Genealogy Jottings

Last winter we sold the family home, and I saved several boxes of things to sort later. As I unpacked one recently, I discovered my dad’s Loveland High School year books from World War II. I thought I would see only his school photos inside, but I found much more. One especially interesting page described school being dismissed for days at a time during the labor shortage in 1942. Students worked in the sugar beet fields to help with the harvest. That explains the photo I found several years ago of Dad in the beet field! He had never mentioned working as farm labor so I had no context for the picture. Yearbooks can provide some interesting details on a person’s life, especially if one participated in school activities.

I just cannot find it. In 1900, Petronellia and Samuel Reed had 7 children under the age of 18, but I cannot find a census record for the family. I have searched the Ancestry indexes in creative ways for every person in the family and come up empty. I have searched their assumed township and surrounding townships  in Missouri name-by-name and come up empty. Where were they? Did the census taker miss them?

We all know that cemetery markers serve to memorialize the dead. As we move into the Memorial Day weekend, I began thinking of all the photos I have taken of tombstones  over the years.  I have found pictures of others on the website FindAGrave.com. They provide birth and death information for my ancestors when no vital record exists. Find A Grave provides a valuable service to genealogists, and I could aid the effort by furnishing photos from my own collection. At this point, I do not have the technical skills to do this, but I would like to learn. This weekend, as usual, I will visit the gravesite of my uncle, Robert Lloyd Reed, at Fort Logan National Cemetery. It will give me an opportunity to begin by photographing his headstone and inserting the image, not just at Find A Grave, but also into my own database. Thanks, Uncle Bob, for your service and for inspiring a service project of my own.

My distant cousin, Dr. Michael Hayden, wrote The Reeds of Ashmore in the 1980’s. Numerous Reed descendants grace its pages, and this week I have been using a book I acquired via inter-library loan to update the family stories that Michael gathered. Ashmore Illinois 1800-2000 follows the pattern of the 19th-century “mug” books used by genealogists, and it is chock full of Reeds and their relatives who still live around Ashmore. This week I have added dozens of people to my database and learned about their lives. Many are professional people who got their start by attending nearby Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. A few still farm the Reed family land. Some have married neighbors; others have wed people from as far away as Africa and Japan. We may not know one another, but we are all connected by our descent from Ann Kirkham and Thomas Reed, Ashmore pioneers of 1830.

Last Saturday an obituary appeared in The Denver Post for a woman I never knew. Her name was Barbara Ann Evert, and she was my third cousin. The sad thing is that she lived just a few miles from me. She descended from a line of Everts I could not find when I compiled a family genealogy a dozen years ago. Who could have known that she was virtually a neighbor? Barbara sounds like someone I would have liked. She passed away at the age of 77 after falling while hiking in the Grand Canyon. Barbara, I am sorry that you and yours do not appear in my book. You are now gathered back in with the rest of us on the website.

Courtesy of my local inter-library loan department, this week I have been perusing The History of Ashmore, Illinois 1800-2000.  My Reed and Carter family footprints are all over this book. Many of their descendants still live in Ashmore. My distant cousin and Ashmore resident, Margaret Reed Winkleblack, contributed many interesting articles to this volume. Thanks to all the information in this book, I will have abundant source material for writing character sketches of my ancestors who settled and lived in Ashmore.

This week I made a trek to the Post Office to pick up my great-grandfather’s probate file. The County Clerk in Illinois had mailed it with postage due, so I had to cough up the extra 84 cents to claim it. I have ordered many estate files in the past, and never before have I encountered the cumbersome procedure followed by this county. Usually I mail a query via e-mail if I can, or else with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The clerk sends back a response telling me whether they have the file and how much it will cost if they do. I send a check for the fee. They then mail  a copy of the file to me. Simple enough. Everywhere I have worked with before, the cost of mailing the file to me is included in the fee. This county, however, has come up with an odd policy. First of all, they require a money order for the fee (they won’t accept a credit card or a personal check), so I had to drive somewhere to get one. Secondly, they ask for another SASE for their use in mailing the file, but they do not say what size envelope to send or how much postage to affix. I used a single stamp, and of course it was not enough. They had to really work to stuff the pages into the business envelope I provided. It seems obvious to me that setting the fee to cover the cost of appropriate envelopes and postage is the way to go. Why create a procedure like theirs? Either they just have not thought it through, or else they want to discourage genealogists from asking for records. In my eyes, they look ridiculous. I am more and more appreciative of the wonderful folks in Grant County, NE who have e-mail and mail documents for free.

Common genealogical wisdom tells us that even though governments outside New England began registering births and deaths in the 1800’s, compliance with the registration requirement was spotty in the early years. This week I looked at Coles County, Illinois death records for 1877-1905. My Reed family pioneered near Ashmore about 1830, and three generations of my ancestors lived there. Cousins have done a lot of research on the family, but holes or undocumented facts remain on the family group sheets. As I looked at the LDS microfilm of the death register book, I found that the Reeds were as haphazard as anyone about reporting deaths. I found just 4 records out of a list of sixteen family members who passed away in Coles County during the time period I searched: Nancy Jane Dudley, George Robert Reed, Caleb Reed, and William Riley Galbreath. Despite this dismal registration percentage, at least these people actually were named in the record. Scrolling through the film, I noticed records of many unnamed babies who died shortly after birth in Coles County. Were any of them Reed babies? Often not even a surname appeared for the child, nor were the parents’ names listed. Not much of genealogical value there although I suppose the county was more interested in documenting causes of death and burial sites. I will add the information I found on Nancy, George, Caleb, and William to my database. Deaths of the other twelve known Reeds, and names of any who may have died young, will remain undocumented for now.

Awhile back I mentioned attending the 2011 Colorado Genealogical Society seminar. I was one of the lucky recipients of a door prize that day–a free membership to the Computer Interest Group (CIG) that operates under the auspices of CGS. Earlier this week I went to a CIG workshop meeting and met with a group of people there who use the same genealogy software that I use.  A couple of very experienced and knowledgeable users led a Q & A session about the software. I came home with several ideas of ways to make the program more useful to me. The very next day I modified my screen layout and began implementing some of the advanced task tracking features that the program offers. Both of these will be great time savers for me. Less time spent on organizing information means more time to spend on research!

One hundred fifty years ago the Civil War began. Many Americans today have ancestors who fought in that conflict. Until now, one had to travel to the National Archives in Washington to view the draft records compiled 1863-65. Recently the NARA-Ancestry partnership posted the records online on the Ancestry website at www.Ancestry.com. Of course I took a look right away. I had no luck finding two of my usually-elusive subjects, John Davis Riddle and Samuel Harvey Reed. I was thrilled, however, to find my third problem child, Thomas Sherman. He appeared as a single man in Johnson County, Indiana–the first Indiana record I have ever found for him even though family lore had always claimed he lived there for a time. The family also claimed that he served in the Civil War, but so far I have found no record of that service. Several men named Thomas Sherman did serve from Indiana, but none of those I have researched so far provide a good match for my Thomas. I need to do an exhaustive search of all military and GAR records to lay this issue to rest.