September « 2009 « All My Ancestors

19 September 2009

Ahnentafel Roulette: Saturday Night Fun with Randy

Filed under: Cooper Family, Dad, Grandmother O, Memes, Mitchell Family, Texas — allmyanc @ 5:02 pm

Here are Randy’s instructions for this week, should we decide to accept.

1) How old is your father now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your “roulette number.”

September 4 of this month my dad would have turned 80. Given the Osborne genes, he’d probably still be with us if it hadn’t been for an unfortunate meeting with a staph infection after a hospital stay. So 80 divided by 4 is 20 and that’s my roulette number for this exercise.

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ahnentafel. Who is that person?

Number 20 on my pedigree chart is my great, great grandfather, John B. Cooper.

[For those of you who read this blog and don't have the faintest what an ahnentafel is, don't worry. All groups have their own lingo, and I suspect ahnentafel is one that is not all that familiar outside genealogy. Here's the definition from the Encyclopedia of Genealogy, where you will learn that it translates to "ancestor table." It is the listing of one's direct ancestors--no aunts, uncles, cousins--just parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. These folks are numbered, with the males being assigned even numbers--their associated female, usually a wife, has odd number obtained by adding 1 to the male's number. So on my chart, my dad's number is 2 and my mom's his 3 (2 + 1). Typically, each male's father's number will be double his number--the numbers double for each generation, in other words. My paternal grandfather's number is 4 and his wife's, my grandmother's is 5, etc., etc. ]

3) Tell us three facts about that person with the “roulette number.”

John B. and 3 of his 4 brothers all died in the Civil War. He survived Camp Douglas only to die at the end of the war, probably in the Battle of Atlanta. They were the sons of Job Cooper and Elizabeth Landrum Cooper.
John B. married Mary Mitchell, daughter of Ephraim Miles Mitchell and Rebecca Jones Mitchell sometime in 1857, probably in Shelby County, Texas.
He mustered into the 18th Texas Cav, Co. A (Darnell’s) in Johnson County, Texas on 15 Jan 1862. The value of his equipment is listed as horse, $125, horse equipment, $20, gun $35, and pistol, $5.

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.

Done!

5) If you do not have a person’s name for your “roulette number” then spin the wheel again – pick your mother, or yourself, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!

Didn’t have to spin again.

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14 September 2009

Tombstone Tuesday: Ochiltree Cemetery

Filed under: Cemeteries, Texas — allmyanc @ 2:44 pm

About a month ago I visited the cemetery in the Texas panhandle where so many of my family are buried. It was a lovely morning–cool and a breeze and a clear sky. The end of August in that part of the country can be scorching, so it was a nice way to spend the morning.

I went out to photo some gravestones for FindAGrave and to try out my new camera. I was surprised to find a new directory installed with some new landscaping as well.

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The pages on the display boards have a listing of the burials, the year of death, and the location. This posting is updated monthly. It’s a great addition that I know the local genealogy society has provided. Here’s one of the pages:

I noticed that the printout had come from the County Clerk’s office, and I wanted to know if I could get a copy. I wanted a copy for a couple of reasons–I thought it would make a wonderful addition to the library where I work. Even though I work and live in Oklahoma, I know that out in the panhandle, the state lines don’t really matter. Many of the folks who are buried in the Ochiltree County Cemetery in Ochiltree County, Texas, are from adjoining Beaver County, Oklahoma. My mother, for example, and her parents, are all buried in Ochiltree though their roots are in Beaver County, Oklahoma.

I have also begun a project that could take me the rest of my life to complete. I’ve begun entering the family data from the Ochiltree County history books into a database and will also enter the same info from the Beaver County book. So many of the families are intermarried and related through the generations. Having the cemetery records would help me know when and where many of those folks died and are buried.

And, I suppose, a third reason is that I feel like I know so many of those folks, I just like having the information. As I drive through or walk through the cemetery, I recognize most of the names–I know the people or I know their descendants. I’ve said before–I graduated from a school that my parents graduated from. That same weekend I attended my 40th high school reunion, and as I looked around, I saw folks that I’d gone to school with for all 12 grades. In many instances, their parents and my parents had also gone to school together. So having the cemetery book is just another way to know more about my life and that of my place.

I took photos of some of the folks I’ve entered into that database–some of whom were my neighbors as I was growing up. But here’s the tombstone that I found most interesting on this trip.

and here’s a photo of the requisite graveyard rabbit under one of the tough cedar trees in that windswept place:

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5 September 2009

Stamford Inn

Filed under: Spindle Family, Texas — allmyanc @ 6:06 pm

Here are the scans of the front and back of the postcard I wrote about yesterday. In my excitement at finding it, I didn’t notice at the time that the postmark on the $.01 stamp makes it just a few months over 100 years old. Thomas M. Spindle and his second wife Eliza Harris Spindle, shown in the photo below, ran this inn and a livery stable in the small dusty Texas town of Stamford, Jones County, Texas.

ThomsasandEliza

Sometime between 1908 when daughter Angelina was born in Stamford, Texas, and 1917 when son Malcomb was born in Roswell, New Mexico, the family moved out to New Mexico. So this may very well have been made while the Spindles owned and ran the Stamford Inn. I don’t yet have the details of their ownership.

Stamford1

But it was a great find for our family. We do have some other pictures of the family in front of this building, but this photo shows the size of the place.

I can’t imagine being responsible for the laundry of linen for this enterprise.

Stamford2

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4 September 2009

Serendipity at FGS

Filed under: Arkansas, How to, Oklahoma, Spindle Family, Texas — allmyanc @ 4:38 pm

Today for part of the today I staffed the booth for the Oklahoma Genealogical Society. It is always fun to talk to people about their Oklahoma roots. Persons researching family in Oklahoma express a great deal of frustration–Oklahoma won’t turn loose of their vital records, not even an index. And since it’s a relatively new state, entering the Union in November 1907, vital records are really not all that consistent until the mid 1930s. I was talking to a Texan who was frustrated by this, but she also asked some questions that reminded me how much we have to get out of our skin when doing research. Because Texas kept birth records at the county level, she assumed Oklahoma did too. Not so, as a general rule. And then she asked how long people had to be deceased before their death certificate could be released. In Texas, people have to have been deceased at least 25 years–I blogged about my extreme frustration with the Texas system earlier. As far as I know, there is no time requirement nor do you have to prove relationship, as is also the case in Texas.

One of my favorites was Meg Hacker’s talk about the criminal case files for Fort Smith housed at the National Archives in Fort Worth. She says if you have family in western Arkansas or Indian Territory during the time period, you can probably find them in the index. She said she usually makes this statement and some audience members are just sure that their relatives would not be in the index to criminal cases. She says she hasn’t been wrong yet–there were just so many ways to get into trouble in Judge Parker’s court. So if your family was in this area, take a look at the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) at NARA. Some members of my family are in there–they were in western Arkansas and they were evidently in violation of one of the liquor laws. Meg indicated that it was common to sell pound cake or candy and include a free shot of whiskey. I’ll be interested to see if my family were this entrepreneurial of if they just went for the straight sale when I order a copy of the file.

My really serendipitious find today was a post card depicting the huge inn and livery stable building operated by my husband’s great-grandfather in Stamford, Texas. There are little girls standing out front who may be family members–there were only 12 children. I’ll post a picture of the postcard later–I evidently put it in my car with the load of books I bought for the library. I was prowling through the Texas postcards to see if there were any for my hometown in the panhandle–didn’t find those but I was thrilled to find the photo of Thomas Spindle’s Stamford enterprise.

Tonight is the banquet and tomorrow it’s back home. I picked up literature about the next conference in Knoxville. Hope I can make that one too.

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2 September 2009

FGS: Librarian’s Day

Filed under: Arkansas — allmyanc @ 4:42 pm

Today was Librarian’s Day at FGS, a day sponsored by ProQuest that included a free lunch. All you have to say to librarians is “free lunch” and they are so there. So many folks signed up the meeting had to be moved to from the Arkansas Studies Institute to the conference hotel, the Peabody, which was a good thing since it got me over there to survey the lay of the land. It also guaranteed that the butter was shaped in the form of the famous Peabody ducks–which didn’t keep most of us from slicing of a piece and spreading it on our complimentary rolls. mmmmmmm

I chose to stay in the nearby DoubleTree since there was free wireless and free parking. Since I am paying my own way, I thought I would save a buck. I’ve always had good experiences at DoubleTree hotels (can you say chocolate chip cookie?). It’s only a block and I can certainly use the exercise–and it’s unseasonably cool for this time of year so it’s a pleasant interlude to walk over.

Today’s schedule was not printed in the conference book that I could find. One of my colleagues had copied the list of speakers and times so I relied on her info to see what was coming next.

This day is designed to provide information to those of us who help family researchers in libraries or archives. We have formal lectures but it’s also a great opportunity to network and see what others are doing. First on the agenda was Russell Baker, recently retired from the Historical Commission who talked about building bridges between our customers and our agencies and our volunteers and our communities–you get the picture. Russell always has lots of excellent advice rooted in his own long tenure as a librarian on serving customers and educating ourselves as well as those we serve. He handed out a wonderful list of “50 Things for Genealogists to Avoid,” adapted from Dr. Le Roy Barnett. Russell very carefully notes in the intro that genealogists and researchers certainly must have a list of pet peeves about librarians and archivists, but this is a list of 50 ways to irritate a reference librarian. He hopes it will be the beginning of a dialogue–I just think it’s an hilarious and accurate list of what we encounter (and deal with oh, so gracefully) on a daily basis. (#49, my personal fave: Send the same request for information to different members of the reference staff in the hope that the collective response to your question will be better than the answer you get from a single inquiry and individual. Never mind that this approach requires numerous persons within a limited workforce to conduct identical searches.)

Next we were to hear about the American Memory Project, but the presenter was ill. Instead we were treated to a talk about collection development policies (I know, a topic only librarians could love) by Susan Kaufman, manager at the Clayton Library in Houston (one of my favorite research sites). I was thrilled to get to hear her speak on this topic because I have just finished teaching two semesters of “Collection Development and Management” for the library school at the University of Oklahoma. Lots of good ideas for revamping the course and for polishing our own collection development policy at the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Center.

Lunch brought a presentation from the ProQuest folks–oh, for all the money in the world. I salivated over the Historic Maps Works product, again, having first learned of it last year at NGS. Their newspaper product looks wonderful as well. I was reminded of just how many books they have digitized on their site and they will soon be adding 2700 more titles to their already 26000 unique titles. I was also reminded that I can use their Freedman’s Bureau records for my current study of African American Civil War vets in the 1890 Oklahoma Territory census.

After lunch we heard from Lisa Parry Arnold about the African American databases at Ancestry. She talked about the portion of Ancestry.com that filters for African American data–can I just say I was shocked?! I’ve used Ancestry since the beginning–one of the early home subscribers–and I didn’t know about www.ancestrycom/aahistory. You can bet I’ll be trolling through there for my soldiers. Amazing what you can learn at these conferences.

Final speaker was David Strickland, director of the Arkansas Studies Institute. He talked about his career as a “recovering academic,” which I can identify with. He also talked about building the current center–from two historic buildings with a magnificent addition for manuscripts and research. Someone asked him if there was anything surprising to him as he went through the building process–he talked about how some meetings were devoted to how long the bolts had to be and then went right on to “visioning.” Having sat through a year of meetings planning a new public library building in Oklahoma City, I could certainly identify. He was an entertaining speaker and it sounded like a wonderful building, but my feet wouldn’t endure one more hike.

Now, will I be able to hike back to the Peabody for the session on blogs, social networks and podcasting? Maybe a change of shoes will get me back over there.

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