West Virginia? Virginia?...which one

As I have stated previously, I use Legacy Family Tree software for my family tree. I really like the program. It has some nice features. One of those features is a county verifier. It verifies that a county was in existence at the time of an event.

That being said, most of my family comes from West Virginia which, as you know, was part of Virginia until 1863 when it became an entity of its own. It is hard trying to keep up with which county existed pre-statehood, which county came into existence post-statehood, what year it became a county, etc.

I was getting tired of either Googling this information or looking it up on Wikipedia. So, I found a list of the West Virginia counties, the year they were established and the origin of the county (i.e., what county it was a part of before becoming its own county). I copied it from Wikipedia, cleaned it up and extracted only the pertinent information. This list comes in pretty handy and I refer to it frequently.

I found I was having the same issue with other states, as well. I did the same thing for Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maine, Missouri and Illinois. Those are the states most of my family lived in, was born in or died in, at least thus far in my research. I also created a list of the independent cities in Virginia, which includes the year they became independent. I am sure I will eventually have a list for all 50 states, but for now, these will do. I have made the lists available to you. Click on a state for its county list. Note: The Virginia file has two lists, one for counties and the other for independent cities.

I can now make more accurate notes on events when a county is in question. I write in my notes research indicated the event happened in such-and-such a county but it was not in existence at the time of the event. I feel this will help others who look at my genealogical information to get a better picture of what they are looking at.

I Love a Mystery

I love mysteries! I love reading them, pitting myself against the detective trying to figure out whodunit. Mysteries make me use my brain and all my powers of logic. They keep me engaged.

Genealogy can sometimes be like solving a mystery. I have found several mysteries in my family and proudly solved them. When I am able to figure out something that isn't quite right, it makes me feel a sense of accomplishment.

Here is the latest mystery I solved. I call it the case of the 1910 census Bennett children conundrum.

Recently, I was working on a 1910 census. I found one of those mysteries on my paternal grandparents census. The census sheet had my grandfather, grandmother and three uncles, Willie, Harry and Charley. It indicated my grandfather was married twice, which was true. It indicated my grandmother was married once, again true. It showed she was the mother of seven with three living at home. This is where the mystery came in. At that point, my grandmother had only had four children, two sons and two daughters. My grandfather had two children with his first wife and then four with my grandmother, making a total of six children not seven. I realized after looking closely at the birth years of my aunts and uncles, the census taker had incorrectly listed my aunt as a four year old male named Harry, when in reality it should have been a four year old female named Carrie. I did have an Uncle Harry, but he was born seven years later. That cleared up that mystery. The other six children mystery remained.

I remembered I had two aunts who died in the early 1900s, that explained away those two, leaving four children. Then I realized my grandmother was pregnant at the time of the census with my Uncle Wallace, who was born in August of 1910. That explained away why there wasn't at least four living at home. They must have listed my unborn uncle as the seventh child. That left my Uncle Forrest, who was my grandfather's son from his first wife. I couldn't figure out why he wasn't living in their house because he was 15 years old at the time of the census. I had no idea why he wasn't on the census sheet and no one to ask.

I put that to the back of my mind and continued working on the 1910 census. I ran across a census sheet from the same year but different county, and there, on that census sheet, was my Uncle Forrest. He was living with my great-grandmother. She had lost my great-grandfather the previous year. I can only assume my Uncle Forrest was living with her because she was what would have been considered elderly at that time, and was living alone.

I had solved the mystery of the 1910 census Bennett children conundrum!! Case closed.

And speaking of censuses, I found a website that has some blank census sheets in PDF form from 1790 through 2010. The website is the United States Census Bureau. While Legacy software offers blank census sheets, their sheets are somewhat abbreviated and the columns don't quite match the columns on the official sheets. The census sheets on this website seem to be replicates of the original census sheets, making it easier to match up what is on the images.

Well, that is it for this blog. Hope you find the census sheet website as useful as I did.  Peace, love and happines. . .Namaste!

You never know how you look. . .

We had a saying in my family...you never know how you look 'til you get your picture took. That saying brings me to today's topic for my blog.

I like including photographs in my family tree, as I am sure you do, too. I like putting a face to a name. It brings that person to life to me, making them more real and their relationship to me more personal. Also, I want my daughter and grandchildren to be able to look at the tree and see their ancestors.

When I look at old photographs of my ancestors, I like to look at them to see if I, in anyway, resemble anyone of them. Since I don't feel I definitively look like one side of my family more than the other, I don't think I will find a photo of an ancestor I will look exactly like or closely resemble. But still the same, I look. Although, I guess I do resemble more of my father's side than my mother's.

I don't know about you, but I have a ton of old photographs of family members I have no earthly idea who they are. Since the only people who might have known these people have passed, I can't imagine how I will ever find out their identity.  Nevertheless, I keep the photos in hopes of one day finding out who they are. They were developed in a variety of ways. Some are the old tin-types photos.  Others are on heavy cardboard with a matte surrounding the photo.  And still others were made up as postcards. I must say, the photos have help up well, not aging like photos taken in this day and age. I will have to do some minor clean up on them, but not a whole lot.

Let me retract my previous statement, while it is true I have no idea who some of the people are, some of the photos do have names written on the back. However, right now, it doesn't help much because I don't know how they fit into my family tree.

My task now, if I choose to accept it, which I do (ala Mission Impossible), is to figure out which side of the family they belong and how they fit into the family puzzle.  This will be a monumental task because, as previously stated, the family members who could tell me who they were and where they belong have long since passed. I guess that is the life of a genealogist...solving family mysteries and fitting the puzzle pieces together.

Genealogy brings out the nerd in me

I am such a nerd in many areas of my life. The littlest of things can excite me or make me happy.

For instance, genealogy and starting this blog. I started it with the good intention of posting something genealogy related everyday. However, sometimes the shiny things in life draw my attention away and I get sidetracked, which means I probably won't post something everyday. LOL.

In recent months, I have watched several webinars hosted by Legacy and MyHeritage. For most part, they are informative and I most always walk away with a little more insight into researching my ancestors than I had before. I highly recommend signing up for them if you have the time and can. They offer both free and members only webinars. At the end of each webinar, they most usually give away some door prizes and then give you a discount code for purchases on the Legacy website. I used the discount to buy my membership. Although, the cost for a year of webinars is roughly fifty dollars, but I know sometimes fifty dollars can be hard to come by. And with this membership, you have access to their whole webinar library, webinar syllabi, if there is one (which sometimes there isn't) and the ability to view them at your leisure.

I also do a little happy dance when the light bulb comes on and I have an "ah-ha" moment that helps me break through a brick wall. I get so excited. I want to share the news with everyone. I know not everyone is as enthusiastic as I am about genealogy, and some people don't care at all, but I still want to share my victory with them just the same.

I like it when I stumble upon the key to unlock the mystery that is keeping me from finding needed information. For instance, I have been trying for several months to find the death date of an aunt, as well as the death date of a cousin, to no avail. I knew the year they died, and in my aunt's case, I even knew the month, but I could not find any further information. While my cousin did have a memorial on the Find a Grave website, her graver marker just gave the years of her birth and death, nothing more. Just on a whim, I decided to search for my cousin's obituary. Lo and behold, I found it online on an archived newspaper website. Thinking if I could find hers, maybe I could find my aunt's, too, and I did. I broke through two break walls in a matter of a few minutes. These are the moments that make it all worthwhile.

Till next time...peace, love and happiness...Namaste!!

Another day, another family member

Previously, I mentioned using FamilySearch to look for my ancestors. There are more layers to FamilySearch than just searching for your ancestors by name. Searches can be done by record, family trees, genealogies, catalogs, books and wiki.

I only mention all the ways to search records to let you know they are available to you. While I have searched by record, family tree and genealogies, I don't know a whole lot about how to use catalogs since I am still learning about that one. And I don't know anything on how to use wiki because I haven't used that one at all. But I am excited about the books feature. I actually found a genealogy book from my mother's side of the family, called "Brumback-Hotsinpiller Genealogy," which was published in limited edition in 1961. Being I was only one at the time of the publication, I obviously didn't buy one and neither did my mother. My uncle (my mother's brother) had a copy, but upon his passing, it went to a cousin. Fortunately for me, I had copied the book several years ago. However, I didn't copy the photos from the book but scanned them to my computer. Long story short, I lost the pictures at some point in the past. I searched for this book and found a copy available online that I could view. I was able to download the photos, so, in essence, I now have a complete book. I thought I would never have a copy of the pictures again. The littlest things can make me happy. LOL.

If you are a descendant of the Brumback's of the Hutsinpiller's, you might like to view the book yourself. It can be found at Babel Hathitrust. They allow you to download the pages but you are limited to the number you can do at one time. You have to wait three minutes after you have reached the limit. In order to download the whole book at one time, you have to be a member, and you can't just join. However, you can still get a digital copy of this book. I sent them an email stating I was a descendant of the Hutsenpiller's and would like to have a copy. I received an email back with a link for downloading it to my computer. They were very nice about it and it didn't cost me anything other than my time. So, if you are related to the Brumback-Hutsepiller clan and didn't know about the book or your family didn't get a copy, here is your chance now. However, they did leave one, possibly two, pictures out when they were scanning the book.  

I get so excited every time I go to MyHeritage and find new information I didn't already have on a relative in my tree, or a new relative I didn't have in my tree at all. It is like meeting them for the first time.

I found a cousin from my father's side through MyHeritage DNA and contacted him recently. He told me that my great-great-great-grandmother (at least I think she is that many greats) Bowyer's family was traced back to Sweden, which I had no clue about their ethnicity.

What can I say...genealogy gets me excited. LOL

Until next time...peace, love and happiness. Namaste!

Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Don't leave them in the past

My name is Kathie Bennett and I am a genealogist. I might be considered an amateur by some, but I have been doing this since my early-20s. I have always loved history and have loved hearing stories of my family. As I have gotten older and more and more of my family has passed away, it makes me realize how important it is to listen to the stories of our elders. We should write them down so we can pass them on to our children and grandchildren. I wish I would have had the forethought to have written those stories down when I was young. But like most young people, I didn't give any thought to wanting those stories when I got older or wanting to pass them along. Even if I did consider it, I always thought "oh, I'll do it later, there's plenty of time." But time passed, as did the storytellers. Even though I do remember bits and pieces of the stories, I don't remember enough to make sense of them now. Sadly, those stories will die with my last two living elderly relatives when they pass.

As I stated before, I have been doing genealogy since my early-20s. It has been an ongoing endeavor, as I have stopped and started several times, oftentimes changing software, which sometimes meant starting fresh because I had lost my previous tree. My genealogy software of choice is Legacy's Family Tree. It is a free software, but the caveat with the free version is you have some limitations. The upgraded deluxe edition is around forty dollars, however, if you have a previous version, then it is around thirty. I would highly suggest upgrading to the deluxe edition if at all possible, but if not, then the standard edition works nicely. Of course, there are oodles of other genealogy software out there, and I think I've tried them all. LOL. I settled on Legacy and have been using it for several years now. I like the fact they offer free webinars on a plethora of subjects. Sometimes they only offer one a week, and other times there are two.

Back when I first started researching my family tree, I didn't have the advantage of using a computer and the Internet to do my search. I had to do it the old fashion way...I had to talk to relatives and look at family Bibles to get the family information, which is a great way to get firsthand information. Of course, there was also the courthouse and the local newspaper office. But if I wanted to know more about relatives from, say Virginia, I was basically S.O.L. unless I wanted to drive to Virginia. That would have been okay since I lived in West Virginia at the time, so the drive wouldn't have been so bad. Now, I no longer in West Virginia, so I have to rely on other ways of ascertaining information.  I use many different family search websites to locate family I couldn't find in the past or that my family didn't know about or couldn't remember. My favorite is the Latter Day Saints' website, FamilySearch.org. I love that it is a totally free website, and they have over one billion records in their repository and more are added daily.

Well, that is all for today. Hope you come back again soon.

Peace, love and happiness...Namaste!