1940 US Census Indexing: I Took The Plunge!

After seeing all the hoopla about volunteering to index the upcoming release of the 1940 US Census, I threw my insecurities out the window and signed up to go a-indexing! It took about ten minutes total to download the software app, watch the video, sign in to my FamilySearch account and give it a whirl. It's kinda fun.

My hesitation was that I'm still a newbie and have been known to screw up stuff now and again... OK, regularly. But all the big kids were singing its praises so I jumped on the bandwagon. (Too many metaphors there, but you know what I mean;)

The video is so simple and straightforward, even I could understand it! And then they give you a test batch to try out. If you make a mistake or get confused they help you.

I'm working on some birth records now for somewhere in Texas and it's so very moving to see these records and know that my keystrokes could lead to someone finding their ancestor. OK, I'm hooked.

Plus, I get to pick from a list of records I want to index. That's really nice. I took a look at some handwriting on records from the War of 1812 and I'm not there yet. But Texas births... I'm all over that!

It comes to you in little batches so I don't feel like I've got this gigantic job to to. It's just filler work for me. Do a couple every now and then. Writing this blog post is taking longer than the batch I just finished.

Yeah, I can do this indexing thing... and I bet you can too. To sign up to index the 1940 US Census, go to http://the1940census.com/

And to get all warmed up and try your hand at indexing, go to http://the1940census.com/getting-started/

Photo of the Day from my archive:

My GF, John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) and his mother,

Christiana Eckhart Kelly (1861 - 1932)

ca. 1910.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/1940-us-census-indexing-i-took-plunge.html

A Funny Story About That Sign

When I was four years old we moved from Western Maryland to Ohio. Dad had a wonderful new executive position in a plastics plant... and if you remember the movie, "The Graduate", everyone was talking about "plastic".

We visited my Mom and Dad's families, both from Frostburg MD, regularly. It wasn't a long drive, so we'd pack up the car, later the station wagon, and make the trip. I always loved the ride, and mostly it was along the Ohio and then Pennsylvania Turnpikes. Early on the big road ended or hadn't begun yet, and that was OK with me as I loved the smaller roads that made their way through all manner of villages and towns.

Our family life in Ohio was suburban and the streets went on and on until they hit downtown Cleveland. By contrast, little Frostburg seemed a microcosm of life where stores were just across the way and everyone knew everyone... and probably was related somehow or other.

There were things that puzzled me about life in Frostburg. You could say to the man at the little store, "put it on my bill" and he would! You couldn't do that in suburban Cleveland.

In Maple Heights we lived at "fifteen one one one" Maple Heights Blvd. In Forstburg the house numbers of the people we saw were mostly single or double didgets. Three numbers indicated that your relative lived on a long street, like Bowery. Main Street was so long it had an east and west side.

There were signs that puzzled me and one said simply and profoundly: Beware of Sinks. We passed those signs in and around Ocean Mines MD for a while before I spoke up and asked outright what they meant, interrupting adult conversation. I saw no sinks anywhere on the landscape, of either the bathroom or kitchen variety!

To elaborate on the answer, here's what Aunt Betty wrote recently in answer to a question about my GGF Daniel Williams that reminded me of my puzzlement at the sink sign.

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived.

In the 1940's, I remember hearing the digging and conversations of the miners in our kitchen at Ocean. They must have been working near the surface.  As a matter of fact, in the late 50"s about 9:00 p.m. one evening, we heard cracking of the walls and I thought the house was on fire. 

I ran outside to look at the house and nearly fell in a 50 foot cave-in of the road. The ground under the house was pulled toward the cave-in and the house fell 9 feet. None of the doors and

windows would close or open properly. What an experience. At that point it was decided that we should move. 

Signs were placed along the road for several miles which read "Beware of Sinks". The house used to be even with the road in front of the house and today it is about 10 to 12 feet lower than the road.

Daniel was elected as a trustee of Ocean School, District #18 on June 22, 1907. He was a member of the George's Creek Valley Lodge of Masons at Lonaconing MD.

Picture of the day from my archive:

Mom and Dad at a function for one of his executive postions, ca. early 1960s 

Me, Easter in front of our house at 15111, 1950-something.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/funny-story-about-that-sign.html

Daniel Williams In The Newspaper: Chicago Fair of 1893

OK, so here's where I am so far tracking down my GGF, Daniel Williams (1852 -1920) and his trip to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from the Ocean Mines of the Consolidation Coal Company in Western Maryland where he worked as a foreman in mine number 16. It's just the kind of detail that tickles the fancy of the story teller in me, so I must know more!

It's the newspapers of the day that I want, so first stop is to find out what newspapers were published in the area in 1893. The Library of Congress's Chronicling America project was go-to location. There I searched on state, then town. Cumberland MD had 64 entries for local newspapers and it was interesting to see the frequency with which they came and went over the years!

The "finalists" on my list to track down for Cumberland are the Cumberland Evening Times (1892 - 1916) and the Cumberland Daily News (1890 - 1923). While talking to Mom this morning she shared that over the years one leans left the other right, politically.

Chronicling America's search for Frostburg MD produced one entry that had relevance and that's the good old Frostburg Mining Journal, the FMJ. It was published from 1871 to 1913.

None of the above are available online, much to my dismay. So now I have to figure out how to get this research done by remote control.

I was at a little workshop on US land records and happened to mention that I had paid $25 to get a copy of my 5th GGF's land sales in 1816 and 1817 and his will. One of the ladies in attendance "hrumphed" with great disdain at my not having gone to upstate New York to track them down myself. Of course it would have been exquisitely better to have gone there and dug through the archives my own self... no telling what I might have stumbled into. But it simply was not possible. Likewise, I need a work-around to browse and get a copy of the relevant articles in the FMJ and Cumberland newspapers.

Picture of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-in-newspaper-chicago.html

Daniel Williams and The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: Coming Up Empty

My search for more info about my GGF, Daniel Williams (1852 - 1920) and his trip to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (see post below) is coming up empty. There's tons of information about the event itself but Daniel William's role as envoy remains lost to me... at least for the moment.

Sometimes it's the search itself that brings me nearer to my ancestors and all those small details that I accumulate along the way add to my deeper understanding of their life and times. I really don't know what it was like to work in a coal mine but this search had brought me places I might never go.

Here's a for instance. Was searching one of my favorite sites for my target area, Western Maryland, at http://www.whilbr.org/CoalTalk/index.aspx. See there at the bottom of the page? Where it says "Coal Mining Resources"? Well if you click through you are taken to a very nice video on YouTube about mining from the Frostburg State University's Ort Library Special Collections at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glim9dO50L8

It's this tangential stuff that fills in a lot of the blanks in the lives of my ancestors:)

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-and-chicago-worlds-fair_25.html 

Daniel Williams and the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

Here's how my latest research project got launched. I was trying to find out more about the mystery photo (below) of my GGF, Daniel Williams. We know he worked for the mines but how did the clothing and gear fit into his work? Can we find out even more about him by following the tracks of this photo? Hopefully, yes.

So I put out some inquiries and Cousin Jo Ann C. wrote back that she thought they had on miner's hats with lamps. Good observation!

Then Aunt Betty wrote this and I'm off on another trail as well:

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman

at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived.

He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from Ocean Mines

to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

WOW! He took a large lump of coal to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893! Here's a link to the epic event on WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition

It was the Gilded Age and nothing was "too much", or too new for that matter. It was the first time that a wide area was bathed in electric light at night and by all accounts it was a magical sight! There's so much written about this event that you can (and I did) lose yourself for hours in the swim of information!

Of course general googling around leads me nowhere in finding the specifics of this effort of Daniel Williams. Now it's on to newspapers of the day, locally. In Chicago, it was just one of thousands of ventures to make the Exposition a success. But in the hills of Western Maryland it would have been newsworthy. Wish me luck!

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL of this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/daniel-williams-and-chicago-worlds-fair.html

Mystery Photo: What Does It Mean?

I have a problem. Was browsing through Aunt Betty's Archive of Williams family photos when I came across this one. It's a puzzle to me and I can't figure it out. I can and will ask Aunt Betty and Mom both but meanwhile I can't resist playing history detective, looking hard and trying to figure out what's going on in it. That's my GGF Daniel Williams, second from the left and marked clearly in Aunt Betty's notation at the bottom of the image. I just love how she labeled everyone recognizable in each picture... none of these "hidden" notations in the file ID.

OK, so at first, in thumbnail version, I could see that it's a picture of a bunch of men in, perhaps, a kind of uniform with some round things and a piece of equipment on a tripod. The thought crossed my mind for a moment that this was a Civil War group, but that couldn't be correct. because the puzzle pieces don't fit.

I guessed that they are surveyors and that the equipment is for surveying. So off I went to check the 1910 US census for Frostburg Maryland. It shows Daniel Williams, at 53 years of age, living with his wife Jane with four sons, Thomas 20 YO, Joseph 14, Cambria 12 (my GF) and Charles 10 years old. The census also says that his occupation coal miner.

But why is he this get up with other men likewise attired? Why is a miner dressed up like what appears to be a surveyor? I'm stumped, utterly.

So now I'll go ask Mom and Aunt Betty and see what they know.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/mystery-photo-what-does-it-mean.html

One "Like" and One "Dislike"

Ya know, some days...! First, a Dislike about passwords. I try to change my various passwords regularly and rotate from my list of over a half-dozen of them in and out of connection that keep me going. There's a bit of a theme to them so that when memory fails (as it too often does) there's no need to look them up... just try another version. But here's a recent true tale about passwords.

I have three Hotmail accounts for various purposes. One of them is for my landscape painting collectors. In the most recent rotation of password changes I choose a password that I had used before... when my Hotmail account was hacked! Like, so D'uh!!! And they hacked it again! All my fault, really. And so my poor collector base kept getting emails from me inviting them to click through to a "work from home" scheme. For three days! Until I figured out what had just happened there. Grrr.

Next is a Like. I really like Google Reader. Was a slow adopter but now that I'm on board, was thinking this morning that I can't be without it. I can get cozy and read all the genealogy news that interests me at one sitting. No clicking through or surfing over to various sites. It's brilliant.

Picture of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/02/one-like-and-one-dislike.html