Two Years Down the Track

Reflection is so important to me as as a family historian and lifelong learner. For the past few years I have published the Accentuate the Positive Geneameme, a tool genies can use to reflect on the things they have achieved. You can access it and join in here.

http://geniaus.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/a-tradition.html

In my first post on this blog two years ago I  introduced myself. Things have remained very much the same in my Geneaworld although I have picked up a couple of extra volunteering activities.

I am sorry that when travelling I have missed a couple of monthly posts to this blog - I will endeavour to correct this in 2016 when I already have about four months of overseas travel planned. I may rejig some of my old personal blog posts and reblog them here.

The work I have done with another local family historian and our local studies librarian to establish the Hornsby Shire Family History Group makes me feel so proud. In just 11 months we have grown to have over 70 members and have exhibited at various community events.

Jennie Fairs from The Surname Society approached me last year and asked me, as a genie who trips about, to write a regular column for their newsletter, The Surname Scribbler. I was honoured to be asked and appreciate the opportunity it gives me to reflect on my geneactivities. Although my columns are fluffy the bulk of the articles are most informative and instructive. It is worth the modest membership fee to receive copies of this epublication (it's cheaper than many commercially produced publications).

You might note that I use a bit of geneajargon in my writing. I have always been fascinated by jargon and made up words so in August 2014 I started the Geneadictionary blog, a lighthearted publication, in which I share words I find and those that my Genimates find for me. Although it doesn't have a massive readership I enjoy putting this blog together. While I had been dabbling with Wordpress for a few years I had never blogged with it seriously. I now use Wordpress for Hornsby Shire Family History Group website and my  surname study blog CurryAus.

I continue to be involved in Rootstech, the greatest Geneaevent on Earth, and will be an Ambassador and Presenter again in 2016. I wonder which of my fellow bloggers I will meet there this year.

Have you reflected on your geneactivities lately?

The Slave Name Roll Project

February is Black History Month in the United States. It seemed an appropriate time to write about DNA matches to two fourth cousins twice removed, who happened to be African-American. Here's how it all came about.

Dad had a fairly extensive tree built out with no sources. I spent a couple of years working backwards just sourcing his research, correcting the few mistakes I found, and extending his research when possible until I got to the period of time just after the Revolutionary War. It's about this time frame in the U.S.when you need to rely on different record sets with which I was then unfamiliar. So I started learning about the types of records I would need to use to learn about my family before and just after the Revolutionary War. These are primarily wills, property deeds, estate inventory lists, court records (it was a surprisingly litigious society) and old books about family genealogies. I learned my ancestors owned land and grew tobacco or cotton as cash crops. I suspected I would come face-to-face with slavery, which was known by many as the "peculiar institution." 

Image of a watercolor entitled "Old Plantation (Slaves Dancing on a South
Carolina Plantation) circa 1785-1795 attributed to John Rose; courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons

Just as I was sorting through my feelings about finding slave owners in my ancestry, I received a message through Ancestry.com about DNA matches with two people, whose tests were administered by their cousin. He was the one who contacted me. He believed the unknown shared ancestor must be from Bedford County, Virginia. I looked at the DNA matches he referenced and agreed. The geographic "hotspot" was definitely Bedford County, which made it likely our shared ancestors were from my Beard or Mitchell lines. These lines intermarried frequently. I had researched my great grandmother's Beard line extensively. Her mother, my great great grandmother, was Barbara Ann Mitchell (1841-1890), and I had done no research on the Mitchell family.

Wood engraving entitled "The Inspection of a Negro" originally published
in Captain Canot circa 1854; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I gave myself a somewhat successful lecture about not judging my ancestors by today's moral code and began researching my great great grandmother. As I worked backward to Barbara Ann's great grandfather, Robert Mitchell (1714-1799), the shaky leafs on my DNA results went nuts. Turns out, I'm loaded with Mitchell DNA.

The surprise was discovering William Armstead Claytor, a son of Barbara Ann's second cousin, Harvey Claytor (1800-1871). William was African-American and the likely son Harvey Claytor and the family's slave cook, Letitia. After the Civil War, William moved to Floyd County, Virginia, bought land, and raised a family of 13 children who all went on to become teachers and doctors. I was so moved by the family's accomplishments during a period when many laws were enacted which legalized discrimination that I started thinking about what I could do to help my African-American genealogy colleagues.

William Armstead Claytor and his wife with 10 of their 13 children;
courtesy of Ancestry.com member cclaytonarizona

At the same time I was thinking about how to help, Cather Meder-Dempsey, author of Opening Doors in Brick Walls, posted a story about her slave owning ancestor in three parts. Reading her story gave me a brainstorm (at least I think so). I would start a Slave Name Roll modeled on fellow Worldwide Genealogy blogger, Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project. Heather graciously gave me permission to steal her format and we were off to the races.

Slave Name Roll Project

The project was launched on the last day of February with links to named slaves of two people. I honestly had no idea how it would be received. I tweeted a link to the page and posted the link on my genealogy bloggers community Facebook page. As you can see by looking at the page nearly a month later, the response has been gratifying. And keeps me incredibly busy keeping up with the contributions. It's a good thing I'm retiring at the end of May! I hope you will contribute if you are able.

The success has started me thinking about the long-term future of the project. Am I the correct curator? Would another group or person be a more appropriate? What else should be done to the foster continuous collaboration between slave descendants and those with slave owners in our ancestry? I'd love your thoughts.

Memorial Day Foundation's War Memorial Registry

As we in the U.S. get ready to celebrate the second of our two annual holidays to commemorate veterans, who served in the armed services, I wanted to review a website volunteers may use to upload photographs and information about war memorials into a war memorial registry.

Veterans' Day is observed on the 11th day of the 11th month. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed 11 November 1919 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words:

"To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations..."

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs, the original concept for the celebration was a day observed with parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 a.m., the exact time the armistice went into effect. An act of Congress in 1938 made the day a legal holiday. In 1954 the act was amended and the name of the holiday changed to Veterans' Day in order to honor service men and women from all U.S. Wars.

Soldiers of the 353rd Infantry near a church at Stenay, Meuse in France,
wait for the end of hostilities. This photo was taken at 10:58 a.m., on
11 November 1918, two minutes before the armistice ending World War I
went into effect

I began photographing war memorials this year as part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's, the author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog, Honor Roll Project. The objective of the project is to transcribe the names of soldiers on war honor roll memorials so they are available on search engines for future genealogists and descendants to discover. Heather marshals her volunteers before each Memorial Day and Veterans Day then updates her honor roll page on each holiday. But I'm stealing Heather's thunder and wandering off topic...

In an effort to increase the possibility that an future descendant may learn a little more about the memorial on which their ancestor is honored, I also uploaded my war memorial descriptions and photographs to the Memorial Day Foundation's War Memorial Registry.

The Memorial Day Foundation is a tax-exempt not for profit organization created to increase awareness and respect for the holiday. The foundation provides flower bouquets when can be laid at war memorials across the country. It also maintains a website which is a crowd-sourced repository of photographs and information about almost any type of war memorial.

MemorialDayFoundation.org home page

The war memorial registry is organized by state and then by city. Under each city is an index of war memorials, which are linked to a detail page about each memorial. Here is a sample of the index record for a memorial I added:

MemorialDayFoundation.org War Memorial Registry index record

I began contributing to the Memorial Day Foundation last month. By in large I found it to be a positive experience.

Positives

• It is easy to register and begin contributing. The website is intuitive to navigate
• The contributions are moderated to ensure the quality of each entry
• There are over 12,000 memorials listed on the site at time of this writing
• The organization is extremely responsive. I received an email from the Executive Director the same day I started contributing to the website.
• My user support experience was very good. I forgot to attach a photograph and received an email offering to post it for me if I would email it to the organization.

Negatives

• They do not accept Confederate war memorials even though the very holiday for which they were named commemorates both sides in that terrible and tragic war. This is my biggest pet peeve
• Their information about Memorial Day under the Education tab is not completely accurate but supports their position not to recognize Confederate memorials. 
• They do not have an online way for users to edit or correct their memorials
• They do not have a separate field on the data entry form to list the names of individuals that may be listed on honor rolls
• I am not a fan of Taps playing when you visit the website. I love Taps but do not like sites to make noise that I don't knowingly choose to happen
• The keyword search brings back a lot of erroneous results

Payback

I don't know about you but I have found the Famlysearch website (and before that the IGI microfiche) most useful resources for my family history research. I have used theses resources provided freely and generously by The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) over many years. I have also made use of the Famlysearch Centres in both London and Salt Lake City.

When I was at Rootstech in 2012 there was a big drive by Familysearch (an initiative of the LDS) to find volunteers to index the 1940 US Census that was due to be released in April that year. I considered signing up to be an indexer but because my keyboarding skills are so woeful I did not  join.

Last week I tuned into DearMyrtle's Wacky Wednesday Hangout on Air to find that the topic was Familysearch Indexing. During the program Myrt demonstrated how to log in to Familysearch, sign up for indexing, download the indexing software, set it up, do some indexing and upload your work. It didn't look too difficult at all and there is lots of online support for indexers. After watching the demonstration I thought that I should have a go so I downloaded the software and joined up.

To date I have indexed  200 records in five batches of forty records each, although they have all been at Beginner Level some have been typed and easy to transcribe while others have been handwritten by people whose handwriting left a lot to be desired. I don't know that I'll ever progress to Intermediate Level! To ensure accuracy all  indexing is checked by an arbitrator, so far I have scored between 78% and 100% agreement from my arbitrated batches, I only made a couple of typos but I will try to be more careful. The lower percentages were from the batches of handwritten records I indexed. I am sure that as I get more used to reading tricky handwriting I will improve. I must also remember that quality is better than quantity, I will try to take my time.

With a large family that creates lots of ad hoc commitments I find it difficult to make a commitment to volunteering on a regular basis at a given place and time. Contributing to the Familysearch indexing project (as with doing text corrections for Trove) allows me to do some volunteering say thankyou in some small way to Familysearch for al the information they have given me over the years.

I am looking forward to July 20 and 21 when Familysearch is holding a Worldwide  Indexing Event for old and new indexers to break the record set in 2012 when 49,025 indexers  and arbitrators joined together to index records.

Will you be joining me at the Worldwide  Indexing Event?