The Slovak Yankee

Follow Friday: Amanuensis Monday at Geneabloggers

Geneabloggers is shaking up its blogging meme routine and having several options for each day of the week.  I've been participating in transcribing records on Monday thanks to Transylvanian Dutch's invention of the Amanuensis meme.  Now, there are literally dozens of people transcribing records on Monday. 

The records themselves are interesting to read, but it is the breadth of the types of records that really grab you.  If you are just starting out in genealogy (or even not), look at the types of records you can use: obituaries, letters, court documents, military records, deeds, wills, probate files, oral histories, diaries, and the list goes on and on.  

Mr. MacEntee should catalog the number of different types of documents and use it for his presentations.  It's a wonderful teaching opportunity and certainly can inspire someone to search in several new places.

Family Trees at the National Archives

The National Archives has a website called Docs Teach meant for teachers to have access to thousands of primary documents for teaching purposes.  The site is divided into historical eras and I clicked on the 1754-1820s link.  There are a number of family trees there and imagine my surprise to find my own ancestors Thomas and Bridget Pinkham!  This is the Docs Teach page.  This is my own blog posting on the very same Bible.  I recognized it instantly.  Very cool that my direct matrilineal ancestor is on the National Archives site.  However, you should check some of the other old family trees.  Maybe your ancestor is there too.

The Dollivers and Aunt Ada

After I transcribed the obituary of Ada S. Keene (and I'll be doing a similar one for her husband next Monday), I looked at my notes in my database for her.  She is the sister of my great-great-grandmother and the woman to the far right in this picture.  She had two children, one of whom is mentioned in her obituary.  The other was Annie Bradley Keene, and under her I just had "Aunt Ada's mother."

Those are cryptic notes for anyone else, but I knew what they meant.  Back in the 1920s, for reasons I won't go into because it is not my story to tell, Ada came to live with my great-grandparents Archie and Lila.  Lila and Annie Bradley Keene were first cousins.  So my grandmother and Ada lived together for quite a few years growing up.  They were only a year apart, and naturally became like sisters.  Their friendship lasted their whole lives and my mother grew up calling her Aunt Ada (and then I did).  However, her real relationship with my mother was 2nd cousin, once removed.  Because I knew her and because she was well off to the side collaterally in my family, I had never bothered to do much "real research" on her.

A few years back when the NEHGS launched the Mass. Vital Records Database 1841-1910, I waited and then found Ada Smith's marriage record to Charles Arthur Keene in 1892.  However, after rediscovering the Keenes this time, it only took me only an hour to find everything else.  The NEHGS database now goes to 1915.  That found me the marriage record of Annie Bradley Keene and Amos Dolliver, as well as the birth records of their first two daughters including Aunt Ada.  The 1920 and 1930 censuses gave the names of the rest of the children.  The Social Security Death Index gave me the deaths of the two sons.  I already had Aunt Ada's death record and her obituary.  A simple Google search on the male names revealed the online obituary for one sister (with married name) and that mentioned the other sister with married name.  Both were found in the Social Security Death Index, and Aunt Ada's youngest sister just died in July 2010 here in Massachusetts at age 90.  I got her obituary online too. [Boo Hiss on Genealogybank.com which never seems to have any modern obituaries for me.]

So, I now have a fairly complete family picture of my second cousins, twice removed.  Interestingly, I could do this all from home with two paid databases: NEHGS's Americanancestors.org and Ancestry.com.  The two obituaries however were just on the Internet for free.  The five siblings died in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and two in Massachusetts.  So, there's no denying the convenience of this type of online research.  I do it so rarely, that I forget that it can be done this way.  

Rotating Your Searches

I was intrigued to read Genealogy's Star's two part posting on Taming the Rise of Digitization.  Although not following his line of reasoning, it did spark a thought of my own.  As someone who's done a fair amount of research and who is waiting for more online resources to open up, how can I methodically touch base from time to time to see what's new?

I guess one could make a list of brick walls or surnames of particular interest and then from time to time, go to specific sites and re-search (that is to search once more), databases already searched.  I would venture that Google Books and Family History Pilot would be two good places to go back to in a set time pattern.  But what?  Every six months?  Once a year?

I may try compiling such a list and testing this out over the next few years.  I'm sure that someday something will pop up and surprise me.  But of course, isn't that the major symptom of the disease?  The never-ending hope that someday something will turn up to help us.  We never really ever declare a search dead and over.  Although I might just start that trend.  It's too bad you can't register certain searches to run over and over again like you can in Westlaw, Lexis, and Google in other genealogical databases.  I'd love an alert for several searches.  

I think some of us "old-timers" need to get a routine going, because at the present I only do off-the-cuff searches when the mood strikes.

Content Wars

Responding to Thom MacEntee's Open Thursday Thread on the Content Wars:

• Once a collection of documents is digitized and indexed, should they be made available to researchers for free or for fee? This means they would either follow the FamilySearch (free) or the Ancestry (fee) models. Note: there are many other vendors and providers both free and fee – I am only using the most recognizable vendors as examples.

My response: I think the digitizers have the right to recoup their expenses of digitizing and providing the documents online in a searchable format.  That said, anyone who has ever paid a toll on a highway knows that although the initial costs may have been repaid, the toll never dies.  There will always be a choice.  You can use it online and pay a fee (for convenience and the opportunity cost of travel) or go to where the actual document is and see it for free.

• Does it matter if the documents themselves are in the public domain when it comes to charging a fee for access? Does a good index and search mechanism add value to the record set, to the point of justifying a fee for access?

My response: No it doesn't matter and an emphatic yes, it matters if there is a good index/search mechanism.  Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis charge an arm and leg for their content, which is law, and in the U.S. the law is owned by no one.  (that is, cases and statutes, etc.)

• Think about the holdings that genealogical or historical societies have.  Should they place access behind a members-only website, even if the documents are in the public domain? What about making the index free but the images members-only?

My response: Yes they should.   Many societies may have debts or overhead to deal with.  Membership is key for those societies.  I think making the index free to entice membership is a great marketing ploy.

• Let’s say that 20 years from now, most records of use to genealogists are digitized and accessible – either free or fee. What will genealogy vendors need to offer consumers to keep them engaged in genealogy? What will genealogical societies need to do to survive if their public domain holdings are made available for free?

My response:  From your mouth to God's ear that most records are digitized within my lifespan.  It's all about the quality-added for the vendors.  Are records responsibly linked between individuals who created them?  Are the search mechanisms robust?  Can you keyword search entire documents or only subject search them?  If genealogical societies give their holdings away for free, they are doomed.  They should fold themselves back into their respective geographical area historical societies.  The content is online and the actual documents are protected in a society.  

Great questions!!!

No Such Thing As a Database Improvement

Unlike Will Rogers, I don’t think I’ve ever met a database upgrade I’ve liked.  I’ve been trying to figure out why.  Partly, I’ll admit I don’t like change.  I learn to use databases, use them well, and then, certainly without my consent, they are changed.  I’ve never been queried about the changes, nor on any committee that instituted the changes.  I’m not even sure end users are even consulted in the world of database improvements.  I think they are mostly business decisions made my managers and executed by computer programmers.

It seems to me that database improvement is just a code word for dumbing down a system so that more of the “average” searchers can use and benefit from the system.  And that means more customers and higher revenues.  In the 20 years since computer databases came into their own, I’ve experienced this let down time after time.

Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw were really the first two modern search databases of any consequence.  They even started off with stand alone units before desktop and laptop computers caught on.  Their searching, and specifically Lexis’s searching was great.  Then came windows and the mouse.  Eventually free language searching.  Each time, these things impeded what was a wonderful system.  You used to be able to string search your search (multiple commands all at once, which you typed out) so you could cut down your time in the database, because you were being charged not only for your searches but by the minute of just being on the database.  Now that these two legal databases are so huge with information, in order to find appropriate cases you need to field search, which is what we were doing “back in the day.”  Those databases have come full circle.

Harvard’s online card catalog, HOLLIS, was at first a unique computer creation just for Harvard.  That is, it was not adapted from the two big OPAC computer programs of the day (Ex Libris and Innovative Interfaces).  It was the best search system ever.  There was nothing you couldn’t find.  And as a librarian there was a public and private view (HULPR) and you could find when journals were checked in and all kinds of useful information as a reference librarian.  However, again, the web took over, and eventually Harvard had to go to a system that had greater support than the unique HOLLIS system.  Again, with millions of items in the database, you need robust searching techniques or you tend to miss things.  Nothing was better than using KSH (keyword in the subject heading) and knowing librarian subject words like handbooks, bibliography, biography, etc.  I find the web-based HOLLIS of today clunky.

When Ancestry.com upgraded their search system to include some algorithm for approximate searches, it was terrible.  I don’t know any genealogist who didn’t opt to stay with the “old” Ancestry search model.  I guess so many genealogists did that the “new” search option was dropped.  Thank goodness. 

Now, there is Americanancestors.org, the new website for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.  I’ve been a member of NEHGS for 25 years and using their webpage since day one.  Sadly, I have to say, it’s another “improvement” gone wrong.  The first thing is that I have to login every time.  The old system remembered my computer (even Ancestry does that).  So, it’s a wicked annoyance.  [I double checked that it wasn’t my Safari web browser.  It also happens on Firefox.] I tend to use the NEHGS databases to check information more than look up information.  With that in mind, I was distressed to see that the database for The American Genealogist, didn’t note the year coverage up front.  Eventually I know they’ll have all of TAG, but they don’t now.  I finally figured out that if you click on volume, there is a pull down menu that only goes to volume 43.  So, that sort of answered the question.  But the pull down menu is cumbersome for the Register which has over 160 volumes.  I preferred typing in the volume number --much quicker.  

It’s much harder to search a single database.  I did some searches of Mass. VRs 1841-1910 and despite choosing just that database, I got Maine marriages too.  I’ll have to explore more possibilities, but it seems that the functionality I held in high regard is lost and replaced by a more sweeping search functionality.  That’s fine, but it holds to my theory that the improvements are made to help drive more customers to the database and up revenues.  I just don’t know why those of us loyal and long-time customers always have to suffer.

Follow Friday: LiveMocha

There are many places on the Internet to find genealogical terms in foreign languages.  There are probably few Americans who won't at some point in their research, need to work in a language other than English.  However, if you want to kick up a notch and not just memorize a few words like baptism, death, and widow, there is a place to learn a foreign language for free on the Internet.

LiveMocha offers courses of all the major languages I can think of.  I was impressed that they had Slovak, an often forgotten language among the European languages.  [No Rosetta Stone for Slovak for instance.] I'm in the middle of my first lesson.  Here's a New York Times article about it.  The web does have some real advantages insofar as the sound capabilities that now the Internet has.  You click on a word and you hear it pronounced properly.  I had a few false starts in lesson one trying to figure out what word was meant by the picture given (no English translation is provided), but I got the hang of it.  

So, if you are planning a trip to the homeland of some ancestor and want to learn some of the language spoken there, I think this is certainly one affordable way to do so.

Transcription Monday (Amanuensis): Internet Genealogy

From "Accessing the Genealogical Literature: Problems Facing Historians and Genealogists" The American  Genealogist 72 (1997):387-398.

Internet Resources

Presently, there is little genealogical scholarship adrift on the “information highway” known as the Internet. Many genealogists are mounting their ancestries on homepages on the World Wide Web without footnoting sources, and forcing the browser to email them asking whence the information came. However, this medium is fairly new and the researcher should be aware of its potential for information about primary resources and contact with fellow researchers.

Just before this article was to be published, Thomas Jay Kemp, head of special collections at the University of South Florida, Tampa, published Virtual Roots: A Guide to Genealogy and Local History on the World Wide Web (Wilmington Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1997), an exhaustive listing of relevant web sites for genealogical research.  Hence, my own comments here will be brief.

The most comprehensive site thus far is maintained by Cyndi Howell at (http://www.oz.net/~cyndihow/sites.htm). With links to over 20,000 web sites, it should be every genealogist’s starting place for Internet research. Another website with promise is the USGENWEB Project at (http://www.usgenweb.com/index.html) which is trying to produce a webpage for each U.S. county with genealogical information. Thus far 2,200 of the 3,100 counties are represented. Since each page is maintained by volunteers, there is wide variety in the type and quality of the information given. One site that does display scholarship is a Mayflower Homepage maintained by Caleb Johnson (http://users.aol.com/calebj/mayflower.html) which has original full-text Mayflower documents available (the Mayflower Compact, Winslow’s writings, Morton’s writings, various wills, etc.). Of course there is an abundance of good scholarship on the Mayflower families in print, but it is nice to have to some available electronically as well. 

Other sites of interest are :

• Horus’ Web Links to History Resources on the Web (http://www.ucr.edu/h-gig/horuslinks.html) from the University of California, Riverside, History Department.
• HYTELNET (http://library.usask.ca/hytelnet/) the most comprehensive index of searchable online library catalogues worldwide. 
• Library of Congress (http://marvel.loc.gov/)
• OCLC (http://www.oclc.org) 
• RLIN (http://www.rlg.org) 
• Chadwyck-Healey (http://www.chadwyck.com)

Notes:

I wrote that article.  I posted this for several reasons.  I make more disparaging than effusive remarks about Internet genealogy.  This week in a series of posts I will examine both my viewpoints and the reality of research on the Internet.  Readers new to this blog have not read all my postings from the last three years (yes, it's been that long) and are getting a distorted picture of how I view the Internet. 

I'm also posting this to prove my bona fides.  I think I can safely say without fear of successful contradiction that I was talking about Internet genealogy before ANY blogger, and indeed was the first to write about the Internet as a burgeoning source for genealogy [in a scholarly journal].  Indeed, that article most likely predates most genealogists' start dates for their research.  So I have been studying this phenomenon for a long, long, long, time.

I'm sorry I present a contrarian view to things.  Most, if not all but for me, of genealogical bloggers are the most excited, happy, helpful and wonderful people out there.  In my opinion, that sometimes comes off as the Stepford Genealogists.  Ancestry Good.  Foootnote Good.  Genealogy Good.  There has to be more than one-dimension to this whole thing, right?

Dark Ages for Genealogy--It Happened Once Already

As part of the ongoing discussion of Curt Wichter's comments (much of the discussion captured here), I would encourage everyone to read Nicholson Baker's Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (New York, N.Y., Random House, 2001).  For those doubters that historical materials can be lost even through the best of intentions, it's already happened.  It happened seventy years ago.

When microfilm became a new technology (I know-how quaint), libraries had the opportunities to create enormous amounts of space by getting rid of paper newspapers.  Those newspapers were laid flat and sewn together one month at a time and took up a great amount of shelf space.  Naturally, the thought was and in fact, happened, that newspapers were microfilmed and then discarded.  What was lost?

First of all, some newspapers, in whole or in part, were in color.  If you didn't know that, then you can see that's part of the problem.  Newspapers used to run multiple editions.  However, only one edition was ever microfilmed.  So, say your ancestor was of meager means and could only afford an obituary to run once.  If it ran in the morning edition and it was the evening edition that was microfilmed, you've already lost.  And if it's the microfilm from which your digital image is made, you have lost forever.  

Most of Baker's book looks at the ramifications from a historian's point of view, but you can see a genealogist being affected as well.  

Follow Friday: Passenger Lists of the 17th Century

In 2004, the NEHGS asked me to write a series of online articles on passenger lists for their website.  The articles are still there and can be read if you are a member.  Most people don't care about the background of passenger lists, they are just concerned with the lists themselves.  Although the last date on this web site is November 2007, I found it is a good quick site to check on passenger lists* to New England (and Virginia) in the 1600s.  It is called Pilgrim Ships.

**There are no such things as passenger lists for the 17th century in New England.  These lists are compilations of names from various sources: diaries, letters, writings, licenses to leave England, etc.  Many older genealogies placed people on ships much earlier than they probably arrived.  It was a cachet to be as close to the Mayflower.

The Mayflower has no passenger list either.  We know about the passengers from William Bradford's writings 30 years after the fact (his famous Mayflower Increasings).  To date, no other piece of evidence has been found to contradict his memory, which I find incredible.  However, he was cryptic and there are several mysteries that have yet to be solved as well.