During my discoveries about Emily Gillen and her daughter, Emma Pope yesterday, I added information to my Ancestry tree. My routine is to have both Legacy and the web open at the same time. I use two monitors here at my desktop and that makes it real easy. When I locate information, I add it to my Legacy database and also to my Ancestry tree.
Each time we work on someone in our Ancestry trees, or add new people, we will usually generate hints. I was not disappointed this morning as I had hints for Emma Pope Seed’s children, Maurice and Rhoda.
There were 16 hints for Maurice and 11 for Rhoda. Let’s take a look at Maurice and see what I can learn.
By the way, Maurice is my half 1st cousin, 3 times removed. I don’t normally research that deep into the tree, but there are just too many good hints here for me to ignore.
Here are some of the hints:
- Census records for 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940
- Florida State Census for 1935
- U.S. City Directory for 1912 & 1924
- U.S. School Catalog for 1903
- Florida Passenger List for 1921
- Passport Application for 1921
- U.S. Social Security Applications Index
- U.S. Find A Grave Index
- Photo of his headstone
Here’s Maurice’s passport application, including his photo.
This application gives his exact place of birth, his father’s name and exact place of birth, where he is traveling to, and a complete physical description of Maurice. I also collect signatures from my ancestors and this application provides me with one.
(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)
Certainly a bonanza of information for any genealogist. I wrote a blog post about Passport Applications which you can read here.
Next, I’ll check that U.S. School Catalog hint. Maybe I’ll find a picture there too. Here’s what I found.
| Name: | Maurice Joy Seed |
|---|---|
| Publication Year: | 1903 |
| Publication Place: | Illinois |
| School Name: | Northwestern University |
From page 356 of the school catalog for Northwestern University in Illinois, publication year 1903.
This entry gives us more evidence of his date and place of birth and tells us what he studied and where he lives at the time of this publication.
From the U.S. city Directory for 1912 I learn that Maurice was married to a woman named Elizabeth and living in Mount Vernon, Illinois. His occupation was Editor and Publisher of the Daily & Weekly Register at 806 Main. That his home is at 1030 Maple and it gives his telephone number as 181 – 1 ring.
Also of note on this page is his sister Rhoda is listed just below him, working as a teacher, listed as “Miss” so she’s not married and she is living with her parents at 517 N. 10th. The father, Thos. H. Seed is listed just beneath Rhoda.
| Name: | Maurice J Seed |
|---|---|
| Gender: | Male |
| Residence Year: | 1912 |
| Residence Place: | Mount Vernon, Illinois, USA |
| Occupation: | Editor And Publisher |
| Spouse: | Elizabeth Seed |
I’ll take a look at one final item today, the FindAGrave hint.
Now, I have links to the memorials for Maurice’s family and a death year for him. I can use all the leads from these memorials to find more vital records.
CONCLUSION: Following the hints on Ancestry can lead you to some great discoveries. Note, that none of the hints I follow involve other member’s trees. I will occasionally check the trees, but I follow the records, not the trees.
I’ve learned a lot about Maurice today and a little more about his father, Thomas too. Now I can take a look at other leads on my Ancestry tree for this family and use the FindAGrave memorials to gather more information.
I hope you’ve found this journey today as much fun as I have.
If you think you might be related to anyone mentioned in this blog post, please contact me.
Happy hunting,
Michigan Girl
Copyright © 2010-2016 Diane Gould Hall
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION
What a successful day. You hit the jackpot. I, too, am skeptical about information located on ancestry.com family trees. In the beginning, I took this info as fact. Now I go for the documents.
ReplyDeleteThat's for sure Cynthia. Days like this are so much fun. It's why we keep doing what we do, right?
DeleteThanks for stopping by.
Interesting... I didn't know about the passport applications, so I will be checking them out. Great post.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jeanne. I'm glad I shared something new for you to use. We all learn so much from one another. Sadly, I've located very few passport applications for my family. Seems they didn't leave the country much. To my knowledge neither my parents or grandparents ever had passports. Let me know what you find.
DeleteThanks for your comment.
Wow, this is wonderful and it makes a good point for adding information into Ancestry trees. I confess I started one, but have been bad about keeping it up. I keep my Legacy up to date (and love it), but of course it is a whole different ball game. I really like your idea of having the two open at the same time. It sure paid off for you.
ReplyDeleteMichelle - I do think it's very worth it to have an Ancestry tree. I don't use the familysearch tree or My Heritage or anything else. However, I have 3 trees on Ancestry, two public and my primary one which is private. I keep them up to date, although those trees aren't an exact match to my Legacy tree. They were at one time when I uploaded the GEDCOM. However, if I were to upload from Legacy and begin again, none of my media would go with the tree. I have hundreds of photos and media on Ancestry. I think only about 25 people have access to view the tree. I do get connections from it all the time. Those hints are a constant source of information for me and I'm always turning up something new.
DeleteThanks for stopping by. And, thanks for the 3 comments. I really enjoy reader comments.