He wanted to find his mother.  That’s the first thing he told me in response to my “Can I help you?”  When I thought he probably meant that he’d been adopted, I was right.  He knew her name and he knew where he was born and the state agency through which he had been adopted.

After my interaction with him, I wondered if at some level, he really wanted to know.

I asked him if he’d tried to get a court order to open his files.  He said he had known a judge who was going to help him but she died.

I told him I knew a person in the city where he was born who did this sort of work as a gift to adoptees.  He didn’t ask her name or for her contact information.

I asked him if he’d registered with the agency for their mutual consent service.  No.

He knew that his birth mother had 3 sisters and that she had been born about 1930.  In the 1930 census, I found at least 3 families with daughters that were possibilities in the city where he was born.  He didn’t look at them but told me he’d tracked one family by that name back several generations.  (I didn’t say it, but wasn’t he going the wrong direction?)

From an online index, I printed out a list of persons with the surname he was researching who had died in that city–some of the names matched the 1930 census records.  He went back to the newspaper room to look at obits.  For about 5 minutes.

He said he’d be back and look later as he went out the door.

I’ve helped people find their birth families and birth families find their children.  It’s always a roller-coaster ride.  This gentleman was definitely on the ride and didn’t quite know how to handle it.  I’m almost certain we could have found his mother’s family, but he had to be ready.

One comment today took me back to a posting I made a little over a year ago when I found the listing of the inhabitants of the St. Louis Insane Asylum on the 1900 census.  In response, a reader wrote to ask about a great-uncle’s wife who was perhaps an inmate and died in 1881.  I told him I had no info other than what I found on the census, and that he might check the 1880 listing for the institution.

Then it occurred to me that I should perhaps check to see if indeed there was a listing.   Always a good idea, don’t you think?  :-)

So I fired up my Ancestry.com subscription and limited the search to the 1880 census.  But how to search for an institution when I didn’t know anyone’s name?  So I decided to try just putting “St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA” into the “Lived In” box and entered “insane asylum” (without the quotes) in the keyword box.  What I got was a listing for another agency in St. Louis–one for orphans with asylum in the title.  So I tried just typing in insane, and again, I got listings for persons who were classified as insane.  You may remember that this particular census year, enumerators were instructed to note persons who were “blind, deaf and dumb, crippled, maimed, idiotic, insane, bedridden, or otherwise disabled.”  Typing in only the word asylum seemed to work the best.  Or perhaps I just made the best pick from the list this time.  In any event, it requires some trial and error.

The listings for the residents of the St. Louis Insane Asylum begin on page 1 (penned), 479 (stamped) in ED 438 for St. Louis County, St. Louis City.  The enumerator also notes that this is the 237th Election Precinct of the 27th Ward.   There are about 11 pages of inmates and workers listed.  It is important to note that the census taker did not write the name of the institution at the top of the page but only along the left edge.  In this same section, beginning on page 20 (penned), 484A (stamped) are the residents of the City Poor House–again, only noted along the left margin.

I think I remember that the Soundex system had a separate index for institutions.  Finding the listings for these institutions without a persons name using the databases is a little trickier.  Anyone know of a better method of finding institutions in census databases?  I also found some schools, convents, and other hospitals in this quest, by the way–all enumerations of use to researchers but accessing them without a specific person’s name takes some patience.

Again, if you want more information about these institutions in St. Louis, I refer you to David A. Lossos’ page on Early St. Louis Hospitals, Homes and Asylums.

I am both thrilled to be sending it in and chagrined that it has taken me so long.

When we first started researching his family, we discovered there were no Spindles registered as Patriots in the National Society for the Sons of the American Revolution.

My husband is not a joiner. Those of you who know him know that is probably the understatement of the century.

But he has wanted to be an SAR member for a very long time. I have worked through three different chapter registrars–one of them is now deceased. Sad, but true.

But through my work at the library at the Oklahoma Historical Society I met the most helpful man who was willing to do the bit of hand-holding that I needed.

And it was so much easier than I ever imagined. (Of course it’s not accepted yet but I’ve been given hope.)

I had the line back to John Spindle, Jr. who furnished beef and brandy to the Continental Army. What I did not have was a piece of documentation for each date and line on the application.  Documentation of John Jr’s marriage to Mary Barbee Sears has taunted researchers for years, for example.

Turns out, I may not need it. The application for SAR says very clearly, “Proof is needed only for individuals in the bloodline.” Between birth and death records, wills and census records and probates for each of the 7 Spindle generations back to John, Jr., it’s not difficult at all to document.

Another SAR member filed a Supplemental Application back in 1997, so while we aren’t the first to get John Spindle, Jr. on file as a patriot, here’s hoping what I’m sending in will work for Hubbo to finally get his wish.

This is the answer to all of us who have wished for a catalog of materials that have been digitized and put online–“books and articles, audio and video files, photos, data sets, theses and research papers” to quote the WorldCat blog.

I’ve used it when it was housed at the University of Michigan, but I played with it some more and I was amazed at the breadth of what was available, including interviews and photos.

Have fun!

I love WorldCat.

I downloaded the app onto my iPhone, thinking, as a librarian, I should have it there, but not imagining that I would ever use it.  Not so.  I have used it multiple times when I’ve found myself away from my computer and wondering about the availability of a title.

WorldCat is an uber catalog.  When folks at the library where I work ask me about a title we don’t have within our 4 walls, I nearly always offer to do a lookup for them in WorldCat.  Most of them don’t know what WorldCat is, so it’s an opportunity to shed some light as well.  I tell them it’s one way to determine if that particular title is available in our area–we are privileged to have a wonderful public library system in our area and also to have the holdings of 4-5 college and university libraries available to us.  So sometimes it’s just a matter of visiting an area library.  Other times, I can tell them how to request the item through interlibrary loan at their public library.

This caveat regarding interlibrary loan is also always given–many libraries will not loan their genealogical titles.  BUT, customers can request photocopies of the table of contents or the index or perhaps the entries for a certain person.  Most libraries are willing to do this copying of a specific topic when they are not willing for their books to go out the door.

And of course, books are not the only format of information cataloged in WorldCat.  It’s possible to search for serials or microfilm or cds or musical scores or maps and even internet links.

One of the ways I used WorldCat is to find the actual title of a work.  Since I work in a historical society library, the library where folks come to do their genealogical research, I use it a lot to help customers who start by saying something like, “My mother’s cousin’s uncle’s grandmother wrote a book about our family.  It’s blue.  Do you have it?”

Using WorldCat, I can determine what titles have been published about that given family.  I ask about the family name–the customer doesn’t have to know the name of the author or the title of the book.  Then WorldCat can be searched using “Mitchell Family” as a subject search, and I can see what books have been published about the Mitchell family and also what libraries hold those titles.  For such a common name, I might also throw in a keyword search as well, such as including the name of the state where they lived or perhaps one of the collateral lines.

Knowing that the cover is blue, however, is not all that helpful.  :-)

With Amy and others posting about this tool, I encourage you to get acquainted with WorldCat.  I typically access it through my public library’s website–if “my” library system has the title, WorldCat lets me know that with a highlighted line.  Otherwise, I can look to see how many libraries hold it and where I might find it in my area.

Use it to see what’s been been published on a topic of interest–your family names or location where they lived.  You’ll feel so smart!

I’m taking license with the prompt for today.  This is a Christmas present for this year rather than bringing up memories of Christmases past.

What happened at work yesterday is a large part of the reason I do what I do.  [NOTE:  ALL names and places have been changed for privacy.]

A gentleman came into our library with an application for the birth certificate for his wife’s adopted sister.  He’d been to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and they’d told him they couldn’t help him–they would not issue him a birth certificate nor would they issue one to his wife for her sister.  They suggested he come to the Historical Society.  We get these customers often–the state does not have any sort of public record index nor do they provide any sort of access for any vital records from any time period.

I began the reference interview to try to determine what we could do for this man.  We do have newspapers from across the state so sometimes those will provide birth information.  Through the years of being a librarian, a genealogist, and an all-around curious person, I’ve helped people with these sorts of research problems–it’s always a circuitous path with lots of unknowns.  And it usually takes a lot of time and effort.  He said he’d been working on this for 16 years.

When I started asking questions, he said the family had been very closed-mouth, not unusual in these situations.  But he thought she might have been adopted by the daughter of a friend of the family–that was the family story, maybe, if the below-the-surface talk could be believed.  And he knew that person’s name.  Let’s call her Roberta.

So we started looking.  We found the family in the 1920 census living in the community he remembered.  The potential adoptive mother was married to Marvin Morgan (name changed)–our customer didn’t know she’d been married.  But he was sure this was the person he’d heard might be the adoptive mother–he recognized her parents names as well as hers. The young married couple was living with her parents in the small town our customer knew as their home, and they had no children of their own listed on the census.   So we looked for them in 1930 to see if there was a child listed in the household, but we couldn’t find them listed–either the grandparents or the adoptive parents.  The husband had been listed as working in the oil fields, so they could have moved anywhere to find work in that time period–the depression and Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl.

We decided to take a look at the SSDI.  Marvin’s name was common but not exactly as common as, say, Bob Jones.  We found a “Marvin Morgan” listed who died in 1975 in Gotham City, Oklahoma, who was the right age and who had received his Social Security card in Oklahoma before 1951.  We thought he was a likely candidate based on that much info, and there were no other candidates with this munch potential.  It was at least an hypothesis to test, a lead to follow.

My colleague trotted back to get the city directories.  Listed in the Gotham City city directory was Mrs.  Robert Morgan, retired.  Was this Roberta or was it someone who was still using a husband’s name?  We kept looking until we found the year she was no longer listed in the directory.   HOWEVER, we went a step further,  looking up her address in the back of the first directory that she was not listed.

A person by a different name was living at that address, but the phone number had remained the same.

What did this mean?

Using the name listed at the address, we went back to the front of the directory and found the wife’s name matched the information the customer had for the sister’s name!  Woo-hoo!

Then, with trepidation, we put her name into the SSDI.  We found a death date for a person who matched  what we knew so far.   Sure enough, she’d died in September of this year.

We went on and found a death notice that included her funeral date and the funeral home.

It was bittersweet, but rewarding.  He was thrilled and so grateful.

It made my day.  We didn’t even charge him for the copies we’d made for him.  In about half an hour, we’d answered a question this family had sought for years.  The answer usually doesn’t come that quickly nor that easily.  We were aided by the fact that the sister’s name had not been changed and that much of the family whisperings turned out to be valid.

It wasn’t the hoped-for outcome, but it still felt like a  gift to both his family and to my coworker and to me.

A few weeks ago my husband insisted on buying me a MacBook Pro.  I am conflicted.  I have been a PC user since the beginning–we had a personal computer very early.  I remember one I had had two pop-up disk drives on top.  All of my files, including my considerable genealogical materials, are all on my PC–both desktop and laptop. I bought Office for Mac since that will evidently allow me to use my documents and powerpoints, etc., ,etc.

But what am I going to do with my genealogy data?  Do I want to continue to try to use both platforms?  Reunion is the only genealogy software package I know of for Mac.  I did see one other program in the store last night but it didn’t seem like a good choice.  I know Reunion has been around awhile and is highly regarded by those who use it.  So I bit the bullet and bought it.

My thinking is that I will enter my husband’s line into this software.  I had his family info in some version of my TMG about 4 computers ago.  When his sister got interested in researching that line, I sort of stepped away from it.  And now who knows where the disks are that have his family data?  I know it was some of the first research I did so doing the data entry again will probably yield a much stronger database.  I still have all the documentation and I do have printouts from the original database so it won’t be like starting all over.  And I’m so disenchanted with what happens when trying to import data via gedcom, I wouldn’t try it even if it were a possibility.

Some of this decision is driven by the fact that Nathan Murphy has selected my husband’s immigrant ancestor to be part of his dissertation study of 100 prisoners sentenced to transportation to the colonies–I wrote about this possibility earlier.  I need to get the data I have into a better format to share.  I have a collateral relative’s application materials for the Sons of the American Revolution.  I scanned all that in using my new ScanSnap, which I love.  It scans both sides with one pass and the document feeder handles a stack of paper in about 3 minutes that would take 3 hours to scan one by one.  It’s truly amazing and I now have some hope for clearing my office of so many stacks.

But I digress.

So far, I’m struggling a bit with Reunion.  I can’t figure out how to make the source function work well and I MUST be sure to do a good job of entering that data.  I’ve worked with TMG and its predecessor for years and know how to make that work.  For some recent work for some clients, I’ve entered the data into Legacy and like working with their source templates.  I’ll keep reading and working at it.  I need a manual to have beside my computer as I work through the steps–there is help, of course, but no printed manual comes with the rather pricey program.

So let’s just say that Friday’s theme is Frustration.    I’ll keep you posted from time to time on my progress.

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.

I have a password-protected family website.

Not many of my family members appear to be interested but I like having the info available but “safe” behind the password.  It includes info on the living–I can refer persons to it for info and it’s a nice place to store my pics and stories with the appropriate family groups.

Recently I was surfing Ancestry.com for some info about my family and was surprised to find some of the photos from my closed website attached to some records in the Family Trees section.  Initially I thought perhaps someone else in the family had shared these photos with the author, but the further I looked, the more sure I was that these photos came from my what I thought was secure website. There’s one of my sons, for example, as young boys with my grandparents that hasn’t been posted or shared anywhere else.

I have (politely) contacted the person who posted this family tree twice and have heard nothing.

I am fairly certain I know how this happened.  One person I gave access to shared his/her password with others in that branch.  How do I handle this?

I am a fairly generous person.  I am willing to share nearly all of what I have.  But that website has pictures on it that came to me from my grandmother and her siblings and their children.  I feel protective of them.  Had I been asked, I probably would have shared.  But this somehow rubs me the wrong way.  I’ve read a zillion posts like this and truthfully, sometimes think “What’s the big deal?  It’s all family.”

But this time, when it happens to me, am I wrong to feel wronged?

Help me out, here.  Or, as Rachel Maddow says, “Talk me down.”

New Prospect Cemetery Rusk County, Texas

Mary Landrum Ballenger 1824 TN - 1898 TX daughter of Merriman Landrum and Delilah Jackson Landrum

Thomas Ballenger 1811 SC - 1882 TX

New Prospect Baptist Church

Mary Landrum Ballenger’s mother is probably also buried here but her grave is not marked.  She came to Texas with her daughter and son-in-law about 1855.  Her husband had died in Tennessee in 1826.