FOLLOWING LEADS ~ THE SEED FAMILY FROM YESTERDAY’S POST ~ Maurice Joy Seed

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

The very first one I went to was the Passport Application. Why?  Because they will often contain photos of the applicant.  I was not disappointed.

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

ANCESTRY HINTS ~ Do you take advantage of this resource?

Maybe it’s only me, but sometimes I get in a rut with my research.  I sit down at my computer, look at my Legacy database, and try to decide who I’m going to work on today.  Or, maybe there was some note I wrote yesterday that’s on my desk that I need to go back to.

What would give me a fresh look and a new direction?  How about looking at my hints on Ancestry?

Do you look at your hints on Ancestry? 
Do you go through all of them?

Here’s what I am in the habit of doing.  I will see a new number up by the “shaky leaf” at the top right of the screen.  I’ll click on that to see what names pop up.  Generally, it’s people in a group I have recently worked on.  I may or may not look at the hint.  I rarely scroll through the hints list or use the other options available to us.  

My habit is to look at the hints, from the Facts page, for whichever ancestor I am currently working on. 

Here is what showed up for me today in the way of current hints.

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)


I do see two people on that list that I was working with yesterday.  Mary Johnston and Addison Boggs.

Next, I clicked on “See all recent hints in” and selected my primary tree on Ancestry.

That brought up this screen.



WOW!  That’s 13,905 hints total. 
I have 3,535 people in this tree.  NOTE:  I use my Ancestry trees for connections & sharing with cousins, gathering hints and for my DNA.  My primary records are all in Legacy, on my computer.  Any record I find on Ancestry is downloaded to my computer, saved in the appropriate digital folder and added & sourced in my Legacy program.  Ancestry is simply a tool for me.
I have to admit that I don’t do a lot of fiddling with the hints page.  However, maybe I should.
 
You can sort by

• Most recent
• Last name
• First name

Or you can filter by name.

These are all very helpful ways of focusing on a particular ancestor.
 
I love working with and finding photos for my ancestors. I see from the hints page that I have 1730 PHOTO hints.  Let’s take a look at those.  I didn’t sort these in any order, however, you do have that option.

In looking at the first 10 pages of 87 pages of photo hints, most of them were familiar.  They were images that have been added by me and then saved to other trees, or added by cousins.  By the time I got to page 15 I was seeing some new items.
 
It was actually very difficult to not stop and take a look at those items instead of finishing this post.  Guess where I’ll be going back to when this is published?

What about STORIES?  I have 119 story hints.  Those might be interesting to take a look at.

I see lots of interesting items here.  Everything from abstracts of war pensions to lineage to divorce packets to an entry that says “attacked by Indians.”  Certainly many of those are worth looking at.
 
The bottom line is, I don’t take enough advantage of the options offered to us on this website.  Do you?

I’m off to investigate some of those stories and other hints right now.  Please share with me what your experience is and whether or not you use all the options on this website.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

OCCUPATION FILES ON ANCESTRY - 1600-1995 - What are they?  Have you seen these?

ADDING A RECORD TO LEGACY FROM ANCESTRY - A Step by Step Guide

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2016   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

FOLLOWING LEADS ON ANCESTRY– One thing leads to another

How many of us have those shaky leaves on Ancestry.com?  Sometimes there are 2 on mine and sometimes there are 32.  I think it all depends on how much I’ve worked on the site in recent days.  

Today I thought I’d check a couple of leads that had popped up on a particular branch of the family. 
The first thing I do is click on the shaky leaf and see what kinds of records they are referring me to.  Then I go to my Legacy database and see what information I have on that person.  

NOTE:  I use the Ancestry tree for the purpose of connecting with cousins and others who might be researching my line.  And, for the shaky leaves that refer me to records that I can follow up on.  My primary family tree is on my personal database on Legacy.  ALL my research notes are on Legacy, as are most of my sources and the majority of my images.  I absolutely DO NOT rely on the family trees on Ancestry as sources.  They are merely possible leads.  That’s a whole other blog post.  But, trust me when I say that there are more errors on those trees than you and I can even count.

What I found today was a shaky leaf for Elliott H. BOGGS.  He is a 3rd Great Granduncle and I’m very interested in knowing more about him.   All I had in my database was his approximate date of birth & place and his wife, their marriage date and 6 children. 

Here is a screenshot of what I have in my Legacy database for Elliott & his wife & children.



As you can see, there is a LOT of missing information.

Here is one of the leads that showed up in Ancestry.  I have him as having died in Iowa in Sep 1882, which is very close to the death date listed here.  



When I clicked on that lead, here is what came up.



I didn’t know where he was buried.  Is this really him?  What should I do next?

I decided that my next move would be to go on FindAGrave.com and search for Oliver Cemetery in Monroe, Ringgold, Iowa.

Here is the result of my search:



I clicked on the cemetery.  It shows the 392 interments and that it is 94% photographed.  I entered Boggs in search  box for last name and clicked on “search.” 

NOTE:  I rarely, if ever, enter a first and last name when I am searching for someone on findagrave.  The site has a very narrow margin in it’s search engine.  In this case less is always better.  I’d rather see 100 Boggs come up and pick the one I want, than have none come up because I entered Elliott and the memorial spells the name Eliott.

In this case I got the dreaded “Sorry, there are no records.”

WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT?

• Give up?
• Assume that the record on Ancestry is incorrect and he isn’t really buried here?
• Look for other places that might have records for this cemetery?

YUP!  That last option sounds good to me.

I conducted a search on Google for “Oliver Cemetery in Iowa” and got the following results:



Are we having fun yet?  I know I am.

I reviewed these entries before clicking on any of them. 
- The first one looks promising. 
- The second one is Mount Olivet in Dubuque County, Iowa, so I don’t think that’s a hit. 
- Nor is the next entry from wikipedia.  

Let’s click on that first entry and see what we find.



OH NO!  There are no Boggs listed here at all. 

SHOULD I GIVE UP NOW?

Heck no!  Let’s scroll further down the list from Google and see what else is there.



I like the looks of that second entry with a reference to the GenWeb Project.  In my 10+ years of experience I have found that GenWeb projects can contain a lot of good information.   Based on my experience I will click on that one.

NOTE:  If you don’t have years of experience, you would probably have to click on each of the results found on Google to see what they contain.  We learn as we go.

Once I clicked on that second entry here is what I saw:

 --------- You can always click on any image on this blog to enlarge it ---------

 A close up shows that they have Oliver Cemetery Transcriptions – with links to gravestone photographs, biographies, obituaries and family pages. 

What?  WOW!  I sure hope they have a listing for Elliott Boggs.

I clicked on the link shown in blue “Oliver Cemetery Transcriptions.”  They had all the letters of the alphabet, so I clicked on “B” with my fingers crossed.  Here goes……..

I scroll down the page of B surnames.

THERE HE IS!!!!!



Am I excited?  You bet I am.  As I quickly review what is listed here I realize this is, more than likely, the correct person and matches my entry in Legacy.  Not only does this give Elliott’s name and his location in the cemetery, but there is his wife, listed right next to him.  And THERE’S MORE.

This listing contains:

• Both Elliott H. Boggs and his wife Elnora H. McCoy Boggs.
• Their location in plot 62 in the cemetery.
• A full date of birth for Elliott and a place.  And a year and place for Elnora.
• The full date of death, place of death & age for Elliott and the full date for Elnora.
• In the comments area we have the name of the parents of both Elliott & Elnora, but also their marriage date & place.

This is quite a bit more than what you will find on most of the cemetery listings that I have seen.  The bonus is the names of parents and the date & place of the marriage.

WHAT WILL I DO NEXT?

Once I’ve gotten over the excitement of my find, I will begin looking for other records to confirm what is here.  

How does it compare to what I already know?

If there are conflicts, are they small ones or major?

What other records can I locate that will help me confirm this information?  Maybe a death certificate, marriage record, probate record.  

Is the cemetery still in operation?  I’ve made many a phone call to cemeteries all over the country and had some wonderful results.

I’m pretty convinced that this is “my” Elliott Boggs.  Small discrepancies like years of birth being off, Eleanor McCoy being listed as Elnora, his death year listed as 1893 and not 1892 as in my database, the marriage being listed as 18 Apr 1849 and not 18 Apr 1839 are not reason enough for me to believe this isn’t “my” Elliott.  

That being said, I have a LOT of proving to do.  So, off I go to find more records. This has been a good day of research and very rewarding.  

LESSON: NEVER give up.  Keep on looking and keep on clicking until you’ve exhausted all possibilities.  

What if I would have given up after that first search on FindAGrave or Google that turned up nothing?

Happy Hunting

Michigan Girl


Copyright © 2013  Diane Gould Hall