.  [I am unsure the correct term was chosen here. Bigamy is always a crime, by definition. Someone who has a polygamist ancestor doesn't have a bigamist ancestor, as long as it was legal.]
6.  Met all four of my grandparents [3/4]
7.  Met one or more of my great-grandparents  [1]
8.  Named a child after an ancestor. [No children yet. Getting married next year...]
9.  Bear an ancestor's given name/s [My Hebrew name 'Baruch' is after my great-grandfather Barney]
10.  Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland
11.  Have an ancestor from Asia [No identified ancestor]
12.  Have an ancestor from Continental Europe
13.  Have an ancestor from Africa [No identified ancestor, though I'm sure if I were able to trace my ancestry back far enough...]
14.  Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer [Both of my maternal grandparents grew up on a farm.  I have to go a few generations further back on my father's side.]
15.  Have an ancestor who had large land holdings
16.  Have an ancestor who was a holy man - minister, priest, rabbi [Methodist and Mennonite]
17.  Have an ancestor who was a midwife [A great grandmother practiced midwifery in Chicago after emigrating from Transylvania]
18.  Have an ancestor who was an author [Ancestry's OneFamilyTree states Chaucer as my 18th great grandfather, but I have disproven that relationship. I do have a close ancestor who published a book on legal matters.]
19.  Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones
20.  Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng
21.  Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X
22.  Have an ancestor with a forename beginning with Z
23.  Have an ancestor born on 25th December
24.  Have an ancestor born on New Year's Day
25.  Have blue blood in your family lines [I used to believe all my blood was blue, before it was oxygenated. However, this scientific myth is allegedly inaccurate. OneFamilyTree would tell you I have royal ancestry, but I haven't verified my lines.]
26.  Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
27.  Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth [1/4]
28.  Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century
29.  Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier
30.  Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents [All 8 I believe.]
31.  Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X (not that I know of)
32.  Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university [Both of my grandfathers. One of my grandmothers took college courses, though she didn't get a degree. My other grandmother enrolled at a university, but changed her mind, and didn't attend.]
33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence
34.  Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime. [No serious crime I can think of offhand. Not counting petty theft.]
35.  Have shared an ancestor's story online or in a magazine [I'm a genealogy blogger. That's what I do.]
36.  Have published a family history online or in print
37.  Have visited an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries [Have plans to do so next year.]
38.  Still have an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family.
39.  Have a family bible from the 19th Century
40.  Have a pre-19th century family bible

Monday, October 10, 2011

Amanuensis Monday: Judson Van Every - Manchester Journal - 1902-1910

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week, I share transcriptions from The Manchester Journal (Manchester, OK).  Judson Van Every, the brother of my great grandfather, Melvin Van Every, appeared often in the pages.  These transcriptions were originally written down by Wayne York, a grandson of Judson Van Every.  I found the transcriptions attached to an entry on an Ancestry Public Member Tree belonging to plnjmw. They are shared with her permission.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Week In Review

Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.



The following individuals participated this past Monday in the weekly meme I began back in February of 2009: Amanuensis Monday.  I apologize if I missed anyone, as I had to rely on Google to find many of the posts.  It is my understanding Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers will be back in town and tracking participation in the daily blogging prompts tomorrow.


Other Weekly Link Lists
Many of those who usually appear below post on Friday.  However, Randy usually does an excellent job of listing other lists.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Amanuensis Monday: Missouri Sheriff Has a Mule Problem

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week, I transcribe another document relating to the ancestry of my fiancée. This is a newspaper article from The St. Louis Post Dispatch concerning her second great grandfather, Louis P. Gober (1867-1948). [The article was found at ProQuest Historical Newspapers.]